‘Seek him that maketh the seven stars’ – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion and turneth the shadow of death into the morning.
Much of the gospel of Matthew depicts the growing tension between Jesus and the Jewish religious leadership of his time, especially in the person of the Pharisees. While this theme is not absent from any of the four gospels, it has a particular resonance in Matthew, the tone of which suggests that the context of this particular gospel may well have been set in a community of Jewish Christians which had separated very painfully from the synagogue, given how much opprobrium is directed at the ‘scribes and Pharisees’ nearer the end of the gospel.
The section of the gospel read as our second reading depicts the split with a painful and clear dichotomy – one that might have felt all the more poignant if we had heard the verses immediately preceding. For the very last verses of chapter eleven present us with Jesus at his most consoling, inviting all those who are ‘weary and carrying heavy burdens’ to come to him for rest. And then, so Matthew tells us, ‘At that time’ – at that very time – Jesus finds himself going through the cornfields, needing to satisfy the weary burden of human hunger – only to have the Pharisees accuse him of breaking God’s law.
And that’s not an accusation which plays well with Jesus, who has left behind the ‘gentle and humble’ persona depicted only a few verses earlier. As is often the case, when Jesus has an argument about the Law thrust at him, he gives back as good as he gets – indeed, he gives back rather better, throwing a line from Hosea at those who would condemn him, to top off a legal counter-argument in which he emerges as the victor.
Seek him that maketh the seven stars…
And that’s not enough. With a very clear sense of the growing division and enmity, Matthew tells us that Jesus then enters their synagogue (that possessive pronoun telling us all we need to know about the level of tension and division now in the air). And here the stakes are raised – raised from hunger to sickness and deformity. “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?”, they demand…. and, again, Jesus gives those who love to uphold the Law a lesson on what it might mean, properly, to do just that.
A lecture, and an action, that leave them conspiring ‘how to destroy him’. An attitude that simply encourages Jesus to cure ‘all’ of the ‘crowds’ that have begun to follow him, in the context of which Matthew aligns Jesus for us with that famous but shadowy figure from second Isaiah – the Suffering Servant – whose service and compassion for all people will enlighten the nations and bring justice to all.
Seek him that maketh the seven stars…
It is good – very good – this evening, to welcome members of York Medical Society to join us at this service, worshipping here at the Minster, as is their custom, on the Sunday following the feast day of St Luke, labeled in the New Testament as being the ‘beloved physician’.
Founded in 1832, the Society, so its website explains, exists to offer medical professionals ‘an environment removed from the workplace, and a rare opportunity to socialize across specialities in relaxed surroundings’. For those of us not privileged to belong to this wonderful body, I can reveal that in the coming weeks, they will be having a talk about the history of the universe; a talk on the state of nature in North Yorkshire; a Christmas wreath-making workshop; and – I am most envious to report – both a wine-tasting for the imminent festive season, and also (most dear to my heart) a whisky tasting.
One would have to be living with one’s head in the clouds not to be aware of the many pressures that the medical profession faces in the current climate. The extraordinary years of the pandemic (in which, so appropriately, we stood on the streets to applaud the NHS), and the challenging economic reality this nation faces does not, I suspect, make the working life of our guests this evening always feel a bundle of laughs. So it is good that they model for themselves and the rest of us, the need to find that bigger picture in which they can relax, they can form friendships beyond their immediate work environment, in which they can grow, and in which, perhaps, they can even Seek him that maketh the seven stars.
Our medics are not the only group gathered here this evening who meet together regularly for reasons that blend vocational activity with relaxation, and – at least in some cases – the chance to sample the odd alcoholic beverage. Some of you may be aware that our visiting choir this weekend is the choir which formed me both as a musician and as a Christian. In my school days the director of this choir was also the Director of Music at a nearby grammar school, and it was his rather heavy-handed suggestion that persuaded me to darken the doors of a church for the first time in my life, and I guess you could say that it ‘took’, and after a mere 18 years of singing in Kingston I found myself moving onwards to theological college, to do my own seeking of the one that maketh the seven stars, and here I am today.
Of course, when I joined All Saints choir back in 1975, Jonathan Dove’s uplifting anthem that we have just heard was still some twenty years in the future, for he is a mere three years older than I am. So it is not a work I have ever had the pleasure of singing myself, but I am deeply grateful that it was chosen to round off this weekend of choral excellence by my old friends. For, in Mr Dove’s choice of text, we have the challenge that is at the heart of our second reading, and – indeed – I think we have the challenge of how we live out our entire lives encapsulated in just two well-chosen verses of scripture – verses that tell us to Seek him that maketh the seven stars.
Conflict dogs and divides the communities of the world, and even those communities that strive to be religious, explicitly following God’s command and God’s call, are far from immune, as that portion of Matthew shows us so clearly. In about a month’s time, our politicians will be debating Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill to legalise assisted dying. In addition to the debate and division I imagine we will see on the floor of the House of Commons, I am quite certain that the rooms of the York Medical Society, and many other spaces occupied by healthcare professionals will be divided by this debate – as, most certainly, will be many parts of the church of God (only yesterday, the deans of England’s cathedrals, were being asked to sign a letter on this subject). People will not agree, and it is possible heated words will be exchanged as law, vocation and ethics mix together in a complex fashion.
And that is just one topical and clear instance of why it is important to hear the call of that glorious anthem to which we have just listened, which encourages us to emulate Jesus in working out properly and fully (by which I mean doing so much more than just quoting a particular legal formula) that God would have us do in the living out of our lives and the challenges we will face.
That is why it is, truly, so important to seek the maker of the seven stars and Orion, for it is only God who possesses the gift that ‘turneth the shadow of death into the morning’. That’s not always easy to do – far from it – for in truth, despite Matthew’s bitter depiction of them, I am sure the Pharisees were keen to obey and follow God, even though they disagreed so violently with Jesus. But it is only when, in fellowship with those around us, whether in societies, in choirs, or in any other walk of life into which God calls us – it is only when we respond to that call to seek the maker of those seven stars that we will find ourselves able to say (and perhaps even to sing) yea, the darkness shineth as the day, the night is light about me. Amen.
‘When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”’ – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean
When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”
When I was interviewed for the position that I now hold as Dean of York, I was asked a question which rather surprised me. It was about misogyny – specifically, about what I would do if I were at a meeting or social event as the Dean of York, and someone were to make a manifestly misogynistic remark in front of me.
I think I must have raised my eyebrows when this was put to me (coming from a city like Chicago, it did feel a little surprising), because one of the panel, looking at me, added, “this is Yorkshire, you know…”
Well – I leave you to make up your own mind about whether or not the question identified a valid concern, but I will say that both Alison and I have occasionally been surprised by remarks that have been uttered either to us or in front of us that have reminded me of this moment in the interview. And it is particularly sad to note that sometimes such remarks have been about Dean Viv, who was, of course, the first woman to be the Dean of York, holding the post from 2012 to 2018.
All of which is to say that I realize that there may be some people around this great cathedral whose views on what roles are appropriate for women and what roles are appropriate for men might feel – shall we say – traditional. People, perhaps, who believe they understand exactly what the author of the Book of Proverbs was on about, when describing that figure that he calls a capable wife – the sort of wife who will be supportive of her (evidently more important and capable) husband – her husband who is busy being a mover and shaker at the city gates, taking his seat among the elders of the land.
But there will be others, I suspect, for whom this passage can feel a particularly blunt reminder of the patriarchal culture in which the books of the Bible were brought to birth, and who will be wondering why on earth, in today’s world, it can be a good or appropriate thing to legitimize these seemingly outdated words by reading them out loud and calling them ‘the Word of the Lord’?
Of course, we should take note that the words we heard translated as a ‘capable wife’ – the Hebrew phrase eshet Chayil – are also often rendered as ‘woman of valor’. And perhaps that helps a little – perhaps that enables us to give thanks that in today’s world most professions have seen women reach the very top ranks, even if society is still male-dominated.
Perhaps that enables us to give thanks that there are now 35 female bishops in the Church of England – even though I still regularly hear conversations in which people – well, men – mutter worriedly about whether we are ‘ready’ for a female archbishop, at the point when either of the current postholders might retire.
Perhaps it is good, though, to champion the idea of the ‘woman of valour’ and rejoice that we can, at least, uncouple such a notion from the distinctly ‘wifely’ feel of the translation which we heard read just now.
But actually even saying that is to miss the point, and, in my opinion, to fail to understand what the author of Proverbs is really pointing us to.
During the time we were living in Chicago, Alison and I were privileged to be invited to dinner one Friday evening at the home of a very distinguished orthodox rabbi. When we took our place at the table, I was surprised to discover that the weekly liturgy that heralds the arrival of the Jewish sabbath includes the recitation of those verses about the capable wife that we just heard from Proverbs.
Curious to know the relevance of this passage to the celebration of the arrival of the sabbath, I asked the rabbi why these particular words were read. And I suppose that – to my shame – I was anticipating a trite reply about the role of a good Jewish wife, and how she is there to support her husband and family. After all, my not very well-informed perception of orthodox Jews made me think that in a setting which seemed to traditional and conservative, it might be very natural to hear a remark or two along the lines of ‘a woman’s place is in the home’.
However, I was gently put in my place when the rabbi explained that this famous passage was read each sabbath in order to help Jews welcome the feminine presence of God into their home. For, as the rabbi reminded me, the attributes of the one God are both masculine and feminine, and neither should be ignored or prioritized at the expense of the other – rather, both should be welcomed into one’s home and one’s life.
Furthermore, he reminded me that this passage about the eshet Chayil is the last word – the climax of the book of Proverbs, and more than that, in the original Hebrew it is an acrostic, with each verse beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. A fact that suggests it might well have functioned as a liturgical or catechetical text – something which everyone in the community was encouraged to learn, to recite, to live by – women and men alike.
Certainly, in this early example of what we call Wisdom literature, after some thirty chapters of wise advice about how to live life – advice with something of a masculine feel to it – when, by way of climax, the author wants us to understand values and attributes that are exceptional, he presents us with a woman of such remarkable abilities and graces that we see in her nothing less than a feminine personification of the divine. A feminine personification of the divine to encourage us, to inspire us, and to challenge us.
And when we read today’s gospel passage, we are reminded, all too clearly, how much we need to be challenged – just as we need to be challenged when we find ourselves witnessing or hearing language or behaviour that is sexist, or racist, or ableist, or homophobic, of which in any other way disparages and denigrates some of God’s beloved children who are our siblings in Christ.
For throughout Mark, the depiction of the disciples cannot be said to be complimentary. Their almost constant failure to grasp even the most basic essentials of Jesus’ teaching permeates the entire gospel narrative, and this morning’s passage shows the Twelve as little more than grumpy and embarrassed teenagers caught out after an utterly inappropriate argument about greatness and importance.
An argument, moreover, set in the context of an even more awkward moment around a similar theme, which we heard one week ago as last Sunday’s gospel reading. For last Sunday, our gospel found Jesus and the disciples in Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus demands that his closest friends tell him who they think he really is. A moment which starts well – with Peter acknowledging that Jesus is the Messiah – but a moment which then ends badly, as Peter reacts negatively to Jesus predicting his Passion and death – which then ends so badly that Peter is addressed – and addressed very publicly – as Satan.
Well today, we are a little bit further on in Mark’s narrative, and we come to Jesus’ second prediction of his Passion and death… a prediction which proves to be a curtain-raiser for this egotistical dispute among the disciples. A dispute about – of all fatuous, ridiculous, and offensively irrelevant topics – a dispute about which of them was the greatest.
Jesus is attempting to show them that, despite being the Messiah, the Christ, his sense of ego is of such little relevance to him that he is prepared – that he is expecting to suffer and die to demonstrate the truth about God’s love to the wider world. But his closest friends and followers – they can only talk about their own egos – unaware (that at least for those of us who speak English), the word EGO should really be understood as an acronym for Edging God Out. And, of course, when Jesus demands to know what has been going on, they lapse into the sullen and embarrassed silence that is a particular gift of young men.
And the tragedy is that this was not what Jesus wanted of them. It was not what Jesus wanted of them and it was not what Jesus wanted for them. For Jesus wanted them and needed them to be the best versions of themselves that they possibly could be, for – strange to say – he needed them, truly, to become nothing less than what the author of Proverbs referred to as being a ‘capable wife’. For these men in whom Jesus – incredibly – believed so much, these men were to become the foundations of what you and I now call ‘the church’, that body which is also known as the bride of Christ.
Because, for the Christian, it is the Church of God that must, surely, be the real woman of valour. And that means, quite simply, that the virtues and attributes of which we heard read just now, those hallmarks of valour that are the very climax of this great book of Wisdom, they should be the aspiration of all God’s children that claim to be the church.
Because the capable wife is called to do her husband good and not harm, which is – or ought to be – the vocation of the Church. That capable wife is called to let her works praise her in the city gates. That is, or should, be the call of the Church of God – and therefore the call of each and every one of its members. It should not be worked out in the kind of petty arguments like the one where Jesus says to the embarrassed disciples, “What were you arguing about just now?”
Because whether male or female, young or old, gay or straight, our aspiration corporately and individually, needs to take us beyond the petty squabbles we just witnessed of Peter, James and John and all the rest of them. Jesus believed in them, nevertheless, and loved them, just as he believes in and loves each one of us, despite our own failings. And that is why Jesus calls us, as he called them, to be the best version of ourselves that we possibly can be. Because when we don’t then we end up – like the disciples in this morning’s gospel – we end up ‘arguing on the way’, and there is already, surely, too much argument in the world without us adding to it.
Just before the final blessing, as we are getting ready to be sent back out into that argumentative world, having been fed on the Body of Christ, and having been confirmed anew in the reality that our call is to be the Body of Christ, we’re going to sing the well-known words of the Victorian priest John Ernest Bode. Words he wrote to celebrate his three children being confirmed in 1869, when – doubtless – he hoped and prayed that his children would grow in the Christ-like vocation of being the best version of themselves that they could be.
I hope and pray that we, too, can lay aside the things over which we indulge in arguing about ‘on the way’, that we can hear again the call that we should all emulate the divine ‘woman of valour’, so that we can genuinely sing and pray:
O let me see thy footmarks,
and in them plant mine own;
my hope to follow duly
is in thy strength alone;
O guide me, call me, draw me,
uphold me to the end;
and then in heaven receive me,
my Saviour and my Friend. Amen.
‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation’ – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean
Title: ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation’
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean
Date: Sunday 16 June 2024, The Third Sunday after Trinity
If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.
Hector Pieterson died 48 years ago today. Had he lived, he would now be sixty, and, one hopes, beginning to contemplate plans for retirement. He might have had a successful career, a loving spouse, children and possibly grandchildren, in whom he might have found joy and pride. But it was not to be. And the reason it was not to be – the real reason – was quite simply that he was black.
The apartheid government of South Africa had implemented the compulsory use of Afrikaans in schools across the country, refusing to heed the desire of the majority of black schools that tuition should be in local languages, and not the language felt to be ‘the language of the oppressor’. Across Soweto, students from many schools protested, and into the midst of peaceful demonstrations, came fierce police brutality resulting in at least 176 student deaths.
Of this tragedy, Hector became the icon, captured in a famous photograph as he was carried, dying, in the arms of a friend, with his elder sister running alongside. A tragedy fuelled, at least in part, by the strongly propagated teaching of the Dutch Reformed Church that apartheid was divinely ordained and set out in the Bible – a teaching that encouraged and emboldened the South African government in this abhorrent era.
And yet, If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. And that means we need a new way of thinking about things…
For the sixty-six books of the Bible, of course, can be understood and interpreted in so many ways, and are redolent of images, not all of which seem to make a great deal of sense. You will find ample proof of this in the Great East Window, most of which is devoted to recounting the narrative of the Revelation to John in 81 remarkable panels of glass that are one of the greatest highlights of this magnificent cathedral.
But, remarkable and exquisite though John Thornton’s breathtaking window is, the bizarre and complex imagery of Revelation has ensured that its message of encouragement to a community of persecuted Christians in the very late first century has been consistently misinterpreted in all sorts of weird and not very wonderful ways – some of which have been downright dangerous, especially when the religious fundamentalism they create gets mixed with political fundamentalism.
Interpretation, of course, is at the heart of our gospel reading this morning, which also contains some less flamboyant but nevertheless rather challenging assertions. For while the science of agriculture is understood in a far more complex manner in the modern age than in first century Palestine, to depict a farmer watching plants ‘sprout and grow’, and to say, ‘he does not know how’ would have done a great disservice to those who tended the land in Jesus’ own day. For you may be assured that two thousand years ago, they understood the importance of ploughing, of weeding, and most certainly of watering.
If we should wonder, therefore, what is going on, the answer is at least hinted at in the curious paragraph that ends almost an entire chapter of agricultural parables in Mark chapter four. In this editorial note, picking up a similar text inserted into the longer Parable of the Sower which immediately precedes this morning’s section of this chapter, we learn that only Jesus’ disciples are privileged, at this point, to get a clear explanation of what he is talking about.
And, if it were the case in Sunday School, that you were simply told that a parable is a story based around one easy-to-grasp, straight-forward image, we need to accept that this is an over-simplification that simply does not work all the time. For if it was a straight-forward truth that parables use one easy to understand illustration to make one simple point, then the confusion and lack of understanding that pervades this part of Mark’s gospel would simply not be the case.
Indeed, if you scroll back a few verses in this chapter you will find Jesus explaining that he speaks in parables precisely to cause mis-understanding, quoting the prophet Isaiah, and saying, “everything comes in parables; in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’”
And, in the passage we just heard read, Mark’s editorial remark clarifies that the word – and even outside the Fourth Gospel our ears should prick up at the use of this term – Mark clarifies that the word is spoken to people ‘as they were able to hear it’.
So what is going on?
How could people not understand the basic point Jesus is making about the universal mission of the kingdom of God offering shade, shelter and protection to all who seek it?
Or, perhaps more worryingly, how could almost fifty years of the offensively vile apartheid regime in South Africa be propped up by theological arguments propounded by a major Christian denomination justifying its evil and often murderous behaviour?
What – to get to the root of what is going on – what does it take ‘to be able to hear’ Jesus’ teachings in a manner that elicits an appropriate response? A response that – in the context of South Africa of fifty years ago produces a Tutu-like condemnation of apartheid, rather than the faux-theological justification for it that so stained the Dutch Reformed Church of that time.
Of – if we were to borrow the language of the better known Parable of the Sower which immediately precedes this morning’s gospel – why is it that only some seed falls on fertile ground, while other seed lands, unproductively, on the path, or amongst thorns, or on rocky ground?
A clue to the answer, I would suggest, is to be found in the words we have just heard from Saint Paul. Words penned by him at a very low point in his life, castigated and criticized by his beloved Corinthians who, now that he no longer is living and teaching among them, have come to regard him in a very harsh light that clearly has stung Paul very deeply.
And thus, from a section of this letter which speaks of the pain and risk of human vulnerability, Paul is, as it were, getting back to basics, and speaking of the call and of the demands of love – of divine, selfless love. Of the love of Christ which, so he passionately believes, is what urges on both him, and others who truly know they are called by God. For, as Paul has come to know in the very depths of his being, the love of Christ has consequences, because, as he says so powerfully:
We are convinced that one has died for all… so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.
The issue at the heart of the call of today’s readings from Scripture – the issue at the heart of our response to the Good News of the gospel – is about God’s love, and our response to it. It is about whether we have the great-heartedness to open our lives to God in the manner in which Paul did in such a remarkable and surprising manner.
For when we first get to know Paul or Saul, he has a very rigid view of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘not in’. At least in a religious sense, the Saul we first meet in Acts has an apartheid-like view of those who are acceptable to God. An apartheid-like view that saw him approve of a murder even more violent than the murder of young Hector Pieterson in South Africa, as he stood by and watched the stoning of Stephen – something which, at first, propelled this zealous Pharisee into active and harsh persecution of the first Christians.
But then, on the road to Damascus, Paul loses his sight as he encounters the risen Christ, but perhaps – to pick up the language we are using this morning – perhaps he gains his hearing, as he encounters the true breadth, depth and height of God’s love
And thus, as he writes so profoundly to his erstwhile friends in Corinth, he has learned that if we hear the words of Jesus properly and take them into our lives, From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view…
Young Hector Pieterson died an evil and tragic death because those in power in his native land did not regard him, and all those whose skin colour was different to theirs, as God regarded him. Their actions were actions urged not by the love of Christ, but by the worst sinful instincts of human greed and hatred – sinful instincts that, in other parts of the globe lead to similar suffering and death right now.
As we gather today to feed on the Body of Christ and to be transformed anew into being the Body of Christ, let us never forget that Christ died for all, precisely to ensure that we who live might, indeed, ‘live no longer for ourselves’, but strive to look at the world and its children as God looks at us, so that, truly, in Christ there might yet be a precious new creation. Amen.
‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink’ – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Jesus cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.’
Date: 18 May 2024, The Installation of Revd Canon James Milne, Canon Precentor at York Minster
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Jesus cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believe in me drink.’
Almost forty years ago, the south transept of this great cathedral church was struck by lightning, causing the third major fire to impact the Minster since its completion in the 14th Century. Three days previously, the then Archbishop of York had presided over the consecration of the Revd Professor David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham.
Professor Jenkins was not, as you may know, an appointment of which everyone approved. Some claimed that he was not a real Christian… that he had heterodox views… even, so some said, that he was a heretic. And amongst his rather strait-laced opponents, perhaps inevitably, there were those who claimed that the lightning strike and subsequent terrible fire were proof of God’s anger at Jenkins’ consecration.
I’ve never really understood this… but, then again, I don’t really believe in a god who behaves more like a character from a Marvel movie, throwing around lightning bolts and starting firestorms just because he was in a bad mood about something. But – if I did believe in such a deity – I’d be troubled by the idea their sense of timing was so poor that the lightning bolt of wrath arrived three days late, rather than striking the cathedral roof at the very moment the archbishop’s hands were descending on Dr Jenkins’ head!
But for all that, the link between God and fire can be a hard one to break, even if, over the years, it has sometimes been expressed very inappropriately and simplistically.
And Jesus cried out, ‘let the one who believes in me drink’…
The Israelite people put fire at the heart of their worship, and they did so chiefly to appease God. Every single day of the year, at the Temple in Jerusalem, an animal would be offered to God in carefully controlled flames on the altar of the Temple by the priest. A holy person carefully lit a holy fire to assuage and pacify a God perceived as fearsome, and locked away in complex rituals. And, moreover, after the flames had consumed this poor animal, the ritual would conclude with a jar of wine being poured over the altar by the same – very holy – temple priest.
Day by day by day… except during the festival. For during the festival of booths, of which we have heard tell in both our readings this afternoon – a festival that falls near the end of the long, hot and very dry middle eastern summer – during this festival, which was in part a celebration of harvest, the priest would carefully fill a jar with water from the nearby pools of Siloam, bring it to the Temple, and alongside the jar of wine, it would be carefully poured over the altar in this precise and controlled liturgy.
And thus we see how fire and water were the stuff of the proper and appropriate worship of the one God. Offered with necessary care and control in the most holy of places, and performed by the most holy of people.
All of which, I dare say, makes this afternoon’s liturgy seem rather uneventful – no fire and water are required to admit a new member to the College of Canons of the Cathedral and Metropolitical of St Peter in York. But nevertheless, you will, I hope, recognise that this service is being offered with what you might call ‘care and control’, be it the world-class singing from our Choir, whose members rehearse day by day by day; or whether it is the well-crafted liturgy that remains one of the glories of Thomas Cranmer’s liturgical genius; or whether it is the perfectly wrought processions, with everyone in their appointed place and order.
And all of this done, on this particular afternoon, to allow us to welcome our new Canon Precentor, James Milne. And James, of course, is no stranger to well-crafted liturgy and to musical excellence. As you will know or will have noted from the order of service, in his role at St Paul’s, James was responsible for two major royal services, marking both the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and then her death in September of 2022. James, I know, needs no persuading about the importance of ‘care and control’ in the liturgies of the Church of England as established by law!
But, as our new Precentor – our new ‘first singer’ – James has an even more important duty than crafting intricate and wonderful liturgies. Beyond this vital task for which York Minster, and our many sister cathedrals around this country are well known… beyond this vital task lies another task yet more vital, in which, as our new Precentor, James comes to share…. To share with me, with the other members of the clergy team, with Archbishop Stephen, and with the entire Body of Christ in this city, diocese and province.
And that task is not to be careful with either fire or water – which is what Jesus is talking about in that snippet of John 7 that we hear read on this, the eve of Pentecost. For Jesus is in Jerusalem at the climax of the great festival of booths. He has witnessed the care and control of the burnt offerings immolated in the Temple, and has witnessed the preparations for the high priest to douse the smouldering remains with a single, special jar of water, on each of the seven days of this festival. Precious, living water from the pools of Siloam, carried with great care to the holiest of holies, used in this sacred ritual by the temple priest alone, behind closed doors, so that the sacred nature of this ritual is not polluted by the pesterings of the general public.
And Jesus can bear it no more. As the ‘great day’ of the festival dawns, and the rituals of organised religion are executed with care and control, Jesus recognises that something was missing. Something infectious, joyous, carefree and loving was lacking – and he could bear it no longer. And thus he cries out ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink…’
But this drink – the drink of the living Word of God – this drink is not portion-controlled under the careful authority of the Temple priests. This is abundant water offered abundantly.
But it comes with a catch…And the catch is that if you drink of that water, you don’t get to keep it – you end up having to share it even more abundantly. For, as Jesus goes on to say, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” Not just one jar to pacify or please God – rivers of water. And more than that – be very clear that ‘heart’ is a tame and dubious translation of the Greek. Jesus is talking about the believer’s belly. This is both visceral, and it is personal. Jesus is talking about living water rising up from the foundation – physical, emotional and spiritual – of who we are, or – at least – who God has created and called us to be. And that changes things.
Just as fire – the real fire of God – also changes things. And if you don’t know what I mean, I beg you to come back tomorrow morning as we hear again the story of Pentecost, and how tongues of fire transform the erstwhile hapless disciples into confident evangelists who transform the world with Good News, so that it spreads – like wildfire – across the face of the world… even to York on the 18th of May, Two Thousand and Twenty-Four.
David Jenkins was most certainly not the cause of a divine firebolt of anger that saw our south transept burn some forty years ago. He was – in my opinion and that of many others – he was an inspirational bishop, deeply orthodox, and who knew, and often said, “You can’t keep a good God down.” Indeed, at times he would amplify this and say, “Even the church…. Can’t keep a good God down”.
James – God has called you to come among us as our ‘first singer’, and in that role, to be responsible for our careful and controlled liturgies. But – as our ‘first singer’ – I pray strongly that not only will you help us maintain the excellence of our liturgical and musical tradition, but that you will also play your part in ensuring that the dazzling flame of Pentecost, and the unquenchable living water which should flow from our hearts, our bellies, our mouths and our very lives, that these precious gifts and manifestations of the living God will never be absent from the ministry of this cathedral church as it serves its city, its diocese, its province, and its world. For it is true, as Bishop Jenkins said, that you really cannot keep a good God down – so let’s celebrate that in spiritual fire and water now and always.
Amen.
‘If we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us’ – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: If we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.
Date: 28 April 2024, The Fifth Sunday of Easter
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
If we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.
Outside the south door of this great cathedral is a statue commemorating arguably the most important person ever to have resided in this city – the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. Proclaimed as such in 306, right here, possibly on the spot where this pulpit stands, this ‘great’ ruler was responsible for the decriminalization of Christianity, and the start of a journey that would lead to it being adopted as the official state religion of the empire.
The consequences of what is sometimes called the Constantinian shift were felt throughout the history of the Church of God. Given that the great emperor’s rule began here in York, it is, perhaps, fitting to observe that the most pronounced impact of Constantine’s radical change of direction can be seen in the life of the Church of England. For there are only two countries in the world where senior religious leaders (in our case, bishops) sit, by virtue of their office, in the state’s legislature (the other such country being Iran). And atop the structure that has 26 Church of England bishops thus ennobled in the House of Lords, the Supreme Governor of our church, of course, is the monarch.
Now, I am a fan of establishment, for it is clear to me that the English church has received many missional benefits from the links that it brings. But it is also clear to me that these benefits have not been without a cost factor, for a church that is established is not, usually, a nimble church; a church that is, by definition, at ease with the powers which govern and rule does not always relate so easily to those lower in the social or political order; a church which finds itself alongside those who have the power to persecute is not always a church that is readily able to stand alongside those who are being persecuted.
In short, whether you use the term in the particular legal definition that pertains to the Church of England, or whether you simply speak of any church that is large, or rich, or ‘well established’, you may not find a church that can quickly, easily, or meaningfully tell one of its leaders to Get up and go…to the road that goes down…to Gaza – to the road which, perhaps even more today than 2000 years ago, is so very truly a wilderness road.
Philip, of course, was a member of a very pre-Constantinian church – a church which understood very clearly the consequences and impact of persecution, which is where the curtain rises for us this morning in the Acts of the Apostles. For Saul (who is still a chapter away from his life-changing journey to Damascus), Saul has been busy
‘ravaging’ the church, causing its frightened members to be ‘scattered’ around the entire region.
And thus it is that Philip, who had originally been chosen, if not ordained, by the apostles to offer pastoral service by feeding those in need, Philip finds himself recommissioned to a brand new ministry of preaching and teaching, and having to do so on the very fringes of society, on that most awful place, the wilderness road that leads to Gaza.
And there he – and thus we – encounter a child of God who is not merely passing through a geographical and political wilderness, but also a profound spiritual wilderness. For there is much to the story of the Ethiopian eunuch that while not stated explicitly in Luke’s text, shouts to us from the margins of the page, in the hope that we hear and understand what you might call the full story.
Now the eunuch was probably what is usually termed a ‘God-fearer’. A gentile by birth, but one who had come to believe in the Jewish faith, but who had not taken the necessary steps formally to convert to Judaism – steps which, for an adult man living before the benefits of either anesthesia or antiseptics, bore very real risks of pain, and serious illness.
And, we should note, we come across this God-fearing and unusual man, not on his journey towards Jerusalem and the Temple, but on his return home. Something had drawn him, called him, to the very heart of ‘established’ Jewish religion, but his call has been not been fulfilling – it has not even been nurturing. For although something has caught his eye in the pages of scripture, nobody has bothered or cared to help him understand it, as he makes clear when he answers Philip’s question by saying, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”
And it is not surprising he needs guiding, for he is reading one of the most counter-cultural passages of the Hebrew scriptures – he is reading the poignant and unsettling account of that shadowy figure often called ‘the Suffering Servant’ – the figure at the heart of the writing of Second Isaiah that was so uniquely meaningful to Jesus, and to Jesus’ self-understanding of his own vocation. A passage which speaks of God as persecuted, of God being denied justice, of God being unjustly killed. In other words, a passage which speaks of God in a manner about as far removed as it is possible to be from anything to do with the authority or security normally conferred by ‘establishment’.
A passage, therefore, which might suggest to this Ethiopian ‘stranger’ that the God whom the Israelites worship in Jerusalem might yet have something to offer those
who are in some way or other ‘outcast’.
For this man is an outsider. His skin color would have stood out in the crowds in Jerusalem. And while his unusual physical condition would, one assumes, not have been obvious to the naked eye, if he had had the naivety to be honest about who and what he was, the priests of the Temple would have lost no time in telling him that he absolutely was outcast – he was to be excluded from the assembly, as is stated with total clarity in the first verse of Deuteronomy 23. And it is to bring the Good News of God’s love to this particular outcast that Philip finds himself sent.
Indeed, when you look at the subtlety of the Greek which Luke uses, Philip is not merely told to ‘get up’ and go off towards Gaza. The angel is using what you might call resurrection language of raising or being raised. Philip is told to ‘be raised’ so that he, in turn, might ‘raise up’ a beloved child of God in whose face the religious establishment has just slammed the door very firmly shut.
And thus, duly raised up and empowered by the angel, Philip raises up the eunuch, baptizing him into the death of Christ, and thus into the inclusive new life of resurrection that is offered to every child of God, and which has power to change us and through us, to change the world.
At which point, of course, Luke abandons his initial language that told us the Ethiopian was ‘returning home’ (that is to say, having to assume his old spiritual and emotional identity). As a result of Philip’s angelic and inclusive ministry, we are, instead, told that the eunuch goes on his ‘way’, and, in doing so, becomes a follower of the way, which is how Luke initially speaks of the Christian faith – he goes on his way, and does so no longer confused and down-hearted, but ‘rejoicing’.
In December, at the request of the leaders of the Christian Unions of our two local universities, I invited the Reverend Rico Tice, a prominent evangelical who was for many years on the clergy of All Souls, Langham Place, to preach in this very pulpit for the CU carol service.
I was saddened – but possibly not surprised – to learn only yesterday that Mr Tice has just left or split from the Church of England because of what he calls its ‘onward trajectory’ in affirming same-sex relationships, and, more specifically, about its approval of a small collection of prayers which – although they do not constitute any kind of stand-alone rite akin to a blessing of such a relationship – he deems to be “a clear, pervasive denial of the Christian’s need to repent of each and every sin they commit.”
While I wish Mr Tice well, and have no desire to enter any kind of tit-for-tat argument with him, his words simply make me hope that he and others who share his views will not find themselves committing the sin of exclusion. For if we are to speak of ‘a clear, pervasive denial’ of the ‘need to repent’, then let us be absolutely clear that over many centuries, the Church of God has failed to repent of the ways it has excluded and damaged not just the people whose sexuality has been deemed inappropriate or unacceptable, but many others whom the ‘establishment’ has deliberately or accidentally made to feel outcast on account of their colour, their enslavement, their disabilities, their gender, and probably many other characteristics.
The youthful but profound poet Jay Hulme, whose work is on sale in our very own bookshop, and who is, himself, a committed member of the Church of England, serving as churchwarden of a parish in the East Midlands, reminds his readers of the breadth of God’s love in a reconsideration of the Beatitudes in which, amongst other things, he rightfully asserts:
Blessed are the outcasts; the ostracised, the outsiders…
Blessed are the hated; for they are not worthy of hate…
Blessed are the closeted; God sees you shine anyway.
Blessed are the queers; who love creation enough to live the truth of it,
despite a world that tells them they cannot.
And blessed are those who believe themselves unworthy of blessing;
what inconceivable wonders you hold.[1]
I pray that the doors of this vast, seemingly immoveable and very well ‘established’ cathedral will never fail to be open to offer God’s blessing to all who approach them – especially to those who feel that, for whatever reason, their face or their lifestyle might not ‘fit’ our expectations or deserve our welcome. Because, as St John wrote so very clearly – wrote without any attempt to limit, to narrow, or to exclude, If we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. Amen.
[1] Beatitudes for a Queerer Church from The Backwater Sermons, Canterbury Press, Norwich, 2021
Bread of Heaven, feed me now and evermore. Amen. – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Bread of Heaven, feed me now and evermore. Amen.
Date: 21 April 2024, The Fourth Sunday of Easter
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Bread of Heaven, feed me now and evermore. Amen.
Whatever next? What on earth is going to happen next?
That’s the question running through this evening. And, I’m afraid, it’s being asked by people who have not quite understood the call of God in their lives – being asked by people who have not quite got what it means to be followers of the one God.
Take the Israelites, about whom we were hearing in our first reading. They had their minds set on pretty much one thing – something on which their minds had been set for years and years. They wanted to escape from Egypt, and from the oppressive, vindictive cruelty of Pharaoh and his regime. They wanted God – their God – to liberate them.
And do you know what? He did! You can read all about it in the second book of the Hebrew scriptures – a small passage of which was our first lesson tonight. God acts in the events of what we have come to call the Exodus. After a succession of plagues, culminating in the utterly horrific slaughter of the first-born, when God passes over the homes of the Israelites, Pharaoh seems to have had enough, and the Israelites are freed. Free, at last. Told to get up and go, taking their flocks and their herds with them, they get their liberation.
But what’s going to happen next? What on earth is going to happen next?
Because, of course, the Israelites rapidly have to refocus, and learn that just because they follow a God who is compassionate – a God who cares about their unjust exploitation by the Egyptians – a God who is prepared to intervene – just because God is on their side… it doesn’t mean life is going to be nice and easy.
Indeed, if the first lesson had been permitted to start one verse earlier in Exodus 16, you’d have heard them moaning full on: If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.
So did they want to follow a God of liberation, and escape from the heavy task of making bricks without straw and being an enslaved people of no ‘worth’ or status – or did they just want a full stomach?
And it’s not just the Israelites who are discovering that following faithfully doesn’t guarantee you an easy life. That’s also what is going on in that very strange book we call the Revelation to John from which we have just heard.
Revelation, in essence, is a coded message of encouragement to some of the first Christian communities to experience persecution by the Romans. Christians who might have thought that, what with Jesus overcoming death and rising in glory, the only necessary battle that needed winning had, indeed, been won – and won even more gloriously than the liberation won by the Israelites so many centuries in their past.
But, instead, they find themselves asking, Whatever next? What on earth is going to happen next?
Now the irony is that for the first hearers of this book we find so strange and complex, its meaning would not have been obscure. The images and names were clear references to situations they could easily have identified and understood. But disguised, of course, so that this scroll of ‘propaganda’ that was so critical of the ruling authorities, could not be understood at face value if it were to fall into the wrong hands. But – to the intended audience for whom it was written – this coded language would have been clearly understood.
But with the passing of the ages, we have been left with a document that, tragically, has fed some of the most bizarre, far-fetched, and sometimes downright dangerous expressions of Christianity that the world has seen.
So we don’t now know who Antipas, the faithful witness was. We don’t know exactly what the Nicolaitans taught. We don’t have a precise understanding of the reference to ‘hidden manna’, let alone a clear vision of how to understand the white stone and the new name. And if you think any of the images in those five verses was remotely challenging, try reading the rest of the book, where it gets way more fantastical and hard to interpret in any detail.
None of it is clear in any detail, but it doesn’t need to be, for the big picture of this most precious last book of our Scriptures, the big picture really is not unclear, despite the language and the imagery.
The first point we should notice in this letter to the church in Pergamum, even if we do not understand the references in it, this letter calls its hearers to be faithful to Jesus, even (and perhaps especially) when that means acting against the predominant culture. And given that the author is describing this once great city as being where Satan’s throne is, it’s not hard to believe the culture ought to challenge the values we associate of the followers of Jesus.
In his excellent sermon here at our morning Eucharist, while speaking of what he alluded to as being the ‘corporate personality and identity’ of a worshipping community, the Bishop of Whitby said, ‘we can either be swept along with the current, or bring good influence to bear.’ The church in Pergamum is being told, very clearly, that real Christians should not be ‘swept along with the current’.
And thus it is also clear, that just as for the Israelites escaping their cruel enslavement in Egypt, while the ultimate victory over death has indeed been won by the risen Christ, following in his footsteps will be costly. Read on through the weird and wonderful Revelation, and while you will not understand all the symbolism and imagery, you’ll certainly pick up the key plot of major conflict and battle that has to be endured before the final joy of that new era at which the Lamb is at the centre of a new Jerusalem in which there will be no more mourning, crying, pain or even death.
But the most important point that we should pick up, even from this most obscure of New Testament readings, is that – while it will not be easy to follow God’s call into the liberation of the Exodus or of the Resurrection – God will neither desert those who follow, nor will he fail to sustain them.
The escaping Israelites, moaning minnies though they are, they’re being given bread from heaven. Admittedly, in true Star Trek fashion, it’s ‘bread, but not as we know it, Jim’ – but it is bread from heaven, nonetheless. And with images too obscure for us properly to understand, ‘hidden manna’ and white stones with secret names, they are there to sustain the persecuted Christians being encouraged by the strange writings of this apocalyptic revelation.
All of which reminds us, quite simply, that when we hit those moments, even in the relatively safety and security of York in 2024, when we hit those moments when we find ourselves asking, “whatever next?”, we should remember that God does not promise God’s disciples an easy life. God calls us to be in the world and not of it, and that’s not always going to rest easy with the Pharoahs and the Roman emperors of our own age when we remember the challenge of not just being ‘swept along with the current’.
But an easy life can be over-rated. At least, an easy life is over-rated compared to a life lived in the confidence of God’s enduring presence walking with us through the wildernesses in which we sometimes find ourselves. For God does not leave his beloved alone, even when God calls us to follow him to the very verge of Jordan, promising that he will, indeed, feed us on the Bread of Heaven both now, and evermore. Amen.
‘O that they would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness’ – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: O that they would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he doeth.
Date: 20 April 2024
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
O that they would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he doeth.
In the name of…
You’ll know, I’m sure, the story of the very capable gardener who bought a run-down cottage in one of those picturesque villages that regularly feature on the front covers of magazines that expound the delights of rural living. The building was structurally sound but the property had been unoccupied for some years since the previous owner had died, and it exuded an air of shabbiness, matched by the overgrown and unkempt condition of the garden.
The new owner put his back into the very necessary work of restoration with energy and enthusiasm, and after a few months, there had been a huge transition. With a mown lawn, existing plants trimmed back and many new plants in place, the garden had been transformed into a place of nigh-on perfection and utter beauty.
One sunny summer’s morning, the new owner was sitting on a well-positioned bench in the garden, enjoying a cup of coffee and surveying all that had been achieved, when the vicar of the parish walked past, and stuck his head over the garden gate.
“Gracious,” said the vicar, “your garden is looking wonderful now. It is so heartening to see what man and God can do when they work together.”
“Well,” came the swift reply, “I’m not so sure God had much to do with it, vicar… After all when he had it to himself, it looked awful!”
This afternoon, of course, our thoughts are focused not on what happens on the land, but what happens at sea – and that can be a much more intimidating business, as much of what we have heard in today’s service has reminded us. The beloved hymn we have just sung, complete with its special lifeboat verse, speaks of the ‘angry tumult’, of ‘wild confusion’ and of the ‘foaming deep’ – scary images of chaos and danger, not scenes of comfort or beauty.
And that famous hymn echoes words penned well over 2000 years before its author was born, from that portion of Psalm 107 that was read to us. For the psalmist also knew of the dangers of the ‘stormy wind’ and the waves it could produce. What is slightly more unnerving, is that the psalmist also speaks of the role of God in the dangers that are found on the high seas.
Now, at first, this seems quite straight-forward. Many people across the ages have looked at the vastness of nature and felt the presence of God. But this psalm goes beyond the ‘awe and wonder’ approach to the natural world, for its author is happy to attribute to God direct involvement in creating both storm and calm – for, we are told, it is at His word that the stormy wind ariseth.
Let’s be honest: the nature of God as portrayed in those eight verses is really rather fickle. This god snaps his fingers and a storm flares up, causing those at sea to ‘reel to and fro’ until they are ‘at their wits’ end’, and then – if asked nicely enough – the same god ‘maketh the storm to cease’. If you are just beginning to wonder whether this god sounds suspiciously like the playground bully you tried to avoid when you were at school, you are not – in my opinion – very far wrong.
Which means we might have to do just a little bit of work to understand why it is we should therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, because it’s a pretty narrow definition of goodness that understands it as simply being the relief which comes when a bully stops tormenting you. And, indeed, I would feel really rather nervous about attempting to honour the selfless work of the 5600 crew volunteers, and the 3700 shore crew volunteers, in a building like this, if all they were really doing was trying to rescue seafarers unfortunate enough to have been picked on by a callous or angry god who was just having a bit of heartless fun at their expense.
But there is a reason that the collection of writings we refer to as the Bible is a rather weighty tome. For the Hebrew and Christian scriptures cover over a thousand years of reflection on the nature of God and how God interacts with the world and with humanity, and, as you would both hope and expect, the understanding of the nature of God and of how the world ‘works’ matures substantially over these centuries. And, of course, for those of us who are Christians, it comes to its fullest revelation in the story and person of Jesus.
For the hard but undeniable truth is that the fallen world in which we live is challenging and dangerous – both in terms of horrors committed by corrupt, greedy and violent human beings, and also in terms of what we usually call natural disasters. And the real Good News of the Bible is that God is not some moody and immature supernatural being who turns storms or earthquakes or droughts or famines on or off depending on whether he got out of bed on the right side or not. The Good News that we are gathered to celebrate this very afternoon is that God cares about us – cares about us so much that he allows himself to be born into this world, becoming just as vulnerable as you or I, to show the world that when disaster and death occur – which, inevitably, they do – they do not have the final word.
And the God whose love inspired the building of this vast and wondrous cathedral – the God whose journey traces its steps from a humble crib in Bethlehem to a cross atop a skull-shaped rock in Jerusalem – the God who encounters danger and death (without which there can be no resurrection) – the God who is so intimately involved with the totality of human experience that he knows fear and pain and death… this God endures all this, as St John puts it in a famous passage in the fourth gospel, so that the world might be saved through him.
Not some of the world. Not the people who vote Tory or the people who vote Labour. Not the people who hold this passport or that passport. Not the people whose skin is this colour or that colour. Quite simply, God rolls up God’s sleeves, God walks the roads that we walk, and God sails the seas that we sail, and endures the dangers we endure, because God loves – loves without judgement or discrimination – and in the economy of God, even though there are storms and tempests a plenty, in the great economy of God, love wins.
Which is – to my mind – what is modelled in the remarkable work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. For when a lifeboat crew goes out to save frightened humans on a capsizing vessel, those volunteers don’t demand to know why the people were stupid enough to get into trouble in the first place. They don’t check people’s documents or bank balances or voting records before offering them the hope of rescue. They don’t cross examine those who are in need to make sure they are ‘worth’ saving. Without judgement, they just get out there, into scenarios that I suspect those of us unused to nautical life would find utterly terrifying, they just get out there to offer unconditional assistance to those in great need.
So when the psalmist suggests that we should therefore praise the Lord for his goodness and declare the wonders that he doeth, I hope that we can see the big picture – the enormous picture of a divine love that intervenes in the world not by flicking some heavenly on/off switch that controls the waves, but – so much more wonderfully and importantly – by unconditionally walking alongside the world both in its joys and its fears, and by showing the world that terror and disaster and even death do not have the last word.
“It’s so heartening to see what men and women and God can do when they work together,” said the vicar to the gardener. And what we celebrate today in the glorious bicentennial of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution is a glorious example of how we can emulate God’s getting alongside God’s children to love them unconditionally – for that is what has been happening around Britain’s coastline these last 200 years, day by day by day as the storms come down and the waves arise and hearts fail in terror. That is the point when countless petrified seafarers have discovered that they are not alone and that someone they don’t even know is risking their life for them.
Long, long may it continue, and may we all say O that they would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he doeth.
“And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home” – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home”
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: 10 March 2024, The Fourth Sunday of Lent, Mothering Sunday
“And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home”
Last week, I was in Houston, Texas, attending the annual gathering of a body called the Episcopal Parish Network, which brings together leaders of American parishes, to share ideas, and address the challenges of mission and ministry in the 21st Century.
The opening event of the conference was a panel discussion between five prominent church leaders. These included the CEO of the American church’s most significant retreat and conference centre; my own former colleague, now my successor at the cathedral in Chicago; the rectors of two major parishes, one in Manhattan and the other in Atlanta; and – bringing an English perspective to the proceedings – my opposite number in the southern province, the Dean of Canterbury, the Very Reverend David Monteith.
Their task was to share experiences of leadership in the face of change and disruption, and each of these five shared a particular challenge facing the institution of which they are at the head. The Dean of Canterbury shocked the room into silence with his opening sentence: “If things stay as they are, then the simple truth is that Canterbury Cathedral will close in three years’ time.” The CEO of the Kanuga conference centre spoke of the vast decline in bookings and revenue from its principal source of revenue, as the church has moved away from in-person events. We heard of a parish diminishing a once vast endowment by running deficit budgets for almost sixty years; of the challenges of managing substantial real estate while trying to fund ministry in a racially divided city; and of a diocese foisting a land-deal on a cathedral that would deliberately devastate the mission of a vibrant and growing church community.
What bound these five eyebrow-raising stories together was not just the challenges of maintaining mission and ministry in such trying circumstances, but the constant voices of onlookers – including onlookers within the Church of God – talking of despair and failure. Voices pointing out that – on both sides of the Atlantic – church attendance is plummeting, economies are not doing well, there is no money to be had, donors are disillusioned… Best just to give up and accept reality.
And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home…
For if things are not going well, it’s wise, it’s sensible, it’s practical to be realistic. No point in getting your hopes up. No point in indulging in wishful thinking. If the end is nigh, then all you can do is make the best of a bad deal. Which – apparently – is what we find Jesus doing, as he makes the last decisions of his life.
The Fourth Gospel recounts how the leaders of the Jews had demanded of Pilate that Jesus be crucified. Jesus has been led to – of all awful, horrible places – Golgotha: The Place of the Skull. And there he has been crucified – the centrepiece of a triptych of victims of brutal Roman rule. His clothes have been given away; his tunic has been the subject of a dice game; it seems that there’s nothing left to do except for him to die.
But, so Saint John tells us, “standing near the cross”, in a very small, and mainly female clutch of those who were faithful to the very end, Jesus sees his mother, and that curious, anonymous, shadowy figure that the evangelist calls ‘the disciple whom he loved’.
And so it is – at what, seemingly, is the end of all things – there is no wishful thinking. No unrealistic hopes of some glorious future that cannot possibly take place. All that there is time for is one last bit of practical action – sorting out someone to look after his dear old mum. “Woman,” says Jesus, “here is your son,” and to the disciple, “here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home…
Except he didn’t.
Well, I suppose he might have done… but I’m not sure it is what Jesus was really telling him to do… because… because it isn’t actually what Jesus said.
What Jesus actually says, in John’s original Greek, is that from that hour, the disciples takes Jesus mother eis ta idia – which is to say, ‘into his own…’. The evangelist does not use the word for home, or for house, or for care, or for anything else. And – even if the result of Jesus’ final command was that Mary goes to stay with the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ – this is about something bigger than simply a change of domicile or address.
Because today is not – in the first instance – about our biological mothers. It is about an almost mystical vision of the calling of the Church of God. For Mothering Sunday finds its roots in the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where he talks about ‘the Jerusalem above’ (in contrast to the earthly city), of which he says, in a curious turn of phrase, ‘and she is our mother’. And the thing that you need to know about today is that, until the liturgical revisions of the 1970s and onwards, Galatians chapter four was read, year by year by year, from at least the middle ages until very recently on the Fourth Sunday of Lent – and that is why today is known as Mothering Sunday. Open your BCPs, and you will find that passage as the epistle reading – it was read, here in this cathedral, at our 8am service this very day.
And from this rather curious Pauline text sprung an appreciation of mother church (including of course, the mother church of a diocese, such as this beloved building), and, only in a very secondary sense, an appreciation of the mothers of families. So, when we speak of Mothering Sunday, we speak first of the call of ‘mother church’ – of the call of the baptized community which is the church of God, and its vocation to ‘mother’ those whom it is called to serve. Which is why it is so important to understand the significance of Jesus’ final words to his own mother and to the Beloved Disciple that are our gospel reading today.
Which brings us back to this curious, and really very broad turn of phrase penned by the evangelist, when he records that the disciple simply takes Jesus’ mother ‘into his own…’
For in this final instruction given just before Jesus will speak of his work being finished, complete, and made perfect, Jesus has not, in a moment of morbid defeat, asked his best pal to be kind to his mum. As the culmination of his own mission in the world to which he was sent, the Living Word of God has looked into the for-ever sized future and with these dying words called into being and described the proper vocation and mission of his Church. For ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, properly, should be us – the Church, and in these deceptively simple words, we, the Church, are being given our calling to embrace the pain of the world, to take it into ourselves, so that we can show the world the true, vast, sacrificial love of God contained in the Good News of the Word Made Flesh that is the subject of the Gospel of John.
And that is wonderful… but it comes with a price – the price that is inherent in any worthwhile vocation – the price of heavy responsibility. For if we – whether it is the ‘we’ that is this Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York, or if it is the ‘we’ of the Church of England, or if it is simply the ‘we’ that is the whole Church of God – if we are to show ourselves worthy of being beloved by God like the shadowy disciple whom Jesus loved… if we are to take people ‘into our own’, then we first have to make sure that our own ‘house’ or our own ‘church’ is speaking of the things that are beloved by God. We have to make sure that the church is properly living out its vocation – its vocation given to it by Jesus as he hung, dying, on the cross.
And that is what the five, inspiring and brave church leaders whom I heard speak last week were saying. For each, in their own way and in their own context, was reminding us that neither financial pressures, or sinful behaviour, or diminishing membership, or overspent endowments, or divisions and rows over sexuality or gender, or anything else must get in the way of the Church of God being faithful to her vocation to serve the world. And each of those five were clear that it is precisely in dedicated, confident, and faithful service that the Church of God will flourish, and even grow.
Because God is not a God who gives up. God does not believe that death has the last word. God calls the Church to reimagine its mission and ministry in every generation, not to ‘think small’, but constantly to find new ways to think big in embracing the call to be the ‘mother church’ that represents that ‘Jerusalem which is above’, and remind the world that God’s love is the one thing that, even when it hangs, dying on the cross, will never fail us.
Amen.
And Jesus was transfigured before them – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: And Jesus was transfigured before them.
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: 11 February 2024, Sunday next before Lent
Readings: 2 Kings 2.1-12; 2 Corinthians 4.3-6; Mark 9.2-9
What do a world expert in the science of spintronics, the designer of a machine to make envelopes, an epidemiologist, a journalist turned museum manager, a biochemist and administrator, and a pair of comedy writers have in common? I have two answers to the question. And I’ll give you the less important one now: this past week, they were the seven recipients of honorary degrees at the graduation ceremonies of the University of York.
Without wishing to diminish the undoubted honour paid to these remarkable people by the university, and distinguished though all seven of them are, their new doctorates are, nevertheless, not the most important thing that they share in common – a fact with which Professor Charlie Jeffrey, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, would, I hope, agree.
For, at a dinner to celebrate these honorary doctors, the VC gave an impactful speech in which he reminded his audience about the core purpose of the University of York, which, when it was founded sixty years ago, identified its vocation to take a lead in ‘ameliorating human life and conditions’ through research, teaching, widening access, and seeing its members (whether student or staff) as ‘citizens of the world’, ‘regardless of class, creed or race’.
Or, as Professor Jeffrey succinctly rephrased it for this age which thrives on soundbites, ‘the University of York exists for public good’.
And Jesus…was transfigured before them.
Some 1900 or so years before the founding of York University, Peter, James and John had a remarkable experience ‘up a high mountain’. An experience that came at a turning point in their relationship with Jesus – an experience that came to throw some much-needed light into an atmosphere of darkening gloom.
For just under a week before this morning’s dramatic story unfolds, Jesus has taken his disciples to Caesarea Philippi – a city mired in the demands of loyalty to what you might call human things, not divine things: named to proclaim the godlike nature of the Roman emperor, and built on top of a shrine to the pagan god Pan. In this, very specifically chosen location, Jesus had demanded to know who they believed him to be. A question to which Peter gives the clear and strong answer that Jesus is the Messiah. So far, so good…
But Jesus muddies the waters and darkens the mood, by immediately explaining that the nature of this messiah-ship means that he must ‘undergo great suffering’ and be killed – the first of three predictions of his passion and death interspersed through the second half of Mark’s gospel. And – as you doubtless recall – Peter’s horrified response to this is to ‘rebuke’ Jesus – only to have Jesus ‘out-rebuke’ him back, denouncing him in front of the other disciples as being ‘Satan’, and telling him that his mind is set ‘not on divine things but human things’.
And, to stress the point yet further, Jesus shocks and embarrasses his disciples by calling a vast crowd to gather round, so that he can explain as clearly as possible that those who wish to follow him must do so by taking up their cross, and being ready to ‘lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel’. ‘For,’ Jesus demands, ‘what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?’
That is the context, the backdrop, without which you cannot really understand what was going on when Jesus led Peter, James and John up that mountain, and was transfigured before them.
And the question – the real question – is what exactly was is it that the three disciples saw atop the mountain.
For as we recite the Creed in just a few minutes time, we will rehearse our belief that Jesus, the Christ, is fully divine (‘true God from true God’) – and also that he is fully human (‘was incarnate…and was made man’). And this morning there will be many preachers talking about how, in this moment when Jesus was transfigured before them, the three disciples are given a pure and unadulterated glimpse of Jesus’ divinity, bursting through the gloom and the darkness of imminent suffering and death. A glimpse, if you like, of post-resurrection divinity, given to refocus their attention, and encourage them to journey to Jerusalem and to Good Friday.
But that’s just not good enough. If this mountain-top moment is, as it were, when the chocolate coating of Jesus’ humanity is somehow melted away to reveal the divine, luscious caramel filling inside, then we have got something wrong.
Rather – surely – in this transfigured moment, as the voice of the Father proclaims Jesus to be the beloved Son, we are seeing the glory of what humanity was created to be. It is too easy just to talk about the glory of divinity as Jesus shines with unique brightness on the holy mountain. It is too easy, as it were, to say it is just God being God. But, in Jesus, in the act of Incarnation and with all that Incarnation offers and demands, in Jesus we understand God not just being God, but God being human – fully and properly human.
And, in the Transfiguration, Jesus wants the disciples to understand not just the true glory to which human beings are called, but what the implications of that glory really are.
That is why Jesus has been trying to explain to his followers that not only is he the Messiah… but that the nature of being the Messiah… the anointed one… the Christ… is a self-sacrificial one. A Messiah that exists not for his own good but for the good of the world to which he has been sent. A Messiah, as Professor Jeffrey might succinctly put it, who ‘exists for public good’. A Messiah who understands and who demonstrates what it truly means to ‘lose one’s life for the sake of the gospel’ and to set your mind ‘not on human things but divine things’.
Peter had failed to understand this. And not just Peter, for Jesus’ ‘Get behind me Satan’ rebuke is a public one uttered in front of all the disciples. And it is a rebuke to us – to you and to me – for the many times we set our own minds on human things, rather than on divine things.
Which is why, having explained to all those gathered around him that it will profit them nothing – absolutely nothing at all – ‘to gain the whole world and forfeit their life’, Jesus is transfigured by God the Father. Transfigured so that those who follow him can see just how glorious humanity can be when minds are genuinely lifted above ‘human things’ and set, selflessly, on divine things.
The selfless call to focus on what Jesus calls ‘divine things’ and which the Vice-Chancellor calls the ‘public good’ is, to quote the VC, “a moral compass in good times – and less good times”. And there, inevitably, is the rub. For this call comes, as both Jesus and the VC make clear, at a cost.
Reflecting that “We are now firmly in the latter kind of times,” due, as Professor Jeffrey explained, to ‘the mix of a failed funding system and higher inflation’ we learned that the university (and not just our local university but many others in the country) receives ‘less than 80 pence in funding for every pound [spent] on teaching home students and doing publicly funded research.’
“In other words,” he concluded, “ameliorating human life and conditions is now a deficit making activity!”
As the leader of another major institution in this historic city, I share the Vice-Chancellor’s reflection and lament that we currently find ourselves in ‘less good times’, and that is why it was so good to hear him celebrate not just the seven outstanding honorary graduates, but the DNA-level core purpose explanation that the institution which he leads ‘exists for public good’ – just as, so I fervently believe, does this institution and the entire Church of God.
And in the Church of God, we have known for some while that serving the public good is costly. For if we regard ‘taking up one’s cross’ and ‘losing one’s life’ as being ‘deficit making’ (something with which I think most people would agree) then that cost – as we see so clearly this morning – is at the very heart of the gospel. But it is at the heart of the gospel because this ‘deficit making’ is the only path that leads to true glory.
I am sure that the ‘magnificent seven’ (if I may call them that) looked glorious in their doctoral robes last week. But the fact that they received honorary degrees is a fact of less importance than the simple recognition that what they really have in common is – as the University of York recognized in them – they have each manifested through their life and work a clear commitment to the ‘public good’.
And today, not just in York, but across God’s world, as we live through what many of us feel are ‘less good times’, when ‘public good’ is inadequately funded, and suffering and death are all to visible across the world, even – and especially – now, we get to behold Jesus in transfigured garments even more brilliant than doctoral robes.
And as we gaze on this ‘kingly brightness’, never forget that it is not just Jesus, it is all of us who are called to change ‘from glory to glory’, so that, ‘mirrored here’, our lives might tell of God’s self-sacrificial story of serving the ‘public good’.
Archbishop Stephen tells the story of a vicar preaching on the well-known text in which Jesus says “I am the vine and you are the branches, abide in my love.” As the sermon progresses, the vicar exhorts the congregation to invite Jesus into their lives, so that they might fully become who and what God is calling us to be in Christ.
At the end of the service, a little boy comes up to the vicar, saying he is very confused and wanting to ask a question – which the vicar duly encourages. “Well,” says the child, “God is so very big, and I am so very small. If I invited Jesus to come and live in my heart… if I invited Jesus to transform my life…. He’s so big, and I’m so small… if he came and lived in my heart, wouldn’t he burst out all over the place?”
“Yes,” said the vicar, “that’s how it works.” Amen.
“Then Simeon blessed them” – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Then Simeon blessed them…
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: 2 February 2024, Candlemas
Then Simeon blessed them…
Last night I attended a political Q&A session with one of the candidates standing to be mayor of York and North Yorkshire. The first question addressed to the candidate was from Archbishop Stephen, who spoke of an encounter he had had with the mother of a child of primary school age in one of the most deprived parts of this diocese.
She had described to the archbishop how her child goes to school with an empty lunchbox. Arriving early, breakfast is provided by the school, and in the middle of the day, her child, along with 90% of the other students, gets a free school meal. And at the end of the day food is laid out on several trestle tables, so that her child and many others can pack their empty lunchbox with provisions that will become their supper.
“I’m not going to ask you what you would do to fix this grinding poverty,” said the archbishop, “but what I want to ask you”, he said to the aspiring mayor, “is what would you say to the mother of this child – who has given up all hope in politicians, and cannot be bothered to vote for anyone any more.”
The answer that was offered was broadly about the steps thought necessary to build infrastructure in the region that would enable greater economic growth, the result of which would trickle down to those living in such poverty. And, depending on your political and economic opinions, that might be something important to achieve. But it was not a proper answer to the archbishop’s question… and it was certainly not an answer that relates to the characters we have encountered in our gospel reading on this great feast we call Candlemas.
Poverty is not a new phenomenon, and, although you may not have noticed it, it is a backdrop to the story we have just heard. For Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph were required to bring a sacrifice as set out in the Law, of two turtledoves or pigeons. But that’s only a half-truth. If you go and check what the Law of Moses actually say (which is clearly set out in Leviticus 12) the sacrifice is meant to be one pigeon, and one lamb. But if she cannot afford a sheep, it says, she shall take two turtledoves or pigeons.
And so, carrying, as it were, an empty lunchbox, Mary and Joseph go to Jerusalem to fulfil a religious requirement to allow Mary to be declared ritually clean after childbirth – and, in so doing, they encounter a pair of devout, religious old people. Anna, so we are told, simply never leaves the Temple. If we were to translate the story into our own setting, she would be the pensioner who is always at Morning Prayer and at Evensong – doing her religious duty, and probably being regarded as a bit ‘strange’.
And Simeon – ‘righteous and devout’ – he is also, probably, someone who is searching for meaning through his religious observances. And his actions and words – clearly – come over as strange and unexpected, at least as far as Mary and Joseph are concerned. But, eccentric, ‘cracked’, obsessive, whatever one might make of Anna and Simeon, they had the ability to see what was going on. Because, through the grace of God, suddenly they both knew, with astonishing clarity, that something unique and wonderful had happened. Somehow, on this day of all days, as they fulfilled what they believed their own religious, and rather obsessive calling was, they finally saw something different.
The distinguished church musician and composer Sarah MacDonald, who works in Cambridge and Ely, and whose music is regularly in the repertoire of our own wonderful choir, wrote an article in December, reflecting on the monotony that church musicians – and, let me say, clergy – can find during Advent, which brings the inevitable requirement of participating in carol services day after day after day after day. Her moving and illuminating article concluded with her saying:
[Something] that is crucial to remember, particularly for those…currently in the middle of multiple repetitions of far-too-early carol services, is that for many in the congregation…this may be the only celebration of the nativity that they experience this year. It may be the 14th time that we conduct, play, or sing “Once in Royal David’s City,” but for someone in the pews it could the one “And our eyes at last shall see him” moment that we all long for throughout the year, regardless of the liturgical season.
Anna and Simeon were no strangers to multiple repetitions of religious ritual. They had probably gone well beyond the 14th iteration of such things. But Candlemas is the story, literally, of that ‘one “And our eyes at last shall see him” moment,’ which, as Sarah MacDonald so poignantly wrote, is something “that we all long for throughout the year…” if not throughout our life.
And that in itself is a beautiful story, and one which we commemorate in this beautiful, candlelit liturgy. But the story does not end with Anna or Simeon. The story goes back to the empty lunchbox. Because Anna, having had her revelation, goes on to ‘speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem’. And Simeon, of course, speaks first to God, and then he speaks to Mary. Simeon answers Archbishop Stephen’s question 2000 years before he asked it, and he answers it properly.
Because, as Luke tells us, “Simeon blessed them”… Simeon passes on the Good News, he does not keep it to himself, and he gives Mary an answer to the question that the Archbishop of York was asking last night – an answer that spoke directly to the needs that Mary was going to face, rather than being an aspirational political soundbite. Because Simeon blessed them.
And what is a blessing? Why is it that in our liturgy tonight and at so many services, do we conclude with a blessing? Quite simply, it is an assurance that God is with us. And that is what Simeon and Anna understood in the most profound, ‘Emmanuel’ way possible – that God, in that vulnerable baby, was literally and incarnationally with us.
And that’s not a magic wand or a lucky charm. Simeon is prophetically very clear about that, warning Mary that a sword will pierce her soul, which – indeed – it will on Good Friday, as she watches her son die a criminal’s ugly death. And the sword will linger around her soul at other challenging and painful moments during Jesus’ life, as the narrative of the gospels makes abundantly clear. This ‘blessing’ does not wipe out the challenges and the pains of real life for Mary – and nor does it wipe them out for you or for me, or for that mother facing the horrors of a breadline existence who spoke with Archbishop Stephen.
But that’s OK. It’s not God’s job to alleviate poverty, just as it was not God’s job to address the Roman occupiers’ attempts at a criminal justice system. That’s our task. The blessing of the Incarnation, which we have celebrated these forty days since Christmas, the blessing that Simeon and Anna recognised is that, while we live in a world of imperfection and injustice, God walks this world with us, understands – first-hand – our pain, and shows us that pain and death do not get the last word, and that Good Friday will be followed by Easter Day.
And if, by some chance, you’d never noticed this before – whether you are a first-time visitor to church, or whether, like some clergy, church musicians, and elderly figures in the gospels – if you’d not realised the full nature of God’s blessing, then I hope that, in the full spirit of Christmastide, tonight, indeed, will be that ‘one “And our eyes at last shall see him moment”’ for which, as Sarah MacDonald so rightly said, we all long. Amen.
Since you are eager for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them for building up the church – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Since you are eager for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them for building up the church
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Readings: 1 Samuel 3. 1–20; 1 Corinthians 14. 12–20
Date: 28 January 2024, The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany – Septuagesima (BCP)
Shortly before the voters in Iowa took to the polls, a political video appeared on YouTube and has been widely circulated. Showing photos of Donald Trump from throughout his life, a lofty voice proclaims that, “On June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said I need a caretaker… so God gave us Trump.”
Whether or not Mr Trump proves to be victorious in the election this coming November, there is no doubt, that despite his multiple marriages, his complex relationship with what most of us would call ‘truth’, and allegations of behaviour which would appear to be far from standards championed in the pages of the Bible, Trump is beloved of American fundamentalist Christians, whose significance as part of the US electorate cannot be understated.
While British politics has tended not to make messianic claims for its leaders, that does not mean that fundamentalism, if not of a religious kind, is entirely absent from our own political system. Some would argue that it was a particular kind of economic fundamentalism that brought about the notoriety and the downfall of the remarkably brief administration of Liz Truss.
And even if political life in Britain is not touched by the kind of religious extremism and fundamentalism that is pervasive in the United States, our church life certainly is, as is manifest around the evermore increasingly divisive debates around human sexuality, and whether or not any kind of prayers can be uttered in the buildings of the Church of England for those who are in same-sex partnerships.
But the hard truth is that the current debates and divisions in the church are not, really, about human sexuality. While that may be the presenting issue, at the heart of this deep and acrimonious division is what St Paul, in our second reading, calls ‘the power to interpret’, and about the manner in which we understand the authority of sacred Scripture.
For in that reading we just heard, Paul is concerned about a deep division in the Corinthian community around the question of authority within the church, as manifested in the ‘spiritual gift’ of speaking in tongues.
Now this is a charism or a blessing which has never been part of my own spiritual tradition, and it is not one to which I am very drawn. But I fully recognise that for some people it is a valuable and beautiful part of their prayer life. But in Corinth, those who possessed this gift were using it as a basis to claim a particular authority in the church community in a manner which could not be sustain any intellectual challenge or discussion, and which was therefore being destructive to the life of the church. Which is why, as the great apostle says with some force, “I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others… than ten thousand words in a tongue.”
And, in a manner analogous to the situation in the Corinthian church, many centuries before Jesus of Nazareth, the early chapters of 1 Samuel also show us the need to allow an intellectually and spiritually honest approach to encountering God to triumph.
For the young Samuel has a night-time encounter with the word of the Lord. God shares with him his deep unhappiness with the corruption of the temple over which Eli and his two sons have presided. But with the coming of Samuel, who, unlike his guardian’s family, is possessed of intellectual honesty in his faith, God announces that he intends to act – to act in a manner which will build up the people of God and not diminish them.
In short, our readings this evening alert us to the dangers created by those whose claims of authority, especially religious authority, are based on fundamentalisms that cannot be subject to challenge by what Paul calls ‘the mind’ as well by ‘the spirit’. And those dangers are increasingly visible across the face of the world.
Professor James Walters, the Director of the Faith Centre at the London School of Economics, wrote an article earlier this month about the place of religion in the current conflict in the Middle East. He says:
What I have seen on numerous trips to Israel and Palestine is an intensification of powerful religious imaginaries that are simply not understood or taken seriously in the West. Liberals talk about a two-state solution…The Right talks about terrorism in terms reminiscent of the disastrous post-9/11 interventions…the Left has adopted a lens of racism and colonialism that continually fails to encompass the complexities of what is happening.
[But, asks Professor Walters], who will talk about religion? Who will open a Bible and discover that land and statehood are not purely secular concepts but embedded in Judeo-Christian history? Who will read of the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey in the Qur’an and learn of Jerusalem’s profound significance to the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims? Who will actually pay attention to what people on the ground are saying about God and the promises they believe God has made to them? These will be the people who break through this miserable, hate-fuelled conflict that no side is able to win.
The state of God’s world and the state of God’s church demand a religious literacy and integrity that is sadly lacking, both within and beyond the confines of the Church of God. The desire for what Paul called ‘spiritual gifts’ – and, more importantly, the perceived authority which those who possess such gifts so often claim – this desire can bring with it the danger of division, of distrust, of dehumanization, and of downright hatred and violence.
Eli, the keeper of God’s temple in Shiloh, for all his failings, was gracious enough to advise the young Samuel that when he heard God calling in the night, he should reply, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’. Both in many stories in the pages of the Bible, let alone in the centuries of history that have succeeded it, we find the opposite sentiment, as people make unfounded claims of authority that say, in essence, ‘Listen, Lord, for your servant is speaking’.
Paul saw the dangers of this in the setting of the Corinthian church, but his words speak across cultures, ethnicities, faith communities, let alone across history. For we – the people of God – we are called to build up the church and not tear it apart. And that’s not because the Church of God has a value intrinsic to itself – it is because we who are the church, our vocation is to try and help build up the world, which is so good at tearing itself apart with fundamentalist ideologies, whether economic, political or religious.
And so, when it comes to matters of faith, let alone matters of politics, economics or any other global concern, do not let Paul’s plea be ignored when you open your Bible, your news website or paper, your bank statement, your school report, or anything else which impacts and relates to your life in God’s world and God’s church: Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults. Amen.
Matins attended by the Courts of Justice – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Matins attended by the Courts of Justice
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: 8 October 2023, The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the Lord has comforted his people,
and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
On, or just before, 24 February, Cecilia Hardy was brutally stabbed just around the corner from Hungate, by the River Foss, about five minutes’ walk from this glorious cathedral church. A widow of limited means, she had what I think was probably the misfortune not to be killed outright, but spent two weeks on her deathbed almost certainly in considerable pain, before succumbing to her injuries in mid-March.
Such investigation of her death as took place, entirely conducted by men, concluded that the likely killer – one John Milner – had been acting in self-defence, although his immediate flight from the city might suggest that such a notion was not one on which the killer himself was relying. However, no record exists of his capture or of any subsequent trial that might suggest the late Ms Hardy ever received justice.
Lest you feel that I recount the sorry facts about this murder in order to score a point about the inadequacies of the legal system, I should assure those of you with any responsibility for the administration of justice in or around this great city of York that you are off the hook. Cecilia’s life was taken… in 1375.
That I am able to recount the sorry and unfinished tale of her murder is due to a remarkable and superbly produced website that has just been renovated and relaunched by the University of Cambridge. Entitled Medieval Murder Map, it features a selection of 14th Century coroners’ records from the cities of York, London and Oxford, and gives a fascinating if rather gory lens into the nature of life, death and justice, in an era when sheriffs were more than just ceremonial, the judiciary, as we know it, was only just beginning to evolve, and a professional police force was still nearly four centuries in the future.
And Jesus said, “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.” Which, in truth, is how we know who might have killed Cecilia Hardy, even if we do not know what became of the murderer. For it was because of the jurors gathered together by the coroner, drawn – as was then the custom – from the four nearest parishes around this sudden death: St Mary in Layerthorpe, St Cuthbert in Peaseholme Green, and St Andrew and St John the Baptist both of the city of York – it was those medieval jurors who swore on their ‘sacred oath’ that it was John Milner had killed this poor widow.
In the 14th Century jurors were, inevitably, all men – something which, of course, is obviously not the case in our own era. But that being said, they were drawn from a proper cross-section of the community on which they were called to sit in judgement.
And what is equally, and in some ways even more important, is that the local community was not merely involved in delivering the verdicts of coroners’ courts of their day – more often than not, it was also the local community that was involved in the first response to the discovery of a crime, including attempts to apprehend those responsible, through what was known as raising a ‘hue and cry’.
The Murder Map website describes this process as ‘a combination of a 999 call, police sirens, and a collective hunt for the criminal’, and it was nothing short of a legal obligation laid on all of the king’s subjects (women as well as men) by Edward I some ninety years before Cecilia Hardy met her sorry end.
All of which reminds us that, although today, in the majesty of this vast and splendid cathedral, we are welcoming such important people as solicitors, barristers (both juniors and silks), magistrates, coroners, district, tribunal and circuit judges, High Court Judges, and Justices of Appeal – each and every one of them highly trained in legal matters, and almost all of them salaried professionals – despite the fact that today’s service acknowledges a most necessary reality that the administration of the law and the maintenance of peaceful society is now, rightly, in the hands of experts – all of this reminds us that the upholding of what was once called The King’s Peace is a matter for us all – a matter for all of God’s children, and, indeed, a matter for God himself – which is why the prophet demands of us to
Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For, says the prophet, the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones – compassion even on the like of poor Cecilia Hardy, and on the victims of the crimes perpetrated in this city and region over the centuries.
Now the prophet in our first reading was addressing a rather bigger issue than the murder of one poor and probably abused woman. The prophet was addressing the lot of the entire community – the community which he understood as being ‘the people of God’ – the Israelite people of Judah and Jerusalem. And the Israelites had – collectively –suffered something which, from both a religious and a sociological or political perspective, was even worse than murder.
For in 587BC, the army of King Nebuchadnezzar had sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple (which, in modern-day terms was more like destroying Buckingham Palace or the White House than even destroying York Minster), and carried everyone of prominence into a cruel exile in Babylon. And while we look on with horror at the appalling violence in and around Gaza unfolding in these last 24 hours, the events of the Sixth Century before the birth of Jesus represented something of far greater significance than the recent uprising by Hamas.
For the Temple was understood – literally – as God’s dwelling place on planet Earth, and with its destruction an entire, vast community of people was effectively destroyed, with everyone of importance scattered into an exile that would, with a modern lens, utterly breach the Fourth Geneva Convention’s demands about the resettlement of a resident population. And, most importantly, to the Israelites, it appeared that not only had justice utterly and completely collapsed, but that the covenant relationship with God on which any notion of justice could be conceived had been irreparably, totally and permanently rendered null and void.
But, eventually, help was at hand – and it came from a most unlikely source. Because any study of any period of history tells us that no nation remains a super-power for ever – and after some fifty years, the Persians, under the leadership of their King, Cyrus, crushed the Babylonians and became the dominant force across the Middle East. And King Cyrus – whom this Israelite prophet very remarkably calls God’s shepherd, gentile though he was – Cyrus allowed and even encouraged this displaced community to return home, to rebuild the Temple, and to become once again the people which God had called and created them to be. Which is why, in our first reading, we hear him shout out with such excitement:
Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the Lord has comforted his people,
and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
For to the prophet and his people, justice had been delivered – justice had been delivered to an entire people. And such is the scale of God’s justice, that it is newsworthy not just for the Israelites, but it is to serve as a ‘signal’ to all ‘the peoples’, and be a cause of joy that will make the very mountains break into song.
And then, some 600 years later, we find the bar of God’s justice raised ever higher, as Jesus sets out his vision for a renewed, God-centered community of people in the text we call the Sermon on the Mount. For we are told – in words that can seem really quite unsettling – we are told that what humans cover up will be uncovered; that secrets will be made known; that words uttered in darkness will be made light; that what is whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.
The words are startling, because there are many people here this morning, including both lawyers and clergy, who are expected to respect and keep a confidence. The act of sacramental confession, after all, would be nonsensical if a priest were to shout the sinful secrets imparted to him or her from the rooftops!
But Jesus shocks his hearers by reminding them that if our society, our communities, if all of God’s people lived a life fully inspired by and focused on the ways of God, we would not need secrets.
Not only would no court ever sit in camera again, but we would not need courts at all. And in the Christ-like world we sometimes call God’s Kingdom – that world for which we pray day by day in the most well-known prayer of all – when that world comes fully into being, there will no longer be an annual legal service. For if we all lived truly Christ-like lives, the North Eastern Circuit, with all His Majesty’s judges, magistrates and all the members of the legal profession would be joyously redundant.
But until that day dawns, as we mark the start of a new legal year, we must turn to God to pray for those gathered here in their various offices, and to thank God for their vocation and commitment – a vocation and commitment exercised as far as I can see in ever more hard-pressed and misunderstood circumstances which potentially undermine not just the professions represented here this morning, but which undermine the communities they are called to serve. For justice is not the preserve of those whose vocation it is to administer it – justice is at the very heart of the children of God.
And so each time we dare to use the words which Jesus gave us, each time we have the audacity to pray ‘thy kingdom come’, we must recognize that the justice which is The King’s Peace, and all that it takes to bring that to being and to maintain it – that justice is not merely the prerogative of our special guests gathered here this morning. It is a God-given calling that rests – and which has always rested – upon the shoulders of us all.
When poor Cecilia Hardy met her end, the community around her, let alone the Sherriff, let alone Edward III whose long reign was nearing its end when she died – the interwoven communities of York and of England knew that justice demanded the commitment and participation of everyone – and in the last 648 years, despite the professionalization of the legal system, that truth remains and endures.
So – as we prayerfully cheer on those gathered here at the start of this new legal year, and if we truly believe that there must – always – be justice for Cecilia Hardy, her forebears and her successors, then we must all play our part in striving to bring unity to communities divided by the suspicion, envy and distrust that stem from secrets muttered in the dark; we must seek to bring the comfort and compassion of which the prophet spoke so movingly to all of God’s children.
For that, and nothing less, is what is needed if the heavens and the earth are truly ever to sing for joy. Amen.