Third Sunday of Lent, 3 March 2013

"Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money , come, buy and eat!"

Once upon a time there was an ocean. It was so deep that its depths had never been sounded. It was so wide that its expanse had never been charted. It was so massive that its scale had never been comprehended. It had no beginning, and it had no ending. At its farthest reaches its waves never stopped pushing it farther still, and they lapped against the shores of eternity.

This is the story of three of those waves.

The first looked back at the ocean behind it and did not like what it saw. 'What is that thing?' it wondered, 'so deep, so broad, so vast. Why is it pursuing me? It seems so wide and so fierce! It's going to swallow me up! It must be an enemy. I must flee as quickly as I can! Help! Help!' And with that the first wave rushed for the shores of eternity. It broke upon them and returned to the ocean from which it had come. And as it did so all it could see were the cold clutches of a fearsome and deadly foe.

The second wave did not look back at the ocean behind it. Not once. It reared up, scattering spray to the left and to the right, proud, joyful and exuberant. 'Look at me' it shouted 'look at me. I'm so tall; I'm so mighty; I'm so amazingly gorgeous. I'm free! I'm free!' And with that the second wave broke upon the shores of eternity and returned to the ocean from which it had come. And as it did so all it could see was something it had never seen before; something it had never known; something it could not understand.

The third wave looked back at the ocean behind it. Then it looked forwards to the shore in front of it. And then it smiled. 'Ah' it thought 'my old friend the ocean. Made of the same stuff as me, my dear companion and my devoted  soulmate. Soon I shall reach the shore and rest, and the ocean will come and sit beside me, moulding itself to my shape and complementing my utter uniqueness. Welcome, old friend '. And with that the third wave broke upon the shores of eternity and returned to the ocean from which it had come. And as it did so it wept salty tears, for it had never expected to break; it had never expected to be broken.

You are a wave in the ocean of God, lapping at the shores of eternity. You have come from God and you will return to God. As a wave is made in the image and likeness of an ocean so are you made in the image and likeness of your God. Do you know this? Do you? Do you believe it? Have you taught it to your children? Or do you fear it? Have you begun to realize it? Or do you misunderstand it?

The first wave feared it. It looked back at the ocean and fled. It saw only an enemy. But "No, I tell you" says Jesus, not once but twice, " No, I tell you". God does not pursue vendettas against you. Galileans have been murdered in the Temple by Pontius Pilate, the brutal functionary of the occupying power; eighteen innocents have been killed by a falling tower in Siloam. But God uses neither earthly tyrants nor tragic accidents nor anything else to exact bloody revenge on his people. "As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, they kill us for their sport" cries Gloucester. But not your God. God is not your foe.

The second wave hadn't begun to realize it. It never looked back. It was so entranced by itself that it never recognized the ocean from which it came and with which it was one. But "A man had a fig tree planted in his garden" says Jesus. For a wave to be free of the ocean is impossible; for a fig tree to be free of the soil from which it springs is impossible; for you to be free of God is impossible. You may pretend that it's not; you may delude yourself that it's not; you may spend a lifetime rehearsing and believing a story in which it's not. But God is not an optional extra for you or for anyone, for in God you live, and move, and have your being.

The third wave misunderstood it. For it looked back and saw a biddable friend. The third wave never expected to break upon the shore; it expected to rest there; it hoped to enjoy the view; it believed that the ocean would come and dance to its tune. But "Unless you repent" says Jesus, not once but twice, "unless you repent". The ocean will not cuddle up to you or give you a cheery slap on the back. It will re-shape you and re-form you in ways you cannot imagine. It will shake you, break you, and re-make you. God never changes. "Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters". The invitation is offered to you as it is offered to Isaiah's audience. But drink of those waters and you will change, for those waters are love.

You are a wave in the ocean of God. You are a branch on the tree of God. You are a verse in the song of God. You are a finger on the hand of God.

You have only to learn to be what you already are. Amen.

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.

Sunday 20 January 2013, Third Sunday of Epiphany

"Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him."

But what did they believe? That their friend had miraculous power over the DNA of creation? Probably. In the turning of water into wine they had witnessed something otherwise inexplicable. That their friend was the Anointed One for whom their people had been waiting?   Possibly. The abundant provision of wine was one of the signs of the Messianic age that their prophets had foretold. Or that their friend was God Incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity? Certainly not. It took the church several decades to work that out.

It's not that any of the three beliefs are wrong, judged from the standpoint of later Christian doctrine; it's not that any of the three beliefs contradicts the others. But they differ, and their difference might prompt us to reflect upon what we believe. "His disciples believed in him", and belief in Jesus is as much a cornerstone of twenty-first century faith as it was of first-century faith. We believe in Jesus. What do we believe?

In my last weeks as Vicar of St Peter's I promise that I will try to refrain from graciously  bestowing upon you the fruits of the immense wisdom I have gained in the last six years; and if I break my promise then I'm sure you'll correct me. But perhaps I might share with you four distinct times of my life, and four distinct ways in which I have believed in Jesus.

The first is my childhood, when Jesus was as real to me as King Alfred the Great or Admiral Lord Nelson, two other favourite historical characters who dominated my imagination. I read countless books about all of them. I knew their stories. I knew their characters. I even knew what they looked like - of course! I had little idea of their chronology - I felt badly cheated when my father told me that he did not remember the Battle of Trafalgar. I had little idea of their significance - although I knew that Jesus's was to be found in church rather than at the fireside where Alfred burned the cakes. But I knew that they were real, unlike Batman or the Famous Five. I believed in Jesus. He was the one who turned water into wine. My belief lacked a reasoned foundation; my belief was limited in scope; but it was a belief.

The second is when I was an undergraduate. It was the mid-1980s. The miners' movement had been crushed but the student movement, as we liked to call it, was on the march: against apartheid, for gay rights, against the American missile bases, for the Sandinistas. I studied political thought, was impressed by Lenin's monograph The State and Revolution and became a passionate Marxist. That lasted a fortnight. In this fevered milieu Christianity was neither right-on nor cool. My belief in Jesus needed a different basis and it found one. Jesus had been an anti-capitalist agitator. (If only he had realized it!) 'Love one another' he had said: what he had really meant was, obviously, 'peace, bread and land'. He was a class warrior, a radical. I believed in Jesus. He gave wine to those whose vessels were empty. My belief lacked doctrinal content; my belief was selective in its scope; but it was a belief.

The third is when I was an ordinand at theological college. I arrived there from a career in the law, a career which had shown me justice and mercy in operation. I arrived there full of questions about the justice of the atonement effected by God in Christ. I did not understand how the wrath of a supposedly merciful Father could be satisfied by the death of his guiltless Son. I knew our judges could do rather better. I found the answer in the Anglican divines of the twentieth century, in Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy and Bill Vanstone. They taught me to look for Jesus in the dock rather than on the bench; in the trenches rather than in the battalion headquarters; on the shop floor rather than in the boardroom. They taught me that in Jesus we see God: not the rebellious, campaigning God of my undergraduate days, but rather a vulnerable God, a victim God, a God who identifies absolutely with the grief and misery of creation. I believed in Jesus. He turned water into vast quantities of wine and demonstrated thereby God's reckless love for the world. My belief lacked any notion of glory; my belief was earth-bound in its scope; my belief nailed Jesus to the world and thus overlooked the call of heaven; but it was a belief.

The fourth is in my six years as Vicar of St Peter's Eaton Square. It has been one of my chiefest privileges to baptize many here, to be the agent of God's gratuitous love for his people. It has been my enormous privilege to see many respond to their baptism, to see people responding to God's gratuitous love for them - not by becoming, or by  trying to become, something that they are not, but by becoming, or trying to become, what they already are. Jesus is the one whose mortal body shines with celestial light on the mountain of his Transfiguration. Jesus is the one whose life lives within us from the moment that we are. Jesus is the one whose light is kindled within us in the sacrament of baptism. By his incarnation Jesus has gathered into one things earthly and heavenly. He has become human that we might become divine. I believe in Jesus. He is the one whose life and death and resurrection have changed the water of mortality into the wine of eternity. My belief lacks...well, I'm not yet sure what it lacks. Tell me. Or invite me back in a few years time. I'll have worked it out, and I'll believe something new.

Perhaps I'll call Jesus as my best friend. Perhaps I'll call him my King and perhaps I won't grit my teeth as I do so. Perhaps I'll have fallen in love with him (although I rather doubt it). Whatever I believe about Jesus, inexorably he calls me, inexorably he draws me, and there is no refusing. I believe in Jesus. Amen.

The Epiphany 2013

'The Epiphany' states the Book of Common Prayer 'or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles'. It's a resonant title for today's feast, and one that has endured: the contemporary Collect we have prayed speaks still of God's Son being manifested to the peoples of the earth.  Yet there are two ways in which the title troubles me. First, when something is manifested it is displayed or shown. Too heavy an emphasis on manifestation - on display, on show -  can trap us into thinking of this as the day when Christ is unveiled, rather like a new work of art. The curtain is drawn back and  -  ta-dah - here he is! And secondly, in the coming of the Magi, I wonder if the Christ really is manifested to the Gentiles. I wonder if he is actually manifested to three Gentiles, to Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar.

There's a growing sense in which even the formal title, Epiphany, lends additional weight and authority to the understanding of manifestation as sudden unveiling.   It's used with increasing regularity in personal memoirs and self-searching recollections. "I had an epiphany when..."; "it was a little epiphany as...". Such phrases inevitably presage the dawning of a new realization or the discovery of a forgotten truth. The epiphanic moment when I knew she loved me; the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles: both suggest something that is sudden and once-for-all; whereas what we celebrate is something rather different. We celebrate a moment, yes, a moment when three men, three Magi, did something very strange. They flung themselves down before an unknown child and his mother. They paid him the homage due only to the king of kings. They offered him rare and precious gifts, laden with meaning. Now...why did they do that?

The answer is not that in that moment a covering was cast dramatically aside revealing the Christ for all to see. The answer is not that they experienced the sort of epiphany (small 'e') beloved of self-indulgent autobiographers. The answer is that they had come to the end of a journey. The Epiphany we celebrate does not hit us between the eyes with unavoidable and self-evident truth in the light of which nothing will ever be the same again: ta-dah.  The Epiphany invites us to begin a journey towards truth, a journey of our own.

The Magi's journey begins with their skill in astrology. They study the heavens, and their study alerts them to something: to a change, to a hitherto unknown astral presence, to a new star. Their study is informed and enlivened by what we might call faith, by a willingness to look beyond their discovery and see in it a sign of something with universal significance. So they set out to discover that something for themselves. The journey is long and costly. They leave behind comfort and familiarity. They enter a realm where their learning is pagan; they go among a people to whom they are outsiders. They travel to a place where their language and diet and appearance mark them out as strangers.

And they are changed by the experience. St Matthew doesn't tell us as much but if you doubt it, go and see The Hobbit - an Unexpected Journey. Remember how Tolkien's unlikely antihero, Bilbo Baggins, is changed by the quest upon which he is unwillingly entered without tobacco or pocket handkerchiefs. Travels change the traveller. It is their astrological wisdom and their willingness to believe beyond the limits of that wisdom that compel them to set out. It is their reliance upon what lies beyond wisdom, reliance forced upon them by their journey, that compel them to worship the child. The Epiphany is more Journey's End than Brief Encounter.

And this, I think, explains why in the coming of the Magi the Christ is manifested to three Gentiles. For we forget at our peril that others fail to see him as he is. The unnamed Magi to whom the names Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar have been given do not feature in our credal statements, unlike their fellow Gentile, Pontius Pilate. Pilate sees Jesus as the Magi see Jesus, yet he sees nothing but a Jewish prisoner condemned by his own people, arguably worthy of pity, but certainly not worthy of worship. In the governor's palace Christ is present before him, just as in the house in Bethlehem Christ is present before the Magi, yet Christ is not manifested to him as he is to them. But Pilate has not journeyed. He does not look at the things of earth with a willingness to see the things of heaven; he has not left behind comfort and familiarity; he has not ventured out in reliance only upon the wisdom that lies beyond his own wisdom. 'What is truth?' he asks. He probably doubts that such wisdom exists.

In these weeks of Epiphany God opens up the stall he has pitched in our midst and makes clear what he is claiming and what he is offering. At his Baptism Christ is revealed as the only Son of the Father; at the wedding in Cana Christ is revealed as the Alpha and Omega of all creation; at the coming of the Magi Christ is revealed as the sovereign Lord of all peoples. God is here; Christ is here; Love is here; but we are not there, not all of us, not yet. We have a journey before us, a journey that is both internal and external, a journey that will test the wisdom we have been given, a journey in which guiding stars will come and in which guiding stars will go, a journey which will take us beyond the secure and beyond the comfortable, a journey in which all too often the only certainty is our lack of certainty. It is our faithfulness to the journey - not our seeking after glory - that will lead us to worship the Christ. Amen.

Christmas 2012

"And she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn"

Perhaps it's strange that, among all the extraordinary sights and sounds of that far-off night, the new baby's first clothes are remembered. He is wrapped in bands of cloth, in swaddling clothes. It's rather quaint and romantic-sounding: in fact it means that he is trussed up like a Christmas turkey, a practice which has gone in and out of fashion over the years. When it's been in fashion it's been said to protect the child by ensuring that its limbs grow straight and strong. Swaddling exerts a measure of control over the changes that growth will bring.

Perhaps it's strange that his first clothes are remembered - but then perhaps it's strange that the clothes that were intended to be his last are also remembered. The lifeless adult body is taken from the wooden cross, just as the lively infant body was once taken from the wooden feeding trough. It is wrapped in cloth again: a final swaddling. It's intended, like the first swaddling, to protect the body and shield it from harm, to exert a measure of control over the changes that decay will bring.

Yet the babe of Bethlehem does not remained swaddled for very long. The bound limbs are flexed. The swaddling clothes are abandoned. He learns to roll over and crawl, to walk and run, to climb and sail.  The lifeless body does not remain swaddled for long, either. When his friends come to the rock-hewn tomb to honour him they find him gone. The sign that he has gone is that the cloths have been abandoned and are lying on the floor.  He has outgrown them, just as he has outgrown the swaddling bands. The layers of protection have been cast aside. He has been set free.

A brief look at the Mothercare catalogue suggests that swaddling is currently out of fashion: mercifully, the urge to protect children is not, and after the horror of Newtown Connecticut it's to be hoped that it will climb the political agenda, in the United States at least. Yet the urge to swaddle is not just something we experience in relation to children. We experience it in relation to ourselves too, from the airbags in our cars via the intruder alarms in our homes to the precisely drafted phrases of our prenuptial agreements. We swaddle our lives in protective wrapping as surely as Mary swaddles the child who lies in the manger.  And while airbags and alarms and agreements may be entirely sensible and healthy there is other swaddling that is not. The brief authority that we borrow from the job we do or the income we enjoy; the demands that we convince ourselves are made upon us by dependent families or needy friends; the personal tragedies that we constantly deny; the self-medication in which we we indulge as we reach for the wine glass or secure the adrenaline rush: all these swaddle us and suffocate us, with layer upon layer of deceit and obfuscation. All these conceal our true identities.

Christ may come to us swaddled, but Christ does not come to swaddle us. He does not come to offer us protection from the bumps, bruises, crises and conflicts that our lives will bring. He does not come to control the change that will befall us. He does not come to give us layers of clothing or layers of make-up, layers that disguise our reality. Christ does not come so that we might appear to be something other than we are. He comes so that we might fully be what we most truly are.

The bands of cloth are a warning. They show us the lengths to which we will go to cover ourselves up, to hide ourselves from ourselves, to control our surroundings and manage our futures. But for the child to grow and flourish the swaddling must be abandoned; for the risen Christ to walk free the grave clothes must be discarded. So what swaddles you? What keeps you from being the person you really are, the person God would have you be? Tonight God sends you a child to remind you that you are a child.

We are not the layers of protection we have accumulated. Life lived well compels us to strip these layers away, the layers we treasure, the layers we cling to so tightly, the layers that we think make us more intelligent, more interesting, more successful, more attractive. Life lived well compels us to peel away the identities we have constructed and the defences we have built. Life lived well compels us to abandon the habits to which we are addicted and the thought patterns into which we slip so easily. To live well is to know ourselves as God knows us, and to know ourselves as beloved of God as surely as is the child in the manger.  Life lived well begins tonight, as we gaze upon the swaddled Christ.

You are already the child of God. You do not have to be anything else. You have only to be who you already are. Amen.

Christ the King,25 November 2012

"There are female bishops in heaven, where God's really in charge. It's slower than it should be, but it'll come". A Facebook post by Frances, a Roman Catholic teenager whose mother is training to be an Anglican priest, offers us a richly textured reflection for the last week of the church's year.

According to the infamous atheist bus that can still be seen on our streets it's all much simpler than Frances would allow. 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life'. In his recent book Unapologetic (of which I'm an unapologetic fan) another Francis, Spufford, reserves some of his very considerable appetite for scorn for that bus and for its message. Paraphrasing him, to suggest that human life is something to be enjoyed is to turn human life into a tub of Ben & Jerry's or an episode of The Archers. Those are things to be enjoyed. But life has rather more flavours than a scoop of Caramel Choo  Choo and rather more depth than thirteen minutes of the nation's favourite radio soap.

For example, I spent last week in a Benedictine monastery. The chief work of monks and nuns is the worship of God. The divine Offices are sung with beauty and reverence from before the sun has risen until after it has set. It is a place of profound peace. But not just of peace. New doors have been fitted to the buildings, and the storms of last week revealed that they have not been fitted terribly well. So no sooner is the divine Office finished than members of the community roll up the sleeves of their habits, climb stepladders, and wield Stanley knives in an attempt to ease the hinges. I hope they enjoy their work and I hope they enjoy their prayer, but the one verb scarcely does justice to both. More is asked of them, and more is asked of us.

Various verbs are likewise needed to describe our membership of the Church of England. We know that, locally, church works. Here at St Peter's prayers are said, worship is offered and on the portico and in the playground community is built in a fashion that we are proud to call inclusive. Yet we also know that, nationally, church looks a bit different. At the end of a week like this week, it looks absurd. Even if we rejoice that our ecclesiology allows a handful of lay people to thwart the avowed wishes of their bishops (and I do rejoice in that - there are other ecclesiologies and other churches in which it could not even begin to be possible); even if we rejoice that the Church of England still manages to form Christians who are capable of thinking and voting counter-culturally (and I rejoice in that too - on the whole we're not brilliant at it, particularly when it comes to issues of wealth creation and redistribution); even if we rejoice in these things we are left with a episcopate which is theologically incoherent and a public profile which is utterly discredited. We still belong to St Peter's Eaton Square, and we still belong to the national Church. Yet our belonging to each is of a different order. It requires different things of us and makes different claims upon us.

And today's feast reinforces what Frances identifies, our need to live at different speeds and to face in different directions. Our year ends with the proclamation that Christ is King. He is risen from the dead; he has ascended into heaven; he reigns supreme over all things and in him will all things be made new. Yet we who proclaim his kingship know at the same time that evidence in support of our proclamation is often hard to find. The planet is disfigured by war, poverty and injustice. The king appears sadly negligent of his kingdom. Enjoy your life? We need a better formula.

It is provided by our understanding of who we are. We are dust, made of the same elements that make the world we inhabit. We share with our fellow creatures a capacity for enjoyment and for its opposite. Yet we are more than dust, too. We bear within us a spark of divine life that is heaven-sent; it is this that we will kindle in Thomas and in Sofia today. Christ's kingdom is not of this world. So we are made to fix the door hinges - and we are made to sing God's praises. We are made to share the common life of St Peter's - and we are made to pray for, live alongside and love our brothers and sisters who conceive of God's church rather differently. We are made to be citizens of Westminster - and we are made to be citizens of Christ's kingdom. We are called to tend the spark within us until it burns so brightly that when our neighbours see us they see heaven's fire.

So I want Thomas and Sofia to enjoy their lives; I want all of us to enjoy the year before us; and I want to see women bishops as soon as possible. But I want more than that. I want God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; I want us to attend to the truth that comes from Christ; I want us to allow it to shape us, mould us and ultimately engulf us. "The Son of God became the son of man"

writes Irenaeus "that man might become the son of God". It's a rather more ambitious proposal than the atheist bus allows. Amen.

Second Sunday before Advent, 18 November 2012

 Is 'Skyfall' a serious contender for the title of 'best Bond film ever'? I think it is. The performances are excellent. The chases are fast. The fight scenes are thrilling. There are Komodo dragons, a blissfully limited amount of passionate slush, and one perfectly timed but utterly unacknowledged dry Martini. But there is also a story of two men who have been betrayed.

One of the two is Silva, a languidly creepy villain, portrayed without any trace of a white pussy cat. He is one of Britain's top agents stationed in Hong Kong. M, played again by Judi Dench, hands him over to the Chinese before the territory reverts. Silva is part of the price she's willing to pay for a trouble-free transition. The other is Bond, James Bond. At the beginning of the film he wrestles with a terrorist on the roof of a moving train. Another British agent has the chance to take one shot. But the sightline is not clear. Bond's writhing form flits in and out of the crosshairs. 'Take the shot' says M. She betrays him, just as she betrays Silva. Adamantine certainty crumbles.

The mighty stones of Jerusalem's Temple must have looked like a certainty far more reliable and far less fickle than M's loyalty. Their massive weight betokened God's commitment to his people Israel. This was the place where he had elected to dwell, at the very heart of his chosen people. "What large stones and what large buildings!" exclaim the fishermen from Galilee who have come up to the big city. Jesus's response must shock them to the core. "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down". Jesus predicts the inversion of all certainties. He predicts the overthrow of everything that the disciples - everything that the Israelites - believe and trust. "Take the shot" says M. Jesus takes aim at what is dearest to his people, and squeezes the trigger.

Jada and Lorian are being baptized in a landscape that bears an eerie resemblance to that inhabited by Silva and Bond. Just as betrayed secret agents must learn to live without the biggest certainty of their professional lives, so Jada and Lorian, and all of us are learning to live without the certainties with which we have long lived. A global  geopolitical settlement that prevailed for decades has collapsed. Religion has re-acquired its medieval potential for terror. The fragile planet creaks under the burden of unlimited growth. The Internet has revolutionized our communication. Like Silva and like Bond we live on the other side of certainty, in a place where the stones of the temple have been thrown down.

So how do they cope? I don't think I'm giving anything away if I tell you that Bond survives. The future of the franchise is assured. Silva longs for revenge. With fiendish ingenuity he plots M's destruction from his island hideaway. The only agent capable of thwarting him is, of course, 007. And Bond cannot resist the call. After the railway shooting he embarks on a lengthy binge in a tropical paradise, but when England is threatened he cannot but return.

Silva's response is nihilistic despair; Bond's is unquestioning patriotism. But what is ours? The Gospel does not offer a plan for our uncertain times. It has much to say about many of the crises that affect us: about the destructive power of greed; about the centrality of forgiveness; about the virtue of self-giving in place of self-serving. But it does not offer one comprehensive route-map out of them. The prophet Daniel foresees a time of anguish. The prophet Jesus foresees wars and rumours of wars. The prophets of political and economic punditry foresee protracted recession, global warming and intractable strife in the Middle East. And what God offers is not the sort of neat solution that Q Division is tasked with dreaming up. Baptism is not the sacramental equivalent of a bio-hazard suit that can be concealed inside a cigarette lighter. It will not shield its wearers against everything that they encounter. What God offers is far more intuitive than that. It is the deadliest secret weapon of all. What God offers is companionship.

Secret agents are probably the loneliest people on the planet. I can't help wondering if that accounts for the success and the longevity of the Bond series. I wonder if in Bond's aloneness we see our own aloneness: a far more exotic version of it, obviously, one that is full of beautiful women, gorgeous locations and world-saving secrets. But Silva and Bond are fundamentally alone. In their possession of state secrets, in the small hours of the morning, or as they confront death, they have only their hatred of England and their pride in England for company. They are like us. No matter how strong our relationships are we ultimately face the perils of the post-certain world by ourselves. Which is why God offers what God offers in baptism. God offers it because only God can offer it, and what God offers is what we need above all else. The only one who can be with us in our aloneness is the one who is nearer to us than we are to ourselves, the one who promises to be with us to skyfall and beyond. Amen.

  

All Saints Sunday, 4 November 2012

When we were children my sister possessed a good singing voice and enough confidence to use it when the occasion demanded. In church she sang lustily. The problem was that the only hymn she knew was 'We plough the fields and scatter'. Whatever the season and whatever the hymn chosen for it, that is what she would sing. Loudly.

What we sing in church matters, and the day on which we sing it matters too. On one Sunday of the year my sister's choice could not be faulted. On every other Sunday it would have jarred horribly had she not been three years old. Some hymns simply belong on some days. It's impossible to conceive of Palm Sunday without 'Ride on, ride on' or of Pentecost without 'Come down, O love divine'. And, for me at least, it's impossible to conceive of All Saints without 'For all the saints'.

Why is that? It part it's sentiment, of course. That hymn has ushered in every All Saintstide that I can remember and is as much a part of this time of year as fireworks, poppies, and the church heating not working. In part it's that it's dear to any priest who has ever worked as a bishop's chaplain. Our motto is 'We feebly struggle, they in glory shine'. But it's the combination of William Walsham How's words and Vaughan Williams's tune which have assured the hymn its place in the pantheon of classics. It will surely be sung for as long as hymns are sung. 

The words. How was a nineteenth century Shropshire parish priest and a rather reluctant bishop, and in 'For all the saints' he sketches out for the church he served the essence of saintliness. The saints are not principally those who have done great things or thought great thoughts. The saints are, first, those who have confessed the name of Jesus before the world. They are those whose witness to the name of Jesus has been costly. How characterizes saintliness in bellicose terms. Saintliness is a well-fought fight; there is fierce strife and warfare long.  He published the hymn in 1864, when the American Civil War was at its height and the forces of the British Empire were engaged against the Ashanti. Today it is almost always sung a week before Remembrance Sunday, when images of men huddled in their trenches are fresh in our minds. Then and now the image of saintliness as struggle resonates deeply with those who sing the hymn.

Yet, secondly, this struggle, the struggle of saintliness, is not a struggle fought in vain, for the saints are rewarded with rest. After the noble fight comes the golden evening and the sweet calm of Paradise. But if this sounds like a rather individualistic account of the Christian life - sainthood as a tough job well done with an an appropriate recompense attached - then How envisages more.

Thirdly 'But lo! There breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array...' Beyond the struggles of the saints, beyond their costly witness and beyond the martyrdoms of centuries there comes a day when the King of Glory makes all things new, gathering the faithful from earth's wide bounds and ocean's farthest coast. So How sets before the church the vocation of the saints, the consolation of the saints, and the hope of the saints: the vocation of the church, the consolation of the church, and the hope of the church.

The music. Vaughan Williams entitled his tune 'Sine Nomine', as it was destined for the feast when all the saints are honoured but none are named. I know I'll be corrected if I'm wrong but it's written in four-four time and so could - I think - be played as a march. It was certainly intended as a processional, and the adjective 'rousing' could have been invented to describe it. It's not just soldiers who march, of course. Civil rights campaigners march; ban-the-bomb protestors march; anti-poverty agitators march. People march with a common purpose. They may be diverse in almost every respect, they may be a countless host, but the cause unites them and makes them one. And a march - any sort of march -  is a good metaphor for the life of a saint: never static, but always advancing, in the company of others, in knowledge of God and obedience to his call.

And perhaps it is this that accounts for the status of 'For all the saints'. The words are theologically coherent (which cannot be said of every hymn), and the tune is a good sing (ditto). But, more important than either is that 'For all the saints' enables the church to become a part of the reality that it's singing about. When the struggle of sainthood is at its darkest, writes How, the distant triumph song can already be heard. The times may seem bleak and hope may seem impossible, but the embattled saints are already on the side of the victors. Desmond Tutu says 'We used to say to the apartheid government "you may have all the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come, join the winning side!"' The same is true of the saints, and the same is true of us. When we sing Alleluia to Father, Son and Holy Ghost we are not just exercising our lungs, or politely doing what custom expects of us at this time of year. We are adding our voices to those of the blest communion. We are claiming our place among the fellowship divine. We are singing because they are singing, and they are singing because they know they've won. '...All are one in thee, for all are thine'. They are singing us home - in a song that will never end. Amen.

  

Sunday 14 October 2012, 19th after Trinity

"Hate evil and love good, and establish justice..."

 

Delegates to the Conservative Party conference, which met in Birmingham last week, listened to two proposals from the platform aimed at establishing justice. Chris Grayling wants to change the law on self-defence to allow individuals to defend their property instinctively and honestly, even if the force they use is disproportionate to the threat they face. Theresa May wants to change the law on sentencing to allow individuals who are victims of anti-social behaviour to choose the penalty that those convicted receive.

 

We should be under no illusions: both proposals represent a change in the way we conceive of society. Both represent substantial shifts in the balance that we have historically struck between the individual and the community. The first will, if passed into law, allow an individual to use inappropriate force upon another as long as he judges that his act is reasonable. The community will hand that judgement over to the individual and, as long as the individual judges that his act is reasonable, the community will not question his exercise of it. The second will, if passed into law, hand to the individual who has been wronged the authority to select the wrong-doer's punishment. No longer will this function be exercised by the Crown, acting on behalf of the wronged individual and on behalf of the whole community out of the deeply-held belief that a wrong against an individual is a wrong against the whole community. The wrong suffered by the individual, and the individual's response to it, will be what determines the wrong-doer's fate.

 

As I have said, the proposals represent a change in the way we conceive of society.

 

In his lecture to the Theos think-tank, delivered not far from here the week before last, Rowan Williams spoke eloquently about how we conceive of society - how we will miss him. He suggested that to conceive of society as a balance between the individual and the community, a balance exaggerated by these two proposals, is to conceive of  it wrongly. The real balance is the balance between the individual and the person. Williams reminded his audience of Saint Augustine's observation that a person is in relationship with God before he is anything else, or before he is in relationship with anything else. None of us is on our own, and none of us cannot pretend to be - or, at least, we can pretend to be. We can pretend that human society is a matter of managing the relationship between a collection of individuals, each of whom has a stockpiled birthright of liberties and dignities. But for people of faith human society is a matter of ordering the relationship between a collection of persons, each of whom is the object of unconditional divine love.

 

In his encounter with the rich young man and in the exchanges that follow it Jesus has a lot to say about how we conceive of society. He has a lot to say about how wealth, property and family all conspire to distort the loyalty that our primary relationship should command. The young man is good-hearted and eager to please, but the possessions that he loves mean that God's claim on him will always have to compete with the business affairs and commercial anxieties that fill his head. He sees himself as an individual in a matrix of relationships which he has chosen, just one of which is with God. Jesus addresses the complexity directly.  "Sell what you own" he advises. In other words, stop trying to amass an identity for yourself; stop relying on what you own to create your conception of who you are; stop building yourself up as one individual among many. Remember instead who you really are: God's beloved. Rely  instead on who you really are: God's beloved. Give away everything else. Don't build up, and you will discover the treasure of heaven.

 

The rich young man goes away grieving and we do not hear of him again. Yet all who respond to the call to follow Jesus are asked to do what the young man was asked to do. They are asked to give up everything that they cling to, everything that distorts their loyalty to their primary relationship. This is what we call Baptism, in which God washes away every trace of present sin and through which God offers a sure route home from all future sin. Try hanging on to wealth or position; try hanging onto brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles when you are plunged into the healing and cleansing water. Baptism is an assertion of our primary relationship with God; it reminds us of our duty to it; and it underlines its fundamental significance for everything we are.

 

So where does this leave last week's proposals? Perpetrators of anti-social crime offend against the primary relationship, against the truth of God's eternal regard for every one of us. But a system of justice that panders to us as individuals, a system of justice that neglects our common origin in God, in a God who gives each of us equal eternal worth, offends against that truth as well. We of all people have an interest in the treatment meted out to alleged offenders. After all, we worship one. Faith compels us to see ourselves in them, and them in us, too. Amen.

 

 

Sunday 7 October 2012: Harvest Thanksgiving-The Screwtape Emails

My dear Wormwood,

 

Seventy years have passed since your uncle Screwtape picked up his pen to send you words of counsel. I suppose I ought to say that it feels like an eternity, but demons who inhabit everlasting fire know what eternity feels like, and it feels a good bit longer than seventy years. And now that I have picked up my pen I find that pens have largely been replaced by keyboards and letters by electronic communications. 'The Screwtape Emails'. It doesn't have quite the same ring.

 

I am writing in response to your difficulties with the tiresome people of St Peter's Eaton Square: the shiny, happy central Londoners who are so smugly pleased to describe themselves as a growing community, a vibrant community, and an inclusive community. I know, nephew Wormwood, I know. It makes my horns droop, too. What is to be done with a collection of people who are so confident and so competent, and who have rarely ever been more so than now? This year alone they have staged a blockbuster Jubilee Fete and hosted the mother of all pig roasts. They have run a cafe on their portico and launched a new Mission Action Plan.   They have begun the rebuilding of their school and hosted their bishop, their Lord Mayor, and a celebrated Paralympian. Now they are planning a gala autumn party, a parish pantomime, and a four-week exploration of Luke's Gospel. There is no end to what they are willing to do. They seem utterly formidable, utterly beyond our reach. Our Enemy once urged his scatter-brained companions to consider the lilies in the sublime effortlessness of their beauty. St Peter's Eaton Square looks like a field full of them: gorgeous, exotic, unique.

 

But do not despair, Wormwood, do not despair, for their moment of triumph can yet be our moment of triumph. Today at St Peter's they celebrate Harvest Thanksgiving. They will bring to church tins of baked beans, boxes of tea bags and, because their postcode is what it is, bottles of extra virgin olive oil. These will be given to the poor. It is all part of the same tiresome pattern. People at St Peter's are ceaselessly active. They do things. But you and I have something in common with the Enemy. And that is that we see them as they really are. Confident, of course; competent, definitely; active, certainly. The sun shines in SW1. But the sun always casts shadows. So they are also ridden with anxiety, crushed by fatigue, bruised by their relationships, disappointed in their hopes, and hurting bitterly. And all that, my dear nephew, gives us plenty to work with.

 

The more successful they seem the harder it is for them to acknowledge the shadows. They can raise £20,000 from a church fete, cook canapés to die for and plot strategies for their children's schooling that would shame Napoleon Bonaparte. How can they also be exhausted, stressed, and angry? The Enemy knows that they are, of course, and he loves them for it. That's the whole dreary point of the Enemy. He wants the disposable razors and the instant coffee. He wants their home-baked cakes, he wants their committee membership, he wants them to erect marquees and hand out hymn-books in church. But he also wants their weariness and their pain, their dysfunction and their dis-ease, their depression and their despair. The Enemy knows that lilies flower only briefly. He knows that for every luxuriously extravagant bloom, wondrous to gaze upon, there is a brown and shrivelled-up stick, excruciating to gaze upon. Being the Enemy he gazes upon both, knows them to be one and the same, and loves them nonetheless. And if he gets his way he will go on loving them until the dryness and the deadness and the lifelessness have been pruned away and glorious, abundant, eternal life springs up in its place.

 

It's a frankly appalling prospect, but, luckily for us, the people at St Peter's don't get it. They still believe that the only harvest that matters is the harvest of their success. They still believe that everything else is to be hidden away. I hope you'll understand the opportunity that this creates for us. Let them believe in the myth of their confidence and their competence. Let them believe that they are world-beaters. Let them believe that it's what they do rather than what they are that ultimately counts. Let them believe all that, and the poor fools have purchased a one-way ticket to destruction. How wonderful.

 

They must never know that it could be different. They must never know that the Enemy longs for it to be different. They must never know that they could do more than nod at him with a 'sorry God', 'please God', 'thank you God'. They must never know that they could stop, that they could be still. They must never know that they could look at themselves in the light that shines so blindingly from the Enemy's face. They must never know that if they did they would begin to discover who they really are - the cherished objects of unmerited, unconditional, everlasting love. But I'm not going to tell them that and neither - I am quite sure - are you.

 

With my most infernal regards, as ever,

 

Your affectionate uncle,

 

Screwtape.

St John's, Higham, Kent: 150th Anniversary of the Consecration

His most recent biographer does not record whether Higham's most illustrious resident was present at the consecration of its new parish church, but then 1862 was a difficult year for Charles Dickens. He turned fifty and he wrote little more than a largely-forgotten short story, 'His Boots'. His brother Fred was locked up in the Queen's Bench Prison and his son Alfred failed the Army exams. Closer to home he was forced to exchange his beloved Gad's Hill for what he called 'the nastiest little house in London' in order that his daughters might enjoy the metropolitan season - and the historical detectives suspect that the actress Nelly Ternan may have born him a child, in exile in France. Perhaps it's no wonder that he didn't play country squire when the altar and walls of St John's were anointed with holy oil and God's praises were sung for the first time within these walls. They had been sung here for well over a year before things began to look up and he began work on the novel that would become Our Mutual Friend.

 

Dickens, that great teller of tales, loved to tease visitors to his study at Gad's Hill. They would enter and close the door behind them. Then they would look around and be amazed to discover that the door had disappeared. Instead all around them, all around the walls, were book-lined shelves. On close examination, some of these had extraordinary titles. There was Cat's Lives, in nine volumes, and A Short History of a Chancery Suit, in twenty-one volumes. His suspicions raised, the visitor might subject these books to an even closer examination, and would then discover that they were false. Dummy books had been built onto the back of the door. Their titles amused the great novelist. They couldn't be taken down and read, but they could be swung open, allowing the visitor to walk through and leave the study. The painted books were a doorway, a means of access to another place.

 

One hundred and fifty years after the consecration - and two hundred years after Dickens's birth - St John's is lit up by one hundred and fifty icons. Icons are pictures. Not landscapes or sea views, of course, but formal, stylized pictures of saints and Biblical scenes. But those who pray with icons believe that they have something in common with the study door at Gad's Hill. The visitor to Dickens's study might enjoy poring over the fictitious titles painted on the spines, just as a visitor to your exhibition might enjoy poring over the technical skill of the iconographers. But unless the visitor to Gad's was willing to look beyond the dummy books he would remain forever stuck in the study, looking at the surface of the door. And unless the visitor to St John's is willing to look beyond the gold leaf and the egg tempera he will remain every bit as stuck. For just like Dickens's practical joke the icons'  painted panels are a doorway, a means of access to another place.

 

Those who pray with icons believe that they are one of the means that God has chosen to reveal himself to the world. When a faithful person looks upon an icon he or she does not just look upon painted wood; he or she looks upon the one whose image is painted upon the wood, and the one whose image is painted upon the wood looks upon the faithful person. A computer-literate generation will not find this difficult to grasp. When we open up our computer screens we are confronted by an array of little images. When we click on one of them - Word, for example, or PowerPoint - we are taken to the programme that we want to use. The point of the little images is that they take us somewhere else. And we call the little images 'icons'. 

 

Most pictures hang on the walls gathering dust. They may entertain us and they may educate us. If the walls they hang on are the walls of Hogwarts they may even move about and speak to us. But most pictures do not allow us to gaze upon the face of God. Even to suggest that this is what icons allow should raise some questions for us - questions about the pictures, certainly, but also questions about God. We don't have to listen very hard to hear the scoffing of the cultured despisers of religion. What sort of God allows his creation to peer at him through wood and paint?

 

Our sort of God is the answer; our sort of God. For our sort of God is the God revealed in Jesus Christ; the God who sits down in a house in Capernaum and takes a child his arms. Our sort of God says 'Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me'. This is the God  who has not held anything back; the God who has come to us in person; the God who identifies himself absolutely with the small and the weak.

 

Charles Dickens wrote books. When we read his collected works we learn something about him. Our God did not write books. We do not have to read his collected works in order to learn something about him. For our God turned up. As Saint James puts it, Wisdom came from above, pure, peaceable, gentle and merciful, in the flesh and blood of Jesus. Wisdom came from above, and Wisdom comes from above. Wisdom's coming is an annoyance, as ancient Solomon said it would be, for Wisdom's coming illuminates all our faults, fragilities and failings. Yet still Wisdom comes, and Wisdom is not ashamed of us: not ashamed of the flesh and blood that Jesus shares; not ashamed of the works of our hands; not ashamed of the things of the earth that we work with our hands. Wisdom takes these and makes them holy. Wisdom comes and through the love we have for one another; through the holy icons; and above all through the bread and wine of the Eucharist Wisdom makes us welcome. Amen.

Sunday 16 September, 15 after Trinity

"Most young people in Britain think that morality means looking after your family or putting others first". So says a BBC poll published this week. Almost 600 young people aged between 16 and 24 were asked to choose which they thought was the most important moral issue from among eight alternatives. 59% opted for caring for the family: only 4% thought that having religious faith or beliefs was the most important.  A British Social Attitudes survey published simultaneously suggests that less than a quarter of young people now consider themselves to be religious.

 

Such figures must be read sceptically. The questions devised by the pollster determine to some extent the answers he is given. But if the figures give us a broadly reliable snapshot then perhaps it's worth asking whether what they suggest - that religion is barely esteemed among the young - actually matters. So long as the young care about something other than themselves - and it appears that they do - then does religion matter?

 

Unsurprisingly I think it does, and I hope that my reasons for thinking that it does amount to more than either professional self-interest or middle-aged reaction. I think that religion does matter. It's not that religion is something that the young should take a respectful interest in whether they like it or not, like they should maths lessons or piano practice. It's not that I adhere to a species of religion that holds that they are at risk of the eternal flames if they don't take such an interest. Put bluntly, it's that I actually believe that, like eating undressed salad and taking strenuous and regular exercise, religion is good for you, even if it's often considerably less fun.   

 

Why is it good for you? What is its purpose? Most people would agree that living in denial of something is unhealthy. Successive British Governments denied for twenty-three years that the blame for the Hillsborough tragedy could be laid anywhere but at the feet of the Liverpool fans. The consequences for us all of that denial will be laid bare in the months ahead: in the anguish suffered by the families; in the eroded trust between communities and police; in the dented confidence in our system of justice.

 

Yes, denial damages, and the purpose of religion is help those who practise it to live free from  denial. For the purpose of religion is to help its practitioners to understand who they really are. When Peter acclaims Jesus as the Messiah he is making a claim about himself as well as a claim about Jesus. He is acknowledging that God is God, that Jesus is God's Anointed One, and that he, Peter, is one of those to whom God's Anointed One has come. He is acknowledging his dependence upon God; he is acknowledging his need of God's Messiah; and he is acknowledging his solidarity with the people to whom God's Messiah has come. Those who live without religion are living, whether consciously or not, with denial. They are living without acknowledging this dependence, this need, or this solidarity.

 

So we're all right then? This is not a moment for complacency. It is emphatically not the case that the practitioners of religion have got everything sorted. Far from it. Peter himself illustrates this perfectly in his very next utterance. He has, as it were, taken the first tentative steps into religion. He acknowledges God. But he also presumes to know God, and to know that God's Messiah cannot suffer and die. In his confession of Jesus as Christ, Peter has begun the journey, but he has only begun it. He will have to follow Jesus to the cross and beyond before he fully knows what his confession means. He will have to set aside the notions of Messiah-ship that he has long held and treasured. He will have to be led into a wholly new understanding. He will have to grow up.

 

If the purpose of religion is to help those who practise it to live free from denial then one of the most pernicious forms of denial is self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is a denial of the passing years; it is a denial of our inevitable ageing; and it is a denial of the irrefutable evidence of our eyes, minds and hearts. If the purpose of religion is to help those who practise it to live free from denial then it is also its purpose to help them towards maturity. Those who live in denial of their dependence upon God or in denial of their need of God often find other gods to be dependent on or to need. But practitioners of religion often depend upon the God of their childhood, or need the God of their adolescence. And this is as unhealthy as living in denial of God. Like Peter, who cannot cope with a Messiah who suffers, we cling to a God who is in reality the tyrannical Headmistress who once terrified us, or the benevolent commanding officer who we once respected. We long for a God who punishes us (or, sometimes, for a God who punishes others); we long for a God who barks orders at us; we long for the God we've always longed for, the teddy-bear God or the Darth Vader God, the God who, whether he's an object of adoration or an object of fear, is the God who has never left the corner of the nursery of our lives.

 

Religion requires of us a mature understanding of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, a mature knowledge of the God disclosed most clearly in the crucified prophet of Nazareth. Hand-in-hand it also requires of us a mature understanding, a mature knowledge, of ourselves. Religion won't let us be toddlers or teenagers once we've left those years behind. Following God, journeying into God's mystery, means journeying into our mystery. The purpose of religion is to help those who practise it to live free from denial, and our greatest denial is our denial of our fractured, fragile selves. Spend any time at all in the company of the living God and the blind rage, the naked fear, the frustrated ambition and the visceral pain that we all hold within ourselves become all-too visible. It's far easier to stay in the nursery with teddy. It's far easier to deny it - but religion won't let us. That's why the polls' findings alarm me. Religion is good for us. What will take its place? Amen.

 

 

 

This Scepter'd Isle 6: Michael Ramsey: 12 August 2012

In 1966 the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury became the first Archbishop to be received in the Sistine Chapel in modern times. At the end of the visit Pope Paul VI took off the episcopal ring that had been presented to him by the people of Milan, and gave it to him. It was a remarkable gesture. Since the papal bull Apostolicae Curae of 1896 the official stance of the Bishop of Rome had been that Anglican holy orders were null and void. The occupant of Lambeth Palace was but a layman got up in the fancy dress of an Archbishop. Yet what was given that evening was the personal gift of one bishop to another. It was a testament to the winds of change that the Second Vatican Council had blown through the Church (it had ended one year earlier). Yet it was also surely a testament to the stature of Michael Ramsey.

His little book The Christian Priest Today is another such testament. It was first published forty years ago, and is still in print. A collection of his charges to candidates  in the Dioceses of Durham, York and Canterbury on the eve of their ordination, it is still the only book that, in this Diocese at least, candidates who are exploring their vocations to priesthood are required to read. In the first charge Ramsey asks 'Why' in the modern era 'the priest?'. He finds a number of answers. Why the priest? Because the priest is a minister of reconciliation; because the priest is a man of theology; because the priest is a man of prayer (we must excuse the gender-specific language - in this particular only is The Christian Priest Today a product of its era). Ramsey had the stature he did when Archbishop and has the stature he has today because he was what he taught his ordinands to be. In his visit to Rome and in his dogged but ultimately disappointing pursuit of Anglican-Methodist unity he was a minister of reconciliation.  And he was a man of theology and a man of prayer.

A man of theology.  In his first book, The Gospel and the Catholic Church, published in 1936 as the storm clouds gathered in Europe, Ramsey prefigures the charge he was later to give to his ordinands and addresses the question 'What is this strange thing, the Christian Church?'  What is its relevance? What relation do its hierarchy, its doctrine, its worship have to the all-too-evident troubles of humankind? Many in that era answered that question by forswearing the supernatural and calling on the Church to take a lead in social and global affairs. But Ramsey reminds his readers that relevance has never been the Church's primary business. Her Lord gives up a relevant ministry in Galilee in order to die upon the cross. His life ends irrelevantly, with the cry 'why hast thou forsaken me?' The relevance of the Church of the Apostles is not that it speaks out on social and global affairs but that it points to this death, and to the deeper issues of human sin and God's judgement that this death discloses. 'In all this' writes Ramsey 'the Church was scandalous and unintelligible to men, but by all this and by nothing else it was relevant to their deepest needs'. Was, and is. 'Looking at the Church now' writes Ramsey 'with its inconsistencies and perversions and its want of perfection, we must ask what is the real meaning of it just as it is'. This real meaning is not to perpetuate the teachings of Christ or even to facilitate the worship of Christ. No, 'As the eye gazes upon it' writes Ramsey 'it sees - the Passion of Jesus Christ. And the eye of faith sees further - the power of Almighty God'. The Church gives expression to Christ's death and resurrection. Put bluntly, we are here because of Christ's Passion; we embody Christ's Passion; the betrayal, torture and death that our forebears witnessed; the resurrection that brought them new hope. Social and global affairs point to the problems of men's lives, writes Ramsey: the Church points to the deeper problem of man himself. It has a foundation which is at the same time historical and mystical: evangelical in its rootedness in the Gospel; Catholic in the universal claim that such rootedness allows it to make. It remains a powerful claim for Anglican authenticity.

A man of prayer. 'The authentic knowledge of God comes through prayer alone' Ramsey enjoins those he is about to ordain. He was never pious about prayer. He was once asked how long he prayed for every day. 'Two minutes' he replied 'but it takes me about twenty-eight to get there', a great comfort to those of us who struggle through the Silent Hour. Be Still and Know, published in his retirement in 1982, has the subtitle A Study in the Life of Prayer. In it he warns against drawing too sharp a distinction between life and prayer. God reveals himself to us through the beauty of nature, the stirrings of conscience, the example of the saints, inspired texts, and through Jesus Christ. We respond to God through gratitude and trust and awe, through love, through contrition, through service. Through all these aspects of everyday life our hearts and minds and wills move Godwards, a move that is expressed partly, but not wholly, through words. Our Godwards move is in word and in silence, in passivity and in action.  Prayer is thus, he writes, 'an aspect of a many-sided converse between human beings and their Creator'. And having given prayer a context Ramsey goes on to consider what it is in its specifics. His approach is alarmingly simple. 'May we think of our prayer as being for a while consciously with the Father, no more and no less than that? It is the keeping of a little time in the conscious awareness of one who is friend as well as creator and saviour'. Hence the twenty-eight minutes spent waiting for the two minutes, a ratio that perhaps challenges us to review the time we give to prayer. This friendship, like any friendship, needs our investment.

There is a story that when Ramsey was teaching in Durham a young undergraduate rushed into him, knocking all his papers to the ground. 'Oh my God' said the undergraduate. 'No' replied Ramsey 'just his representative on earth'. That gift for self-deprecation; that numinous understanding of the Church; above all, those long minutes spent in the conscious awareness of his creator, his saviour, and his friend - all these allowed and allow many truly to see in Michael Ramsey a representative of his God.  Amen.