Shared Anxiety, Essential Goodness and Basic Trust – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 16 February 2020 – Sung Eucharist
Romans 8:18-25 Matthew 6:25-34
Not long before Christmas, I was having a casual chat with a ten year-old girl. At one point she slipped into the conversation an admission that she was having trouble sleeping. When I asked her what the problem was, she said she was having anxiety attacks. ‘About what?’ I asked. ‘Well, two things, really,’ she said: ‘Climate change and Brexit.’
I have to confess I wasn’t too surprised that climate change was a concern, but I was a little taken aback by Brexit. I hovered between feeling rather impressed, on the one hand, that she was so politically aware at such a young age, and angry, on the other, at what our politics were doing to the mental health of our younger generations.
When I asked her what it was in particular about climate change that concerned her, the reason given was fairly stark: she was worried there might not be a planet left for her to live on. As our discussion progressed, she said she wasn’t alone in being anxious. Many of her friends were also experiencing significant feelings of worry and anxiety about all sorts of things, but particularly about climate change. At the deepest level of all, I suppose, her worry was about life itself, about the threat of extinction, not only as an individual, but also as a species and as part of the whole wonderful living organism we call planet earth. I recalled that when I was in my early twenties, I was worried in a not dissimilar way – along with many others at the time – that the single push of a nuclear button might blow us all to smithereens.
At the beginning of today’s gospel reading, we heard Jesus saying, ‘Do not worry about your life…can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?’ At one level, this sounds like singularly unhelpful advice. It can be quite irritating to be told not to worry. We all know worry doesn’t get us anywhere; the problem is we don’t always know what to do about it. And this is where Jesus is a spiritual master. He does indeed know how to deal with worry; but I’ll come on to that in due course.
Anxiety and depression are the most prominent indicators of mental health difficulties in our society today and these things are now considered to be widespread. Some might be inclined to think it’s all a bit hyped up, as if we’ve gone rather soft. There’s no consensus as to whether there are more mental health problems today compared with previous generations, or whether there’s just a greater awareness of them and willingness to do something about them. Either way, addressing mental health issues is a sensible, mature and compassionate response to the difficulties we all experience at some time or other in life. According to mental health experts, the most common behavioural symptom of anxiety is actually avoidance: pretending there isn’t a problem in the first place or simply ignoring it. So, as we’ll see, Jesus’ wisdom actually turns out to have extraordinarily contemporary relevance.
In some situations, anxiety’s a perfectly normal and healthy response. If a lion were to come bounding into the Minster right now, our hearts would start racing and the adrenaline would start pumping. These bodily responses would alert us to real danger, something we’d need to be anxious about. We’d be imagining all the various possible outcomes. And while the advice of Dad’s Army’s Corporal Jones – ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic! – might be theoretically correct, it’d be misleading if we took it to mean just ignore the lion and pretend it isn’t there! The real question would be how to deal with it.
On the other hand, if we’d spent time in Africa in childhood, and had seen our father mauled by a lion, we might be excused if every time we saw a lion, we became more than just a little anxious. So, if a lion appeared on a film we were watching and we started screaming and ran out of the room, others might conclude we were over-reacting, and in many ways they’d be correct. But if the effects of that childhood trauma, absolutely real as they were, had never been properly addressed, they’d continue to influence our behaviour in ways which weren’t always in sync with reality as it is now. The issue wouldn’t so much be the anxiety itself, as the original trauma, and the failure, whatever its cause, to deal with it and come to terms with it.
The widespread incidence of anxiety in our society today seems largely to be the result on the part of all of us to be unsatisfactorily adjusted to the way things really are. I mean this not just in relation to our lives as individuals but corporately and socially, too. Is it any wonder, for example, that when someone on universal credit’s informed that their payments are to be stopped, pending further investigation or information being provided, that mental health issues arise? Money to live on doesn’t just appear from nowhere, so it’s not surprising that in such situations stress, anxiety and depression are common responses. These things can’t be resolved at an individual level alone, though: they relate to the kind of society we all want to live in together and how we bring that about.
This is where Jesus’ teaching about anxiety comes in full view. He neither ignores the reality of anxiety nor pretends it’s easily dealt with. After all, he says, tomorrow will still have worries of its own. Problems and challenges don’t disappear, they’re part of life. The question is how we respond to them.
At the heart of what Jesus says in this gospel passage today, and everywhere else, as far as I can see, is a recognition that God, creation and humanity are essentially good. The problem is that we’re misaligned in relation to this truth, which leads, amongst other things, to mental health problems, like anxiety. The response to this is to discover our correct alignment. In this, the Church hasn’t always been as helpful as it might be, for the way the gospel itself’s so often been presented hasn’t really been gospel – good news. The message, or at least the implied message, has often reinforced the sense that human beings are essentially bad, corrupt, lacking, deficient, unacceptable, even depraved, leading us to internalise attitudes of self-judgement and self-condemnation. But this isn’t who we really are. Jesus’ core message in this passage is that anxiety results from this misaligned perception, so the remedy lies in discovering how things really are. At the heart of Jesus’ teaching is the invitation to trust: to trust in the grace and goodness of God and in our essential goodness, too, as those created in the image and likeness of God. This is why he uses the analogy of the birds of the air or the lilies of the field. They are simply themselves, they are just as they are by nature, and because of that they have no cause to worry.
The anxiety which characterises our whole condition as human beings results from not trusting our basic goodness. It’s not enough to expect God to deal with this from the outside, as it were; it has to be dealt with from the inside, by the transformation of how we see ourselves, others, the world and God. This is why Jesus begins his preaching with the word ‘repent.’ This isn’t the message of a moralistic crusader. Rather, it’s an invitation to change our minds, to change the way we see things, to see that our essential nature is actually love, compassion, wisdom and goodness. The problem for all of us is that we find it difficult really to believe and trust this, so we live and act not from who we really are but from a diminished sense of self. It’s ultimately from this that all our mental health problems, the problems we share together as part of our common human condition, arise. Trust, says Jesus. In the final analysis everything really is all right, including you in your misalignment and anxiety, for everything’s grounded in the love and grace of God.
Disagreeing Well – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 9 February 2020 – 3rd before Lent – Matins
Jeremiah 26.1-16 & Acts 3.1-10
How do you respond when someone says something to you that you do not like and do not agree with?
In today’s first reading, Jeremiah, following the guidance of God, goes to the people and tells them that God calls them to be obedient to God or else they will face punishment and their city will be laid waste. It is clear that the people did not want to hear this message so they seized Jeremiah with the intention of killing him.
This may seem like a reaction steeped in the way the world was several thousand years ago, but we will all have heard the story of Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who died a couple of days ago. He was the first to identify the new Coronavirus in December and when he spoke about it on social media he was detained by the Chinese authorities for spreading ‘false rumours’. In addition, threats of death and physical violence are a daily occurrence on social media. It is salutary to be reminded that these kinds of responses, when people hear things they do not want to hear, are not far below the surface, even in the enlightened and civilised 21st century.
So, how do you react when someone says something with which you disagree? It has to be said that our role models have not covered themselves in glory over recent months and years judging by the tenor of recent political debate in our own country!
The clergy of the Minster have been faced with a challenge in this area over the last week or so. On 22nd January the House of Bishop’s issued a pastoral statement relating to the change in the law allowing people of opposite sexes to enter into a civil partnership, a legal arrangement previously only open to couples of the same sex. The pastoral statement talked about the Church’s understanding of marriage, making the point clearly that a civil partnership is not a marriage, and restating the church’s teaching that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman and that marriage remains the proper context for sexual activity. This pastoral statement was greeted warmly by those in the Church who are keen to uphold the Church’s present teaching on these issues, but for many in the Church, and for most people outside the Church, it was greeted with a mixture of anger, despair, dismay and confusion. Lots of people heard or read reports of the Bishop’s statement and did not like what they heard at all – what was the right way to respond? There was a furore in the press and the statement was quickly followed by some bishops distancing themselves from the statement and the archbishop’s publishing an apology, not for the statement itself, but for the ‘division and hurt’ it had caused.
The Minster clergy were lobbied by some to sign a letter of complaint to the House of Bishops. We discussed this possibility, as most of us thought the statement was, at the very least, unhelpful, but in the end decided to arrange an evening after evensong and invite anyone who wants to, to gather and discuss how the statement has affected them. We decided that the best thing to do was to listen to those who are feeling hurt, rejected and judged by the pastoral statement. Details about the evening, which is on Tuesday this week, are in the Notice Sheet today.
So, how should we respond when someone says something we do not like, something with which we strongly disagree? Our instinct is to go into combative mode, to challenge and belittle what we have heard. An instinct that social media platforms encourage and inflame.
We all know that Jesus taught us to love our neighbours and that he went even further and taught us to love our enemies. This is very hard indeed and not many people can do it – but surely, loving our enemies must start with listening to people with whom we disagree? We should listen carefully to what they have to say and examine what their motives might be for saying it? Is their point of view borne out of personal experience? Is their point of view borne out of careful and prayerful reading of scripture? As we listen carefully to others we should also constantly examine the basis for our own points of view, where do they come from? How justified are we in believing we are right? We are very quick to condemn religious and political fundamentalists but it seems to me that there are some in the liberal and academic elite these days who aren’t far off being fundamentalists themselves. Maybe even we have a tendency to express our views in ways which close debate rather than encouraging it?
As Christians we are disciples of Jesus and he taught us to love our enemies. One small step on the way to being obedient to this teaching is surely to listen carefully to those with whom we disagree and debate sensibly and respectfully with them. We are all led to believe that most issues in the world are about what is right or wrong, black or white, good or bad – but hardly anything is that simple. The world (and the bible) is complicated, there is ambiguity, there is nuance. Everybody’s world view is different and limited, everyone’s understanding of scripture is different and limited. It is only by listening together, discussing together and I would say, praying together, that we discover what is true. What we have to remember is that Jesus in not just in the truth we are reaching for, Jesus is also in the way we travel to the truth and Jesus should also be the driving force of the life we live, in relationship with others, as we travel towards the truth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.
Birth, Death and the Ecstasy of Love – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 2 February 2014 Candlemas Solemn Evensong
Haggai 2:1-9 John 2:18-22
When Sue and I were expecting our fourth child, we already had three boys. As we were driving to hospital for the birth, we were still undecided about names: we were fairly clear about the name should it be a boy, but we just couldn’t settle on a girl’s name, largely because we assumed it’d be another boy. At the moment of delivery, the midwife announced, ‘You’ve got a beautiful baby girl!’ So flummoxed by this was I that with the utmost inanity I asked, ‘Are you sure?!’
When our third son was born, the delivery wasn’t quite so comical. Towards the end of the labour, we sensed that something was seriously wrong because there was a sudden flurry of activity. The umbilical cord was being cut before the birth was complete. It became clear that it had become entwined around his neck. When he was fully delivered, he was blue and lifeless. My immediate thought was that he was dead. For about a minute there was nothing and then, all of a sudden, there was an involuntary inhalation of breath, followed by the first sound of crying. It was a moment of sheer relief and joy, but in those few moments I became acutely aware of how life and death are profoundly connected.
Those who’ve ever had the experience of being present with someone as they breathed not their first but their last breath might also know that dying can also evoke awe, wonder and mystery, just like birth. It was my privilege to be present with my wife and daughter when my mother-in-law died ten years ago. Even though she was ill and in a degree of pain, it was clear that she didn’t really want to die, not so much because she seemed to be afraid – I don’t think she was – but rather because she simply wanted to hang on to life. She was used to being in control of things and almost to the end she resisted the inevitable like mad.
Not long after eight o’clock in the morning, after a restless night, the nurses came in to make her feel more comfortable. Afterwards there was a difference. Her breathing was calmer and she seemed more peaceful and at ease. The next two hours before she died were some of the most beautiful I’d ever experienced with her. It was as if the relinquishing of life was the most natural thing in the world, as if it were a letting go not into vacancy but into something much bigger and fuller, something characterised – like birth – by a sense of the sheer miraculousness of it all, something graced with all-embracing love and compassion.
On this Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple – Candlemas – we’re presented with the profound interconnectedness of life and death. As we heard in the introduction to the service, today we’re given the opportunity, so it would seem, for one final glance back towards the birth of Christ, before turning our sights in the direction of his passion and death. There is, of course, for all of us, the sense of a journey to be made between our births and our deaths, but it would be misleading to think that birth and death are separated from each other by what comes in between, as if there were little connection between any of them. The truth of the matter is they’re all of apiece, and sometimes it’s impossible to distinguish which is which.
This is a point made well in the poem, Journey of the Magi, by TS Eliot. The journey the wise men make to the infant Christ at Epiphany is an arduous and demanding one, which unsettles and disturbs them, causing them to reconsider their frame of reference. The poem ends like this:
…were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
For Eliot’s Magi, the distinction between birth and death is ambiguous, and this is an important truth to ponder as we prepare to make our way in procession not, on this occasion, to the crib, but to the font, the place of baptism, the place where Christians are baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ, the place also of birth.
Journey of the Magi implies that birth and death are connected because they both seem to be a ‘hard and bitter agony.’ The question arises, though, as to whether this is actually the last word on either. Certainly Jesus’ dying on the cross was a ‘hard and bitter agony,’ and as we process towards the font in a few moments, we’re invited to identify with Jesus in his journey towards suffering and death, and to find in that journey the path to life. Beyond the ‘hard and bitter agony,’ though, there’s something else that links birth and death, what might be called the ecstasy of love. Let me explain.
You and I are created to know, enjoy and live in communion with one another and all creation in the abundant, overflowing, boundless love of God. We also know that life doesn’t always feel like that. Life itself can indeed be a ‘hard and bitter agony,’ but as we reflect on why that’s the case, we become more and more aware that it has to do with our resistance, our selfishness, our self-centredness. We want things to be the way we want them to be, and when they’re not we find ourselves in conflict with ourselves, with others and with God. This causes us to suffer, to experience the ‘hard and bitter agony’ of life.
Having our egocentricity laid bare is painful. There comes a time, though, when the realisation dawns that it’s actually less destructive and painful to go on asserting our own self-centred desires and ambitions and let go into something much more expansive instead. In and through our very suffering we discover, in fact, that we’re being invited to surrender into love.
Now those of us who’re fortunate enough to know the intimacy of love in family life, among friends or with lovers, know that this kind of love isn’t a ‘hard and bitter agony;’ it’s genuinely ecstatic, in the sense that we’re taken out of ourselves by the other into a communion of love in which there aren’t any barriers. There’s just an endless, uninhibited, free flow of love, in which there’s no resistance because the sense of a separate, isolated, egocentric self is surrendered and disappears.
And it’s here that what Christians experience of God as Trinity – in whose image and likeness we’re created – is important. Fancy technical words are used to describe this, words like perichoresis – mutual indwelling – but what they’re struggling to convey is a sense that in the fullness of love there’s no struggle, no ‘hard or bitter agony,’ because there’s nothing to resist or to be resisted. Love’s experienced as a joyous pouring of itself into the other, a dying into the other, which gives birth to an overflowing abundance of love.
This is what Jesus is all about and what he comes to reveal. The fact that his death is a ‘hard and bitter agony’ is because it’s the price of overcoming our resistance with love. Through Jesus’ death, though, something new is born for the whole creation. As St Paul says, ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.’
As we make our way in procession to the font, we may well be aware of the struggle that life sometimes brings. If we thought life were only ever a ‘hard and bitter agony,’ we might conclude it’s scarcely worth it. Underlying all this, though, from beginning to end, is the invitation from God to die to ourselves, to let go of ourselves, into each other and into God, so that we might be born into the love of God and give birth to the love of God in us. The promise isn’t so much of a ‘hard and bitter agony’ forever, but of the sheer ecstasy of love.
Seeing and Touching God – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 26 January 2020 – 11.30am Matins
Amos 3:1-8 1 John 1:1-4
I’m holding in my hand a small clay model. Most of you won’t be able to see it, so let me briefly describe it for you. Standing just a little over six inches tall, the figure’s of a woman bending forward slightly. She’s wearing a dark blue blouse and a floor-length turquoise skirt. Positioned at her left foot is a cat, nibbling at her skirt. The features of her face are painted rather than moulded, although her hair has a vaguely realistic shape.
This model’s of little artistic merit at all but it’s of considerable sentimental and emotional value to me personally, because I made it. It’s the only thing I’ve ever modelled in clay and I produced this at school when I was 11 years old. I spent the whole of my first term at senior school making it in art lessons. My intention all along had been to make something to give my Mum as a Christmas present. It’s in my possession now because my Mum returned it to me much later in life. I can remember thinking at the time that it was a little disconcerting to be given it back. Did this mean that it didn’t mean anything to her after all? I’d never had cause to question the matter but when my Mum died just over six years ago, I wondered whether she hadn’t thought all along that it would give me time to value what it represented. My Mum had vascular dementia and so the time came when it was very hard to engage with her in any meaningful way at all. This figure, though, was a tangible reminder of a loving relationship in which there was a genuine exchange of love. It was as if my Mum was giving back to me something in which I’d invested so much of myself as a sign of her love for me.
Over the years here, I’ve convened groups of a dozen or so people over a period of four successive weeks to share their stories with one another. In each case, I’ve invited the participants to bring an object that means something to them and explain its meaning and significance. I’ve used this very model. I speak of my relationship with my Mum and what that meant to me.
The figure also shows an accident of history, which you can’t see, but which is highly significant. Her right arm has been broken. Whereas I might have been inclined to think that this spoilt the model, I explain that it actually enhances it. Brokenness is part of all our lives and I’ve shared with groups something of the brokenness my Mum experienced in childhood and which affected our family. The broken arm draws forth from me not just love for my Mum but also compassion for her and for others.
Without knowing any of that, there’s no way you’d look at this little statue and conclude that it’s a figure of my Mum herself, but I know that was what I wanted to create to give her that Christmas. I invested the whole of myself in making a model in as close a likeness as I could of the one I loved most in my life as a small boy, to show her how much I loved her. I could have told her in words, and that would have meant something and been sincere, but they wouldn’t have conveyed that message as much as my artistically flawed little clay model did. Something tangible, something more than words, more often than not speaks so much more loudly than words. I’d warrant my Mum treasured this naive little present as much as I do myself now, because she could almost touch and feel and hold my love for her in her hand.
In trying to communicate the significance of who Jesus is, the author of the first Letter of John begins the letter – as we heard in the first lesson today – by saying, ‘We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.’ In other words, it’s the author’s conviction and experience that God’s made known supremely not simply in words but in a person, a flesh and blood human being, who experiences and knows life in the same way that you and I do. The life and love of God are revealed in one who’s embodied and immersed from the inside in the joy and delight, the glory and mystery, the suffering and pain of life, just as you and I are. It’s as if God went through the same sort of process I did in making that model for my Mum. ‘How can I convey my love?’, God seems to have asked. ‘How can I show human beings how I see them?’ And the best and only truly authentic answer available to God was this: don’t just tell them in words, show them in something tangible, handle-able.
So when we wonder who and what God is and what God is like, the simplest we can do is to point to Jesus and say: God is as God is in him. But there’s a next step we so often resist, and it’s this: to accept that God is just as much as God truly desires to be in us, and to acknowledge that we are truly who we are as we see and know ourselves to be created in God’s image and likeness in Christ. We, too, embody the life and love of God in ourselves, albeit in the same flawed way that the model of my Mum is flawed, but if God is to be real for us and for others, it can only be as we allow God to be truly embodied in us, so that God can be heard, seen, looked at, touched and handled in us.
On this Generous Giving Sunday, we’re invited to demonstrate our response of love to God not just in words, not even just in the giving of our money, but in the offering of ourselves to be completely and utterly indwelled by God, to be totally transparent to God in all that we are, to be a living embodiment of God as God is in Christ – heard, seen, looked at, touched and handled.
‘We are all missionaries’ – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 19 January 2020 – Epiphany 2 10am Choral Eucharist
1 Corinthians 1.1-9 & John 1.29-42
Apparently for many years, at the beginning of the 20th century, it was common practise for soldiers in the army to tie their newly issued motorised vehicles to trees or other static objects when they parked them. This practise was enshrined in their orders and so of course they just kept on doing it. After many years someone had the courage to ask why this was being done and when the practise was examined it transpired that it stemmed from a time when soldiers rode horses and ponies which had to be tethered when not being used – what had happened was that when the animals were replaced by vehicles, no one had updated the orders of what to do when they weren’t being used!
This is an example of how we can get so used to things that are odd or strange that we simply take them for granted. The same thing happens with scripture. Those of us who know our bibles fairly well know passages that we simply take for granted, but, if you think about them, or look at them with fresh eyes, are seriously odd. Today’s gospel is one such passage. We have got so used to its strangeness that most of us we no longer notice it.
The first odd thing about our gospel this morning is the way John the Baptist is portrayed. Mostly when we see him depicted in the gospels, he is a wild firebrand, preaching repentance and calling out the rich, the powerful and almost everybody else for their hypocrisy and sin. In the first part of today’s gospel passage, however, he quietly and succinctly identifies Jesus as the ‘Lamb of God’ and proceeds to describe what happened around the baptism of Jesus.
That is the first odd thing about this passage – we meet a quiet and reflective John the Baptist. Odder still, the next day John is again simply and quietly standing around with two of his disciples, when he sees Jesus walking by and he identifies him again as the ‘Lamb of God’. When John the Baptist’s two disciples heard this they followed Jesus. When Jesus noticed that they were following him he turned and asked them, ‘What are you looking for?’ A direct, challenging and powerful question. They begin their response by addressing him as ‘Rabbi’, or ‘Teacher’, a clear sign of respect, then they continue ….. now, what question would you expect them to ask? They have been with John the Baptist a long time and he has been talking endlessly about repentance and judgement and has also been prophesying the coming of the Kingdom of God and the coming of the messiah. Presumably they were there when Jesus was baptised and they have just heard John identify Jesus as the ‘Lamb of God’. I would expect them to ask, ‘are you the Lamb of God?’ or ‘are you the messiah?’ or maybe ‘we are looking for meaning’ or ‘can you help us get close to God?’ The two disciples don’t respond in the way I would expect at all. ‘Rabbi’ they say ….. ‘where are you staying?’ ‘Where are you staying?’ ….. what has that got to do with anything? They have left their homes and jobs to follow John the Baptist and they have been living with him in the wilderness for some time ……. homes and possessions meant nothing to John ……. they have been hearing John talk about the coming of the Kingdom of God when the world will be turned upside down …… and when they meet Jesus and they are directly asked by the person John has identified as the ‘Lamb of God’ ‘what are you looking for?’ the best they can come up with is ‘Where are you staying?’!
Knowing Jesus from the rest of the gospels one might expect him to respond to this very human and dull question by saying something like, ‘foxes have holes and birds have nests but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head’. But Jesus saves that up for another occasion and simply responds to them, without missing a step, ‘Come and see’ and that is what they do. They stay with him, wherever he was staying, the rest of the day and they are clearly drawn to him. One of them, Andrew, goes off to find his brother, Simon Peter and they become some of Jesus’ first disciples and the rest is history.
So what can we learn from these strange events? I think that they give us a wonderful insight into the haphazard nature of mission. We are big into mission in the Church – we are here to share the good news of God’s love which we see most clearly expressed in the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. The Church, rightly, puts a huge amount of effort and resource into mission and we, here, in this Cathedral church, have recently appointed Canon Maggie as our Missioner to help lead us in working out the best way for us to live and share the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. We are soon to be part of a huge Mission across our diocese led by the Archbishop and many other northern bishops and the Mission is called ‘Come and See’. We regularly run courses for people enquiring about faith. We want to have more housegroups to nurture more people in faith and we want to ensure that everything we do is geared up to deliver our mission to invite everyone to experience God’s love in our community, in our city, in our diocese, in our province, across the Anglican communion and across the world.
All of this is fantastic and we should put all our energy behind it, but what we have to remember, every single one of us, is that people who are searching for meaning or direction, people who are searching for God don’t all come knocking on our door with a clear and concise question about what they want or what they are looking for. We can and should have strategies for mission and mission action plans and courses for enquirers and big missions led by bishops so that we can respond to those who will be attracted by such things and can articulate questions about life and faith we can respond to. But all of us, every single baptised Christian, should always be open to the have conversations with and respond positively to anyone who asks weird and unexpected questions because we do not know where they will lead. It would have been quite understandable if Jesus had responded to the ‘Where are you staying?’ question by saying, ‘who cares where I am staying, it doesn’t matter, come back when you want to ask questions about truth, meaning or God.’ But, of course, Jesus did not respond in this way, he responded positively and warmly to the question that was asked and then John’s disciples were drawn into deeper faith as a result.
The point is that we must never forget that we are all involved in mission. We all have a calling to share the Good News of God’s love. Matthew’s gospel ends with a commission to the disciples and, therefore, to every baptised Christian ‘Go and make disciples of all nations …..’ Not everyone looking for faith comes to a place like this with a neat, cogent question. Many will approach someone they know who goes to church and talk about all sorts of things and ask all sorts of weird and wonderful questions because they don’t really know what question to ask ….. we have to be ready to respond as Jesus did in a friendly and warm way to whatever questions that are asked, however weird or discordant they are, however disconnected they seem to be from matters of faith …. and to trust that glowing from our faces, from our actions and from our words will be something of God’s glory and grace which others will sense as special and then be drawn into God’s love, just as those disciples of John were in today’s peculiar gospel reading ……… With our generosity and gentleness and the power of the Holy Spirit, even the most peculiar questions can lead to faith …. we are all missionaries …….
‘What difference does our worship make?’ – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 12 January 2020 – Evensong
Passage of scripture: Joshua 3.1-8 & Hebrews 1.1-12
Attending the pantomime at the London Palladium, visiting 11 cathedrals, driving round the Isle of Harries in the outer Hebrides, watching the England v New Zealand Rugby World Cup game in a bar in Athens, growing a beard, swimming in the sea off the Pembrokeshire coast on Christmas Day, reading half a dozen books, playing a round of golf, cycling over 600 miles …. this is not a fairly unambitious Bucket List (I don’t like Bucket Lists, I think they make life into something to consume rather than something to live, but that is another sermon). No, this is a list of some of the things I have been able to do during my recent 3 month sabbatical. I have had a great time!
In addition to all of this I have been doing some writing. I have written 6 short stories which will form the basis of our Three Hour devotions here at the Minster on Good Friday this year. The stories are based on scripture but are essentially works of my imagination which have helped me, and hopefully will help others, view the events of Good Friday from different perspectives.
One of the hymns we sing every year on Good Friday is ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’. I always find the singing of that hymn particularly moving but we have to remember that even though we sing it in the midst of the darkness of what we are remembering on Good Friday, we sing it in the light of the resurrection. My stories are written from the perspective of 6 people who might have surveyed the wondrous cross as Jesus died on it and would have had little or no idea that resurrection would follow.
I had five characters I knew I was going to explore in stories, but I hadn’t settled on the sixth. The days of my sabbatical began ticking by and I pondered about who my last character would be …. and then I had an odd thought. We always assume that the Magi who visited the manger in Bethlehem, were old. (I think we make an erroneous connection in our minds between age and wisdom.) Anyway, perhaps the Magi were young? Maybe they were due to inherit responsibility for their families and their lands and were searching for wisdom about how to be good leaders? Maybe they had heard that the God of Israel was not a God of emperors, kings, the rich and the powerful, but a God who chose a slave nation to be his people? A most unusual turn of events in those days. If they were young when they visited Bethlehem then it is conceivable that one of them might have returned to Jerusalem 30 years later. What would Balthazar be thinking if he witnessed the crucifixion? Legend has it he gave the infant Jesus the most unusual gift of Myrrh, something used for embalming the dead, a gift we must assume that was a prediction that the child would suffer. Imagine Balthazar watching the crucifixion – what must he have been thinking?
As I wrote a story about Balthazar surveying the wondrous cross I realised that the most important aspect of the story of the Magi is not told in the gospels. Matthew tells us that when they saw the infant Jesus they ‘knelt down and paid him homage’ …….. and that’s all we know! The interesting and important question is, how did paying homage to the infant Jesus change them? Were they different, better people when they went home? If they had been young did they fulfil their responsibilities as adults to their families, and to whatever they inherited from their fathers, in a better, kinder more ‘Christian’ way than if they hadn’t seen and paid homage to Jesus?
I don’t want to pre-empt the story for any of you who might come on Good Friday but I think that coming from a sophisticated, privileged background of wealth and education the magi may well have been moved to kneel in homage by the simplicity of what they encountered in the stable. Perhaps Joseph welcomed them by sharing his little family’s meagre provisions with them? Perhaps seeing the infant Jesus made them think that being a king or a leader of any kind, may not be about wealth and power, may not be about instilling fear and subjugating those being led, but about being humble and vulnerable, identifying with, living alongside and loving those being led? Maybe they were very different people when they returned from the stable in Bethlehem to their homes and responsibilities in the East?
The stories I have written are for Good Friday, but the one about Balthazar relates to the season of Epiphany. After this service we should all go around into the Lady Chapel to our crib and take a look at the magi, who, legend dictates, are nearly always depicted as three kings, and wonder how paying homage to Jesus changed them and then to think hard about how paying homage to Jesus, which is essentially what we are doing in this choral evensong and in every act of Christian worship, how does paying homage to Jesus change us?
Having spent all of my adult life working in the Church I know that regularly paying homage to Jesus in worship, for some, sustains them in living lives of near saintliness. In all the churches I have been part of, including this one, there are people who live good, kind, sacrificial, loving lives, a great deal of which has flows from regularly paying homage, like the magi, to Jesus. For most of us the homage we pay to Jesus in worship at least makes us try to be better than we would be otherwise. We fall well short of saintliness but we do keep trying through confession, thanksgiving, prayer and having our minds fed and our hearts uplifted in worship, to be better, kinder people, a little less selfish, a little more loving, a little bit more like Jesus, the one we follow as disciples.
In this season of Epiphany we look back to Christmas and forward to Lent – as we remember the story of Jesus and, in this and every act of worship, pay homage to him, as the magi did, we have to keep asking ourselves the question – what difference is this all making to me and the way I live my everyday life as a disciple of Jesus?
The Woman at the Well – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 5 January 2020 – Choral Evensong
Isaiah 49:1-13 John 4:7-26
I wonder whether you’ve ever been to the Holy Land or even ever had the desire to do so. Despite hearing numerous people telling me over the years how life-changing such a visit can be, I’d never had any inclination to go until about 10 years ago. A former colleague of mine was living in East Jerusalem, where her husband had a posting with the Foreign Office. She’d always said we should take the opportunity to go and stay with them. Then, one day, we had a message to say that if we wanted to do so, we’d better get on with it, because they were about to be moved to China within the next few months.
So just after Easter some 10 years ago, we went. It was a magical trip for all sorts of reasons. One of the unforeseen benefits for us, though, was that because John had the use of a diplomatic car, he was able to get us to places which were otherwise tricky to gain access to. One of those places was Nablus, on the West Bank, where a well – said to be Jacob’s Well – is to be found. You’ll recall from the second lesson from John’s Gospel that Jesus sat down by this well in the heat of the midday sun one day and entered into conversation with a Samaritan woman, which, for her, was indeed life-changing.
As is the case with so much else in the Middle East, different religious groups have vested interests in Jacob’s Well: Jews, Samaritans, Christians and Muslims. In 1860, the site was obtained by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and in 1893 a church was built over the well, with a monastery as part of the complex. That building was destroyed by the Jericho earthquake in 1927. Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the well’s been the focus of considerable acrimony between Jews and Christians. In 1979, the then custodian of the site, Archimandrite Philoumenos, was found hacked to death inside the crypt housing the well. In 2009, the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem declared Philomenous to be a saint, since when a new church building has been erected over the well.
As with many of the sites in the Holy Land, you have to take all sorts of claims to be the really authentic place where this or that happened with a large pinch of salt. Whether or not the well in Nablus really is Jacob’s Well, there was, nevertheless, something about it. Hewn out of rock, it was extraordinarily deep, as the gospel narrative states. On the edge of the well was a stone on a string, which you can throw down to see just how long it takes for the stone to hit the water. A long time! And the water tastes unbelievably sweet and good!
The church which was erected over the well by Greek Orthodox Christians in 1893 was dedicated in honour of St Photini the Samaritan – the Samaritan woman herself. The choice of the name – Photini – is incredibly interesting. It means ‘the Enlightened One,’ or ‘the Luminous One,’ Photini being derived from the Greek word, ‘phos,’ meaning ‘light.’ Legend has it that the Samaritan woman was baptised by the Apostles and given the name Photine. Now whether we go along with the notion that the Samaritan woman was an actual historical figure or one constructed as a spiritual archetype by the evangelist is neither here nor there. The important thing is that the figure of Photini offers us a way in to this amazing, utterly engaging, spiritually true-to-life story, and speaks to us of our human condition, of our true nature in relation to Christ, and of the transformation required if we are also to become enlightened or luminous.
Enlightenment isn’t a word much used in Christian circles; it’s rather more associated with Buddhist traditions. In his letter to the Ephesians, though, Paul speaks of the ‘eyes of your heart’ being ‘enlightened.’ Light’s associated with Christ himself, who as the Prologue to John’s Gospel puts it, is the ‘true light, which enlightens everyone.’ So in a Christian context, enlightenment has to do with the discovery of our true nature as the light and life of Christ within us and at the heart of everything. As the prologue also states, this light is mysteriously obscured within us, yet, as everything which obscures the light is cleared away, so the light of Christ, which is already present – just as the sun’s always still present behind the clouds – begins to shine in us, and we discover our luminosity.
It’s here, perhaps, that the Buddhist traditions can – forgive the pun – shed a little light on the matter, for the practice of meditation, which invites a forensic examination and analysis of the workings of the mind and the heart, enables us both to discover the luminous ground of our awareness, and also that which obscures it. And this is exactly what Jesus does with the Samaritan woman.
Anyone who knows anything about Buddhism will almost certainly have an idea that the problem for human beings lies in the nature of desire, but a more sophisticated acquaintance with Buddhism will be aware that it’s not quite so simple. Nirvana, the so-called ‘goal’ of Buddhism, is often assumed to be that state in which desire has been extinguished. It’s actually rather more subtle than that. The problem isn’t so much to do with desire per se as with misdirected or disordered desire. It would be impossible to live without any kind of desire at all. If that were the case, we’d never get out of bed in the morning. No, the real issue concerns the nature of our desire.
In the encounter with the woman at the well, Jesus gently, sensitively and compassionately enables her to discover how the dissatisfaction she feels with her life arises out of her misdirected desires. And the metaphor for her desire is her need for water. In other words, this is all about spiritual thirst.
At the most basic level, she’s fed up with the sheer drudgery and mundaneness of life. She has to trek to the well in the heat of the day to draw water, a fundamental necessity of life, and yet she desires something more. The paradox is that this desire for something more obscures for her the sheer wonder and delight of water itself. Her sense of drudgery obscures her basic appreciation and savouring of the miracle of water. The discovery of that something more would enable her to delight in this practical and manual daily task in a way which eludes her at the time of her initial conversation with Jesus.
Jesus then draws her attention to a more fundamental disorder of desire in her life. For some reason she’s had five husbands and the man she’s with at the time isn’t even her husband. We don’t know what lies behind this and we should be careful not to project back on to her all our contemporary notions of romantic love. The point is that she appears to have looked for the fulfilment of her desire in a succession of human relationships. Such things are necessary and often life-giving, of course, but we find that often they can’t bear the burden of our unrealistic hopes, expectations and desires, and they become a source of pain, hurt and suffering. Jesus shows us that in all this she’s really desiring something more.
That something more is difficult – impossible even – to put into words, not least because it’s the very reality in which we’re grounded and through which we experience life. Suffice to say, the woman discovers this in the person conversing with her, as if he were a mirror in whom she sees herself. She sees in him the luminous ground of her own awareness and realises that this is what she’s been looking for in all the twists and turns of her life. And, paradoxically, even her misdirected and disordered desires, which have left her feeling dissatisfied with her life, have actually had their part to play in the discovery of what she was really looking for all along.
So the Samaritan woman, St Photine, the Enlightened or Luminous One, is really you and me. Her story is an invitation to all of us to discover that what we really want is already present within us. As we read in the letter to the Colossians, this is the ‘mystery hidden throughout the ages and now revealed to his saints – Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ The living water, for which we thirst, is already flowing abundantly in the unfathomably deep well of our being.
Christmas 2019- The Revd Canon Maggie McLean
Over Christmas I really enjoyed watching the film ‘The Two Popes’.
I liked it not only for its drama about different ways for the church to be, and to do, but for its depth of humanity.
The characters came alive as leaders and also fallible people. People with something to learn from each other.
One part of the film reminded me of a visit I made to Argentina 15 years or so ago. The country of the present Pope.
During our stay in Buenos Aires we went to see ‘the Pink House’, the Argentine equivalent of the White House.
It was here, in a plaza in front of the presidential building, that mothers protested during the so-called ‘dirty war’.
Between 1973 and 1983 tens of thousands of people ‘disappeared’.
In response mothers and grandmothers of the victims of government oppression gathered in front of the Pink House and protested.
They were unafraid; the most important things in their lives had already been taken. They felt they had nothing else to lose.
It is hard for most of us to imagine this horror. This panic and desperation to know what had happened to loved ones. To seek answers and to be denied.
All that many of these women did was be present and weep.
The power of their protest lay, in part, in the fact that they were not influential people; they were not wealthy, they had no clout. They came, they demanded answers, and they expressed their grief:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
Today our Gospel reading is no less horrific. It tells of state organised violence – the murder of God knows how many children. All boys under the age of two.
It’s hard for us to imagine the impact of this crime, two thousand years ago.
The still greater tragedy is the repetition of such crimes, down the years, until today.
Children abducted and murdered; damaged beyond belief by living in a war zone; forced to survive on insufficient food and drink.
When will we learn?
When will we act?
Like the women in the Plaza de Mayo, the powerless have much to teach us. Perhaps they are not the kind of people we look to in order to learn. They are not always the educated or the qualified. They are certainly not wealthy or powerful.
Yet such passionate protesters articulate the injustices of life in ways which should disturb our comfort, and bring comfort to the broken.
Today we are between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Perhaps some of us are thinking about resolutions to make.
For me, reflecting on this Gospel, I don’t feel the need to make a new resolution – but I do feel a call to strengthen my resolve.
To listen and to act. To be open to the experiences of those responding to injustice and violence – to not only hear, but to do.
Howard Thurman, an African-American theologian and civil rights leader, put these feelings into context when he reflected on the Christmas story and it is with these words I wish to end: He writes….
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
Amen.
Heart of Love – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 29th December 2019 – Matins
Isaiah 35:1-6 Galatians 3:23-end
The anthem we’ve just heard is probably one of the most well-known and best-loved of all pieces of music associated with Christmas. I like to think we at York Minster have a rather special connection with it through our visiting choir today. Harold Darke, the composer, who, at the age of just 16, set to music the words of Christina Rossetti’s poem, In the bleak midwinter, was the great uncle of Richard Darke, who didn’t need to trade on his great uncle’s name, but was in his own right a much-loved, respected and gifted musician in Yorkshire. In particular, he was the Director of Music at St John’s Knaresborough for 22 years. The choir of St John’s comes to sing the services this weekend each year and we’re extremely grateful to them for doing so. By virtue of the relationship between great uncle and great nephew, the anthem provides us with the opportunity to remember Richard with much gratitude and affection, as he died in October just over a year ago.
I remember as a boy – singing in a parish church choir and later at school – getting all tongue-tied and confused over the last line: ‘Yet what I can I give him – give my heart.’ I always assumed it was a not very well phrased question, as if there were one too many ‘Is’. It was only much later that I realised the sense of it had to do with not having anything to give except the heart: ‘Yet what I can I give him – give my heart.’
‘Heart’ is an interesting word. It is, of course, a muscular organ that pumps blood around the body, but it’s long been associated with emotion and feeling, too. We speak of a broken heart when someone’s disappointed in love. In fact, one of the best known Christmas songs captures just this. Wham’s 1984 hit single, Last Christmas I gave you my heart, is all about the break-up of a relationship:
Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,
but the very next day you gave it away.
This year, to save me from tears,
I’ll give it to someone special.
Last Christmas, so the song tells, the singer had wrapped up his heart and sent it with the message, ‘I love you’. The heartache results from the fact that the love’s still there, unrequited, and won’t go away.
The heart’s also a very significant word in Jewish and Christian spirituality. Jesus summarises the Law by saying, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength; and your neighbour as yourself.’ The Biblical significance of heart’s more than its just being a bodily organ, although that’s important, and more than its being the seat of emotion, although that’s not insignificant. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, as the contemporary author and scholar, Martin Laird, reminds us, the word heart ‘intends the unifying, grounding centre of the human person.’ In other words, ‘heart’ really denotes that unitive awareness which is completely inseparable from God. ‘Heart’ is where we and God are one.
The problem, of course, is that we all know ourselves and experience life as fractured and fragmented, divided and dislocated. The Christian story can be read as one in which our ‘original’ state is recovered, when we wake up to the unity and harmony which is the real nature of things. This is why St Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, says that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, because in Christ all are one. Up to the point of his conversion experience on the Damascus Road, Paul saw everything in dualistic, binary terms, as in or out, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. All of that was transcended by an overwhelming experience of divine love, in which he knew himself and everything and everyone else to be at one. Paul spoke of his waking up to this unitive awareness by declaring earlier in the letter, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’
Christ is the reality, the unifying ground, in which everything has its being, and what we celebrate at Christmas is the revelation of this truth in a divinely human person, a being who is single in the sense of being whole and undivided. We might say that in him God lays bare his heart. And God invites us to do the same, to discover that beyond all division is the love of God, in which the broken heart of humanity finds its wholeness.
The Word became flesh and lived among us – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
First Eucharist of Christmas 24th December 2013 11.30pm
Hebrews 1:1-4 John 1:1-14
‘And the word became flesh and lived among us.’
If you’ve ever watched the BAFTA or Oscar ceremonies on television, you may recall that towards the end there’s a very poignant moment, when pictures are shown of people who’ve died during the previous 12 months, having made significant contributions in film or television during their careers. If there were a large screen here in the Minster showing pictures of those who’ve been important in your life, but who’ve died since last Christmas, I wonder who’d be there. A close family member, perhaps, a friend, a work colleague, someone who’s inspired, encouraged or influenced you.
I’d personally want to see one particular picture, which wouldn’t so much make me sad as make my heart expand with love and gratitude. It wouldn’t even be a picture of someone I really knew. I met him only once, but that was enough to leave an indelible impression on me. Nor was his death untimely or tragic in any way: he died in May at the age of 90, surrounded by those who loved him, having led an amazingly full, creative and fruitful life. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if only a handful of those here now have ever even heard of him. And yet, whether we realise it or not, we all owe so much to him for his vision, his humanity, his faith, his love and, above all, for the way he changed attitudes everywhere towards those living with learning disabilities. He was the French-Canadian philosopher and theologian, Jean Vanier, best-known as the founder of L’Arche, a network of communities not so much for those with learning disabilities, but rather in which those with learning disabilities are included.
Vanier initially trained as a naval officer, and then embarked on an academic career, but while staying with a priest-friend in France, his life was changed. He came across a mental hospital, which at that time was referred to disparagingly as a ‘place for idiots.’ Some 80 men were housed in cramped conditions and were effectively written-off as human beings. It was there that Jean Vanier met Raphael, who’d contracted Meningitis, and Philippe, who was badly affected by Encephalitis. And so it was that in 1964, Vanier was prompted to invite these two men to form a small community with him and to live together in a tiny house he’d bought. From this first small community of three there are now 147 such communities in 35 countries.
I met Jean Vanier some years ago now at a day conference in Westminster Cathedral. He was insistent that the afternoon session begin with all 400 attendees washing one another’s feet, just as Jesus had washed his disciples’ feet the night before he died, on what we now call Maundy Thursday. It was a profoundly moving experience of love, humility and gentleness. It was in fact on Maundy Thursday in 2016 that I spoke in this pulpit about something that happened after we’d washed one another’s feet at that conference, so I apologise if there’s anyone who’s heard this story before. I want to use it in a rather different way tonight, though.
When the foot-washing was over, Jean Vanier encouraged feedback and discussion. All of a sudden, there was a disturbance at the back, caused by a loud wailing sound. Clearly someone with a learning disability was trying to speak with some urgency, for what followed was obviously a question, which sounded something like this: ‘Ow oo you ive wi umwun yoo ate?’ Minds were racing as we desperately tried to work out what had been said. All I could come up with was, ‘How do you live with someone you ate?’ ‘Surely this man’s not confessing to cannibalism,’ I thought.
At this point, all the attention was focussed on Jean Vanier. With utter gentleness and love he said, ‘Fred, you’re asking how we live with someone we hate. You tell me. How do you think we do that?’
Unlike Vanier, most of us might have responded to Fred rather patronisingly at best, or shuffled uncomfortably in our seats, at worst, embarrassed by our own inadequacy. Vanier, though, saw Fred as being no different from himself, treated him as an equal, as one from whom we could all learn, not despite his disability but because of it. All distinctions between superiority and inferiority, able and disabled, clever and stupid, disappeared in that moment and what was left for all to see was simply a beautiful and reciprocal relationship of love between equals in their shared humanity.
Why do I speak about Jean Vanier and tell this story as we celebrate the birth of Christ? For one very simple but mind-blowing reason: that the Word became flesh and lived among us. We see the Incarnation made real among us, because the effect of Jesus’ coming among us is to draw us into relationship and to create community, real community, not the superficial and narrow kind of community made up of only the likeminded, but the kind of community in which there’s a place for all because the barriers and boundaries of fear and prejudice come tumbling down, where relationship itself affirms and nurtures our deepest humanity, because we discover what it is to love and to be loved.
That’s exactly what happened in that exchange between Jean Vanier and Fred. Vanier responded to Fred’s question with such love and tenderness that Fred’s dignity was affirmed and, as a result, each was drawn more deeply into love. Indeed, Fred taught us so much in that moment, not least that the weak, the vulnerable and the often-ignored-if-not-despised have so much to give us, because they show us how to be vulnerable, and it’s only in vulnerability that we can really know love. That’s what Christmas invites us to see: that God’s mysteriously embodied in the vulnerability and fragility of a human baby, which, by virtue of simply being, is a crying out from love for love. What we all experienced in that encounter between Jean Vanier and Fred was the Word becoming flesh before our very eyes, the reality of Christ being made visible and his presence made known, because he was living among us as love. No wonder that in that moment we beheld his glory made manifest in relationship and community, full of grace and truth.
What we celebrate tonight isn’t simply something that occurred 2000 years ago, nor something that’s of significance just once a year, but something that’s true at every moment: that the Word becomes flesh in every person, in every place and in every time, if we would but let it. Christ is the reality in which all things exist, without whom not one thing comes into being, the light which is the life of all people. So the reality of the Incarnation’s to be discovered wherever we are right now, whatever’s going on in our lives, and above all, whenever we’re drawn out of our self-centredness into relationship, community and intimacy. The truth of the Incarnation isn’t primarily something we work out in our heads; rather it’s discovered precisely in and through the day-to-day embodied experience of our lives.
So, if you’re wondering what it all really means and whether it’s of any consequence, start exactly where you are right now in your life, with the people you come across, the people you’re here with now, those you’ll be with tomorrow and beyond. The key lies in our daring to be vulnerable to others and letting them be vulnerable to us; in being open to the possibility of a movement of love between us, however small.
Sometimes, of course, it’s really difficult, because we don’t necessarily like everyone or we’re afraid of being hurt or taken advantage of. But this is exactly what happened to Jesus. The vulnerability he experienced from his birth stayed with him until the end of his life, indeed took him to his death on a cross, because it was love that motivated him in every aspect of his being. His birth and death reveal that God meets us and loves us most of all precisely at the point where we feel most vulnerable. That vulnerability is the narrow gate through which God can enter, be made flesh, be made visible, live among us and draw us into the fullness of God’s own life. It can open up a whole new world of possibility and promise, just as it did for Jean Vanier, Raphael, Philippe, Fred, and for all who risk being vulnerable to love. It’s then that we experience and know for ourselves the reality of the Word made flesh, Christ living among us, here and now and always.
Keep Awake – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 1 December 2019 – Matins
Micah 4:1-7 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Rugby Football may not be your cup of tea. If so, then the attention given to this year’s world cup competition might have been just a little too much for you to bear. This was undoubtedly the case for Canon Peter Moger, Precentor here at the Minster until recently, although if truth be told, Peter wasn’t so much irritated by the competition as completely oblivious of it!
The final, with England playing South Africa, took place on 2nd November, the day after Peter’s licensing on the Feast of All Saints as the Episcopal priest in Stornaway. Peter was very keen to give a tour around the island of Lewis to the small number of us who’d gone there to support him, largely to show us the second church in his charge. This is a 13th century church dedicated in honour of that well-known saint, Moluag. Canon Michael Smith – currently on sabbatical – and his wife, Ann, together with Dr Richard Shephard, my wife and me, stayed in an air B&B together. Michael had let it be known in no uncertain terms that we were intending to watch the rugby. So at 9.00 o’clock, the five of us sat down in front of the television. Dr Shephard managed to last barely a few minutes of pretending to be vaguely interested, before the sheer agony of boredeom forced him to leave the room and go and do something else! The four of us who remained, though, were gripped. And for those of us of a certain age, this final brought back memories of the final in 2003, when England beat Australia to become world champions.
The hero of that match was, of course, the fly-half, Johnny Wilkinson. At 79 minutes into the 80-minute game, England were ahead, and then Australia equalised, taking the score to 14-14. During the twenty minutes of extra time, both teams managed to add another three points to their scores, until 20 seconds before the end, Johnny Wilkinson scored a drop goal to give England a three point lead – and victory.
Wilkinson seemed to have golden boots on his feet, and he was well known for the ritual and posture he adopted before kicking the ball through the posts to convert a try or score a penalty. He seemed almost to crouch or squat and hold his hands in a rather curious position – almost prayer-like – in front of his chest. His eyes oscillated several times between the ball on the grass and the posts through which he needed to kick the ball, as he sought to fix in his mind the required trajectory of the ball. His concentration was enormous, and time and time again he managed to achieve his goal – literally – of getting the ball between the posts.
Keeping your eye on the ball is a phrase that’s widely used, whether or not the connection’s made with sport. It means, of course, keeping your focus, not being distracted, because if you take your eye off the ball, you’re likely to miss. We use the phrase metaphorically in all sorts of circumstances in our everyday lives.
If St Paul had been writing to the Thessalonians today, I wonder whether he might not have used this metaphor, for that’s really what he’s saying in the passage we heard as the second lesson today. Keep awake, be vigilant, keep your eye on the ball, otherwise you’ll miss the crucial moment on which all could be won or lost. For Paul that moment was the so-called second coming of Christ at the end of time.
The notion of the second coming draws on the language of what’s called apocalyptic found elsewhere in the Bible, notably in books like Daniel in the Old Testament or the Revelation to John, with which the Bible ends. Apocalyptic makes use of all sorts of weird, wonderful and disturbing images, with the intention of warning and alerting people to the serious danger they’re in without being aware of it. Apocalyptic seeks to wake us up and get us to pay attention. Although some people take the words literally, it might be more helpful to read them in a rather more symbolic way, not least because the thought world of St Paul seems so alien to us, which is why, if he’d been trying to say now what he was trying to say then, he might have used the metaphor of keeping your eye on the ball.
The business of paying attention resonates with many today and can connect us with every aspect of our experience. It’s why the so-called mindfulness movement has caught on, because it offers a practice of being attentive as a way of dealing with all the stuff which seems to blow us off course in our lives. But we know how important paying attention is in all sorts of everyday circumstances. A musician knows all too well that mistakes are likely to be made when your attention wanders. Or think of a brain surgeon in the middle of a delicate and difficult operation. A moment’s distraction could be fatal. And what about the temptation to answer a mobile phone when driving. Tragedy could occur in a split second. All this is a way of saying that everything in life is actually a spiritual matter.
A good many years ago now, when I was a vicar in Bedford, I invited Michael Mayne, then Dean of Westminster, to come and lead a quiet day as part of a two-week mission. He kindly gave me the manuscript of his addresses, which I still have, and he began the first address with these words:
I want to put before you a profoundly simple – that is to say, a simple but profound – truth. And it is this: that at root, the Christian life is about giving attention in order to become what we truly are. Prayer, spirituality, is about giving proper attention to God. Love is about giving attention to people. By which I mean attentiveness to what is before our eyes in the sacrament of the present moment.
I should define a religious person – one who is spiritually aware – as one who is prepared to give attention to the world, to its people and to its creator, in the process of learning to love them.
For St Paul, the crucial moment on which all could be won or lost seems to be the moment when Christ will come again in the future, at the end of time, but if we think about it carefully, that can’t possibly be the whole story. He’s actually saying, pay attention now, in this moment, because if you don’t, it might be precisely now that he comes and then you’ll miss him. Christ comes to us at every moment and in every situation. The so-called second coming points, perhaps, to that single moment when the whole creation will be so utterly at one in its attentiveness, that the very life and presence of God will be realised in everyone and everything in all its intense fullness.
So keep awake, be vigilant, keep your eye on the ball, for the God who comes in the future is simply the God who comes at every moment, which is only ever now – in the eternal present.
Patience is not one of my virtues – The Revd Canon Maggie McLean
10am Sung Eucharist – Sunday 1 December 2019
Patience – waiting – is not one of my virtues.
Good things, things I’m looking forward to, can never arrive too soon and right now, it’s probably the way a lot of children feel about Christmas.
Waiting comes in many forms. We can wait for something with apprehension – perhaps the result of medical tests or the outcome of an interview.
Alternatively, we can wait with sheer excitement for a special occasion; an anniversary, a party.
Sometimes we have a mixture of these feelings.
I thought about this a couple of years ago whilst waiting in line at Universal Studios in Orlando for the Harry Potter ride which took you down into the vaults of Gringots bank.
I wanted to go on it, but as we moved along there were signs that made me have mixed feelings about the prospect. So for example one said:
“This is a high-speed roller coaster ride that
includes sudden and dramatic acceleration,
climbing, tilting, and dropping. You will be turned completely upside-down several times.”
(Perhaps a sign which we ought to have for new Canons!)
I was in the queue, committed to going, but my anticipation began to be mingled with real anxiety.
In our society a lot of effort goes into supporting the experience of waiting.
Digital signs at stations, on the motorway and at bus stops, all try to manage the anxiety waiting can produce.
We are impatient creatures and business and government understand the need to manage our waiting, our anticipation and our frustration.
We only need to take a few steps out of the Minster to experience a world disinclined to wait. In our restaurants and shops we can have Christmas today – its sparkle, its food and its celebration.
Yet for the Church, Advent is about more than the flightpath to Christmas.
It’s a season full of signs about what the birth of Jesus means. Not for one day, but for all days. Not simply about jollity, but about the second coming; about our mortality, judgement, being with God – and the idea of not being with God.
And rather like my Harry Potter experience, the signs aren’t cosy or devoid of risk.
Our Gospel reading seems entirely compatible with the idea of sudden “acceleration, climbing, tilting, and dropping”. People will be together; one will be taken and one will be remain.
We are not left with a vision of comfort, but of dramatic transformation. The image for God here is the thief in the night – the unwanted visitor who disrupts the home.
Advent tells us that God’s coming will be an unsettling and disturbing experience. With God comes change, change we may not have looked for.
Both the Israelites and the early Christians were preparing themselves for the ending of history and the start of God’s reign.
It might be tempting to see this as something which is eternally about tomorrow. But as our prayer for today tells us, the urgency to prepare is ‘now’; ‘now in the time of this mortal life’.
Advent isn’t about tomorrow but today. About whether we are ready to greet God; to open our hearts and lives to the presence that is our one true hope – but, also, a presence that never simply leaves us as we are.
In the couple of weeks that I’ve been here I’ve been reminded how this space offers to many the chance to meet with God.
Like a Russian doll it holds story, within story within story. It is shaped and marked by those whose experience of God, even centuries ago, continues to bear witness in stone and glass; word and song. It tells of the end time and it speaks of today.
Last week Chris and I went out for a drink in one of the pubs on Goodramgate. We got chatting with some people on the next table who were visiting from Derby for the weekend.
One of the group spoke about their friend who, following a bereavement, happened to be in York and visited the Minster.
As a result his life was changed. Something happened here. And as his friend put it:
“He went in alone, but he walked out with God”
Advent is about being as prepared as we can be for that experience. It’s about being open enough to recognise God when the Holy Spirit enters our lives.
I hope that in this season of Advent we all take time to ask God how we can be ready for that encounter. How we can be ready, and how we help others to be open to that experience.
This isn’t the season of passive waiting. It is the season of searching and striving – of active anticipation. The picture Jesus paints is of God breaking into the world. The thief who steals our illusions and helps us see ourselves, and those around us, as people already loved beyond measure.
This magnificent building does not contain God. It points to God, even as Advent points to the love which is at the heart of our faith.
Our task, our calling, is to be ready and alert for every moment when this love breaks into the world.
Like the night watch scanning the horizon for the first glimmer of day, we are asked to wait eagerly for each and every sign of God’s presence in the world; and proclaim to those around us that the night has ended.