Turning aside – Revd Dr Canon Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Preacher: Revd Dr Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Title of sermon: Turning aside, A Homily for the Solemn Eucharist on Ash Wednesday
Readings: Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Date/time/service: Wednesday 2 March 2022
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it.
But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now that I must give all that I have
to possess it.
Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
Not my words but those of RS Thomas, from his poem The Bright Field. This poem captures in words the image of the sun breaking through a dull welsh sky, lighting up a lowly field- a sight so enchanting that it calls us to turn aside and look and absorb that moment of glory being revealed. Brown clay and soil and earth and dust is elevated to take on the mantle of a priceless gem, a pearl of great price, a treasure, in a landscape of gilded furrows.
That idea of turning aside and of turning, is a pertinent one for us today. Perhaps, as we race through life and we hurry on to our receding futures and hanker after our imagined past, we fail to see Gods’ light breaking through around us and within us.
Far from turning aside we rush onwards at speed, hurrying, hankering, caught up in the pace which the world sets for us, constantly ‘ON’, always doing, running, speeding, sending, self-obsessing, oblivious to small miracles coming to birth all around us, failing to take time for the things that matter, not hearing the voices that need to be heard, not noticing the hungry, the naked, the afflicted.
What if life was about turning aside? What if we made a conscious decision daily to turn, to turn towards Christ, and be faithful?
What if we made some effort to turn away from ourselves, and have eyes and hearts open to noticing, perceiving, taking things in, being observant about the world and its needs? Putting others first, making time to stop, and wait, and seek-out God’s presence and see the light breaking through?
What if life was about turning aside? What if life was about turning away from sin, from all that mars God’s image within us, and turning towards Christ? So that we might be strengthened to re-build, to repair, to heal, to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, so that the fast that we choose goes deeper than a mark on our forehead?
We are offered the chance to turn aside for a while- recognizing our mortality, understanding where we have come from and where we are going, coming to appreciate the preciousness of life itself: from dust we come and to dust we shall return. How then shall we use this gift of life in between? How will we honour this life in those around us? How will we work for this life in a world which constantly tries to diminish it through prejudice, hatred, violence, and now war?
During Lent, day by day we commit ourselves to use the gift of life we have been given, the life between the dust and remember that the dust from which are all made, and the dust to which we will return- is indeed holy ground.
We are called to turn aside and take a moment to pray, so that even in the dust and dirt there may be hope and light, even in the rubble of a building, in food scarce and yet shared, in underground shelters, in the cries of refugees, we pray that there may yet be hope and light. In our weeping world, we pray that the light will break through and we may notice it when it does.
Instead of hurrying on to a receding future, instead of hankering after an imagined past- instead of being oblivious to all that is around us, we are all being called to turn aside and through the brown clay and earth and soil and dust, to notice the treasure before it’s too late.
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.
Amen.
Don’t worry – Revd Maggie McLean, Canon Missioner
Preacher: Revd Maggie McLean, Canon Missioner
Title of sermon: Don’t worry
Date/time/service: Sunday 20th February 2022 – 4pm Choral Evensong
I’ve always felt there’s a slight contradiction in our second reading tonight. Jesus tells his hearers not to worry about tomorrow. One example he gives is to consider the grass of the field. Grass which flourishes today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven. I think if I was the grass I might be a little bit worried about tomorrow!
It’s always easy to say ‘don’t worry’, especially when the worry isn’t ours. Sometimes something makes us anxious and we seem to have little choice but to worry. The people of the Ukraine, and the rest of us, understandably worry about what tomorrow might bring. In the past couple of years in our world it seems that there has been no shortages of things to worry about. Shortages of other things – from toilet rolls to petrol – but a never ending supply of anxiety.
For me the sense of our second reading relies on its relationship to the first reading. In Genesis chapter 1 huge things are taking place. A barren and lifeless world is blessed with light. Water appears and then dry land rises out of it. Over the course of time vegetation appears, great beasts of the sea, animals and birds, and then, late in the day, human beings are created. All this activity of creation is crowned on the seventh day with rest. Just when the story feels as though it’s about to begin, with Adam and Eve set in the garden, God stops. Everything stops. There is rest. Shabbat.
It is this rich cast of creation to which Jesus looks when he tells us not to worry. The birds matter – and without worrying about it, they are fed. The flowers of the field have great colour and vibrancy and splendour – but these aren’t things they think about. This is simply what is.
For Jesus worry is what robs us of the moment. Today we live in a world that can appear driven by worries about what to eat; what to drink; what to wear. A whole advertising industry runs on our dissatisfaction with the things we have. Using all the arts of human psychology and appeal, we are encouraged to be unhappy with what we have and to aspire for something new; better; bigger; richer.
Our culture of dissatisfaction comes with a cost for all of us, perhaps especially the young. It is impossible to think that there is no connection between image-based social media and the lifestyles and anxieties of younger people. Too often it is believed that ‘image is everything’. Both directly and indirectly we are encouraging people to be dissatisfied with how they look and to buy the things that claim to improve our appearance. It is true that this has always been a part of life, but there can be no doubt that it is entering into our lives in ever more subtle ways.
Thankfully there is a counter narrative to all this hype. People whose appearance doesn’t fit with the dominant standards of beauty are challenging views and attitudes. However, the pressure to conform to accepted ways of looking continues. In truth we can all feel anxious about fitting in, looking the right way and wearing the right things. It’s part of human nature – but also a part that the advertising industry knows and exploits. You tend not to sell very much if your main message is that people are fine as they are.
Time and again Jesus spent time with people who didn’t fit in. Whether it was healing the servant of an enemy officer or being touched by a woman who was haemorrhaging, Jesus kept company with the outsiders. This welcoming and including is a hallmark of the Gospel and a challenge to the usual ways of doing things.
One of the most exciting things about the Church is that anyone can join. There’s no threshold of beauty or intelligence, skill or ability. All it takes is a response to the invitation of Christ to ‘come and follow me’. All that should make us fit in, is the response to that call – we don’t need to be anything else to claim our place in the Kingdom.
Little wonder that our Gospel carries the assurance that we don’t need to worry. In contrast to all the striving and restlessness of trying to fit in, Jesus tells his hearers to be still and reflect on the beauty of the world in which they live. A world in which birds and flowers are simply ‘themselves’, being what God has created them to be – giving no thought for tomorrow.
In our age, we know that there are things which require preparation and planning. Most of us can’t just get up tomorrow and assume everything will be fine. But I think there’s a difference between preparation and anxiety. We need to commit our plans to God as much as the worries of a particular day. We need to find our ‘sabbath’ in the busyness of life so that we can remember that we are in God’s hands.
As we draw nearer to the start of Lent it might be a good idea to spend some time praying about God’s acceptance of our lives. To be reminded that we are loved and wanted and to reject the idea that there is some further level of acceptability we need to achieve. To be still and know that God never rejects our difference; our uniqueness; our life.
Amen.
Racial Justice Sunday 2022 – Revd Maggie McLean, Canon Missioner
Preacher: Revd Maggie McLean, Canon Missioner
Title of sermon: Racial Justice Sunday 2022
Date/time/service: Sunday 13th February 2022 – 11am Choral Eucharist
“He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.”
Thirty years ago, I was doing my curacy in a church in Bedford. For the people of that city there were very different ways to think about this parish. Depending on your point of view, it was either a) a vibrant multi-cultural community or b) the wrong side of the railway line. For some people an exciting place to live and for others, different; dangerous; unknown.
If we are honest, we can all find the unfamiliar unsettling. There’s a human tendency to seek the familiar and reassuring. Not for everyone, but certainly for many people, both family and friendship circles can look very much the same. Yet when we gravitate towards this familiarity we also deny ourselves rich opportunities to learn and to grow. In Bedford I made friendships that have lasted over the decades and given me insight into the experiences of people with backgrounds very different from my own. Friends whose parents came in the Windrush generation, answering the UK’s request for workers.
Most churches did not make welcome the devout Anglicans who answered this call. It was suggested to people that they would be more ‘comfortable’ somewhere else. Congregations that would have been energised with new life chose instead to close the door on difference. To understand this I cannot commend enough the book ‘Ghost Ship’ published in 2020. Written by a parish priest, A D A France-Williams, it tells the often harrowing, frightening and true accounts of what it means to be black in the Church of England.
Our Gospel reading this morning begins with a seemingly innocuous detail. Having spent the night up a mountain in prayer, ‘He came down with them and stood on a level place’.
‘He came down with them and stood on a level place’.
Getting to be with Jesus isn’t supposed to be difficult. When you read what France-Williams describes you certainly don’t get a sense of the Church as a level place. Instead, it feels like an optical illusion, where things that appear level accelerate advancement for some while sinking others into an abyss. A game of snakes and ladders where only some people know the rules and control the dice. The many accounts, actions and experiences the book describes show how deeply wired into the church’s life are the assumptions and attitudes that sustain white privilege.
When Jesus stood on a level place people came from everywhere to be near him. ‘A great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon’. They came to this great teacher in a level place to be healed. To confess their sins and be put right. To hear how they needed to be, in order to enter the Kingdom of God. It was a place without privilege or hierarchy – a place where need and love were all that mattered.
‘Ghost Ship’ concludes with a call for change. Racism in the church cannot only be a concern or an issue when people from BAME communities are present. Too often in the church that’s the reality and it needs to stop. Simply saying that our bit of ground is level fails to see the bigger landscape of which York Minster is a part.
France-Williams ends by quoting a South African author who reported on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Antjie Krog:
“Reconciliation will only take place… the day whites feel offended by racism instead of feeling sorry for the blacks”
We can all be part of that change. We can do more, far more, to make sure that all those God calls into the church find it to be a level place. A place where hidden rules and unspoken barriers are set aside. But it will only happen if we are all committed to making a change.
Amen.
Accession Day 2022 – Revd Dr Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Preacher: Revd Dr Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Title of sermon: Accession Day 2022
Readings: Psalms 20, 101,121. Joshua 1:1-9, Romans 13:1-10
Date/time/service: Sunday 6th February 2022 – 4pm Choral Evensong
Imagine the jubilation, walking into Westminster Abbey to the music we have just heard. The words from Psalm 122 describe the joy and delight of entering into the courts of the Lord in procession for solemn assembly, to worship God. It was sung at the Coronation Service of Queen Elizabeth on the second on 2nd June 1953, and much of the music we have heard today, references that triumphant ceremony. But let’s rewind just a little to the anniversary we mark today, the moment when a lifelong vocation was born from the pains of death, when the mantle of service was passed on from one generation to another.
In the year previous, on the 6th February 1952, Princess Elizabeth was in Kenya with her husband Prince Phillip on a royal tour, in place of her father King George the Sixth who was ill. It was here that she received the news of her father’s death and her own Accession to the throne. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, she ceased to be Princess Elizabeth and became Queen Elizabeth II. She was just 25.
On that day her life changed forever, and she had to handle the grief of losing a beloved father and the incomparable weight of the duty which was being thrust upon her. We can only imagine her sorrow, and we can only imagine her fear and trepidation in taking on this responsibility and embracing what we in the church might describe as an ontological change- a change in her very being and in her life’s purpose.
When God ordained Joshua as leader of the people of Israel after Moses death, God said to Joshua, ‘As I was with Moses, so I shall be with you, I will not fail or forsake you, be strong and courageous, neither frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you everywhere you go.’
It is worth reflecting on how a young woman of 25, in a patriarchal society where her age as well as her gender would have been a stumbling block to many, it’s worth reflecting on how she would ever have the strength and courage to take on the mantle of being Queen of England. But Elizabeth, with dignity, with incredible humility and courage, made a vow to God in her own heart: to love and serve her people for as long as she lived. And so she has done.
But this fortitude, courage and strength has come from somewhere and our own Queen credits her ministry, (for I think we in the church can recognise this as a ministry), she credits her ministry to her unwavering faith in God and her trust that God will be with her everywhere she goes , just as God was with Joshua, just as God is with us. The words of Psalm 121 seem pertinent: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help, my help cometh even from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
Her unique vow to serve as Queen, came in the line of other Christian vows she had already made: the vows made at her baptism, confirmation and marriage. At every stage of her life, she kept faith in God.
Over most of the seventy years of her reign the queen has practised her faith quietly and persistently, but it has been noted that since the turn of the millennium, in her words and in her speeches, particularly at Christmas, she has become more open about her faith, and how it has sustained her and shaped her, less private and more public about what lies at the heart of her reign. What can we learn from her example of Christian discipleship?
Our Queen often talks her own accountability before God, she recognises that in spite of her position she is simply a creature standing before the creator, a sinner in need of forgiveness, a disciple of Christ seeking to love him more dearly, see him more clearly and follow him more nearly day by day.
What can we learn from her lived example of Christian leadership, as individuals, as a church, as a nation?
Throughout her reign she has quietly shown her solidarity with the people she has been called to serve, when she was just twenty one, with an understanding of her future destiny she said this: ‘We must give nothing less than the whole of ourselves,’ she said, “I declare before you, all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service.”
And so we saw when she offered her service in the army during the second world and so we saw only last year, when our queen in solidarity with her people in the midst of a global pandemic, sat alone at the funeral of her beloved husband.
In her speech on Christmas Day, two thousand years after Christ’s birth, she referenced the central teaching of the Christian faith: love God and love thy neighbour as thyself.
Is this simple commandment the answer to the questions we all ask: how do we live a good life? How do we bear the responsibilities we have been given? How do we honour one another as children of God? And for those with power and authority in our world, how do we exercise that power with humility and with justice? Love God and love thy neighbour as thyself.
St Paul in his letter to the Romans offers that there is no authority except from God, and perhaps those who take that truth seriously, are more likely to be the kind of rulers and leaders our world really needs. Leaders who bear their power not with arrogance but with humility before God.
We can probably find examples of leadership where those with power think they are Gods, beyond reproach, beyond interrogation and beyond integrity, where their needs come before anyone elses.
But not so with our Queen, who throughout her life, in an astonishingly quiet and steadfast way, has been a living example of all those virtues which we hope are still part of the fabric of this great nation: Steadfastness, forbearance, fortitude, integrity, sacrifice, compassion, courage, hope, love and faith.
We have in our Queen an example of Christian Leadership at its most humble and human, and Christian discipleship at its most obedient.
Whatever your take on monarchy in the modern world, we cannot deny that here is a woman of faith who has lived out that faith in word and deed as both as Head of State, as supreme Governor of our Church of England, but most importantly, as a faithful disciple of Christ.
God save the Queen.
Is your all on the altar? – Revd Dr Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Preacher: Revd Dr Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Title of sermon: Is your all on the altar?
Readings: Ezekiel 43:27-44.4, I Corinthians 13, Luke 2:22-40
Date/time/service: Sunday 30th January 2022 – 11am Choral Eucharist
You have longed for sweet peace,
And for faith to increase,
And have earnestly, fervently prayed.
But you cannot have rest,
Or be perfectly blest,
Until all on the altar is laid.
Refrain:
Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?
Your heart does the Spirit control?
You can only be blest,
And have peace and sweet rest,
As you yield Him your body and soul.
These words are from the once well know hymn, Is your all on the altar? Written in 1900 by Elisha Hoffman, the hymn questions how much we are really prepared to give of ourselves in and through worship, how much of ourselves we are really prepared to give to God. Evelyn Underhill, the 20th century Anglican theologian, in her reflections on worship, said that Christian worship can never be divorced from sacrifice. Worship is not a form of entertainment, though occasionally the sermon can be funny. It’s not a ‘show’ that we watch passively, and it’s not something we are forced to do. For the Christian, this is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise. But what does that mean?
Martin Luther suggested that when we hear the word of God with all our heart, we offer a sacrifice. When we pray and when we give in charity to our neighbour, this is sacrifice. When we receive the sacrament, we offer a sacrifice. This is the place where we are transformed and made new. This is the place when we give of ourselves that we might therefore live.
It’s the basic message of the gospels give your life to God to save your life. Love God with all of your heart and mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. Worship is a sign of all of these things, and the place where we learn them. It’s a school for the soul.
Thankfully when we come to worship, we do not have to offer a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons, a donation as you leave would be wonderful though! We are simply called to offer ourselves in love to God, and that is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise.
In the lifetimes of Elisha Hoffman, Evelyn Underhill or Martin Luther, sacrifice might have been an easier word to understand, but for us today the concept seems rather challenging. Why would anyone give up anything for someone else? Or give of themselves for another? Hasn’t our culture has become a culture of taking rather than giving- a culture all about ‘me’ and my views, my needs, my rights above the views, needs, and rights of everyone else?
To put all this in another more straightforward way how might this act of worship help us look at the world in a new way? What is worship teaching us to be and to do and how is it shaping the life of the Christian community and the world in which we live?
In faith, Joseph and Mary went to the temple to present their new born in thanksgiving and praise. Their response to the living God was their duty and their joy. Their thank-offering represented all that they were- they were putting their all on the altar in the form of their new born baby.
Their love for God had drawn them to the temple, as it had drawn Simeon. He had also given his long life, living in the hope of seeing the salvation of God. And what about Anna, the prophet, who had given her life to the Lord, praying and fasting in the temple until, upon seeing this child, her fasting turned to celebration and her prayer was transformed into praise.
Every one of the characters in our Gospel reading put their all on the altar and of course, as Simeon looked at this tiny new life in front of him, he said to Mary ‘a sword will pierce your own soul too’- a premonition of the sacrifice of Christ himself upon the cross, the sacrifice above every sacrifice, God giving a beloved son for the life of the world.
This pattern we are called to follow, is one where we give of ourselves, for God and for our neighbour, putting our all on the altar. Throughout the gospels, Jesus calls his disciples to follow him with a whole heart not at their own convenience.
Another name for this ‘giving of our all’– this ‘sacrifice’ might in fact be love.
St Paul, in his letter to the church in Corinth, gives us a definition of divine love and in that definition, love always gives of itself: to love is to give yourself away for the sake of another. Love is patient, kind, not envious, boastful arrogant or rude, love does not insist on its own way. In the vows made at a wedding, loved and beloved say to each other- all that I am I give to you, all that I have I share with you, within the love of God. Of course, that formulation only works if both people say it, and this formulation is meant to be a reminder of the complete love of God for each one of us, and hopefully our love in return.
This is the love we are called to give to God and our neighbour- love given as a sacrifice of praise. Christina Rossetti captures this perfectly in her carol, In the Bleak Midwinter: ‘What can I give him, poor as I am?’ she asks. In the end she realises that she doesn’t need to offer a lamb like the shepherds, or a gift of great price like the wise men- all she is asked to do is to give her heart.
This is all we are asked to give: all that we have and all that we are. This is the kind of love which could transform the corrupt and unjust structures of our society into the kind of communities which reflect humanity at its best, where the forgotten are drawn in, the excluded gathered to the centre, the victims of tyranny, poverty and oppression released from their captivity. It can all start here, if we are prepared to put our all on the altar.
Perhaps Sacrifice is a good word for us to use after all? Because it suggests that none of this is easy. If we think beyond our circles of comfort, what are we prepared to give for the good and the flourishing of another, not just those with whom we share our lives, or those like us, but a brother or sister who lives on the other side of the world, who lives on the streets of our city, who is excluded and persecuted for who they are?
Might we want to break down, just a little, the injustices of our world? The corruption, the sense of entitlement, the selfishness? As we read the news and reflect on the world around us this week, might we want to build a different kind of kingdom, with more loving values, with more sacrificial values?
‘Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle’, so said, Martin Luther King. What are we really prepared to give or give up for this Kingdom cause? What individual inconveniences are we willing to accommodate for love in its truest and broadest definition?
Well, it all starts here. If we really take our worship seriously, if we give our heart, if we give our all, if we see ourselves as a living sacrifice, and are ready and open to being transformed by love, we can really change the world through our worship and all we have to do, is put our all on the altar, in the name and to the glory of the one and only living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
How can we know the way? – Revd Dr Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Preacher: Revd Dr Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Title of sermon: How can we know the way?
Readings: Numbers 9. 15–end, 1 Corinthians 7. 17–24
Date/time/service: Sunday 23rd January 2022 – 4pm Choral Evensong
In the last week or so much has been said about what it means to have (or not have) a ‘moral compass’. It’s hard to work out why, with so much honesty and integrity in public life.
Nevertheless, when this phrase is used it usually refers to an internalized set of values and objectives that guide a person with regard to their ethical behaviour and decision-making. Day by day and week by week, how do you make decisions? Decisions for yourself or on behalf of others? What set of values and objectives are you using? I guess having a ‘moral compass’ helps us decide what is right and what is wrong, what to do and what not to do. But who sets the compass?
Without something or someone to guide us in the right way, we have a tendency to go the wrong way, because we are all only human, we are, in the words of the book of common prayer like lost sheep who are easily led astray. We follow too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We are always tempted to want more, we are programmed to try and control the future, thinking that we are masters of our own universe and that destiny is held within our hands alone. Our compasses are very often turned inwards on ourselves and our own needs and that is always where it starts to go wrong.
I think in the last couple of years we have all come to realise that sometimes we do not always know which way to go, which road to travel on, it’s sometimes felt that all we can do is get through, one day at a time. The world has been catapulted into the unknown. So I suppose the question is how do we navigate a way forward in the midst of so much uncertainty, change and doubt? How do we know which way to go- whether morally, or physically, or spiritually? How do we make decisions in our daily lives, what do we use as a compass or a guide? As we are called to move forward, what can we learn from our global wilderness experience -when the entire human family has been stopped in its tracks and forced to re-set its compass by an airborne virus.
Our reading from the Book of Numbers describes the journey of the people of Israel through the wilderness after their freedom from slavery in Egypt. As an oppressed and imprisoned people they had been isolated, they had been broken in spirit, they had had their hope and their dignity taken away. They were exhausted, they were fearful, they were uncertain. They did not know where they were going, they had lost all sense of direction.
So God provides a pillar of cloud and fire to lead them, when the pillar is settled on the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, the people of Israel make a camp and rest, when the pillar lifts they move on. By night the pillar of cloud becomes a pillar of fire to provide light and warmth and comfort. When all else had been taken away, and in order to simply put one foot in front of another, the people of Israel follow the firey-cloudy pillar and accept God as their only guide.
St Paul in his letter to the Church in Corinth advises this new community of Christians to be careful of their desires and not to put too much emphasis on trying to control the future. To this community, he advises that they remember who they are, that they continue to move forward, and that they focus on the here and now rather than a future beyond their reach or a past life long before they were called. In all the worlds temptations they are advised to let God be their guide through their pilgrimage of life.
In his poem ‘Lead kindly light’ John Henry Newman reminds us that ‘one step is enough’ in the midst of any encircling gloom. ‘I do not ask to see the distant scene’, he says ‘one step enough for me’. If we are open to being led by the kindly light, or by the fire and cloudy pillar, we need not worry so much about the future perhaps, we need not be afraid. If we are open to being led by Christ, rather than our own devices and desires, we can walk on in faith, even if not by sight. If we are open to being led by Christ, we may not even need a moral compass, because Christ is the only direction we need.
As we are still journeying through the season of Epiphany and the month of January, it seems appropriate for us to be thinking about what might lie ahead in the year to come or indeed what might happen tomorrow. What choices might we have to make in the days and months ahead and how will we travel on the right way?
I’ll close with the words of another poem, by Millie Haskins, written at the turn of the twentieth century, a poem which can be taken as a prayer, and reminds us that all we need do is put our hand into the hand of God, and let God guide us onwards and upwards. That is probably the only decision we need to make today, tomorrow and every day of our lives.
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”. And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way”. So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.
Amen.
What lies before us – The Reverend Canon Victoria Johnson
Sermon Preached on the Tercentenary of Grinling Gibbons, Wood Carver and Yorkshire Day
York Minster, Sunday 1 August 2021 by Canon Victoria Johnson
Readings: Psalm 84, 1 Chronicles 22. 6–end, 1 Corinthians 3. 10–17.
What lies before us.
A celebration of the tercentenary of a Master Wood Carver and sculptor and the annual commemoration of God’s own county, on Yorkshire Day: two events which combine during this service and may together help us reflect on the future that lies before us, and how we might be called to fashion it.
Grinling Gibbons, is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important wood carvers in history. He wasn’t a Yorkshire man and he wasn’t English, he was an immigrant from Rotterdam-but it was here in this city that he flourished as an artist and created works of beauty to inspire and memorialize, among them three elaborate carvings here in York Minster for three Archbishops. It was here in this city that he honed his skills among the guilds, craftspeople and businesses that contributed to the life of this northern metropolis three hundred years ago.
In a building like this, it seems fitting that we remember all those who carved stone and wood and painted glass, creating windows into new worlds delighting the eye and inspiring the heart, monuments to the transcendent and the timeless. As we sit beneath the Great West Window, locally known as the Heart of Yorkshire, in the city of the county, we also mark Yorkshire day, a much more recent celebration of a county with a rich heritage and history.
But to be of any worth, or significance, both of our celebrations today must also encourage us look to the future, otherwise they are simply fossilized traditions, time stood still. For we cannot celebrate Grinling Gibbons without a thought for the artisans and craftspeople of today, giving thanks for their skills and considering how they are supported, trained and nurtured within a modern economy. We cannot celebrate our county and its heritage without consideration of what it might represent now and in the future, we are all part of living traditions.
For the past is not all that we have: we have a future waiting to be shaped before us, and as we slowly emerge from a global pandemic, what kind of city, what kind of church, what kind of county, what kind of country, what kind of world are we hoping to build for those generations who come after us?
Our readings, speak rather fittingly of a building for the future. King David commissions his son Solomon to build a temple, a house for the Lord, with the assistance of stonecutters, masons, carpenters and all kinds of artisans working in gold, silver, bronze and iron. In our second reading, we move from an architectural vision of a physical house made by human hands to a different kind of temple in the form of a person, a temple built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Through Christ, God comes to dwell with us, and God sanctifies humanity -we are his temple- so that each and every person made in his image, is a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. Each builder must chose with care how to build on this foundation we are told.
Let’s think about how we might create and build communities which are built on the foundation of Jesus Christ whether they be communities of faith, communities of collaboration in our city, or communities of friendship across our county- with Christ as our foundation what might those communities look like?
Today we can draw upon another moment in history associated with 1st August. William Wilberforce, a Yorkshire MP and committed Christian campaigned for the Abolition of Slavery. His rather plain slate memorial is just over there.
He died on 29th July 1833, not quite seeing the Act of Abolition passed on this day in 1834. Here was someone who was trying to create and shape a new future built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, someone who believed that every person in their glory and uniqueness, was made in God’s image and we should build a world to reflect that. Here was someone who believed in new futures of justice and mercy for all people everywhere, new futures of compassion and kindness and generosity. We still need to work towards those new futures in our society today, where the evil of racism persists, where there is still discrimination, poverty, injustice and modern day slavery.
Yesterday in the Yorkshire Post, the Archbishop of York said that Yorkshire Day might also be the day on which, we as citizens of this county, commit to addressing the current climate emergency and the associated floods, droughts, famines and extreme weather events we see all the more frequently, affecting everyone but always detrimentally affecting the poorest and most vulnerable in our world. In the midst of a global pandemic and a climate emergency, we have discovered that we are all in this together, and when one suffers all suffer.
So what kind of future lies before us?
What might need to be re-shaped, re-fashioned, and re-built to create a future which is worth celebrating? A future where communities of love, peace and justice flourish, not only in Yorkshire but across the whole of humanity in all of its fullness and diversity?
If we are tasked with building a new kind of future, or carving something beautiful from a past, and sometimes present reality which is far from perfect, how might we go about it? What is our vision for our city, our county, our nation, our world?
At the beginning of this year, Amanda Gorman, in her own words ‘a skinny black girl descended from slaves’, recited a poem at the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States, called ‘The Hill we climb’.
With her very presence and her words crafted from pain and a history of oppression, she carved out in the air a vision of a new future for her society, and that vision was as beautiful as any sculpture that could be made with human hands. She spoke of her country, made up of countys and cities and townships:
And yes, she said, we are far from polished, far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
What kind of temple, what kind of city, what kind of county and country- what kind of world stands before us now – waiting to be built?
This temple, this building was created to give glory to Jesus Christ who offered a vision of new future, a kingdom beyond all earthly kingdoms, beyond our definitions of space and time, a kingdom above every earthly city, and state and nation- a kingdom which we pray will come on earth as it is in heaven.
The Kingdom of which he spoke was not bound by borders or any human dividing lines, entry into this kingdom was not restricted by class, gender, race, wealth or status, there would be in this kingdom, no male or female, no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, for all are made one in Christ, who is for us the sure foundation, the cornerstone on which we build.
Today, on the 1st August 2021, as we rightly celebrate the past and the riches that it shares with us, may we also look at what stands before us, and take up our tools, and begin the work of carving a future of which we can all be proud.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
The divine potter – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: The divine potter
Date/time/service: Sunday 13th June 2021 – Trinity 2 Evensong
Passage of scripture: Jeremiah 7.1-16 & Romans 9.14-26
I used to enjoy art lessons at school but I was never very good at it. For a term or two we did some pottery and I produced a couple of objects but nobody, including me, knew quite what they were. They stood gathering dust at home until my mum judged I would not notice if they discretely disappeared. I never knew what happened to the heavy, misshapen, ceramic things.
In today’s second reading St Paul compares God to a potter and to us as the clay being shaped by the divine hand. It is a metaphor used a few times in the bible including Isaiah and Jeremiah. I think we need to be a little careful when we reflect on this metaphor as we explore our relationship with God. There is a danger of thinking that our relationship with God is all about striving to become something or someone we are not. This can disturb our sense of identity and lead us to be permanently dissatisfied and yearning to be someone else.
Shifting to a slightly different artistic metaphor for a moment, the great sculptor, Michelangelo, apparently once said, ‘Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.’ Maybe we can extend this to clay and particularly to the metaphor St Paul uses in chapter 9 of Romans. Within the piece of clay I am made of there is the true Michael, the Michael God intends me to be. The same is true of the pieces of clay we are all made of, within the clay there is ‘you’, the ‘you’ God intends you to be. If we are to truly become the people God intends us to be then the creative work of the divine potter, and our striving to be who we truly are, is ongoing. But the important things is that none of the striving is about trying to be someone else, it is about becoming who we truly are. Too often in this consumer society do we think that if something isn’t working we throw it away and get a new one. We shouldn’t fall in to the trap of thinking this way about our emerging selves.
Of course, all the creative work of the divine potter is done in the context of us having free will so we have a tendency to keep shaping ourselves in line with our selfish instincts and desires which results in us being the wrong shape. Add to this the pressure we come under from the world around us and advertisers in particular, endlessly tempting us to conform and consume our way to happiness. It is no surprise that we all feel pressure to be someone else or to be like someone else. All God wants us to be is truly ourselves.
The passage from Romans goes on to talk about God’s wrath and God’s mercy and the passage we heard from Jeremiah talks about God’s judgement. It is very easy to be frightened by such talk, indeed some of it sounds bleak and sometimes vicious, but there is another way of thinking about God’s wrath and mercy, about God’s judgement, and that is that we matter to God. We are significant. Who we are, what we do and what we say all matter and are important enough to God for us to make God angry, or to make God want to shower mercy upon us.
Rather than associating wrath, mercy and judgement with the ‘hell fire and brimstone’, ‘day of judgement’, Fear inducing religion that has been, and sometimes still is, preached in churches, maybe we should associate it more with something like an annual review at work? Each of us is important to God and God, the judge, wants us to thrive, wants us to fulfil our potential and being aware of God’s judgement is all about us being helped to discover where things are going wrong. Where we are misshapen. Where we need to reject the temptations of the world and embrace, or be embraced by, God and the ways of God. To make ourselves vulnerable to the creative moulding of the divine potter, always working with us to make us the shape, the Michael, the ‘you’ – we are meant to be.
There is a pop song from the end of the 1960s by a group appropriately called ‘Amen Corner’ and it is called ‘Bend me shape me’. It is a classic, silly love song. A boy singing to the girl he loves saying that she can ‘make this beggar a king, a clown or a poet’. The chorus then kicks in, ‘Bend me shape me anyway you want me, long as you love me, it’s alright’. It struck me that if we take the words out of the context of a silly love song we can make them in to a prayer rising out of our reading from Romans today. Maybe it is by freely submitting ourselves to the divine potter that we will become who God created us to be, be that a king, a clown, a poet or anything else? Maybe a good prayer for us, to God who loves us, to God who is love, is, ‘bend me, shape me, anyway you want me …..’
Let us pray
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may breathe your love.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may hear you speak.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may know you are near.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may feel your love.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may trust your will.
Still my restless heart, O God, that I may receive your grace.
In your peace may thy will be done.
In your peace may I discover my true self.
In your peace may I find true blessing through Jesus Christ. Amen
Binding the strong man – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Binding the strong man
Date/time/service: Sunday 6th June 2021 Trinity 1 Eucharist
Passage of scripture: 2 Corinthians 4. 13–5.1 & Mark 3. 20-end
A Head teacher I once knew gave me some excellent advice. When preparing an assembly he told me that the most important question to have in mind is, ‘What does it look like in the playground?’ If, for example, you tell the story of the Good Samaritan in an assembly, you have to make it clear that knowing and understanding the story is important, but it is even more important to make its message real, which will mean, in the context of a school assembly, telling the children the story means that in the playground they should take care of each other, always help someone who has been knocked down, accept help from or offer help to, someone you don’t usually play with. I always have this in mind when I begin to plan an assembly and now I have it in mind when I am preparing a sermon.
There is a great deal of talk in church circles at the moment about discipleship. We should all be concentrating our efforts on discipleship, ensuring that we are enabling each other to deepen in faith and to discern how each of us can use our own particular skills and experience to be better and more useful disciples of Jesus. In the gospel reading this week Mark talks about what following Jesus means and what it might entail. I suppose you could say that Mark is helping us to see what being a disciple of Jesus might look like in the playground – and what he has to say is extremely challenging.
When exploring discipleship you might expect talk about kindness, compassion, gentleness and love as these, surely, are the characteristics of a disciple of Jesus. Things are never that straightforward in Mark’s gospel, he is always surprising, always shocking. He forces us to look at the world and Jesus in radically new ways. His teaching about discipleship is surprising, strange, radical and deeply challenging.
The gospel of Mark starts with Jesus healing lots of people and casting out demons from many. You would have thought that everyone would have been delighted about this. That in these remarkable events the people would have recognised God at work, evil being dealt with and God’s kingdom being established. According to Mark, this is not what happened. Having healed lots of people and cast out lots of demons Jesus returns home and in chapter 3 we learn that his own family try to restrain and stop him from speaking because they thought that he had gone mad. Jesus was giving them a bad name! In addition the Scribes and the Pharisees, the powerful, religious elite, began telling people that they thought he was possessed by demons himself. There is chaos and the people are confused. Then Jesus says this;
“ …. no-one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house.” Mark 3v27.
We need to think very carefully about what Jesus is saying here and we need to be careful about how we understand the image he gives us. When Jesus says ‘no-one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions’ perhaps he is saying that the strong man is the devil or force of evil, and the house, is the world. Jesus may be telling us here that the world is dominated by ‘the strong man’ evil, and we, as followers of Jesus, cannot simply ignore that and take possession of the world for God – we have to deal with evil, we have to tie up, or bind this strong man so that we can take possession of the world and make God’s kingdom a reality here.
If Mark were preaching here today I think he would be telling us that in order to be good disciples of Jesus the most important thing we have to do is to deal with the demons, fight against evil. In ourselves that means battling against our selfish instincts and in the world it means working for greater compassion and justice for all people. The only way this world is going to become God’s world, God’s Kingdom, is if people like us, disciples of Jesus, bind the strong man of selfishness and evil in ourselves and in the world.
It always strikes me as odd to see a smoking area just outside a Gym with people who have just worked out for an hour or so puffing away on cigarettes or vaping furiously. Clearly they aspire to be fit because they have just ‘worked out’ but then succumb to an addiction that mitigates against being fully fit. I think most of us are a bit like that with our faith. We want to be good and faithful disciples of Jesus but we regularly succumb to selfishness and greed. Mark is teaching us that we can’t do both, we have to deal with the selfishness and greed before we can be good and faithful disciples.
None of this is easy. It is much easier to be selfish, to only think of ourselves than it is to be selfless and to think of others. Being a baptized Christian, being a disciple of Jesus, is not just about being nice, I think St Mark would say it is also about fighting. Fighting against all that is destructive, negative and disabling in ourselves and in the world. It is only when we have engaged in that battle and won, it is only when the strong man has been bound, that we will be liberated to fulfil our lives in generous kindness, compassion and love. And in this way we will take possession of the strong man’s house and ensure the establishment of God’s Kingdom.
So what does all this look like in the playground? As we walk out of church today, we should commit ourselves afresh to dealing with those aspects of our character and personality we know are flawed, our demons of selfishness, greed, arrogance – so that we make space for selflessness, generosity, compassion and grace in our selves. And today we should commit ourselves to fighting the evils which belittle our world, the demons in people, communities and nations which result in poverty, injustice, conflict – so that all the little kingdoms of self interest in the world will be replaced by God’s one Kingdom of fairness, justice, peace and love.
We are ‘Corpus Christi’ – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: We are ‘Corpus Christi’
Date/time/service: Thursday 20th June 5.15pm – Corpus Christi
Passage of scripture: 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 & John 6.51-58
Imagine that you have never been in a church before and that you know very little, if anything, about Jesus and the bible. Then, for one reason or another, you end up here, on the Feast of Corpus Christi. You are in awe of the building, amused by the people at the front swanning about in funny clothes and nervous about doing the wrong thing. Then you hear the reading in which Jesus tells his followers that the bread they are to eat is his body and the wine that they drink his blood. That is disturbing enough but then you hear the next reading where Jesus says ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.’ Surely that would be enough to send you running away from here thinking that we are all mad?
We know a little bit of theology. We know that the sacrament of the Eucharist is steeped in layers of meaning to do with the ancient Jewish Passover, the sacrificial death of Jesus on a cross and 2,000 years of reflection and tradition. We know that Jesus promised to be with us when we share bread and wine and that we are sustained on our spiritual journey by this sacred meal. For us, it is the most natural thing in the world to hear these words and to partake of this meal, but for others looking on it must seem crazy and perhaps even evil.
So – what is to be done? Do we stop this peculiar ritual because it is so easily misunderstood? Do we re-invent it with Ribena and crisps to make it seem more ‘relevant’? Do we carry on regardless, arrogantly ignoring those for whom it makes no sense? Or, do we carry on and do all that we can to give what we do some context and to connect what we do with the lives that we lead every day?
Let’s go back to where I started. This time imagine you are you and the one who knows nothing about Jesus and the bible is sitting along the same row as you. Despite the fact that our friend feels that they have stumbled on a weird, cannibalistic cult they haven’t actually run screaming from the building. When the service is over our friend leans over to you and asks, ‘what was all that about?’ What are you going to say? How are you going to respond?
Gone are the days when we can believe that we religious types are the normal ones and what we do in places like this is normal. The balance has tipped, in fact it probably tipped quite a while ago. We are odd and what we do here is odd by most people’s standards. Maybe that is a little harsh, perhaps I should say, to most people we seem odd and to most people, what we do here, must seem very odd indeed.
I preached a sermon here a few years ago about rhubarb. There is an area near Wakefield which is a centre of excellence in the growing of rhubarb. When rhubarb cannot be grown outside in the winter because of the weather, it is grown in forcing sheds in which the environment is tightly controlled, minimal light, just enough water and the rhubarb grows quickly (if you stand quietly in the sheds you can actually hear it growing) and is tender and sweet. Churches can become like those forcing sheds. We can be so consumed in what we are and what we believe, we can control our environment to just suit us so that we can feel great and sometimes actually seem to thrive …. the only problem is that we are not connecting in any way with the real world.
We have to do all that we can not to become a church like those enclosed rhubarb forcing sheds, controlled and only good at one thing. We all need to be able to survive and thrive in a world where we are thought to be deeply peculiar and that means every single one of us thinking things through and being able to respond positively to the visitor who leans over to us at the end of a service like this and asks, ‘what was all that about?’
For what it is worth, if someone came up to me after this service and asked, ‘what was all that about?’ I would start by talking to them about Jesus. In my experience, that is always the best place to start. Today I would talk about our belief that Jesus is God’s son and point out that when he was talking about himself and trying to give people an insight into who he was, he always compared himself to something very ordinary and every day, in today’s gospel he compares himself to bread, in other places he compares himself to a vine, the door of a sheepfold, a good shepherd. These sound odd to us but when he was speaking these were images that everyone would know and understand. The message is that Jesus is not other-worldly, he is not separate and distant from our normal human experience of life, he is part of it, indeed, he is at the heart of ordinary everyday life. And when he wanted to assure his closest friends that he would remain with them, he didn’t give them a strange sophisticated ritual to follow, he again took something simple and everyday, the sharing of food with people that we love, and said, whenever you share bread and wine in memory of me, I will be with you. So, a response to the question, ‘what was all that about?’ after this service, to someone who is totally unchurched, is that it is all about celebrating that the God we believe in is present with us in our ordinary, everyday lives and that the simplest things and simplest experiences are where God is encountered. Yes, we dress things up in church with funny clothes, magnificent buildings, beautiful music and even a dramatic smoke machine, but essentially, what we are doing is rejoicing in God being with us in the simple sharing of food. As the great poet George Herbert might have said – this is all about encountering something of ‘heaven in ordinary’.
As we sit and pray and reflect here in church at services like this on days like this, let us all spend some time preparing ourselves to talk to anyone who might turn to us and ask, ‘what was all that about?’
Comfort and Challenge – The Reverend Canon Victoria Johnson
A sermon preached on the Day of Pentecost by Canon Victoria Johnson
On Sunday 23rd May, 2021 at the Solemn Eucharist
Readings: Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:22-27, John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
‘Comfort and Challenge’.
What is the Holy Spirit saying to us on this, the day which some call the birth day of the church? Is the Holy Spirit whispering comfort, or provoking challenge? What is the Holy Spirit blowing away, what is the Holy Spirit disturbing? What is the Holy Spirit empowering?
It feels as if we are somehow, living in the midst of the birth pangs of a new beginning…some call it the new normal -it certainly feels as if our society, our church, and our world are experiencing a period of wrestling, of upheaval, of messy and sometimes painful emergence.
As we acknowledge the imperfections of the present time, perhaps the very thing we all want most is the past, and who can blame us- the past before all of this- the past when we could smile and be seen, and embrace, and sing and gather, the past when we were more certain of the future that lay before us.
These things will all return in their time but the world into which they return may look very different and we all know that the ‘rebuild’ is probably going to take time. It won’t be easy. The much promised ‘freedom day’ may not deliver everything for everyone on the twenty first of June, however much gloss we put on it.
This last year has also brought to light a past where we have not got everything right, it has shown up a way of living that was very far from the kingdom we pray will come amongst us. We have seen the widening gap between rich and poor, racism, nationalism, gender violence, we have seen effects on the environment, on the NHS, on mental health, on the lives of young people, their education and well-being. The impact of covid- will be felt for years and years to come.
In these moments of challenge and change, we might pray today for the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit who, in the words of a prayer of Erasmus ‘cheers those in sorrow’, bringing those in heaviness to the truth, kindling in those who are far away the fire of charity, for those who are cold knitting them together with the glue of peace. We call upon the advocate, the comforter, to salve and console us after these life-altering events for which none of us wished. We claim that comfort and life and fire of love today, for our world and for our church.
In scripture, the Holy Spirit is sometimes referred to as a breath- Christ breathed on his disciples the Holy Spirit, and from the book of Romans, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, and that same spirit intercedes for us, with sighs too deep for words.
The Holy Spirit we long for today, is that spirit imagined as a gentle breeze, the flickering candle, the shuffling of leaves, the sweetest dove, the consolation of silent prayer.
Come Holy Spirit!
But, there is another side of the same Holy Spirit. We are told in the scriptures, that the Holy Spirit is also like a fiery whirlwind blowing through the lives of all believers: wonderful and terrifying, comforting and disturbing. We learn that those on whom the Spirit rested were thought to have drunk too much wine.
The Spirit brings portents and signs. The Holy Spirit is variously described as being like a mighty wind, like flame, rushing water, like a bird on the wing, it cannot be tamed, or trained, or captured.
TS Elliot writes in The Four Quartets. “The dove descending breaks the air, with flame of incandescent terror” Are we ready for the incandescent terror of the same Holy Spirit? Are we ready for comfort and challenge?
We cannot domesticate or control the Holy Spirit. When we eventually sing ‘Come down O Love divine’ and ask the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts, consuming and burning our earthly passions-do we realise we are opening ourselves up to radical transformation and challenge as well as divine comfort?
Michael Ramsey in his reflections on the Holy Spirit, (The Holy Spirit, A Biblical Study) comments that the history of the church is shaped by the sacraments, by the apostolic ministry and teaching of the church, and the Holy Spirit uses this shape to reveal the works of God.
But, he notes, the Holy Spirit also acts in unpredictable ways, exposing, teaching, illuminating, judging, renewing. The Sprit he says, is still as it was and ever shall be, the unpredictable breath of God.
On this last day of the Easter Season, we again celebrate renewal and rebirth, it is yet another beginning in Christ- a re-creation. The unpredictable breath of God might be blowing through our lives at this moment-doing something new and we should be prepared for challenge, the unpredictable breath of God may be uncomfortable and even terrifying. Our plans for ourselves may be overwhelmed by God’s plans for us. Things might have to change, heaven help us, we might have to change. That is the risk of standing before the living God and praying ‘Come Holy Spirit’.
We are at a turning point in the life of the church in this country. What is left of us when everything has been taken away? What are we really about? What have we discovered about the church in the last year?
We have discovered that we can be incredibly agile- that we can gather on-line as well as in person, we have discovered that as an institution, we are racist and often exclusive and discriminatory on account of gender and sexuality and class, we have discovered that worship really matters to us, people are hungry for prayer and hungry to know more about Jesus, we have discovered that community matters, we have discovered that we are capable of great acts of generosity, but also massive failures in protecting the vulnerable from abuse, we have discovered that there are many people longing to meet God but they’re often disappointed by the church and it’s pettiness and lack of love, we have discovered that we are able to serve the community in many and various ways in humility and faithfulness, we have discovered that we like every other community have experienced loss and fracture and sorrow, we have discovered that we are at our best when we speak out against injustice and practice what we preach in the name of Jesus our Lord. It’s a mixed picture.
In the last year, the church has also been exposed in all of its fragility and failure and in all of its promise and purpose. What have we learnt? And where do we go from here? Can we face the future in hope? Are we, the church, brave enough to invoke the Holy Spirit that might disturb us further? Are we ready for the fire of incandescent terror, as well as calling upon the Holy Spirit that offers us comfort and consolation?
St Paul writes in his letter to the Romans: We do not know how to pray as we ought, but we do have to trust that the Spirit discerns what we need, according to the will of God. We long for the Holy Spirit to come and bring comfort, but we also need the Holy Spirit to come and disturb our comfortableness, and in her unpredictable way continue to expose us, teach us, illuminate us, judge us, renew us.
Come Holy Spirit, come to us, and come among us, come as the wind, and cleanse us, come as the fire and burn, come as the dew, and refresh, convict, convert, and consecrate our hearts and lives to your greater glory, and this we ask for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen
(Prayer adapted from Eric Milner-White, 1884-1964)
Is death strong? – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Is death strong?
Date/time/service: Sunday 9th May 2022 – 6th Sunday of Easter
Passage of scripture: Song of Solomon 4.16-5.2; 8.6,7 & Revelation 14-end
I have come rather late to poetry. I always liked the idea of poetry but generally found it difficult to understand. One of my heroes, Spike Milligan, used to say that he preferred poetry to prose, ‘because it makes less mess’, so I have persevered. To be honest, I am better at reading books about poetry, books where someone is helping me understand it, than books simply full of poems by actual poets. The good thing is that this interest in poetry has helped me reflect a little deeper on some of the books in the bible where some poetic techniques are used.
Our first reading today came from the Song of Solomon. An unusual book in the bible, not only because it is essentially a book of poetry about romantic love between a man and a woman, but also because in all 8 chapters there is no mention of God at all! It is assumed that it made its way into the bible because people have interpreted it to be an allegory of the love between God and Israel, and now many read it as an allegory about the love of Christ for his Church, a theme which we also find in the writings of Paul.
The Song of Solomon is full of evocative imagery. In the second chapter there is a passage about one of the first encounters between the young couple in love and this is said, ‘now the winter is past and the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come’. Beautiful imagery to describe the feeling of hope, expectation and new life that comes when people fall in love.
If you were taking part in a creative writing exercise and your teacher asked you to complete these phrases ‘love is strong as …..’ and ‘passion as fierce as …..’ I wonder what words you would come up with? ‘love is strong as … iron …. an oak tree …. a giant ….’ ‘Passion as fierce as …. a lion ….. a bear ….. an erupting volcano …..’ If I had never read the Song of Solomon I don’t think I would ever come up with the suggestion of saying ‘love is strong as death’ and ‘passion fierce as the grave’. Because many of us are familiar with this quotation we tend to take it for granted, but these are very strange things to say indeed. Instinctively we would think that death comes when strength is lost due to old age or illness. If we think of a grave we usually think of bleak sadness and stillness. So why did the poet who wrote the Song of Solomon describe death as strong and the grave as fierce?
It is all to do with perspective and what poets and other artists are great at, is helping us to see things from different perspectives. When someone we love dies it can feel as though they have been wrenched away from us, it can feel that our relationship with them has ended and nothing can make that right. If we think about death from this perspective the description of it being strong begins to make more sense. If we think about Mary Magdalen weeping by the grave of Jesus and if we think of funerals we have attended we probably all have experiences of people weeping and sobbing uncontrollably by the graveside. I remember one funeral I took when a mourner, looking at the floral tribute, saw one sent by someone they didn’t like and throw it over the fence into the field next door to the graveyard. If we think from this perspective we can see that graves and fierce passion are indeed connected.
So, what does all this have to say to us?
For me, ‘love is strong as death’ is at the very heart of scripture and at the very heart of who Jesus is. St Paul says ‘love is strong as death’ in this way in Romans 8.38,39
‘For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
And, more succinctly in 1 Corinthians 13.8
‘Love never ends’.
These words from scripture and the resurrection of Jesus tell us that love is strong as death, indeed, that love is stronger than death.
It is very easy for us to get a little carried away with this way of thinking and speaking and to start behaving as though death doesn’t matter. That it is a minor inconvenience in our journey to heaven. This leads people to only want services of thanksgiving instead of funerals and balloons instead of lilies. This is a mistake. Though I firmly believe that love is strong as death and that love never ends, death is still devastating. Death often feels heart-breaking and knowing or believing that it cannot break our hearts doesn’t stop it feeling as though they are broken. Death changes everything, except the love that binds us together with each other and with God, and that change is hard, very hard to live with and to live through, even if we know or believe that love is still there.
It is Ascension Day on Thursday so the great cycle of Lent, Holy Week and Easter comes to a close for another year. In the normal course of events Lent begins with us being told, as we are ashed on Ash Wednesday, ‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’. In other words, you are going to die one day, sort things out. It is good to be reminded as the Easter season comes to a close that ‘love is strong as death’ and that ‘love never ends’ because this is the heart of the Easter message. The whole point of these great liturgical seasons is not to simply revisit the same familiar stories and themes each year, but each year to reflect on the same stories and by so doing to deepen our faith and to grow in wisdom each time we go around the cycle. This Lent, Holy Week and Easter has all happened in the midst of a pandemic which, amongst many other things has reminded us of our mortality. So may we move into Pentecost this year more able to talk about and to think about death, not in a morbid or frightening way, but in an honest and truly Christian way which enables us to prepare sensibly for death, grieve when it happens, and all in the context of knowing that, whatever happens, we are all held in God’s love which is stronger than death and never ends ….. after all, we are Easter People.
Let us pray
Almighty God, Jesus promised us life and life in all its fullness. Help us to see that to attain life in all its fullness we need to learn to live with vulnerability, ageing, decay and death. Inspire our thinking and our understanding about life and what truly makes us who we are. Give us courage to accept vulnerability when we need to, in the full knowledge that your love and your presence with us is constant and unconditional and that when minds and bodies wear out or cease to work we remain yours, held in love that never ends. We ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord. Amen