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.

“Ash, Silence and the voice of God” – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

How did Jesus feel, going into the wilderness? 

Perhaps we imagine a holy, patient Messiah walking away from civilisation, happy to spend time apart from people, praying. The account we’ve just heard from Matthew’s Gospel seems to support that. Jesus ‘was led’ by the Spirit in order to be tempted. Mark’s Gospel is less coy. There, Jesus isn’t led by the Spirit but forced by the Spirit. The word in Greek is used more often in the gospels to describe exorcism. It has a force and compulsion that may sound surprising. Jesus – as it were – spat out by the Spirit, to face his demons alone in the desert.  

I have some sympathy with the idea of a reluctant Messiah. Would I want to spend week after week, hungry and cold, with no company other than my own thoughts? Perhaps not all of us, but maybe most of us, don’t rush into that kind of space. We might well need the Holy Spirit to give us a firm prod, to make us spend the time to ask of ourselves, and of God: ‘what’s really going on? What do you want me to do?’ 

Sometimes it can be lazy to be busy. To rush from one task to another with a diary brimming with appointments. Taking the time to make space, to find solitude, can be something we choose to avoid. Of course, it depends a lot on temperament. While some of us enjoy our own company, many people don’t. We need other people round us to know who we are. Being alone can be a void that is far from comfortable or easy. Our Gospel today seems to say, give it long enough, and the demons will come.  Create enough space and our worst doubts and temptations will come to the surface.  

As the word suggests, entering the wilderness can be…  bewildering. The place where we are led astray and become disorientated. Little wonder that the Spirit needs to catapult this saviour to face the demons that assault our certainties. 

We can all find lots of reasons to avoid Lent. It’s the season in the Church’s year when we are called most intensively to make space; take time; reflect; and open our hearts and minds to a God who might ask us difficult things. A season that couldn’t have a more basic and challenging start.  

Last Wednesday I was privileged to be part of services where hundreds of people in the Minster were told the most basic and inconvenient truth about themselves: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. Not only told but marked with the ash that represents our physical reality.  

The desert season of Lent reminds us of the truth of our being. But it doesn’t end there. In the desert, in the experience of sand and stars, God is also present. Love and grace continue to be with us. In the place where people are absent, God alone tells us our worth and value. Perhaps the thing that keeps most of us out of the desert is fear. Fear that we are only ash; only a failure; only a fleeting glimpse of who God wants us to be. We need an agent of God, perhaps the Holy Spirit, to push us into these uncomfortable places. To learn with patient faith that God is also there, even in our temptations. To name the whispers that speak to our weakness and, naming them, see them for what they are: shadows of our doubt and shades of our fear. 

One way in which many people might encounter this kind of space is in pilgrimage. While every pilgrimage has a purpose and a destination, there are times spent in remote locations, far from crowds or signs of civilisation. Days when we feel less confident that we can complete the journey. In places the world around us can seem a wilderness, and we might sometimes question whether we’re on the right path. 

Without doubt, there can be a bleakness in the season of Lent. So we might need to ask God to give us a nudge. To dare to be in the places where stillness allows us to hear the Spirit’s call. It is through Lent that we dare to arrive at Easter, knowing that we’ve faced our demons and kept on the right path. These 40 days are a microcosm of our pilgrimage through life. Beginning in dust and ashes, but placing our hope in the God for whom even death is not the final word. 

Amen.

“Here is my son; listen to him” – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.

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

What would it take for us to truly listen to God?

Not to hear words we already agree with. Not to have our preferences baptised or our fears soothed. But to listen – deeply, dangerously, to the very core of our being, in a way that might truly unsettle us, change us. To listen in such a way that it might well cost us something.

This very question hangs over today, the Sunday before Lent, like the cloud on the mountain in today’s Gospel. It is the question that draws together both of our readings, and it is the question the Church must face before it dares to enter the wilderness of Lent.

Peter, writing later in his life, is at pains to insist that what he proclaims is not a clever construction, nor a persuasive story, nor a religious myth designed to inspire loyalty. “We did not follow cleverly devised myths,” he writes. “We were eyewitnesses.” In other words: this faith was not invented to be useful. This faith was encountered. It interrupted real lives. It left real marks.

And yet we might wonder why Peter feels the need to insist so strongly. Perhaps it is because even in the early Church there were doubts. Perhaps it is because the temptation to reshape God into something manageable was as present then as it is now. Perhaps it is because listening to God is never straightforward – even when God speaks plainly.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Peter appears again, this time on the mountain. Jesus is transfigured before him. Moses and Elijah appear. Heaven seems suddenly close. And Peter, understandably overwhelmed, does what so many of us would be tempted to do: he tries to fix the moment. “Let us make three dwellings.” It is the first century equivalent of a theological selfie. Let us capture this. Preserve it. Institutionalise it. Keep it safe.

There is something deeply human about that instinct. We pull towards clarity. We yearn for certainties. We prefer moments where God feels obvious, radiant, undeniable. We build churches, liturgies, doctrines, and habits around those moments. None of that is wrong. But it carries a risk: that we tempted to listen only for the God we already recognise.

Because the voice that comes from the cloud does not say, “This is what you must believe.” It does not say, “Stay here.” It does not say, “You’ve understood everything.” It says: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.”

And suddenly listening becomes the most demanding task of all.

Listening is so much harder than believing. So much harder than worshipping. So much harder than obeying. Because listening requires us to relinquish control over what we will hear. It opens us up to surprise. To challenge. To contradiction. To the possibility that God may speak in ways that disrupt our certainties rather than confirm them.

There is a version of faith – popular in every age – that treats God as a source of affirmation. God agrees with us. God validates us. God reinforces what we already think. That kind of faith is attractive, comforting, and ultimately shallow. It produces confidence without transformation.

But the God revealed in Jesus Christ is not a projection of our best ideas. The God of the Transfiguration is revealed precisely in the one who will shortly speak of suffering, rejection, and the cross. The dazzling light on the mountain cannot be separated from the hard road to Jerusalem. To listen to Jesus is to listen not only to words of glory, but to words that unsettle our fantasies of strength, success, and control.

Peter, writing years later, understands this in a way his younger self could not. He has learnt the hard way. He writes from costly lived experience. When he speaks of the “majestic glory” and the voice from heaven, he is not inviting the Church to chase spiritual experiences. He is grounding faith in a truth that has endured testing, failure, and fear. Peter knows now that listening to God did not spare him suffering – but it did sustain him through it.

So what does it mean for us, here and now, to listen?

In a culture saturated with noise – opinion, outrage, binary certainties – listening is countercultural. We curate what we hear. We choose the voices that reassure us. We mute that which makes us uncomfortable. Even in the Church, we can turn listening into a performance: nodding politely while already preparing our reply.

Yet the voice from the cloud is not inviting us into debate. It is not asking us to balance perspectives or manage tensions. It is commanding something far simpler and harder: listen to him. Not listen to our fears. Not listen to our prejudices. Not listen to the loudest voices or the most powerful interests. Listen to Christ.

And Christ speaks in ways that resist capture. He speaks through scripture, yes – but Christ speaks also through the poor, through the excluded, through the wounded. He speaks in the quiet persistence of prayer and in the discomfort of unanswered questions. He speaks not only in moments of radiance, but in the shadowed places where certainty fails.

That is why the Transfiguration is offered on this Sunday, on the threshold of Lent. Before the Church enters a season of repentance and self-examination, we are offered a vision of glory – not to escape the journey ahead, but to endure it. The disciples are not allowed to stay on the mountain. They must come down and we too must come down. Listening always leads us back into the world, not away from it.

And here is the hardest truth of all: listening to God does not guarantee clarity. It does not remove disagreement. It does not protect us from misunderstanding one another. What it does is reorient us. It places Christ, not our certainties, at the centre. It teaches us to live faithfully without complete resolution.

Which brings us back to the question we began with.

What would it take for us to truly listen to God?

Not more certainty.

Not better arguments.

Not stronger control.

What it takes is graceful, generous humility. The willingness to be addressed rather than affirmed. The courage to follow Christ down the mountain as well as up it and the patience to trust that God’s word is trustworthy even when it unsettles and disrupts us.

The answer, finally, is this:

To truly listen to God is to allow ourselves to be changed by Christ – not only in moments of light, but in the long obedience of the road that leads us through the valley of the shadow of death, towards resurrection.

And Lent begins by asking us, are we really, truly willing to listen that deeply. Well, are we?

Amen.

“The Throne Is Not Empty: Worship and Identity in an Age of Fear” – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

There is something about Evensong that tells the truth about the human condition. We arrive towards the end of the day often carrying more than we can easily name. The noise of the news still echoes in our ears; conversations, worries, and unfinished business linger in our minds. We arrive with the atmosphere of our culture pressing in – relentless commentary, brittle outrage, cheap certainty, and the exhausting sense that everything is always at stake.

And yet Evensong is not simply a service of comfort. It is a service of reorientation. It meets the world as it is – with all its conflict, confusion, and cruelty – and places it within the greater reality of God. It retrains our attention and restores the centre.

And both our readings tonight also do precisely that. They do not invite us to escape the world, but to look upon it truthfully. They offer two arresting images that matter deeply for a culture like ours: Wisdom calling at the crossroads, and heaven gathered in worship around the throne.

We are living in a time marked by cynicism, distrust, and anger. Truth is now being treated not as a shared good but as a tool for leverage. Politics has become spectacle. Identity has hardened into tribe and those who feel unheard are being all too easily persuaded that their pain must have an enemy attached to it.

It is apt, therefore, that today is also the day the Church keeps Racial Justice Sunday. Racial injustice grows wherever fear hardens identity and difference becomes threat. But the gospel utterly refuses to collude with that logic. In Christ, human dignity is not earned or defended against others; it is given. The Church is called to be a community where difference is not feared but reconciled, where belonging is not secured by exclusion but received as grace.

Today’s Collect for the Second Sunday before Lent gives language to this truth:

Almighty God, you have created the heavens and the earth and made us in your own image: teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children.

This Collect reminds us that identity begins not in anxiety or opposition but in gift. If we are made in God’s image, then our neighbour can never become a rival to our belonging but a vital part of the same divine intention. To discern God’s likeness in one another is already to resist the fear that fractures communities and corrodes common life.

In such a moment, Christian worship becomes more than devotion. It becomes discernment. It becomes resistance. It becomes the place where we remember what we are for, and to whom we belong.

St Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” That can become a holy restlessness when shaped by faith. But restlessness shaped by fear drives us toward slogans and scapegoats. When anxiety becomes the air we breathe, it becomes all too easy to trade wisdom for simple answers, truth for certainty, and justice for victory.

We see this in particular in the present rise of populism, not simply as a political movement but as a cultural malaise. Popularism draws strength from real pain: economic insecurity, cultural dislocation, communities that feel abandoned. That pain demands urgent attention and any Church that is not willing to bear the pain of its people has ceased to listen as Christ listens.

But populism does not bear pain; it corrupts it. Popularism reshapes pain into grievance and grievance into rage. It offers belonging through exclusion and identity without compassion and this dynamic has further seeped into families, workplaces, churches, and communities, training us in suspicion and condemnation.

Racial injustice flourishes in precisely this soil, when fear seeks somewhere to land and whole groups of people are made to carry anxieties that belong to us all. The Christian response is neither denial nor moral superiority, but repentance and reorientation: learning again to see one another as bearers of God’s image rather than as problems to be solved.

That is why tonight’s readings matter. Our readings from Proverbs and Revelation do not merely inspire; they reorient us. They call us back to what is real, what deserves our allegiance, and what leads to life.

Our first reading opens with a striking question: “Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?”

Wisdom is not hidden away. She is encountered at crossroads, at city gates, in public places – where decisions are made and power is exercised. Wisdom is not private spirituality but public truth. She refuses easy enemies and resists simplifications that allow injustice to flourish. Wisdom calls us to listen before judging and to discern before condemning.

Populism, by contrast, thrives on speed – quick blame, quick anger, quick certainty – demanding that we decide who is at fault before understanding has begun. It tempts us to prefer the comfort of being right to the demanding work of being wise.

Then Proverbs says something astonishing. Wisdom speaks as present before creation itself, rejoicing before God always. Creation begins not in rivalry or fear, but in delight. The universe is not founded on resentment but on joy.

If creation begins in delight, then human difference – of culture, language, ability, identity and race – becomes not a problem to be solved but part of the abundance of God’s good creation. Reality belongs to God and is shaped by Wisdom, not grievance.

So discipleship in our age requires a spiritual refusal. A refusal to let resentment organise our lives. A refusal to let anger become our identity. A refusal to let tribalism teach us to see others primarily as threats. Hi We were created for something so much deeper: the joy of living in tune with Wisdom.

And if that were not enough, Revelation throws open for us a vision of the gates of heaven.

We are shown a throne – not because God is a tyrant, but because reality has a centre. The universe is not saved by the loudest voice or the strongest leader. There is a throne, and we are not on it.

Around that throne, living creatures cry, “Holy, holy, holy,” and elders cast down their crowns. This is not decorative worship but resistance. Revelation was written to communities living under empire, surrounded by the same pressure to conform. John’s vision says: look again. Worship belongs to God alone.

And that matters now. When politics becomes performance and ideology takes on religious intensity, Revelation reminds us that the throne is already occupied. It does not belong to nations, leaders, or crowds.

The throne is occupied by God.

Populism longs for a saviour who crushes enemies. Revelation calls us to worship the One who reigns in holiness. Around the throne are gathered people from every nation and language, not erased into sameness but united in worship. Heaven itself stands as a piercing rebuke to every hierarchy that measures human worth by race, power, or belonging.

But neither is the Church immune from these temptations. We too can trade depth for certainty, humility for rage, and discernment for belonging. But worship reforms us for we become like what we worship.

If we worship strength, we will become brutal. If we worship victory, we will become cruel. If we worship the nation, we will become tribal. But if we worship God, we will become free.

So, what are our readings calling us back to? Not neutrality or silence, but maturity. They call us to become communities of Wisdom: patient, discerning, compassionate, and truthful, people whose identities are rooted not in grievance but in grace; not in fear but in worship; not in nostalgia but in hope.

So let us hear Wisdom calling at the crossroads. Let us step away from the cheap thrill of outrage. Let us refuse the catechesis of contempt. Let us worship the One who alone is holy, and let that worship reorder our loves, our speech, our politics, and our compassion.

Because Wisdom is not silent and the throne is not empty. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life…” – The Very Reverend Dominic Barrington, Dean of York

On October 2^nd, 2023, Ezzideen Shehab, a 28-year old Palestinian man, returned to his home in Gaza City, after studying medicine abroad for almost a decade – returned to his home with the great achievement, the great honour, of having become a doctor. That Friday night, the night of October 6^th, 2023, his father prepared a feast. Writing about this joyous family gathering two years later, Dr Shehab remarked,

“We gathered as one family, laughing, speaking over one another, breaking bread with careless joy, pouring juice into glasses as though it were the wine of peace itself… My father’s hands moved as Christ’s once did, blessing the bread, dividing it among those he loved.”

In rapidly acquired hindsight, it was, of course, a fateful evening, and – precisely two years later, in October 2025, he recalled that “…somewhere, though no one could name it, there hung in the air that same fragile foreboding that filled the upper room in Jerusalem, when love spoke its last words before betrayal…”

For the very next morning, as we all know, the Middle East changed, as the world woke up to the horrific news of the Hamas attack on Israel that left over 1,100 people dead and some 250 more taken hostage. And that hideous betrayal of humanity was followed by nearly 700 days of military conflict – some two years of very unequal warfare during which another 1,700 Israelis and some 72,000 Gazans lost their lives, as the Gaza Strip was reduced to little more than rubble. Humans created in the image of God betrayed other humans created in the image of God, and love seemed to have been utterly vanquished from the stage.

It was not the context in which our young medical graduate had imagined that he would minister as a doctor. And over the next two years, his medical skills found themselves augmented by a spiritual – indeed, a theological – inner life, that led, three months ago, to the publication of the Diary of a Young Doctor – a record of his experiences and insights as he sought to live out his vocation in ever more desperate circumstances.

This profound reflection on living through what many have now termed a genocide contains many – too many – poignant encounters, such as the one he had on 27^th May, 2025:

This morning, they came, two sisters. The elder, a girl, the youngest still a child. Nineteen and fifteen. They stood before me like two broken icons, hollow-eyed, limbs too light to hold the soul in place. I listened to their lungs wheeze and watched their hearts labour against emptiness. I gave them what I had: medicine, supplements – a gesture that felt almost obscene. Then the youngest, with her cracked voice, asked, “Doctor, how can we take medicine without food?”

I say this with tears on the page: I did not answer. Because what answer is there? … What is this world where children must beg for bread to take with their antibiotics?

And yet, as we hear this morning’s gospel ring in our ears, it is not hard to imagine those two emaciated sisters saying to Jesus, “How can we not worry about what we are to eat and drink?”… We seem to hear Dr Shehab saying to Jesus, “Look at this genocidal death and destruction – we are not of more value than the birds of the air…”

But, therefore… says Jesus… therefore, do not worry about your life…

It sounds a tall order – an improbably, perhaps impossibly tall order. If you read the doctor’s diary, you will realize that not a day passed in which he did not face his own mortality and vulnerability, as around him friends, family members and colleagues were killed and wounded indiscriminately.

And if it sounds a tall order to tell the quietly heroic Dr Shehab that he shouldn’t worry about his life, it feels, I suspect, an even taller order for us to contemplate, in the safety and comfort of the city of York, where most of us take for granted so many aspects of a secure life, the sudden deprivation of which would probably leave us extremely worried. But unless or until that happens, we may find it hard to hear or to understand Jesus looking us in the eye, and saying, therefore… therefore, do not worry about your life.

And it’s not the only thing which Jesus has been saying. Since last Sunday, when we heard the start of the Sermon on the Mount, in the well-known text we call the Beatitudes, Jesus has been fleshing out some of the implications of what it might actually mean to live out the values of the kingdom of heaven in the midst of the broken kingdoms of this world. And if we bother to take his teaching seriously, we cannot fail to be shocked and discomforted by the counter-cultural call to love and to give unconditionally, to work out where your treasure really is to be found, to forgive those who wrong us, to pray and to work for God’s will (not human will) to be ‘done’  – done right here on earth, and not just in heaven on a ‘pie in the sky when you die’ basis.

And – this morning – these counter-cultural teachings come to head in the verse immediately preceding what we just heard read, when Jesus says bluntly and clearly:

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

“It’s simple,” says Jesus: “you have a choice… and therefore… therefore, make the right choice… and don’t worry about your life…”

And only a few years later, Paul, known to his Jewish friends as Saul, made the right choice. Indeed, you might say that for him, the choice became blindingly obvious, as he journeyed to Damascus on an errand that would have been emphatically the wrong choice. But newly commissioned by his extraordinary encounter with the risen Christ, Paul sets off across much of what was then the ‘known world’, manifestly not worrying about his own life.

And boy if he had been the worrying type, he’d have given up pretty quickly. Go look at some of his letters, and you can get a vivid sense of what it means not to worry about your life if you are intent on building the kingdom. In one particularly noteworthy passage, he says:

I am talking like a madman…with far greater labours, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.

That is why, in our first reading, Paul speaks of creation being ‘subjected to futility’ – that is why he knows that the ‘glory of the children of God’ is a work in progress, yet to be fully realised, as we endure the groaning of the labour pains of a broken world that is only held together – that is only saved by hope… by the hope that in Christ (and only in Christ) can we be set free from ‘the bondage of decay’.

For Paul knew that the living out of such a hope can only be done in solidarity with the crucified one. Because one thing is utterly certain – there is no resurrection – there is no hope of resurrection – where there has been no crucifixion. And crucifixion is ubiquitous, as Dr Shehab realized when he encountered those two sisters in the ruins and rubble of Gaza:  I tell you this. This is not war. This is crucifixion.

But it is the encounter with crucifixion, as the young doctor discovered, that we fully and properly learn to make the right choice:

I tell you: our humanity is not in question. It is crucified. And I, a doctor in Gaza, am merely one of many still clinging to the faith. Not because I believe will save me, but because I believe that suffering beside the innocent is the last honest thing a man can do.

On that fateful evening before the horrors of Hamas’ evil attack on Israel and all that followed, on that fateful evening, Ezzideen Shehab experienced the profound joys of a celebratory meal, gathered ‘as one family’, breaking bread ‘with careless joy’, recalling Christ’s own actions sharing broken bread and the ‘wine of peace’ ‘among those he loved’.

As we share in Christ’s celebration around that altar in a few moments, we are called to do so with an equally careless joy… but a joy that connects us with a saviour whose scars tell us of the cost of making the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven:

“…if God still watches, let Him bear witness. For if He is silent now, then one day He must speak. And when He does, He will whisper not in Hebrew, nor Arabic, nor English, but in suffering. The only language that was ever real.”

Which is why, if we truly seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, if we are serious about praying the prayer which Jesus taught us, then, in fellowship with that young doctor, in fellowship with Paul, and with all who have followed the Crucified One, it’s time to stop worrying about our life.

Amen.

Dr Shehab still runs the Al-Rahma Medical Clinic in northern Gaza, offering medical care without cost, treating the best part of 500 people each week. If you wish to support his work, you can do so at https://chuffed.org/project/117739-dr-ezzideen-shehab

“Pilgrims of Peace” – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

In the past week it feels like there has been a welter of news connected to pilgrimage. And it’s been news from near and far, and across an extensive period of time.

Firstly, the excavations to build the HS2 railway in Warwickshire have unearthed a Medieval pilgrim badge. With a design of three lions this would have been a common sight in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. Tokens of making a journey to a site of special religious significance. Then there is the continuing media interest in pilgrimages, with a current BBC series presented by Simon Reeves.

Finally, and much closer to home, this weekend we are celebrating the exhibition here in the Minster of part of the shrine of St William. An important focus for pilgrimage here in the north of England, this is the first time in 500 years that these important artefacts connected with William have been brought together. But they are more than artefacts.

Pilgrimage is centred on a special person or place, usually associated with someone who has made God known in a particular way. The journey to get there, possibly with hazards and considerable effort, is part of the experience of connection we feel when we arrive. Since William was made a saint 800 years ago, people have travelled to York to find a physical link with someone who lived and died being faithful to Christ.

The Feast of the Presentation, also called Candlemas, recalls a journey which the family of Jesus made to the central structure of the Jewish faith – the Temple in Jerusalem. It would not have been an easy journey. Across 80 miles the family travelled with others for both company and safety. It is estimated that it would have taken 4 days. It was a purposeful journey, at the end of which Mary was purified and Jesus was presented.

Every Evensong, as we have this afternoon, includes one or more psalms. Today it was Psalm 122. The 15 psalms 120 to 134 are often called the Pilgrim Psalms. Psalm 120 says something like: ‘I have to get out of here’. Psalm 121 then describes the departure, and Psalm 122 leads to thoughts about the journey’s goal: Jerusalem. As one writer has put it, even as the pilgrimage begins, “Jerusalem’s silhouette” is captured in the beauty of verse:

‘Jerusalem, built up again as a city, firmly put together, a unity’

For any Israelite this was a thrilling vision. After the pain of Exile and poverty, the vision that the city can be built up again. As the same writer goes on to say: ‘it is like a promise that the work of people in community can change this world’s architecture towards peace’. Given the world of that time, and the world of today, it is a testimony to human faith in God that we can still image a place of peace. Having looked towards the wonderful vision of this city, the author of the Psalm turns towards the people with an invitation to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

But here something else happens in the Psalm. The speaker recognises that they themselves must also turn towards peace, not simply tell others to do so: ‘For the sake of my siblings, for love of my companions on the way, I will after all speak for peace in you’.

And who is the author of this Psalm, and all the fifteen Pilgrim Psalms? Surprisingly, they are the most troubled people in society. In these psalms we find the voices of slaves; people in poverty working too many hours; farmers who weep because the grain they take to sow diminishes the family’s stock of food. As has been said about these psalms, the people who raise their voices here are ‘Exiles in their own land’. These are not naïve pilgrims.

The arc of the 15 psalms demonstrates a realism about the conflicts and cost of seeking peace. Jerusalem is a potent vision of God’s dwelling, a holy place of celebration and love and yet, as we know from the Gospels, a place which falls far short of what God desires for the people. In the second reading this afternoon Jesus points to the ultimate futility of a physical place, placing himself – the Son of God – as the enduring fulfilment of our hopes for peace and unity.

I long for the peace of Jerusalem, and for peace everywhere. Our true pilgrimage, the journey that can give us this peace, is the life we lead from day-to-day. As we seek to draw nearer to God let’s hear the voices of our companion pilgrims, especially those whose hearts and hopes for peace are born out of pain and suffering. Together – and only together – can we arrive with gladness at the heavenly Jerusalem: the living temple where God’s peace is within us.

Amen.

Quotes from: A Transforming Path – The Pilgrims’ Songs

Klara Butting