Not our ways - a sermon for Evensong at Coventry Cathedral 29th July 2018

There are some people out there who believe that if you’re friends with God, you’ll lead a charmed existence.

They are those who’ve listened to preachers of a prosperity gospel and managed to forget that the subject of the Gospels themselves, Jesus Christ, was subjected to a terrible death, which he had done nothing to deserve.

Those who want to feel that the otherwise disturbing muddle of life circumstances is contained within an absolutely ordered universe, where good behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour punished.

If they want to hold on to that world view, they would do well to avoid reading the book of Job, source of tonight’s first reading.

Job, you see, is an upright man, revered by many, approved by God, and his life circumstances when the book begins affirm the belief that was prevalent in Old Testament times, that worldly success was a sign of a good life, and a testimony to God’s favour.

God looks at Job and smiles with loving pride.

Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’

However, - and it is an BIG “However” , things don’t stay that way for long.

Convinced that Job’s righteousness is only possible because all is going well for him, Satan persuades God to allow him to test Job’s faith. Disaster strikes, Job loses children, cattle, and later health and strength – all part of a process that seems to us at best capricious. What is God really up to, when such things happen?

How can we continue to have faith in one who deals so unfairly with humanity?

Enter Job’s friends, rallying round as best they can – though it turns out that they are not actually much help to him at all.

Like so many others before and since, they want answers to the problem of suffering – and in the absence of answers, they’re prepared to furnish some of their own. It’s perfectly understandable. We all want to make sense of the pain and evil we see around us. We want to find safety in an explanation, in some kind of reason.

If we can explain things, then we can tame them.

If we understand why bad things have happened, then we can make sure that they won’t happen to us….

Except, somehow, we can’t.

I’m sure that Job’s comforters set out with good intentions, but their attempts to help him make sense of his ordeal, their wild misreadings of the situation, and, their refusal to shut up and just be with him in his pain consistently made things worse….and in our reading this evening, Job reaches the end of his tether.

His friend Bildad has been eloquent about the ways in which the wicked can expect to come to a bad end and now, though popular myth presents Job as the embodiment of patience in the face of adversity, that’s definitely not the image he’s presenting to the world.

“How long will you torment me and crush me with words?”

he cries, taking over the initiative after being on the receiving end of torrents of misguided advice. Now it is Job’s turn to ennumerate all the ways in which he has been hurt, excluded,crushed at every turn….

It seems to him his friends are co-conspirators with God, intent on making things unbearable for him – and Job makes no attempt to conceal how badly he is suffering.

“Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends;for the hand of God has touched me. Why do you persecute me as God...”

With friends like these, who needs enemies? Job has repeatedly protested his innocence, maintained that there is nothing, NOTHING in his life that would justify the suffering he is experiencing – but his words seem to be falling on deaf ears as they continue to try to apply the law of cause and effect to his situation.

Will he die before he is vindicated?

Will he never achieve justice?

Lest the worst happens, Job longs to create a lasting record of his truth.

23“Oh that my words were now written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
24That with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!

Speech is lost in the moment, the written word more permanent, books treasured for longer still but for real immortality, words engraved on rock may endure for centuries. Job is buying time for his truth to out, his reputation restored.

But into this tumult of injured innocence drops suddenly a music of absolute, unshakeable tranquility

“I know that my redeemer liveth and that he shall stand on the latter day upon the earth”

As happens elsewhere in the Old Testament, the glorious music of Handel’s Messiah threatens to completely seduce us, so that we lose sight of the original intention here, the words subverted by a very different musical code. Though we cannot help but think “Jesus” when we hear the word “Redeemer”, Job’s appeal is to a different source of help. The Hebrew word he uses, “ga-al” means to redeem or to act as a kinsman-redeemer – a figure familiar in Jewish law and practice. Redemption here has to do with “release from legal obligation or deliverance from desperate circumstances, closely connected with a payment necessary to effect that release” It was this principle that was at work in the story of Boaz and Ruth, as Jewish law made provision to redeem family members in dire straits. Recognising himself at the end of all his resources, Job looks longingly for such a one to come to his aid.

In the history of his people, God had repeatedly taken on that role, saying to Moses, “I am Yahweh, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians…. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments” (Exodus 6:6) or later, during the Babylonian Exile, speaking through Isaiah, “Don’t be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine”

Job seems to have perfect confidence that his redeemer IS at hand...though as he anticipates the destruction of his earthly body we’re left to wonder quite what he is looking towards. So to whom is he appealing? We honestly cannot know – but this is certainly not the calm declaration of unshakeable faith that Handel’s music suggests. Job has recognised God as his accuser – so it makes little sense if he turns to him for vindication. That seems to be nonsense, no matter how beautifully we set the words to music….though Job is expert at bridging the gap between reason and experience, saying earlier in his trials

“Though God slay me, I will trust him”

And perhaps that’s the answer.

The problem of suffering is real and intractible for those of us who claim God’s essential goodness….but it’s something we cannot ignore.

So what, if anything, does all of this have to say to you and me today? What does it say in a world where wild fires claim the lives of children on holiday with their parents, where a compassionate and able oncologist falls a victim to cancer himself, a much loved man active the service of others receives a terminal diagnosis out of a clear blue sky,where some families seem to be buffetted by disaster while others sail blithely on?

Don’t look in the book of Job for answers...but, if you look hard enough, you might just get a glimpse of how to live with the questions.

You see, I think Job teaches us that there is nothing whatever wrong with asking God “why”, or telling God exactly what we’re feeling when God offers no satisfactory answer. Wrestling for a blessing, as Jacob once did by the ford of Jabbock, forces us into God’s arms, even as we struggle. As the book of Job continues, God speaks to him out of the whirlwind, reminding him once again that his ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts ours.

We are limited, fallible, mortals...and in verse after verse we are reminded of this. God is always greater, always beyond our comprehension...We can and do protest, but a God who is small enough to fall in with our expectations would be no God at all…

Yes, dreadful things happen – and we rightly protest and lament but in the end, we come face to face with the reality of God and can either fall silent in prayer or turn away forever.

The Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel writes of the day when the rabbis put God on trial. Gathered in Auschwitz they debated through long hours as day turned to night, coming finally to the conclusion that God WAS guilty – that he had a debt to pay to humanity. Profound silence followed this verdict until one of the rabbis observed

“It’s time to worship God” - and they all went to pray.

To whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life

Sermon for Proper 10 B, Sunday 15th July 2018 BCP Eucharist at Coventry Cathedral –

In the beginning was the Word.

What is true in Scripture is sometimes true for us as individuals too.

It certainly was for me. I grew up, amid the bells and smells of South Coast Anglo Catholicism, hooked on beautiful words and beautiful worship….but it wasn’t until my first term at university that I began to really fall in love with God, when a far-sighted supervisor set me an essay on Lancelot Andrewes, as a good route into the joys of 17^th century literature. Not only did that period become my literary heart-land – and remains so to this day – but my pleasure in Andrewes writing launched me into a deeper exploration of his world, and his influences. Where would his words take me? It transpired that in addition to having a rather wonderful name, and inspiring T.S. Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi” , Bishop Lancelot was part of the committee that translated the King James Authorized Version of the Bible. His gift with words shone through there too...words that carry a magnetism all their own….that can draw readers and hearers deeper into the heart of the mystery of God.

And the same is true of the language of the Book of Common Prayer, which we are using for our liturgy today. There is a beauty and a poetry that can enchant the heart, even as it lifts the soul.

Words matter right enough. It would be madness to deny it – and if you grew up with the Book of Common Prayer, and have been missing its music in the depths of your soul, then I do hope and pray that this morning gives you the chance to drink deeply from its familiar springs and be refreshed. Sometimes it does us good to revisit familiar places, and to touch base with what is precious there...but we need to remember, too, that we worship a living God, who is always “going ahead of us into Galilee”...one who cannot be enshrined and contained by even the most beautiful verbal reliquaries. The beauty of the Prayer Book (modern language for its day) and of the Authorised Version too is not intended to seduce us, or distract us from the inexpressible beauty of the living God...Sometimes it seems we struggle to remember that, for ourselves and for others.

You see, poetry and clarity do not always sit well together. And the things of faith seem impossibly obscure and abstruse to the many who are living their lives quite happily without ever crossing our threshold to pray or worship..so, although I continue to enjoy immersing myself in beautiful language, and celebrate its power in signposting me heavenwards, I’m relieved that our usual diet here is slightly more accessible to newcomers. Only slightly, I’m afraid – because most of what we do in the cathedral or in most other churches is a such a long long way from the normal experience of the majority that there’s still a colossal work of translation to be done.

By us.

Thou and I.

Adopted as God’s children through Jesus Christ we are part of his plan to love the world whole once again…

“Part of the plan”?

That smacks alarmingly of a theology that assumes we have no freedom as individuals...but it’s not where I stand.

While I am utterly confident that God did indeed search and know us from the beginning of our lives and the beginning of time, and while I am even more confident that in the end, no matter what, we will be caught up in the wonder of his love, the route that takes us there is of our own choosing. We may be chosen to be holy and blameless – but this doesn’t preclude us making our own choices that take us on a very different route for a while. Actually, there’s huge variation in our patterns of choices and direction every single day...and those choices do make a difference for better or worse...as we allow more or less of Christ’s light to shine in our lives.

You may be deeply uneasy at the thoughts of divine selection too- “Chosen before the foundations of the world” .

Why me? Why us? Does this cut across the whole theology of inclusion on which our reconciliation ministry, and our common life rests? Are we supposed, after all, to think of “us” and “them”, the chosen and the rejected, insiders and outsiders?

For me this would be a deal-breaker. I could not love and worship a God who allowed anyone – anyone – to be lost... ...- but take heart. Even St Paul, who, let’s face it, came from a long line of Chosen People, seems to have grasped that God has a bigger vision

“To gather up ALL THINGS IN HIM”

All things.

Nothing lost, nothing wasted…

The best news possible

Jane Williams, wife of the former ABC, puts it beautifully.

In Christ, God has always chosen to be our God. Even before we existed and certainly before we consciously turned towards God, God chooses that we are to be “in Christ” and share that relationship between Son and Father.

...This is what we are made for. We are designed to be part of the ceaseless flow of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

That’s where we belong...that’s what we are for.

In the here and now we are to so live that we make that heritage evident…to live for the praise of his glory, says Paul...In other words, everything we do and everything we should points to the God who has adopted us as his heirs.

Our lives, our way of being, is the best language we have to inspire others to join in the praise that is the inevitable outpouring of hearts and souls awake to God’s presence.

Paul, with his grounding in law, often uses legal metaphors as he reflects on our relationship with God…

The language of legacy is something he turns to again and again, - so we might be forgiven if familiarity blunts its impact. – but it’s pretty mind-blowing when you think about it.

We are heirs.

Inheritors, not just grateful petitioners and recipients of the riches of grace lavished upon us….but INHERITORS, part of the family, adopted children having equal rights with our brother, Jesus Christ himself, who is also the route by which we can come into that inheritance.

We turn to Christ

We receive the Holy Spirit

We become part of that ceaseless flow of love that is the eternal communication between Father, Son and Spirit – and in which we are forever included.

Whatever the language you prefer, whether ancient or moder….and regardless of the way in which you interpret Paul’s theology – this is the best possible news...and its ours to share.

You see, words can sometimes hurt and exclude….and we’re not above using them to do just that.

And religious practices may make no sense, and may even drive people away

But a community whose dominant characteristic is love will draw others in, because there is something unmistakeably attractive about that way of being.

Love is the irrestistable force which will, in God’s good time, gather up all things in heaven and on earth.

Let’s work with God to hasten that day, for his love’s sake.

Reflections on reconciliation for the Stratford Poetry Mass, June 20th 2018

Peace and Reconciliation.

Working as I do at Coventry Cathedral those words inevitably roll off the tongue together, as if inextricably linked from birth, but that’s really not so. 100 years ago, when the guns fell silent  at last, there was peace for a time,  – but very little reconciliation.

Paradoxically, that came to the fore a little over two decades later, when a seed was sown in wartime, amid the smouldering debris of the Coventry blitz. The morning after that night of destruction, a Church of England priest, walking in the ruins of his beloved Cathedral chose just two words to mark what had taken place. Those words, “Father forgive” were important in themselves – but even more important was the word that isn’t there….. In the apse of the ruined Cathedral, and in our Coventry litany of reconciliation that we pray day by day the verb has no object.

We do not say “Father forgive them”.                                                                                                                  There is no sense that some need more forgiveness than others, that the world can be divided into “us” and “them” , goodies and baddies. Instead we face a simple truth that we all have within us the capacity for good or for evil, and that we all alike stand in need of forgiveness.

It’s that admission that is essential. Where any party is convinced that they are innocent, reconciliation is almost impossible, for it almost always involves letting go of something – be it a grievance, or something material that prevents us from turning to the one-time enemy, with open hands and heart.

That letting go, and that turning towards is a challenge. The whole reconciliation journey, from fractured past to shared future, is fraught with challenges, as we acknowledge and then seek to mend what is broken, in our relationship with ourselves, with one another, with God. In the beginning “God looked at all that was made and saw that it was good” – but since then we’ve changed the landscape, so that we travel through the hostile terrain of our wounds and misdoings, our divisions and estrangements.                                                                                                                  

 Rumi, the Sufi mystic wrote “Out there beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” – and that’s our destination too – a place where peace and justice, mercy and truth can to find a balance point,  to truly  rest with one another.

But oh, the way is tortuous and wearying at times.                                                                                     

  “If thou can get but thither” says Vaughan, as if this life-time journey could be accomplished just like that “ there grows the flower of peace”, while Jesus offers: “My own peace I give to you”. His is a strange peace indeed, framed as it is by a crown of thorns – but ultimately, that is the only route to reconciliation. It is the power of unbounded, unconditional love, poured out with reckless generosity  that can enable to believe in and practice love once again – to build what Provost Howard of Coventry called a “kinder, more Christ-child-like world”  –so that little by little we no longer need to think in terms of “them” and “us”, for God’s reconciling love holds all secure.

Trinity 2, Proper 5 : a new kind of family

Among the many different Bible translations that you’ll find in a good Christian bookshhop, there are also some extra special editions for particular groups...Youth Bibles, Devotional Bibles for Mothers, and Fathers,  Revolution Bibles for Teen Guys (I kid you not), and probably Bibles for dog-lovers and cat-lovers too. Of course, there are red-letter Bibles too, with Jesus’s words in stand-out ink, but as far as I can see, there’s one special edition missing.

Nobody has yet published a Bible with the words we wish Jesus hadn’t said picked out in florescent green. I’m sure it would be a best-seller – because there are so MANY of them.

You know the ones.

“Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me” “Sell all you have and give the money to the poor” “Love your enemy, bless those who persecute you”…

You will probably have your own list of texts that make you wince...Mine include those above, but I really wouldn’t mind if he’d kept quiet instead of giving us this morning’s words too “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”

It sounds so easy, but it feels so hard.

Honestly, couldn’t he be a little less challenging? He’ll lose all his friends.

Picture the scene.

Here’s Jesus surrounded by a crowd so huge that nobody is even THINKING about feeding them...and he's not telling them gentle stories about lost sheep or prodigal sons.

Instead he is, not to put too fine a point on it, having a bit of a rant.

“How can Satan cast out Satan? …..Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven...”

It's not comfortable listening, even at the beginning.

Nobody much is enjoying themselves...I’m willing to bet that there’s not a lot of eye contact between Jesus and his hearers. They’re all wishing themselves far far away.

Small wonder that the Scribes, present perhaps to ensure that orthodoxy is attended to, set out to discredit Jesus – to divert his hearers in mid flow...

“Don't listen to HIM. He's not well...He's raving...Might even be possessed...Ignore him”.

And, in their task of persuading Jesus to shut up, to stop his incendiary diatribe, they recruit some rather unlikely allies...Mary and her sons and daughters.

Jesus's Mum and his siblings

That’s when I start to get a bit anxious.

I remember reading this passage while my children were small and thinking

“ Oh Jesus! Why? If my children are ever that rude to me in public I'll...maybe cry...maybe hit them...”

Nobody likes to hear family tensions being aired in a public space....and certainly the way in which Jesus seems to reject his own flesh and blood is an affront to those “family values” which were as powerful a force in 1^st century Palestine as they are, in a rather different way, in 21^st century Britain.

So, what's going on as Jesus asks his outrageous, offensive question, one that must have stung mother Mary like a slap on the cheek?

“Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Is it possible that Jesus looks at them without really seeing?

That in the flood tide of his preaching he has actually lost sight of reality, forgotten who he is and where he comes from?

I don't think so for a moment.

As they appear, intent on leading him away, calming him down, winning his silence, Mary and her sons are allied with the voice of law and order, concerned to keep up appearances, anxious that Jesus should stop making waves – lest they should all be washed away and perish.

Jesus must be feeling under pressure...no time to grab a sandwich, people surrounding him on every side – and nothing like enough friendly faces in the crowd...and now his nearest and dearest are missing the point too.

And yet...and yet, he will not be silenced, not even by his mother’s pleas.

He rejects both his family and their agenda of status quo, peace and stability, and casts about instead for a new family, a core community more truly able to offer support and encouragement, to share his vision and the task he has embraced as his own calling.

Searching, he lights on those sitting listening – hungry for his teaching, despite its tendency to baffle and to challenge.

A disparate group, brought together solely because they are drawn there by Jesus.

The kind of group you might assemble if the “Coventry welcome” on our front page was made real in our congregation today.

Nothing in common, except the single calling -to do the will of God.

“Here are my mother and brothers...”

And so the Church is born – as surely as it is at the foot of the cross when Jesus gives Mary and John to one another, as surprisingly as when the Spirit came on the disciples at Pentecost.

The Church – the family of Jesus in truth and in deed...drawn by him and existing to do God's will.

It's as simple – and as difficult – as that! Our core purpose in a sentence – which will take us a lifetime to unpack

Bur through the centuries it has proved so very hard for us to keep our grip on that calling.

It's so much easier to be God's family in name than in truth.

But to live it...to do God's will...that hasn't got any easier.

Sometimes, it’s not quite obvious where God’s will lies – and all kinds of family squabbles can break out then, resulting in unimaginable hurt that clouds the gospel for generations... More often, though, God’s will is all too obvious, but a bit too costly as well.

You see, to do God's will is never a recipe for social success.

It forces us to speak out against injustice – even the sort of injustice that is such an habitual part of life that we are barely aware of it.

It means standing on the edge with the excluded, the neglected, the outsiders

It means that instead of being the voice of stability and tranquility, we find ourselves needing to make waves again and again and again.

It involves us in letting go of much that we treasure and long to cling to.

We are here, purely and simply, to do God's will...to live as signs of God's kingdom of love and justice and joy.

That won't often win us friends or allies...for the kingdom is founded on challenge not complacency.

It won't give us an easy ride, at home or abroad – indeed, an easy ride is almost in itself a guarantee that we've lost the plot.

It has been truly said that if we really preached the gospel, we would empty the churches – for the cost of obedience to God is higher than most of us are willing or able to pay.

But – and of this I'm certain – though doing God's will will not guarantee peace and prosperity it will fill us with the kind of joy that stems from knowing that all our security, all our identity, is found in God as we seek to do God's will.

We will stumble, fall and fail a thousand times – our human nature pretty much guarantees that.

But still and all, we ARE God's family – drawn by Jesus, called to do God's will.

So let us pause for a moment, reflect, and confess in our hearts our failure as individuals and as community to BE the Church, the family of Christ...our tendency to settle for an easy compromise, our longing for approval from our family and friends...

and having paused, let us turn our faces to the Son and begin our journey again.

If we do so, I know that God's grace will meet us, raise us from death to life and bring us, through Christ our brother, to an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.

Windows onto God – a sermon for Evensong at Coventry Cathedral, May 28th 2018

When I was a teenage chorister, passages like those we’ve just heard used to drive me to distraction.

You see, my favourite escape route when the sermon didn’t grab me was to wander off in my imagination, into the depths of the readings. This was fine when they were stories of Jesus and his friends, or parables, or the Old Testament adventures...journeys through the wilderness, escapes from captivity...or the beautifully poetic prophecies of Isaiah about lions and lambs, or deserts bursting into life.

But passages like tonights were another thing altogether.

I would tie myself in knots trying to actually picture the 4 creatures.

4 faces, 4 wings, eyes wherever you looked – how on earth did that work?

Were Ezekiel and John both indulging in substance abuse?

I tended to think that they might be, and would retreat with relief to whatever was going on in the psalm.

Now I find myself preaching on those same passages – and its tempting to take the same escape route.

Except, of course, that there’s no way out!

It seems that all our readings, from Old and New Testament and psalm alike have the same message…

“Lord my God, you are very great… You are clothed in splendour and majesty”

Every word of Scripture we’ve heard this afternoon is designed to convey that...to offer a range of different images that might give us, the hearers, a window onto God – or, as John experienced it, a “door standing open in heaven”. Open doors are surely, always, an invitation...It would be simply perverse to turn away...but as we go through, we need to adjust our expectations, to understand that we are entering a different kind of reality.

You see, it’s important to notice what’s actually going on in the passages.

Neither writer is attempting an accurate scientific description of something you might try and draw for yourself (I say this, though behind me you have John Piper’s interpretation, to which we’ll return later, which might also help your imagination to take flight).

Notice how often Ezekiel tries to make this clear

“what looked like four living creatures...” “The appearance of the likeness of the glory of God”.

He knows we’re not dealing with exact equivalence. All these images are things glimpsed through a glass darkly…best guesses at a wonder beyond all words and all imaginings.

In the same way that icons, beloved of the Orthodox tradition, don’t presume to offer pictures OF God but rather invite us into a way of contemplating God’s majesty – so these passages are in no way factual descriptions of the glories of heaven, but routes into wondering.

As such they are part of a great tradition, and those living creatures are carefully chosen for their honorable place in Jewish writing as representatives of the whole of animal life.

Midrash declares that each is present because “all have received dominion” – the “king of the beasts”, the lion, symbolises strength and power and rules over all wild animals; birds are commanded by the eagle, far-sighted and visionary, and gifted with eternal youth; domestic animals are led by the ox, patient, strong, obedient; and here, too, is humanity, not in any way the “crown” of creation, but a good, respected part of it.

Four creatures – made into perfected, extraordinary versions of themselves, to emphasise just how charged and heightened these visions really are – because our writers are glimpsing something truly tremendous. We know this – even while we struggle to place ourselves beside them, to share their imaginings, see through their eyes.

But in fact our failures of imagination don’t matter in the least. These living creatures are there not for themselves but because they ARE creatures – part of the natural order, beings made for God’s glory and taking their part, with us, in the eternal song of praise around God’s throne.

One commentator writes of the vision of Revelation 4

“This is a throne-room for the universe – and the throne is not vacant. The universe is not a chaos, nor is it ruled by blind fate. Someone is in charge”….and this, of course, takes us back immediately to our great tapestry where that Someone, Christ himself sits, flanked by the four living creatures that our writers have described to us.

Michael Sadgrove, a former Precentor of the Cathedral, describes the tapestry as a ‘magic carpet’, carrying the worshipper on a flight not into fantasy but into reality at three levels – the reality of God, the reality of the world, and the reality of the person themselves.

That’s what lies on the other side of the door, if we have the courage to walk through.

Reality. We’re no longer dealing with “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God” but with a direct encounter with God made human, with God’s whole life and being walking the earth in the person of Jesus Christ...that same Jesus who now sits in glory, ruling over our world, our history and our future.

This “window onto God” is quite unlike any other – because we are invited to come close to, to know for ourselves, to receive into our own beings the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth”.

Where pictures fail, and dreams fade on waking, this Christ meets us where we are, in our everyday lives, and walks beside us here and now.

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, Who was, and is, and is to come...”

In Revelation, the 24 elders join with the living creatures in a chorus of universal praise…and surely our ultimate calling is to find our voices and to join with them..

In the meantime, though, we may feel rather more like that human figure standing between the feet of Christ, simply too close to see what is going on, oblivious to their surroundings.

But though we may not have much grasp of God’s reality, nonetheless we are secure – because the One who holds the universe in love will not let us slip or fall, however poor our vision as we travel onward til the door is fully opened and we are welcomed home to join ourselves in the song of heaven.

Ascension day sermon, Coventry Cathedral, 2018

When I was a small child, I loved Ascension day because there was a half day from school after early Mass, sticky buns and country dancing. Now it’s more a day when I hanker after chestnut candles against blue skies, revel in glorious music and try my hardest to write a sermon that has no mention of the tips of Christ’s toes vanishing into the clouds…but I still love this feast, despite the problems that it might present to those who want to view their faith through a purely rational lens. In a world which, on the whole, doesn’t imagine heaven as a realm above the skies, we do rather struggle with the baggage of past understandings of the Ascension, and perhaps that is in part the reason that a festival that was once so significant that it involved a half day from school is now largely forgotten, even among the faithful. Today does matter though. It is a turning point.
“The head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now” we sing, and it is tempting to think in terms of before and after, to see those two states in opposition to one another – and of course it depends on your perspective how you understand each part of the story.
There is one view for the eleven, left craning their necks for a last glimpse of the One who has given their lives hope and purpose through three extraordinary years…and pondering what his promise of “power from on high” might actually mean. For them, as for us, Ascension represents the start of a season of waiting in faith and in hope…and of trying to understand their new calling as apostles, those who are sent, rather than disciples, those gathered to learn.
And for Jesus? Well, when teaching children, I tend to explain today as “Christmas backwards” – but of course that is to oversimplify. While it is true that Ascension marks the end of Jesus’s physical presence in the world, it isn’t simply the moment when he returns home, takes off his humanity with a sigh of relief and everything goes back to “normal”…Things have changed for all time. The One who returns to glory returns wounded – for us and by us.
And the point is – the wounds are part of the glory! “The Messiah will suffer.” That’s essential…though not to assuage some cosmic system of justice. Some years ago, a speaker at a diocesan conference completely changed the way I was feeling about my beloved but rather struggling parish when she pointed out “The glory of God is as fully revealed on Good Friday as it is on Easter Sunday”. That enabled me to celebrate the church as it was there and then, rather than feeling frustrated that it wasn’t yet the gloriously confident, vibrant community of my dreams and longings. Surprisingly, (or maybe not really so very surprisingly at all) as soon as that happened, the church began to change….to see itself as revealing the glory of God in all the muddle and brokenness…and that fresh understanding began a process of healing and transformation. But that’s another story.
Last Sunday morning , Archbishop Justin gave us a similar message as he spoke about the tapestry – about the crucifixion, which is invisible from the nave, obscured by the high altar, but which literally provides the foundation for the image of Christ in glory which dominates our whole space. He pointed out, referring both to the tapestry, woven in a single seamless whole, and to the two moments of revelation  “It’s ALL ONE.”  Crucifixion and ascension are both alike manifestations of Christ’s glory
“And I, when I am lifted up will draw all people to myself”
Christ , risen, ascended, glorified, carries with Him both the marks and the lived experience of agony. They are for all time, - which means that our experiences of pain and suffering are part of what he carries with him for all time too.
This, of course, is also the message that our cathedral, ruined and rebuilt, carries to the world. We resisted the temptation to clear away the ruins, and recreate the lost cathedral – something done with startling effect in Dresden. Equally, we chose not to tidy up and build something new and different where the wreckage of the past had stood. Instead, we left the scars of history visible as a permanent part of our present reality. We do not cling to them with bitterness, but acknowledge that the pain was real, that places and people ARE changed and shaped by such experiences, that although we all carry our own wounds – of  loss, disappointment, failure – yet we dare to move forward in hope of a new kind of future.
Often people describe the relationship of old and new cathedrals in terms of death and resurrection…That makes sense too, but the presence of the scars on hands and feet of Christ in glory reflects the wounds of the ruins on which he gazes out day by day. And it’s ALL ONE. Cross, pain and glory inextricably woven together in the fabric of our salvation.
In Helen Waddell’s novel Peter Abelard, about the great medieval theologian famous for his love affair with Heloise, she describes Peter  walking in the woods with his friend Thibault. They come across a rabbit trapped in a snare, and its suffering triggers a deep conversation about pain and the cross:

I think God is in it too.'.
'In it? Do you mean that it makes him suffer, the way it does us?' Thibault nodded.
'Then why doesn't he stop it?'
'I don't know,' said Thibault. 'Unless it's like the prodigal son. I suppose the father could have kept him at home against his will. But what would have been the use? All this,' he stroked the limp body, 'is because of us. But all the time God suffers. More than we do.'

Abelard looked at him, perplexed. 'Thibault, do you mean Calvary?'

Thibault shook his head. 'That was only a piece of it - the piece that we saw- in time. Like that.' He pointed to a fallen tree beside them, sawn through the middle. 'That dark ring there, it goes up and down the whole length of the tree. But you only see it where it is cut across. That is what Christ's life was; the bit of God that we saw. And we think God is like that, because was like that, kind and forgiving sins and healing people. We think God is like that for ever, because it happened once, with Christ. But not the pain. Not the agony at the last. We think that stopped.'

'Then, Thibault,' he said slowly, 'you think that all of this,' he looked down at the little quiet body in his arms, 'all the pain of the world, was Christ's cross?'

'God's cross,' said Thibault, 'And it goes on.'

Christ in glory continues to hurt for the pain of the world. That gives a particular kind of hope to those who are suffering here and now. To the family of a young mum with a life limiting illness, who will not live to see her children grown. To my friends who watch by their  mother’s bedside, wondering if she will recover after the removal of a lung. To another who has been told that thereis no more treatment left. To others who have flown across the world to be with their dying son. To those forced from their homes by violence. To those longing for a fresh start and new possibilities.
All of those weeping, aching souls can know that their pain is known, understood, shared by the one who is all love. Christ’s triumph does not undo or override the struggles that are part of the here and now…It redeems but does not banish pain. It’s all one….
So Ascension is about so much more than vanishing toes or easy triumphalism. There is glory and pain intermingled, Rich wounds still visible above in beauty glorified. It is indeed a turning point, but not one that signifies Christ’s departure from the world – but rather that same world’s brokenness bourne by him up to heaven, where the hands which bless us in our weakness bear the marks of suffering too.

If there's an open door, why walk through a closed window? Thoughts from On Fire 2018

It's extraordinary how really important, life-changing things somehow bed themselves down in your world so thoroughly that you can't remember life without them.
I'm just back from On Fire...and have discovered that this was my 7th year at a conference that I only discovered by a miracle of grace, and attended with fear and trepidation back in 2012 - but which is now one of the places that I feel most fully myself, the community where I have the deepest, widest conversations, and where, without fail, I am touched deeply by God.
By a happy God-incidence, my current boss, the Dean of Coventry, was the person who first mentioned On Fire to me. I love that a relatively casual remark of his, in a long ago ministry review, set something in motion that enables me to be whatever it is that I am in the life of his Cathedral 7 years on...
but then, On Fire is full of happy God-incidences, too many to record really.

So instead I want to share a picture that seemed to be a parable for much of my life. This year I was privileged to be conference Chaplain (one of those vocational times when my "deep gladness" did indeed meet the deep need that some brought to conference, so that I was able to listen and pray and discover that this was very much part of who I am in ministry) and this gave me so much joy that I spent much of the time wearing a silly grin and singing Rend Collective before breakfast. Madness!
It also meant that, as friends shard their stories, I did quite a number of circuits of the beautiful grounds of High Leigh, which is where I encountered this visual parable.

I went over, initially, because the gate itself looked very beautiful.
As I drew close, I realised that I would never need to open the beautiful gate, - which was fortunate, as it was chained shut....but beside it on the left was a "kissing gate", perfect for walkers...
No need to struggle with chains, or climb over the top. There was a perfectly negotiable route there. The decorative but difficult route was not one I had to engage with.

Then I noticed something else. On the other side of the gate, there is actually no fence at all. 
You can walk straight from one part of the garden into the other with no barrier.
The gate is an almost imaginary construct....very handsome, to be sure, but utterly unnecessary.

And I thought about how that might be an image of the way I have related to God...first through a rather beautiful challenging approach (the demands of a singer on the Greater London Choral Circuit make it quite hard to lift your eyes from the music to engage with the living God who is the reason we sing at all)....
then through a simpler but still constricted approach, as I worked madly at being a good Christian, a faithful disciple, an effective minister...
But latterly I have realised that there is no barrier at all....that we "make God's love too narrow by false limits of our own"...
That I can simply respond to God's invitation "Come to me..." and that there is nothing whatever to prevent me.

Being at On Fire reminds me that I need to walk in that meadow, to take off my shoes (this is holy ground) and my socks, and feel the grass between my toes and dance barefoot with God under the spring skies.
And because God is all kindness, in those precious four days in Hertfordshire, I get to experience what that is like. 
How, then, can I keep from singing?