“Faith, hope and endurance in adversity” – The Reverend Eleanor Launders-Brown, Succentor

2 Thessalonians 3.6-13; Luke 21.5-19

You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.

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

41 years ago, a devastating fire engulfed the South Transept. It was only through the skill of the fire crews bringing down the roof, that the whole building wasn’t destroyed.

Some have speculated about conspiracies and hidden meanings behind that tragic event, and it is an example of our need to seek understanding and meaning in chaos.

Some people naively said that the fire, started by a lightning bolt was a sign at God’s anger at the controversial consecration of David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham. But the God I know wouldn’t do that, they certainly wouldn’t wait three days to do it if that was their intention!

They said he denied the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus. Bishop David was misquoted and his words taken out of context. He actually said that “The resurrection was not just a conjuring trick with bones.” And he was right, its so much more than that, but that’s a sermon for another day.

He challenged traditional views and faced a backlash for it.

He called out lazy assumptions that we simply believe what we’re told instead of seeking a living faith, wrestling with difficult topics and coming to our own informed conclusions.

His journey reminds us that standing firm in our beliefs can lead to persecution and misunderstanding. Yet, like the promise of Jesus, he found strength in enduring the trials. Our faith calls us to be courageous amidst opposition.

The fire was a devastating loss, but the controversy around it ignited conversations about faith, resilience, and the enduring spirit of a community. It mirrored what Jesus was talking about in our gospel reading. The temple faced destruction, and we too encounter fires of our own.

Jesus was in the temple, a place of beauty and reverence. The disciples were marvelling at the grandeur, seeing its magnificent stones and offerings.

Then Jesus drops a bombshell. He states it will all be destroyed. You can just see the look of disbelief on their faces. It’s a reminder that even in places where we feel secure and safe, change is inevitable.

Our gospel speaks directly into the heart of our life experience. It tells us that we will face challenges, trials, and tribulations. Jesus speaks of wars, insurrections, and natural disasters. But, in the midst of this ominous message, Jesus makes a promise. He tells the disciples that not a hair on their heads will perish and that by enduring, they will gain their souls. Telling us that, even in the face of adversity, there is always hope.

We live in a world where uncertainty seems to be the only constant. Just look around you at this beautiful building. I, like many of you are left at a loss for words to describe the wonder of this place, every time I look around, I see something new and it strengthens the closeness I feel to God when I’m in here.

Paul warns against idleness and encourages diligence in our work. This echoes the message from Luke where Jesus urges us to remain steadfast in our faith during difficult times. Both passages tell us that our faith should be active, not passive.

Jesus warns us that we will be questioned about our faith. But he also reassures us that we will not be alone. The Holy Spirit will empower us to speak boldly and truthfully in our defence. This promise is extended to each of us, inviting us to be witnesses to our faith every day even in the face of adversity, ridicule and rejection.

Think about the fires we are facing. It may be a personal struggle, a community issue, or the chaos which we see in the news every day.

Some of you are aware, I’ve had a personal battle with discrimination in the Navy and in the church.

Wrestling with faith and sexuality at a time when it was illegal in the forces prompted me to turn to a local church. It was a bold step to come forward at a time which could’ve cost me my career. Having built up the courage to seek guidance, I was banished from the building unless I considered some sort of therapy to “heal me” of my disease (his words, not mine!!)

I then went away to sea, and having no one to talk, my mental health plummeted, and things got as low as they possibly could.

But in all of that, God never left my side. God prevented me from doing something that I would regret. I was physically unable to move and when I accepted that hold, it became the warmest of embraces and I felt seen, acknowledged and valued by God for the first time.

It was people who abandoned me, not God. Things got a lot better after that. I had my happy ever after. God gave me someone to spend the rest of my life with, naval law changed, and I could finally begin to live as the person who I am, the person who God created.

I owe my life to God; it was given to me for a reason. That was when I decided to offer myself up for ordination and service to God.

We still live in a time when those who speak loudest are those who are opposed to and fearful of change. And unfortunately, by our silence, we become complicit in that voice. This is the image that is currently being presented to the wider world, but that’s not the church I know, it certainly isn’t true of our community here. But we are all guilty of apathy, just because an issue doesn’t affect us directly, we often can’t be that bothered to do anything about it.

Yes, we may be supportive of the issues raised, but our inaction and silence is the very thing that allows this prejudice and exclusion to continue.

I do get quite weary of banging my drum, here she goes again! Blah! Blah! Blah! When the abuse and derogatory comments come, and they will. To those people I say, I love you as God has called me to love you, but can you look inside yourself and by your words and actions, can you truly say the same to me?

The church is very divided. There is a lot of hurt and there is a lot of healing that needs to take place.

I can’t do this alone, and I know that the very Jesus who abides in me surrounds me and protects me, but it still hurts.

We at York Minster are in a privileged position. People look to us, as the Mother Church, for guidance. And when we speak, people hear.

As I put my head above the parapet, I would like to know that you have my back. That, together, we can be the catalyst for change. Together, we can make a difference.

Let’s make it clear to the world that York Minster is a place where everyone is welcomed, nurtured and accepted. That the beautiful building that we see reflecting God’s glory pales into the background of the beautiful people that are God’s people within it who are living as Christ did.

Speaking up, calling out the injustices around us, not just scrolling on or passing idly by. We should be more than simply witnesses of hope and resilience to a world that so desperately needs it. We can be agents of the change that the world needs to see.

Hold on to that promise of endurance. Face these trials with courage, trust in God and each other.

We are called to speak bold truths, to act justly, and to love unconditionally.

The fire in the South transported was extinguished 41 years ago, and the beautiful building we sit in is a testament to what can come from the destruction of the fires we face. but unfortunately, there will be other fires for us to face. Remember that every fire we endure, God is with us, holding us, guiding us, and empowering us. Giving us the strength to endure as Jesus has called us to do and giving us the spirit and resolution to change these injustices, one act at a time.

Amen.

“What then are we to say about these things?” – The Very Reverend Dominic Barrington, Dean of York

During half term, with my family, I visited the Anne Frank House in the centre of Amsterdam. Our visit was at the end of the day, pushing into the evening, but the crowds were still substantial, as we made our way slowly around this otherwise unremarkable house in which Anne, her parents and elder sister, and four other Dutch Jews hid out of sight of the Nazis for some two years, prior to their arrest in the early August of 1944.

In each of the rooms, the excellently curated information on display contains quotations from Anne’s now famous diary, creating an almost unbearable sense of poignancy as you immerse yourself in the story of those terrible times. Her youthful naivety and profound sense of hope is palpable, and all the more moving in the light of her eventual fate in the disease-ridden huts of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

My wife, my teenage sons and I were pretty silent by the end of our visit – and we were not alone. Despite the exit of the exhibition containing the inevitable café and gift shop, the atmosphere was muted and subdued. Being brought face to face with the horrors of the Holocaust made personal in such a very particular – and in some ways, very unremarkable – setting, it was as if we were all, inwardly, echoing the words which we just heard from Saint Paul: What then are we to say about these things?

Anne, of course, would not have been silent. Her answers to that rhetorical question fill her extraordinary diaries. “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out,” she wrote, “Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

And, of course, that goodness of heart is one of the things that, today, we gather to remember. The sacrifices of so many, especially in the two world wars, who rose up to fight against those who sought to dominate and subjugate others through acts of intimidation and violence and warfare. The thousands upon thousands who gave their lives to ensure freedom and peace for others. That sacrificial generosity should never be forgotten.

So it is, indeed, good that we should speak of ‘these things’ – that we should know what to say about them. For such sacrifices should inculcate in us, and in those who come after us, a similar desire to live out such radical generosity, and demonstrate that Anne Frank was not wrong about the fundamental goodness of humanity.

But that is no longer enough. When Paul demands of us to speak about ‘these things’, there is more to say. For if we talk for just a few more moments about the Holocaust, then we should note that, despite the 1.2 million visitors that come to the Anne Frank House each year, in Anne’s native Holland, a recent survey showed that 12% of Dutch adults believe the Holocaust to be a myth, or to be very greatly exaggerated. And if you focus on those under 40, that figure rises to 23%.

In Britain, the same percentage said they had never heard of the Holocaust, or – at best – knew very little about it, and over half were unaware that it resulted in the death of six million Jews. The figures for the United States are even more alarming.

More broadly, over 40% of British adults surveyed could not answer correctly which country was the principal enemy of the Allied forces, and over 50% did not know what the D Day Landings were. That, to my mind, suggests that our communal attempts to do some ‘remembering’ are not working as well as they should – and the consequences of this failure are alarming.

Writing in today’s Observer, the distinguished British historian Sir Anthony Seldon, powerfully recalls the optimism of the post-war government of Clement Atlee, who sought to deliver ‘a new Jerusalem’ for the people of Great Britain.  https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/in-1945-we-said-never-again-yet-already-weve-forgotten

Seldon contrasts it painfully with the reality we experience today, writing:

Unemployment, ill health, homelessness and despair are reaching levels that would have shocked the architects of the new Jerusalem. Nigel Farage’s Reform party has a credible chance of winning the general election due in 2029. Abroad, we see Europe divided and at war. In Germany, [the far right populist party] Alternative für Deutschland achieved its best results, with 21% of the popular vote. Far-right parties are performing strongly in France, Italy, Austria and Belgium. Russia is intent on beating Ukraine, and is shamelessly destabilising Eastern European countries.

In short, to summarize Sir Anthony’s words, the world feels as if it is an ever more dangerous place, despite the fact that we ought to know better. All of which says to me that we are not doing this ‘remembering’ thing properly. All of which says to me that we are not using our memories. Or, to put it in the language of St Paul, we have not come up with a proper answer to his blunt question that opened our second reading, when he demands of us What then are we to say about these things?

If you were to open your Bible and glance back at Romans Chapter Eight, from which we have just heard, you would find Paul explicitly addressing what he calls ‘the sufferings of this present time’. But he is clear that for God’s children, present-day sufferings do not diminish the hope of our calling – our calling to change the world, our calling to make the world a better place, our calling – like Atlee – to build ‘a new Jerusalem’ fit for a people committed to peace and justice. And Paul, as we heard, is clear that if we strive to do this, then nothing in all of creation ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God’.

But that’s only going to happen if we start remembering properly, and using our memories to fulfil that vision. Sir Athony reflected on the celebrations this year of the 80^th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War:

We have … forgotten the lessons of the second world war. This summer, on the 80th anniversary, the bunting came out, books were published and war films and documentaries were shown. It felt cheap and vulgar. We were remembering winning a war, not why the war had been fought.

And with that forgetfulness, we find ourselves incapable of knowing how to answer Paul’s demanding question: What then are we to say about these things?

When the young Alice of Lewis Carroll’s Victorian children’s novels steps through the Looking Glass, she encounters the White Queen – a confused and confusing individual who explains that she lives ‘backwards through time’, as a result of which, she has a memory which ‘works both ways’. And when the bewildered Alice explains that she is unable to remember things before they have happened, her new friend exclaims, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.”

Whether Anne Frank knew Lewis Carroll’s books, I have no idea, but she would, I am sure, have agreed with the White Queen. For Anne was clear that, in her own words, “I want to go on living even after my death” – a fate that has been amply fulfilled by her remarkable diaries. Fulfilled, because her diaries that chronicle her memories of this most awful period of human history have been shared across the globe in every generation since those darkest of days. Shared, in the hope that we are called to realise, the hope that such terrible times could nor arise again.

But we will only be able to do that if we can work out, as Saint Paul demands of us, What then are we to say about these things?

And if we are serious in sharing Paul’s belief that the ‘sufferings of these present times’ can make us ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us’, then we need to make our memories work forwards, and not just backwards. For to do anything less is to dishonour those whom we remember today. And then we might, just possibly, start to change the world to be more Christ-like – to achieve that vision of ‘a new Jerusalem’. For as young Anne said in one of her last recorded remarks, “How wonderful it is that no one has to wait even a minute to start gradually changing the world.”

Amen.

“Mortality, Memory and Meaning” – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

In the past, people might have thought it strange that hooded figures bringing death would be the highlight of a popular TV show in October 2025. But for anyone watching Traitors the question of who will stay, and who will be visited by the grim reaper, is a tantalising spectacle. Perhaps our mortality is so serious, that we can only talk about it lightly.

Rather like the many euphemisms we have for death, entertainment is simply another way in which we speak indirectly about difficult or unanswerable questions.

This week the Minster will be surrounded by children looking for small effigies of ghosts.

Hidden among railings and masonry, these figures are at the centre of an annual treasure hunt. As we approach Halloween, each evening will see some of the largest ghost tours of the year too. People out in the dark and the cold, being told chilling tales, and thinking about a York where different people once occupied the same space. It’s not for everyone, but the numbers taking part suggest that we continue to have a fascination with a past that dares to intrude on our present.

Our first reading this afternoon, from Ecclesiastes, seems appropriate to this season, taking a bleak if accurate view of the human condition and its inevitable end: “because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets”.  While the prospect of an eternal home may be welcome for those taking leave, the consequence of loss is inevitably mourning. In poetic language the author of Ecclesiastes reminds us of all that will be broken, and our return to dust.

A little while ago I was speaking to a member of the Minster congregation. Quoting words that come from a hymn we often sing, Immortal Invisible, she reflected that she was probably in the ‘withering’ stage, but not quite yet in the ‘perishing’ phase, of her life.

I think we can all recognise this reality, especially in autumn, when much of the natural world is shedding leaves and preparing for winter. We don’t find it easy to talk about ‘perishing’.

The author of Ecclesiastes similarly uses indirect language to speak about our mortality, when: the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was…

The bowl in particular reminds us of one of the ancient understandings, in which our physical nature is simply a container for our spiritual identity. Like oil or incense, when the bowl is broken, our essence is released. People often question and criticise our indirect language for death. Yet, as the author of Ecclesiastes demonstrates, poetic words say more than plain speaking ever can. The same writer says that for ‘everything there is a season’, and maybe direct words serve one purpose, and poetry another. The skill – the wisdom – is to judge the occasion and find the words that fit.

Living healthily with an awareness of our mortality has always been seen as a critical aspect of Christianity. It’s something alluded to in the second reading, from the Letter to Timothy.

It is the seriousness of a soldier’s work, and the risk it carries, that distances them from everyday concerns. The awareness that death might descend suddenly reframes the soldier’s perspective on life. The author of the letter suggests that Christians are in the same boat – living a life alert to its risks, but also with the conviction that God is with us at all times, and for eternity. The key thing, the letter to Timothy says, is not to become ‘entangled’ with the earthly so much that we miss the Divine.

Having lived in what is believed to be one of the most haunted properties in York, the ‘Plague House’, I can’t tell you that I’ve seen any spirits. But living in a property that’s centuries old was a daily reminder that people have gone before us and will come after us.

To live with that sober reality, even if we take it lightly at times, is a healthy way to sift the wheat from the chaff. To focus on a faith that will last, and to be “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus “.

Amen.

Sermon for The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

Nehemiah 8.9–end and John 16.1–11

‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared’

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

The people of Israel weep.

Not the polite, restrained weeping we sometimes witness in our pews or on television tributes, but the full-bodied, gut-wrenching tears of those who have seen too much, known too much, lost too much.

In our first reading, they have just heard the law read aloud – Ezra’s voice spreading through the people like rain over cracked soil. And in response, they are utterly undone. For these are not tears of reverence or of devotion. These are the tears of recognition. The law convicts them – not just of individual failings, but of communal amnesia. They weep because they remember what they have forgotten.

And into that shared grief, Nehemiah issues a command they and we do not expect:

“Do not mourn or weep… Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared… for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

It is a surprising command. It is not “repent harder.” It is not “punish yourselves until you feel worthy again.” Rather, it is “celebrate – and make sure everyone has enough to do the same.”

There is something profoundly countercultural about this command. In our own day, we live not in the ruins of Jerusalem but surrounded by the wreckage of our shared discourse. Culture wars rage across our institutions, our churches, our communities. We watch as nuance is exiled, empathy dismissed as weakness, and truth manipulated in the name of tribal loyalty.

The law we have forgotten is not the code of Moses, but the law of love, of neighbourliness, of communal obligation. And when that law is read again – whether by prophets, poets, or protesters – some weep, but others rage. We are a people not at peace with our past, and we are a people who are deeply suspicious of our future.

Into this context, our second reading offers another startling word.

Jesus says to his disciples, “I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues… Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.”

We are left in no doubt: the tearing apart of community is nothing new. Religious violence, righteous exclusion, doctrinal purging – these are not modern inventions. And Jesus’ words are not just warnings – they are diagnoses.

They remind us that some of the greatest harms are done by those who believe themselves to be guardians of truth. Those who exile others for the sake of “purity” do so believing they honour God.

In our own fractured landscape, we have seen how people on every side of every issue claim the moral high ground while digging trenches that make communion impossible.

But Jesus does not leave us there.

He goes on to say, “When the Spirit comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.”

The Spirit unmasks the falsity of our certainties. The Spirit shows us that sin is not what we thought it was; that righteousness is not owned by any one tribe; that judgment belongs not to us, but to the crucified and risen Christ.

This is forensic theology. The Spirit does not float above the fray but enters into it. Not to vindicate one faction over another, but to diagnose the deeper illness: the ways in which our violence, our divisions, our exclusions are built on false understandings of holiness and truth.

Our readings this evening call us to something braver than the culture wars permit.

They invite us to imagine a community not built on winning the argument, but on shared joy. Not on expelling the unclean, but on making sure all have enough to celebrate. Not on moral certainty, but on Spirit-led humility.

The people in Nehemiah’s day are told to feast, to eat the fat and drink sweet wine and to send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. This is not just a command to rejoice – it is a command to remember the poor and the vulnerable in every single act of rejoicing.

Now imagine a church that measures its faith not by doctrinal alignment, but by whether the most vulnerable among them have enough to feast.

Now imagine a community that refuses the binary of winner and loser and instead lives out the messy, costly reality of shared life.

This is not weakness. This is not moral compromise. This, my friends, is resurrection strength.

The culture wars thrive on a scarcity mindset: if your truth is affirmed, mine is erased; if my experience is centred, yours is diminished. But the Spirit reveals the opposite: that when one part of the body is honoured, the whole body is strengthened. That joy, like manna, multiplies when shared.

The church has too often traded the Spirit for strategy, and joy for judgment. But joy is not an optional emotion – it is the theological act of resistance.

To feast in a wounded world is not to deny its pain – it is to insist that pain will not have the final word.

To weep when the law is read is not a failure – it is the first sign of awakening.

To send portions to those with nothing is to declare that no one will be left behind in the kingdom of God.

And so we are faced with a stark choice.

We can participate in the patterns of the world: misinformation, gatekeeping, scapegoating, polarising, proving ourselves right, regardless of the cost to others.

Or we can take the harder path: of Spirit-disruption, of wounded joy, of communities that listen, make space for difference and diversity and dwell together in the tension of not always agreeing – but always, always loving.

Jesus says, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.” These are, on the surface, strange words. But the presence of Christ withdraws, so the Spirit of Christ can come. This is theological decentralisation. The Incarnate One who once walked among us in one body now calls us, you and me, to be his body – many members, one wounded-and-risen whole.

This is the antidote to our present culture wars: not the erasure of difference, but the bearing of it together in joy. Not uniformity, but cruciform unity.

So let us read the law again, with tears in our eyes and bread in our hands. Let us welcome the Spirit who will prove the world wrong – and us, too. Let us feast, share, and build a community that is less concerned with being right and utterly focuses on being reconciled. For when we do, we will find that Nehemiah is absolutely right, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Amen.

“Weak pleading or courageous insistence” – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

There is a lot packed into this parable recorded in Luke and It’s worth spending a moment or two unpacking what it says. I guess that many of us might have an image of the widow even though we know almost nothing about her. We might imagine loneliness; powerlessness; marginality. Yet none of the text tells us this. All we know is her loss, but not whether it was long ago or recently. Maybe she is wealthy; relatively independent and well educated. We simply don’t know. But we do know that she believes she has suffered an injustice. Perhaps something connected with her bereavement – a matter of inheritance? Who knows. What we do know is that she was persistent.

The judge, on the other hand, is high and mighty. Like the labour party of Tony Blair, he doesn’t ’do God’. Equally, he seems aloof from what people think about him. But the key issue, it seems to me, is that he doesn’t do his job. The widow keeps coming because he’s failed to attend to her cause or make a decision. Only her persistence compels him to do what he’s supposed to do: To pronounce judgement.

So, is this weak pleading or courageous insistence?

It is for us to decide.

Down the centuries women who have suffered injustice have risked much by appealing for an outcome. The mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires are just one example. In Gaza and elsewhere women will turn their despair and outrage into a demand for restitution to be made.

Last week I was fortunate enough to see Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure performed by the RSC in Stratford. Despite various reconciliations at the end (and forced marriages) it’s not a play that is comforting or amusing. The production team clearly knew that and they began, before the first word was spoken, to show images of all the men whose conduct has been questioned in recent years. Men who have used their place and their power to satisfy their own desires and obstruct justice.

Perhaps what was most depressing for me was to think that, across an arch of 500 years – half a millennium – nothing has changed. And of course, going back to our parable today, that story stretched much, much further back into history. Think of the woman caught in adultery in John’s Gospel. Thrown down before Jesus with men standing by telling him to judge her. But where was the man?

In Measure for Measure the full horror of so many women’s experience is expressed in painstaking detail when Isabella threatens to expose her unjust judge. Alone together, Angelo simply laughs in her face, asking: “Who will believe thee Isabel?” His speech makes it abundantly clear that say what she will, no one will take her word over his. As he put it at the end of his address to her: “my false o’erweighs your true”.

Seeking justice implies vulnerability. The courage of the widow in Luke’s Gospel is to refuse to be swept aside by denial; or to be hushed by the stare of authority. She will not be silent; will not be biddable; will not simply walk away. She demands justice.

It might seem a minor detail, but it’s interesting that Jesus is telling this parable to his disciples to encourage them not to lose heart. He chooses the actions of a woman to model the behaviour they will need to adopt. They aren’t to be like the judge, in his authority and power. It’s probably not how many preachers address this parable, but I have to ask, isn’t Jesus saying to his male apostles – you need to model your faith on the example of a powerless woman?

As the parable concludes we are told that God isn’t like the judge in this story. Eventually, simply for a quiet life, the earthly judge gives the woman the justice she demands. As Jesus says, God is utterly and completely different from this judge. God brings justice – God is justice – it’s in the essence of what we understand about the God we worship. Our God is attentive to the cry of the widow, and to every petition that we make. Rather than waiting to be ground into submission, the God we love and worship wants to work with us to bring justice to the world today. And how desperately needed that justice is, in so many places and among so many people.

This parable calls to us, each of us, to model our lives on the courageous outsider; the second-class citizen; the one whose voice isn’t likely to be believed. It is part of the radical message of the Gospel, as when Jesus put a child into their midst, that confounds the values and expectations of the world. This is different; Jesus is different; the Gospel is different. Unless we learn that, we can never enter the Kingdom of God.

Amen.

Sermon for the Baby Loss Awareness Service – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

There are moments in life when words feel impossible. When loss strikes at the very heart of who we are, language falters. Parents bereaved of a baby — through miscarriage, stillbirth, or death in infancy — often describe the silence that follows. A silence in the nursery. A silence in the conversations of friends who do not know what to say. A silence in the heart where dreams once stirred.

It is into such silence that poetry sometimes dares to speak. R. S. Thomas, the Welsh priest-poet, wrote these haunting lines in his poem The Unborn Child:

“I think of you with child’s eyes,

who never looked on the sun,

who never looked on the earth,

whose hands never touched water.”

Thomas names the ache of potential never realised: eyes that never saw, hands that never touched. The grief of baby loss is precisely this — the grief not only of absence, but of unlived futures. It is the sorrow of birthdays never celebrated, of first steps never taken, of words never spoken.

And yet Thomas does not end in despair. He concludes:

“Yet you are with God,

who is our beginning and our end.

He shall gather you,

unborn, into the great kingdom of the living.”

Here, Thomas holds together absence and presence, loss and belonging. The unborn child is named as part of God’s life, gathered into the great kingdom. Not discarded. Not forgotten. But received and treasured by the One who is both beginning and end.

Psalm 139 offers a similar witness. It is one of Scripture’s most intimate songs, a meditation on God’s presence in every corner of human life. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me.” God is not distant or abstract, but closer than breath, acquainted with every thought, every tear.

And then these words, which cut straight to the heart of today’s gathering:

“For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret.”

For all of us here tonight grieving the loss of a baby, these verses carry a bittersweet weight. They affirm what grief already knows: that even the smallest life is known by God, woven in God’s love, never hidden, never insignificant. The psalmist does not speak of potential life, half-formed or uncertain, but of lives already precious, already held in God’s gaze.

This is vital. In a culture that sometimes trivialises baby loss – Scripture insists otherwise. Every life, however brief, is fearfully and wonderfully made. Every life, however hidden from the world, is visible to God. Every life, however fleeting, is woven into eternity.

But I fully recognise that knowing this does not take away the pain. Faith does not magic away grief, nor should it. Jesus himself wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus, even knowing resurrection lay ahead. Tears are holy. Grief is love, persisting.

So, what does it mean to bring our grief here, to this place, to York Minster, and to hold it before God?

First, it means permission. Permission to lament. To name our anger, confusion, questions. Psalm 139 speaks of a God who knows our words before they are on our lips — including the words we dare not speak aloud. This is not a God who demands we tidy our emotions before entering church. This is a God who receives our silence, our groans, our unanswerable why.

Second, it means memory. Baby loss is often marked by a cruel forgetting – friends falling silent, society shifting the subject. But here, tonight, we say: our children matter. Our children are remembered. Their names, their presence, their stories are carried in our prayers. And in God, nothing is lost. R. S. Thomas’ poem assures us that even the unborn are gathered, their lives lovingly held with Christ in God.

Third, it means hope. Not easy unearned optimism. Not denial of grief. But hope grounded in the mystery of resurrection. In Christ, life is stronger than death. Love endures beyond the grave. The unborn child, the stillborn child, the baby who lived only hours – each is enfolded in the embrace of God. Not erased, not extinguished, but belonging to the “great kingdom of the living.”

What, then, does this mean for us, the living, who carry the scars of such loss? It means that God is with us in the silence, in the sleepless nights, in the anniversaries that sting. It means that our tears are not wasted but gathered – “put in your bottle,” as Psalm 56 says. It means that grief and faith can coexist, not as enemies but as companions on a long journey.

And it means we are called to be community for one another. To sit beside those who mourn without rushing them. To hold the silence without filling it with clichés. To remember that healing is not about “moving on,” but about learning to live with love that is unfinished.

So tonight, as we light candles and speak names, as we weep and remember, we do so knowing that our children are known to God. Their eyes never looked on the sun, as Thomas wrote. Their hands never touched water. But they are gathered. They are cherished. They are part of God’s eternal story.

And we too are gathered – our grief, our longing, our hope – into the arms of the One who formed us in the womb and who will never let us go.

Friends, when words fail, let this be our prayer: That the God who knit our children in love will hold them forever, and that the same God will hold us too.

May God bless each and everyone of you this night.

Amen.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” – The Very Reverend Dominic Barrington, Dean of York

There is peace (or rather, there is an absence of war) in Gaza. As of this past Friday, an agreement brokered by President Trump has garnered sufficient agreement from both Hamas and Israel that the guns have fallen silent, the bombs have ceased falling, the remaining hostages are due to be released, and thousands of Palestinians are returning to the areas of Gaza in which they once lived, to try and rebuild a new existence out of the ashes and rubble of their former homes.

Netanyahu has claimed that this is a ‘national and moral victory for the state of Israel’, and it would not be surprising, before long, to find a similarly outrageous claim from the leadership of Hamas, also suggesting that they have achieved some kind of victory. Which is why, at times like this, we probably get an understanding of how the Middle East could produce a poet who could utter such a statement as “Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.”

Of course, we are only matter of a few days into this ‘absence of war’ in Gaza. We have not remotely reached a condition that could genuinely be called ‘peace’; for now, we merely have a ceasefire, and a ‘peace deal’ is still a considerable way off, demanding more complex negotiations and discussions which could – so very, very easily – unravel, possibly plunging the region back into warfare and violence. To use the language of Jesus which we heard in our second reading, although we may well have some ‘fruit’ to celebrate this weekend, it is, by no means, ‘fruit that will last’, though we all hope and pray so fervently that this will, please God, eventually prove to be the case.

And for that to be the case – for this fragile ceasefire to turn into a lasting peace – people are going to have to stick at it. On both sides of the terrible divide which has become such a gaping chasm between Israelis and Palestinians, in both communities, and at all levels, people are going to have to stick at it.

People are actively, deliberately, and painfully going to have to embrace the costly work that will be necessary to ensure that real peace is achieved – the kind of peace that is about mending what is broken; the kind of peace that is about creating safety; the kind of peace that is about restoring justice; the kind of peace that, ultimately, might speak about and demonstrate something of the love of God – about which we find Jesus talking at the opening of our second reading.

Which is also, of course, what Nehemiah is trying to do, in that convoluted narrative which formed our first reading.

To refresh your memories, we are in the middle of the fifth century before Jesus was born, getting on for a century after some kind of peace had returned to Jerusalem following its sacking by the Babylonians in 587. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians then would have born some comparison to the destruction of Gaza we have watched in these past two years: just about everything of importance had been raised to rubble. The Babylonians were harsh and cruel conquerors, and once the Temple had been destroyed, pretty much everyone of significance had been led into a demeaning exile in an unwelcoming foreign land.

But super-powers come, and super-powers go, and after some fifty years of exile, the Persians topple the Babylonians, and their control over the ancient Near East was very considerably more benign. Those Israelites who wished to return home were allowed to do so, and, indeed, money was made available to them for the rebuilding of the Temple and of the city of Jerusalem.

But – despite the good intentions of the Persian king Cyrus – this was not entirely straight-forward. Apathy, corruption and self-interest meant that the reconstruction of the Temple was not, in fact, quite such a high priority as one might have expected should be the case. And our first reading finds us the best part of a century later, and Jerusalem is still a mess. It is still not the ‘vision of peace’ that is the meaning of its name. And the pious Nehemiah has been given support and permission by the Persian king Artaxerxes (for whom he is the royal cup-bearer) to return to Jerusalem and try and resolve the situation – and, in particular, to rebuild the walls around this once-great city.

And when we hear the talk of the city wall, we should understand that this is about more than defence. The city wall is profoundly symbolic of the rebuilding of the identity that the Israelites are, uniquely, God’s people – God’s children, called by God into a particular and loving relationship.

But those around Nehemiah do not want this to happen. The provincial governor, Sanballat; the leader of the neighbouring Edomites, Geshem; and the well-connected Ammonite, Tobiah; these three throw distraction, deceit and downright danger at Nehemiah to prevent the fulfilment of his great vision – but, as we heard, all to no avail. Nehemiah is out to bear fruit – fruit that would last a good long while. Fruit which could speak to a true ‘vision of peace’ that befits those whom God has called to be God’s people – people called to love one another, just as God loves us.

Nehemiah discovered the profound truth to which Jesus gave voice nearly five hundred years later that one can be hated by the world for doing what we might think of as God’s work. And, in Christ, the challenge of that work is, perhaps, a little more wide-reaching than Nehemiah would have perceived or understood.

For, in Christ, our understanding of being God’s children or God’s people has been transformed into a bigger picture – into the biggest picture that it can possibly be. For the special relationship with God of the old covenant, rooted in a religious understanding related to a specific ethnicity – that covenant has been broadened and replaced by one that neither knows nor recognizes any distinctions or barriers, whether to do with ethnicity, creed, colour, gender, sexuality, or anything else which can be used to divide one beloved child of God from another.

And the kind of love that in Christ we have received, and which we are called to share – the kind of love which will, truly, bear the fruit that lasts, that endures, that remains – this kind of love is generous… some would say generous to a fault… for it is, as Jesus remind us, a love that is ultimately rooted in self-sacrifice.

The opening of Psalm 144 may well jar in our ears, and it is a reminder that there is a militaristic vision in some of the older parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. And it is probable that in some shape or form much of this psalm has its roots in material similar to that found in Psalm 18, another, longer, psalm with much similar language about victory in battle – a psalm that is one of the older ones amongst those 150 beloved hymns of the Israelite people.

But this evening’s psalm, although it starts with hands that make war, and fingers which fight – tonight’s psalm changes gear, and its final four verses, give it a much later feel than the older psalm to which it is so clearly related. For in these final four verses we find a ‘vision of peace’ that has turned its back on war and violence. For they offer a vision of peace in which nobody is led into captivity, nobody need complain, a vision of an abundant life in which every need is met, and every person can be described as blessed.

That comes about – and, I suspect it only comes about – when people love one another as we have been loved by God in Jesus, living sacrificially, whatever the cost. If Israel and Hamas can learn a little of the dedication to God’s people and service that motivated Nehemiah, and which was seen, fulfilled in the life of Jesus… if those in the Middle East, and all of God’s children, here right now, and around the world… if we can all learn a little more of what it means to ‘love one another as I have loved you’, then we will bear that fruit that was so precious to Jesus – the fruit that will last.

Amen.

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead” – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

2 Timothy 2.8; Luke 17.11–19

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David – that is my gospel.”

May I speak in the name of the living God, who is our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. Amen.

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.” That’s where our epistle reading begins and that’s where our faith begins too. Not with Jesus the teacher, nor even with Jesus crucified, but with Jesus raised. Because without the resurrection, the cross is just another violent ending. Without the resurrection, the disciples’ fear is justified, the story is over. But with the resurrection, everything is transformed. The scattered disciples become bold witnesses. Death is not the end. The tomb becomes a womb of new creation.

And what rises from the tomb is not some polished, idealised body. It’s not the ‘Gym Jesus’ of classical art. What rises is a wounded body – still marked, still scarred – but radiant with God’s life. This is not erasure, it is transfiguration. Not the removal of fragility but its revelation as holy. Resurrection, then, is not fantasy. It’s flesh. It’s memory. It’s us breaking to become the bread of life.

The risen body of Christ teaches us that salvation doesn’t mean being “fixed” or perfected according to the world’s standards. It means being gathered – wounds and all – into divine glory. It means our fragility is not an obstacle to God’s presence, but the very place where grace breaks through.

And today’s Gospel makes this real. Ten people with leprosy cry out from a distance – each excluded from society, family, temple. Jesus heals them, restores their place. But only one returns to say thank you. And that one, Luke emphasises, is a Samaritan – the outsider among outsiders. The only one who sees that healing is not just about restored function. It’s about restored relationship. It’s about recognising Christ at the centre and giving thanks.

Healing, in this story, is not a return to the norm. It’s not certification of usefulness. It’s not about being reabsorbed into systems that exclude. It’s about gratitude. It’s about communion. The Samaritan’s act of thanksgiving reorders the whole event. What could have been a clinical cure becomes an act of salvation.

This challenges the way our culture sees worth. Theologian Sharon Betcher puts it bluntly: we live in a world where bodies are judged by productivity, where weakness is constructed as liability. But the resurrection refuses that narrative. It reveals that what the world dismisses as weakness, God calls holy. That what the world marginalises, God makes central.

The Samaritan refuses to be measured by usefulness. He turns back, slows down, and gives thanks. In doing so, he enters what theologian John Swinton calls “gentle discipleship” – a way of life not governed by speed or output, but by patience, friendship, and belonging. In his book Becoming Friends of Time, Swinton reminds us that time belongs to God. Not every healing is about “getting back to normal.” Sometimes healing means lingering. Sometimes it means turning back. Sometimes it means resisting the tyranny of the clock to inhabit resurrection time.

So what do today’s readings call us to?

First, they call us to stop imagining healing as conformity. Too often the Church has mirrored the world’s obsession with smoothness, with being made acceptable. But Christ still bears his wounds. The Eucharist isn’t about fixing. It’s about breaking. ‘We break this bread to share in the Body of Christ.’

Second, they call us to reimagine community. The outsider saw what the insiders missed. Our churches should not be places of polished perfection but of mutual dependence, of shared limitation, of deep thanksgiving. Christian community is not built on independence but on communion.

God never called creation perfect. God called it good. And goodness isn’t about flawlessness – it’s about relationship, openness, and story. Perfection suggests closure. But goodness is the fertile ground of grace. It is through our dependence on one another that love takes root and grows.

Third, they call us to make our worship a radical act of gratitude. The Eucharist isn’t a tidy ritual. It’s the Samaritan’s cry of thanksgiving. It is where we proclaim that Christ’s wounded body is life. That what the world calls broken, God calls beloved.

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.” This is the heartbeat of our faith. This is how the disciples moved from fear to joy, from despair to mission. And this is how we are to live – not by hiding our wounds, not by chasing false perfection, but by trusting that our fragility is the very ground of grace.

So may this Cathedral be a place where wounds are not hidden but honoured, where time is not rushed but redeemed, and where thanksgiving disrupts every system of exclusion. And may we, like the Samaritan, live lives shaped by the risen, wounded Christ – our joy, our hope, and the heart of the gospel.

Amen.

“I received mercy… making me an example to those who would come to believe.” – Dean Dominic’s sermon from St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town

The question – I think – the question which stares us in the face from this morning’s gospel is, “Are you crazy? Are you crazy?”

But before we work out the answer, may I first thank Dean Terry for his very gracious invitation to share this pulpit with me, which is an honour and a privilege. I bring you greetings from York Minster – and from our own Archbishop, Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York. As some of you may know, for the best part of twenty years, our two dioceses have had a companion relationship, and it is a joy that Canon Maggie and I are able to represent that relationship this morning.

But while it’s a joy and a blessing to share in this act of worship with you today, I’m still worried by the question – because I hear our readings shouting at me, “Are you crazy?”

Because today’s gospel is about utterly irrational behaviour. Today’s gospel is about doing things which make no sense at all. Doing things which are economically ridiculous, and which – to someone with a diary that is full to over-flowing with tasks that should have been done yesterday and meetings that must be attended tomorrow – things which are simply a waste of time. Today’s gospel is about being crazy.

This morning’s gospel is crazy, because the wilderness is a dangerous place. After all, it was in a wilderness that Jesus found himself spiritually wrestling no less a figure than the devil himself. And in a dangerous place like that you do not simply abandon 99% of your assets, whimsically to go off to find the one that has gone missing. I’m afraid the missing sheep – and, indeed, the missing coin – that’s just an asset you write off on the balance sheet of life. It is not something which – if you are sane, or rational, or efficient, or competent – if you are anything other than crazy – you just forget about.

After all, they tell us that time is money, and so many of us have far too little time to do the things that we even want to do. So not only would it be a crazy waste of time to go looking for that sheep, or that coin… it would be just as crazy to drop everything and run off when your neighbour summons you to an impromptu party they’ve decided to throw – something just to celebrate their craziness.

Let’s be honest. This is how real life works, isn’t it? This is the life that I find I have to I live if I’m going to survive the pressure of work, and family life, and all the rest of it. I don’t have time to be crazy, I don’t want to be crazy – at least, that’s what I find when I find myself looking in the mirror, let alone in my diary, or – when I dare to do so – in my conscience, or my heart.

Even today, some people look up to clergy, and I hope they find in me an example of someone who is rational, and ordered, and in control, somebody who is capable of running a very big cathedral with an awful lot of staff and worshippers and visitors and tourists… I hope they think I’m a good example.

And then that little voice pops the pin in the balloon of my smug, self-satisfied condition, and I hear that man saying to me again what he’s always said, when I quieten down enough to listen (which is not as often as it should be). And that voice says, “Are you crazy? Dominic – are you crazy?” Or, in the words of our gospel this morning, “Which of you does not go after the one that is lost…?”

And that is why I am so lucky – why we are so lucky – why we are so blessed to come to church this morning, and to discover we seem to be surrounded by some really crazy people.

Take St Paul. He’s a pretty frequent visitor to church most Sundays. Look how crazy he was. He knew all about the demands of what you and I probably call ‘real life’. Especially back in the day when he was more usually known as Saul – he knew all about that. He knew what tasks had to be done (mainly arresting these crazy followers of some jumped-up nobody of a rabbi from the north), and he knew just how to go about doing that. He was busy, he was capable, he argued really well. He had it all in hand. Until something crazy happened – something crazy which threw him off his horse, dazzled him with a light brighter than anything he’d ever known before, and gave him a new, crazy, outlook on life. And it was catching…

Paul’s new craziness was really catching. Because, if we are going to be honest, for many years Biblical scholars have been telling us that it is highly unlikely that the person who wrote One Timothy was actually Paul himself. Now, if you go to a university today and make false claims about authorship, and you’ll be out on your ear on a charge of plagiarism before you can snap your fingers.

But back in Biblical times, having your disciples attempt to echo your thoughts and what you stood for after your death – that was the highest praise. And so, someone – as I say probably not Paul, but one of those who had ‘come to believe’, because in Paul they found someone who was a really good example of how to live life – someone who had been touched by Paul’s craziness – someone else got it. And they used Paul’s name and identity to keep his ideas alive, and that someone else starts talking, in One Timothy, about how good it is – what a good example it is – to be crazy.

And so this morning, this shadowy author is speaking to us about how grateful he is that God strengthened him – strengthened him to be able, also, to live a crazy life, to be an example to others… To others who might find themselves needing to find a lost sheep or a lost coin when the rest of the world is saying, “No, no, no – be sensible. Don’t bother about that. It’s not the effort.”

And the story of Christianity, and the story of the Church of God – that story carries on like that, through the generations. And – on this particular morning – we get reminded that even in our own time, that craziness is a craziness which can change the world.

On this particular morning, we get reminded that there are too many people living for ideas that will die… but that if you are crazy, you learn – if that’s what it takes – to die for an idea that needs to live.

For this Friday was the 48th anniversary of the murder of Bantu Stephen Biko – a man touched with just the same kind of craziness that makes people search out what is lost sheep against all the odds. A man who was so certain that the evil ideas of the apartheid government were ideas that would die that, in the short life that he lived, he demonstrated with such clarity, that crazy idea of dying for the idea of a truly free South Africa that could, as he said, “be a community of brothers and sisters jointly involved in the quest for a composite answer to the varied problems of life.”

But, back in the bad days of the 1970s, certainly for those of us watching in anguish from around the world, that idea which, for Steve Biko, was worth dying for – that idea seemed little short of impossible. It seemed as elusive as the one lost sheep in the wilderness or the lost coin in the house. And I don’t know if I would ever have been crazy enough, or saintly enough, to put my energy into going to find it – I don’t know if I would have been crazy enough to drop everything to seek out such an unlikely excuse for a party.

It has been an honour, a joy and a privilege for Canon Maggie and myself to spend some time in this country. We have been looked after and cared for with a profound sense of welcome and with grace and kindness. We have tried to engage meaningfully with the history of the country and with some of the towering, visionary, crazy people who helped bring a transformation that for so long had seemed as improbable as finding one lost sheep.

And we’ve also had some fun while we have been here. We have learned much from your gracious Dean, Fr Terry, who is, let me tell you, a most excellent tour guide. And with him, we enjoyed a lovely visit to the farm and winery at Babylonstoren. For those who have the resources to enjoy its luxury goods, it clearly is a place that offers very high quality produce, and some very fine wines – wines which are marketed successfully around the country.

And thus, as we parked up, we saw the sign pointing people to the location to which they should go if they had ordered Babylonstoren wines in advance on a ‘click and collect’ basis. ‘There you are,’ said Fr Terry, ‘everything these days is click and collect’.

But in fact – if I may gently contradict you, Father – not quite everything is click and collect.

On 18th August, 1977, Steve Biko was arrested at a police road-block near what is now Makhanda – arrested, never to be seen again by his friends or family. Arrested, and subjected to repeated severe violence, denied medical care, and left alone, shackled, naked, in a police cell. For 25 days, until his death in Pretoria, he had, in effect, vanished, like a lost sheep. He was lost in the evil, inhuman, violent and murderous wilderness of Vorster’s apartheid regime.

But he was never lost to Jesus – to the utterly crazy Jesus of whom we read in this morning’s gospel – the utterly crazy Jesus who was determined that even when Steve Biko was apparently lost to human society, beaten and bleeding in a lonely prison cell – he was not lost to God. Not lost to the God – who in the person of Christ – calls us and reminds us, crazily, never to stop searching for what is lost and precious – whatever the cost.

Because, as we are reminded so strongly in our gospel today, Jesus was not a ‘click and collect’ God of convenience and comfort – Jesus was crazy enough to journey through the wilderness, through the wilderness of this life, himself bloody and beaten in Golgotha, and – abandoned by his friends – to death on the cross. Jesus was crazy enough to do all that to search out you and me, and every precious rainbow child of God.

And that craziness is infectious, my sisters and brothers. It infected Paul. It infected Paul’s disciple who, in all likeliness wrote that reading. It infected Steve Biko, it infected and beloved Archbishop Tutu, and so many crazy Christians down the centuries, who have been for us that good example.

And so, this morning, when Jesus says to us, once more, “Which one of you – which one of you is crazy enough to go and seek out that lost sheep, whom I happen to love very very much?” Let’s make sure we can be that good example for those who come after us, let’s hope that we can raise our hands, and say, “that’s me – I’m that crazy.” Amen.

“Following Jesus might cost nothing less than everything” – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

I imagine that most of us here today have a Bible.

But I don’t mean something we were given at confirmation; or bought in a shop; or found in a hotel bedroom. I mean the kind of patchwork collection of teachings, stories and parables that we carry within us. The parts of the Bible that have been especially significant to us, perhaps what we have chosen to have read at one of those special moments that mark our passage through life. We all have this Bible, and it is unique to each of us.

However, I doubt very much that many of us would include the Gospel reading we have heard this morning today. With all its references to hatred; cross-bearing; life-denial; warfare; renouncing all our possessions. These are tough, perhaps even questionable ‘asks’ for the disciples. Taken in isolation we find a Jesus who is harsh and unreasonably demanding.

There’s a great temptation for Christians to cherish the bits of the Bible we like and shuffle the uncomfortable parts to the margins. To allow our inner collection of teaching to put hard or uncomfortable words into the shade. Alternatively, we reinterpret these passages to lessen their demands – to translate away all that’s uncomfortable.  I’m not sure that’s being altogether faithful. It seems to me that Christians are called to live with the bits of Scripture we find difficult, as well as with those verses from which we take comfort.

One of the things I’ve learned from York Minster’s connection with South Africa, is just how dangerous a partial reading of the Bible can be. The whole theory of apartheid, of racial segregation and inequality, was created in the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University. And it could only happen because many passages of the Bible were muted and ignored. We need, as best as we can, to allow the breadth of the Bible to speak to us, not only the bits that we feel suit our circumstances.

Which brings us back to today’s Gospel.

I wonder whether if in this this passage, Jesus is making it clear just how much discipleship might cost. Yes, it was easy to follow Jesus when he was the talk of the town; when crowds were pressing in wanting to be near him; when miracles sprang up wherever he went; and when religious leaders saw the disciples as gatekeepers to allow access to the popular young Rabbi.

But things change.

Jesus knew that profoundly dark and difficult days lay ahead – when even a faithful disciple like Peter would earnestly deny ever having known the man. All this was to come, not because Jesus was choosing this path, but because it was the inevitable consequence of refusing to compromise with the ways of the world. Jesus is telling the disciples – and telling us – that following him might cost nothing less than everything. And, looking down the centuries of Church history we can see that it does, in each and every generation. In this tough passage of Luke’s Gospel Jesus is asking his followers:

have you understood the cost, and are you prepared to pay the price?

Perhaps what this passage says more than anything, is that Christ knows us. Knows the flimsy stuff of which we are made. Knows that we fail so easily. Knows that we never seem to be prepared for what is to come. As the poet Grahame Davies has put it so beautifully:

‘what is best of us

dissolves like incense in a chancel’

The utterly remarkable thing is that despite all of this, God loves us.

If we took this passage from Luke on its own, as a key text in our personal Bible, it might well be a text to make us despair. The cost Jesus describes is simply so great, beyond anything we can calculate. But the great thing, the truly miraculous thing, is that God is also there, beyond our imagination. So that when things become impossibly difficult, we know that God is still with us – calling us and drawing us.

As one form of invitation to Holy Communion puts it:

‘Come to this table, not because you must but because you may,

not because you are strong, but because you are weak.

Come, not because any goodness of your own gives you a right to come, but because you need mercy and help.’

In the end all that really matters, is that we are invited.

Amen.

“My people have changed their glory for something that does not profit” – The Very Reverend Dominic Barrington, Dean of York

In the middle of next month, Donald Trump will return to this country for an unprecedented second state visit as the guest of the British sovereign. At the banquet that King Charles will hold in the President’s honour, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, will not be present. Writing in the Guardian on Wednesday https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/27/ed-davey-trump-gaza-boycott-state-dinner-king-charles, Sir Ed explained that, while it goes against all his instincts to refuse an invitation from His Majesty,

“I fear we could have a situation where Trump comes to our country, is honoured with a lavish dinner at one of our finest palaces, and no one reminds him that he has the power to stop the horrifying starvation, death and captivities in Gaza. And no one uses this moment to demand that the US president picks up that phone to Netanyahu and the Qataris and does the right thing.”

Or, in the language of the prophet Jeremiah, from whom we have just heard, one might say that Sir Ed feels that the ‘glory’ of a state banquet at a royal castle hosted by the King himself is being used ‘for something that does not profit’. And thus – although it is likely that his absence may not be noticed by the US President – he will absent himself in protest, in the hope that ‘the people in Gaza are not forgotten during the pomp and ceremony’.

While I have utter sympathy with Sir Ed’s views about the awful situation in Gaza, and while I applaud the fact that he explained that he and his wife had ‘thought and prayed long and hard’ about the issue, this morning’s gospel reading forces me to observe that his strategy is a very different strategy to that taken by Jesus – at least the Jesus of whom we read in Luke’s gospel. For Jesus appeared to have no qualms about turning up to dinners hosted by people with whom he disagreed – and not just turning up, but stealing the limelight to seize an opportunity for some quite outspoken teaching.

If you dial back three chapters earlier in Luke, you’ll find Jesus at another meal hosted by a Pharisee. That episode is so shocking – at least to modern middle-class ears – that it is not included in the Church’s three-year lectionary, so the story is rarely heard on a Sunday morning. For, from the word go, this dinner party goes spectacularly wrong, with Jesus firing off insults to both host and guests – culminating in Luke’s rather understated remark that by the end of the meal the others present are feeling ‘very hostile’ towards Jesus.

And so, as the curtain rises for us this morning, a more senior figure – a leader of the Pharisees – is seeing if he can both tame this outrageous figure, and learn more clearly just how scandalous Jesus is. And while the mood around the table does not get as explosive as that in chapter eleven, Jesus is certainly not wasting another good teaching opportunity. And thus he tells what Luke refers to as a parable – but what an odd parable it is.

For parables usually speak to us in crystal clear terms about what Jesus calls the Kingdom. And usually they do so by simple and powerful similes:

Here’s a mustard seed – it’s very small but it becomes very big so that everyone could find shelter and shade – what does that tell us about God’s kingdom?

 Or 

A man got beaten up by bandits, and it took a despised nobody to treat him with compassion and dignity – what does that tell us about God’s kingdom?

 Or

 A loving father goes out of his way to care for both of his dysfunctional and badly – what does that tell us about God’s kingdom?

And so on and so on and so on….

But this morning, here in Luke chapter fourteen, we are told that this simple bit of common sense etiquette advice to help you avoid a socially awkward moment is not just a tip about how to behave in front of your elders or betters… It, too, is a parable.

It could be easy to ignore this, or regard it as a slip of the evangelist’s pen – but that would be a mistake, because Luke does not use language casually. Luke is a profound wordsmith, and if Luke is clear that Jesus intends the remarks we just heard to be understood as a parable, then that is emphatically what it is.

Because, of course, Jesus isn’t merely offering a first century equivalent of a Sunday newspaper advice column on how to avoid a social  faux pas. Yet again, Jesus is doing nothing less than teaching about how things work in God’s kingdom. Jesus is saying that humility and not ostentation is at the heart of the kingdom of God – something which, manifestly, he does not see exhibited by his fellow dinner guests.

And then this conversation-cum-parable turns, pointedly, to the host – to this senior religious figure. And to the face of this influential religious leader, Jesus makes clear how he believes people are called to live out the demands of generosity, of grace, and of love.

Just over ten years ago, in Cleveland, Ohio, ten Republican hopefuls who aspired to receive that party’s nomination to run for President, took part in the first televised debate of the primary campaign. Alongside Donald Trump were a number of well-established politicians, and – as you may recall – at that point Mr Trump was considered to be an outside candidate whose campaign was bound to fail alongside the political heavy-weights running against him.

During the debate https://rollcall.com/factbase/transcript/donald-trump-first-gop-debate-august-6-2015/, Trump was accused of having financially supported  – horror of horrors – liberal policies. Specifically, of liberal policies pursued by Hillary Clinton. Trump’s reply was fascinating:

“I gave to many people… I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me…

…with Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She didn’t have a choice because I gave.”  [My emphasis]

So – if you should find yourself invited to dinner at the White House or at Mar a Lago – understand you are there for a purpose that is utterly transactional and reciprocal – you are there to be part of a quid pro quo. Which is – of course – as even the principled Sir Ed Davey admits, the reason that President Trump will be visiting this country next month: “I argued last January that we should use the offer of a state visit – something Trump so desperately craves – as leverage to persuade him to do the right thing.”

And, lest anyone think I am painting Mr Trump in an unfair or bad light, let me add that – having explained to his Republican rivals exactly why he sometimes supported ‘liberal policies’ and just what he gained by doing so – he said, with simple and perfect clarity: “that’s a broken system” – and, about that, I think he is totally correct.

Sir Ed Davey and President Trump are not the only people whose positions on Gaza have been in the news this week, however. On Tuesday the two most senior church leaders in the Holy Land – the Latin and Greek Patriarchs of Jerusalem – issued a joint statement about the worsening situation in Gaza City https://www.lpj.org/en/news/statement-by-the-latin-patriarchate-of-jerusalem, which is where the miniscule Christian community in the Gaza Strip is to be found – and, since the war began, to be found sheltering in the church compounds of their respective churches in that city.

As you will be aware, Israel has announced that it intends fully to occupy Gaza City, and is demanding its entire population of hundreds of thousands relocate to the south of the Strip – which, to offer context, is pretty much the equivalent of ordering the populations of Leeds or of San Francisco to up sticks and move.

In response to this, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch, explained that for many of the sick, weak and elderly sheltering in the church compounds, an enforced flight to the south would, quite simply, ‘be nothing less than a death sentence’…. and for that reason, his clergy and nuns would ignore the demands of the Israeli military, and stay put to feed and care for their flock. To offer what one English theologian called ‘the interruptive hospitality that says no to force’…. to host meals in which there is no leverage – no quid pro quo, but, quite simply, to offer the grace and love of Christ.

Jesus offers this parable-cum-lecture to the leader of the Pharisees, because he recognises that this man is a man of substance and influence; he is man who has capacity – a capacity with which, if he so chose, he could feed the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. He could host a meal motivated not by the quid pro quo mentality of reciprocity, but the pro bono motivation of grace and love. But – to Jesus’ dismay – that has not been his choice. It is not how he wishes to use either his influence or his resources.

In a few minutes time, you and I will gather to be fed at the ultimate pro bono meal. The meal where the ever disruptive figure of Christ is present not as guest but as host, offering, out of grace and love nothing less than his own self, in a body broken on the Cross, and in blood spilled for the world’s salvation.

As we feast on this uniquely holy and transformative food, it is incumbent on us to ensure that we do not change the glory which it confers on us into something that, as Jeremiah so forcefully put it, ‘does not profit’.

And as Christ sends us onwards, out of the doors of this great cathedral, into a world in which there is so much suffering, need and deprivation, I pray that, as members of Christ’s own body, we will use our capacity to share God’s love without stooping to the self-interest of that ‘broken system’ that ultimately will profit nobody – least of all ourselves.

Amen.

“Companionship Learning – being a disciple of Christ today” – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

We hear a lot in the Church of England about discipleship. The idea of being a disciple, following Christ today, is seen as the key to transforming the church. We are told that it will energise mission and halt the decline seen in so many congregations. As the Archbishop of York wrote in 2020:

“God calls every one of us to be a missionary disciple”.

So, it makes sense for us to learn from Scripture what mattered about discipleship in the days when Jesus called the first disciples.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has spent a lot of time thinking about those first disciples. As he has said, it’s a very different concept from our understanding of learning today.

Being a disciple wasn’t about turning up now and then to hear a teacher or attend a class. As Williams goes on to say:

 “in the ancient world… To be the student of a teacher was to commit yourself to living in the same atmosphere and breathing the same air; there was nothing intermittent about it”.

Discipleship in that sense is a state of being in which you’re looking and listening without interruption. This kind of discipleship still happens in some religions today. In Islam, for example, the seniority of a scholar can depend on who they spent time accompanying. This is especially the case in the Sufi tradition. More than going to classes or hearing a sermon, becoming a disciple involves time spent with the teacher.

I imagine that for any teacher here this afternoon, that might sound a horrifying thought! Apart from the safeguarding concerns, which of us would like a student to be with us 24/7, observing all our failings and frustrations? The times when we relax and the times when don’t live up to being our best selves. I can imagine that the teaching unions would have something to say about it as well.

But for Jesus, and figures such as John the Baptist, having disciples was the way to imprint teaching into the character of the follower.

It was important to see Jesus when he was angry; when he wept; and when he was exhausted. The Gospels aren’t a transcript of someone’s class; they are the eye-witness testimonies of people who were there all the time. Through thick and thin, all the way to the cross – and beyond.

When we think about a disciple, like Bartholomew, we are contemplating this kind of learning and transformation. Not a toe-in-the-water, but three years spent breathing the same air as Jesus. It must have been an intense and roller-coaster kind of experience. From being the valued gatekeepers who controlled access to Jesus, to sitting by a courtyard fire and denying having ever known him. This isn’t about sitting at the back of the class hoping no one will notice.

It isn’t asking AI to tell us what to think. This is visiting the body of your beloved and executed teacher and discovering something utterly beyond your imagination. It’s also promising never to desert the Son of Man and finding out that you’ve made a promise you can’t keep.

It’s humanity and divinity; amazing joy and profound despair.

And within all of this, what we might call companionship-learning, there are dazzling moments when we know that the full lesson has been learned:

When beyond anyone’s expectation someone suddenly sees what it’s all about. It’s Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, declaring: ‘Yes, Lord… I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God’. And this is what we’re called to do – and to be.

Today Christians do this in prayer, in worship and by being alert to God in daily life. Like Bartholomew and the other eleven disciples, we’re called to spend time with Jesus. To watch; to listen; to be alert for when God’s presence breaks into our lives.

Before I came to York Minster in 2019 some research had been done about people’s experiences when they visited this amazing building.

Over 80% said that they had experienced something spiritual while being in this space. And churches are places that can offer the atmosphere of being with Jesus. The thin places where space and artistry, music and light draw us into the company of Christ.

Being a disciple of Jesus isn’t cosy. It’s not a warm bath of affirmation and joy. It’s tough. But it’s also life-changing; transformative; and fulfilling. It led to disciples travelling all over the world to share the Good News, and to create more disciples in their wake.

In the Gospels we are invited to share in the intimacy of their time with Jesus and, through their words, to know the character and spirit of Jesus present with us. It is in this discipleship that we are changed – and it is within this discipleship that we are called to change the world in which we live.

Amen.