Transfiguration and Paradigm shifts

In 1962 Thomas Kuhn published a game-changer book, which caused a bit of a kerfuffle in his own field – and has been taken up by nearly every other field since. The book had the unpromising title of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but is probably one of the few books in the philosophy of science that could genuinely be called a bestseller. The premise is sort of simple, which is why it translates well. He was addressing the common view of science: that we gradually know more and more; We refine our ideas, create greater detail and enlarge concepts. Science is slowly progressing to an ever more complete understanding. Instead, he argued, science is tied to narratives, ideas and models. Normal science operates by developing these pictures to account for anomalies and new information. But these narratives, ideas and models are not necessarily true in themselves; They’re just ways of thinking that help scientists imagine and organise experiments and observations in order to predict future events with greater accuracy.

Then, he says, there are these moments – when for varying reasons, which may be because there are rather too many anomalies to account for, Or it may just be cultural and societal assumptions or predilections; But someone comes up with a new model or idea and suddenly everything changes; all that old work gets tossed out and the poor little scientists have to start again. This is a scientific revolution. So the big examples would be things like the Copernican revolution when people changed from seeing the centre of the solar system as the Earth to the sun. Or the beginning of Quantum science, where the model that works for really, really small things don’t work in the same way as big things. There are many examples though – like Schrodinger’s cat – no one’s ever quite sure whether he’s alive or dead, and posters on lampposts brought in no convincing evidence; Heissenberg’s famous ‘uncertainty principle’ – that, still, no one’s really sure about; but part of the point, and the inspiration for the book, comes from the difficulty of looking from one point in science to another. So Thomas Kuhn talks about giving lectures on the history of science, and reading through Aristotle’s Physics. He came away thinking – “wow, this guy is just a ‘dreadfully bad physical scientist” – despite the fact that Aristotle – who is still widely read and admired 2400 years after he died – is clearly a brilliant mind. What he concluded was that Aristotle was not a bad version of Newton – He just was working with an entirely different set of tools and ideas about the world. To understand Aristotle’s science is remarkably difficult because we just cannot get our imagination around all the differences, the different assumptions, between then and now.

On a side note, I’ve always been baffled that Christians still have strong feelings about the old doctrine of transubstantiation. It’s one of those words that makes good Protestant stand up and shout “Down with this sort of thing!” For those of you who have been preserved from this particular internecine debate, the Catholic doctrine is that the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ. The “science” behind the doctrine though is Aristotelian. In his day, for complicated reasons we shall not address here, objects in the world were said to have substance and accidents. So the ‘substance’ was the thing-in-itself – The core essence of Sarah or chairs or bread – And the ‘accidents’ were what we perceive – so taste, feel, smell, appearance, sound. With this ‘science’ the old doctrine makes sense – the accidents remain as they were – It tastes, looks, smells, feels like bread. But the substance has changed – it’s now substantially the body of Christ. When you understand this way of looking at the world, the doctrine makes sense. But no one now thinks of the world as having substance and accidents – That is no longer normal science. Which makes it very odd to talk about this doctrine at all, and leads to a lot of confusion.

***

But I bring all this up, because today the Church celebrates an event in the Gospels called the Transfiguration. Jesus has taken the inner circle of disciples – James, John and Peter – off in secret. There they have this moment of Epiphany; this transformation, this dream-like sequence, as they see Christ in his divinity. And the core of this vision is Christ speaking with Moses and Elijah about the death that awaits him in Jerusalem. We hear that the disciples are terrified, they keep silent, despite the declaration of heaven that Jesus is the Son of God, despite the flashing lights.

This moment is a paradigm shift. It’s the revolution in Judaism that Jesus brings about. Not in ethics or ritual or eschatology; Jesus’ ideas are quite radical but not remarkably so. The revolution is in what it means to be the Messiah. And we see it over and again in the Gospels that what stresses and confuses the disciples is when Jesus tries to explain what is coming in the crucifixion. The idea of a suffering messiah is in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the prophet Isaiah; But it was not the accepted paradigm of what a messiah looks like.

From our Christian paradigm, Jesus saying that he’s going to die in Jerusalem is expected. It’s very hard to imagine how this just wouldn’t make sense to a first century Jew waiting for liberation from the Romans. Even his disciples don’t get it. – and keep getting things wrong until the resurrection. Because the point is that Jesus isn’t about a small colony seeking liberation; A people wanting their independence back; Which is what was understood. The true Messiah is about the revelation of the meaning of the world as love; It’s about the definition of love as self-giving even to death; It’s about divine kingship going further than one particular nation to all people; It’s about true power lying in service; It’s about the reality of suffering in discipleship and the Christian life; We’d need to imagine our King Charles walking out of his palaces to live under the stars, preaching to the confused paparazzi that followed him, and proclaiming that he would suffer the fate of his namesake, to imagine the magnitude of the change Jesus is proclaiming. In short, Jesus is turning upside down all the ideas of messiahship/kingship in the first century and many ideas about what a blessed life looks like today.

The question it asks us is are we truly converted? Have we really got this new paradigm? That following Christ is about service, it involves suffering; it’s unpopular and it’s not easy. Would we rather be followers of a king who lives in palaces, content to live out his days in peace? The brightness of this moment of transfiguration pre-empts the darkness that is to come. It is the bright field, Jesus spoke of last week, that will become Golgotha. The primary image of Christ is that of the light of the world taken into the darkest of places. That is the reassurance we have – that there is nowhere in which the light of Christ does not shine. But the difficult message of the Gospel holds these things together – Christianity does not propose a simple happy ending: It holds together hope and fear; Faith and abandonment; Love and suffering; And says: here is the new paradigm – this is what it actually means to be God. So we are asked today – do we have the right paradigm of faith that will sustain us in the darkest of hours? Are we following Christ or some other king? Have we noticed that as Christ is lifted up in light, it is to shine a spotlight on the road of suffering that is the path of love? A paradigm shift is a kind of conversion – Not in the superficial things, not a refining of concepts; But a change in the soul – a metanoia – Like Paul blinded by the light, Like John Newton, realising the wickedness of slavery Like an apple falling from a tree bringing about the fall, or the discovery of gravity. Amen.

Trinity: Nothing Compares to You

It’s been 7 hours and 15 days, Since you took your love away…

I don’t know if children watch music videos anymore. Sixth form common rooms at the end of the twentieth-century were awash with music videos and occasionally one was striking enough to be remembered for, well, at least three decades. So the video of Sinead O’Connor singing Prince’s song: ‘Nothing Compares to You’ is one you don’t forget. The whole video is a close up of her face – filling the whole screen – A beautiful, elfin face exaggerated by a buzz-cut lack of hair And, throughout, singing with all the raw emotion of hurt and anger and grief; tears gently falling down her cheeks; It is achingly vulnerable – Uncomfortable to watch, hard to look away.

The song is simple – melodramatic – but the beginning is effective – Grief turns you backwards – it’s been 7 hours and 15 days – I go out every night and sleep all day. With all those synth strings and synth vocals who wouldn’t be moved? It’s a vision of poor, bare, forked humanity, And when that doesn’t move us, Doesn’t make us turn aside, Well then something’s gone wrong.

Once you know the poem, it’s impossible not to hear it immediately when you come to today’s Gospel readings. R.S. Thomas is a better writer than Prince, but his music videos were an embarrassment.

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it.  But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it.  I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it.  Life is not hurrying 

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past.  It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Thomas does pretty well at maintaining the sense of the parable. The image is one we know well – When we suddenly catch sight of a field of bright rapeseed, or the sun breaks through the clouds over the sea – Or any of a million natural moments of wonder, which strike the eye like a revelation and then pass on; Sometimes accompanied by the solid reassurance of David Attenborough’s voice – at least if you don’t get out much. Sometimes observed with joy as a child grows and every change is an unexpected miracle.

These natural wonders are the visual image – to which Thomas suggests the theological counterpart is the moment of epiphany, a glimpse behind the veil; A second’s breath of eternity. Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

Now people get that sense of the divine in nature. But that’s not what Jesus or Thomas is getting at here. Jesus uses agricultural parables because he’s talking to peasants. Thomas uses these images because Welsh people used to know their Bibles, and his readers like to go for nice walks. But nature is not the point.

Jesus’ examples are of how one small, hidden thing is more important that everything. If we discover what is truly valuable, then we’ll be prepared to sacrifice everything else for it. Just as when a child has an accident you would even drive into the ULEZ, braving Putney bridge, to get to hospital; especially if it was so urgent that driving round St George’s for forty minutes looking for a parking space didn’t seem like an option.

But in Thomas’ poem we have a slightly surprising adaptation. Because Thomas suggests that in this transitory bloom – in the moment of the bright field – a moment as transitory as your youth – that is where we discover eternity. Eternity juxta-posed with the passing moment.

So what is this bright field? What is the brief encounter that we might turn aside for? Discovering something like eternity, Something like the kingdom of God?

It can be beauty, The beauty of a lofted drive or an elegant forehand, Things that bring us together – that create shared solidarity – or whatever in art, music or nature thrills us. That which enables our concentration, our wonder, above all establishes a sense of unity; meaning and coherence amid the chaos of life.

But the word which best captures how I think Jesus understands these parables is ‘incarnation’. The Word made flesh. All those parables could be Jesus speaking about himself. Jesus is the least of all seeds – counted as nothing in life – Jesus sown in death becomes something greater after death – large enough to lodge all the birds in its branches. Jesus the leaven who rises – and gives to all the resurrection of the dead – Jesus the treasure that his disciples must give everything to purchase, The pearl of great price – The net that brings in all humanity.

These parables are images of incarnation, Of how Jesus brings to the world the kingdom of God. But they also concern the preciousness of human life. How just as in that other parable Jesus will seek out the one lost sheep – conveying the absolute value of every person – So the smallest seed here may become the greatest of shrubs; The hidden kingdom of God within you, will raise you like leaven; You are the pearl of great price for which God himself will sell everything. You have the kingdom of God hidden within you, that like the children of Narnia, gives you an unexpected royal inheritance. And the more you are in this world lowly and vulnerable, grieving and injured, the more capacity you have to be transformed by the riches of God.

We may not see it. We may be hurrying to a future where all the problems and difficulties we are facing will have been dealt with; We may be hankering after a past, when we imagine life was so much easier. It’s a step of faith to find God in the present moment – In all its complications.

There’s a famous atheist play, from which the punchline comes that hell is other people. It provides a good contrast with Christianity, because Christ argued the opposite: That other people are heaven.

When we encounter a face – filling our screen – With all the emotion of a broken down lovesong – The anger, frustration, tears, grief, affection and confusion that life brings – It might feel like a distraction, an inconvenience, an imposition; But that is the kingdom of God. That is the field in which treasure is buried, the pearl of great price. Jesus is saying that is what he would give his life for. Because where suffering meets compassion is the place of redemption. And it’s there that the kingdom of God becomes a tree in which the birds of the air will come and make their nests.

Let us be awake enough to notice the bright field. Let us be generous enough to afford the pearl of great price. Let us find God through our tears and the tears of others. Amen.

St Margaret's Day Sermon

Psalm 130 – de profundis

Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord :
 Lord, hear my voice;
O let your ears consider well :
 the voice of my supplication.
If you, Lord, should note what we do wrong :
 who then, O Lord, could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you :
 so that you shall be feared.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him :
 and in his word is my hope.
My soul looks for the Lord :
 more than watchmen for the morning,
more, I say, than watchmen for the morning.

De Profundis – out of the deep. It’s striking how captivated the world was by the missing submarine. Many other disasters ended more lives in the meantime, not least in Ukraine, but the submarine kept the headlines. I wonder if there’s something primal about the fear created by the deeps – The utter blackness, the concentrated pressure, the freezing cold, the monstrous weight of water above you. De Profundis is also the title of one of the most famous letters written in English, by Oscar Wilde from Wandsworth prison – His making sense of the awful fate that had befallen him. I say a letter, and it is – but it’s the length of a novel. Definitely not for the tweeting generation. TLDR

Amongst other things the letter is a meditation on sorrow. ‘Where there is sorrow there is holy ground’, he writes. That may surprise. Often suffering is quoted as the reason people don’t have faith. Wilde remarked: ‘there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man.’ But he corrects himself: ‘I was entirely wrong… Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world… If the world has … been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love.’ Out of the depth have I cried to you, O Lord.

Not all suffering is redemptive. But sorrow has certain qualities, pointed out by those like Wilde who have been tried by it, that bring us to God. Sorrow very often brings to our awareness what is most important. I spoke with a friend this week whose child is very ill. We reassess our lives, our relationships, our way of life, our deep-seated beliefs. Sorrow can make us honest.

Sorrow may bring humility. The recognition of our need of others. The loss of our invulnerability. Wilde wrote: ‘One cannot acquire humility, except by surrendering everything that one has.
It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it.’

Sorrow may force change – where otherwise we stay within what is comfortable and easy, in the illusion that this middling life will continue forever. Last week I spoke about how we might look at the journey of faith, not as something in which we gain things, achieve things, do things, believe things; But one in which we let things go, and in the loss of what is cheap find what is permanent. Sorrow may be a means of cutting away life’s chaff.

Wilde demonstrates the difference between the atheist and the Christian, and it is in part an attitude to sorrow. The atheist might say that the suffering of the world makes a loving God impossible. The Christian says that love is the only explanation for the suffering of this world; Revealed by Isaiah’s ‘man of sorrows’; And as Wilde quotes Goethe:

‘Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the midnight hours
Weeping and waiting for the morrow, -
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.’

Out of the depths have I cried to you, O Lord. Lord hear my voice.

I speak about sorrow, notwithstanding our celebrations today, because of this church’s dedication to St Margaret of Antioch. St Margaret lived through the Church’s worst persecution under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Famously he prohibited Christian worship. And there wasn’t even a pandemic. And as St Matthew reports, echoing the experience of his own church – the inheritance of Christianity in these first centuries was punishments and executions, betrayal and hatred, ‘but the one who endures to the end will be saved.’

The favourite story of St Margaret is that she was swallowed whole by a dragon but escaped when the dragon’s digestion was irritated by the cross she was wearing. In St Margaret the dragon bit off more than he could chew. Like Jonah from the whale she was vomited forth. Qualities we might emulate, but not, please, in the barbecue later. [On a side-note, it’s presumably because of her safe delivery from the dragon that through the Middle Ages she became a patron saint of childbirth – Though this does seem somewhat perverse for a childless teenage girl.]

The story itself is interesting. Stories of saints often have a symbolic quality. Is St Margaret pictured as having entered into a hellish situation or a place of temptation to recant her faith – in the devil’s belly – and to have found release? Or is the dragon symbolic of the emperor? Is it a picture of the persecution of the early church, saved through fire? In any of these cases, in cells, in the belly of a dragon, Christians have found themselves calling out de profundis – Out of the depths. And the story is there to say that God is with us. When we walk through fire, we shall not be burned. It is her cross that irritates the dragon’s belly; Her faith – that brings her from death into life.

Talking to my friend last week, she spoke of the difficulty of prayer in times of difficulty – a feeling of being cut off. Sometimes in crisis – with one thing that is our heart’s desire, prayer comes naturally, easily. I told her what I believe to be true, that God never places any barrier between us and him. But in sorrow, our grief, our anger, our fear may keep us from God. We are as easily able to shut ourselves off from God as from our friends and family. And sometimes we’re not even aware of how angry, how frightened we are.

St Paul asks – what will separate us from the love of Christ? Hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakeness, peril, the sword?’ No – not even death, nor life, angels nor rulers, things present or to come, power nor height nor depth – Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God’. Ultimately, not even ourselves. Paul too is a man of sorrows – But Paul is able to turn his suffering into hope.

The anti-suffering atheists I have met, quite often have been some of the most moral people I know. They very often have impossibly strict views, being vegan, or teetotal. I bring this up because as well as having a strong focus on suffering, Christianity is also very concerned with sin. Not, though, with trying to create people who are proper and well-mannered. As Wilde writes: ‘The conversion of a publican into a pharisee would not have seemed to Jesus a great achievement.’ Rather sin and suffering are both moments that can turn the soul towards God. So in his analysis of the parable of the Prodigal Son, Wilde argues that when the prodigal son falls to his knees and weeps, he makes his having wasted his life and money with harlots, and his swine-herding and starving, ‘beautiful and holy moments in his life’. Because they are the means by which he learns repentance. By which he learns humility. By which he seeks forgiveness. By which he returns to God. Sin and sorrow may be redeemed.

You may have noticed that we confess our sins each week. It’s not in some vain hope that we eventually become unsinful people. It’s because it’s in recognising our weakness that we meet God. Wilde wryly remarks that this is a difficult idea to grasp: ‘I dare say one has to go to prison to understand it. If so, it may be worth while going to prison.’

De Profundis. Out of the depths. My favourite psalm is 42, which has the line: Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. ‘Deep calleth unto deep’ was read by the mystical theologians as the soul’s communication with God. It is in the depths, they felt, that we are closest to God. So whether today you’re in those deeps, Or if you’re moving forward into broad, sunlit uplands, May God be with you on this St Margaret’s Day And in your sin, your sorrow, your humility, your forgiveness, May you know the love from which you can never be separated. Amen.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

That line, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”, is spoken twice in the story - once by each sister. It is fraught with emotion; the voice of grief – the mourning of a beloved brother. It is an accusation: “if you had been here” - that is to say, you were nothere when I needed you. It is a question - if you had been here would he still be alive? “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Mary and Martha – are grappling with loss in the face of their faith in Jesus. It’s the sentiment behind every moment of grief, failure and disappointment; the regret of our impotence thrown like small stones at the window of the heavens – at our perpetual disappointment at life, ourselves, and others. It’s the voice that rings through history at the suffering of war, of earthquake, of failed revolutions, of disease and famine and drought and fire and flood, of school-massacres, pointless terrorism, torture and execution.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

We are told that Jesus is “Emmanuel”: God with us. Jesus reveals God as love and promises to be with us to the end of the age. We come to church, we share the Eucharist, in faith that this is true, but can we resolve this with our experience? If faith is to be real it has to honestly make sense of our experience; it has to be able to give a shape to how we see the world and so it has to contend with this question that returns to us time and again:

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”

Where were you? In my moment of need, where are you?

This story is the Christian attempt to make sense of this question. And because of this – because it is an attempt to justify the ways of God to man, it’s full of contradiction. It’s the last and greatest of Jesus’ signs – the end of his public ministry. It demonstrates his omnipotence: his power over life and death. But it’s the only real moment of humanity, of emotional turbulence within the whole Gospel.

Two weeks ago, we heard the Samaritan woman who caught Jesus tired and thirsty, but even then it was the encounter, not food, drink or rest that sustained the indefatigable Jesus. Last week the Gospel was the crucifixion. Jesus is almost superhuman to the end in this Gospel. There’s no agony in the garden, no “Lord, Lord, why has thou forsaken me”, Jesus is in control – he has foreseen this: from the cross he organizes those who follow him, and speaks to fulfil Scripture.

Strangely though it is this moment, the raising of Lazarus, at which his divine power is apparently most on show that he is most human. He is ‘greatly disturbed in spirit’ and ‘deeply moved’, ‘again greatly disturbed’, and in that shortest verse in the Bible, we are told in a better translation, “Jesus wept.” What the Gospel does is to confuse our sense of what is divine and what is human. Because at this moment which puts on show his miraculous powers he is grieving and weeping. And at the climax of the Gospel, the moment from which all Christian theology unfolds, there is no miracle at all, just a man put to death. Strangely Jesus is most human when he is most divine; and most divine when he is most human.

And I think, even at our most faithful, we’re mostly with Martha as she tries to make sense of the death of her brother. Jesus speaks to her the words of faith: “Your brother will rise again.” And in our faith we manage: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” This is faith deferred. Hope deferred. This life is much as we expect, but in our faith we think that after death we might understand better; see that miracle; meet God; we are waiting for God; hoping but not expecting; that after the ordinary experience of suffering and death, we might see God.

But Jesus says to her “I am the resurrection and the life.” The present tense tells us that even in death life is already present. A second contradiction that where the evidence tells us that life has ended, that this person is no more, they are alive in Christ. They are already at peace in God’s kingdom. The resurrection is with us here, now. And over the years the paradox has been strengthened by the weight of those enchanted words:  “I am the resurrection and the life”, the words which begin every funeral. Words of faith in the face of death that this is not the end.

Our instincts tell us that God is on the side of the young and beautiful, the healthy, vivacious and rich – this is where you find God – we know God’s presence by his blessings. We think that faith is like the lyrics to a Destiny’s Child song: ‘After all of the darkness and sadness/ Still comes happiness/ If I surround myself with positive things/ I'll gain prosperity.’ But Jesus is not the light of the world because he makes things beautiful, because everything he touches turns to gold; it is because he reveals the divine in the human, and our humanity in God. It’s because he promises that when all hope is gone, when all is corruption, God is at work, God is present. And even though Jesus dies young, tormented and tortured, this does not make him any less loved by God.  It shows that God’s love and presence are found in the darkest parts of our lives.

This repeated refrain, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”, (a line perhaps spoken between the sisters frustrated by Jesus’ absence), is a form of protest, of faith struggling to grapple with reality. It may remind us of Moses arguing with God, of Jacob wrestling with God, or Job picking his scabs in the desert.  It reminds us that while God wants us to have life in abundance, God is most present when the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, have torn what is most dear to us. And that when pretense and ambition and appearance and pride have been stripped away, it is then God is closest to us. And if, then, we can still love – then that is when we are closest to God.

It is that A-level philosophy moment when people often reject God as incompatible with the suffering they imagine in the world. Christianity turns this problem on its head. It answers that suffering is exactly where you find God. Not the neat god of comfort, the god who solves problems, an easy God; the God who is super-human or in-human; but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who suffers on the cross, the God who takes suffering so seriously that it is the means by which he demonstrates his love for the world.

We have now entered Passiontide, which if we take the Christian journey seriously is the holiest time of year. It’s where we take time to reflect on the nature of suffering and love, and – if we dare to have faith find in them the revelation of God, for which the Church has for thousands of years now found the basis of prayer, service and praise. I am the resurrection and the life. Dare we believe it? Rather than seeking God in perfection, in power, in beauty, might we instead find it in suffering, in weakness, and in our mortality?

Lent: The Woman at the Well

Sermon by Anne East
Readings: Exodus 17: 1-7, Romans 5: 1-11, John 4:5-42

“Jesus and the woman at the well”.  One of the many ‘unnamed women’ that we read about in Scripture: Jesus and the ‘bent-over’ woman, Jesus and the woman with a flow of blood, Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, the woman who anointed Jesus’ head, the woman who called out to Jesus from the crowd. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I’ve got a bit of a fixation with these unnamed woman — they occur in the Old Testament too, but we’ll keep that for another conversation.

Jesus and the woman at the well is the second part of the trilogy that Brutus described last week. Part One was the ‘insider’ Nicodemus, a man, a leader, a Jew. Here we have a woman, a Samaritan, an ‘outsider’, not quite respectable. But note that this is the longest one-to-one conversation between Jesus and another person recorded in the Gospels. We only find it in John’s gospel. Luke, who has so many stories about women, doesn’t have this one – neither do Matthew or Mark. It is an episode that has captured the imagination of writers, poets and artists over the centuries. There is something beautiful about the staging of this scene.

Jesus is facing hostility from the Pharisees in Judea, so he decides to leave for Galilee and to reach Galilee he has to go through Samaria. The disciples go off to buy food and Jesus rests by the well. It’s very hot, it’s midday – and this woman appears. What is she doing out in that heat, it’s not the normal time for drawing water. Why is she alone? Why didn’t she go the well with the other women? It is a strange situation right from the beginning. Now the answer to these questions may have something to do with what we are told later on – that this woman has had five husbands and is now living with another man. Maybe she is not socially acceptable? Got a bit of a reputation?

If Jesus was surprised to see her, she was even more surprised to see him and especially when he asked her for water. She was a Samaritan, he was a Jew. Jewish food laws were strict, what they could eat, what they could touch, what vessel they could drink from. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria!”

And  if that request surprises her of course Jesus offer of ‘living water’ puzzles her even more. “Sir, give me this water, so I won’t get thirsty.” People often misunderstand Jesus at first: Nicodemus, that we heard about last week, “How can a man be born again?” or even the disciples later  in today’s reading, wondering about the  ‘food’ that Jesus tells them he has.

So this conversation leads into a theologian dialogue – about ‘living water’, about the source of that water, and about where God is, where they should worship him – “our Mount Horeb? Or your Mount Sinai? Our ancestors worshipped in this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem” . The woman seems to be asking a similar question to the one the Israelites were asking Moses in that passage from Exodus: “Is the Lord among us or not?” ‘Is God with us? How can we know?”

She’s feisty, this unnamed woman. She recognises the societal barriers and boundaries that keep her in her place but at the same time she challenges Jesus’ authority over and against the ancestors of her faith, “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and his sons and his flocks drank from it?” She reminds me of the Canaanite woman who in seeking healing for her daughter and being told “You can’t take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs!’ retorted “But the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the family table!.” Persistent.

Here, the woman says, “‘You seem to be a special person, you know a lot. I know that when the Messiah (the Christ) comes, he will explain everything to us” .

And Jesus gives this amazing reply, “I, the one who is speaking to you – I am . . he.”

‘I AM’ – that’s YHWEH, the name of the Lord in the Old Testament. This is God’s name as revealed to Moses, ‘I AM. Tell the Israelites that I AM has sent you.’

As we read on through John’s Gospel we find Jesus making other  ‘I AM’ statements: ‘I AM the bread of life. I AM  the light of the world, I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life. ‘

It starts here, at this well in Samaria:  ‘I can give you living water . .  You spoke about the Christ…I am he.’

So Jesus reveals his identity to this woman. Her question about the acceptable place of worship (Mount Gerazim or Jerusalem, over which the Jews and the Samaritans have disagreed for centuries) represents a fundamental issue for this Gospel: ‘Where can we find God’s presence?’ Let’s think back to the opening chapter “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”

What extraordinary things happen at this well in Samaria. Jesus tells the woman he is the Messiah, and she tells this good news to the others in her village. This unnamed woman is the first evangelist to the Samaritan people. Listen to their declaration:  “Now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the saviour of the world.”

When we read / re-read a passage of Scripture – and particularly during our Lenten focus — in the tradition of ‘Lectio Divina’ (Diving Reading), we seek the gift to us in that passage.

John chapter 4, Jesus with the woman at the well: where, for you, does the treasure lie? What is the gift that you find when you dig deeper in this passage of scripture?  Is it the fact that this woman is an outsider, a nobody, of low social standing? Jesus does not turn away from this woman – on the contrary, he engages her in serious conversation and spends several days at her village. Jesus welcomes outsiders, as well as insiders, into discipleship. And when we take small, tentative steps towards understanding (like this woman does) Jesus waits patiently until we see him for who he is.

The woman was amazed that Jesus knew so much about her. He knew where she was coming from, how life had been for her, where she was weak, mistakes she might have made. Jesus accepted her. Is that the gift for you? Reassurance that you are known, accepted and loved?

 Or is it that “living water” which holds the treasure?  Water, we know, is essential for life – we simply can’t live without it. Jesus offers a new life - a life that bubbles up in us like a spring – cleansing, renewing, refreshing. As Paul said in today’s NT reading, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”.

 And what should we do with it? The woman was offered the water of life and she used it to irrigate her whole village. The more that our lives are filled with God’s living water of life and love, the more we too may become sources of love and comfort and fairness and truthfulness for other people.

 May it be so. Amen

Lent: Coming to Jesus by Night

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

To be a Christian is to have a sort of double vision on the world. The world is natural. It’s governed by laws of nature, tested by repeatability – Most early scientists were priests who delighted in seeing the glory of God in the rational, ordered creation. And so we look at the world of physics – of bodies in motion – Governing the observable, the working of minds and bodies and societies.

But to the Christian the world is also super-natural. A world in which we have responsibility for our actions; Where there is a struggle in society and in our souls between good and evil; A world which touches eternity, so that moments that are transitory have an eternal weight; A world in which grace, forgiveness, sacrifice and love can lift us out of the ordinary; A world in which hope, even in the face of impossibility, shines in the darkness, A world in which you are not just a collection of atoms, genes, synapses, but a creation, a little lower than the angels, godlike in capability and reflection.

John’s Gospel is written in double vision, double speak; Where the literal and the metaphoric harmonise.

So Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. Now, in a book where the main character is described as the light of the world, if you say someone comes to visit him ‘by night’, you’re making a point. It’s like Chekhov’s gun – if you show a loaded gun in the first act, it’s got to be fired in Act 2. And twelve chapters later, at the betrayal, we’re told – ‘Judas went out, and it was night.’ The literal night is pregnant with the inner meaning of spiritual darkness, ignorance, and the absence of God. But, equally, Nicodemus comes by night because he’s afraid, he doesn’t want to be seen; Perhaps he’s embarrassed, perhaps it’s dangerous: the literal and metaphoric travel together.

And then we have this conversation; Nicodemus is playing the straight man, he interprets naturally, almost comically. Jesus is speaking in metaphor, supernaturally. Unfortunately, we lose the ambiguity of the Greek – Jesus says ‘we must be born again, which could equally mean born anew or born from above; Which we know is meant spiritually; Nicodemus interprets it naturally, with all that climbing inside your mother nonsense.

Jesus, addressing this misunderstanding, clarifies that you must be born of the Spirit. Again, we have a translation problem: in the Biblical languages the words for Spirit and Wind are the same. Somewhat misleadingly English translations switch between Wind and Spirit when the same word is used – from pneuma– like pneumatic. The same word also means ‘breath’ – so when Jesus dies, he breathes his last, and gives up his Spirit – or in the old words – gives up the ghost. But this play on words, breath, spirit, wind doesn’t come across in English. It’s harder for us to appreciate John’s double speak – Our translation switches between ‘wind’ and ‘spirit’, dividing the natural from the supernatural. And with this the Greek has more wordplay as the word phonê – from which we get phonetics – means both ‘sound’ and ‘voice’. So we have: ‘The wind/spirit blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound/voice of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the wind/Spirit.’ The wind/spirit bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound/voice thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit/wind. The natural and supernatural speaking in one sentence.

Incidentally, I like the sound of ‘born of the wind’ – it sounds tremendously more free than being born of the Spirit. It also gives a lovely spiritual interpretation to the 70s rock classic by Kansas: ‘Dust in the Wind’.

But my point in all of this is that St John’s Gospel is written in double-speak: a language that is natural and supernatural, Physics and metaphysics. And if that isn’t enough ambiguity look at the passage again. There are no quotation marks in Greek. Is this Jesus speaking as this translation suggests? It’s equally possible to read from “No one has ascended…” as the evangelist speaking to us the reader – after all it’s all a bit out of order at this point in the Gospel.

In any case, this double-speak matters, because Jesus is trying to get us to think again. Like a parable, it’s not just that this story means this; It’s meant to get you thinking; Above all it wants you to change – to snap out of your complacent faith; So here, we must be born anew, born again, born from above – Which is to say, we need to start again, look afresh! Question our preconceptions with the new thought God is ready to surprise us – And the nearer to the centre we are, the more familiar this all is, the more comfortable I am, the more I am likely to be like Nicodemus.

I think we can put our hands up and say there’s a little bit of anti-semitism going on here. Nicodemus is a Jewish leader, and, despite the obvious, we’re always tempted to think of Jesus as a Christian. These two men are the same religion. And presumably, if you’re with Jesus, you’re the same religion. So Nicodemus is exactly akin to, say me, going to Jesus.

Now, as you may well know, this episode is the first in a trilogy. Anne is preaching on the sequel next week, the more exciting ‘Empire Strikes Back’ of John’s Gospel, aka ‘The Samaritan woman’. The final part of the trilogy is the healing of the Gentile official’s son. The overarching structure of the trilogy is that, as we move away from the centre – from the Jewish man through the Samaritan woman to the Gentile – the foreign enemy – So we encounter more faith and a more immediate response of faith.

Now I’d say we all tend to identify with the Gentile. We’re not Jews, and Samaritans are a bit like the Jehovah’s Witnesses of the day. But we’re really like Nicodemus, the insider. He’s the person that should get it – should recognise Jesus; Already religious; in the right faith, which he himself teaches; with the right education and parents. But he doesn’t – he misses the whole point of his faith when it’s right in front of him.

So actually, if you like me have been coming to church some time; If you’re an insider, the conventional Christian, Then perhaps you’re the one coming to Jesus at night. Thinking you know the situation, how to be a person of faith, but interpreting Jesus’ words in natural ways, while the supernatural challenge flies over your head. Perhaps, you’re a little reticent, embarrassed to speak about matters of faith – Preferring the anonymity of arriving at night. Do we have the Spirit? Are we living this life as people of faith?

There’s no denial of the natural, the scientific in Christianity. You can still believe in dinosaurs, and the ordinary processes of the observable world. But we’re asked here to begin again, in seeing the world theologically. In our relationships, asking how can I be more like Jesus? By expecting, being excited to find God in worship, in reading Scripture, in being with other Christians, in our walk through this world.

John is saying – yes, that is a cluster of atoms, a strange coincidence, an Easterly wind bringing cold from Siberia, the noise of a once thriving city; But also – that is the handwork of God, the sign you have been waiting for, the Spirit ushering in the kingdom of God, the voice that is calling you.

 As Christians we must learn this double-vision, double-speak. We see the world in its beauty, its rationality, its order; But we live in the Spirit with which it was created, whose character is revealed as love.

Nicodemus is an open-ended story. He pops up a couple more times and we’re never quite sure whether he’s crossed over; He defends Jesus’ right to a trial; he helps bury Jesus’ body. Perhaps he remains fixated on the natural. Perhaps as a witness to these things he is born from above. There’s a good deal in the life of faith that is a natural good; Large fancy buildings, Music, friendship, time to reflect, community, coffee – But can we also cross over and hear the voice of the Spirit bringing something to birth in us?x Can we be in-spired, can we breathe in this faith that leads from the natural to the supernatural? xFrom earthly things to heavenly things? From time to eternity? Amen.

Giving I

In 1937 Dietrich Bonhoeffer published one of the defining works of theology of the twentieth-century: a German Lutheran pastor, a world-class theologian, a man executed for attempting to assassinate Hitler, a man who knew the cost of discipleship – wrote that grace is free, but never cheap.

Grace is free but never cheap. A little bit like the NHS – but without the waiting times.

The Church, and especially the Church of England, prefers to treat grace as being cheap. It fits better that way – it fulfils measurable goals on parish returns. It’s like Church Schools – In London entry to a church school usually means having the vicar sign a form saying you attend at least fortnightly for two years and have ‘active involvement’, that ghastly phrase, meaning you’re on some sort of rota. Having spent my entire adult life studying the Christian faith, I can tell you there is nothing in 2000 years of Christian reflection on the doctrine of salvation about being on a rota. Church schools, make being a Christian cheap but not free. But grace is free and never cheap.

So well, you might ask as we sit together in church – what does it mean, what does it cost to be a Christian? Nothing. There is no badge, no welcome pack, no registration form, no membership card or certificate, no free gift except – if you can grasp it – a gift that has always been yours, that arrived before your first breath.  You don’t have to come to church, you don’t have to join in the hymns, speak to anyone else or sign up for regular giving – Being a Christian is free, The love of God is free, Grace is free.

And this is something we need to hear, learn and inwardly digest. I think it’s less common now for Christians to judge one another – We’re rightly just pleased when people turn up and happy to allow people to choose their level involvement –That’s right – because grace is free. It demands nothing. It needs nothing. You are welcome. In the front row, hovering at the back, grace is the same. God loves you no more and no less.

But it’s more often the case we need to address the insecurity in ourselves. Very often we want to do something to qualify – To make us good enough – To believe we’ve made it to being a Christian. To prove to ourselves or others our faith or goodness or worth. But give it up. You are good enough – you’re worth it – You’re forgiven – you’re accepted – included – You are one of us – inside, perhaps especially, if you’re more comfortable outside; Because grace is free. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Grace is free.

But grace is never cheap. So Bonhoeffer writes of the disciples: ‘They must burn their boats and plunge into absolute insecurity in order to learn the demand and the gift of Christ’ (53). Bonhoeffer the most promising theologian of the twentieth-century, who was a pastor here in London shortly before the war, who was offered a post in America to escape the regime he preached against, who was hung at Flossenberg Camp days before it was liberated by Americans, whose last words were: ‘“This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.” Knew and lived a grace that was not cheap. Because what we say, we learn, we sing, we share with one another here in church is that grace matters; That the fact that we are loved and ought to love another, That every one of us matters – Is something that should change us.

And not just in our Church Sunday club. Our membership with its low-bar entry and the small benefits of coffee for those who get through the service, a biscuit if you get there before my children, a place in a church school, a warm handshake before leaving. Faith is not a transaction; Grace is not found in isolation in a Sunday morning. If it’s there, it’s bubbling under the surface, nudging us in the direction of love; “Yes, I will make that call today” “Yes, it makes me uncomfortable but I will knock on her door before getting home” “Yes, I will forgive my son who has neglected me” “Yes, I will support this cause because it’s making a difference” “Yes, I will pray for five minutes before I go to sleep” Grace is the voice inside your head saying ‘yes’ to other people. And that isn’t cheap, it’s demanding; it’s persistent; You probably heard it at your wedding: Love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things.

The New Testament teaches one very simple thing. God is love. This isn’t about the existence of a being, or some metaphysical abstraction – It’s just to say that the meaning and point of life is love. The love demonstrated in words and action by Jesus. That love is free. It’s given to you; To each one of us, but it’s also the source, the principle and the reward of everything. Literally everything that matters, everything that endures has the character of love. To discover this, is a thing of joy and release. You don’t have to try; You don’t have to be something or know something, or do something; You are accepted for being you.

But to understand the implication of this is to realise that everyone is loved – Even people we don’t love; People we don’t agree with; And especially people whose lives are characterised by things that would make us miserable. And if love is working in us it will take our resources and direct them to the needs of others. This isn’t abstract. It will usually begin with those closest to us; Our family, our friends, whose needs we are most aware of. Then our community – our neighbours, our church, the groups and people we’re involved with. Then perhaps we’ll see more need, more suffering further afield where we can actively assist. Love is open-ended – it will take us as far as our courage allows. Like the disciples we may burn our boats and plunge into insecurity; Like Bonhoeffer and Bonhoeffer’s friends, family and fiancée we may lose everything for love; It may just be nudging us a little further – To pray, to give, to volunteer, to join, to say ‘yes’ to someone else. Not to buy our faith, to appease a demanding god; to purchase a sense of goodness or validation; But to be a part of that grace which is always free, but never cheap.

So over these next 3 weeks where we’re thinking about giving, this is the starting point. Grace, love is free but never cheap. And we are like God when we freely give to others; But that will cost us; And if we love completely it will ask for everything. But to have nothing but love is to be divine. So each of us can ask ourselves today. Out of our plenitude – out of our fullness, our resources – Our time, our skills, our energy, our prayers, our wealth – What do we have to give today? Grace is free, but never cheap. Amen.

Epiphany Carols

The visit of the Magi is a strange episode. It doesn’t help that they’re variously referred to as kings, wise-men and magi – The most obvious word to use would be magicians – The Greek is magos – the same root as magic. From the story we know only that they were star-gazers and took dreams seriously, and they were wealthy; It is a lucky boy who gets gold from his surprise godparents.

The story is only in Matthew – which means only he had heard it, or thought it worth including. This is kind of surprising. Matthew is the most Jewish of the Gospels; It’s Matthew that records Jesus saying not one iota of the Law will be removed; And consistently draws parallels between Moses and Jesus – When the kings leave, Herod kills all the little boys like Pharoah did; Jesus then escapes to Egypt, echoing Moses’ upbringing; And most of Jesus’ teaching occurs in the Sermon on the Mount, the parallel of Moses bringing down the Ten Commandments. Jesus brings the New Law, the New Commandment – the universal message to love God and your neighbour.

 The Hebrew Bible doesn’t have any time for magic – it’s frequently prohibited and in the law, punishable by death. So why does Matthew have these ancient Russel Grants, at the outset of his Gospel?

The episode is really emblematic of a movement throughout the Gospel from the people of Israel to a universal Gospel. While the prophets always came to restore the people of Israel to a right relationship with God, in Christ this message of restoration becomes Good News to all people. So if there is a parallel in Luke, it’s the Candlemas Gospel of Simeon holding the baby and proclaiming him The Messiah – that is the anointed one, the king – Who is now a light to lighten the Gentiles, that is the nations of the world. And as the light to the nations, he is discoverable, as the magi show, and through nature and reason they are led to proclaim him king.

Christ as the universal, discoverable revelation of God has captured the imagination of artists and poets. Auden in his poem speaks of the star as the light that drew magi but still draws our seeking – As Augustine famously wrote – our hearts are restless until they rest in thee – And this desire for understanding comes from God, drawing the wise. This path of discovery, for Auden, is uncomfortable, costly; Those ‘three old sinners’ miss their dinners, wives, books and dogs – But their passion to find wisdom leads them onwards.

TS Eliot’s earlier poem rings a similar note – missing the ‘silken girls bringing sherbet’, Hearing ‘the voices singing in our ears, saying/ That this was all folly’. The voices of easy living and materialism persist in pulling magi, and all who seek answers, away from their journey. The wisdom they seek, that the Magi find, Eliot puts down to a discovery of life and death. We all, of course, know life and death. But in finding Christ the magi understand them differently. Discovering the birth of Christ is the comprehension of our need for redemption, And the miracle of an infant Lord ‘stranded/ Immensely in distance’; It’s followed by the discovery of his death – foreseen in the magic of these strangers and their gifts – which is the redemption we seek.

The art of magic may have been replaced by science, music, poetry and the arts. Perhaps there are still ways in which these in their various charms can speak to our hearts. Reason alone is unlikely to stir us to restless exploration or to fulfil the empty spaces of our hearts. But wonder and curiosity lead in the direction of truth, beauty and goodness, which are shades of the divine. Let us then follow the magi, as they follow their star, and pray that, whatever the wilderness, the awful weather, the night, it leads us to Christ.

Epiphany: Freedom and Friendship

‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ INFSHSA

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Patrick Stewart playing Macbeth in a film adaptation. Every time I see the play I feel badly for the poor man, but especially when beneath that gruff exterior is the very model of heroism and leadership we know and love in Captain Jean-Luc Picard. From the start Macbeth is trapped and tricked by fate – the witches hail him immediately as king, which sets him down a track to getting his hands dirty with murder – and all to rule Scotland. Then they promise him, with convoluted assurances, that he’s invulnerable, which leads him to a gruesome death. Fate costs him first his soul and then his body.

At the end he realises that he’s just been an actor in his own life: ‘Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more: it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing...’

Not unlike Kate Winslett in The Holiday, who is chastised for only being a Best Supporting Actress, when she should be a leading lady. (2 films not often compared.)

But fate is a common theme in tragic drama. Before Oedipus is even born a soothsayer warns of coming family drama (not the PG kind), and the prologue of Romeo and Juliet notes that it’s not going to end well in this ‘fearful passage of their death-marked love’. Weirdly, science has taken the new place of fate. Between the natural sciences with causality, laws and genes, and social sciences with all their predictable outcomes, you can take someone’s pedigree and school and predict their job and life expectancy, like the oracle of Delphi.

But for all this blaming it on the heavens, we shouldn’t forget Cassius’ comment: “the fault dear Brutus is not in the stars but in ourselves.” (He obviously didn’t go to Eton); Cassius and Brutus are defeated and slain, and in Dante’s depiction of Hell they are on either side of Judas eternally chomped in the mouths of the three-headed devil: ‘The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus;/ See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word’. Not an obvious figure to name your child after, but at least Brutus takes responsibility for his decisions.

Today we have a perhaps fated conjunction of events: The Gospel is Jesus’ calling of the disciples, the Bishops opening up old wounds in the Church of England and the week of prayer for Christian unity. Today is a good day to reflect on what it means to be called as a Christian. Is it perhaps a trick of cruel fate – a savage public school chapel upbringing – or pressure from a rather domineering partner – that forces us against our will to a place we don’t want to go, as Macbeth growls:

They have tied me to the stake; I cannot fly / but bearlike I must fight the course”?
(As a tired father once muttered walking in to Sunday School.)

Or is it a star-crossed love affair that brings you here with a passion for the unknown woman in the 3rd row, that has taken control of your Sunday morning despite the fact that you avidly follow Richard’s Dawkin’s twitter-feed all through the service? We operate a don’t ask don’t tell policy here on this issue.

In the calling of the disciples in today’s Gospel what we find is a conjunction of the disciples’ desire to find the Messiah, and Jesus’ open call to follow him. The disciples themselves are not marked out by any obvious intelligence, wisdom or qualities of perception. Their training as fishermen will be presumably of little help in Jesus’ mission beyond a slightly awkward metaphor. (fishers of men) And throughout the Gospels they’re shown up as the lumbering, slow-witted Dr Watsons, compared to the mental-acrobatics of the Holmes-like Jesus. But the desire for change is there. And somehow this is enough for Jesus to transform these ordinary people into a world-changing movement. Their hearts, their desires, are in the right place.

Macbeth, however much he feels cheated, is a conniving murderer at heart, and that’s what he chooses to become; however passionate Romeo is, he knew it was trouble getting into bed with a Capulet. The disciples for all their slowness are open-minded and open-hearted enough to follow the truth that they see in Jesus.

Our desires inform our decisions and our decisions accurately reflect the people we are. When we look at the decisions we’ve made honestly, we really see who we have become, though we may regret them. So we must want to change - and decide to change for the better.

When Jesus finally achieves his tragic end, it’s not that he’s been tricked and thwarted, compromised or overcome; he has predicted his death and finally, through the struggle of Gethsemane, he chooses his own fate, and it reflects who he is: ‘to thine own self be true’. What binds the disciples to Jesus through the pain and hardship, what determines their call as Christians, is friendship and a shared purpose. For all their misdemeanors, the Gospel writers know that these holy fools died for their faith.

So the question that addresses Christians today is: what are our desires, and how do these meet Jesus’ call? It couldn’t be more obvious today that Christian visions of the kingdom of God, Christian ideas, about lifestyle, who can be a priest and what the church is, are in conflict. But as the epistle makes clear, factionalism and conflict are not new in the life of the church.  

Where there is passion there is usually conflict. But, as I said earlier, the call of discipleship occurs in the meeting of our desires with Jesus’ open call to follow him. And Jesus, time and again, sets the basis of this inclusive call to follow him in terms of friendship. And all that stuff about love is essentially that – that in all Christian relationships – in all human relationships – the basis upon which we should relate to other people is as friends. It’s asking for a high level of generosity of spirit.  There has to be room for people to say honestly what they think in appropriate situations. But to allow this there also has to be an acceptance of difference. That, whatever we say or think or feel, we can accept that other person without prejudice on the basis of friendship. It is the exclusionary outcome of the current debate on sexuality, and the threat of schism, that is most hurtful to Christ. We, the Church, are just not very good at being friends.

Now if we return to our tragic heroes, scuppered by fate: Macbeth, Oedipus, Othello, Lear, one of the striking things about them is that they don’t generally have any friends. Sometimes they do - but then they’re Iagos or Lady Macbeths, and that sort of friend (I use this phrase advisedly) doesn’t have your back. But if ‘the fault dear Brutus is not in the stars but in ourselves’, the one thing we need is friendship. Without friendship – between our vaulting ambition, faltering hesitation and terrible jealousies, we’re heading for a tragic end. And not the sort of friendship that nods and retweets everything we say – but one that is able to see the truths we hide from.

Here is something to remember then about the nature of discipleship. It’s not a journey made alone – in a church or as churches. If we take the time to reflect, a little time in prayer, we may see how God is at work in our own life, we may see how our desires and the kingdom of God we are trying to build here in Putney coincide. But if we look at others – people perhaps not just like us – we may see God in them, and this may enrich and widen the scope of our efforts and our understanding of God and the world. Because that is what friendship does.

Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants... but I have called you friends.” Prayer is a form of friendship, as a means of open and honest communication with God, but friendship is also a form of prayer as we give our attention to seeing the handwork and presence of God in another person. So as the call of the disciples reminds us of the call on each of our lives, let us think today about how we can achieve the kingdom of God, in establishing a loving and just community and church in the bonds of friendship; and how we can maintain our freedom against the threats of fear, prejudice and fatalism, and avoid a tragic end.  Amen.

1st January: The Name of Jesus

Reading: Luke 2: 15 – 21
Sermon by Anne East

Happy New Year!  This year January 1st 2023 falls on a Sunday and we have the opportunity to celebrate the feast of the Naming of Jesus.  In the Eastern Orthodox Church this is also known as the Feast of the Circumcision, in keeping with the Jewish law which states that males should be circumcised eight days after birth, in a a ceremony at which they are also given their name.  

Our names are an incredibly important part of our identity. They carry personal, cultural, familial, and historical connections. They give us a sense of who we are, the communities to which we belong, and our place in the world.  In the past two years I’ve had the pleasure of preaching at both my grandchildren’s baptisms. On each occasion there was quite a lot in the sermons about their names.

My mother chose my name ‘Anne’ because it was the shortest to write on any school book, exam paper or official document. She herself was called Henrietta Eliza – so I take her point. My mother also didn’t want to choose a name that could be shortened. She’d considered my grandmother’s name ‘Elizabeth’ but was anxious about the many varieties that name could take: Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Betty, Bess, Bessie . . . my mother liked to be in control – and so much flexibility filled her with horror. I never did find out how she felt 22 years later when a whole group of friends in Sri Lanka started calling me ‘Annie’ (a lengthening, rather than a shortening – but we’ll set that aside!) The name Jesus is derived from the Hebrew name Yeshua  meaning "to deliver; to rescue.” it is related to another biblical name, Joshua.  ‘After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.’  Luke 2:21

The instruction to name Mary’s baby ‘Jesus’ is given not only to his mother but also to Joseph; when he ponders the dilemma of his future wife’s pregnancy he is told, “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ Matthew 1:21

Our Gospel reading this morning takes up the narrative at the point at which the shepherds respond to the message of the angels that they will find a ‘child lying in a manger’ who is Saviour, Messiah and Lord. There is an astonishing juxtaposition here, between the weightiness and importance of those titles and a new born baby lying in a container which is used for animal feed.

‘Saviour’ – one who rescues. This baby, the shepherds are told, is the one who rescues and restores humanity, the One who brings us back into a relationship with God.

‘Messiah: the Anointed One’,  the Promised One, for whom the people of Israel have longed for centuries . For them the coming of the Messiah would bring mean a rebirth of the nation, throwing off the yoke of the oppressor, the occupying Romans and ‘Lord’: a title which denotes exulted status, worthy of worship and devotion. But contrary to whatever the shepherds and others might have expected, the Messiah has not come as a revolutionary, the Lord is not to be found in a palace, the Saviour is just a baby. There is a sense of dislocation there, something being out-of-place, this clashing of the ordinary and the extraordinary.

This sense of dis-location applies to Mary and Joseph too. They had spent time moving further and further away from their home, to go and register. Birth is a messy process, painful and frightening; they found themselves at that crucial point, in the unfamiliar, the unknown, the uncomfortable.

Then a few hours later, before dawn, there are unexpected visitors. Shepherds arrive, with stories of angels and heavenly choirs. These people in their smelly working clothes (remember, shepherds slept with their sheep), these people lived outside the boundaries of polite society, (not like a respected tradesman, such as Joseph was). Shepherds were assumed to lead rather shiftless lives. Yet these people were the first to hear, the first to see, the first to tell of Jesus’ birth.

Outside the boundaries of polite society . . I wonder if you have come across a sculpture by the Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz, that depicts Jesus as a homeless person, sleeping on a park bench? It’s a bronze cast, life size, a figure lying on a bench, face and hands obscured, hidden under a blanket, but crucifixion wounds on his feet reveal his identity. The sculpture is meant to be provocative, to challenge people. The first casts were offered to St Michael’s cathedral in Toronto, and St Patrick’s cathedral in New York, but both declined saying that ‘appreciation was not unanimous.’ In 2013 a cast was finally installed at St Alban’s Episcopal Church in Davidson, North Carolina.  Some people loved it, some didn’t . That’s the nature of art – it divides people. Some residents, however, were not making their judgement on artistic merit; they said it was ‘an insulting depiction of Jesus that demeaned the neighbourhood.’

The rector of that church described the statue as ‘a Bible lesson for those used to seeing Jesus depicted in traditional religious art as the Christ of glory, enthroned in finery.’ People are often seen sitting on the bench, alongside the statue, resting their hands on the figure lying there, and praying.

Jesus, the homeless; in essence, that’s the kind of life Jesus had: laid in an animal feeding trough at birth, wandering through the countryside, dependent on others for food and shelter. Luke 9: 57-58 “As they were going along the road someone said to Jesus, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’. The people Jesus associated with were rarely the strong and the powerful, but the weak and the marginalised; beginning here with the shepherds.

We do well to  remember this, at the end of a period of frantic consumer activity, where we have been bombarded with images of the people we should aspire to be: the good-looking, the wealthy, the influential. Today we remember a frail new-born baby, and God’s glory being revealed to shepherds – the ordinary and the extraordinary coming together.

 Another name for this baby is Emmanuel, God-with –us.

Christmas is not only the birth of Jesus, an event in history, but also the beginning of a new creation. It is the active remembering of the Divine breaking into our human world; may we, like Mary ponder this in our hearts, and take that sense of awe and wonder with us into the coming year. Amen

Christmas: this quintessence of dust

Readings: John 1:1-14
Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

 …I have of late — but wherefore I know not —
lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise;
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory,
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you,
this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,
why, it appears no other thing to me
than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man!
how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!
in form and moving how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
man delights not me: no, nor woman neither…

Lines from that almost perfect work of art – Withnail and I (and also Hamlet).

No other words so perfectly capture the two natures of man. The only work that possibly comes close is the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York. That magisterial work really fuses two songs together, a slow one and a dance-y one, and the words move from Christmas hope of ‘a better time/ when all our dreams come true’ to the realities of drug abuse and alcoholism; Christmas night spent in the ‘drunk tank’; majestically brought together with the nostalgia of the ‘boys of the NYPD choir’ which I’m reliably told don’t, and have never, existed.

But Christmas is all about these two natures: noble in reason, infinite in faculty and yet a quintessence of dust. The contradiction of living ‘A little lower than the angels’ our ‘nasty, brutish and short’ lives. In this I’m reminded of Rowan Williams’ assessment of Richard Dawkins, the scientist, as ‘a man who has devoted huge amounts of energy and tremendous intellectual sophistication into proving that there is no structure or meaning to the process which he so elegantly, intelligently and brilliantly outlines’. Personally, I’ve always thought Hobbes description of ‘nasty, brutish and short’ applies quite well to Dawkins, but that’s probably unfair. He is actually 1cm taller than me.

But at Christmas we have this most basic picture of humanity - amid all the mud and oomska - animals among the animals, birth in a stable, literally mired in poverty. And yet Christmas appeals to the better nature of our humanity. That there is something in us worth saving, that there is something human that might endure - perhaps eternally. And what the Christian faith declares uniquely is that this flesh can of itself contain all the mystery and meaning of the universe. For better and for worse. The Word, uncreated, the divine eternal meaning that lies behind the heavens and earth, may be invested in this form of life, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.

But really? I hear you say. It all sounds very romantic and self-aggrandising. Are we not dressing up mutton as lamb. Is it like that favourite Christmas song: “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause” On the face of it a charming little song to sing in the parlour or next to the piano. And yet what the protagonist of the song clearly doesn’t realise is that behind this kissing and tickling of Santa Claus is a torrid affair, ready to break apart her respectable middle-class childhood. “Oh what a laugh it would have been if Daddy had only seen” Hardly.

Well, I suppose it comes down to something you can’t really argue. There are those, the Bertrand Russells (a notorious womaniser), the Richard Dawkins (sometime academic in the second best university in England), who would say the universe holds no greater transcendence than our nasty, brutish short lives invent. The universe is just there. ‘Red in tooth and claw.’ Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made. As Samuel Johnson said: “I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.” We are a quintessence of dust and to dust we shall return.

Then there is the Christian vision of a created universe. That what shapes the universe and the character of humanity is an act of love. That from Christmas to Easter, the life of Christ reveals this hidden nature of creation, That what is sometimes sensed in beauty, truth and acts of kindness, is revealed in the life of Christ as the ultimate meaning of the universe: That we are not simply dust, but capable of so much more, in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! And that in so far as we have loved, we will endure.

It’s very difficult to argue between these views. They stand on different foundations. If you were French you would probably bet on the latter just in case it was true.

It’s a bit like if I were trying to convince someone to marry me who didn’t believe in marriage. You might be able to convince them on the grounds of utility. It makes life a bit more secure if you’re married, you get a bit of a tax break, you get presents - But if you want to get married it’s probably for something more than that; because marriage has a greater symbolic significance; because it adds spiritual weight to your relationship; because the vows speak of something enduring, eternal even; a little bit magical – like Christmas night – We can be realists about the reality of relationships, even after the wedding, without discarding the spiritual meaning of marriage and remaining true to it as best we’re able.

And not kissing – or tickling (for goodness sake)– Santa Claus underneath the mistletoe.

But despite the fact that 95% of the time we probably think of ourselves as hard-headed rational people; And for all that sometimes our heads take us to a place where the world is cold and scientific, where decisions are made based simply on utility; we are deeply sentimental. And this sentimentality is itself lodged in some deep-seated views about human nature: the worth of the individual, of freedom, of compassion, fairness, and love; of the hope for a better world. I think it’s actually especially true of British people that they suffer this double think. Their heads see the world with a cool rationalism and this is generally where they begin from. But their hearts make judgements based on an entirely different register. Especially when it comes to love, to children, to grief and to Richard Curtis movies.

The more we look at this register – which puts love above pragmatism, which gives meaning and purpose to every life, which believes – despite appearances – that what we are and do really matter - we realise it is a theological register. Because without the promise of eternity, without judgement, without redemption, what does any of it really matter?

So Christmas isn’t just about the two natures of humanity, her basic quintessence of dust and her strivings for a better time. It’s also about our striving for what is eternal, what lasts beyond our short three score years and ten. In this, Christmas is remembered at every Eucharist. The prayer the priest makes over the wine is derived from a seventh century collect for Christmas:

By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.  

Which is to say that at Christmas we remember what is hidden within ourselves and within what often seems a cold world. The belief that we, that the world can be better. Can find peace.

And perhaps we, in our quintessence of dust, can remember to delight in one another, and sometimes, at least at Christmas, because at Christmas you tell the truth – Remember the side of our nature closest to the angels – And find eternity in this quintessence of dust. Amen.

Advent IV: The Nativity Play

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

When I first arrived at St Margaret’s there hadn’t been a Nativity play for some time. Despite Covid we’ve had one every year since I arrived; I’m looking forward to seeing what Sunday School have put together this year. Zz had once again offered to play the donkey, but, amid accusations of corruption, I was told a child has already been given the part, which has rather put his long nose out of joint.

The nativity play is one of the greatest areas of confusion when it comes to reflect on the stories that have passed down to us concerning the birth of our Lord; So much so that I would bet money that even theologians would struggle to remember what’s in the Bible and what is just assumed; but even in the biblical accounts we might reasonably ask where the evangelists got their material from? Some elements, we may suppose, may have been passed on by word of mouth through his mother, but at some point, while the disciples were still making sense of what happened — that their teacher, who performed healings and miracles, was executed and returned from the dead — they also tried to give an account of what such a man’s birth was like.

But we don’t actually hear about how Bethlehem was overcrowded and there was ‘no room at the inn’; There’s no stable and no animals in the Gospels, though Jesus is put in a manger. In St Luke’s Gospel there are shepherds but no kings. But in Luke Jesus always has a close affinity with the poor. St Matthew’s Gospel bypasses the birth altogether and goes straight to the wise men — or were they kings? —, when Jesus is a couple of years old. But there aren’t three — although everything in fairy tales comes in threes. And part of the kings plot gives Matthew license to speak of Herod murdering all the infant boys, which is exactly what happened to Moses, and Matthew likes to draw parallels between Jesus and Moses.

The other two Gospels don’t even mention the birth of Jesus.

Christmas itself doesn’t become a religious festival until the 4th Century, when the date gets picked — probably as a one in one out for a pagan winter festival; Oliver Cromwell, of Parish of Putney fame, notoriously banned Christmas. It wasn’t popular and unusually he was executed a few years after his death and his head kept on a pole for twenty years. To this day the Parish of Putney celebrations of Christmas are muted and underwhelming.

Now if you have this North Putney mindset it’s easy to be sceptical of Christmas; if the Lord wasn’t born under a Christmas tree with a fairy on it then what are we all bally well here for? And while we’re at it, can we please sing In the Bleak midwinter, because everyone knows that Mary and JoJo trudged for days in the Middle East through the snow. Snow on snow on snow.

But the Gospels aren’t history. History didn’t really exist at this time. The Gospels are works of persuasion, devotion and teaching. Which isn’t to say that these things didn’t happen. Jesus definitely was born. But what matters to the Gospel writers is that you understand who Jesus is and what he was about.

So for Luke it matters that he was born in poverty — that he’s shared our difficulty — and the first people to see him were the least in society — filthy young shepherds in the fields. Matthew emphasises his kingship — so it’s the magi who come to find the new king of the Jews. And, he’s looking forward here to the crucifixion, as Jesus is executed under a sign reading King of the Jews and embalmed in the tomb with one of the three gifts, myrrh.

So perhaps we should have a second lobster in the Nativity, or an Octopus – that is a lot of legs David. Because the oceans too have need of God’s salvation – And if you’re in the National Gallery, browsing paintings of the Annunciation, referred to in today’s Gospel, you might be surprised that Mary is almost always some very white medieval princess, Maid Marion-ish, which isn’t very woke. But Christmas has always called for a little imagination.

And even when we think of Jesus’ name – written here in the today’s Gospel in capitals – we have his Latin name. Not Latin America – not for us Jesus. But Jesus, the Romanised form of the Greek, which is Iesous, a translation of his Hebrew name:  Yeshua. Though Yeshua is a shortened form of Yehoshua, So really we should just call him Joshua. (Which means ‘The Lord saves’.)

So it’s probably best to be experimental with Nativity plays. The church always has been and perhaps the evangelists were too.

The point of Christmas is to remind us that God came into the world as one of us, to share the good and the bad, the pain and the joy. And by gathering our loved ones and little ones for the play, we can remember that God is to be found in just this sort of setting, at school, at church or at home: this family gathering, whether rich or poor, with presents or with animals. And If you can’t say it as Christmas, when can you eh? Because at Christmas you tell the truth – as long as there’s love and people are brought together, it’s Christmas, and God will be there: As he is called Immanuel — Which translated is: ‘God with us’.  Amen.

Work in Progress

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

The mind is a funny thing. It prefers to deal with broad brush strokes rather than detail, so if an idea seems to be true in one or two areas, the mind will seek to apply it to all areas – to make it a general rule. Upon discovering chocolate children usually want to eat chocolate all the time – not seeing the need for meals or a balanced diet. I wonder whether you might do children a favour just for a day or two giving them nothing but chocolate – it might just cure them of it.

But despite the number of delicious treats my family consumed at yesterday’s fayre; The layer of crusted icing I washed off Apollo’s face; I’m not concerned about chocolate today. The idea that I’m concerned about – That rules our minds – That distorts the way we see the world – That is, in the bad sense, ideological – Is the idea of progress. This is not I hasten to add because of any lack of progression achieved last night.

One of the first places we encounter the idea of progress is with evolution. Evolution is almost synonymous with progress. And given that evolution takes in all the natural world; if we see the development of life as a process of improvement then that makes it a pretty strong metaphor for all things. Only it’s not clear that evolution is progression. The dinosaurs certainly didn’t think so. And currently the diversity of species is in decline. The only reason to think evolution might be progression is if we happen to be particularly impressed with our own species – which I suppose is only natural. And yes humans have some pretty special features, But if evolution were progression we’d surely want to see the whole system improving, which actually, at present, the evidence is rather against.

A second area where progress seems undeniable is technology. My niece was born with one fully functioning hand and now has a range of prosthetics that make her life a whole lot easier. Televisions routinely get larger and more sharply defined. Everything, it seems, now has some form of artificial intelligence – With my voice I can operate lights, music, encyclopaedias. (as they were called before google); “Alexa – turn the television off – I’m going to bed”. But technology is a tool and so progress has a shadow. We’re only too aware of the advancements in weaponry which threaten the planet; We’re more aware of the risk of social media and internet on the health of children; Is the world safer, less violent, less divided, more equal, more honest, because of technology? Is this progress?

And then, history. Is the human story a story of progress? History is always presented to us as progress. The plotlines naturally go forward. Events build on the past. But few who lived through the first half of the twentieth-century had much reason to see history as progress. Who would choose the 2020s as a decade to live in? Battling against pandemics, a climate crisis, global uncertainty and war; and at home a winter of discontent; On what criteria would we see this current moment as a pinnacle, and not a pimple, in human history?

And I wonder if you look honestly at yourself? Are you a work in progress? Or have you noticed that middle-age slowing metabolism, The wit is a little rusted? In my twenties I remembered everything I read; Now I can quite easily watch a film twice and, only an hour in, think “oh actually I’ve seen this before.” There’s not much about being human that improves with age. It doesn’t get easier to watch England play football. And the results don’t steadily improve.

You might be asking yourself now – “why does this matter?” Why is this idea of progress a problem for the vicar? Well, my main problem with progress is that it doesn’t allow us to die “old and fat and satiated with life.” Like Abraham and Isaac – If we hang on to the idea of progress then we’re missing out on what comes next; What a tragedy to die before the metaverse finally happens; Before England win a trophy; Before the kingdom of God arrives; Before the season finale of Strictly… Because if the world is in a state of progress – the dying are being left behind; There is something missing – which is coming soon. And in a fast-moving culture that believes in progress, we’re going to end up feeling not satiated with life but “tired of life”; Especially if we have not kept up with progress.

So when we are gathered to our family – in a field at Mamre, on a mountain top at Pisgah, we have not found that peace of having seen the seasons pass and lived a meaningful life; We are asking what comes next? Will my children push on up the ladder and find some success, some fortune that has evaded me? What was the point of me, now the world has moved on and left me behind?

The idea of progress consigns us all to the dustbin of the past; The idea of progress seeks to erase the past – for its racism, sexism, bad taste, missed penalties and failure to keep up. But our faith does not believe in this sort of progress. Our faith believes that we have in every generation everything required to find meaning, to live a good life, to discover God alongside us. That at every moment – the Judge is standing at the doors! That a peasant five thousand years ago; that Abraham, or Moses or St Benedict or St Francis, or your great grandma or your children, being human, have equality in those things which make life meaningful; in discovering truth, beauty and goodness. And all of that is discoverable in the English countryside, the warmth of a pub fire, a conversation with an old friend, a voice lifted-up in praise, or in a softly-sung lullaby.

The various forms of progress that we cling to in the fervent hope that things are getting better and not worse, have little effect on our pursuit of a good life. Despite the three thousand apps that advertise they can give you exactly that. What is virtual reality and reality television, when reality itself is right in front of you? Two weeks ago we plant a thousand crocuses in the churchyard. I’m deeply excited about the abundant blossoming we’ll see this year in Spring. We all know this winter will be difficult – and in places like Ukraine unbearable. But we stand with two thousand years of voices, who have suffered like us, who have known joy like us – and we too pray: Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.’

Here – not awaiting the upgrade And not enfolding like a sham of progress that sees some getting on very nicely and others left behind; But here in a sudden transformation, when we suddenly see the world as it is in its beauty; When we see our neighbour as they are – enough to want to love them; When we see eternity as always having been present – in our troubles, in our triumphs, in our failure and our rising to try again. And when they shall obtain joy and gladness, [] sorrow and sighing shall flee away.  So Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Amen.

St Nicholas

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

St Nicholas is a good saint to celebrate at this time of year. He reminds us, and helps us instruct children, that there’s a Christian basis to Christmas; and helps us ground all the lights and chocolates in the more definite virtues of generosity, godliness and the protection of innocence.

There are two main stories about St Nicholas, neither of which are suitable for children. The first tells of when, as a rich young man, he stepped in to save three girls. The girls didn’t have the financial backing for dowries, which narrowed their options to the worst of futures. It’s a medieval situation which persists in the world. St Nicholas is said to have ridden by as each came of age tossing in – probably not down a chimney – a bag of coins. The plight of girls and women in this world remains heart-breaking; it’s sadly only in Disney films that Santa makes sure every child receives a gift.

And like many of the saints’ tales St Nicholas stories are not without some child-inappropriate gory details. A favourite medieval tale is his resurrection of three boys who had been chopped up with an axe by a wicked shopkeeper and pickled in brine. Such stories do not lend themselves naturally to a show and tell, and I avoid suggesting to children we go down to the crypt to inspect the parish axe – (The classic fairy tales by Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson are of course worse in this regard.) But because of such stories, which over time pass into folklore and charming customs, St Nicholas became the patron Saint of children, and identified with that chief Christian virtue of generosity.

I’ve always struggled with saints. I’ve never had many heroes of my own – I think David Gower is the only human I idolized as a child; Ian Botham’s a more natural hero and I saw him play a number of times; There was an effortlessness to Gower and just a bit more charm and grace. But after two disastrous tours to the West Indies against that formidable 1980s line up, I had no more heroes.

As a culture now we seem to delight in celebrities’ fall from grace, and even the great heroes of our recent past, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Sir Cliff Richard — are quickly qualified with their various faults — Usually to the extent that public recognition given to anyone unleashes an outcry from some group of students.

The lives of saints, however, have been a traditional teaching tool, and despite our increased levels of literacy, I think this is still useful. Many of the stories of saints are quite obviously folklore and apocryphal, adding colour to some of the faded characters of history. We’re not the first to notice this and it’s important to remember that these stories were always also told for entertainment and taken with a pinch of salt. I will try to tell one of the stories to our children this morning in a PG format and I’m sure some new details will appear and others pass away, without losing the meaning. Because the stories do draw out Christian virtues and priorities, and act as illustrations of what we should take with utter seriousness. Today’s Gospel is nothing short of a command to include children in the work and ministry of the Church. For which St Nicholas should prove to us both a reminder and a helpful tool. There were about 70 children at playgroup last week and you can see that Christmas is getting people excited. We know that Christianity is becoming less embedded in our culture, which means we need to make the most of those parts of our culture that maintain a spark of Christian truth.

But even more, St Nicholas has become an embodiment of generosity that even the secular world understands, and through every Christmas movie, from A Christmas Carol to Miracle on 34th Street, an acknowledgement of the truth that godliness combines with contentment; that there is more happiness to be found in generosity than in the accumulation of wealth. In this way saints can be for us symbols of the priorities of the Christian life, and for us as a Christian community. `And happily St Nicholas is a rather jolly figure, not eaten by a dragon, or gruesomely tortured and murdered.

While many fear the pagan elements of our society, it’s the strength of disenchantment in our culture that presents the greatest threat to faith today. Children are naturally alive to wonder – They love stories – and have a certain resistance to the cynicism and materialism that later acts as an irresistible gravity to the imagination. One of the wonderful things about being a parent is seeing the return of that wonder through the eyes of your children.

So while St Nicholas will continue to remind us that it is to children that the kingdom of God belongs, and that the love of money is the root of all evil, he now also reminds us of that need for wonder. And that there’s more to life – more even to 2022 – than death and taxes.

Despite the lifting of lockdowns; The low-lying of trump; The fact that this year there’s been at least one prime minister you like, or you’ve got to say ‘so long’ to one you didn’t like; Despite that obsession of the British – the weather – being actually very good; I have not heard anyone say this has been a good year; And I think we are all hopeful for a better 2023. But perhaps in a return to a more normal Christmas, we can recall the joy of better times, and the hopes and dreams of all the years, in the stories that continue to keep children awake and full of wonder, and remind us that generosity is needed now more than ever.

St Nicholas should recall us to look on the world as children do, and believe that there is purpose and justice, to be not naughty but nice, And with the children, in this holy season of Advent, to again wait with expectation for the Holy night that is to come. Amen.

Advent

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

In my early twenties I started a phd in theology and literature, which took the best part of four years. In that time I met with my supervisors usually once a month – except in the summer. I went to a couple of conferences to give papers; Taught an undergraduate class for two terms and did a bit of private teaching; Led a normal student life; Spending all day in a coffee shop nursing a cold cup of coffee, hoping someone would come along and buy me another one. Spending all evening in a pub nursing a warm pint of beer, hoping someone would come along and buy me another one. I still can’t afford coffee and beer out, but happily now I don’t have time to go to coffee shops and pubs. But then I did have the most enormous amount of time. The joy of an arts doctorate is that it’s just you, your thoughts and a library. It’s kind of hard looking back to imagine having that scale of time. Vast oceans of time not tidying up, picking up poo or looking for cash under the sofa to pay for childcare.

Time. I remember someone saying as we were awaiting Secundus (as I would have preferred to call him), and seeing me looking harried and worrying about the future demands awaiting delivery, that you shouldn’t worry about the increased demands of a second child: You have no more time, so you just do everything a bit more badly. Which I found helpful, and I think is largely true.

But Time. Advent is all about time. We look backwards to remind ourselves of the promises of God. We look forwards to the return of Christ and the restoration of all things. We try to attend to the present moment, in order to ask ourselves that question: Are we ready? Are we right with our God and neighbour?

Advent reminds me of a favourite expression in the army: “Hurry up and wait.” – Said because no one cares about private soldiers’ time so it’s easier to get them on to a parade ground an hour early – even in the dead of winter – than to risk any disturbance to decorum at the arrival of a colonel. And to be fair, God – at 2000 years – is a more careless commanding officer than most. O, come quickly; [They have been singing for centuries.] If you want a slightly baroque meditation, consider how on D-Day 330,000 soldiers, airmen and sailors – That’s an entire city’s worth of people – crossed the channel – in different ways on different schedules, but all exactly co-ordinated, between midnight and morning. The secrecy was so successful it was a total surprise. The logistics of making that happen, with no leaks, is kind of staggering. The reckoning of lives is also staggering. But you can just imagine the waiting involved. Stood next to your wooden glider: “is it today?” A metaphor for Advent, perhaps.

But in faith it’s all in the waiting: TS Eliot, in chapter five of my thesis which will only ever be read by 5 people, was quoted:

‘the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.’

For Eliot the movement of God is only found only in stillness. The illumination of God is found only in darkness.

If you want to know the presence of God, it begins with waiting. So yes, this Advent, turn off your phone, close the door; take your hearing aid out. Find your stillness. Discover Time, as it’s passing, not in apprehension and anxiety ahead, or regret and nostalgia behind. And I say all this as a sinner – one of us all – who is not only busy but deeply attached to his busyness. Deeply attached and deeply wailing.

Rhiannon took a last-minute gig in Kidderminster yesterday, a town known for its museum of carpet, and a via dolorosa up the M40 if ever there was one; My purgatory was to take both children to a party in a leisure centre – abandon all hope ye who enter here – submerged for two hours in the angry hiss of a bouncy castle, having interrupted half conversations while a pack of wild boys hurled themselves at each other and sugary drinks, sometimes in combination. That is the worst possible kind of waiting – of constant distraction. The boys of course adore it even when they sustain life changing injuries, and scream like foxes when they’re told we’re going.

But let us assume – for a moment – that we have found time. We are in this Advent season of waiting. What is it, as Gwen Stefani asked, what is it you’re waiting for? Isaiah reminds us that we are waiting for peace. A peace, which we are constantly reminded under the conditions of humanity, is impossible; Not least the peace of Jerusalem for which the psalmist sings; The epistle and Gospel look for the return of Christ – the day of Salvation – And end to darkness and conflict. The emphasis of these passages is readiness.

For a while in the army I was with a high readiness unit – ostensibly on 4 hours notice to move. I remember the commanding officer bringing up at a staff meeting his concern over the number of dogs he was seeing around, which might strike you as odd. But his concern was, if 500 men suddenly had to get on a plane to South Sudan, what’s going to happen to all those dogs left behind. He had great attention to detail. And perhaps we need more attention to detail. What are the things we can’t leave behind? What is it that we cannot bring before God? These are things to be discovered in waiting.

Advent is the time to look yourself in the mirror. See the receding hairline, the grey, the marks of time. Not to lament the passing of youth, but to avoid getting caught up in the little things; our pride and vanity over small accomplishments, our fear and insecurity of what we don’t want taken away. Advent reminds us that at the last everything is taken away, every scrap of civilisation, all our illusions, however honourable, clever or impressive, dispersed — every medal, certificate, reference and cosmetic addition. We will stand simply as who we are and what we have done before God. And what is more, we pray for this. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, Come Thou long expected Jesus. These are hymns, prayers for the final resolution. Be careful what you wish for.

How is our spiritual readiness? Looking at that human animal in the mirror, accepting it for what it is, and asking how it can be better, more alive to its own suffering and the suffering of others; more honest about what really matters. Now this might all sound like boot camp – But spiritual readiness is really equanimity. peace.

Our last hymn this morning is without doubt the most rousing expression of Christian hope, penned by the great Anglican Charles Wesley. I wonder as we hear day after day of horrors across our world in another bad year, if we can raise our voices a little more than usual; Find within our hearts a little more prayer and praise to sing out our “O come quickly”. There is so little peace in our world at the moment. It’s not easy to achieve in any form; For our own hearts it needs our attention; at the very least, a once a year Advent check-up. Above all it needs time. Time not spent in doing or distraction; And that time is always hard to find. So give yourself time. Give your partner time. Not just in Kidderminster or the joy of spending time with your beloved children; But time to rediscover yourself. Your hopes, your fears, your unrealised dreams, your faith.

 I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.

Christ the King

Sermon preached by Anne East
Readings: Jeremiah 23: 1-6, Colossians 1: 11-20, Luke 23:33-43

I have been reading ‘Ghosts of Empire’, by Kwasi Karteng. Published in 2010, it is an interesting and informative book. I would say that the author has a future as a writer of political history.

There’s quite a lot about ‘kingship’ in it — for one of the ways the British managed their Empire was to cultivate local rulers, chieftans , maharajas, kings, and endow them with the trappings of monarchy on behalf of the Great White Queen, Victoria. So in Ghosts of Empire we read which rank of Indian princes were entitled to  a 9 gun, or 21 gun or 31 gun salute. (Victoria herself had 101).

Then there was King Mindon, the last king of Burma, who possessed a white elephant, and as long as he was Lord of the White Elephant, he was deemed to be a just ruler and the equal of any monarch in the world.

(The idea that being the Lord of the White Elephant conveys such status is intriguing, and I’m sure there must be a novel or at least a poem in that title somewhere)

Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. We are at a transition point in the church calendar, next Sunday is the beginning of Advent and we start a new church year. So today, like New Year’s Eve, we can reflect. Christ’s reign takes on special meaning when understood within the context of the whole narrative of his birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection which we celebrate each year. The Christ who rules over all creation enters the world as a vulnerable baby. The Christ who is hailed as a king suffers a cruel death at the hands of the state.

Kings usually ascend to their thrones by genetic inheritance. They are normally descendants of a particular line of people. We have been very focussed in this country recently on the role of royalty and a royal family and a slimmed down monarchy. ‘Kings R Us’ we might say.

The early Israelites did not have a king, they were under the protection and patronage of The Lord, Yahweh. God was in control: “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock . . . I will bring them back to their fold . .” says the Lord, in our reading from Jeremiah. But the people wanted a man-king, God’s deputy if you like, who shall “reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

We are well aware, in the context of leadership, of the risk of the dynamics of power, people taking advantage of their positions and serving their own narrow interests, whether in ancient Israel or in the modern world.

But hear what the priest and theologian W H Vanstone wrote about the kingship of Christ:

Thou art God; no monarch Thou
Thron’d in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, Whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain.

Jesus is not the kind of king most people expect. He does not rule by threat or military domination or acquisition, his authority is not sustained by asking homage from others. He ‘hung out’ with the poor and marginalised, and then he hung on a cross. The majesty of this king is revealed not when we look up but when we look down, seeing someone who is deeply humiliated, tortured, mocked.

So here is the question: Why, on beholding this grim scene, organised by the Romans to deter insurrections, why did the thief ask, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom?” What has this dying thief seen and recognised? Where. why, how does he see a ‘king’ nailed on the cross beside him?

This record of this conversation only occurs in Luke’s gospel. And it’s given rise to a number of theories from commentators who felt compelled to offer an explanation for the thief’s request — he’d met Jesus before, he’d heard him speak, he knew his reputation. Well, maybe.

Jesus had spent his life teaching about the kingdom of God, preaching liberation to captives, healing those who were sick. Jesus had challenged the unjust treatment of women, talked of the need for patience with children, accused the religious authorities of lacking good faith. His ministry had been controversial, powerful and world altering.

But at that place, Golgotha — ‘called The Skull’ — where is the evidence that such a kingdom exists, has ever existed, or ever will exist? The thief asks, nonetheless.  “.remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And he addresses Christ simply as ‘Jesus’, no royal title, no ‘Master’ / Teacher / Rabboni / Lord’. Simply ‘Jesus’ in the way one person might address another. The name ‘Jesus’ means ‘God will save’. That is the name, that is the hope of the dying man. And in this absolutely hope-less moment, salvation breaks through: ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’.

‘Today’ does not mean ‘the day after yesterday’ or the ‘day before tomorrow’, Luke is not referring to the current 24 hour period. Spiritual time is not linear time. The king on the cross. God’s salvation fractures time.

So here’s the next question: where do YOU see signs of the kingdom?

Where did you see the Kingdom of God last week?

If you’d dropped into church on Tuesday morning when the Toddler group was here? Or if you’d joined the Lunch on the Lane on Thursday? Seen the rows of high chairs for the babies, or our older guests  with their walking frames?

Or if you are walking in Putney Park Lane mid morning when the carers from Paddock School are taking their students for a walk  . . .is that the Kingdom of God?

Jesus talked more about the kingdom of God than any other topic: He describes it as having different rules and expectations from the rules and expectations of humanity. It’s like the love and forgiveness freely given to an errant son; it’s like a shepherd who cares so much for all his sheep that when one is lost goes and searches and does not give up until the sheep is found; it’s like a rich man who gives a party and when the invitees are too busy to attend opens his doors to the poor, the blind and the lame.

This is not a kingdom which needs to exhibit a white elephant to prove its justice and right-doing. This is a kingdom of Love — a place where God dwells. And it is in Jesus that the means and making of this kingdom are to be found. Paul tells the Colossians that to follow Jesus, to proclaim Christ as King, is to live one’s life in a new way, to take on the values and standards that reflect Christ’s character.

This is the Kingdom we are building, this is the king we serve. May it be so.  Amen

Remembrance Sunday

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

As the world never ceases to spin, and technology runs our social lives, dating, churches (hi Dad), and basically everything;  there will always be those who cling to the past, and those who wish to leave it behind forever.

Wars are times of great innovation, necessity being mother to invention. The First World War which we remember today, takes credit for tanks, flamethrowers, poison gas and aircraft carriers, and also more generally helpful things like air traffic control and mobile X-ray machines.

The cost of not staying up to date in war bears an especially high price. Take Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander during the infamous Battle of the Somme. Haig was very popular; his funeral in 1928 was a day of National Mourning. But from the 60s Britain turned on him, owing largely to the satirical musical “Oh What a Lovely War”. The musical might not have made it on to the West End but Princess Margaret went to see it and said afterwards that what’s been “said here tonight should have been said long ago” to the Lord Chamberlain. The family of Haig protested, but it was a hit. It’s been said that it tells you more about the 60s than the War, but its view was later set in stone by Blackadder Goes Forth.

Haig was a creature of habit, and the big push that started the battle of the Somme began predictably, as always, at 7.30am. There was no attempt at surprise and 66,000 men (mostly volunteers like you or I, not professional soldiers) walked forward steadily in a line, carrying up to 100lbs of kit towards the German line. Haig, who never visited the Western Front, overestimated his earlier bombardment, and underestimated the German machine gun. Within an hour there were 30,000 casualties. At the end of the first day there were 20,000 dead and 35000 injured with no significant objectives achieved.

The Daily Mail, ever the objective truth-teller, described how “The very attitudes of the dead fallen eagerly forwards, have a look of expectant hope. You would say that they died with the light of expectant victory in their eyes.” Other papers were no more truthful; the Times described the wounded as “extraordinarily cheery and brave” the Observer claimed we had “excelled our best hopes”. It’s not Haig alone that carries the blame for this, the greatest disaster in British military history, but his attitude is significant. In 1926 with a bewildered nation mourning nearly a million dead, Haig wrote: ‘I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity of the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse – the well-bred horse – as you have ever done in the past.’

Our views of that war now often reflect more the poetry, than the history – But remembering is important – History can be cruel, can be kind. What and how are we remembering today?

Christianity is a faith of remembrance. The Hebrew Bible has a continual command to remember the Lord and his great works of salvation. Malachi today: “Remember the teaching of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb.” It is by remembrance that the people of God know who they are.

But, even more than Scripture, Liturgy, our festivals are all acts of collective remembrance recalling great acts and sacrifices, and by their continual repetition bringing depth and meaning to human experience. Christmas and Easter layer memories, of Jesus and the church, our families and nations; Through sentimental adverts, seasonal chocolate and board games we recall our salvation and family arguments. But who would we be without these rituals – Imagine if it really was always winter and never Christmas; Someone’s going to get a shock tuning in this year for the Queen’s speech. Our family life, cultural and social life, and national life is all held together by rituals.

Rituals can become bad. Bad habits, ritual humiliations, the Two-minutes hates in George Orwell’s 1984, blood-rituals that swear revenge. Remembrance of violence and pain can swing both ways, seeking peace or perpetuating violence. In a previous parish, a German friend of mine was berated for wearing a poppy. (not by anyone in church I should add!) Is it forgiveable if the berator fought against the Germans? if they lost a loved one in the war? How are we remembering? There is remembrance that clings to the past, and there is remembrance that seeks peace.

We can remember war to hold on to enmity and mistrust; to never forgive a people; to remember our victory over another set of nations; as a basis for suspicion against foreigners. Or we remember lest we forget; remember the war which the science-fiction writer H.G. Wells too optimistically called “the war to end wars”, to remember the mindlessness of war; that two world wars killed more than a hundred million people; people like you and I, but on the whole people a lot younger than you and I.

And how we remember affects what sort of people we are. Does remembering give us a sense of superiority, justify our resentment of other nationalities, give us a misguided sense of strength, then we are a particular sort of people. Two world wars and one world cup – they used to sing. And presumably are still singing – at least until Christmas.

But we can remember to give honour to people we love, and values we cherish; We can remember the weakness of all flesh before weaponry, and the weakness of all minds before power, pride, envy, cruelty and above all fear; That is remembrance as confession – And if we remember with faith, in hope and love then we remember well.

The holiest part of the communion service is the words of institution. It’s called the Anamnesis – which means Remembrance – Or rather – as amnesis, from which we get amnesia means to forget, An-amnesis strictly means ‘to not forget’. Here we recall Christ’s words, even as he is remembering the great act of the Hebrew’s deliverance at the Passover of the angel of death.  And Christ’s words are a command: “Do this in remembrance of me.” Our first task as Christians is to not forget the death and resurrection of a man who gave his life for others.   Some have remembered these words with violence – as a basis for anti-semitism. But for the Jews who celebrated the meal with Jesus, and the Gentiles who continued this with them in the face of persecution and death, it was a meal of solidarity. Solidarity with all those who suffer, and especially those who have died, and were continuing to suffer for the faith.

This is the remembering that draws us here today. The re-membering of the body of Christ, which is one even as it is broken. The French and English have been at war most of their history, the Americans won their independence from us in battle, and the twentieth-century pitched friends and families across Europe on different unwanted sides of reckless wars. Nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom. The remembering we do here does not undo that history of suffering and tragedy; But it does not remain trapped in the past; it hopes for something better; for ‘the sun of righteousness [that] shall rise, with healing in its wings’; for a peace in Europe that extends to the East. It hopes that out of suffering and death, through love, can arise new life.

And for the tragedy that rocked Europe for thirty years and more, for the wasted youth and avoidable suffering, all we can do is give thanks and entrust them to God, knowing that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God. If we have no faith then this remembrance is a bleak minute. A hundred million youths cut down before they’d begun, and a humanity that hardly deserves another chance and cannot believe in being better. But if we dare to believe, then by our endurance we will gain our souls, as they who have known even darker times than these surely did.

Today we remember the fallen and all who give their lives for their country, in faith, with hope, for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Amen.

I know that my redeemer liveth

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.

We are in the month of Remembrance: On All Saints and All Souls – Remembrance of the heroes of the church and those we miss personally, And, next week, those lost in war. Our readings from across the Bible today all reflect on resurrection and Christian hope. So we might ask ourselves this morning – What is our hope? Hope. It does not feel, presently, like a time of hope. And it’s a Sunday morning there may be a million incidental things our minds are occupied with – Shopping lists, Strictly Come Dancing, doctor’s appointments, the week ahead – But, in the last two years, we have all had time to reflect on our mortality; Even among those without religion a panoply of views on life after death circulate. What is your Christian hope? And what is it based in?

Tomorrow, I’m taking a service at Putney Vale. Not wholly unusually, there is no next of kin. It’s arranged by a solicitor who may not be present with a funeral director who will organise a number of services that day, taken by myself, who have, through a number of phone calls, managed to get only as many facts on his life as could be written on a post-it.

The saving grace is that he served as a corporal in the British Army, and worked for SSAFA and the Royal British Legion: army charities; and the British Army doesn’t abandon its own. Representatives, with little or no personal connection will attend and, astonishingly, a standard bearer, himself in his 80s, who never met the deceased, is travelling with his wife from Devon, to attend.

So a life, which like many, drifted into isolation in his last years, will have, I hope, the send-off that he might have hoped for. And, because I can’t let the standard bearer travel for 8 hours for a 20-minute service, we will toast him at a local hostelry after the service.

Next week is Remembrance Sunday, where we will promise, once again, that ‘at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.’ Primarily, we remember the fallen of the First World War, and this should not be forgotten. That generation earned an enduring national act for their sacrifice. But we also remember those of later conflicts. And memorials to many wars exist across our country. All Souls College, Oxford’s was founded to pray for those who had fallen in the 100 years war with France, A war that never officially ended – Brexit means Brexit. Right?

Remembrance is a form of human solidarity. We can’t imagine what it was like to be going over the top on the first day of the Somme, any more than a hail of longbow arrows silently descending on us, But in our connection as humans, as Britons, We count ourselves with them, and count them with us. Remembrance is a form of life after death.

This matters because it gives us the beginning of an understanding of what Christian hope might look like. The fact that even solid atheists believe in remembrance – and not just for our sake but as a duty to the fallen – suggests a universal human instinct for connection to past generations, which points to something that takes us past death.

In the Christian faith, our remembrance of the dead, is a participation in God’s remembrance of all the dead; A remembrance that is in complete knowledge of all people and their circumstances, that comprehends the whole person. So Job, in those words immortalized by Handel, proclaims that at the last in his flesh he shall see God; Just as the psalmist looks to when he will see the face of God in righteousness; That his heart will be weighed and examined by night; To have all your thoughts, words and deeds remembered is to face judgement, But, as Job says, with God on your side. But Christian hope is more than this – It looks to a time where we may be transformed in the image of Christ, just as we were made in the image of God.

What this will look like is not clear. So the Sadducees in today’s Gospel are making fun of Jesus. Rhiannon loves to tell people how you can remember the difference between Pharisees and Sadducess. The Sadducees don’t believe in life after death – they are sad you see? But the Pharisees do – far I see.

So it’s the Sadducees who are teasing Jesus about life after death by describing a ridiculous situation involving a woman being widowed seven times so having 7 dead husbands – I’ve often thought Rhiannon could do with at least one more husband – She is very good at delegating tasks – But Jesus’ answer is more enigmatic suggesting the next world will not be like the present. However, he affirms the resurrection on the basis of the character of God – That he is God of the living and not the dead. And if we are created – we might reasonably ask – Why would be made for so short a time – With so little justice but with so great a capacity for reflection, for virtue and for love?

The passionate conviction that this world is not all there can be; That the suffering of this life; That the tremendous sacrifice endured by various generations is not for nothing; Is so boldly stated by Job: I know that my redeemer lives; And I shall see my God.

That is the faith that God is asking of us today: That despite collapsing governments and bridges, and the Arts in this country; In a world of floods and famine and war; Where nothing is certain, nothing is sure; We can still pick ourselves up from scratching our open sores, like Job, And proclaim “I know that my redeemer lives.” Which is to say: This is not for nothing. I will see justice. I will see mercy. I will be remembered, if only by God.

The hope of resurrection is more than just optimism. It is the belief in the transformative justice of God. That in the tragedies stealing hope in countries like Ukraine, India, Pakistan, East Africa and many other places, When Wales lose once again to the All Blacks, life is not just a sad tale told by an idiot; But that God works in us and through us; and while we may not see it in our own time, There is a redemption, there is a resurrection, And we may not understand the present difficulties of our age; But there is a future in which those struggles are remembered and overcome.

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. Amen.

All Souls

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

There is a tension in the New Testament between two ideas of eternal life. It’s about verb tenses – which doesn’t sound very interesting, but bear with me. In the last clause of today’s Gospel, we have the verb: anasthsw. (from which we get the lovely name Anastasia) The Greek ending ‘sw’ tells you immediately it’s first-person future: ‘I will raise up’ And to be totally clear, we’re told ‘on the last day.’ The picture painted is of a final day when all will rise to meet Christ, which is why traditionally we are buried with our feet to the East, so, rising, we will face the direction from which he will appear. Incidentally, priests are buried with their feet to the West so they can gather their faithful. I’m sure you’re not all happy that I might be the first face you see after a thousand years, or at the current rate of bad events, maybe six months; But it’s not my current plan to stay here for the rest of my life so, very likely, you’ll have some more attractive face to welcome you on the day of judgement.

However. In the line before we’re told that it’s the will of the Father that all who see and believe in the Son may have eternal life. exh (subscript iota) – may have – zwhn aiwnion – eternal life – from which we get the lovely name Zoe. exh - The mood is subjunctive, the tense is present. Not will have or should have – at some point – But may have, may possess now – eternal life.

And in the most famous verse in that Gospel we have the same tense: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Not ‘will have eternal life’; ‘have eternal life’: The one who takes hold of this love that made the world already holds eternity in the palm of their hand.

We have a sense of this in how we experience the death of those we love. On the one hand they have been transported to some future that we hope to share in. They are no longer in our present world, but we hope to see them again. Our reunion is a future event.

And, yet, we may also sense them with us. That celebrated sermon by Henry Scott Holland remains a favourite reading after a hundred years because it speaks to experience: ‘What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner.’ – Death is nothing at all.

This duality of time often filters in when people speak about loss: In a recent interview, Maurice Saatchi said he went to visit his wife’s tomb for breakfast every day for seven years and talks to her all the time. ‘I think about Josephine continuously, I don’t know if that’s rare or completely normal for scouples who are separated, but I live to see her again.” The article began: “We'll see you at 11.30am,” says Lord Saatchi. His wife, Josephine Hart, died 11 years ago and it is clear that I will be meeting them both. 

The novelist David Grossman, who lost a son to war, writes hauntingly:

… A man from far away
       once told me that in his language
       they say of one who dies in war,
       he ‘fell’.
       And that is you: fallen
       out of time,
       while the time
       in which I abide
       passes you by:
       a figure
       on a pier,
       alone,
       on a night
       whose blackness
       has seeped wholly out.
       I see you
       but I do not touch.
       I do not feel you
       with my probes of time (62-63).

But how do we make sense of this? I am quite often asked by the bereaved that most straight forward question: “but where is she now?” The answer is “she is with God” – but we might want to think about that a little more. The image that initially conjures up – of our beloved with a kind old man – is not the most helpful or convincing way to think about death.

The letters of St John describe God in a way that unsurprisingly is taken up more in the wedding service than the funeral: ‘God is love and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.’ The essential point of Christianity is that our universe is created and shaped by love; And that even when it appears weak and overcome, the power of love – as Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Jennifer Rush, Huey Lewis and the News, 10CC and Luther Vandross all tell us – the power of love – will overcome all evil – even the vampires at your door (and it might just save your life).

We’re a little bit over-used to this concept. It’s sentimentalised in our culture, because of our Christian heritage. But it remains the unique selling point of Christianity – That the power and wisdom of God is revealed to us in the weakness and frailty of a person who has chosen to live by a rule of compassion, even at the cost of suffering and death, A life which chooses to give itself for others.

Now, what faith chooses to believe is that what is sewn in love is reaped in joy. That the love we give and receive is stronger than death. That because it shares in nature with the divinity that created the world, love is eternal.

Christianity is a metaphysic of love. The only thing that is real, the only thing that survives in the crucible of death that is this world, is love. Love created us; Love redeems us on the cross; And as that love lives in us so we are given immortality. We are really no more and no less than the love we give and receive.

So the act of faith that brings us here tonight; That requires us to remember those we love and see no more; Is the force of eternity within us, which is the power of resurrection, the power of love, a light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome.

We cannot help but be moved when we hear those stories from war – and they are not uncommon – of friends giving their life for one another. If we take time to really follow the passion in Holy Week, we cannot but be moved by the story of Christ. We may know ourselves stories of immense bravery, or of commonplace unselfishness in lives given, spent for children, partners, friends.

In the economy of the world this makes no sense. You have one life – get the most out of it. In the economy of faith this is everything. We are what we give.

But when we experience love, when we know love, we know this now. We have eternal life now, in the present. We have love that is more important than anything, that is stronger than death. So tonight we give thanks for that love whose object has fallen out of time. For the love that sustains us in memories, and the love that is not yet cold in our hearts, but endures eternally. For the light that shines in the darkness. Amen.

All Saints 2022

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. INFSHSA

I am frequently in trouble with my wife. I believe the cause of this is a generation gap – she is 10 years younger than me but in the era of technology that makes a significant difference. I got my first mobile phone at the age of 23. She had one at around 13. If I don’t answer the phone she is furious. My feeling is that this is because her generation just cannot imagine life without a phone – Whereas at 22 I travelled across the entire world for a year without one. And no one died. We have a lodger in the vicarage who is 22. She was born with a phone inserted into her face so she can access Instagram just by twitching her neck. Ok perhaps not, but she has had a smart phone since she was a child, with all the social media, notifications and constant clamour for attention that brings with it.

And we don’t think about it anymore but on this phone you can email, message, whatsapp, facebook message, tweet, Instagram, snapchat – is that still a thing? – message me on linkedin – I think there are at least 12 ways in which you can make my phone vibrate. Incidentally, I read that there are 130 working mobiles for every 100 people in the UK, so some people clearly have at least two of these little brats.

Before I was ordained I went on retreat for just over a month. It was a silent retreat. I didn’t talk to anyone except a spiritual director for twenty minutes a day. I didn’t read the news, watch tv, read any books, turn on my phone or use the internet. The question I’ve been asked many times since is was it difficult to be silent for so long and to not hear from anyone for a month? Well, basically, no. It wasn’t difficult at all. 

What was difficult though was coming out of the retreat. After a month of letting go of all relationships and situations which were outside of my immediate bodily reach, suddenly being returned to the considerable pressures of time, money and energy required just to maintain friendships, let alone professional and social ties suddenly felt almost intolerable. And a month’s backlog of emails, messages and mail was enough to almost send me back on retreat. The fact is that whether we realise it or not, and mostly we don’t, we live under a hitherto unprecedented weight of demands, which are now, thanks to various technologies, almost impossible to escape.  Most of us actually have become so used to it that now we actually feel we need it. And let’s be honest, people revel in it. They draw confidence from the number of facebook friends, by how many messages they have, by how busy and important and liked they are. People have ceased to feel embarrassed when their phones go off in company – it’s a matter of pride that they are so necessary to the world. Some people even put their phone on the table at dinner, JUST IN CASE something happens that requires their immediate attention.

And in an odd sort of modern way - this is exactly what it means to be rich, to be full now, to be laughing, to be spoken well of. And Woe to that sort of thing. Now there is no blessing in poverty, or hunger, or weeping or being hated. To say otherwise is to make light of those whose sufferings we can little imagine. Jesus isn’t saying that.

These blessings are typical of Jesus though. There is something paradoxical about them and something revolutionary. Fundamentally, they are about reversals, and about how God’s kingdom, a kingdom which Jesus announces as already present, is about overturning our usual values and expectations. How saints are always counter-cultural. It’s about paying attention to what is actually true, as opposed to what everyone else thinks.

And our culture values busy-ness. Business is good! I have a friend, a solicitor at aptly named Slaughter and May who in one week worked 80 hours and slept only 12 hours. And technology, your smart tv, radio, laptop, ipad, ipod, iphone, means that we never need to do nothing. We are never silent. never truly alone. We are rich, we are full, we are laughing and if the only thing worse than being spoken about is not being spoken about, it’s now very difficult to avoid being spoken about – not that it is always necessarily being spoken well of. To give up these things, is to enjoy poverty. To turn off everything, and get lost on Wimbledon Common, is to enjoy poverty. Most of all to avoid the nagging insecurities that require us to be always available, the narcissistic thrill of the phone vibrating, is to enjoy poverty.

And whether it’s for a daily half hour, a quiet Sunday afternoon, a Saturday without distractions, or a blissful month in the country, it’s got to be a good thing. And even if it’s turning off your phone when your friend drops round so you can attend fully to them, it’s at least a move towards greater attentiveness. If our minds are constantly bombarded with people and information pawing at us, we never have the chance to think and reflect upon our experience. The human mind is such that it needs rest, it needs emptiness – not to be filled with all the good thoughts you think you should be thinking, or fluffy clouds and pretty things, or even close reading of the scriptures. But actually our minds sometimes need to be stripped away from the endless distractions, left to themselves in order to come to terms with who we are.

I thought I’d finish with part of one of T.S. Eliot’s late poems, which attempts to capture this: 

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,

The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art,
the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,

Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
…
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,

The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence

And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen

Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;

Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Amen.