God's "Yes"

A sermon for Trinity Sunday . . .

Trinity Sunday sermons: never easy. I never was much good at either numbers or theology. But here’s an idea I came up with a few years ago for a family service on Trinity Sunday. It’s about names for God, and the first of those names is for God as Creator and Father and King. We read how God in the Old Testament formed the children of Abraham into a nation, leading them by Moses across the wilderness to the land he’d promised. His names are holy and not to be spoken out loud, but in scripture we find his name written down as the Hebrew letters YHWH. Our Bibles express that as “The Lord”, but the name itself was translated Jehovah, or for modern scholars Yahweh. So our first name for God is Yahweh, and I’ll write down a Y for Yahweh..

The Gospels of our New Testament show us another image of God: God born among us and living alongside us, God known and revealed in the man Jesus of Nazareth. Prophets of old had said that God would send his chosen one, his Messiah, to set his people free, and one name they gave him was Emmanuel, which means “God with us”. So let’s take that as our second name for God, and write the letter E.

Perhaps you can see where this idea is headed. We now look beyond the New Testament and into the history of this thing called Church, born on the Day of Pentecost. We think of God inspiring, directing, enlivening, and enthusing his people today; God present among us as wind and fire. We might sing “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.” Jesus told his disciples that though he was going from them, they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth. So our third name for God is Spirit, giving us the letter S.

It won’t have escaped your notice that those three letters together give us the word ‘Yes’. For me, God is the ultimate “yes”. His yes in Creation brings all things into being. His yes to the way of the cross lifts from us the burden of our sins. His continued yes to all of us inspires and enthuses and enables his Church in mission and service.

I could stop there, but bear with me as I say a bit more about this great little word yes. Yes is a releasing word that allows all kinds of possibilities. Contrast it with no: no is a shutting down word, a word to deny potential, a word that refuses to dream dreams. Yes may be a risky word, not all the possibilities it allows are going to work; but the God we believe in is a God who takes that risk. This is God saying yes to us even though we may make mistakes, even though we may go against his will, even though we may even deny his existence. For me God is that yes that releases us to be ourselves, that allows us an independence we can use or misuse.

Yes is a relationship word. Christianity, Judaism and Islam share a history and a scripture, and we worship the same God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. All three faiths speak firmly of the one true God, and the Islamic statement that ‘God is one, and beside him there is no other’ would be echoed both by Jews and Christians. But we Christians wish to say more than that about God; we wish to say that God is not only one, but also three. That’s a difficult concept to understand: how can God be three and one all at the same time? St Patrick used the shamrock leaf as an image of Trinity; others have used images like ice, water and steam, three forms of the same substance.

But no image of that sort can ever be enough; all of them fall short of what Trinity tries to express about God. Anything that tries to define God tends to fit God into a box, but the real God isn’t boxable or safe, and can’t be contained. That’s why the name of God in the Old Testament is never pronounced: to name God would be to claim to control God, but God is not to be controlled. Christians can sometimes seem to be saying that the doctrine of the holy Trinity somehow sums God up, is somehow the last word on God: not true - nothing we think or say can define the indefinable God. All the doctrine of the Trinity can ever be is our attempt to say what it is God has revealed of himself to us. We encounter him in these three distinct ways, as Father, as Son, as Holy Spirit: in three different ways of saying ‘yes’. And Father is not separate from Son, and Son is not separate from Spirit: that consistent ‘yes’ is one God. And Father, Son and Holy Spirit form a moving trinity of relationship, in which all three are fully and deeply interdependent. As Jesus says to Philip: ‘Do you not know that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?’

God reveals himself to us as Trinity; and in doing so God invites us to participate in that relationship. Jesus prayed that his people might be one, their unity a witness to the world of the eternal commonwealth of love that we call God in Trinity. We are one in Christ, we belong to one another as we belong to God-in-Trinity; our witness to the God who is Trinity must itself be Trinitarian - a oneness that transcends human barriers, that transcends the boundary between church and chapel, between here and the other side of the world, between wealth and poverty, black or white, language, culture and tradition.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York called for a wave of prayer with mission in mind, between Ascension and Pentecost but onwards too into this long season of the Sundays after Trinity that begins today. Trinity speaks of three persons and one God, a dynamic interplay of love in which Father, Son, Spirit belong together, and each one is that wonderful word yes expressed to us and to the world in its own distinctive way. Reflecting on what they had seen and known in Jesus, the first apostles said (in the words here of Paul) that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” Reflecting on what they had been gifted with on the first Christian Pentecost, the apostles knew that, though their Lord Jesus no longer walked alongside them, his Spirit was with them always - again, as Paul said, “We have the mind of Christ.”

Today on Trinity Sunday we celebrate all of that; and, yes, we rehearse a theological theory, a brave attempt to define the God who is one and yet more than one. More than that, though, we affirm God’s ‘yes’ to us and to the world, his yes that sets us free and empowers us. Our mission prayer should be that people encounter for themselves the yes of God to them. And that we may also offer our own ‘yes’ to God in response to God’s yes to us: yes, we shall live together as God’s people, yes, we shall do our best to build and maintain relationships that bear witness to God’s self-giving and creative love, and yes, we shall both serve and proclaim the one we honour as Father and Son and Holy Spirit, as the three persons, three revelations, who together are love in action, the one true God.

More On Pecking Orders

Nature Notes for the month ahead . . .

A couple of months ago I wrote about the way our local robins seem to target dunnocks, frequently flying the width of our garden to see one off. Robins are feisty little birds and often quite combative toward other species, but the special zeal with which they chase off dunnocks probably has to do with similarities in terms of habitat and food.

But I have noted similar battles between a number of other closely related species. Blue tits, for example, which come a long way down the garden pecking order, will frequently fly at visiting coal tits and chase them away. To some degree size does matter in the garden, and blue tits are among the smallest birds to visit our feeders, losing out to some degree to larger species like greenfinches or for that matter great tits. However, they are persistent, and of course they are quite acrobatic little birds, able to exploit openings some of the other larger species  aren’t agile enough to use to their advantage.

Coal tits are just as agile, but don’t seem to do as well at all. I wonder why. They are about the same size as a blue tit, and I imagine they have a very similar diet. Coal tits are very definitely at the bottom of the pile as regards bird feeder pecking order, and only manage to sneak in when other birds have their backs turned. Their strategy is to zoom in, grab a seed and zoom away - and in fact they will hide most of these seeds for later use.

Blue tits show a particular antipathy toward their close relative the coal tit, and I’ve observed them - again, like the robin - flying almost the width of the garden to tackle a coal tit and turn it away from the feeder. I presume once again that it’s because they have such similar needs, in terms of diet and habitat. They can’t help but be competitors.

Recently, I’ve also noticed a similar interspecific conflict between blackbirds and song thrushes. Song thrushes have declined considerably in recent years, so I was pleased to find one beginning to visit us regularly through the latter part of the winter just gone, and into this spring, when in fact there is clearly a pair - good news! But a song thrush has only to hop onto our lawn for it to be attacked by blackbirds. Closely related species, again, with song thrushes a little smaller than blackbirds, and more specific as regards diet.

There are many more blackbirds than song thrushes in our gardens, and it may be that - if what I’ve observed is replicated nationwide - song thrush decline might have to some degree have been assisted by this blackbird/song thrush conflict, even if the primary reasons for decline lie elsewhere as I expect they do. Blackbirds will anyway be assisted by being more generalist feeders. Some have even managed to use our suet feeder. They don’t do it very well, wings flap wildly and then the bird sort of falls off back to the ground - but they do manage to win their morsel of food.

A sermon for Pentecost

Thomas Alva Edison once said, “Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.” In other words, it’s a general truth that the initial breakthrough is only the first step in a long process.

You could look at the first Christian Pentecost as a crucial breakthrough: suddenly, as if out of nowhere, comes the gift of the Holy Spirit. The story in the Acts of the Apostles attempts to describe the indescribable; how can you describe being clothed with power from on high, and filled and over-filled with joy and delight? You can’t. Luke speaks of wind and flame - mysterious and uncontrollable forces. People saw the disciples out on the street and thought they must be drunk on the new wine of Pentecost, which is one of Jewish harvest festivals. And maybe in a way, new wine was indeed the cause of it all - just not the new wine the scoffers in the crowd imagined, instead an experience beyond language, for the disciples and also for those who saw and heard them.

But this immense spiritual high was only a first step. Jesus had told his disciples that the Spirit of truth would lead them into all truth. So Pentecost is not only an event, it’s also a process, a process of discovery and enlightenment, a process of apostolic formation. We may experience the Spirit as either fire or dove, and both are valid. The Spirit can be  the tempest wind that throws the windows open, but she can equally be the gentle breeze that quietly breathes new life into our hearts. The Spirit is God's personal touch upon us, and that’s different for each different person.

Holy Spirit may come as storm wind or as gentle breeze, but the Spirit always comes to bring power and joy. And the Spirit  stirs up those gifts within us which form a foundation for building the Church: not only joy but also love, peace, and things like patience, kindness, self-control and gentleness that enable us each to be Christ-like ourselves and to be Christ-centred together as a community of faith.  

On that first Christian Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell in full force upon the disciples; but their joyful preaching that day was still only a first step. They had much still to learn, to discover, and to experience. It took time to realise that this gift could be received by those who were not Jews as well as those who were. When you read the Acts of the Apostles you discover a community founded in the Spirit that all the way through the book is still receiving the Spirit, and still learning what it means to have God present in power among them and within them. Still learning too just what their Lord was calling them to do in and for the world. That first Day of Pentecost didn’t answer all their questions in one go, wonderful and life-changing though it was. In fact it probably raised a few new ones.

Simple statement: the Church must continue to be Pentecostal. The Church was founded in the Spirit, and it must be always open to the Spirit. That word Pentecostal usually describes a particular and quite narrow definition of Church; for me that’s never enough. To be Pentecostal is not to be some particular style of Christian, but just to be Christian, open to the God who isn’t only out there, in heaven or in some mysterious place of glory, nor is he only in here, in the pages of scripture or of history. To be Pentecostal is to believe in God in us, in God's empowering presence in my own life and yours. In my case it hasn’t ever been quite the rushing wind and tongues of fire that we read of in Acts chapter 2. But I certainly can think back to times when I’ve felt God’s presence and power (times too, if I'm honest, when I’ve tried to push him away). 

I do thank God for the times when his love has broken through the protective shell I’ve erected of selfishness or fear; these are times when the penny drops, when eyes are opened, when I've understood what God is calling out of me more deeply and clearly. So you could say that the work of the Holy Spirit is to bridge that decisive gap, the eighteen inches or so that separate mind from heart. Billy Graham once called those eighteen inches the most important mission journey.

Jesus said that the Spirit of truth will lead us into all truth. This isn't the truth of book-learning or lecture halls, this is the truth of emotional engagement, truth not only known in mind but also felt like a fire in one's heart; and Pentecost is a celebration of the truth that possesses us, and claims us as its own, a celebration of God in breakthrough mode, empowering a little group of disciples to begin the mission that would be worldwide, and that continues to this day. 

As long as the Church remains prayerfully open to this wild and unpredictable Holy Spirit, to God as wind and flame, to God as gentle dove, to God as comforter, to God as disturber, that breakthrough mode persists; things happen, new disciples are made, great works are done. But when the Church prefers to keep God under lock and key in however beautiful a shrine or safety box, the fire of that breakthrough day fades away, and the Church becomes a thing rather than a movement. But of course, what has happened again and again through history is that when the Church gets jaded and old and no longer going anywhere, the Spirit breaks through again in renewal and revival, and people rediscover the joyful Pentecost awareness of God as love, God not just as a doctrine or philosophy, but as a truth that dances within us. We have had ten days of a wave of prayer, or at least that’s what the archbishops called us to be doing. How hard were we praying? And were we praying for the filling of our churches, or, more honestly and Pentecostally, for people to encounter God for themselves, to meet with Jesus, to be filled with his love? Maybe at last the time is right for the Spirit to move again across our land.

Waiting

A sermon for the Sunday after Ascension Day :-

I thought I might spend some time with you today musing on the Christian ministry of waiting. For I think there’s a real and valid Christian ministry of waiting that ties in with the theme and story of this Sunday, the Sunday that falls between Ascension Day and Pentecost. Today we think back to the friends of Jesus waiting in Jerusalem; waiting, as their Lord asked before he left them, for the gift he would send upon them. We think of them waiting for the Holy Spirit, waiting too for the call and summons that would launch the Church, that would send them out to do mission, that would begin their story and ours of active and apostolic mission and ministry across the world.

Waiting: “I seem to spend all my life waiting,” said one of the women at the stop as we waited for the bus from Shrewsbury to Welshpool last week. I don’t often catch the bus, usually I’ve got my car, so it’s a sort of waiting I don’t do very much. She obviously did it every day. There were other people waiting that day in other ways and for other reasons. Along the street there’d been some kind of accident or disturbance which had resulted in a shop window being broken. I’d passed a young policeman waiting there, standing in the gutter facing the shop, keeping an eye on things I suppose until his mate came back in the car. I’d also passed a motley crew of urban beggars; they were also waiting, sitting at one end of the footbridge across the river. Theirs was not a very purposeful sort of waiting, but I suppose waiting was a way of life for them, waiting without much reason and with little reward. Maybe it was one of their number who’d broken the shop window. If so, maybe he’d at least get a bed for the night, albeit in a police cell.

So how would a Christian ministry of waiting be different from other kinds of waiting? Well, the first thing to say about the disciples waiting in Jerusalem was that they were waiting prayerfully. They were waiting purposefully. And they were waiting joyfully. Their waiting wasn’t just empty time, but preparation for what was to come. They had seen Jesus go from them, but what they saw on the hillside wasn’t only departure, it was also coronation. And now they were waiting to be commissioned into the service of their King.

My son came up to visit last weekend, and we found ourselves talking about one of the last times I was down in London with him. We’d met in Borough Market in London, near Southwark Cathedral. John had come from work, but I’d been at Southwark Cathedral to attend a service within which new bishops were being consecrated. And thinking back now, that service was itself a conscious act of prayerful waiting, as is every service of ordination or consecration or commissioning. On one level it’s about people being given jobs to do, or maybe people being accorded a new status in the Church. But there’s more than that going on. We’d been calling on God to send his Spirit upon these two people who, within all the ceremonial stuff, were being called and commissioned into a new and demanding role - that of being shepherds to God’s people, and leading and preaching and serving and loving according to the call of Jesus and after the example of Jesus and in the name of Jesus. And, as at every service of that sort I’ve been at or taken part in - ordaining a new minister, welcoming a minister into a new charge, baptizing or confirming new Christians or new members of a church, all of us there were drawn to reflect on our own call, and on the presence of God, of his Holy Spirit, in our own lives. All of us were being drawn to wait on God.

One title given to the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. But God’s Spirit is as much Disturber as Comforter, for he’s not soothing us into a holy huddle but turning us round to point us out into the world. The Church Spirit-filled won’t be inward-looking and all tied up with its own affairs. If we’re waiting on God we’re surely waiting, like the first disciples, for a change of mind and heart and vision. God calls us to love our neighbours as ourselves, whoever and wherever that neighbour may be.

Years ago I remembering listening to the then Bishop of Coventry talking about what in Germany is called Nagelkreuzgemeinschaft, and in this country the Fellowship of the Cross of Nails. It connects Coventry and Dresden, it connects Britain and Germany, but more than that, it seeks to be an agent of reconciliation and peacemaking globally. The Bishop described how his wartime predecessor, standing in the burnt-out ruins of the old cathedral in Coventry, the ruins that still stand next to the new church, said: “Those who did this thing must become our friends.” The first cross of nails was formed out of three medieval nails found on the floor of the cathedral; it became a symbol of hope – of the Christian hope that by God’s grace and his power within us, even bad and tragic and hurtful things can be turned round and used for good.

The Spirit is not to be contained by human borders. The friends of Jesus waiting in Jerusalem were fishermen and ordinary folk, not travelled people, but they were about to launch into the unknown. The story of the Ascension ends Luke’s Gospel of Jesus and begins the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s ‘Gospel of the Holy Spirit’, where he tells of the Spirit releasing the good news of Jesus Christ from its Jewish setting out into all the world.

Christian Aid Week is just around the corner, starting next Sunday, and it is itself a witness I believe to the way in which a Spirit-led Church will dare to cross borders and make friends. Those who this Christian Aid Week will be distributing and collecting envelopes door to door, or standing on the street with a collecting tin, or organising some special event to raise funds but also to tell stories - if we’re doing any of this we’re showing the world how Christians care for our neighbours.  Remember the question Jesus was asked: ‘Who is my neighbour?’ He replied by telling the story of the Good Samaritan, of a man who reached across the boundary, the division, the enmity between one kind of person and another. My neighbour is anyone; anyone who needs my help, my support, my vision, my love. Their need puts them in my power. I can help, or I can walk away. I know what the Samaritan did. I know what my Lord would do. The disciples in Jerusalem were waiting for new vision, and waiting to see the world – and to recognise their neighbour - through the eyes of Christ. We should wait and pray for the same vision.

But there’s a sort of waiting I’m all too prone to, that I need to confess to you. Maybe in fact you share my problem. There is that waiting which is about putting off the evil day when you’ve to start doing that thing you really don’t want to, or when you have to begin that job you fear might be too big for you. ust now at home, it’s my decking. It’ll be a big job, so I think: better not to start yet. Time’s not right. I need a week of good weather. I need the loan of my son-in-law’s power washer. I need . . . actually what I do need is just to get on with it. And that applies just as much to the spiritual tasks I find reasons to postpone. For all their uncertainties, the disciples waited in hope, waited with a deep desire to get on with things. There was nothing of the avoidance tactic in their waiting.

A few months back I was listening to a talk given by a youth worker from the Church of South India. She was very young herself, and full of enthusiasm and commitment. She talked about the 150 evangelists that were at work in her remote, poor and very rural part of India, travelling from village to village, but finding it hard. So they were equipping all of them with bicycles. So far they had fifteen; only 135 to go. She was very excited about that. Her church was very poor, and there wasn’t much chance they’d be able to raise enough money to buy all the bicycles they needed, but she was sure they would arrive somehow, because she was sure this was what God wanted.

So for now they were waiting, waiting for help to arrive from friends and partners. But what struck me as she spoke was that just because you need to wait doesn’t mean you don’t also make a start. And for the young woman who was addressing us and for her co-workers back home, the fact that they’d been able to make a successful start was all the assurance they needed that they’d be able to finish the job.

A week today is not only the start of Christian Aid Week but also the Day of Pentecost. Today we wait on our King ascended into heaven but at the same time always with his people. We  wait on his promised gift of the Spirit. May we wait prayerfully and purposefully, may we wait with confidence and hope, may we wait with enthusiasm, wanting to make a start, ready to offer ourselves in the service of our Lord and in his mission of love to the world.  Lord, lift our vision, and help us to wait with the hope of a better world in our hearts. Renew us in eager faith and in mutual love. And as we see what you would have us do, help us to begin now, but always to expect more. Amen.

Some thoughts for Rogation Sunday

To be preached at Chirbury tomorrow . . .

I’d been Vicar of Minsterley for quite a few years when a team from Midlands Today came to film a short piece about our maiden’s garlands - but it was only then that I realised that among the carvings by the main doorway on the west front of Minsterley Church is the Green Man. It came as a bit of a surprise to find masons still carving such images as recently as the late seventeenth century, when Holy Trinity Church was built. As a figure from pagan legend, the Green Man can’t have been very acceptable in the reformed Church, though not uncommon in medieval churches. But there he is, and in fact he’s there in this group too, in a much more recent incarnation, among Waldegrave Brewster’s carvings in Middleton church.

So perhaps he never really went away in these parts. He still dances at Bishop’s Castle, I believe. Maybe his appearance at Minsterley was part of the rediscovery of old images and traditions that came with the restoration of the monarchy - a bit of life and colour restored after the plain whitewashed walls and solemn tables of Cromwell's puritan austerity. Brewster, of course, carved almost every image he could think of at Middleton, including the witch at work at Mitchell’s Fold; the Victorian era was a time of huge rediscovery of ancient tradition and country lore.

Anyway, I’m happy to let the Green Man begin my sermon for Rogation Sunday, because, pagan or not, he can stand as a reminder that we human beings are rooted in the land. If the green things of the earth do not live and thrive, then neither do we. In Genesis chapter two we read that Adam and Eve are made of the same dust and clay as everything else. We human beings often behave as though we were gods, different from this thing around us called nature; but the fact is that we are part of it, made from atoms and molecules, genes and chromosomes, like everything else living.

We’re also destined for the same end. Those who go to church on Ash Wednesday are told to remember that “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But we’re not just dust. We’re also sentient beings, able to interpret the world around us, and to be creative and inventive; and as Christians we talk about being not just body, but also spirit - made of the stuff of the earth, but made also in the image of God. And made therefore to seek and know the mind of the Creator, who calls us to be stewards of the earth he made. The story of Adam and Eve began in a garden, where they fell from grace and were cast out. But then out there in the hard world beyond Eden their task and ours is to make new gardens for God.

Back to Eden was the title of a project I helped introduce when I was working for the mission agency then called USPG. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts - to give it its original title - was founded more than three hundred years ago by Thomas Bray, born near Trelystan and baptized in Chirbury. For three years I was part of a team promoting the mission work the society still funds and supports all around the world.

Underpinning our mission strategy was something called the Five Marks of Mission, adopted by the Anglican Communion in 1990. Briefly, they are (1) proclaiming good news, (2) teaching and baptizing new believers, (3) responding to human need, (4) transforming unjust structures; and (5) safeguarding the integrity of creation and renewing the life of the earth. Renewing the life of the earth was very much the theme of the Back to Eden project, which was based in the South African Diocese of Umzimvubu. The Umzimvubu is also a river rising in the Drakensburg Mountains close to the border between South Africa and Lesotho, and flowing down to the Wild Coast of the north-eastern Cape Province.

This part of South Africa became the African homeland of Transkei, where many people were resettled from the cities into new but pretty basic homes, hardly more than concrete boxes with little in the way of facilities. The land around had become impoverished, because it was badly farmed by urban people resettled against their will who had little idea of how to live on the land. Their main fuel was wood, and the loss of trees made the land vulnerable to erosion, exacerbated by the practice of burning off areas of land to provide young shoots for the cattle. The river itself, quiet and easily forded in the dry season, would become in the wet season a raging torrent that ran blood-red with soil ripped away and carried off downstream, leaving huge gullies called dongas, scars across the face of the land that grow deeper with each wet season. Repairing the dongas was the most urgent task, but repairing the whole relationship between people and land was important too. The Green Man reminds us how we all depend on the land: if the land is damaged we are damaged too.

So the then Bishop of Umzimvubu, Geoff Davies, had made care for the environment a vital component of his strategy to build the church in what is still a young diocese, founded in the mid 1990’s. Looking at the Back to Eden Project, I was inspired by the stories of lives being rebuilt, families nurtured, and the land itself being healed and repaired. When I talked about the project to churches and groups I would show pictures of children helping carry big stones to fill in and stabilize the dongas; of market gardeners looking very proud of the crops they were learning to grow and harvest; and of young men learning how to put fences up, one of the new skills being taught that would help them earn extra money to supplement their income from working the land. The most inspiring thing was that all this was small-scale and locally initiated - a big project made up of lots of small schemes which each had identifiable and achievable targets.

The result was that people were taking control of their own lives, as they learned how to love and respect and conserve their own land. We had helped fund this work over several years, and the next step was to make it a project and guarantee further funding. The title of the project came from a senior retired priest in the diocese, Fr Nceba Gabula. His impressive gardening skills were being used to further the mission of the  church, as he taught his people new skills and  showed them how to use the land well and sustainably, and make their own little patches of ground productive. And he had said this: "Our mission to go back to the garden of Eden, back to creation, is a call to liberation for the people of this region."

I believe God calls all of us as his people to build gardens of love through our care for one another and our care for the land. Sadly not everything has gone well since that time in Umzimvubu. There’ve been troubles and divisions, and last year their cathedral burned down in mysterious circumstances. That’s so sad, because the need there is as great as ever. I can only hope that the issues there will be resolved - so that both land and communities can continue to be healed and restored. Fr Gabula described Umzimvubu as a land that used to be Eden when people lived in harmony with it, and when they honoured God by their care what he had made; and his vision of going back to Eden, with the land secure and fertile, and the people in a creatively loving and obedient relationship with God, still needs to happen.

As it does for all of us at Rogationtide. We don’t really need the Green Man to tell us we belong to the land, if God’s creative Spirit dwells within us. God’s Spirit is active across all kinds of human boundaries, and we as people of God are a holy nation. Wherever we live and whatever language we speak, we belong together in the love of God and in our sharing of the world he made. Like the sun and rain, may his word bring our earth and ourselves to new life.

Wren

My two poems presented at my poetry session with Paul and Lyn today were "Watching the Wheels" (posted here last month) and this one. I'm quite pleased with them both.

Tiniest of woodland birds, you scurry mouse-like
through dead leaves and brambles, then in a blur of tiny wings
flash low across my path to find a leafless perch,
where with sudden burst of song you bring the copse to life,
assuring me that spring at last is here.

Agape

My planned sermon for the Sunday to come . . . (now slightly edited - 23/4/16)

It’s a shame that we don’t make space for the third reading at our communion service, because the today’s, from Revelation chapter 21, is  reading I quite like. In his great vision of the end of all things, John writes: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and I saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband.”

We might need a new earth. The other day I saw a programme about the nature of Hawaii. Not a place I’ve been, or ever likely to go, but from the point of view of its wild environment Hawaii is very special - a place of huge scientific importance. There are many endemic species found nowhere else on the planet, and immense volcanoes that can help scientists decode the geological changes that shaped the early days of our planet. Offshore it provides a haven for many rare fish, birds, turtles and reef corals.

All of that was on the programme I was watching; but it also homed in on the mess humanity is currently making of this unique set of habitats. In particular, there is plastic rubbish that’s perhaps spent anything up to fifty years travelling the Pacific only to end up on Hawaiian beaches, where it just sits, and doesn’t decay. A lot of plastic gets eaten by the albatrosses, clogging up their digestive systems so that many of them starve to death. To an albatross, anything floating on the sea looks like food, and gets eaten, including all kinds of disposable plastic.

Disposable to us, but not to the planet. Disposable things don't really get disposed of, they just end up out of our sight and therefore out of our minds, but in places where they still do damage. The programme provided a glimpse of what we don’t usually see: how the way we live has consequences, and often they’re not good ones. What makes life easy for us here seems to be having an unguessed-at impact on the other side of the world. This should be of immense concern to everyone, but especially to Christians, for all created things speak to us of God and are precious to him.

In the Book of Revelation John shared his vision of how things would be in the new age, when pain and tears would be no more. The Church that first heard his words knew a lot about pain and tears. It was living under persecution; Christians were being put to the sword, or set upon by wild beasts in the arena. Some would have recanted their faith rather than face such terror, persuaded perhaps that they'd been wrong ever to have put their faith in Christ. For how could God let such awful things happen to his faithful people?

Yet right from the start Jesus had warned his disciples to be ready for the persecution that lay ahead, for days when they’d be arrested, dragged into court, betrayed by family and friends, put to death even. He’d told them that those who look for an easy life here had already received their reward, and advised them not to lay up for themselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal, but instead to lay up treasure in heaven. For, he said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  I thought of those words as I watched the distressing images from Hawaii, of earthly treasures turned into dross that clogs up our waterways and pollutes our planet. God made us stewards of creation, and we’ve let him down.

The readings we did hear this morning urge us to take a global perspective. In the reading from Acts, Peter is taught a lesson. Good Jew that he is, he’s horrified at the thought of eating food that isn’t kosher - but that’s what he’s commanded to do in the dream he had. And he begins to understand that the message of life and salvation entrusted to him is for the whole world, for non-Jews as well as Jews, not confined by any human boundary. And in the Gospel reading, Jesus tells his disciples, "Love one another as I have loved you." It’s through the witness of our love that the world gets to see that the message we bear is true. Words only go so far - it’s in our loving and Christ-like action that God is shown to the world, and we are identified as his people.

Love. English is a language of great and poetic beauty, but it  falls short of that greatness perhaps when we come to that little word 'love'. For that one word in English translates several different words in Greek, the language of the New Testament, and they are these: eros, which is the sexual or romantic love between two people; philia, which is the love between friends, which also forms the words philadelphia, love between brothers, and philanthropia, our duty of love towards neighbours and visitors. And then there is the word used in this passage from John and elsewhere in the Gospels, the word agape.

Now this is or should be a special word for Christians, and it’s therefore worth unpacking. Agape is love without limits or boundaries; you don’t have to behave in some particular way, or to be a member of some particular group, or to be related to me, in order for me to show you agape love. Agape is an unconditional love that is expressed in our helping and treasuring and upholding the thing or person loved, without desiring it as a possession, or hoarding or consuming it. It’s love the respects the freedom of the other, it’s love that is fundamentally selfless, expressed in free gift and sacrifice, it’s love that is the deliberate decision of those who wish to continue and share the love of Christ.

Agape describes both the love God has for us and for his world, and the love by which we may glorify him. Agape is the currency of that new heaven and new earth in John's great vision; it will be triumphant over all that is ungodly and selfish. John encourages the persecuted Church of his day to be strong and steadfast, and not to give up on agape or on God. For Agape is also the new heaven and earth among us now: the love that will transform our living together as human beings and our care as stewards for the natural world around us. Agape is love that lives for tomorrow within the world of today, that finds its expression in service, and strives for what is good, challenging us to recognise God in our neighbour, and his imprint in every fold and furl of creation.

The Annual Meeting and Other Thoughts

A sermon preached at Chirbury Parish Church last Sunday, on the set readings for the day . . .

I want to take from the readings we’ve just heard some thoughts about discipleship, fellowship and mission - three vital words when it comes to our identity as the Church of Christ. First we have the story from the Acts of the Apostles about Tabitha (or Dorcas, to give her her Greek name), at Peter’s hands miraculously healed if not indeed raised back to life from the dead.  It’s a powerful story, but alongside the miracle we also get a quite charming insight into the close fellowship of the little Christian community in Joppa where Dorcas had “filled her days” - so we’re told - with acts of kindness and charity; isn’t that a lovely thing to be able to say about someone - could be said of me, or of you? Certainly I find a personal challenge in that description.

Dorcas seems to have been quite a saintly lady - but then again, in the New Testament the word saint is used of all the faithful, and not only of a few special people who’ve been canonised. So all of us are saints, potentially at least, all of us members of the vast throng mentioned by John in one of the readings set for today that I haven’t used, from chapter 7 of that immense vision of the last things we call the Book of Revelation. This is what he writes:

“After that I looked and saw a vast throng which no-one could count, from all races and tribes, nations and languages, standing before the throne and the Lamb. They were robed in white and had palm branches in their hands, and they shouted aloud: “Victory to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

So we’ll be all robed in white, then. I’d certainly like to think so - but if I’m to be robed in white and given a palm branch to wave it won’t be because of my own goodness or my own achievements, however steadfast and noble and enduring and loving I’ve managed to be. The only reason these robes are white is because they’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Those who receive these robes have placed their hope in Christ, for it is Christ alone who justifies us and makes us clean.

For now though we are the Church militant here in earth, with a gospel-shaped job to do. So here are three things that lie at the heart of what being the Church should be: three things we should be looking for, praying for, and working for:  first, we should aim to be a community of people who belong to one another because we belong to Jesus, and who therefore should aim to be constantly growing in our care for each other;  second, we should each of us be constantly striving to excel in acts of kindness and charity;  and thirdly that everything we are and everything we do should be focused on Christ, for without him nothing we can do, nothing we can attempt, has any lasting value.

In our reading from John’s Gospel we find Jesus telling his opponents that his own sheep will hear his voice and willingly follow him. While in these parts sheep are more likely to be herded or driven, a Judaean shepherd would lead his sheep, and his sheep would therefore need to recognise his voice. Through the day sheep would be grazing together in mixed flocks out on the hills, until called out by their own shepherd.

As Christians most of us spend most of our lives in company with people who don’t necessarily share our faith, or at least don’t practise it. And most of the time that won’t matter. Often we may find ourselves working closely with people with whom we agree on lots of things, but maybe not on what we do on a Sunday. But we need to know who we belong to when the chips are down, and whose voice to pick out when other voices are calling in other directions.  That’s our number one priority, and everything else about being a Christian, being Church, follows from that.

At this time of annual parish meetings, something from which I’m presently spared by age and retirement, church folk will be finding themselves looking back over the year past, and looking ahead to the year to come.

The other day I was talking to a churchwarden (not from these parishes), who told me she’d been thinking very hard about not standing again at her church's annual meeting, but had decided that maybe she would if (underlined). If she could feel a little bit happier about future directions in the diocese and deanery (which I think she was beginning to), if just a bit less stuff to do landed on her shoulders, in other words if a little more if it was shared some of the other folk in her church. I think she was in fact quite hopeful there, since she had some quite positive things to say about the standard of fellowship they had, and clearly things weren’t all bad. When you think about it most of life is a mixture of good and not so good, and none of us get it all right all of the time. We’re a mixed lot of sheep.

Sometimes we’re good at listening to the voice of our Good Shepherd, but often we’re not so good, and stuff gets in the way. We’re wilful, we know it all already, we want our own space; we think we’re sorted already, so we've no need to listen. Or is that just me? Anyway, looking back on my own journey of discipleship and ministry, I have to admit that things have gone better when I’ve taken the time and trouble to ask prayerfully, “Lord, is this your will?” and when I’ve had the humility to go to those with whom I should be sharing ministry and ask, “Does what I'm proposing make sense? Are you happy to be on board?”

But let me remind you of the firm promise Jesus gives to those who do listen to his voice. He says this: “No-one can snatch them from the Father’s care.” We're often so aware of our own weakness and smallness, our age profile, the number of empty pews in our church. We lose confidence in our ability to do mission. But what Jesus asks is this: that we recognise his call, and offer him ourselves as we are. Remember the five barley loaves and two small fish offered by a small boy? Jesus used them to feed a multitude. And he can and he will make much more of us than we could make of ourselves, once we make that offer.

Our annual meetings often reflect on church fabric and finance. We love our church buildings, and I’m glad we do, but however lovingly and carefully we care for them and maintain them, that on its own makes us little more than the curators of a museum. And Church is much more than that. Church isn’t primarily about buildings at all, it’s made up not of stones and stained glass but of sheep who know their Shepherd’s voice, and follow.

The church Dorcas attended probably met in someone’s home, and not in a special building; but it was a real church even so, a place of service and faith and fellowship and love. And the Spirit of Jesus. We need that still, maybe more than ever. It’s only when people can see the quality of our fellowship and feel the strength of our faith that mission begins to make sense.

And mission is what we’re about, not only because we want our churches still to be here in years to come, but because we want our churches to be doing the Lord’s work now, and because like him we care about the people here, about their future,  and about their walk with the Lord. When I was working for a mission agency I was told that mission begins with listening. Mission begins with listening to the voices around us, for if we’re not meeting with people where they are, addressing the real concerns they have and speaking in language they understand then we won’t be heard. But even before that mission begins with listening to the voice of our Good Shepherd, and setting ourselves to follow where he is leading.

It’s right that we should love our church buildings, and our traditions of worship, and that we should support its structures within deanery and diocese and so forth. But at the same time I’d have to say that when I hear the voice of my Shepherd I don’t so much hear him calling me into the church building as sending me out from it. We meet here to gather at the table of Christ our Good Shepherd, to pray in his name to our Father and to receive the enlivening and renewing power of his Holy Spirit; and we are then sent out by him proclaim his name and his love in our bit of his world. And we’ll do that by following him into the places where he already is, to families and streets and homes where he is already present, and where he is already wanting to change hearts, to heal wounds, and to transform lives.

Good Shepherd

A sermon I preached last Sunday at Coedway Chapel . . .

The Good Shepherd is one of the most familiar images of our Lord; the 23rd is the one Psalm people know even if they're not churchgoers. The title of Good Shepherd is given to God not only in the 23rd psalm but also in the prophet Ezekiel. But in Ezekiel God's pastoral care for his people is contrasted with what the false shepherds have been doing - priests and rulers who’ve betrayed God's trust. They should have been doing what the Good Shepherd does, guiding the people, protecting them, leading them to places of safety, but instead they’ve exploited, harmed and endangered the flock placed in their care.

But Jesus declares himself to be the Good Shepherd - and in doing that he claims divine authority and identity. In one of his parables he speaks of the shepherd's joy when he finds the lost sheep and brings him back to the fold. And he identifies himself as that sort of shepherd, one that searches out the lost, one that knows and cares for his sheep.

In the reading we’ve heard today from St John's Gospel he speaks of his sheep as recognising his voice, and we’ll think more about that in a moment. But one reason why sheep would need to recognise their shepherds voice was so they could be led safely off the hillsides at the end of the say to be penned safely in the fold overnight. In one place Jesus says 'I am the door of the sheepfold'. The image that brings up for me is that of the shepherd lying across the doorway of the fold the sheep are penned in. There is no actual door, but any wild beast that might threaten the sheep would first have to deal with the shepherd. The sheep are protected from danger by the shepherd’s own body.

And my own sheep know me, says Jesus. They will know my voice. The other day, walking up on the Long Mountain I was watching a shepherd out with his dogs. It was impressive, the dogs responding to his whistles and calls, and penning the sheep very efficiently. But those sheep were being driven, organised, scared even into going the right way. In Greece a few years ago I watched a shepherd not driving but leading his flock. It was quite a biblical scene, the old shepherd with his staff, and the flock, a mixed flock of sheep and goats as it happens, all with their little bells clanking. Like in the psalm they will have trusted their shepherd to protect them and to lead them to good and safe pasture.

But here’s another image of Jesus from our readings today.  Peter speaks of Jesus as 'the cornerstone'. This is another image with Old Testament resonance: the stone rejected as useless and cast away is restored to become the chief stone of the corner, in other words the stone fundamental to the whole building. And Peter goes on to make clear what he means: that there is salvation in no-one else.

That was a very challenging statement to make to those who had regarded Jesus as a nuisance and a threat, someone who had to be removed. But Peter uses the same image in his first letter, and we can find the image of being built together in Christ in St Paul’s letters too. Jesus is the cornerstone and we are built on him to be formed into a spiritual temple, built to the glory of God.

I was reading yesterday about plans for this year’s Christian Aid Week, which happens every year in May, and then on the radio this morning I was hearing about the final push against the scourge of polio, which is of great interest to me as a Rotarian as Rotary international has taken a lead in this world. We are that close (a pinch of the fingers) to finishing polio off, with just a handful of cases, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I was glad of the way both those stories helped direct my thoughts and actions towards the responsibility we all share for the poor and the suffering of this one world which is our home together.

And I'm also reminded of our need to pull together, to be working as one in the cause of humanity; the defeat of polio is exciting because there’s been such a good and effective coalition of partners, among them some people I know myself who've just returned from being in India helping to immunise children against this disease. They had wanted to go there, both of them, partly because they had had of the impact of polio within their own families, and now they wanted to help remove it from the lives of others.

And Christian Aid week each year not only reminds us of the needs there are around the world for help, rebuilding, support, but how we can stand together as Christians, united across denominations. Christian Aid is an ecumenical organisation that was founded initially in response to the need of the poor in eastern Europe at the end of the second World War, whose work then spread across the globe, crossing all kinds of boundaries of places, nationalities and cultures. In Christ we all belong together, in him we find our identity and purpose and vocation - and that is the central theme I think of those two great images of Jesus the Good Shepherd, and Jesus the Cornerstone.

Jesus speaks of the other sheep that don’t belong to this fold, but which he must also bring in. There are no boundaries to the work of salvation and to the divine love that overflows in the example and witness offered by our Good Shepherd. And there must be no boundaries to our understanding of what our outreach and mission and service should be as his people, his active body in the world today. For there will be one flock, one shepherd, that’s what Jesus says. Indeed, Jesus also said, on the night of his betrayal, that to do mission the world we must be united. May they be one, he prays to his Father, so that world will know that you have sent me.

I remember once watching a dry-stone waller selecting and placing his stones, talking about his work as he went along. It's a marvellous art, in which, as he told us, each stone in the pile before him already had its place, its own special part to play in the construction of a good and solid wall. His job was to find the right stone for each space, and place it there. As a careless hiker in dry stone country may discover, knock one stone out, and the whole structure an become unstable, and that whole section of wall may well collapse. I’m also reminded that one attractive thing about walls made of stone rather than brick, is the variety of different sizes, different shapes, and maybe different colours and textures too.

And if "Christ is our cornerstone and on him alone we build", it’s marvellous the range of different stones that can then be bonded together in this construction. But each stone has its place, and its part to play. If any stone is missing or not properly supporting the stones that depend upon it, the whole structure will be weakened.

So these images of sheep and stones are pretty basic to how I understand my ministry as a Christian. Jesus shows me, in human form, the God who seeks and finds, and who cares and leads and protects: the Good Shepherd who knows his sheep and is known by them.  His call to me is to be an attentive sheep, to follow well, to hear and respond to his voice.  But also to be a shepherd in the service of the shepherd, having a pastoral ministry to those to whom I can offer, in some sense, direction and encouragement and leadership and love.

And Jesus is the rock who strengthens me, who provided the firm foundation for my life.  I should seek to be firmly built in him, connecting myself to his example of love.  There is one corner stone; but in a wall the stones also support each other, and each shares something of the ministry of that chief stone:  strengthening, supporting and enabling those around us.

May we be, in shared and united ministry, both sheep and shepherds to the glory of the Good Shepherd; and both stones built on the strength of the chief stone and stones supporting and strengthening the stones around us - and this again, to the glory of the one stone who is the corner and the foundation, in whom alone is our salvation.  Amen.

Nests

My "Nature Notes" contribution for the month to come . . . my second on this subject.

Most children believe that birds live in nests - or at least, they do when they are very young. If they are interested in nature they will soon come to realise the truth - so far as nearly all birds are concerned - that nests are very temporary structures, used only for the brooding of eggs and the nurturing of chicks. But just now the nesting season is in full force, and nests will be in use.

There are many variations on the basic nest template. Some birds make virtually no nest, with some coastal or seabirds, for example,  more or less nesting directly on rock ledges, or in a scrape on a pebble beach. And then there is the cuckoo, of course, which doesn’t bother with making its own nest - or indeed caring for its own offspring - but parasitises on others.

Garden birds do make nests, which vary from the flimsy jerry-built bundles of twigs that are the nearest that pigeons get to nests, to the amazingly detailed little domed nests of long-tailed tits. These small masterpieces can take a couple of weeks to build (or, better perhaps, to weave) - they are soft and warm, made from moss, hair, wool, and maybe a thousand or more feathers. It is usually very well concealed, in the fork of a tree or in thick brambles. But even such a fine and detailed nest is only used by the baby birds for some two to three weeks.

Another very detailed nest is that of the wren, made of grass, moss and leaves. In many birds it is the female that takes the lead in nest-building, while the male spends most of his time defending the territory. In wrens, however, it is the male who builds, and he will in fact build several nests, often quite inventively sited, and the female will then choose the nest she wants to use. Wrens will on occasion use their nests as winter shelters in very cold weather when their small size makes them vulnerable.

Most nests are carefully hidden away, but inexperience and pressure for nest spaces may mean birds build in places that are too obvious, and if you know where a nest is, then predators probably do as well. Nests are at risk from magpies, crows, cats, rats, squirrels, even wood-peckers. Try and keep some thick bushy cover in your garden if you want breeding birds in spring as well as feeding birds in winter. Nest-boxes will benefit many birds which like to seek out holes in which to build their nests - like tits, nuthatches and sparrows. House sparrows like to nest together, and multiple occupancy sparrow boxes can be bought. Other social nesters include jackdaws and rooks - social but not always sociable, as jackdaws will take over the nests of neighbours, and rooks are notorious stealers of twigs - and of course swallows and martins.

Finally, a little mention of the robin, one of our most entertaining nesters. Robins will often nest in sheds and outbuildings, and use buckets, pans, kettles as shelter! Most years a robin or two will make the news with their amusing choice of nest site.

Apology

A very busy week has left me without time to post anything. That's my excuse, anyway . . . so, several posts all at once, now!

Mary

Tonight we celebrated the Annunciation, on the first available day in the lectionary, a good week and a half after Lady Day. Here is my short address . . .

A London tour guide working the open top buses, being interviewed about his job, told the story of how one day his microphone was taken off him by a very bright little girl on the bus, who proceeded to captivate the rest of the passengers with her version of the story of that tragic nine days queen of England, Lady Jane Grey. She'd seen a famous painting in the National Gallery and she wanted to tell the world about it. The painting was by a 19th Century artist, Paul Delaroche, and it presented the execution in 1554 of Lady Jane Grey as a martyrdom, in which Lady Jane's innocence is declared in the pale lustre of her skin and the simple, pure white dress she wears, all very different from the elaborate Tudor gowns of those who look on.

Delaroche’s painting tells the tragic story of the ending of a young and vulnerable life. Lady Jane was only seventeen when she was put to death, and was by all accounts a young woman of both beauty and learning, to whom the throne of England had passed in the deathbed will of Henry VIII's son Edward VI. But Edward, being only fifteen at the time of his death, was not old enough for the will to be valid. Edward's sister Mary soon gathered the support she needed to claim the throne, and Jane was doomed.

That story lingered in my mind as I sat down to prepare some words for tonight mainly because it contains these great themes of duty and destiny and - in this case - their tragic consequences. There are those in history whose destiny has been to say 'Yes' to the call, no matter where that yes may lead. We could see Lady Jane Grey in that light, Queen Mary too, perhaps, who knew herself born to be queen, and who might have changed the whole destiny of England had she reigned for longer than the five years she did. Had Mary not died at the age of only 42, and had Mary had children, history might have taken a very different course.

But tonight we’re thinking of another young woman to whom destiny called. The Annunciation to Mary the mother of our Lord is a story with the same interplay between destiny and innocence, in which a young girl is told she's to bear a child who’ll be nothing less than God's anointed Son, the one given to set his people free. And so Mary’s life ceases to be her own; later, after the child is born, old Simeon in the Temple will tell her of the sword that will pierce her heart; later still Simeon’s words become reality - and Mary stands on the hill of Calvary to see her son die.

Lady Jane Grey had little choice, perhaps, in her yes to destiny’s call; her destiny was closely bound to the political ambition of the Duke of Northumberland. But Mary the mother of Jesus maybe could have said no. Whenever I read it I sense all of creation collectively holding its breath and waiting on her answer. Then again, God knows us before we know ourselves; and Mary was chosen for the unsaid yes that even so she was sure to say.

Colossal news breaks in to an ordinary life as Mary says what she perhaps need not have: Let it be to me according to your will. Those are words that run counter to much in the modern world. They're about being where we ought to be, and doing what we ought to do, rather than insisting on that modern god, freedom of choice and the right to do whatever I want. But still today there are those who have a sense of 'ought' and even of destiny, and I thank God for their vision and courage and faith; for society to be able to provide well for its members we need those who know the meaning of service and obedience, and who get on and do what needs to be done. And in a society founded on Christian principles, the Church needs to be faithful and responsive and responsible. Its leaders and members need to be responsive - ready to say yes to God's call even though that call may take us to places we may not choose to be, and responsible - knowing we’re here for the sake of others, and that in serving them we serve our Lord.

So may we then take to heart Mary’s words 'Let it be to me according to your will'. What is God asking of us now, at this stage in the history of our nation and of our Church, at this stage in the living of our lives? He is calling me, and he is calling you, be sure of that. Each one of us has a role, a place and a calling within his purpose; in the building of a holy Temple, each stone has its part to play and its place to fill.

The story of protestant Lady Jane and catholic Queen Mary is a tragic tale made only more tragic by the fact that it was religious intolerance what led Jane to the throne and then to the block - an episode in the history of our nation when those who should have been striving together for the Gospel of Christ were instead fighting each other. Mary prayed was that it should be to her according to God’s will. If that prayer is ours too, may we also recall the prayer of Jesus in the garden: 'Father, may they all be one, that the world may believe.'

I’ve never done an open top bus tour in London, but Ann and I did do one some years ago in Marrakech. We were on the edge of the Sahara, but it was cold and rainy, and the rain grew heavier throughout our journey. Being British, we stuck it out upstairs for quite a while, but eventually we had to admit defeat and retire to the relative dry and warmth of the enclosed seats downstairs. God sometimes has to work very hard on us before we finally give in and let him have his way; he does have to put up with us being short-sighted and foolish and stubborn. We’re not good at saying yes to him, and maybe we need to leave more space in our prayers to hear what he wants to say to us.

Maybe our prayers have too many of our words in them, and not enough of his. The thing is, his words may not be what we expect or desire; they may run counter to our own plans. With that in mind, we can only give thanks now for Mary, and for her simple 'Yes' that opened the way for the Word of God to be born among us. So we see divine love take human form as Mary’s yes to God allows his yes to the world.

Doubting Thomas?

A sermon for the second Sunday of Easter . . .

So today our Easter story is the story of doubting Thomas. I’ve always had a special regard for Thomas, maybe in part because the first church I had charge of as a young curate was dedicated in his name. He gets labelled as “Doubting Thomas”, but I can’t help but think that’s a bit unfair. It wasn’t that Thomas couldn’t believe so much as that he was determined not to. When he says “I will not believe,” he uses the strong version of the verb. He’s not saying “I can’t”, he’s saying “I won’t” - so why is that, we might ask.

You see, Thomas wasn’t lacking in chutzpah or courage. It was Thomas who said, “Let us go also, that we may die there with him.” That was when Jesus decided to return to Judaea after hearing of the illness of Lazarus. Judaea was a very dangerous place for Jesus to go, people there wanted to do him harm - so Thomas doesn’t come across as a man lacking in faith or courage. It might even be that the absence of Thomas when Jesus appeared to his disciples on Easter Day was because he’d been out on the Jerusalem streets, rather than hiding behind locked doors like the other disciples.

So here’s what I think. Thomas wanted so much for his Lord to be risen and alive; and when at last he did see Jesus, he didn’t for a moment need to actually do what Jesus told him to do – place his finger in the marks of the nails and his hand into the wound in his side. His trust in Jesus was so sure and complete that he straight away falls before him and hails him as “My Lord and my God.” But his longing for Jesus to be alive was such that he dared not trust anyone else’s word for it - even that of his friends. What if they were wrong, what if it was all an illusion? That would be a disappointment too much to bear, and Thomas was not prepared to take that risk. His faith remained strong, and he wanted so much for it all to be true, but he didn’t dare take the risk of believing.

That’s what I think. For me, we do Thomas a disservice when we label him as a weak and wobbly doubter. Thomas would go on to travel half a world to take the Gospel to India, and to die a martyr’s death, or so the tradition goes. But his initial refusal to believe allows Jesus to say to us “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”

So what about us who have not seen? What is the ground of our faith to be? I can only speak for myself. My own Easter faith rests firstly in the existence of the Church itself, built as it is on the foundation of apostles and martyrs. Had there not been people who knew Jesus and who knew that this man had been dead but had risen from the dead, it’s hard to see how the message of Jesus could have survived, or how the Church could have been built. His people should have been defeated, downcast, disillusioned, but something happened to make them lose their fear, and to fill them with joyful courage.

Secondly, my faith rests on the examples of people in whose lives the light of Christ has shone. Some of them I’ve known, others are people I’ve heard about, some of whom bear the title ‘saint’. Some have directly ministered to me, some have taught me, all have inspired me.

But thirdly, I find faith simply in the living of my own life. It may be that I am mistaken and full of illusion; not everyone I know s going to be convinced, but my own sense, from a life that’s managed to contain thus far some pretty impressive highs and lows, is of there being point and purpose and direction to my life’s journey, which leads me to have a personal sense of God’s call and challenge. I’m not a very holy or pious person. I’m not very good at praying, I don’t read scripture as much as I should. Why God should want me, I don’t know. But my sense is that he does.

You may not be convinced. Where’s your proof, you might ask. I have friends and family members who do not believe in God, and I’ve not managed so far to get them to see things my way.

But that’s the point I suppose. There is no proof, or perhaps I should say there is no empirical proof. There are perhaps two kinds of proof: empirical proof, the proof that scientists seek and work from, where you do the same experiment, you get always the same result, wherever and whenever you do it. But there is also what I would call experiential proof. It’s not repeatable for every different person and in every different place; it’s highly subjective, it’s to do with living relationship rather than scientific law – but it works for me.

Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe. Faced with empirical proof, you have no choice but to believe, unless you work really hard at continuing to believe in, say, the earth being flat, the moon being made of cheese, or Mars being inhabited by little green men who build canals. But experiential proof isn’t transferable; so how do we pass on the flame of faith to others?

The clue is in the phrase I just used – the flame of faith. Our faith needs to be a flame, something we pass on by our own burning. People won’t believe Jesus is alive unless they see him alive in us. People won’t believe that Jesus can be their good news unless it’s obvious that he’s our good news. And every little bit helps. Desmond Tutu said: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” The Easter message of Jesus risen and alive should overwhelm the world - what good news it is that love is stronger than death, and that within that saving love you and I are known and loved and treasured. So do we have, and can we share, that flame of faith?

Watching the Cars

A poem reflecting on my visit to Pelotas, Brazil some years ago . . .

My first impressions are of long departed glory,
of peeling paint and shabby doorways,
grass growing between the cobbles
on the side streets. Once
there was imperial majesty in this city;
a touch of that ancient splendour lingers on, here and there.

The main streets are busy enough:
trucks and buses snort and roar, as the
soft drink sellers and windscreen cleaners
dodge between them at the traffic lights.
I stand awhile in the midday sun
watching the cars. She too
is watching the cars,
a lady of uncertain years and layers of shabby dress,
bent-backed and bustling.
But she has the badge,
the authority to do what she does.
The papers in the plastic wallet
on its lanyard around her neck
permit her, or so it seems,
to stop the world in its tracks. So,
arms flailing, she halts a snarling and wheezing bus,
then guides a driver out of his parking space,
a space he will have entered only at her discretion.
A little money changes hands; dust rises.
And the world begins to move again.

I think the parking here is free, but surely
no-one would dare to park unaided
or leave their car unprotected. After all,
she has the badge,
the authority to do what she does,
the monopoly of parking in this square.
The vehicles continue to circulate in a haze of dust and oil;
I buy a bottle from the soft-drink seller by the lights
and search for shade under the shabby balconies.
In the fragile economy of this decaying city,
she holds on to her one small part, her toe-hold on the ladder,
the papers that permit her to spend her days
watching the cars.

My Sermon for Easter Day

It’s spring, whatever the weather might be doing. We have passed the equinox, the clocks have gone forward, and it’s spring.  And with spring come daffodils, and birdsong, and butterflies. There’ve been a few about already, small tortoiseshells and peacocks mostly.  These are butterflies that overwinter as adults, and sometimes we find them fluttering against our windows on warm days in winter. Now they’re seriously beginning to get out and about.

And soon we’ll begin to get some of the butterflies that overwinter as a pupa, and in a chrysalis. This is the stage between caterpillar and adult. Some of these butterflies aren’t as popular or welcome as small tortoiseshells and peacocks - one of them is the cabbage white. But it’s a small miracle when the dry, dead looking chrysalis splits open to allow a new and pristine butterfly to emerge and to fly. Not surprisingly, the imagery of chrysalis and butterfly is often used by preachers on Easter Day, and this address is no exception.

There’s clearly something chrysalis-like about the empty tomb attended by Mary Magdalene, and by Peter and John: when they get there they find just the shell remaining. The body that had been placed there has been triumphantly and wondrously released.  And the fact that the graveclothes and the linen cloth left inside the tomb - here is a sign that something new is happening here. Jesus did not come back to life on Easter Day. That’s what Lazarus did when Jesus brought him out of the tomb. Do you remember, he was still wearing his grave clothes, brought back to earthly life, to die again some day. Easter is different from that and new: Jesus is alive in a new way, Jesus has moved forward into a new dimension of living.

The chrysalis from which a butterfly will emerge seems to be dead, but inside it contains life. That’s true also for the other great Easter symbol, the egg. But it’s not true of the tomb in that garden. On that first Good Friday evening and through the day that followed the tomb contained no life.

The body laid within it had been certified dead. Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the tomb, expected nothing to happen there; all he wanted was to do the right thing by this good man. Mary of Magdala and the other women with her, when they made their troubled way into the garden through the early morning mist, knew they would find only death in that place. But they needed to do what they could, so they came to anoint the body now that the Sabbath was over.

We shouldn’t be surprised to find there’s something mysterious and dream-like about the Easter stories we read in the four Gospels. Jesus shows himself to be the same man that died, that people had seen die, that people had laid in a tomb: the scars were there in his hands and feet, the gash where the spear had been thrust into his side.  And yet he’s not the same; he appears in a room whose doors have been closed and locked, and people who’ve known him well don’t recognise him when they first see him. What has happened is unthinkable, impossible, and it will take time for his friends to get their heads round it all. But also, this is not resuscitation, this is not “a conjuring trick with bones”; this is something new, not a resumption but a beginning.

One Easter hymn speaks of ‘the Queen of Seasons, bright with the day of splendour’. Something new has begun, and nothing is the same as it was. A man known to have died has been raised, and his tomb is left empty, the graveclothes no longer needed. Without Easter what would be left of our Christian faith?

Let’s imagine no Easter Day, no risen Christ. imagine the disciples making their furtive way back to their fishing nets, picking up the threads of their old lives, as the challenging things said and done by this carpenter’s son from Nazareth fade in the memory and are cast aside. Think of the cross continuing to be nothing more than the mark of shame and disgrace. Think of death continuing to have the last word.

But that isn’t what happened. Jesus continues to live in people’s hearts because on that first Easter Day people knew he was alive. Death does not have the last word. Jesus was not raised as a one-off. He wasn’t raised because he’s so good and so different from us that the normal rules don’t apply to him. Jesus is raised from the dead as God’s declaration that life is for all to share, that every one of us is born to inherit life and not death. For though we are made of the dust of the earth, we are made in the image of the God whose love for us stands for ever; we have within us the seeds of eternity.

Five words to take to heart, then, on Easter day:  ‘Make the most of life.’  You could interpret those words in a selfish way: please yourself, and don’t worry about the rest of the world, or even “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”   But that would be like being the caterpillar that wants to just stay a caterpillar for ever. The message of Easter day is that there’s more than that for us. The empty tomb, the grave clothes set aside, speaks of the love stronger than death in which we are known and named. And that it’s worth using and sharing what we’re given - loving our neighbours as ourselves.

To see a butterfly newly emerged from its winter shell is a wonderful thing.  The wings gradually open to the sun, the warmth gradually has its effect, and suddenly the insect is airborne, flying strongly, making the most of its new wings.

And we are offered the renewing and strengthening warmth of God’s love so we can make the most of the life that is his gift to us. God calls us to meet him not just on Easter day but every day, and promises that when we open our hearts to him we too can be transformed as his people. To be Easter people is about what we do with the whole of our lives, not just the Sunday bits of them. The world today desperately needs more Easter people within it: people who are living now the life that is eternal, people who are trusting now in the love that is stronger than death, people who are serving now our risen Friend and Brother by continuing his work of healing and renewing, befriending and blessing, bringing light into the world’s dark places. As we do this, so we shall be offering our own sacrifice of praise to the one for whom the cross became a throne and the grave became a garden - revealed in all its spring beauty when the stone was rolled away.

A Sermon for Passion Sunday

I'm preaching this Sunday at the chapels at Arddleen and Geuffordd.

There’s a richness of scripture in the readings set for this Sunday, the Sunday sometimes called Passion Sunday. I could probably preach a dozen sermons; time, however, will not allow me to! Between now and Easter Day in two weeks time, we journey through a heady mixture of glory and tragedy, and it’s important I think that we experience both of those things.

Of the many texts in scripture that spoke of a coming Messiah, it was to the servant songs of Isaiah that Jesus turned as the pattern for his life, as the programme for his ministry as the Christ. God’s chosen one, according to this scripture, would be a servant so much abused and so deeply wounded, a man so scarred and unsightly in appearance, that people would shrink away from him, that people would reject him and treat him with derision. Jesus spoke in plain words about this to his disciples, but it’s no surprise that they didn’t it, they didn’t understand or accept it. Remember how Peter insisted to Jesus, “This shall not happen to you!”

But all these things did happen to Jesus. The disciples were scattered in fear and alarm. Despite all that Jesus had tried to tell them, they could only experience his passion in terms of defeat and tragedy. And the tragedy of these events was only deepened further by the shame they felt at having let him down. They didn’t stand with him, they didn’t stand up for him; when trouble came, all of them ran off and left him alone. As we read the story we can’t help but be moved by poor Peter, sobbing at the cock-crow as he discovered how easily he had denied his Master, having insisted that he would stand firm with him and defend to the death.

We too need to feel some of that tragedy, for the cross is tragedy. Our sins are the reason why this man’s blood is shed. Ours are the hands which nail him to the cross. He loses his life because of what we have done, and because of what we have not done.

You may recall Mel Gibson’s film of the Passion of Christ, released in 2004, and the cause of great controversy at the time, including some charges of antisemitism. Incidentally, for those who like trivia, the fact that the film is voiced entirely in biblical languages has made it the highest grossing film ever made in a language other than English. It was quite a rigorous and brutal telling of the story, too brutal for many people. After its release, Mel Gibson revealed that the hands in the shot where the nails are hammered in were in fact his own, something he chose to do to demonstrate that no one person or group or race of people is to blame for what happened at Calvary. We are all implicated in the tragedy of the cross.

The cross was to begin with such a shameful sign that Christians used it only secretly. But it became a sign of glory. In other words, what began as a mark of disgrace and disgust became something that could take pride of place in churches of all shapes and sizes and traditions. Now here’s the thing. At any point Jesus could have turned from the way of the cross. But he is the suffering servant, the one spoken of by Isaiah the prophet: and he must therefore walk the whole road, he will be completely faithful, even though his own life is shattered; Peter and the others may scatter, but their Teacher will be faithful to death. And now we understand what St John teaches us: that it’s here on the cross that Jesus is raised up, and what seems like a place of shame and defeat is in fact the throne on which Jesus is revealed as King. And as Jesus says in John’s telling of his story, “When I am raised up I shall draw all people to myself.” Not raised up from the tomb on Easter morning, but raised up on Good Friday to jeers and spitting, mailed to the wood of the cross.

Peter, James and John had in fact glimpsed the glory that was to come before the events of Passiontide unfolded around them. When they went up the mountain with Jesus to pray, they had seen him suddenly too brilliantly white for their eyes to bear; and with him were Moses and Elijah, the two great heroes said not to have died but to have been taken up bodily into heaven. We remember this as the Transfiguration of Jesus, just a short moment of divine glory, before it’s over and Jesus is alone.

That experience meant that as they endured the tragedy of the cross, those three disciples, the inner circle, had seeds of glory already planted in them. In the light of Easter they would come to understand that Jesus had died not because they - we - had bound him to the cross, but because he had accepted it. On the cross which becomes a throne Jesus freely takes up the burden of our sins, he accepts the challenge of love and becomes our salvation.

And that cross is therefore the heart of who and what we are as his people. It is the ultimate and undefeated sign of love. It claims us forever as God’s people even though we ourselves can never do enough, can never be enough, by our own efforts. The deadening impact of a law we can never keep is transformed by grace. Today, Passion Sunday, we celebrate the cross as our sign and our glory; but between today and Easter, we need also to feel the tragedy of the cross, and to know our share in the hammer blows by which our Lord is fastened there. We can only share its glory if we also know its shame.

On the mountain Jesus met and spoke with Moses and Elijah. They were great reflectors of God’s glory, they were faithful labourers for the freedom of God’s people. But only in Jesus do we find the perfection of that glory. On Calvary we see the Son completely transparent to his Father’s glory. What he sets free on this tree can never again be bound.

As yet untitled . . .

A poem I wrote yesterday and read at the "Verbatim" open mic poetry session :-

A street or two away from the bright lights,
but a world away too,
you might just find him delving through the bins,
a piece of urban detritus, set adrift on another rainy night.
He does not know any more who or where he is;
his eyes see nothing of the world in which he used to live,
your world - for that was before the day he died,
the day the music died, that was
before the blood in his veins was turned to straw,
and his soul dried out and shrivelled.
Once he knew all the songs,
once he knew all the players.
A flick of his fingers, and the lights came on back then,
when his world was laughter, and cheers, and applause,
when there were still things
in which he could believe,
when there were still pains and pleasures he could feel.
There was a time when nothing could go wrong,
when he was the lucky man,
the man with the charmed life, blessed, indulged,
delighted in by his own guardian angels.
And then it all did go wrong, then
it all did go. Lost is all he is now; the street lamp
picks out a single feather, floating.
And there are no tears, only rain,
and the angels, if they are there at all, can no longer fly
in the cold and wet.

Trichomonosis

My nature notes column for the coming month . . .

We’ve been getting some very large numbers of finches visiting our garden feeders over the past few weeks, and numbers of greenfinches, chaffinches and siskins have generally been in double figures, with smaller numbers of goldfinches, a couple of pairs of bullfinches (bullfinches pair for life, so are usually seen as a couple), and the occasional brambling, the chaffinch’s Scandinavian cousin.

A greenfinch with trichomonosis (picture from a bird food supplier)

But then I noticed one greenfinch acting rather differently from the rest. Finches (and other small birds) tend to flock together through the winter, and a group of mixed species will move through the area visiting different sources of food - which is one reason why one moment there may be no birds at all in your garden, and the next it’s absolutely full of them. This bird, however, was not moving around with the flock but staying close to the feeders. It looked listless and sad, and its feathers were puffed up, making it look like a little ball of a bird.

Although it stayed close to the feeders, it didn’t actually seem to be using them much. This was a rather poorly bird, that much was clear. And probably therefore a bird suffering from the disease trichomonosis, which has greatly reduced greenfinch numbers in our gardens in recent years. I had been expecting to see signs of this disease sooner or later, so I’m sad but not surprised.

Trichomonosis is caused by a protozoan parasite, and affects the throat and gullet of the bird, preventing it from eating successfully. Affected birds may regurgitate food, and other birds may then consume it, which is a prime cause of the disease spread, as is poor hygiene at feeding stations, bird baths etc. This is the disease of pigeons known as canker, or as frounce when seen  in birds of prey. It has been known as a disease of cage birds for some time, but has been identified as affecting greenfinches (and other birds such as chaffinches and siskins) since 2006. The parasite cannot live long outside its host, which means that simple hygiene measures can meet with a reasonable degree of success. It does not affect human beings or other mammals.

So what should I do? I try to make sure I clean feeders regularly, but I could improve hygiene further by using an appropriate disinfectant product. It’s important to leave feeders to air-dry before refilling. Bird baths, also, should be emptied and air-dried on a regular basis. Ground-feeding birds are particularly vulnerable, so cleaning the ground beneath feeders (ours are on paving) will help - but, even better, move feeders around the garden; that will help prevent the build-up of contamination in any one place.  I think the RSPB recommends stopping feeding so that birds are forced to feed elsewhere at a lower density; in reality, though, they may simply move on to other garden feeding stations, where perhaps no hygiene measures are in place. So I shall improve hygiene, keep feeding, and hope for the best.

Refreshment Sunday

A sermon for tomorrow . . .

One of the traditional names for this Sunday, the fourth in Lent, is Refreshment Sunday. On this Sunday you were allowed to take a break from your Lenten discipline, and, I suppose, let your hair down a bit. The name 'Refreshment Sunday' reminds me too that we all need a bit of refreshment in our lives, and that every Sunday and not just this one should be refreshing. Modern Sundays may be entertaining and even exciting, but for me they’re often too busy and frenetic to be all that refreshing. A lot of people are so worn out by the end of the weekend that they’re almost relieved to be back in work on Monday morning. But in all the mix and muddle of a modern Sunday, churches perhaps can still offer the chance of refreshment.

Worship is more than a fill-up visit to the spiritual petrol pump before we drive off into the working week, but we should be refreshed and recharged by what Sunday worship provides. When we review how we do worship, as I’m sure we should from time to time, one of the questions to ask should be, “Is our worship spiritually refreshing, and fulfilling? Or does it take more out of us than it puts in?

Today is of course Mothering Sunday as well as Refreshment Sunday; household servants would be released today to visit their families, which is one reason for the name, but it also became a day when we celebrate our Mother Church. So perhaps we can reflect on what that phrase 'Mother Church' actually means. We could of course also reflect on the motherliness of God, but perhaps we’ll leave that for another time. But in what sense can we think of the Church as a mother?

Mothering is in part about providing refreshment; childhood memories for me include Mum providing endless cups of squash on the hot summer days we always seemed to have in those days. As we kids came rushing in from playing outside or down the fields, all hot and tired, there’d always be a jug waiting.

But of course, there's more to refreshment than that. Lots of things get described as 'refreshing' in our everyday speech. Drinks are refreshing, but so are flavours, mint for example, flavours with a sharp and clear impact on our taste buds. Water taken externally is refreshing, too, so we’re refreshed and relaxed after a bath or a shower. But people can say refreshing things too: think of a refreshing truth, or a refreshing idea. “It’s refreshing to hear someone saying such things,” people may say. Just the other day, someone said to me, “What a refreshing change!” To be honest, I don’t recall what that refreshing change actually was - but it's true that a change can be refreshing.

There’s a real link between refreshment and healing. Refreshment aids the process of recovery. That’s true when we’re healing bodies, and it’s also true when we’re healing minds and souls, and for that matter situations and communities. Healing can begin or be enabled by refreshing things: the truth being spoken, a new perspective or vision being shared, or just a caring hug being given.
But I can think of another place where I personally see the word 'refresh' quite a lot: on my computer screen. I often need to press the refresh button when things on the web get fouled or frozen up, or when the page I want doesn’t load as it should. When I press 'refresh' things should and often do start working again as they should. I’ve spent much of the past week trying to persuade my computer to work as it should; and sometimes my own life needs just as much work.

There are times when our Christian lives get fouled up and frozen, times when ministry and witness and prayer get stale. When our lives as Christians get tangled and deformed, Sunday and Mother Church should be refreshing us and kickstarting us, putting things right, sorting out the glitches, showing the way forward.
If it's doing that, then great, halleluia, praise God. If it isn’t, then that’s something to look into. Question: Do we step out of church on a Sunday with a spring in our step, or does what we do here feel like hard work? Does worship inform and inspire us, or is it more likely to patronise and bore us? As a minister I might not enjoy the answer to a question like that, but it’s still an important question to ask. There are times when church itself is in need of refreshment.

Church provides refreshment when it channels the refreshing power of God. So if a churches fails to refresh, then perhaps its connection to God isn’t properly tuned. We can sometimes be too churchy to be Godly - too involved in doing our own thing to be as plugged in as we should be to what God is wanting to do.

The alternative greeting at the start of the communion prayer (the one not printed in the books we use) is this: The Lord is here, his Spirit is with us. That’s the promise that began this thing called church, on the first Christian Day of Pentecost. God's Spirit is the Spirit of fellowship, if you recall the words of the Grace, and fellowship and refreshment are closely linked. God’s Spirit is given for our refreshment.  The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace; well, a long list of things in fact, but the list begins with these three.  How well do we do love and peace, and more importantly perhaps, how well do we do joy?

Christian joy is actually quite a deep and even (in a way) serious thing. All Sundays, even in Lent, should be joyful. And what motivates our joy is that we delight in our Lord, our living and reigning Lord, whose new life we share. One of the prefaces we use at Easter speaks about the long reign of sin being ended, a broken world being renewed, and we once again made whole.

It’s all right to quote from the Easter service because every Sunday, even in Lent, is in fact a celebration of our risen Lord, and so a time of joyful praise, as we praise God for his love, for the love which saves us, calls us and sends us.

And joy and refreshment closely connect together. A truly joyful church will be constantly refreshing and enthusing and enlivening those who worship as part of it. We're sent out from this service with joy, sent to take the good news of Jesus out into the world that so desperately needs to know about his saving love. At the close of this worship we are sent from Mother Church to share and continue the holy task of mothering, refreshing, healing, loving, in the places where we live and work, and in the name of Jesus Christ. Our world needs so much to be refreshed by what only his gracious hand can bring.