Sermon for Rosie's 1st Mass, St Eustachius, Tavistock, 26th September 2021

                        

Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever

How did you get here today?

I don’t mean the literal journey, though for some of us, with petrol-shaped anxieties, that might be a tale worth hearing in itself… but what I REALLY want you to think about is why you’re part of a shrinking minority who chooses to spend a Sunday morning doing things that feel increasingly alien, hearing stories from two thousand years ago and receiving them as if they were the key to life itself. 

Actually, of course, we who are here today could surely put up a fairly robust argument to confirm that those stories are indeed just that – the key to life itself...but we have to accept, we’re not currently doing too well in persuading others.

So, yes – back to your own journey.

How did you get here?

What were the steps, who were the people whose influence edged you along the way of faith?

 Before I say any more, I’d invite you to just spend a moment answering that question in your heart and giving thanks for your own personal cloud of witnesses, the everyday saints whose prayers sustained you, whether you knew it or not. Parents, godparents, there might even be a priest or two who cheered you on.

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it often takes a whole community, whether gathered or dispersed across space and time, to lead someone to faith. 

So – stop and thank God for each one of them.

Now, back to the journey. Perhaps you had a moment when it all suddenly made sense? Something you might identify as a “Conversion experience”, - to lapse into church jargon. That wasn’t how it worked for me. For me it was simply an ever deeper conviction that the words that I sang week by week as a chorister, the work of 17th century poet-priests that somehow touched places in me I hadn’t even acknowledged, were speaking of a greater reality than anything else in my life. That’s what I mean about saints dispersed across time. When I stand in glory, I’ll be looking out for George Herbert, John Donne, Johann Sebastian Bach because the beauty of their words pointed me to the beauty of a God beyond all language, all artistry...They showed me truth in ways with which I could not argue, and that truth has stayed with me day by day by day.

But that’s my story – and today I want you to engage with your own.

Because however you got here, by whatever route, it was the RIGHT ONE FOR YOU.

God never calls us to live someone else’s life, to follow every step of another Christian’s journey. 

Yes, we can be an inspiration and encouragement to one another – that’s a very important part of vocation – but there is no such thing as an identikit Christian, or, thank heavens, an identikit priest.

God calls us to be fully ourselves for God.

That’s something that Rosie, like each and every one of us, will continue to learn.

There are parts of ourselves that we may need to let go of, those parts that tend towards selfishness, and lack of love - but never in order to try and be someone else. 

You – yes YOU Rosie Illingworth, priest in the Church of God, are God’s Very Good Idea…

But so am I

and so is each one of us.

Because only you can sing the song God wrote for you, only you can do the work God has lined up for you…

Of course, recognising God’s call on our lives is not always a positive experience. If you’re one of those who found themselves at an identifiable turning point, I wonder how it felt. 

We know St Paul was knocked flying, and centuries later C S Lewis was a contented atheist who wrote of his own conversion with gritted teeth.

In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England” 

Yup. C S Lewis. The man who gave us Aslan, whose Narnia stories have brought generations of children to "desire a better country"", whose Mere Christianity remains on best seller lists, whose “A Grief Observed” is one of the most helpful books ever written on bereavement.

He didn’t find it easy, coming to terms with the reality of God. - so a bit of struggle really is OK. 

And yet, and yet – he knew there was no point in taking evasive action.

God’s will is for all of us to know and love, even as we are ourselves are loved and known – and God’s will WILL ultimately hold sway...as God pours an immeasurable, unbounded tide of love into our hearts and draws us inexorably ever closer.

In our Collect today we’ve prayed for that to happen – and in that prayer our longing for God and God’s longing for us, meet so we know that our prayer will be answered

Back to here and now, and the course of our own journeys. Whatever route you took, it probably hasn’t been plain sailing but we are here, and we are together.

Isn’t that wonderful

And, of course, today is just another beginning.

For those of us who’ve travelled with Rosie on this journey to priesthood, it’s tempting to think that we might have arrived. After all she IS, by God’s grace, now a priest, and today she comes home to herself in a new way as she celebrates Holy Communion for the first time. Family, Church family, friends – we can all permit ourselves a bit of wild celebration. This weekend MATTERS. God’s Church has been blessed and changed forever by this new priest – who, wonderfully, gloriously, is the Rosie whom we love and we are excited and delighted to see what she and God will get up to together in this new phase.

Because, of course, the journey continues.

That restlessness that Augustine identified centuries ago when he first wrote “Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless til they find their rest in you” is the hall-mark of the human condition. You see it wherever you look, as people try desperately to find ways to satisfy that yearning, that sense that something is missing. It’s there in the relentless consumerism that fuels so much of contemporary culture; in the feverish determination to get abroad somehow, as if landing on a sun soaked beach is, overnight, the answer to all life’s ills; even in the elevation of family from one of life’s great gifts to the Be All and End All. 

When humanity forgets to look for God, their need for God remains.

And that’s what makes today so important.

You see, today we don’t just hear ABOUT God – or even just about Rosie’s journey with God.  Please do ask her about it sometime... give her a chance to obey the command of the ordinal,  that as a priest she is TO TELL THE STORY OF GOD’S LOVE and tell her yours as well

To do that is pure joy – and yet, today, there is more.

Today, and every Sunday as we gather for worship, those stories become real, lived experience  and we get to meet with God.

We meet with God in one another – made in God’s image, sharing God’s love.

We meet with God in God’s Word, to challenge and change us.

Though we know that the Church never has the monopoly of God’s love and grace we can tend to stay where we feel safe and comfortable, and behave as if ours is the only way that God will draw people to himself – so there’s our challenge this morning.

“Whoever is not against us is for us” 

That’s a clear call, to keep us seeking people of good will with whom to serve the world for the sake of the Kingdom, remembering that

God is always bigger, more generous, and more present – even, or perhaps especially, in unexpected places.

Are you excited now?

Was the journey worth it?

But there’s yet more!

Today above all, we meet with God in the bread of Communion. 

As Rosie speaks those precious words of blessing and consecration for the first time, we know that Jesus will honour his promise to be here with us in the breaking of bread.

I expect we all have very different ideas about how that promise is kept,  but I’m absolutely certain that however we got here this morning, whatever tangles and traumas may make up our lives today, as we open our hands and our hearts, whether we feel his presence or not,  Jesus will come to us.

Receive that precious gift  from the hands of your new priest, for it is a fragment of God’s life and love offered to us in a morsel of bread. Such a small thing, yet all the food that we need to continue on our way, until in due time we come at last to the heavenly city, where we will see God face to face and know God’s love for all eternity.

Proper 19 Trinity 15 Year B James 3:1-12 Mark 8:27-38

 May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I pray that, or a variation on it, practically every time I preach.

Words and thoughts go together, not just in the pulpit – and may honour or dishonour God as they leave our mouths and begin to set up the reverberations that can continue beyond any expectation, or any desire.

Of course, words can be slippery creatures, their power magnified in this age of instant communication. As one who tends to over-communicate, I have to remind myself that when I tweet “That was the WORST DAY EVER!”, actually meaning “Things went a bit wrong for a while this afternoon...” there will be people who assume that a Serious Disaster has struck...As one who thinks aloud, I need to preface some responses with “I’ll know what I think when I hear what I say” - and that’s just when dealing with well-intentioned, day to day conversations.

This week guidelines issued to candidates standing for General Synod from a particular tradition in the Church of England, suggested careful phrases behind which to disguise their views, and likely voting preferences on some of the bigger issues that divide the Church today. That anyone should seek to win votes IN THE CHURCH on the basis of a clever deception seems deeply troubling….giving away something about the inner reality of those who suggested this behaviour.

You see words, even words intended to deceive, may reveal more than we plan…

James’s insistence that you should not be able to truly praise God and curse our neighbour underlines this. Our words will often show others more of the truth of who we are than we would ever choose, for good or ill.

Sometimes, this is a lovely surprise, as I discovered a week ago, as it was getting dark. I was walking down Hill Top, ...and saw a group of youths coming towards me who looked, if I’m honest, really rather scary.

There was no diversions possible so I pressed on, with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and one hand clutching my keys firmly, just in case.

As we passed one another, one lad, seeing my cross and collar, called

“God bless you, Mother” - a joyful blessing revealing a kind heart that was at odds with his tough guy exterior, and reminding me that words can be a window onto our true selves.

The words of our mouths, the thoughts of our hearts – and of course, the direction of our lives.

Things we simply MUST take seriously, aligning them as best we can with the way of the Kingdom, the way of the Cross.

You see, no matter who we are can get things disastrously wrong…

Enter, Peter who in one short reading swings from trimphant epiphany as he recognises the truth of Jesus as Messiah and Lord, to missing the point entirely, and finding himself equated with Satan.

It’s easy to imagine how it happened. Try putting yourself in his place just for a minute.
Imagine, you have enjoyed the daily companionship of Jesus…have listened to his teachings…broken bread with him…watched him transform the lives of men, women and children by his presence as much as his miracles.
You have gladly given up everything for the sake of his company – just to be with him, to be known as one of his followers.
I would guess that each of us is here because at some level we’ve made the same choices as Simon…

But what if we had to take Jesus out of the equation…if we had to imagine life without him. I’m sure that is what prompted Peter to take him to one side and try to persuade him to see sense.
The very clarity of vision which had enabled him to recognise the Messiah meant that he was horribly clear what life would be like for him if Jesus went to his death.
He was very sure that he understood how a Messiah should behave – and “suffering at the hands of the elders, chief priests and scribes and being killed” simply wasn’t on the agenda.
Of course, there was this baffling line about being raised on the third day – but that just didn’t make any sort of sense…it certainly wasn’t something to rely upon.
No…Peter was adamant.
Death should not touch his Messiah.
Full stop.
No argument.
God forbid!

Oh…where would we be without Peter?
So often, he models faults that we too struggle with…and, once again, his words are a dead give-away of the fightings and fears within that I recognise only too well.
Here he has decisively proved that one can proclaim Christ as Lord without really grasping what that means in real life. Peter is convinced that his Messiah will triumph through strength…He’s completely floored by the way of the Kingdom.

And then Jesus tells him what it means to line up words and deeds in perfect accord…To actually LIVE the gospel...right through to death and beyond.
“If any want to become my followers let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will gain it”
It’s all a bit Alice in Wonderland isn’t it?
If we pursue our goal, we will never reach it…but if we focus instead on a different way – why then all, all will be ours.

Dear Peter!
He knew the right words, but the living reality was altogether too much for him.

He wanted to keep his version of Jesus safely confined in a box tailor made for the purpose. That can be a problem for us too. We don't fully understand God and so we try to fit God, in all his greatness, into our understanding. We baulk at the effort of expanding our views to encompass God..., rand whether we want to or not, our words will probably demonstrate this.

Yes. Your words as much as mine.

Whether you’re setting out to teach or not.

Take this seriously. PLEASE.

The words of our mouths, the thoughts of our hearts, the course of our lives...need to line up.

That the old “sticks and stones” adage is often dreadfully, catastrophically, WRONG. Wounds left by words can hurt far more, and may never fully heal.

Each of us carries a potentially deadly weapon around with us, every single day, and sometimes it seems so much easier to blame than to praise, though we all know from experience the disproportionate power of criticism, which stays with the recipient long after affirmation has been dismissed. That’s a strange bit of human wiring – but one we need to recognise and attend to all the time. While St Francis encouraged his followers to practice “Custody of the eyes”, our readings today remind us that we alone can keep custody of the tongue – and it’s important that we do so.

How will you use your gift of speech to encourage, what kind words will you share this week?

Remember, our words reveal the truth of our being, and the complex reality of our life as citizens of the Kingdom.

May all that we speak be to the glory of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Proper 14 for the Cathedral Eucharist 8th August 2021 "I am the bread of life"

 I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”

When I was a student I had a good friend named Jack. He was extremely tall (particularly when standing next to my 5’4”) and carried not an ounce of surplus weight. He was a great cook and a famous host, but the meals I remember him by most clearly were those I never actually got to eat. You see, Jack was generous with his invitations to afternoon tea, and his rooms were only a short walk from one of Cambridge’s better bakers. When he was expecting guests, Jack would set forth to Tyler’s, on a mission to buy bread for the tea-party. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion the smell of the new bread, and its fresh-baked warmth proved too hard to resist, and he would arrive back in his rooms with only the stub end of the loaf, having consumed the rest on the walk between bakery and college. Legend has it that on one occasion at least, he visited the bakery 3 times before actually making it home with an untouched loaf. Bread from Tylers was pretty wonderful, but for someone Jack’s size, one loaf was only a short-term solution.

I often think of Jack as I break the bread at the Eucharist.
Of course, we generally use wafers, and sometimes people complain sadly that they bear no resemblance to real bread at all. Perhaps that’s a good thing. There’s no room for confusion. We’re not eating a “proper meal” together, but taking part in something quite different, whose value lies far beyond any standard nutritional benefit. The fragment of unleavened wafer we receive becomes something much greater than itself, for it is here that we are offered Christ, in all the fullness of his risen life.

In our gospel this morning, John sets out to demonstrate that Jesus is the One for whom Israel was waiting, and to do this he aligns Jesus with Moses...To understand his technique, we need to remember that for the Jews, the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) provided a constant frame of reference. The contents of these books were not abstract concepts for the Jew - these were living words, pregnant with layers of meaning, and each new generation of Jews felt themselves living in the story in some way.
And so John has Jesus evoke memories of the defining period in Jewish history, the Exodus from Egypt, and recall God’s provision of manna, “bread from heaven”.
This was the freedom food, which enabled God’s people to travel onwards to the place they had been promised.
The food which sustained them, and made it possible for them to live as a people on the move, following wherever God lead them.
But, though this food seemed miraculous, it had to be consumed on the day it appeared, or it rotted and became worthless.
The Israelites were not allowed to build up supplies in case of crisis. They just had to trust God’s provision, day after day after day.

Now Jesus compares himself with that bread…in terms guaranteed to have any observant Jew sitting bolt upright on the edge of this seat
I am the bread of life.
I AM is the name God gives himself when he meets Moses, at the burning bush
Say I AM has sent you.
And so Jesus identifies himself with God and urges the crowd
“Stop looking only to your physical needs!
Your ancestors ate manna but died!
You who ate when I fed the 5000 will die in time!
But belief in me is ‘food’ that leads to eternal life.”

Jesus, the bread which now comes down from heaven sustains those who eat for ever.
This is no less the food of pilgrimage, no less a food provided directly by God,- indeed this food represents God’s very life, available to be absorbed by all God’s people.
Jesus is offering himself to his disciples…whoever eats me…
Imagine the impact of that, with Jesus himself standing beside you, on a hot day in Palestine, as the crowds press around, murmuring in doubt or disapproval.
A living, breathing man inviting you to eat him.
Shocking, unthinkable words.
Frightening, unwelcome words – in the same way as those words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper
“This is my body…this is my blood...”

John wrote several decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, as part of a community that would have regularly celebrated the Lord’s supper together. For them, as for us, Jesus’ imagery - eating flesh and drinking blood - had come to life in a new way as the church shared the meal Jesus instituted.
So it is, week by week, when we gather and make Eucharist.
We bring ourselves, just as we are, broken, flawed, hungry for love and reassurance.
We bring the mess and muddle of our lives and lay them with our gifts upon the altar.
And as the bread and wine are consecrated and transformed, as Christ becomes truly present in those ordinary things made holy by the power of the Spirit, so we find ourselves joined with Christ and with one another.

There is a story* told about a Eucharist that took place in prison camp – where rations were low, and morale lower.
Neither bread nor wine was available but the longing for Christ, the prayers of the faithful and the words of the priest together made this a true Communion.
Listen
It was Easter in the camp. There was not a single cup.
No bread or wine. The non-Christians said, "We will help you; we will talk quietly so you can meet for worship." Too dense a silence would have drawn the guards' attention as surely as the lone voice of the preacher. "We have no bread, nor water to use instead of wine," the preacher told them, "but we will act as though we had."

"This meal in which we take part," he said, "reminds us of the prison, the torture, the death, and final victory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The bread is the body that he gave for humanity. The fact that we have none represents very well the lack of bread in the hunger of so many millions of human beings…but in Christ all our hungers are satisfied. The wine, which we don't have today, is his blood and represents our dream of a united humanity, of a just society, the hope of the kingdom to come...."

He broke the bread and held out his empty hand to the first person on the right, and placed it over his open hand, and the same with the others: "Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me." All of them raised hands to mouths, receiving the body of Christ in silence. The communion of empty hand..."

Was Christ present there? Need we really ask that question?

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”
Hear Christ speak these words to you as you make your way to the Communion rail.
In that tiny fragment of bread, we receive Jesus himself, all we will ever need to sustain us on our pilgrimage.
Bread is the traditional staff of life, but the life that this bread represents is everlasting.
It is the life of God himself…and we are invited to share it.

Thanks be to God!

Lammas Day sermon at Holy Trinity Coventry, Proper 13 B 1st August 2021

It’s always a pleasure to join you here at Holy Trinity – and one of the things that I specially love it to imagine the pews filled with all those who have worshipped here across many years. The thought of the citizens of Coventry gathering before the Reformation, Sunday by Sunday to hear Mass...and to celebrate the many Church festivals and Saints days that gave the year its shape and structure delights me, so it’s a rather wonderful that we are here together on 1st August..

Lammas Day - the day of the “Loaf Mass”. What? You may cry. Has Kathryn finally lost the plot? What IS she talking about? Isn’t Lammas inherently pagan? No – not a bit of it. Actually, Lammas tide has impeccable Christian credentials. It is the festival of thanksgiving to God for the start of the harvest, where corn and bread are offered as symbols of gratitude. It’s name comes from the Old English word for ‘loaf’, hlaf, which is followed by ‘mass’, the Eucharist, at which bread is broken and shared before we are sent out, strengthened for service in God’s world. After a year that has featured periodic shortages of particular foods, exacerbated by the panic buying that seems irresistible to some, we are perhaps more aware that we have been for a while about the sources of our food, and our dependence on those who produce it. Food is not an optional extra, but something we all need to sustain our life – and to pause and give thanks should surely be part of our daily practice – even though we may not bring that gratitude into our worship as often as we should.

The writer David Adam invites us to

Be gentle when you touch bread. Let it not lie uncared for—unwanted
So often bread is taken for granted. There is so much beauty in bread
Beauty of sun and soil, beauty of honest toil
Winds and rain have caressed it, Christ often blessed it
Be gentle when you touch bread.

So – bread is a gift in itself, but also a symbol of so much more and it’s rather wonderful that our readings today are part of those summer weeks in which the Lectionary invites us to think repeatedly about bread..

Today we focus first on God’s daily provision for God’s people on their wilderness journey, the solid, physical evidence that God remained absolutely invested in their wellbeing “...in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, then you shall know that I am the Lord your God”. When you’ve embarked on a journey into the unknown in obedience to God’s call, it’s more than reassuring to have reminders that God really IS part of this. We, who have so much, are far less able to spot the blessings poured upon us. Our eyes are blinded by the surfeit of good things we can enjoy, and so we lack the readiness to give thanks that we recognise in the Israelites in the desert (even if that gratitude turns out to be short-lived) and in those who surelye filled this church in centuries past to celebrate the Loaf Mass on Lammas day. But, you know, being attentive to God’s gifts is a skill worth cultivating. That may seem too obvious to be worth mentioning - but you might be surprised at how easy it is to slip into complacency and the kind of pernicious egotism that assumes that everything we have is “Because I’m worth it”. Note that the manna fell from heaven not because of who the wandering Israelites were, but because of who GOD is...a God of generosity, who, then as now, delights to bless, to overwhelm us with God’s grace, the undeserved free gifts that are quite simply part of God’s nature.

So – be alert. And be thankful.

But there is more. Our gospel, too, reminds us of how God’s gift of bread is a sign of God’s commitment to humanity...but now we are in a different world, the bread no longer simply a matter of milled flour to sustain us day by day. Jesus is beginning to explain to the crowds that they need other gifts – other nourishment – in order to really live. It sounds like a simple journey. Forget about your material needs...focus on the food that will last for ever...by recognising the truth that stands before you in the person of Jesus, Son of Man and Gift of God. But the crowds need something concrete to focus on. They are drawn back into their history – into the recognition of God’s goodness played out in the lives of their ancestors in the wilderness – and they want more of the same. If we’re supposed to believe in you – how can we know that your claims are true. What do you bring to the table as evidence that you come from God. And the answer comes, loud and clear – It’s not about what I am doing. It’s about who I AM.

That moment which makes clear how Jesus emerges from and perfects God’s covenant with Moses. Not simply “I AM has sent me...” but now, explicitly, “I AM”.

Astounding. Earth shaking. An itinerant rabbi proclaiming himself the great I AM...the one who’s name is so holy it cannot be pronounced. A human being announcing that he, HE, is the one who has come from heaven to give life to the world. Next week we will hear Jesus expanding on that theme, to the amazement and disquiet of his hearers. Next week, I’m confident that my preaching will dive deeper into the mystery of God’s life offered to us here at the altar week by week in a fragment of bread…for truly, as we break and share the bread of Eucharist – thanksgiving – we encounter the reality of God’s presence transforming us from the inside out, and experience the reality that is our life in God.

But today, Lammas day, I want to return once more to the role of ordinary, daily bread as a powerful sacramental sign of God’s care for our bodies as well as for our souls. Let me end with a pair of stories...which entwine together around this theme. Are you sitting comfortably?

I used to go on retreat to Llan, a wonderful place in the Shropshire hills, miles from anywhere. The set up there was geared around an individual retreatant, cooking for themselves from supplies bought in by the hosts. One year when I arrived, there was a lovely loaf of new bread from the local bakery waiting wrapped in the bread bin, and a slice of that with some local honey made a blissful breakfast. It was just as good with "Gold and herbs" cheese and salad at lunch time, but though I was making inroads on the loaf there was still plenty left the following morning, when A. announced that G was baking, and there would be home-made bread in time for lunch. I protested that I really didn't need it. The shop loaf was very tasty, and I had quite enough for the whole of my stay.
My host smiled but said nothing, and just before lunchtime, as I sat on the terrace in the sunshine he appeared bearing half a loaf of steaming white bread, straight from the oven.
It was, of course, delicious and I appreciated it hugely for itself, but also for the reminder of God's joy in giving more than we can either desire or deserve...a reminder that I, who sometimes hesitate to ask, absolutely needed to hear. That week I was gently practising Ignatian spirituality, encouraged by an American book called, intriguingly, Sleeping with Bread.
The story behind the title is a joy. Listen.

During the bombing raids of WWII, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, "Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow."

As the orphans found tangible comfort and reassurance through holding the bread, so the process of looking back each day and noticing the times of consolation and desolation, the moments for which I'm most grateful or most regretful, makes it easier to attend to God's presence and work in my life. That might be so for you as well. For me, at Llan that week, bread was very much part of the story. Ordinary, every day but infused with a generosity that far outstripped my needs or my desires.

Why not use it, this Lammas tide, to help you focus your own gratitude for God’s gifts lavished upon you, grace on grace, to the glory of his name.