Being a shepherd is dangerous – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)

 The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)

Sunday 22^nd 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.

The writers of our Scriptures have a lot to answer for – The Reverend Catriona Cumming

The Reverend Catriona Cumming

Sunday 15 April 2018 – 11.30am Matins

The writers of our Scriptures have a lot to answer for.

Or perhaps I should say: the compilers, editors and interpreters of our Scriptures have a lot to answer for.

I doubt many of them could imagine this society, and how different it might be to their own.

Concentrating on telling the story of what God was doing in their midst, could they possibly imagine a woman in holy orders, beginning a sermon with that phrase: they have a lot to answer for?

After all, their context, which framed the stories they told, is so different from our own. Yet their society has in many ways shaped ours, for better and sometimes, for worse.

Two issues stand out to me – their acceptance of slavery as a normal part of life, and the place of women within a deeply patriarchal society.

We may think that we have moved on – and in many ways we have – but this week’s news headlines show how deep the influence of those patriarchal worlds runs.

This past week saw the anniversary of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King. The work that he did, and that is continued by groups like Black Lives Matter, Poor People’s Campaign, and others, shows that the legacy of slavery is still with us, even before we consider the horrors of modern day slavery.

Earlier this week I was in a conversation about safeguarding, when the second issue was put front and centre. Historically, and even currently, one of the mitigating stories we as a society tell ourselves about sexual misconduct and abuse of power is this: a poor person – generally but not exclusively a man – cannot help themselves, faced with an alluring, perhaps unconsciously seductive person – generally, but not exclusively, female, and so fall into actions which are harmful to that person.

It is a story told throughout history, and its characters are infamous: Jezebel, Salome, and of course Eve.

Eve who begins it all.

Who has, to quote Nicola Slee:

“presented as the temptress and seductress, responsible for sin in a way not true of Adam”(Slee, Nicola. Faith and Feminism: An introduction to Feminist Theology 2003. Darton Longman & Todd, p, 18.)

The problem is that not only has Eve been seen as a femme fatale, seducing Adam into eating what he should not eat – she has passed on those traits, those seductive and frightening qualities to all women – so said many of the Church fathers.

John Chrysostom wrote:

‘What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment*, an evil nature, painted with fair colours?’

*I want to get that printed on a shirt.

For centuries, for a woman to be saved, she needed to be subject to a man, be that her father, husband, or priest.

Women, as uncontrollable, irrational beings, were deemed incapable of performing certain roles. And so, broadly speaking, the world was divided up into male and female spheres. Women had no place in public life, in politics or academia. Men, busy with their own affairs, left the private sphere, the family, to women.

This is a division men and women are still trying to negotiate.

The recent reports from major companies on the gender pay gap, tells us that we still have work to do.

So, why does this matter? Should we not just consign these archaic bits of scripture to history where they belong, and move on with our lives in the 21^st century?

Some think we should do precisely that. I don’t.

The stories in the Old Testament have important things to say, about who God is, and who we are in relation to God.

Looking back on the way these scriptures have been interpreted, shows us the struggles of women and men through the ages, to honour God, and to be faithful.

In critically appraising not only scripture, but the interpretation handed down to us, we can, by the work of the Spirit, not only identify with the struggles of women, and men, in times past, but also allow God to speak into our struggles today.

We can stand in solidarity with those women, and men, who stood out in a patriarchal society, and whose voices and motivations have been lost, or distorted by time, and bias.

We need to do this for all of scripture – not just the bits we find difficult.

This evening is the eve of the feast of the annunciation, when Mary was told that she would become the mother of our Lord.

If Eve has become the archetype of the femme fatale, Mary is the flipside of that archetype.

The pure, chaste, virtuous woman is also a strong narrative weaving its way through the Old Testament, into the Epistles, and Revelation.

Mary, in contrast to Eve, has been elevated, so much that it sometimes seems as if she can never have been human – so perfect is she.

For Christians who honour her, who ask for her help and intercession, she has been, is a lifeline.

But she, like her son, was fully human. Viewed with an awareness of the prevailing norms for women in her age, and for ages afterwards, HER act of obedience, of subservience to God’s will, was profoundly counter-cultural.

She was radically, physically, bodily obedient to God in direct contravention of societal expectations.

Through who she was she turned the world on its head. Through this woman, the world was transformed.

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

The writers of scripture have much to answer for. Thank God.