What lies before us – The Reverend Canon Victoria Johnson
Sermon Preached on the Tercentenary of Grinling Gibbons, Wood Carver and Yorkshire Day
York Minster, Sunday 1 August 2021 by Canon Victoria Johnson
Readings: Psalm 84, 1 Chronicles 22. 6–end, 1 Corinthians 3. 10–17.
What lies before us.
A celebration of the tercentenary of a Master Wood Carver and sculptor and the annual commemoration of God’s own county, on Yorkshire Day: two events which combine during this service and may together help us reflect on the future that lies before us, and how we might be called to fashion it.
Grinling Gibbons, is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important wood carvers in history. He wasn’t a Yorkshire man and he wasn’t English, he was an immigrant from Rotterdam-but it was here in this city that he flourished as an artist and created works of beauty to inspire and memorialize, among them three elaborate carvings here in York Minster for three Archbishops. It was here in this city that he honed his skills among the guilds, craftspeople and businesses that contributed to the life of this northern metropolis three hundred years ago.
In a building like this, it seems fitting that we remember all those who carved stone and wood and painted glass, creating windows into new worlds delighting the eye and inspiring the heart, monuments to the transcendent and the timeless. As we sit beneath the Great West Window, locally known as the Heart of Yorkshire, in the city of the county, we also mark Yorkshire day, a much more recent celebration of a county with a rich heritage and history.
But to be of any worth, or significance, both of our celebrations today must also encourage us look to the future, otherwise they are simply fossilized traditions, time stood still. For we cannot celebrate Grinling Gibbons without a thought for the artisans and craftspeople of today, giving thanks for their skills and considering how they are supported, trained and nurtured within a modern economy. We cannot celebrate our county and its heritage without consideration of what it might represent now and in the future, we are all part of living traditions.
For the past is not all that we have: we have a future waiting to be shaped before us, and as we slowly emerge from a global pandemic, what kind of city, what kind of church, what kind of county, what kind of country, what kind of world are we hoping to build for those generations who come after us?
Our readings, speak rather fittingly of a building for the future. King David commissions his son Solomon to build a temple, a house for the Lord, with the assistance of stonecutters, masons, carpenters and all kinds of artisans working in gold, silver, bronze and iron. In our second reading, we move from an architectural vision of a physical house made by human hands to a different kind of temple in the form of a person, a temple built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Through Christ, God comes to dwell with us, and God sanctifies humanity -we are his temple- so that each and every person made in his image, is a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. Each builder must chose with care how to build on this foundation we are told.
Let’s think about how we might create and build communities which are built on the foundation of Jesus Christ whether they be communities of faith, communities of collaboration in our city, or communities of friendship across our county- with Christ as our foundation what might those communities look like?
Today we can draw upon another moment in history associated with 1st August. William Wilberforce, a Yorkshire MP and committed Christian campaigned for the Abolition of Slavery. His rather plain slate memorial is just over there.
He died on 29th July 1833, not quite seeing the Act of Abolition passed on this day in 1834. Here was someone who was trying to create and shape a new future built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, someone who believed that every person in their glory and uniqueness, was made in God’s image and we should build a world to reflect that. Here was someone who believed in new futures of justice and mercy for all people everywhere, new futures of compassion and kindness and generosity. We still need to work towards those new futures in our society today, where the evil of racism persists, where there is still discrimination, poverty, injustice and modern day slavery.
Yesterday in the Yorkshire Post, the Archbishop of York said that Yorkshire Day might also be the day on which, we as citizens of this county, commit to addressing the current climate emergency and the associated floods, droughts, famines and extreme weather events we see all the more frequently, affecting everyone but always detrimentally affecting the poorest and most vulnerable in our world. In the midst of a global pandemic and a climate emergency, we have discovered that we are all in this together, and when one suffers all suffer.
So what kind of future lies before us?
What might need to be re-shaped, re-fashioned, and re-built to create a future which is worth celebrating? A future where communities of love, peace and justice flourish, not only in Yorkshire but across the whole of humanity in all of its fullness and diversity?
If we are tasked with building a new kind of future, or carving something beautiful from a past, and sometimes present reality which is far from perfect, how might we go about it? What is our vision for our city, our county, our nation, our world?
At the beginning of this year, Amanda Gorman, in her own words ‘a skinny black girl descended from slaves’, recited a poem at the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States, called ‘The Hill we climb’.
With her very presence and her words crafted from pain and a history of oppression, she carved out in the air a vision of a new future for her society, and that vision was as beautiful as any sculpture that could be made with human hands. She spoke of her country, made up of countys and cities and townships:
And yes, she said, we are far from polished, far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
What kind of temple, what kind of city, what kind of county and country- what kind of world stands before us now – waiting to be built?
This temple, this building was created to give glory to Jesus Christ who offered a vision of new future, a kingdom beyond all earthly kingdoms, beyond our definitions of space and time, a kingdom above every earthly city, and state and nation- a kingdom which we pray will come on earth as it is in heaven.
The Kingdom of which he spoke was not bound by borders or any human dividing lines, entry into this kingdom was not restricted by class, gender, race, wealth or status, there would be in this kingdom, no male or female, no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, for all are made one in Christ, who is for us the sure foundation, the cornerstone on which we build.
Today, on the 1st August 2021, as we rightly celebrate the past and the riches that it shares with us, may we also look at what stands before us, and take up our tools, and begin the work of carving a future of which we can all be proud.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
The divine potter – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: The divine potter
Date/time/service: Sunday 13th June 2021 – Trinity 2 Evensong
Passage of scripture: Jeremiah 7.1-16 & Romans 9.14-26
I used to enjoy art lessons at school but I was never very good at it. For a term or two we did some pottery and I produced a couple of objects but nobody, including me, knew quite what they were. They stood gathering dust at home until my mum judged I would not notice if they discretely disappeared. I never knew what happened to the heavy, misshapen, ceramic things.
In today’s second reading St Paul compares God to a potter and to us as the clay being shaped by the divine hand. It is a metaphor used a few times in the bible including Isaiah and Jeremiah. I think we need to be a little careful when we reflect on this metaphor as we explore our relationship with God. There is a danger of thinking that our relationship with God is all about striving to become something or someone we are not. This can disturb our sense of identity and lead us to be permanently dissatisfied and yearning to be someone else.
Shifting to a slightly different artistic metaphor for a moment, the great sculptor, Michelangelo, apparently once said, ‘Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.’ Maybe we can extend this to clay and particularly to the metaphor St Paul uses in chapter 9 of Romans. Within the piece of clay I am made of there is the true Michael, the Michael God intends me to be. The same is true of the pieces of clay we are all made of, within the clay there is ‘you’, the ‘you’ God intends you to be. If we are to truly become the people God intends us to be then the creative work of the divine potter, and our striving to be who we truly are, is ongoing. But the important things is that none of the striving is about trying to be someone else, it is about becoming who we truly are. Too often in this consumer society do we think that if something isn’t working we throw it away and get a new one. We shouldn’t fall in to the trap of thinking this way about our emerging selves.
Of course, all the creative work of the divine potter is done in the context of us having free will so we have a tendency to keep shaping ourselves in line with our selfish instincts and desires which results in us being the wrong shape. Add to this the pressure we come under from the world around us and advertisers in particular, endlessly tempting us to conform and consume our way to happiness. It is no surprise that we all feel pressure to be someone else or to be like someone else. All God wants us to be is truly ourselves.
The passage from Romans goes on to talk about God’s wrath and God’s mercy and the passage we heard from Jeremiah talks about God’s judgement. It is very easy to be frightened by such talk, indeed some of it sounds bleak and sometimes vicious, but there is another way of thinking about God’s wrath and mercy, about God’s judgement, and that is that we matter to God. We are significant. Who we are, what we do and what we say all matter and are important enough to God for us to make God angry, or to make God want to shower mercy upon us.
Rather than associating wrath, mercy and judgement with the ‘hell fire and brimstone’, ‘day of judgement’, Fear inducing religion that has been, and sometimes still is, preached in churches, maybe we should associate it more with something like an annual review at work? Each of us is important to God and God, the judge, wants us to thrive, wants us to fulfil our potential and being aware of God’s judgement is all about us being helped to discover where things are going wrong. Where we are misshapen. Where we need to reject the temptations of the world and embrace, or be embraced by, God and the ways of God. To make ourselves vulnerable to the creative moulding of the divine potter, always working with us to make us the shape, the Michael, the ‘you’ – we are meant to be.
There is a pop song from the end of the 1960s by a group appropriately called ‘Amen Corner’ and it is called ‘Bend me shape me’. It is a classic, silly love song. A boy singing to the girl he loves saying that she can ‘make this beggar a king, a clown or a poet’. The chorus then kicks in, ‘Bend me shape me anyway you want me, long as you love me, it’s alright’. It struck me that if we take the words out of the context of a silly love song we can make them in to a prayer rising out of our reading from Romans today. Maybe it is by freely submitting ourselves to the divine potter that we will become who God created us to be, be that a king, a clown, a poet or anything else? Maybe a good prayer for us, to God who loves us, to God who is love, is, ‘bend me, shape me, anyway you want me …..’
Let us pray
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may breathe your love.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may hear you speak.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may know you are near.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may feel your love.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may trust your will.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may receive your grace.
In your peace may thy will be done.
In your peace may I discover my true self.
In your peace may I find true blessing through Jesus Christ. Amen
Binding the strong man – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Binding the strong man
Date/time/service: Sunday 6th June 2021 Trinity 1 Eucharist
Passage of scripture: 2 Corinthians 4. 13–5.1 & Mark 3. 20-end
A Head teacher I once knew gave me some excellent advice. When preparing an assembly he told me that the most important question to have in mind is, ‘What does it look like in the playground?’ If, for example, you tell the story of the Good Samaritan in an assembly, you have to make it clear that knowing and understanding the story is important, but it is even more important to make its message real, which will mean, in the context of a school assembly, telling the children the story means that in the playground they should take care of each other, always help someone who has been knocked down, accept help from or offer help to, someone you don’t usually play with. I always have this in mind when I begin to plan an assembly and now I have it in mind when I am preparing a sermon.
There is a great deal of talk in church circles at the moment about discipleship. We should all be concentrating our efforts on discipleship, ensuring that we are enabling each other to deepen in faith and to discern how each of us can use our own particular skills and experience to be better and more useful disciples of Jesus. In the gospel reading this week Mark talks about what following Jesus means and what it might entail. I suppose you could say that Mark is helping us to see what being a disciple of Jesus might look like in the playground – and what he has to say is extremely challenging.
When exploring discipleship you might expect talk about kindness, compassion, gentleness and love as these, surely, are the characteristics of a disciple of Jesus. Things are never that straightforward in Mark’s gospel, he is always surprising, always shocking. He forces us to look at the world and Jesus in radically new ways. His teaching about discipleship is surprising, strange, radical and deeply challenging.
The gospel of Mark starts with Jesus healing lots of people and casting out demons from many. You would have thought that everyone would have been delighted about this. That in these remarkable events the people would have recognised God at work, evil being dealt with and God’s kingdom being established. According to Mark, this is not what happened. Having healed lots of people and cast out lots of demons Jesus returns home and in chapter 3 we learn that his own family try to restrain and stop him from speaking because they thought that he had gone mad. Jesus was giving them a bad name! In addition the Scribes and the Pharisees, the powerful, religious elite, began telling people that they thought he was possessed by demons himself. There is chaos and the people are confused. Then Jesus says this;
“ …. no-one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house.” Mark 3v27.
We need to think very carefully about what Jesus is saying here and we need to be careful about how we understand the image he gives us. When Jesus says ‘no-one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions’ perhaps he is saying that the strong man is the devil or force of evil, and the house, is the world. Jesus may be telling us here that the world is dominated by ‘the strong man’ evil, and we, as followers of Jesus, cannot simply ignore that and take possession of the world for God – we have to deal with evil, we have to tie up, or bind this strong man so that we can take possession of the world and make God’s kingdom a reality here.
If Mark were preaching here today I think he would be telling us that in order to be good disciples of Jesus the most important thing we have to do is to deal with the demons, fight against evil. In ourselves that means battling against our selfish instincts and in the world it means working for greater compassion and justice for all people. The only way this world is going to become God’s world, God’s Kingdom, is if people like us, disciples of Jesus, bind the strong man of selfishness and evil in ourselves and in the world.
It always strikes me as odd to see a smoking area just outside a Gym with people who have just worked out for an hour or so puffing away on cigarettes or vaping furiously. Clearly they aspire to be fit because they have just ‘worked out’ but then succumb to an addiction that mitigates against being fully fit. I think most of us are a bit like that with our faith. We want to be good and faithful disciples of Jesus but we regularly succumb to selfishness and greed. Mark is teaching us that we can’t do both, we have to deal with the selfishness and greed before we can be good and faithful disciples.
None of this is easy. It is much easier to be selfish, to only think of ourselves than it is to be selfless and to think of others. Being a baptized Christian, being a disciple of Jesus, is not just about being nice, I think St Mark would say it is also about fighting. Fighting against all that is destructive, negative and disabling in ourselves and in the world. It is only when we have engaged in that battle and won, it is only when the strong man has been bound, that we will be liberated to fulfil our lives in generous kindness, compassion and love. And in this way we will take possession of the strong man’s house and ensure the establishment of God’s Kingdom.
So what does all this look like in the playground? As we walk out of church today, we should commit ourselves afresh to dealing with those aspects of our character and personality we know are flawed, our demons of selfishness, greed, arrogance – so that we make space for selflessness, generosity, compassion and grace in our selves. And today we should commit ourselves to fighting the evils which belittle our world, the demons in people, communities and nations which result in poverty, injustice, conflict – so that all the little kingdoms of self interest in the world will be replaced by God’s one Kingdom of fairness, justice, peace and love.
We are ‘Corpus Christi’ – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: We are ‘Corpus Christi’
Date/time/service: Thursday 20th June 5.15pm – Corpus Christi
Passage of scripture: 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 & John 6.51-58
Imagine that you have never been in a church before and that you know very little, if anything, about Jesus and the bible. Then, for one reason or another, you end up here, on the Feast of Corpus Christi. You are in awe of the building, amused by the people at the front swanning about in funny clothes and nervous about doing the wrong thing. Then you hear the reading in which Jesus tells his followers that the bread they are to eat is his body and the wine that they drink his blood. That is disturbing enough but then you hear the next reading where Jesus says ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.’ Surely that would be enough to send you running away from here thinking that we are all mad?
We know a little bit of theology. We know that the sacrament of the Eucharist is steeped in layers of meaning to do with the ancient Jewish Passover, the sacrificial death of Jesus on a cross and 2,000 years of reflection and tradition. We know that Jesus promised to be with us when we share bread and wine and that we are sustained on our spiritual journey by this sacred meal. For us, it is the most natural thing in the world to hear these words and to partake of this meal, but for others looking on it must seem crazy and perhaps even evil.
So – what is to be done? Do we stop this peculiar ritual because it is so easily misunderstood? Do we re-invent it with Ribena and crisps to make it seem more ‘relevant’? Do we carry on regardless, arrogantly ignoring those for whom it makes no sense? Or, do we carry on and do all that we can to give what we do some context and to connect what we do with the lives that we lead every day?
Let’s go back to where I started. This time imagine you are you and the one who knows nothing about Jesus and the bible is sitting along the same row as you. Despite the fact that our friend feels that they have stumbled on a weird, cannibalistic cult they haven’t actually run screaming from the building. When the service is over our friend leans over to you and asks, ‘what was all that about?’ What are you going to say? How are you going to respond?
Gone are the days when we can believe that we religious types are the normal ones and what we do in places like this is normal. The balance has tipped, in fact it probably tipped quite a while ago. We are odd and what we do here is odd by most people’s standards. Maybe that is a little harsh, perhaps I should say, to most people we seem odd and to most people, what we do here, must seem very odd indeed.
I preached a sermon here a few years ago about rhubarb. There is an area near Wakefield which is a centre of excellence in the growing of rhubarb. When rhubarb cannot be grown outside in the winter because of the weather, it is grown in forcing sheds in which the environment is tightly controlled, minimal light, just enough water and the rhubarb grows quickly (if you stand quietly in the sheds you can actually hear it growing) and is tender and sweet. Churches can become like those forcing sheds. We can be so consumed in what we are and what we believe, we can control our environment to just suit us so that we can feel great and sometimes actually seem to thrive …. the only problem is that we are not connecting in any way with the real world.
We have to do all that we can not to become a church like those enclosed rhubarb forcing sheds, controlled and only good at one thing. We all need to be able to survive and thrive in a world where we are thought to be deeply peculiar and that means every single one of us thinking things through and being able to respond positively to the visitor who leans over to us at the end of a service like this and asks, ‘what was all that about?’
For what it is worth, if someone came up to me after this service and asked, ‘what was all that about?’ I would start by talking to them about Jesus. In my experience, that is always the best place to start. Today I would talk about our belief that Jesus is God’s son and point out that when he was talking about himself and trying to give people an insight into who he was, he always compared himself to something very ordinary and every day, in today’s gospel he compares himself to bread, in other places he compares himself to a vine, the door of a sheepfold, a good shepherd. These sound odd to us but when he was speaking these were images that everyone would know and understand. The message is that Jesus is not other-worldly, he is not separate and distant from our normal human experience of life, he is part of it, indeed, he is at the heart of ordinary everyday life. And when he wanted to assure his closest friends that he would remain with them, he didn’t give them a strange sophisticated ritual to follow, he again took something simple and everyday, the sharing of food with people that we love, and said, whenever you share bread and wine in memory of me, I will be with you. So, a response to the question, ‘what was all that about?’ after this service, to someone who is totally unchurched, is that it is all about celebrating that the God we believe in is present with us in our ordinary, everyday lives and that the simplest things and simplest experiences are where God is encountered. Yes, we dress things up in church with funny clothes, magnificent buildings, beautiful music and even a dramatic smoke machine, but essentially, what we are doing is rejoicing in God being with us in the simple sharing of food. As the great poet George Herbert might have said – this is all about encountering something of ‘heaven in ordinary’.
As we sit and pray and reflect here in church at services like this on days like this, let us all spend some time preparing ourselves to talk to anyone who might turn to us and ask, ‘what was all that about?’
Comfort and Challenge – The Reverend Canon Victoria Johnson
A sermon preached on the Day of Pentecost by Canon Victoria Johnson
On Sunday 23rd May, 2021 at the Solemn Eucharist
Readings: Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:22-27, John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
‘Comfort and Challenge’.
What is the Holy Spirit saying to us on this, the day which some call the birth day of the church? Is the Holy Spirit whispering comfort, or provoking challenge? What is the Holy Spirit blowing away, what is the Holy Spirit disturbing? What is the Holy Spirit empowering?
It feels as if we are somehow, living in the midst of the birth pangs of a new beginning…some call it the new normal -it certainly feels as if our society, our church, and our world are experiencing a period of wrestling, of upheaval, of messy and sometimes painful emergence.
As we acknowledge the imperfections of the present time, perhaps the very thing we all want most is the past, and who can blame us- the past before all of this- the past when we could smile and be seen, and embrace, and sing and gather, the past when we were more certain of the future that lay before us.
These things will all return in their time but the world into which they return may look very different and we all know that the ‘rebuild’ is probably going to take time. It won’t be easy. The much promised ‘freedom day’ may not deliver everything for everyone on the twenty first of June, however much gloss we put on it.
This last year has also brought to light a past where we have not got everything right, it has shown up a way of living that was very far from the kingdom we pray will come amongst us. We have seen the widening gap between rich and poor, racism, nationalism, gender violence, we have seen effects on the environment, on the NHS, on mental health, on the lives of young people, their education and well-being. The impact of covid- will be felt for years and years to come.
In these moments of challenge and change, we might pray today for the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit who, in the words of a prayer of Erasmus ‘cheers those in sorrow’, bringing those in heaviness to the truth, kindling in those who are far away the fire of charity, for those who are cold knitting them together with the glue of peace. We call upon the advocate, the comforter, to salve and console us after these life-altering events for which none of us wished. We claim that comfort and life and fire of love today, for our world and for our church.
In scripture, the Holy Spirit is sometimes referred to as a breath- Christ breathed on his disciples the Holy Spirit, and from the book of Romans, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, and that same spirit intercedes for us, with sighs too deep for words.
The Holy Spirit we long for today, is that spirit imagined as a gentle breeze, the flickering candle, the shuffling of leaves, the sweetest dove, the consolation of silent prayer.
Come Holy Spirit!
But, there is another side of the same Holy Spirit. We are told in the scriptures, that the Holy Spirit is also like a fiery whirlwind blowing through the lives of all believers: wonderful and terrifying, comforting and disturbing. We learn that those on whom the Spirit rested were thought to have drunk too much wine.
The Spirit brings portents and signs. The Holy Spirit is variously described as being like a mighty wind, like flame, rushing water, like a bird on the wing, it cannot be tamed, or trained, or captured.
TS Elliot writes in The Four Quartets. “The dove descending breaks the air, with flame of incandescent terror” Are we ready for the incandescent terror of the same Holy Spirit? Are we ready for comfort and challenge?
We cannot domesticate or control the Holy Spirit. When we eventually sing ‘Come down O Love divine’ and ask the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts, consuming and burning our earthly passions-do we realise we are opening ourselves up to radical transformation and challenge as well as divine comfort?
Michael Ramsey in his reflections on the Holy Spirit, (The Holy Spirit, A Biblical Study) comments that the history of the church is shaped by the sacraments, by the apostolic ministry and teaching of the church, and the Holy Spirit uses this shape to reveal the works of God.
But, he notes, the Holy Spirit also acts in unpredictable ways, exposing, teaching, illuminating, judging, renewing. The Sprit he says, is still as it was and ever shall be, the unpredictable breath of God.
On this last day of the Easter Season, we again celebrate renewal and rebirth, it is yet another beginning in Christ- a re-creation. The unpredictable breath of God might be blowing through our lives at this moment-doing something new and we should be prepared for challenge, the unpredictable breath of God may be uncomfortable and even terrifying. Our plans for ourselves may be overwhelmed by God’s plans for us. Things might have to change, heaven help us, we might have to change. That is the risk of standing before the living God and praying ‘Come Holy Spirit’.
We are at a turning point in the life of the church in this country. What is left of us when everything has been taken away? What are we really about? What have we discovered about the church in the last year?
We have discovered that we can be incredibly agile- that we can gather on-line as well as in person, we have discovered that as an institution, we are racist and often exclusive and discriminatory on account of gender and sexuality and class, we have discovered that worship really matters to us, people are hungry for prayer and hungry to know more about Jesus, we have discovered that community matters, we have discovered that we are capable of great acts of generosity, but also massive failures in protecting the vulnerable from abuse, we have discovered that there are many people longing to meet God but they’re often disappointed by the church and it’s pettiness and lack of love, we have discovered that we are able to serve the community in many and various ways in humility and faithfulness, we have discovered that we like every other community have experienced loss and fracture and sorrow, we have discovered that we are at our best when we speak out against injustice and practice what we preach in the name of Jesus our Lord. It’s a mixed picture.
In the last year, the church has also been exposed in all of its fragility and failure and in all of its promise and purpose. What have we learnt? And where do we go from here? Can we face the future in hope? Are we, the church, brave enough to invoke the Holy Spirit that might disturb us further? Are we ready for the fire of incandescent terror, as well as calling upon the Holy Spirit that offers us comfort and consolation?
St Paul writes in his letter to the Romans: We do not know how to pray as we ought, but we do have to trust that the Spirit discerns what we need, according to the will of God. We long for the Holy Spirit to come and bring comfort, but we also need the Holy Spirit to come and disturb our comfortableness, and in her unpredictable way continue to expose us, teach us, illuminate us, judge us, renew us.
Come Holy Spirit, come to us, and come among us, come as the wind, and cleanse us, come as the fire and burn, come as the dew, and refresh, convict, convert, and consecrate our hearts and lives to your greater glory, and this we ask for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen
(Prayer adapted from Eric Milner-White, 1884-1964)
Is death strong? – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Is death strong?
Date/time/service: Sunday 9th May 2022 – 6th Sunday of Easter
Passage of scripture: Song of Solomon 4.16-5.2; 8.6,7 & Revelation 14-end
I have come rather late to poetry. I always liked the idea of poetry but generally found it difficult to understand. One of my heroes, Spike Milligan, used to say that he preferred poetry to prose, ‘because it makes less mess’, so I have persevered. To be honest, I am better at reading books about poetry, books where someone is helping me understand it, than books simply full of poems by actual poets. The good thing is that this interest in poetry has helped me reflect a little deeper on some of the books in the bible where some poetic techniques are used.
Our first reading today came from the Song of Solomon. An unusual book in the bible, not only because it is essentially a book of poetry about romantic love between a man and a woman, but also because in all 8 chapters there is no mention of God at all! It is assumed that it made its way into the bible because people have interpreted it to be an allegory of the love between God and Israel, and now many read it as an allegory about the love of Christ for his Church, a theme which we also find in the writings of Paul.
The Song of Solomon is full of evocative imagery. In the second chapter there is a passage about one of the first encounters between the young couple in love and this is said, ‘now the winter is past and the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come’. Beautiful imagery to describe the feeling of hope, expectation and new life that comes when people fall in love.
If you were taking part in a creative writing exercise and your teacher asked you to complete these phrases ‘love is strong as …..’ and ‘passion as fierce as …..’ I wonder what words you would come up with? ‘love is strong as … iron …. an oak tree …. a giant ….’ ‘Passion as fierce as …. a lion ….. a bear ….. an erupting volcano …..’ If I had never read the Song of Solomon I don’t think I would ever come up with the suggestion of saying ‘love is strong as death’ and ‘passion fierce as the grave’. Because many of us are familiar with this quotation we tend to take it for granted, but these are very strange things to say indeed. Instinctively we would think that death comes when strength is lost due to old age or illness. If we think of a grave we usually think of bleak sadness and stillness. So why did the poet who wrote the Song of Solomon describe death as strong and the grave as fierce?
It is all to do with perspective and what poets and other artists are great at, is helping us to see things from different perspectives. When someone we love dies it can feel as though they have been wrenched away from us, it can feel that our relationship with them has ended and nothing can make that right. If we think about death from this perspective the description of it being strong begins to make more sense. If we think about Mary Magdalen weeping by the grave of Jesus and if we think of funerals we have attended we probably all have experiences of people weeping and sobbing uncontrollably by the graveside. I remember one funeral I took when a mourner, looking at the floral tribute, saw one sent by someone they didn’t like and throw it over the fence into the field next door to the graveyard. If we think from this perspective we can see that graves and fierce passion are indeed connected.
So, what does all this have to say to us?
For me, ‘love is strong as death’ is at the very heart of scripture and at the very heart of who Jesus is. St Paul says ‘love is strong as death’ in this way in Romans 8.38,39
‘For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
And, more succinctly in 1 Corinthians 13.8
‘Love never ends’.
These words from scripture and the resurrection of Jesus tell us that love is strong as death, indeed, that love is stronger than death.
It is very easy for us to get a little carried away with this way of thinking and speaking and to start behaving as though death doesn’t matter. That it is a minor inconvenience in our journey to heaven. This leads people to only want services of thanksgiving instead of funerals and balloons instead of lilies. This is a mistake. Though I firmly believe that love is strong as death and that love never ends, death is still devastating. Death often feels heart-breaking and knowing or believing that it cannot break our hearts doesn’t stop it feeling as though they are broken. Death changes everything, except the love that binds us together with each other and with God, and that change is hard, very hard to live with and to live through, even if we know or believe that love is still there.
It is Ascension Day on Thursday so the great cycle of Lent, Holy Week and Easter comes to a close for another year. In the normal course of events Lent begins with us being told, as we are ashed on Ash Wednesday, ‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’. In other words, you are going to die one day, sort things out. It is good to be reminded as the Easter season comes to a close that ‘love is strong as death’ and that ‘love never ends’ because this is the heart of the Easter message. The whole point of these great liturgical seasons is not to simply revisit the same familiar stories and themes each year, but each year to reflect on the same stories and by so doing to deepen our faith and to grow in wisdom each time we go around the cycle. This Lent, Holy Week and Easter has all happened in the midst of a pandemic which, amongst many other things has reminded us of our mortality. So may we move into Pentecost this year more able to talk about and to think about death, not in a morbid or frightening way, but in an honest and truly Christian way which enables us to prepare sensibly for death, grieve when it happens, and all in the context of knowing that, whatever happens, we are all held in God’s love which is stronger than death and never ends ….. after all, we are Easter People.
Let us pray
Almighty God, Jesus promised us life and life in all its fullness. Help us to see that to attain life in all its fullness we need to learn to live with vulnerability, ageing, decay and death. Inspire our thinking and our understanding about life and what truly makes us who we are. Give us courage to accept vulnerability when we need to, in the full knowledge that your love and your presence with us is constant and unconditional and that when minds and bodies wear out or cease to work we remain yours, held in love that never ends. We ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord. Amen
Sermon Preached at the Dedication of the Grand Organ of York Minster On Easter Day at Evensong
Sermon Preached at the Dedication of the Grand Organ of York Minster On Easter Day at Evensong by Canon Victoria Johnson, Precentor and accompanied by Ben Morris Assistant Director of Music
Readings Psalm 66, Ezekiel 37:1-14, Luke 24:13-35
Background to the Sermon
On Easter Day we rededicated the Grand Organ of York Minster in which it was ‘woken’ up from sleep after a once in a century refurbishment project. The sermon was a first for York Minster, preached by the Precentor, Canon Victoria Johnson and Ben Morris, Assistant Director of Music.
Central to the concept of the Sermon was the sound of Easter made manifest through the wonderful instrument which had just been dedicated by the Archbishop of York. Vicky said, ‘this was a unique experience combining Liturgy, Music and Spoken word to create a new sound world for the Minster, where the organ, at the very heart of our worship, was given a voice. At a time when congregations are not permitted to sing, the organ articulated the Easter Alleluia on our behalf.’
The sermon was written attentive to the emotions and experience of sound, and tried to articulate the joy of Easter through the Easter Hymn ‘O Filii et Filiae’ whose Alleluia ran like a golden thread through the text. The effect of the sermon relied on the exceptional improvisational skills of Ben Morris who accompanied the text from beginning to end. This co-creation of word and music was greatly appreciated and it provided a moving and exhilarating experience for those who were able to be in the building and those joining special service online.
Have you heard the sound of the Easter Alleluia?
The Organist plays the ‘Alleluia’ from O Filii et Filiae, quietly and mystically, running into a simple minor chord (on quiet strings or similar).
Two thousand years ago, as the sun began to rise, early in the morning on the first day of the week, Mary sat on a stone weeping. She had not yet heard the sound, and her tears ran down her face and dropped onto the dusty earth. As she wept, and as her tears fell, small white flowers sprung up in their place. Small white flowers around her feet.
The sound of small flowers springing up is placed on top of the chord.
Her tears became like the river of the water of life, rushing, flowing, surging, creating something new, there in the garden.
A very quiet sound of water running starts to emerge
And then a voice said ‘Mary, why are you weeping’?
And there in that moment, she suddenly heard the sound of the Easter Alleluia.
A tiny echo of the Alleluia is sounded, and then returns back to the chord.
Two disciples were walking and talking, grappling with a grief which barely contained their confusion at all those strange events in Jerusalem. The crowds, the betrayals, the trial, the circus of accusations, someone washing their hands of it all.
They looked up as a stranger suddenly appeared alongside them, listening, talking, wondering, and in his voice, they hear something of the likeness of…. But no it can’t be.
First five notes of the Alleluia, but then not quite getting there. Back to the chord.
They walk a little further and come to rest at the end of the day. The kindly stranger is still with them and then, in that moment, in that precise moment as bread is broken and wine is shared, their hearts are strangely warmed, and they hear the sound of the Easter Alleluia.
A warm echo of the Alleluia is sounded reducing to a single note- which moves into the first verse of O Filii et Filiae as a single note melody…possibly with a very low undergirding to represent the universe being made.
In the very beginning, when God said ‘let there be light’ this was something of the likeness of the sound of the Easter Alleluia.
As the breath of God blew through the desert and bones clicked into place, bone upon bone, flesh upon flesh. Bones in the sand were brought to life through the sound of the Easter Alleluia.
Back to the chord
Then one day the sound overshadowed the bright heart of a girl, and in her womb there dwelt the new seed of this sound, and from her lips she sang out with all of her being, and though she did not know it yet, she sang with the sound of the Easter Alleluia.
Perhaps a simple chordal or mystical mixture sound of the Alleluia, merging back down into a note, then a chord, then maybe some quick and quite engine like, ‘coursing and building’ the church, to underlay, culminating in a whisper, then a roar of the Alleluia.
This beautiful sound came to live in the hearts of those who could hear it and became the engine oil of justice and righteousness, it brought peace where hatred held sway, it melted the pride and power of the cruel, it disrupted the careless and the slick, and raised up the humble and meek; it exposed lies to the light of truth and gave voice to the voiceless.
It coursed through history, turning sinners into saints, sanctifying the blood of the martyrs, turning our world upside down. It gathered from north, south, east and west, and day by day and year by year, this sound which was from the beginning, made all things new, and in whispers and in roars, we still hear the sound of the Easter Alleluia.
Back to the chord and into alleluia to ‘create the song’…
Can we hear that sound today? After a year of grief and fracture and pain and loss, after a year of isolation, confusion and testing to our limits, we sit again with Mary, in the garden, whose weeping at the grave, creates the sound of a song: Alleluia
Then into silence.
Far, far away from that garden through time and space, in the lands of the north, in a church of great splendour, there was an instrument which had no sound for year upon year. And despite everything which challenged it, and everything that silenced it, one day, it found its voice again.
Back to the chord
It had pipes like penni-whistles, and pipes like clarinets and flutes, and pipes like the strings of an orchestra, and pipes as big as the funnel of great ship navigating the waters of this world.
The Organist illustrates as above and then returns, back to the chord.
The purpose of this instrument was re-kindled by skilled hands and careful ears, and it returned to fulfil its vocation. On this day, when we cannot sing, it sings for us, like a choir of five thousand voices- and it becomes for us a sign of the sound of the Easter Alleluia.
The Organ builds and builds very slowly to:
So let us hear it sing for us, as we sing in our hearts of Jesus Christ who is risen for us and for all.
For he is the sound of the Easter Alleluia. Alleluia Christ is risen, he is risen indeed. Alleluia.
A full verses toccata style finish of O Filii et Filiae, ending of course on the final chord with a B natural and not a B flat. Major, not minor.
Amen.
Living Christ’s Story – Reverend Canon Maggie McLean (Missioner)
This weekend last year we had, I guess you would call it an art installation, of the word HOPE in large illuminated letters. They are doing the rounds of all the cathedrals but were with us at the start of this dreadful last 12 months when we have seen lives ruined and lost; families separated; social isolation on a scale I think very few will ever experience again.
And here in the beauty and expanse of York Minster were these four letters – HOPE – shining out of the darkness as we went into an unprecedented year where we probably, amongst all the other adjectives, felt HOPELESS.
I want to reflect a little bit this evening on this word HOPE as part of our Lenten Sermon Series, Living Christ’s Story, and how an understanding of Christian HOPE has been influential in my own journey of faith and discipleship.
The Indonesian word for HOPE means ‘looking through the horizon to what is beyond’. What might this mean and what might it look like?
For the Christian I think it means living God’s Kingdom now – to live God’s future today – to look beyond the horizon of this world and live in the hope of God’s Kingdom in the present.
A kingdom that believes in a new way of being:
A Kingdom where women can walk home alone at night;
A kingdom where black lives matter;
A kingdom where climate justice is a reality.
This isn’t wishful thinking, it is the prayer of every Christian ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven….
And I see the reality of this in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. God breaks into our world through the birth of Jesus.
God wants to be in a relationship with us, a relational God in a world made up of relationships. Jesus living a life of relationship where the mighty are brought low and the lowly are lifted high, revealed throughout the Gospels in:
every conversation,
every confrontation,
every act of healing,
every miracle of new life and new birth.
A life that says death does not have the final word but where God tugs us back to life, new life, which allows us to see beyond the present to what can be. And that for me is what it means to live Christ’s story and to live and work for the hope that is within us: a hope for a more just and equal world where we love our neighbours as ourselves and work for the flourishing of all humanity.
The first reading this evening speaks of the exodus, a foundational narrative in which God reminds the Israelites: ‘I will take you as my people, and I will be your God’. A pivotal story in which we are reminded of God’s love for God’s people and God’s will to be in relationship with humanity and to bring us out of all that enslaves us and establish a relationship based on promise and trust.
Writing at a time of great persecution, Paul in the second reading, is not trying to deny the reality of suffering but speaking words of hope to this fragile and fledgling Christian community. Paul, in essence, is reflecting on what it means to live out Christ’s story and we see the confidence and assurance he has in God in a future not yet realised. Or in other words, we hear Paul talking about hope – a hope founded on God wanting to be in relationship with humanity and reconciled, through Christ, with us, because God so loved the world…..
Living Christ’s story is living a life of love. And that is a life of choice. Choosing to love when it would be so easy at times to turn away; not get involved; not love our neighbours as ourselves. That’s not what Jesus did. His life, death, and resurrection are nothing less than the embodiment and enactment of love.
And we see this breaking into our world when…..
We watch someone running into a collapsing building in a war torn city and bring out a crying child;
When a teenager stands up to a president demanding that the leaders of the world do something for climate justice;
When we see a black man carrying an injured white supremacist away from danger;
When we see the daily visit of a husband to a care home to sit for a few hours by the side of his wife who no longer knows him;
When we see a nun kneeling in front of a man with a machine gun.
Living Christ’s Story is in short living a life of love and hope that the world can and will be a better place. A place we begin to occupy today when we live the love to which each of us is called. Freedom from all that diminishes human dignity; suffering that may come when we assert that dignity, and joy in a hope we know will never fail.
In Jesus name we pray ‘thy kingdom come’.
There are no ‘visitors’ – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: There are no ‘visitors’.
Date/time/service: Sunday 14th March 2021 Zoom and Live stream
Passage of scripture: John 19.25b-27
A sermon about hospitality at York Minster in the context of seeking to ‘Live Christ’s Story’. How on earth do we learn about hospitality from someone who was born in a borrowed stable, buried in a borrowed tomb, lived in obscurity for most of his life and, for the notorious bit of his life, didn’t own a home and therefore, presumably, lived off the hospitality of others?
A tough question. Here is my response. For starters, it is interesting, with all this in mind, that Jesus’ dying wish, as we read in the gospel this morning, was that his mother should have somewhere to live, somewhere to call home and someone to care for her when he was not there. Clearly, despite being an itinerant preacher with ‘nowhere to lay his head’, a home and a loving family were important to Jesus.
Perhaps the most important lesson about hospitality we learn from Jesus is that, for him, there are no outsiders. He spent much of his life extending the hand of friendship to those living on the fringes of society. He seeks out lepers, he talks with Samaritans and he befriends fallen women. He commends the generosity of the poor. He speaks of the importance of valuing and protecting children. He tells stories about God’s mercy and forgiveness, about God searching for the lost. It seems that there is no one he will not talk to, heal and forgive. There is no one he will not embrace with love.
We also know that Jesus enjoyed sharing meals with others, in fact some criticised him for being a ‘glutton and a drunkard’ and for sharing food with all sorts of people he should not have consorted with at all. He ate with people like Zacchaeus the tax collector. He also ate with friends Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and of course he ate with his disciples regularly. Famously his last meal was with them in the upper room.
So, the gospels tell us that Jesus was very social and enjoyed the hospitality of others, and in terms of his time and energy he was generously hospitable, some would say, outrageously generously hospitable towards all sorts of people – spending time with them in conversation and prayer.
What can we, in this cathedral church of York Minster, learn from all of this?
I know that there are people here today, people who come regularly, because this is a hospitable place. Because, when they first came, tentatively looking for a church, someone spoke to them, befriended them and so drew them into this community. I feel sure there will be others who came here once or twice and no one spoke to them and they left and never came back because they felt this was an inhospitable place. Sometimes we get hospitality right, sometimes we don’t. How do we get it right more of the time?
It is, perhaps, inevitable that we identify as ‘visitors’ those who buy a ticket to visit us as a heritage attraction. But for anyone who comes here to pray alone or to worship with us, perhaps we should learn not to think of them as visitors. Maybe, as Jesus did not possess a home, we should not think about this magnificent place as being ‘ours’? It is very clear that possessing things was not important to Jesus.
York Minster is the place we come to worship. York Minster is the place we come to meet our friends. York Minster is the place we look after because it is, and has been for generations, a precious and beautiful place of encounter with God. But this is not our place. This is as much ‘home’ to those who have worshipped here regularly for 50 years as it is ‘home’ to anyone who wanders in off the street to join in worship or to offer a prayer of thanksgiving or a prayer of despair. This is as much ‘home’ to those of us who give generously of our time and wealth for its thriving as it is ‘home’ for the person who comes through the door once with nothing in their pockets. This is as much ‘home’ to those of us who have a seat in which we regularly sit (including the Archbishop), as it is ‘home’ to the person who comes and, unknowingly, sits in the seat we think of as ours! ‘Friend, come higher’. Perhaps when we think of hospitality at York Minster and what it might look like in 5 years time, one aim we might adopt is that, by 2025 we will have established a culture whereby, in terms of prayer and worship, THERE ARE NO VISITORS. We may feel that this is our spiritual home, and it is, but for the time anyone is here to pray or to worship with us, it is their spiritual home as well. The only difference there is between one of us, who may have been worshipping here for 50 years and someone who is worshipping here for the first time is that we know where the toilets are and where to go for coffee after the service. In every other respect we are the same. This is their home as much as it is ours. If we began to think more like this how would that change the welcome we extend?
How would our understanding of hospitality change if we stopped thinking ‘us’ and ‘them’, regulars and visitors? Could we ever train ourselves never to use the word ‘visitor’ in relation to someone who comes here to pray or to join in our worship? How would the way we welcome people change if we learned to see everyone who comes here to pray simply as our sisters and brothers in Christ?
I wonder where this way of thinking may lead? Perhaps the next challenge will be to consider how to stop thinking of the people who buy a ticket to visit here as a tourist attraction as ‘visitors’? It seems that visiting a place like this, for many people, is just something else to consume. A place to tick off on their tour of the north of England. All they seem to want is a photo to prove that they came here. Are there things we can do to improve our welcome to those simply dashing in to ‘consume’ another visitor attraction, to make them get a sense that this place belongs to them as much as it belongs to us? That this huge space, these magnificent stones and this gleaming glass enfold, is actually here to encourage everyone to have big thoughts, to ask big questions, to encounter something bigger than themselves we call God? We are not here to sell an experience or a photo opportunity, we are here to maintain a place for everyone and anyone to come and stand in awe, not as a consumer but as themselves. This is a massive challenge because we have to ‘market’ ourselves and we have to sell tickets to maintain these magnificent stones and this gleaming glass. But how can we market ourselves as a place of encounter with something bigger than ourselves and not just a place to tick off having visited like the Railway Museum and Yorvik?
My time is up, but one final thought. I am suggesting we train ourselves to stop thinking of York Minster as ‘ours’ and to adopt a radical, generous hospitality whereby it is made clear that it is home to everyone who comes through the door, and I am suggesting this because this approach resonates with the example and teaching of Jesus Christ, who owned nothing. Among the things he didn’t own was a computer. How do we extend his radical, generous hospitality to those who come to York Minster online through our website, Zoom, live-stream or pre-recorded services? How do make ‘online’ York Minster an awe inspiring place of encounter, just like the building and what happens in it?
In short, York Minster is not our church to share, it is God’s house of prayer and, as such, we share it, as Jesus shared himself, with everyone and anyone.
Living Christ’s Story – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Living Christ’s Story
Date/time/service: Sunday 7th March 2021 – Evensong
Passage of scripture: Exodus 5.1 – 6.1 & Philippians 3.4b-14
‘The Imitation of Christ’ by Thomas a Kempis, written in the 15th century, is a spiritual classic about the interior life which I read a very long time ago. The title of this book came to mind when I sat down to write my contribution to this series of short homilies on what it means to ‘Live Christ’s Story’.
There is a danger when we talk about faith in relation to books like ‘The Imitation of Christ’, and the invitation to ‘Live Christ’s story’, that we mistakenly believe that faith is all about trying to be something or someone we are not. That faith is all about striving to imitate or be someone else. I think this is profoundly unhelpful and dangerous.
In one of his books Rowan Williams said this, ‘At the day of judgement …… the question will not be about why we failed to be someone else; I shall not be asked why I wasn’t Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa, but why I wasn’t Rowan Williams.’ p. 95
From the age of about 14 all I ever wanted to be was a parish priest. In pursuit of this ambition I got a degree in Theology and then went to Theological College. By the time I was thirty I was a parish priest in a large village. By that time I also had a wife and a child. Everything had fallen into place. Everything, including my faith and my theology, was relatively neat and tidy – my one remaining ambition was to try to be a really good parish priest. Then something happened which resulted in me becoming the chaplain of Helen House, the first Children’s Hospice. I began spending time with children and families who were living the nightmare of dealing with the terminal illness of a child and, within a short while, I was taking funerals for those families. As a result I discovered that my neat and tidy faith and theology were not fit for purpose. In addition my picture of priesthood was profoundly challenged.
Most of the families I met at Helen House had very little or no church connection, so I had to talk with them about the profound challenges they were facing without relying on them knowing much about the bible, and without being able to talk with them about God in the neat and tidy ways I had learnt at University and Theological College. Quite quickly I had to learn to re-interpret my faith, understanding of God and what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, so that I could engage meaningfully with those families in conversations and in taking funerals for them. The truth is that since that time I have never been able to reconstruct a neat and tidy faith. Despite all this my faith, to date, has always been strong and profound, it is just that it is untidy, incomplete and will ever remain, a work in progress.
Mother Frances Dominica, the founder of Helen House, once said this,
“What can we do as we accompany children (and families) through dying and bereavement? …. again and again we feel inadequate to the task and I believe it is right that we should. But we … can be alongside as ourselves, as paid-up card-carrying members of the human race. If we are to have anything worthwhile to offer then we need to be in touch with that which is deepest within ourselves. In the midst of the struggle and the unknowing in myself, there I find God. …… The ground on which we walk in the home or hospital or hospice is holy ground.’
Put simply, what I learnt at Helen House was that in order to be an effective priest I had to be, first and foremost, a human being. I had thought that ‘Living Christ’s Story’ was, for me, about using all that I had learned at University and Theological College, and using the authority given to me at ordination, to lead people and communities through the joys and sorrows of life while all the time proclaiming the good news of what God has done for us in the life of Jesus Christ. At Helen House, I was forced to learn that simple humanity and human connection has to come before any of this. I had to meet people first and foremost not as a qualified and proficient priest but as vulnerable Michael.
Of course, as I read the gospels I now see what I was missing. So caught up in fulfilling my ambition of becoming a qualified and proficient priest I was missing the fact that Jesus was born a vulnerable human being, engaged with everyone he met first and foremost as a vulnerable human being and died as a direct result of being a vulnerable human being. By baptism I become an active part of Christ’s story, but not fulfilling a role, not playing the part of ‘qualified and proficient priest’ in that story. The best and worst part about living Christ’s story is that we are not in it to play a role, we are in it to be ourselves, our true selves. We are in it to become the people God made us to be. We can play games. We can try to hide behind masks and personas we create, but when we truly live Christ’s story those masks and personas have to be rejected to reveal the real person beneath. The person God made us to be.
I am not a huge fan of reality TV, primarily because it isn’t reality, it is a manipulated and edited version of reality. I am not a fan of reality TV but I am a fan of reality faith. Living Christ’s story has to be all about reality faith.
If I am not facing the challenge of Living Christ’s story as the real me in my real, everyday life then I am not living Christ’s story at all, I am just living my own story and that is ultimately a story of vanity and ultimately, isolation.
Let us pray
Lord Jesus, who did empty yourself of your eternal glory and became a little child for love of us, empty us wholly of all vanity and pretence, that we may love you truly as you love us infinitely, and serve you faithfully with grace and in truth. Amen
Stewardship – Canon Victoria Johnson
Sermon on the theme of Stewardship
Canon Victoria Johnson, Sunday 7th March 2021
Readings Exodus 20:1-17, John 2:13-22
In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
In this the third of our Lent Sermon series, we consider Stewardship– as an expression of our Christian faith- how we steward our time, our talents, our money. We do that following on from St John’s account of- Jesus cleansing the Temple– The very reading that provokes angry letters about Cathedral gift shops or charging for entry, a reading that incites people to argue that the church shouldn’t talk about money, or ask for money, or steward money, whilst themselves failing to support the work of the church adequately. An attitude that gives nothing but wants everything. Anyone who has ever been an active member of a Christian community, knows that you cannot run a church on air – bills to pay, roofs to fix, organs to rebuild, staff to salary, ministry to pay for.
I am going to come back to that reading and its very real challenge to us, but I want to start our reflections on stewardship today somewhere else- I want to start by reflecting on a Christian understanding of the word legacy, in the sense of something being passed on from generation to generation. Beyond the merely financial, we could think of legacies in a much broader sense, how we pass on our values and attitudes, how we pass on knowledge and understanding, how we pass on traditions which we cherish, how we pass on the world we currently inhabit. We could also think of this in terms of how we pass on our faith, and how we live out Christ’s story.
To pass on a legacy, to share something of what we have with the future, we have to have a care for how we steward what we have now. One of the most pressing questions about stewardship, growing more urgent by the day, is how we exercise stewardship of our planet, and own up to our human propensity, shall we just call it a sin– to simply trash and exploit everything around us for our own ends, until it’s almost beyond use. Our collective efforts as a human race have so altered our planets eco-systems and climates that we are in danger of causing irreversible damage- the house is on fire now- how are we responding? Individually, nationally, globally? Will there be anything left to pass on?
Let’s bring this thinking into our life of our faith- how do we pass on the faith of the church and the faith that is within us and proclaim that faith anew in every generation? The church, like the world it serves, is not just for us now, it doesn’t exist to see us out– it’s a gift for the future both spiritually and materially, how do we steward this heritage for those who come after us? This is a daily question for us here- we believe this place is a treasure, and we treasure it because it speaks of our faith, but we do have to carefully steward our resources to care for it, and yes- a gift shop, paid staff and careful use of money is part of that stewardship.
Today, we have offered a little blessing for our Grand Organ, which we know will be shared with at least three generations beyond us. It has taken profound generosity, three years of hard work and years longer to plan. Like the Great East Window, restored over the past fifteen years, these are signs of our faith in there actually being a worshipping community here in a hundred years-time: and through our mission we will work hard to ensure there is.
Everything about this wonderful building, of which we are stewards, makes us consider the long game- and what we are passing on from generation to generation. Music, stones, stained glass, mean little unless the faith that inspired their creation is passed on as well. I suppose, we could steward our faith by keeping it private, digging a hole in the ground and hiding it away where it cannot grow or diversify, ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified in our words and actions. But that is no way to steward this gift as the parable of the talents reminds us. The concept of stewardship extends to how we live out our faith in the world today, so that there will be something to pass on.
In our old-testament reading, the Ten Commandments are given by God as a means of living out the faith and then passing it on. In response, God promises to show steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who keep the commandments. They were essentially a rule of life which exploited no-one, cared for the earth, and encouraged the people to be content with what they had, they gave a right perspective, they showed the way, they helped the people of Israel understand who they were. They were both private and public, personal and political. Stewardship in these terms was about walking in the way of God and thinking of the long-game, the legacy of faith that would be passed on.
Over 600years after the Book of Exodus was written, Jesus walks into the temple in Jerusalem, and casts out the money changers. John’s Gospel puts this incident at the beginning of Jesus ministry. A naïve reading of this text uses it to denounce jumble sales in church, back where we began, but we have to give John, the great theologian, more credit than this and do a little more work with our scriptures.
This text is about who Jesus is, his identity as the living temple. This was a figurative and prophetic act which revealed his identity as the Son of God. As he walked into his Father’s House, people had no regard for anything other than themselves, yet alone generations to come. They had forgotten God’s commandments. They were not interested in legacy, they were not interested in stewardship, just an instant kind of gratification, and that self-centred world view made them impervious to the God of heaven and earth who stood before their eyes. No wonder Jesus was angry. They couldn’t see who Jesus was- and they had no concern for the communities of which they were part yet alone the generations that would come after them. This was about his love and their hearts, not about cash registers in church.
There is no instant gratification in Christ-before glory there was crucifixion, before joy there was pain. By his very body, broken, bruised, nailed to a cross, Jesus would build a new temple which would bring together people of every generation, with towers telling of salvation, and walls re-echoing praise. He gave to those who followed him a new commandment to love God and love neighbour as self, he gave them bread and wine to remember him forever. Through him, and with him and in him, they would become the living stones of the new temple.
We are stewards of that gift, his body, the church –through which we find our identity. He commanded us to turn away from self and promised that we would be set free by his life. As we hear in the Litany sung during Lent, we find our identity in his story, by his holy incarnation, his cross, passion, death, burial, resurrection and ascension and through the coming of the Holy Ghost.
Christ’s legacy is universal, unending, unquenchable, and in his name he calls us to live lives of radical generosity, service and love, building life on his life. We are called to proclaim his name and tell the praise of the one who has called us out of darkness into light, not bury it away as if we have never heard it or known it. As he gave his life as a ransom for many, how are we called to give of ourselves and what we have, to be his body in the world today?
The daily challenge for every Christian, is to reflect on how we respond to the generosity of God in Christ, in our words, deeds and actions, and yes- in how we spend our money, use our time, steward our resources and ensure that we have a legacy to pass on. What are we leaving behind? What kind of temple are we building for the future?
Lent is traditionally a time of almsgiving- giving as an expression of our faith. What are we prepared to sacrifice? How are we called to be stewards of our faith today, for the church of tomorrow? How much of ourselves, our time, our money, our talents are we really prepared to give towards the enterprise of being a member of the body of Christ and living his story? That is surely where our reflections on stewardship have to begin?
In the name of the living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Lent 2: Sacrifice and Service – The Revd Canon Maggie McLean
I sometimes wonder just how many arguments have been avoided due to Sat-Nav. It hasn’t removed them entirely. You may be familiar, as I am, with the argument about why a driver is following Sat-Nav even when they know there’s a quicker way. Perhaps it’s laziness, but it can be easy to follow the directions of a computer than trust our local knowledge.
We follow where we have confidence; when we have faith and when we trust the advice we’re being given. In the pandemic trust in authority has sometimes been in question. When we want a whole nation to follow advice trust matters. Only when we act together and go in the right direction can we achieve the safety and open society we long to see. On Friday the Government’s scientific adviser couldn’t have been clearer about the need to be disciplined in our lives and ensure we leave lockdown together.
Leadership that inspires faith and builds trust is critical to success.
In our Gospel reading today we see a leader who doesn’t hide the difficult reality that lies ahead. The suffering he will endure, and by implication the kind of persecution his followers will encounter.
Rejection and death – and a third day promise the disciples didn’t fully grasp. No wonder Peter takes him to one side to have stern words. It’s not the sort of talk that builds on the success and popularity Jesus was creating.
Yes, healing,
miracles
teaching.
Not persecution,
suffering
death.
For Jesus there was no algorithm or short-cut to achieve what he’d set out to do. The mission of Jesus was a living engagement with the world. As he met the excluded and despised; as he sat with tax collectors and foreigners, women and children, he lived a journey that was unconventional, dazzling and dynamic. The dead were raised; the blind received their sight; and the Kingdom of God lived where he walked. Service stood at the heart of this mission of salvation.
In this Kingdom, the world was turned upside down, with the teacher and lord washing the feet of servant and pupil. The different reality Jesus held out before the disciples and crowds was bound together as both word and deed. Time and again Jesus called people into this story of renewal and new-life.
‘He called to him the multitude with his disciples’. And he tells them about the cost of this service. The price that many would pay if they chose to put their faith in him. A cross to carry and a life to lose.
It’s as though he’s saying: ‘don’t start on the journey; don’t even think about setting out – until you understand the suffering it may bring’.
The risk, the danger, is that people and institutions usually don’t like to change. Most people find it easier to stick with the privilege rather than take a towel and sit on the ground. Servant leadership may sound fine – laudable – but it’s not what we really want, is it? But if we don’t want it nothing will change. It’s hard to blame anybody for refusing to carry a terrible, brutal symbol of death. To hoist a cross on their shoulders and begin that journey.
When I was interviewed here at the Minster a couple of years ago I had to speak to the question: ‘York Minster – place of privilege or mission launchpad?’ As I answered at the time, it’s both. Of course there is privilege. Every day I open my curtains and look across at one of the most amazing wonders of European Medieval art: it’s a privilege. Or when I listen to the choir and the soaring music that fills this extraordinary place. Privilege.
Privilege and service can live together. The real question is, how do we use privilege to become service? How do we truly allow people to share in the central truth this building tells. Not as strangers but as friends; not as visitors but as people who belong to this story just as much as any of the rest of us.
Jesus challenged privilege which was hoarded. Privilege that was kept like pounds in the bank rather than advantage used to serve the poor. The poor in body, mind or spirit. It was his main charge against the rulers of his time;
‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees… For you lock people out of the Kingdom of Heaven.. you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them’.
The service Jesus lived, and the service we are called to share with him, can cost. It can be hard; it can be thankless; and we may feel rejected. But when we take our privilege and turn it to service, lives can, and are, changed. Our lives as well as the lives of others.
As we prepare for the Minster reopening, we look forward to a time when we can welcome people again. Not as strangers or the people who don’t belong – but as the people for whom this amazing place was built: Pilgrims – Friends – Disciples.