Authority and Integrity – Reverend Canon Maggie McLean
There was once an MP who was campaigning hard to be re-elected. One day, after a busy morning chasing votes (and no lunch) he arrived at a church barbecue. It was late afternoon and the MP was famished.
As he moved down the queue for the food, he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line. “Excuse me,” the MP said, “do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?” “Sorry,” the woman told him. “I’m supposed to give only one piece of chicken to each person.” “But I’m starving,” the politician said. “Sorry,” the woman said again. “Only one to a customer.” The MP was a modest and unassuming man (you can tell this is a work of fiction!), but he decided that this time he would throw a little weight around. “Do you know who I am?” he said. “I am the local MP.”
“Do you know who I am?” the woman said. “I’m the lady in charge of the chicken”.
Authority exists in many different forms. It can be about a time and a place, as well as about roles and responsibilities, as the MP in our story discovered. Someone can have authority in one context and entirely lack it in another. It isn’t always easy to tell who’s in charge, or who has the right to make decisions – though I’m sure this is never a problem at Minster!
And if it is true that authority can depend on a time and a place we sometimes look for clues to work out when it’s being used. We might know that someone is a person of authority because they have the right kind of badge. In health centres and other places the staff wear identification to show that they have the authority to be there. They carry a ‘token’ that tells other people who they are. We don’t just trust them because they represent themselves, but because they represent something a lot bigger.
If we need the services of a solicitor, accountant or other professional we look to see that they have the authority of a professional body. We want to know that their conduct is regulated – that if we have a complaint there will be someone to go to. All around us there are public authorities for education, health, trade and the law. Together they provide a framework in which we live, knowing what to trust and who to question.
Of course, some of the fiercest conflicts in our history have been about where authority lies in both religion and politics. Is the head of state also the head of our religion? Before it is established authority can often be contested. We ask, ‘who gave them the right to make decisions for us?’ Authority has to be authorised and accepted if it is to be truly effective.
Perhaps the single quickest way for someone to lose authority is for there to be a difference between what they say and what they do. No matter how strongly they carry the mandate of an institution, if a gap begins to emerge between what they say and do then people begin to lose faith in them. Like the parable used by Jesus in our Gospel today, we have more respect for the person who acts than the person who pays lip service. It’s not for nothing that we have the proverb ‘actions speaker louder than words’.
When the chief priests and elders of the people began to question Jesus’ authority what they were concerned about was his official status – his mandate. They are asking who put him in charge. Jesus takes that question and deflects it to another recent religious leader who lacked official approval: John the Baptist. Jesus challenges the leaders to tell him where John’s authority came from. If the authority for John came from heaven then the leaders couldn’t deny that the same might be true for Jesus. He might not need the human endorsement of a religious body: it might just come from God and be recognised by the people.
The authority of Jesus, like that of John, is that the people who know their need of God turn to him.
His authority is authentic – it comes out of living experience rather than a book, a tribunal or a legal charge. Jesus doesn’t have a badge. There’s no convenient ID for the religious leaders to see. They find Jesus scary because he doesn’t fit into their world: he isn’t ‘one of them’.
What’s more, it becomes clear to the leaders that Jesus isn’t interested in joining their holy huddle – their club – and that frightens them even more- Because they have nothing to offer Jesus. In fact, Jesus’ authority is greater with the people because he isn’t seen as an official representative.
Of course, in all kinds of ways in our world today, we need to see ID and evidence of authority. But authority that is inauthentic is of no use to anyone. I sometimes meet people who think that the Church always needs protecting in our society. That laws need to be made to back it up (or prop it up)! It always strikes me as showing remarkably little faith in God. If we believe that the figure we read about in the Gospels is risen and in the world – is present through the Holy Spirit- then the authority of the Church shouldn’t depend on institutions, laws or privilege. Our authority should come through what we do, the care we give and the love we show.
In our Gospel today we are reminded that what drew people to Jesus was his living authority. Jesus put his words into deeds and this is what drew people to Jesus 2000 years ago, and it is the only thing that will draw them to him today.
A God whose love is limitless. Is this a faith for me? – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean
There are moments in the life of every Christian when we might ask: ‘is this for me? Is this the faith to which I should commit my life? Is Jesus the answer to my searching and striving, the person to put my faith in?’
It might be a question that comes when we heat a particular teaching. I can remember taking a mid-week service with a small congregation and reading the parable of the Prodigal Son’. One very faithful worshipper spoke to me at the door on the way out. For the first time, she said, I felt myself in a parable. What disturbed her was the fact that she identified with the older brother. With the one who’d been good and done all the right things.
The faithful child who stayed at home and kept the family business running. Put up, as we all do from time-to-time, with the peculiarity of parents and bitten his lip.
Then the second son returns – and it’s party time. All is forgiven. The elder son can’t cope with the fuss, the celebration, and what feels like the poor reward for his obedience.
Maybe today’s Gospel makes us feel that way too.
We might well find ourselves in the company of the grumbling, hard-working, all-day grafters. Miffed at being treated the same as the late-comers. What kind of world is this, where the sinner and the work-shy enjoy equal rewards? Is this the kind of Kingdom we want to support – to put out faith in.
It has echoes in our current crisis of Covid-19. Some, on furlough, have been paid to shield themselves at home while others have borne the ‘heat and burden of the day’. In places like the NHS, where colleagues have been divided by necessity, it can stir feeling of injustice. How can we be paid the same, when some have worked and others have not? Our heads may know the reasons why this was needed, but human nature can stir very different feelings.
If the parable of the workers in the vineyard was acted out the consequences aren’t hard to imagine. On day two fewer people turn up early. Most wait until the heat of the day has passed and work an hour or two for their pay, in the coolness of late afternoon. I’m not sure how profitable the business would be a week or so down the line.
So why does it matter – what is this trying to tell us? More than anything else, I feel it tells us about the kind of God we are called to worship. A God whose love is limitless, and who desires our good no matter how late we leave it. A God revealed in Jesus who endlessly calls and invites, and at whose banquet no one is ever too late.
If we think it unjust that such love should be offered to both the timely and the tardy, then perhaps Christianity isn’t for us. If this parable offends us then it may be God’s way to let us know that there is more work to do. More work on our spirituality and the misguided feelings of envy for those who come at the eleventh hour.
Here in the Minster it is a reminder to us that long-standing service doesn’t privilege a relationship with God. Through these doors all are equally welcome and equally loved. If the Prodigal Son and the late-arriving workers disturb us, then we need to be disturbed. Faith is not always comfortable and God’s work is at different stages with each of us. We can never be too old to learn, or too entitled to think we don’t have to.
The wages of love are for everyone – and in the troubling times of Covid-19 we all need to be reminded of the God who is here for everyone. From the first light of the day to its end.
You need me and I need you – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: You need me and I need you.
Date/time/service: Sunday 6th September 2020 10am Zoom Eucharist Trinity 13
Passage of scripture: Matthew 18v15-20
We have never gone in for those eye-catching luminous signs outside the Minster with catchy lines on them like ‘Down in the mouth? Come in here for a faith lift’ or ‘Carpenter from Nazareth seeks joiners’. Someone sent me one last week that I thought was quite good, it just said ‘Ch_ _ ch, what’s missing? U R!’ I thought that was quite a clever one.
It is one of the mysteries of the Church of England that so many of us think that faith is a private business, something that is just between me and God. I meet loads of people who tell me they believe in God and that they say their prayers but who are generally missing, they rarely, if ever, darken the doors of a church.
I talk to lots of people about Baptism. It is surprising how many people talk about wanting their children to be baptised because they want them to grow up with Christian values. Nothing wrong with that – I think Christian values are great. Sadly, people who say that and their baptised children are also, generally, missing from church.
I also talk to a lot of people who do go to church sometimes but their churchgoing is controlled either by their mood. ‘I didn’t feel like going today’ or by other people ‘We had visitors so I didn’t go to church’ or by their lifestyle ‘It’s the only day of the week I can get a lie in’. More often than they think, people who say these things are also missing from church.
What all these people forget, the ‘private religion people’, the ‘Christianity is a set of values people’, the ‘occasional, when I am in the right mood, there’s nothing else on and I’m not too tired people’, is that the heart of Christianity, the heart of being a Christian, is being part of a community. As Jesus says in the gospel this morning, ‘Where two or three are gathered together, I am there among them.’
The very first thing that Jesus did when he began his ministry was to gather a community around him, friends to share with, to offer mutual support, to help with his ministry. Jesus was not a loner. When he wasn’t being besieged by crowds of people wanting him to teach them or heal the sick he was with his disciples, his core community, talking to them, trying to help them understand his teaching and his message. Being part of a community was essential to Jesus and to his ministry. Being part of a community is essential for all Christians. ‘Where two or three are gathered together, I am there among them.’
There has been a resurgence in celebrating community over recent months – in many places volunteering and helping neighbours has been significant and then there was the ‘Thursday clap’ for the NHS – all of this has created bonds within our communities that maybe were not there before. These have been important community events. The point for us is that every week, here on Zoom and in the Minster, there is an important community event. We gather here to establish and celebrate community. We gather here primarily to worship God, but that involves learning together, offering mutual support, being aware of the needs we all have and being there to help each other. In all baptisms, whether they happen with just the family present or in a main church service, make it clear that baptism about joining the Christian community, it is not just about adopting a set of values. Baptism is the beginning of a journey into faith into friendship with God, a journey we do not undertake alone, we travel together. Becoming a Christian is about joining a community.
Part of the challenge for us is the eternal challenge we all face constantly, the challenge not to be selfish or self-centred. What I mean by this is that when we think about this church community, we shouldn’t just think about where we fit in, whether we have the time or the inclination to turn up, if it’s a big enough priority for us. What we should be thinking is that our presence, our prayers, meagre though they may be, our singing, quiet and off key though it may be, our smile at the sharing of the peace, our presence at the altar rail, our little square on the Zoom screen, may be important to somebody else, may help and support others in their journey of faith.
There is nothing wrong with saying our prayers on our own sometimes, there is nothing wrong with admiring and seeking to attain ‘Christian values’, there is nothing wrong with having a busy life with lots of commitments and responsibilities and there is nothing wrong with looking after ourselves. But, if we are Christians, if we are baptised people on the journey of faith, growing in friendship with God – we cannot and should not go it alone. We cannot and should not isolate ourselves from others. We cannot and should not consider our faith to be private. As Christians we are never independent, we are always interdependent, we need each other. This is just as true when we meet in person in the Minster as when we meet here on Zoom.
There is a clever song by Ed Sheeran called ‘You need me, I don’t need you’. Too many of us (including me) live our lives as though other people need us but we don’t really need other people. As Christians this is just plain wrong – we can all look around the church today or flick through the screens at our Zoom service and say about each person ‘You need me and I need you’. The Church Community is sacramental and we all play our part because it is when we gather that Jesus is made present, remember what he says in today’s gospel – ‘Where two or three are gathered together, I am there among them.’
Learning not to be in control – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Learning not to be in control…
Date/time/service: Sunday 30th August 2020 Trinity 12 11am Eucharist
Passage of scripture: Matthew 16.21-end
In the gospel last week we saw Peter at his very best. He responds to Jesus’ challenging question, ‘who do you say that I am?’ with the clear, confident answer, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’
In the gospel today Peter is not so impressive! Jesus warns him and his fellow disciples that he is to go to Jerusalem and that he will suffer, die and be raised again. Peter’s response seems instinctive and panicky, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ This provokes Jesus to respond by saying ‘Get behind me Satan’ he reprimands Peter further by telling him is thinking in human ways and not divine ways.
It’s very easy to be critical of Peter here but if someone we loved told us they were going to die we probably wouldn’t respond by simply accepting what they said and trusting in God. More likely, we would question them and look for ways to help and protect them, and that is all that Peter is doing. Looking at it like this, Jesus seems to be a little harsh on Peter, to say the least! But maybe there is quite a lot we can learn from this encounter as we deal with the pressures and fears of this wretched pandemic.
Over the last generation or two we, in the west, seem to have pretty much convinced ourselves that if we are sensible and careful and eat our ‘five a day’ we should be healthy. In addition, the way that we can access and manipulate information through computers and phones has made us believe we are in are in control of our own lives and our own destinies. We have come to believe that we can make ourselves safe from harm, and more importantly, we have come to believe that we have a right to be safe from harm.
For many of us, it is only when a massive storm strikes, a cancer grows, a tree falls as a car approaches or a virus spreads, that we suddenly have to face the reality that we are not, ultimately, in control of our destiny, or of the destiny of the people we love most in the world. We can do everything we can to care for our planet, to live healthy lives, to avoid danger, to avoid spreading disease, to care for each other – but in the end we have to live with the fact that from our first breath to our last, life is risky and however careful we are, there are things in the world we cannot control.
This belief that we have a right to be safe and well and this sense that we are in control is very modern. For all of history, and for billions in the world today, life threatening illness, famine, or other natural disasters were and are a daily reality to be lived with.
In addition to coming to believe that we have a right to be safe we have also made dying and death a taboo subject. It is rare to hear the words ‘dead’ or ‘died’ spoken anymore, now it seems, people ‘pass away’ or simply ‘pass’. Not only do we rarely talk about death we tend to treat it as a failure. We talk about people ‘losing their battle with ….’ If someone dies unexpectedly we tend to always want to find someone to blame. The truth is, of course, that death is inevitable for all of us. Death is actually just a part of life.
I read a fascinating article this week by Rowan Williams, the last Archbishop of Canterbury. In it he explores our attitude to death. He begins by responding to a claim by some extreme Christian group that as Christians they have no fear of death so they see no need to comply with all the rules and regulations surrounding Covid 19. Rowan Williams begins by saying that risking ones own life by not complying with the rules and regulations is one thing, but that not complying actually means that you are risking other people’s lives, and that is wrong.
Rowan Williams agrees that we, as Christians, should not be overly fearful of death. He says that if we are constantly recognising and rejoicing in those we love and acknowledging what we truly value and learn to accept that these people and things are not dependant on me and will not be destroyed by my death – then we can face death with greater equanimity. Take the masons who built this Cathedral for example. The ones who laid the foundation stones at the bottom of these pillars knew they would be dead by the time the last pinnacle was put in place on the tower. But, they must have loved and valued their work, and this place, so much that the fact that they would not see it finished, didn’t matter. And the fact that they probably trained up their sons and daughters in their craft meant that they knew that though they wouldn’t see the building finished their grandchildren would ….. and that was fine. I don’t want to pretend that this made life and death idyllic and easy for our forebears, simply that they must have been much more accepting of the risks involved in living and much more accepting that there comes a time when we all have to move over so that the next generation can take over.
Certainly Jesus’ reprimand to Peter in the gospel today has particular resonance because Jesus knew, and we now know, that his great work meant going to Jerusalem, suffering and dying, so that he could rise again so that we could all become an Easter people, a people of resurrection, afterwards. Of course we want to live, and, like Peter, we want the people we love to live as well. We should do everything we can to care for ourselves and each other, we should do all that we can to preserve life and the quality of life, but I think this story and the gospel in general, calls us never to deny or ignore death, not to see it always as a defeat or a failure or an offence against our human right to well-being and life.
I heard a radio programme this week in which two women from Ireland were talking about the interesting, funny and quirky nature of the culture from which they came. They spoke about the unusual way that some from the Irish culture frame a proposal of marriage. ‘Will you marry me?’ is considered way too banal and simplistic, the question asked, when you want to share the rest of your life with someone else, is ‘Will you be buried with my people?’ Not terribly romantic, but actually really helpful – the question is not just about living together, it is acknowledging at the outset, that living together will inevitably mean dying together. I thought this was rather beautiful and actually is an expression of the profoundly Christian belief, so beautifully and simply articulated by Paul in the middle of his beautiful passage in 1 Corinthians 13, ‘Love never ends’.
Rowan Williams concludes his article about death with these words which emphasise that we should be realistic and honest about death and, if faced in the context of love, value and relationships, and the belief that ‘Love never ends’, dying is not the end of the world!
‘A summons to faith, courage and energy in the face of death isn’t a call to heroics for the ego. It is an invitation to attend, to be absorbed in value, depth and beauty not our own. It is to recognise the gentle insistent pressure of a shared reality which tells us to make room for one another.’
Key to discipleship – The Revd Canon Maggie McLean
As I’ve discovered in recent months, all around York there are images of crossed keys.
This is most common around the Minster and connects with the Cathedral’s dedication.
Looking down on us from the East End is the carved figure of Peter, blessing the city. His symbol the keys which give access to heaven.
All of this is here because of the words heard in our Gospel today.
Jesus gives Peter a special role; the Church came to understand Peter as its first leader; and York’s dedication is seen to be linked to the first church here, founded by Peter’s successor the Pope.
Peter connects York to Rome and Rome is connected to Peter, who takes us to Jesus.
For some Christians the physical links of history matter a lot.
For other Christians this is less significant, and it is the Bible that first and foremost connects us with faith.
Perhaps, when it comes to Jesus, the route we take perhaps doesn’t matter too much, so long as the journey brings us to a living faith.
In the Gospels the disciples don’t all reach the same conclusions at the same time. None of us do.
We aren’t all the same and faith develops at its own pace.
In responding to Jesus’s question it’s Peter who takes the plunge.
He isn’t tentative; hesitant or vague. He makes his declaration without qualification. ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God’.
Perhaps we tend to think about this passage as revealing about Jesus. But of course it’s very revealing about Peter.
We see in this exchange that Peter puts his full commitment behind his faith.
Peter is a rock of conviction; the disciple who commits his life.
As we go on to see, he is not without moments of doubt and disowning, but he remains fundamentally committed to Jesus – learning from his mistakes as much as his moments of triumph.
We all come to faith in different ways. In Peter we see that discipleship isn’t for the perfect but for the loving and the committed.
The followers of Jesus don’t have to get everything right but we are asked to learn from our mistakes.
Perhaps the pandemic has brought us new questions and maybe even doubts. It can be hard having less contact with our brothers and sisters in faith. We might feel that the way we shared our faith has changed or that in some way we’ve not lived as we hoped we would.
The example of Peter should bring us some comfort.
There will be days when we get it spectacularly right and days when everything seems to go wrong.
Days when we feel close to Christ and days when we wonder where our faith is leading.
Faith finds its own way.
From top disciple to being called Satan;
from unshakable faith to a skulking figure by the fire, denying Jesus time after time.
If Peter can get through so can we.
Let’s not pretend we’re better than we are. It’s Peter’s honesty and open failure that make him dear to Jesus.
In this example of an imperfect person, full of faith – failing, but always coming back to Jesus – we find the key to discipleship.
And in that, we should all feel encouraged to continue in our lives in the company of Jesus.
Chosen People – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Chosen People
Date/time/service: Sunday 16th August 2020 Trinity 10 10am Zoom Eucharist
Passage of scripture: Matthew 15.21-28
I wonder how today’s gospel makes you feel? In the light of the present debate about race and racism it is disturbing to be reminded of a story where Jesus actively ignores a woman from a race that is not his own and then refers to her as a dog! You can guarantee that today’s ‘Woke’ fundamentalists would ‘cancel’ and ‘no platform’ Jesus, and demand that his Twitter account be suspended. I would not be surprised if they wouldn’t also demand that the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury make a heartfelt apology on behalf of Jesus for his appalling disrespect, rudeness and lack of political correctness over 2,000 years ago.
So why did Jesus initially respond in this dismissive way to this poor woman?
In order to make any sense of this we have to look back at Genesis 12.1-3
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
This marks the beginning of the concept of the descendants of Abraham being God’s Chosen People. This was refined more when, in the next chapter of Genesis, we are told that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, took his side of the family in a different direction becoming a separate nation. Of course Abraham’s offspring end up, after a few generations, being slaves in Egypt until the time that Moses leads them from slavery towards the Promised Land where they would be free. It could be said that the Old Testament is the story of God’s Chosen People as they succeed and fail, as they are obedient and disobedient, as they sometimes listen to God and sometimes ignore God.
We know the stories of God’s Chosen People well, but what we usually fail to acknowledge is that if a specific nation, or group of tribes, are God’s Chosen People, then all the other nations, all the other tribes, are not God’s Chosen People …….. in the context of Old Testament times that is just tough. In the context of today it looks a little like racism. The ‘Woke’ fundamentalists would call this ‘Chosen People supremacy’ or ‘Chosen People privilege’.
When Jesus says in the gospel today ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ He is referring to this history. From a Christian point of view, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is a point in history which changes everything, not least, what it means to be one of God’s Chosen People. The whole reason why this story is told by Matthew is not that it reinforces the old ways and old thinking about God’s Chosen People, but that it introduces the new ways, the new thinking about God’s Chosen People … The point of the story is that Jesus does respond to the woman and, despite the fact that she is not one of God’s Chosen People, he heals her daughter. The significance of this should not be underestimated. In fact, it could be said that this story is one of the seeds sown by Jesus that takes root and begins to grow noticeably when Paul says, in Galatians 3
‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’
This equality of all people under God is fundamental to Christianity and has become embedded in our understanding of the value and dignity of every human being and the establishment of the idea of human rights. Many would argue that humanity would always have evolved the idea of human rights but I think that there is a strong argument for saying that because Jesus broke the conventions of his day, spoke with foreigners, healed their children and made a hero of a Samaritan in one of his most famous stories – that the equality of all people today framed in law in many countries around the world, has it’s foundations in Christianity and, in particular, in events like the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter recorded in today’s gospel reading.
Of course, our idea of what it means to be one of God’s Chosen people has also evolved. As we heard earlier, God chose an individual, Abram as his chosen person and then all his descendants as the Chosen People. In John 15 Jesus says to his disciples ‘You did not choose me but I chose you.’ God still chooses individuals, but now there are no limits …. your family, nationality, tribe, ethnic background, gender, colour, sexual orientation ….. are all irrelevant. God is not in the business of creating an exclusive elite. God is in the business of creating an inclusive community of disciples who love their neighbours (and their enemies) and who love God. We know this to be true because of what Jesus did and what Jesus taught and in the way Paul understood and examined all that Jesus said and did in his writings. It is certainly true that the Church does not have a brilliant record of living up to this teaching over history and it is right that the Church is being questioned robustly about actually how inclusive it is even today …..
The important thing is that we are not trying to do anything new, all we are trying to do is to live the life Jesus called us to live and to develop the relationships with each other that Jesus calls us to develop.
As part of my reading for this sermon I discovered that in the summer of 2018 Our Lady’s Church in Acomb, here in York, made history by becoming the first Roman Catholic parish in Britain to sign up to an organisation called ‘Inclusive Church’. We know Fr Tony, the parish priest, here at the Minster, in fact he came to Canon Chris’ final Evening Service. On their website they include the Inclusive Church statement of belief,
“We believe in inclusive Church – church which does not discriminate, on any level, on grounds of economic power, gender, mental health, physical ability, race or sexuality. We believe in Church which welcomes and serves all people in the name of Jesus Christ; which is scripturally faithful; which seeks to proclaim the Gospel afresh for each generation; and which, in the power of the Holy Spirit, allows all people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Jesus Christ.”
Despite its uncomfortable beginning, there is a direct link between today’s gospel and this impressive statement of belief – thanks be to God.
The Casual belittling of others – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean
Recently I’ve been wading through the final book in Hilary Mantel’s series about Thomas Cromwell. If you’ve seen it, or read it, you’ll know why ‘wading’ might seem an appropriate word. It’s a big book.
But its size seems right for the magnitude of the topic. Thomas Cromwell was a man who rose from nothing to become second only to the King.
In Mantel’s imaginative portrayal that story of rags to riches is never far from the King’s mind.
Mantel imagines that the King would have found a friendly way to keep Thomas in his place; to remind him from where he’d come. So there’s a nickname linked to Cromwell’s surname.
The King calls him ‘crumb’.
I hope that isn’t a spoiler if you’ve not read it.
Every day we can choose words to build up or put down. We can honour others or diminish them; we can choose words of respect or words that emphasise our difference, our disparity.
We can all get it wrong – I know I do.
I’m not talking about a serious challenge to those with power, bringing down the mighty, but about the way the lowly are kept low. The casual words we use to patrol the difference between us and ‘them’.
In our Gospel today Jesus knew his mission. He was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. It’s a wonderfully vivid and startling exchange in the way Matthew writes it. A scene we can all imagine.
We’ve all been in this position.
As a vicar in a parish I would be tempted at times to ask a caller where they lived. ‘Oh no, that’s not in my parish – it’s so-and-so’s parish down the road. Here’s their number….Why don’t you call on them, they’ll be able to help’.
When life is busy it’s always good to find that someone’s needs should be another person’s problem. I’d love to help but I work at the Minster – try St Olave’s!
Jesus was used to people who were persistent. He turned aside to help blind Bartimaeus and discerned the need of the bleeding woman who touched his cloak. Jesus always had time to stop for those in need.
Or did he?
Today’s reading suggests that even a Messiah can get to end of his tether.
A truly human Jesus of Nazareth could be tired, tetchy and beyond himself. The disciples are on his side. ‘Oh, for goodness sake Jesus; just tell her to go away’. Tell her to get lost.
He doesn’t do that – but he states his case about who he’s here to help, and it isn’t this woman. She persists, kneeling before him. His answer is stronger. It isn’t right to take the food meant for the children and give it to dogs. Whatever the woman felt in hearing these words, her love for her daughter makes her go one step further. Even the dogs, if that’s who we are, get to share in the crumbs.
I think, if you was a pre-packaged Messiah – perfect and with all the answers – then this is a difficult reading.
If, on the other hands, you believe in a Jesus who grows and learns and changes, then it offers profound hope. Jesus is with us, even when we aren’t as perfect as we would like to be. When we reduce others to crumbs, or dogs or whatever name we choose to lessen others.
The key, the most important part of this reading, is that Jesus listens. Even tired, at the end of his tether, or exhausted, he is able to hear. And to be changed. To find in the least likely person a moment of God revealed. A moment of breath-taking faith. A moment when the outsider is seen as the apostle, evangelist and the holder of great faith.
In recent days we have all seen the great scramble to return from France to the UK. Ferries packed with cars and lorries ploughing the narrow divide of the Channel. Perhaps you may also have thought about the small boats those greater vessels will pass. The people who try every day to enter our country and share in some of the things meant for us.
I’m not going to get into the politics and ethics of this reality now. What I do know, is that the way in which we speak about people seeking refuge and asylum is something we can all change. We can all think about the language we use and the culture it creates. Words that diminish those who already have so little; words that don’t belong in the Kingdom of God.
At times we’ll get it wrong – we all do – but we need to hear the words of those who challenge our casual belittling. The people who are more than a crumb and deserve greater dignity than to be called a dog.
In today’s reading we find a Jesus who is like us in our weaker moments. Yet also a Jesus who never loses the capacity to hear and the courage to change. A saviour who finds in encounter and conversation a faith beyond the limits of his expectation.
Touching Places – Reverend Canon Maggie McLean
A few year ago on the last day of the year I traveled from Fort William across the Isle of Mull to the Island of Iona. It was one of those beautiful, cloudless winter days, freezing cold but one which brought clarity to everything you looked at. As we travelled across Mull we talked about what it must have been like for those first few Christians on British soil to begin their Christian mission from such an isolated place and how hard it must have been to travel without the luxury of cars (or roads)! On reaching Iona the Abbey stood out in the silence that surrounded it. As we began to walk through the village our own silence enveloped us and we went our separate ways on our own spiritual pilgrimage.
Iona is a rare and special place.
Nobody can imagine that Columba chose Iona for its ease of communication or accessibility. I believe he chose it because there Columba found, as many other Christian have also found, a “touching place” where the beauty of creation can give us a glimpse of God. A place where God’s presence shines out – just as we remember a human being transfigured by God’s glory.
Iona is often described in Celtic Tradition as a Thin Place. Thin places describe the veil being parted between this world and the other world, between heaven and earth, between the divine and the human, between matter and spirit, between the eternal and the temporal. In the thin place the duality of those parings disappears and we now stand in union, wholeness, and ultimately holiness.
But if that were all it was about then life on Iona might appear like an escape from reality. However, the Christian Community which exists there today has used the inspiration of that place elsewhere. If you like Iona is the mountaintop experience but you don’t remain there. It is the revelation which inspires and encourages.
And so
In far different locations the vision of Iona gives an impetus to pray and work creatively where environmental or human ugliness has disfigured the everyday and everywhere beauty which God inspires. In parts of Glasgow the Iona Community works in physical and spiritual ways to enable people to find their own “touching places” of encounter with God. In a song written by the Iona Community we hear the following words:
“To the lost Christ shows his face, to the unloved he gives his embrace, to those who cry in pain or disgrace Christ makes with his friends a touching place.”
We all need our “touching places”. Somewhere to go, and somewhere to be, that reminds us of a vision of God which can often get lost in the preoccupation of the everyday. Yes, God is around and about and beside us everywhere, but we also know that we sometimes need to be reminded of the otherness of God as much as God’s day to day presence.
One aspect of the Christian experience of God, is that God is “above and beyond” as well as at our side and within. In moments when we see and experience the vastness of creation – the uncontrollability of the elements – we can become aware that God is whether of not we are. It reminds us that God is in the present moment and, at the same time, throughout all ages.
It is a humbling experience because it calls to mind the fact that God loves us despite our inconsequence, so succinctly put in the eighth Psalm:
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”
It may be that all of us here today have some “touching place” where we renew our vision of one aspect of our relationship with God. Such places, like Iona, might be far off and only occasionally visited. But it might also be the case that there is a place, some words or a piece of music which enables us to re-vision ourselves more easily. It might even be something that reminds us of that far off place, like a relic which a Medieval pilgrim might brought home and guarded jealously. We turn to these when we are worn-out, deflated and demoralised. We reach out and touch them in the hope that God might touch us and enliven us.
The Celtic vision of Christ and God which Columba and many others shared was a spiritual way of life which knew the need of touching places. Today many people are turning back to that way, welcoming its less cerebral approach to faith. Yes, the Church in Britain gained much from the Roman influences of Christendom, but we also lost a theology of creation which we would do well to recover. The Celtic saints held out a vision of Christianity which emphasized ministry outside the Church; that spoke of a vigour in life; that used the language of taking, binding, bursting, and returning. Their faith was exercised in precarious and dangerous places, where heaven and earth were part of the same journey.
As Christians today we have much to learn from what Columba and others found in ministering the Gospel in the British Isles 1,400 years ago. We need to find and to cultivate our “touching places”.
In those days, in every Church in the land, a fire was kept constantly alight. Not just a tiny flickering candle – but fire. It ought to remind us today that no matter how well organised our Church life; or no matter how considerable our acts of service to others; unless we feed the light of our faith – unless we turn aside to find our “touching place” – than we are in danger of ministering a dry and lifeless Gospel.
We read in the Gospels that Jesus often turned aside into the wilderness – to find his place of prayer.
Yes, there were still people to be healed; teaching to be done; disciples to encourage. But Jesus did say no; he did choose stillness over action; he didn’t use the worthy excuse of ministry in order to avoid the work of prayer. If we value the faith we have been given let us give it the place it deserves. Let us dare to stay still just long enough to risk encountering the God who is both near and now, and also above and beyond. To see the ordinary transfigured by the God whose light and love creates thin places for us all.
If stars shine then so can we – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: If stars shine then so can we…
Date/time/service: 9th August 2020 Transfiguration Sunday 11am Eucharist
Passage of scripture: Luke 9.28b-36
In today’s gospel we hear the dramatic story of Jesus climbing a ‘high mountain’ with Peter, James and John, three of his closest friends, and while he was up the mountain his face began to shine like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.
I have read this story many times and, indeed have been fortunate enough to visit the Mount of the Transfiguration on a few occasions. What struck me about this story this time as I read it, is that it is very matter of fact and physical. Most people believe that Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles as well as the gospel that bears his name, and when he describes the day of Pentecost in Acts, another dramatic event, he says things like, the sound was ‘like the rush of a violent wind’ and ‘divided tongues as of fire, appeared among them’, making the point that there wasn’t an actual violent wind or actual real fire. The story of the Transfiguration is told in a very different way. According to Luke, Jesus’ physical appearance actually changed. It does not sound like metaphor for an inward spiritual feeling. There is no hint of poetry. It feels like a straight, factual description of what the disciples saw with their own eyes.
So what is an old liberal like me, who likes to try and explain stories like this by seeing them as metaphor, or imaginative descriptions of spiritual experiences, to make of this story?
There is no doubt that Jesus had a physical body like ours. He got hungry, he got tired, when his body was cut, it bled. It’s this physical body, like ours, that is transfigured, that shines with light. We tend to be very dismissive of these bodies of ours. We look after them while we have them, take them to the doctors when they are ill, try to keep them fit and well, but essentially we tend to think of them and use them as vehicles in which our souls are carried, believing that when we have reached the end of our life’s journey, these bodies are no longer required so they are destroyed and our immortal souls go to heaven. That seems to me to be what most people think, but it is profoundly un-Christian and un-biblical. In fact yesterday we celebrated the Feast Day of St Dominic who made his name, in part, by refuting the heresy which says that all that is physical and material is bad and only the Spirit is of God. St Dominic stood for the truth of our faith which is that this physical world, these physical bodies, are created by God and in Genesis we are told that God saw all that he had made and it was very good. Nothing that God makes is bad or sinful or disposable. Perhaps the story of the Transfiguration is reminding us that our bodies, this corporal world, is not merely a temporary vehicle for souls, but is essentially good and is part of God’s great work of creation and salvation?
We all say in the creed week by week that we believe in ‘the resurrection of the body’ but we have all been to burials and cremations and don’t really have any idea what we mean by ‘the resurrection of the body’. Some of us will have seen Stanley Spencer’s great painting set in a churchyard with bodies clambering out of graves, and it is beautiful, interesting and unsettling but ultimately, if pushed, we’d all probably say that it is absurd.
But perhaps it’s not so absurd? Remember the feeding of the five thousand, the gospel last week? Jesus tells the disciples to gather up the scraps of what is left over at the end of the meal and 12 baskets are filled. This tells us something of the abundant generosity of God and it also tells us that nothing that God creates is ever wasted. Nothing that God creates is disposable.
There’s a song by someone called Moby and its title is, ‘We are all made of stars’. If we accept the ‘Big Bang’ theory of creation, then this is certainly true. We are created out of the chemicals and gases which are a part of what I would call God’s Big Bang. We are all made of stars. Is it so ridiculous to consider the possibility that God, in God’s time, can work with this physical stuff we are made of, to make glory shine more intensely in and on creation? I am no astrophysicist but I know that when we look at the stars at night we are seeing light that is hundreds, sometimes thousands, of light years old. Is it really so ridiculous to consider that in the great scheme of God’s creation these physical bodies of ours, made of stars, can and should be shining intensely with God’s light, with God’s glory?
So let’s not dismiss this story as one of those that we consign to being just a about Jesus or just a metaphor for significant spiritual experience. Let us accept this story as Luke tells it and also accept that it is potentially about us as well. What happened to Jesus on the mountain can and should happen to us – these physical bodies, this physical stuff is made by God and is good. Salvation will not come when a mass of holy souls are wafting about piously praising God in some ethereal, purely spiritual heavenly existence. These physical bodies, this physical stuff is made by God and is good and is an essential part of God’s work of salvation. These physical bodies, this physical stuff can and should shine with the light of divine glory.
The process of transformation, the process of transfiguration works from the inside out. The thing about the light of transfiguration is that it is not just a reflection, God’s light reflecting off our lives, no, the light comes from the inside out, we are not simply reflectors of God’s light, we are sources of God’s light and that light begins to glow through small acts of everyday kindness and love and potentially can become brighter and brighter so that eventually the whole of creation shines with goodness and love, shines with God’s glory.
We are all made of stars, and, like them and like Jesus, we should shine!
Nothing is ever wasted – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Nothing is ever wasted.
Date/time/service: Sunday 2nd August 2020 8th after Trinity
Passage of scripture: Matthew 14.13-21
A lot goes through your mind when you are training to be a priest. I remember talking with friends at college about how we would cope when we had to take the funeral of a child. The prospect of having to do just that was one of the many things that gave us trainee priests sleepless nights.
When I was ordained and in my first job as a curate, I can remember my boss, the rector of the parish, telling me that a funeral had come in for a family whose baby had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He said he would take the funeral but that I should attend, in the congregation. He was well aware that I was nervous about dealing with such a scenario.
I can still remember the full church and the baby’s family huddled together in inconsolable grief. The service began, my boss hitting just the right tone of compassion, humanity and authority. Quite soon we came to the bible reading. I was expecting John 14 – ‘in my father’s house there are many rooms’, or Romans 8 – ‘nothing can separate us from the love of God’ or Matthew 19 – ‘let the children come to me’. But we did not have any of those readings, instead we had Matthew 14 – The Feeding of the 5,000’. To be honest, I thought my boss had gone mad or made a mistake. What had the story of that miracle to do with the gut wrenching agony of the death of a child? I waited anxiously to see what he would make of it. He was a wonderful, holy, faithful and hard-working parish priest but preaching wasn’t his greatest gift. Then he began to speak and I have never forgotten what he said. Referring to the bible story he spoke about the fact that once the people had eaten their fill of the loaves and the fish, the disciples ‘picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces’. The important point being that nothing was wasted. Everything was gathered up. He spoke about how the baby’s short life had been lived in love and that that love would never die and just as the baby would never be forgotten by the family, so God would never forget the baby – I remember him saying that, with God, even that tiny little scrap of a life was gathered up.
We do have a tendency to think that God is really only in good and holy things but we have heard one or two sermons recently which have reminded us that God is at work, should we have the perception and the patience to notice, in the difficult and challenging aspects of life. A few weeks ago, Abi, preached about her calling to be a Deacon and how she understood that as being about discovering God on the fringes of things, in unlikely places and unlikely people, I think the phrase she used was ‘God is in the muck of things’. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Canon Emeritus Chris, on the Sunday he retired, preached about the parable of the wheat and the weeds, reminding us that Jesus taught that in our work for the kingdom we should not pull up and discard what we consider to be weeds in order to try and nurture a pure crop of wheat – it is not for us to judge what are the weeds and what is the wheat in God’s eyes. God can be discovered in the muck, in the weeds and in the scraps.
Winston Churchill said, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’. In other words, with some careful thought we can learn something from every crisis that assails us. Reflecting on the last four or five months there has been much that has been very painful and for many there has been, and continues to be, much suffering, but there has also been much to learn about the way we live our lives, much to learn about relationships, the way we work, the way we worship, the way we care for one another.
The more I have thought about this, the more I have come to believe that the gathering up of the scraps in the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand tells us something that is at the heart of our faith, something that is integral to the very being of God. On the cross, the last vestige of life left Jesus in his agonising last breath and the broken scrap of his body laid and sealed in a tomb, but that was gathered up by God and, in God’s power, in God’s love, new life emerged.
Sometimes it feels as though our lives are overwhelmed with darkness. Illness, death or some other crisis assail us and we feel isolated, alone and God seems to have departed, but what we have to try and remember is that somewhere in the darkness the faint glimmer of God’s light will be shining ….. in time, all will be gathered up. Jesus teaches us in the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and as he walks from the tomb with the wounds of crucifixion still visible in his hands and feet to greet Mary in the garden, that nothing, with God, is ever wasted.
It is easy to say that nothing with God is ever wasted, but when you are in the midst of a crisis or a trauma, it is hard to believe. I never cease to be amazed, however, at the number of people who come to faith, not through wonderful holy experiences, but through painful and difficult experiences. The gathering up of the scraps in the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand is a source of encouragement and hope to us all – God holds you and me and every tiny scrap of our lives, every tiny scrap of creation in the palm of his hand – and he never let go.
Trinity 8 – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon:
Date/time/service: Sunday 2nd August 2020 Trinity 8 Evening Prayer
Passage of scripture: 1 Kings 10.1-13 & Acts 13.1-13
With all due respect, the Queen of Sheba seems to have a very peculiar idea about what constitutes wisdom. First of all, she came from Sheba to visit the notoriously wise King Sololmon, ‘to test him with hard questions’. And then the passage goes on to say, ‘When the queen of Sheba had observed all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his valets, and his burnt-offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her.’ Is wisdom really all about being able to answer hard questions and being really, really rich? Well, I suppose that might have been the understanding of what wisdom is in the Old Testament but I hope we have now moved on a little.
Solomon is famous for making a wise judgement when two women were brought to him who both claimed to be the mother of the same baby. Solomon’s judgement was that the baby should be cut in half so that each woman could have part of the baby. The one who was lying agreed and the one who was the real mother gave up her claim to be the mother to protect the baby. In this way Solomon worked out who the real mother was. This story reveals the wise way Solomon used his understanding of human nature.
So if wisdom is not about hard questions and wealth, what is it about? A dictionary definition is, ‘the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise.’
Within a few clicks on Google I came across a ten step plan to help anyone acquire wisdom, it wasn’t bad, it started with ‘Try new things’, then ‘Step out of your comfort zone’, ‘talk to people you don’t know very well’ and ‘Be open minded’.
If these are the steps to wisdom then I think Jesus is the example of a wise person we should emulate. He was constantly doing new and unexpected things, walking on water, talking to outcasts, making a Samaritan, member of a hated race, the hero of a story … the list is endless. It seems that for about 30 years of his life he lived within his comfort zone, presumably in Nazareth working as a carpenter, but then he marched right out of his comfort zone into dangerous places where he regularly spoke to people he didn’t know, in fact he made a point of speaking with the very people everyone else was trying to avoid talking to! And, of course, he was open minded. When he saw a tax collector, or a prostitute or a leper, he never did the lazy thing of characterising and judging them by their outward appearance. He spoke to them politely and respectfully and as a result, many of them found that their lives, once stuck in behaving the way everyone expected them to behave, were transformed by their encounter with Jesus.
Wisdom seems to be in short supply today and the problem, it seems to me, is that gaining wisdom is challenging and quite hard work and most people seem to be lazy. Most people seem to be content to steer well clear of trying new things, never straying far from their comfort zones, ensuring that their friends in real life, and in their online life, are people like themselves, people who broadly share their views, and allow their views and opinions to be shaped by a society that seems to close of debate and discussion.
Eucharist – The Reverend Canon Dr Chris Collingwood
Sunday 19th July 2020 – Eucharist
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
What have you been binging on in lockdown, I wonder? Think TV box sets rather than gastronomy! Early on, Sue and I decided we needed a little light relief, so we watched all 20 episodes of the Vicar of Dibley! Now we’re into slightly darker stuff, as we’re gradually working our way through all 12 series of the M15 spy thriller, Spooks. We’ve only just got to series four so far, though!
Between times, we watched the three seasons of Medici on Netflix. Set in 15th century Florence, the story’s based around the rise to power of the influential banking family. Beginning with the murder of Giovanni de Medici in 1429, it concludes at the end of the century with the decline in the Medici fortunes under Giovanni’s great-grandson, Piero, known as the Unfortunate. The broad sweep of the narrative, though, centres on Giovanni’s son, Cosimo, and, after Cosimo’s death, his son, Lorenzo. During this time, the Medici bank became the richest in Europe, its prestige enhanced by being entrusted with the papal finances.
The history of Florence in the 15th century’s heady stuff, in which religion and politics, family feuds and suing for peace, the grasping for power and concern for the poor, the desire to do all for the glory of God alongside the celebration of humanity, all converge and jockey with one another for supremacy. Amidst all this, they were great patrons of the arts. Cosimo put a great deal of effort and money into the completion of the dome of Florence’s cathedral; Lorenzo was instrumental in nurturing the talents of the artists Boticelli, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
In 1482, a Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, was sent to the convent San Marco in Florence as the lector or teacher, where, sometime after he arrived, he conceived seven reasons why the Church should be scourged and renewed. A charismatic preacher, Savonarola denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule – particularly, as he saw it, that of the Medici – and the exploitation of the poor. He called for the destruction of secular art and culture and for the establishment of Florence as the New Jerusalem, which he envisioned as becoming the world centre of Christianity, something that wasn’t looked upon kindly by the Papacy in Rome. In his zeal, he instituted a puritanical campaign by enlisting the active help of the Florentine youth. Such was the unrest he stirred up that the Pope banned him from preaching under threat of excommunication, something Savonarola ignored. Inevitably, perhaps, excommunication followed in 1497, and in 1498 he was hanged and burned in the main square of Florence on a charge of heresy.
In the light of today’s gospel reading, this seems to me to be a tale of wheat and weeds. The question is: which is which? The desire to purge of all that’s deemed to be impure exercises a strong hold on a particular type of religious consciousness. It’s as if everything that gets in the way of what’s considered to be purity, the weeds, has to uprooted and exorcised, so that the wheat might grow properly. We see this today in religious extremism, whether of the Islamic or Christian variety. We see it, too, in the vandalism and destruction of the art and architecture of churches in this country and elsewhere during the Reformation, to say nothing of monasteries and the monastic life. Attempts were made to justify this, of course, and there’s no doubt that some good things emerged as a result – the accessibility of the Bible in English, to cite just one – and yet how much was lost.
Nor is this desire for purging confined to the religious imagination alone. Think of the various 20th century revolutions, in Russia and China, for example. There can be little doubt that change was needed in both instances, but just look at the resulting cost of revolution in terms of the oppression, fear, brutality and death that followed.
Similarly, the motivation for the Iraq War in 2003 was to deprive that country of a brutal tyrant, believed to have manufactured weapons of mass destruction, but among the consequences of invasion – unintended and unforseen, of course – were the chaos that ensued, the rise of Islamic terrorism, and the heightening of tension between different cultures and worldviews.
‘Do you want us to go and gather the weeds?’ ask the master’s slaves in Jesus’ parable. ‘No,’ he replies, ‘for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.’ The desire to purge and purify always runs the risk of destroying not just the weeds but the wheat as well. And much of the time, it’s not entirely clear which is which anyway. We think we know, of course, but we’re so often proved wrong, which is why Jesus urges caution. Don’t let your zeal blind you to the ecology of the weeds, Jesus seems to say, even to their beauty, for your perspective’s limited.
This is something I’ve learned through the practice of Zen meditation. There’s a popular misconception that the purpose of meditation’s to realise blissful states and be untouched by the rest of life. There’s no doubt that meditation does lead to the experience of deep peace and equanimity. Often, what initiates the practice of meditation is the desire to be relieved of suffering, the sense that there’s more to life, a longing for the fullness of life. At some stage along the path of practice, though, we discover the paradox that the possibility of suffering being relieved is encountered as we begin to accept it, that the fullness of life involves not rejecting those aspects of life we judge to be unacceptable, but embracing them. The fullness of life mysteriously involves holding the wheat and the weeds together.
What I mean by weeds in this context will be familiar to all of us. Things like strong emotions, such as anger, grief and anxiety, unresolved traumatic experiences going back to childhood, disappointments and frustrations in the way life works out, conflicts at work and at home in our relationships with others and, goodness knows, sometimes these test and challenge us almost to the point of breaking. We know the way we deal with such things can be toxic and corrosive, so the temptation to purge them’s overwhelming. If we reject them without investigating what they might have to teach us, though, the possibility of these weeds contributing to the growth of the wheat is lost. For ultimately, the weeds have an important role to play, which is that they enable, if we let them, the growth of love, wisdom and compassion.
Zen meditation requires us to sit with all the gunk of our lives, the pain and discomfort, as well as the joys and delights, without making judgments about how things should be, trusting that everything’s held in a love and compassion that embraces everything. This love and compassion constitutes who we really are, and the practice of meditation is to enable these things to be manifested not only in meditation but in the whole of life. This can only happen, though, if we acknowledge and attend to the weeds as well.
This is why the weeds and wheat of Jesus’ parable is paralleled in the Buddhist symbol of the lotus, which can grow only in mud. As the contemporary Vietnamese Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, says:
‘The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud — the obstacles of life and its suffering. … The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our station in life. … Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one.’
Isn’t this exactly what we see at the very heart of the Christian faith? On the cross, Jesus entered into and embraced the mud of suffering, violence and inhumanity, and allowed them to be the very means by which the reality of divinely-human love and compassion were revealed. We can speculate, of course, as to what might have been without the cross but, in the end, such speculation’s futile. The plain fact of the matter is that the cross did happen. Jesus flinched from it, as we all would. ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not what I want but what you want.’ At that point, Jesus accepted the cross and embraced all it would entail as the very means by which the love and compassion of God would be revealed. Without the cross – the weeds, if you like – we simply wouldn’t know the love of God – the wheat – in quite the way we do. The two are intricately bound up with one another.
What’s true of Jesus, though, is true of us, too. He’s blazed the trail we’re invited to follow, so that love and compassion might be realised and manifested in us. It can be hard, often painfully so, but it’s only by attending to the weeds, rather than pulling them up prematurely, that they can be transformed to blossom into wheat. And who knows, come the harvest, it might just all be wheat after all.