Sunday 24 February 2013, 2 of Lent

Those of you who worshipped at the sung Eucharist last week had the dubious privilege of seeing me serve at the altar as thurifer, something I have done only once before in my forty-six years. Although I began serving when I was eight or nine years old Father Bernard Shackleton did not use incense regularly, and when his successor, Father Tony Pinchin did,  I nearly always managed to avoid being the person responsible for wielding  it. Nearly - I was asked once, over twenty-five years ago. For reasons I will return to I felt very uncomfortable doing  it, and I was never asked again.

I continued to evade the holy smoke at theological college . There, there were always lots of jobs to do, and lots of people to do them, and being thurifer was one that I never needed to take on. Then, of course,  I found myself ordained, and my relationship with the thurible changed for ever. As a priest it is brought to you so that you can decorously scatter incense grains on the glowing charcoal that someone else has prepared. And thus it might have continued for ever until last week when we were a server short and I put my hand up.

As with a quarter of a century ago I found the experience very uncomfortable. Why? Because there are techniques involved in being a thurifer, techniques of which I am not a master. You have to know how to switch the gas on. You have to know how long to cook the charcoal for. You have to be able to swing the thurible convincingly, navigating corners, the altar, the organ, and your fellow servers without causing any injury. You have to know when to refill the thurible. And, most importantly of all,  you have to remember to move the kneeler. It's not that any of this ought to be beyond a person who has been admitted to the degree of Master of Arts by two universities  and who used to practice at the criminal Bar. But I hadn't learned any of the techniques. I hadn't had any chance to practice them. I was surrounded by a serving team, all of whose members were proficient in all of the above. I was in front of a congregation, all of whose members expected - not unreasonably - that their Vicar would know how to perform. And I was at the head of the procession, leading the way, with no one to follow, no one to copy, and in full view of all of you. Yes,  I felt uncomfortable.

In fact I felt as I had felt when I was a very new Vicar here. Then I was not master of the techniques either. I had never chaired a PCC. I had never drafted a Mission Action Plan. I had never employed a curate, a verger or a musician. I was surrounded by people who were proficient in all those things.  I was in front of a congregation who had high and not unreasonable expectations of their Vicar. I was leading the procession with no one to follow, no no one to copy, and in full view of all of you. Then as on last Sunday, I was uncomfortable.

I did not want to be revealed as someone who was not master of the techniques. I did not want to be revealed as someone who was unsure of himself. I did not want to be revealed as who I really was. Easier to pretend to a mastery that you don't possess; easier to be glib; easier to be cheerful;  easier than admitting  that you are who you are: the you that you fear will be talked about, the you that you fear will be thought less of, the you that you fear will look foolish. Abram has no such fear. He does not bluster or pretend or avoid. "I continue childless" he tells God to his face "and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus". He admits his disgrace. Abram's heirs forget his honesty, his readiness to see himself as he is. Jesus laments over their city. Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. Its people cannot abide being told what they are. Nor can we. We are uncomfortable at being revealed for who we are. Perhaps we are uncomfortable at being who we are. Perhaps we are uncomfortable because we do not know who we are. And perhaps this discomfort is a wound we bear: the greatest, deepest, sorest wound we bear, hurting us, absorbing our energy, and disfiguring our growth.

Wounds require honesty. If they are denied or ignored they fester. If they are wrapped in layer upon layer they refuse to heal; they weep.Wounds have to be acknowledged. Wounds also require kindness. If they are scratched or salted they worsen. They have to be attended to with gentleness and patience; they have to be soothed, so that the inflammation dissipates and the flesh is slowly mended. Wounds have to be healed. One reality of the wilderness is that it offers few places to hide or to run to. In the wilderness of Lent we need to see our wounds with a little more honesty and treat them with a little more kindness; and we need to remember that others (including, perhaps, the new Vicar) are similarly wounded.  And we should never despair or become self-indulgent. It is through wounds that God's grace pours into the world; it is through wounds that we glimpse eternity. If you don't believe me take a look at the wounded figure who hangs behind me. By his wounds ours are healed; by his wounds we are healed. Amen.

Ash Wednesday 2013

What a difference three days makes. On Sunday we were with Peter, James and John on the mountain-top, bathed in heaven's light. Celestial glory  poured forth from the face of Jesus and we knew that God stood in our midst. Tonight things have changed. The glory has departed and the shadows gather. Instead of luminous radiance our liturgical language speaks of sorrow and penitence, of repentance and shame.

And inexorably the question arises - why? Peter, James and John have seen the face of God. Why do they need to return to the plain, to the ordinary life and ministry of Galilee and to the agony of the cross and Passion? And we, we who live on the far side of the resurrection, we upon whom the Spirit has been poured, why do we need to venture into the wilderness? Why can we not remain on the mountain-top, assured of the presence of our God? Why does he insist upon this austerity first? Why does he need our tears and our fasting - why does he need our misery?

We are asking the wrong question, of course. To understand the passion of Christ as something insisted on by God, as something required by him as a necessary preliminary of our salvation, is to misunderstand it. To understand Lent in similar terms, as an obstacle course created by God, containing many hurdles which we must climb, and many streams which we must ford, is likewise to misunderstand it. God does not rejoice in the suffering of Christ and God does not rejoice in the disciplines of Lent. But God knows the violence, anger, rage, and grief of which humankind is capable and in which humankind is immersed. And God knows also that bathing a mountain-top in celestial light will not address the destructive powers and passions which disfigure and enslave his creation. Christ must descend to the plain to take upon himself the full force of the world's rage and fear, and to defuse and defeat it once and for ever. And God also knows that were we simply to leap from Epiphany to Easter we would do so with all our own rage and pain intact and ready to be unleashed at any moment. Lent is given us as a space in which, if we use it seriously, we may get to know ourselves better. It  is a window in our crowded diaries, if you will, a window in which we can get better acquainted with our interior selves and make ourselves more ready for the coming of the glory of God.

Churches of our tradition tell their members repeatedly that they are loved by God and that they could not be more loved by him. That is true and nothing I am about to say is to resile from it. But if our rage and our pain, if our anger, our violence, our dishonesty, our addiction is not recognized for what it is then how much harder will it be for us to discern and to accept the love that we are offered in the risen Christ. Rowan Williams observes that CS Lewis, not often accused of being a liberal, envisages all created beings ultimately standing before the face of Aslan and deciding for him or against him on the basis of what they most deeply desire and who they have made themselves. Lent allows us to consider afresh what we most deeply desire and who we are in the process of becoming.

And if we use Lent seriously then I think that what we may discover is that behind the anger, behind the shame, behind the compulsive patterns we are critically, crucially afflicted by an all-consuming fear, which is the defining syndrome of our age, our city, and our community. It manifests itself in many different guises. We are fearful of the meat content of some of the products we are sold. We are fearful of the eruption of gang culture onto streets not far from here. We are fearful for our financial and domestic futures. None of these fears is unreasonable. Each has a basis in fact: the discovery of horseflesh in frozen lasagne; a young man slaughtered on Lupus Street; the ongoing economic malaise and the emergence of new and untested societal phenomena.  Yet even reasonable fear can be harmful. It can prompt us into rash reaction; it can confine our vision; it can ensnare us and it can make us small. It can make us less than the people God wants us to be. It can corrupt all our thinking, all our dreaming and all our speaking, so that all we do, all we plan, and all we imagine is merely a commentary upon our fear rather than anything free, independent, or Spirit-inspired. Fear means that when we look at Aslan we worry about the health and safety implications of our proximity to a large wild beast. Fear breaks in where trust and faith fail. If St Peter's wants to adopt a common objective this Lent then it could be that it would like to become slightly less fearful.

The only way of doing that is not assertiveness training, anger management, or any other contemporary panacea. It's entering the wilderness. It's stopping and listening. It's consciously doing without the props and crutches that sustain us from day to day. It's patiently attending to our fear and understanding, discovering that despite it we are held, through it we are accompanied, behind it we are gazed upon in love by the One who alone casts out fear. 'Do not be afraid' he will tell us on Easter morning. 'Do not be afraid'. Amen.

Candlemas 2013: The Screwtape Emails Part 2

My dear Wormwood,

You have to hand it to the Enemy. It's a cunning move. He turns up in a building dedicated solely to worship of him. But he turns up in the guise of a whining child too tiny even to climb its steps (so much for the pomp of the temple). He allows people to witness the child's vulnerability, helpless in its mother's arms.  But what he actually allows them to witness is the vulnerability of the whole ghastly project of their so-called redemption (love is always vulnerable).  And he doesn't stop those old fools Simeon and Anna blabbing the whole thing: 'This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel'. Nor does he stop the passers-by ignoring them (vulnerability again). It's pure genius.

The Enemy must have known that Simeon's prophecy about the child was a prophecy about children. That's omniscience for you. But Simeon can't have known that. Children are responsible for the falling and the rising of many. That's why they are so dear to our Father. They are among his most unwitting and most lethal agents.

Children are responsible for the rising of many. They can inspire remarkable acts of generous self-giving and wonderful acts of profound love. They bring out the sickening best of which the human race is capable. But they can also inspire quite the reverse - and that is of much greater interest to our cause. Children are responsible for the falling of many.

Consider our dear friends at St Peter's Eaton Square. They are a curious menagerie, but on the whole not lacking in intelligence. The Enemy ought to have high hopes of them. They turn out to worship him in substantial  numbers. They do their best to care for one another. They even manage to be concerned for their wider community. But just try putting children on the agenda at one of their get-togethers - the behaviour of children in church, the noise children make in the churchyard, the biscuits children eat on the church portico. They change.

It's delightful. Worship, care, concern...all these are forgotten. For some, children are immediately clothed in the gleaming white of Gabriel and his grinning band of nincompoops. For others, children are immediately the red-eyed and cloven-hoofed denizens of our own happy tribe. For some, children can do no wrong. For others, children can do nothing but wrong.

Why this sudden rush to irrational prejudice the moment children are mentioned? Fear, my dear Wormwood, fear. They are afraid. Some of them use children as a shield. Caring for a child's needs diverts attention from their own needs.  Everything is for the child. All very laudable, no doubt, until they convince themselves that worship is for the child, prayer is for the child, the Enemy himself is for the child. Others of them use children as a target. The child represents everything that is strange, everything that is uncontrollable, everything that is other and everything that is threatening; the child draws the fire of a host of secret frustrations and pent-up anxieties.

Every community, my dear Wormwood, has its weakness. At St Peter's, it's children. That's why they are so vital to our Father's strategy. They make some forget about their own needs. They make some forget about the needs of others.

And what is so terribly amusing is that it could be very different.  You'd have thought that Simeon had made that crystal clear. The Enemy is interested in everyone. The child is a light for all the nations. All of them. The Enemy has no taste. Never has. The Enemy isn't bothered about elites. He's never wanted cadres of the holy or vanguards of the righteous. He wants them all: clever, stupid, beautiful, ugly, rich, poor, diseased, healthy, fascinating, tedious, fanatical, disenfranchised. They all have a place. What is so utterly hilarious is that none of them seem to get it.

If they'd only look around them they might. The presence of children might stop worship being a self-indulgent faith fest conducted for the sole benefit of  the initiated. Equally, the presence of children might stop worship being a nice outing for the nuclear family from SW1. Try sinking to your knees and having a virtuous and private one-to-one with the Enemy when there are bored toddlers in the pew in front of you. It can't be done: one-to-ones need to happen at a different hour. You get cross and angry and resolve never to come again. Try enjoying quality time with only your own children when there are a hundred others around, clamouring for their attention, borrowing their toys and showing them up. Again, it can't be done: quality time needs to happen at a different hour. You get distracted and frustrated and forget about everything else. In the presence of children in worship we see the audacious ambition of the Enemy. Or, rather, we see it. Most of the time they, thankfully, don't.

'Here I am Lord, is it I Lord?' they sing. 'No it isn't', the Enemy must long to shout. 'It's never been about you. It's never been about you and your children. It's always been about all of you'.  They sing to a God who became a child in order that they might become his children. But their own make them forget that. It's almost tragic.

I remain, Wormwood, your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape.