The Law – gift or curse? – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 3rd June 2018 Evensong
Jeremiah 5.1-19 & Romans 7.7-end
There are some who doubt the truth of the bible and there are others who believe every word of the bible is divinely inspired truth. As I have read and re-read the verses from Romans 7, set for our second reading, I have resolved to show this passage to anyone I speak to who doubt the truth of any of the bible and to those who think every word is true!
What we have in Romans 7 is an insight into the inner workings of Paul’s mind as he struggles to understand where God is in all that he is experiencing. As I have reflected on Romans 7 I have found it impossible to imagine why anyone would fabricate such writings or why anyone would ever think it is adequate to simply say that every word of scripture is true because it was divinely inspired.
Paul was a complicated man. He became a passionate disciple of Jesus after spending his adult life as a Pharisee, steeped in the Jewish law, which directly led him to persecute the early followers of Jesus vigorously and violently because, in accordance with his reading of the Law, he thought they were blasphemers. In the midst of all of this, as we all know, he encountered Jesus in a vision on the road to Damascus, was generously enfolded in the community of the followers of Jesus and became the passionate and articulate disciple of Jesus we all who know. Paul wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else.
In Romans 7 Paul acknowledges that though the Law is good it can lead to sin. The Law is good because it seeks to ensure justice and order. If there was no Law then there would be anarchy and chaos. The Law exists so that people can flourish. But there is a problem, because once you have the Law you will have people who forget that keeping the Law is a means to an end, not and end in itself. The Law is there not to contain, control, test or trick people, it is there to liberate people so that they can flourish as individuals and as communities. Paul could see that some people in authority were using the Law to frighten and manipulate others, in fact he had been one of those people himself. The Law is a gift from God to bring life but it can be misinterpreted and abused to bring death. It feels strange to say it, and this is what Paul is struggling with, but a life giving gift from God can lead to sin and spiritual death.
There is another problem with the Law and it is what I will call ‘The beans up the nose’ problem. Let me explain, we had some friends who also had three sons, like us. Most of us know that small children can be very imaginative in the ways that they can misbehave. Once our friends gave their sons their tea, beans on toast, and inspired by other recent bouts of mischief, issued the instruction, ‘do not put these beans up your nose’! Choral evensong at York Minster is not the place to go into the details of what happened next, suffice it to say, there is something in human nature, not only for mischievous children, but also for adults, that when you are told not to do something, that is the thing you want to do. As Paul says in verses 18 & 19 ‘I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.’ It is no coincidence that when we talk about this tendency in human nature to explore what is against the Law we talk about the attraction of ‘forbidden fruit’. The first sin came about because the first Law God gave was this, ‘of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat’ Genesis 2.17. Would Eve had been attracted to the forbidden fruit if it had not been forbidden …..? There’s a thought to ponder. With the carnage of the beans on toast debacle in mind, at least she only ate it!
I rejoice that we are able to read about Paul’s his turmoil in struggling to see where God is in the Law and all that surrounds it and I rejoice that when our forebears sat down to decide what writings should be included in what we now call The Bible, they included passages like this, passages in which the complexity and contradictions of our relationship with God are so plainly recorded, passages like this, which reveal that simply saying something is true because God said it, is simply not good enough.
I have often said that I believe Spirit filled divine inspiration helped Paul and others to be brutally honest when they wrote the books that now make up the bible, we should pray for the same Spirit filled divine inspiration to be with us as we read the bible so that we can find a way through the complexities and contradictions.
But let’s get back to this passage in particular. Laws are there to set a framework within which everyone can live and thrive. Paul reminds us that living by the Law is a constant battle to do what is good, not just for our own sake but also for the sake of our community. There is a selfish element within all human beings that seeks the fulfilment of personal ambitions and greed and all of us are willing to risk chaos, or at least disorder, to satisfy those ambitions and that greed. Speaking from his own experience and his own inner battles, Paul is telling us that we need strength and commitment to embrace and love the Law God gives us because the Law was given not to frighten and control but to enable people, all people, to thrive and to love.
Blessed Alcuin of York (c. 730-804)
Eternal Light, shine into our hearts;
Eternal Goodness, delivers us from evil;
Eternal Power, be our support;
Eternal Wisdom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance;
Eternal Pity, have mercy on us—
So that with all our heart and mind and soul and strength we may seek your face,
And be brought by your infinite mercy into your holy presence through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Creating Space for Truth, Clarity and Grace – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 3 June 2018 – Matins 11.30am
Deuteronomy 5:1-21 Acts 21:17-39a
Listening to the radio yesterday morning, I heard Ian McEwan, the acclaimed novelist, speaking from the Hay Literary Festival. By the way, if you haven’t read his latest novel, Nutshell, I can thoroughly recommend it; it’s an absolute hoot! Anyway, McEwan was responding to the observation that sales of novels are seriously declining at the moment. He’d been asked whether people were less inclined to read these days and, if so, why that might be. Although he conceded that attention spans are perhaps shorter than they used to be, and that the attraction of film and television was strong – indeed, several of his own novels have been adapted for the cinema – he argued passionately that the novel remains a wonderful medium for exploring consciousness, human relationships and the interaction between human beings and the world as a whole.
Now I could almost certainly guarantee that having been presented with today’s two Biblical readings, your first reaction isn’t likely to have been that they’d make great novels, TV or film! In the first, from the book Deuteronomy, we heard a recitation of the Mosaic Law, recognisable as a version of the Ten Commandments, and in the second, Paul’s portrayed in the Acts of the Apostles as kicking up a stink during a visit to Jerusalem, the geographical and spiritual centre of the Jewish Faith. Acts purports to be history, and so isn’t intended to be read as a work of fiction. But it could so easily be turned into an historical novel or adapted for the cinema as a biopic, or for the television as a biographical drama, along the lines of something like A Very English Affair, based on particular historical events in the life of the former Liberal Party leader, Jeremy Thorpe, the last episode of which is to be screened this evening. Acts has all the ingredients necessary for a gripping drama.
For starters, take Paul himself. He was a highly complex and controversial character: intelligent, opinionated, abrasive and fearless. He was an all-or-nothing kind of guy. Raised as a strictly observant, zealous Jew, convinced that the Law had to be adhered to rigidly, he was the primary motivator of the persecution of the first Christians. But then, as he was on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians, he was stopped in his tracks by an encounter with the Risen Christ, which utterly changed his life. No longer believing that obedience to the Law was capable by itself of leading to salvation, he began to preach a gospel of grace, to be appropriated by faith, a gospel that wasn’t for Jews alone but for Gentiles as well. Much of the drama of Acts arises out of the impact of this monumental shift in Paul’s experience, thinking and action.
In today’s reading, he’s depicted as going to meet the leaders of the Jerusalem Church to tell them of the work that, as Acts puts it, God had been doing among the Gentiles through his ministry. The Apostles are clearly impressed and heartened but they’re also quite savvy. Stories of Paul’s alleged abandonment of the Jewish Faith had been circulating, with the result that there was huge potential for conflict among the Jews in Jerusalem. Jewish nationalism was on the rise at the time, in much the same way that populist movements are springing up in our own day all around the world. So the Apostles advised Paul to present his legitimacy to the Jewish population by submitting himself to the Jewish custom of shaving his head in accordance with the Law as part of a rite of purification.
But then rumours begin to be circulated. It’s alleged that Paul’s taken Gentiles with him into the temple, something that, if true, brought with it the death penalty. The author of Acts refutes this allegation, but the mob’s incited and feelings run high, to the extent that the crowd’s on the verge of lynching him. Just at the last moment, though, the tribune comes to the rescue and allows Paul to speak under the protection of Roman soldiers.
Now today’s reading ended at this point; we didn’t hear what Paul had to say. If you want to know, you could come back next week and hear how the story continues! Or, of course, you could read it yourself. Suffice to say that Paul presents his impeccable credentials as an observant Jew, recounts his experience on the Damascus Road, and has his Jewish audience in the palm of his hand right until the last moment when he mentions the G-word – Gentiles – and then all hell’s let loose. The crowd gets whipped up into a frenzy and demands that Paul be done away with. It’s only when the centurion hears that Paul’s a Roman citizen that he realises that he really does have to protect him under law, and whisks Paul away to safety.
If I’ve done nothing else, I hope I’ve demonstrated that the Acts of the Apostles can be quite exciting! But that’s not really enough for a sermon, so what’s the point I want to make? It hinges on the suggestion that a false allegation is made against Paul: that he took Gentiles into the Temple, whereas, in fact, the author of Acts denies that this was so. The whole sequence of events unfolds on the basis of rumour, innuendo and hearsay. We know from our daily lives just how damaging these things can be.
And this brings me to the passage read from Deuteronomy. One of the commandments relates to just this: ‘Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbour’ (5:20). Now this could mean specifically perjury or simply lying more generally. The important thing is that it implies an overwhelming concern for truth, and justice for one’s neighbour. Jesus would later summarise the whole Law by saying that we should love God and our neighbour as our self, and that there was no commandment greater than these. In other words, love of God and neighbour is lived out in practising justice towards our fellow human beings.
We’re all far too quick to make judgments about others. We do so without patiently seeking to establish facts, without really wanting to get to the truth of the matter, and we jump to conclusions when we don’t have the full picture. We’ve always known this about certain parts of the press and the media but social media now makes it possible for something to go viral, whether it’s been established to be true or false. And once it’s out there, it’s almost impossible to reel it in. The world thrives on rumour, innuendo and hearsay.
So what’s to be done? Three things. First, don’t assume that what you hear or read is unequivocally true. Check it out first. Acknowledge that there’ll almost certainly be another dimension to the story.
Second, be cautious and restrained in how you speak, especially of others. Don’t perpetuate rumours and hearsay, don’t jump to conclusions and assume that something’s true just because someone’s told you. Put yourself in your neighbour’s shoes and ask what justice requires in a given situation.
Third, and this is perhaps the most important point of all, introduce into the whole of your life the practice of pausing. When you’re under pressure, when you’re put on the spot, take your time, take a few deep breaths before speaking or responding. This is where meditation can help. It allows us to sit lightly to all the stuff that arises in the mind, all the internal dramas that serve to give us a sense of self. This ‘self’, though, so often clouds and distorts our vision. It’s only by letting it go that clarity begins to emerge and we can see things for what they truly are.
One person who practises and models this to perfection is Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. When he was interviewed on the radio some years ago – it was, I think, on something like Radio 4’s Today programme – he was asked a very tricky question, and he clearly knew that whatever he said was likely to incriminate him with one group or another. So with extraordinary presence of mind he simply said that he needed to take a few moments before answering. There followed about 10 seconds of silence, something that broadcasters loathe and dread, because it’s what they call dead air. But he just paused and his silence spoke volumes.
We can also do that, for it’s when we step aside, it’s when we choose a kind of inaction, that God can act. Paul himself knew this, for after his experience on the Damascus Road he disappeared into the obscurity of the Arabian Desert, not just for a few seconds but for three years, so that in that silent space he could begin to discern what God was asking of him, to see from God’s perspective. Jesus, too, understood the value of pausing, of silence, of inaction, for when a woman supposedly caught in the very act of committing adultery was brought to him by a baying mob, he simply knelt down on the ground and doodled in the sand before speaking: ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone’. When God’s given that kind of space, clarity and truth can begin to emerge, grace can come into play, and the most unexpected and surprising things can happen.
The Trinity made easy? – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 27 May 2018 – 4.00pm Evensong
Ezekiel 1. 4-10, 22-28a & Revelation 4
As Christians we do have a tendency to get into a state about the Trinity. We find it hard to explain to others and difficult to talk about. And yet we are blessed, baptised, confirmed, married and buried in the name of the Trinity, ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’
The Trinity falls into that category of thing that we know we should believe but which, to our rational, 21st century minds, we actually find difficult to believe, like supernatural miracles, virgins giving birth and dead bodies walking out of tombs.
Where did the doctrine of the Trinity come from? It was not handed down from heaven as a kind of divine CV. Neither was it created by a super-clever theological Einstein to be put into creeds, to become a kind of defining tenet of our faith, something we have to put a tick against on the application form for becoming a Christian. Neither was it ever meant to be a dogma to daub on banners as we Christians went to war, in centuries past, with those we called heretics and non-believers because they didn’t believe in the Trinity.
The doctrine of the Trinity is simply an attempt to explain our experience of God. We experience God as creator, the prime mover, the source of all that is. We also experience God as personal, one of us, someone who shares in our humanity and identifies with our life experience, that is Jesus. And then, as we heard last week with the story of Pentecost, those first Christians had an intense sense of Jesus’ constant presence with them even when his physical presence with them had come to an end. This was a dilemma – it did not seem to make sense. God was the creator, the source of all creation, God was personal, one with us in Jesus and when Jesus was no longer physically present among them the first Christians still had a profound sense of God being with them and within them. So the doctrine of the Trinity grew out of people’s experience of God, it is simply an attempt to describe our experience of God.
Think of any life changing experience like falling in love or bereavement or becoming a parent and then think about how you explain that experience to someone else. Someone once said to me that they felt as if a bucket of love had been poured over them when they fell in love. The bereaved often talk about feeling as if part of them has been amputated when a husband or wife dies. New parents talk about living in a new world with new horizons when a child is born. We are always finding ways to try and describe the inexplicable and indescribable. The trouble is that the more you talk about something, the more you try to define something, the more complicated everything becomes. This is not a reason for not trying to talk about your experience, we just have to be careful and measured and never claim that we have the definitive explanation. Our attempts to talk about these important life-changing experiences are valuable and worthwhile but they will always fall short of what our experience actually is.
The Trinity is simply the Christian communities attempt to explain and describe the way we experience God. But we must remember that it is ultimately only an attempt to explain and describe what is inexplicable and indescribable. As the ex-Bishop of London, Richard Chatres has said,
When we think about God we are not supposed to pretend that we know everything. We are supposed to proclaim with the hymn ‘O Lord my God when I in awesome wonder….’ That awe is what worship is about.
The doctrine of the Trinity is hugely helpful and important, we should reflect upon it, dwell in it, but in the end we are not called to worship the explanation, the ‘description’ of God, we are called to be drawn into the awesome wonder of God which is beyond explanation and description.
I think we end up getting anxious and confused about the Trinity because everyone wants everything explained these days. Everyone wants everything to make sense and to fit in with our understanding of the way the world works. Bookshops are full of books with titles beginning with ‘How to …..’ or ‘Such and such for dummies’ or ‘so and so made easy’. It maybe that lots of subjects can be handled in this way but we make a huge mistake if we attempt to squeeze humanity’s experience of God into this ‘make everything easy and accessible’ packaging. I think we need to come at this from the other end and start, not with making everything easy and accessible, pretending that we can know everything, but by being drawn into the mystery, generating worship that leads to a sense of that ‘awesome wonder’ we sing about in that hymn. What people need now is less information and more inspiration, less explanation and more exploration, less stark simplicity and more rich complexity, less manmade systems of belief and more divinely inspired glimpses of glory.
So the Trinity is an attempt to explain the way we experience God, an explanation that has helped endless numbers of people draw close to God. The books and sermons written about the Trinity have helped countless people into a deeper understanding of God and a deeper relationship with God – that is why the doctrine of the Trinity is a precious, holy and sacred thing. Everything that happens to us as Christians happens in the name of the Trinity. The best way we can respond to this is not to spend our time attempting to explain the Trinity and make it easy for people to understand, but to lead people, through our love and compassion, through our worship, through the beauty of our church building, through our welcome and our witness, to experience something of God who is the creator, the source of all true creativity, who is Jesus, one with us, and who remains constantly present in the energy and inspiration of his Spirit. We are not here to defend or explain the doctrine of the Trinity we are here to lead others into an experience of the awesomeness and wonder of God who creates, redeems and sustains.
Let us pray
Eternal source of life and love, holding all in purposeful order, awaken reverence and awe for your mystery and wonder.
Eternal Presence, making visible and intimate the depth of your being, draw all people into your outpouring heart.
Eternal Spirit, indwelling, moving creation into being and hearts to leap for joy; inspire justice, excite truth and refresh the face of the earth.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, blessed and glorious Trinity, to you be glory and honour, now and for ever. Amen
The Spirit of God fills the whole World. Alleluia! – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 20 May 2018 – 4pm Evensong
Ezekiel 36:22-28 Acts 2:22-38
One of the delights of Common Worship, the Church of England’s suite of liturgical resources, gradually introduced over the last 18 years, and which stands alongside the older Book of Common Prayer, is that it gives distinctive character to each of the Church’s seasons. Daily Prayer, for example, which we use here for the service of Morning Prayer each day, though its structure remains the same throughout the year, allows the particular flavour of each season to be captured and celebrated through the carefully selected provision of appropriate Biblical material. Thus, during the 10 days between the Feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost, as we’ve focussed our attention on waiting for and being open to the Spirit, the canticle or song recited after the first reading on each occasion has been drawn from the very words we heard as the first lesson from the Prophecy of Ezekiel this afternoon:
‘I will take you from the nations…I will sprinkle clean water upon you…A new heart I will give you, and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. You shall be my people, and I will be your God.’
This great feast of Pentecost is often referred to as the birthday of the Church. The Acts of the Apostles, from which the second lesson was taken today, tells, in chapter two, of how the Apostles were transformed and energised by the power of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, giving them new vigour, vision and purpose. It narrates the remarkable change that took place in the Apostles, from their experience of disappointment, fragmentation, and even depression, perhaps, after the crucifixion of Jesus, first to their bewilderment in the face of resurrection, and finally to their new and fresh understanding of what the events of Good Friday and Easter Day actually meant, and of how they were enabled to tell the story in a different way. And we heard something of that in Peter the Apostle’s sermon, recounted in the second lesson.
All this is remarkable and wonderful. There’s a real danger, though, that it’s considered to be a story about the Church alone. It isn’t. It’s a story about the whole world, the whole of creation. This is something that’s made abundantly clear in the refrain with which the canticle at Morning Prayer during these 10 days is topped and tailed: ‘The Spirit of God fills the whole world. Alleluia.’ Not just the Church, note, but the whole world.
This shouldn’t actually strike as surprising. The first chapter of Genesis articulates an awareness of the presence of the Spirit from the beginning of creation, for we’re told that when everything was still a formless void, a wind from God, the Spirit of God, swept over the face of the waters. There’s never been a time when the Spirit hasn’t been present and active, forming and shaping the whole of creation out of the first tiny seeds of its hidden potential into that fullness of life, which is its goal, purpose and glory. What the Apostles realised on the Day of Pentecost was that Christ himself was indeed the very fulfilment of that potential and that the Spirit is present in all things and all people enabling them, as St Paul states, to attain their full stature, their maturity, in Christ. This is part of what the Church has to proclaim to the world, that individually and together, as created in the image and likeness of God, we have the capacity and potential to embody Christ wholly in our lives, to participate in the divine life to the full. Sometimes, though, it’s the world which has to remind the Church of what that might actually entail.
One such example would be in relation to the status of women. From a cultural perspective, the Church emerged in a patriarchal context, but Jesus seems to have elevated the status of women far beyond what was expected at the time. The Gospels portray women as the first witnesses to the resurrection, and there are hints that they played a prominent role in the life of the early Church. In his letter to the Galatians, St Paul even writes that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ. Women tend to have been airbrushed out of the story over the centuries, and that’s probably an understatement. And there’s still resistance in some quarters.
But it wasn’t the Church in our time which built up the momentum for change. It was so-called secular society. Feminism became the driving force for change in the second half of the 20th century, and it’s only recently that the Church of England has caught up. Indeed it’s only just over three years ago that Libby Lane was the first woman to be ordained as a bishop – proudly, we can say – here in York Minster. And now we rejoice with Viv, our Dean, in her nomination as the Bishop of Bristol. We can also wish her happy birthday! My point, though, is this: that although there’s by no means unanimity of mind about the role of women throughout the whole Church, those who, like me and many others, rejoice in how things have moved, attribute the change to the activity of the Spirit no less in the world at large as in the Church.
A less comfortable example is that of safeguarding. There’s scarcely an institution, organisation or network of family and friends that hasn’t been infected in some way by the reality of sexual abuse. The Church has an appalling record in this regard and many within and beyond, quite rightly, expect more of it. The pressure to deal with this, though, has for too long been ignored by the Church, and the incidence of abuse has been covered up and brushed under the carpet. It’s the expectations of society at large, though, which have forced the Church to get its act together, something it’s been slow to do. Even the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse hasn’t satisfied many survivors that the Church is really taking this matter seriously as it ought.
Some have drawn attention to inadequate theology as lying at the root of the problem. Professor Linda Woodhead, for example, an eminent sociologist of religion, has characterised the prevalent stance of the Church as seeing itself as ‘an oasis of truth and goodness in a sea of secular ungodliness’. She rejects that notion outright. Furthermore, she draws attention to a faulty approach to forgiveness, which bypasses the need to be accountable to God through one another. She’s called, therefore, for a radical change of direction in how we do theology in the light of sexual abuse:
‘After IICSA’, she writes, ‘the idea that doctrine is the possession of the Church, not an ongoing discussion with laity and society, ought to die for ever. It is bound up with a state of mind in which it is impossible to pursue living questions wherever they lead, or admit mistakes other than in the most generalised terms’.[1]
Isn’t part of the problem here that the Church has forgotten that the Spirit isn’t in the Church’s sole possession? The Spirit is at loose in the world, blowing where it wills, and sometimes it’s the church that attempts to stifle the Spirit’s breath.
It’s not all lost, though, and there’s no cause for despair, far from it. For what the Apostles learned on the Day of Pentecost wasn’t entirely new. They had to discover the supreme lesson that lay at the heart not just of the history of Israel but, indeed, of all history, that when life seems to collapse in disaster and failure, as was the case with the exiles to whom Ezekiel was speaking, and as was the case with the Apostles after the crucifixion, that there is at the heart not only of the Church, but of the world as a whole, a presence and power which we call the Spirit, ceaselessly shaping the whole creation towards fulfilment in Christ. More than this, it’s sheer grace, for it all begins and ends in God, and it’s this that the Church is called to proclaim, embody and live:
‘A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. You shall be my people, and I will be your God.’
[1] ‘The Fault is Theological’ in Church Times, 6 April 2018, p.11.
Godquake – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Pentecost Sunday – Choral Eucharist 10am – 20May 2018
Acts 2.1-21 & John 15.26-27; 16,4b-15
I always smile when I see a Fire Exit sign in a church! It makes me think of the Day of Pentecost and the story we hear today detailing the strange events which happened to the disciples on that day. If our Health and Safety Officer, Steve Bielby, or one of his colleagues had been in the upper room with the disciples I wonder if the Church would have ever existed. The minute the ‘violent wind’ had raced through the room followed swiftly with the ‘tongues of fire’ resting on each disciple, the Health and Safety Officer would have calmly directed people out of the Fire Exits and the Day of Pentecost would have come to an early end. In the ‘Enquiry’ which would have followed the Officer would certainly have had something to say about the suspicion that the disciples had been drinking!
Of course this is silly because it seems fairly clear that Luke, who we think wrote this account of the Day of Pentecost, is using metaphors to try and explain dramatic and strange occurrences. He talks of hearing, ‘a sound like the blowing of a violent wind’, and then, ‘They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire …’ and about the allusion to the disciples being drunk, it is clearly a joke, he says, ‘some made fun of them and said ‘They have had too much wine’. So if we take all this into account we can dispense with any concerns about physical danger. Luke is using metaphors to describe a remarkable and unusual event. A Health and Safety Officer would not be perturbed by what happened. We can simply enjoy looking back at an important, mysterious and significant event in the emergence of the Church. Pentecost is really all about the breaking down of barriers and the growing in confidence of the disciples, to pursue the ministry of Jesus and to build communities from which the Church, from which this church community, grew. Pentecost is about remembering that the Church was born in profound joy and mutual love in which earthly differences between people, like status, race and language, are totally irrelevant.
That is all well and good but we make a massive error if we think that what happened on the Day of Pentecost was not dangerous in some ways, because it was! What happened on the Day of Pentecost was a matter of life and death, to be more precise perhaps I should say that it was a matter of death and new life!
Many of the disciples who were touched, inspired, filled with the Holy Spirit on this day died as a direct result of what happened – just as the secular and religious authorities of the day had been suspicious of Jesus and eventually killed him, so they were suspicious of his followers. In the years to come many of the disciples were arrested and martyred for their faith and work. But their deaths led to new life, new life for them and new life for the Church because their sacrifices somehow helped to establish the communities they created, their sacrifices were the foundations on which the church grew. Many early church buildings were actually built over the graves of martyred saints.
The danger about what was happening on the Day of Pentecost would not have been noticed by a Health and Safety Officer – it was all far too deep and profound. What happened on the day of Pentecost may have looked to a casual onlooker like a great party, everyone full of joy, everyone talking and getting on, everyone acting as if they had had a few drinks, but what was actually happening was the shifting of creation’s tectonic plates. God’s Spirit was no longer focussed in one person, Jesus, and directed at one nation, Israel, no, God’s Spirit was filling many people (potentially all people) and was being directed at every nation. It wasn’t an Earthquake it was a ‘Godquake’. The way God was present and active in the world was changing and changing radically.
So what does all this have to say to us as we remember and celebrate the Feast of Pentecost? Perhaps the most important thing is to be reminded that the Holy Spirit is dangerous! Ironically the Church (capital ‘C’) and churches, like ours, have a reputation for not being good with change. We have the reputation for being conservative, keeping old services and old hymns because they are familiar and safe, we don’t like changing our buildings or our services or our music or even our service times. I still bear the scars of changing service times in a previous parish! But this is in stark contrast to what happened on the day of Pentecost which was all about change – it was all about God changing the way God was working in the world, it was all about people being changed from being a collection of individuals into being a community, a body, the body of Christ.
So what makes a good celebration of Pentecost? When we leave should we be reeling drunkenly with joy, talking animatedly to anyone and everyone, ready to heal and to teach and to prophecy? Should we be luminescent, alight with God’s love, with God’s life? Of course we should – but the likelihood is that that is not going to happen because we are too reserved, too ‘buttoned up’. If there was a strong wind and flames dancing on people’s heads and everyone talking different languages I wouldn’t need a Health and Safety Officer to show me to the Fire Exit – I’d find it myself very quickly – I am English after all!
What makes a good celebration for Pentecost for us is that we should be reminded of the enormity of what we are part of – we are part of that great tectonic shift in the way God works and the way the world should be, we are in the business of being different, not just building our own little kingdoms but building God’s Kingdom. We should be reminded that the Holy Spirit is not about keeping things the same it is always about change, transformation, the transformation of ourselves and of others through our love of them and of the world, through our striving for peace and justice.
The Holy Spirit is dangerous. Some of our sisters and brothers around the world who have been filled with the Holy Spirit face real persecution and real, physical danger every day. This is not the case for us, the danger we face by being filled with the Holy Spirit is that our equilibrium will be disturbed. What we like, what we are used to, what makes us feel safe and comfortable, may change – the Holy Spirit isn’t interested in the establishment of our own little kingdoms, the Holy Spirit is only interested in filling us with energy and courage to help establish God’s Kingdom where there are no barriers, no named seats, no personal preferences, just one community of love where all are equal.
Let’s finish with a prayer – a prayer in which the Holy Spirit isn’t mentioned but a prayer clearly infused by the Holy Spirit. It is a prayer written by John Donne,
Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity: in the habitations of thy majesty and glory, world without end. Amen
The Fall of Empires – The Reverend Catriona Cumming
The Reverend Catriona Cumming
Sunday 13 May 2018 – 11.30am Matins
Rev. 14. 1-13
Several years ago, I visited an old friend in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the United States. It’s a pretty town, with lovely Georgian buildings, and plenty for tourists to do. One of the things you can do is go on a narrated harbour cruise, where a guide tells you about the historic coastal properties, lighthouse, and fort.
As the only British person in a group of Americans it was an odd experience. I was surrounded by citizens of the most powerful country in the world, viewing evidence of my own country’s colonization of another nation’s birth right. Within the history of that place is the displacement of people who had lived there for who knows how long, the enslavement of countless others, and a war fought to gain independence from a tiny island thousands of miles away. It was a strange experience, and I found myself helplessly, and haplessly apologising for what my country had set in motion when British explorers first made landfall in the early 17th century.
This memory surfaced this week as I read of the fall of Babylon, and the fate of Rome – two great Empires – superpowers if you will – of the ancient world.
In John’s vision, the hour of judgement has come, and those who have chosen their sides must face the consequences. John is clear that what puts people in danger is Worshiping this superpower. It is, for some, a kind of madness, like being drunk.
‘Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image and for anyone who receives the mark of its name.’
Rev 14.9-11
Which all makes me feel rather uncomfortable – for all sorts of reasons – but partly because the problem with worldly power is that it is incredibly seductive.
Seduced by that power, one can find oneself rationalising all sorts of behaviour, because we – the powerful – are bringing enlightenment, democracy, or religion, to these poor benighted souls. It is particularly difficult, when one is living in the midst of… well, life, to be objective. We grow up, and live in a particular context, and with a particular cultural bias.
So it might be tempting on hearing the apocalyptic reading this morning, to throw up our hands, or throw in the towel. How are we to step out of a cycle which goes back to ancient Babylon?
Discouraging as these reading might appear, there is definite good news in there. Even at the hour of judgement, an angel of the Lord still proclaims a message of hope – and not just to those who are marked out as belonging to the Lamb. Even at this late hour, God wants salvation for all peoples:
“Then I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation and tribe and language and people. He said in a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgement has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.’”
Rev. 14. 6-7
God does not give up on God’s creation – on any of us.
Our place in this world, the damage we do – even inadvertently to one another – is complex, and difficult to untangle, but let us be clear: God does not give up on us.
And nor should we give up on each other. Imperfect as we are, our worship, and our love, for God, and for God’s creation, is treasured in heaven. We can only direct our lives and worship towards the one whose kingdom is justice and peace, rather than ambition, and economic might: towards Jesus.
We will not do so perfectly, not this side of heaven. And we must still be wary of complacency, and of trying to convince ourselves and others that we have all the answers. We don’t, and neither do they. But if this scripture tells us nothing else, it tells us that God will not give up on this world. Thanks be to God.
What on earth are we doing? – The Reverend Catriona Cumming
The Reverend Catriona Cumming
Sunday 6 May 2018 – 11.30am Matins
John 15. 9-17
I would like us to pause for a few minutes this morning, and consider what it is we are doing here.
The writer of psalm 42 puts it rather beautifully:
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
a multitude keeping festival.
Ps. 42. 4 NRSV
These words make sense in a building like this, gathered together with a congregation of this size.
The scale and grandeur of this place hopefully leave a mark on those who visit for whatever reason.
Celebrating the great festivals of the church’s year in this place feels significant.
The beauty of the music, the occasional profundity from the pulpit, and the sense that one is participating in something greater than one’s self, hopefully sustains those who visit, helps them encounter God’s love, and sends them out again with hope.
But it is important to remember that this service, this morning, is one of countless services all over the world.
Not many will be in such places as this.
Some will be furtive – in people’s homes, with door closed and blinds drawn.
Others will be outside, under a tree to shelter from the sun.
Some people here this morning will have been coming to the Minster for most, if not all their lives.
But not all – in fact, they will be in the minority.
For most of us, this place represents a pausing point, for however long.
For those of us for whom this is ‘home’ for a longer period of time, it is important that we remember – this is only one experience of going to church.
For some here, this may be the first time you’ve ever come into a church, or a church service.
“What on earth are they doing?!” you may think at various points.
To tell the truth, it’s something that those of us who go to church quite a bit more often think as well:
“What on Earth is she doing?”
So, what are we doing?
Well, partly, we are meeting together as a Christian community, to worship God together, but also to build relationships with each other.
It is something that we have in common with Christians across the world, though it is worth remembering that gathering together for some Christians is dangerous, or impossible.
The liberty and opportunity to congregate is not something we should take for granted.
Regardless of how often we meet, Christians are called to love one another – as Christ loved his friends.
This means seeking one another out – it means forming community.
That doesn’t mean organising committees, and subcommittees, and action groups.
It means getting to know people as they truly are, including all the REALLY annoying bits, allowing them to get to know us; loving them, and allowing them to love us in return.
Doesn’t sound very British, does it?
What we are doing today is not about meeting up with like-minded people and being nice to one another, although that’s a start.
Besides, anyone who has spent five minutes talking about anything substantive with a group of Christians, knows that under the veneer of politeness, there are huge disagreements waiting to burst out, and we all have the capacity to be anything but nice to one another.
Building community in a place like this, where so many people are passing through – on holiday, or wanting something different from their local church for just one weekend – can be hard.
Because building community takes time and patience.
But all baptized Christians, wherever they are from, are called to be part of the same family.
We are all baptized into one body – and so the stranger in our midst – that person sitting behind you who you may or may not have seen here before – is part of that community.
We work hard here to welcome visitors, wherever they are from, whatever their faith, and not just on a Sunday, but throughout the week: it’s good customer service.
But it’s about much more than getting good review on TripAdvisor. It is the mission of every Christian.
In our Gospel Jesus tells his disciples that he has appointed them to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.
For that fruit to last, what we are doing here has to be about more than a ‘nice’, or even ‘moving’ experience.
Fruit that will last is fruit that will grow and thrive in trying, hazardous conditions, through drought or flood.
Jesus appointed his disciples. He chose them.
All of this stems from that choice.
God chooses you.
God chooses me.
God chooses us.
“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
We are here because God is. And God is love.
Love by its nature is relational.
It is dynamic, and transformative.
It is God’s love at work in us which enables to build community.
When we place aside our ego, our grand plans, and abide in God’s love, that is when we see growth.
Bonhoeffer, writing about life together, commented that:
“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.”
Bonhoeffer, D. 1953 ‘Life Together’, p. 18. SCM publishing.
I can’t quite get through a whole sermon on this passage without mentioning the icon which hung on the wall of the chapel of my theological college: Westcott House in Cambridge.
It is an icon of Jesus, and the scripture it contains is from this passage: ‘you did not choose me, but I chose you’.
Such a choice, when one is under strain from deadlines, and finding other members of the community challenging, can feel like a huge cosmic joke.
But at its heart is God’s desire for us.
It is that desire which draws us here today, and which shapes us, if we allow it.
At the beginning and end of each day here, we pray.
We pray in the middle of the day too.
We gather to give thanks, to plead, to rejoice or lament.
But essentially what we are doing is taking time to be with God: to abide in God’s love.
Worship has taken many forms through the Church’s history, as Christianity has crossed borders, and been brought into conversation with different cultures.
It can be grand and solemn, silent or raucous.
Today we gather round a table – seeking to spend time to abide with God, Jesus abides, is present with us, in bread and wine, as he is present wherever two or three are gathered together in his name.
As bread and wine are transformed, so we as a community and as individuals, are transformed.
Only through relationship, through the love of God, are we then able to offer love to one another – despite our differences and disagreements – however well we know one another.
And more than that, we are then able to show the love of God to those who have no idea what on earth we’re doing here.
And so we are appointed to bear fruit, fruit that will last.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
I’m going fishing – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 6 May 2018 – 11.30am Matins
Ezekiel 47:1-12 John 21:1-19
‘I’m going fishing,’ announced Peter, as we heard in today’s second lesson. As a response to resurrection, this might strike us as rather odd, so let’s explore what might be going on here.
The two final chapters of the Gospel of John are devoted to accounts of the resurrection and, in addition to the Risen Christ himself, these chapters are concerned almost exclusively with four characters: Mary Magdalene, Peter, the one known as the Beloved Disciple, and Thomas.
At the beginning of chapter 20, Mary Magdalene, distressed at having discovered that the tomb where Jesus had been buried was empty, runs to tell Peter and the one described as the ‘other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved’, whereupon the two men run to the tomb with Mary to see for themselves. Mary, we read, stands weeping outside the tomb by herself, and it’s here that she encounters the Risen Christ in the one she presumes to be the gardener.
Later, Jesus appears to the disciples who’re locked behind closed doors, but Thomas is absent. A week later, Jesus makes another appearance, and this time Thomas is present as well.
Today, we heard from chapter 21 of seven of the disciples gathered by the Sea of Tiberias, when Peter says, ‘I’m going fishing’. Jesus appears and directs the operation from the shore, enabling them to catch such a large quantity of fish that it’s difficult for the net to be hauled in. Jesus then cooks breakfast for them on a charcoal fire, and this is followed by Jesus asking Peter three times if he loves him, which he answers affirmatively in each case.
So what’s so odd about Peter going fishing? Well, just imagine what the situation must have been like. As far as the disciples were concerned, the crucifixion of Jesus had been an unmitigated disaster, and for Peter himself there must have been a sense of personal guilt and shame at having denied that he’d ever even known Jesus. Then came the most extraordinary news that Jesus had been raised from the dead, something Peter came to see for himself at first-hand. He was presumably present when Jesus appeared to the disciples in Thomas’ absence, and then again when Thomas was present. So along with the other disciples, Peter was involved in experiences that were certainly difficult to comprehend, but which came with an overwhelming sense of exhilaration and joy, along with the promise of liberation and new possibilities. And Peter’s response to all this was to go fishing! What do we make of this?
The gospels convey the distinct impression that the twelve whom Jesus called to follow him actually left their daily occupations, including their homes and families, so it would be seem, to wander around the Galilean countryside with him for three years, learning from him and being a small itinerant community. So when Peter declares that he’s going fishing, it looks like a retrograde step. It’s as if everything has ended in disaster, and not even resurrection is enough to make Peter reconsider the conclusions he’s drawn. It appears that the time Peter spent with Jesus counted for almost nothing and that Peter had learned little of significance from him. Peter seems to regress to what he knows; he settles back into his comfort zone.
There’s another way of looking at this, though, and it’s quite simply this: that the impact of resurrection is to turn us all in the direction, as it were, of metaphorical fishing. In other words, resurrection isn’t about some delightful experience which removes us from the world and from everyday life. It invites us to find the resurrection life in every situation, in every circumstance, in every person, at every moment. Although we habitually divide everything up, life is actually a whole. Our work and leisure are as important as our worship; what we do in the world as important as what we do in church. Divisions are false. Isn’t it precisely while Peter is fishing that he perceives the presence of the Risen Christ making a difference to his work?
This dynamic is paralleled in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, too. When the women discover the empty tomb, they’re told that Jesus isn’t there, but that he’s been raised and that he’s gone on ahead to Galilee. Now Galilee was where the whole Jesus thing had begun. We might have expected the women to have been told that Jesus was to meet them somewhere different and special where there’d be an amazing spectacle, a denouement where all ambiguities, perplexities and puzzles would be ironed out and everything made crystal clear for all to see. Instead they’re told in as many words to return to everyday life and get on with the business of living.
For those who like the spectacular and dramatic, this is hugely disappointing. The good news, though, is that this raises everyday life far above routine and drudgery. We all spend the vast bulk of our lives in what we call everyday life, being involved in work, enjoying family life, preparing meals, dealing with finances, caring for the sick, getting into arguments, promoting justice, making music, spending time with friends, planning holidays, making ends meet, and so on. What Peter discovered is that it’s precisely here, in our daily activities, that we discover the presence of the Risen Christ. The challenge for the Church isn’t only to gather people together, but also to enable all people to see that we’re walking on holy ground, whoever we are, wherever we may be, and whatever we’re doing.
So what will you do as you leave this cathedral? Have a chat with one of the clergy? Go for a drink? Get some lunch? Deal with your e-mails? Meet friends? Go to work? Have a rest? Whatever the case, these are all where we ‘go fishing’, and it’s there that the Risen Christ is already present.
Arise, shine, for your light has come – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 29th April 2018 – 4.00pm Evensong
Isaiah 60:1-14 Revelation 3:1-13
The opening verses of this evening’s first lesson from the prophecy of Isaiah are some of the most beautiful and lyrical words in the whole of the Bible:
Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
Some might argue that Isaiah has a more such lyricism than any of the other prophetic books. And you’ll be familiar with other such passages, not least from Handel’s oratorio, Messiah. Take this, for example:
Comfort, comfort ye my people,
saith your God.
Speak comfortably to Jerusalem,
and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished,
that her iniquity is pardoned (Isaiah 40:1-2).
Those were verses from chapter 40. Here are some from chapter 53, from one of the so-called suffering servant songs:
He was despised and rejected,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
Surely he hath borne our griefs,
and carried our sorrows:
he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities (53:3, 4a, 5a).
And then what about these from chapter 61, words which Jesus reads when he goes to the synagogue immediately after his baptism and temptation in Luke’s gospel:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because the Lord has anointed me;
He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
To bind up the broken-hearted,
To proclaim liberty to captives
And release to the prisoners (61:1-2).
These few passages beautifully convey the general tenor of the latter part of Isaiah’s prophecy, addressed as they are, first, to those exiled to Babylon after Jerusalem had been destroyed in 587BC, and then to the exiles who’d been allowed to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their city, their temple and their lives, some fifty years later. Whereas the first part of the book, which relates to the situation of Jerusalem under the threat of Assyria in the eighth century BC, contains warnings about failing to trust God and making alliances with foreign powers, the latter part of the book, clearly addressing much later historical circumstances, speaks to a people broken by suffering and disaster, whose morale is in need of rebuilding. To these people, Isaiah speaks words of grace, hope, encouragement, healing, forgiveness and restoration: ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.’
I suspect it’s rather hard for us actually to imagine just what the situation must have been like. Those who are old enough to have lived through the Second World War might be able to identify with a general sense of being exhausted and worn down, but, in this country, at least, that will have been tempered with euphoria at having won. This wasn’t the case for Isaiah’s exiles. They were utterly broken, believing themselves to have been abandoned by God and left to the mercy of the Babylonians. They’d lost everything. The whole of their history and identity rested on the belief that they were the chosen people, enjoying a special relationship with God, and yet all that now seemed little more than a delusion. The return to Jerusalem to start the enormous task of rebuilding will surely have been tinged with a heavy dose of forlornness and weariness, to say nothing of self-recrimination and guilt. Even to entertain the possibility of believing in themselves once again must have seemed like requiring a monumental effort on the part of the people, let alone believing in a God who loved and cherished them. And yet it is to such a condition that Isaiah speaks, ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.’
This is, of course, the message of Easter, that the one who was despised and rejected, the one who bore suffering and sorrow, has been raised, that his glory is not for himself alone, but that his light irradiates the whole creation. The light of Christ is our light; his glory is also our glory.
Can we possibly believe that? Does the world look like that? Does the situation in Syria, for example, encourage us to trust that the light of the Risen Christ is already shining upon them and us, to see that the glory of God has already risen upon them? It’s not surprising that many would dismiss such notions as fantasies and delusions, and yet the light for which we look is not one that blinds us because it’s so bright, but rather one that glimmers faintly but steadily.
Faith isn’t simply a private matter for individuals, it’s something that relates to every aspect of our communal, national and global life, but this isn’t to say that it’s not personal. After all, the focus of the Christian faith is a person, who himself experienced suffering and death and, in one sense, tragedy, disaster and failure. And I suspect that it’s in the context of our own personal lives that we’re most likely to find the possibility of seeing, believing and trusting that at the heart of everything is a gracious presence and power of love and goodness, which often seems to be obscured, sometimes glimmers, and occasionally blazes for just a short time. In other words, we’ve probably all got stories, not only of how we’ve experienced suffering, despair and failure, but also of how, in ways we may not be able to explain or even comprehend fully, we’ve also experienced new life, new possibilities, new beginnings. These, I would suggest, are experiences of resurrection, which are signs of the glory of the Lord rising upon us because our light has come.
We’ll all be aware, no doubt, of other people for whom this is the case. John Profumo comes to my mind, and I’m longing for his biography to be written. Born in 1915, Jack, as he was known, was one of might be called the top drawer of society. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he was appointed an OBE in 1944 for distinguished war service, rising eventually to the rank of brigadier. He inherited a barony from his father in 1940, entered politics and served as the conservative member of Parliament first for Kettering and then for Stratford-on-Avon. In 1960, he was appointed Secretary of State for War.
It’s the year 1963, though, which marked the turning point of his life. Having married Valerie Hobson, an Irish actress, in 1954, he was introduced in 1961 to Christine Keeler, a high class call-girl, with whom he began a brief affair. This would have been of no consequence, had she not also had an affair with Yevgeni Ivanov, the senior naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy. In March 1963, the Labour MP, George Wigg, raised questions about national security in the House of Commons, insinuating that Profumo had conducted an affair with Keeler, something that Profumo denied. In British politics, however, lying is deemed to be the ultimately unforgivable sin, and so it was that on 5th June 1963, Profumo was forced to resign, his political career in tatters.
The remarkable thing about Profumo is that he maintained a total silence about the events that had led to his political downfall. His wife stood by him faithfully, and not long after his resignation, Walter Birmingham, the Warden of Toynbee Hall, a charity working with the disadvantaged in London’s East End, invited him to work there as a volunteer, something he did until his life ended in 2006, at the age of 91. Using his political skills, he worked tirelessly and self-effacingly as a fundraiser, for which, in 1975, he was made a CBE. He was invested with this honour by the Queen herself, something that many saw as marking his rehabilitation to public life, and Margaret Thatcher invited him to attend her own 70th birthday party, seating him next to the Queen.
His obituary stated that his life consisted of two halves: disgrace and redemption. Profumo himself never justified or defended his actions and never referred to what became known as the Profumo Affair, which is why, sadly, there’ll probably never be a biography. In his obituary, though, Lord Longford said that he felt more admiration for Profumo than for anyone else he’d ever known. The residents of Toynbee Hall described him as a saint.
I’ve no idea what his religious affiliation was, if any, nor do I know whether he took matters of faith and spirituality seriously. All I can say is that for me, the way he lived his life after the political scandal is inspiring. There appears to have been no trace of self-pity, just a concern to make amends. What enables that to happen, whatever our religious persuasion, is the grace of God. That’s what we see in the restoration of the Israelites in the sixth century BC. It’s what we see in the resurrection of Jesus, and it’s what we experience in our own lives in all sorts of small and large ways. Sometimes we hit rock bottom in life, but whether we do so as a result of our own making or that of others, the bottom is never a dead end. For beyond what we can conceive or comprehend is something else: the indestructible presence of God, who comes to us as grace and who always addresses us with the words, ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you’.
Reframing our Worldviews – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 22nd April 2018 – 11.30am Matins
Nehemiah 7:73b-8:12 Luke 24:25-32
Beningbrough Hall is a large Georgian Mansion just outside York, owned now by the National Trust, which houses a large collection of 18th century paintings on loan from the National Portrait Gallery. To celebrate the centenary this year of women gaining the right to vote, the four principal galleries are now home to a temporary exhibition called Making her Mark: Celebrating Creative Women, which showcases women who’ve been a significant influence in the worlds of literature, dance and drama. Among the subjects depicted are Judi Dench, JK Rowling and Darcey Bussell.
If you walk around the estate of Beningbrough Hall, you’ll come across at one point what looks like an empty picture frame on a stand. Beningbrough Hall can be seen from all sorts of vantage points on the estate, but the purpose of this frame is that it’s somehow supposed to provide the best view of Beningbrough Hall when seen through it. The intention is to make you stop and look in a focussed rather than a casual way at the house.
The sight of an empty picture frame at Beningbrough seems rather bizarre, but the interesting thing is that we all actually view the world through a metaphorical picture frame all the time, whether we realise it or not. What I mean is this. All of us, no doubt, think that we perceive the world as it really is. The truth of the matter, however, is that our view – our worldview – is structured, coloured, shaped and skewed in all sorts of ways. Our view of the world isn’t neutral. It’s viewed through a frame. Our worldview is a kind of framework which directs us to see the world in this way rather than that.
All sorts of factors influence how we see things before we actually see them. So, for example, if you’re born in India, the chances are you’ll see the world through the eyes of Indian philosophy and spirituality. If, on the other hand, you’re born in Saudi Arabia, you’ll see the world through the eyes of Islam. If you’d lived in the former Soviet Union, your worldview would have been one of atheistic socialism. We can’t escape having a worldview. The problem is that our worldviews very rarely accommodate the whole world. When this becomes clear to us, we find we have a choice. We either exclude what doesn’t fit and pretend it doesn’t exist, or we allow our worldview to change and expand to fit the facts.
One example of this would be the Church’s attitude to slavery. Jesus himself didn’t challenge slavery, nor did Paul the Apostle. It’s only in relatively recent history that it was challenged as an offence against God and human dignity, despite the fact that the defining event in the Old Testament was the exodus of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, into what was promised to be the freedom of the Promised Land.
Many slave owners and slave traders resisted the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, for the obvious reason that it adversely affected their economic interests. We now take it for granted that slavery is wrong. Our worldview is one that, at least in principle, accommodates the inherent dignity and freedom of every human being. For most of history, though, this hasn’t been the case. The prevailing worldview prevented slavery from being seen for what it is.
Similar challenges to worldviews have come in our own time in relation, for example, to women and homosexuality. Those whose worldview is shaped by an adherence to a literal reading of the Bible will argue that there should be no accommodation to the pressure to see things in a different way, while others will suggest that the facts of experience can’t be ignored, and that there are ways of reading the Bible in other than a literal way. So one of the things about worldviews is that there will always be different ways of seeing and experiencing the world and one of the paradoxical things about worldviews is that they actually have to accommodate that fact. One of the tests of the adequacy of a worldview is how successfully it is able to do just that.
In today’s second reading from the Gospel of Luke we see a worldview being changed before our very eyes. The bulk of Luke’s account of the resurrection takes the form of a story about a journey made by two disciples on their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Their worldview is under severe strain, because they simply can’t accommodate the fact that the one they’d hoped would be the saviour of Israel had met an ignominious death on a cross. Furthermore, reports had been received that some women had heard that this same person was now actually alive. As they walk, a mysterious stranger joins them, who encourages them to tell him all that’s happened. And it’s he, the Risen Christ, who, step by step, begins to reshape their worldview into one that can accommodate suffering and death in a new way, with resurrection then thrown in to boot. Their worldview has been shaped by their scriptures but they can’t see what the scriptures are actually saying:
‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared. Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As a result of this encounter, their worldview is changed. From the perspective of resurrection, suffering and death are seen in a different light and enabled to take their place in a way that hadn’t seemed possible before.
The claim that Jesus has been raised from the dead is in itself one that many find difficult to accommodate into their worldview. It seems to go against all that’s understood about how the world works. There’s a deeper truth to which the claim points us, though, and it’s simply this. Every worldview, including the Christian one, is limited and struggles to accommodate the whole truth. At the heart of all experience, though, is a mysterious dynamic, forever reshaping things and opening up new possibilities. We’re invited to let go of all that’s limited, to die, and to have new life breathed into us, to be raised. In so doing, we discover that at the heart of everything is an eternal freshness, an openness, a newness, of which the resurrection of Jesus is the supreme sign.
Being a shepherd is dangerous – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 22nd April 2018 10am Choral Eucharist
Acts 4.5-12 & John 10.11-18
I looked up ‘Dangerous jobs’ on the internet. Apparently one of the most dangerous jobs in the world is underwater welding – statistically it is a thousand times more dangerous than being a policeman. Working on an oil rig is also quite high up the list of dangerous jobs as is ‘snake milker’! A snake milker is someone who takes the venom from poisonous snakes that is then used in creating medicines, including antidotes for those bitten by poisonous snakes! It is quite clear to see how all these jobs are dangerous – but who would ever think that being a shepherd might be dangerous? We think of shepherds as people protecting and herding sheep in beautiful countryside with a well-trained dog. Even when we think of Jesus being a shepherd we think of those images of him standing on a beautiful hillside with a lamb, probably the Lost Sheep from the parable, over his shoulders. And yet, in biblical times, being a shepherd was a very dangerous job indeed. Remember the story of David and Goliath? David was a shepherd and as he goes out to face up to the fearsome Goliath he says, ‘The Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine.’ I Sam 17v37. In biblical times,being a shepherd was dangerous.
In today’s gospel Jesus is identified as the Good Shepherd who is prepared to live with danger and even to lay down his life for the sheep. The passage points out that sheep being watched over by a lazy shepherd not fully committed to protecting them, are in great danger. The good shepherd is prepared to die to protect the sheep. The passage we hear as our gospel reading today is hugely encouraging, it is telling us that Jesus is our good shepherd, willing to give his life to protect us.
That is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at this passage is that it makes it absolutely clear that being one of Jesus’s sheep, or, being a follower of Jesus, being a Christian, is difficult and dangerous. There are wolves out there who will attack and scatter.
Christians have many critics, those who think we are fantasists, simply frightened of death, falling for a silly set of superstitious beliefs that help us get through the day, face our mortality and skate over the issues of real life. Much of this criticism might be summed up in the famous quotation from Karl Marx, ‘Religion is the opium of the people’. In other words, many think that religion is a ‘comfort blanket’ for those who cannot face reality.
What all this does not take into account is the fact that being a Christian is actually quite hard. I have preached many sermons about how we mistakenly think that everyone who met Jesus, everyone who was healed by him or forgiven by him then immediately lived happily ever after. It may be that ultimately they did live happily ever after but encountering Jesus, receiving healing and forgiveness from Jesus, meant radical change, living differently in the future – and that is always hard.
Added to this is the fact that some people come to faith as a result of a joyous conversion experience, but many come to faith through difficulty, pain and darkness. I began thinking about this particularly this week because on Tuesday the Old Testament reading at Morning Prayer was from Exodus 20. Most of that chapter is about God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, but when that has finished it says this in verse 21 ‘The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.’ It is not only Moses who finds God in the ‘deep darkness’, I have spoken to many people who have encountered God in the ‘deep darkness’ that we sometimes experience in our lives. In this Easter season it is important for us to remember that new life comes out of the ‘deep darkness’ of a tomb. Our faith is not about running away from real life to escape it’s challenges and complexity it is about walking into life, with all its challenges and complexities, knowing that even in the darkest places we go, God is in the midst of it and so there is always a way forward, there is always the possibility of new life, there is always hope. Not a kind of wishful thinking, blind optimism, but a way of prayerfully discovering creative ways forward, prayerfully discovering that generosity of spirit, grace and love, though hard times, sometimes involving real challenge and sacrifice, will always lead to new life, new ways of being and ultimately to fullness of life.
I am not sure how Christians have managed to get this reputation for being people who cannot face real life and so embrace a set of silly superstitious beliefs. A careful reading of scripture does not point to this – the life of Jesus certainly does not suggest being his follower will be easy. Being a follower of Jesus, being a Christian is not and never has been about running away from the complications, contradictions, challenges and sometimes the ‘deep darkness’ of real everyday life. It is about walking into life, real everyday life, believing that in the midst of the complications, contradictions, challenges and sometimes the ‘deep darkness’ of everyday life, we can discover God and by aligning ourselves with God, with the ways of God, we will discover how to live and even thrive through all our life experiences. By living this way we will, as John says in his gospel, have life and have it abundantly.
We know that being our Good Shepherd was dangerous for Jesus and that, following this metaphor, being Jesus’ sheep is fraught with challenge and danger. We believe that, because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, because of what happened on Good Friday and subsequently on Easter Day, the Good Shepherd walks with us. There is nothing that can happen to us, nowhere, not even a tomb, where we won’t discover God. So we can join with the psalmist in praising God and saying, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Psalm 139.11-12
Boundless Openness – The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
The Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 15 April (The Third Sunday of Easter), 10am Eucharist
Acts 3:12-19 Luke 24:36b-48
A couple of days ago, one of the Minster Community said to me, ‘I hope we’re going to hear about your sabbatical in your sermon on Sunday’. Well, that’s a little bit like someone saying they’d love to see your holiday photos, and two hours later regretting they’d ever been quite so polite! I know for a fact that the person in question wasn’t simply being polite, but I recognise that not everyone will be quite so interested, so I won’t go on about it too much. First, though, may I say how deeply grateful I am to all of you, and especially to my colleagues, for making it possible for me to be away for just over three months. I’m aware that my absence has added to their load, but it’s a mark of our generosity towards each other that we can make it possible for sabbaticals to happen. So, to Viv, Peter, Michael and Catriona: thank you so much.
Sue and I spent just under four weeks in India in January. Then we lived in Goathland for two months where I was able to write a book and I’m pleased to say it’s now in the hands of the publisher. The current title is Zen Wisdom for Christians and it’s due to be published later this year. One of the lovely things about being relieved temporarily of responsibilities in the Minster is that we’ve had weekends free, and we were able to use them to visit different churches and also to catch up with family and friends. That’s been a real gift. In Easter week we had a holiday in Skipness, just across the water from the Isle of Arran. On Easter Day itself we attended the Episcopalian church in Lochgilphead, where we had the liturgical works, and where we were made to feel extraordinarily welcome. I’ve had to revise completely my stereotypical view of the Scots as dour, miserable and stingy. Now it’s just Yorkshire people who’re like that!
One of the purposes of going to India, apart from seeing a number of people we’ve known there for nearly 25 years, was to visit a Zen centre up in the hills near Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu. We hadn’t been before and we enjoyed ten wonderful days there. The Zen Master is a Jesuit priest, Fr AMA Samy, a quite remarkable man who just exudes peace and tranquillity. He’s spent much of his adult life now practising Zen as a Christian, and Bodhi Zendo, which can accommodate some 50 guests at a time, is full all the year round. Many of the visitors are from Europe, especially Germany, but it attracts people from all over the world, mostly but not exclusively Christian, in search of a depth of spirituality which they find it hard to come across in their churches. What they’ve discovered is that meditation, being still, waiting in silence and being open connects them more profoundly with themselves, with others, with the world and with God.
AMA Samy is quite a prolific author and in one of his books he describes the characteristic stance of Christians who practise Zen as ‘boundless openness’. This openness is what lies at the heart of the Easter mystery. As far as Zen is concerned, AMA Samy says that the Christian must ‘learn to let go, to pass over, to die, into Zen and Zen tradition. Having died, he or she can come back to life’. For dialogue to be ‘genuine and life-giving, it must be a passing over and dying into the other…The heart of Christianity is discovered as boundless openness to the other…This is the mystery of Jesus Christ’.[1]
Boundless openness. That’s the message of Easter. It’s one we all long to know in our depths and it’s one the world needs to hear more than ever at this time. Because the truth is that boundless openness is primarily what God is. God is boundlessly open towards us as an infinitely limitless love. It’s what all human beings are in their hearts, too, created as we are in the image and likeness of God, but such openness, as well as being utterly exhilarating and liberating, is also scary, for it takes us out of our comfort zones. Boundlessly open love asks us to lose ourselves in love, to risk being hurt and rejected, ridiculed and misunderstood for the sake of love, but because of our fear we resist the truth of who God is and of who we are. We close in on ourselves and become closed to others and to God in the mistaken belief that somehow we shall be able to hang on to ourselves. In truth, this is the real death.
And this is precisely what the whole Easter story is about. Jesus is the very embodiment of God’s boundlessly open love. Such openness, however, was too threatening – largely, it should not be forgotten, for the religious establishment – so he was killed. His resurrection, though, demonstrates the boundlessly open heart of God, who, even when rejected, cannot help but go on loving. Boundlessly open love is who God is in God’s inner being as Trinity, a communion of love, in which each person of the Trinity is utterly transparent to the other. Boundlessly open love is who God is in relation to God’s beloved creation, which God longs to draw in to the very fullness of divine life without any barrier whatsoever. Boundlessly open love is God’s nature – and although obscured, it’s yours and mine, too. Easter summons us to open ourselves to God’s boundlessly open love and, in so doing, to be who we are.
This is what we hear in both readings today. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is depicted as almost rubbing the Israelites’ noses in the shame of rejecting Jesus and choosing a murderer instead. And yet, despite killing the ‘Author of life’, a fresh start, a new beginning is available to all. All that’s required is repentance, a turning to God in boundless openness, a God who doesn’t rub our noses in it but embraces and includes us in God’s boundlessly open love.
In the gospel reading the Risen Christ greets the eleven and their companions with a seemingly innocuous word: ‘Peace’ – ‘Shalom’. The gospels are at one in their portrayal of the disciples as being bewildered, confused and afraid, and this rings true, doesn’t it? If you’d just let your friend down in such a way that had led to his or her death, wouldn’t you be consumed with guilt, remorse and self-hatred. You probably couldn’t imagine the sting ever being removed. So even the news that Jesus was alive would be tinged with apprehension. Would there be blame, recriminations, a reckoning? No wonder they were disbelieving in their joy. Jesus greets them with, ‘Peace, be still, stop beating yourselves up, it’s all okay. My presence is the sign that the boundlessly open love which I am in every fibre of my being, and which led to my death, is actually indestructible, so open your hearts to it, lose yourselves in it, and come alive, for there’s nothing to be afraid of’.
Nothing to be afraid of? We’re living at a time when there seems a great deal to be afraid of. Chemical weapons, bombs in Syria, political instability on a global scale, an escalation of tension that’s led some to comment that we’re in a more dangerous state than we’ve been since the Second World War. The knee-jerk reaction to such circumstances is to close down, to harden the boundaries, to pretend that everything’s black and white, to behave in the very way that led to Jesus’ death.
The message of Easter is that the way that leads to life is to be boundlessly open – to the other, to difference, to change, to love. Of course it’s costly. That’s what the cross shows. But just imagine what this place and the whole Church would be like if we were truly open and inclusive, comfortable with rubbing shoulders and sitting next to people with whom we might disagree strongly and yet prepared to take the time and effort to find out what makes us all tick. Just imagine. We’d be a truly Easter people, boundlessly open in love to one another and to God, a sign of the presence of the boundlessly open God, whose love is indestructible. We’d be who we really are.
[1] See Samy, AMA (2009) The Zen Way, Dindigul: Vaigarai, p.121 and Samy, AMA (2010) Zen: Ancient and Modern, Dindigul: Vaigarai, pp.201-202.