“Who are you, Lord?” – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

“Who Are You, Lord?”

May I speak in the name of the living God, who is our creator, sustainer and redeemer. Amen

What does it mean to meet the risen Christ — and be forever undone? For this morning we are being offered two seismic encounters with the risen Jesus: Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road and Simon Peter on the shores of Galilee. In both, we find a single terrifying truth: to meet the risen Christ is not to be affirmed but to be utterly undone and remade.

Saul’s first words when flattened by the blinding light are raw and trembling: “Who are you, Lord?”. Peter, meanwhile, when he realizes that the stranger on the beach is Jesus, throws himself into the sea – a reckless and almost desperate act. Both men, giants of faith, respond not with polished prayers but with confusion, fear, and vulnerability. Why? Because the risen Christ comes not to decorate our old lives, but to dismantle and rebuild them afresh.

When Saul is confronted on the road, he is, by his own standards, a success: “as to righteousness under the law, blameless”. His entire identity – religious, political, cultural – is founded on zeal for God as he understands Him. Yet Jesus says, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting”, and in that moment Saul’s world utterly collapses. All his knowledge of God,  all his mission, all his certainty  –  all of it exposed as enmity against the very God he thought he served.

Likewise, Peter, after his threefold denial, is confronted with a threefold question: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”. The questions burn; each time Peter must relive his failure. The risen Christ does not offer Peter a private absolution and a pat on the back. He insists Peter walk through the fire of truth before he can be entrusted again: “Feed my sheep.”

Karl Barth writes in Church Dogmatics, “Man must lose himself in order to find himself”. In both Peter and Saul, we see that exact pattern in action: the necessary disintegration of the old self to make room for the new. Resurrection is not the polishing of our existing lives but the beginning of something wholly other.

Paul would later write, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”. And yet we so often imagine conversion as a gentle invitation, a soft whisper. But not for Saul and Peter. Meeting Christ is a violent dislocation. It is a kind of death.

In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it with grim clarity: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” . Saul dies on the Damascus Road. Peter dies on the beach. But both rise again into new lives not their own: Saul as Paul, apostle to the Gentiles; Peter as shepherd of the broken body of Christ.

But we must not romanticise this death. Let us not forget that Saul is blinded. Peter is humiliated. Resurrection life demands first a profound unmaking. Jesus does not meet them in triumph; he meets them in collapse.

Even after their conversions, Saul – now Paul, and Peter would wrestle with the radicality of Christ’s call. Peter must learn to eat with Gentiles; Paul must learn that God’s power is made perfect in weakness. Their lives will be shaped by constant confrontation with the risen Christ, ever larger and more unsettling than they expected.

Fleming Rutledge, the American episcopal priest and author in her book The Crucifixion notes, “The living Christ is not a tame deity but the Lord of the cosmos who meets us always as one we do not know, and yet who knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves.” To meet him is to have every safe and manageable idea of God shattered.

“Who are you, Lord?” is not a question we will ask once. Its asking is the lifelong posture of the disciple. It is the humility that realises Christ is always more than we have yet seen. Peter’s restoration and Paul’s commissioning are not moments of closure but openings into ever deeper journeys of being undone and remade.

It therefore matters deeply that Jesus entrusts the care of his flock not to the unbroken, but to the broken — Peter, who failed; Paul, who persecuted. As Rowan Williams reminds us, in his book Tokens of Trust,  “The Church is what happens when people are overwhelmed by the act of God and have nothing left to be proud of.”

The Church is not a fellowship of the adequate. It is the living testimony that the risen Christ meets failures and zealots, cowards and persecutors, and transforms them into witnesses. This is our hope, our calling, and our peril.

And so we return to the beginning: What does it mean to meet the risen Christ? It means to be forever undone, and, in that undoing, to be remade for his glory.

This morning, Christ asks us:

“Do you love me?”

“Who are you, Lord?”

Our answers will not be tidy. They may be soaked in tears or faltered with doubt. But Christ does not seek perfection. He seeks those who are willing to be unmade, that he may fashion them anew and make them his own.

Amen.

“Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!” – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

Sermon for the Eve of the Feast of St George – 27^th April 2025

Alleluia Christ is risen. He is risen indeed Alleluia!

May I speak in the name of the living God who is our creator, sustainer and redeemer. Amen.

In December 2016, a suicide bomber attacked St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Cairo, killing 29 people – mostly women and children. Amid the wreckage, a young girl was spotted walking past the scorched sanctuary, clutching a small wooden cross. “She carries it every day,” said an elder of the church. “Her parents told her: If they come for you, don’t be afraid. Hold the cross tight. And remember who you are.”

She had seen such violence and fear, but what she held so tightly in her hand, and in her heart, was so much stronger: What she held was a witness.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

The prophet Jeremiah, all the witnesses named in tonight’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, St George, and the girl in the bombed-out wreckage, each were witnesses to the cost of faithfulness.

So, let me ask on this second Sunday of Easter: What is the cost of this faithfulness – and are we prepared to pay it?

This question is not a theoretical one. Certainly not for the Coptic Christians of Cairo. Not for Jeremiah the prophet, nor the martyrs in Hebrews, nor for St George for that matter. And not, ultimately, for us.

Yes, Easter is a season of joy – but resurrection isn’t the opposite of suffering. It is God’s answer to suffering. And it’s not a cheap answer either. The open wounds of the risen body of Jesus Christ testifies to that.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

In our first reading, Jeremiah’s faithfulness comes at great personal cost. “Why is my pain unceasing?” he laments (Jer. 15:18). Speaking God’s word has not made him triumphant; it has made him lonely. Yet he continues: “Your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jer. 15:16). Not joy as comfort, but joy as fire – a holy fire that sustains us when all else is stripped away.

The theologian Walter Brueggemann calls the prophet “one who carries in their body the anguish of God.” To be a prophet and witness is a painful vocation. But in Easter light, we know it is a vocation that is not in vain. For God’s anguish leads not only to the foot of the cross, but onwards to its ultimate destination, to the empty tomb, to resurrection light.

Because Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, we heard a roll call of faithful witnesses: some were victors, others were victims, each one, according to the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews “Of whom the world was not worthy” (Heb. 11:38). Yet none of them received the fullness of what was promised – “so that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:40). Resurrection does not mark the end of Jesus’ story, rather it marks the beginning of the Christian story, of our story.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

St George, whose feast day is tomorrow, stands among those witnesses. Not as some mythical dragon-slayer, but as a martyr. He was executed by the Roman Empire for refusing to renounce Christ. His legend has unfortunately been distorted into nationalism, but the truth is that St George died for a kingdom not of this world and his faithfulness cost him everything – but not even death had the final word.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Easter is the ultimate sign, the ultimate articulation that the grave is not the end. The cost of faithfulness is real – but the reward is not a medal or a certificate, it is the promise, the sure and certain hope, of the resurrection, of the life beyond death. The path towards resurrection does not bypass or avoid pain and suffering but it is a journey that ultimately leads us to joy.

Hebrews urges us: “Let us run with perseverance the race set before us, looking to Jesus” (Heb. 12:1-2). This is the very Jesus, who endured the cross so that we could all experience resurrection joy. The risen Christ bears his wounds, but he is no longer bound by them.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

As late German theologian Jürgen Moltmann puts it: “The resurrection of Christ is not the consolation for suffering; it is the protest of God against suffering.”

Easter doesn’t erase the cost of discipleship – but it declares death defeated, the silence of the tomb broken, and the wounds of Good Friday transfigured by the light of Easter morning.

This is the hope that sustained Jeremiah. This is the hope that gave St George courage. This is the hope held in her hand by that little girl in Cairo. And it is the hope that empowers us not just to endure, but to run the race that is set before us.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

So, what is the cost of this faithfulness?

It may cost reputation. It may cost comfort or security. For some, like St George, it may cost life itself. But the cost is never the end of the story. Because, as the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, Jesus endured “for the joy set before him.”

And that is that joy? It is not only a distant reward in heaven. It is the joy that breaks into the present – in every act of justice, every word of truth, every sign of love stronger than death.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

It is the joy of the risen Christ, who declares: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Easter does not remove the dragons we face – whether systems of oppression, personal loss, cultural hostility, or even our own demons. But it declares: they will not win.

Because Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

As Kathleen Norris, the American poet and essayist, writes, “Faith is not about being sure where you’re going, but going anyway.”  For to be faithful in Eastertide is to live with the wounds and still sing the song of joy. To run the race, with our attention firmly fixed on Jesus – not because the way is easy, but because he has already completed it, and travels with us still.

So we return to our question: What is the cost of this faithfulness – and are we prepared to pay it?

Are we prepared, like Jeremiah, to speak the Word that wounds us?

Are we prepared to be like the witnesses mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews, whose devotion to God was such that they chose to make the ultimate sacrifice rather than betray their beliefs?

Are we prepared, like George, to defy empire in loyalty to another kingdom?

Are we prepared, like the girl in Egypt, to hold tightly to hope when all around is violence?

Are we prepared, like Jesus, to bear the cross – and still speak of joy?

Because the world needs witnesses. The world needs prophets. The world needs resurrection people.

So, my friends, let us run the race together. Let us endure. Let us live out in word and deed the hope of the risen Lord, so that it may be said of us: “Of whom the world was not worthy.”

Because, Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine.” – Reverend Canon James Milne

At Choral Evensong one Sunday afternoon in March 1977, the Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral sang, as the Anthem, words spoken by Jesus to his disciples on the night before he died and set to music by the Romantic German composer Johannes Brahms as part of his German Requiem: “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful.” 

The hauntingly moving treble solo was sung by Robert Eaton, a thirteen-year-old chorister, who was known for his infectious laughter and for having incurred the wrath of the Master of the Choir for carving the name of his beloved football team – Brighton and Hove Albion – onto the lid of the Choir Practice Room piano. The preacher at Evensong that day was John Collins, who served as a Residentiary Canon of St Paul’s for some thirty-three years from 1948 to 1982, during which time he campaigned tirelessly against racial inequality, global poverty and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He was a founding member of the charity “War on Want” and the first ever meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was held in his home in Amen Court. What, you may ask, was the response of this radical cleric, never afraid to speak truth to power, to Robert Eaton’s singing? He ascended the pulpit, only to leave it a few moments later, having announced to a startled congregation that nothing he could possibly say could follow what they had just heard. In so doing he expressed what the congregation knew in their hearts, that they had experienced something extraordinary and life-changing though what, they did not know. What the Master of the Choir knew was that a private recording had been made of that performance to which he and others could listen, to recapture something of that beautiful moment.

In later life Robert Eaton moved to New York where he married and where, whilst working as a trader on the one hundredth and fifth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre on 11th of September 2001, he was tragically killed in a wicked act of terror. As his family and friends mourned his death, the sound of his voice, preserved on that childhood recording, broke into their grief: “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful. Yea, I will comfort you, as one whom his own mother comforteth. Look upon me; ye know that for a little time labour and sorrow were mine, but at the last I have found comfort.”

It is often suggested that when we worship time is bent. Both the past and the future break into the present and by so doing each is changed. For those present at Choral Evensong in St Paul’s Cathedral one Sunday in March 1977, the true meaning of that extraordinary moment finally became clear. It had been extraordinary, because Robert Eaton was singing his own Requiem and offering something by which his family and friends might in all their anguish and sorrow receive some small comfort and hope, as might many more besides for that recording survives to this day. You too can listen to it.

At Evensong last Sunday afternoon, the Sunday of the Passion, the Dean spoke powerfully of those who sing a love song for their beloved out of the deepest and most tragic grief and by so doing proclaim that love, not violence or terror, will have the final say. What song, I wonder, are we called to sing this Easter Day? Is it not the song of Isaiah fulfilled in Resurrection of Jesus: “Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Is it not the song of St Paul the Apostle, a man only too aware of his need for grace and transformation: “To someone untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

As Easter People we are called to proclaim (with every waking breath) that through the death and resurrection of Jesus there is joy and new life even if, for a time, there is sorrow and despair. We proclaim this song, not that we might blot out or belittle the anguish and sorrow of our world, but because our faith teaches us that these songs of comfort and hope are never lost but, once uttered, remain for ever to bring light in moments of darkness and to transform our sorrow. If words spoken in anger and through hate can haunt us years after they were uttered, how much more can words of comfort and hope reach into our present from the past enabling us to embrace the future trusting that the death and violence of this world will never have the final say? “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful. Look upon me; ye know that for a little time labour and sorrow were mine, but at the last I have found comfort.”

Our world, despite the many sorrows and challenges that beset it, is today being changed because our forebears, young and old, had the courage to be an Easter People proclaiming songs of comfort and hope. I pray that we may we have the courage to follow in their footsteps this Easter Day, for in so doing lies the transformation both of our present and of our future. Amen.

‘Let me sing for my beloved my love-song’ – The Very Reverend Dominic Barrington, Dean of York

Let me sing for my beloved my love-song…

Smadar Elhanan was the youngest of four children – the only daughter, much adored by her three elder brothers, and her parents Nurit and Rami. Her name, in Hebrew, means ‘the grape of the vine’, and is a reference to the beautiful poetry found in the Song of Solomon. In the best possible way, she was the ‘princess’ of her family, and lived a happy life in Jerusalem, until just after her 14^th birthday, when two Palestinian suicide bombers detonated their bombs in West Jerusalem’s equivalent of Oxford Street, killing five people instantly, including Smadar and two of her friends of the same age.

Speaking of that terrible day, her father, Rami, says, “You find yourself running crazily through the streets, going from one police station to the next, one hospital to the next, until eventually, much later in that long accursed night, you find yourself in the morgue and [a] terrible finger is pointing right between your eyes and you see a sight that you will never, ever, be able to blot out.”

Let me sing for my beloved my love song…

In the year that Smadar was murdered, another beautiful baby girl was born in Jerusalem: Abir Aramin. Her parents, Salwa and Bassam felt the same delight that had been true once upon a time for Rami and Nurit. Fast forward ten years, and young Abir was standing with some friends outside the gates of her school in Anata, a troubled district of East Jerusalem, well known for clashes with soldiers of the IDF. And, on this most terrible of days, one such soldier deliberately shot her in the head with a rubber bullet. A day or so later, she died in hospital.

Let me sing for my beloved my love song…

It is easy, of course, to sing a love song when all is going well. But Nurit and Rami and Bassam and Salwa will not be the last parents, in the Middle East, in Ukraine and Russia, or across this broken planet, who will have to sing the heart-rending love song of grief – of a grief of separation so awful and profound that it surpasses decent imagination.

Grief of this kind is stark and ultimate. Forty years ago, 39 soccer fans were killed and hundreds more injured at Heysel stadium in Belgium. A monument erected to those who died then has inscribed upon it Auden’s poem Funeral Blues – the poem made famous from its use in Four Weddings and a Funeral, which laments so bitterly the death of a beloved:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

At the start of Holy Week, on the day when we have heard already in our morning worship the account of the Passion and death of Jesus, we might feel it is apt for us to be ‘in tune’ with such grief. But I want to suggest this evening, that it is not enough simply to acknowledge the pain of such grief – the pain that is inherent in the eternal story of the Passion of Christ.

For our readings tonight issue us a challenge – a challenge demanding of us that not merely do we enfold the grief of the Passion into our lives, but that we work out what God is calling us to do with it.

In other words, we must ask what it means to say that, in Auden’s terms, you should put out every star, that you should pack up the moon and dismantle the sun and pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.  What does it really mean to say that nothing now can ever come to any good?

And the answer to that question sits in that most stark and pointed parable that was our second reading. A parable that infuriated its hearers and, despite their high calling, made them bent on revenge and murder. And what a strange parable to tell… a parable that is strange, and which is almost nonsensical…

The landowner leases his vineyard to some tenants, and they default on the rent, and abuse his servants. So, eventually, he sends his son, in the hope that he will be respected by the tenants in a way in which the servants were not. But what do the tenants say? Nothing about respect or honour – instead they say This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.

Let us kill him and get his inheritance….? Really?

While life in the 21^st Century has many differences to life in the First Century, the rules of inheritance were not that different. The tenants’ plan is nonsensical, as Jesus points out: the tenants will be put to death and the vineyard will be leased to other tenants. So what on earth are the tenants thinking? The idea would have been as ludicrous to the first audience of this parable as it is to us today. Why do the tenants think they have any chance of succeeding in this misguided, murderous scheme?

There is but one answer that can make sense of this parable – there is only one state of affairs that can underpin and account for the tenants’ seemingly bizarre behaviour – behaviour that is both murderous and suicidal. The tenants must believe that the landlord is dead.

The tenants believe the landlord is dead, and thus the inheritance is up for grabs if his son is killed as well. And given that this is a parable and not a news report, what Jesus is saying to the face of these religious leaders – who were already far from happy with his behaviour – Jesus is looking them in the eye, and saying to them, “You behave as if the God you claim to worship is dead.”

Because, if God is dead, then anything goes. And, if anything goes, then Auden is right, and nothing now can ever come to any good. Once you recognise that this underpins the logic of the tenants in the vineyard, you are hardly surprised that the scribes and the chief priests want to ‘lay hands’ on Jesus there and then.

And if we live in a world in which God is dead, then we live in a world in which the strongest and the richest and the loudest and the most bigoted will have the upper hand. And, if the world seems like that, what love song can you possibly sing then?

Isaiah’s prophecy of the vineyard is one of the most powerful passages of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is powerful in its condemnation of the behaviour of the people of Israel – the people who should have been God’s pleasant planting, but who produced bloodshed not justice. Isaiah is naming and shaming the people of God with a vision of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and of the Temple – a prospect, symbolically, that could even be said to represent the death of God. And what love song do you dare sing then?

And by the time Jesus is telling his listeners this most powerful of parables, have no doubt that the game, as it were, is up. He knows that he is in the end game, and that the death which he has predicted not once but three times is looming. This is a man who knows that those who act as if God is dead will have no compunction whatsoever about killing him. And what love song can you dare sing then?

Those who grieve tend to make good footage for journalists. Those who grieve with real dignity make good examples for the world around them. But those who use and channel their grief, not to deny it, but to turn it into a power for good, do more than that – they change the world around them. Which is why Rami, the grieving Israeli father, and Bassam, the grieving Palestinian father, joined a remarkable organisation called The Parents’ Circle, to ensure that the tragic deaths of their daughters would not be in vain.

In this extraordinary organisation, alongside others, both Arab and Jew, who have suffered similar bereavements, they speak together as a double act, a double act of people who the world would expect to hate each other, but who, instead, claim each other as blood brothers moulded together in a love that surpasses the evil which killed their precious children. They speak together of a love-song that says that in the Holy Land and across the world, it does not have to be like this. They speak together in a way that counters those who act as if God is dead, and which demands the listener to recognise that reconciliation and peace must have the final say.

As Bassam says: ‘The year Smadar was murdered, Abir was born.  But what I didn’t know when Abir was killed is that she and Smadar would keep on living.  And we will not let other people steal their futures.  Try shutting us up, it won’t work.  [Our] grief, the power of it…is atomic.  To live on in the memory of others means that you do not die’.

That is the kind of love song we should sing for those who are beloved. That is a love song that sings of God, even in a world where we it can appear that God is dead.

For Auden – well Auden would have been right. It would have been fine to put out the stars, and the moon and the sun. If loves does not last for ever, then turn them all off.

But the love song of Passiontide, the love song of Holy Week, our love song this week is a song we will sing and sing and sing – even when God will die in front of our eyes. For the love song of the washed feet and the broken bread of a Thursday night, the love song of the scorching heat and the agonized death of a Friday afternoon – the love song that gets sung as darkness covers the whole land – that love song will get sung again as the first lights of the newest dawn the world has ever known breaks on a Sunday morning.

What song will you sing for your beloved this week?

‘I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth’ – The Very Reverend Dominic Barrington, Dean of York

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I was pondering this morning whether the editor of the BBC Sunday programme had been disregarding that instruction from the prophecy of Isaiah – the instruction to disregard ‘the former things’. There was a fascinating account of an important local story, as you may well have heard yourselves, or you may have read in the local press. The Bar Convent has unearthed a quite remarkable treasure: an Arma Christi scroll, dating from around 1475. A scroll – one of only eleven now of its kind extant in the modern world – that is in essence a meditation on the ‘instruments of the Passion’ – Christ’s ‘arms’, if you like. A meditation on the instruments of the Passion and of the true image of Christ, associated with Saint Veronica mopping his face on the way to his crucifixion.

On the report of this in the Sunday Programme, Sister Ann, the redoubtable Superior of the convent, remarked that, in today’s world, ‘the Passion is the last place people want to go, and yet,’ she said, ‘it is the place we need to go.’

Rather interestingly, in terms of a juxtaposition, this item on the programme was followed immediately by a report about a woman called Paula White-Cain, who is the Senior Adviser on Faith to the White House. We heard a report about a video that she has put out through her ‘Ministries’ (she’s a very successful evangelical preacher in the United States), which was talking (I thought, perhaps, rather strangely, to my ears as a Christian) about the fact that this is time for ‘God’s divine appointment with you’, because this is ‘Passover Season’.

And on offer to the faithful in Passover Season are seven ‘supernatural blessings’ that are available to us. Blessings including the assignation of a personal guardian angel, as well as also having an enemy to fight your own enemies; very predictably, giving you prosperity; taking away sickness; assurance of a long life of increase and plenty; and ensuring that it is going to be an all-round special year of blessing.

There was, of course, a slight catch to this. Quoting a verse from Exodus 23, she, and those who work with her, are very keen that you don’t appear, to use the Biblical term, ‘empty-handed’, and for donations of a minimum of at least $1,000, not only will you be in line for the seven supernatural blessings – you’ll also get a 10” Waterford Crystal cross!

I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth do you not perceive it?

Possibly those two extraordinary stories from the Sunday programme are old hat – medieval piety and Pentateuchal pre-Christian practice. But if we wanted to see something new ‘spring forth’ this past week, it has certainly been on offer in the world of global trade, in the big announcement of ‘Liberation Day’ by Mr Trump. He, at least in modern times, is up to something new with the introduction of tariffs, and I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say that the whole world has perceived what he’s up to.

We all saw the great scoreboard. China hits us 67% – we’re hitting back with 34%. The European Union hits us with 39% – we’re hitting back with 20%. Japan hits us with 46%, we’re hitting back with 24%. He is nothing if not confident of the rightness of his course of action. If he were to paraphrase that prophecy from Second Isaiah that we just heard read, I’m certain that he believes that he will be giving ‘drink to his chosen people’…and doing so, quite possibly, ‘so that they might declare his praise.’

I was wondering, as I watched this news unfold and I looked at that poignant reading from the gospel, what Judas might have made of the economic blessings of Mr Trump’s tariffs, let alone the supernatural blessings on offer from Paula White-Cain’s ministries. I think he might have felt that he was in good company, because Judas, of course, is the ultimate ‘transactionalist’ (if that’s a word) – the ultimate transaction-maker of the New Testament narrative: Why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor?

Judas’s choice, Judas’ outlook is a ‘tariff outlook’. It’s framed with the language of economic value: ‘we could have done something better with this fruit of the work of 300 days labour – we could have done something better than squander it like this.’

‘We could,’ so he claims, ‘have done something more effective with the poor’. And, of course, as the evangelist allows us to understand in a side note, the real thing that’s going on for Judas isn’t so much the economic waste of the product, as the self-interest – the question of how you personally exact the best outcome. And, just possibly, that is something we can see in more modern-day transactionalist approaches.

Certainly, Judas’ outlook is in sharp contrast to that of Mary. She is not remotely interested in economic value or in what can be obtained by a transaction. If we ought to think about ‘doing a new thing’ and making sure we ‘perceive’ it, it is, I believe, Mary who is offering us the role model that is important as we enter the season of Passiontide. For she is, quite simply, giving a gift – an extraordinary, outlandish gift, if, indeed, that perfume was worth 300 denarii. And she’s giving it without any sense of receiving anything back in return.

That’s a gift that as, we enter Passiontide, is iconic – because it is a gift iconic of God’s relationship with the world. And the challenge, as we enter these last two weeks before Easter, is absolutely to make sure that we perceive it. So how, indeed, are we going to do that? How, indeed, do we manage to do this when we are surrounded by the world of transaction in so many ways, from global economics, to the self interest that we recognize when we look honestly in the mirror at ourselves.

How will we perceive anew what God is doing? What God has always been doing, and which is, in its way, always new? Well, I have a suggestion that those of us who claim to be disciples might want to take seriously in Passiontide. Next Sunday is, of course, Palm Sunday, and we enter then into Holy Week. And Holy Week is the crowning glory of Lent. And if Lent is the time to spring-clean our discipleship – our Christian commitment – our lives – then Holy Week is the absolute nub and focus of that.

With us next Sunday morning will be Canon James Walters, the Director of the Faith Centre of the LSE, and, to my mind, one of the best thinkers, writers and preachers in the Church of England today. Jim is with us not just on Palm Sunday, but throughout Holy Week, preaching for us day by day by day.

If you’ve looked at the notice sheet you’ll see that he is preaching on the title Bearing Fruit from the Seed that Dies – a reference to Galatians 5, and the fruits of the Spirit that are showered on the disciples of Jesus. The fruits of the Spirit that are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Those fruits of the Spirit will be set in the context of the last days of Jesus’ life.

I want to suggest, and I hope that people won’t take this the wrong way, that it might be just a little bit transactionalist if we turn up on Palm Sunday and sing ‘Hosanna’, and then live out an ordinary, normal week, and the next time we set foot in church is Easter Sunday, when we sing ‘Alleluia’ and celebrate the Resurrection.

That feels to me sightly transactionalist, because it doesn’t give us the chance to take advantage of what the Church offers in Holy Week – it doesn’t give us the chance to walk alongside Jesus, to recognize what it really means to say God is doing something new, and give us the chance to perceive it. To perceive it in the little services on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week, and in the great dramas of the liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and when we strike the first light of Resurrection in the darkness not of Easter Sunday morning, but in the darkness of the Saturday night.

In the world in which we live today, when transactionalism is so much the guiding stuff of secular life, I want to suggest we need to get our eye in and refocus if we are indeed going to perceive what God is up to – what it means to focus again on God’s grace, and God’s generosity as we walk towards Easter.

Really, it is about choices – about the choices disciples make. Do we chose the Arma Christi and Sr Ann’s advice that, actually, the Passion is what we need – or do we choose the great supernatural blessings that can be ours, complete with the 10” Waterford cross, if you’ve got $1,000 to spare?

Judas and Mary, in the story we heard read just now, they both make their choice. The curious thing – the coincidental thing – is that both their choices lead to a death on Good Friday. And, in one case, that death is the final chapter in the book. Judas dies, having realised the emptiness of his transactional life; Judas dies despairing of that 300 denarii he could have got his hands on, and the lack of value of thirty pieces of silver.

Mary’s choice leads to someone else’s death, for she had, indeed, bought that precious ointment for the day of his burial – but in her act of grace, iconic of God’s act of grace, that story does not end on Good Friday. This Passiontide, as I look in the mirror, I urge myself and I urge each one of you to make the right choice and perceive anew all that God is doing. Amen.

‘Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near’ – The Reverend Canon Timothy Goode, Congregational Discipleship and Nurture

“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near”

May I speak in the name of the living God who is our creator, sustainer and redeemer. Amen

As we pass the 5^th anniversary of the first Covid 19 lockdown, it feels apt that one response to our readings might be to ask, ‘Why do bad things happen, and why does God seem so slow to act?’

For in today’s Gospel, Jesus is also confronted with suffering and tragedy. Some Galileans have been slaughtered by Pilate; a tower in Siloam has collapsed, killing eighteen. The crowd has come to Jesus with the same questions we ask today: Why? Why them? Why now? Was it their fault? Was it divine punishment?

Jesus offers neither easy nor glib answers. Rather, somewhat surprisingly he instead offers an uncompromising warning: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5) and follows his warning by sharing the parable of the barren fig tree.

His words are razor sharp, urgent, and deeply unsettling. Instead of blaming others, Jesus demands that we look at ourselves. The real question isn’t why suffering happens – it’s what we are doing with the time we have left.

There is a great myth that pervades each generation. We want to believe that we are in control, that good people get rewarded and bad people get what they deserve. But Jesus blows this myth apart. The victims of Pilate’s brutality and the fallen tower aren’t singled out for their sins. Actions have consequences, tragedy happens, we live interdependent lives and none of us are immune from the changes and chances of life.

And we are living in deeply unsettling times. The ground which we inhabit no longer feels stable. The post war consensus is falling apart. Once trusted allies are no longer reliable. The values of integrity, honesty and equity are ridiculed as woke, whilst popularism, isolationism and self-interest are lauded. Our society feels broken, ill at ease with itself. Within our contemporary culture, we are witnessing a new arena, a virtual colosseum, for the playing out of these culture wars.

I don’t know if any of us have managed to see the quite extraordinary and deeply challenging and affecting Netflix series Adolescence. I would highly recommend it. It is not an easy watch as it uncompromisingly lays bare how the distortions of social media, relentless online bullying, male rage, and the objectification of women, are shaping young lives in deeply destructive ways.

In one stark narrative, the simmering anger and dehumanisation that begins online escalates into a tragedy: a young boy, poisoned by a culture that glorifies dominance and aggression, is accused of stabbing a young girl.

It reminds us that our digital age, with its isolating echo chambers and relentless pressure to conform to harmful ideals, is just one more arena where sin takes root and flourishes.

This modern horror compels us to ask, just as we have asked over the ages: Why do bad things happen, and why does God seem so slow to act?

We are living at a time when the very tools that connect us also amplify our worst instincts. Social media often rewards cruelty and fuels anger, much like the mental tropes we repeatedly employ when disaster strikes. There is always the risk that we retreat, look outside of ourselves for someone to blame, and in doing so convince ourselves that if we cast the fault on others, we might be safe, that we might somehow shield ourselves from similar fates.

But as the series shows, and today’s Gospel reminds us, this temptation digs deep down into our very souls. When we allow rage, dehumanisation, and objectification to go unchecked, we risk a present and future where tragedy is not an anomaly but a symptom of a society which has turned away from empathy and compassion.

In responding to the suffering and tragedy all around us Jesus warns: Stop looking at others. Start looking at our own lives. Christian discipleship starts with us. It starts with how we relate to one another.

St. Augustine puts it bluntly: “God had one Son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.” Suffering isn’t a divine scorecard – it’s a wake-up call. None of us have endless time. The question isn’t ‘Why do bad things happen?’, but ‘Are we are truly living as God calls us to live?’

Well, Lent is a season of repentance, where we seek to be attentive to God’s call on us.  Too often, we reduce repentance to a feeling of guilt or the words of a ritual. But biblical repentance – metanoia – means a complete reorientation of our hearts and minds towards God.

John Calvin – not someone I regularly quote – puts it this way: “Repentance is an inward matter, which has its seat in the heart and soul, but afterward yields its fruits in a change of life.”

C.S. Lewis, reflecting on repentance, wrote: “Fallen humanity is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.” True repentance is not a minor course correction – it is totally surrendering our ways to God’s ways.

The parable of the barren fig tree is call for urgency. Yes, the fig tree has been given time, but the window for fruitfulness is not indefinite. God is patient, but the focus of his patience is to lead us into action.

Isaiah in our first reading further draws us into the urgency of this call: “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near”.

Our world is full of fig trees that bear no fruit. We see them all around us. We see them in all political systems that perpetuate injustice, violence and oppression, in churches that turn inward instead of outward, in our own lives when we delay doing what we know to be just and right. We assume we have endless time, but Jesus is telling us otherwise.

The barren fig tree in Jesus’s parable stands as a symbol for all that is unfulfilled, all those wasted opportunities to act in love, justice, and righteousness.

But this parable is not just about warning – it is also about hope. The gardener pleads for more time: “Sir, leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilise it”. Here is the grace of God at work in both word and deed. God does not give up on us. He nurtures, tends, and calls us to growth.

“Everyone who is thirsty, come to the waters” says Isaiah. God’s call is not one of condemnation but of invitation. He does not want us to remain barren; he longs for us to flourish. But flourishing requires a response.

Karl Barth once wrote, “God’s grace is not exhausted in merely forgiving sin, but is the power which transforms us and makes us new.” The delay of judgment in Jesus’ parable of the barren fig tree is not an invitation to complacency but a gift of time for transformation.

So, why does God seem slow to act? Perhaps the better question is, why are we so slow to respond? We wait for justice, we wait for peace, we wait for renewal – but all the time God is waiting for us to respond, to act.

Jesus’ words are clear: the time for repentance is now. The time to turn back is now. The time to bear fruit is now. Not out of fear, but because to live in step with God is to live in the fullness of God’s grace.

So, may this Lent be the time when we finally stop prevaricating and respond positively to God’s call. May we turn to God, not just in sorrow, but also confident in the hope and redeeming grace of God. And by doing so, may we, through God’s mercy, finally become the fig trees that produce the good fruit that God specifically created us to bear. Amen.

‘Going to the other side’ – Canon Peter Collier, Cathedral Reader

Now, we even give them names – the most recent was Eowyn, the next apparently will be Floris. And we colour code them – yellow and red. And they can cause much disruption to our North Yorkshire lives, with trains being delayed and cancelled, roads being blocked by fallen trees. And they are most dangerous along the seacoasts, with the risk of people being swept away and drowned.

I am talking of course about storms, of which we seem to have more of them than before, and when they come they seem to come with a greater severity than before. But today is not about climate change, it is about a storm on a lake 2000 years ago.

I wonder if like me you know the names of places in the New Testament but are not very good at locating them, and knowing where they are in relation to each other. Much of the time of Jesus’ ministry was spent around the Sea of Galilee. That sea is in the north of Israel, about 65 miles north of Jerusalem. As a lake it was about 13 miles north to south and 8 miles east to west. So quite a sizeable piece of water. Nazareth where Jesus grew up was about 15 miles to the west of the lake. And Capernaum where Jesus spent a lot of time with his disciples was on the top north-west shore of Galilee.

And it was thereabouts, that in the weeks preceding our gospel reading today, Jesus had been travelling, on foot of course, healing, and teaching, with large crowds gathered round him. The crowds came from all over the region – some from the coastal area of Tyre and Sidon some 40 to 50 miles away. They came to hear what he said and to be cured of their diseases.

We heard in our reading that in the midst of all that, one day, he got into a boat with his disciples and told them that they were going over to the other side – that is to the east side of the sea – an area now known as the Transjordan – or then as the country of the Gerasenes or the Gadarenes. It had a predominantly Gentile population. To the Jews, the people who lived there were unclean, because as we know amongst other things they kept pigs, as the story was later to unfold and involve.

This was a significant moment because Jesus was now taking his message beyond Jewish communities. He had obviously had contact with Gentiles who came to him, such as the centurion whose son was ill, but now he is intentionally going into the territory of the Gentiles. He is going literally and metaphorically to the other side.

On the way, in the boat, Jesus fell asleep and I guess many of us know the story that follows quite well.

A gale swept down and they were all are in danger. The disciples woke him up in panic – “Master, Master, we are perishing” they cried out. Jesus woke up and stilled the wind and the waves, and there was calm. Jesus then turned to them and asked them “what happened to your faith?”

There is a fuller account of what was said in both Matthew and Mark. Mark records the disciples as saying: “Teacher don’t you care that we are perishing?” And Jesus replied: “Why are you afraid …”, literally: “Why are you so cowardly. Have you no faith?”

We think of a coward as a person who is not willing to face danger or difficulty. It is more than just being afraid, it is the mindset that always seeks to avoid difficulty. Jesus does not criticise them for being afraid, fear was natural in the circumstances, but he was touching on how they handled their fear. He is saying to them that fear and faith should go alongside each other.

Rather than “Lord – don’t you care?” the response might have been “Lord we are afraid, we could drown, but we know you can handle it!”

So how are we to apply this to our own lives and situations – after all the Bible is given to us not so that we can become theologians but so that we can become disciples.

There is a long-established tradition of looking at this story figuratively – seeing our circumstances as the storm around us, circumstances that could so easily overwhelm us and make shipwreck of our lives.

But there is a danger in that approach, if we simply say that if we cry out to God, whether without or with faith, God will still the storm and bring us back into calm waters.

Because we know it doesn’t work like that – Christ doesn’t always calm the storms in our lives; God doesn’t always intervene to take away our problems. Illnesses prevail. Family and close friends for whom we pray still die. The family fallout remains unresolved.

Yes, sometimes God does intervene and things do change unexpectedly and dramatically, but that in our day is the exception rather than the rule. It isn’t a matter of if we call on God to wake up and do what we ask to be done, God is sure to do what we ask.

After all, the route of our faith lies in that Lenten journey we are about to embark on, the journey to Calvary and the cross. Jesus himself with his sweat like drops of blood cried out that if it was possible the cup should pass from him. “Nevertheless, not my will but yours” is what he prayed. And so he journeyed to and through the cross.

So for us – we often have to go to the other side – to enter the unknown, the new. It might be moving to a new home, or a new job. But there are many lesser unknowns. And we are constantly facing the unknown. This next week, day by day, we don’t know what we might face.

There will be much that will be familiar and that we will know. And, of course, we prefer what is known because we have more control over it. But into the midst of the usual routine quite often there comes something different and unexpected. It might be an illness we contract. It could be the death of someone near to us. It might be something happening in our family that causes us difficulty and pain. It might be something in relation to our working life.

And as we go to the other side, and enter the new territory, the circumstances may suddenly seem overwhelming.

And we will find ourselves asking “where is God in all this?” We will identify with the disciples and their reaction as we ask – “Does God even know about it?” “Does God care?” “Is God asleep?” “Why is God letting this happen to me?”

And Jesus asks us whether in spite of our fear and whatever our feelings whether we will face into the danger or difficulty and trust him in and through the circumstances we are in.

He wants us day by day, whether in our usual territory or when we are going to the other side, whether we are facing the known or the unknown, increasingly to learn to trust in His overarching, undergirding, all surrounding love for us. It was for this reason that he came – to reveal to us the depth and length of God’s love for us. A love in which we can always find shelter and safety.

Amen.

‘The language of birth’ – The Revd Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

May I speak in the name of the blessed and Holy Trinity, One God in three persons.

I’m not entirely sure that St Paul and I would have got on. He is a fascinating figure. All that fire and passion of persecution dramatically changed and redirected to establishing the early church. While he famously had his ‘Damascus road’ conversion, I’m not sure that it altered his personality. The skills he used to persecute Christians across Israel became the very same skills he used to empower a network of emerging churches. He brought the same intellect and debating skills to defend the Christian faith as he’s used to undermine it.

The reason I say that we might not have got on lies in his attitude towards women. While there’s the spectacular statement of equality – ‘in Christ there is neither male nor female’ – there is other stuff about wearing hats in church or, worse still, speaking in church. Today many men are wise enough to know that comparing any experience to childbirth is likely to get short shrift. I’m not sure whether St Paul had ever seen a child being born (perhaps he had) but he is happy to compare his role in birthing new churches with the travails of pregnancy.

In our second reading Paul writes to the Galatians:

My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, I wish I were present with you now and could change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

Well, it’s a nice idea, but I’m not sure St Paul knew what it is actually like.

But I acknowledge that he did know something of the blood, sweat and tears involved in growing churches and the deep frustration that Christians often seem to have a hard time agreeing with one another.

There’s a reason that the time of giving birth is called ‘labour’ and, like other aspects of life, doing anything good can be costly and painful. St Paul certainly found it hard labour to form Christ in people so that their spiritual birth would lead to healthy growth. Sometimes I think that there are Christians so fixated on the birth bit that they forget that birth always leads to growth. Being ‘born again’ must mean that we embark on a journey to develop and change.

Despite my reservations about it, the metaphor of childbirth has merit. When we are born we enter a new community, and we share in the life of a new family and friends. Christ is formed in us as we learn what it means to be part of the church, and how we mature to serve God in one another. Perhaps the most exciting thing I find in the Gospels is that the Church often becomes the community for those who have been excluded elsewhere. Time and again Jesus welcomes the stranger; the wounded; the sick; the mad; and the maimed. The people pushed out into the wilderness and laden with the sins of others. It is for these – it is for us – that Jesus says ‘draw near with faith’.

Many years ago George McLoed, founder of the community on Iona in Scotland, is said to have written the following words of invitation to communion:

Come, not because you are strong, but because you are weak.

Come, not because of any goodness of your own, but because you need mercy and help.

Come, because you love the Lord a little, and would like to love him more.

Come, because he loves you, and gave himself for you.

This is the community into which St Paul and all apostles, ancient and modern, invite everyone to be born into – born into a new community of faith. Not because of virtue or strength, but because God already loves us and calls us.

The Catholic poet Elizabeth Jennings once wrote of seeing the “priest as midwife and as mother”, which is odd because the Catholic Church has an all male priesthood. Yet, as with St Paul, perhaps it is only the language of birth that can describe the radical power of what God in Christ creates in each of us.

If the church fulfils its calling, this is our great labour of love, to open our doors to all those in this life who, simply and solely, know their need of God.

‘The best has been saved for the last’ – The Revd Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

Evensong Epiphany: The best has been saved for the last.

One of the scariest, but also most beautiful, experiences in my life was meeting an elephant.

We were on safari in the Serengeti, safe in a vehicle, and I had every confidence that the driver and guide knew what they were doing. For a moment the jeep came to a halt. To my left, out of the undergrowth, emerged the biggest elephant I’ve ever seen. It was HUGE.

I could also see, down below it, two young elephant calves, and I knew that mummy elephant was going to be very protective of her offspring. So, as you might imagine, I was both impressed and afraid. We might have been in a modern and safe vehicle, but we were no match for this behemoth.

Elephants have a long history in their contact with human beings.

You might know the parable of the blind people and the elephant. This story was first recorded about 500 years before the birth of Christ and features in several world religions.

In other accounts it is a group of sighted people who encounter an elephant at night.

Whatever the version of the tale, the message is the same. The people who find the elephant cannot see and each touch a different part of the beast. From the tail, to tusks, to toenails and the animal’s hide, each person gives an account of what they believe must be true for the whole of the creature. “It is a hard, bone-like animal, unyielding and sharp”. Or “it is made entirely of leather, rough to the touch but also soft and mobile”. And so the story goes on.

The people only begin to move towards the truth about the elephant when they have an ‘epiphany’. An insight, or moment of change, that leads them into greater understanding. The epiphany comes when they start listening to one another and piece the experience of each person into a tapestry of the whole.

Tonight, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. In Christian theology it’s the time when the identity of Jesus begins to be revealed. From the Magi in their distant pilgrimage from the East, following a star, to the miracle of the water-become-wine. The stories of this season offer us glimpses of Jesus so that we might deepen our faith in him. Just as the disciples, the Magi, and the people around him began to grow in their understanding of Jesus, we are also called to make that journey.

The Epiphany for the people encountering the elephant was the dawning realisation that they didn’t have the full picture. It’s a humbling and complicated realisation. For us it means that we can’t go around haranguing other people about the Jesus we’ve found – because we only ever have a partial picture of who Jesus is. If we want to learn more, to expand our understanding and love of Christ, then we need to listen to other people.

There’s that lovely moment in the reading from John when the mother of Jesus tells the servants to ‘do whatever he tells you’. The only way they can do that is by listening to him. As the Church we listen to Jesus in many different ways, from prayer to reading the Bible. But we also hear Jesus speaking through those who are also trying to be faithful disciples, and for that reason, we need to listen to one another.

When the prophet Isaiah urges the people to ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song’ it implies that new experiences, new epiphanies, should develop and renew the worship offered to God.

Isaiah invites the people to ‘Lift up your eyes and look around’. Forever looking inwards and to the past can limit our openness to new epiphanies. I appreciate that this can be frightening and unsettling. Hording our self-certainty can be far more appealing than setting off to a distant land; or listening to other people’s experience of God; or even saying in our prayers: ‘Lord, teach me new things’.

Part of the promise of Epiphany, thankfully, is that God doesn’t leave us alone. Isaiah says ‘yes’, there will be times when the land is darkened, and ‘thick darkness’ covers all the people. And this doesn’t sound very promising. But God always encourages us to lift up our hearts and have faith that beyond this darkness, beyond the difficulties in which we find ourselves, there is a wonderful future that we can hardly imagine. From empty bottles and a wedding party about to end in embarrassment, the situation won’t just be rescued – it will be transformed into more than the best we could ever imagine. The season of Epiphany invites us to ‘lift up our eyes’. To listen to the experiences of others who are on a journey of faith, and to grow in our understanding of God. And no matter how dark the days may seem, God promises that in this season, against all expectation and convention, the best has been saved for the last.

“Mary the first theologian of the Incarnation” – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

Many of our Christmas cards might make birth in the first century seem a holy, simple and painless event. But, as we know, birth then – and birth in the Holy Land now – is far from safe or certain. Mary had a lot to think about.  

According to Matthew, Joseph wanted to dismiss her quietly; for her own good. I wonder how often down the ages, and still today, men have discarded their responsibilities, telling themselves: ‘it’s for her own good’.  

By contrast, in the Gospel reading we have just heard from Luke, Mary is portrayed as a confident young woman, travelling in haste to visit her also-pregnant cousin, Elizabeth.  

It is a meeting of great joy and affirmation when, in Elizabeth’s womb, John the Baptist leaps at the sound of Mary’s greeting. Theologically it’s as though John’s work has begun already, enlivened by the approach of Jesus – stirred into action in the presence of the one whose way he is destined to prepare.  

Of course, it is not uncommon in the later stages of pregnancy to feel the movement of a baby. For a mother it is a deep and somehow unexpected experience. A reminder of human life hidden within a human life. Almost 30 years ago, when I was pregnant, I would sometimes feel my child move while standing at the altar. I was aware of the life within in me, while I held in my hands the spiritual life Christ offers to each of us. 

We mustn’t think of Mary’s pregnancy as some sanitised and celestial form of an Air B&B for the Divine. It’s fine that the Orthodox churches often talk about Mary as ‘God-bearer’.  But if it is a Christian doctrine that the conception of Jesus was highly unusual, nothing suggests that Mary’s pregnancy was strange or unexpected. Consequently, I believe that Jesus wasn’t some divine spark sheltered in Mary’s womb. The incarnation includes the physical development of Jesus through all the usual stages of human change and growth. To put it more plainly – it means that Jesus was being co-created. 

It is this which brings God closer to us than we are to ourselves. Not an external, exterior, distant God – but God in Christ who has relinquished power in order to serve and to save.  

For that reason we must never forget the physicality of our faith at this season as the theologian John Bolland writes: “the Word becomes flesh so that the Word might be more easily – and literally – grasped: skin on skin, warm to the touch, pulsing with life”.   

Jesus is born as one of us. This is the starting point for the whole of the Christian faith. 

The saviour who passes through the broken waters and the blood of birth to bring new life to the world. It is painful and messy and traumatic – as many births are – but the Word made flesh is the spiritual life for all who put their faith in him.  

Our Gospel this morning ends just before Mary offers her magnificent, moving and revolutionary hymn of praise to God: the Magnificat. It is a song of reversed fortunes, where the proud are defeated in the imagination of their hearts, and the powerful are pulled from their thrones. But more than that, it is a triumphant declaration of a woman doing, and being, and speaking her own work of theology. Because of the outrageous hope that God has spoken into the life of Mary, Mary is liberated to praise a God who chooses what the world considers weak, in order to shame the strong. In recent weeks I have been moved by several examples of courageous women who have refused to be silent. Not least by the extraordinary, astonishing, and impressive Gisèle Pelicot. 

As we approach Christmas, we might be tempted to look upon Mary as the vessel of God’s salvation. The one chosen to carry Christ to birth. But Mary is so much more than that.  

She is the first theologian of the Incarnation. The first to perceive and understand the revolutionary change which God is bringing to the world. The first to worship and adore the child whose greatest desire is to lift up the lowly; to scatter the proud; and to empower the silenced to speak. 

‘The Upside-Down Kingdom’ – Canon Peter Collier, Cathedral Reader

May I speak in the name of the one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So we come again to the year’s end, the liturgical year, which means that today we are celebrating that Christ is King.

My first experience of monarchy was in 1957 – I was 8 years old, the Queen came to Hull and amongst the places she visited was a children’s home with which my father had some connection, and so we were there beside the steps as she went up into the building – almost touching distance. There was great excitement. Later in the day we went out to the village of Paull, beside the Humber estuary to watch as the royal yacht Britannia made its way out to sea to take the Queen on a state visit to Denmark. As you may gather it is a memory that has lived with me vividly ever since.

Some of you will have been here when the Queen visited York – perhaps in 1988 when she formally reopened the south transept after the fire, or perhaps when she distributed the Maundy money in 2012. Some of you I know were here on one or both of the King’s recent visits. Some of us had the privilege of being introduced to him. All these experiences shape our view of monarchy.

I know there will be different views amongst us today about monarchy. I wonder what is your image? According to Wikipedia there are 43 sovereign states that have a monarch as their head of state – most now have restricted powers, limited by their country’s constitutions, but there are still a few, a handful, where the monarch has absolute power. I expect many of you are enjoying the new series of Wolf Hall where we see the Henry VIII style of kingship wonderfully played out by Damian Lewis. Now there was a king. “off with her head”, meant the head rolled.

And Pilate had that sort of power – in his case it was power delegated from the emperor – but still power to decree life or death – no appeals, no stays, no convention on human rights there.

And he had all the other trappings of absolute power – a palace, wealth on display, all the resources he needed, and armed soldiers to enforce his bidding. That’s what kingship meant to Pilate.

And now he has been told that this man who is produced in front of him in chains claims that he too is a king.

And they have a discussion about kingship.

It is striking that the place in the gospels where this discussion about kingship takes place is not at the transfiguration, nor the resurrection nor the ascension, nor any other place where glory is on display. No, it is in the shadow of the cross. Jesus is a prisoner, accused of treason and facing a death sentence.  And there he has a discussion with Pilate about whether or not he is a king and, if so, what is the nature of his kingship.

What Jesus says about his kingdom – is that it is not from here; it is not of this world.

How can Pilate be assured of that? “Well” says Jesus “if it was a kingdom like the kingdoms of this world, like your kingdom Pilate – then my followers would be fighting to protect me from you because that is how kingdoms operate in this world”.

That was true then and it has been true ever since.

Earlier this year I read Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which takes us from the Roman conquest to the middle of the 8^th century. Covering the Anglo Saxon period when there were several kingdoms on this island. And I could not believe the number of battles that there were between various kings, often between people who were blood relatives.

Only last weekend we were remembering those who died in the two world wars of recent memory.

And in addition to the warring kingdoms of nations we now need to add the corporate kingdoms of business and enterprise. They also have real power in this world, power which they use to get yet more power, as they build their brands and their businesses in competition with one another.

So whether it is clans, tribes, nations, corporations – all under their kings wage war of one sort or another – it is all about conflict, about winners and losers.

Jesus says to Pilate – that is not what my kingdom is about. You want to know what it is about – well it is not about conflict but about truth. That’s what I came for – to testify to what is ultimately true. And my followers are those who listen to me to get that truth.

The truth which Jesus spoke about again and again is counterintuitive to the received ways of doing things – basically it is about turning the world upside down. In Acts 17 we read that when Paul and Silas went to Thessalonica it was said “these people who have been turning the world upside down have now come here”. And what lay at the root of that?” As the Thessalonian mob said “they are saying there is another king named Jesus”.

His mother Mary when told of his coming also spoke about things being turned upside down, about the God who looked upon her lowliness and who would thereafter scatter the proud, put down the mighty, send the rich away empty, and who would lift up the humble and meek and fill the hungry with good things.

Jesus himself often spoke in ways that were counterintuitive –

About greatness – he said whoever is humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

About leadership – he said it was about washing feet, and about service.

And as to how you should respond to being wronged – you should forgive – How much should we forgive each other – is it as much as 7 times? – “no” he said, “70 times 7’.

And so we could go on.

None of this makes sense by the standards of the kingdoms of this world, but it is what God’s kingdom is about. And when you hear it and hear about it and when you see it, you know it makes sense. You know it is the truth about how we should be living in this world.

But it is a challenge to all those received ways of working, and if you challenge the status quo of the powerful, they will try to silence you.

And for Jesus being true to that kind of kingship led to the cross.

Of course the ultimate truth is that it will not always be like this. One day he will reign in power. Daniel looked forward to that day as we heard in our first reading.

It spoke about one like a human being, or as some translations say “the Son of Man”, coming with the clouds of heaven, being presented to the Ancient of Days. “And to him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”

Whilst that is then, that is not now.

Now we are still in this world, some of us have had and some of us do have positions of authority and so have power over other people; the expectation we have grown up with and that others have is that we can use that power to achieve what we want to achieve. And of course as we have been reminded in the last couple of weeks any abuse of power in the church can be so damaging. This morning, on this Feast of Christ the King, Jesus challenges us to live counterintuitively and counterculturally in his upside down kingdom.

Of course there will also be those here who have been on the wrong end of the exercise of power and authority. And for those there is real comfort in this gospel account too. We know that King Jesus has been there. And as his followers we are one with him – or you might say he is with us where we are – whether misunderstood, rejected, accused, powerless, or abused. He knows it, he gets it, and through his resurrection life and his transforming love can change our lives beyond measure.

Amen.

‘The Heart of Faith’ – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

When I am in the Minster, or just walking past it on the outside, I often hear words of admiration. “What an amazing building!”; “How did they build that without a single computer!”; “Look at the glass – it’s so beautiful!”. Perhaps those who have been coming here for several decades stop being awed by this magnificent structure – but I doubt it.

No matter how often you see it, it is always impressive. And no matter how well anyone thinks they know the Minster – every nook and cranny – we all, still, discover new things.

Big buildings, especially big churches and cathedrals, are designed to make us catch our breath. To speak in the materials of this world about another world and a different Kingdom.

To lead us to think beyond the materials from which they are made and to glimpse the glory, the peace, the splendour and the light of what is yet to come.

At the start of today’s Gospel, the disciples of Jesus are impressed by the Temple. Perhaps, like the Minster, the fact that people could bring together such a weight of things was almost beyond belief. “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings”. However, Jesus isn’t impressed. He knows that all kingdoms and empires come to an end. And, when they do, all their splendour turns to dust.

Later, from the Mount of Olives, the sight of the Temple still dominated the view of Jerusalem. A small group of the disciples are eager to know when this destruction will take place, and what will be the sign that it’s about to happen. Jesus answers that it will come, but not necessarily when we think it is due. The trouble we see around us in the world are the ‘birth pangs’ of what is to come.

As we know all too well, conflict and trouble have always been part of the sorry history of humanity. We long and pray for peace; but live alongside the reality of conflict. We all strive, as much as we can, to offer our small contribution to make the world a better and more loving place. That’s our calling and our mission, no matter how little we think we can achieve. We must “seek peace and pursue it”.

Today we will be baptising Ben into the faith at whose heart is the peace of Christ. It is this peace which we are called to seek, and to live out in our lives. This is partly why I love the heart that is depicted in stone and glass in the West window of the Minster. You can look round and look. In the vastness of this building something as human, and as hidden as a heart, is given pride of place. As if to say, no matter how impressive the building, God’s temple is found in the steady beat of a faithful heart. In lives which, even when these stones are turned to dust, are destined to dwell in immortality.

We have seen in the last few days how the Church can fail, all too easily, to put at its heart the love; care; compassion; and wisdom, the world should expect. This failure comes at a cost which is paid by the victims and survivors of abuse. Splendid buildings are not enough to safeguard the lives God loves, and that we – too often – have harmed. To change requires a determined heart, and the tenacity not to ignore the voices and signs of injury.

In a moment in this service Ben’s Parents and Godparents will be asked a very simple question:  ‘Do you turn to Christ?’. To turn means to set out in a new direction, and to follow Christ into all the mess and joy that life brings. We all know that life seldom unfolds in the ways we anticipate. We don’t know what the future will hold for Ben. What we do know, is that Christ promises to be there with us. In happy times and challenging times. To stir our hearts into life and know God’s love deep within our being. It is because God loves us that baptism is given as an unconditional sign of blessing. That through its waters we are born into a new community which has – and will – change the world for the better. It is this faith and hope which is the light carried in the heart of each and every person who comes to be baptised. It is the love which alone will last in both this world, and the next.