‘Peace’ – The Reverend Canon James Walters

Tuesday in Holy Week – Peace

I associate the service of compline with the word peace. The candlelight, the calm, the stillness at the end of a busy day. It feels like a glimpse of the peace that so commonly evades our world.

Yet the liturgical language of compline is not devoid of threat. We pray that we may be defended from fears and terrors, even from deadly foes. The peace we encounter in compline – the peace in which we will lie down and sleep – is not the absence of danger and risk.

The idea that peace is simply the absence of war is quite a modern humanistic one. It presumes that conflict is an aberration, and once removed, humans will revert to their natural state of harmony. But that is no one’s experience of everyday life. Conflict and tension occur in relationships, in families, among colleagues and in communities. Geopolitical conflicts too have continued to rumble on, even while we in the Western world were cocooned in a bubble of security that made us believe that war was a barbarism soon to be eliminated.

So part and parcel of the peace we encounter at compline is a naming of the reality of our fallen predicament. It’s not a spiritual escapism nor a state of denial. It can even come with a warning. We often read the verse from 1 Peter: “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil is prowling round like a roaring lion, seeking for someone to devour.”

The story of Holy Week too is shot through threat, risk, violence and conflict. The colonial rulers of Jerusalem fear an insurrection brought about by religious fervour during the Jewish festival of Passover. Conflict penetrates Jesus’s own circle as Judas betrays him to a brutal death. Jesus’s prophecies about his resurrection (“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”) allude to the violent sacking of Jerusalem and the tearing down of its temple that the Romans will carry out within the lifetime of many present. So if we’re looking for peace as the absence of war and violence, we won’t find it in Holy Week either.

Peace in the Christian understanding is not just an absence, it’s a presence. It’s something positive and powerful. In the face of chaos and disorder, it is coherence, a meaningfulness that holds all things together, the good and the bad. In a world of fragmentation, it is an energy for connection and healing.

That energy is manifest in Jesus’s actions throughout the passion story. We see it when he heals of the ear of the High Priest’s slave when soldiers come to arrest him. We see it in the washing of his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. These are all signs of the judgment of this world that Jesus refers to in John’s Gospel, the driving out of its ruler the devil.

But most of all peace is simply what Jesus embodies. In his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. As his beloved disciple reclines on his chest at the Last Supper. In his silence at his trials. John’s language for the passion story is the “lifting up” of Jesus, and it is in this that Jesus draws all people to himself, draws them into coherence and peace.

As chaos and darkness engulfs, Jesus is what the poet T. S. Eliot calls “the still point in the turning world”:

Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Like peace itself, this still point is a paradoxical place. It is where time and motion appear to cease, yet this stillness is the source of movement and dance. As the committed pacificist Sidney Carter captures in his famous hymn, the journey of Jesus to the cross is not a passive submission, it is the greatest manifestation of the Lord of the Dance. “They cut me down and I leapt up high. I am the life that will never, never die.”

So to grow in the spiritual fruit of peace, to be a peacemaker, is to stand where Jesus stands. It is to find and inhabit the still point in the turning world, the point where the world is gathered up. And when we find that place, we find that it is not an escape from the world, an otherworldly nirvana. It is the place from which we engage in the connecting, and reconciling, and healing that makes us bearers of peace to the world.

It might feel privileged and naïve to talk about peace in such terms when we think of what is happening tonight in Gaza. But it’s from my encounters and friendships with Palestinian Christians that I have perhaps learnt most about the meaning of peace. I think of Sami Awad who founded the Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem. He has pioneered what he calls non-linear leadership training, working with both Palestinians and Israelis to put an end to the working out of each side’s self-defeating response to trauma. He helps people find that still point where past and future are gathered and where we find the imagination and creativity to believe that coexistence is possible.

If Sami can find the still point in the brutality of the occupied West Bank, then we can find peace and share peace in the conflicts of the culture wars and the harshness we encounter in our lives. When Jesus said on the night before he died, “My peace I give you, my peace I leave with you”, he wasn’t wishing his disciples a quiet life. He knew they wouldn’t have that. He warned them about the persecution that was to come. But he was giving them a peace they could believe in and encounter come what may.

This isn’t simply to say that peace is a state of mind. That would indeed seem glib. Rather, peace is realised in the world by those who attune themselves to the coherence and connectedness that is often hidden, the energy of reconciliation and healing, the gathering up of all things in Christ.

This is why I associate compline with peace. It brings us to the still point of the turning world. It calms the monkey-mind of our busy days, it shuts out all the distractions that compete for our attention, and it allows us to encounter God, the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, in the greatest opening up of the still point in our temporal world, the resurrection that is at the heart of our faith. So as the fruit of God’s peace grows in you, may God make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight. May you know peace, and may you be a peacemaker.

‘Joy’ – The Reverend Canon James Walters

Monday in Holy Week – Joy

Happiness has become a big industry. Books and podcasts on happiness abound and wellness gurus on social media are all telling us how we can find it. In our society, people are trying to measure happiness, promote happiness, and commodify happiness. And this is not a trivial matter in a country where 1 in 6 people report mental health problems such as depression or anxiety. Happiness is elusive for many and the impact on society is immense. And so making people happy is the preoccupation of corporations, of the health service, of governments, and of academics.

I have two colleagues at the LSE who have made their name in the field of happiness. Richard Layard has for years made the economic case for cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness as mechanisms of managing our negative emotions. Paul Dolan is a behavioural psychologist who argues that we should reject popular ideas about what success and fulfilment look like to define our own paths to happiness.

There is wisdom in both their contributions. But I have to say I am nervous about any attempt to improve our lives by avoiding or supressing what is difficult and painful. There is a danger that happiness today is built on various forms of denial. Suppressing negative emotions doesn’t make them go away. Ignoring the things that bring us sorrow and pain does not make those things any less real. This is true individually as we assess our own wellbeing, and it’s true for us as a human species. In so many areas we seem to prefer to drift towards denial of our problems rather than confront them. I’m thinking of course of the climate emergency, but also of global inequality or of the dangers posed by AI. None of these things, taken seriously, should make us entirely happy.

One of the things I find quite distinctive about Christianity as a worldview is its rigorous impatience with fantasies that deny difficulty. The rich man who comes to Jesus would prefer to stay in denial about the obstacles his wealth poses rather than give them up. In a shocking passage in the gospels, Jesus associates Peter with Satan when he tries to deny the path of suffering that Jesus must walk. Even some of the people whom Jesus heals like blind Bartimaeus and the paraplegic at the Pool of Bethesda are challenged to think about whether they truly want to be made well, perhaps so they are not in denial about the difficulty that comes with losing these identities of dependence and the livelihoods they have built on them. Jesus won’t let us run away from what is difficult, just as he knew that he could not run away in denial from his own cup of suffering as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.

It is no wonder Christianity has been criticised throughout history as promoting misery and denying people happiness. In the first century the followers of Epicurius rejected the Christian focus on self-control and moral judgment in favour of the pursuit of sensual pleasure. In the 19th Century, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that Christianity was “against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul—against life itself.”

Christianity does not make you happy they all argue. And if happiness is built on denial of the difficult and the negative, then they are right. But Christianity believes in something much bigger than happiness and this is called joy.

Joy is what we encounter when we don’t turn away from the difficulties of life, but when we’re able to place them within a bigger frame of meaning and transformation. Joy is not the avoidance of suffering, but the knowledge that suffering is not a dead end, that there is always hope because God is an abundant source of life and healing. Joy is knowing that we can make sense of what is difficult and that we are given the moral resources to confront it.

The great mystics always knew this. For John of the Cross there is no attaining the joy of union with God before first going through the dark night of the soul. Happiness is not running away from what we fear; paradoxically “light is at the heart of the darkness.” For fellow Carmelite Teresa of Avila, there is also no joy without first passing through pain. In her great work The Way of Perfection, only in the final stages of the mystical life does joy overcome pain, and even then it does not fully annihilate it. Pain and difficulty are not destroyed but are engulfed by the vision of transformative grace that the Lord has placed into the contemplative’s hands (36.9).

In understanding the meaning of a joy that is greater than happiness, we are given a wonderful image in the story of Jesus’ anointing at Bethany. The pouring of the costly ointment on Jesus’s feet is a beautiful action and I love the detail that the fragrance filled the whole house. It is so cheering, so delightful; it brings a smile to my lips. We can’t deny there is also an unsettlingly erotic dimension to the story as Mary uses her hair to wipe his feet instead of a towel.

And yet this extravagant gesture was not an act of happiness. We are told that she had saved the perfume for his burial. It was a response to the presence of death, an act of impending sadness.

This is a household that has known great sorrow. In the previous chapter of the gospel, Mary’s brother Lazarus had been dead for four days. It was a house of mourning, and we are told that even Jesus himself wept. But miraculously Lazarus was raised as Jesus proclaimed himself to be the Resurrection and the Life. Mary has learnt that with Jesus, death is not the end. Darkness and struggle are not eradicated, but can be made sense of and confronted with the powerful love and hope that permeate this household just like the fragrance of the nard.

So I believe this anointing is not motivated by happiness, but it is an act of joy. It is a celebration of Mary’s love and gratitude for Jesus, even as she anticipates and fears his death. And it is, therefore, a prefiguring of the joy of the resurrection, which will not bring Jesus fully back to her in the same way – he will bear his wounds as he ascends to the Father. But it will overcome the pain of the cross that she has journeyed through and allow her and the other disciples to see a new world infused with possibility and hope.

Mental health and negative feelings are a complicated matter that can’t be generalised about and can’t be comprehensively dealt with in a sermon. But as we search after this elusive happiness as a society, I can’t help feeling we would do much better if we stopped trying to exclude the dark and the difficult from our view. Instead we need to attend to our pain and our fears, and interpret them within a larger framework of meaning and hope. Whether or not we are able to find happiness within our personal lives, it seems to me impossible to look at so much of what is going on in the world today and respond with happiness.

But I do believe we can have a disposition of joy, because whatever happens – with our economy, with our international relations, with our fragile climate – we can find hope in the pursuit of God’s purposes, we can find hope in the knowledge of God’s transforming presence among us, and above all we can find hope in the knowledge that God is God and as Julian of Norwich wrote so famously, “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

‘Love’ – The Reverend Canon James Walters

Palm Sunday – Love

Contrary to the expectations of many, Christianity is a significant force in the public life and global affairs of our times. But its meaning is contested, as it has always been. Earlier this year we saw an extraordinary argument about the nature of Christian love playing out on social media between the Vice President of the United States and the British podcaster and former politician Rory Stewart. A surprising array of people weighed in to share their views in this unlikely theological debate. Even Pope Francis, in his declining health, was prompted to intervene.

The Vice President, J D Vance, took up a theme from the writings of St Thomas Aquinas, the ordo amoris – Order of Love – to defend the American government’s isolationist and anti-immigrant policies. “We should love our family first,” he argued, “then our neighbours, then love our community, then our country, and only then consider the interests of the rest of the world.” In other words, there is a natural hierarchy of love, and that is affirmed in Christian teaching.

Rory Stewart, showing an unusual level of Christian education for British society today, responded by arguing that what was so radical about Christian love, as it entered the hierarchical and socially stratified world of the Roman Empire, was that it challenged and subverted all these natural instincts. Jesus commands us to love our enemies and to receive the hospitality of the despised Samaritan. He also says some decidedly unsettling things about letting go of immediate ties to family in order to be a disciple.

Pope Francis appeared to come down closer to Rory Stewart. He wrote:

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. The true ordo amoris… is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

It’s a temptation recurrent through Christian history to think of the Gospel as a system, a structure that we can impose on the world, and which will bring a reassuring tidiness to our lives. For years I studied an academic discipline called “systematic theology”, a potential Tower of Babel if ever there was one. The modern world loves to systematise and categorise into mental concepts, but the truths that radiate to us from the scriptures and that are encountered in the worship of the Church are not so easily pinned down.

Learning is certainly an important dimension of Christian life. But it’s not by mastering an intellectual system that we are changed from glory to glory, into the image of Christ.

Pope Francis is far wiser in speaking of Christian understanding as being gained through meditation. We become better Christians, not through firmer grasp of the ideas, but through allowing the truth to grow within us. And that prompts us to think much more about our patterns of prayer, silence, and worship. Christian love is not a system of any kind; it is a fruit that grows – so the First Epistle of John famously says – as we live in God and God lives in us.

Love is the first of the nine fruits of the Spirit that we find in the Letter to the Galatians. It is followed by joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We’re going to be reflecting on these fruits of the Spirit as we gather day by day in the Minster this Holy Week. They will help us think of Christianity less as a system and more as a formation in the ways of God and a growing into the fullness of humanity that has been revealed in this captivating but puzzling figure who rides into Jerusalem on a donkey on this Palm Sunday.

Love is the first of the fruits because love is the destination and the meaning of all that takes place in the gospels and culminates in the Passion story. It is love that comes to Jerusalem in the name of the Lord, love that is rejected and imprisoned, love that offers itself for our redemption on the cross, love that banishes the order of death to establish its ordo amoris as the self-giving energy by which we are to live in harmony with one another and with the earth.

So come to church as much as you can this week, not to learn more, not to have a better grasp of the Christian system, but to grow. Grow in all the fruits that the Spirit cultivates in the soil of a heart turned to God. But grow most of all in love, fruit of the seed that St John, in the twelfth chapter of his Gospel, tells us must die in order to bear much fruit.

This is the love that today’s fractured and frightening world needs, perhaps more than it has ever needed it. So let us stop seeing Christianity as a system, a set of ideas, and let us allow it to grow in us, that we may bear fruit from the seed that dies.

‘Rejoice, Jerusalem – Walking Together in Faith’ – The Reverend Dr Thomas Pott o.s.b., Sant’Anselmo, Rome

Rejoice, Jerusalem – Walking Together in Faith

On this Sunday, we are halfway through our Lenten journey toward the great feast of Easter. According to the ancient antiphon at the beginning of the Mass, Laetare, Jerusalem, this Sunday is called Laetare: “Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning; exult and be satisfied at her consoling breast” (cf. Is 66:10-11).

Jerusalem, the city of peace, symbolizing God’s intimacy with humanity on this earth, spiritually nourishes all who love her, just as a child is nourished by its mother. The exclamation “Rejoice” is addressed both to Jerusalem as an image of the Church, which gathers us into its womb, and to each of us personally and individually. Indeed, a mother’s love for her children is not merely a dynamic meant for a collective but a movement of the heart, a vital flow of blood to each son and daughter she has brought into the world.

The Tension Between the Individual and the Collective

In the readings we have just heard, we can perceive a certain tension between relationships of “one to one”—the heart of God speaking to the heart of each individual—and relationships of “one to many”—God’s love addressed to all together as a single body. It is not so much a matter of differentiating between these two manifestations of God’s, let’s say, motherhood, but rather of realizing that when God speaks to the whole, He includes each of its parts as specifically as possible—each one of us, every human being without exception.

Thus, in the reading from the prophet Isaiah, God addresses the one He calls His chosen one: Jacob, the father of the People of the Covenant. He exhorts him not to turn away from God—that is, not to build his own life project apart from God’s plan, relying on his own strength and doubting God’s faithfulness and power.

In the Bible, constructing one’s own project apart from God is symbolized by the making of idols. Isaiah presents a man and his companions who work together on a beautiful artistic and religious project: they build a false god. And when they finish, they look at it and say: “It is good!” (Is 41:7), echoing the words of God’s blessing at creation: “He saw that it was good.”

However, Jacob and, through him, all the members of the people of Israel, are called to devote themselves entirely to God’s project and to let Him give them wings like eagles, so they may run with God without growing weary, walk with Him without growing tired (Is 40:31).

In the same passage, God calls Abraham His friend. To him and to all his descendants, God pledges His faithfulness and His unwavering presence so that no fear, anxiety, or confusion may take hold of them: “Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Is 41:13).

The promise to Abraham, the word spoken to Jacob, is addressed to them and, through them, to each one of us, both collectively and individually: “Run with me without growing weary, walk with me without growing tired, be the companion who works with me in creation.”

In other words, God says to Jacob and Abraham and, through them, to us: “Give me your faithfulness, just as I give you mine.”

The Faithful Companionship of Paul and Timothy

In the Second Letter of Saint Paul to Timothy, we see two other faithful companions and friends. Like the idol-makers mentioned in Isaiah, they work together with diligence. However, their shared journey is not limited to a project restricted to the realm of their own human and fragile existence; it is entirely devoted to what Paul calls the Kingdom of Christ.

Indeed, it is “in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingly power,” that Paul addresses Timothy in the same way God once spoke to Jacob, Abraham, and all their descendants: Keep the faith, remain faithful, advance and run with God, rise up with the wings He gives you.

It is with this fervor that Paul entrusts his mission and ministry dedicated to the truth to Timothy. This is not something to be taken lightly or merely according to Timothy’s own convenience. On the contrary, Paul adjures him to fulfill his ministry to perfection. To be a minister of God, as Paul himself was, means to devote oneself entirely and existentially to God, just as God devotes Himself to us: existentially.

Is it not beautiful that these exhortations—from one man to his friend, from an apostle to his spiritual son—are part of the divine revelation contained in the Bible?

This evening, Scripture unveils an important aspect of what it means to walk together in God’s footsteps: transmission. And is it not extraordinary that Paul’s solemn recommendation, spoken this evening in this sacred and historic place, is addressed to us—men and women of today—gathered here to pray together?

Yes, it is certainly wonderful! But also daunting. Because we must ask ourselves:

• What effect does Paul’s admonition have on us?
• Will we leave the church changed, at least a bit…, renewed in our faith, more deeply united to God’s plan for the world?
• Are we ready to become more inwardly aware of the fact that we are entrusted with a ministry and a mission in service of God and creation?

Living Out Our Baptism with Authenticity

Yet in itself, Paul’s words tonight are not extraordinary compared to what we receive every time we participate in worship, every time we enter the church to pray, or even every time God speaks to us directly through a human person in need of our help or love.

What is special of today’s scriptural message is that it depends on us to pass on to the people with whom we walk together the mission that flows from our baptism—the ministry that arises from our faith, hope, and love—the mission that stems from our calling as followers of Jesus. “Proclaim the message; be persistent, whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.” This is the exhortation by which we are called to encourage one another “in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus.”

But Paul’s assurance in carrying out his ministry, as well as God’s command to Abraham and Jacob to place their trust in Him alone, also teaches us how to understand and live out our baptism with consistency—how to be truly followers of Jesus, walking together in His footsteps.

First and foremost, we must become aware that walking together toward unity in one body—the Church—is not for the sake of our own projects, nor to build a new Tower of Babel, a temple to our idols.

Rather, it is about serving the communion that life itself generates, building the spiritual Jerusalem, the City of Peace, or as Paul calls it, the Kingdom of Christ.

It is the Kingdom that welcomes us, that envelops us when we are gathered in worship. It is the society that exists within us and among us when our communion is truly in service of all our brothers and sisters in humanity.

Walking Together in Truth

Thus, each of us must define our priorities according to our life situation. No excuses—we are all responsible for the path our feet take!

Trusting in God alone and renouncing any project where He is kept at a distance means becoming bridge-builders and destroyers of walls of division, people who rejoice in encountering others with an open heart, without judgment, without contempt for what seems different from us.

At the level of our divided and deeply troubled churches, this calls for a conversion of ecclesial mentalities, focusing on Christ himself who leads us, walking together in spirit and in truth.

In contexts where Christians pray and celebrate their unity in the living and indivisible Body of Christ, like here and now, our true identity as followers of Jesus is to be communion.

Let us cast aside our false gods, let go of our divisive and exclusive identities. Let us walk together in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, without weariness, without fatigue; let us fly with the wings God gives us.

Amen.

‘Know where you stand, and then stand there’ – The Reverend Canon Dr Jennifer Cooper

[Mr Dean: thank you for your warm words of welcome.  I know I speak for each one of us of the Malines Conversation Group when I say that we are very moved by the use of the Mercier chalice and the Malines ciborium today as we share communion together. Such gifts exchanged between our two communions are powerful symbols of our desire for unity. They speak more powerfully than any words]

We Christians have turned a specific corner with this Sunday. We are now more than halfway through Lent. We are now turning in anticipation of celebrating Easter. We can see the light at the end of the Lenten fast.

Lent is a time of soul searching for Christians. It is a time of reflecting on our lives. A time to be honest with ourselves. It is a time to turn away from those things which do not bring life to ourselves and to others. But Lent is certainly not a time to be gloomy, even if we know we need to amend our lives. No matter how much I might be a work in progress, no matter how much each of us is a work in progress, God remains steadfast. God never breaks faith with us.

It is fitting then, at this midpoint in Lent, that our readings from scripture give us powerful images of God’s generosity, of the abundance of God’s provision for us. Our readings today are readings of promise and of consolation. They offer us some refreshment, they offer us hope. Indeed they give us images of feasting.

But our readings also offer us words of wisdom that speak very much to the challenges of our own day. They invite us to pause and to ask ourselves: where do I stand? What do I stand for? With whom will I stand? They are an invitation to search our hearts and to ask ourselves: what do I truly value.

Hope is certainly what our world needs now, as much as it ever has. The landscape all around us is shifting. Nothing seems too stable. There are so many places in our world where it is not safe to stand. There is political chaos. Borders between nations are up for grabs. We see this in every corner of our world. As a Canadian I ask myself: what will become of my homeland? And that is to say nothing of nations at war.

And the planet itself is in a state of churn: the devastating earthquake in Myanmar reminds us vividly that human life itself, human flourishing, is precarious. Our planet is in chaos.

And yet our scriptures invite us to trust that God wants none of these things for us. Not war, not the brokenness of this earth, not the displacement of peoples from their homes. God wants only that all people have life and have it in abundance. God’s longing is for our flourishing.

Our first reading tells us of the first time the ancient Israelites celebrate the Passover in their homeland. It is a tiny snippet of a much longer story. They have fled enslavement in Egypt and survived generations in the wilderness. Now, at last they have arrived at their own homeland. It is a good land.

The land itself is a symbol of God’s generosity and care for them. They no longer need the mana fed to them in the wilderness, now they are in a land of plenty.

Only a few verses on in this book, immediately beyond what we have read today, Joshua is commanded by the Lord to take off his sandals. He is told by the Lord that the land on which he stands is holy.

God’s generosity is the very ground on which Joshua stands. It is as if the Lord has said to him: ‘stand here, stand still here stand still for a moment. Can you understand what I have given you?’ Only if you understand what I have given you, will you understand how much I value you – you will understand your worth in my eyes. This place is the symbol of my faithfulness to you.

And then our second reading. The parable Jesus tells his followers is also a story of wandering, of hunger, of coming home and of feasting.

There are two brothers, both of whom have a lot to learn. The older brother stays at home. He believes he has acted justly and responsibly. And on the surface of it, he has. Any of us here today who have slightly reckless younger siblings might feel rather sorry for this brother. Here he is, doing what he believes to be the right thing. But he just does not understand the deeper value – that underlying his father’s generosity there is a deeper truth. The recognition of the immeasurable value of each person, including this rather wayward younger brother.

And the younger brother simply does not understand his own worth. That might sound ironic – he has just squandered his father’s money recklessly. He has been utterly humiliated. He has the good sense to turn around and head home, to ask for forgiveness. But even then he misses the point. His father does not want him to become his hired hand, he simply wants him to be who he is: a much loved son.

Neither son has really understood the true meaning of their worth. The older brother in his own insecurity is so blinded by resentment and jealousy that he cannot welcome his brother home. And the younger son believes that in order to return home he must become a servant – he cannot believe that his father will welcome him for who he truly is.

Two brothers not really sure where they stand or why – with a lot to learn.

At some point last week a quotation popped up on my Facebook feed. It was a quotation taken from Daniel Berrigan – an American catholic priest and peace activist. Berrigan first became well known at the time of the Vietnam war. The quotation that popped up was short: ‘know where you stand, and then stand there’. It seems very apt for our time. It has been running through my mind since.

It is one thing to think we know where we stand. It is quite another thing to stand there when this becomes costly, when the ground seems to be shifting under our feet. We can only stand still in a place, stand fast, if we truly know why we are there – if we are committed to the ground on which we stand. – what are the values upon which we stand. What is the ground.

On this fourth Sunday of Lent we have had two readings that touch on the themes of place, of belonging, of God’s generosity and the immeasurable worth of each and every person.

If we – each one of us – stand fast in the place of God’s generosity we might just bring about a world in which everyone has a place, not just of safety but of feasting.

May it be so.

“What Are You Expecting?” – The Right Reverend Mark Edington

[Text: Luke 21:28: “Now when these things begin to take place,
stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”]

On this Advent Sunday, the first day of a new church year, the Dean has chosen to set before you in this pulpit an American bishop, which may just be all the proof you need that the end times spoken of by Jesus in Luke’s gospel are now well and truly upon us.
We have a reputation here, I know. We are too enthusiastic, too animated, too emotive, and too long. So if by mere chance you happened to know before you arrived in church this morning just what it was you would be faced with, all the more credit to you for your courage and forbearance in coming.

My English grandparents, who came to America a hundred years ago from Bath and from Berkshire, would never in a thousand years have expected that this grandchild would ever end up preaching in York Minister. Their expectations for all of us were considerably more modest.

But you will perhaps permit me to wonder—what was it you were expecting?

Maybe you have long since passed the point at which you expect anything at all from the preacher on Sunday morning. Perhaps you are among those who come faithfully to church not expecting anything new or insightful to be said, no more teaching with authority. Over the course of two thousand years it has all been said, and we come instead for the beauty, and the music, and the sacrament, and the community.

I find that in many of the churches I visit, that’s often the case. People have no more expectation of the preacher than to provide a warm bath of words between the gospel and the Creed. My own preaching professor, who once stood in this same pulpit, would not infrequently say to us beginning students—“Well, I came expecting nothing, and I got what I expected.” Is that what you expected?

I wonder what you are expecting of this year of grace that lies ahead of us, uncharted, today. What are you expecting for your family? What are you expecting for your work—or perhaps your search for work?

What are you expecting for health, and the health of those nearest to you?

What are you expecting for those whom you may know and love who are contending with a life-ending illness, in the wake of the vote in Parliament on Friday?

What you are expecting for your country in the year ahead, or for the new government in mine? What you are expecting about the miserable, grinding, depraved war over Ukraine’s future, or for the violence tearing apart the Holy Land, or for the one hundred and twenty million displaced people in the world desperately seeking refuge from the war and weather driving them from their homes?

And now that I’ve invited you on a tour d’horizon of all the things you’re expecting in the year ahead, I wonder whether I might just gently ask you: Where, in any of those—much less in each of them—are you expecting Christ?

God created us to be planners. We are blessed with memory, reason, and skill, as the prayer teaches us, but the purpose of the first is chiefly to refine and strengthen the second and the third to help us navigate our future. We are, by the grace of God, plan-making creatures—and by the mercy of God, able to change our plans when they turn out to have been poorly formed.

But for the most part, when we look toward the future, our expectations tend to fall into one of two camps—hopes, for our own ambitions or our own desires; and dreads, for the things we see on the horizon that might defeat or disappoint.

And for most of us, I’d wager, the balance between those is definitely leaning in the direction of dreads.

The thing is, in all of that there’s very little room for Christ in between our hopes and dreads—to say nothing of the Christ who is coming, Christ in glory, robed in dreadful majesty. We don’t lift our expectations much higher than the ground beneath our feet, let alone to the horizon in the East where the dangerous power of God’s love to change everything breaks like the dawn.

And that is a problem. Because it turns out that what we expect—the discipline we bring toward living toward the plans our expectations shape—has profound importance for our spiritual lives.

From the evidence in Luke’s gospel, it’s a little hard to make out just who it is Jesus is addressing in the teaching we heard this morning. We get two clues, one just at the end of the previous chapter, and one at the very end of this chapter, after what we heard this morning.

The first clue says that Jesus was saying these things to the disciples, but “in the hearing of all the people” (Luke 20:45). And the second clue says that “Every day he was teaching in the temple…. and all the people would get up early in the morning to listen to him in the temple” (Luke 21:37-38).

So Jesus is speaking to a mixed crowd. He is speaking to those who have walked with him for three long, dusty years now, and to those who have just caught wind of his message. To say it differently, he is speaking to a wide variety of expectations about God. Which is to say, he is speaking directly to our condition here, in this moment, in this place, at the gate of this year.

The disciples are in that crowd; and if you look from here there is nothing to distinguish them. They are not more educated and not more wealthy. We don’t even have any reason to believe they are more religiously observant; we never see them spending a great deal of time in the synagogue, or Jesus, for that matter.

What sets them apart from most of the rest is something not about class or education or piety, but about their hearts. For reasons we’ll never fully know, they have each of them lived in the fervent, abiding expectation that God is going to enter their lives in some way. Their planning for the future has involved the constant lookout for God’s transforming love to show up.

God knows this, and that is why God calls them. And that is why what appears to us with the eyes of this world as the height of irresponsibility—leaving jobs and families and communities and the expectations of others behind to follow a wandering preacher—is for them merely the enacting of the expectation with which they have approached their future.

Mary has lived in the fervent, abiding expectation that God will enter her life in some way. Her planning for the future, young though she is, has involved the constant lookout for God’s transforming love to show up. And that is why, one fine day, Gabriel shows up on her doorstep.

And when the angel’s message comes in a way not just unexpected but questionably appropriate, when it comes with what appears to us with the eyes of this world as the height of irresponsibility, it is for her merely the enacting of the expectation with which she approaches her future.

So dear people of God, what about you? Can you make space somewhere between the hopes and the dreads in your heart to make a place for expecting Christ to enter into your life anew?

I am not your bishop, but I feel obliged to offer you this solemn word of warning: If there is any one thing we can learn from the Gospels that is incontrovertible, any one thing that is always and everywhere true, it is that no one— who encounters Christ—no one—leaves that moment
unchanged. No one.

And that is why so many people make every possible, desperate effort to avoid the meeting. Whether for good or ill, the presence of Christ, when it comes, will transform us. No one leaves unscathed. Some of our deepest convictions will be questioned; some of our most treasured institutions will be shaken; some of our most certain prejudices will be laid to ruin.

And in the midst of all that, as much today as in those first encounters, some will follow in faith; some will reject in outrage; and some, like the rich young ruler, will walk away, grieving.

I don’t know what it will be for you this Advent. I only know that if you look for it, if you expect it, it will surely come; and if you are ready for it, if you will risk it, it will change you, too.

So come with me out into the world, this world so cast over by what feels like the encroaching darkness. Come with me out to the hillside, and let us sit together, facing the east, waiting in expectation for the dawn to break.

Amen.

‘The Upside-Down Kingdom’ – Canon Peter Collier, Cathedral Reader

May I speak in the name of the one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So we come again to the year’s end, the liturgical year, which means that today we are celebrating that Christ is King.

My first experience of monarchy was in 1957 – I was 8 years old, the Queen came to Hull and amongst the places she visited was a children’s home with which my father had some connection, and so we were there beside the steps as she went up into the building – almost touching distance. There was great excitement. Later in the day we went out to the village of Paull, beside the Humber estuary to watch as the royal yacht Britannia made its way out to sea to take the Queen on a state visit to Denmark. As you may gather it is a memory that has lived with me vividly ever since.

Some of you will have been here when the Queen visited York – perhaps in 1988 when she formally reopened the south transept after the fire, or perhaps when she distributed the Maundy money in 2012. Some of you I know were here on one or both of the King’s recent visits. Some of us had the privilege of being introduced to him. All these experiences shape our view of monarchy.

I know there will be different views amongst us today about monarchy. I wonder what is your image? According to Wikipedia there are 43 sovereign states that have a monarch as their head of state – most now have restricted powers, limited by their country’s constitutions, but there are still a few, a handful, where the monarch has absolute power. I expect many of you are enjoying the new series of Wolf Hall where we see the Henry VIII style of kingship wonderfully played out by Damian Lewis. Now there was a king. “off with her head”, meant the head rolled.

And Pilate had that sort of power – in his case it was power delegated from the emperor – but still power to decree life or death – no appeals, no stays, no convention on human rights there.

And he had all the other trappings of absolute power – a palace, wealth on display, all the resources he needed, and armed soldiers to enforce his bidding. That’s what kingship meant to Pilate.

And now he has been told that this man who is produced in front of him in chains claims that he too is a king.

And they have a discussion about kingship.

It is striking that the place in the gospels where this discussion about kingship takes place is not at the transfiguration, nor the resurrection nor the ascension, nor any other place where glory is on display. No, it is in the shadow of the cross. Jesus is a prisoner, accused of treason and facing a death sentence.  And there he has a discussion with Pilate about whether or not he is a king and, if so, what is the nature of his kingship.

What Jesus says about his kingdom – is that it is not from here; it is not of this world.

How can Pilate be assured of that? “Well” says Jesus “if it was a kingdom like the kingdoms of this world, like your kingdom Pilate – then my followers would be fighting to protect me from you because that is how kingdoms operate in this world”.

That was true then and it has been true ever since.

Earlier this year I read Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which takes us from the Roman conquest to the middle of the 8^th century. Covering the Anglo Saxon period when there were several kingdoms on this island. And I could not believe the number of battles that there were between various kings, often between people who were blood relatives.

Only last weekend we were remembering those who died in the two world wars of recent memory.

And in addition to the warring kingdoms of nations we now need to add the corporate kingdoms of business and enterprise. They also have real power in this world, power which they use to get yet more power, as they build their brands and their businesses in competition with one another.

So whether it is clans, tribes, nations, corporations – all under their kings wage war of one sort or another – it is all about conflict, about winners and losers.

Jesus says to Pilate – that is not what my kingdom is about. You want to know what it is about – well it is not about conflict but about truth. That’s what I came for – to testify to what is ultimately true. And my followers are those who listen to me to get that truth.

The truth which Jesus spoke about again and again is counterintuitive to the received ways of doing things – basically it is about turning the world upside down. In Acts 17 we read that when Paul and Silas went to Thessalonica it was said “these people who have been turning the world upside down have now come here”. And what lay at the root of that?” As the Thessalonian mob said “they are saying there is another king named Jesus”.

His mother Mary when told of his coming also spoke about things being turned upside down, about the God who looked upon her lowliness and who would thereafter scatter the proud, put down the mighty, send the rich away empty, and who would lift up the humble and meek and fill the hungry with good things.

Jesus himself often spoke in ways that were counterintuitive –

About greatness – he said whoever is humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

About leadership – he said it was about washing feet, and about service.

And as to how you should respond to being wronged – you should forgive – How much should we forgive each other – is it as much as 7 times? – “no” he said, “70 times 7’.

And so we could go on.

None of this makes sense by the standards of the kingdoms of this world, but it is what God’s kingdom is about. And when you hear it and hear about it and when you see it, you know it makes sense. You know it is the truth about how we should be living in this world.

But it is a challenge to all those received ways of working, and if you challenge the status quo of the powerful, they will try to silence you.

And for Jesus being true to that kind of kingship led to the cross.

Of course the ultimate truth is that it will not always be like this. One day he will reign in power. Daniel looked forward to that day as we heard in our first reading.

It spoke about one like a human being, or as some translations say “the Son of Man”, coming with the clouds of heaven, being presented to the Ancient of Days. “And to him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”

Whilst that is then, that is not now.

Now we are still in this world, some of us have had and some of us do have positions of authority and so have power over other people; the expectation we have grown up with and that others have is that we can use that power to achieve what we want to achieve. And of course as we have been reminded in the last couple of weeks any abuse of power in the church can be so damaging. This morning, on this Feast of Christ the King, Jesus challenges us to live counterintuitively and counterculturally in his upside down kingdom.

Of course there will also be those here who have been on the wrong end of the exercise of power and authority. And for those there is real comfort in this gospel account too. We know that King Jesus has been there. And as his followers we are one with him – or you might say he is with us where we are – whether misunderstood, rejected, accused, powerless, or abused. He knows it, he gets it, and through his resurrection life and his transforming love can change our lives beyond measure.

Amen.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ – The Reverend Jonathan Chaffey, Archdeacon of Oxford

“We cannot hallow this ground”, said President Lincoln in his extraordinary address on the battlefield of Gettysburg in 1863.  “The brave men who struggled here have consecrated it…It is for us rather to be dedicated…that these dead shall not have died in vain.”  In our land the annual rhythm of Remembrance honours those who paid the ultimate sacrifice and compels us to reflect on our own call to be peace-makers today.  There are estimated to be over 100,000 war memorials in the UK to help us remember well.  York Minster has memorials dating back to the Crimea and Boer Wars.  Alongside plaques that commemorate those who gave their lives in battle or as POWs, you famously have the King’s Book of York Heroes for the First World War and the rather older ‘5 Sisters Window’ re-dedicated in the 1920s to commemorate women of the former British Empire who died in that same conflict.

Memorials capture the imagination down the generations, whether as the traditional village cross, or modern art installations or musical compositions.  Most are uncontroversial but some highlight the juxtaposition of sacrifice and moral complexity in war.  The Bomber Command Memorial in London recalls the loss of 55,000 bomber aircrew in the Second World War, some of them flying from airfields in Yorkshire yet was constructed only in 2012 due to the pain and confusion of what it represents.  It quietly includes the inscription, ‘alongside those of all nations who lost their lives’ in the aerial campaign.  It is appropriate then not just to recall the sheer scale of suffering caused by war but to do so with sober reflection concerning the motives, methods, ambiguities and consequences of war.  To rephrase the question posed by Lincoln: how do we remember in a way that honours the past, informs the present and inspires the future?

How we remember is as important as what we remember.  ‘There is a time to weep…a time to mourn…’  It is absolutely right that we should make our Act of Remembrance, just as the guns fell silent at the 11^th hour on 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918.  I can tell you there is nothing more sobering than to stand on a parade square in a far off land, bidding farewell to departed friends and colleagues, listening to the Last Post, as a military chaplain saying prayers on behalf of sailors, soldiers and airmen and women – youngsters generally who may not always be able to articulate a faith but deep down are really grateful for spiritual succour.  Yet if we are to honour those who have courageously served and died, in war and in the fight to maintain civic society against terror and extremism, we need to do more, to remember with understanding – for ‘there is a time to speak, a time to gather stones together, a time to build up…’.

Yet it is difficult.  We have heard the abiding counsel of the Ecclesiastes reading, reminding us of the wisdom to know what activity is right, physically, morally, emotionally, at any given time: ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven… a time to plant  and a time to pluck up, to kill and to heal…for war and for peace’.  If only it were easy to judge the right time…!  Yes, there comes a point when the choice is so stark, the cause so great, that there is no time left to ponder. You might think of the summer of 1940 when an existential threat to our nation demanded decisive action in the Battle of Britain.  But our moral choices are not usually so obvious. At ground level I recall a young Serviceman in Iraq who shot an insurgent and then switched roles to patch him up as the team medic. Control of such choices may become even more challenging with the development of increasingly autonomous weaponry. At a more strategic level how does one evaluate one country’s right to defend its homeland against the risk to wider security, or where military response to atrocity generates far-reaching suffering. As in our everyday experience when we sometimes don’t know whether to speak or be silent, to laugh or to cry, we should avoid a superficial, one-dimensional view of conflict for it bears a multitude of complexities.

Remembrance is made yet more challenging by the fickleness of our human condition: How do we fathom the right course of action when emotions and reason often jumbled together?  Leonard Cheshire, who won the Victoria Cross as a Pathfinder pilot and later founded the Cheshire Homes, highlighted the tension: ‘Ambition is a good thing; but not at the expense of others’.  The Russian dissident Solzhenitsyn astutely observed that ‘the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being’.  St Paul wrote honestly: ‘I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out!  For what I do is not the good I want to do…’ This battle for good and ill is writ large on the international stage and we should pray for those charged with responsibility for leadership.  No wonder Jesus looked over Jerusalem and cried: “If you had only known what would bring you peace …”  He cries today, whether over the legacy of failed military interventions, the drawn-out suffering in the conflicts of Ukraine and the Middle-East, of Africa and elsewhere, the fragility of international partnerships that hinders united action on climate change and migration; he cries over the weaponizing of gender, the power struggles over natural resources, even over water.  It is vitally important for future generations that we face up to battles that may exist in our own lives, communities and nations today.

Jesus, the Prince of Peace, offers a better way: “Blessed are the peacemakers; for they will be called the children of God.”  The series of Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel is a manifesto for the Kingdom of God.  It serves as a battle plan against self-interested agenda.  It is truly transformative, liberating as much the one who shows mercy as the one who receives it.  It is profoundly challenging, a call to sacrifice as well as to ultimate redemption.

Are you up for it?  Could you make it work in your family?  Could you be a bridge-builder in your community?  Can you adjust your sights, your ambitions and priorities in a call to service?  There is a wonderful verse in our first reading: ‘God put a sense of past and future into their minds’ – or as another translation puts it: God ‘has set eternity in the hearts of humanity’. It is possible.  Jesus himself has shown the way; he himself walked the talk.  He fought the battle and supremely embodied it on the cross.  He laid down his life, not just for his friends, but uniquely for his enemies also: “Do this as I have done for you”, he said, even as he washed his betrayer’s feet.

The remarkable thing, of course, is not so much that we remember before God but that he remembers us.  Jacob Astley got it right when praying at the Civil War Battle of Edgehill: “Lord you know how busy I must be this day; If I forget thee, do not thou forget me”.  He never forgets us nor leaves us.  He knows the deep waters of anger and pain in grief because he’s been there.  He understands the complexities that we face.  We will be blessed if we allow his peace to steady our disordered passions, if we allow him to walk alongside us in our lives.  So in return let us offer our lives in dedicated, compassionate service.  If we do that then we will truly honour the sacrifices of our forebears, gain lasting hope for the future and become peace-makers today.

‘The best is yet to be, and that will be remembering’ – Reverend Carl Turner, Rector of Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue, New York City

It is said that dogs do not have short-term memories, that they don’t have the same concept of time as we humans do. It certainly is true of my Cairn Terrier, Bertie. When I come back home after being away for a few hours, I get the exact same welcome as when I come back after being away just a few minutes having forgotten something. For humans, whose lives are dominated by time as well as space, memory is crucially important. I guess that is why it why dementia or Alzheimer’s is so distressing, for memories not only fade, they get jumbled and mixed up.

I had a parishioner in New York, her name was Jo Brans – she died a few years ago. A literary scholar, she wrote books, had a column in a big magazine in Texas, and was larger than life. But in her old age, dementia had made her a shadow of her former self. She wrote an article on aging, and recalled a poem by Philip Larkin, titled ‘The Old Fools’:

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can’t quite name. Each looms
Like a deep loss restored…That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.

Poignantly, she said that there seemed to be more ‘lighted rooms’ now in her own head, then, turning to her beloved husband, she borrowed some words of Robert Browning but made them her own: “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be, and that will be remembering.”

Remembering is not only what makes us human, it also forms bonds that create community; and communities use ritual and liturgy in order to connect with the remembrances of the past in a vivid and beautiful way. That is what we are doing tonight, my friends.

We live in an age when so many funeral customs have all but disappeared. Gone are the days of washing and preparing the body, bringing the body home, sharing stories, and even feasting around the body; many funerals, these days, do not even have the body present. As we heard in our first lesson, so many find death a discomfort even to talk about; “In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster.” But what does the writer go on to say?

“…they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.”

Bishop Richard Holloway suggests that Christian remembrance is not simply about memory but is an active engagement with the past and its effect on present realities; he suggests that Christians might use a better term for this kind of remembrance, making them actively remembrancers.

In his book with the most cheerful of titles – Anger, Sex, Doubt, and Death – He says this:

“We would be remembrancers even if we lived for ever, but it seems to be the presence of death that provokes the keenest remembrance. The living we can revisit, but the dead we can only remember. And we do: sometimes in little glimpses, like the credit flashbacks at the end of a film; sometimes in more elaborate sequences, in which we reconstitute as much about a person as we can. It is death that makes us look back in sorrow, makes us remembrancers. But it is also death that makes us look forward in dread.” (1).

In the prophecy of Isaiah there is a beautiful image of a person’s life journey described as a tapestry or carpet. When a carpet or tapestry is being woven, as it grows in size, it is impossible to carry on without rolling it up, and the roll becomes bigger and bigger and the pattern becomes obscured. It is only when the rug or tapestry is complete that the weaver cuts it off from the loom and unrolls it. Isaiah says: “like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom.” (Isaiah 38:12)

Being cut off from the loom that was essential to the creation of the tapestry in the first place is a process of separation; it is an image of death, yet it is necessary in order for the tapestry or the rug to be of any use. But the most beautiful thing of all is that, it is only when it is cut off from the loom that the carpet can be unrolled, and the rich tapestry with its unique pattern can be revealed.

Jesus said “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
Of course, we are taught that with death also comes judgment. Jesus also speaks about judgement in our Gospel reading:

“The Father … has given all judgment to the Son.”

Now that the beautiful tapestry with all its rich colors and pattern is spread out for all to see, it is also possible to see the flaws that were created during its making. We fear our flaws being revealed, but they are what makes the tapestry so unique and, therefore, precious. The process of coming to terms with the entirety of the pattern that is our life is what we call judgement – which, for the Christian, is not something to be feared, but a means of growth into the loving embrace of God – into accepting all that I was, all that I am, and what I shall be.

For some, that journey will be hard – meeting God who is pure love and forgiveness may be too much for some to accept all at once – perhaps some might even want to roll up the tapestry again, for they are not yet ready to see it in its entirety spread before them. Archbishop Michael Ramsey used to teach about this by using another uncomfortable word – purgatory – but not as a place of torment; rather, as he described it, a stage on the journey as we comes to terms with the reality of our lives and come closer and closer to God who, unlike us, is always pure love and ultimate forgiveness. As Professor Philip Sheldrake once said, “Holiness is a process, a continual movement towards God.

In the same vein, I love the story that Cardinal Basil Hume used to share about a priest preaching at a funeral. The priest started his homily, “I want to speak to you today about judgement.” And the congregation visibly shuddered. “Judgement,” the priest continued, “is whispering into the ear of a merciful and compassionate God the story of my life which I had never been able to tell.”

Judgement, is whispering into the ear of a merciful and compassionate God the story of my life which I had never been able to tell.

Let us pray.

A prayer by David Adams:
Light of the world, enter into the depths of our lives.
Come into the dark and hidden places.
Walk in the storehouse of our memories.
Hear the hidden secrets of the past.
Plumb the very depth of our being.
Be present through the silent hours,
and bring us safely to your glorious light. Amen

(1). From ‘Anger, Sex, Doubt, and Death’ pub. SPCK 1992

‘Three saints got into a boat’ – Canon Dr Paula Gooder, Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral

Three saints, Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus got into a boat…

If this were a joke, this would be one of the weirdest opening lines of a joke ever…but it isn’t.  According to the Venerable Bede, Pope Gregory I did send Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus to England on what we now call the Gregorian Mission.  He sent them to help Augustine of Canterbury who had arrived five years earlier with forty or so other monks to establish Roman Christianity in England.  Initially they were successful and so Pope Gregory sent a second mission five years later which included Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus.  Justus became the first bishop of Rochester in 604 and Mellitus the first bishop of London in the same year, founding a church in the city, which was probably on the site where St Paul’s Cathedral now stands.  Paulinus was consecrated as a bishop twenty or so years later and was made the first Bishop of York in 627, also founding a church in the city.

There is something profoundly satisfying about being invited here to preach on the day when we commemorate St Paulinus at the consecrations of three more bishops, Tricia, Barry and Flora, in the city where Paulinus was a made Bishop nearly 1400 years ago.  As I preach I bring best wishes and prayers from Mellitus’ Cathedral – St Paul’s, where I minister as Canon Chancellor.  All we need is someone from Rochester to rock up and we have a Gregorian Mission full house!

In the nearly 1400 years since Paulinus was made the first Bishop of York much has changed for the church in England, and yet, what inspires us, upholds us and draws us onwards remains the same.  Nearly 600 years before Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus set out from Rome to go to England, the risen Jesus met his disciples on a mountain top in Galilee.  What he said to them, then, echoes on down the centuries.  600 years later it inspired Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus to journey from Rome making disciples as they went, baptising and teaching everything that Jesus had passed on to his disciples.  1400 years on from them three more people are poised on the edge of a new venture with God.

So what was it about that encounter with the risen Jesus that has made such a great difference to so many people over so many years?  The answer has to begin with that they met Jesus, risen from the dead, and that meeting changed everything for them.  But there is more – of course there is more – and so many things that I will limit myself to my three favourites…

I love that the moment that the risen Jesus met his followers and sent them out was on a mountain in Matthew’s Gospel.  If you know Matthew’s Gospel at all you will know that he has a thing about mountains.  Each one of the Gospel writers has a thing – for Mark it’s boats, for Luke it’s journeys and for Matthew it’s mountains.  In Matthew’s Gospel as soon as Jesus goes up a mountain you know something important is about to happen.  Jesus is tempted, gave a Sermon, goes to pray, heals the sick, is transfigured, begins his final journey into Jerusalem to die and finally meets his disciples after his resurrection all on a mountain.  Not the same mountain but a mountain nevertheless.  Seven mountains, seven important moments in the life of Jesus and his disciples.  The last and final one being when he handed on the baton to his followers.

We all need our equivalent of Matthew’s mountains.  Places where we are alert that something important might happen, that we might hear God speaking, or know God’s presence in the sound of gossamer thin silence.  Places where our souls can rest and find healing.  Places where we can see afresh who God really is and hear afresh his command to go, gossiping good news to everyone we meet.

Tricia, Barry, Flora, you don’t need me to tell you that your lives are about to be turned upside down in a new way with the mad chaos that only ministry in the Church of God can bring.  In the midst of the storm may you, may we all, find our thing – a boat, a habit of journeying, a mountain top, anything or anywhere frankly – where we can practice the discipline of expectation of wondering whether this is moment, the time, the place when God will speak again and stir our souls.  As R.S. Thomas put it, ‘a moment of great calm, …waiting for the God to speak’. Sometimes God will speak, sometimes God won’t, sometimes God won’t speak  for months or years but, as it was for the first disciples, simply going to the mountain top and waiting is the start of it all.

This doesn’t mean, however, that this means we will glide along in haze of pure certainty every hour of every day.  One of the features of this passage, that utterly fascinates me, is that at that moment on the top of the mountain, when, after they had waited, they did eventually meet the risen Jesus and he sent them out on the biggest, most madcap mission imaginable.  Then, at that moment, Matthew talks to us of doubt.  We could, if we were so minded, talk for an exceedingly long time about what Matthew meant when he said ‘When the disciples saw him they worshipped but some doubted’.  There has been much debate not only about what they were doubting but about precisely who was doing the worshipping and who was doing the doubting.  I won’t bore you with the details but the consensus is that among the eleven on the top of that mountain there was more than one person who was both worshipping and doubting at the same time.  It might have been all of them; it might have been just a few of them but worshipping and doubting were going on together.

For some people this causes immense problems, you can’t, they claim do both at once.  To which my response is you may not but I can.  In my experience, it is precisely in the moment when I cannot comprehend who God is, when I’m wrestling to accept or to wrap my mind around the vastness of God and what that means in the world, when I’m railing against the impossibility of it all that then I fall into the fullest worship possible.  Yesterday my friend and fine scholar Judith Maltby sent me a poem ‘The Inescapable Day’ by the American poet Vassar Millar, whom she is currently studying, and a couple of lines from it have hooked into my heart:

here we fidget,
snuffling and straining
to work the Mystery over our heads and hearts like a child’s pyjamas.

The God we worship is a God far too great a mystery to comprehend in a single, simple moment.

Of course, the very heart of this passage, rests not in the thin places or in the wrestling with mystery, but in the journeying onwards.  Jesus sent the disciples down from mountain and out into the world bearing news that was deeply and profoundly good and remains as good today as it ever was 2000 years ago.  News that we are loved with a love beyond all measuring, that whether we understand that love or not it will never fail, or falter or change.

I mentioned earlier Matthew’s use of mountains as a motif, he has another that is equally striking.  Matthew bookends his Gospel with a theme.  Right at the start of the whole Gospel an angel appeared to Joseph and told him that Mary would bear a son and he would be Immanuel, God with us.  In the final phrases of the Gospel, Jesus sends the disciples onwards, down from the mountain, and reminds them of the very essence of who he is — God with us – saying I am with you to the end of the age.

Tricia, Barry, Flora you will be doing a lots of journeying over the next weeks, months and years, sometimes physically, sometimes deep in your souls, but as you go remember that you do not go alone.  Whatever happens, however it feels sometimes, we never journey alone.  We journey with the one who never has and never will leave us.

It is this that gave Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus the courage to leave Rome and travel to the cold wet lands of England.  It is this that calls you three – and us all – to journey to places beyond our wildest dreams.

Three saints, Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus got into a boat…1400 years later three more saints, Tricia, Flora and Barry, ready themselves to follow in their footsteps.

When you think about it…it is, after all, quite a good joke!

Amen.

‘And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him’ – The Very Reverend Paul Kennington, Interim Dean of Chelmsford

And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Once when I was invited to the St Jean Baptiste Day reception in Montreal Town Hall  I was introduced to the Premier of Quebec, Pauline Marois.  Making polite conversation over the canapes she asked me ‘So what exactly is the Anglican Church of Canada?’

Being a provocative sort of chap I replied that the Anglican Church of Canada is like the Roman Catholic Church but with married clergy, women clergy and gay clergy – she laughed and we shifted the conversation to Edith Piaf and Celine Dion.

Jesus sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

The Epistle reading from James warns us about the power of words.  At one level it is just good advice against gossip and about saying too much.  How many of us have pressed the ‘send’ button on an email only to regret it in the morning?

But on another level it is about more than just idle gossip and temper.  The words we use are also definitions and identity.  It is with words that we tell people about Jesus  –  or not.

And words are often not what they seem.  In predominantly francophone Montreal, I took a lot of care translating between English and French.  How do you say ‘atonement’ in French?   What is the best English translation of ‘recueillement’.  Translation is never quite as easy as looking it up in Google Translate.

To a Parisian the word ‘pain’ – the ordinary word for bread – conjures up a long thin crusty baguette freshly baked in the early hours.

To Jesus I imagine the word for bread would conjure up a round flat bread.

To my mother in Leeds ‘bread’ was always a white sliced loaf of Mother’s Pride.

Even such an everyday staple as ‘bread’ cannot always be translated so simply.

So God help us when we come to telling anyone about Jesus.  There is an argument that the Eastern and the Western Churches never got over the fact that the Greek word  ‘hypostasis’ looks so very much like the Latin word ‘substantia’ –  but that translation would lead us into heresy for God is three hypostases but only one substance.

So perhaps Jesus shows exceptional wisdom when he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.  Words will never do him justice and may lead us into trouble.

Those of you who have studied the Bible may want to heckle me now and tell me that this is just the Messianic Secret.

And if you have never heard of the Messianic Secret, the theory goes that Jesus never said these words at all, but that Mark invented them as a literary device to explain why Jesus remained incognito, as it were, until after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

But biblical studies have changed. We’re less fussed these days about the actual words of the Historical Jesus and we’re more content simply to read the  Gospel, so whether or not Jesus ever sternly ordered his disciples not to tell anyone about him,  St. Mark thought it was important enough to say – and therefore important enough for a preacher to preach about!

So what do we make of this counterintuitive stern order not to tell anyone about Jesus when Church today is all about discipleship and evangelism?

At first Jesus merely asks the disciples,  who do other people say that he is –  they come up with the usual suspects:  – john the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets –  all of them wrong.

So Jesus asks them who they think he is – and it is Peter who answers : you are the Messiah.

All well and good.   It is tempting to sit back and think ‘ Yes, Peter has got it right’ –  Yes, Jesus is the Messiah –  but you see he hasn’t got it right – he has got it very wrong.

He has used the right word, of course  – Ha Mashiach – but what Peter means by Messiah and what Jesus means by Messiah are diametrically opposed – as far apart as a French baguette and a slice of Mothers’ Pride.

Jesus explains to Peter that Messiahship is about suffering, rejection and death – but Peter thinks the word Messiah means something very different indeed – and Jesus calls him Satan – a strong word to call one of your best and most loyal friends.   It starts to become clearer why Jesus sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.  Even if they used the right word they did not always understand what they were saying.

And perhaps that is the word of caution for us from the Gospel today.

There are about two and a half billion Christians in the world – and we all use the same words about Jesus in worship and prayer:

the only Son of God, begotten of the Father, true God from true God, 

and yet scratch us  –   scratch our understandings of the what the Good News is, and of what it means to live faithful and holy lives, and we are as far apart as chalk and cheese.

Between the Plymouth Brethren and the Metropolitan Community Church we are barely recognisably the same faith.

In our own Anglican way both St Michael le Belfry and the Minster may sometimes sing about the Church by schisms rent asunder, and by heresies distressed,  and yet I think we have very different views on what those schisms and heresies actually are.

And this subtle disagreement has always been one of the great strengths of the Church of England.

We have been traditional careful not to tell anyone too much about Jesus!

When I grew in Armley, I first attended Christ Church – a low evangelical church which taught me about my personal sin being like a rain cloud separating me from the love of God.  Only Jesus the atoning death of Jesus could take that cloud away.

That metaphor didn’t work for me and I defected to St Bartholomew’s Armley where I learned to make the sign of the cross, genuflect and say the Hail Mary.

And both churches happily got on with their own business of burying the dead, marrying and baptising the parishioners, feeding the hungry and preaching the word.  We didn’t interfere in what each other was doing.

No doubt the faithful at Christ Church thought we were all deeply misguided praying to the Virgin Mary up at St Bart’s – and I thought that the chorus  ‘Jesus how lovely you are, you are so gentle, so pure and so kind’  was – well how do I put it –  lacking a certain depth of theology and musical subtlety  – but Fr Owen happily went to Deanery Synod in his Cassock and Steve went in his open neck shirt and chinos.

And therein lies a change.  When I was much younger I was taught that there is no such thing as ‘The Anglican Church’,  – that there is no Anglican Confession of Faith – like the Westminster Confession or the Catholic Catechism, or dare I say it like The 2008 Jerusalem Declaration.   We don’t have a Constitution or a Supreme Court.  There is just the Anglican Communion – the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Creeds of the first Ecumenical Councils.

But over these past 40 years people have talked more freely about  – ‘The Anglican Church’

And I wonder what exactly they mean by that?

Do they mean a centralised body led by The Church of England?   My friends in Montreal would not think very highly of that bit of English colonialism.   Or are the words  ‘The Anglican Church’ just a verbal grenade to mean the global majority of Anglicans, especially for liberal Anglicans like myself who disagree with the global majority on a number of issues?

Jesus sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

As I get older, I feel more and more that the Anglican Way of not over-defining, and of not making windows into people’s souls has a great deal to commend it.

I still want to preach the word of course, and to tell people about Jesus, but today’s Gospel gives wise advice to be very cautious when we attempt to over explain the mystery of the Word made Flesh.

In the end I am want less of other people telling me about Jesus and a little bit more of people showing me Jesus – not necessarily the right answers, but a bit more love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in the Church and in the world.

You could say a little bit more ‘recueillement’ and a little less ‘atonement’.

Jesus sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

But he did tell us to follow him.

‘In the days of King Herod of Judea’ – Canon Peter Collier KC, Cathedral Reader

Title: ‘In the days of King Herod of Judea’

Preacher: Canon Peter Collier KC, Cathedral Reader 

Readings: Judges 13:2 -7, 24-25; Luke 1:5-25

Psalm: Psalm 71

Date: Sunday 23 June 2024, The Eve of the Birth of St John the Baptist 

May I speak in the name of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

“In the days of King Herod of Judea”. One of the things about Luke’s writing, which is very often about miraculous and other worldly things, is that he always grounds what he is describing in its real, historical, and political context. So here in Ch 1, it is “in the days of King Herod of Judea”. Similarly, in chapter 3 it begins “in the 15th year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius”. Luke knew that any work of God, any experience of God is, always rooted in a real place and time. So for us today, living Christ’s story is done here and now in the days of a conservative government, a labour controlled local council and whatever other political context you want to give, as well as your own family and other social contexts. Because our experiences of God as we follow Jesus Christ here and now can happen only in those real-life contexts.

“In the days of King Herod of Judea” there was a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. Let’s look for a moment at their here and now. Zechariah was a priest from, as they would say, “up north”. He came to Jerusalem twice a year when it was the turn of his division of priests to do their Temple ministry for a week.

Zechariah was married to a priest’s daughter, so would be regarded as especially blessed. Their piety as a couple was well known. They kept the laws and followed all the relevant regulations. They were faithful people.

But they were childless, and they were now both getting on in age; their days were almost over. And that absence of children was a source of much pain and grief to them. Elizabeth in particular would have felt ashamed amongst other woman, as the law seemed to say that if you were faithful then you would be fruitful and have families. And she would have been very self-conscious of how others viewed her, and what she sensed they were saying about her behind her back.

But let’s be clear about this – suffering pain is not sin. And many today suffer pain in their families, or perhaps because of their families or maybe because of how other people look at them. Feeling different, feeling excluded is a common experience, especially in a religious environment. And it can be very painful. I expect there will be many here this evening, who feel real pain for some such reason. And if you take nothing else away tonight it should be that to be in pain is not to sin. Because like Zechariah and Elizabeth we can remain faithful and trusting in God whatever we are going through in or families, in our church, and whoever is running the country.

“In the days of King Herod of Judea”, Zechariah was about to have a remarkable spiritual experience. God who seemed to have been silent for 400 years, was about to speak prophetically to Zechariah through the angel Gabriel. It happened on what was a very significant day for Zechariah. Significant because he had drawn the lot that day to offer the incense at the altar. According to Jewish oral tradition, a priest could only do that once in his lifetime. So for Zechariah as a priest this would have been the most important moment in his whole life.

And as he came to offer the incense, there suddenly appeared an angel. And whatever else he might have expected at that great moment it was not that. And he was terrified. But the angel spoke, and said “Don’t be afraid; your prayer has been heard.”

I am confident that the prayer that was referred to by Gabriel was not a prayer for a son, but the prayer that he and the nation prayed day after day, longing for God to come as he had promised and once again redeem his people. In a couple of chapters’ time Luke will also tell us about Simeon, whose song – the Nunc Dimittis – the choir has sung again tonight, and of 84 year old Anna. He tells us that they both spent their time in the temple praying for God’s salvation to come. And the answer to Zechariah’s prayer is that God is about to come and redeem his people and that Zechariah and Elizabeth are to have the Elijah like child who will come and prepare the way and get people ready for the Messiah to come. And so, says Gabriel, they and many others will have a lot of joy because of what this child, their child to be, will do.

Now Zechariah cannot get his head round this, it is all too much for him. How can this happen he says. I am old. My wife is getting on in years. I just don’t get it! I can’t get it!

The angel responds by saying that he had come directly from God to tell him this and because he hadn’t believed it, he would now be mute until the child was born.

Now all this would have taken a little time and it meant that he was in the sanctuary longer than people expected and they began to wonder what was going on. And when he did come out, obviously he couldn’t tell them what had happened and it must have been a very weird sight as he tried to indicate in some sort of basic sign language what had happened. They realised he had had some sort of extraordinary spiritual experience, perhaps a vision. Of course later he would be able to write down what had happened, and no doubt when he got home at the end of the week that’s what he would do to break the news to Elizabeth.

And as we know in due course it all came to pass.

Spiritual experiences can have many different effects, sometimes quite dramatic as with Zechariah or you perhaps remember in the Old Testament, Jacob when he wrestled with God went away limping. Sometimes as here there is an impact that is visible to other people. Though more often that is not the case.

But when we do have an experience of God very often it takes time to work out what has happened, what it means and how we move forward from there. Zechariah needed time to do that processing – there were to be a lot of implications to what he’d just been told – a baby when it was really time for grandchildren, the boy would have to grow up with them, there were special instructions about the diet – no alcohol whatsoever. And what about all that lay ahead for the boy as the Elijah like prophet; how different their lives were going to be from now on. There was an awful lot for Zechariah to process.  And God gave him time, time when he couldn’t talk but could do a lot of that internal processing.

And when we have any experience of God in our lives we need to pause and reflect and process what it means.

So on the eve of the feast of the birth of John the Baptist what are we to make of all this? What impact might it have on our lives in the days not of King Herod of Judea but of King Charles of Windsor? What are our circumstances? Our here and now? Are we feeling excluded and consequently experiencing pain? Are we open to experience God in new ways? And are we making space to process what we do experience of God, day by day and week by week?

May it be so for his name’s sake. Amen.