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Eighth Sunday of Trinity – The Rt. Rev. Gregory H. Rickel Assisting Bishop of SE Florida, TEC

Preacher: The Rt. Rev. Gregory H. Rickel Assisting Bishop of SE Florida, TEC

Date: 30 July 2023,  Eighth Sunday after Trinity

Good morning I bring you all greetings from the Episcopal Church which comprises
the United States, as well as many countries and places outside of it. We rejoice in our
connections in this, our Anglican family. I bring you particular greetings from the Diocese of Southeast Florida where I serve as Assisting Bishop and from our Bishop Diocesan Bishop Peter Eaton.
Now, I realize, many of you have already picked up that I am not from around here, I have a rather peculiar and funny way of speaking, and indeed it might have been helpful to have an interpreter this morning, to interpret my Southern USA drawl, but alas we do not have that so I promise I will try to do my very best. As I do that I also wish to thank Dean Barrington, a true mentor and friend, for the invitation and blessing of standing here in this amazingly beautiful and
sacred place.
Today I would like to focus on “heart.” Both the word, but mostly the concept. The heart
is of course a real thing and yet also a theme well beyond that reality. This is what our
collect for the day points to so well when we prayed.
We beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern both our hearts and bodies in the ways of your laws
and the works of your commandments;

Paul points to it in his letter to the Romans today when he speaks of our God, who
searches our heart.
Most of us understand body, it is pretty clear, and we can see it and know it. Heart, however, is both physical and real, and yet far more than that. Here, when heart is used, it is, of course, not suggesting our actual beating heart, that organ we all have right about here. Of course, that organ is real, and also real important to each of us, but that is not what heart here means.

No, in these words, from Jesus, “heart,” refers to those things we cannot, for the most part, see at all.
If you think about it, none of us absolutely know we have a heart right here, except that we can feel it beating, we can feel it when it is hurting, but in the end it is a matter of faith to a degree, that one is right here, and is working to keep us alive. Most of us intellectually know that we cannot live without it working, day in, day out, minute to minute, literally as they say, and
hopefully for each us, not missing a beat.
Most often, if we are truly fortunate, we don’t think about it at all, but it keeps always, doing its work. It’s consistency, its persistence, is absolutely crucial to our continued survival. We can live without many other things, but not without a heart.
So we can say it is absolutely central, crucial, primary to life.
With that idea, and understanding, Jesus and so many others use this image, heart, meaning everything that makes you you, me me, anybody anybody.
That is what makes this image so mysterious and yet so powerful. It is one reason Jesus,
and so many others, use the image so often.
In fact, in Scripture we find the word “heart” used in just this manner, over 1000 times,
making it therefore, one of, if not the most common anthropological theme in Scripture.

Love God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind…
Luke 10:27

Where your treasure is, there your heart will
be also. Matthew 6:21

Heart as it is used here, means all those things that fall outside our physical reality. It
is, you might say, the air that we breath, the feelings that we have, the love that we share,
or that we don’t. You might even say it is how we navigate the world, and interact with our community, and our planet. We hear sayings every day that pick up on this.

His or her heart is just not in it. Home is where the heart is. The heart of the story. Getting to the heart of the matter.

And it is far from just Jesus or religion that believes this. Carl Jung once said, Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside it, dreams; who looks inside it, awakens. Jesus is saying much the same. In a sense, he is telling a truth, we all know, and also asking us a question and that is a simple and yet
deeply challenging one: What is primary in your life? What is central to your being?
What is the heart of your life? What is it in your life, that like our physical real heart,
beating inside us, drives you, motivates you, moves you, causes you to act.
It is summed up for me in a much paraphrased comment by GK Chesterton, who basically said “it’s not that Christianity is all that bad, its just that no one has ever really tried it yet!”
Because it is not always easy, and Jesus didn’t promise it would be, but he did promise a God of Love, that would be with us in every beat of our heart, in every step we ever take, and God, in turn, asks us to essentially love others, just as God Loved us, which I would say is to love completely,
recklessly, wastefully, not something this world encourages of us, and not something our mind tells us is reasonable, and that is why heart is so important. That is why heart is what Jesus asks us to give completely. Because heart is everything, mind, soul, body.
What is primary in your life? What is your heart?

I don’t believe following Christ means you must live an oppressive life, or somehow live removed from this world. I don’t believe that following Christ means you have to leave everything you own on the street corner and walk away. I do believe it means realigning how you see all of those things, what the priority of all those things are in your life. I do believe we have to let go of them, in the sense that they are no longer things we own, be it money, or possessions, or even those we
love, to let go of them, in the sense that they are not our heart, they are not the central reason for our being, or for our actions in this world, and instead care and love all those
things for God, and as God loves us, fully, completely, abundantly, recklessly, wastefully. When Jesus spoke of freedom, that is what he was talking about. When he spoke of heart, I believe this was what he was speaking of.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That is God’s wish for this world, and for each and every one of us. That is the heart of this faith. That is the heart of Jesus’s way, and it is a free gift, available to each and every one of us. We
must only accept it, follow it, and live it, from our heart.
My beloved I have said these words to you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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Trinity Sunday – Revd Matthew Porter, Vicar of St Michael le Belfrey and Bishop Designate of Bolton

Title: A Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Preacher: The Reverend Matthew Porter, Vicar of St Michael le Belfrey and Bishop Designate of Bolton

Date: 4 June 2023  Trinity Sunday 11.00am

Readings: Is. 40:12-17, 27-end; 2 Cor. 13:11-end; Mt. 28:16-end

Last words. Last words are important, especially when you’re dying. It’s said that famed musician Billie Holiday’s were: ‘Don’t be in such a hurry.’ The last words of footballer George Best, who struggled with alcohol, were: ‘don’t die like I did.’ And Bob Marley the celebrated singer, said to his son as he died, ‘Money can’t buy life.’ So often it’s the final words that people remember.

When Jesus gives his last speech to his disciples, his Great Commission, what (according to Matthew) does he say? ‘Go’ – don’t keep the good news to yourself; go and make more disciples. ‘Teach’- pass on what I told you. ‘Baptise’ – immerse people. In what? In God. What kind of God?

‘In the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ Immerse them in the God who is three and yet One. That’s what I was doing last Sunday, next door in St Michael le Belfrey Church. I got wet, immersing five young adults in water in our baptistery, declaring: ‘I baptise you, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ It marked the end of their old life, as they now chose to follow Jesus for the rest of their days.

While we need to take seriously the rise of atheism, especially in the contemporary West, most people in the world today, and across human history, believe and have believed, in God. The question is: what kind of God is he? Let me highlight three things we can confidently say about the nature of God from our readings.

First God is Trinity. We’ve been seeing this already, for today is Trinity Sunday.

This three-in-one way of understanding God has sometimes been seen as an embarrassing problem which the ancient church has passed down to us. Passed like a hospital pass in rugby, that’s difficult to receive! Or passed on like inheriting an old house, that comes with a lingering fusty smell that’s annoying and we just can’t get rid of it! Over the last two to three hundred years, ultra-rational people have often thought like this about the Trinity, finding it awkward: how can God be three and yet one? They find it goes against their neat categories, being untidy and even contradictory. But, think about it, we live in a world that rightly celebrates both unity and diversity; they don’t have to contradict. Also most of us can live holding two things in tension; it doesn’t phase us. We call this paradox – living with apparent contradiction. For example: throw things in the sky and they normally fall. And yet people travel daily on planes in the sky, trusting they’re not going to fall to the ground. Also, people normally do all they can to avoid pain, yet across our planet every day women are giving birth, knowing full well it’s going to hurt! Those are just two examples showing that we humans can live with a bit of paradox in our lives! So, observing that’s there’s paradox in the Trinity doesn’t mean it’s not true. In fact for some, it makes things more reasonable, with Oxford theologian and scientist Alastair McGrath describing our faith as ‘shaped by a rich and coherent Trinitarian logic of faith.’

And of course the testimony of our Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, is that God is Trinity. Even in our first reading today, from Isaiah, it’s possible to see the interconnected and beautiful work of God the Creator, God the Lord and God the Spirit. So rather than being something to apologise for, I want us to celebrate the Trinity today! We gladly worship this wonderful, relational God, who’s revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I hope you know this trinitarian God. We know him through Jesus Christ, who through his cross and resurrection has opened the way to the Father, and to the experience of the Spirit. It’s all through Jesus Christ. If you don’t know this God, come in prayer to Jesus Christ today, and enter into the joy and wonder of worshipping our Trinitarian God.

Here’s a second thing we see in our readings: he is a giving God. All three persons of the Trinity are like this: giving and giving and giving. They give love to each other. And to us. They just can’t help it! It’s in their nature. The close of 2 Corinthians (in our New Testament reading) speaks so simply, but profoundly of this, of the gracious work of Jesus: self-giving of himself with great love. Forgiving and freeing us. So unconditional, undeserved and unending! All overflowing to us. The deep love of God the Father: so strong, protective and creative, which he wants us to experience. The rich loving fellowship of the Holy Spirit: life-giving and empowering; pulling together and bringing unity, that he wants us to enjoy.

Notice that Jesus says: ‘All authority in heaven on earth has been given me,’ and then he passes it on. He gives it away, for our God is a giving God. This is why Isaiah, having told us that God doesn’t get tired or weary, then says that if we hope in him, expectantly putting our trust in him, we can have our strength renewed. Some of us here today, are tired and weary: worn out with life, with work, with politics, with our relationships, even sometimes with church. If that’s you, again come to our giving God and ask for him to give you his strength. For he loves to give to us all we need for life.

Ann Voskamp, a mother with young children, one day felt dared. She dared to write a list of a thousand things for which she was thankful. Not of gifts she wanted, but of gifts she already had. So she made a start:

As she thought about these things, they made her smile, so she wrote them down in a journal. They were common things she was grateful for.  Here’s what she said about it: ‘I didn’t even know they were gifts really, until I wrote them down, and that is really what they look like: Gifts which God bestows. This writing it down – it is sort of like … unwrapping love.’ And that was the start of a joyful journey into thankfulness, eventually written up in her best-selling book One Thousand Gifts, a book which has helped many not only journal their thanksgivings, but more importantly live lives of gratitude to the trinitarian God who keeps on giving. This is our trinitarian God. He gives.

A third and final thing we discover about our God, is that he gives to us, not just for own benefit, but for others. He’s a going God – who sends us out to serve. That’s why Jesus said, in the Great Commission of Mt 28: ‘Go and make disciples.’ He wants us to give away our faith: pointing others to Jesus Christ, so they too follow him. To give away our money: generously giving to church, and to the poor and those who are struggling. To give away our time: investing in people and projects in our locality and beyond that make a difference. To give away our love: trusting that God will give more, so we can give again. This is our mission, with the Father being the sender, Jesus being the One sent, and the Spirit being the sending power.

The purpose is transformation. Starting in us. And then spilling out, well beyond ourselves. John, one of those baptised last week in St Michael le Belfrey Church, gets this. Although he’s only been a believer a few weeks, here’s what he said in a short interview before his baptism last week: “I moved to York but didn’t expect to find Jesus or church. But Jesus found me. That’s how it feels. I want to be baptised to start a new life with Jesus. I want to live better. And I also want to make a difference in the world.” How right he was! As disciples, we are baptised people: immersed into the Trinity, to live a new life. Yes, to live better. But also to make a difference in the world. Eighteenth century pioneering missionary Henry Venn grasped this. On arriving in India, knowing that was the place he was called to serve, he famously said: ‘Until now I have not been very useful. Let me now burn for God.’

So on this Trinity Sunday, may you experience the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, as he gives his love to you, and sends you out, with heart on fire, to transform the world.

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Grown men don’t cry – Revd Dr Ian McIntosh

Preacher: Revd Dr Ian McIntosh

Title of sermon: Grown men don’t cry

Date/time/service: Sunday 13 March, 11am, Choral Eucharist

 

“Grown men don’t cry”.  This popular proverb has shaped many a male upbringing speaking as it does of an expectation of a masculinity which displays no emotion or weakness.  When the Tsunami hit Indonesia on Boxing Day 2004, the BBC reporter, Ben Brown, broadcast a live interview with a lady who had lost everything.  They stood amongst the rubble of a former home, surrounded by debris as she told the world of her pain.  It was heart rending.  And his response was to offer her an arm around the shoulder, with tears in his eyes.  A rare public display of compassion seen on live TV.

“Grown men don’t cry”.  Yes they do.  And they do at the moment in the Ukraine where a broadcast last week showed a distraught man able to do nothing but weep uncontrollably as his home burnt.  Tears stream down the faces of those husbands and fathers who have to say what they hope is a temporary farewell to their wives and children fleeing from railway stations in Kyiv to become refugees.

“Grown men don’t cry”.  This one does when I see the suffering of others and can do little to help.  When those I love are upset and I can do nothing about it.  When I feel overwhelmed with expectations. And in a world where the rates of males taking their own lives is alarmingly high, it is important that we all debunk these popular myths which can be so damaging.

The shortest verse in the Bible is in John’s gospel – Jesus wept.  Grown men do cry.  Jesus cried.  He cried at the tomb of his friend Lazarus who had died before Jesus could reach him.  Jesus also cried as he approached Jerusalem in the days before he was crucified distressed at how that city would turn down the offer of peace and settle instead for an option of war and conflict.  And in our gospel reading this morning we read of what is essentially part one of that visit to Jerusalem.  Here Jesus laments over Jerusalem.

Lament is a very powerful expression of emotion.  It is a deep being moved over the plight of others, in this case of Jesus knowing that his life, his values, his care and compassion of others will not be recognised in Jerusalem.  In the very place where they most needed it, those who he loves will refuse it.   At the very centre of the faith which nourished Jesus, his love would be spurned.

Jesus’ lament is also a raging.  A raging at the despotic family of Herod whose forebears had already caused Jesus’ family to flee as refugees to Egypt when he was young. And now a new Herod who Jesus names openly as a fox seeks to do him more harm. And yet in the midst of rage, Jesus is determined that his mission of love to the world, to the Herod’s of this world, will not be curtailed, even if it will end up in his own death.

Jesus’ lament comes from the depths of his compassion – that deep place of being moved in the bowels that leads to wanting to gather up others into safety but can’t.  That is where his compassion always comes from.  It is expressed here by a Jesus who is deeply in touch with his femininity as he employs a beautiful image from wider creation of a mother hen gathering her chicks.  Laments allow this man Jesus to describe his longing in an image drawn from the world of mothering and women.

Laments are part of a language of compassion.  In the Bible and especially in the psalms, they allow impossible questions to be posed without answers.  They are vehicles to express feelings that need to be expressed.  They cry out to a God who often feels a long way off and who seems powerless. Laments enable a language of tears, a primal language without words, one that is greater than words.

So grow men do cry and they do rage.  And today as we worship this morning in the midst of war in the Ukraine, we too cry and rage.  We cry with the women, men and children of the Ukraine who are battered, scarred and so fearful.  We long with the many people in Russia and around the world for an end to this outrageous war.  We name that fox Putin and pray that he will have the decency to seek a withdrawal of his troops and to ensure ceasefires that truly allow people to be safe. We weep and God weeps too as God does in Jesus Christ.  God weeps to show the depths of compassion and solidarity with a broken and fractured world.  God rages against injustice and calls us to rage too – to be angry and to channel that into acts of mercy and compassion. God calls us to work for a healed world where such tyranny will no longer be.

It is very hard to be powerless, to have little to say in the face of such trauma. However, we have a God who is as God is in Jesus – a loving, merciful, compassionate God who weeps and rages and laments and loves.  And if that is what God does when life gets unbearably tough, then that is what we are called to do this morning and this Lent – to weep, to rage, to lament and to love.

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Returning to meet with Jesus – Revd Daniel Jones, Honorary Minor Canon

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure. Luke 9.31

When living in exile just before the 1917 revolution, Lenin is said to have written that, “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” What I think he was referring to, was the tendency for a society to remain apparently stable for long periods of time, during which time ideas and beliefs bubble under the surface and eventually, for good or ill, pour out in the events that we then read about and see in the news.

Both on a societal and on an individual level, what we see going on on the surface is an indication of what’s happening underneath. Our actions betray our thoughts. Every time I sit and listen to a sermon preached, every time I read a Christian book of any kind and, dare I say it,
every time I stand in a pulpit, I’m aware of how we are called to live out our beliefs. The whole point of preaching is that you and I are invited to read our lives and our Bibles together in the hope that each might help us to make sense of the other. And yet, there are weeks when so much darkness happens in our world that it feels difficult to see the promise of peace which is reflected in the pages of our Bibles being equally obvious in the text of our newspapers. That’s a rather longwinded way of saying, how might you and I hold onto the stories about Moses, Jesus and the transfiguration that we have heard this morning and use them to reflect on the unsettling realities of what’s happening in Ukraine.

To try to do so risks seeming to trivialise the current political situation and yet to shy away from doing so would be to fail in our responsibility as Christians to see the world and its history as belonging wholly to God. I don’t have any easy answers to that, actually I’m not sure I have any answers at all, and so, as much for my own benefit as for anyone else’s, and just in case you are feeling a little lost or sad or frightened by it all, I hope you’ll permit me to share some thoughts in the hope that God and the safety of all God’s people might be for a few moments in the meditations of all our hearts.

Writing about a hundred years before Jesus, Marcus Varro wrote “Antiquities of Human and Divine Things.” The work is long since lost but Augustine preserved Varro’s thinking for us in one of his books. Augustine seems to have liked Varro’s distinction between three different versions of theology: mythical; political and natural. Mythical theology is the accounts of the actions of God told by the storytellers and written in the pages of the Bible. Natural theology is the works of God glimpsed in the beauty and order of our world. And political theology is how human beings make their own, let’s be honest often faltering attempt, to reflect divine beauty and order in our own social structures – including this one. The distinction between these three things is, I think, a good one but only if you remember that they can’t actually be separated. The job of every human being, as God’s pilgrim people, is to live out the story of God: that means looking for God’s truth in our world and living out God’s values in our relationships.

And that’s why, even when the news is difficult, we begin by returning to the Galilean countryside to meet with Jesus. And this morning, you’ve just heard Jesus and his disciples having what can only be referred to as the greatest of all mountaintop experiences. Just for a moment, Jesus disciples are surrounded by “light inaccessible, hid from our eyes” as we will sing in a few minutes time. They are lost in very presence of God. Is it any wonder that they ask to make dwellings for Moses and Elijah and one for Jesus himself. In other words, let’s stay here forever. Let’s just get lost in our beliefs. Let’s just tell the stories of our faith. Let’s just look for God in God’s divine light. Let’s be mystical and natural theologians without having to do the uncomfortable job of being political ones too. You can’t do that, says Jesus, and he sends them back out again. What follows the transfiguration is a story of how they come down from the mountain, and into a crowd where Jesus heals a sick child. Is Jesus making the point, I wonder, that mountaintop experiences are great but the more open we are to the presence of God, the more willing we have to be to return to really engaging with the sufferings of our world.

NT Wright puts it like this: we have to remember that “it was that the glory which they had glimpsed on the mountain, the glory of God’s chosen son, the Servant who was carrying in himself the promise of redemption, would finally be unveiled on a very different hill, an ugly little hill outside Jerusalem.” Jesus’ hope for a better future always means engaging with the lived reality of his world, even if it hurts to do so. I wonder whether that’s what he meant to teach those disciples that day: that it’s good to be lost in worship but it’s only truly worship if God’s redemption promises somehow play out in their lives, and ours. Being people who live out the story of crucifixion and resurrection means that we are at the same time willing to stand alongside others in the sufferings of our world and also alive to the hope that God will bring and end to suffering. We are called to be people who are changed by the divine promise of a future hope. This week, I wonder what that means for you? For me, it means that Jesus reminds me that violence is never an answer, that the suffering of the innocent is never right and that injustice has to be faced down even if to do so is costly. Our lives too must be transformed by our beliefs. It also means that, while the peoples of Russia and Ukraine may feel a long way away, you are I are called to somehow come down from the mountain, to somehow engage with issue, even in the midst of our confusion and sadness, even not knowing what we might actually do. If nothing else, we are called to pray for those who suffer and for those who work for their freedom, as we continue to tell the story of God’s future hope to a world that longs to hear it.

Amen.

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Accession Day 2022 – Rt Revd Richard Frith, former Bishop of Hereford.

Preacher: Rt Revd Richard Frith, former Bishop of Hereford.

Title of sermon: Accession Day 2022

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8, 1 Cor 15: 1-11, Luke 5: 1-11

Date/time/service: Sunday 6th January 2022 – 11am Choral Eucharist

 

There’s one word that kept coming back to me after I looked at today’s readings.

An OT reading with a vision of God.

An epistle reading with the basis of our Christian faith.

A Gospel reading with Jesus calling his disciples to follow him.

Readings set ages in advance, that come round every three years – but used today, two years on from the start of an extraordinary time for all of us.

That one word for today is Confidence. Confidence.

There are many signs of a lack of confidence, not least, as far as I can tell, in the Church. The disappointing reality is that we do tend to show just the same human weakness, insecurity, lack of confidence and consequent tendency to point our fingers at others as everyone else.

By confidence, I don’t mean wishful thinking or false bravado, where the more lacking in confidence we are, the less we listen and the more loudly we shout. Rather, taking a dictionary definition of it as “the belief that we can have faith in or rely on someone or something” – in Christian terms, confidence in our faith and how it can sustain and motivate us: that it is good news.

So, in our OT reading we have a confident vision of God. “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple…”

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

That’s where we start. It is horribly easy to ignore God – for the Church to be just another organisation. Isaiah’s vision gives a sense of wonder, a vision of God present not only in heaven but also very much on earth; a vision of God leading to worship that can provide perspective and engender hope; and the ministry that flows from it.

It is that confident vision of God that enables Isaiah to hear the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” and to respond, “Here am I, send me!”

Then in our Epistle reading we have from St. Paul a confident statement of faith, thought to be the oldest of all testimonies to Jesus’ resurrection: St. Paul handing on the faith as he has received it.

 

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Advent Sermon – Peter Collier QC, Vicar General of the Province of York and Cathedral Reader

Preacher: Peter Collier QC, Vicar General of the Province of York and Cathedral Reader

Title of sermon: Advent Sunday 2021

Date/time/service: Sunday 28th November 2021 – 1st Sunday of Advent 

Passage of scripture: Luke 21.25-36

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you, O lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Well, Storm Arwen has swept through, the days are shortening, and last week my garden was covered with a glorious carpet of leaves. As I get up each morning and look out on the world I know that Christmas is getting closer.

Perhaps if Jesus had spoken to the disciples in November rather than the spring he would have talked about falling leaves rather than sprouting ones. But his point would have been the same – look around you, see what is happening, take notice of the signs.

He told them about the signs he particularly wanted them to look out for, not what was happening in the garden, but what was happening in the world around them.

He spoke about cosmic changes that would make people afraid, he spoke about the powers of heaven being shaken. These words could be taken literally, but they could equally be seen as referring to some convulsion shaking the world whether political or something else. And, he says, it will make everyone fearful and worried, and some will even pass out because they will be so affected by it.

Then, says Jesus, then, when all that is happening, people will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

Last Sunday, the Archbishop announced a royal visit which he said was going to take place. Perhaps like me it took you a little while before you realised what he was talking about. He told us that the royal visit was going to happen but in one sense had already happened. The kingdom of God which is going to come is already here among those of us who follow Jesus Christ and who are living his story.

Luke also has overlapping time frames in this chapter – some of the things Jesus speaks about he says will happen in the lifetime of those who are listening. He had spoken earlier in the chapter about the fall of Jerusalem, which some of his readers would witness. But some things will be at the end of time as we know it. Those first disciples would not see those things happen in their lifetimes. But we might, or we might not.

So Jesus said to them and this morning says to us – look around you – are there things that make you worried? – wars, famine, floods and other disasters? The pandemic which has had an unprecedented impact on the whole known world? And now there is the omicron variant. Will we ever see an end to it and to the huge impact it has had on the emotional and mental health and wellbeing of all of us. Anxiety and fear and that closely related emotion of anger have taken hold of us perhaps as never before. And we could add climate change into the mix with seemingly so little resolve on the part of key word leaders to do anything about it.

Jesus says that all these things that disturb us are signs – signs that he is coming soon.

So what? What response is he looking for?

Raise your heads! Be on guard! Be alert! Pray for strength! Is what he says

A few verses earlier Luke not only records Jesus talking about the fall of Jerusalem, but also saying that some of those listening to him will be persecuted, imprisoned, brought before kings and governors, betrayed by family and some will be put to death. In his follow up volume (Acts) Luke describes all those things happening to those who followed Jesus Christ.

And it was to prepare them for that that Jesus told them to Raise their heads! Be on guard! Be alert! Pray for strength!

And what of us at the start of this Advent season?

When Jesus spoke about the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory, those listening would have immediately thought of the prophet Daniel, and of Daniel’s vision of one like a son of man being given an everlasting kingship that would never be destroyed and of that time when all peoples, nations and languages would serve him.

Jesus is saying to his disciples that at the very end when God’s court of judgment is ready to proceed to final verdict and sentence, he will come with great power and glory and fully establish his kingdom, a kingdom for which there is real evidence and something of a foretaste now when we feed the poor, care for the sick, visit the prisoners and live Christ’s story.

So he says:

Raise your heads, lift them up, don’t be ashamed or afraid of being someone who is known as a follower of Jesus; Jesus the king, your king is coming and coming soon.

Be on guard, watch out, so that your hearts are not weighed down. When the anxiety or panic comes on us this week let us remember these words of Jesus.

Be alert, always be ready. It might be today; there might be no Advent Procession this year, because the King will have come. If I knew that that would be the case should I do anything different in the rest of today; no – In everything I do I am to live Christ’s story and that is all I need to do.

Pray for strength – we don’t know what lies ahead of us, but we do know that Jesus promised that he would be with us to the very end. Each day this week as each day every week he is with us alongside and by his spirit equipping and strengthening us to live for him. Prayer is simply us opening our lives to live in dialogue with him and draw on that strength.

So this week, we don’t know what the news will bring? But whatever may come our way, Jesus says to us – read the signs – because they will tell us that the King is coming, the royal visit is at hand – So – Raise your heads! Be on guard! Be alert! Pray for strength.

Amen.

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Peter Collier QC, Vicar General of the Province of York and Cathedral Reader

Sermon Preached for Evensong.

York Minster, Sunday 7 November 2021 by The Reverend Peter Collier.

 

May the  words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you , O lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

I wonder if you picked up the thread running through the scriptures that we have heard read and sung this afternoon

The Psalmist speaks of the nations being in uproar and the kingdoms tottering, but he introduces us to a God who makes wars cease.

The prophet Isaiah speaks those well-known words about a time when the wolf and the lamb will live at peace with each other. A far cry from those Attenborough documentaries with their dramatic footage of nature red in tooth and claw. Just for a moment imagine them without the drama of the chase and the kill?

The Psalmist and the Prophet are looking at the big picture, and to the end times. The Christian gospel proclaims that that there will be an end time and it will be a time when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God. It will be an age of peace and harmony and there will be an absence of so much that dominates our world – human conflict and natural disaster with their ensuing hunger, disease, and death.

But that age is not now and the Christian gospel is not just about a distant hope, it is about hope for the here and now.

It is in the now that Jesus promises to those of us who love him that he and his father will come to us and make their home with us

As we begin to make plans for Christmas, I am already looking forward to hearing the ABY read the prologue to John’s gospel with those wonderful words – the word became flesh and lived among us – or as the Message translation says – The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood. The Revised English Version has it as – the word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.

That is wonderful news – God, the Word – came and for a period lived here in the neighbourhood, pitched his tent among us. He became one of us, he experienced life on this earth with all its ups and downs, joys and heartaches. But that was then. And we know that he died, and as we said in the creed, on the third day he rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven.

So the prophets might have looked ahead to the future and the story of Jesus takes us back 2000 years. But reading what happened when he was here can emphasise our aloneness now. We can feel very much on our own in a world that is not only hostile to us but also where there is so much destructive hostility at work across the globe.

But what of now? Well Jesus says he will come with his father and make their home with us.

Make their home with us?

Can we try and visualise that for a moment or two.

Imagine someone else coming to make their home with you. It happens in some families – they take in another family member, perhaps a grandchild. Some go further and take in a stranger, perhaps a foster child or a refugee. In a moment of crisis we once took in my wife’s brother. What I thought might be 2 weeks turned into 2 years. Whoever you take in, the act of taking them in has a huge impact on your life – they are there, at all times of day and night; they take part in everything – we are talking not about a lodger with a key to their room but someone who has come to share your home in every sense.

The result is that we have to adapt; it is disruptive to the pattern of life we had grown used to. It will mean making changes.

There are theological and philosophical mysteries aplenty here as Jesus talks about himself, the father, and the holy spirit; but in fact, in our experience we discover these mysteries and so come to understand their meaning.

We have the experience of remembering what Jesus said. And the more we read what he said the more we will be reminded. That is what the Spirit does.

Jesus went on to say that it was good that he was going away because he was going to be reunited with the Father who is even greater than him. This is where my understanding and my ability to put it into words fails. But we are grasping after something on a bigger and different scale than just Jesus here on earth. When he was on the earth he could only be with those he was physically present with. But when he had gone and rejoined the father, they can send the spirit to each and every one of his disciples in the same way at the same time.

And so they will come to live with each one of us, sharing our homes, our lives, our work, our recreation, our joys and our sorrows.

And they will bring not only disruption but true peace. Not like the world’s peace which so often is just a truce, a halting of hostility for now, a patching up, but deep down the cause of the hostility continues.

The peace Jesus brings is peace within, peace with myself, peace with others.

In a few minutes we shall sing together:

Peace in our hearts our evil thoughts assuaging,

Peace in thy church where brothers are engaging;

Peace when the world its busy war is waging;

This week wherever we are and whatever we are doing we have that promise, that assurance – Jesus and the Father have moved in to live with us – and that will bring disruption and change in our lives as we adjust to their living with us, but also they will bring us peace.

It is a foretaste of what the prophets spoke about. They looked to the day when the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the Lord

This week, day by day we can each know that foretaste for ourselves.

 

Amen

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The Widow’s Offering – The Reverend Dr Catherine Reid

Sermon Preached on the Third Sunday before Advent

York Minster, Sunday 7 November 2021 by Canon Victoria Johnson

The Widow’s Offering

Our Gospel passage begins with Jesus’ ultimate criticism of the religious leaders of the day – the Pharisees and Scribes – that they were hypocrites. That is, they said they followed the will of God but, in fact, did otherwise. Jesus uses the image of the actor to say they were not who they appeared to be. Yet, the Pharisees were serious about God and the Torah, enough to kill, but their hypocrisy was that even while they claimed to be experts of the Torah, they violated it. This matter of hypocrisy is significant, as we shall see. Something of this too connects with the reading from Hebrews; ‘For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.’ Jesus cuts through any pretence or play and goes to the real place as he truly is.

We are meant to notice that our Gospel passage begins with this criticism and then tells of a widow putting in all the money she has into the alms box at the Temple. Widows were supposed be given particular care in the Jewish community and yet are the victims of the hypocrisy in the religious leaders Jesus is so critical of; ‘they devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.’ Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees and Scribes is serious indeed. It is no coincidence that our Gospel passage today begins with Jesus’ criticism and proclamation of judgement on these groups, as he then relates the action of a widow in sharp contrast to the actions of those who are said to prey upon her.  Jesus’ telling of the widow’s offering is connected to his condemnation of the Pharisees and Scribes.

This hypocrisy in the religious leaders gets to a serious spiritual matter for all of us, for every Christian. There’s a reason why repentance, of turning back to God, is at the heart of our journey with God. We die to sin and rise to new life with Jesus. We can be very serious about God and believe we are doing his will, and yet, if we do not make a daily offering of our heart to God, we very easily devise rules of our own, and like the Pharisees, can actually go against the will the God. We can end up play-acting. Being a disciple of Jesus is tricky and not always straightforward, it involves all of us, and every bit of our lives. There has to be a continual openness to God and a desire for a deeper listening and noticing.

I wonder what you think being a Christian is all about… Do you think it’s about being a good person? Well, you might find yourself making more ethically-based decisions [of sorts] as you seek to live faithfully, but being of faith for the sake of being good is not what it’s all about. In fact, if we do think this, we’re likely to be rightly accused of living under a guise of hedonism.

We are, first and foremost, above and before all else, to love God. In the same chapter as our Gospel passage this morning, it’s significant that we hear the first commandment, ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And the second, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Mark 12.30) There is a hierarchy here. God first, and we see this in the widow’s offering. In loving God, she wants to give all she has. She is wholehearted in her response to the generosity of God.

We are to notice the contrast of amounts in the account of the widow in the Temple. Many rich people put in large sums and the widow two small copper coins. They give out of their wealth, out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, out of her need, out of her scarcity. When giving from poverty, you have to really think about it as you are personally on the line, your very security; but when giving from wealth, your very self and security are not in jeopardy or at any particular risk.  Yet, in one way, all of this is not about amounts of money, it’s about making an unreserved response to God’s generosity, which also isn’t about amounts, but rather that he has made us a new creation in Christ and has set his seal upon us; that he has given us a new heart.  God’s outflow is from his love, ours – an outflow of our worship.  The words often used at the Offertory in the eucharistic liturgy, All things come from thee O Lord and of thine own do we give thee, have particular meaning here.

What we see in the widow’s offering is her wholehearted response to God’s faithfulness, to his generosity, and we can reflect on this ourselves in how we respond to God, in all areas of our lives.  In the widow’s offering, we see an expression of the first commandment, to love your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.  We are to love God and in this we want to give everything we have. What does this look like? And who is this like? [Jesus]

As we are drawn daily to make this wholehearted response to God’s generosity in Christ, we can find our prayer to God each morning and throughout each day in the words of the psalmist,

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51.10)

 

Amen.

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Climate Sunday – The Reverend Johannes Nobel

Sermon Preached on Climate Sunday

York Minster, Sunday 3 October 2021 by Revd Johannes Nobel (Green Ambassador for the Diocese of York)

Readings: 2 Corinthians 9.6-15, Luke 12.16-30.

Climate Sunday. 

Our Gospel reading for today is a strong favourite of mine. ‘Consider the Ravens’, Jesus says. You see, I am keen birdwatcher. I promise you, there aren’t many ravens in Yorkshire, so this verse gives me ample excuse to spent long days in the field, searching for ravens. After all, that’s what Jesus told us to do: ‘Consider the Ravens.’

It’s easy to take Jesus’ words out of context and apply them in such a way that they suit our own desires.

Take, for instance, that other well-known phrase from today’s Gospel reading: ‘Do not worry.’

We have so many things to worry about. Some of us worry about running out of petrol. We worry about our job security or about our pension. We worry about our family. We worry about Covid – a lot. We worry about the future. And an increasing number of us worry about the fate of our planet. We worry about Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss. About rising sea levels, about air pollution, about climate refugees, about extinctions, about what may be to come.

Last month, the University of Bath published research into climate anxiety among young people. They surveyed 10,000 young people aged 16-25 years in ten countries. They found that 84% of respondents were worried about climate change. Indeed, 59% of respondents indicated that they were very or extremely worried. Another finding of the report was that over 50% of young people felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty.

‘Do not worry’, Jesus says.

What do those words mean in our context? Is this about ‘letting go of things we cannot change’? Is it about ‘hoping for the best’?

Neither of these. We can change, and in the words of Greta Thunberg: “Instead of looking for hope, look for action – then, and only then, hope will come.”

I have some issues with that statement, and if you want to know why, you need to come to my lecture at St Thomas church tomorrow at 7pm, about ‘How to talk to Greta Thunberg about God’. But let’s say she has a point. “Instead of looking for hope, look for action.”

Because action is what we need. When last month at the University of York, archbishop Stephen was asked why now is the time to take climate action, he responded with a story. He said: Imagine that a plane would crash, and all 150 passengers would be killed. It would be terrible news. Now imagine that the very next day it would happen again. And again. Two planes on one day. Over 300 casualties. And the next day it would happen again. And again. No doubt it would take less than a week for all air traffic to grind to a halt. All planes would be grounded. It would be the highest priority: People are dying. All else would have to wait.

The inconvenient truth is that the World Health Organisation estimates that in the next 30 years, on average, over 700 people will lose their lives due to climate change, each day. And that’s not counting the millions who die of air pollution each year. But 700 casualties is the equivalent of 4-5 planes, each day. And we know the cause. We even know the solution. Why are we so slow to act? It doesn’t make sense to Greta Thunberg and the young people who follow her.

‘Do not worry’, Jesus says.

Oh, really? How can you even say that, Lord?

In fact, Jesus says: ‘therefore, do not worry.’ His words are spoken in the context of that parable about the rich man, that wealthy fool, who thought he was safe and comfortable because he had ample goods stored up for years. Good management had brought him some great returns and a very nice pension. But his life was demanded of him. I imagine it happened in a flash flood, or freak storm, or a devastating wildfire. The man lost everything. And at that point he realised that he had not been rich toward God. He had not considered his Creator.

Don’t follow his example, Jesus says. Live simply, so that others may simply live.

‘Do not worry… For life is more than food.’ You don’t to eat meat every day. ‘Do not worry… for the body is more than clothing.’ You don’t need to buy new clothes every season. ‘Do not worry.’ You don’t need that foreign holiday. ‘Do not worry.’ You don’t need the latest gadget.

Don’t store up plastic treasures on earth. Learn to store up ‘enough’, and do not forget to be rich toward your Creator.

Being rich toward your Creator means this: Spend your resources, your time, your energy, your love, on caring for what God has made, be it human or non-human. This is how we praise and bless our Creator. This is how we are rich. Rich in thanks and rich in praise. Rich in faith, hope and love. Rich in action.

‘And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.’ (2 Cor 9.8)

Amen.

 

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Follow me – Sammi Tooze; Diocesan Generous Giving Adviser

Sunday 26 January 2020 – 10am Eucharist

1 Cor. 1. 10-18           Matt. 4. 12-23

In the name of the living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We all know that the moment Christmas really begins is when the John Lewis Christmas advert first appears on television. This year we were greeted by an excitable little dragon, who after causing disruption by setting things on fire is given the perfect gift of a Christmas pudding to set alight. My favourite advert, however, was in 2011, which featured a little boy desperately waiting for Christmas Day to arrive. After impatiently counting down the days and hours, he wakes up on Christmas Day – he gets out of bed, rushes past his stocking, into his parents’ bedroom and gives them their present. The slogan reads, ‘for gifts you can’t wait to give’.

Today marks the beginning of our annual period of reflection on Generous Giving in the Minster, where we are all invited to consider the resources and gifts God has given to us, and how we might respond to that through giving to our church. It is a subject that the Church of England has always found challenging, but one which enables us to sustain and grow the ministries in which we all share.

Perhaps we should begin by asking ourselves why giving is such a challenging subject. It’s a challenge because it forces us out of our comfort zone, and into a place where we must place ourselves and our resources at God’s disposal, before our own desires. It is particularly difficult if we’re part of a cathedral community, I think, where it’s so easy to look around at the many projects which sustain our day to day life and ask, ‘how could my giving ever make a difference?’ It also challenges our priorities, by asking, ‘do I give what I have to spare’, or, in the words of the post-communion prayer we say each week, do we ‘offer [ourselves] to be a living sacrifice’?

Giving is something that Jesus talked about on a par with prayer and love; it is rooted in our state of heart, and our calling as disciples. As we begin this period of reflection on Generous Giving as a community, I’d like to suggest three things to help frame our thinking:

  1. Response to God’s generosity

The first is that we are invited to give as a response to God’s generosity to us. God is, by nature, a God who gives – in fact, it is possible to read the whole Bible as a narrative of giving. In Genesis we see God gifting creation to humanity, and despite our continued failings God keeps on giving from the mundane to the miraculous, the pinnacle being the well-known words in John’s Gospel:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

– John 3.16

Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, summarises this notion beautifully.  He says this:

“The generosity of God is proportionate to his radiant glory – which is unattainable, overwhelming abundance”.

As Christians, we are enriched by the gifts God has given to us, and are invited to respond. This brings us back to the John Lewis Christmas advert. ‘For gifts you can’t wait to give’ – the message here is that it is a joy to give to those who we love, motivated by love and grounded in grace and humility. What might it look like if we shaped our thinking in this way when giving to the church?

For gifts we can’t wait to give.

  1. Enables ministry and mission

Secondly, we can reflect on where that giving goes, and for what purpose. The end point of all our giving is that it enables ministry and mission in our church, and that in turn enables the church to grow, and to be Christ in the world.

Here in York Minster, that manifests itself in such a variety of ways – through our worship, the care of our building which speaks beyond itself, our music which underpins our personal and collective prayer, our outreach services such as Minster Mice and Threshold – all of which offer an opportunity for people to encounter God’s love. Of course, all this is God’s mission, and the best part of it is that he invites us to join in.

In the Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes about the churches in Macedonia who gave financially to support sister churches. To describe this, Paul uses the word ‘grace’, gifts of grace from one church to another, ‘for the privilege of sharing in the ministry to the saints’. (2 Cor 8.4). This, I think, eloquently frames the lens through which we are invited to think of our giving – as gifts of, or expressions of, grace – which enable us to participate in God’s work.

For gifts we can’t wait to give.

  1. We grow as disciples

Thirdly, through giving, we grow as disciples. In the Gospel reading this morning, Jesus says to Simon Peter and Andrew, ‘Follow me’. Being a disciple means to follow Jesus: to go where he goes, to look on the world with his eyes, to love the world with his heart, and to give our lives, with his, for the sake of others. Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John all left their boats immediately, and followed him. Followed him as disciples, who learn by watching what their master is doing. Jesus lived a life of generosity. As we follow as his disciples, then we catch the vision of that generosity and become more like him.

To be a disciple is to follow, with courage and obedience, and live our lives with grace and generosity, which in turn reveals the generosity of God. And that includes the state of our heart when it comes to giving to our church: generous giving is a spiritual issue as well as a practical one. As baptised Christians, our identity lies not in ourselves but in God through Christ – as Paul says in our first reading, ‘I belong to Christ’. And so every bit of ourselves belongs to and is offered in the service of God – our work, our leisure, our gifts, our time, and our money. God chose to enter the material world and be born into it, so for us material things and spiritual things cannot be separated.

Giving is about our state of heart, our strength of faith, and our humility – putting God’s mission and the people around us ahead of ourselves and our own desires. Our commitment to being disciples is the tiniest part of a relationship in which God is committed to us – capturing all our offerings and making of them something beautiful and glorious.

I’d like to conclude by offering some familiar but profound words of Christina Rossetti, who eloquently frames our reflections in this season of Epiphany:

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

yet what I can I give him: give my heart.

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I recently had an experience… – Revd Jane Speck (Chaplain at York St John University)

10.00am Sunday 8 September

Luke 14:25-33

May I speak in the name of the Living God,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I recently had an experience I’ve never had before: I bought a house.  And in order to do this, I put myself at the mercy of numerous estate agents.  What a charming bunch they are!  I really appreciated the ones who use brutal honesty as a sales tactic, they were my favourites.  But the ones who were capable of persuading us that a tiny box room could, with careful rearrangement of furniture, easily be used as a double bedroom – they took my breath away.

So now that we’ve moved into the house we eventually bought, and most of its ‘original features’ have turned out to be polystyrene – … – I have been reflecting on the tactics of sales people and how very skilled they are.

And it strikes me, on reading today’s Gospel passage, that Jesus was a terrible salesman.  Truly, awful.  For someone who was clearly gathering supporters to himself in their thousands, his sales pitch still needed work.

Take today’s Gospel passage.  Three times Jesus suggests something that’s really hard to do, a hugely unattractive prospect, then tells the people that unless they do this thing, they cannot be his disciples.

So, what is Jesus’s three-point sermon on how to be his disciple?  It’s quite simple really.  Hate your family, prepare to die, and give up everything you own.

Remind me why we’re doing this again?!

Perhaps we’d better have a closer look.  Hate your family, Jesus appears to say.  Well, tragically some of us might find that rather easier than others… but I don’t think Jesus is really telling us to break the fifth commandment!  Biblical scholars, commenting on this verse, assert that in Hebrew understanding the concept of hate was closer to a re-alignment of priorities: that which one loves comes first, with that which one hates coming second.  The word ‘hate’ has become stronger in meaning over time.  But does this different interpretation let us off the hook?  Jesus is calling on the people – calling on us – to realign our priorities, to reorder our relationships, to give precedence to him.  He’s asking us to rethink what ‘family’ and family relationships mean to us.  We live in divided times.  Times when we seem to be encouraged, by those in power, to give voice to our bias and feel justified in our prejudice.  I wonder whether we are here being invited, by Jesus, to think again about what we mean by ‘family’.  To cast the net wider than our little nuclear family and to start including our friends, our neighbours, and also – most challengingly – those we find difficult.  Those we find threatening.  Jesus was all about love, so perhaps when he says ‘hate your family’ what he means is change your priority, stop focussing exclusively on the people closest to you and start loving the people you find it most difficult to love.

It’s radical and challenging and uncomfortable.  It’s counter-cultural and goes against instinct.  Jesus is saying that in order to free ourselves to follow in his way; his way of love, we mustn’t let anything, even those people we love the most; even our love for ourselves and our lives, come between us and him.

I’m not sure what this looks like in our real lives.  I’m not sure because the thought of putting anything before my family feels uncomfortable to me.  But I also know that I’m a better, calmer mother when I pray more.  I’m a better, kinder wife when I have God at the centre of my life.  I’m a more open and generous neighbour when I put Jesus first.  I know that if I try to practice what Jesus says it turns out to be better for my family and those around me, not worse.

Jesus didn’t come to make things easier for us.  He came to make them better, in ways we can barely imagine.

The second of these hard sayings of Jesus tells us that unless we carry the cross we cannot be his disciples.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown up singing Anglican hymns exhorting me to ‘Take up my cross and follow him’, and attending Faith Walks where a slightly smaller than average cross is handed round for participants to carry for a while.  So there’s a bit of me that thinks I’ve got this bit covered.  I’m good with this.  For the people hearing Jesus say this ‘live’, it would have been horrifying because they saw, regularly, people put to death in this manner, and would do anything to avoid it.  No one knew, at this point, that this was how Jesus would die.  But crucifixion was used as a tool of terror to keep the people oppressed and compliant.

How can we understand this now?  Perhaps it’s a bit like Jesus saying, ‘just stare down the barrel of this loaded gun, while you follow me.’  He is inviting us to let go of the desire to preserve our own life, to stay safe.  He is inviting us to accept the inevitability of our death, in order that we might truly, richly live.  You know how people who have had a brush with death often say that it has taught them to live more fully now?  Perhaps this is your experience.  Jesus wants it to be the attitude we all have: let go of fear, of procrastination, of waiting for life to start, and live it as if you are about to die.

So to the third of Jesus’ hard sayings. ‘You cannot become my disciples,’ he says, ‘if you do not give up all your possessions.’  Well, speaking as someone who recently moved house there is certainly some temptation here.  We live in materialistic times, and we own a lot of stuff.  Really a lot.  It certainly focusses the mind to see how many boxes are needed to fit it all in once it’s off the shelves and out of the cupboards.  Do we need it?  Probably not.  Are we attached to it?  Yes.  Whether because it has an emotional value, or it confers a certain status, or it’s just easier to keep stuff than go through the process of getting rid of it, we do become attached to our possessions.  If we didn’t Maria Kondo wouldn’t be a best-selling author, and Ikea wouldn’t have a reputation for providing excellent storage solutions.

But at the end of the day it is just stuff, and as any refugee will tell us, when your lives are at stake you’ll be glad just to take your family and the means for survival with you.  Stuff can be replaced.

As ever, I suspect that Jesus is aiming for something even harder here.  What else do we possess that we might need to let go of?  Perhaps you hang on to an image of yourself that’s hard to let go – seeing yourself as professionally successful, or physically attractive, or a really great Christian; perhaps conversely you see yourself as a failure, someone who can’t be trusted with anything, and derive a certain comfort from feeling useless – and this self-image, positive or negative, has become more important to you than Jesus himself.  Perhaps you have a tendency to see your partner or children as possessions, and need to set them free to be themselves.  What is it that you are clinging to, that’s getting in the way of making following Jesus your priority?

Jesus’ sales pitch might be brutal, but at least it’s honest.  He recommends to his followers that they count the cost.  After all, who starts to build a house without working out first whether they’ll have the money to finish it?  Actually, if you watch Grand Designs you’ll know that a surprising number of people do just that!  Don’t be like them.

Or who starts a war without working out whether they have a reasonable chance of winning?  It really focusses the mind on peace.  I probably don’t need to draw the comparison with our own nation, and our ability – or not – to take the consequences of our actions into consideration.  I’ll leave that for you to ponder.

Jesus is not trying to hide the fact that following him is hard.  He’s not trying to persuade anyone that polystyrene features are the real thing.  Count the cost, he says, then make your choice.  Jesus ‘calls people to a kind of discipleship that is not cheap (akin to Bonhoeffer’s aversion toward “cheap grace”), not easy, and not to be entered into without deep consideration of the consequences and costs.’  (Jeannine K. Brown Professor of New Testament Bethel Seminary St. Paul, MN)

But what would we be choosing?  If we count the cost and pay the price, will it all be worth it?  Yes.  Yes, because what Jesus is offering is life, life in all its richness.  His are words and questions that offer life. Isn’t that why we showed up here today?  We want life.  We want to be fully alive.  We want to be real and authentic.  We want to be like Jesus.  Even with his terrible sales pitch, his brutal honesty, there’s something about Jesus that makes us trust him; that makes us believe:  We can do this.  He has made it possible.  So let’s not lose the power and gift of his words.  Let’s not lose this moment.  Let’s not leave here the same person we were when we came in.  What is one thing, just one thing, large or small, that you could do or give up that changes your priorities, that reorders your relationships, that gives precedence to Christ?  Choose that and you leave here today a different person.  Choose life.

Amen.

(Last paragraph adapted from a sermon by Revd Michael K. Marsh, US Episcopal Church)

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Tribute to Lord Habgood – Bishop David Wilbourne

Tribute at Lord Habgood’s Thanksgiving Service on 27 June in York Minister
by Bishop David Wilbourne, – Chaplain to the Archbishop of York 1991-1997

‘Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel.’
John lived those lines of St Paul.

No death has ever affected me as much as John’s.
Just one hour after he had died,
the Publisher from SPCK rang and said,
‘You’d better get on with his biography!’
Since then John has filled
my every waking and sleeping moment,
our home has been littered with towers of papers
bearing strange insignia such as
Westcott Compline 1957
– add milk and heat over stove;
House of Bishops Homosexuality, Adelphi Hotel, 1988
– that sounds like one great party;
and Cuddesdon Retreat 1966.
As well as being the year of that World Cup,
’66 was the year of theological college wars.
‘They think it’s all over, it is now!’

It wasn’t all over for Queen’s College, Birmingham:
ecumenical John created a veritable kingdom outpost there.
Before Queen’s, at Queen’s and after Queen’s
John had no truck whatsoever with bland bishops
who told him this couldn’t be done, that couldn’t be done:
John did it.
Our Lord’s Last Supper plea, ‘That they may be one,’
drove him, lock, stock and barrel.

The biography is complete, 75,000 words,
I guess too many for this morning.
Time fails me to tell of John phoning 10 Downing Street
brokering an offer from the Durham miners
which would have saved Ted Heath’s government
and spared us the Lib/Lab pact and Margaret Thatcher.

Time fails me to tell of John proposing to persuade
Saddam Hussein to draw back from the brink of war.
Hussein presumably got wind of John’s searing silences
and promptly invaded Kuwait instead.

Time fails me to tell of John secretly meeting
with both sides during the Troubles in Northern Ireland
persuading North and South to adopt
the European Convention on Human Rights
assuring fearful minorities
they had at least a basic respect and dignity.

This morning I want to dwell on just one thing.
Whilst Terry Waite languished in his Beirut cell,
for forty days each year for four years
I was incarcerated in a silent metal cage, six by eight feet
which I had to share with two other men,
one of them John, the other Gordon, our driver.
We travelled around twenty thousand miles each year,
silence in the car was the absolute rule,
which made for four hundred hours,
forty working days
if you work ten hours a day.
A Lent every year.

Forty days of fast since we never ate in the car.
I once came armed with a pack of bacon sandwiches
and offered one to the Boss.
‘No thank you,’ he replied,
giving me the withering look Saul must have given
David when he asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
‘I’ve put tomato ketchup in them,’ I reassured him.
‘That makes me even more determined to resist.’

We broke our fast only once,
at a Little Chef outside Wrexham en route for Oswestry,
where St Oswald, King of York, had died horribly in battle.
It was Sunday lunchtime, the place was packed,
but within one minute of me and John striding in
in his gorgeous purple cassock – Rosalie’s phrase –
the cafe emptied.
I guess the punters feared it was a Fresh Expression
and John had a tambourine
hidden in his cassock’s ample folds,
little knowing that John wasn’t a tambourine sort of guy.

I used to sit in the front of the car and watch him
in the rear view mirror.
We were jumpy about being ambushed,
the IRA were active at that time,
so I had to keep an eye out
for what was hurtling towards us.
Gordon, an ex sergeant major looking for a skirmish,
even used to poke a stick under the car
with a mirror on the end checking for bombs.
Never mind the IRA,
John had said some cutting things about Evangelicals
and you do not want to mess with those guys.
Whatever,
I watched him for four silent Lents.
Could you not watch with me for four Lents?

Often he was pouring over the Bible
thinking of something arresting,
which would refresh the Gospel and refresh his audience:
Tell the truth, but tell it slant…
On the way home he poured over the New Scientist,
hallowing it like Scripture:
‘I will consider the heavens, even the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained.’

Always he’d be either thinking or praying.
When he was fashioning the Act of Synod,
the trickiest of balancing acts between two integrities,
his eyes darted around, his eyebrows danced,
a veritable Einstein figuring out his theory of relativity.
In 1993 it was the Church of England’s version of Brexit,
and John fixed it.
If only you had been here, Lord (Habgood),
our nation would not have died.

When we returned from Wydale Hall
after giving his charge to York’s first 39 women priests,
– affectionately known as the 39 articles –
he had that look of an errant husband
concocting an excuse
to pull the wool over his wife’s eyes.
Wonderful Rosalie was fiercely against women priests:
‘This had better be good.’
At Eastertide 1989 Chris Armstrong was chaplain
for the heavy journey to Sheffield Cathedral
to mark the terrible Hillsborough Disaster.
They’d been held up by a major traffic jam on the A1,
and a voice came from the normally silent back seat,
commanding Gordon to break the speed limit.
God so loved Liverpool that gentle John did a ton.

Whenever we neared home, our journey almost complete,
John looked like a boy, anticipating Christmas day’s dawn.
All archbishops eventually have to return to base.
The 95th Archbishop  of York coming home,
surrounded by his 94 predecessors,
portraits galore beaming down upon him.
Since we are surrounded
by so great a cloud of archbishops…
Late December 1953,
Cyril Garbett returns, looking piqued,
anticipating a ship’s biscuit with his acerbic sister,
the chaplain shivering, thinking,
‘Oh God, we’ve still got to say Evensong.’
Garbett piping up,
‘Thank God, we’ve still got to say Evensong!’

Donald Coggan once lectured his clergy:
‘When I return to a chilly Bishopthorpe,
there’s nothing I like better than rushing upstairs with Jean,
stripping off our outer garments
and having a stiff and vigorous game of table tennis.
That soon warms me up.’
How we laughed!  How Donald sadly didn’t.

John looked like Odysseus
sighing with relief, another long epic journey over,
yearning for Rosalie, Laura, Francis, Ruth, Adrian,
hoping his lovely family would remember him.
Sometimes Rosalie lost track of where in the world
the love of her life had got to now.
The Border terriers,
probably mere pups when he had left,
yapping down the corridors at his return:
To the Bishop: Are you going out again tonight?
Can Laura and I watch Top of the Pops, please?
I hope you are well!  See you soon!
All best wishes, Francis” 

He’d briefly greet the family,
and then straight up to the office
to answer mail and write the latest talk.
‘Oh, A cup of tea would be nice, Mary.’
‘Hail Archbishop’s PA, so full of grace,
the cup that cheers is with thee,’

 

He always had that same look,
like when he celebrated communion or confirmed a child.
A happy-in-his-skin look, a look of wonder.
I once spotted him over our garden wall,
looking at his pet tortoise.
For fifteen minutes, just wondering at it.
Where are the bishops who will be silent like John,
silent like Mark’s women at the tomb
rendered mute by the sheer stupendity of the Easter God?

Where are the bishops
who will be silent like Christ on Trial:
For Rowan Williams,
Christ’s silence is eloquent because otherwise
‘What is said
will take on the colour of the world’s insanity.
It will be another bid for the world’s power,
another identification with the unaccountable tyrannies
that decide how things shall be.
Jesus described in the ways of this world
would be a competitor for a space in it, part of its untruth.’
Poor talkative little Christianity!

On his 65th birthday we were both travelling to London
and tried to get him a place in the driver’s cab.
British Rail declined.
I guess they didn’t think the driver could bear his silence
all the way down the East Coast.
Instead they treated us to a First Class breakfast
complete with a loquacious hostess called Karen
whom we’d picked up outside W H Smith’s kiosk
at seven in the morning.
Karen encouraged John to dunk his eggs
as we sped through Doncaster.
‘What’s that you’re reading, luv,’ she chirped.
‘Hansard,’ came the reply, like ice.
‘Not very chatty, your Boss, is he?’
she said when John had gone to the loo at Grantham.
He always went to the loo at Grantham.
I guess it was his way of paying the place back
for spawning Margaret Thatcher.
There was usually quite a queue.

 

It was a fearful and terrible thing
to fall into the hands of one of John’s silences.
You felt judged, you felt an idiot,
you filled the silence with babble.
But also you felt affirmed,
tremendously affirmed
with a love beyond words.
The word became flesh and was stunned into silence.

If I had to sum him up,
it would be a picture of a visit to Whitehaven.
A Sri Lankan priest there
had had major brain surgery,
and hadn’t got long.
He was mute, in a wheelchair,
with his dear wife tending him, looking so very sad.
John commissioned him for a ministry of prayer,
and then knelt down before him almost in homage,
held his hands in his and looked into his eyes,
beautiful dark pools of black,
saying nothing.
The silent before the silenced.

And that a higher gift than grace
should flesh and blood refine,
God’s presence and his very self
and essence all divine.

Praise to the holiest in the height,
and in the depth be praise,
in all his works most wonderful,
most sure in all his ways.

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