Dignified by Divine Love rather than Social Status or Merit – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)

Sunday 6 October 2019 – Matins

Isaiah 59:9-20   Luke 14:1-14

Let’s start by having a little harmless fun at Donald Trump’s expense. Almost five months ago, the President of the USA and his wife made a State Visit to the United Kingdom. Although there were any number of protests about this, they were given the works, and on the evening of Monday 3^rd June, having had a meeting with the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, in Downing Street earlier that day, the Trumps were the guests of honour at a State Banquet hosted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace. There was, of course, an order of procession and a seating plan. The President was briefed beforehand about where to sit and was told it would be perfectly obvious where his seat was. As the procession made its way to the table, Donald Trump placed himself in prime position with the Queen at his side. The Queen looked at him and said, ‘Move down one, Mr President; that’s my seat!’ Mr Trump replied, ‘Oh, sorry Ma’am. I saw number one written on the place card and assumed it meant me!’

Well, if you’re not entirely sure which bits of that account are historically accurate, welcome to the world of fake news! I’ll leave you to work out which bits were made up. The simple point is, though, that such a social faux pas on the part of the President, while not being entirely improbable, would have caused offence, I suspect, throughout this country, and embarrassment back in the USA. Generally speaking, the host of a dinner or a banquet is expected to sit at the head of the table, and the place of honour would be to their right. For the guest to usurp the position of the host would be seen as presumptuous and discourteous in the extreme. After all, we’re all expected to know our place.

Much social convention and etiquette operates on the basis of things being in their right places. Even in Church circles there are orders of precedence in processions and so on. Whenever the Archbishop’s here, for example, he doesn’t need to ask, ‘Where do I stand?’ or ‘Where do I go?’ He knows he’s always at the back of the procession, taking the place deemed to be that of the greatest honour and dignity. Even a procession into a service like this observes correct etiquette: the choir first and then the clergy, taking their places according to what’s referred to as the dignity of their position and then in the order of seniority determined by the date of their installation. You can imagine at the big services, such as the consecrations of bishops, anyone who wanted to subvert such things would cause havoc. That’s why we have people like Precentors and Succentors to make sure we do what we’re told!

Now Jesus, I suspect, would play by the rules up to a point – he wouldn’t want to stand on ceremony for himself – but for everyone else he’d be totally subversive. Whatever your status, he’d say, take the place of lowest honour. If you do otherwise, you’ll find that those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Greco-Roman society – the context for what lies behind these incidents we heard in the second lesson from the Gospel of Luke – was highly stratified, in which it was very important that everyone knew just what and where their place was. Social status was really important. It’s only even in relatively recent memory that such stratification has been eroded in our own society, and politicians of all colours are inclined to speak of a classless society, in which everyone’s valued on the basis not of position but merit. Jesus calls into question any concern for social status. In fact, he confronts us all ultimately with the question: where and in what do real value and esteem lie?

To press this point, he advises those having a lunch or a dinner party not even to invite their friends – those with whom they’d ordinarily associate on the basis of status – but the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Outrageous! They don’t have any status but neither do they have any merit. They’re outcasts, not part of polite, ordered society. Invite them, Jesus says, and if you baulk at the idea, ask yourself where real worth lies. For Jesus, true value isn’t determined by social status, not even by merit. The value of every human being lies in the fact that they come from God, they’re grounded in God, and they’re created in the image and likeness of God. Their value to God lies in the simple fact that they are. In the end, it doesn’t matter what our social status or our achievements are. Our dignity lies in the fact that we’re loved and valued by God for who we are. The challenge is to relate to everyone, and to build a society – what’s called the Kingdom of God – in which this is universally, unequivocally and unreservedly the case.

The God of Love, not Violence – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)

Sunday 20^th October 2019 – Choral Evensong

Nehemiah 8:9-end   John 16:1-11

18^th August, 1572. Paris. A royal wedding’s about to take place. The political atmosphere in the city, though, is febrile. Margaret, sister of the young French King, Charles IX, a Catholic, is to be married to Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. The country’s deeply divided and on the verge of civil war. The Huguenots have been in the ascendant for a while, and many have infiltrated the royal court, most prominent among whom is Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, who has the King’s ear. Many see the Huguenots as a threat to national unity and on 18^th August 1572 a large number of Protestant aristocrats have gathered for the wedding, which the King hopes will broker peace.

Four days later, on 22^nd August, an attempt is made on the Admiral’s life, sanctioned, many think, by the Cardinal of Lorraine. The King visits Coligny on his sick bed but angry Huguenots storm in on the Queen Mother having dinner, demanding justice. Coligny’s brother’s camped outside Paris with a 4000-strong army of Protestants. On the evening of 23^rd August, the King and his mother discuss what’s to be done and between them the decision’s made that the Protestant leaders must be eliminated.

What follows on 24^th August, the Feast of St Bartholomew, has been described as the bloodiest of all massacres during the Reformation era. Estimates of the numbers killed vary, but the likelihood is that somewhere in the region of 3000 Protestants were killed in Paris and some 7000 in the provinces. Many Catholics believed that by disposing of Huguenots in this brutal way, they were fulfilling their duty not only to the King, but also to God. The most dangerous threat to the cohesion of French society, so they argued, was the cancerous and pernicious heresy of Calvinism, and heresy had to be stamped out. In perpetrating bloody violence they were, they claimed, carrying out the will of God. On hearing of the massacre, Pope Gregory XIII ordered the celebration of a Te Deum of Thanksgiving in Rome, and many French Protestants concluded that Catholicism was a ‘bloody and treacherous religion.’

I mention all this not because I want to demonise Catholics – far from it. The most significant influences in my own life, both personally, spiritually and intellectually, have been Catholic. No. I refer to the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre because it illustrates what is perhaps the most serious mistake, the deepest travesty and betrayal that lies at the heart of the Christian faith and just about every other religion, namely, that violence is associated with God and, more than this, the belief not only that God sanctions violence, but also that God is a violent God.

Absurd, ridiculous, outrageous, you might retort. The God revealed in Christ is a God of love and compassion. Absolutely right. Time and time again, though, that insistence that God is love and compassion has been denied and ignored. It runs right through the Bible itself. How many times have you heard readings from the Bible, in which God’s portrayed as commanding the slaughter of this people or that, and you’ve winced and not known quite what to do with it other than to ignore it? There are deeply uncomfortable passages in the Bible, which we have every reason to question. And the association of God with violence is presented to us in this evening’s second lesson:

‘I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.’

Jesus unequivocally rejects violence here. Killing others in the name of God is a sure sign that those who do such a thing don’t actually know the God of Jesus. What lies behind this passage is almost certainly the bitter disputes between the early Jewish Christians and other Jews, who believed that those following Jesus were themselves heretics from a Jewish point of view. Sometime during the latter part of the first century, Jewish Christians were expelled from the synagogues, and the bitter atmosphere in which this was carried out left a lasting legacy of hurt among the early Christians.

It’s a curious thing, isn’t it, that Jesus completely turned his back on violence and laid it upon his followers to do the same, and yet in all of the gospels we find a rhetoric of invective directed towards opponents of the followers of Jesus. Verbal violence characterises some of the debates in the early Church. More than this, though, the early Church sometimes enlisted a violent Jesus in support of its own cause. Take the Book of Revelation, for example, the subject of much of the Great East Window. In this last book of the Bible, a picture’s presented of the fulfilment of God’s purposes as a marriage between God and humanity celebrated in a wonderful wedding feast. In order to get there, though, there’s a terrible conflict in which Jesus himself is enlisted to unleash violent forces of destruction. In chapter five, Jesus is depicted as the sacrificial lamb who has been killed, but then in the next he’s the one who opens the seals, from which come horses whose riders are permitted to slaughter, to kill and to wreak havoc on earth. Note that it’s Jesus who’s portrayed as initiating this.

Surely something’s gone wrong here, for if Jesus had believed that God was a violent God his manifesto for action would have been aimed at overthrowing the Roman occupiers of his country, presumably by military force. This he rejected out of hand. Instead, he revealed the nature and character of God as one of love, which absorbs and takes violence into itself. ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword,’ he declared shortly before his arrest, and to demonstrate what it looks like to reject violence as a way of living, he willingly accepted the gruesome brutality of crucifixion. On the cross there’s no rhetoric of invective, no call on his followers to rise up and overthrow the Romans, not even an expression of anger and hurt on the part of Jesus, but infinite love and compassion, which understands and somehow embraces and contains the violent tendencies, motives and distortions of the human heart that have put him there.

It is, of course, extraordinarily difficult to live this; some would say impossible. The instinctive response to being hurt is to hit back with a desire to wound. That’s partly what explains the bitterness we find in the gospels among those who were expelled from the synagogues. We’re all aware, too, that the instinctive response to threat and aggression is fight or flight. That’s partly what explains the decision to attack, which led to the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. So, too, in the Book of Revelation, there’s an understandable longing to be vindicated and for evil to be overcome. We all want to be proved right, but we can never be proved right through violence. And in a world in which fallen human beings have mixed motives, violence may need to be contained and peace defended, but violence can never bring about the transformation we all need. Most of all, though, a violent God can’t achieve this with and for us, for violence only begets violence. The only thing that works in the end is what we actually see in Jesus: a non-violent God of love and compassion. It’s this God alone who has the power to transform and to fulfil the gospel of love embodied and enacted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Being Well, Keeping Safe – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)

Sunday 13 October 2019 – Sung Eucharist

2 Timothy 2:8-15          Luke 17:11-19

Harry Williams, who died in January 2006, was a Cambridge theologian-turned-monk. All set for what many predicted to be a so-called glittering career in the Church, he came to very considerable prominence in wider society when, as Dean of Chapel at Trinity College, he suffered a psychological breakdown, born of years of trying to suppress his homosexuality. For eighteen months he gave up on church altogether and it was only with the help of a psychoanalyst that he was able to come to an acceptance of who he was with integrity and without shame or self-condemnation.

What struck those who heard him preach once again in the College chapel after his absence was the sheer honesty, vitality and relevance of his preaching, and as a result there was standing-room only whenever he was in the pulpit. Such was his reputation that invitations came to preach from far and wide.

On one occasion he was asked to preach at Eton College. Realising that getting the boys on his side wasn’t going to be easy, he began by admitting that he’d been racking his brains as to what could be the most boring way to begin his sermon. He then revealed to the assembled company, now hanging on his every word, that he’d cracked it. ‘Today,’ be announced, ‘is Advent Sunday.’

Well, in the spirit of Harry Williams, I can happily say, ‘Today is Safeguarding Sunday!’ I know, of course, that if you’d gleaned that in advance, wild horses wouldn’t have kept you away! I can see you on the edge of your seats already! Joking aside, though, the mere mention of the word safeguarding is likely to evoke a mixed reaction. Some of you will be working in organisations where safeguarding is simply taken for granted: those who work in education or social services, for example. For such people, complying with the contemporary requirements and expectations with regard to safeguarding is simply non-negotiable.

Others, no doubt, will have jaundiced views about safeguarding, thinking that much of it is simply bureaucracy gone mad, and perhaps there’s an element of truth in that, not least because we can see certain things that are lost in the process, things like being able to give a cuddle to a toddler who’s fallen over at nursery and hurt herself and wants mummy, but mummy’s not there so the next best thing’s a teacher. The trouble is, of course, that we all know of people who’ve abused positions of trust and preyed on vulnerable people, like toddlers in need of some comfort. So safeguarding is about protecting the vulnerable from harm. And if truth be told, we’re all vulnerable in some way or other. It’s part of the fragility of the human condition.

And then it could be said that safeguarding’s all relative anyway. Take the present plight of the Kurds in northern Syria. I wouldn’t mind betting that if you were to ask any of them what their top priority is at the moment, what their deepest longing is, it would simply be to be kept safe. How at risk and vulnerable they are to all sorts of things: bombs and bullets; injury and death; psychological harm and emotional trauma; homelessness and disease; insecurity and fear. And what about the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey? They’re currently being used as pawns in a political power game and they can’t possibly feel safe. There’s a deep desire in all of us to feel safe and there’s a fundamental moral obligation pertaining to all of us to be concerned to guard everyone’s safety. We might not call that safeguarding but in effect that’s what it is. So we might well be tempted to think that our preoccupation with safeguarding’s a sign of a society that’s gone mad, but I have my doubts that those who’re currently vulnerable and at risk in Syria and Turkey would see it that way.

Now we might think there’s a heck of a difference between our lives here and the lives of those in Syria and Turkey, which is why it’s probably best to think of safeguarding in our situation not so much in terms of legislation or bureaucracy but of culture. The aim of safeguarding is to create a culture across the whole of society in which everyone can flourish and be free from abuse or harm, especially those who’re particularly vulnerable: the young, the elderly, the mentally ill, the easily influenced, and so on. What constitutes good safeguarding practice is simply a way of fleshing out the aspiration to guard people’s safety and enable them to thrive. Attendance at safeguarding courses is mandatory for clergy, amongst many others, and Jonathan and I attended a day course together in February. Here’s a list of the areas that safeguarding’s concerned to address in children and adults: physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, sexual abuse and exploitation, financial or material abuse, discriminatory abuse, organisational abuse, spiritual abuse, domestic abuse, online abuse and modern slavery. That’s quite some list. I can imagine St Paul writing a hefty letter to present-day churches, if he felt that such concerns were being ignored, and arguing that failing to address them would result in the diminishment of our fundamental dignity as created in the image and likeness of God. Indeed, he might go further and say that such a failure would be tantamount to dishonouring Christ.

Today’s gospel reading might seem a long way from safeguarding concerns, but I wonder. To use the current terminology of our own day, it’s actually about wellbeing, and I want to suggest that safeguarding is intimately bound up with wellbeing. Wellbeing is what we experience when we can be fully who we are as human beings without fear or anxiety. The aim of safeguarding is simply to promote that state of wellbeing and limit and contain anything that threatens it.

So the story of the healing of the ten lepers is about being made well: the lepers recover their wellbeing because their leprosy is cured. It’s not just a story of physical healing, though. As lepers, they would all have been excluded from everyday society – just as in our own time those living with AIDS and HIV were and sometimes still are. In addition to this, though, one of them was also discriminated against on the grounds of his nationality and religion – he was a foreigner, a Samaritan. Of the ten lepers healed, he was the only one to come back and say thank you. The others all seem to have taken it for granted. The Samaritan, though, realised just how significant his healing was. It brought with it not just physical healing but restoration to society, and an end to the suffering born of prejudice, discrimination and, no doubt, abusive attitudes and behaviours. Such things would have taken their toll on his general health, as they would on us and anyone else, which is why in our own time wellbeing and safeguarding are such priorities. No wonder he was thankful. And perhaps the other nine healed lepers present a warning to us not to be complacent about wellbeing and safeguarding.

Harry Williams, with whom I began, came to see that one of the most significant ways in which we discover God is through our authentic and restored humanity. It’s as we become more fully ourselves, more free to be who we truly are, that we grow into the fullness of Christ. There are many within the Church itself who testify to how in all sorts of ways that growth has been hindered, not least because they’ve been damaged by the Church and its representatives. Safeguarding Sunday is a reminder that the responsibility to promote a culture of wellbeing belongs to us all. What’s at stake is the capacity of everyone to grow to maturity, measured by nothing less than the full stature of Christ. That’s what we have to protect, guard and keep safe.

Farewell Sermon for Canon Peter and Heather Moger – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)

Sunday 22 September 2019 – Choral Evensong

Ezra 1   John 7:14-36

How many times, I wonder, has Peter stood in this pulpit and preached about the anthem? Actually, given notice of that question, Peter would be able to answer it accurately, of course; he files and categorises all his sermons! He’s nothing if not organised! Over the years, many of us will have had cause to be grateful for sermons Peter has preached involving music.

This hasn’t always been because of the unpromising material presented by the Biblical readings, although all of us who preach will sometimes have looked at the readings and said: ok, what else can I preach about! Dare I say it, there’s an element of that this evening! You should know that today’s readings haven’t been chosen especially for the occasion: they’re simply the readings set in the lectionary for today, and it’s entirely appropriate that Peter stuck with the lectionary. After all, as some of us know only too well, he’s a stickler for following the lectionary – even when he chooses to ignore the readings and preach about something else!

I am actually going to preach about the anthem myself, but perhaps I might say in passing that there’s actually quite a lot in the readings this evening that resonates with Peter’s ministry, gifts and imminent departure for pastures new. Both have to do with the Jerusalem temple in some way, the temple which was the focus of the worship of Israel until it was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. Peter has devoted the whole of his ministry to the ordering of worship and in this regard he’s absolutely second to none. Indeed, I’d say he’s the go-to Precentor in the Church of England.

Then there’s the list – the inventory – of vessels offered by the people to assist in the rebuilding of the temple. Peter loves the fabric of this place: not only the vessels and vestments but also the glass and stone. He was a member of the advisory committee which oversaw the restoration of the Great East Window, now visible and legible in all its glory, and he knows all too well that the very building of the Minster speaks of God and, in a variety of ways, tells the story of God.

And the obvious resonance with the second lesson lies in the fact that there Jesus himself is speaking about his own departure: ‘I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.’ Jesus is referring to his own death here, a slightly different situation from Peter’s, although Peter would no doubt want to remind us of Paul’s words to the Romans that we’re all baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ. In other words, we’re constantly dying and living, indeed, we’re learning what it is to die in order truly to live.

Now Peter doesn’t regard Stornaway as a kind of death imposed on him; rather he perceives it to be a genuine vocation, but this doesn’t deny the fact that it involves a sense of loss. However exciting the future looks, the move requires of Peter and Heather alike a letting go of all sorts of things and people, which will be difficult and painful for them, as well as for us, too. At the heart of the Christian gospel, though, is the affirmation that life, real life, arises out of death. It’s actually when we cling to life as we know it that life in all its fullness is somehow impeded and we begin to die. So real life involves letting go, sometimes of the things we hold most dear. In letting go of a life with which Peter and Heather are familiar, comfortable and entirely at home, they’re giving us a wonderful picture of what living out the gospel looks like, something that each of us has to discover in our own particular way according to our experience and circumstances. So having not preached on the anthem thus far, let me now begin to turn a little in that direction!

Music’s intrinsic to Peter’s very life and being, as it is to Heather’s. Indeed, it was music that brought them together at Oxford. Just as music has been central to Peter’s ministry, so, too, has music been at the heart of Heather’s professional life. In fact, Music at Heart is the name of Heather’s highly successful and much valued teaching business, exposure to which at a very young age has nurtured the musical lives of some of our choristers.

Peter’s emphasised over and over again that we learn God’s story through its association with music. Think of things like Handel’s Messiah: choruses and arias like For unto us a Child is Born, He was despised, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and many more. The words get into our blood through the music. But it’s not just that music’s a kind of functional add-on to the words. The language of the music is itself a theological discourse. In other words, we can read the theology in the very music.

Explaining this and showing how it works would require far more time than I have available in this sermon, so let me put this in very general terms before coming on specifically to the anthem.

Much Western music is what we call tonal; in other words it’s in a key. If you find the note middle C on a piano and play all the white notes up or down from there, you’d be in the key of C Major. The last hymn we shall sing this evening, Angel voices ever-singing, is written in the key of C Major. What this means is that it begins and ends in that key, even though it also finds if way to G Major at one point, and then passes through D minor, before finally coming back home to C at the end. Being written in a key gives a sense of location, of being grounded, even of identity. It’s possible to wander away from a home key, sometimes quite a lot, but that key gives us a sense of our bearings, so that when we finally come back to it, we feel as if we’ve come home again.

Over the centuries the boundaries of tonality have been pushed further and further. In the early 20^th century, some music was identified as being atonal – without a key – and some music written in our own day could still be described as such. Often a composer will provide something else to give us a sense of home, though: a musical motif or idea, or a particular colour or texture, or something like that, so it’s hard to avoid a sense of home altogether.

Tonal music’s predicated on the notion that just being at home all the time – in pianistic terms, just playing the white notes in C Major and never touching the black notes – can be a little tedious. What makes a musical journey much more interesting is exploring other avenues and seeing where they lead. By the beginning of the 20^th century this exploration, as I’ve already suggested, pushed tonal music way beyond its recognised boundaries.

Underlying all this, though, is a sense of harmony, and the relationship between consonance and dissonance. Unrelieved consonance can be rather boring and unrelieved dissonance can be rather grating on the ears. Tonal music’s always integrated the two in varying degrees, but the point is that harmony isn’t just about everything sounding nice all the time. It’s about weaving consonance and dissonance – the sounds that in isolation seem to clash – into a bigger, broader whole, so that overall the dissonance in some way contributes to the ultimate harmony as much as the consonance, indeed it’s often the dissonance that makes it all rather more interesting.

Howells’ anthem, Like as the Hart, inhabits exactly this kind of sound world. Just as the words themselves speak of a kind of longing for home – for God – so the music conveys a sense of restless instability. Although the home key is E minor, this key’s also subverted with all sorts of rather jazzy blue notes and chords, so that when we finally get to the end, although we finish on an E Major chord, we’re still left with this rather bitter-sweet sense of things not quite having been fully resolved.

And isn’t this what life’s like for all of us? However rooted we may feel, however much we may have a sense of where life’s going, all sorts of things crop up in life which may make us see things in a different way, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. The Christian story, though, is one that encourages us to trust that all the twists and turns of life, the discords and dissonances included, indeed everything that happens, serves ultimately to bring us home. The greatest dissonance of all is the cross and yet even this, especially this, contributes to the ultimate harmony of creation, by revealing the boundless love of God at its heart, which is what the resurrection affirms. So Howells’ Like as the Hart is to be heard and understood not only as a stand-alone piece of music, which of course it can, but also in a much broader context, that of our being created for God, of our wandering away from God, of our yearning for God, and of our coming home to God. In this regard, words and music are perfectly at one.

If music can amplify words, then it’s also the case that words can draw on the language of music to say what they want to say, and nowhere better, perhaps, than in George Herbert’s wonderful poem, Easter, which speaks in the first verse of the joy of resurrection, in the second precisely of the dissonance of the cross, and in the third of the resolution of everything, with the aid of the Spirit, in the life of the Trinity. So let me finish with this.

Rise, heart, thy lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him may’st rise:
That, as his death calcinèd thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and, much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art,
The cross taught all wood to resound his name
Who bore the same.
His stretchèd sinews taught all strings what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort, both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long;
Or, since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied

Oh let thy blessèd Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

So, Peter and Heather, we give great thanks to God for you both, and pray that you may always know that you are held in the loving embrace of God the Holy Trinity, and that in the end you, we and the whole creation might know the harmony of God, in which everything and everyone is at home – even in Stornaway!

Time and Eternity – The Reverend Canon Peter Moger (Precentor)

York Minster, Sung Eucharist, Sunday 22 September 2019, 10.00

In the name of the living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

A Bishop was visiting a parish in his Diocese, and had to stay overnight.  The Vicar’s son was very excited that the Bishop was going to stay, and begged his father to be allowed to take the bishop his early morning cup of tea.  The Vicar was a little anxious, but drilled his son as to exactly what he should do and say.  ‘You should knock on the door, clearly, three times,’ he said, ‘and call out “It’s the boy, my Lord, it’s time to get up”.’  So the boy rehearsed until he was word perfect.  The day dawned, and the boy climbed the stairs from the kitchen, carrying the Bishop’s cup of tea.  He knocked boldly on the door, three times, but his memory failed him, and in desperation he blurted out: ‘It’s the Lord, my boy, your time is up!’

Time is something we can’t escape.  Our lives are measured (if not governed) by it, and we are always, and increasingly, aware of the pressure of time.  Today marks – for Heather and for me – the end of 9 happy years at York Minster, and in a few weeks’ time we set out on an exciting journey – leaving the Church of England for the Scottish Episcopal Church, and mainland England for the Western Isles of Scotland.  In our visits to the Hebrides in recent months, we’ve become acutely aware of a significant local concept: ‘island time’ – an unhurriedness – born of the fact that the extreme weather can mean that the ferry or the flight simply doesn’t run, and that what was planned for today will have to wait until tomorrow.  For a precentor, that’s really tough!  Because precentors like time to be measured and precise: we start services on time and liturgy is planned down to the last detail.

Before the Gospel we sang a hymn which I couldn’t resist choosing for today: Sing, choirs of heaven, a setting of the ancient Easter Exsultet to Richard Shephard’s magisterial tune, Scampston. This is very much a ‘York’ tune: it featured in the 2000 and 2016 Mystery Plays, and in recent years the hymn has been sung here on Easter Day.  The words and music together take us beyond ourselves into the heavenly realms, as we ‘join our cheerful songs with angels round the throne’, glorifying God for Jesus’ resurrection.  The hymn is a window which opens onto eternity.

In a sense, cathedrals are about eternity.  Anyone who’s tried to get a quick decision from Chapter or from the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England, will know all about that!  But seriously, cathedrals move slowly – on an almost geological timescale – because they are (and should be) places which celebrate the eternal: the mystery of God who was, and is, and is to come.  They are places where it’s worth taking time to get things right: our music, our mission, our stone and glass, our safeguarding.

So what can we say about time in relation to our Christian faith?  At the heart of our faith are the two gospel truths: that God, in Jesus, one the one hand shares our life, and on the other changes it.  In taking human flesh, the eternal Word – the second person of the Trinity – is born as a human being and enters the realm of time, with all the limitations that brings.  In doing this, God enters time, inhabits and sanctifies it – marks it out as holy.  We live in the year of Our Lord 2019.

Christian worship reflects this hallowing of time.  We set apart particular days to worship God – each Sunday is special because it recalls the resurrection: a key moment in the sanctification of time.  A little later, we shall hear these words in the Eucharistic Prayer:

From sunrise to sunset this day is holy,

for Christ has risen from the tomb

and scattered the darkness of death

with light that will not fade.

This day the risen Lord walks with your gathered people,

unfolds for us your word,

and makes himself known in the breaking of the bread.

The seasons carve up the Christian Year into chunks, each with its own theme: Advent for waiting, Christmas for the incarnation, Lent for penitence and so on.

Within the days and seasons, we set apart special times of day for worship, and within those services we divide time still further – for reading the scriptures, for praying, for receiving the sacrament.  Music plays a vital part in this, because music itself delineates time – through note values, bar lines, and the sections of a composition.  Music—within worship and elsewhere—helps reinforce God’s hallowing of time.

God, in Jesus, shares our life – and sanctifies the time of our earthly existence.  We give this concrete expression in worship, but more than that—if we’re serious about this—we will see all time as God’s time, as time made holy.  We’re used to the idea that all material things come from God, and so anything we consider to be our own is technically a gift from God.  It’s no different with time.  Time is gifted to us, and to be used wisely.

This comes home forcefully in this morning’s NT Reading. Paul writes to Timothy of the need to pray for our earthly rulers – those who wield authority in the here and now.  (And God knows that is especially urgent than at the present.)  In other words, our faith must be part of the substance of daily life – and not a parallel universe into which we escape.

One of my great Anglican heroes, Thomas Ken, the non-juror Bishop of Bath and Wells and hymnwriter puts it well:

Redeem thy mis-spent time that’s past,
live this day as if ’twere thy last:
improve thy talent with due care;
for the great day thyself prepare.

But let’s hold it there a minute.  I said earlier that the two gospel truths are that God shares our life and changes it.  God hallows time, but also transforms it.  The point of Jesus sharing our humanity, is that we may share his divinity.

The death and resurrection of Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit have eternal consequences.  They mean that, ultimately, our existence is not limited by time, but is eternal.  Our hope of new life in Christ begins now but continues beyond the grave into eternity, where we become citizens of heaven.

Eternity gives our lives a proper sense of perspective.  It’s good to be reminded that this world isn’t all that there is, and that the best is still yet to be.  Cathedrals are a real help here, because they take us out of ourselves, and force us to look beyond and contemplate the eternal.  The builders of this Gothic Minster understood this profoundly: they set out to create in stone and glass a building which pointed beyond itself to the eternal God.  Before every Sunday Eucharist we remind ourselves of this as we sing in the South Quire Aisle:

This is none other than the house of God.

This is the gate of heaven.

The Jonathan Dove mass setting we have this morning does something similar.  Remember the closing bars of the Gloria earlier, and listen later for the Sanctus.  This is music which engages us with eternity, which opens the heart to the glory of God who is above and beyond and the one to whom we belong.  But Dove’s music is at the same time measured – and so the window it opens onto eternity is a window here on earth – sung and heard by real people in real time.  As such it offers us the chance to contemplate eternity from where we are, from within the present moment in time.

The Bible has two words for time: there is chronos, the measured passing of time, and kairos, critical time.  The birth of Jesus was once such kairos moment, as was his death and his resurrection.  Each was a breaking in of the eternal and the divine into the passage of measured time.

For us, although we live within chronos, time in the kairos sense is still important.  God is always a God of the present moment – always liable to break into our lives when we least expect it.  The point at which I decided to respond to the advert for a priest on the Isle of Lewis was one such kairos moment; a God-moment which has been an agent of change – for us as a family and, by extension, for the Minster.

As a community, it’s vital that we expect and recognise those kairos moments, asking the all-important question, ‘What would God have us do now?’  The Minster—with a relatively new Dean, two new Chapter members about to arrive, and a new Archbishop just around the corner—is well-placed to seize the time, aligning its next strategic plan with a shared understanding of God’s mission here.  But to do it properly will take time and effort – and might seem like an eternity!

To conclude, I’ve asked the choir to sing another fine York

piece: Philip Moore’s setting of a prayer by Christina Rossetti – O Lord God of time and eternity.  As it is sung, please make the prayer your own.

O Lord God of time and eternity,

who makes us creatures of time,

that when time is over, we may attain your blessed eternity:

with time, your gift, give us also wisdom to redeem the time,

so our day of grace is not lost, for our Lord Jesus’ sake.

That Nothing May be Lost. – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)

Sunday 15 September 2019 – Sung Eucharist

1 Timothy 1:12-17   Luke 15:1-20

The Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, the Lost Son. These three parables constitute the entirety of chapter 15 of Luke’s gospel. We heard the first two in today’s gospel reading. If you’re wondering whether you’ve ever heard of the Lost Son, then you’ll almost certainly know it well but under a different title: The Prodigal Son, although it’s not really the son who’s prodigal – which is to say spendthrift or extravagant – but the father, and it’s not just one son who’s lost but two. By contrast the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin seem a little less complicated. What all three undoubtedly have in common, though, is a concern for the recovery of the lost, of what’s gone astray or missing or has somehow become separated.

Luke’s gospel has a particular concern for the restoration of the lost. What’s interesting is who Luke puts in the category of the lost: not just those conventionally deemed to be sinners but also the poor, women, strangers, foreigners, social outcasts. If we’re inclined to assume that the lost have only themselves to blame, Luke’s concerns would suggest otherwise. The lost in these instances have become separated at the hands of others as a result of greed, the abuse of power, fear, prejudice and discrimination. And Luke’s absolutely clear that the overcoming of separation and exclusion lies at the heart of who God is and what God’s all about.

It’s not only Luke who’s concerned about the lost, though. Indeed, the whole gospel message is about the restoration to wholeness of all things and all people. After the feeding of the large crowd in John’s gospel – a number that’s calculated in the other gospels as 5000 men, to say nothing of women and children – Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ ‘So that nothing may be lost.’ That phrase could be used as a summary of the whole gospel story. The whole purpose of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is precisely so that nothing and no one may be lost, so that everything and everyone might be brought into the embrace of God’s utterly spendthrift, extravagant, abundant, generous love, which knows no bounds. It knows no bounds because it rejects nothing, not even those who wish to exclude and do away with Jesus altogether. Instead, Jesus meets such attitudes and actions with love, compassion and forgiveness and, in so doing, holds everything and everyone in his embrace.

If the whole gospel story could be summarised in the words, ‘so that nothing may be lost,’ then the reading we heard today from the First Letter to Timothy puts it in a slightly different way, ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’ ‘Salvation’ is the word most commonly used in theological circles to describe the underlying purpose of the gospel, but we find that this concept embraces all sorts of other related notions, things like restoration, healing, wholeness and holiness. Salvation or wholeness is what we’re made for, far more than separation or exclusion, but this involves – not surprisingly, perhaps – every aspect of our lives and experience. It has to do, of course, with relationships, relationships not only with God and other people but also relationships with bits of ourselves, from which, for whatever reason, we’ve become disassociated. This happens to all of us unavoidably and the journey towards wholeness, towards the recovery of anything or anyone that’s lost can be a difficult, challenging and often painful one. I’d like to tell you about Marian Partington, because her story not only illustrates what I’m trying to say, but also the capacity to move and inspire.

Her book, If You Sit Very Still, begins on 27^th December 1973 with the abduction, either by force or deceit, of her sister Lucy. It wasn’t until 4^th March 1994, 21 years later, that the heart-wrenching truth about what had happened to Lucy began to come to light. Frederick West revealed to the police that there were several bodies buried in the basement of 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, where he lived with his wife, Rosemary. Among these bodies was Lucy’s. It transpired that she was one of at least 12 young women who were raped, tortured and murdered by the Wests between 1971 and 1987. Marian’s book details with extraordinary candour the impact of these events on her and her family. For 21 years Lucy was lost. The not knowing was almost impossible to bear. Not only were they distraught about Lucy’s disappearance, not knowing what had become of her, hoping year after year that she’d suddenly turn up, but their own lives had been put on hold. They’d lost the capacity to function, as it were, normally.

The discovery of Lucy’s body, though, wasn’t the end of the matter. Marian then set about the task of trying to piece together the very uncertain fragments of the story, trying to make some kind of sense of them, moulding them into something vaguely coherent and understandable. This was motivated in part by a desire that Lucy herself should not be lost. At the time of her disappearance she’d been a student of English literature at Exeter University, a poet who’d recently become a Roman Catholic. Marian was concerned above all else that her sister’s life hadn’t been for nothing, that even her terrible ordeal might somehow contribute to something unimaginably creative and redemptive. Piecing together these fragments, though, involved trying to make sense of her own life, of what she, her siblings and indeed her parents had lost not only as a result of Lucy’s disappearance, but also of their parents’ separation when they were younger, and of what she herself had lost in all sorts of ways throughout her life.

Unlike her sister, Marian was a Quaker and at some stage she committed herself to the practice of meditation in a disciplined way. This led her to undertake three intensive retreats. On the second, she found herself consumed by what she describes as a ‘murderous rage’ welling up within her, directed not surprisingly at Fred and Rosemary West. Paradoxically, you might think, this was the turning point in her journey, for she realised that in some respects she was no different from Rosemary West. What was it that had led Rosemary West to become embroiled in the awful goings-on in 25 Cromwell Street?

Marian discovered that Rosemary herself had been brutalised as a teenager, having been continuously raped and abused. What had been taken away from her, such that the only way she could deal with it was to deprive Lucy ultimately of her life? In working all this through she discovered an extraordinary bond with Rosemary, and she was clear that this connection was rooted in unresolved pain. ‘Hatred, anger, rage and vengeance all come from that place of unresolved pain,’ she writes. ‘I think the actions of the Wests come from that place. So I have compassion for them because I know that once you are brutalised you lose the sense of who you are, the sense of beauty, the sense that God is within you.’

This realisation of shared pain led Marian to write to Rosemary, now in prison, telling her that she forgave her and requesting a visit. Sadly, Rosemary clearly wasn’t yet in a place to face her own pain and asked the prison authorities to send her letter back with the request that Marian cease from all further contact. Marian, though, now works with sexual offenders in prisons, and acts as a storyteller and ambassador for the Forgiveness Project, founded by Marina Cantacuzino, who gave an Ebor Lecture here a couple of years ago.

There’s so much more that could be said about this story but there isn’t time. So allow me to let the story stand on its own feet for you to ponder, except to say that as far as I’m concerned it’s a story shot through with the gospel. I see in it the Spirit of God patiently at work recovering and restoring so much that had been lost. For Marian, that recovery came at a considerable cost to herself, but the reward was a wonderfully creative and compassionate commitment in her own life to do everything in her power to reach out to those who, like her, are lost in some way but don’t necessarily know it. To my mind, her story acts as an embodiment in a particular life of what the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Lost Son are all about: the Christ-like action of God ceaselessly at work restoring anything and anyone that’s lost, bringing everything and everyone into wholeness. At a time when things seem to be falling apart on a national, international and global scale, to say nothing of what may be happening in our own personal lives, this story can encourage us to trust that in the end nothing’s ever irretrievably lost.

‘Looking after number one’ – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)

The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)

Sunday 1 September 2019 – Trinity – 11 Evensong

Isaiah 33.13-22 & John 3.22-36

‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ John 3.30

I never fail to be moved by the humility and generosity of John the Baptist. In the second reading today from John’s gospel, John the Baptist emphasises that he is not the Messiah and rejoices that Jesus, the one to whom he is pointing people, has come and that the time is now right for Jesus to increase and for him to decrease. Earlier in the same gospel we heard how John the Baptist and two of his disciples saw Jesus passing by, John said to his friends ‘Look, here is the lamb of God’ and John’s disciples went to follow Jesus, without any complaint from John …… this was another clear sign of humble John decreasing as Jesus began to increase.

The only one who outdoes John the Baptist in the humility and generosity department is Jesus himself! From the borrowed cradle of straw in the stable in Bethlehem, to the borrowed tomb on the hillside just outside Jerusalem, Jesus is unfailingly humble. From gallons of wine miraculously provided at the wedding in Cana, to the washing of Judas’ feet just before he goes to commit his act of betrayal, Jesus is unfailingly generous to everyone he meets. It is almost as if the more humble and generous he is, the more he grows in significance and influence, the more he increases.

All of this sounds sensible and normal when spoken about from a pulpit in a church on a Sunday – but imagine praising these characteristics at work or at school? Imagine recommending someone for promotion citing humility as their great gift?

The truth is that most human beings are self-promotors, self-increasers, by instinct. We see this in the disciples. Mark tells us that James and John ask Jesus if they will be able to have the best seats in the kingdom! Matthew is also aware of this incident, but interestingly, presumably aware of how bad it made James and John look, he relates that it is their mother who asks Jesus if her sons can have the best seats in the kingdom. Jesus’ response is to give some very clear teaching about humility,

‘whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. Mark 10.43&45

Despite his very clear teaching and the example Jesus gives us in his own life we continue to find humility a challenge. From a very young age these days we are encouraged to be self-promoters or self-increasers. From the ‘Personal Statement’ youngsters have to write when applying to University, to composing a CV and vying for jobs in our company or organisation, we all engage in self-promotion. Of course, there are also celebrities, many of whom are hero-worshipped by millions, who thrive on self-promotion and there are also some celebrities who are only celebrities because they are good at self-promotion! All of this makes some people think that ‘looking after number one’ is the way the world works, the way things are and the way things have to be – but that is not the case. Jesus teaches us that there is another way, a better way and that better way can also be based on the adage, ‘look after number one’, but we have to stop thinking of ourselves as ‘number one’ and start thinking of God as ‘number one’!

What does living by the adage, ‘you have to look after number one’ when ‘number one’ is God, look like?

• When in the midst of conflict of any kind, an argument with a friend, a serious disagreement at work, a clash with those ‘idiot brexiteers’, or those ‘idiot remainers’, (depending on your point of view!) we should not be striving to win the argument, we should not be striving to look good or clever or superior to our adversaries, we should be listening more than talking and we should be seeking creative solutions. God is the creator.
• When someone insults or belittles us, we should never insult or belittle them back, but we should think about how best we can understand and love them. The loving thing to do might be to have a really tough conversation with them. God is love.
• We should look after our own well-being, not because of our importance but because being well ourselves enables us to be better and more effective disciples of Jesus, after all, it is Jesus who teaches us to love our neighbours as ourselves. (Mark 12.31)
• We should ensure that loyalty to God comes before loyalty to anything or anyone else, including our political party, ethnic group, religion or denomination and as Jesus so disturbingly teaches, loyalty to God should come before family! This does not mean that we should be deliberately disloyal to any of these other groups, least of all our families, but that our loyalty to God should be being worked out through our politics, our religion, and the way we relate to others, including, of course, our family.

‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ John 3.30

So today, as we reflect on this saying of Jesus let us pray that we may manifest similar humility and generosity in our lives as we see in the lives of John the Baptist and, above all Jesus. Let us ensure that in all things, we look after number one, remembering that in our lives, God is number one!

Let us pray

Lord Jesus, whose majesty was obscured by humility, whose power was obscured by vulnerability, whose eminence was obscured by the washing of feet, help us not to think too highly of ourselves and help us to see you as someone who is honoured in churches and beautiful worship but also in us living lives like yours, marked by humility, faithfulness, vulnerability and service. Amen

Blessing – The Reverend Deacon Abigail Davison (Curate)

The Reverend Deacon Abigail Davison (Curate)

Thursday 15 August 2019, 17:15. The Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Solemn Eucharist.

Luke 1.46-55

This looks like no kind of blessing that I’d want.  Unmarried and pregnant in a culture where some would argue that was a stonable offence.   What on Earth was Mary thinking, imagining there would be anyone at all calling her blessed?

Did she just not know what she had agreed to?  Was she too young, too naive to understand the implications?  What on Earth was she thinking?

Well, this is no kind of Earthly blessing.

And two thousand years later, and three thousand miles away, we are indeed still calling her blessed!  Are we being naive, sentimental maybe?  Do we have too twee an image of motherhood, have we forgotten its dangers and struggles, especially for this girl?

Clearly, we need to rethink why Mary took this as a blessing.  Maybe we need to rethink what we mean by blessing.

I wonder what we think a blessing from God actually looks like.  Is it abundant wealth, health, security, respect?  It’s far, far too easy, from where we’re sitting right now, in a land where (if we’re being honest) people are poor because we let them be; in this amazing, safe, building; in these golden robes even, to think that this is exactly what blessing is.  And if you don’t have these things, then clearly you are not blessed, not in favour with God.

Yet, Mary didn’t have these things – she grew up in Roman occupied first century Palestine.

Not even her child, Jesus who is the Christ, had these things!

If you wanted to go through a list of the Saints and Martyrs who have gone before us, or even to go around the Saints gathered here or gathering around the world to worship today, I wonder how many we would find who could say that they are abundantly wealthy, comfortable, respected, safe and in good health?

Were they not blessed: are we not blessed?

I wonder this – what if we stopped thinking of blessing in such worldly terms?

What if being blessed is about being equipped to fully take up our part in God’s mission for the world?  To become everything God wants us to be.

That starts with being redeemed: that starts with Christ.

I wonder if Mary’s feeling of blessedness is less about her having a baby (by the world’s standards, you wouldn’t be far off calling that a curse!).  What if it’s because she is the first to know our redemption is at hand – it has been promised, many faithful people have waited for it, but Mary knows it is here.  She has said yes to her part in it.

Mary did not choose an easy path, blessed by the world’s standards, she chose to be blessed by God.  And holding true to all God’s blessings, that blessing is one she shared with the world.

It is a blessing that is offered to you now, not least in the Eucharist [which we are about to celebrate].  If you haven’t already, will you come and be blessed, not as the world blesses, but as God blesses.

Let this Mind be in you. – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)

Sunday 11 August 2019 – Matins

Song of Songs 8:5-7       2 Peter 3:8-13

Anthem

O when I am alone, when I come to die, when I want to sing, give me Jesus. You may have all the rest, give me Jesus.

Words: Traditional spiritual Music: Larry Fleming (1936-2003)

Last week, pictures went viral of an African American, Donald Neely, walking between two police officers on horseback, Neely himself having been handcuffed and tied with a rope. He’d been arrested for trespassing and would normally have been taken to the police station in a car but, apparently, no cars were available, so the two Texan police officers improvised. Their action has served to pour petrol on the already raging flames surrounding the issues of racism in the USA. Not surprisingly, it’s brought to the surface memories of how slaves were treated in previous centuries, many of them having been treated in an almost identical manner.

The picture brought to mind another story, that of another African American, James Byrd Jr. On 7^th June 1998 he’d been hitchhiking and was picked up by Bill King and two accomplices, Lawrence Brewer and Shawn Kelly. Using a rope, they attached James Byrd Jr. to the tow-bar of King’s pickup truck and then drove the truck at speed for three miles, dragging Byrd along the road behind them. They then dumped Byrd’s body outside an African American Church in Jasper, Texas. King’s accomplices, Brewer and Kelly were sentenced to death and life imprisonment respectively. King, like his accomplices, an avowedly White Supremacist, was also sentenced to death shortly after the crime, but the sentence wasn’t carried out until a little over three months ago, when King was executed by lethal injection on 24^th April.

We live in deeply troubled and troubling times. Here in the UK we’re torn apart by Brexit. Populism’s on the rise the world over, not least in the USA, where the current president is perhaps the prime example of a world leader driven by a populist agenda. Among the features of populism are that it seeks to dispense with nuance in public discourse, it demonises the other, and it fuels discontent among those who believe they’ve been hard done by or ignored by the establishment. The president’s recent remarks, telling four members of Congress that they can go back to their own countries if they don’t like what they find in America, have resulted in something of a backlash, not least because three of the president’s targets were actually born in the USA. The suggestion’s been made that, as a result, actions like those of the two police officers in the photo are now being legitimised, lending credence and acceptability to the views and actions of white supremacists in particular.

Populism feeds on bitterness and resentment and one of the effects of the president’s remarks is that it’s awakened dormant grievances about African Americans going back for years. I’m constantly perplexed that more than 50 years after the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, and the assassination of people like Martin Luther King Jr., racism is still rife in that country. Were racism a thing of the past everywhere, today’s anthem would be something of a rather saccharine throwback to a bygone age. In today’s climate, though, there’s a searingly painful urgency to the cry uttered in its words and music: ‘O when I am alone, when I come to die, when I want to sing, give me Jesus. You may have all the rest, give me Jesus.’

We’ve been treated all this week to the most wonderful and wide-ranging selection of music performed by the Matthäuskantorei from Lucerne in Switzerland. Today’s anthem broadens this diverse repertoire even further. I confess to never having come across the words of this traditional spiritual, nor ever having heard of the composer, Larry Fleming. He’s best known, I’ve since discovered, for being the founder and director of the National Lutheran Choir in the USA, but he’s also highly regarded as a composer of choral music.

I wonder how you heard this anthem. Was it just a rather clever arrangement of a nice tune with some sentimental words? I suspect that may be how many of us will have heard it. In today’s climate, though, it seems to me to evoke something much more profound. ‘Give me Jesus’ could probably be found on the lips of many Christians throughout the world, who often give the impression, particularly in the West, that an individual relationship with Jesus is just about the sum total of what the Christian faith’s all about. When we hear the words of this traditional spiritual sung in our time, though, we’re connected with our brothers and sisters across the ages who’ve been degraded, abused, enslaved and deprived of their God-given dignity. Imagine singing this spiritual as an African American slave on a cotton plantation or being transported from Africa across the sea to America in a tightly-packed galley ship and it begins to take on a different hue. It becomes an articulation not just for an individual relationship with Jesus but rather a cry from the depths of the heart for a radical transformation of society and its structures. Such a transformation begins in the human heart, of course, but it’s not just an individual matter: it’s about right relationships with one another and with God. It’s about the coming of God’s kingdom of justice, mercy and compassion, in which such things as slavery, racism and abuse have no place.

African American slaves looked to Jesus above all, not least because there was a sense of mutual identification. Just as Donald Neely and James Byrd Jr. were tied with rope, so in some paintings and in films depicting Jesus being led to the cross, he’s also portrayed with a rope tied around his hands being pulled along by soldiers, a solitary figure, almost completely isolated from everyone else spiritually, emotionally and psychologically. The plea, ‘Give me Jesus,’ is thus a reaching out to a God who’s known and seen to be in solidarity with the downtrodden, to one who’s wholly identified with the plight of African American slaves. When they were being brutalised, they saw in him one who was similarly brutalised and yet who met such brutality not with like but with compassion and love. Surely that’s the Jesus they were crying out for.

In our hearts, that’s the Jesus we all want, the one who meets everything and everyone – including the abuser and the enslaver as well – with love and compassion, with the love which, as we heard from the Song of Songs, is ‘strong as death’, for the love which can’t be drowned by floods, and which is worth more than anything else, even the wealth of one’s house. This is the love for which we’re all made and yet from which we fall short. It’s for that reason that this prayer of the African American slaves can also truly be ours: ‘O when I am alone, when I come to die, when I want to sing, give me Jesus. You may have all the rest, give me Jesus.’

‘Church should be changing us?’ – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)

The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Church should be changing us.
Sunday 11 August 2019 10am – Trinity 8
Hebrews 11.1-3,8-16 & Luke12v32-40

When you go and see your GP you prepare by thinking carefully about what you are going to tell him or her, because you know time is limited. When you are there you listen carefully to what he or she advises, usually you do as you are told and more often than not you get better.

When you go to the gym, if you do, you prepare by warming up your muscles, you follow the guidance of an instructor, do the exercises in the right way and generally get a bit fitter and a bit thinner.

When attending school or university you prepare by doing your homework, you listen carefully to the teachers or lecturers and hopefully your mind becomes more effective and you learn more things.

When you go to church you prepare by …… you share in the service and you listen and hopefully you are ……. changed?

I wonder if we give ‘going to church’ enough preparation and I wonder if we expect ‘going to church’ to change us in any way?

I sometimes think that we forget that all that we do here, all this ritual and music, all this reading the bible and sharing sacraments, all these prayers that we say, should actually affect us, all this should all be changing us, it should all be making us better disciples of Jesus and better people. I know this seems like an obvious thing to say but I firmly believe that it needs saying. One of the saddest things a parish priest has to do is to take the funeral of a faithful parishioner who was in church every Sunday and yet was deeply unhappy and unpopular because, despite being in church every week, they were selfish, unkind, gossipy and vindictive. It is possible to come to church every week and not take any of it in and not be changed in any way. In fact some people (ordained as well as lay people) use the church as the place they go to exercise their selfishness and their need for power and status.

Usually, before a wedding or a baptism I invite the congregation to be expectant that something might happen to them – I tell them that they aren’t in a ‘venue’ but in a church where, for hundreds of years, the people of York have been gathering to say their prayers in joy and in sorrow – this is a place where people encounter something unusual, something bigger than themselves. In other words, don’t just sit there like lemons looking bored, waiting for a drink or a cigarette and the party afterwards – engage with what is happening and see how it affects you. (I don’t put it quite like that, you will be pleased to hear).

Sometimes I wonder if we should give a similar notice at the beginning of our regular services. We all need to be more expectant of being changed by coming to church.

This week we have celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration, the occasion when Jesus glowed with glory on the mountainside. The goodness of God, the glory of God shone out of Jesus’ body. The Old Testament readings for the Feast of the Transfiguration speak of Moses whose face shone when he had been speaking with God. His shining face was so disconcerting for his family and friends that he took to wearing a veil all the time, only taking it off when he went up the mountain to speak with God. The point of these stories is that the glory of God is tangible. It can be seen, and should be seen, in the bodies of those who encounter God and live in step or in tune with God.

Do you think that when we leave the Minster after sharing in this Eucharist the people of York will see God’s glory shining from us? Will they stop and stare and have to shield their eyes because glory is shining from us? When I stand at the back to say goodbye as people leave, should I be handing out little veils so the poor people of York aren’t blinded by the glory shining from our faces?

Probably I am being a little bit optimistic, but the point is that everything we do here is supposed to affect us, it is supposed to make a difference, it is supposed to make us better disciples of Jesus, it is supposed to make us better people.

I have been thinking about this a lot this week and the main things that stop us being changed by what we do here are familiarity and self-righteousness! We get so used to doing what we do here we can forget it is supposed to be changing us. Also, we have a tendency to think that everyone else needs what happens here more than we do. You sit there thinking people like me need to listen more to what we say and preach in church, clergy can be experts in hypocrisy and self-righteousness! On the other hand clergy can look down from our lofty vantage point and imagine that you lot need all of this more than we do!

The truth is that we all need to be expectant and attentive during worship and we all need to be affected and challenged by what we do here. The great thing about services like this in our tradition is that they are made up of many elements, and different elements will speak to us in different ways week by week. For example this week there will be some of us here who really need to say the words of confession and hear the words of absolution, maybe we have lost our temper with someone or been unkind or been forgetful. There will be others here who need to bring all their thanksgivings for their blessings this week and they need their thanksgivings to be carried to God in the beautiful singing of the Gloria and the hymns. There will be others who may be grieving or worried who particularly need to feel God draw close to them in communion today and there will be some itching to be commissioned to go in peace to love and serve the Lord, to share the good news of God’s love in many different ways this coming week. The point is that we have to make ourselves vulnerable to being forgiven, challenged, loved and changed in services like this.

This is the prayer that will be said after we have received communion this morning. I thought it was a fairly modern prayer written for the modern rite we now use. It transpires that it is based on ancient words written in the fourth century by someone called St Ephraem the Syrian. This prayer makes it absolutely clear that we should be changed by all that we do in worship.

Strengthen for service, Lord, the hands that have taken holy things; may the ears which have heard your word be deaf to clamour and dispute; may the tongues which have sung your praise be free from deceit; may the eyes which have seen the tokens of your love shine with the light of hope; and may the bodies which have been fed with your body be refreshed with the fullness of your life; glory to you for ever. Amen

So, over 1600 years ago St Ephraem the Syrian also thought that too many people were taking church for granted and not allowing themselves to be changed by sharing in worship. Thank God that he wrote such evocative and powerful words that have been repeated in many forms over the centuries, to constantly remind us that we should be being changed and made better people by what we do here. We may be a little way off needing veils to stop divine glory blinding our friends and neighbours but we should at least look and behave differently because we have encountered the living God of love in word and sacrament.

‘What is on your Bucket List?’ – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)

The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 4 August 2019 – Evensong Trinity 7
Genesis 50.4-end & 1 Corinthians 14.1-19

I can remember my Granny saying to me, ‘Michael, I have a lot of time for Jesus, but he didn’t know what it is like to grow old!’ That’s certainly true and I think how we grow old is a very important issue that most of us tend not to address until it is too late. People pay millions of pounds for creams and unguents marketed as smoothing away wrinkles, the signs of ageing, and others pay even more millions to plastic surgeons to smooth and tuck and reshape bodies that are sagging or bulging to make them look as though they aren’t ageing. All of this suggests to me that we aren’t very good at growing old.

Some people do acknowledge that they are mortal and time is limited and their response is to make themselves a Bucket List – a list of all the things they want to do before they ‘kick the bucket’ or, to put it more clearly, all the things they want to do before they die. This is a really good thing to do, the only thing is that the kind of thing that gets written on lots of people’s Bucket List are things like, Sky-diving, swimming with dolphins and visiting the Taj Mahal!

I am a little sceptical about this kind of Bucket List. I hope I am not being a pious killjoy but the lists I have seen all seem to be about consumerism – unusual experiences and exotic venues are there to be consumed and then ticked off the list. Is this how we should be preparing for old age – binging on thrills and treats before we fall off the perch?

The important thing about all of this is what is on your Bucket List?

The first reading today is about the closing part of Joseph’s remarkable life. Having been his father’s favourite son and therefore the most unpopular brother, he had been sold into slavery as a young man by his jealous siblings. Assuming him to be dead they carried on with their lives. It transpired that Joseph not only survived but thrived in Egypt reaching a lofty position in the household of Pharaoh. When a famine started his brothers travelled to Egypt to buy food and were dealt with by Joseph (who they did not recognise). In the end Joseph’s identity is revealed and his brothers and father were welcomed into his household.

In today’s reading we saw Joseph dealing with his quite impressive Bucket List – he is in the process of fulfilling his late father’s wishes before he died. After a time of mourning Joseph took his father Jacob’s body to Canaan where he buried him in a cave which Abraham had bought as a burial site.

After he had buried his father Joseph then formally forgives his brothers the great wrong they had done him – with huge grace and generosity Joseph acknowledges that his brothers had wished him harm but that God had intended it for good and he promises to provide for and protect his brothers and their families.

At the end of our reading Joseph then asks his brothers to take care of his burial. There are no specific instructions recorded but the expectation would be that he would be buried with his father in Canaan.

With Joseph’s actions in mind I wonder if too many of us spend too much time on what might be called the ‘swimming-with-dolphins’ or the ‘binging-on-thrills’ Bucket List and not enough time on the ‘healing-relationships-and-preparing-for-our-departure’ Bucket List that we see Joseph addressing.

The truth is that whether we are young or old we should ‘Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts’ as Paul says at the beginning of our second reading – we can do this however old we are and I think that there is an argument that we should concentrate more on pursuing love and striving for spiritual gifts the older we get. For example, many of us take great care in leaving our affairs in order with a Will in place and maybe even some guidance about our funeral wishes, but how many of us plan to do what Joseph did and ensure that those we leave behind know that their relationship with us is in good order, wrongs forgiven, misunderstandings sorted, knowing that they are valued, appreciated and loved? These aims should be at the top of any Bucket List.

In addition, when failing bodies and minds mean that we have to be inactive and immobile how useful is it going to be that we can sky-dive or swim with dolphins? Maybe learning to pray and meditate, learning to use stillness and silence creatively, will be a little more helpful when old age comes calling, as it surely will.

St John writes (John 10.10) often about having life in all its fullness or life in abundance. It is a big mistake to think that is all about wealth or possessions or thrilling experiences – the fullness of life, abundant life is all about grace, truth and above all, love – there is nothing inherently wrong with wealth, possessions and thrilling experiences but they are all transitory and ephemeral – the only thing that lasts is love, as Paul says, ‘love never ends’ (I Corinthians 13.8) and nothing can ‘separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8.39).

Of course we are all free to have whatever we want on our Bucket Lists but I think that at the very top of every list should be,

1. Pursue love
2. Strive for spiritual gifts

Let us bow our heads to pray

This prayer was written by Eric Milner-White, Dean of York 1941 -1963

O Lord God, who leavest us not nor forsakest in the time of age: shew me, as my strength faileth, an even fuller lovlier light of thy glory shining over and about me.

There in that glory, let me find mine. Grant me new store of gentleness, gratitude, patience; new learning of the Passion of my Lord; new dignity of Grace. Make my life wholly his life: his heart my heart; his breath my breath, breathing love to the very end.

My time is in thy hand. Be thou my support in weakness, my courage in the dark and in pain, mine aid, day and night, my company on loneliness, my rest.

For all that thou takest from me, thou givest what is better, and guidest to the best.

Be thy love my bed and covering, be thy Christ my living Bread; thy Spirit, my strength to the end. Bring me forth, forgiven, loved and loving, child and servant for ever, into thy joy. Amen

Let this Mind be in you. – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)

Sunday 28 July 2019 – Evensong
Anthem: Let this Mind be in you
Words: Philippians 2:5-11       Music: Lee Hoiby

Where, if anywhere, do you find God? For some of you that in itself might be a rather perplexing question. Who or what is God anyway, you might ask. It might seem that you constantly struggle with this notion of God and you just can’t get your head around it.

Others of you might readily identify places, events or occasions when you’ve sensed the presence of God. Often people suggest it’s in those times when we’re withdrawn from and relieved of the everyday conflicts, tensions and demands of life that we’re taken out of and beyond ourselves and experience something other. For some, discovering God has been in a place of natural beauty, which takes our breath away, giving us a sense of our smallness on the one hand, or our profound interconnectedness with everything and everyone, on the other: a stunning mountain range, for example, the vastness of the ocean or the intricate delicacy of a flower. Some become aware of God in and through music, which has the capacity to touch and move us at a very deep level beyond words. And then there’s falling in love, of course, when the whole world comes alive in our beloved. No longer is there any sense of separation or division but unity and communion with all.

I could go on but let me return to the question and ask it once again: where, if anywhere, do you find God? And let me venture what might seem a bold answer as to where you might look: God is to be found exactly where you are right now. I don’t mean that just because we’re sitting in a church, and in a very beautiful, awe-inspiring, historic church at that. Thankfully some people do find God in church. No, I mean that God’s to be found wherever you are and whatever’s going on in your life. God is right where you and I and are at every single moment of every day.

We tend to think that God must always be somewhere else. ‘If only I can get my marriage sorted out,’ we might say, ‘then perhaps I’ll find God.’ Conversely, we might think: ‘I never had any cause to question the presence of God until the doctor told me I’d got three months left to live. Since then, God’s disappeared.’ It’s easy to think that God’s with us when all’s going well; when life’s tough it seems all the more difficult and unlikely.

The words set to music in today’s anthem confront and encourage us with the claim that God is wherever we are, whatever the circumstances and whatever may be going on in our lives. Thought, perhaps, to be an early Christian hymn or creed, which Paul incorporates into his letter to the Christians in Philippi, it speaks in metaphorical language of how, in the person of Jesus Christ, God comes down to our level, so to speak, and experiences not just the seemingly good things of life, but also what we consider to be the worst: suffering, humiliation and death. Paul invites us to see that it’s in this person that we find and see God, for it’s in his self-emptying that Jesus shows us God. In him the self-emptying of God and the self-emptying of humanity meet and are perfectly at one, and Paul sees this supremely on the cross: ‘Jesus…being in the form of God…was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’

Hanging on a cross, suffering the most awful of deaths, is the last place we’d look and expect to find God. The gospels of Matthew and Mark recount that it was on the cross that even Jesus himself felt abandoned by God: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ And yet the paradox is that it’s precisely in the most Godforsaken place that God’s most fully present – supremely as love, compassion and forgiveness. From the human point of view, Jesus is empty of all that’s not God, and from a divine perspective, God’s empty of everything that can’t be embodied and lived in a human being.

This is why we can affirm on the basis of the cross that there’s no place or person where God is not. Sometimes, often perhaps, God’s presence is obscured and hard to see or find, but that doesn’t mean that God’s not there. The cross reveals that God’s present where God seems most absent. Despite the fact that human beings seek to banish God, God’s incapable of being banished, because it’s in the nature of God to be the most down-trodden, humiliated and rejected of all. This is what we call love: to become absolutely nothing for the sake of the other, and it’s this nothingness, this emptiness, which is the very presence of God. Which is why Paul speaks of Jesus being exalted. To be the lowest of the low is, from the divine perspective, to be the highest of the high. This is the real nature of things, the real nature of God and the real nature of humanity.

So, let me say once again: God is to be found right where you are now, in whatever’s going on in your life right now. Easy to say, you might retort, but harder to see and harder still to accept. Which is why the search begins when we acknowledge that we might need to see in a different way. Our vision needs to be trained, clarified and sharpened. The message Jesus proclaims as he begins his Galilean ministry is quite simply, ‘Repent’: look in another direction for what you’re truly looking for. For me, this is exactly what happens in and through meditation. Meditation can be understood as an extended exercise in repentance. In meditation we try to see things as they really are and this requires maintaining a constant attitude of attentiveness. Meditation’s about paying attention, looking, contemplating. In the early Church, contemplation was described as theoria, which simply means looking. So contemplative prayer or meditation is primarily about looking and seeing.

What anyone who begins to meditate discovers early on is that what we see first is ourselves and, more often than not, what we see isn’t very pleasant. We see all sorts of things that we realise sooner or later serve to colour, cloud and distort our vision in a self-centred way, so we begin a process of letting go, of being emptied of our distortions, prejudices and resistances. This can feel like a humiliation but little by little we begin to see more clearly. Our awareness expands and becomes capable of taking more in, not just those things it’s easy to include, but also those things to which we have an aversion. Gradually our seeing is able to embrace more and more without feeling the need to exclude or split off. Our field of vision is enlarged infinitely. It’s a slow and often painful process and we fall back into our old habits and ways of seeing on numerous occasions, but this expanded awareness is characterised by compassion and acceptance, which embraces others as well as those parts of ourselves from which we’d rather run away.

This is the mind of Christ of which Paul speaks, the mind which was able to embrace everything and everyone on the cross with love and compassion. As we’re emptied, we begin to see with this mind. We see the presence of God in the most Godforsaken people and places. More than that, though; we begin to see the possibility of embodying this mind, we hear the call to live it and be it. As we begin to see that God’s to be found everywhere and in everyone, including the darkest of places, we also begin to sense that the universal human vocation is to be that presence in all its fullness in our own lives, too. ‘Let this mind be in you,’ Paul says. When that happens, it’s not only Jesus who’s exalted but the whole creation, including you and me, for everything will be seen and found in him, the embodiment of love and compassion.