Amazing love...Homily for 8.00 Easter 5

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, also should love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another

Jesus seems very intent on getting his message across...a message summed up in a single word

LOVE

That's the beginning and the end of the Christian life...LOVE

All you really need to know about the Christian life – and the God who calls us.

Love.

Simples!

But I'm rather afraid that if you stood by the Co-op check-out and asked everyone who came through the first word that sprang to mind when you said “Christian” love might not be the answer.

A straw poll conducted yesterday came up with “Boring” “Science” “JBigotry” “Dior” “Fundamentalist” “Perfection” and “soldier” before finally someone suggested “love”....

and if I'm honest I wasn't very surprised.

You see, though we are a people shaped by God's love, called to live each moment responding to it – we are actually really bad at showing it.

God pours out his love and invites us to share it with others– but we struggle to believe that there's enough to go round...so we hoard it.

Though love and fear should be mutually exclusive, we are anxious. We close our fists to hold God's gifts tightly instead of playing pass the parcel so that everyone can be included.

Indeed, it can seem as if our faith is more of an insurance policy against a miserable eternity than a life-enhancing source of overflowing joy....

But take comfort...If we're anxious that there's not enough to go round, we're not alone.

The reading from Acts presents Peter learning a very important lesson.

Throughout history til this point, the Jewish people had rejoiced in their special relationship with God. They WERE God's chosen...defined by the Torah and the Covenant...

And within the Torah, the dietary laws draw a clear line between those who follow them – who are the insiders, God's people – and those who don't.

So what you eat defines who you are unmistakeably...and Peter was confident that those who followed the purity code were God's favourites.

But that day in Joppa God turned the Jewish world upside down...removing the barriers of history and showing Peter that there were to be no limits on God's grace from now on

“What God has made clean you must not call profane...”

Against his upbringing, against his life-long experience, Peter found himself awake to a new reality, invited to see the whole world in a different way.

If God then gave them the same gift that he gave to us...who was I that I could hinder God. ...God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life”

In other words he'd learned, as we must learn, that God's love is always broader, deeper, stronger......and completely inclusive.

Nothing and nobody is beyond its scope – and there will always, ALWAYS be enough to go round.

So – spend a minute thinking about the people you struggle with.

Those whose behaviour alarms you...Those whose outlook is radically different from your own...Those whose messy lives make you think “For goodness sake......”

Those who seem to have no time for you, and make you feel small and unimportant.

Think about them.

Then...remind yourself that God loves each of them so much that he chose to DIE to prove it.

Remind yourself that God loves each of them just as much as he loves you.......and that God loves you just as much as he loves them.

Finally listen to the words of Jesus once again

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, also should love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another

Ask for God's help in learning and living his lesson of love – a love that includes everyone, regardless of race, creed, gender.....or anything else you can think of....a love that never gives up, regardless of our response...a love that lasts forever.

A view from some distance up the candle

Once upon a time, in my first years out of university, I was part of the choir of St John the Divine Kennington - and it was here that I first encountered Benediction...and was completely overwhelmed.
Though I'd grown up amid the rarefied Anglo-Catholic air of Chichester diocese my family were firmly morning-only worshippers (the restful silence of 8.00 for preference) so I had never even dreamed that such exotic delights existed!
That first time, in the chapel at St Gabriel's college, I had no IDEA what was going on - simply that I seemed to be in a place where prayer was easier, more valid, than anywhere ever before.
I loved the externals - the altar crowded with lights, the clouds of Rosa mystica incense - and I loved too the way we could somehow slip into the ongoing tide of prayer that stretched through the centuries as we sang the plainsong hymns "O Salutaris hostia" "Tantum ergo sacramentum"
All my senses rejoiced in something that was so very very beautiful...and I found the theology behind it  beautiful too.

I have never doubted for a second that Christ is fully present in the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist. My own experiences of meeting Him there time after time are proof enough for me.
I always find it easiest to pray in churches where the Sacrament is reserved - indeed, it was almost a "deal breaker" for me in considering possible jobs.
I don't understand the how and whys...and I don't think that I need to.
I just know that, for me, this is a solid reality - and a place where heaven and earth touch.

So...it's really not surprising that in Exposition and Benediction I feel very close to God...for it's a time of quiet reflection kneeling before Christ, present in the consecrated Host upon the altar...and then a moment when we receive a blessing that strengthens and inspires us.

It's a moment when words are unimportant and when even my ceaseless background chatter of ideas is stilled.
A moment out of time - when we are swept up into the unbounded present that is eternity.

It's something I long to experience more often...
I find it so hard to shut up and just BE before God but here it is both easy and blessed.

As to what actually happens in practical terms - the best summary I've come across is here  (scroll down to find it)...or, better still, there's a brilliant children's resource also offered by Little St Mary's - where they probably do this better than most places!

And if, for you, this reads like complete nonsense - confirmation that I'm dottier than a dalmatian with measles - then think of this. You can sing the Tantum Ergo most beautifully to the tune of "I'm forever blowing bubbles"! Try it and see - and I bet Jesus enjoys it hugely!

You don't always get what you want...

Home from On Fire, the AngloCatholic Renewal Conference that I experienced for the first time last year. I blogged about it then - and had been looking forward hugely to reconnecting with this network and finding out what God had in store for me. I went with some pretty huge things to pray through - and, this time, with the reassurance of knowing I was going to spend time with established friends, people with whom I'm comfortable sharing at deep levels. On day 1 as we enjoyed a gin before dinner I commented to one about how lovely it was not to be in a state of badly-suppressed terror...this time the arrival at High Leigh had something of the same feeling of home-coming I usually associate with Greenbelt. I was excited and hopeful.

Which made it harder, I think, when some of the teaching on offer this year was distinctly UNhelpful. Some things were said in ways that I'm pretty certain would not have been part of what the organising committee expected or wanted...and there was a stirring of unwelcome memories for some of my friends.  Having not been part of the charismatic movement in the past, I was immune from those particular struggles - but had plenty of my own as the week unfolded. 

Of course, there was much that was completely wonderful. Time with friends, raspberry gin, addresses by the Bishop of Hertford - and encounters with God in the Blessed Sacrament both at the Eucharist and during Exposition and Benediction. 

But there was also disappointment.When I took a deep breath and went forward for prayer ministry, placing all that I was carrying with me firmly in God's arms - though friends left and right were falling down, it seemed that (to paraphrase) "in Kathryn, nothing much happened". 
And that, of course, triggered all my own insecurities about charismatic gifts. Had I let God down somehow by not being open to him? 
What was I holding onto unconsciously that was stopping God from doing what I firmly believed that I needed God to do?

That wasn't a good evening.

And then we reached the final Mass. A service where the music was mostly familiar, the sermon truly outstanding and in which we were each lovingly anointed for whatever God was calling us on to. 
Like other services at "On Fire" the Mass included a time of waiting on the Spirit. Last year there had been a picture that seemed to be specially for me...but again, this year, there was discouraging silence where I had hoped for something loud, clear and unmistakeable. 
All there was was was the reassurance "God says, I am not SENDING you out but going with you..." (did I say "All"? - oh well, you see what sort of mood I was in...full of grumpy mutterings to myself about "wasted opportunities" and "a whole year til you'll be with people who get this stuff" and....)

And then - well, then I went forward to do my job as a chalice assistant as the rota had indicated - and there and then, as I did what I do week after week after week God met me and swept me up in a whirlwind of love and joy that made it impossible not to grin like a lunatic at each and every person to whom I handed the chalice. I just about resisted the urge to say to each
"The blood of Christ - and you do know, don't you, that it comes with all the love that you'll ever need and more.......?" but that was most definitely what I was feeling for myself.
And isn't that just LIKE God? and just like me?
I'm spending ages hammering on a door that doesn't seem to want to open, - while beside me stands another, flung wide...

Perhaps the charismatic gifts will be part of my future. 
Perhaps they won't.
I know myself well enough to resist saying that I won't mind either way. I want any and every shiney thing that God might be offering - so I will keep on asking, but I do know that God doesn't love me less if those gifts do not become part of my life and part of my ministry.

I know too that as I stood there yesterday God affirmed me in my vocation as His priest...affirmed me in doing what I do day after day after day as I stand before His people and offer them God's own self in bread and wine.

Oh - and the Rolling Stones quote? well, I guess that might just have been the prophetic word I was craving, as over our final lunch a friend said, a propos of nothing obvious "You don't always get what you want..." and my heart responded happily 
"But...you might find that you get what you need".

My sheep hear my voice - words for 8.00 on Vocations Sunday, Easter 4C

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 

Today we celebrate vocations Sunday...and in case you were in any doubt, can I say loud and clear that vocation is for everyone.

The God who created the unique individual who is YOU gave you gifts to be used in his service...

An article on our diocesan website puts it rather neatly

“We are all called, no matter what our occupations may be. There is no special status in the Kingdom for those in “top jobs” or “important responsibilities”...

It used to be that we understood particular paths as vocations – teaching, nursing, ordained ministry, the creative arts – but vocation simply means CALLING – and there is no doubt that each one of us has particular work to do for God.

During the Confirmation service, the bishop says to each candidate

“God calls you by name and makes you his own” - but that calling begins long before we are ready to stand and make an adult commitment to our faith...From the very beginning the God who searches and knows us has a particular work for us to do.Our whole life should be a celebration of what God does for us,a response to the amazing love in which we live and move and have our being, a living out of God's purposes in our everyday world.

So...all we need to do is to listen for the voice of our Shepherd...because he knows us and knows where we should go.

But somehow, we seem to struggle with this.

Perhaps it's just that we've stopped expecting God to speak – so we don't REALLY listen.

Perhaps its because the path God calls us to seems at odds with our own understanding of our needs, our desires or our abilities.

Perhaps we doubt whether that inner restlessness, that sense that we are not quite at home where we are, is really God's voice at all.

A while ago a group of clergy friends came up with a check-list of ways we might know if God is calling us...a check-list that is only slightly humorous. 

• If you’re having a hard time sleeping or concentrating on anything else, if
what you’re thinking about doing raises your blood pressure and makes it hard
to sit still, then you MIGHT be hearing the voice of God.
• If you’re thinking of doing something that you don’t feel at all qualified or
prepared for, you MIGHT be hearing the voice of God.
• If you are comfortable where you are, and something is provoking you to
try something (in service to others) that places your comfort in jeopardy, you
MIGHT be hearing the voice of God.
• If your family and friends think you're crazy for even considering a
change that might place your comfort level at risk, you MIGHT be hearing the
voice of God.
• If you stop worrying about whether you’re hearing the voice of God, you
MIGHT be hearing the voice of God.
•If, no matter what other direction you explore, you keep finding the same
option opening up before you, you MIGHT be hearing the voice of God.
• If you’re thinking of doing something that you enjoy doing, that you are
good at, but for the first time  with the intention of glorifying God and serving
others, you MIGHT be hearing the voice of God.
• If you’re concerned about what others might think of
you, you MIGHT be hearing the voice of God.
• If it seems impossible, you MIGHT be hearing the voice of God.

What do you think? Does it ring true for you?

If it does, and if you're absolutely scared stiff....take heart. 

This is GOD'S call for you, remember...and Jesus is very clear about what happens to those who hear his voice and follow his lead.

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand."

If we trust our shepherd and follow his voice - all shall be well.

And if none of that strikes a chord at all – it might just be that you are exactly where God wants you to be, singing the song that He has given you to sing...

If that is so, then sing it with all your might...with every breath of your body, day by day.

There is no greater joy than in BEING true to the self that God has created...in responding to the call of the shepherd who is himself the way that leads to eternal life.

Seeing is believing

Last week the world was full of Easter joy.
Whether you watched rockets knock stars from the sky as the Paschal candle banished the darkness from our hearts and minds or rose with the dawn to hear the resurrection greeted in the sound of joyful bird song - I hope and pray that for a while at least the uncertainties, questions and grey areas of faith were banished by the confident truth
"Christ is risen! He is risen indeed"

A week on, though, we're back with our own familiar realities...in a world where fear locks us in, behind closed doors - and where doubts and insecurities are part of the fabric of life.
It seems so unfair that nobody talks about Peter the Turncoat or - despite their evident ambition - James & John the Wannabe twins - but Thomas - oh, he's Thomas the Doubter for all time - and as such, surely, the patron of pretty much everyone I have ever known.

He hears the excited testimony of his friends "We have SEEN the Lord" - and is not satisfied.
He wants firm, tangible evidence...nothing that could be based on mass hysteria (can 10 be a mass?) or the power of suggestion. 
He wants incontravertable proof that Jesus is alive.
Don't we all?
Seeing is believing!

So - here's my own story of doubts and faith and proof and wonder...Are you sitting comfortably?
During ordination training, I found myself on a weekend exploring Franciscan spirituality, and was told to go out on a walk without watch, phone or any agenda except attending to what God wanted to show me. At the time a special friend was in hospital, so separating myself from the phone was a huge challenge in itself, and I was concerned that I would be so bothered at being out of touch with her that I'd be quite unable to hear anything from God at all.
However, I obediently set off down the drive, taking time to look and listen as I very rarely did. Having suffered all my days from a fair degree of short- sightedness, I tend not to be a very visual person, and it was good for me to learn to gaze without hurrying on to the next thing.
Normally, of course, I would never have met the spider.
As it was, I nearly missed him, as he span his line around an ivied tree. He had one of those mottled grey-brown bodies that was very much at home amid the layers of autumnal leaf-mould. I watched him scurrying along the bridge he was building from his own body, hardly breathing for fear that I might damage the fragile work of engineering that was before me. But then the rain started…large, heavy drops, which shook the dying leaves around his workplace. The spider froze, midway between one twig and the next, stopped dead in the very midst, the very moment of creation. Perfectly camouflaged amid the dead twigs and bark, suspended on his own silken way, stretched, elongated, he looked nothing like a spider at all.. I waited.
And waited.
As time passed, I became desperate for him to move. I began to doubt my own memory. Had there ever really been a spider at all, or had my eyes been playing tricks? I longed to shake the branch again, to prompt him to move, to reveal himself. I knew deep down that I had seen him, that what I now gazed at, willing him to move, to prove the truth of my experience, had only paused upon its delicate and dedicated course. I knew, but still I longed for confirmation, for fresh evidence of a reality that should need no proof.
Then I heard God laughing.
“Kathryn” he said “You’re doing it again. Don’t you realise that you do this with me, again and again and again? We spend time together. I fill you with a sense of joy and awe at my presence, and you focus completely on me. Then the time comes for you to leave the mountain, and even as you head homewards the doubts crowd in. “Was it really God?” you ask. “Perhaps I just felt happy because it was a beautiful place and a special day. Perhaps I was bouyed up by the presence of loving friends.” You will the moment to repeat itself, to confirm its truth.
That spider is a spider, even though its intricate work appears to halt, even though it seems to vanish, and merge into its own small world. And I am God. You may lose sight of me too, may wonder if you ever really glimpsed me here…but I have the whole created world in which to hide or show myself. You need not doubt the evidence of your eyes”

Remember that, as you engage with the world this week. 
God is here - as surely as the risen Christ encountered Thomas in the upper room. Just open your eyes and you'll see.

Lenten Loveliness

Facebook and twitter friends already know that this Lent, in a desperate bid to make myself slow down and listen, I have been taking time each day since Ash Wednesday to luxuriate in some of the music that has shaped my faith and opened windows onto heaven for me across many many years.
Being incorrigibly extrovert, of course I've had to share those treasures under the banner of 
"Lenten Loveliness" - and that extra dimension of sharing the process with online friends has meant that this has been the single Lenten discipline which I have actually stuck to faithfully - and also the first one that has made an appreciable difference to my spiritual well-being as I've travelled through the 40 days. 
Sometimes I've been about to fall asleep when I've realised that I've not actually listened to or posted a track...but the process of pausing to think and then to listen deeply to the music of the day has always been a blessing and route to growth, as well as a way of connecting with some special moments of my life, singing in beloved buildings with people I value.

Now, of course, Lent is behind us....so here is the complete list of works - all of which can be found on You Tube if you're feeling a bit deprived of loveliness in any area yourself.

1. Allegri : Miserere Mei 
2. Weelkes : When David heard 
3. Farrant: Call to Remembrance 
4. Purcell : Thou knowest oh Lord 
5. Battishall : O Lord, look down
6 Farrant : Hide not thou thy face  
7. Farrant : Lord, for thy tender mercy's sake 
8. Palestrina : Cicut cervus 
9 Purcell : Hear my prayer 
10 Byrd : Agnus Dei from Mass for Four Voices 
11. Vaughan Williams : Mass in G Minor (part 1) 
12 Vaughan Williams : Mass in G Minor (part 2) 
13 Vaughan Williams : O taste and see 
14 Tallis : O Sacrum Convivium 
15 Vaughan Williams : Love bade me welcome 
16: Ley : Prayer of Henry V1 
17 Purcell : Remember not 
18: Howells : O Pray for the peace of Jerusalem 
19: Howells : Like as the hart 
20 : Tallis : Loquebantur 
21: Gibbons : Almighty and everlasting God 
22 Tallis: O nata lux 
23 Gibbons : Drop, drop slow tears 
24 Tallis: Salvator Mundi 
25 Dunstable : Salve Regina 
26 Cherubini : Requiem 
27 Morley: Out of the deep
28 Palestrina : Tu es petrus 
29: Anon : Rejoice in the Lord 
30 Byrd: Kyrie from Mass for Four Voices 
31 Rachmaninov: Bogorodice Djevo
32 Wesley: Thou wilt keep him
33 Victoria: Tenebrae Responses - O vos omnes 
34  Pergolesi: Stabat Mater 
35 Bairstow: Lamentaions
36 Anerio : Christus factus est 
37 Lassus: Lamentations
38 Gabrielli Jubilate Deo
39 Bruckner: Christus factus est 
Palm Sunday Bonus tracks!  Weelkes: Hosanna to the Son of David
Gibbons: Hosanna to the Son of David
40 Casals: O vos omnes 
41 John of Portugal: Crux fidelis 
42 Victoria: Improperia
43 Durufle: Ubi Caritas 
44 Lotti : Crucifixus
45 Bach Crucifixus and Et Resurrexit from B Minor Mass
46 Wesley: Blessed be the God and Father

Homily for Easter Sunday 8.00

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

We've made it through the long cold days of Lent, through the gathering darkness of Holy Week, the total eclipse of Good Friday and the vacuum that is Holy Saturday...

We've tried, with more or less devotion, to walk the way of the cross and enter into the Passion of our Lord – so that today we can truly embrace the joy of the resurrection.

Except – when you read Luke's account of the 1^st Easter day there doesn't seem to be much joy around.

During the 2 weeks when we helped our children to Experience Easter, at the final station we invited them to come up with words to describe how the women might have felt as they viewed the empty tomb. The only rule was that there WERE no rules – that no word was off-limits, provided you could explain why you felt that the women might have experienced resurrection in that way.

Since the children got to write their word in glorious technicolour on the whiteboard, this was a very popular activity, reflecting a wide spectrum of feelings.

There were the positive words: delighted....overjoyed...euphoric...words that showed that the children already knew the end of the story.

There was the one that made me smile inside even as its author whispered it to me to check that I wouldn't be scandalised “OMG”!.....

I'm sure I made it very clear that for me these were the “right” answers - “Brilliant” “Great word” “Yes, I'll bet they felt JUST like that...”

Then there were the uncertain ones “Puzzled....confused....bewildered...gobsmacked”

I was OK with those too. “I'm sure they were...it was so unexpected”

Even the best news may not look that wonderful when it is so utterly baffling, so contrary to everything we think we know.

But there were others.

“Empty...Lost....Overwhelmed...”

and reading St Luke's account of the resurrection, I realise that I should have been more encouraging even about these, the words I felt had no place in the story.

Because, you see, Luke offers us no hint of jubilation.

The triumphant alleluias that we take for granted just aren't there .

Instead the women were perplexed and terrified....and their announcement is disregarded as an idle tale, disbelieved even by the disciples.

Perhaps, then, this is the best of resurrection gospels for 21^st century England.

While I'd want to challenge the much-reported view of former ABC George Carey that Christians are persecuted in this country, we don't have to look too hard to see that the Christian story is no longer central to our national consciousness. Our faith is but one among many, and though the Church of England retains a privileged position as the established church, this does not mean that our neighbours, friends and families actually know what we believe.

The level of confusion over and indifference to what Easter is is just one example.

When our curate Clare booked little Hetty into nursery for an extra day this Thursday she said something about it being a busy week...and was met by totally blank looks as she stood there complete with clerical collar.

Meanwhile, someone asked me “Are you going away this weekend?”

And a colleague on twitter overheard a conversation in which a child was assured that the Easter bunny would surely take some eggs to baby Jesus.

That might raise a smile – or it might just make you want to cry.

We are here today because we believe that the greatest miracle of all time took place in the garden of the resurrection on the 1^st Easter day...the miracle that means that love wins for all time, that death, fear and destruction can never have the final word...that the holy fire of Easter is never extinguished by the darkness of the world.

But unless we demonstrate that reality in our own lives then small wonder that it appears to be an idle tale.

To live resurrection does not mean that we can expect to look like finished products overnight...quite the reverse.

It might, in fact, have more to do with showing that we are open to the possibility of new beginnings and unexpected hope in the face of all evidence to the contrary...in the face of the brokenness of our lives AND the brokenness of our world.

Resurrection rarely comes neatly gift wrapped, with the sort of explanation that can confound the sceptics – but its evidence is around us every day.

Later this morning we'll baptise a brother and sister whose birth parents could not provide the security and love a child needs – but who had the courage and generosity to give them up for adoption. Resurrection for them – and for the parents who'd wondered if their empty arms would ever be filled.

Last week I met with someone who has struggled with alcohol addiction – but has been dry for 5 years. Resurrection for him – and for those who've hung on to him, trying to show love even as he pushed them away.

There's more – so much more – and I'm certain that, if you pause to reflect, you'll know of some everyday Resurrection stories, stories of transformation and hope through which God's glory shines.

For Resurrection happens again and again..though we may neither recognise nor understand it.

It happens whenever we try to live in love rather than selfishness...when we choose reconciliation rather than vengeance...when we seek justice for the marginalised and freedom for the oppressed...in other words, when we try to live like Jesus.

It is his risen life that we celebrate – and his risen life that we share...

His life, given up freely for us on Good Friday but restored so that he might give it to us once again...

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Maundy Thursday

Obedience and love

These are the themes that, through all the confusion, the discordant sounds of violence, fear and death, emerge clear and unmistakeable this week.

Obedience and love.

Love and obedience.

Supremely, of course, this week we stand speechless as God's love for the world is revealed in Christ's shocking, scandalous obedience to the death of the cross...an obedience that proves to broken humanity, men and women ground down by the pain of living that, despite the evidence of the world, they – WE – are both loveable and beloved.

On Good Friday Christ crucified opens his arms of love for us

“How much do I love you?......THIS much........”

Tonight he shows us this love in simpler ways – ways that we too can aspire to...and invites our obedience.

He gives us his mandate – mandatum – for this is why we call today Maundy Thursday.

We have a mandate from Christ to do as he does.

“You also ought to wash one another's feet”

Christ's mandate, and yet we struggle to obey.

We struggle to live as a community involved with one another's frailty and brokenness.

We find it so very hard to accept the invitation to become intimate with our neighbour, to run the risk of vulnerability, even in the church, which aspires to be the safest of places – and we hang back too, from obeying the command to serve each other. Too often, we leave our mutual Christ-given responsibility for one another behind us when we depart from church.

Working with the children to Experience Easter last week, I rephrased the gospel

“Nobody is too big, too important to do simple things to care for others...”

That's fine.

We're used to the idea of practical care as part of our Christian calling – but it's somehow seems much easier to care for those who are far away than to reach out in love to the person in the pew behind, and so we lose the opportunity to form a deeper community, founded on mutual care and mutual openness to one another.

We struggle, all of us, with accepting care from others...perhaps even more só when we reflect that in that relationship of care giver and cared for Christ is always present.

Are we afraid to let Him come that close?

Tonight of all nights, He holds nothing back, kneeling at our feet and then trusting Himself to us in that precious fragment of bread and sip of wine.

His prayer is that we might all be one...one in faith, and love and obedience...one as His Body on earth...one as we gather round His table.

“Do this in remembrance of me”

“Love one another”

“Eat this bread, drink this wine...be nourished by my life...then live it in the world.”

Our mandate as His Church...tonight and always.

If stones could speak - a homily for 8.00 on Palm Sunday

If these were silent, the stones would shout out

Strange words from Our Lord on the eve of his Passion....words that have provoked some deep and thoughtful conversations with the children of the parish as they've visited St Matthew's to explore the “Experience Easter” stations.

You may not realise it, but as you sit in the choir stalls you are at the beginning of the Experience Easter journey...at the station that reflects on Palm Sunday. That cairn of stones at the foot of the cross represents the hopes and dreams of  several hundred children. They sat where you are sitting, talked about their longings - for themselves, their families, and the world -  and held a stone as they thought about these in silence, then slowly and prayerfully made the journey along the road to Jerusalem, to leave their hopes, dreams and prayers, with the One who has the power to make them reality.

Holy ground for Holy Week.

Now here, as Holy Week begins in earnest, we stand with the excited crowds, confident that the man on the donkey is the one who will change the world forever.

Whatever our agenda – we are sure he can bring it about. 

This is the man who will make all our dreams come true, not just today but always.

We proclaim with joy the coming of the King into his City...and we offer him our own longing for liberation, as surely as the crowds lining the road that day offered him their longing for liberation from Rome, their dreams of Isaiah's peaceable kingdom.

We cheer and shout, for today we see things as they truly are

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in highest heaven”

You see – some things are too huge, too important to be quiet about.

I'm certain that this is what Jesus meant with his words

“If these were silent, the stones would shout out”

One wise child last week pointed out that unless we explained it, nobody coming in to church would see more than pile of stones by the high altar....but that because we had seen child after child carry their stone, made precious by the dreams it represented, along the road to Jerusalem, we knew that this cairn truly marked a very special place.

We had seen – and so we understood.

The Palm Sunday crowds had also seen – and understood...

They had seen the miracles and wonders, had listened to the stories, had grasped that here, HERE was Someone, a man like no other...bringing peace and glory in his wake.

Their hearts were full and their joy overflowed.

They could not keep silent

This is Holy Week...a week unlike any other in the year...a week when we do not simply recall but reMEMBER the events in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.

We bring the past into the present, so that we too can find our place in the Passion narrative, can walk the way of the Cross and find it none other than the way of life and peace.

We have seen and so we understand.

In the past we have been able to assume that these stones – the stones of our churches – would cry out, would carry memories of a familiar story out into our community, to draw others in to walk beside us.

Now, you know, even the rumour of God is barely alive in too many places.

Perhaps we relied on the stones to cry out for too long....but now we have to add our voices.

This is our story, this is our song...

Let us proclaim it with our lips – but also with our lives

“Peace in heaven and glory in highest heaven” to be found in the person of that young man, riding down the road on a donkey 2000 years ago – but living in his Church and in his world today.

F for forgiveness

"My chains fell off, my heart was free...."
sang the huge congregation gathered at Canterbury Cathedral yesterday.
So,too, sang the significantly smaller congregation at St Matthew's last Sunday. 
"And Can it Be?" is my absolutely favourite hymn, part of all my significant services - 1st Mass, farewell, Induction...
I'm relying on all of you to ensure it's sung with verve at my funeral one day.
"Amazing love  - how can it be....?"
is pretty much my on-going response to God - but this week it's the liberating power of forgiveness, both human and divine, that is pre-occupying me.

It all began on Wednesday, when together with a friend from church I finally visited the F word exhibition...something I'd hoped to do since failing to get to it at Greenbelt some years ago. 
The Forgiveness Project is extraordinary - sharing stories of reconciliation that build bridges across chasms of hurt that common-sense would surely declare too deep, too wide to span at all.
There was the mother who became friends - truly FRIENDS - with the mother of her son's killer...the Holocaust survivor who signed a letter of forgiveness in the ruins of the Auschwitz gas chambers with a former Nazi doctor...and so many other stories of transforming power.

It was very clear that the act of forgiving was revolutionary in its power - both to shape the lives of those involved and in its impact on the wider community.
Eva, the Holocaust survivor wrote 

Forgiveness is really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment. I call it a miracle medicine. It is free, it works and has no side effects.I believe with every fibre of my being that every human being has the right to live without the pain of the past. For most people there is a big obstacle to forgiveness because society expects revenge. It seems we need to honour our victims but I always wonder if my dead loved ones would want me to live with pain and anger until the end of my life. 

I've never had anything even moderately serious to forgive - so it seems presumptuous of me to argue with her - but it seems to me that she is underestimating herself - and so many others - when she describes forgiveness as "free". Surely, if it is more than a form of words, forgiveness must surely be almost unimaginably costly. Nothing that I read made me feel otherwise, though it was striking how for the majority forgiveness was the obvious "solution", however hard won. It was the route by which they moved on from victim-hood, by which they escaped being defined by their hurt forever. It's power to reshape history shone through every account. A good friend, a survivor, once said that for him "Forgiveness means depriving the power of the perpetrator to keep on harming, day after day..." while one of my truly amazing Y6 children wrote, during our "Experience Eucharist" week                           "Forgiveness means letting go of your hurt and offering the hand of friendship to the one who has hurt you".                                                                                                                                               Powerful stuff!

So much for forgiving...BEING forgiven, of course, is equally challenging. Again, the stories of the Forgiveness Project confirmed this. To accept forgiveness means accepting, too, that we are culpable.It means being honest about our selves, our actions and motivations, even those which seem to have been successfully buried out of sight.

That's where the Sacrament of Reconciliation comes in, for me - and this was the second lens through which I've been exploring forgiveness this week.

I love this Sacrament dearly - though the process of looking into my own soul with all the clarity of vision I can muster is always, and I think quite rightly, painful. Motivations I've managed to gloss over, habits of mind that I'd pretended to ignore, just have to be confronted full on...and that's never an encouraging process. So often I seem to have picked up the same loads of rubbish that I gratefully shed before...have fallen flat on my face in the self-same patch of mud from which I've been helped again and again. Why do I keep on going there? Examination of conscience isn't supposed to be fun...Allowing God's light to shine in my darkest corners is, frankly, painful. But nonetheless, as I say, this Sacrament is one of the great gifts of the Church - something that makes all the difference because it has the power to change my view of myself - to liberate me in the same way that the participants in the Forgiveness Project have been liberated.

You see, within the context of the Sacrament we are reminded again and again that we are more than the sum of our negligence, weakness and deliberate fault...and that however overwhelming our sense of personal inadequacy and failure may be, this is NOT what God sees when God looks at us. That can be hard to hear, harder to believe - for somehow it's always easier to be generous about other people than to accept God's staggering generosity for ourselves...but when the words of Absolution come, there's no getting away from them. 

They are offered to ME -personally, by name! - in the face of all those mean, grubby things I struggle to articulate - and they embrace, too, "All those sins I cannot now remember" - for the longing to be free of them means that they, too, are covered by that amazing love.

"My chains fell off........"

Although it's Lent, there might just have been a few "A*******s" resounding round my car as I drove home.

Passion Sunday

What are we to make of that?

It's not, after all, the Sunday when we HEAR one of the Passion gospels read aloud – that comes next week, as a solemn post-script to the triumph of Palm Sunday.

Passion might seem to have little to do with us – a small polite group of Anglicans gathered in the quiet of an 8.00 celebration of Holy Communion – and on the whole we'd probably prefer to keep it at a distance - but it's passion that brings us together.

Not only THE Passion – Christ's suffering on the cross......but, if you like, the passion behind the Passion.

We're here because of God's passion for us – that overwhelming love that brought the universe into being and is endlessly poured out on each and every one of God's children.

We are here because that passion seeks us out relentlessly (the ceaseless pursuit of the Hound of Heaven) and is not content until it has brought about our ultimate salvation...

One dictionary defines of passion as “intense desire” - and indeed it is God's intense desire for us to come into relationship with Him that lies at the root of everything. That desire, that passion, is so great that had you or I been the only person ever born into our world, Christmas, Holy Week and Easter would still have happened – just for us.

But we tend to think of passion as a two way process – the glue that holds a relationship together... so what of our part in the process? What of our passion for God?

Does that exist at all?

Do I – do you - grasp the depths of that love, vast as the ocean?

And, if we grasp it, does it move us in our turn to reckless generosity?

“It is most wonderful to see his love for me so free and sure

but tis more wonderful to see my love for him so faint and poor”

runs a hymn I sang in childhood – and the sad truth is that most often, even when I glimpse the wonder of God's love, I hold back, resist the longing to throw myself into his arms.

I'm don't really understand why – though I guess it has something to do with a core of selfish, rebellious independence...that part of me that fears to be lost in wonder love and praise...even while I know that I will be most fully myself when I am lost in Him.

My better, best self, reading the gospel we've shared this morning identifies completely with Mary, ready to pour out her costliest treasure – that fragrant, wickedly expensive perfume – worth a whole year's wage for a labourer..I long to show Jesus that I can and will give him everything – just as he, in his passion, has given me everything.

I want to show my love in ways that will fill the whole house with a beautiful perfume, so that nobody can miss my extravagant devotion.

That's my best self.

But I know in my heart of hearts that, had I been one of the crowd in that house in Bethany, I would probably have grumbled with Judas about the terrible waste...tutted in disapproval at such public displays of emotion...or looked away, embarrassed at such naked feeling.

I wonder, had I stood at the foot of the cross, if my reaction might not have been similar – for surely there has never been such a public display of longing love since the world began.

I struggle to enter into God's Passion for me, risk remaining forever a spectator as I try to hold onto an independence that is, in the end, worth nothing.

“Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things...”, or, to put it another way,

“whoever tries to keep their life will lose it”.

As we contemplate God's passion for us, let's ask for courage and faith to let go, to fall into those everlasting arms –for then we will discover their strength and their gentleness as they hold us

secure.

And let's pray that the words that Isaac Watts wrote more than 300 years ago may come to be an expression of OUR Passion -today and every day

“Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small.

Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all”

Mothering Sunday

If I asked for a "job description" for mothers, I wonder what you'd come up with?

Would it be all about those shining souls whose immaculate homes, wholesome cooking and endless patience is the hall mark of – well, Hallmark Cards, actually?

Because, if so, I don't think I'm qualified for the job.

I love my children more than words can say, and I do my best to be there for them – but I just can't meet the expectations of the media, whose vision of a perfect mother is so far from my reality...

So I'm afraid that if my family depended on me for all their mothering, things would be pretty bleak. However, all is not lost....I'm pretty clear that they know how much I love them...and I know too that I'm not the only one. They've lots of special people, family and friends, who care about them deeply– but beyond even that, I know they are held in God's arms.

Paul talks of the "God of all consolation" – reminding me of the way that that those perfect mums are always supposed to be ready to "kiss it better" no matter what.

We can't always do that, specially when our children move on from grazed knees to broken hearts, but Paul tells us that God can and will - so we don't have to "mother" unaided.

Nor do we need to worry if the care that our own families can offer feels inadequate, disappointing.

Even if your experience of human family relationships has been thoroughly difficult,even destructive, God offers us real care, real love with no strings attached.

Of course, God is beyond male and female, but today I invite you to think about the motherly qualities of God …

Then think about parenting – and if you are a parent, remember how you felt when your own children were tiny.

If you loved them then, I wonder why??

Was it because they did wonderful things for you?

My guess is, probably not.

My babies were excellent at crying, at demanding feeds at horrible times of night and day, at filling nappies and a lot more besides, but I don’t remember them offering much in return in those days. But I have to say that I quite definitely loved them just because they were, and are, my children.

In the same way, God loves us because God loves us, because God loves us,

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

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

Each of us is Ioved, completely and fully, like a precious only child, held securely in a warm embrace.

God mothers us.

But there is more…The Gospel reading shows us a son (Jesus) who cannot be the son he'd like to be to his mother and a mother (Mary) who cannot be the mother she'd like to be to her son. The expectation of the time would have been that Jesus would have a duty to look after his mother, to care for her in old age while Mary, like any mother, would have longed to protect her child, hated to see him suffer.

But circumstances intervened.

The ideal family seems to be breaking down at the foot of the cross…

But because Jesus knows that he and Mary can't be what they would like to be to each other, he entrusts her to John, and John to her.

Together they form a new family – the church….the family we belong to too.

We are a family for each other and even if we lose our own families, or things go badly awry with those relationships, here in God’s church we should find lots of mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters to support us.

Remember, if you would, all those who have offered you love and care unlooked for…then reflect that within our Christian family each of us has a responsibility to share in the mothering of the world with God, by passing on the love and care we have been so freely given.

That is part of what being Church – the Body of Christ – is about.

Today, then, we celebrate all those who mother us in all sorts of areas of our lives. Let’s thank God for them, and be on the lookout for chances to share in the work of mothering the whole world for God’s sake.