Sunday, June 05, 2022
Welcome to Sunday - Pentecost 2022
Saturday, June 04, 2022
No Words – just Jesus
This was the final slide at the final Mass of this year’s On Fire Mission conference, there to convey the information that, though we weren’t going to attempt to take the Blessed Sacrament for a walk in the grounds our final blessing would come not through human words but through the Benediction of the Sacrament.
But for me, this was also a short-hand for a series of beautiful, precious encounters that I had with Christ in the Sacrament during that wonderful season at On Fire. - and indeed, a lifetime of graced moments which have ensured that my theology of Eucharist is incontrovertibly that of Real Presence.
I don’t think I ever really doubted it. I grew up amid the incense-laden heights of Sussex Anglo-Catholicism. Even my beloved honorary mother, who self-identified as a heathen, was very clear indeed that she was “HIGH heathen” and all my early experiences of worship were full of awe, wonder, and multi-sensory delight. I’m not sure that my Confirmation and 1st Communion, aged 13, were remarkable in themselves, but I do know that I had a real sense of Jesus slipping his hand into mine at some of the trickiest moments of my teens, and I recognised that those experiences of his closeness were in some way tied to the whole business of Communion.
It wasn’t, though, til I joined the choir of St John the Divine, Kennington, when I landed in London after university, that I really began to grasp what was going on. Once a month the choir sang Evensong with Benediction at the chapel at St Gabriel’s college down the road, and though Evensong had been my spiritual life-line during my student days, college chapels offered glorious music but not in my experience Eucharistic devotion, so I had less than no idea what to expect.
The choir sat at the back of the chapel, I’m short-sighted and anyway, and that first Sunday evening I didn’t really know that I SHOULD be looking out for anything in particular as the liturgy moved from the familiar territory of Evensong into something completely different, completely wonderful.
I’ve no idea at what point it was that I found myself completely bowled over by a wave of love that brought me to my knees, and left me there, head bowed, for the rest of the service. I just know that suddenly that reassuring hand was back in mine, that I knew without question that I was utterly beloved and that, no matter what life looked like, everything at the deepest level really was alright.
And….it has been that way ever since.
No words – just Jesus.
Just Jesus in the Sacrament, offering, quietly, to hear my confession as I waited close to the tabernacle for an available priest at On Fire 3 years ago…
Jesus flooding the space with light and beauty and love and peace as I knelt this year in a once soul-less conference room that was suddenly the best, the only place to stay and sing, and experienced the glorious blend of Compline and Benediction.
Jesus, wonderfully, being taken from the tabernacle to join worshippers at a Forest Church experience just as I (this time properly equipped with a fellow priest ready to hear my confession) had said “I’d LIKE to meet for Sacrament of Reconciliation close to Jesus but I rather think that the meeting room is in use”...so that I was able to kneel close by, under a tree, so very conscious of his presence that it was absolutely as the hymn has it
“and in his ear all trustingly, I told my tale of misery...”
No. It makes no sense at all – but all the same, for me it is deeply, wonderfully, true.
I’m not sure why I’m writing, really. I guess so that when I hit one of those times when God feels a little more distant, I have a little altar in the wilderness to remind me of precious encounters.
But really, I should heed that wise advice
“No words – just Jesus”.
Saturday, May 28, 2022
That they might be one - thoughts for Easter 7 C at St Francis, Radford
If you ever find yourself talking to a priest about their job and ask them what aspect of their work they love most, the chances are you won’t wait long before they rather apologetically mention funerals.
I have to say, I’m another enthusiast for these opportunities to stand beside a family in the torrents of love and grief and honesty, and try and find ways to help them process all of that...to light a candle of hope amid the sadness...to offer a reminder of God’s love stronger than everything in creation. It’s holy ground and I’m always conscious of the privilege of walking there.Yet more precious are those times when I’ve been with a friend in the last stages of their journey, and together we have worked out the whole heart-breaking but hope-filled business of saying goodbye. Recently I’ve trodden that path through long months of decline with a beloved friend and priest, and together we found comfort in the worlds of Thomas More “Pray for me as I will for thee, that we may merrily meet in heaven”. Wendy loved prosecco and I opened bottle and raised a glass to her on her birthday, which fell just a few days after her death this month, as I reflected on the bubbles of resurrection joy she would now be experiencing til next we meet...
Equally, I’ll never forget the words that Pat, a dear lady in my last parish, left to me “I'll see you later...” she said “Here or there”
In both cases, the words were a wonderful expression of the faith that had filled and shaped their lives and spilled out to touch the lives of others...and I paid special attention in those conversations because I was very conscious that we would not be chatting together on this earth for much longer.
Last words have a special power – and our gospel today is part of the the lengthy prayer that Jesus offers at the Last Supper in John's gospel – the wise words that are know as “The Farewell Discourse”
Last words of advice from our Lord himself…
Clearly we should all sit up and take notice.
We NEED to hear what Jesus is saying.
And what does he say?
Well, on one level, he says nothing to US at all.
We are eavesdroppers, listening in as he prays to his Father – but as so often in the gospels there is a sense that we are meant to hear just as elsewhere in John, Jesus says to God
“You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me."
But this prayer is both an entreaty to God – to make things happen – and a declaration for us of the way things should be.
At this most crucial point in his earthly ministry Jesus asks God for one thing for us
“That they may all be one”
Words that have troubled and burdened us ever since, as we deal with factions and disputes, as we take sides over theology and worship separately on the grounds of belief or simply of preference.
Words that can change how you feel in a matter of moments.
Let me explain. Some years ago, before I came to Coventry, I was at a training event – and sitting at the same table as my then Bishop. I wasn't very pleased with him that day. Not long before he had refused to publicly affirm something that mattered a great deal to me – and I was planning to air my disappointment with him in the course of the event. Only very early on, as an illustration of something (I can't remember what) we were asked to give something we valued to someone else around our table to look after for the rest of the day. And so it was that I found myself wearing Bishop Michael's episcopal ring for a few hours.
It was heavy on my hand – a man's signet ring with a dark stone...and around the stone I saw engraved “Ut unum sint” “That they might all be one” As I read those words and realised that for Bishop Michael they would be non-negotiably present whenever he caught sight of his hand, at any moment on any day, I understood just HOW heavy the ring really was – and how heavy the burden on our bishops to be a focus of unity within the church. Every day they are confronted with the need to make Jesus's high priestly prayer a reality – while the members of the churches they serve seem intent on ignoring it as much as possible. For a little while that day I was able to put aside my own anger and disappointment that +Michael had not fallen in with my particular agenda as I recognised his role in calling us back to the over-riding agenda that Jesus placed before us in his farewell discourse.
“That they might all be one”
But oh, we seem so far from becoming the answer to that prayer.
There are divisions within our families, our churches, our nation.
A seemingly endless series of opposing pairs – male or female; rich or poor; gay or straight; Christian or Muslim; conservative or liberal; educated or uneducated; young or old; have or have not.
But those labels that we bandy about so liberally are attached not to issues but to people...real people, with names, lives, joys, sorrows, concerns, and needs just like our own. I think we sometimes forget or ignore this. It is easier to deal with an issue than a real person...to keep our distance from the unfamiliar by drawing lines to exclude and to reassure ourselves that WE are right, approved of, accepted, in control. That’s why I believe that our Cathedral’s Litany of Reconciliation is important...It doesn’t pray “Father forgive THEM” as it catalogues the ways in which we harm one another and the planet. Instead it says “Father forgive” - recognising that there is no “them” and “us” - that we all alike mess up and need forgiveness. That life is not designed to be a contest, or an expression of a binary universe where if I am to win, someone must lose, if I’m to be included someone must be excluded…Both/and, rather than either/or, is the message, even as the divisions of our lives seem sharper and wider than ever.
But still Jesus prays “that they may be one”
He doesn't pray for tolerance, for smoother relations between factions...
He doesn't pray that differences would be eliminated.
He prays “That they may be one......as he and the Father are one – so that OUR oneness might be a revelation of God's presence in the world.
That does not mean, however, that we will lose our identity or individuality. You are called to be YOU – not a bland copy of me...And I’m to be me, Kathryn, with all the joy and frustration that this entails.
This is unity, not uniformity.
Jesus does not stop being Jesus nor the Father stop being the Father because they are one.
Jesus and the Father are one because they love and give themselves to each other.
Their oneness – and the oneness to which we should aspire - is not about eliminating differences.
It is about love.
Love is the only thing that can ever overcomes division...for divisions are, ultimately, based on fear...and perfect Love (the love we meet in God) casts out fear.
In love there may be differences but there is no division.
God’s love knows no conditions and no boundaries.
God loves male and female, rich and poor, gay and straight.
God loves Christian and Muslim, conservative and liberal, educated and uneducated.
God loves young and old, introverts and extroverts, haves and have nots...all those on either side of the binary divisions we’ve created
All are loved fully, completely, and uniquely.
Often when I'm baptising I tell the family “Baptism will change nothing on God's part. God already loves your child so much that if she was the only person every born, Jesus would still have come into the world for her.”
I don't often unpack what that total love means...
God's love has NO boundaries...not even between Jesus and you...or me.
Shall I say that again?
God loves you as much as he loves Jesus.
God loves your neighbour as much as he loves Jesus.
God loves your enemy as much as he loves Jesus.
No difference, no distinction.
Absolute love for each and every one.
If that is how God loves how can we be content to do less?
For far too long we have dealt with each other through our boundaries, differences, and divisions. See where that's lead! It's not very pretty
Though Jesus is praying to the Father you and I will in large part be the ones to answer his prayer.
We can collaborate with Him – or go our own way, clinging to those divisions wrought from fear and suspicion.
Let's begin, every day, to choose Love.
Sunday, May 22, 2022
One stitch at a time
I'm doing a tapestry, - have been doing so for some time.
That's because whenever I sit down at home, a dog or cat arrives on my knee within seconds, so basically it's a tapestry I only ever work at on retreat or at On Fire.
I really like it and I enjoy working on it . One day it will be something beautiful (I hope I'll finish it myself, though my first tapestry project was completing one my mother started, several years after her death...so you never know!)
And this year at On Fire I realised it was a pretty accurate parable of my spiritual life.
There are seasons when it grows appreciably, when I might even get a sense of what the picture is supposed to be....but there are also months on end when the whole knotty mess is stuffed in a bag and ignored. And it is when I am away on retreat or at On Fire that a few more stitches are added, that appreciable progress happens.
So, what have I learned about myself and God this year, as I returned thankfully to the beloved community where I have more space to be myself, and experience what it means to be loved by God than anywhere else on the planet?
For me, the big thing is around vocation.
Of all the glorious, heavy, life-changing aspirations of the Ordinal, I find most resonant for me the demand: "[priests] are to tell the story of God's love".
This is the heart of my priesthood, enacted whenever I preside at the Eucharist of course, but made real too in the joys of ministry as a Spiritual Director, and for three beautiful, intense days in my role as conference chaplain at On Fire. It is beyond precious to walk on holy ground with my siblings here, to remind them just how loved they are, sometimes to hold hard things with them or for them. They are always generous in their response to our conversations and, though I don't for a moment imagine it's all about me, I do know that working with the grain of myself enables me to be a better, less tangled Kathryn.
"Vocation", said Frederick Buechner, is "the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet," and certainly my experience is that this is a season of the deepest gladness. And my hope is that if, year on year, I keep on practising being the person I am meant to be, that practice will gradually transform aspiration into reality.
Like the tapestry, it can be achingly slow progress, but the journey itself is precious and beautiful.
Saturday, May 21, 2022
Sermon for Evensong Easter 6: Zephaniah 3 & Matthew 28
There’s an awful lot of joy about in today’s Evensong
Our introit reminded us “This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it”
Psalm 126 reminds us of the joy of God’s restoration
“those who sow in tears shall reap in joy”
and our Old Testament reading from Zephaniah is so flooded with jubilation that it touches both God and God’s people with equal delight.
Let me remind you:
“Sing aloud O daughter Zion….Rejoice and exalt with all your heart”…
God has done it again!
Removing judgement, God too is swept up in the celebration...in fact, God looks at God’s people and SINGS FOR JOY
“He will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exalt over you with loud singing, as on the day of festival”
It’s as well that this is where our readings point us, as I’m distinctly joyful myself. Indeed, I’m in that rather irritating state of bursting into song at random moments, wandering round with a silly grin just because.
You see, I’m just back from our first in person gathering of OFM after the pandmic break.
On Fire is the Catholic Charismatic conference whose blend of word and sacrament, of catholic spirituality and spirit- filled worship never fails to restore my soul and renew ME in God’s love. It’s always an extraordinary time, as a community forms around the person of Christ, full of expectation that God will be present, active, transformative… And because we are all expectant, all on the look-out , the Holy Spirit is very much in evidence, doing her thing pretty much wherever we turn.
Sometimes, of course, the work of the Spirit is to enthuse, inspire, set hearts and minds ablaze with the wonder of love and the power of grace. It’s not altogether unknown to find yourself unexpectedly dancing for joy (in a very well-behaved, Anglican way, of course!)
Sometimes she is more about persuading us out of our comfort zones, to take on the world for the sake of God’s Kingdom
Sometimes, as was my experience last week as Conference Chaplain, she is all about confirming our calling, inviting us into the place where our deepest joy and the needs of the world meet, so that we find ourselves living the best version of ourselves with heart and soul and work all in perfect alignment.
Sometimes, before any of that can happen, there is a great work of healing to be done.
Last week, again and again, I found myself listening to beautiful, broken, beloved children of God who had been persuaded by the words and attitudes of some in the Church that they were somehow not good enough, not wanted, not really part of the family.
They told me precious stories, replete with holiness, that tapered off into tears, because, of course, for some of them rejection by the Church was equated with rejection by God as well.
And I, with the privilege of listening as hard as I could, with one ear to them and the other tuned to the voice of the Spirit, found myself saying
“God looked at all God had made and it was very good.”
“You are fearfully and wonderfully made”
and, again and again,
God rejoices over you with loud singing.
So, can I say it once more to you tonight.
If anyone or anything has ever made you wonder if you really belong
If anyone has spoken words that diminish you and wound your soul.
If you have every doubted for a moment that God’s overwhelming, boundless love is there for you,
you are invited to joy.
Stop here and now and listen.
Listen to hear that song of God’s love for you – not a tentative, quiet song, that you might be able to miss, but a loud, unmistakeable descant of joy.
God looks at you and sings for joy.
How beautiful is that!
Let it renew you in love and call forth joy in your own heart too, for surely you DO belong, you ARE at home, and in Jesus, God has promised to stay with you to the close of the age.
Sunday, April 03, 2022
A positive result? Wrestling for a Blessing in the covid pandemic.
Churches Together in Berkswell and Balsall Common invited me to contribute to their Lent series, spiritual perspectives on the pandemic. As the timing coincided with the arrival of the Epstein Stories in Stone exhibition at the Cathedral the experience of wrestling for a blessing gained an extra dimension. Here, more or less, is what I said.
I prepared these thoughts as we were invited,, as a nation, to look back at two years of upheaval, challenge and loss, and in some ways I feel I've little right to be speaking at all.. Inevitably this is my personal perspective, and I'm acutely aware that though I lost a long awaited sabbatical,, and some exciting plans to celebrate a big birthday on safari with my children, as a family we suffered no covid bereavements,, no obviously life changing trauma. Nonetheless I know we are all different, and so, I imagine, is each of you, so my invitation this morning is to look for A Positive Result. Of course, in the topsy-turvey world of the pandemic, we have come to treat positives with some suspicion, and equally some of the things I've logged here may not be unadulterated good, but bear with me if you would.
It seems to me that there are unexpected blessings to be drawn from our individual and collective experience and I’d like to explore some of these and consider how we might incorporate what we have learned into life going forwards. Inspired by the Genesis account of Jacob wrestling with the angel, and by Epstein’s sculpture currently on loan to Coventry Cathedral, may I invite you to consider whether moments of grace and transformation might after all have been part of your experience, even if, like Jacob, we have all emerged from the encounter limping and dislocated.
So, how have you been, these past two years?
With our “National Day of Reflection” on Tuesday reminding us to look back I wonder how the landscape looks for you. We know that we have all been changed by the pandemic in ways it may take years to fully discover. We know, too, how the arrival of covid 19 revealed as absolute fraud our comfortable certainties, our dogged insistence that humanity commands the world and everything in it. We, who believed we were safely insulated against the ills that flesh is heir to, were abruptly forced to confront our own, inescapable mortality. Shocking but probably good for us, unwelcome but ultimately beneficial, as deep honesty can often be.
Because this experience has been nothing if not honest. Those chilling daily statistics were inescapable, even if, like me, you sometimes avoided R4 for days…so this exercise is not I think about avoiding hard truths but rather perhaps reframing them so that in years to come we can look at this period not just as a time of loss, but also a time of growth.
I’m privileged to work at Coventry Cathedral, and encountered some of the greatest losses and gains in my working life there. Early in March 2020, the unthinkable happened. Public worship, which had continued unbroken through centuries in times of war and pestilence, was suspended.
Like so many others, we were forbidden from carrying on our core business. Or were we? That second week in March was simply extraordinary, the great West Screens open wide to welcome a ceaseless tide of visitors coming in to be quiet, to cry, to light candles and to join with fervour in the hourly prayers I led, which felt, somehow, as if they might just be the most significant work I had done in ministry. There was an overwhelming sense that those who came in brought with them all the concerns of wider society, and that as we prayed for all whose lives were overshadowed by the pandemic, for the sick and the scared, for those offering care and those researching cure, we were articulating something that needed to be named and offered again and again.
While there were a smattering of familiar faces who found their way in day by day, nearly all those who prayed with me were not regular worshippers with us, or, it transpired, anywhere else in the city.
"This seemed like the right place to be" said one lady.
"Your words helped me feel we might not go off the rails" said another.
Not my words at all, actually.
I mostly read a psalm or two.
"Lord, you have been our refuge from one generation to another"
"God is our strength and refuge, a very present help in time of trouble"
I edged those dear familiar words around with faltering links of my own,
I told those present that they had been a precious stepping stone for others before us, negotiating their way through times as uncertain and challenging as those we were facing ourselves. I told the story of the Cathedral to all who came, with the reminder that for Provost Howard and his congregation in 1940 the morning after the blitz must have been heavy with grief and with dread. No sense for them then of the new future, quite unlike the past, which was waiting out of sight around the corner.
I talked about the difference between faith and confidence...How at such moments confidence is hard to find but that faith is the underlying motif that has held us steady through generations, .invited them to pray the Lord's prayer together (finding myself automatically using the traditional form of words, as I always do at funerals, although the Cathedral generally opts for modern language), and, hour after hour, prayed blessing upon blessing upon blessing.
For me that week was full of anxiety and dread as I realised that I would be separated from those I loved most for weeks, even months, but was also an experience of profound wonder. It seemed that somehow we had rediscovered the faith of a bygone age, when people were more ready to admit their dependence on God, a time when the image of Cathedral as mother-church, sheltering storm tossed humanity, might be wholly appropriate. Perhaps, after all, there might be something we could do to make a difference in all this. Gradually, my own anxiety was subsumed in a sense of calling, stronger than ever…
Many years before when I was setting off in my first incumbency, I was sent on a training day about change. I can’t remember much of the content, except that after lunch we were asked to imagine our parish in the grip of some huge, possibly threatening, change – and then DRAW a model of our likely response. I can’t draw. Absolutely rubbish…Always have been. Always will be. So that might have constrained my reaction a little, but I don’t think so. I drew a sideways rectangle, and placed a cross, and an outline chalice on it…Unleashing my inner Father Ted I announced “When in any doubt, it’s always the right thing to do to say Mass”, so it’s by no means surprising that this was my first response in this crisis.
"Let’s do the Eucharist more often. MUCH more often. Every day, in fact."
Cathedrals, though, take a while to change direction – the QE2 is lithe and nimble in comparison – so though everyone agreed this felt right, we didn’t actually start until the day after Lent 3 and our last act of public worship. We always have a combined service of Morning Prayer with Communion first thing on Mondays – so, knowing that we would open for private prayer at 10.00, we arranged to live stream our usual offering, despite the vagaries of the cathedral wifi. Even that very first day, a surprising number of people joined us online, from our regular worshipping community, from the wider diocese, and from the international movement of reconciliation that is our Community of the Cross of Nails. Despite ourselves, we had begun to create a Eucharistic community based on virtual presence – and that community grew exponentially over the weeks that followed. That daily act brought people together around a virtual altar and empowered us to live as the Body of Christ in extraordinary times, as we worshipped daily with people from the wider diocese, entirely content with their own parish church, deeply and wisely allergic to the Coventry ring-road, but thankful to have their days punctuated by prayer…and we drew in the ALWAYS house-bound, who could never make the journey to worship with us, who have been excluded from communal worship for far too long. Online church has much lower thresholds than any physical building. If you’re anxious, you can just hover at the door. If you’re unwell, still in your pyjamas, - turn off the camera and join without anyone being any the wiser. When you’re ready to engage, you’re welcome – but meanwhile, just stay where you’re comfortable…That’s fine. Now it was "home alone" for me and my pets…my congregation represented by a number in one corner of my screen, and some comments below.
To my surprise, I began to value this experience tremendously, to find myself warmed and encouraged by the little tide of hearts and thumbs up that made their way across my phone screen.. It was indeed vicarious worship - but with more sense of a congregation present than sometimes when they are sitting in the far distant back rows of the nave...The regular need to stop and pray gave structure to days that might otherwise have slipped into free fall...And I loved that I was now in touch with people scattered far and wide who had been part of my journey at many different stages - that for this season, we were worshipping together. I never once as I presided at Communion felt even notionally alone….and 2 years on, some of us are still together so that the brief informal "Welcome to Sunday# I offered in the summer of 2020 as a transition for those not yet ready to go about again continues with its own distinct and faithful congregation
New worshipping communities are something that gladdens every bishop’s heart -but I’m not sure anyone had imagined it happening like this. Another gift. A church to engage with no matter what, no matter when…completely inclusive, its doors ever open
I think the Cathedral grew into herself during this season – which might seem bizarre, as of course unlike the local church, a Cathedral is uncompromisingly, above all a BUILDING – the place where the Bishop’s Cathedra is set….but now we were in diaspora….scattered to homes across the city …The building was locked and silent and yet…and yet…another learning point, another unexpected blessing – God with us!
I'd created a worship space in the dining room. The table was a good height and size. The mantelpiece was already home to many icons and I loved that I could look out the window and see down the road - my neighbours homes - people I didn't know well, but with whom I was newly connected in our shared experience of lockdown and whom I could, as I broke bread and drank wine, bring in prayer into the circle of God's love. It worked well as a space...but what changed it for me forever was the experience of UNmaking it on Maundy Thursday. Week.
So to my next gift, a new understanding of place in worship.
Of course my dining room church couldn’t "compete" with the layers of deep prayer that have shaped our ancient buildings, with their patina of prayer and worship offered and received, but it was all that I needed - a place where God's presence was undeniable, where I knew, and know, God was as inextricably connected in those small things which hint at the transcendent day by day
When we closed the Cathedral doors in March there was such a strong sense of exile…I left the cathedral to take a funeral and as I said the words of committal that day, part of me was also laying to rest our old ways of being, our former practices of community and worship. Whatever lay ahead, it was clear that one chapter had ended. But of course, what emerged were new ways of being Church…of gathering for worship together though apart…of singing the Lord’s song in a strange land.
What was God up to, in this barren, stony landscape that we’d never expected to arrive in? It seemed, though, that we had no choice but to be there in the moment, regardless.
Easter approached and we agonised about how we might celebrate it “properly” away from our beloved buildings. My dining table was all very well but…it wasn’t really church, it wasn’t anyone’s spiritual home. But in Holy Week, things changed for me. At the end of an impromptu Maundy Thursday Eucharist, shared online with a couple of friends, we read the Gospel of the Watch and then I stripped the altar, extinguished all my candles, took down each icon, removed everything that spoke of "church" and left it heaped to one side. I listened to Psalm 22 to the Wesley chant, as I do every year and as I unmade church that evening in the gathering dusk, that very ordinary dining room in my suburban semi became non-negotiably holy ground, as much church as anywhere I've been. I left the room in darkness at the end of the Watch on tiptoe - not wanting to disturb the deep layers of God's presence that I was suddenly and wonderfully aware of. And all through Good Friday and Holy Saturday I passed the dining room door reverently, removing my shoes, knowing that this was holy ground. Surely, the Lord WAS in this place – and I knew it not. Extraordinary. The bottom of that heavenly ladder of Jacob’s dreams propped up in my dining room. God’s angels heading up and down from my house, that connection as lively and unbroken as ever
And, of course, what I found in my home is true of yours too.
That traffic from earth to heaven, from sheltered flats and noisy family kitchens, from care homes and hospital wards where weary staff draw breath and pray to escape a second wave of the pandemic. And from the shanty towns and refugee camps. A constant stream of messages, pleas and praises rising to God, an unbroken flow of love coming down A reminder that there is nowhere – NOWHERE – where God does not stand beside us and assure us “I am with you and I will keep you. I will not leave you”
"Surely the Lord is in this place." And this one. And this.
That traffic from heaven to earth is as constant as ever – its tides diminished neither by lockdown nor by the ebbing faith of humanity. Wherever you go – you are walking on holy ground. SUCH a powerful reminder A blessing hard won but worth struggling for.
If that all feels a bit too churchy (this is a LENT series, after all, so I’m not too apologetic) let’s think about the blessings wrested from other areas of life. Yes, the pandemic has reminded us more than any of us would ever have chosen that we are not in control, not the brave, self-reliant species we might wish to be. Home alone, I was confronted in a new way with my own vulnerability and the vulnerability of humanity. But it taught me, too, that I have so much that I need here in myself and in my life at home, that home is a place of contentment, even when it doesn't contain the people I love most, those whom I long to have always beside me.
And – do you remember those early days, when birdsong replaced for me the city hum, when the skies were empty of planes, when it felt as if the whole human race had let go of its stranglehold on the planet so that nature could breathe again?. Those weeks, for all the loss and grief, were so beautiful…and prompted me to consider the fact of my own mortality without fear, as I exulted in the wonders of that long and perfect spring, knowing that spring would continue, its wonders be cherished and celebrated long after I have ceased to be. That realisation was, and remains, oddly consoling. Somehow as we were less relentlessly presented with the strivings and struggles of human ambition, it seemed easier to accept that we are just passing through and that this is absolutely OK. We are to use our present moment, but to recognise that it IS only a moment, and this is just as it should be.
It was in that season, too, that I found my priorities had changed. The gentler tempo of those first weeks, when zoom meetings were the exception rather than the rule, when we were all learning how to be in the new order, persuaded me that I should no longer allow myself to work a 60 hour week, that while priesthood is who I am, the aspects of ministry that are more about what I DO are by no means the be-all and end-all.
I have grandchildren to cherish, music to sing, poetry to read…and I’m no longer willing to let the busy-ness of work push those aside. In 2020 We were all offered a re-set button in 2020…and it seems to me wisdom to allow the new order to shape our days going forward. Not, of course, that this is easy. We’ve all spent a lifetime buying into the relentless drive for progress, for more and better and better and more…Remember how many things were allegedly “World-beating” …even when they demonstrably weren’t. Evidence of an approach from which we were invited to step away, though it seems that we find that a struggle, that we are collectivelyintent on making up for lost time no matter what.
Which brings us to the present – and to the Stories in Stone which currently fill our cathedral. There were so many times when it seemed that all our hopes for this year, when the cathedral celebrates its diamond jubilee, would be lost – but incredibly, an exhibition we’ve taken 7 years to plan is happening right now and at its centre is Epstein’s great piece from Tate Modern “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel”. It draws all eyes as you enter the building…two figures locked, in combat? In embrace? In an extraordinary mixture of both…
It’s obvious that Jacob is exhausted, that he would no longer be standing were he not in his opponent’s arms…So he is held up by the very arms with which he grapples…It’s an enthralling work – and so, of course, is the story from Genesis which it depicts. Jacob has been in exile and now he is heading home….with understandable caution, since at journey’s end he will meet the brother whom he last saw the day he cheated him of his birthright. Knowing that HE is responsible for the broken relationship...knowing that it is up to him to seek forgiveness and reconciliation...it is not perhaps surprising that he is suffering from insomnia. He has sent his family over the ford but stayed alone on the near side.
The text is quite clear about that. Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him til day break. You would think, wouldn’t you, that that one half or other of that sentence must be wrong. If Jacob is alone – there is nobody else there. If there is a wrestling partner – then Jacob is not alone. What are we to make of that? We can’t just imagine a virtual wrestling match...fightings and fears within, without… This is more than just the product of a guilty conscience and a healthy anxiety about confronting his own past. This is a real, physical struggle – one that marks Jacob for life. After my months alone this makes SUCH sense to me.I might have shut the door, hunkered down with my patient dogs and cats, but it turns out that I wasn’t alone either.
As is his wont, bidden or unbidden, God shows up. Of course, Jacob shouldn’t have been surprised...and perhaps he wasn’t. God had said he would be with him right through until he had accomplished all God’s plans for him. This journey towards reconciliation is surely part of God’s plan – but they’re not there yet. Jacob still has work to do… And he starts with honesty. The last time he sought a blessing it was from his father Isaac – a blessing based on a lie, as he claims his brother’s name, and his brother’s place in the family. Now he admits to being himself, Jacob...and asserts his continued need for a blessing. The process of reconciliation is going to cost him. He knows the truth of this – the truth of who he really is, when everything else has been stripped away...and now, beyond this – unlooked for – comes this experience of wrestling all night.
Wrestling with God. His experience comes to define the nation of his descendants. Israel means one who wrestles with God – and so this is a description of all the People of God throughout the ages. They, we (the “new Israel”), are those who hang on to God no matter what...who will not let go until we receive a blessing.
I don’t know how you’re feeling, but my experience of the pandemic has most definitely been one of wrestling, both for myself and for the Church I love. Wrestling with fear – that I’ll die too soon to see my beloved grandchildren grow, that my children’s jobs will disappear in the recession and that I’ll be powerless to help and support them... Wrestling With grief – that cherished plans have been obliterated, joyful celebrations cancelled, With anxiety that the Church as institution will be so badly damaged by the impact of the pandemic that it won’t actually be around for me to retire from. With doubt, - that the whole faith thing might be a wild delusion, leaving me a child crying in the night with but the language of the cry... Much of that wrestling was not deeply rational – but it certainly led to a good few disturbed nights and weary mornings, when I may not have been limping visibly – but there was a definite lack of spring in my step spiritually and emotionally, if not physically.
I wonder what you have been wrestling with through the past weeks and months?
I wonder if you’ve found that God was part of the struggle after all? Perhaps, like Jacob, you are haunted by the past. By a failure or disappointment that you cannot forget...Reconciliation means acknowledging that; calling ourselves by our true name, with all the baggage of our history, and then offering that baggage to God for healing and transformation. That’s a good night’s wrestling – and I think that discovering ourselves and our own inner resources, strengths, weaknesses, is another pandemic blessing.
Perhaps you’re wrestling with theology, with your understanding of God or of Scripture. Perhaps the faith you have relied on now feels like a boat that has sprung a leak...is not quite equal to your longing to make sense of our current predicament. Perhaps your struggle is with a threat of some kind: a real or imagined enemy, -the virus? Grief? Aging? Or a lost or broken relationship, an Esau in your life. In all of these wrestlings, the point is to hang on until the day dawns and the blessing comes. Do not let go. God IS there, your companion in the darkness...his arms holding you up, even if the struggle leaves you limping in pain. We know in Coventry, better than most, that to be reconciled – to ourselves, one another, to the reality of life on this beautiful, broken, transient planet – is a journey that involves pain and loss as well as hope and transformation. The wounds of history, collective and personal, are real and deep. Perhaps we cannot heal them ourselves – but we can limp on.
Will we claim our blessings? Already, 2020 feels a lifetime ago, and I’m anxious again – this time that we might, you and I, have already discarded some of the blessings that were so precious along the way. Like Jacob, and like almost everyone I know, I am very weary. I won’t be the same again. None of us will. But, amid all the deep and genuine loss, amid the frustration and longing to put the whole thing behind us and move forward, can I encourage you to reflect on the blessings you might have overlooked…to claim and hold onto them, even if the struggle to do so leaves you limping..