“Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!” – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

Sermon for the Eve of the Feast of St George – 27^th April 2025

Alleluia Christ is risen. He is risen indeed Alleluia!

May I speak in the name of the living God who is our creator, sustainer and redeemer. Amen.

In December 2016, a suicide bomber attacked St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Cairo, killing 29 people – mostly women and children. Amid the wreckage, a young girl was spotted walking past the scorched sanctuary, clutching a small wooden cross. “She carries it every day,” said an elder of the church. “Her parents told her: If they come for you, don’t be afraid. Hold the cross tight. And remember who you are.”

She had seen such violence and fear, but what she held so tightly in her hand, and in her heart, was so much stronger: What she held was a witness.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

The prophet Jeremiah, all the witnesses named in tonight’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, St George, and the girl in the bombed-out wreckage, each were witnesses to the cost of faithfulness.

So, let me ask on this second Sunday of Easter: What is the cost of this faithfulness – and are we prepared to pay it?

This question is not a theoretical one. Certainly not for the Coptic Christians of Cairo. Not for Jeremiah the prophet, nor the martyrs in Hebrews, nor for St George for that matter. And not, ultimately, for us.

Yes, Easter is a season of joy – but resurrection isn’t the opposite of suffering. It is God’s answer to suffering. And it’s not a cheap answer either. The open wounds of the risen body of Jesus Christ testifies to that.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

In our first reading, Jeremiah’s faithfulness comes at great personal cost. “Why is my pain unceasing?” he laments (Jer. 15:18). Speaking God’s word has not made him triumphant; it has made him lonely. Yet he continues: “Your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jer. 15:16). Not joy as comfort, but joy as fire – a holy fire that sustains us when all else is stripped away.

The theologian Walter Brueggemann calls the prophet “one who carries in their body the anguish of God.” To be a prophet and witness is a painful vocation. But in Easter light, we know it is a vocation that is not in vain. For God’s anguish leads not only to the foot of the cross, but onwards to its ultimate destination, to the empty tomb, to resurrection light.

Because Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, we heard a roll call of faithful witnesses: some were victors, others were victims, each one, according to the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews “Of whom the world was not worthy” (Heb. 11:38). Yet none of them received the fullness of what was promised – “so that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:40). Resurrection does not mark the end of Jesus’ story, rather it marks the beginning of the Christian story, of our story.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

St George, whose feast day is tomorrow, stands among those witnesses. Not as some mythical dragon-slayer, but as a martyr. He was executed by the Roman Empire for refusing to renounce Christ. His legend has unfortunately been distorted into nationalism, but the truth is that St George died for a kingdom not of this world and his faithfulness cost him everything – but not even death had the final word.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Easter is the ultimate sign, the ultimate articulation that the grave is not the end. The cost of faithfulness is real – but the reward is not a medal or a certificate, it is the promise, the sure and certain hope, of the resurrection, of the life beyond death. The path towards resurrection does not bypass or avoid pain and suffering but it is a journey that ultimately leads us to joy.

Hebrews urges us: “Let us run with perseverance the race set before us, looking to Jesus” (Heb. 12:1-2). This is the very Jesus, who endured the cross so that we could all experience resurrection joy. The risen Christ bears his wounds, but he is no longer bound by them.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

As late German theologian Jürgen Moltmann puts it: “The resurrection of Christ is not the consolation for suffering; it is the protest of God against suffering.”

Easter doesn’t erase the cost of discipleship – but it declares death defeated, the silence of the tomb broken, and the wounds of Good Friday transfigured by the light of Easter morning.

This is the hope that sustained Jeremiah. This is the hope that gave St George courage. This is the hope held in her hand by that little girl in Cairo. And it is the hope that empowers us not just to endure, but to run the race that is set before us.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

So, what is the cost of this faithfulness?

It may cost reputation. It may cost comfort or security. For some, like St George, it may cost life itself. But the cost is never the end of the story. Because, as the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, Jesus endured “for the joy set before him.”

And that is that joy? It is not only a distant reward in heaven. It is the joy that breaks into the present – in every act of justice, every word of truth, every sign of love stronger than death.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

It is the joy of the risen Christ, who declares: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Easter does not remove the dragons we face – whether systems of oppression, personal loss, cultural hostility, or even our own demons. But it declares: they will not win.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

As Kathleen Norris, the American poet and essayist, writes, “Faith is not about being sure where you’re going, but going anyway.”  For to be faithful in Eastertide is to live with the wounds and still sing the song of joy. To run the race, with our attention firmly fixed on Jesus – not because the way is easy, but because he has already completed it, and travels with us still.

So we return to our question: What is the cost of this faithfulness – and are we prepared to pay it?

Are we prepared, like Jeremiah, to speak the Word that wounds us?

Are we prepared to be like the witnesses mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews, whose devotion to God was such that they chose to make the ultimate sacrifice rather than betray their beliefs?

Are we prepared, like George, to defy empire in loyalty to another kingdom?

Are we prepared, like the girl in Egypt, to hold tightly to hope when all around is violence?

Are we prepared, like Jesus, to bear the cross – and still speak of joy?

Because the world needs witnesses. The world needs prophets. The world needs resurrection people.

So, my friends, let us run the race together. Let us endure. Let us live out in word and deed the hope of the risen Lord, so that it may be said of us: “Of whom the world was not worthy.”

Because, Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine.” – Reverend Canon James Milne

At Choral Evensong one Sunday afternoon in March 1977, the Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral sang, as the Anthem, words spoken by Jesus to his disciples on the night before he died and set to music by the Romantic German composer Johannes Brahms as part of his German Requiem: “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful.” 

The hauntingly moving treble solo was sung by Robert Eaton, a thirteen-year-old chorister, who was known for his infectious laughter and for having incurred the wrath of the Master of the Choir for carving the name of his beloved football team – Brighton and Hove Albion – onto the lid of the Choir Practice Room piano. The preacher at Evensong that day was John Collins, who served as a Residentiary Canon of St Paul’s for some thirty-three years from 1948 to 1982, during which time he campaigned tirelessly against racial inequality, global poverty and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He was a founding member of the charity “War on Want” and the first ever meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was held in his home in Amen Court. What, you may ask, was the response of this radical cleric, never afraid to speak truth to power, to Robert Eaton’s singing? He ascended the pulpit, only to leave it a few moments later, having announced to a startled congregation that nothing he could possibly say could follow what they had just heard. In so doing he expressed what the congregation knew in their hearts, that they had experienced something extraordinary and life-changing though what, they did not know. What the Master of the Choir knew was that a private recording had been made of that performance to which he and others could listen, to recapture something of that beautiful moment.

In later life Robert Eaton moved to New York where he married and where, whilst working as a trader on the one hundredth and fifth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre on 11th of September 2001, he was tragically killed in a wicked act of terror. As his family and friends mourned his death, the sound of his voice, preserved on that childhood recording, broke into their grief: “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful. Yea, I will comfort you, as one whom his own mother comforteth. Look upon me; ye know that for a little time labour and sorrow were mine, but at the last I have found comfort.”

It is often suggested that when we worship time is bent. Both the past and the future break into the present and by so doing each is changed. For those present at Choral Evensong in St Paul’s Cathedral one Sunday in March 1977, the true meaning of that extraordinary moment finally became clear. It had been extraordinary, because Robert Eaton was singing his own Requiem and offering something by which his family and friends might in all their anguish and sorrow receive some small comfort and hope, as might many more besides for that recording survives to this day. You too can listen to it.

At Evensong last Sunday afternoon, the Sunday of the Passion, the Dean spoke powerfully of those who sing a love song for their beloved out of the deepest and most tragic grief and by so doing proclaim that love, not violence or terror, will have the final say. What song, I wonder, are we called to sing this Easter Day? Is it not the song of Isaiah fulfilled in Resurrection of Jesus: “Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Is it not the song of St Paul the Apostle, a man only too aware of his need for grace and transformation: “To someone untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

As Easter People we are called to proclaim (with every waking breath) that through the death and resurrection of Jesus there is joy and new life even if, for a time, there is sorrow and despair. We proclaim this song, not that we might blot out or belittle the anguish and sorrow of our world, but because our faith teaches us that these songs of comfort and hope are never lost but, once uttered, remain for ever to bring light in moments of darkness and to transform our sorrow. If words spoken in anger and through hate can haunt us years after they were uttered, how much more can words of comfort and hope reach into our present from the past enabling us to embrace the future trusting that the death and violence of this world will never have the final say? “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful. Look upon me; ye know that for a little time labour and sorrow were mine, but at the last I have found comfort.”

Our world, despite the many sorrows and challenges that beset it, is today being changed because our forebears, young and old, had the courage to be an Easter People proclaiming songs of comfort and hope. I pray that we may we have the courage to follow in their footsteps this Easter Day, for in so doing lies the transformation both of our present and of our future. Amen.

‘Self Control’ – The Reverend Canon James Walters

This week we have been working through and meditating on the Fruits of the Spirit set out in the Letter to the Galatians. And we have arrived finally, at this great celebration of Easter, to consider the last of these fruits, self-control. And, frankly, that feels like a rather disappointing place to arrive at. Self-control feels very, well… Lenten. Shouldn’t we be throwing off the self-denial of the last forty days to celebrate the Easter feast?!  

Well, I don’t think the self-control that’s talked about here is quite as dreary and austere as it might sound. Consider the opposite, indeed we see the opposite everywhere: lives that are out of control. Lives out of control through addiction and unhealthy dependency. Lives out of control through submission to technology and the duplicitous manipulation of corporate and political interests. Lives out of control through debt and economic pressures. 

Christian life doesn’t inoculate you from these things. Christians suffer from addictions and distractions and the pressures of the world just like everyone else. The Gospel isn’t a uniquely effective wellbeing strategy. 

But the framework of Christian life, which includes both discipline and liberation (or even discipline as liberation), gives us a rhythm and a story that provides us with the crucial aspect of self-control, which is knowing who we are and what we are for. 

The world in which we live is full of confused and confusing information. Most of it is superficial and inconsequential, playing on our basic desires for stimulation and connection, but offering very little in the way of meaning and truth. Think of how our culture understands Easter itself. The shops are full of chocolate eggs, and bunnies, and pastel-coloured spring-themed merchandise designed to evoke warm feelings, consumer contentment and vague culturally resonant ideas of new life. But none of it really means anything at all. 

You, however, who are presenting yourselves for baptism and confirmation tonight, you who have come to church to worship Almighty God, have heard the truth through the idle tales of the world. You have heard and believe that Jesus has risen from the dead. 

That’s what the women going to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week heard from the two men in dazzling clothes. Then they remembered that they had heard it from Jesus himself who told them that he would be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. The male disciples then hear it from the women, but they are slow to recognise that it is not just more of the world’s idle tales. They get there in the end. 

This revelation of the truth is for all these people a turning point. From the confusion and chaos they have been living since Jesus’ arrest, in some ways the confusion and chaos that has characterised their journey with Jesus, they start to take control. They take control of their fear, coming out from hiding to proclaim this truth through the world. They take control of their community, expanding it with men and women, Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free. They take control of their future, knowing that whatever persecution they suffer, their future is for God’s glory. 

And what is this truth? What has God done in raising Jesus from the dead? He has brought control to the world. It is not out-of-control to the meaningless forces of death and nihilism. It is not out of control amid the cacophony of idle tales that convey no meaning. It is under the control of God, for God’s loving purposes of glory, delight and life in all its fullness. 

If you are a gardener, the task of this Easter bank holiday may well be getting the garden under control. Another way of thinking about control is the imposition of order over chaos. That’s what spring gardening is about: putting your borders and your trellising and your soil composition in good order to allow for a fruitful growth season. This is what God has been doing since the beginning of creation, as we heard in the readings at the start of this service, imposing order on the chaos such that by Genesis 2 his creation is described as a garden. And so it’s not for nothing that the resurrection of Jesus takes place in a garden. It is where order is restored, where God (to use a somewhat tainted phrase) takes back control. 

Self-control, as a fruit of the Spirit, is about receiving this gift of meaning and hope and purpose that flows from the truth of the Gospel, and allowing it to shape our lives through prayer and worship, study of the Bible and participation in the life of the Christian community. It is about allowing God to impose some order on our lives, not to oppress and restrict us, but in order that our lives might bear the fruit of the Spirit and be a blessing to the world. So as we renew our baptismal vows tonight, own them in confirmation, or joyfully make them for the first time, let us rejoice that, despite the chaos we see around us, the world is not out of control. And that control is a gift to us, the life-giving truth in which we share. 

‘Gentleness’ – The Reverend Canon James Walters

For a long time, the primary religious question in the Western world has been whether or not you believe in God. Are you a believer, or are you an atheist? Yet the late American novelist David Foster Wallace argued that: “in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” 

Foster Wallace is right. People worship money, or power, or bodily beauty, or celebrity and popularity. All these things become substitutes for God – idols – and in our age of advanced communications technology they are magnified as we are bombarded on social media with commodities we must own, bodies we must attain, and celebrities we must revere (until they’re cancelled, and then new ones take their place).  

More conventional powers, like nationalist movements, extremist religions and ultra-Right groups have also harnessed these platforms so that people may be snared into worshipping them too. We are all worshipping, and the screens on our phones and our laptops have become the new medieval rood screens onto which we project our deities and before which we bow. 

But while they are amplified by new technologies these idols are as old as humanity itself. In the Fifth Century, St Augustine of Hippo saw all these false gods as objects of what he called the libido dominandi, the lust for power or the will to dominate. And it’s that will to dominate that characterises, for Augustine, the Earthly City, the sinful state in which fallen humanity finds itself. 

So in this world of domination, intensified by the screens that demand our attention, the question for Christians on Good Friday is ‘who is the god that you worship?’ Who is the Christian God? He is the antithesis of the will to dominate. He is the god on a cross. Arrested, tortured, executed. Our god does not compete in the Earthly City, he becomes its victim.  

And he does so to lead us to what Augustine calls the Heavenly City, or what’s referred to by Jesus in St John’s passion story as “a kingdom not of this world”. He stands in front of Pilate, a man who knew the will to dominate as well as anyone. Perhaps he knew it so well that he realised he might as well release Jesus because Jesus was not competing with him in that game. But the logic of the fallen world demanded that you compete for domination, or you perish, and so the crowd cried for him to be crucified. And we are told that this was within the purposes of God the Father for the redemption of creation. 

To refuse the will to dominate is to be gentle. To us the term gentleness may evoke something soft and unremarkable. To describe someone as gentle barely even seems a compliment in our culture. But our god chose gentleness. He chose it, not just as the passive rejection of violence; he chose it as the power by which he would redeem the world. The gentleness of submitting to death, the gentleness of giving his mother and his friend into each other’s care as he dies. The gentleness of bowing his head and giving up the ghost. 

So gentleness was the means of our redemption, and it is also the means by which we overcome the will to dominate in our lives today. The late philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle was one of the few intellectuals to take gentleness seriously in her work. In her 2013 book, The Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living, she describes gentleness as “a force of secret life-giving transformation… Without it there is no possibility for life to advance in its becoming.” And she points to the power of gentleness in the moments of life where we allow ourselves to tap into its potential: in parenting and caring for the vulnerable, in welcoming, in forgiving, in listening, in affirming, in resisting. These are all expressions of the fruit of gentleness that heal us from the will to dominate. And this fruit grows in us as we learn to give our attention and our devotion less and less to the idols of this world and more and more to the Kingdom of the god who was crucified. 

Dufourmantelle herself died at the age of 53 in 2017 while rescuing two children caught in dangerous waters in the Mediterranean off a beach near St Tropez. The risk of living is indeed the risk of dying. Gentleness is not passive; it is our liberation from the will to dominate so we may participate in the life of God, giving ourselves to others in love and service, in small ways and, by God’s grace, in our totality. St Augustine described this as the service that is perfect freedom, the liberation from the idols of the Earthly City that brings us home to the City of God, in this world and in the next. 

‘Faithfulness’ – The Reverend Canon James Walters

A woman was staring at me on the bus. It was a bit disconcerting. She didn’t seem to blink. But I could tell she wasn’t really looking at me. I was a representation. That’s what you are when you wear a clerical collar in public. 

Finally, she opened her mouth: “Well, I wish I had your faith.” 

I find it helpful in these situations to respond with a question. “What is it that you think I have that you would like to have?” I asked her. “Certainty,” she replied. “You’re wrong,” I said, “I don’t have certainty. Certainty is the opposite of faith. If you’re certain about something, you don’t need to have faith in it.” 

She sat down next to me, and for the next dozen or so stops we had an anonymous conversation about the nature of the seventh fruit of the Spirit, faithfulness. 

Whatever it is that I have (and presumably most of you have), it’s clearly not something the majority of people in British society have today. If you go to church regularly you are in a minority of 5%. A cultural identification with Christianity persists more widely. But the 2021 census found that the proportion of the population who claim any kind of affiliation to Christianity has fallen below 50% for the first time. Western European society can’t even be compared to the unfaithful slave in the parable we have just heard who says, “My master is delayed in coming”. Our culture believes that there is no master, or rather that we are the masters, and the house is ours to use as we please. 

The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor describes modern Western society as operating within what he calls the “immanent frame”. That is to say that we explain our reality and answer all the questions we believe to be important without reference to the transcendent or the supernatural. We no longer believe that extreme weather is caused by the wrath of God or illness by evil spirits. Most people seem to lead a contented life without praying or coming to church or opening the Bible. 

Scientific rationalists hubristically claim that they have taken away the need for such superstition and provided answers to all the meaningful questions. But I wonder, is it that modern society can now answer all the questions without faith, or is it that there are some questions we have just stopped asking? 

We never got round to discussing what prompted the desire for faith in the woman on the bus. But I suspect she had started asking questions to which she had not found ready answers. Why have I experienced this terrible loss? What is the point of my life? What truths can I live my life by? Where can I find peace? 

And, as I told her, she was wrong to think that I have neat comprehensive answers to these questions that provide me with spiritual certainty. But what I do have is a vocabulary and a grammar that can begin to construct some answers that resonate with my experience, my feelings, and my understanding of the world. 

To be a faithful person in late modern Western society is not to possess some piece of knowledge or insight that other people do not have. Much less is it to supplement or replace a scientific certainty with a spiritual certainty that eradicates doubt and ambiguity. 

Rather, to come to faith is to reach a point of rational frustration, a dissatisfaction with the norms of the immanent frame. And at that moment, faith does not flood in with its creeds and doctrines to give us comfortable and certain answers. At least, it shouldn’t. Faith is staying in that place of unknowing, while coming to believe that, at the limits of our understanding, we are met by truths that surpass full comprehension. But we are not left blind. The Bible, the Christian tradition, Christian teachers and friends all give a language to help us make sense of the work God is doing within us. In the words of Thomas Aquinas’s great hymn which we sang here last night, faith befriends our outward sense as we grow in understanding of God and God’s purposes for our lives. 

Good Friday is, for me, the ultimate point of rational frustration. It seems to go against everything we would imagine God to be if God were simply our projection. How can this be the God we need? A God who submits to human violence. A God who dies.  

And if this day is true and meaningful, then it brings us to multiple points of rational frustration about the shape of our lives. Why do we strive for security and affluence when God becomes so undefended and vulnerable? Why do we work so hard to justify ourselves and compete with others when God gives himself so utterly to redeem us? Why do we crave power when God is supremely manifest in total humility?  

The Czech philosopher and civil rights activist Jan Patočka used similar terms to rational frustration when he spoke of people who have been “shaken”. Patočka, who had an enduring interest in Christianity as he resisted Communist oppression, described the shaken as “those who are capable of understanding what life and death are all about, and so what history is about.”  

Good Friday is the day when the earth shakes, literally. We read in Matthew’s Gospel that as Jesus breathed his last, “the earth shook and the rocks were split.” All our certainties fall apart, all our neat answers prove inadequate. The immanent frame is no longer satisfactory. And Patočka spoke of a “solidarity of the shaken.” We are not alone in our rational frustration. There is a coming together, like Mary and John at the cross, of those who are on a new journey of understanding beyond their old comfortable answers.  

I think we are living in times when more and more people are becoming shaken – shaken by the turbulence of the global economy, shaken by the threat of war, shaken by the terrifying reality of dramatic ecological change. And the challenge for the Church is whether we can overcome our own institutional crises to draw these shaken people into a meaningful solidarity, communities that work for sustainability, for peace, and for compassionate interdependence. Because what meets us in our rational frustration is not a set of ideas, what meets us is the Kingdom of God. Faithfulness is not faithfulness to doctrine or beliefs, it is faithfulness to God’s ways with the world, the kingdom that is revealed by this king whose throne is the cross and whose crown is a crown of thorns. 

The parable of the faithful and unfaithful slaves is about openness to receiving that Kingdom and a willingness to play our part in bringing it about. The returning master is obviously the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But the moral of the parable is not to live in a state of apocalyptic fervour. That’s a mistake made by many people in our times. The Pew Research Center found in 2022 that 39% of Americans believe that we are living in the End Times. 10% believe that Jesus will return within their lifetime. This causes many people to interpret the horrifying events of our age as welcome signs of Jesus’s return, and so fatalistically accept, even celebrate them. 

Living like this is to misinterpret the parable. The Venerable Bede observed that, “It is not numbered among the virtues of a good servant that he hoped the Lord would come quickly, but only that he ministered faithfully.” We are not called to believe the world will end tomorrow; we are called to be faithful to God’s Kingdom today. And that is a source of immense hope and resilience and as the future of our world looks less and less secure. There is a saying attributed to Martin Luther: “If I knew the world would end tomorrow, today I would plant a tree.” Keeping the faith in these faithless times is about staying true to the ways of the kingdom that has been revealed, regardless of whether cultural norms draw us towards complacency, or whether geopolitical and ecological events draw us towards despair. 

I didn’t have the time to say all of this to the woman on the bus as we sat together for those dozen or so stops. But I wanted her to understand that God hasn’t privileged me with some secret knowledge that makes my life easier than hers. I don’t have certainty, about God or about much else that’s going on in the world. But I live in a place of unknowing where God meets me in prayer and worship, in silence and in scripture, in the solidarity of the shaken and in the shakenness of creation. Attending to that, submitting to that, wrestling with it, delighting in it – this is what I believe faithfulness to be. 

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.

‘It was the hardest Lent, I have ever had to endure’ – The Revd Canon Richard Sewell

Title: ‘It was the hardest Lent, I have ever had to endure’

Date: 14 April 2024, The Third Sunday of Easter

Preacher: The Revd Canon Richard Sewell, Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem

Readings: Luke 16:19-31

‘It was the hardest Lent, I have ever had to endure’

It was the hardest Lent, I have ever had to endure. Not because of the suffering of my penitence and Lent disciplines although of course I did those. It was hard because of the unrelenting pain of those in Gaza, suffering real hunger not because of fasting but because  they were being starved to death. It was a hard Holy Week but at least the mood and the seriousness of final days of Jesus matched our own mood of the suffering and violence of all the people of Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. Good Friday’s Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem’s Old City was the perfect spiritual fit for our own sense of loss and near despair.

The day I was most wary of, most dreading, was Easter Day. How would we raise ourselves with Hallelujahs and Easter joy when on the ground in Gaza nothing had changed? Children, women and men were still dying in their hundreds from missiles, aid was still not getting through in sufficient quantities to prevent extreme hunger. Hostages were still held in underground tunnels. Our hearts were breaking and the celebrations of Easter seemed a far distant cry from that reality.

But when Easter Day dawned, we gained a glimpse of something to turn us around. At our service in St George’s Cathedral, we gathered, Palestinians and foreign nationals together and sang our hearts out. It changed nothing in Gaza, it did not release the hostages, it did not lift the crushing restrictions in the West Bank. It did not stop bombs falling and people dying. But for a couple of hours we proclaimed a truth which is written into nature: God has contended with the power of darkness and evil, and has won. We sang our hearts out because we heard again the story of an empty tomb and the declaration which the angels gave to the women: ‘He is not here. He is risen!’

Now we are two weeks into Easter, the joy is still there but it’s battling with the gathering darkness. Of course, it can be the same for any one of us. There are multiple reasons why the core and essence of our Christian faith is not always the dominant though and prevailing emotion in our hearts. If you are recently bereaved, if your marriage is in deep trouble, if you are living with depression and any number of other reasons, then Easter joy is not easily accessible.

But the gospels and the best teaching of our traditions remind us, over and over that our faith has to be able to endure many challenges of our circumstances; it will be tested by many of our life experiences. Faith must hold firm in the heat of the fire.

The mention of fire brings us to Jesus’s parable and the flames of Hades. It is a dire warning even if we do not take the parable literally, which we should not. Jesus tells the story as a graphic warning that this life is the time in which we are given the opportunity to decide how to live: which lights to follow, where to set our heart. Of course, we are going to keep hold of the truth of the Gospel, that we are saved by grace and not by works but we are also reminded by scripture that we are known by the fruit of our actions.

In the parable the rich man has lived to enjoy the good things of life without any concern for those who are denied such pleasures. Perhaps he has decided that compassion is for losers; that people make their own good fortune and what concern should that be to him? Lazarus positioned himself the gate of the man who lived the high life believing that sooner or later he would be moved to spare some of his excess to benefit a man with nothing. But it never happened. Jesus tells the parable to demonstrate that decisions which may make perfect good sense whilst enjoying the fine things in this life, may look different from the perspective of eternity.

It is certainly a story which resonates strongly for me living in Palestine and Israel in a time of war. I’m fairly certain that it’s a story which resonates here in York today because a war in the Middle East is never only a concern to the people who live in the Middle East. However, I must say that there have been times in these past six months that Palestinian Christians have felt that even their Christian brothers and sisters in the wealthy and comfortable parts of the world have not noticed the suffering of poor Lazarus at their gate. The feeling of neglect and the sense of rejection felt by Palestinians by the words and deeds or the lack of words and the lack of deeds even by Christian leaders has left them feeling utterly abandoned. Balancing the need to condemn Hamas with the desire to support Israel along with the desire to protect innocent victims has usually resulted in the innocent victims feeling as if they are the ones who have been left begging without reward at the Rich Man’s gate.

But I am here to tell you, Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike are not sitting passively waiting for the world to come to its senses. Inevitably people are taking many different courses of action in the face of dangers they face, some of them not so wise. But my experience in many different contexts across the Land is that they will not let fear and hatred rule their actions. I clearly see a determination to pull together, to strengthen the bonds of community so that none are left to suffer alone. I am continually impressed and moved by those who are literally binding up the wounded, comforting the bereaved, feeding the hungry and visiting those imprisoned. They are not just siting around waiting for the rich countries of the world to come to their senses. They are They are using the forces of light to contend with the darkness which threatens to engulf them. I believe with all my heart and soul that we are all called to play our part too.

On Easter Day, the Anglican Christians of Jerusalem gathered together in the Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr for the high point of the whole Christian year. We may not have been all that many but it felt as if being together we amounted to a great deal.

I am pretty sure that I was not alone in wondering if Easter could be made to feel anything like Easter when our hearts were breaking and we were grieving and also angry. I need not have worried: The Holy Spirit moved among us. Two of our teenagers sang and encouraged us:

When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary
When troubles come and my heart burdened be
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence
Until You come and sit awhile with me. You raise me up.

We received the Eucharist as a sacrament of the presence of Christ with us. And in the final hymn we sang together in Arabic and English simultaneously:

Up from the grave He arose
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes
He arose a Victor from the dark domain
And He lives forever with His saints to reign
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

In singing it, for a while at least, we knew that victory over the dark domain and Easter joy lifted our hearts. We walked blinking, out into the bright sunshine and the world still had not changed. But we were changed, as I hope you were too in your own Easter celebrations. As we continue through this season of Easter may we live in that resurrection light and commit to doing the deeds of the light, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

The Easter Hymn – Canon Victoria Johnson, Precentor

Title: The Easter Hymn

Preacher: Canon Victoria Johnson, Precentor

Date: 31 March 2024, Easter Sunday

Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14, Luke 24:13-35

The Easter Hymn

They say you’re not meant to clap in church!

But today, of all days, I’m doing what I like! This simple expression of joy, gladness and thanksgiving is surely allowed? Who made that rule anyway? Telling the us that we cannot express joy and delight in Church!

Who said that joy- like perhaps opera music, was only allowed outside of the church, and within the church we would remain glum and straight-faced. O Clap your hands, all ye peoples, the psalmist writes, O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands.

The piece we have just enjoyed was not written directly as a piece of sacred music to be sung in church even though it expresses the joy of the resurrection. It was written as a vignette, a little sacred anthem within a secular opera- it’s meant to represent the sound of a rural village erupting in joy on Easter Morning: Rejoice for the Lord has arisen! Alleluia!

It appears in the midst of a plot-line which would not be out of place on Coronation Street or Eastenders, including jealousy, betrayal, murder. But human drama wherever it is, is always punctuated with a divine song. God’s grace transforms even the worst of us and brings us to praise and thanksgiving. God’s love reaches into the forgotten and forsaken places of this world and wrings from them hope and possibility. We are all called to sing an Easter Hymn.

The bleeding of the sacred into the secular and the secular into the sacred is an appropriate theme on this Easter Day- because if we think that the resurrection does not affect our day to day lives beyond the walls of the church, we are not really appreciating the reality of what God has done in Jesus Christ, or what God can do in Jesus Christ. If we think we can’t bring all that we are into this place, and offer ourselves to the God who loves us, then we are also not really appreciating the reality of what God has done in Jesus Christ and what good God can work within us.

If we do not think that God can find a way into opera houses, pubs, museums, laboratories, hospitals, schools, universities, suburbs, cities, villages, farms, prisons, high-rise flats, foodbanks, the houses of parliament- then we are not appreciating the reality of what God can do.

The deepest kind of divine joy- is always in the midst of our dramas, our reality, whether we acknowledge it or not. Bidden or not bidden, God is present. God,who is not put off by our disobedience, nor confined by our walls, our conventions.

God in Christ is not even confined by a tomb with a heavy stone rolled across the door. Christ will bring joy out of all that seemed lost, he will bring life from all that seemed to be without hope, he will bring life, where all seemed dead and bare. Wherever we go, wherever we are, Christ is there going ahead of us.  Where there are endings, the risen Christ shows us the way to a new beginning, even weeping at the grave creates the song: Alleluia.

The joy of the resurrection, has the power to permeate every aspect of our lives, it can navigate the sadnesses, the disappointments, and the sorrows of this world with a love which bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things, believes all things, for the Risen Christ is over all, and through all, and in all.

The story we celebrate and the song we sing today emerge from the events of holy week, bursting from an empty tomb, emerging from betrayal, loss, darkness and death and exploding into every corner of our lives, rippling out into the farthest corners of the universe, whispering life into the forgotten corners of our world, reaching down into the depths of hell and waking up the dead from their long sleep, breathing new life into dry bones, reaching into the places of war and conflict and demanding peace. The joy of the resurrection causes us to relinquish anger and embrace compassion, exposing corruption, prejudice and hatred, putting into perspective the petty grievances and little setbacks we face whilst holding the hand of those who are weary, grieving or in pain, and speaking into their hearts and ours these words: Have faith. You are not alone.

The joy of the resurrection is too wonderful to be contained within our church walls and kept to ourselves, it goes with us on all our journeys, as we walk along whatever roads we are called to travel, the joy of the resurrection comes with us into our homes and sits at table with us.

For those who watch us now from the four corners of this earth, wherever you are, the joy of the resurrection is with you too coursing through cables and ethernet and WiFi-there is nowhere that the joy of the resurrection will not go.

The joy of the resurrection is there as we break bread and cherish the company of friends and family, the joy of the resurrection is there in the midst of all our dramas, the tragedy and the comedy are no boundary for the resurrection.

The joy of the resurrection is there in our acts of kindness and in the demands of love, it is there in the green shoots that are springing up all around us, it is there in the tears we shed as we say our goodbyes, and in the cry of new born babies.

Unless we are looking for the resurrection every day, in every place, in every moment of our lives in the so-called ‘sacred’ and in the so-called ‘secular’, in everything that we do, and in everything that we are, then we have missed the point of all this and as St Paul says, our faith has been in vain.

If it’s ok to clap in church, and I can assure you that it is, it’s also ok to take the church’s joy out with you into the world, and know that the risen Christ will not let you go, it will warm-up your hearts, and the sound of the resurrection will be singing in your ears as you navigate life, the universe and everything else.

No loss will be beyond us, no disappointment will define us, no goodbye will be the end.

So, my final words to my friends at York Minster, and all who celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ today: Rejoice- for the Lord has arisen.

And please don’t let it stop here.

Alleluia Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia.

‘For whom are you looking?’ – The Most Rev and Rt Hon Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York

Title: ‘For whom are you looking?’

Date: 31 March 2024, Easter Sunday

Peacher: The Most Revd and Rt Hon Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York

‘For whom are you looking?’ (John 21. 15)

This is Christ’s question to Mary Magdalene on the morning of the first Easter day – and at that point still unknown to her.

The answer, of course, is that she’s looking for Jesus, the very person who is addressing her; and although I don’t know exactly why each one of you has come to York Minster this morning, I expect we all have this in common: we’re looking for Jesus.

Perhaps you are someone of robust faith and you are here, as it were, to further deepen the relationship with God that you already have.

Or perhaps you are searching, confused and concerned by the trials and horrors of our world and believing there must be a better way?

Perhaps you’ve glimpsed this way in Jesus and even, maybe, in some of those who follow him, and you’re here to see if he really can be found today?

Or perhaps you really don’t know why you are here at all.

You walked in off the street. It’s a good way of getting to see York Minster without having to pay the entrance fee.

Or you like the music.

You love the building.

Or maybe, for you, this place, at this hour, is the last chance saloon, that, like one of the thieves crucified with Jesus, and knowing the ways your life has not turned out as you had hoped, you are crying out: ‘Jesus remember me.’

Mary herself had come to the garden to anoint a corpse. It was still dark. She probably couldn’t sleep. All her hopes were dashed. Nailed to the tree and now buried in a tomb.

And here is the first enigmatic message of Easter. The tomb is empty. ‘He is not here’, are the first words spoken to describe – and even begin to explain – what has happened.

You are looking for him. But he is not where you put him. Not where you left him. Not where you are expecting him to be.

And then, lingering in the garden – while, I note, all the men in the story rush around like headless chickens, looking busy, but achieving very little – Mary sees someone whom she believes to be the gardener.

Perhaps he knows what has happened? Perhaps he has seen the body taken away?

He speaks to her; ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’

And all I’m suggesting to you this morning – whoever you are and for whatever reason you find yourself here – is that in and through and beyond, and at the same time right in front of you in this place, in this service, in these words you are hearing now, and in the profound comfort of the sacramental presence of the risen Jesus in broken bread and poured out wine, sisters and brothers, it is this same Jesus who stands before you.

You came to look for him, but the profound, beautiful, life changing truth of the gospel is that he is looking for you. He has plumbed the depths of what it is to be human, even sharing death itself.

And now he has returned.

He is not on the cross where we executed him.

He is not in the tomb where we buried him.

He is with us – by his Spirit and in and through the work and witness of his Church.

And, I want to say this to each of you. He loves you very much. He cares for you.

He has known you since the very first moment of your being.

He delights in you.

He weeps over your feelings; cries out at the injustices and cruelties you have experienced.

He longs to be so invited into your life, that he may be alive in you for others, so that his kingdom, which is not a territory on a map with borders and governments, but a beautiful, ever expanding network of healed heart and changed lives, that through this, He can change the world itself, even if it is just one heart at a time.

And when this happens: when, like Mary, we hear Jesus speaking our name; when we discover that he has always been looking for us, we receive him with joy, embrace him and live our lives in him.

And, yes, there is great joy; and there is freedom from fear, from failure, from exclusion and from anxiety; but, no, it doesn’t necessarily make life easier. In fact, perhaps harder.

‘Don’t cling to me’, says Jesus to Mary. ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ and I am preparing a place for you and for everyone.

Now you will be my representatives in the world, you will be my hands and eyes and feet and heart.

I will be present in the world through you. And your life must be shaped by my life. And yes, this is hard.

During the Second World War, Bishop Wilson of Singapore, and later Bishop of Birmingham, was interned by the Japanese and tortured in the Camp at Changi.

Speaking about his experience in 1946 and what it taught him about following Jesus, he recalled words of one of my predecessors, Archbishop William Temple.

Temple had written that if we pray for a particular virtue, whether it be patience or courage or love, one of the ways that God answers this is by giving us opportunity to express it.

This is not, perhaps, the answer to prayer we would choose, and Bishop Wilson said this in his sermon –

‘After my first beating I was almost afraid to pray for courage lest I should have another opportunity of exercising it; but my unspoken prayer was there, and without God’s help I doubt whether I should have come through.

‘Long hours of ignoble pain were a severe test. In the middle of that torture, they asked me if I still believed in God. When by God’s help I said, “I do”, they asked me why God did not save me; and by the help of his Holy Spirit I said, “God does save me. He does not save me by freeing me from pain or punishment, but he saves me by giving me the spirit to bear it.” And when they asked me why I did not curse them, I told them it was because I was a follower of Jesus Christ, who taught us that we were all sisters and brothers.

‘I did not like to use the words, “Father forgive them.” It seemed too blasphemous to use our Lord’s words, but I felt them, and I said “Father I know these men are doing their duty. Help them to see that I am innocent.” And when I muttered “Forgive them,” I wondered how far I was being dramatic, and if I really meant it, because I looked at their faces as they stood round and took it in turn to flog, and their faces were hard and cruel, and some of them were evidently enjoying their cruelty.

‘But by the grace of God, I saw those men not as they were, but as they had been. Once they were little children playing with their brothers and sisters and happy in their parent’s love… and it is hard to hate little children. But even that was not enough. Then came into my mind as I lay on the table the words of that communion hymn:

‘Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
And only look on us as found in him.’

‘And so, I saw them, not as they were, not as they had been, but as they were capable of becoming, redeemed by the power of Christ; and I knew that it was only common sense to say “Forgive.”

Few of us will, thank God, find ourselves tested in this way.

But this is the way of Christ. To see ourselves, and to see others, as God sees them and as God loves them. And to be found in Christ. And to forgive, as he forgives.

Dear friends, it is also, the only hope for our world.

And the alternative is on show each day in the terribly inequalities and depravities of our world, which means that even in a country like ours, the sixth wealthiest in the world, child poverty and inequality continues to rise; asylum seekers fleeing terror and torture themselves are treated with indignity; where Christians in Gaza and the West Bank are not able to worship today as we are, where war foments, where antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise, where conflict smoulders – in the Holy Land itself, in Ukraine, Yemen and Sudan, in human hearts bent on endless retribution, unfound by grace, endlessly banging the table for what we have decided is just, but with no mercy whatsoever.

This is the world where Christ is not recognised; where he reaches out to our sorrows and pleads with us to think again, but we do not listen, so conditioned by vengeful hatefulness and all that has proceeded from it, that we do not hear him calling our name, we do not see him standing among us.

We are here this morning, even with the concerns and conflicts of the world, because we are looking for him and because we know that we need something that is outside ourselves and that can make us, and those we love and all the world what it is meant to be. We long to be found.

After eight months, and the most unimaginably awful torture, Bishop Wilson was released. He wrote very movingly about the joy of seeing sunlight again. He said it was like a foretaste of resurrection and that of course God is to be found on the cross, sharing in the sufferings of the world, but it is the resurrection that has the final word.

Which is why Easter day, this Easter day, is a day of celebration.

The dead wood of the cross has become the tree of life. Where life was lost, their life has been restored.

New Hope and new joy break forth. Flowers grow.

And we, the people of God rejoice.

And forgive me, I think I find myself saying this on every Easter morning, but make no apology for saying it again, for there is nothing the devil and the dark forces of the world hate more than laughter and rejoicing, especially the laughter and rejoicing that comes from victory over evil and even death itself.

This is why we open the Champagne today, fill the fridge with beer, eat lots of chocolate, shuck many oysters, slap legs of lamb on the grill, rustle up the rum punch and dance the night away, embracing one another with hopeful joy and confident expectation: the Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia! He has appeared to Mary. He longs to come to us. And everything is changed.

One last amazing thing.

After the end of the Second World War and when Singapore was liberated, some of the men who had tortured Bishop Wilson came back to find him. They asked him to baptise them.

Amen

Easter Sunday Festal Evensong – Canon Maggie McLean, Canon Missioner

Title: ‘His face was like the sun shining with full force’

Preacher: Canon Maggie McLean, Canon Missioner 

Date:  9 April 2023  5.30pm

As you may have noticed, from early evening, the area round the Minster sees many ghost tours. Often the tours stop near the Great East window. Here there is a house known locally as ‘the plague house’, which is supposed to be haunted by a young girl who appears at a first floor window. It’s a regular part of the nightly ghost tours. I was rather surprised the other day – just as I walked past this house – to hear a woman telling her child, while pointing at the East Window, that this is a very, very famous window. ‘However’, she continued, and pointing towards a small window in the plague house, ‘not as famous as this window’.

Fame comes in many different guises.

Every day, more or less, I sit in front of the East Window as we say Morning Prayer at 07:30.

Sometimes it’s dark; in other seasons it begins in darkness and becomes light; and sometimes it is lit even before we start. But it never disappoints. Its colour and vibrancy inspire our prayer and remind us of those who have prayed as we do over many centuries.

The East Window is renowned because it’s an astonishing depiction of Christian themes by late Medieval designers and glaziers. It is a perspective, and a theology, that remains fixed to the time it was created, nearly 600 years ago.

This afternoon’s second reading provided the words that inspired most of the panels in the window. In fact the passage we heard today is captured almost entirely in one frame. Without wanting to make this sound like a crossword, from where you’re looking, it’s 10 up and 5 across.

It depicts Jesus surrounded by candles; hair white as snow; a sword coming out of his mouth. His face is a shade of yellow, reflecting the phrase: “his face was like the sun shining with full force”.

Of course, even the most gifted glazier couldn’t represent fully the force and splendour of this description.

Christ risen;

Christ in glory;

Christ eternal.

It’s simply beyond human imagination and skill.

But the effectiveness of this panel doesn’t rely purely on human craft. In designing something novel, the artists were working with something older than humanity. As it happens – and I’m sure it’s no coincidence – 10 up and 5 across is just about bang on central to the window as a whole. I suspect that this layout is down to more than just chance. At the centre of the window this frame bears the full force of the rising sun. It is lit for longest and this inevitably pale reflection of Revelation is transfigured by the day’s first light. Working with God’s creation, the glaziers have achieved something no human power could ever provide. At those moments in the day the glass become the words from Revelation: “his face was like the sun shining with full force”. It is an overwhelming experience and, when it happens, it is too dazzling to behold.

At Easter we celebrate the Risen Christ, who has conquered death and in whom the light of God shines forth into the world. As the glaziers found, it is impossible for us to reflect that brilliance in our own strength and skill. We need to have God with us, in us, enabling our dull gifts to be suffused with the light of Christ. Six hundred years ago the glaziers knew that this would only work if the figure of Christ was set in the centre of their design. They left a message for every generation that followed, an invitation to place Christ in the centre of our lives, providing the love, meaning and purpose that transforms everything that surrounds us.

This Easter I hope and pray that we each embrace once again the transforming power of God and allow resurrection glory to shine out into the world.

Easter Sunday Festal Eucharist – The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell

Title: Easter Sunday sermon Festal Eucharist

Preacher: The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell

Date:  9 April 2023  11.30am

“(Jesus) asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’” John 20. 15

For those of you who made it through this Holy Week, here at York Minster, you will have heard a series of beautiful and challenging sermons from the Dean, on the last words of Jesus from the cross. But on this morning, we, with great surprise and rejoicing, encounter the risen Lord and consider his first words. And the first words of Jesus on the first Easter morning, are not as we would expect.

And if you’re sitting there wondering what those first words are, if it had been me on the first Easter day – if you’ll forgive such a thought! – then I think there would have been a shout of triumph. It has I mean, after all, it’s been quite a weekend, isn’t it? You know, you would forgive Jesus for a little bit of uncharacteristic triumphalism on such an occasion as the resurrection. He might have said, I’ve risen from the dead. I’ve forgiven the sins of the world. I go for the things of glory. If you read that you wouldn’t be surprised.

But sometimes a still small voice is louder. And the actual words that Jesus spoke on that first Easter morning, to Mary Magdalene, well, they are still reverberating around the world.

I find it beautiful and astonishing that what he actually says is, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’

And still, not recognising him, Mary opens up her heart to him.

And because the Easter faith we proclaim and celebrate today is all about love, or not really very much about anything at all, then we can also identify a golden thread running through the whole story of the gospel, and reaching its climax in Jesus‘s death and resurrection.

This golden thread is love. It is compassion. And it is inviting us to find a way to justice. And love is always looking for love to be returned. Always searching. And by asking these questions, Jesus is forming first with Mary Magdalene and then with others, with us here today,  a new community in his name with a new purpose for the world.

So, on the night, before he dies, giving us the new commandment to love one another, he washes his disciples’ feet. And on the cross, he turns the other cheek, and walks the extra mile, forgives those who nail him there, and reaches out to the not exactly very penitent thief, who, in the last chance saloon of life, reaches out to him. And even on the first Easter day, when you might have imagined Jesus rising with a shout of triumph, he turns to Mary with compassionate concern, and reaches out to the sorrow in her heart.

And since this is how God is revealed to us in Christ, the one whose character and very nature is service, compassion, love, then it must also be the case that this is how God comes among us today, on Easter Day,- even to those who don’t yet recognise him.

He says to us, here in York Minster on this Easter morning, and across the world, and especially in  situations where people are hurting or grieving, he says to us in a still small voice of calm, why are you weeping?

And if you’re a third child, in a family, whose universal credit has been limited to two, you might say to Jesus why does my birth have to be such a problem for my parents and my siblings? This is why I’m weeping.

And if you’re an Eritrean asylum seeker who came to this country in a little boat across the channel, and are awaiting possible resettlement in Rwanda, you might say to Jesus, why am I being punished for fleeing persecution, where can I find justice and compassion in this world. This is why I’m weeping.

And if you’re a hard-working, single parent, who can’t make ends meet, you might say to Jesus, I’m having to choose between food and fuel, and if my kids need a new pair of shoes there is simply nothing left to pay for them. This is why I’m weeping.

And if you’re a young Ukrainian graduate who volunteered to defend your country, and is now on the front line in Kherson and sheltering from enemy fire, and unable to get to church today, and can only sing alleluia in your heart, you might say to Jesus, my heart is broken with the madness of this war. I haven’t seen my family for months. I live with death each day. This is why I’m weeping.

Or I’m a fisherman living on the Polynesian island of Tuvalu and the sea levels are rising, and my whole world is sinking, why, doesn’t this world care, those whose actions across the globe melt ice caps, hack down forests, and are steadily killing, well, everything. This is why I’m weeping.

Or I was trafficked into a place where I have no identity, agency or freedom. Or I am a survivor of sexual abuse and my whole life is scarred, and no one takes responsibility. This is why I’m weeping.

Or what about you?

What sorrows and fears have you brought to church this morning? What griefs and hurts are locked inside? What do you want to say to Jesus about your tears? And what do you long to hear from him?

And Jesus, again to Mary unrecognised, asks another question – perhaps, the most important question any human being can face – ‘Who are you looking for?’ Which means I suppose, ‘Who will you follow? How will you set your compass? What are the values you propose living by? What do you believe? And whom do you trust?’

And because there are no easy, off-the-shelf answers to the huge problems facing our world, and all the different hurts and sorrows we carry; and because we don’t know the way to go, what God offers us, amidst these trials and challenges, is a companion. A guide. Someone to be with us. Someone who knows what it’s like to be us. Someone alongside us and to show us the way. Someone to show us what being human is supposed to look like.

This won’t solve all our problems. But it will change the way we tackle them. It will cast them in a different light. And, frankly, as I look around the world today, without the compassion, service, love and justice that we see and experience in Jesus, we will never find peace in our world, nor any way through the intractable and confronting challenges we face.

‘I’m looking for Jesus,’ said Mary. Actually, she’s speaking to the Jesus she is looking for but she doesn’t yet recognise, because, he is alive with a new and transformed life, which is the hope, and the promise that, despite all of life’s difficulties and challenges, there is a better future and an eternal hope.

And Jesus,  then speaks her name.  ‘Mary,’ he says. And her eyes are opened and she recognises him.

Dear friends, in this moment we find the greatest hope of all, and the most important message of Easter: we only know and recognise God, when we know God knows and recognises us. Jesus reaches out to the sorrow in Mary’s heart and he speaks her name. And in the knowledge that we are known by God, of inestimable value and deeply loved, we can rise up and build a better world, a world ordered by the love, compassion and justice that we see in Jesus, so that we respond to the world in the same way that Jesus responds to us.

Because as we know it is easy to be cynical and to despair. it is so easy to think that things can never change. That death and evil and injustice have the last word. And that all you can do is make the best of what you’ve got in the years left to you. And then protect that keenly.

The reason we are here today, on Easter day says something else. Things can be different. Things can be better. That expectations can be turned around. And this is very good news indeed.

It is worth celebrating. So, open those Easter eggs when you get home. Crack open the champagne. Put some red stripe in the fridge. Bake a very large cake. Stop off for a kebab from the caravan on the ring road. Order lots of curry. Invite everyone in. Turn the music up loud. Wear your most outrageous hat. Pucker up. Make a noise. Celebrate. Something better is beginning. A new hope is stirring. Tap your feet to a new rhythm of joy and hope. Because Jesus is risen from the dead. He is reaching out to the sorrows in our hearts. He is inviting us to follow him. He is calling us by name.

Amen

Good Friday: The Last Word of All – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York

Title: The Last Word of All

Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York 

Date:  7 April 2023  5.30pm

When Jesus had received the wine, he said It is finished.

Back in 1993, a 74-minute CD was released by an English composer. A distinguished English composer, who has written some very well-acclaimed pieces that have been performed by a number of internationally renowned artists. But this record was not quite like his other ones, for it consisted entirely of one phrase of music being played again and again, and the music in question was a man singing the refrain of a hymn.

Now if you think it strange that someone could release CD consisting of part of a hymn being sung over and over, what made it even stranger was who it was that was singing. For this was no professional singer – quite the reverse. The singing is actually a tape-recording from the early 1970s, taken from material compiled by the BBC for a documentary about life in slums of inner-city South London now long-since demolished. And the researchers for this documentary came across an old man on a sitting on a lonely bench singing to himself – quite unaware that he was being overheard. And as he sat there he sang:

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.

This one thing I know, that He loves me so.

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

The voice of this old man sounds ragged and pathetic; he was clearly someone not only well advanced in years, but clearly not in the best of health. There are frequent pauses for breath in between the clauses of the song, and his aged voice sounds pretty toothless, and conveys all the signs and sounds of extreme poverty. And yet he sung

This one thing I know, that He loves me so.

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

It is a performance, in its way, of great grace and serenity. Were you to listen to the recording, which is widely available in all the usual places, you would realise at once how near the bottom of the social scrap-heap this man must have been. And yet, he sings this genuinely pathetic and touching refrain, this most unexpected and unlikely affirmation of faith in God’s love and support.

Today, of course, we are singing rather older and more venerable songs. Songs not from the 1970s, but songs rooted in ancient traditions of the church. We have, indeed, just sung one of the four accounts of Christ’s passion, and sung it in a musical style the origins of which are more than 1500 years old. And all of that feels, perhaps, appropriately Good for such a distinguished setting as the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York which we know as York Minster – appropriately Good for a holy day that the Church has labelled – so paradoxically – as being Good.

And that, in itself, is a strange last word – a very strange last word to ascribe to the day that the Son of God dies. An even stranger last word to ascribe to the day that the Son of God not merely dies, but is unjustly and cruelly executed by a conspiracy of corrupt and callous humans, too bent on their own agenda to notice the incarnate Love of God present in their midst.

And so it is, on this day of days, that we hear that ultimate, final Last Word: When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.”

And this last word is inexorable and inescapable. For century upon century upon century, across the entire Christian world, it has always John’s account of the Passion that has been read on the day that Christ dies. And thus the last word of all is always, and can only ever be It is finished.

For these are very human words. We are finite people, and we live in a world of beginnings and endings. And we know that every beginning comes to an ending – whether the ending is happy or sad. A lovely holiday finishes. A lifetime’s employment finishes. A love affair finishes. Every single life that is lived comes to its conclusion, prematurely, or after many years – life finishes.

This last word is no more and no less than the ultimate statement of the human condition – for we are finite, and thus we have no other destiny but to finish. As creation begins, so it must end – and endings are hard, for every ending is, in its way, a death. And yet…. And yet that old man, who had, I am sure, lived out most of the years of his life, that old man could sing

This one thing I know, that he loves me so.

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

This one thing I know…. That he loves me so…

And that is the big clue…. That is the key to the mystery of this day… that is the lens through which Saint John calls us to view the Cross, to view the the broken and pierced body that hangs upon it, to view the death of God, inexorably shot through with the Love of God. And, for Saint John, and for the Church of God, it is the triumph of that love which allows us… which dares us…. Which demands of us that we call this day Good.

Nearly 40 years ago, one of the finest priests who has ever ministered in the Church of England, a man with a theological brain that could have guaranteed him a professorial career of great distinction in any university, but who chose to devote himself entirely to parish ministry – nearly 40 years ago, well into his fifties, this man wrote an account of the nature of the church’s ministry that many regard as a spiritual classic of the 20^th Century.

In it he explains all sorts of not insignificant ways the church brings benefits to society, many of which are as valid today in the Britain of 2023, as they were back in the 1970s. He would, I am sure, have applauded how the Church of God has, in the last fifty years, become much more conscious of the call of what many people call social justice. But ultimately, he says, it is not for this service that the Church…makes its offering…

 The Church offers itself to the triumph of the love of God… The Church lives at the point where the love of God is exposed to its final possibility of triumph or tragedy – the triumph of being recognized as love, the tragedy of so passing unrecognized that the final gift, the gift of which all other gifts are symbols, the gift of love itself is never known. The Church cannot endure that this tragedy should be…for it recognizes…the love of God is no controlled unfolding of a predetermined purpose according to an assured programme… But rather….

That upon which all being depends is love expended in self-giving…[love] without residue or reserve, drained, exhausted, spent: love…on the brink of failure…yet ever finding new strength to redeem tragedy…and restore again the possibility of triumph.

That weary and broken old man – he knew this. He knew it in the very fibre of his being, which was why he could dare to sing

This one thing I know, that He loves me so.

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

For pretty much everything had failed him. His friends and family had failed him. His community had failed him. His country and his politicians had failed him. All those who should have supported him had failed him, and, in our own day, we fail him and so many like him again and again and again. But Jesus – Jesus, who we see today, so finished upon the cross – Jesus had not failed him – had not failed him and could not fail him. Could not fail him because of and not despite of the shedding of his blood.

For today, on this Friday we call Good, we hear the Last Word of an incarnate God who thinks big – who thinks bigger and more daringly than the world had or has ever witnessed. The God Incarnate who, at the very start of his ministry, in the Sermon on the Mount, encouraged his followers to be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. A tall order you may well think. But in this ultimate last word, we get the clue to that. For last night, were reminded that Jesus loved his own to the end – to love so completely finished that it is made perfect.

And today, on this stark day of horror and of triumph and of life, we see a Jesus who has put all in order, and done all that he came to earth to accomplish. To make sure that all is complete, he’s even prepared to drink sour wine. And then, in triumph, and in control – he bows his head, and he gives up his spirit. This is not just what some might call a good death, it is very much more than that….

When Jesus had received the wine, he said It is finished.

This is the last Last Word, because it is the word not of despair and brokenness, but of completion and perfection. Of a life so perfectly lived in tune with God’s will, and a love so perfectly loved in tune with God’s love.

That is the last word which God’s church is called to proclaim anew in each and every generation – a last word of paradox and triumph, enunciated by a broken figure reigning from a criminal’s cross.

As Gavin Bryars, the composer who made famous this old man’s song, as he was working on this recording one morning, he went to make a coffee, and he left the tape-loop of the old man playing in his office, adjacent to a staff common room in the university in which he worked, unaware that the song would be overheard.

When he came back with his drink, he says, “I found the normally lively room subdued. People were moving about more slowly than usual, and a few were sitting alone, quietly, weeping.”

For in his eloquent and melodic Last Word, that old man sung of love perfected upon the Cross. Of a love which would never fail him – which would never fail the world. A Love that could drink sour wine and proclaim the triumph of God’s work as it exclaims It is finished.

For that is the ultimate last word from the cross and about the cross. It is the Last Word about what Bill Vanstone so aptly called  Love’s Endeavour and Love’s Expense. It is the Last Word on which, and only on which, you and I can dare to rely. For it is the last human word that demonstrates the eternal truth that He only became human, that He only did any and all of this, and did it so perfectly, that we might become divine.

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.

This one thing I know, that He loves me so.

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

What Last Word will you dare sing today?