The power and the sauna

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Jeremiah 23:1-6, Colossians 1:11-20, Luke 23:33-43

I was let out of St Margaret’s on Friday to join a friend at his club; to use the sauna and have some lunch. A rare break from work, you understand. I haven’t been to many saunas in the last few years, but a little while back I lived in Germany. Saunas are very inexpensive and much better there so I went quite regularly. The thing that struck me on Friday, sitting in the soupy heat, was how many men came in and read the newspaper. It’s something that would only happen in Britain. Sweating uncomfortably in 80 degree heat, low lighting, uncomfortable wooden seats; and someone pulls out, from who knows where, the Telegraph.

 While I was in Germany, I wrote a piece for a paper which argued that saunas are to be encouraged because they’re like little chapels. You can’t really do anything in the sauna. Can’t take in technology; no screens or headphones; it’s not really the done thing to start chatting, especially in Germany where clothing tends to be either optional or forbidden. So, generally, saunas are quite meditative places. And perhaps it’s the scrape of the pages, perhaps it’s the sheer ridiculousness of it, but my gentle meditative mindset does not survive the turning pages of a broadsheet.

 Now I bring this up because the feast of Christ the King is a bit marmite. It’s less than 100 years old, started by pope Pius XI, as the defensive gesture of a Church that was seeing its earthly kingdom and influence diminishing. It was also a response to anti-clericalism, which personally I’d say is a terrible, terrible crime against humanity. But at its worst Christ the King might be thought to encourage a sort of Christian triumphalism. The letter to the Colossians spoke of ‘the strength that comes from his glorious power’ and in our final hymn today, the great hymn of the resurrection, we hear ‘thine be the glory’ to an almost military march. We could be forgiven for assuming that with Christ comes terrific power. As if we could rule the world.

 It’s said that when Constantine the great Roman emperor converted to Christianity he saw a cross and the words “In this sign conquer.” The Royal Army Chaplaincy Department has taken it as their motto, Which is not unproblematic. The point the Gospels try to make, on the other hand, is that Christ’s kingship is ironic.

Now I’m on dangerous ground here. Anyone who grew up in the 90s may have had the misfortune of being misinformed as to what irony is by Alanis Morissette. So “rain on your wedding day”, infamously, is not ironic. It’s just disappointing. I’m not trying to say that Christ’s kingship is disappointing. Irony comments upon, makes us to reassess, what is being ironed/ or ironised. So rain on your wedding day is not ironic. The groom turning up grinning wearing a prison jump suit and a plastic ball and chain attached to his foot would be ironic. But ill-advised. 

The irony of Christ’s kingship is played out through his trial and crucifixion. We have this miracle worker, who’s fed thousands, healed, preached peace with divine authority, and raised the dead, under the control of a puppet jewish king and then a weak ruler who doesn’t even agree with the verdict he announces.

 It’s an interesting effect of power, even in the days of the Gospel, that it can make the powerful advocate causes they do not believe it. The need to hold on to power somehow trumps the reason to have that power. Thank goodness that would not happen today.

If you remember, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” The man of divine judgement has come under human judgement. So we see in human power, corruption, injustice and self-protection. We see in Jesus, forgiveness, even on the cross, and words of reassurance, of hope.

So when Jesus is crucified, the sign above him — which would usually describe the crime — says “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”. The irony is that it’s true, but not in the way his executioners understand it. But as a tortured, innocent man, it reveals the reality and brutality of human kingship. And against this, it reveals the humility and love of divine kingship.

The criticism of human power is unlikely to make you think twice. Power and corruption have and continue to walk hand in hand through all history. The more surprising suggestion comes with how we see divine power. We continue to desire the God who acts. If God loves then he will intervene, he will save. ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ We like to think of some superdad who is good, all knowing, all powerful who protects and will keep us from harm. 

But the crucifixion turns all that upside down. There is no magic trick. Anyone who believes that if they go to Church and lead a good life, nothing bad will happen to them #blessed needs to take a good look at the crucifixion. The life we’re called to is one that mirrors Christ. And fundamentally that did not end well. And if God values truth, courage and love over health and happiness then who knows what he’ll ask of you.

 What then is the power of God? The full quote from Colossians: ‘may you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, giving thanks to the Father’. Power, strength, is being like Christ, who endured.

 So when do we know the power of God? It’s when we are weak. It’s when we’re unable to carry on; under the threat of death;in the depths of grief. When we have to throw our trust in him. 

Our offertory hymn is, I think, the greatest hymn in the English language.  In almost every line is the coincidence of opposites. We have glory and dying, riches and loss, contempt and pride, boasting and death, vanity and blood, sorrow and love, thorns and crowns. Each pair, each line, describes the transformation from human power to divine power; each line finds in the cross the unmaking of our normal standards and a new standard raised up. To sing it with faith, is to let go of ourselves and find in Christ the most incredible revelation of what life really is.  And that is love.

 For myself, I see in baptism, this same vision of divine kingship. The fragility and vulnerability of a child; no less than Christ on the cross; hovering over the water, which through the bible is a sign of both death and life; we don’t as in fairy tales promise youth, beauty, wealth. We simply mark this as a passage from death to life.

 Now Christmas as St Margaret’s starts this week with the arrival of the Christmas trees so I thought I’d share with you my favourite Christmas card poem called the Wicked Fairy at the Manger. It makes the point far better than I could:

My gift for the child: 

No wife, kids, home;
No money sense. Unemployable.
Friends, yes. But the wrong sort —
The workshy, women, wogs,
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases,
Poll tax collectors, tarts;
The bottom rung.
His end?
I think we’ll make it
Public, prolonged, painful. 

 Right, said the baby. That was roughly
What we had in mind.

 Freddie, I hope will be saved this. But this is the man he is promised to follow. So Christ the King is not about the power and the glory, The Church triumphant, ‘In this sign conquer’ That sounds to my ears like the scraping of a newspaper page turning in an English sauna.

 Christ’s kingship is the power of sacrificial love; And the infinite worth of every human soul; that an anonymous criminal, a homeless vagrant, a charming toddler, a beloved brother, may be the most important person in the world. The person who is suffering, could be you, is no better nor worse than you; once was Christ. 

In St Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, the meditations that stretch over a silent retreat of 30 days, one of the key exercises is visualising a battlefield and choosing to take yourself to the banner of Christ. To choose to follow him. To place yourself under his kingship. It’s a costly decision. It is an ironic kingship. it probably won’t end well. But it will make you a better person.

 You have probably had the canvasses at your door, with their stories and their promises. There will be banners everywhere for the next few weeks. I know who I choose as my king. Amen.

Your Own Personal Jesus

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18, Ephesians 1:11-23, Luke 6:20-31

In 1989 Depeche Mode released a song which made it into the top thirty in the UK and US, two months and two weeks before the Berlin Wall politically ceased to exist. The record was the best selling twelve-inch single in Warner Bros. history, and each format, seven and twelve inch vinyl, tape, and later CD featured an unadorned woman with a different band member. The song was called “Personal Jesus”.  Its inspiration was Priscilla Presley’s book Elvis and Me, about how another person can become like a god to you, and how you can be a Jesus to someone, someone who’s there; someone to care.

Johnny Cash, on one of his later Rick Rubin albums, with the help of guitarists from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers re-recorded it. Cash, who in his last few months took communion with Rubin every day, sometimes on the telephone, related somewhat differently to the song. When you hear Cash’s old country voice you know he’s re-filling the hollow irony of electronica with some southern soul. The original is usually in top 100 song lists, but Cash, who knew both his dependency on others and on God, twisted it back to being both a love song and a song of faith.

The same song can convey quite different impressions. The year after Johnny Cash died Marilyn Mansun took the song back to naked girls and superficial catholic imagery. Easy come, easy go.

There’s something quite theological about this. We all have our own personal Jesus.  For many Christians a sense of personal relationship with Jesus is at the heart of their faith, as a friend alongside them. 

At a more biblical level part of the charm of the New Testament is that we have four different accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus, written through two generations after his death as the final people who had encountered him were dying. One is more Jewish, one noticed more his teaching about the poor, one is more concerned with giving an intellectual account of what he was about. And these records which we call gospels are based partly on other sources about which we can only conjecture. Just as we mean different things to different people, so Jesus appeared somewhat differently to his contemporaries, and is in each of our minds shaded in different colours.

Today’s Gospel gives us Jesus’ central teaching, known as the Sermon on the Mount, as it’s called in Matthew where Jesus is a second Moses; the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, where Jesus comes alongside ordinary people.  And it poses a question. Is Jesus in your mind a hard-line religious extremist, implacable in commandments which exceed the Jewish rules of his day - or is he the fuzzy live-and-let-live consumate liberal? Is he a Che Guevara revolutionary or a flakey hipster? Usually we think of Jesus as the easy-going reformer, the cuddly take-it-easy-on-yourself guy. The law is there to help you not to condemn you, don’t worry about the Sabbath, what matters is where your heart is.

 And yes. This is all in the gospels.

But then there’s the other Jesus.  The Jesus who says - be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect; who in today’s Gospel places the most stringent demands on us. We might with a pinch of sanctimoniousness be able to love our enemies, but would we actually offer the other cheek to the one who slapped us? Would we give our shirt to someone who stole our coat? Is it even moral to give to everyone who begs? 

I’m reminded of Obi Wan Kanobe in Star Wars. Alec Guiness after a cursory slightly inept bit of fencing declares the immortal lines: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”But does he? After this point he doesn’t really seem to do very much. There’s the occasional ghostly voice and whenever there’s a party he appears alongside a shimmering yoda to enjoy the merriment, but there’s no obvious display of great power. 

 When Jesus says to turn the other cheek is he engaging in defeatism? Is he ignoring the demands of justice? This Jesus seems too impractical, too demanding. We prefer to gloss over him - pass on its rigour to the monks or nuns; Or perhaps you spiritualize it, which is to say you ignore it in a particularly deep way, or claim it was a metaphor and he was really only talking about your middle brother, who never did the washing up and always had the messiest bedroom.

The Jesus of the Gospels presents us with both the liberal Jesus and the hard-line Jesus and if we’re honest we tend to select the bits of him that are easiest to live with. Like the Christmas Quality Streets, where by New Year’s Day, the one’s left are all the same colour. 

Theologians are certainly not immune to this. In Latin America in the 70s there emerged a generation of priests and theologians who read in Luke’s “Blessed are the poor”, “woe to you that are rich” a command to spread Marxism across the continent.  It also led some of these priests to a more liberal reading of ‘turning the other cheek’ - when they took up machine guns to bring about revolution. 

On the other hand, God’s blessing on the poor has been used by some for precisely the reverse ends. After all, if the poor are blessed are we not undermining them by improving their situation? Keep the poor poor and you keep them godly. I’m sure all of us here frequently rail against the curse of our capitalist prosperity, wealth and independence. If only I were poorer, I hear you cry, I would know God’s blessing more. 

Just as our interpretation gives us different Jesi so does it move us towards different interpretations of society. Do we leave the poor in their blessed state? Do we sell all our possessions and give them to the poor? Do we leave it to the individual to make their way in the world or demand the total global redistribution of wealth? 

Politics likes a broad-brush approach. Either the jobless are all scroungers, cheats and layabouts and we’ve developed an underclass that must be purged by austerity; or they’ve all been let down by society and must be supported at whatever cost and protected from the right-wing slash and burn of the welfare state. The first rule of politics: generalize! We should first of all remember though that Jesus is not doing social analysis here but teaching. 

To the rich he makes clear that the wealth of this world is a castle built on sand and can be taken from us, just as the constraints of our frail mortal bodies will always impinge on our happiness no matter who our health care is with. To the poor though, there is the encouragement but also the incentive - you are blessed. You are equally created and loved by God. And for all that you may feel you have little and are powerless, you have a gift from God, and the kingdom of heaven, which is learned and displayed in solidarity, generosity, kindness and love is equally close to you. Indeed, it may be closer. 

And in this the hallmark of Jesus’ teaching is its personal quality.  The woman caught in adultery is treated gently; the rich young man is asked to give up his possessions. The tax-collector is forgiven, the pharisee stands accused. The children are gathered in. In this sense Jesus is personal. Through him God meets us where we are. Not with a reductive political agenda, but a nudge or a push, if we but let him, to consider what more we can do and what more we can be.  If politics says generalize, Jesus says “personalize!”

Now we may be called by Depeche Mode to be Jesus to a friend, there, caring, perhaps unconsciously sharing the love of God with someone by just being nice to them. We may like Johnny Cash have ploughed through a torrent of sex, drugs and illness to find in our weak frames a dependence upon God, or the inspiration to live better. We may be being called to give something up, take something on, to ourselves bless the poor, or find in our own poverty the spark of blessing that returns us to vigour and joy. All of these are valid interpretations of the Gospel which has many things to say to us, whether we can or cannot yet bear it. 

Today is All Saints, where the Church remembers and give thanks for all Christians past and present. It’s a good day for a baptism to add one to its number; she may or may not prove more godly than her sister. She will almost certainly prove more godly than her cousin, who will like most clergy offspring probably come to terrorise the church, like one of the four great beasts come up from the sea.

But All Saints is a chance to celebrate difference; from the tragic Joan of Arc to the jolly Saint Nicholas; from Old St Peter and St Paul, to the very recent Saint John Henry Newman, to little Persephone joining us today. For us all to enjoy ‘the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints’ and we can reflect that God calls people of every persuasion and that in the lives of millions of ordinary men and women like you and I God is at work. 

And in this, if we listen carefully – we can hear a polyphony of covers of a personal Jesus coming to life. Reach out and touch faith. Amen.

‘Forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before’

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 32:22-31, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5, Luke 18:1-8

‘forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before’

The Collect, I’m aware, is often a time when people switch off: that moment between the confession and the readings. And to be fair they often have more clauses than seems plausible for the English language:
a mere ten in today’s; you wouldn’t find them in an advertising campaign. Being mostly written originally by Cramner they often have a beauty which can be overlooked; they’re sort of like little faith-poems, and quite often they have phrases that are worth dwelling on, today’s stealing from the letter to the Philippians: ‘forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before’.

It reminds me of a cold December day two years ago when as a pre-Christmas treat my commanding officer told the whole battalion we were going to do a fifty mile march across Kent with full kit, but without rifles. He didn’t want to scare the locals and to be fair 500 men marching through your village at night is probably enough even without weapons.

It was broken down into 10 mile blocks, with twenty minute breaks between. As exercise it was a strange experience. Even carrying 35lbs you were never out of breath, never heart pounding, or muscles burning; it was just a long boring trudge, mostly through darkness. The CO was ex-special forces and had a reputation. His surname was Mann, and he was known respectfully if not affectionately as the Man-grenade. On our first exercise on the Scottish border I was told to expect 10% losses – which meant around 40 men going down with injuries. I spent more time doing hospital visits in those two weeks than in all my previous ministry. 

But it was the last ten miles that caught people out on the 50-miler. Just the weariness of it, some little rub at 2 miles which had become intolerable at 30.  (You should never go anywhere in the army without tape and Vaseline.) But it’s the psychology of it that matters – knowing you’ve gone 40 miles, feeling your almost there – but 10 miles is a very long way to hang in there for.

‘forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before’. You had to just forget the 40 miles done and focus on the task in hand – each one of those last ten miles. It’s the virtue of perseverance, which in so many things is easy for the first eighty percent, testing for the next ten, and the making and breaking of you for the last ten. That’s where you find out who you are. And it’s usually a surprise just how far you can push yourself.

England will doubtless find this as they prepare themselves for the All-blacks in the semi-final only, for the big challenge of Wales in the final. 

Perseverance is the undoubted theme for our readings today. In Genesis we heard of Jacob persisting in wrestling with the angel until he’d won the blessing.St Paul asks us to ‘continue in what you have learned and firmly believed’; to ‘be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable’ to have ‘the utmost patience’. And finally in the Gospel there is the parable of the unjust judge who gives into the widow simply for her bruising persistence, told to the disciples to encourage them ‘to pray always and not to lose heart’.

Jo de Wardener, who has truly persisted in teaching in our Sunday School now from generation to generation, came to me in the week, claiming extraordinarily that she’d never had this Gospel before, alarmed I think, that the passage seemed to encourage children to nag their parents until they got what they wanted. We’ll see when the children come back in whether they’ve been encouraged in this.

But I think perhaps we all need a little encouragement in perseverance.  For while faith can be easy – and barely acknowledged for years of our life sometimes – there will also be those moments when the testing is severe. 

But even here we can jump to conclusions as to what we will find difficult. I was struck in researching the Great War some years ago that for all the mythology of the Siegfried Sassoon’s, Robert Graves and Wilfrid Owens, that most horrific war returned a more religious, more Christian nation. While the popular assumption is that the War was the beginning of the secular turn, the grim reality of the trenches overturning the Victorian certainties of Empire and Faith, church attendance rose during the decade following the War. Statistically, it’s decades of decadence and individualism that most hurt religion – the 60s being a great turning point in the life of the Church. War and disease, it would seem, are the friends of faith; its enemies are the bicycle, the television and the discotheque.

But what I think most accounts for our difficulty with perseverance is contained in that line from the collect: ‘forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before’. For faith to be real, and not just the comfortable nostalgia of years gone by, we must forsake what lies behind.

Church should not be a return to a world of the past, the familiar thump of Victorian hymns and dreams of running round the old oak tree; the glory days of St Margaret’s, before this dreadful new vicar, a time with less problems and less burdens. And we should not be afraid of the future, of a building without scaffolding, a transformed garden, with new people coming in and having a go, using new energy and skills to do things differently; that is not a dishonouring of the past but its recreation. T.S. Eliot said:

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without; 
For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while there is time of prosperity 
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity they will decry it. 

Last weekend, I was in the eternal city, witnessing with a few other vicars the canonisation of John Henry Newman, who wrote today’s final hymn. It was an interesting situation to be in as Newman was a Church of England priest for most of his life before he converted to Roman Catholicism. He had preached and written of the Pope as the anti-Christ which must be fairly unique on the CV of Roman Catholic saints. They were very hospitable to us, in any case, and we were seated just yards from the Pope while a crowd of more than a hundred thousand thronged St Peter’s square. It is encouraging to be reminded just occasionally that Christians number in the billions and are counted in every country on earth.

But Newman who spread a revolution in the Church of his day and then scandalised the nation by absconding to Rome, is famed for saying: ‘To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.’ It’s a rather extraordinary thing to say, especially for a conservative cleric: ‘To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.’ But behind it is the understanding that the nature of reality is change and if we are not changing then we are decaying. That is if you like the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

On the Berlin Wall someone had scrawled in graffiti the words of a German poet: ‘whoever wishes that the world remain as it is, does not wish that it remains’ Which is a warning to Conservatives everywhere.

For Jacob, persevering in faith meant crossing the Jabok and putting out his hip in his struggle with God; Jesus himself commends us to pester God like a dog with a bone, as though we were battling against an unjust judge. A True faith is something that is battled over, worn smooth with years of ease, years of angst, hard fought nights of wrestling; the slow trudge and the irritant that is not eased by tape and Vaseline. We may look back at times and see the story of faith unfold; but we should be wary when that story is too easy; too comfortable; when St Margaret’s has become the comfortable slipper, unaffected by the river of mud flowing down Putney Park Lane.

Let us ‘forsake what lies behind and reach out to that which is before’. Let us discern what is needed for the kingdom of God now. Let us persevere in the faith; let us be perfect and embrace change. To quote the BT advert currently stealing from Dickens: ‘We have everything before us, we have nothing before us.’  Amen.

And now appropriately we have a baptism. Nothing brings home the perfection of embracing change like the first years of a baby and nothing forsakes what lies behind and reaches to that which is before like a child. So we ask Isobel to bring her family out to gather at the font, as we make the promises that begin another journey of faith,praying for her perseverance through the best of times and the worst of times.

The Blessing of the Dogs: "Be the person your dog thinks you are"

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Psalm 104

My first thought on visiting this church at interview just over a year ago, was “wouldn’t this be a perfect spot for a dog blessing. My previous parish in Paddington had an annual horse blessing as, despite its central location, there were still 2 working stables, plus the cavalry up the road in St John’s Wood. Here, however, it is dogs that predominate the lane and every dog must have his day.

Dogs and horses have always been man’s first companion, created as the Bible tells us, before woman, and while cats are more like people in knowing good and evil, it is dogs of all the animal world that most embody virtue.

The Dickin medal, which is the Victoria Cross equivalent for animals, has been won 34 times by dogs, more than any other animal. The rest have mainly gone to pidgeons with a few for horses. Only one for a cat, and he was in the Navy. I had two years with the PARAs and the exhibits I always most liked at their museums were the PARA dogs who were trained not only to parachute but when they hit the ground to run round in circles until their silk shutes were neatly gathered. At least one I know of landed on D-Day 75 years ago.

Dogs, though not all dogs, have courage and loyalty in abundance.  Mark Twain’s famous quote: ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.’ very much summarises the confidence of the little dog. Our greyhound is a lover and not a fighter. And if I’m honest, of late, not really a lover either. But he is loyal and has his own courage. A dog psychologist wrote that ‘the greatest fear dogs know is the fear that you will not come back. This is certainly true of Zz and while making it impossible to leave at home on his own, makes him adorable and ensures us of a very warm welcome whenever we get home.

But dogs also bring out the best in us. They give us time out doors, time to think; to wonder and wander out under the skies. And dogs show us how to enjoy life. W.H. Auden wrote: In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag. But a dog will also believe in you like no one else. Once a dog has chosen you he or she will never look back and unless you’re a monster you’ll never lose that trust that actually you are the best person in the world.

So for our dog’s sake I leave you with an instruction that has more depth than all the poets and philosophers:

‘Be the person your dog thinks you are.’

Amen.

Creation Sunday: Master, Steward, Friend

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 55:10-13, Romans 8:18-25, Matthew 6:25-end

If you google “evil vicar” you will likely find a sketch by comedians Mitchell and Webb, which is uncomfortably amusing. A ‘not particularly religious’ but ‘spiritual’ Olivia Coleman drops into a church, which she’s heard has become much more inclusive and open minded, hoping to talk about “stuff” with the nice friendly lady vicar who wears a colourful jumper. The vicar she meets tells her he cares nothing for her internet assembled philosophy and the friendly lady vicar has been banished to Daventry. He then tells her that he’s back with all the incredibly twisted people who are still unaccountably vicars, standing with 2000 years of darkness, bafflement and hunger behind them, diligently harvesting the souls of a million peasants. As is evident in the comments left below the video, it’s hard to know whose side you should be on.

I’m reminded of this because Services of Thanksgiving for creation, pet blessings and the like all seem a little Vicar of Dibley. Though I should confess, that I myself have only seen 2 episodes – at the insistence of my wife. One of which was because she’s convinced we should do a Nativity Play involving taking a donkey up Putney Park Lane. 

But there’s a new scent in the air.  A little touch of sulphur to the traditional English thatched delight of the pet blessing. The more apocalyptic side of climate change – though a little way from the sleepy hamlet of Putney– makes creationtide more like Advent than Harvest. And if we are not to write off the international protest this weekend as eccentrics, students and hippies, then we face some troubling questions as Christians.

Like many areas of Christian theology, attitude to creation have shifted dramatically in the last century. For most of history, there has been the understandable view that we are to dominate nature. It is our God given resource, bequeathed in the first chapter of the Bible to Adam: ‘‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’ And in the second account of creation man names all the animals, which must have been very useful for Noah as he checked them all into the ark.

Dominate and control.

In early civilisation, nature is the enemy. Physically there are enough threats, from disease through poison to the charging hippo. And nature is always threatening to encroach back on agriculture, and of course until fairly recently all of Britain was a forest, and we all know from the fairy tales what happens when you go into the forest.

I had such a moment in Australia. I’d chosen to climb a mountain in Queensland in the bush on my own, as I couldn’t afford the SCUBA course my friend went on.  Only it took me a while to drive out and I didn’t start hiking till the afternoon. I was moving quickly though and thought I’d get to the top before dark. Shortly after starting, though, I also had the slightly uncomfortable experience of leeches. They were dropping from the trees alongside the constant rain. Because it was hot I was just wearing shorts and boots so I was soon covered in the little critters. Not knowing better I tore off the leeches and continued merrily on my way. Only leeches have this anticoagulant thing – which stops your blood clotting, and when you rip off a leech you leave part of the leech in you, and a steady trail of blood.

In short, by dusk I was halfway up a mountain, wet through, covered in blood and leeches and by this time the path had disappeared and I was following a splash of paint left every 30m up a steep slope. Frustrated, I put up my tent on a ridiculous slope across tree-roots and definitely not water-tight. Leaving everything behind, I decided to run up a couple of 100m to at least get to the top. A truly ghastly mistake. 10 minutes later I found myself above the tree line in a howling gale in darkness without a torch or any clothing. I did panic a bit, and slid down the slope back the way I came.

It may have been a miracle or blind luck but 5 minutes down I happened to look to the side and there 20m away was my tent. Predictably in the dark I’d come off the trail and not noticed and it was only a shaft of light glancing off the top of the tent which prevented me getting entirely lost in the bush. I passed a terrifying night, soaking, covered in leeches, huddled, waiting for morning.

But there’s nothing quite like waking up in a rainforest. The light made the most stunning patchwork of beams as it was filtered through the canopy. I was so inspired I decided to climb back up and realised I wasn’t even nearly at the top, which took the better part of the next day. But apart from the itching of the leeches – it turns out you need to burn off leeches – it was a glorious day.

I indulge in that story because we have mostly seen nature as dangerous and chaotic – needing to be controlled, like the queue of people ascending Everest, and so sought divine approval to dominate it. And, psychologically, nature can present us with great fear. The fear of anarchy and meaninglessness, and of vulnerability. Life without reason or control, where our stories, our thoughts, everything that civilisation has made stands for nothing; opera, even a Gesamtkunstwerk – it turns out – means nothing to greyhounds and houseplants.

More recently, Genesis has been re-read as a command for us to be good stewards of nature. We have these resources but also the responsibility to look after and manage them. Now that theology is read as colonial, and inadequate to describe the history of our exploitation or to rectify the gathering crisis.

But there has also long been within Christianity a significant thread which sought to approach creation with greater humility and saw in it a good, entirely independent of the uses and enjoyment humanity made of it. Famously the Franciscans for the last thousand years have seen all nature as our brothers and sisters, and our last hymn today uses his words to describe all nature praising God. 

And as each of the readings today show, and even from Genesis where God declares his creation good before man is even on the scene, the natural world is also concerned with glorifying God. Isaiah envisaging the mountains, the hills the trees praising God; Paul describing ‘the whole creation’ as longing for God – and you might note, it’s the whole of creation that will be ‘set free from decay’ and ‘obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God’. While in the Gospel Jesus points to how God feeds the birds and clothes the flowers – that his concern is not only with man.

Unfortunately, the Middle East was very hostile to dogs and there is only one passage in the whole bible that speaks well of them: as one of the three things that ‘go well, are comely in going’ the lion, the he-goat and, you’ll be pleased to hear, the noble greyhound. But in any case, as Scripture makes clear, it is the purpose and future of all creation to worship its creation, and dogs, who embody the virtues of loyalty, discipline and fidelity will be far to the front of God’s more independently-minded animals. (Mentioning no names.)

I suppose the issue that should most concern us today is nature’s attitude to us. For we might well have moved from a theology of dominance, to stewardship, to friendship, but it seems to me that nature may well be moving in the other direction. Certainly, it is to nature that we have evolved as sentient life, able to understand and reflect on our place in the world. Creation has welcomed us as part of its family to this esteemed high place. And yet it seems more and more that nature has had to manage, to steward, this species that has got out of hand.

And it may just be that the scientists and theologians are speaking with one voice when they look to the time where creation is groaning, as it looks to set itself free; that the sufferings of the present time are only to increase and that we are yet in the time of the thorn and the brier;  as nature reasserts itself, and restores its dominance over us, as the son whose vaulting ambition has overleaped itself. But, as Jesus insists, we should not be anxious about tomorrow for today’s trouble is enough for today. Only for our world, and for the poor who are most at risk, it is today that we must act if we are not to imperil forever the world of tomorrow. 

But today we are also celebrating a baptism. Nothing draws us back to our animality like children. And nothing reminds us of our responsibility to the future like children. So as we give thanks for creation and welcome these children into the church, we work for and pray that the world they are growing into will continue to welcome us; and that we discover more and more the friendship that should exist between God and all his creatures.

Pentecost 12: give me the lowest place

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Proverbs 25:6-7, Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16, Luke 14:1,7-14

Give me the lowest place: not that I dare
Ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died
That I might live and share
Thy glory by Thy side

Give me the lowest place: or if for me
That lowest place too high, make one more low
Where I may sit and see 
My God and love Thee so.

Christina Rosetti, being ever-so-humble, captures the message of today’s Gospel. The principle behind it accords very nicely with British social anxiety. For British people, who love to demur and hate the idea of being one of those pushy so-and-sos who think they’re better than they are, we’re naturally inclined to underplay ourselves and avoid confrontation. And who wouldn’t enjoy being told, “Oh no, you are much more important than that, come and sit on this table.” The English, of course, get around the problem by wherever possible having seating plans.

In this, the armed forces always struggle with where to put clergy. They don’t quite fit into the rank structure so they don’t follow the recognised order. And you couldn’t have someone saying grace so far away that the commanding officer couldn’t hear. I usually found I was placed on or near the top table but usually at an awkward corner seat, slightly out of the way where it was very difficult to talk to anyone. Like an ostentatious pet.

But avoiding confrontation and politeness is not the same as humility; although, while people often dismiss the Church of England for caring more about politeness than ethics, and more about good taste than piety, manners may be seeded in a richer soil, and politeness is at least a first step to putting others before yourself.

But all virtues also have their back-door vices. So good manners may conceal not humility but a priggish and judgemental character, or the hypocritical show of concern. So too service is the bedrock of Christian discipleship, ‘The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve’'; but many is the volunteer who finds in their service the opportunity to create their own little fiefdom of power; who discovers in helping others a place to puff up themselves.

Humility goes beyond manners. But it’s not neurotic self-disgust or low self-esteem. Humility is the practice of self-forgetting. It’s the person who’s not concerned with themselves at all, for better or for worse, but for whom others have become larger than life. Humility is putting to one side your discomfort, your hunger, tiredness, your success and failure, to attend to the person in front of you. Of course, we do have such people at St Margaret’s, but I can’t tell you who they are as it would likely go to their heads.

Now I was struck in a conversation with a parishioner recently when she complained how unlikely the Christian story is. Consider this: According to a well know internet search engine, a calculation was done estimating that up to 1995 the total number of human beings who have ever lived was 105 billion. I’m not sure why 1995. Probably that’s when the research was done, but it may also have been that scientists having listened repeatedly to “Rednex” singing – I use the term loosely – “Cotton Eyed Joe” decided that this was probably it for the human race, and started coming up with a final score. The same sources tell me very definitely that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the universe 13.8 billion years. In this context, how likely is it that one human life spanning just over 30 years, should have the not just global but universal impact Christians claim? It seems unlikely. And yet.

If we accept that our world is created such that every creature is of infinite value, and that the creator wished those creatures to understand that, is not the most reasonable way to demonstrate this that the creator would enter into it as one of them? Show them this love in word and deed, not as a wealthy or powerful person but as the most ordinary person imaginable, except for this incredible revelation they would unfold? And how would you inspire your followers not to seek power and prestige but to protect the weak and seek out the lost but by living with those ordinary people and doing it yourself? And is it not frankly a little bizarre that this philosophy which favours the poor and ordinary, that emerged from a remote occupied state and saw all its early leaders killed, should now carry the belief of over two billion people today?

It is perhaps the difference between an objective and a subjective view; but don’t think that the objective is more true. That’s a little bit like admonishing your daughter for not getting better GCSEs when the national average has risen by 0.5%. Or explaining to your wife exactly what childbirth will feel like, having watched a documentary on a well know streaming service, or trying to cheer her up by telling her that statistically a huge number of women, many of whom were terribly frail or fearful, have already managed it. Sometimes the subjective approach contains more truth.

With Jesus’ parables there is always an ambiguity. Here he is on the surface, teaching the importance of humility, of the discipline of learning to put others ahead of us. But like so many of the parables it also is a picture of Jesus. Jesus is the wedding guest who ought to be at the head of the table, as God amongst us. And yet he chose to place himself at the lowest point; to ask God to make a place more low that he might also sit with the least of us as we measure it. And by doing so God has raised him to the place that is exalted above all. So while in St Paul’s letter he instructs us to be hospitable to all, as in doing so we might also entertain angels; by putting ourselves, wherever we are, in the lowest place, once there, we may also find that we share that place with Christ. Amen.

Pentecost 9: Espoused Theology vs Lived Theology

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 15:1-6, Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16, Luke 12:32-40

The first words in the funeral service after the greeting are these: ‘We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal.’  Which is the echo of the letter to the Hebrews we just heard: ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ At funerals, I think, more than anywhere, we’re aware of the tensions between our espoused theology and our lived theology. Let me explain that. Our espoused theology is the theology we learn. If someone asked you what do Christians believe? You’d perhaps tell them what you recall from Sunday School, if you remember a creed, some personal flourishes perhaps.Our lived theologyis what you’re really left with when you’re cut to the quick; the parts your espoused theology cannot reach. If a terminal friend asks you, do you really believe in an afterlife? If someone who’s been terribly harmed asks you if he should forgive the perpetrator.

Our espoused theology is shared. It’s in our services each week and through the year. The creeds –  essentially a list of things the Early Church decided were essential for people to believe, in order to be Christian. And a major source of our theology is our hymns. We sang earlier that we are ‘ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven’; the basis of our praising the King of heaven. And just a minute ago that we come to Jesus in prayer as a place of rest for our souls.

But how much of those hymns translates to what you really personally believe if asked directly? The final verse of ‘Praise my soul’ asks ‘angels [to] help us to adore him’. The first verse of our last hymn will list all the angels, traditionally held, to occupy heaven already in praise; but if some godless sceptic cornered you, would you feel confident defending the existence of angels?

Now you’d not be alone if you were a little agnostic about aspects of our faith; but what about something more personal? Each week we confess together where we have sinned against God and our neighbours in thought, word and deed. In the silence you perhaps reflect on some of your less good decisions, the things you wished you’d had time to get to which would have helped others; if you’re a churchwarden probably the string of people you’ve recently defrauded, slept with or murdered. 

It’s helpful to get these things off your chest.

We then hear the words of absolution. Our sins are forgiven. In our espoused theology, the faith of the church, the work of grace means that we’re released from the judgement of everything in our past. But do we return to these sins? In your lived theology are there things for which you’re not forgiven; where you do not yet feel or know forgiveness? Is your lived theology demanding that you must do something to atone? Sometimes we’re unaware of the heresies of the theology that lurks beneath our good espoused theology; our inability to accept the grace that’s offered to us. And it’s our lived theology that actually shapes who we are and how we pray.

So at funerals we’re confronted with our lived theology. When the reality of life and death is before us, we will find ourselves truly praying or spiritually shutting down. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 

I heard on the radio recently that ‘living funerals’ have become a thing. You may already be planning your own or your partners, especially if you’re a churchwarden. The idea is based on that sentiment sometimes expressed at funerals that ‘she would have loved this’, and the rather peculiar truth that it’s often only after a person’s death that family and friends come to visit. Essentially, it’s a sort of goodbye party, though with a formal element, perhaps your favourite reading and a couple of songs. The woman on the radio was very clear that she didn’t think much of hymns. I suppose the thing I struggle with most is how would you leave that event? A firm handshake and an ‘all the best’? ‘Have a good death’? I spend a lot of energy trying to avoid social awkwardness and, speaking personally, for me this would be a bit of a nightmare.

But actually the more alarming aspect of this trend is that having been to the living funeral you would surely not go to an actual funeral. You’ve said goodbye. So while a body is at a distance, processed out of existence, there’s nowhere to express the actual and unpredictable aspects of grief. There’s no place to comfort one another. And, there’s nowhere to register hope.

We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; 
for the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal.  

Funerals are liminal places. There is absence and presence. They are a kind of place in-between worlds.Like the most primal experience of life, the birth of children, war, these near-death experiences cut through the comfortable platitudes, whether we’re Christian or a materialist atheist, and call us out on what we really think.

That’s when you know your lived theology.

Over the last seventy years death has been quietly, step by step, removed from society to sterilised professionals and institutions. The intention is to focus on the positive, to make it easy for people, to shield us from the nastiness, the messiness of it all. 

It’s strange that for most of human history religion has focused on where humanity is most rational, most educated, most reflective. Now I think one of the things that most threatens our natural sense of the divine is that in Britain we are losing our connection with ourselves as animals. The experience of death helps us understand what it is to be alive, 

And there’s nothing more likely to produce the instinct to praise God as our first hymn led us, than to see our child born, to find that person who seems to meet our every need, to find ourselves in desperate peril or to drag ourselves to the funeral of a loved one. Because in all these instances, when we see our createdness, our natural finitude – both our tiny insignificance and the incredible wonder of self-conscious life – we are also looking towards the things that are hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And it’s not the well-worn creeds and favourite hymns of our espoused theology; it’s in the blood, sweat and tears of our lived theology.

I know that I’m not alone when I tell you that whenever I come to worship, I am as mindful and as much in the presence of those who are no longer with us, than of those whom I can currently see. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 

So Abraham, counting stars in the assured hope of children, the unseen conviction of God’s promise; the Hebrews who are newly come to the promises of God in Jesus, who are strangers and foreigner in this world, hoping for, convicted by the reality of the unseen city of which they are members; the disciples who eschew the goods of this world, for the unseen, hoped for goods of the world to come; whose hearts desire the treasures of an unseen reality. These are those whose lived theology is built on faith. Faith which hopes. Faith which looks on death and is not afraid. 

Our time of trial may come at any point. And that is when we will know our lived theology,how honest we have been with our faith; and whether we have taken the time to build up the reserves of faith and hope needed to help us endure; our unfailing treasure in heaven. Amen.

Pentecost 8: life in God is where we are wealthy.

Sermon by Anne East
Readings: Luke 12: 13-21, Colossians 3: 1-11

There’s a cartoon from the comic strip ‘Peanuts” that has been doing the rounds recently on social media. It shows Charlie Brown and Snoopy sitting by the side of a lake, with their backs to us, looking out over the water. Charlie Brown is saying, “Some day, we will all die, Snoopy.” And Snoopy says, “True, but on all the other days, we will not.” It all depends how you look at it! The parable Jesus tells of the  rich fool and his barns, is not about death, but about life: about the way to live, not about the need to die.

Jesus is talking to his disciples about his mission and his identity when someone interrupts him and asks him to arbitrate in a property dispute, to sort out a family squabble. He asks Jesus to tell his brother to divide an inheritance with him. According to Judaic inheritance practices, an older brother would receive two thirds of an estate while the younger would receive one third. The questioner in this case is asking Jesus to help him possess his rightful share.

Jesus doesn’t get drawn into the details of this case, but says, “Well, let’s look at this differently – life is about more than possessions.” So, as he often did, Jesus tells a story, but unlike the stories of the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, this one doesn’t involve a last minute rescue and a happy ending. A rich man harvests a bumper crop, more than he can deal with. He plans to tear down his old barns, build larger ones to store his crops in and then sit back and enjoy the excess. He stands as a negative example, this is how not to live as a follower of Jesus. In the end, the man’s days are numbered, and death separates him from his overflowing barns.

Note that the man in the story is not just a simple farmer with a small plot of land, but someone who controls much of the agricultural produce of the whole district. And he doesn’t see his plentiful harvest as a generous blessing from God, but as something of a dilemma, because he doesn’t have enough storage space.

Of course it is prudent to gather in the bountiful harvest and save it for the future, that is exactly what Joseph instructed Pharaoh to do when the dreams showed that seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine. But this particular rich man is no Joseph acting wisely for the benefit of those in need. This is about Greed, the desire for more, where enough is not enough. This rich man had enough and to spare - he had so much that he couldn’t store it all. Did others around him have enough food? Did he bother to find out? Did he call to mind God’s frequent insistence that we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give to the poor? No, he didn’t. He was only thinking of himself, of having all the good things stored up for years to come. And in future times of scarcity, of course, he would become even richer, as others became dependent on him and the price he sets for food.

There is nothing wrong with prudent planning for the future – we have to do that here at St Margaret’s to look after and repair our building, pay our bills. But we know it is important that we do more than that – we need to make provision for supporting other poorer churches, our local communities and charities.

Greed applies to more than money, it can be a craving for the things that our culture sees as bestowing status and privilege: this house, this car, this latest gadget.

Greed can give rise to oppression and exploitation. For example - I want to wear nice clothes, to feel smart and be well-dressed, but what if those clothes are made, packed and despatched by people working in dreadful conditions? Clothes are among the items most at risk of being produced through modern slavery, it’s an industry where women make up a staggering 80% of the global workforce. Does my greed allow me to think of that when I’m looking at a pretty shirt I want to buy? This challenges me.

When is ‘enough”? The text doesn’t tell me that! It doesn’t give specific answers to our questions about possessions, it doesn’t provide rues that define how much is ‘enough’, what I should limit, where I should draw the line. But it prods me to think about these things.

Paul offers some suggestions to the people of Colossae. He lists the things that we should get rid of: anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language and lying. He offers the image of stripping off our old self and putting on a new self. Paul encourages us to see that God is so near to us it’s like being newly clothed. I am reminded of that wonderful image from the writings of Julian of Norwich, “He is our clothing”. For Julia, it is an image of the closeness of God: “He is our clothing, He wraps and holds us. He enfolds us for love and will not let us go.” Here is treasure, here are riches. Our life in God is where we are wealthy.

Our Gospel reading ends with Jesus commenting on those who ‘store up treasures for themselves’ but are not ‘rich towards God’. How can we as individuals, and as a community, live richly towards God? One answer might be that it means to live as if we are already in heaven, bringing the values and priorities of God into our thoughts, our activities, our way of being in this world.

A final word on riches: The Blackfoot tribe of North American indigenous people used to have a Blanket Ceremony each year. Blankets represented wealth. They saved all the year round to buy blankets, and when the ceremony came, they gave them away. The person who was able to give away the most blankets was counted the richest. The richest person is not the one who possesses most, but who has given most away.

Pentecost 5: What must I do?

5th Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Readings: Deuteronomy 30:9-14, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37

What do I have to do to be a good person?

It’s the wrong question.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Again, you lawyers, the wrong question.

They are reasonable questions. Excellent lawyer questions. Am I good? Am I good enough? What should I be doing?

Today’s Gospel’s very familiar. Every child knows and instinctively understands it. A few times during show-and-tell when children are asked what can they do to be better, we hear “helping people when they fall over, or when they’re hurt.” Second usually to the washing up.

How well people take it in is another matter. There was a famous study done on seminarians in America.  A situation was set up where the students were gathered in a hall and given certain tasks.  They were then told to move to another building where they would give a short talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan. On the way a man had been placed slumped in an alleyway. According to the research, only 40% of the students stopped to help. When the students were told they must hurry to their next event, only 10% stopped.  One student even stepped over the prone man, on his way to give a talk on the Good Samaritan, so urgent did he feel was the need to share his insight on this important parable. But we shouldn’t judge. Should we?

The context here is important. Notice that it’s a lawyer who asks the question, to test Jesus. The question he asks, is what must I do to inherit eternal life? And his second question makes his concern even clearer “wanting to justify himself”, he asked, ‘who is my neighbour?’ The motivation of the man is concern over himself. He wants to be good. He wants to inherit eternal life. He wants to justify himself. What must I do?

If Jesus was straightforwardly answering the lawyer’s question you’d expect a different set up. You’d expect the man in the ditch to be the Samaritan. The Jews didn’t like Samaritans. They’d intermarried with the Assyrians, so weren’t fully Jewish;  and their religious practices varied from the Jews.  They had different Scripture and didn’t worship at the Temple in Jerusalem as all Jews did. They were something like the Mormons of their day. So if the guy in the ditch was the Samaritan that would give us the basic set up of: “Who’s your neighbour?” Even a Samaritan is your neighbour. Be nice.

But Jesus doesn’t do that. The Samaritan is the hero, not the neighbour. Now parables on one level, are simply illustrations. You might ask, what does forgiveness look like? I’ll tell you the Prodigal Son. Does God love even lowly old me? I’ll tell you the shepherd who left his flock to seek out the one that got away. But Jesus’ parables are more than this. They have a very specific aim. To cut through self-deception. Parables should make you uncomfortable. They want to change you; to convert you. And to do this they come through a story. Because only a story has the subtlety, the ambiguity, the openness to interpretation to challenge the hearer not just on facts, on laws, on thou should, thou should not; but to challenge your presumptions. They have to surprise. The Word is very near you. But it’s not what you expect.

So our dear lawyer, wants to be good. He wants to inherit eternal life. He wants to be a good Jew. He knows he must love God and his neighbour. He keeps the commandments so he figures he’s ticked the God box. Now he’s asking how far, how many people, do I need to love in order to tick that neighbour box. A reasonable, lawyerly approach.

Like a fairy tale we have three characters. Our first on the highway is the priest. He’s in a compromising situation. On the one hand, he has official duties, which he cannot perform for a week if he touches a dead body. Although there’s equally an argument from Jewish law that preservation of life is a first principle and that despite becoming unclean his first duty is to help the man. You might think this is an ideal opportunity to take a justifiable week off work, but I’m not totally clear on whether the Temple had a policy for “unclean-pay” while people were off duty. Anyway, there’s an argument with the priest that he has a legal responsibility to walk on by. Of course, the very clear and present threat of bandits might be enough to hasten his steps. The Levite as a layman is free from public responsibilities, but will still wish to avoid becoming unclean and ruining his holiday. He is, after all, also on his way to Jerusalem, where unlike the Samaritan Jews go to worship. But both these figures are clearly Jews, who know the Law, and you should expect them to consider this left-for-dead man, their neighbour.

Now enter the Samaritan. And we’re told ‘he was moved with pity’. Not ‘he asked himself what does it mean to be good or how might I inherit eternal life?’ ‘Not he asked himself, “Who is my neighbour - is this man my neighbour.” He was moved with pity.

And look how he responds. He knows to use oil and wine on wounds — that is he has some basic first aid understanding, and the means with which to clean the wounds. He’s not just “trying to help, looking useful or trying to be nice” He has the skill to make a difference.  And then he spends time with him, makes sure he’s recovering and pays what would be several hundred pounds for someone to look after him. So he has the means to deal with this. He’s not trying to do something for which he’s ill-equipped or untrained, that might, despite intentions, make matters worse. And he’s not bothered to stick around to seek the reward, the thanks, the praise. He’s not sacrificing his entire life and so giving himself the chance to tell everyone how good he is, at what cost, or limiting the impact of other good he can achieve. He doesn’t need to be needed. He has not then troubled himself with the question of whether he should do this? Who is his neighbour? What will he receive for his actions? He was moved with pity. He recognised the human need and responded immediately with no desire, except to help the person in need. 

*** 

Jesus has shifted the conversation. The lawyer has asked, ‘What must I do’ ‘how can I be justified?’ The Samaritan has simply connected with the injured man. He was moved with pity. He’s not done it for the Law, to be good, justified, to inherit eternal life. He is not acting for himself, out of concern for himself, but for the other person.

The lawyer has asked ‘who is my neighbour’ to ascertain the loop holes. Like the priest and the Levite he wishes to be justified but doesn’t want to take unnecessary risk; get his hands unnecessarily dirty. What must I do to inherit eternal life. He is thinking of his virtue, his salvation as something he can achieve.

Jesus has told a story about a man who is not a Jew; who doesn’t follow the same law; doesn’t worship in the temple; is not socially acceptable to these people. And in the context of ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life? How may I be saved?’ It is this Samaritan, this man of another religion, this outcast, who is the paradigm. The law, the temple fall before the fact that this man was moved with pity, and responded spontaneously to human need. Jesus is asked ‘who is the neighbour I must love?’ He responds by pointing out ‘you haven’t yet worked out how to love.’ Loving begins with the other person.

So what does this mean for us? Well, firstly, it’s a warning against thinking that we’ve got it all sewn up; that you or St Margaret’s has nailed down what it means to be good, to follow Christ, to inherit eternal life. The parables are there to surprise us; to cut through our self-deception; they are a mirror to the laziness of our moral compass.

Secondly, it’s a reminder that we don’t inherit eternal life by racking up a list of good works, by ticking off our church and charity checklist. Jesus teaches us to pray for grace, and in that to find the love that enables us to connect with other people. And so be ready to respond when we meet that need on the road.

So what must I do? Connect - see that your salvation is bound up with your brothers and sisters. Salvation is like love, it begins when two or three are gathered. Try not to rush. People who are rushing are moving too fast to see the people in the road. And be ready. Ready to offer the crucial help, to have the skills and resources needed when the moment arises. Ready to be moved with pity; to see in the people you meet on the road, that need and vulnerability that is waiting for love. Go and do likewise.

Pentecost 4: Only Connect

4th Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Readings: Isaiah 66:10-14, Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Perhaps the phrase brings to mind the eclectic and rather niche gameshow, hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell, But it’s also the epigram to the EM Forster novel, Howard’s End, where we have the charming line:  "The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them," Margaret sighs. "It's one of the curses of London.” Don’t worry, though, we don’t replace people at StMargaret’s, we just add them to a new rota.

‘Only connect’ comes later in the key speech of the novel:

Only connect! That was her whole sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect

‘Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.’

‘Living in fragments’ is a bit of a theme for early twentieth-century literature, struggling with the collapse of the British Empire and the Great War. T.S. Eliot’s great poem The Wasteland includes more lines about the curses of London:

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Eliot here is quoting Dante’s Inferno, likening the crowds that flow over London Bridge to the massed souls just past the gates of Hell. Here are the souls, in Dante’s poem, who are lukewarm, having done no good and no great evil, but who have stood for nothing.  Tellingly, Dante says they do not die for they were never alive. Eliot’s poem, which is a comment on the barrenness, the miscommunication and the fragmentation of modern life, is saying of the crowds, of the lack of meaning, the loss of connection in the daily trudge; that it has no life. That we have made of London an impersonal hell. All this at London Bridge in the shadow of our cathedral, but at the time there was no Borough Market so it may well have been impossible to get a decent lunch.

Now I’m sorry if this seems a very oblique way to begin a sermon.
Only Connect, as I said, is a bit of an obscure quiz and if I’ve taken in too much of the ethos of the show in using the line, let me draw it back together.  Because faith is about connection. It’s about knowing and living with yourself. Whether that’s doing a job that you feel is meaningful; that’s a good use of your time and abilities; building a life with a person you can love and respect, And this weekend we might celebrate that it’s somewhat easier than in E.M. Forster’s time to connect ourselves with our sexuality; connection is having time to pursue what makes you happy, and above all being at peace with the person you were created to be.

This may take a little reflection. Part of the difficulty of modern life is that we compartmentalise.  You wouldn’t believe how many people I see regularly, who walk past me utterly oblivious if I’m not wearing a dog collar. It’s more likely that they’ll recognise my oversize-greyhound. And shortly after I was ordained 10 years ago, I, a sensitive young curate, was walking through Soho only to be heckled by a middle aged woman with a large glass of Pinot Grigio, shouting, “You’re not a real priest”. At such a sensitive time it could have forced an existential crisis. We’re all prone to a bit of imposter-syndrome. But all of us might be one person during the week, and quite another at the weekend. One person at work; one person at home; who are you are with your parents, your children, your partner, your old friends, your putney friends, your vicar, your work colleagues, wherever it is that you find yourself late on a Saturday night, early on a Sunday morning? This is usually where we struggle to connect.

And it’s not just the old ‘Herbert’ line: ‘Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee’; It’s about the fact that it puts a great deal of strain on us acting out different roles; we can start to lose that sense of who we really are. Something more than just mummy. That is where the cracks start to appear. Only connect, and you can find that being a self-aware son makes you a better father; only connect to realise that being a parent, a partner, paying the bills and keeping the house together is the work of many people, and you’re not failing at everything, but performing wonders. Only connect, and owning in church that unpleasant thing you did in work, eases the burden, even if it sets the bar a little higher next time. Only connect and it will be the best You that starts making decisions, not the pragmatist, the pessimist or the person fitting in with the crowd. 

But our faith also asks us to connect with others.You shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart, if you only connect! But our challenge is really thrown down in being asked to love our enemies. To connect with those we disagree with. Even cat-lovers. One of the great things about church is, where else would you spend an hour with children, people who are retired, people with all different jobs, or none, people from across the world. The idea of a community is built on bringing together identity and difference, but we’re becoming less able and willing to find difference and approach others with an open mind. Only connect!

And if St Margaret’s Day is about anything, it’s about maintaining and growing relationships. Bringing together old friends, and making new ones. And as some of you have returned year on year for over a century, 
well, nearly; St Margaret’s Day connects us to those we love and see no more, the growing list of friends who now worship on a further shore in a greater light, and equally back through the generations to those who first sang “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation” 1500 years ago (albeit in Latin), and all who have listened to these readings, sung these hymns and felt the pull of the divine on their lives.  And given that we’re remembering St Margaret, we cannot but remember all those who have given their lives for the faith, from Jesus, through the apostles, the persecutions of Rome, the staggering testimonies of men and women like Maximilian Kolbe and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Nazi death camps and everyone in between. Ten thousand times ten thousand sound thy praise; but who am I? I had not known so many had undone death. Only Connect.

So when Isaiah extols us to ‘Rejoice with Jerusalem’, we can receive it as a present command if we only connect. And by Jerusalem, we understand the city of God, if by our faith, by our living connections, we can make this Wasteland the eternal city. Only connect and ‘You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice.’

Paul began our New Testament reading in words which lay aside formality and position: ‘My friends’, as Jesus said: ‘I do not call you servants any longer… but I have called you friends’ These are the words of connection. ‘Bear one another’s burdens.’ We met some weeks ago discussing some of the difficult areas of faith and some of us spoke quite candidly about our experience of grief. What was especially moving was the way people had supported one another through these difficult times. Both that those grieving had felt able to reach out, and that their trust had been met in this community. That is what it means to ‘bear one another’s burdens’. Only connect. This is what it means that ‘the Kingdom of God has come near to you.’ Only connect. For as Jesus sent out the 70 to connect others with the Gospel, so we are sent out to connect with the world. And we too will return with joy if we’re able to take out a little St Margaret’s spirit with us into the world; not like greedy salesmen, but wanting to connect with the child of God that is in each of us.

 There aren’t many prayers that I really love.  It’s probably some terrible failing, but I prefer my own imperfect thoughts and words, not written down. But there is one prayer I return to. I think perhaps, because you can say it no matter how bad things are; whether I’m on a good day bustling about, or if my worst imaginings have come to pass, and like St Margaret, I’m in the dragon’s belly. It’s a prayer that acknowledges the value of every created thing, simply on the basis that we’re all points of connection, and God is present in every connection. It reads:

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught… Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends.  He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me.  Still, He knows what He is about.

I am a link in a chain.  Only connect. Amen.