“Dinner party etiquette and the upside down kingdom” – Canon Peter Collier, Cathedral Reader

1 Samuel 24.1-17; Luke 14.12-24

Before I retired, my job meant that I was from time to time invited to formal dinner parties with High Sheriffs and the like. I soon learned that there was an etiquette involved – mode of dress, times of arrival and departure, conversation at the table, both whom you spoke to and about what, and then in some cases at the end of the meal the ladies withdrawing.

And so it would have been in Jesus’ day. There would have been a dinner party etiquette, though I am sure it would have been very different from today’s version.

In our New Testament lesson, Jesus spoke about a great dinner party. We don’t know what the RSVP system was in those days and whether those who had originally been invited had previously indicated that they would come; but as the time approached and no one had turned up, the host was anxious and troubled, and sent his slave to remind them it was time to show up. And they all made excuses.

They were quite extraordinary excuses really – I have bought a piece of land; I have bought five yoke of oxen; I have just got married. You would have thought if you were investing expensive capital in your farm, you would have looked at the land and tested the animals before agreeing to purchase them. And if you had looked at them, then as an excuse it falls away very quickly. As for the newly married, Deuteronomy 24:5 gave them a twelve-month exemption from war and other public duties, but that was all.

It is of course only a parable, a story, and so we mustn’t stretch it too far. But the principle is that those who might have been expected to be invited and in fact were invited to God’s feast had said “no”, and so God invited all the most unexpected guests, and they gladly came to this upside-down party.

Jesus had been travelling around Galilee calling people to come and be part of God’s Kingdom and most of those who you would expect to be first on the list, such as the religious leaders of the time, said they wanted nothing to do with it.  But those who were religious or social nobodies responded gladly and said “sign me up”. The ordinary people – fisherman and the like; the despised people – tax collectors and sex workers; the excluded people – the diseased and disabled; it is they who gladly accepted the invitation to come and feast at the table spread by Jesus.

And for Luke there is an even wider meaning. Luke is very focussed on the good news being available to a much wider group than God’s original chosen people. And to the extent that many of them chose not to accept the invitation it was now offered to the whole world; to every tribe and nation.

And of course, if you join that sort of party, you quickly get its message, and it rapidly comes full circle. Jesus is saying to all those who have come in – you have joined the upside-down club and that will now affect your lives and how you live them.

And that continues today. God is in the turning things upside down business. God always has been and always will be.

When I say always has been – let’ s go back to our OT lesson. King Saul was hunting down David as he believed he was a threat to him. And there was no doubt that he was hunting him down to kill him. Saul had 3000 men with him as he searched the wilderness where he believed David was hiding. There came a point when Saul needed to go to the loo. He spotted a cave and went in. Right at the back of the cave David was hiding with his much smaller band of men. When they saw Saul, his men encouraged David to go and kill him, but he refused. He did creep up on him and cut a snippet off his cloak. But more than that he refused to do.

I guess it is probably no surprise to us as David was trying to keep God’s commandments and live so as to please God. But it was counter intuitive to the society of his time. People naturally look for vengeance.

And we are seeing a lot of that today. When something bad happens then there are calls for vengeance. You will recall the demands a couple of weeks ago for a response of rage to the killing of Henry Nowak. Calls for pure rage, cold rage, white rage, righteous rage – but all looking for rage to dictate how we should respond.

Sometimes it is even dressed up in pseudo Christian language. You may recall some weeks ago the US Secretary of War quoted what he thought was the prophet Ezekiel, though the words he used were the adaptation of Ezekiel by Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction, as he called for vengeance against Iran. Putin even uses religious language to justify his attacks on Ukraine. And as we have just reminded ourselves, we hear it in our own country with calls to respond in rage when an innocent person is killed, particularly if it is done by someone who is of a different race or colour to us.

It should be no surprise to us, that those who follow Jesus Christ are called to live differently, and so often to behave in a counter intuitive way as we demonstrate God’s true values. When we do so it can have a similar impact on people as David’s behaviour did on Saul. Deep down Saul knew he was wrong and that David was right and when David confronted Saul and told him what he had not done, we read that Saul wept.

But Jesus is going even further when he says that when we act rightly and do good, we should not be looking for favours in return.

Certainly, Jesus said in the sermon on the mount “Do to others what you would want them to do to you” (Matt 7:12). But that is not the same thing as doing something to others in order that they will reward you in the same way.

How would you like to be treated?  Well, that’s how you should treat other people. But you don’t treat them in particular ways so that they will treat you in the same way. We know that the path Jesus followed of doing good to all manner of people led to him being rejected and eventually killed. So you don’t do it for that reason, you do it because it is how we are called to live as followers of Jesus Christ.

Coming back to where we started, which was with the dinner invitation to the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame, who were invited when the healthy and the wealthy declined to come having, as they thought, better things to do.

As many of you will know this last Thursday the Archbishop came to Evensong and blessed the new ramp which gives entry into this quire. And that ramp is a symbol of what we are trying to be as a part of Christ’s church – a place that is open to all. A place of welcome and accessibility for those who would have thought “this is not somewhere for me to go as I can’t get in physically”. Let alone, all those who feel excluded for reasons to do with who they are or how they live; to do with their disability, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, mental health, or poverty. Here at York Minster, we extend an open and unconditional welcome to all people to come and join with us as we feast at his table. And it is round his table that we learn what it means to live upside down lives.

Amen.

“I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep…says the Lord God” – The Very Reverend Dominic Barrington, Dean of York

This morning, Canon Maggie fascinated our 11am congregation with a mini-biography of St Nicholas of Flüe – the patron saint of Switzerland who fathered ten children before deciding God was calling him to a life of quiet contemplation as a hermit. She made the utterly valid point that the patron saint of Switzerland was as obscure outside his territory, as York’s own patron William – resting in peace directly beneath us right now – is outside this noble city of York.

With a laugh, and with raised eyebrows, I think it fair to say that the worshippers this morning were not entirely convinced that bailing on your responsibilities as a husband and father of ten, to seek out a life of quiet prayer was really an appropriate response to the call of God in his life. But then, the life of this city’s equally obscure patron saint is also, it must be said, not an entirely convincing story of inner sanctity.

York’s own expert on William, Professor Christopher Norton, notes his subject’s obscurity in the opening words of a masterful study of the saint, published some twenty years ago – acknowledging that such fame as he has come to possess derives almost entirely from an extended dispute about the archbishopric, which, as he explains, ‘developed from being a little local difficulty into an international cause célèbre involving kings, cardinals, popes and several men who were subsequently to be reckoned as saints, all divided between… different factions’.

When you add to this background a fairly pervasive modern view of William as being ‘wealthy, indolent and immoral’ (to quote Professor Norton again), you might well be wondering what on earth all the fuss was ever about. You might well wonder how on earth it could be the case that such a figure could ever be declared to be a ‘saint’ at all.

It is certainly enough to make you scratch your head when you remember that William’s remains lie in the heart of a cathedral dedicated to no less a saint than Peter – the ‘prince of apostles’, and one of Jesus’ closest friends and followers.

It is certainly enough to make you scratch your head when, on this, William’s feast day, the spotlight of one of our two readings falls on that equally famous saint Paul, pictured this afternoon having that tearful farewell with the elders of the church he founded in Ephesus.

At least, it makes you scratch your head that William Fitzherbert, this controversial twice-Archbishop of York should be counted a saint when stood alongside the likes of Peter and Paul, until you start looking at these two pillars of God’s church a little more thoroughly.

After all, the patron saint of this great cathedral is the man whom Jesus once addressed as Satan, the man who was constantly blundering awkwardly into situations and getting them wrong, and the man whom Jesus accurately predicted would deny him not once but three times.

And Saul-turned-Paul doesn’t necessarily come off any better. It is clear from the pages of the New Testament that he was an incredibly divisive figure: he was, let us not forget, someone who took pleasure in watching an innocent man being stoned to death and ‘approved’ of it… he was someone who had had a blazing row with Peter about the nature of Christianity … he was someone whose letters verged on the intemperate, with angry remarks about wishing his opponents would castrate themselves.

And once you start scratching your head about the reality of the lives of those we call saints – be they characters from the very pages of the Bible, or obscure medieval churchmen, you begin to realise that God seems to choose some remarkably poor material to work with… from Peter and Paul with all their vivid and visible faults, through William, through Nicholas Flüe, and down to today.

At least – that’s what I realise when I look in the mirror. For when I look in the mirror, I recognize that, like the saint we commemorate today, I’m not universally popular. I recognize that I can make remarks that sound angry and intemperate. I recognize that there most certainly are times when I, too, have betrayed and denied the Christ whom I claim to follow. And it might just possibly be the case that I’m not the only person gathered this evening in York Minster of whom this is true.

But – curiously – it is not all bad news, despite this rather compromised material which for some reason God seems to use in the mission and ministry of God’s church… It’s not all bad news, as some of our youngest church members were discovering this morning. For, while Canon Maggie was opening our eyes to the curious and obscure life of St Nicholas Flüe, around the corner in the Chapter House, something remarkable was happening…

For in our Sunday School, fifteen new archbishops were created this morning. William Fitzherbert found himself being remembered by fifteen small children, each holding hand-made mini-mitres, and each being affirmed in their own call to follow Christ and let their light shine out.

And recalling not a grand old duke, but a complex and sometimes combative archbishop, I am told they sang those well-known words that reminded them – and us – that when we are up, we are up… and when we are down, we are down… and like most of us, a lot of the time in our stumbling and sometimes mediocre lives, in truth, we will be neither up nor down. But God calls us, and God takes us and God finds us and enfolds us into God’s mission to God’s world, with whatever we manage to bring to the communal table of the church’s ministry.

For, as the famous Alabama lawyer Bryan Stevenson has stated so powerfully, ‘Each of us is more that the worst thing we’ve ever done’. And that profound truth reminds us that each of us can play a part in God’s mission. That was true for William of York, whom we remember today, and the Good News is that it is equally true for you and me – for God has a purpose and a use – God has a vocation for each one of us in the ministry and mission of the Church.

Because we deceive ourselves and we misread history and theology if we think that the mission and ministry which William Fitzherbert, Archbishop of York 1143-1147 and 1153-1154 exercised was his mission and ministry. Thank God… it was not. That would not have been Good News. That, I am certain, would not have worked well at all.

But the truth is, as Ezekiel, who found himself surrounded by way too many ‘false shepherds’ remind us – the truth is that ultimately, there is really only one shepherd. But even if at his worst William was, indeed, ‘wealthy, indolent and immoral’, at his best he was a beloved child of God who tried to align himself to the real Good Shepherd – and we know that there were times that he certainly succeeded, so great were the crowds who welcomed him back to York in December 1153, as he uniquely assumed the Archbishopric that second, short-lived time.

And that is our reminder that mission and ministry come from above, and we are all called merely to be the ‘support act’ to the unstoppable Good Shepherd who call us all to follow, and to lend a hand. And we need no mitres, no legacy in stained glass, and no professorial biographies to join in this mission and ministry – just a brief glimpse of that fact that, as the writer of the hymn we are about to sing put it so succinctly, ‘the way of self-giving, Lord, leads us to you’.

Amen.

The Feast of William of York: Saints, Cities, and the Common Good – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

Down the centuries, saints haven’t always aged well. A few years ago, I was at a conference near Zurich when the organiser took us to what had been the home of one of his favourite saints. Nicholas of Flüe. Well done if you have heard of him – I hadn’t – but he’s actually the Patron Saint of Switzerland. As we were told the story of his life, a few of us began to feel somewhat conflicted about just how saintly he was. As a soldier fighting for the canton of Zurich, it is said that he fought with a sword in one hand a rosary in the other. In the year 1467 he had a vision and decided that God was calling him to devote his life to contemplation. A minor detail in the story is that this involved him leaving his wife and TEN children. (Today that might be called parental desertion, but apparently it all seemed very reasonable at the time).

I imagine that in Switzerland, about as many people have heard of St William of York, as those who’ve heard of Nicholas of Flüe in England. These are not in the stellar lineup of first division international saints, such as a George, Mary or Francis. Instead, they are part of that company of saints often only known in their town or city, and very little beyond those places. According to Ai (which never makes things up) there are more than 10,000 saints recognised in the Christian Church. Perhaps a lot more. Do we really need all these figures, sometimes impressive, sometimes doubtful, littering the liturgical calendar? Well, yes, I think we do.

Part of the reason there are so many is that like William, these holy figures are anchored to particular places. Often their inspiration and sanctity grew after their death, among the people who knew them and loved them. This year, the 800^th anniversary of the Canonization of William, we celebrate his association with the city of York and its people. William was a cleric who rose to be the most important priest in the Diocese – Archbishop of York.

It’s perhaps hard for us to imagine what York would have been like in the year 1226, when he was made a saint. As a building, even though it would not have looked as it does today, the Minster dominated the city. Eight hundred years ago the South Transept was being built and was covered in scaffolding – so not much change there then! The great Rose Window was just beginning to be constructed. More significantly, the things going on in the Minster would have been familiar to us. Candles lit; divine services going on; a choir singing; and pilgrims arriving and leaving.

We know that there are many different aspects a to William’s legacy, leading him to have spiritual significance as someone who waited patiently for his calling to be fulfilled. He was instrumental in both physical and spiritual healing, and who became a patron saint of craftspeople. A fitting association for someone who was made a saint at a time when the Minster-was undergoing transformation and relied on a small army of highly skilled workers. In all sorts of ways, the legacy of William lives on in York.

One of his most notable miracles took place when the Ouse Bridge collapsed due to the weight of a large crowd coming to meet William. Despite many falling into the river, no one died. A fact attributed to the prayers of William. In memory of this event a chapel was constructed at one end of the bridge, and this emphasised William’s role as a bridge between this life and the next – between conflict and peace. Perhaps today, that image of William praying on the remains of the bridge is a good one to inspire our faith.

In our time it feels like many bridges are under pressure – both between neighbours and between communities. In places, all the patient work of pursuing the common good appears likely to fall under the pressure of division. Like William, our prayers and deeds need to ensure that innocent people don’t lose their lives when that pressure leads to collapse.

As we reflect on William’s legacy, let us remember that the work of building bridges – between generations, communities, and faiths – is never finished. The story of the Ouse Bridge reminds us that, even when structures fail, the bonds of compassion and prayer can hold firm. In a world where division often threatens to overwhelm unity, we are called not only to repair what is broken, but to become living bridges ourselves: steadfast, patient, and courageous.

Let us honour William not simply as a figure from history, but as a guide for our own journey. May his example inspire us to reach across divides, to lift up those who stumble, and to stand firm in hope when the weight of the world presses hardest. For it is in these moments – when we choose to build rather than break, to unite rather than separate – that we truly embody the spirit of the saints and ensure that nothing precious is lost in the meeting.

Amen.

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.”

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

A few weeks ago, I was undertaking the daily ritual of making the day’s first cup of tea, a sacred ritual upon which the success of the rest of the day depends. I carefully filled the kettle, set it firmly on its base, pressed down the switch, and waited. And waited. And waited.

There is a particular kind of impatience reserved for kettles, especially when one is preparing that first cup of tea. It may be disproportionate, even irrational, and yet somehow it feels entirely justified. I pressed the switch again, checked the lid, lifted it off and put it back down, as though the kettle might respond to encouragement.

By this point, I had moved from mild inconvenience to quiet irritation. The kettle, it seemed, had simply stopped working. I would have to forego my early morning cup of tea, the rest of my day hanging on a thread. And then I noticed the plug. It was not in the socket.

Nothing was wrong with the kettle. It was not broken. It had not failed. It was simply not connected to the very thing that would allow it to do what it was made to do.

A small and trivial moment, but a gift as a sermon anecdote. For we far too often rush to diagnose failure. We assume that something is broken. We worry that life is not working as it should. But sometimes the deeper problem is not failure, it is disconnection. Rather than something being broken; we are simply not connected to the source that gives us life.

And that takes us to the heart of the Ascension.

The Ascension is not Jesus leaving the world behind. It is the moment when the risen Christ carries our wounded humanity into the very life of God. The crucified and risen one does not set aside the wounds of love. He ascends with our humanity, so that, through him, earth and heaven are joined.

And Jesus does not simply pray that we may be helped by God, instructed by God, or protected by God, though all those things matter. He prays that we may be drawn into a deeper connection, into the communion of God’s own life. He prays that the love shared between the Father and the Son may be the place where we connect. “…so that they may be one as we are one.”

This is not a transactional offering. This is an invitation to participate. This is not God assisting us from a safe distance. This is God drawing us into himself.

This matters, because so much of our life, and therefore so much of our imagination, is shaped by transaction. We are taught to believe that flourishing comes from achievement, from productivity, success, and self-sufficiency. I perform, in order to be valued. I succeed, in order to matter. I give, in order to receive.

And if we are not careful, we bring that same logic into faith. We imagine that if we pray hard enough, believe strongly enough, behave well enough, or worship faithfully enough, then God will reward us with the life we want. Prayer becomes a mechanism. Worship becomes a bargaining tool. God becomes the one who blesses our plans.

But that is not the Good News of Jesus Christ. God is not offering us a transaction. God is offering us communion. Human flourishing is not found by bargaining with God or impressing God. It is found by being connected to God, the source of life itself.

That is also the lesson the disciples have to learn. In Acts, they ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” It is a very human question. They want to know what happens next. They want a timetable. They want the plan, the map, and the strategy.

We understand that longing. We want to know how and when things will change, how and when peace will come, how and when pain will ease, how and when the Church will be renewed.

But Jesus does not give them, or us, a timetable. He offers them a promise: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.”

They ask for information. Jesus promises connection. They ask for certainty. Jesus promises the Spirit. They ask to know the plan. Jesus draws them into the life and work of God.

And then he is lifted from their sight.

No wonder the disciples are left staring upwards. But the angelic question presses them onward: “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

It is not a rebuke of worship. It is a summons to vocation. The disciples are not being told that heaven does not matter. They are being told that heaven has now claimed earth. They are not being told that Christ is absent. They are being prepared to discover his presence in a new way: through the Spirit, in the gathered community, in prayer, in witness, in the breaking of bread, and in the costly work of love.

And the life they seek will not be found by staring upwards as though God were elsewhere. It will be found by connecting to the life of God and then living from that connection in the world God loves.

That is why the Eucharist stands at the heart of our life together, for we do not come to the altar to negotiate with God. We do not come to purchase grace with our goodness. We do not come because we have understood everything or made ourselves worthy. We come with empty hands. We come to receive.

The Eucharist is the antithesis of religious transaction. It is communion. It is the life of the risen and ascended Christ given to his people. Here heaven and earth connect. Here Christ is not less present because he is ascended, but more deeply present: before us, among us, within us.

We are presently in that strange and holy liminal space between Ascension and Pentecost, where the Church finds itself between what has been revealed and what is still to be received; between knowing where the source of life comes from and learning how to live from that source.

And perhaps that is where many of us find ourselves too. We know enough to recognise that something is wrong. We know the barrenness of living transactionally, as though love, faith, service, and even prayer were things we use in order to get something back. We know that a life built only on productivity, control, and achievement cannot finally sustain the weight of the human soul.

But the Ascension reveals how we are to respond. It shows us that the life we seek is not generated by frantic effort, nor secured by looking upwards towards a distant heaven, but received through our connecting with the risen and ascended Lord.

Yet that does not leave us passive observers. The kettle may have needed power, but someone still had to notice the disconnection, put the plug into the socket, and press down the switch. Grace is gift, but it calls forth response. Communion is offered, but we must allow ourselves to be drawn in. The Spirit is promised, but the disciples still have to return, gather, wait, and pray.

So our question this morning is not simply, “What is broken?” Nor even, “Where is God?” The question is: are we connected? Are we connected to the source of life? Will we stop pressing harder on mechanisms that cannot save us, and instead open ourselves to the life Christ has promised?

For when we are connected to that promise, when we are plugged into the grace already given, when we have pressed the switch not in anxious striving but in faithful response, we discover that we are not merely repaired, improved, or made more effective. We are connected into the life of the risen and ascended Christ, held within the communion of God’s own love, and sent in the power of the Spirit to bear witness to this astonishing truth: heaven has claimed earth, grace has broken open the world, and all things are being made new.

Amen.

“Another Paraclete” – Canon Peter Collier, Cathedral Reader

Acts 17: 22-31; John 14: 15-21

Our gospel reading today was from John’s gospel, as it was last week. John’s gospel is so full of memorable sayings of Jesus. But if I was to ask you to pick out three passages from John’s gospel that summarise the good news we have through Jesus, I wonder which ones you would choose.

For me there is no doubt about it.

God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son.

And so the Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son.

But when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Those three verses seem to me to encapsulate the good news that we have in Jesus Christ.

And the thread running through them is the golden thread of God’s love – God’s love for his Son and God’s love for us; and the Son’s love for his Father and also for us.

And that is the very heart of what we are about as we come together as part of God’s worldwide church this morning. We are here because in some way and to some extent we have been captivated by the unconditional love of God, who has accepted us into his kingdom just as we are. With all our blemishes and failings, let alone the hurts and harms we have done to others, he accepts us into his family. And he assures us that nothing can separate us from that love, which will go on for ever and ever, world without end. And having been found by that kind of love, we now live together in the context of that love.

Just as God is three persons who from before eternity have been involved in a dance of love, so we are now called to enjoy and to join in their love. And when that happens our lives are changed and cannot be the same as they were before.

In his farewell discourse, which our gospel reading is taken from, Jesus links living in that love with obeying his commandment. And what is that commandment?  Well, he has just told them – it is that they are to love one another.

Jesus has spent three years with this group of followers – the 12 disciples, along with many others who followed him closely. In that time, he had explained to them in many ways how God’s kingdom is different from the kingdoms of the world around them – both the religious and the political kingdoms – it is about service not power. He not only spoke about God’s love for all manner of people, but he himself regularly interacted with those who were marginalised, or excluded – Gentiles, women, lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes, and we could go on.

Of course, this was not new. There was much in their scriptures about God caring for the widows, the orphans and the refugees. But as with most societies, then as now, it is power that rules, and those in power who set the rules.

Now, knowing that very soon he will be taken and crucified, that he will rise again, and shortly thereafter return to the Father, he wants his disciples to understand how they are to go on without his physical presence among them.

And so, he focuses on showing and explaining to them how they are to live. In the previous chapter (chapter 13) we read how he took a towel and a basin and washed the feet of the twelve. And then he told them that that was what they were to do also. He then said that he was going to lay his life down for them, and he was giving them a new commandment to love one another, in just the same way as he had loved them.

So, with the washing of feet and the laying down of life, he had shown love, and now they too were to live in and to show that love.

But how were they to do it without him? We know how often they had got things wrong and needed correction, so what would happen when he was not there to lead and to correct?

What he promised in the passage that have just read was that he would not leave them as orphans. An orphan is someone without parents, without support, without guidance, alone in the world. Jesus said he was not going to leave them like that, but he would ask the Father to give them another paraclete, who would be with them for ever.

Some of you will know of the community of religious sisters based at Whitby. Their order is known as the Order of the Holy Paraclete, not to be confused as is sometime said “the holy parakeet”. The literal translation of paraclete is “one called alongside”.

Our NRSV translates the word paraclete as advocate. Other versions historically and now use the word counsellor, or helper, or comforter, using the word comfort in its older sense of strengthening rather than soothing. But they all have in common someone who comes alongside another to help them.

By “another” paraclete, Jesus means “another like me”. “Another” one who will do what I have been doing.

Jesus came alongside us so that we might see and get to know the otherwise invisible God. The one whom Paul had described in Athens as “the unknown god”. Jesus taught his disciples the truth; He showed them how to live; He corrected them when they were going wrong. That was what happened when the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.

And that is what another paraclete will now do.

I personally like the word advocate, which many of you won’t find surprising as you know that I was for many years a barrister. And I was very fortunate in that for a long time I worked regularly here in York at the Crown Court. Things were done very differently in the 1980s. So, a typical day would begin by having a full English breakfast with colleagues in Fenwicks. Then we would go across to the Court, robe up and more often than not I would go down into the cells to meet my lay client. There I would literally get alongside them, sitting down on the cell bench next to them and listening to them as they told me their story. It was then my job to speak for them.  I was their advocate. But I could only fulfil that role by really getting alongside, listening, understanding and then interpreting them.

Jesus tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit is already alongside them, but he says something more is going to happen – the Spirit is going to live within them, to indwell them. There is a great deal in chapters 14 and 15 about the Father, the Son, the Spirit and us, and talk of who lives in whom, which I find far from easy to follow and grasp. But for me the bottom line is that it is all about the love of God which has found us and within which we now live.

And that Spirit is with each of us day by day in the same way that Jesus was with his disciples, to demonstrate, to teach, to train, and to correct. We now have the Spirit doing all that. Putting a finger on what needs to change, enabling us to produce good fruit, strengthening us to speak and live to God’s glory – that is what the Spirit does. Do you want to see the Spirit at work in your life? Then look inside – that’s where you will find God’s Spirit at work. Any sense you have of what God is saying and doing is simply the promised paraclete doing his job.

And the marker of authenticity we look for is anything and everything to do with love.

One of the sisters of the OHP – the late sister Marion Eva – used to say that when we are called to give an account of ourselves on the last day the question will not be “How much did you do for the kingdom?” But “how have you loved?”

Amen.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

May I speak in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity, One God in three persons.

From our first reading from Acts Stephen said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ But they covered their ears… 

Perhaps we all have the experience of seeing a child, not wanting to hear something being said, covering their ears and making a stream of sound out of their mouth. Perhaps, if we’re honest, we were once that child and sometimes we might be tempted to behave in the same way today. To act like that when we’re being told things we don’t want to hear, whether of a personal nature or simply about the craziness of the world in which we live. Yet maybe the world is the way that it is partly because we’ve stopped listening to people we don’t like, don’t agree with, don’t feel at ease with?  

Last week I spent a little time seven miles away from a country where women are not only denied education but virtually eradicated from public life.  A country where there are arbitrary detentions, torture, and where critics are silenced. I wasn’t passing by on the other side, but at altitude – complete with drinks and complimentary snacks – above Afghanistan.  

Flightpaths across the world have been altered by events in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. Watching the inflight tracker, Tehran appeared to the south as we crossed the Caspian Sea – then Ukraine and Russia to the north as we flew across the Black Sea. It reminded me of the narrow corridors of privilege that cross our world and ensure that we comfortably bypass the realty of contexts very different from our own. But this isn’t simply a passive inconvenience. The increased flights over Afghanistan are now contributing to an estimated seventy million dollars of annual income for the Taliban regime.  

There is a lot of truth in the saying that ‘ignorance is bliss’. However, I think faith and theology push us to ask deeper questions and work towards an accurate understanding of how our lives are connected to the lives of people who aren’t simply travelling with us along narrow corridors of privilege. You might know the acronym PLU’S, which stands for ‘people like us’. It’s been around a long time and describes the fine line we draw between the kind of people we recognise as similar to ourselves, and the rest. As the author Rudyard Kipling observed: “All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they“.  

It seems to me that a defining feature of the Gospels is that Jesus flatly refuses to make this kind of distinction. Time and again we hear it in the Gospels as Jesus resolutely refuses to stick his kind of people and instead demonstrates a determination to be with and for all people. Let’s just look at a few examples. 

Jesus shouldn’t have been speaking with a Samaritan woman – alone.  

He shouldn’t have responded to the urgent petition of a Roman military officer.  

What’s he doing having dinner with tax collectors?   

Surely that woman, bleeding, should have been disciplined for touching his cloak – not met, and blessed and healed?  

What on earth did Jesus think he was up to, listening to a Syrophoenician woman banging on about her sick daughter?  

Even on the cross, he gives the time of day to a criminal seeking salvation.  

And this isn’t to mention the lepers, the mad and the unclean.  

Surely, he should have been focused on saving the right kind of people? People like us? 

What did Jesus think he was doing? 

On long flights I love my noise-cancelling headphones. The sounds around me disappear and I’m happily cocooned in my own little world. My ears are covered and I don’t need to see or listen to anything too upsetting. I think we all have invisible equivalents to those headphones. The gentle pull to be with those who echo the same views we share and value. To avoid too much troublesome noise disturbing our imagination even our faith. But there’s a problem with that.  

Jesus says: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”. Not his teaching but his person – the whole life, death and resurrection is the ‘I am’ who we have invited to step into our lives. This ‘I am’ spends time with a lot of the wrong sort of people. Perhaps, not people like us. And if we live out our call to be disciples, then we should also find ourselves in uncomfortable places, with people who aren’t like us, living and learning what it means to grow into the likeliness of Christ. 

Amen.

“Life to the Full: Gathered by the Shepherd” – The Reverend Eleanor Launders-Brown, Succentor

Acts 2.42-47; John 10.1-10

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

In our Gospel reading, Jesus speaks a promise that stands at the heart of our faith, and as we hold this promise alongside the account of the first Christian community in Acts, we are given both an invitation and a pattern.

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Not life merely prolonged, nor life narrowed by fear or scarcity, but life opened up — restored, deepened, shared — life lived in communion with God.

As we hold this promise alongside the account of the first Christian community in Acts, we are given both invitation and pattern. John’s Gospel reveals to us who Christ is: the Good Shepherd, the Gate of life. Acts shows us how that life is received and sustained among God’s people.

Jesus speaks of sheep gathered into a single enclosure, listening for the voice they recognise. The Shepherd is known not by force, but by faithfulness, not by coercion, but by care.

Jesus says “I am the gate” putting himself as the place of entry, the point of gathering, the source of life. To enter through him is not merely to agree to an idea, but to belong — to be drawn into the life he shares with the Father.

The abundant life Jesus promises is revealed in Acts as a Eucharistic life — a life gathered around Christ’s self‑giving. A life devoted to the apostles’ teaching. A life of fellowship, a life offered in the breaking of bread and in prayers.

The Venerable Bede describes this life as being “Joined together into one body by the bond of charity, as living stones built into a spiritual house.” For Bede, the unity of the Church is not enforced, it is formed, formed by the love we receive from Christ and share with one another. The Church is built where people remain close enough for love to bind them together.

Many of you are aware that I am a Beekeeper. It is often imagined as a calm, gentle pursuit. On the most part, it is, but sometimes a hive can be a little spikey, thousands of bees can surround you, and if one ever manages to get inside my suit, I can tell you – I can run faster than Usain Bolt!

A hive, when opened up is full of sound – thousands of bees working together. And one thing becomes very clear very quickly: You cannot understand a hive by watching a single bee. Taken on its own, a bee may look busy, even impressive, but it cannot survive for long in isolation.

A hive teaches that life, warmth, and fruitfulness emerge only together. The sweetness comes not from control, but from a shared life well-tended. This example describes an image of the Church as it should be – not a collection of individuals, but a living body, held together, warmed by closeness, sustained through seasons of difficulty through that togetherness.

In the Eucharist, we are drawn back to the centre of that shared life.

Here, Christ gathers us. Here, he feeds us with his own life. Here we are returned again to the warmth of communion – both with God and with one another. When we receive the Body of Christ, we are being shaped into what we receive. At the table, solitary faith becomes shared life. Scattered lives are gathered together.

Jesus says “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Acts shows us that this life is nurtured through devotion, fellowship, prayer and the breaking of bread.

So as we come to the Lord’s table, we hear again the Shepherd’s voice, calling each one of us by name; we come close to the centre, the life that Christ gives visible among us – in love, joy and in peace.

And if my bees have taught me anything, it is that when life is well tended, when we stay near what sustains us, sweetness is something that appears, almost without noticing. Amen.

Amen.

“The latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the former” – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

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

What kind of house are we building, and who is it really for? That question lies beneath both our readings this evening. The prophet Haggai speaks to a people returned from exile. They are finally home, and yet something is not quite right. Their own houses are restored, but the temple, the place that names their life with God, lies in ruins. Life has resumed, but the centre has not yet returned.

And into that reality comes a word from God: “I am with you.” Not as a reward for what they have done, but as a direct summons to what they have not yet begun. I am with you; therefore, build.

Yet what they are called to build will not resemble what once stood. Some remember the former temple and know that what lies ahead will seem smaller and less impressive. And yet God still says, “The latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the former.”

It is a startling claim – not because the materials will be richer or the architecture more refined, but because God’s presence simply refuses to be confined by memory or nostalgia. The future will not be a reconstruction of the past. It will be something different – something whose glory cannot be measured by familiar standards.

And this is where Haggai really begins to challenge us.

Because we, too, know what it is to remember former glory. Fuller congregations, clearer influence, a more confident Church. And perhaps, quietly, we have hoped to rebuild it – to recover something recognisable, something reassuring. But God does not call us backwards. God calls us forward. And what lies ahead will not look the same.

St Paul takes Haggai’s image of building, but he turns it inward. He moves from structures to lives, from stone to community. “Like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation,” he writes, “and someone else is building on it.” But what is important is the foundation cannot be changed, for “no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.”

And that foundation is revealed not as an idea, nor as a tradition, not even as a sacred building. The foundation is revealed as a person – and on that everything depends.

And then the image becomes more radical still: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

The dwelling place of God is no longer to be located in a physical temple. It is to be found in a people. Not a finished people. Not a flawless people. But a gathered people – fragile, incomplete, and deeply loved.

The temple is no longer something we visit. The temple is something we are called to become.

Yet St Paul reminds us that we are co-workers in this enterprise. “Each builder must choose with care how to build.” Because it is all to easy to construct something that appears substantial – and yet does not endure. What we build may look convincing. It may feel significant. It may even draw admiration. And yet, in time, it may be revealed as lacking substance.

So, the question presses home. What are we building our lives upon? What are we trusting to hold us? What gives shape to our identity, our worth, and our hope?

We live in a culture that insists we must build ourselves. Construct our identity. Secure our future. Curate our life. Prove our worth. And beneath that demand lies a quiet persistent anxiety: what if what I am building is not enough? What if it does not last?

Into that burden, tonight’s readings speak with honesty and hope. What ultimately matters is not what we construct for ourselves, but what has already been given to us: the foundation not of our making, Jesus Christ. He is not an ideal to strive towards, but a presence to receive; not a standard against which we measure ourselves, but a life into which we are drawn.

This changes everything. The question is no longer; How do I build a life that proves my worth? The question becomes; What is God already building in me – in us – and am I willing to become part of it?

For the Church is not being called to display its strength or success. It is being called to become a place where the presence of God is known in all truth, where people are not required to perform in order to belong, and where lives are not measured by how closely they match an imagined ideal, but by how deeply they are held in grace.

Perhaps this is what it means for the latter glory to be greater than the former. Not more impressive, but more truthful. Not more powerful, but more real.

And so, the question remains. What kind of house are we building, not only as a Church, but in the hidden architecture of our own lives? Are we building something that depends on our own strength, or are we building something that rests upon Christ? Are we clinging to what once was, or are we willing to step into what God is doing now?

Because the promise has not changed: “I am with you,” says the Lord. That is not a reassurance that nothing will be asked of us. It is a declaration that everything is now possible.

If God is with us, then even what feels insignificant can become holy. Even what feels fragile can become strong. Even what feels unfinished can become part of something eternal.

God is not waiting for us to build something worthy of God. God is already at work, building something glorious in us: a living temple, a people shaped not by perfection but by grace, a community where no one is required to leave any part of themselves at the door in order to belong.

So, we do not build alone. We do not build from fear. We do not build to prove ourselves. We build because God is with us, because Christ is our foundation, and because the Holy Spirit is already dwelling among us.

And if that is true, then the latter glory will indeed be greater than the former. Not because it will look grander, but because it will be truer, deeper, and more alive. It will shine not with the cold brittle brilliance of stone, but with the radiance of lives transformed and made holy through the merciful and grace-filled presence of Almighty God.

Amen.

“Dead men don’t rise!” – Canon Peter Collier, Cathedral Reader

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

How did the disciples get it so wrong? How could they have forgotten all that Jesus had said on the various occasions when he had predicted both his death and his resurrection. I can understand them not wanting to accept that he was going to die. But when he did die why didn’t they think – well we didn’t really expect or want this, but it has happened, so perhaps what he said about rising in three days will have happened too, let’s go and see.

But dead men don’t rise.

Early in the morning the three women approached the tomb not expecting to find it empty. They were bearing precious herbs and oils to wash the body of their Lord. They had come to comb his hair, to sponge away the dried blood, to massage the precious myrrh ointment into his skin – ritual acts of care traditionally done before finally sealing a body in a tomb. But as they approached, they wondered how they would get access to the cave, given it was sealed with a great boulder. On arrival they saw that the stone had been rolled away, the tomb was empty, and there was a young man sitting there.

And they were frightened. Not because he might have risen but no doubt fearing that Jesus whose life had been stolen from him had now even had his body stolen away. That would have been the final insult following on all those other insults of his arrest, his mock trial and his judicial execution.

So, having come with a sense that death had defeated all their hopes and dreams, it now seemed that death had even swallowed up the body of their Lord. And we can perhaps understand that as we know from what we see and read about people who for one reason or another have no body to bury – maybe a loved one lost at sea or just someone missing and presumed dead.

Then the young man who was there spoke. He told them not to be alarmed he said: “you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

You might expect that at that point they would have not only remembered all that Jesus had predicted. You might have thought that that young man’s words would have been a great encouragement and comfort to them.

And more than that they might have remembered recent times spent with Jesus and listening to him and all that he had said about being killed and rising again.

But none of that seems to have been in the mind of these disciples. Rather surprisingly we read that what the young man said seems to have had just the opposite effect. We are told they went out and fled from the tomb because terror and amazement had seized them. The word for terror is our word trauma. After all dead men don’t rise. So, what on earth was going on?

What were they afraid of? Did they think the young man was lying, perhaps a Roman guard having a bit of sick fun at their expense?

Or were they terrified because they realised that it was true – that Jesus was alive and if Jesus was alive nothing could ever be the same again. They are told to go to Galilee to meet with him. So, what is it he will have to say to them there? what will he expect of them from then on? Who knows? They don’t know and that could raise terrifying prospects for them.

Today we follow in the footsteps of those women Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome. Those three women didn’t see Jesus. Neither do we. They didn’t hear Jesus call their names. Neither have we. They weren’t invited to touch his wounded hands. Nor have we. They stand beside us today. Like them we have to make decisions on the basis of what we have been told. We too have been told that He has risen as he said he would.

There is of course very good evidence for accepting what we have been told about the resurrection.

As a lawyer I have always been attracted to examine the evidence for the resurrection. I have an old book here, published in 1734, called “The Tryal of the Witnesses”. In 1729 a theologian called Thomas Woolston had published a book questioning the literal historicity of the miracles of Jesus including the resurrection. He was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to 12 months in prison.

My book is an account of what happened when some members of one of the Inns of Court, responding to that book held a mock trial in which the apostles were charged with falsifying the evidence for the resurrection. Twelve of the group played the part of the jury and having examined the evidence, they found the apostles not guilty of giving false evidence.

A much more recent book is called “Who Moved the Stone”. It is written by a journalist, and the first chapter is entitled “the book that refused to be written”. Frank Morrison had set out to write a book to explain why the account of the resurrection could not be true. But as he examined the evidence, he was persuaded that it had happened.

And now like the women in our reading, we have been told that he is risen. And like them we have to decide how we will respond.

The followers of Jesus took time to work it out. Each came at it in their own way. As the Dean reminded us this morning the only real response is to acknowledge that we have been sent out to speak of what we have witnessed.

Maggi Dawn, author and theologian, wrote recently on her blog: “It’s a good thing to remember that the church season of Easter is 50 days long, and that even for the first disciples, while Easter morning brought a certain amount of hope and promise, it was also quite bewildering, and it took them some time to work out the detail of what to do next. The same is true for us. We can never just go back to where we were before – back to the world, back to the church, back to life as if nothing has happened. Every place we have ever been will now look different because we have met Jesus. Easter isn’t a single day of celebration, but a hinge moment in a life that is being transformed.”

Now we have the 50 days of this Easter season to work out what our response will be.

Dead men don’t rise – but now is Christ risen from the dead!

Amen.

“Love unquenched” – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

May I speak in the name of the Holy and Blessed Trinity One God in Three Persons.

Probably many of us in the Minster this afternoon know something about long-distance relationships. It may be that two people who fall in love live in different parts of the world, or the country, or perhaps it’s being at a distance for a specific period of time.

Many years ago, when, to put it in good Yorkshire terminology, I was ‘courting’, Chris was living in Lancashire and I was in Bedfordshire. We often spoke on the phone, and on one Saturday lunchtime we’d caught up for a brief conversation. As we were both curates, a busy day lay ahead of us. For some reason, later that afternoon, Chris just decided to get in the car and drive to Bedford. He didn’t tell me, but he knew I’d be saying Evening Prayer at 5 o’clock, so he drove down the M6 and M1 and was waiting by his car outside the church, just when I’d finished for the day.

Coming out of church, I saw in my peripheral vision someone standing by a car – but didn’t recognise that this was Chris. How could it be – he was in Lancashire! I didn’t realise it was him until the moment he spoke my name, and then the realisation dawned. In a moment worthy of the Song of Songs, Chris took my hands, gazed into my eyes and said: ‘this will serve you as a sermon illustration for decades!’

And so, it has.

Sometimes it’s very hard to see what we don’t expect.

Neuroscientists suggest that between 80% and 90% of what we “see” is actually constructed from memory and internal brain processing, rather than directly from our eyes. So, when our brain is telling us something can’t be, it’s actually very hard to see past that knowledge and recognise what’s really there.

For these reasons I’m not at all surprised that in the garden on that first Easter Day, Mary didn’t recognise Jesus. Seeing him alive was contrary to everything her brain, and her emotions, were telling her. On Good Friday she had seen him die, experiencing the most painful moment in her life. Now, in the garden, what she saw could simply not be true.

The two readings we’ve just heard bring together romantic love and resurrection love.

The Song of Songs is a passionate account of human desire and longing. “’I will seek him whom my soul loves.’ I sought him, but found him not”. The poetry of this book describes that unique experience, when we are drawn to place another person at the centre of our life. As we may know from our own experience, or from so many novels and poems, this can be utterly overwhelming. It leads the narrator of the Song of Songs to exclaim:

Many waters cannot quench love,

neither can floods drown it.

If one offered for love

all the wealth of one’s house,

it would be utterly scorned.

It is an extraordinary, extravagant love. The kind of love that makes us lose ourselves in the object of our desire. As the poet says, “I held him, and would not let him go”.

That reading informs our hearing of the second lesson. Here is Mary Magdalene, who, in realising it is Jesus, moves to envelop him in her arms. What was too good to be true turns out to be real – and Mary isn’t going to let him go again. But this love, this glorified embodiment of God’s total love for the world, can’t be pinned down in a single place. This love isn’t just for Mary; it is a love that promises to meet every person in their need. Whether behind locked doors, or prising open hearts closed tight with fear, the resurrection light pierces our deepest gloom. Perhaps at first, we don’t recognise it – or think it’s simply too good for us – but this glory refuses to be stopped.

Last year I was celebrating Easter in Santiago de Compostela. There with countless pilgrims from across the world. Visiting the Museum of Pilgrimage I came across an artistic arrangement of many different pilgrim walking sticks. All unique, with a variety of shapes and sizes, colours and materials, each one was a silent reminder of all those very different people who make that journey to the tomb of St James. As in all pilgrimages, there are joyous days, and days when the whole thing feels like a painful folly. Yet every one of those sticks is a sign of the continuing work of resurrection – of lives changed, friendships made and the love of God embraced.

We don’t always see what’s in front of us, but I hope that this Easter, we all might be touched by the radiant light of the risen Christ.

Allowing that love which can never be quenched to be a seal upon our heart, and that we too may exclaim in startling wonder:

‘I have seen the Lord’.

Amen.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent – Passion Sunday – Canon Peter Collier, Cathedral Reader

Ezekiel 37.1-14; John 11.1-45

We began our Lenten journey going with Jesus into the wilderness, where he faced the temptations that we know only too well. In various ways, as we prepare for the Easter Feast, we are encouraged to use the season of Lent to deepen our discipleship in our own mini wildernesses.

The valley we read about in our OT lesson is very much wilderness territory. And there in that wilderness the prophet sees a lot of dried out human bones. They are not the recent dead, they are very dry – they have been like that for a long time.

The question he is faced with is whether theses bones can live. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been the first thing that came into his head when he saw them, such was their state. But the question is posed for him – Is there a future here? Is there any hope in this situation? Can anything be done to bring life-giving change after so long?

What are the dry bones that we so often find ourselves looking at?

As we contemplate the world around us – there is Iran; Gaza; Sudan; Ukraine; to name some of the places we hear about almost daily.

Or as we contemplate our own society here in the UK – we look at increasing poverty; family breakdown; and growing mental health issues.

Or as we contemplate our own lives – many of us are aware of our own ageing bodies; our fear of being able to make ends meet, and our anxieties about what lies ahead for our children and their children.

The question that is posed for us this morning is however dry these various bones may be, however long they’ve been like that – is there any possibility of change and any hope of new life?

The natural answer is the one that the prophet gave – “God only knows”.

And God responds to Ezekiel telling him he should speak to the problem. He isn’t to do any of things we are tempted to do when facing intractable problems, such as carry out some research, devise a plan, attempt to engineer a solution. He is just told to prophesy. He is to announce God’s promise. So he speaks God’s promise into the silence and something extraordinary happens – there is a rattling sound and the bones come together and form skeletons, and then he sees sinews and flesh and skin appear, and there are now bodies in front of him, but they are not alive, they are still dead.

And once again he is told to speak, to prophesy. This time he is to address the winds and to call upon the winds to breathe life into these bodies. And so he does that and that vast army of bodies comes to life.

The combination of word and spirit that had brought about life at the very beginning of all things, has again brought about new life where there was not even any hint of hope.

So, now come with me to Bethany and to another scene of death. Here the death is more recent. We face not dry bones but a decomposing body that has begun to smell. Lazarus is dead. He and his sisters Martha and Mary were friends of Jesus, and Jesus has come to visit the grieving sisters. And the response of each of them is “if only you had been here”. And how often do we respond to the anxieties, fears and problems we face in exactly that way? If only …. If only this or that had happened; if only I had done something a little bit different; if only they had kept their noses out … if only …

We know that when Jesus initially heard that Lazarus was ill he hadn’t dropped what he was doing and gone immediately to Bethany. But when he does arrive he finds the sisters in deep distress. The impact of their brother’s death has overwhelmed them.

And we read that Jesus enters into their pain and grief and shares it to the extent that he is greatly disturbed in his spirit and groans, and he is deeply moved. Deep, deep within himself he is profoundly affected to the extent that he himself begins to weep. Why? Why does he behave like this when he knows he is going to bring him back to life? This is not some affected grief but a genuine deep down visceral pain in the heart of God. Sin and death have impacted this world to its great hurt, but even more to God’s hurting heart. And that effect of sin and death cannot be denied, although it is to be overcome.

And so Jesus weeps. And nothing has changed in that respect. He continues to suffer this world’s pain. To know deep within himself the effect of sin and death.

This chapter is the turning point of John’s gospel. This is the last of the signs showing us what God is like, and what God is about. And in chapter 12 we move into the last week of Jesus’ life and his own death and resurrection.

And this last sign is to prepare us for all that will follow as he enters into suffering, abuse and death, and to prepare us for his resurrection which we will celebrate on Easter day.

When Jesus tells Martha that her brother will rise again, she responds with what she has been brought up to believe – “yes I know he will rise at the last day”. But Jesus’ response is to tell her “I am the resurrection and the life”. He is telling her that that new life is already here and is to be found in him. And that new life he can and will impart to her brother, and to all who believe in him.

And though like Lazarus, he will die and rise, unlike Lazarus who would die again, Jesus will rise to a life that changes everything. By his dying and rising he will have overcome death and all that goes with it once and for all. So he tells Martha that those who believe in him will never die. His rising will be a final and definitive act.

Unlike the other signs in John’s gospel where the event happens, and is followed by Jesus’ explanation, on this occasion we have the explanation first, and then the miracle where he calls upon Lazarus to come out and out he comes.

So as we face the last few days leading us to Easter, what are we facing in our lives? Are we looking at dried up bones with no hope that anything can be done to produce a positive outcome? Or are we facing some deeply distressing personal grief?

The message of Lent is that God knows all about it. God knows the hopelessness of our situation. God gets our brokenness and distress because he shares in it, and so God weeps at it all still. But then God says there is hope because in me is new life, a new type of life, a life that cannot be overcome and that will never die.

But there’s a post script. When Lazarus came out of his tomb, he was still bound with strips of cloth and his face was still wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus tells those who are there that they are to unbind him so that he can go on his way and enjoy his new life.

And there is a message for us that though we have God’s new life within us, we need to help each other to experience that life to the full. We need to unbind one another. We need to share our lives and build each other up in our faith. As we learn together what God’s word says and what his promises are and above all as we express to each other that unconditional love that God has poured into our hearts, so we will unbind one another.

In the week ahead you may want to reflect and recall times in your own life when you have been aware of God bringing you into fresh a experience of his life but you have needed others to help you to begin to work it out. And you may think of others even now who you might draw alongside and help discover more of God’s love.

Amen.

“Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord” – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

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

If you visit Belfast today, one of the most striking features of that city is the Peace Wall. For the uninitiated, this name sounds reassuring, almost hopeful, as though it represents a solution to conflict. But when you find yourself beside it, the reality feels more complicated.

The Peace Wall is a network of barriers running through neighbourhoods across Belfast, separating communities that have for generations been divided by violence and mistrust. They were first built during the Troubles to prevent conflict between Protestant and Catholic communities, and they have indeed saved lives, but they have also done something else: they have turned suspicion into architecture. They have made division visible in brick, steel, and concrete.

Today there are more than fifty of these walls stretching across more than twenty miles. What is striking is not simply that they still exist, but that their number has increased since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

This is not because peace has failed, but because reconciliation is so much harder than ending violence.

Violence can be halted by ceasefires, agreements and treaties. But rebuilding trust between communities wounded by history is a much slower and more costly endeavour. It unfolds quietly, often out of sight, through patience, conversation, and the courage to see one another again as neighbours.

Walls can be built quickly but rebuilding trust takes generations.

That reality would not have surprised the prophet Micah, from whom we have heard in our first reading. Micah looks out at the society of his own time and sees something painfully familiar: corruption, mistrust, and moral exhaustion. He describes the experience like someone walking through a vineyard after the harvest, searching for grapes and finding none. The faithful seem to have disappeared from the land. Justice itself has been distorted by power.

Then Micah says something deeply unsettling. He warns that trust itself is becoming fragile, even within their closest relationships. Suspicion is spreading through society. Communities are dividing into tribes that guard themselves against one another.

It sounds oh so familiar, doesn’t it? If we are honest with ourselves, Micah could also be describing our own age as well.

We live in a world where mistrust has become a powerful force in public life. Political discourse has grown brittle and polarised. Communities risk fracturing along ideological lines. And beyond our own disagreements we are witnessing conflicts across the world that seem endlessly capable of igniting and reigniting.

Yet Micah refuses to surrender to despair. After describing the brokenness around him, he says something quietly radical: “But as for me, I will look to the Lord.”

In other words, the instability of the world will not determine where I place my hope. This is not a denial of chaos. It is the recognition that the chaos of history is not the final word.

The theologian Miroslav Volf, in his seminal book ‘Exclusion and Embrace’, reflecting on reconciliation after the Balkan wars of the 1990s, writes that peace is never achieved simply by the absence of violence. True reconciliation requires what he calls ‘the courage of embrace’: the willingness to move toward the other even when history has taught us to fear them.

That kind of courage rarely appears dramatically. More often it grows through small and costly relationships.

And perhaps nowhere has this been more evident in our recent history, than in the relationship that developed between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness. who back in 2007 became respectively, First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.

For decades they had stood on opposite sides of Northern Ireland’s bitter sectarian conflict. Ian Paisley had been one of the fiercest voices of Protestant unionism. Martin McGuinness had been a senior figure in the Irish Republican movement. They utterly represented and embodied the profound division of their country.

And yet astonishingly, in the years that followed the Good Friday Agreement, they began to work together in government. What emerged was something few had expected: not merely cooperation, but a genuine and even warm relationship. Their partnership became so unexpectedly cordial that journalists began referring to them as the “Chuckle Brothers.”

That transformation did not erase the past. Nor did not pretend that decades of violence had never happened. But it did reveal something important: that reconciliation, however unlikely, is still possible.

Reconciliation is slow. Reconciliation is fragile. Reconciliation requires grace, generosity, humility and patience.

And it is precisely this virtue of patience the letter of James commends to the Christian community, that we have just heard in our second reading this evening.

James urges believers to be patient, and he uses the image of a farmer waiting for the harvest. A farmer does not simply sit and wait for crops to appear. The farmer continues cultivating the soil, caring for the field, trusting that the harvest will come, even when it cannot yet be seen.

Patience, then, is not passive waiting. Patience is active faithfulness. Patience is the decision to keep doing the work of goodness even when the results are not immediate, and our Christian faith tells us that God is actively engaged in precisely this kind of patient work within the world.

In Jesus Christ we encounter a God who does not remain distant from human conflict but enters directly into it. The New Testament speaks of Christ breaking down the dividing wall of hostility, not through domination, but through a love willing to absorb violence rather than perpetuate it.

Tonight’s psalm gives us a remarkable cry of trust: “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.” But the hands into which the psalmist entrusts their life are not distant or abstract. For us as Christians they are the wounded hands of Christ; hands that healed the sick, welcomed the outsider, bore the violence of the world and yet refused to return it. And it is those same scarred and faithful hands that hold our lives, and the life of the world itself, even now.

For in resurrection those wounds remain. Those scars remind us that resurrection does not erase the history of suffering, rather resurrection transforms it. And if our times truly rest in those wounded hands, then we are freed from the fear that so often leads us to build walls around ourselves. Instead, we are being invited to participate in the slow, patient, and costly work of reconciliation.

So, when Micah declares, “But as for me, I will look to the Lord.” it is not merely a private prayer for comfort. It is a confident declaration that the future of this wounded world is not ultimately determined by violence or fear. It is held by the wounded hands of God.

And because of that hope, even when the work of reconciliation feels unfinished – as it still does in Belfast, as it does in far too many places across the world – we do not turn away from the task. We continue it. Quietly. Patiently. Faithfully.

We continue it in the stubborn belief that walls are not the final architecture of human history; that suspicion will not have the last word; that fear will not write the ending of our story.

For the God in whom the psalmist places their hope, is the same God who, in Christ, has already begun the patient and costly work of breaking down every dividing wall of hostility. And that work is still unfolding among us – wherever courage overcomes suspicion, wherever enemies become neighbours, wherever trust is rebuilt one fragile conversation at a time.

So, as we leave the Minster tonight, we leave not as spectators of that work, but as participants in it: trusting that the God who has begun the work of reconciliation in this wounded world will, in God’s own time, bring it to completion. As we daily pray,

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.