Visiting the tomb – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Easter Day Evensong 21 April 2019
Isaiah 43.1-21 & 1 Corinthians 15.1-11
A story for Easter Day
When he died I was broken hearted. The suffering he had endured was unimaginable. I was angry at the injustice he had suffered, I was frightened for the future, and, I hate to admit it, I was just a little bit relieved it was all over! Being a friend of Jesus was really hard work. I had given up everything to follow him. For three years I hadn’t really had a good nights sleep, meals had been sporadic, the Roman and Jewish authorities had constantly hassled us and, in addition to all this, Jesus kept on challenging us, saying difficult and disturbing things. Yes, if I am honest, there was a sense of relief that it was all over. I didn’t have the nerve to ask any of the others if they felt the same, I thought it might be just me!
It was with this complicated mixture of feelings that I joined the others to visit the tomb on Sunday morning. We walked there in silence and I was thinking; ….. yes I was sad, I loved him and I know that he loved me ……. I would miss him ……. he was energetic and charismatic, great fun to be with, but exhausting. When we got to the tomb I was certain I would weep and wail with the others, but weeping and wailing was easier than following him, for once, I was in control. He would be dead in the tomb and I could do all the things I felt I needed to do, say all the things I felt that I needed to say, weep all the tears that I needed to weep and then walk away and get on with my life, my way. No more compulsion to risk everything and to live ‘on the road’. I could go home and pick up my safe, comfortable, predictable life and look back at my time with him with deep affection and pride. Maybe one day people would write books about him. I would be able to tell my grandchildren that I travelled with him, I knew him, I loved him.
‘Joanna …… Joanna?’ Mary, James’ mother, one of my companions was speaking to me.
Deep in thought I slowly became aware that she was saying my name.
‘Sorry Mary’, I said, ‘I was miles away’.
‘Joanna, what are you going to do now?’
I was embarrassed to answer the question. To tell Mary that I had already thought about going home and getting on with my old life seemed rather callous, this was only the third day since he had died. In order to dodge the issue I decided I would use a trick he often used. I turned the question on her and asked her to tell me what she was planning to do.
‘Well I haven’t spoken to James yet, but I expect we’ll go back to Galilee. His cousins are still fishing the lake and there’s always work for a fisherman. I’ll go with him, help find him a wife and wait for some grandchildren to come along. It’ll be nice to get back to normal.’ Mary stopped speaking, suddenly realising that she was revealing that there was a little bit in her that was somewhat relieved that he was dead as well. ‘I mean, I am heartbroken, this is awful, he shouldn’t have died ……’
‘It’s alright Mary’ I said, ‘I know what you mean and I have been thinking the same way. I would not have missed my time with him but it has been hard work, I am exhausted and all the things he said and taught are buzzing around in my head. I need some time to rest and think it all through. I am quite looking forward to going home as well.’
Mary took hold of my hand. In this way we comforted each other in our sadness and in our shared feeling of shame that we were relieved it was all over. Now Jesus was dead we could remember all the great things he said about forgiveness and mercy and healing, all the promises he made about the Kingdom of Heaven and we could slowly forget all the difficult things he said about loving our enemies and about judgement, and about giving everything we have to the poor and that ridiculous story about a Good Samaritan, I mean, who has ever heard of a Good Samaritan?
The sun was creeping over the horizon as we neared the tomb. The chill of night being replaced by the warmth of day.
We were visiting the tomb to mourn, we also needed to anoint his body because he had been buried in such a hurry on Friday evening we hadn’t been able to do it then.
‘How are we going to move the stone?’ someone asked.
Silence. We hadn’t thought about that. I don’t suppose any of us were looking forward to doing what we were going to do but we all needed to do it – it was a way of showing our love for him. As we prepared to anoint his dead body I thought of Mary, Martha’s sister, who had anointed his body while he was alive only a week or so ago – I really admired her for that, I wish I had her courage. Anointing a dead body isn’t pleasant but it’s easier, less complicated, less open to misinterpretation than anointing live one.
As the morning mist rose the tomb came into view. Something wasn’t right. We tried to make out what had happened, our pace quickened, and then we saw, the stone had been moved.
‘Someone’s moved it for us already’, Mary said.
We looked around and saw two men standing close by. I couldn’t tell if it was the way the sun shone on their white clothes, but they seemed to glow with light. They dazzled us. We fell to the ground in fear. Were they ghosts? Were they Pilate’s spies? Were they angels? We had no idea, but they frightened us. Then they spoke,
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.’
We stared at each other in disbelief. He had talked about rising after three days but that didn’t make any sense at all so we’d ignored it. I looked inside the tomb to check if what these two strangers were saying was true. It was empty.
We ran back to tell the others. We didn’t speak, we just ran. Out of breath we told them what had happened and what we had seen. We told them that the tomb was empty. And, do you know what – they didn’t believe us. They just thought we were a bunch of exhausted, grieving, sleep deprived, hallucinating, silly women. Fortunately Peter, in order to shut us up probably, got up and went to the tomb himself. When he came back and told them the tomb was empty, they believed him!
He lives.
What now? I suppose I should be telling you that there was a part of me that was disappointed, but there wasn’t. When I discovered he was alive and always would be alive, because he had overcome death, I knew that he would always be with us, he would always be with me. I knew I would have to live with all the great, easy things he said as well as all the difficult challenging things he said. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to mould my memory of a dead hero to suit me and my life, I knew I was going to have to give my life to him and allow my life to be moulded to fit his teaching, his ways. But that was fine – he would never leave again.
Life remembering a dead hero would be easy, safe, dull and would lead only to the establishment of my own little kingdom with me at the centre. Life with a living friend, a living Lord, would be a constant challenge, complicated, but better by far and will lead I hope, as he always said it would, to the establishment of his Kingdom, the Kingdom of God.
Ash Wednesday – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Ash Wednesday 6th March 2019
2 Corinthians 5.20b 6.10 & John 8.1-11
The lady had woken early and showered. She dressed in simple, expensive and smart clothes. She put on her make up and did her hair. She ate a nourishing and healthy breakfast. She picked up her leather briefcase containing important papers, checked she had her phone and keys and she set out for work. She was confident and in control. She was able and ambitious.
Within an hour of leaving home her clothes were ripped and ruined. She had lost her briefcase, phone and keys. She was wandering the streets in a daze. She was confused and vulnerable. She was covered, head to toe, in dust and ash.
The lady was the victim of a random terrorist attack in a busy city centre. One moment she was confident and in control. Within seconds, due to an act of human evil and sin, she was broken and vulnerable. Covered in dust and ash. This is the human condition writ large. We yearn for a safe and comfortable environment where we are in control, but tragedy and acts of selfishness and sin, by others or by ourselves, constantly wreck and shatter our safe, comfortable and controlled lives.
On Ash Wednesday we are challenged, by the Church, to face up to this. We are reminded of our mortality, that life is a precious and fragile gift. We are also led to face up to our weakness and sin which is destructive and ultimately leads to death. In this service we take ash – a stark symbol of tragedy and death, and we are marked on our foreheads with a cross. We take ash, a symbol of destruction and death and make the mark of the cross, for Christians, a symbol of life and hope. The message is clear. By God’s power and grace, by God’s willingness to enter into the tragedy and sin of our lives and our world, there is always the potential for new life, for resurrection. In the dust and ash of human tragedy, in the dust and ash caused by human sin, the sins we commit and the sin done by others, even in the dust and ash of death, there is the potential of new life.
Ash Wednesday is about Hope. The season of Lent we begin today is about Hope. Not Hope that God will magically or supernaturally sort out our problems, but Hope that with God’s Grace and Love, and our repentance and courage, there is no tragedy or sin that cannot be overcome, there is no tragedy or sin that cannot lead, in some way to new life, to resurrection.
It is good to be reminded at the beginning of this penitential season that repentance has two elements – there’s the saying sorry for our sins, but this is not enough we also have to do something about our sin. True Repentance involves a serious attempt to put right in our lives what we know is wrong. Think for a moment about the lady caught in adultery in the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday. At the end of the story Jesus says, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’John 8.11. So she didn’t get stoned to death by the mob, she got forgiven by Jesus – thank the Lord. But when she walked away from Jesus, where did she go? As far as we know, the only person who had forgiven her was Jesus, so presumably, she had to go back to her husband and apologise to him and work hard to gain his forgiveness and trust. Then there would be her family to speak to, remember she was humiliated by being dragged through the streets, everyone knew what she had done. So she would also have to face her neighbours, the ladies in the queue to fill the water jars at the well, I wonder what that was like. Life was going to be very tough for the lady in the gospel after Jesus forgave her. Living as a forgiven person is not always immediately a happy ending – often it involves a lot of honest conversations and hard work.
So as we begin this season of Lent today by sharing in this simple ritual where a little ash is used to mark us with a cross, let us be aware of the enormity of the message this ritual carries – life is precious and fragile, yet there is no tragedy, no sin that may drench us in dust and ash, out of which some new life may not come. New life comes through God’s love, grace and forgiveness, and through our true repentance. In a beautiful church building in the context of a moving act of worship with evocative liturgy and beautiful music, this is easy to believe this. When tragedy strikes it becomes more difficult. So as we prepare for the ritual imposition of ash and the assurance of Hope, let us, in a moment of silence pray that, should we be drenched in the ash of sadness or tragedy we will be able to hold on to the belief that God will remain with us and lead us to new life, and let us pray for others we may know or hear about on the news whose lives today are covered in the dust and ash of tragedy. May we repent of the sins that cause so much tragedy, our own sins and the sins with which we are complicit, and work hard to put things right. May we, this Lent, resolve to hold on to the hope of new life and help make that new life a reality for others through our compassion, forgiveness and love.
Does it matter when we read the Bible? – The Reverend Canon Peter Moger (Precentor)
10.00am Sung Eucharist – Sunday 3 March 2019
Luke 9.28-36
Does it matter when we read the Bible? I don’t mean whether we read it in the morning or evening, but when, in relation to the pattern of the Christian Year. I’m a firm believer that when we read the Bible is almost as important as what we read there – that the context of reading has a profound impact on how we read Scripture and apply it to our lives.
Today’s Gospel reading is St Luke’s account of the Transfiguration. That’s an event which has its own date in the Christian calendar – 6 August. But since the 1960s, all the mainstream churches have been reading one or other of the gospel accounts of the Transfiguration on this final Sunday before Lent. Why?
Well, as I’m always saying to Canon Michael, lectionaries – the schemes which tell us which bits of the Bible to read in worship – are not random! Today’s readings are there for a purpose. Today, the Sunday next before Lent, is a watershed Sunday – a gear change. It marks a shift from the Christmas cycle of time into the Easter cycle of time. That first cycle unpacks for us what it means for God to share our life through the birth of Jesus. We prepared during Advent, we celebrated the birth at Christmas, and in the Epiphany season we explored who Jesus is. And now we begin the Easter cycle, in which we delve into the mystery of salvation – the truth that, in Jesus, God shares our life for a purpose, and that purpose is to change it, for ever, through Jesus’ death and resurrection and by sending us the Holy Spirit. The Easter cycle takes us on a journey which begins this coming Wednesday, winds its way through Lent, Holy Week and Easter, and reaches its culmination at Pentecost. So today is a turning point in the year – a threshold – a liminal day – in which we cross from one period of time to another.
And the point of immersing ourselves in cycles of time within the Christian year is that we allow them to form us, year on year. Times and seasons are a formational spiral; as we hit a new season, we never repeat the spiritual journey of last year, because we’ve moved on. The circumstances of the past year’s journey have impacted on us so that we face Lent, Holy Week and Easter afresh, and ready to be formed still further into the people God made us to be.
So what about the Transfiguration, and why is that passage in particular read today? The account sits at a point of transition in Jesus’ earthly life. Luke sets it almost literally as a watershed in the middle of the Gospel. It follows teaching and miracles and, although more of the same follow, it’s clear that after the Transfiguration, Jesus – identified as God’s chosen one – is set on a particular course as he heads towards Jerusalem – the city in which he will die and rise from death, and in which the Holy Spirit will be given. So it marks a gear change in Jesus’ ministry.
The Transfiguration appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke. And although there are subtle differences from one Gospel to the next, the basics are the same. Jesus ascends a mountain with Peter, James and John to pray; his appearance changes; Moses and Elijah are seen; Peter makes a remark which shows that he totally misinterprets the situation; a cloud covers them and God’s voice is heard: ‘this is my Son – listen to him.’
Supernatural / Prayer
We need to recognise that, above all things, the Transfiguration was a supernatural event – one of those occasions when the living God breaks forcefully into the life of the world. It’s easy, in the daily business of life, to ignore the fact that, as Christians, we are people of the supernatural – that at the root of what we believe is that God has broken into, and continues to break into, our world of time and space. Holy places, such as this cathedral, are a constant reminder of that ‘otherness’ which lies at the heart of our faith. The medieval builders of the Minster were about creating ‘otherness on earth’ – cathedral music is about exactly the same thing: not manufacturing the conditions, but providing a fertile context for the supernatural to shine through.
And the particular event of the Transfiguration came about as a result of Jesus and his disciples going up the mountain to pray. Mountains and hills have often been seen as spiritually significant places, but even if we live in the Vale of York, we can still pray. Not all of us will see visions, or hear directly the voice of God, but without exception prayer offers us the space and opens up the capacity for our spirits to connect with God’s Spirit. As we approach Lent, I would like to encourage you to make use of the weekly Silence in the Minster – each Thursday evening, beginning on 14 March. These offer us the opportunity to be genuinely still before God, to listen, and to pray in quiet, and in the time-honoured service of Compline.
The Past
The appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus on the mountain is usually given great theological significance: Moses as the giver of the Law, and Elijah as first among the Prophets. But we don’t need to be OT scholars to grasp that what Moses and Elijah stand for is the past. Jesus is at a threshold in his life: what he is about to do in Jerusalem will have a profound effect on the course of history, but the saving work of Jesus doesn’t come out of nowhere – it has a past.
Each of us, too, has a past – and as we reflect on Jesus standing between the past of Moses and Elijah, and the future in Jerusalem – we can take to heart that God is the God of our past and our future. Who we are is human beings who carry the image of God – that’s true for absolutely everyone. Who we have become over time is the result of a complex interplay of circumstance, chance and choice. But who we shall be is rooted in Jesus and our relationship with him.
Lent is an excellent time to take stock – to reflect on the past, on where we’ve come from – and remind ourselves that God has been with us in that past. It’s a good exercise sometimes to look back over our lives and think about where God has been with us in our journey. And as we trace the hand of God through time, we are in a good place to ask God to show us what we are being called to become.
Mistakes
Reflection on our past can sometimes lead to an unhealthy pre-occupation with mistakes or choices we wish we hadn’t made – and this can be destructive and compromise the wholeness which God wills for us.
St Peter is our model here. He was someone who, despite having the best of intentions, always managed to put his foot in it, to get it wrong, and – on one occasion – to seriously let Jesus down. But ultimately it was Peter who was chosen to be the rock on whom the whole Church was to be built.
At the Transfiguration, he seems to have been totally mesmerised by the experience. He says to Jesus:
‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’
He wants to fossilize a good experience, without looking beyond, to where that experience might be pointing.
I am glad, both that I am called Peter, and that I was ordained and have served in this Cathedral which bears his dedication. Because it’s a constant reminder that God deals with each of us realistically and as we are – helping us put mistakes behind us and start again. A reminder that past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future possibilities!
Listen to him
Well, the disciples’ cosy experience soon passed and gave way to sheer terror as a cloud covered the mountain. And here the Gospel records a profound and disturbing manifestation of God’s presence, experienced through the voice:
‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’
And that was that. Jesus was left alone with the disciples – and life continued on its course. But that is rather what life can be like. It’s not an endless succession of mountain-top experiences but peaks, troughs and a good bit of trudging along level ground. The key, though, for Peter, James and John – and the key for us – is that we recognise who Jesus really is and we listen to him.
The season of Lent which lies ahead has for many centuries been kept as a time of drawing close to God. St James reminds us in his epistle that if we draw near to God, then God will draw near to us. The danger is that we think, ‘Ah yes, another Lent, another year’ rather than, ‘this Lent, this year.’ As we enter the Easter cycle another time, let us dig deep, as we open ourselves to God’s transforming love.
God of everlasting mercy,
who sent your Son to save us:
remind us of your goodness,
increase your grace within us,
that we may know your power to change and save.
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Glimpsing God’s back… – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 3 March 2019 Matins
Exodus 33.17-end & 1 John 3.1-3
One of the things we pray for most often here at York Minster is that all the people who come will encounter God in some way. Every day at Morning Prayer we pray for the day ahead and for all who will come to the Minster, and our prayer is that they will encounter God in some way. We often introduce Choral Evensong, at which there are often a lot of visitors, by saying that our prayer is that all who are gathered will encounter God by sharing in our worship together. In addition, whenever I am welcoming a congregation to a wedding I often tell them that this is a place where, over many, many centuries, people have encountered God, so I invite the wedding congregation to be prepared for the unexpected! It is interesting to see people start looking just a little nervous, many thought they had come to a ‘venue’ to watch a ceremony, this introduction warns them that this is not just a ‘venue’ and lots of extraordinary things and encounters have happened here over many hundreds of years, so something might happen to them!
So we pray and talk about people encountering God here a lot – but what do we mean? What does encountering God look like and feel like? What am I suggesting the poor, unsuspecting congregations at weddings might experience?
The first reading this morning tells us of an interesting encounter between Moses and God. They are in conversation and Moses says to God, ‘show me your glory’. God tells Moses that he will pass by him but that Moses must stand in the cleft of a rock as God passes by, Moses will not be permitted to see the face of God but he will see God’s back. So his encounter with God will only be partial.
As Christians we believe that Jesus is God incarnate, but most people who encountered Jesus were confused and bemused by their encounter. Certainly, those who heard Jesus’ teaching and parables were nearly always confused and bemused – they recognised that something important and significant was being revealed but most people, at the time, and many people since, have found God’s revelation in Jesus confusing and bemusing.
It is for these reasons that I am always a little bit nervous of people who claim that their encounter with God is absolutely clear, certain and beyond question. Some act as though God has spoken to them with absolute clarity in ways that cannot be doubted or contradicted. It is as if some people claim that, unlike Moses, they have seen God face to face, they have seen God’s glory. This goes against the experience of virtually everything we read in scripture about people encountering God – encountering God is always partial.
Life is not just about ‘being’, it is about ‘becoming’, becoming the people God created us to be – in a sense, nothing is complete, everything we experience is about growing and changing, which is why our encounter with God, like that of Moses, is always partial, is always a glimpse or a moving shadow. In his book about poetry, ‘The Splash of Words’, Mark Oakley says, ‘ … the bible is a collage of writings that remind us that God is not the easy object of our knowledge but the deepest cause of our wonder.’ p. xxii
So, back to all the people who come to the Minster including the poor unsuspecting congregations at our weddings – what does encountering God mean, what does encountering God feel like? It is about sensing something, feeling something beyond us, something bigger than us. As Mark Oakley would say, it is not about ‘knowledge’ but about ‘wonder’.
It is important that we continue to pray that everyone who comes here, for whatever reason, has their hearts touched, their presuppositions challenged. Creation is not just about the individual, it is not just about what we can touch, what we can see, what we can buy, what we can prove – it is about much more, it is about a God who created us and holds us in love. That is not something we can touch, see, buy or prove, but it is something we can sense and even encounter in a place like this.
In conclusion, instead of a traditional prayer I want to read a short poem as a prayerful offering. It is called ‘Muse’ by Malcolm Guite. Among other things I think it is about encountering God
Muse
I stop and sense a subtle presence here,
An opalescent shimmer in the light,
And catch, just at the corner of my eye,
A shifting shape that no one else can see;
Just on the edge, the very edge of sight
Just where the air is brightening, and where
The sky is coloured underneath a cloud.
And so she comes to keep her tryst with me.
She comes with music, music faintly heard,
A trace, a grace-note, floating in clear air,
As over hidden springs the hazels stir.
Time quivers and then she is at my side;
A quickened breath, a feather touch on skin,
A sudden swift connection, deep within.
The Transformation of Peter – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
4th Sunday before Lent 10 Feb 2019 Matins
Jeremiah 26.1-16 & Acts 3.1-10
When we read about people in the New Testament we have a tendency to conflate all the various stories we know of them, from all the different books in the New Testament and draw our conclusions about them from that mass of information. We do exactly the same thing with the Christmas story, we nearly always conflate the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke to make one story. This is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but sometimes it is interesting and helpful to focus on the portrait one author gives us of a person to see what that important character looks like from the account of their life given by that one author. Having heard the dramatic story about Peter in the passage we heard today from Acts 3, I thought it would be interesting to put that story in the context of the portrait of Peter Luke gives us in the gospel that bears his name and in the Acts of the Apostles which we believe he also wrote. In other words – what picture of Peter does Luke give us?
We first meet Peter in Luke’s gospel when Jesus climbs into a fishing boat and, not unreasonably, suggests to the fishermen that they go fishing. Peter, one of those fishermen, says there is no point because they had been out all the previous night and caught nothing. However, they do what Jesus says and, under his direction, they catch a huge number of fish. Peter recognises that there is a remarkable, miraculous power working through Jesus and he falls to his knees and says to him, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man’. That is the first mention of Peter in Luke’s gospel. Peter then appears in Luke’s list of Jesus’ disciples and we see him helping Jesus with his ministry. Luke then tells of Peter being the first disciple to recognise Jesus as the Messiah and then he tells us that he was present when Jesus was transfigured on the mountainside. As Luke’s story of Jesus unfolds we see Peter again, a couple of times, asking questions, seeking clarification of what Jesus is saying and doing. Then in chapter 22 we hear the heart-breaking story of Peter’s three denials of Jesus. Luke tells us that after the third denial the cock crows and Peter remembers that Jesus had predicted that he would deny him. Luke then tells us, simply and starkly ‘And he went out and wept bitterly’. Peter is mentioned one more time in Luke’s gospel when he ran to the tomb and saw that it was empty and Luke tells us that he was ‘amazed at what had happened.’
So, what we have in Luke’s gospel is the portrait of a faithful fisherman who became a disciple with remarkable insight but who is also beset by self-doubt, fear and weakness.
In the Acts of the Apostles, even before the events of Pentecost, Luke lets us know that Peter is in charge! In chapter 1, Peter speaks to all the followers of Jesus about Judas and his role in betraying Jesus, followed by Peter overseeing the selection of Matthias as the man to replace Judas as one of the 12 disciples. In chapter 2 Peter makes an impressive, authoritative speech after he and the other followers of Jesus have been filled with the Holy Spirit. He explains how Jesus has fulfilled prophecy, courageously he criticises many of those listening for being, in part, to blame for the crucifixion of Jesus, he calls them to repent and he speaks of the hope we have through the resurrection of Jesus. At the end of this great speech and a brief description of how the followers of Jesus cared for each other and met regularly to pray and break bread, Luke says simply, ‘And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved’.
We heard the opening verses of chapter three as our second reading today. Peter and John encounter a lame man at the temple, speak with him and then heal him.
For Luke it’s almost as if there is no break in the ministry of Jesus. In the gospel Jesus himself teaches and heals, assisted by Peter and other faithful but flawed disciples and followers. In the Acts of the Apostles, despite the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus, the teaching and the healing, continues and Peter, perhaps the most faithful and most flawed disciple, is the chief person continuing that ministry. He who was taught is now the teacher. He who was healed is now the healer. He who denied Jesus now professes and explains faith in him. He who needed forgiveness now speaks of God’s love and mercy.
So, in Luke’s story, what is it that moves Peter from being the faithful but flawed fisherman in the gospel, into Peter the confident and articulate leader in Acts? It is the resurrection, he saw the empty tomb and was amazed, the Ascension, after which all the disciples went back to their upper room to pray, and, of course, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost after which Peter speaks with even greater authority.
Luke’s message seems clear to me – by encountering Jesus, by encountering the crucified, resurrected and ascended Lord, by being filled with the Holy Spirit – ordinary, flawed human beings, like Peter, like James, John and all the other disciples and, yes, ordinary, flawed human beings like you and me, carry on the ministry of Jesus. The bible tells us, and our liturgy often reminds us, that we are the body of Christ. The story of Jesus we read about in scripture, the regular reminders and celebrations we share in at church of the key events in the life of Jesus, aren’t just about us remembering the story, aren’t just about us honouring Jesus by doing the right religious things, aren’t just about us being pious – no – the story of Jesus we remember and mark and celebrate in liturgy is all about you and me becoming Jesus and carrying on his ministry.
A prayer attributed to St Theresa of Avila – Let us pray
Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth, yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now. Amen
Clothed with Christ – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 10 February 2019 – Choral Evensong
Hosea 1 Colossians 3:1-22
I’ve recently read the most exhilarating book: Bow First, Ask Questions Later. It’s original, intelligent, perceptive, profound, witty and funny. Before you rush to order it, though, I ought – in all fairness – to come clean, and all I need to do, probably, is just tell you the subtitle: Ordination, Love and Monastic Zen in Japan. There, now; if your taste buds had been aroused a moment ago, they’ve probably gone to sleep now! The reason I mention the book, though, is because it offers an interesting slant on this evening’s second lesson and, in particular, on what it might mean to be clothed with the new self, with Christ. So, a little introduction to the book first.
When it was written, the author was still in her twenties and is even now, just a year after its publication, only 32. In 2009, when the stock market crashed, she was an English major at an American university, completing a ‘creative writing thesis that was a collection of love poetry’, so, as she says, she was ‘even less marketable than [she] could have been’. Her solution to the problem? She did, as she says, ‘what any self-respecting spiritual white girl would have done: [she] went to India’.
India wasn’t all it was cracked up to be as far she was concerned, so she moved on to Japan, where she met a monk who would become a significant influence in her life. So taken with him was she that she spent six months in his monastery before returning to America to write a novel. It was in her own words ‘a good novel. It was sexy and dark. It was intelligent, vulnerable and kinky, kind of like Franny and Zooey meets Fifty Shades of Grey’. The problem, though, was that she didn’t know how to end it. So if the contents of this novel interest you more than Bow First, Ask Questions Later, I’m sorry to disappoint you. It was never finished! You’ll just have to imagine what might have been!
As so often seems to be the case in life, the apparent frustration of our hopes, dreams and desires often nudges us in the direction of what we’re really seeking deep down, but haven’t quite identified. What Gesshin Claire Greenwood was clear about, though, was that she needed to return to Japan and to the monk who’d so impressed her when she’d first arrived in there. So it was that on 28th December 2010, she was ordained by him as a Buddhist nun, after which she spent another five years in various Japanese monasteries before receiving authorisation from him in 2015 to teach Zen, receiving final recognition of this in 2017.
Towards the end of the book she recalls how just before her ordination she asked her teacher what was the main difference between a layperson and a monk. His response took her by surprise: ‘a monk is someone who wears monk clothing’. The reason for her bafflement was that this answer seemed so shallow, implying that being a monk’s all about dressing up. Now there are plenty of Anglican clergy for whom this appears to be the case! Such people can leave us feeling slightly uneasy. This isn’t what the monk was suggesting. So what was he getting at? His understanding is actually quite profound, and it’s this that might help us appreciate a little more what it means to be clothed with Christ.
Let’s think about the clothes we wear. Over the last few decades, conventions concerning dress have become rather fluid, to say the least. In the 1950s, for example, there were fairly well accepted dress codes: men tended to wear suits for everything and women dressed in varying degrees of formality. In our own time, people increasingly wear simply what they feel comfortable in. This has happened in the Church. Even just a decade or so ago most clergy would have worn the vesture appropriate to their tradition. Nowadays there are some clergy who reject the wearing not only of a dog collar in everyday life, but even of what’s traditionally been expected in church itself. The motivation for this is no doubt that formality puts people off. There may be some truth in that in some instances, yet it’s also the case that there are some roles which do require a certain form of dress. If Her Majesty the Queen turned up for an official visit wearing trainers, jeans and a hoodie, your first reaction might be that it was rather out of character, and your second that she wasn’t really taking her role seriously. And that’s the point. The queen inhabits a role that’s performed in part by wearing clothes that are appropriate to the role. She is what she does and what she wears.
This is true not just of the Queen. When our probationary choristers, for example, are admitted as full choristers, having completed their initial training, they’re clothed with a surplice, which is ceremonially placed over their heads by senior choristers. The surplice denotes their role. They’re not at this stage as experienced or as able as older choristers, but they gain the necessary experience precisely by doing what their clothing indicates. In this way, they grow into the role and little by little perform it with increasing skill and ability. An eight or nine year-old chorister may not be fully fledged, but what they wear denotes that they perform a role in exactly the same way as is expected of the more experienced adults in the choir. The wearing of the surplice instils in the chorister the aspiration to inhabit that role in an ever more accomplished way, an aspiration that’s never exhausted.
It’s something of this that lay behind the assertion that a monk is someone who wears monk clothing. At what stage can a monk ever say he’s all a monk should or could be? There’s continual growth and development, which never comes to an end. The clothing denotes the role to be performed and is a reminder and an encouragement to continue to grow into that role throughout life.
Now this seems to me to be very pertinent to what it means to be clothed with Christ. The Letter to the Colossians doesn’t suggest this involves a particular form of clothing, although for some roles and vocations it might. Rather, clothing is used as a metaphor. The author does spell out, though, what being clothed with Christ actually looks like. The interior transformation by which the old self is stripped off and clothed with the new self becomes apparent, we might say, in the way we wear ourselves. The clothes we put on are compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, forgiveness and, above all, love.
It might be objected, though, that it’s not so simple: we can’t just be these things instantly, as if by magic. But that’s the whole point. We become these things by doing them. We become compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, forgiveness and love by performing them, by doing them, by practising them. There’s always going to be a gap between what these things really entail and how inadequately we perform them, but we have to begin somewhere. We fall short, we get things wrong, but in the process we gradually learn to inhabit the role, wear the clothes more naturally and comfortably. We don’t spend forever thinking about it and pondering the difficulties of it all. We just get on with it. We bow first and ask questions later.
Called the Fullness of Life Together in the Spirit – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 10 February 2019 – Sung Eucharist 10am
Isaiah 6:1-8 Luke 5: 1-11
When the Bishop of Winchester commended Jonathan to us as our new Dean at his installation eight days ago, he did so with great eloquence and affection. He noted in particular that two phrases are often to be found on Jonathan’s lips: ‘Our life together in Christ’ and ‘Come, Holy Spirit’. Well, I’ve heard Jonathan utter these words already! The first phrase obviously speaks of the life of the Church. So, too, of course, does the second, but the Bishop was quick to add that for Jonathan the Holy Spirit’s perceived to be just as much at work in the world as in the Church. I take this to indicate that the Church and the world exist in a reciprocal relationship, in which the boundaries between the two are far from sharply drawn, precisely because the Spirit’s present in both.
I want to explore something of what this means in the context of today’s readings, especially the gospel. The broad theme is that of vocation. In the first reading we heard of Isaiah of Jerusalem’s evocative and transformative vision of God in the temple – the God, we might note, whose glory fills the whole earth – with its call to the prophet to speak uncomfortable words to the people of Judah in the latter part of the eight century before Christ. In the second we heard of Jesus calling those who’d been hard at work fishing all night but without success. When they responded to Jesus’ invitation to ‘put out into the deep water’, and saw the result, they ‘left everything and followed Jesus’. I want to speak about the significance of the sea in all this, but I’ll come back to that later. Let’s start with vocation.
What do you think about vocation? Do you think you have one or do you think it’s just for clergy? Let me suggest that every single human being has a vocation and it’s not primarily to be ordained or even to be particularly churchy or religious. In the first instance, it’s simply to be fully human, to be who we have it in us most truly to be. Deep within every human heart is a longing for love, acceptance, relationship and inclusion, a profound desire to experience life not as fragmented and broken but as complete and whole. Jesus shows us what it looks like to be fully who we truly are. His full humanity’s seen to be realised only when it’s completely open to and at one with the transcendent source of all that is, the one he called, ‘Abba, Father,’ just as his divinity’s revealed not as something separate from humanity but as love poured out and into all that is, with absolutely nothing left over.
People responded to Jesus – and still do – as the one in whom all longing, human and divine, meets: our longing for God and God’s longing for us. So to be drawn into ever greater union with God is at one and the same time to be drawn into ever closer relationship with every other human being and, indeed, with all creation. The Church’s primary vocation is to be a community, a communion, of love, united in the Holy Spirit of love, sharing with one another without reserve in the overflowing life and love of the Trinity.
We all know only too well, though, that the Church isn’t always experienced like this. The Church itself is fragmented and broken not only at an institutional level, but also in local communities. This is true to a greater or lesser extent of every church community I’ve ever been involved with. The plain fact of the matter is that even when we respond to the call to attain our full humanity and maturity in Christ, we still share as human beings in the brokenness of the whole world. Being called into life together with God and with one another in the Church doesn’t remove our difficulties in one fell swoop. Rather, we travel together in full awareness of both our brokenness and also of what and who we already are in Christ. We might say that it’s our being in Christ that gives us the freedom to live with our brokenness and to be open to healing and transformation.
It remains the case, nevertheless, that some people – many perhaps – have been hurt and broken by the church itself. In our own time, the significant number of people who’ve been subjected to clerical abuse, for example, testify to this. So, too, do LGBTI people, who’ve often been silenced and excluded, women who’ve suffered discrimination, and divorcees who’ve been made to feel as if they’re beyond the pale. Many have been hurt by the judgmental and harsh attitudes and actions of the Church, and sometimes the Church has had to play catch up with the rest of the world, which, by contrast, can appear to be rather closer to the Spirit than the church itself.
Some simply feel let down or disappointed by the Church, as a result of which they’ve given up on it and looked for what they want and need elsewhere. Among these are those who look for the fulfilment of their deepest spiritual longings outside the Church. I often find myself having conversations with people who used to be part of church communities but who found they were no longer nourished and sustained by what they were given. The many, for example, who’re looking for more silence or for a less dogmatic approach to things. Others feel that the Church doesn’t engage enough, if at all sometimes, with the really serious issues facing us: poverty, injustice, inequality, global warming, migration and so on. The drive to respond to these issues is as often as not found outside the Church. So this very awareness pushes us to look for where the Spirit’s at work in the world as a whole, as well as in the Church.
Some Christians find this rather uncomfortable. The world, they argue, is at best ambiguous, at worst full of temptation and danger, capable of leading us astray. It’s better to play safe, they say, and stay within the secure boundaries of the Church rather than engage too closely with the world.
The difficulty with this is that, as I’ve already suggested, the church itself isn’t always a safe place. The Church can just as much be a place of danger and corruption as the rest of the world. Importantly, too, perhaps, the Church can also be used as an escape from the rest of the world, from life itself and the challenges if brings. Life isn’t always comfortable, though, either in the church or beyond it, and the Spirit’s constantly blowing us out of our comfort zones. The Spirit may sometimes be a still, small voice, but it can also be a hurricane: powerful, uncontrollable and irresistible, just like the sea.
Those who made a living from fishing knew they were encountering danger on a daily basis. In Biblical times, the sea wasn’t just a force of nature, it was a place of chaos and disorder. And yet, Jesus invited the fishermen to put out not just to sea, nor to the shallows alone, but into the deep water, the place where safety and security can’t be guaranteed, where human beings are vulnerable to the elements and definitely out of their comfort zone. The sea, after all, has the capacity to overwhelm and destroy, and yet it’s also teeming with life and energy. If the sea was for those fishermen a symbol of chaos, it was also the place of abundance, grace and generative power: they found so many fish that they could barely contain them in their nets.
The fishermen were surprised by catching anything at all, let alone the sheer size of the catch. Abundance came from the most expected place. So, are we prepared to launch out into the deep? What gifts of abundance and grace in the world do we reject? What gifts might those outside the Church have to offer to it? In what ways do we inhibit such gifts from being offered? Where’s the Church called to listen to the voice of the Spirit in the world today? For the Spirit’s the Lord, the giver of all life, drawing all into union with God and with one another. Only together can we fulfil the divine call to be fully human, to be truly who we are.
So it shouldn’t just be Jonathan praying, ‘Come, Holy Spirit’, but all of us. So come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of all your people, and kindle in us the fire of your love, that the call to us from the depths of the Father’s heart to be who we truly are might be made real in the fullness of our life together in Christ.
The longer Song of Simeon – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 3 February 2019 – The Feast of the Presentation – Evensong
Haggai 2.1-9 & John 2.18-22
What follows is a meditation rather than a conventional sermon. At the heart of the celebration of the Feast of the Presentation is the encounter that took place in the Temple in Jerusalem between an old, holy man called Simeon and Mary, Joseph and the 40 day old baby Jesus. Simeon sang a song of praise we call the Nunc Dimmitis and this song is sung or said every day as part of our Evening Prayer. This meditation is based on that encounter and on Simeon’s role in particular, but is also inspired by a number of other things related to the story like, growing old, visiting, working and worshipping in magnificent buildings like this and the people who come to places like this to mark major life events, like baptism.
Another name for the Nunc Dimmitis is, The Song of Simeon. This meditation is called – The longer Song of Simeon.
The longer Song of Simeon.
Waiting.
Waiting for the Messiah.
Waiting to die.
Waiting is fine,
in a building like this Temple.
Dawn is best – before the crowds.
As the great doors open
shadows brighten and cold stone is warmed by sunlight.
It is as if I am alone with God.
Sometimes sitting in the cool silence.
Sometimes walking,
the noise of my stick echoing around these walls
much older even than me.
I stop and lean or sit,
Yearning, one day, to be absorbed into the stone
to be eternally embraced by the beauty and grandeur of this sacred place.
As the sun climbs in the sky, the people come
to work
to stare
to buy and to sell
to fulfil religious duties
to pray.
Alone, in groups, little families.
I look with tender regret at those little families.
Mine is grown and dispersed
leaving me old and alone
waiting,
waiting for the Messiah,
waiting to die.
These families come to give thanks for life.
Some are proud and wealthy
they march with confident joy,
‘thank offering doves’ fluttering in a cage.
Families wanting to be seen and admired
for their good fortune having been blessed by God
with new life.
Some are poor.
They drag reluctant, noisy children with them,
barely able to afford the pigeons with which they say ‘thank you’ to God.
They look bemused – is this new mouth to feed really a blessing from God?
Families come,
babies cry,
crowds shuffle through this holy place
and I watch
waiting
waiting for the Messiah
waiting to die.
Today, I saw them,
a man and a woman with a new baby
just like all the others,
but different ……
They were pigeon-poor.
What was it that set them apart?
What was it that I recognised?
As they walked nervously through the great doors
it was like the sun in the morning rushing in
brightening the shadows
bringing warmth, even life, to cold stones.
As they walked past me I heard the baby murmur
a tiny sound
and the great echo worked in reverse,
the murmur became a song which increased in volume
as it bounced around these ancient walls
filling this sacred space with divine music.
Incense, candles, oil lamps and sacrifice,
prayer comes in many forms
but, as they walked past me
prayer seemed to be embodied in them,
prayer at its most eloquent in love shared.
Waiting is over.
In this little family
In this tiny baby I saw God,
I saw the Messiah.
Surprised at my request,
reluctant to let go of her new precious gift
she gave me the child to hold.
And as I looked into those eyes
I saw vulnerable humanity
I saw powerful deity
I saw the whole of creation
I saw love.
What did he see?
An old man with a grey beard!
A tear fell from my cheek to his.
I kissed his head.
It looked paternal, friendly
but that kiss was more,
worship
affirmation,
adoration.
I gave him back.
Thank you.
I can die now.
Light has come.
I held the hands of the man and the woman.
Take care.
My tears and my kiss were of joy and love.
Take care.
Such love
Such love will know tears of pain, his own and that of others
Such love will be kissed by treachery
Take care.
I walked away,
the waiting over
the Messiah met,
ready to die in peace.
The rich tapestry of scripture -The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 27 January 2018 – 4th Sunday of Epiphany
1 Corinthians 12.12-31a & Luke 4.14-21
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
This is a fascinating passage of scripture. It appears first in Isaiah 61 where it is clearly about the prophet being the one who will be filled with God’s Spirit to ‘bring good news to the poor’. Then, as we heard in the gospel this morning, Jesus, visiting his home synagogue, reads these words from Isaiah and claims that he is the one who now fulfils these words, he is the one who has come to ‘bring good news to the poor …’ And then to top it all, we heard this morning in his first letter to the Christian community in Corinth, Paul says,
‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’ so now, we are the ones who should ‘bring good news to the poor ……..’
The rich tapestry of scripture!
These are well known words. They will resonate with every churchgoer who hears them again today – we know them well. But what do they mean? They sound great, radical, prophetic, but what do they actually mean, and, in particular, what do they mean for us?
What is ‘good news for the poor’? Perhaps ‘good news for the poor’ is some food. For a young homeless man who joined us for our early morning prayers last week, good news was simply having a chance to sit by a radiator! Thinking globally, good news for the poor might mean a new school or hospital. Perhaps good news for the poor is a permanent job or if you are unable to work, enough money to survive? Are these kinds of things that Isaiah and Jesus had in their minds when they spoke these words?
What does it mean to ‘proclaim release to the captives’? In some versions of the bible this is translated as ‘setting prisoners free’ – is that what Isaiah and Jesus had in mind, criminals being released from prison? Or, perhaps they were thinking about people in slavery, are they talking about slaves being set free?
‘Recovery of sight to the blind’ We think we know what Jesus means when he says these words because we know that, from time to time, he healed blind people, he restored their sight. Is that what Isaiah was talking about? As far as I know there are no records of Isaiah healing blind people. And what of us reading this passage, what do we mean as ‘the body of Christ’ today when we talk of restoring sight to the blind?
What does it mean ‘to let the oppressed go free’? Who were the oppressed in Isaiah’s day? The poor, slaves, people living in exile probably. Who were the oppressed in Jesus’ day? The poor, slaves, Samaritans, lepers, women perhaps? Who are the oppressed in our day, who needs to be set free?
All very interesting. When we think of how this passage relates to us, the ‘body of Christ’ today we nearly always read it as though we are the “do’ers”, we are Isaiah or we are Jesus. In other words we read it and understand that we are the people bringing good news, proclaiming release, restoring sight, liberating the oppressed. This is a perfectly legitimate way to read these words and, to be honest, probably the way we are intended to read them – we are filled with the Spirit through our Baptism and through our sharing regularly in the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. We are called to be the liberators, proclaimers of good news, healers. However, I have been thinking this week as I have been mulling over these words, that it might be helpful, and revealing, from time to time, to read this passage in a different way, to read this passage not as the “do’ers” but as the “receivers”.
There are lots of ways to be poor, Poverty is not just lack of money. Perhaps even we, the privileged and relatively wealthy people of York are poor in some ways? Perhaps we are poor in time, we spend so much of our time being busy, being important, paying the bills, that our relationships suffer? Perhaps we are poor in spirit? Perhaps we spend far too much of our time amassing material things and material security that we are starving the spiritual side of ourselves? Perhaps we need to hear the good news that God can break into our busy, acquisitive, self-centred worlds and renew and reset our priorities. Perhaps we need to re-orientate our lives to love our family and our neighbours a little more and ourselves and our ambition a little less? God, through word and sacraments, can enrich our lives and relationships and feed our spiritual hunger.
You don’t have to be in prison to be imprisoned. People are imprisoned in addictions of one sort or another, others are imprisoned in unhealthy or destructive relationships, others are imprisoned by chronic illness. Our God teaches us that none of these have to be life sentences, by living in community, by loving our neighbours and our enemies, by being vulnerable to his healing touch there is nothing from which we cannot be liberated, healed, set free by God.
Jesus makes it clear on more than one occasion that he does not heal the blind simply to improve the lives of one or two people, he heals the blind as a sign that he has come to help everyone see in new ways, or see as they were created to see. How much of the world do we close our eyes to? We close our eyes to suffering but I think we also close our eyes to beauty and to love and to goodness as well. Narrow-mindedness and bigotry are also a form of blindness. I think we need Christ’s healing touch to enable us and encourage us to see the world and other people as they truly are, to see God’s creative presence everywhere and in everyone.
What oppresses you? What stresses you out? Pressure at work? Impending exams? Traffic jams? Moaning children? Nagging parents? When people who were oppressed went to see Jesus he reminded them of the priority of love and he also lavished forgiveness and mercy upon them – Mary Magdalen, Zacchaeus, the rich young man, they were all oppressed in one way or another and they were liberated by the teaching, forgiveness and love of Jesus. We can be liberated too.
We need to hear this gospel again and again. Yes we are called, as the Body of Christ, to fulfil it. But we are also called as fallen human beings to hear it and to be encouraged and inspired by it. We are people who need God to speak his Good News into our poverty. We are people who need God to release us from all that imprisons us. We are people who need God to heal us and help us to see the world and others with greater truth and clarity and we need God to liberate us from all that oppresses us. God gives generously to us, we should give generously to God and to others.
As we hear these words again today let us rejoice in the rich tapestry of scripture. There is not just one way to read and understand passages like this, we can dig deep to find new meaning for today, we can hold such passages and look at them from different points of view and God’s truth, like a magnificent diamond with many facets, shines out from every angle. These words should not only inspire us to action, they should also bring us comfort. The Good News of God’s love is not just something for us to proclaim it is also something for us to receive.
Christian Unity – Just do it! -The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Christian Unity – Just do it!
Sunday 20 January 2019 Evensong Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
1 Samuel 3.1-10 & Ephesians 4.1-6
When we were taught how to preach we were told that we should begin by telling the congregation what you are going to tell them, then you should tell them, then you should tell them what you told them. This is a simple lesson in communication. A beginning, a middle and an end tends to be helpful.
If you think about it almost every book you read will have an Introduction or a Forward which tells you what the book is about or why it has been written and possibly something about the context in which it is set. We are used to this way of doing things. We like things to be clear. We like to know what we are letting ourselves in for.
It’s the same in meetings and in business. We like an agenda, clear aims and objectives, a start time and a finish time. We like to know what our goals are and we also like to do things in such a way that we can measure our success at reaching those goals.
These are good ways of communicating and working. They get things done and ensure that time and talents are used efficiently. BUT it is only one way of working and it seems at odds with the approach of the gospel writers and St John in particular. John says of his gospel ….. these things are written;
‘ … so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.’ Chap 20 v.31
Now if you or I had been writing this gospel we would have put that little sentence at the beginning in the introduction – John puts it at the very end of the penultimate chapter of his book. He tells the story of Jesus and then tells us why! A strange way of doing things if you think about it. So why does he do it this way?
Perhaps the reason why John takes so long to tell us why he has written this story is that he understands what it takes for people to come to belief. John knows that people do not come to belief in Jesus in the same way that they will come to belief in other truths like historical facts or scientific equations. It takes time – it’s only when we have experienced the story of Jesus by listening to it and letting it touch us and inspire us – it’s only when we have tested out the teaching of Jesus and tried to live our lives the way he says we should live them – it’s only then that we truly come to know Jesus and to say that we have come to belief in him.
The disciple Andrew understood this as well. In the gospel story Andrew fetches his brother to meet Jesus and he simply says, ‘come and see’. He doesn’t try and tell him about Jesus, he doesn’t try to tell him what Jesus means to him. He doesn’t hand him a religious tract and he doesn’t invite him to a meeting to hear the Truth of Jesus set out in logical or systematic argument. Authentic proclamation of the gospel is not telling people about Jesus and hoping that they will accept it. Authentic proclamation of the gospel, as John and Andrew knew, is to invite people to come and see, come and experience, come and share, come and share in our community.
This seems to me to be entirely consistent with the approach of Jesus. He never asked anyone what they believed. He never said ‘I’ll cure you of leprosy if you believe in me’ – he just cured them. He didn’t say ‘If you believe in God the way I believe in God and if you do all the right religious things then, follow me’. He just said ‘follow me’. It’s as simple as that. We follow Jesus first, faith and belief follow.
It seems to me that in this week of prayer for Christian Unity it is good to do things the gospel way! Perhaps we spend too long when we think about Christian Unity trying to set out an agenda, working out what we are going to do, we try to set aims and objectives. When we do this we don’t get very far. Perhaps we just need to get on with it – in the words of the Nike advert, perhaps it is better to ‘Just do it!’ I don’t mean that we should ride roughshod over each other’s traditions or each other’s particular beliefs and dogmas – but we should just get on with being as united as we possibly can. If we live together in mutual love and respect then the rest will follow.
It’s not only Jesus’ love that is unconditional it is his invitation to follow, to live his way. We find this difficult. We like conditions. We like deals. We get used to deals – every advert we ever see on the TV or on a billboard is offering us a deal. We’re so imbued with deals we cannot get our heads around a God who does not offer a deal, God just offers love and fellowship and, in Jesus, God offers an invitation. Too much discussion about Church Unity is based on the idea of a deal – if you accept something we hold dear then we’ll think about accepting something you hold dear. If you compromise we will compromise. The only things that Christians need in order to build unity are a desire to follow Jesus and an instinct to love each other. That’s all. We should simply get on with trying to follow Jesus and loving each other without spending endless meetings and synods trying to work out where we may be headed.
This may seem naïve and I suppose it is. But surely the differences there are between the various Christian denominations significant and important though they are, are nowhere near as significant and important as the invitation we have received to follow Jesus and to love each other.
It’s in just getting on with doing things Jesus’ way that we come to belief, it’s in just getting on with loving each other that we come close to God. It’s in just getting on with living in as much Unity as possible that fuller Unity will come. Let’s ‘Just do it!’
I am sure many of us will be watching the next episode of Les Miserables this evening. The stage show concludes with these words attributed to Victor Hugo which articulate a profound truth which cannot be contained or measured and it is not subject to any deal,
To truly love another person is to see the face of God.
It’s by just getting on with living the Jesus way that we draw close to God. It’s just by getting on and living as closely as we can with all our Christian sisters and brothers that true unity will come.
A prayer for unity from the Quaker tradition
Dear God, We give thanks for places of simplicity and peace. Let us find such a place within ourselves. We give thanks for places of refuge and beauty. Let us find such a place within ourselves. We give thanks for places of nature’s truth and freedom, of joy, inspiration, and renewal, places where all creatures may find acceptance and belonging. Let us search for these places in the world, in ourselves, and in others. Let us restore them. Let us strengthen and protect them, and let us create them. May we mend this outer world according to the truth of our inner life and may our souls be shaped and nourished by God’s eternal wisdom. Amen
Epiphany – The Reverend Catriona Cumming
Epiphany 2019
6 January 2019
They say that a preacher has two, maybe three sermons.
And every sermon they ever preach is a variation on those two or three.
At the heart of most of my sermons are these questions:
Who is Jesus?
What is Jesus like?
The whole of this season is essentially a time for the Church to ask these questions?
And added to this… And so what?
Om Christmas Eve I held the figure of Jesus – the bambino, in my arms, and took him to the crib in the Lady Chapel.
And this I know: though ‘his yoke may be easy, and his burthern light,’ to quote Matthew’s Gospel and evoke Handel, our Lord’s likeness is pretty heavy.
Holding a baby in your arms you are very aware of their weight. The solidity of them, and their fragility – both together.
You’re aware of their smell.
That new baby smell which binds them to their family, strong and fragile.
Jesus is small, and weighty, and fragile.
He, like all babies, is full of possibilities for the future, and yet his world is about the present – he is concerned with the business of growing, of becoming.
Jesus is present in the world.
He is engaged in the struggles of living a life which consumes all of who he is.
When I was in theological college we would describe times when we were doing ordinary stuff – reading the paper, doing the laundry, propping up the bar (I will leave you to imagine what I did most frequently), as being “incarnational”.
It was an ironic way of saying ‘I am avoiding doing all the things I should be doing like papers, or revision, by engaging in displacement activity, and it’s FINE, because I’m being “incarnational”.’
The incarnation is the fullness of God dwelling with us: God present in the whole of human existence, enlivening and enriching and transforming that existence so that all is holy – precious in God’s sight.
Jesus, present in the world, transforms each breath, and makes it holy.
Who is Jesus?
What is he like?
Jesus is something else.
It’s interesting to me that the writer of Matthew’s Gospel refers to Jesus at the beginning of this chapter by name.
But in the next eleven verses he is referred to as the child, the Messiah, and described as a ruler.
He is the subject of prophesy:
so it has been written by the prophet:
“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.”
Jesus is light, and hope.
He is the focus of expectation, and the dreams of his people.
The light and hope this child personifies is strong enough to reach out into the darkness – to other nations, drawing wise men from far away.
It is extraordinary to think of the weight of those expectations and dreams, resting on this baby.
This afternoon, at Evensong, we will bring gifts to the bambino in the crib.
With those gifts we bring our own hopes and expectations, which we lay on Jesus, and our own ideas of how that hope will be realised.
But we also bring our doubts, and fears.
Who is Jesus?
What is he like?
It is said that Jesus came to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Underlying the Gospel passage is a sense of fear.
Herod, hearing the wise mens’ message is frightened – and all Jerusalem with him.
Jesus’ presence doesn’t merely inspire fear in the ruler, but in the whole city.
Because Jesus’ presence means something new is happening.
Change.
Something which we still fear.
If this baby was the signal of something new, then what does that mean for the rulers, and the ordinary people, of this city?
Of this world?
If the life and ministry of Jesus, if the incarnation tells us anything, it is that God does not, will not, operate within the confines, the norms of our politics and society.
God in Jesus will not be confined.
Jesus is honoured as a ruler – and yet will be seen as a rebel.
The Incarnation is described as a mystery.
In fact it is bewildering.
It is bewildering that the Creator of the stars of night should dwell with us, should come to us fully divine, and yet unable to hold his head up.
It is bewildering that one who inspires fear in kings and cities, draws wise men from afar, should be found in poverty.
It is bewildering that after 2000 years, we still find ourselves drawn to this child – despite not quite grasping what this means in this world, here and now.
When asked who Jesus is, and what he is like, a number of answers and images may spring to mind.
One is what we see now in the crib in the Lady Chapel: Jesus as a baby, weighty and fragile, arms outstretched, unable to lift his head.
Another is the cross: Jesus with his arms outstretched again, this time in pain and suffering.
One who is fully divine but unable to lift his head, apparently weak and helpless.
In neither case can we fully answer who Jesus is, and what he is like.
For this season though, I will hold in my mind the weight of the bambino.
The solidity and fragility of a child.
I will hold the thought that the baby Jesus, being, growing, was perfectly himself.
I will call to mind the concentration and determination it takes to be alive in this world, and remember that in Jesus God has been and remains present in the every day struggles, challenges, triumphs of each person’s life.
I will balance the hopes and fears I have for the year to come, with the hope that God is present, and is doing something new on a cosmic, and also at a personal, cellular level.
There was another question I asked right at the beginning of this sermon.
Who is Jesus?
What is Jesus like?
The whole of this season is essentially a time for the Church to ask these questions?
And added to this… And so what?
What does it mean for us, that our everyday existence has been shared by God?
What does it mean for us that the King of kings and Lord of lords lived as he did?
These questions do not have easy answers.
In a year of uncertainty, as we try to work out our place in the world, perhaps the Church can ponder these questions, and the hope we might bring to this city, this nation, this continent, this world.
The Manifestation of the All-Inclusive Love of God – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 6 January 2019 – Matins
Jeremiah 31:7-14 John 1:29-34
Peter Cornelius’s anthem, The Three Kings, which we’ve just heard, takes me right back to my school days. I can remember the very first time I heard it in a darkened chapel with candles flickering, and being utterly transfixed by its simplicity, imaginative power and capacity to evoke wonder. In particular, as a relatively young boy, I was mesmerised by the sounds of the baritone solo wafting lyrically over the steady and solid harmonic accompaniment provided by the choir. I can still remember the name of the boy who sang the solo when I first heard it. To me, of course, he looked and sounded like a grown man, but I was also struck by the sense of vulnerability, precariousness and fragility of this solo voice. Perhaps without realising it, it spoke to me of my own vulnerability and, by association, that of the Magi making an arduous and perilous journey as they followed the leading of the star to the place where the Christ-Child lay. The combination of all these things said something to me then – and still does to this day – of the journey we’re all called to make through life into union with the one for whom our hearts seek and long.
There could scarcely be a more appropriate anthem than this for today, the Feast of the Epiphany, celebrating as it does the culmination of the long journey made by the Magi to the manger. Given that the Epiphany’s associated almost exclusively with the kings or the wise men, it might have struck you as slightly bizarre that neither of the two biblical readings had anything to do with them. Indeed, the second reading concerning the baptism of Jesus seems to have been appointed in the lectionary with the almost deliberate intention of ignoring them. Similarly, at Evensong today, at the end of which we shall make our way in procession to the crib in the Lady Chapel to present gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the first lesson from the Prophecy of Isaiah has a definite case for being included, since it actually mentions gold and frankincense, but the second, the story of the wedding at Cana, where water was turned into wine, seems to be almost completely irrelevant. In the immortal words of the comedian Peter Kay: ‘What’s that all about?’
Well there’s actually a profound connection between the wise men, the baptism of Jesus, and the turning of water into wine at Cana. From the earliest days of the Church, these three things have all been associated with one another precisely because they’re all epiphanies of a kind: manifestations, revelations of who Christ is. The story of changing water into wine in the Gospel of John actually ends with the words: ‘Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.’ We might not hear specifically about the kings or the wise men at Matins or Evensong, but at the celebrations of the Eucharist this morning, the story of the journey of the wise men to the Christ-Child was indeed included as the gospel reading. So at all three services on this day, these three events are held together in close liturgical relationship. They show us different facets of the Epiphany. Each points distinctively to something of what’s being manifested or revealed.
The baptism of Jesus reveals the nature of God as ecstatic love: Jesus awakens to his identity as the beloved Son of the Father, each of whom overflows in love for the other in union with the Spirit. The story of the water being turned into wine at the wedding in Cana speaks of the sheer zest for life, of the very fullness of life that pours forth from God in Christ, a fullness which isn’t just enough but more than enough: abundant, overflowing, unstoppable and uncontrollable. The story of the Magi speaks of inclusion, for they weren’t Jews but gentiles. The heart of this Epiphany is that it shows that God is for all, not just for an exclusive group by virtue of their birth, race, religion or status, but for all, so that all might know themselves to be included in the abundant love of God and enabled to live life in all its fullness. So while all three events celebrated today are indeed epiphanies, it’s on what we call the Epiphany, that is the manifestation of Christ to the Magi, the Kings or the wise Men, representing all gentiles, that I want to focus briefly as I draw to a close. And, in particular, I want to refer once again to the music we heard a few moments ago.
There’s something very evocative about that solo voice, which has to do, I think, with a sense of loneliness or, better perhaps, solitariness. Relationship is absolutely crucial to being human – and indeed to being God, too – but simply being with other people isn’t a guarantee against loneliness. It’s been remarked, hasn’t it, that it’s possible never to feel more lonely than in the middle of a crowd. Similarly, it’s possible be in solitude and yet feel completely in communion with everyone and everything, to sense that everything’s included. This solo voice speaks of something unique and deeply personal, and because it’s unique and so personal it’s also universal: the reaching out, the longing for union and fulfilment. It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that the last notes sung by the soloist to the words, ‘Offer thy heart’, form the musical interval of a major sixth, the interval which, in the hands of the composer Richard Wagner, for example, especially the minor sixth in his opera Tristan und Isolde, conveys that universal sense of yearning and longing for love. The human search is ultimately for love, and the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles shows us that our yearning is met by God’s yearning for us in Christ. In him divine and human love meet, combine and are at one. To offer our hearts to God means having the confidence to be exactly who we are with God, and trusting, knowing that we’re loved as we are, that we’re included along with everything and everyone else in the abundant, overflowing, limitless love of God. This great Feast of the Epiphany invites and encourages us to travel with the whole of humanity into the very fullness of God, so that not one person, not one single thing is excluded now or ever.