‘Mother of Pure Evil’ screamed Friday’s headlines after the conviction of the kidnappers of Shannon Matthews. Those headlines were a reminder, as if one were needed, that judgement is a theme that fascinates and implicates us in equal measure.
For more than four years before I came to St Peter’s I worshipped every Sunday underneath something almost as cataclysmic as a red-top headline: painted above the chancel arch of St Thomas’s, Salisbury it dates from the late fifteenth century and is one of the largest surviving mediaeval frescoes in England. The tabloids’ judgement of the kidnappers is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper; but the subject of the painting is, of course, the Doom, or The Last Judgment, the theme of this second address in our Advent series.
It depicts Christ robed in majesty outside the walls of the New Jerusalem. He is the judge of all creation. Beneath his feet sit the apostles in their long-promised places of honour. To the north and south of the chancel arch, and to the right and left of Christ, members of our race go to the fate decreed for them. Angels give the righteous a helping hand and they are raised to life, while the damned are dragged towards the gaping maw of hell. Numbered among them are crowned, mitred and tonsured heads.
No doubt the citizens of late-mediaeval Salisbury would have marvelled at the painting’s colour and detailed sophistication; no doubt they would have been cheered by the rewards promised to the saved; no doubt they would have shivered at the gruesome end of the condemned. To twenty-first century eyes the colours have faded, the detail appears crude, and the rewards and the gruesome end cruder still.
Today few are prepared to argue seriously for the existence of hellfire; fewer still accept that the fate of the unrighteous will be to be tortured for all eternity. Yet our principled loss of faith in hell’s gaping maw has not heralded an equally principled new era of faith in compassionate, forgiving human judgement. Friday’s headlines and the public reaction to every conviction of a child abuser testify to that. And we should not dismiss such outrage as mere populism of little consequence. It does not happen in a vacuum – it influences public policy. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales has recently reminded all judges that their primary purpose in passing sentence is the punishment of the accused. Deterrence of others from committing crime, let alone the rehabilitation of the offender, is a secondary consideration. We inhabit a punishing society.
Our standards conflict in this as in so many spheres of life and faith. God cannot condemn us, we insist. He must love us just as we are, coming alongside us and responding to our needs and concerns. Yet we may (indeed we must) condemn the offender in our midst. We have learned a new way of understanding God – we have not learned a new way of understanding judgement. Our model is still the one painted above the chancel arch in Salisbury. It’s just that we’ll no longer allow Christ to sit in majesty. Preferring the court of public opinion, we’ve enthroned ourselves.
My belief is that it’s time to rediscover and renew our understanding of divine judgement, and that in the light of that understanding we’ll find our view of human judgement changing too. For if we remove God from the judgement seat and turn him into a divine social worker then we turn our backs on our tradition. Punch the word ‘judge’ into your Bible software and you’ll find that it occurs no fewer than 587 times between the books Genesis and Revelation; while ‘saviour’ appears 59 times and ‘creator’ 21. God is our judge: that is a non-negotiable Christian doctrine.
Yet if God is our judge then we must ask: what sort of judge is God? Is he like our own punishing judges, only on bigger scale? In the Salisbury Doom painting Christ holds his hands up in blessing. He is bare-chested and his feet are unshod. At the end of time, all things being complete, blood still streams from his wounds. All-powerful and glorified, his humanity is ever present, ever visible. Christ is transformed from suffering prophet to omniscient judge; yet the omniscient judge is still the suffering prophet. God’s longing is not for the obliteration of humanity (hence the painting’s rainbow throne, token of God’s promise to Noah that never again would humankind be destroyed); his longing is for its transformation. His judicial concern is not with our rehabilitation. He does not want to make us into different people, but to make us more fully the people we essentially are, the people he loves and knows we might become.
And how is this transformation effected? The mediaeval artist shows the cross, spear and crown of thorns brandished trophy-like behind the throne. Christ’s victory is complete, but he is a wounded victor, and his victory is a victory of love. It is love that keeps Christ faithful to his vocation and bears him to the cross; it is love that scars him with eternal wounds; it is in love that we will judge us. On the last day, however we conceive of that, we will discover what it is to stand in the presence of pure love. What would a human court of law look like if it were constructed on a similar foundation?
For no one should imagine that that will be a reassuring or comforting thing. Imagine the light of a love so intense that it shines like a penetrating laser into the darkest corners of our souls. Imagine the heat of a love so coruscating that it burns away the dross and filth that have accumulated within us. Imagine the gaze of a love so clear that it knows us better than we know ourselves and has held us in being from the moment of our first creation.
Demons, fires and toasting forks are terrifying; but to see ourselves as we really are and to let ourselves be changed – that is the judgement of Christ. Perhaps that’s why we remain stuck, content with our overcrowded and unsanitary prisons, content with religion that constrains and demeans, and content with the Doom: because the reality is even more terrifying. Amen.
Monday, 22 December 2008
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Christ the King, Sunday 23 November 2008
Like a refreshment stall temptingly positioned somewhere in the twenty-fourth mile of a marathon, the feast of Christ the King beckons the unwary as they enter the last week of the Church’s year. Its imperious title suggests that the last seven days can be run with omniscient warmth in the heart and a royal spring in the step. Christ is King, after all, and with that dynamic assurance the purple wastes of Advent are so many puddles to be vaulted over on the way to the rapture that indubitably awaits. However, if a long-distance runner succumbs to the lure of the refreshment stall, takes a rest and enjoys a long cold beer when he has a mile of his course still to run he’ll find that last mile longer than all the preceding miles put together. A similar fate awaits those who too readily take refuge in the seductive promise that because Christ is King all is necessarily well. And maybe I’m becoming wise, or maybe I’m becoming cynical, but I am refusing the comforting blandishments proffered by today’s feast and, feeling neither omniscient nor royal, am approaching the end of the year with a sense of dissatisfaction.
I am at risk of sounding more like a chairman giving an end-of-year report than a priest proclaiming the Gospel, and I apologize, but it’s me preaching today rather than James or Mark because it had been our hope that today we would bring to an end our Giving Campaign for 2008. You all know the facts. Increased basic costs mean that for St Peter’s simply to keep going as it always has we need to find an additional £30,000 in 2009. If we want to achieve the relatively modest new ambitions we have set ourselves then we need to find an additional £38,000. The need is therefore urgent: but I am unable to tell you today that we have met it. Circumstances that no one could have foreseen or overcome mean that the Campaign’s mailing has only just gone out. I remain very confident that we will raise our income and plug the hole in the budget, but at the year’s end I regret that we have not done so already and as we had planned.
It had also been our hope that we would go into Advent with a new sound system in Church, one that would enable the many people who will worship here in the next month to participate in that worship in a more effective way, perhaps even by actually hearing the preacher. This is occasionally thought to be a good thing. Although we have identified the system and the supplier that we would like, we have also discovered unexpectedly that its introduction into our building will require a faculty from the Chancellor of the Diocese. Again, I am confident that we will obtain the faculty and that the system will enhance what we do here, but I regret that it will be 2009 before I am able to address you without the risk of the microphone dying or the speakers booming.
I could go on, and point to other areas of our common life where we have not achieved what we have set out to achieve within the time-frame we had set out to achieve them: hence springs my year-end sense of dissatisfaction and of a job only half-done. But if we cannot help how we feel, we can help what we do with our feelings. What might I do with my sense of disappointment?
Ignore it, I suppose, and preach a different sort of sermon, telling you that the plan all along had been to delay the Giving Campaign until Advent when people are in the mood to spend money, and that the new sound system was always destined to be part of our Lenten adventure. Or get angry, blame the PCC, blame the printer, blame the Diocese and inform the Assistant Priest that he will be preaching on Christ the King.
Or, or – draw breath and think for a moment about today’s claim. Christ is King. Of course he is: every breath in our lungs, every sinew in our bodies, every drop of blood in our veins compels us to this conclusion: that in Christ is all authority ultimately vested; that in Christ all history finds its meaning; that in Christ the nations will be one. Christ is king. Yet look at the chaos and agony of the world which is his, a world stalked by injustice and violence, a world where evil runs unchecked, a world where innocence is put to the sword every hour of every day. Look at all that and acknowledge that while Christ is King his kingdom is not yet Christ-like.
To commit to the proclamation that Christ is King is to commit to dissatisfaction, to disappointment, and to a sense of a job half-done. To proclaim that Christ is King is perpetually to reach the year’s end unfulfilled. For to proclaim that Christ is King is to proclaim that the kingdom has not yet come and that in the forests of the Congo and on the streets of this very city it sometimes seems an awfully long way off. And to proclaim that Christ is King is to respond to our dissatisfaction at that distance not by ignoring it and not by getting angry with it, but by learning humility in the face of it. Christ is King is a shout of triumph, but it is also a call to action. It is a defiant statement of hope in the face of human sin, but it is also an indictment of human sin. It starkly holds before us the scale of the task that is ours, the task of working alongside the God who was, who is, and who is to come, for the Earth’s redemption.
The year is ending, there’s no shiny new PA, and we face a deficit next year. I - we - must learn to plan better and to deliver on the expectations we raise. But Christ the King convinces me of disappointments and dissatisfactions which dwarf mine ten thousand times over. Christ the King propels us into the season of Advent and compels us to pray the Advent prayer with greater urgency than ever: ‘Come, Lord Jesus’. And Christ the King bids us transform this world to make it one fit for a King.
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people… Amen.
I am at risk of sounding more like a chairman giving an end-of-year report than a priest proclaiming the Gospel, and I apologize, but it’s me preaching today rather than James or Mark because it had been our hope that today we would bring to an end our Giving Campaign for 2008. You all know the facts. Increased basic costs mean that for St Peter’s simply to keep going as it always has we need to find an additional £30,000 in 2009. If we want to achieve the relatively modest new ambitions we have set ourselves then we need to find an additional £38,000. The need is therefore urgent: but I am unable to tell you today that we have met it. Circumstances that no one could have foreseen or overcome mean that the Campaign’s mailing has only just gone out. I remain very confident that we will raise our income and plug the hole in the budget, but at the year’s end I regret that we have not done so already and as we had planned.
It had also been our hope that we would go into Advent with a new sound system in Church, one that would enable the many people who will worship here in the next month to participate in that worship in a more effective way, perhaps even by actually hearing the preacher. This is occasionally thought to be a good thing. Although we have identified the system and the supplier that we would like, we have also discovered unexpectedly that its introduction into our building will require a faculty from the Chancellor of the Diocese. Again, I am confident that we will obtain the faculty and that the system will enhance what we do here, but I regret that it will be 2009 before I am able to address you without the risk of the microphone dying or the speakers booming.
I could go on, and point to other areas of our common life where we have not achieved what we have set out to achieve within the time-frame we had set out to achieve them: hence springs my year-end sense of dissatisfaction and of a job only half-done. But if we cannot help how we feel, we can help what we do with our feelings. What might I do with my sense of disappointment?
Ignore it, I suppose, and preach a different sort of sermon, telling you that the plan all along had been to delay the Giving Campaign until Advent when people are in the mood to spend money, and that the new sound system was always destined to be part of our Lenten adventure. Or get angry, blame the PCC, blame the printer, blame the Diocese and inform the Assistant Priest that he will be preaching on Christ the King.
Or, or – draw breath and think for a moment about today’s claim. Christ is King. Of course he is: every breath in our lungs, every sinew in our bodies, every drop of blood in our veins compels us to this conclusion: that in Christ is all authority ultimately vested; that in Christ all history finds its meaning; that in Christ the nations will be one. Christ is king. Yet look at the chaos and agony of the world which is his, a world stalked by injustice and violence, a world where evil runs unchecked, a world where innocence is put to the sword every hour of every day. Look at all that and acknowledge that while Christ is King his kingdom is not yet Christ-like.
To commit to the proclamation that Christ is King is to commit to dissatisfaction, to disappointment, and to a sense of a job half-done. To proclaim that Christ is King is perpetually to reach the year’s end unfulfilled. For to proclaim that Christ is King is to proclaim that the kingdom has not yet come and that in the forests of the Congo and on the streets of this very city it sometimes seems an awfully long way off. And to proclaim that Christ is King is to respond to our dissatisfaction at that distance not by ignoring it and not by getting angry with it, but by learning humility in the face of it. Christ is King is a shout of triumph, but it is also a call to action. It is a defiant statement of hope in the face of human sin, but it is also an indictment of human sin. It starkly holds before us the scale of the task that is ours, the task of working alongside the God who was, who is, and who is to come, for the Earth’s redemption.
The year is ending, there’s no shiny new PA, and we face a deficit next year. I - we - must learn to plan better and to deliver on the expectations we raise. But Christ the King convinces me of disappointments and dissatisfactions which dwarf mine ten thousand times over. Christ the King propels us into the season of Advent and compels us to pray the Advent prayer with greater urgency than ever: ‘Come, Lord Jesus’. And Christ the King bids us transform this world to make it one fit for a King.
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people… Amen.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
All Souls Day, Monday 3 November 2008
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
One of the realities of ordained life is that if a priest is invited to supper the meal will inevitably be preceded by an awkward pause in which the host wrestles with whether or not Grace should be said and, if it should, by whom it should be said. A priest I know regularly overcomes this embarrassment by declaring categorically that only meals involving potatoes are proper meals, and necessitate Grace, while others are not and do not. I had supper with him last week and was thrown into confusion when, confronted with a plate of chicken and rice I assumed myself to be in safe territory and picked up my knife and fork. He took this as the cue to launch us into prayer. I blurted out my ‘Amen’ and in my defence pointed out the lack of the aforementioned root vegetable. He smiled and said ‘ah, but the presence of a friend makes the meal proper’.
I should not have been surprised. The priest in question is in fact a rather senior bishop of the Church of England, and he has made known on several occasions his opinion that priests ought to be taught less about the Bible and more about how to cook.
This opinion has (in my view) much to commend it, although it is considered shocking by many. It’s been much influenced by the sublime words of George Herbert, with which I began. They comprise a dialogue between the poet and his host, between humankind and God. Invited to dine and painfully conscious of his frailty the poet tells his host that, in response to his enquiry, all he lacks is a guest worthy of the invitation. ‘You shall be he’ insists the host. But ‘I cannot look on thee’ returns the poet. ‘Who made the eyes but I?’ says the host; ‘but I have marr’d them’ says the poet, ‘let my shame go where it doth deserve’. He is fearful. He dares not approach the table.
It is no coincidence that tonight, as we remember those we love but see no longer, we do so in a setting similar to that envisaged by Herbert. We gather around a table, around a table at which we are invited to sit and eat. Each of us stands where the poet stands, and in our Eucharist we discover the truth of what Herbert believed of God. This is that he is not the zealous receptionist, armed with a roll call of those who are invited and those who are not. Nor is he the muscular door-keeper, whose task it is to root out the unwashed and eject them from the party. He is instead the eternally generous host, welcoming in whoever wishes to approach, cooking and serving, and paying the bill. What he serves, what we feast upon, is his life, his presence, given to us and for us.
For the readings for All Souls Day attest that God is as George Herbert portrays him: he is Love, eternally turned towards the world with arms outstretched, the world which he loves into being and constantly holds in being. His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; and they are offered to every one of his children, to the departed as to the living. In that invitation; in that hospitality; in that love is our hope.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Come, let us taste Love’s feast. Amen.
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
One of the realities of ordained life is that if a priest is invited to supper the meal will inevitably be preceded by an awkward pause in which the host wrestles with whether or not Grace should be said and, if it should, by whom it should be said. A priest I know regularly overcomes this embarrassment by declaring categorically that only meals involving potatoes are proper meals, and necessitate Grace, while others are not and do not. I had supper with him last week and was thrown into confusion when, confronted with a plate of chicken and rice I assumed myself to be in safe territory and picked up my knife and fork. He took this as the cue to launch us into prayer. I blurted out my ‘Amen’ and in my defence pointed out the lack of the aforementioned root vegetable. He smiled and said ‘ah, but the presence of a friend makes the meal proper’.
I should not have been surprised. The priest in question is in fact a rather senior bishop of the Church of England, and he has made known on several occasions his opinion that priests ought to be taught less about the Bible and more about how to cook.
This opinion has (in my view) much to commend it, although it is considered shocking by many. It’s been much influenced by the sublime words of George Herbert, with which I began. They comprise a dialogue between the poet and his host, between humankind and God. Invited to dine and painfully conscious of his frailty the poet tells his host that, in response to his enquiry, all he lacks is a guest worthy of the invitation. ‘You shall be he’ insists the host. But ‘I cannot look on thee’ returns the poet. ‘Who made the eyes but I?’ says the host; ‘but I have marr’d them’ says the poet, ‘let my shame go where it doth deserve’. He is fearful. He dares not approach the table.
It is no coincidence that tonight, as we remember those we love but see no longer, we do so in a setting similar to that envisaged by Herbert. We gather around a table, around a table at which we are invited to sit and eat. Each of us stands where the poet stands, and in our Eucharist we discover the truth of what Herbert believed of God. This is that he is not the zealous receptionist, armed with a roll call of those who are invited and those who are not. Nor is he the muscular door-keeper, whose task it is to root out the unwashed and eject them from the party. He is instead the eternally generous host, welcoming in whoever wishes to approach, cooking and serving, and paying the bill. What he serves, what we feast upon, is his life, his presence, given to us and for us.
For the readings for All Souls Day attest that God is as George Herbert portrays him: he is Love, eternally turned towards the world with arms outstretched, the world which he loves into being and constantly holds in being. His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; and they are offered to every one of his children, to the departed as to the living. In that invitation; in that hospitality; in that love is our hope.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Come, let us taste Love’s feast. Amen.
Sunday, 26 October 2008
The Last Sunday after Trinity, 26 October 2008
Anna has chosen an auspicious day on which to be baptized. It’s not just that her parents had an hour’s extra sleep last night, fortifying them for the rigours of the day. It’s not just that it’s the fourteenth anniversary of Israel’s historic peace treaty with Jordan. It’s not even that it’s the birthday of Domenico Scarlatti, Francois Mitterand and Hilary Clinton. No: it’s that it’s the Sunday before the release of the twenty-second James Bond film.
This might appear an odd coincidence for a Baptismal sermon to celebrate, even a sermon preached in a parish on the borders of which Ian Fleming once lived. For James Bond is licensed to kill rather than to preach; he’s more likely to fire a Beretta than wear a biretta; his taste is for vodka Martini rather than Eucharistic wine. James Bond is not Jesus Christ. But those who follow Jesus Christ have to accept that many more people are likely to go and see the new Bond than they are to go to Church. So we have two options. Either we ignore Bond, or we consider what he might have to teach us, and whether he and we might make common cause for the Gospel. It’s not a trivial or shamelessly populist task: it’s the same as that attempted by the young Galilean teacher who sat down with the crowds and talked about sowers and travellers and wedding feasts, the occupations and amusements of his day.
James Bond has shown remarkable resilience and remarkable adaptability: the first novel was published more than fifty years ago. In the decades since Bond has not stood still. Fleming originally conceived him as a veteran of Second World War military intelligence. His early adventures were peppered with references to the war years; his early enemies were renegade Nazis who had survived. As time went by he became a Cold Warrior; after the fall of the Berlin Wall he turned his attention to the power vacuum that its fall brought about. More recently he has fought the sinister power of the international media and the threat of terrorism. He has never been trapped by yesterday’s battles; he has never aged; he perpetually dons his dinner jacket, picks up his shoulder holster, flirts with Moneypenny and, with Q’s latest gadget in his pocket, he strolls into the crisis of the moment.
Bond’s surroundings change, his challenges change, but he is the same yesterday, today and for ever. And in his missions we catch a glimpse of our mission. The Gospel is the same yesterday, today and for ever, but those to whom it is preached are not. Anna will do most of her growing up in the second decade of the twenty-first century, not the third and not the fourth. It is to her, a child of this time that the Church must learn to speak. This does not mean the Church deserting her foundational traditions. That would be the equivalent of Bond suddenly drinking Pina Colada. But she must find a vocabulary for the age, interpret the tradition for the moment, and accept that the world in which God is active may have changed while she has not. Bond reminds us what it is to be incarnate, enfleshed in a particular place at a particular time, and that is a skill and grace that the Church must re-learn.
James Bond has a huge relish for life and for living. I’m not defending his sexual mores (not that I’m sure he has any), his general attitude towards women, or his apparent indifference to killing. But a flick through Fleming’s novels makes it clear why they were such a hit in 50s austerity Britain. Bond enjoys life. The stories are awash with vintage champagne, served always with mounds of fine caviar and hot toast. They luxuriate in the details of Bond’s cotton shirts and linen suits; they linger over the perfection of his Aston Martin.
Paeans to materialism? Of course. But we live in a London borough whose streets are soon to be filled with buses bearing the slogan ‘There is probably no God. So relax and enjoy your life’. Obviously, believing there probably is a God means not enjoying it. We are poor advertisements for faith if our faces are long and our attitudes sanctimonious. I’m absolutely not encouraging an irritating cheerfulness among Christians. But I am encouraging a little less defensiveness and anxiety. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy and peace. Unsurprising, really, as we’re the ones who have in Christ stumbled across the meaning of life.
And lastly, we are all so inured to James Bond’s lifestyle that its frankly rather hazardous quality goes unnoticed. In every film, in every book, he flings himself into the teeth of whatever’s coming at him. It may be the Communist agency SMERSH; it may be Blofeld, armed with military tunic and fluffy cat; it may be Jaws, or Oddjob, or the man with the golden gun. Whichever, Bond scarcely thinks twice, plunging in without a thought for his own safety. Why does he do it? Why not retire to play golf and write his memoirs? Well, Fleming writes this of one of Bond’s early interviews with M: ‘he sat down and looked across into the tranquil, lined sailor’s face that he loved, honoured and obeyed’. Bond’s motivation is his profound loyalty and his deep love for his service and his country. He is passionately, recklessly devoted to these causes, to which he has pledged his life and allegiance.
Perhaps this sermon should carry the sort of warning that we all remember from childhood: don’t try this at home. I’m not asking anyone to go out and start behaving like 007, and certainly not on a Sunday in Belgravia. But if as a community the Church exhibited just a little of that exuberant spark, just a little of that relentless fire, just think what she might achieve for her Lord.
Rooted in tradition but living in the present, relishing life, and giving everything for the great cause: true of James Bond and, I would have thought, not a bad prescription for the Church into which Anna is about to be baptized. On this her baptism day my hope is that those three thoughts offer her (and all of us) a measure of comfort; as it were, a quantum of solace. Amen.
This might appear an odd coincidence for a Baptismal sermon to celebrate, even a sermon preached in a parish on the borders of which Ian Fleming once lived. For James Bond is licensed to kill rather than to preach; he’s more likely to fire a Beretta than wear a biretta; his taste is for vodka Martini rather than Eucharistic wine. James Bond is not Jesus Christ. But those who follow Jesus Christ have to accept that many more people are likely to go and see the new Bond than they are to go to Church. So we have two options. Either we ignore Bond, or we consider what he might have to teach us, and whether he and we might make common cause for the Gospel. It’s not a trivial or shamelessly populist task: it’s the same as that attempted by the young Galilean teacher who sat down with the crowds and talked about sowers and travellers and wedding feasts, the occupations and amusements of his day.
James Bond has shown remarkable resilience and remarkable adaptability: the first novel was published more than fifty years ago. In the decades since Bond has not stood still. Fleming originally conceived him as a veteran of Second World War military intelligence. His early adventures were peppered with references to the war years; his early enemies were renegade Nazis who had survived. As time went by he became a Cold Warrior; after the fall of the Berlin Wall he turned his attention to the power vacuum that its fall brought about. More recently he has fought the sinister power of the international media and the threat of terrorism. He has never been trapped by yesterday’s battles; he has never aged; he perpetually dons his dinner jacket, picks up his shoulder holster, flirts with Moneypenny and, with Q’s latest gadget in his pocket, he strolls into the crisis of the moment.
Bond’s surroundings change, his challenges change, but he is the same yesterday, today and for ever. And in his missions we catch a glimpse of our mission. The Gospel is the same yesterday, today and for ever, but those to whom it is preached are not. Anna will do most of her growing up in the second decade of the twenty-first century, not the third and not the fourth. It is to her, a child of this time that the Church must learn to speak. This does not mean the Church deserting her foundational traditions. That would be the equivalent of Bond suddenly drinking Pina Colada. But she must find a vocabulary for the age, interpret the tradition for the moment, and accept that the world in which God is active may have changed while she has not. Bond reminds us what it is to be incarnate, enfleshed in a particular place at a particular time, and that is a skill and grace that the Church must re-learn.
James Bond has a huge relish for life and for living. I’m not defending his sexual mores (not that I’m sure he has any), his general attitude towards women, or his apparent indifference to killing. But a flick through Fleming’s novels makes it clear why they were such a hit in 50s austerity Britain. Bond enjoys life. The stories are awash with vintage champagne, served always with mounds of fine caviar and hot toast. They luxuriate in the details of Bond’s cotton shirts and linen suits; they linger over the perfection of his Aston Martin.
Paeans to materialism? Of course. But we live in a London borough whose streets are soon to be filled with buses bearing the slogan ‘There is probably no God. So relax and enjoy your life’. Obviously, believing there probably is a God means not enjoying it. We are poor advertisements for faith if our faces are long and our attitudes sanctimonious. I’m absolutely not encouraging an irritating cheerfulness among Christians. But I am encouraging a little less defensiveness and anxiety. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy and peace. Unsurprising, really, as we’re the ones who have in Christ stumbled across the meaning of life.
And lastly, we are all so inured to James Bond’s lifestyle that its frankly rather hazardous quality goes unnoticed. In every film, in every book, he flings himself into the teeth of whatever’s coming at him. It may be the Communist agency SMERSH; it may be Blofeld, armed with military tunic and fluffy cat; it may be Jaws, or Oddjob, or the man with the golden gun. Whichever, Bond scarcely thinks twice, plunging in without a thought for his own safety. Why does he do it? Why not retire to play golf and write his memoirs? Well, Fleming writes this of one of Bond’s early interviews with M: ‘he sat down and looked across into the tranquil, lined sailor’s face that he loved, honoured and obeyed’. Bond’s motivation is his profound loyalty and his deep love for his service and his country. He is passionately, recklessly devoted to these causes, to which he has pledged his life and allegiance.
Perhaps this sermon should carry the sort of warning that we all remember from childhood: don’t try this at home. I’m not asking anyone to go out and start behaving like 007, and certainly not on a Sunday in Belgravia. But if as a community the Church exhibited just a little of that exuberant spark, just a little of that relentless fire, just think what she might achieve for her Lord.
Rooted in tradition but living in the present, relishing life, and giving everything for the great cause: true of James Bond and, I would have thought, not a bad prescription for the Church into which Anna is about to be baptized. On this her baptism day my hope is that those three thoughts offer her (and all of us) a measure of comfort; as it were, a quantum of solace. Amen.
Monday, 20 October 2008
Sunday 19 October 2008, 22 after Trinity
‘We will not go to Canossa’ Otto von Bismarck told the Reichstag in 1872. He was not discussing his colleagues’ travel plans, but was referring to a journey made to a northern Italian city eight hundred years earlier. The Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, had very rashly claimed for his Imperial throne the right to invest all the bishops of his Empire. For this trespass on the rights of the Church, Pope Gregory VII excommunicated him.
Henry made his way to the fortress at Canossa in January 1077, dressed as a penitent in a hair shirt. When he arrived the Pope made him wait outside in the snow for three days before receiving him with a kiss and accepting his penance. Canossa was thus the moment when temporal power accepted that it had no authority over spiritual power. It is a seminal moment in European history, comparable to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon or the Paris mob’s storming of the Bastille.
Bismarck’s successors, the statesmen and stateswomen of modern Europe and of the United States, will in recent weeks have been less occupied with ecclesiastical matters than was he when he addressed the Reichstag. Still, the next time they meet they might well consider whether Canossa would be an appropriate venue for their meeting. For in these last weeks we have witnessed an encounter which may prove to be every bit as significant as was that of Gregory and Henry. The encounter has changed geopolitical relationships in ways which seemed unimaginable only a few weeks ago. It may have marked the end of an era. It will almost certainly shape the one to come. It’s just that the parties to the encounter are different. At Canossa the Empire met the Church. In October 2008 the private sphere met the public sphere; the bankers met the elected leaders. And exactly who prevailed is not yet clear.
‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s’. Henry’s submission to Gregory allowed prince and prelate to put Christ’s command into effect. By making Henry wait in the January cold Gregory punctured the medieval obsession with the all-encompassing near divinity of emperors and their courts. The reforms of his pontificate were directed to the development of critical distance between the spheres of influence dominated by church and state. The great irony is that - arguably - it was this division that would in later centuries allow the state to insist on the rights of religious minorities and, more recently, of people of no faith. Modern secularism and contemporary multiculturalism have their roots in the reforms of a medieval Pope. It’s an irony probably lost on Richard Dawkins.
So does the history of Canossa have anything to teach us about the encounter between public and private through which we are living? The banks’ acceptance of subsidies can be caricatured as Henry-like, and the politicians’ use of public funds as Gregory-like. And just as the thirteenth century did not witness the development of either theocracy or atheist autocracy the twenty-first is unlikely to herald an era of either centralized control or unfettered laissez-faire.
But perhaps it will see a new balance emerge, as it did in the era after Canossa. Perhaps it will see more effective regulation and more effective control of excess. And perhaps that balance will set the banks free to serve the economy in ways which at present they cannot; perhaps such balance will also prevent politicians from promising a cost-free, ever more affluent future, in which the value of property will rise in perpetuity and the earth’s resources will be deemed inexhaustible.
If we are at the beginning of a new chapter of Western history, at a new balance between the modern powers, then what can the Church contribute to the narrative? Ought she content herself with Gregory’s sphere, the post-Canossa settlement which concentrates on the things that are God’s and leaves the emperor to the mercies of Darling, Paulson and the bankers? I suggest she cannot. For at the heart of whatever economy emerges from the trauma will still be human beings, bringing with them human needs and human emotions, human vices and human virtues.
‘A modern market economy cannot do without a measure of moral corrosion’ writes John Gray, emeritus professor at the LSE. Greed and envy are powerful economic stimulants in the marketplace; thrift and caution are not. How does the Church speak into the balance? As public and private adjust to a new relationship she must counsel and warn, advise and admonish, prophesy and proclaim, recalling always that God’s people are more than customers and investors. The denarius, of course, bore the image and likeness of Caesar; God’s people bear the image and likeness of God.
And God’s people are citizens not just of Europe or the United States. They are citizens of God’s kingdom. Theophan the Recluse writes of the transplanting of humankind’s treasure and of humankind’s hopes, a transplanting from the temporary realm to the eternal. This ‘makes man essentially a pilgrim on earth, seeking his fatherland, the heavenly Jerusalem’. And the heavenly Jerusalem of which Theophan writes is a kingdom which has no market but that of grace freely given; that has no economy but that of salvation; that has no law but that of love. Only through the recalling of that citizenship can we gain a proper perspective on our contemporary way to Canossa. Amen.
Sunday 19 October 2008,
22 after Trinity,
Matthew 22: 15-22
Henry made his way to the fortress at Canossa in January 1077, dressed as a penitent in a hair shirt. When he arrived the Pope made him wait outside in the snow for three days before receiving him with a kiss and accepting his penance. Canossa was thus the moment when temporal power accepted that it had no authority over spiritual power. It is a seminal moment in European history, comparable to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon or the Paris mob’s storming of the Bastille.
Bismarck’s successors, the statesmen and stateswomen of modern Europe and of the United States, will in recent weeks have been less occupied with ecclesiastical matters than was he when he addressed the Reichstag. Still, the next time they meet they might well consider whether Canossa would be an appropriate venue for their meeting. For in these last weeks we have witnessed an encounter which may prove to be every bit as significant as was that of Gregory and Henry. The encounter has changed geopolitical relationships in ways which seemed unimaginable only a few weeks ago. It may have marked the end of an era. It will almost certainly shape the one to come. It’s just that the parties to the encounter are different. At Canossa the Empire met the Church. In October 2008 the private sphere met the public sphere; the bankers met the elected leaders. And exactly who prevailed is not yet clear.
‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s’. Henry’s submission to Gregory allowed prince and prelate to put Christ’s command into effect. By making Henry wait in the January cold Gregory punctured the medieval obsession with the all-encompassing near divinity of emperors and their courts. The reforms of his pontificate were directed to the development of critical distance between the spheres of influence dominated by church and state. The great irony is that - arguably - it was this division that would in later centuries allow the state to insist on the rights of religious minorities and, more recently, of people of no faith. Modern secularism and contemporary multiculturalism have their roots in the reforms of a medieval Pope. It’s an irony probably lost on Richard Dawkins.
So does the history of Canossa have anything to teach us about the encounter between public and private through which we are living? The banks’ acceptance of subsidies can be caricatured as Henry-like, and the politicians’ use of public funds as Gregory-like. And just as the thirteenth century did not witness the development of either theocracy or atheist autocracy the twenty-first is unlikely to herald an era of either centralized control or unfettered laissez-faire.
But perhaps it will see a new balance emerge, as it did in the era after Canossa. Perhaps it will see more effective regulation and more effective control of excess. And perhaps that balance will set the banks free to serve the economy in ways which at present they cannot; perhaps such balance will also prevent politicians from promising a cost-free, ever more affluent future, in which the value of property will rise in perpetuity and the earth’s resources will be deemed inexhaustible.
If we are at the beginning of a new chapter of Western history, at a new balance between the modern powers, then what can the Church contribute to the narrative? Ought she content herself with Gregory’s sphere, the post-Canossa settlement which concentrates on the things that are God’s and leaves the emperor to the mercies of Darling, Paulson and the bankers? I suggest she cannot. For at the heart of whatever economy emerges from the trauma will still be human beings, bringing with them human needs and human emotions, human vices and human virtues.
‘A modern market economy cannot do without a measure of moral corrosion’ writes John Gray, emeritus professor at the LSE. Greed and envy are powerful economic stimulants in the marketplace; thrift and caution are not. How does the Church speak into the balance? As public and private adjust to a new relationship she must counsel and warn, advise and admonish, prophesy and proclaim, recalling always that God’s people are more than customers and investors. The denarius, of course, bore the image and likeness of Caesar; God’s people bear the image and likeness of God.
And God’s people are citizens not just of Europe or the United States. They are citizens of God’s kingdom. Theophan the Recluse writes of the transplanting of humankind’s treasure and of humankind’s hopes, a transplanting from the temporary realm to the eternal. This ‘makes man essentially a pilgrim on earth, seeking his fatherland, the heavenly Jerusalem’. And the heavenly Jerusalem of which Theophan writes is a kingdom which has no market but that of grace freely given; that has no economy but that of salvation; that has no law but that of love. Only through the recalling of that citizenship can we gain a proper perspective on our contemporary way to Canossa. Amen.
Sunday 19 October 2008,
22 after Trinity,
Matthew 22: 15-22
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Harvest Thanksgiving and Giving Campaign Launch, Sunday 5 October 2008
Harvest Thanksgiving at St Peter’s Eaton Square,
Sunday 5 October 2008,
Address given by the Vicar at the Parish Eucharist
I have to own up to something of an internal tussle this morning, as I debated where I should address you from - behind a lectern or not behind a lectern. Those of you who are students of politics will know that in the last year or so whether or not to speak from behind a lectern has become a rather hot issue. Mr Cameron first came to prominence when he made a speech to his party’s conference in which he shunned the lectern and strode about the platform. It was such a good idea that his rival Mr Clegg addressed his party conference this year doing exactly the same thing. The following week the Prime Minister - declaring himself a serious man for serious times - stood very firmly behind a lectern to address the party faithful; and last week, not wishing to be outdone, Mr Cameron too retreated behind a lectern there to address the gathered flock.
This morning I have to address you in serious times on a serious matter and so I suppose - following conventional political wisdom - I ought to do so from behind a lectern because I have to talk to you about one of the things that we cannot talk about in church, which is money, and giving, and that, in this of all weeks, is a serious matter that needs serious attention. But my brothers and sisters I am not going to speak to you from behind a lectern - not because these are not serious matters to which I pay serious attention. They are, and I do, but because this is Harvest Thanksgiving, when the focus of our worship is on what we have been given; it’s on what God is doing here among us; what God’s purpose is for this community; what we are achieving on his behalf; and when I speak to you about those things I am not going to hide myself behind a lectern so to do, even if it means there is nothing between me and the rotten eggs that may follow. I am not going to speak behind a lectern because I want to celebrate, I want us to spend a moment or two thinking about what is God is doing with us and among us.
Let’s just pause for a moment and consider what it is that we give thanks for at Harvest Thanksgiving. We can try it this way, I suppose: please raise your right hand if you believe yourselves to be part of a decaying, defensive and dwindling community which is dying on the stem. I see no hands. The fact is that the growth of worship at this church continues, the trend that began under my illustrious predecessor and to which even I have not been able to put an end. More people are worshiping at St Peter’s today than there were two or three years ago. We are growing community - none of us, I hope, has a sense of our being a declining community. Please raise your right hand if you believe that the quality of music we offer or the quality of worship we offer here is sub-standard and dull and tawdry and boring. I see no hands. That is because we have in our midst some of the finest musicians in London. I know. I have worshipped in two of our neighbouring parishes in the last fortnight and the quality of the music that we offer here from Stephen and the 10 o’clock choir through to Andrew and Dan and the 11.15 choir leave other musicians in this Deanery and Diocese standing. We are blessed with an extraordinary quality in what we offer here Sunday by Sunday. Put your hand up please if you think that the school - that we founded and that we continue to support financially and through our time - is a school which deserves a place at the bottom of the bottom most league table. I see no hands, because our school is a vibrant, lively place that children like to attend and where the quality of learning and education is good and high. We are a growing community, we offer vibrant worship, we sponsor a good and lively school. Put your hand up if you find this a depressing building that’s dark and dusty and filled with unwanted clutter like some other churches you all have visited. It isn’t. It’s warm and it’s welcoming; it’s beautiful; it’s a place of tranquillity, and a place where it is possible to feel near to God. We are a growing community, a community that offers authentic and beautiful worship, we have a wonderful school, we have a marvellous building, all this we have to give thanks for at Harvest Thanksgiving.
But there is more because in twelve months time when I address you, I don’t want to be able to say, twelve months ago I spoke to you and today St Peter’s looks the same as it did then. We have plans for the parish, we have ambitions. We want to refurbish the public address system, so that at last you can all hear what is being said at the front. We want to kit the servers out in new albs, a closer look will reveal that the ones they are wearing more properly belong in a jumble sale than in this glorious building. Those are very internal matters. We don’t stop there. We want to send the young people of our parish on pilgrimage to Canterbury, to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Becket, and learn for themselves what it means to live a holy life. We want to send our teenagers to Taize (and bring them back again, or most of them at any rate), so that they can experience what it is to be part of a global church, a world wide Christian family. We want to build a school in Angola because we believe education is important, and we believe it should be shared. We want to partner the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, a local charity which works with the poorest of the country’s poor. We don’t want to stand still and rest on our laurels: we want to grow and to build and to do more. And as I look at you, my brothers and sisters, I am more convinced than ever of what I said to the first PCC meeting I attended here, which is that I do not believe that there is anything that this community cannot achieve for God, if it is determined to do it.
That is why I am not going to retreat behind a lectern to talk to you about the financial problem that we have at the moment, because I am quite sure that once we think about it, once we focus on it, the problem will go. And the problem is quite simply this. If we are to keep going as we are now, next year, we need to raise an extra £30,000. Why? Because our utilities bills have gone up, because our insurance costs have gone up and because the costs of what we pay to the Diocese, the costs of belonging in the Church of England, have also gone up. Not because of profligacy or waste on our part, but because our bills have gone up and because we don’t expect to receive as much from giving this year as we had hoped to. We need to raise £30,000 extra just to stand still. If we want to do some of the things I have spoken about if we want to achieve some of our ambitions we need an extra £8,000. The target before us is to raise an extra £38,000 next year. I am well aware that in this of all weeks that sounds like a huge sum, but your PCC has thought about it in these terms. There are roughly 250 households associated with our parish. If every household in the parish was to look at what it gives at the moment week by week, and was to give £10 extra per month, then we would raise what we need - if the £10 was given through the Gift Aid system. Gift Aid is the Giving Plus system which means that Alistair Darling gives us money for free, if only we can be bothered to fill out the Gift Aid declaration form. £10 extra per family per month given through Gift Aid, £2.50 per family per week given through Gift Aid. £2.50 will almost buy you a tall latte in Starbucks; it will buy you I suppose almost a third of a bottle of Prosecco from Oddbins; it will almost hire you a James Bond movie for a week from Blockbuster Video. £2.50 will be beyond some of us but it will not be beyond all of us and, I dare to say, it will not be beyond most of us.
My brothers and sisters again raise your hands if you believe you are part of a community that is dying. We are not. We are eminently capable of doing this. At this time we are all thinking about what our commitments are: the global situation is making us all consider what we really value, where we really place worth, what we can really afford week by week. When you look at this building, at this community which welcomes you, when you think of our school, when you think of the music we offer here, I want to suggest that that £10 extra per family per month is easily achievable; that we will raise £38,000 and that in a year’s time we will have balanced our budget for next year, spent the extra we want to, and have grown our plans and ambitions accordingly.
In a few moments we are going to make Harvest offerings at the altar and as you come forward to bring up what represents your offering to God for this year, please think and pray about the extra that you can give, as a thanks for all we have received and to help us to continue to grow.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Sunday 5 October 2008,
Address given by the Vicar at the Parish Eucharist
I have to own up to something of an internal tussle this morning, as I debated where I should address you from - behind a lectern or not behind a lectern. Those of you who are students of politics will know that in the last year or so whether or not to speak from behind a lectern has become a rather hot issue. Mr Cameron first came to prominence when he made a speech to his party’s conference in which he shunned the lectern and strode about the platform. It was such a good idea that his rival Mr Clegg addressed his party conference this year doing exactly the same thing. The following week the Prime Minister - declaring himself a serious man for serious times - stood very firmly behind a lectern to address the party faithful; and last week, not wishing to be outdone, Mr Cameron too retreated behind a lectern there to address the gathered flock.
This morning I have to address you in serious times on a serious matter and so I suppose - following conventional political wisdom - I ought to do so from behind a lectern because I have to talk to you about one of the things that we cannot talk about in church, which is money, and giving, and that, in this of all weeks, is a serious matter that needs serious attention. But my brothers and sisters I am not going to speak to you from behind a lectern - not because these are not serious matters to which I pay serious attention. They are, and I do, but because this is Harvest Thanksgiving, when the focus of our worship is on what we have been given; it’s on what God is doing here among us; what God’s purpose is for this community; what we are achieving on his behalf; and when I speak to you about those things I am not going to hide myself behind a lectern so to do, even if it means there is nothing between me and the rotten eggs that may follow. I am not going to speak behind a lectern because I want to celebrate, I want us to spend a moment or two thinking about what is God is doing with us and among us.
Let’s just pause for a moment and consider what it is that we give thanks for at Harvest Thanksgiving. We can try it this way, I suppose: please raise your right hand if you believe yourselves to be part of a decaying, defensive and dwindling community which is dying on the stem. I see no hands. The fact is that the growth of worship at this church continues, the trend that began under my illustrious predecessor and to which even I have not been able to put an end. More people are worshiping at St Peter’s today than there were two or three years ago. We are growing community - none of us, I hope, has a sense of our being a declining community. Please raise your right hand if you believe that the quality of music we offer or the quality of worship we offer here is sub-standard and dull and tawdry and boring. I see no hands. That is because we have in our midst some of the finest musicians in London. I know. I have worshipped in two of our neighbouring parishes in the last fortnight and the quality of the music that we offer here from Stephen and the 10 o’clock choir through to Andrew and Dan and the 11.15 choir leave other musicians in this Deanery and Diocese standing. We are blessed with an extraordinary quality in what we offer here Sunday by Sunday. Put your hand up please if you think that the school - that we founded and that we continue to support financially and through our time - is a school which deserves a place at the bottom of the bottom most league table. I see no hands, because our school is a vibrant, lively place that children like to attend and where the quality of learning and education is good and high. We are a growing community, we offer vibrant worship, we sponsor a good and lively school. Put your hand up if you find this a depressing building that’s dark and dusty and filled with unwanted clutter like some other churches you all have visited. It isn’t. It’s warm and it’s welcoming; it’s beautiful; it’s a place of tranquillity, and a place where it is possible to feel near to God. We are a growing community, a community that offers authentic and beautiful worship, we have a wonderful school, we have a marvellous building, all this we have to give thanks for at Harvest Thanksgiving.
But there is more because in twelve months time when I address you, I don’t want to be able to say, twelve months ago I spoke to you and today St Peter’s looks the same as it did then. We have plans for the parish, we have ambitions. We want to refurbish the public address system, so that at last you can all hear what is being said at the front. We want to kit the servers out in new albs, a closer look will reveal that the ones they are wearing more properly belong in a jumble sale than in this glorious building. Those are very internal matters. We don’t stop there. We want to send the young people of our parish on pilgrimage to Canterbury, to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Becket, and learn for themselves what it means to live a holy life. We want to send our teenagers to Taize (and bring them back again, or most of them at any rate), so that they can experience what it is to be part of a global church, a world wide Christian family. We want to build a school in Angola because we believe education is important, and we believe it should be shared. We want to partner the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, a local charity which works with the poorest of the country’s poor. We don’t want to stand still and rest on our laurels: we want to grow and to build and to do more. And as I look at you, my brothers and sisters, I am more convinced than ever of what I said to the first PCC meeting I attended here, which is that I do not believe that there is anything that this community cannot achieve for God, if it is determined to do it.
That is why I am not going to retreat behind a lectern to talk to you about the financial problem that we have at the moment, because I am quite sure that once we think about it, once we focus on it, the problem will go. And the problem is quite simply this. If we are to keep going as we are now, next year, we need to raise an extra £30,000. Why? Because our utilities bills have gone up, because our insurance costs have gone up and because the costs of what we pay to the Diocese, the costs of belonging in the Church of England, have also gone up. Not because of profligacy or waste on our part, but because our bills have gone up and because we don’t expect to receive as much from giving this year as we had hoped to. We need to raise £30,000 extra just to stand still. If we want to do some of the things I have spoken about if we want to achieve some of our ambitions we need an extra £8,000. The target before us is to raise an extra £38,000 next year. I am well aware that in this of all weeks that sounds like a huge sum, but your PCC has thought about it in these terms. There are roughly 250 households associated with our parish. If every household in the parish was to look at what it gives at the moment week by week, and was to give £10 extra per month, then we would raise what we need - if the £10 was given through the Gift Aid system. Gift Aid is the Giving Plus system which means that Alistair Darling gives us money for free, if only we can be bothered to fill out the Gift Aid declaration form. £10 extra per family per month given through Gift Aid, £2.50 per family per week given through Gift Aid. £2.50 will almost buy you a tall latte in Starbucks; it will buy you I suppose almost a third of a bottle of Prosecco from Oddbins; it will almost hire you a James Bond movie for a week from Blockbuster Video. £2.50 will be beyond some of us but it will not be beyond all of us and, I dare to say, it will not be beyond most of us.
My brothers and sisters again raise your hands if you believe you are part of a community that is dying. We are not. We are eminently capable of doing this. At this time we are all thinking about what our commitments are: the global situation is making us all consider what we really value, where we really place worth, what we can really afford week by week. When you look at this building, at this community which welcomes you, when you think of our school, when you think of the music we offer here, I want to suggest that that £10 extra per family per month is easily achievable; that we will raise £38,000 and that in a year’s time we will have balanced our budget for next year, spent the extra we want to, and have grown our plans and ambitions accordingly.
In a few moments we are going to make Harvest offerings at the altar and as you come forward to bring up what represents your offering to God for this year, please think and pray about the extra that you can give, as a thanks for all we have received and to help us to continue to grow.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Sunday 28 September 2008, Michael and All Angels
‘You do not walk alone into the next life. With you walks your greatest friend, your guardian angel who was with you when you were born into the physical world and is with you now at the end of your earthly life’.
I quote from the homepage of the Psychics and Mediums Network, not because I am feeling the irresistible pull of the New Age but because the quote’s very existence is evidence for a hypothesis that I accept, that, in this irreligious age, angels are enjoying something of a renaissance.
They are to be found everywhere. Any Registry Office will tell you that among the most popular songs to which brides make their entrance is ‘Angels’, recorded by Robbie Williams in 1997. It has sold more than two million copies worldwide. And if musical popular culture does not convince you then perhaps visual popular culture will. Travel to Gateshead and you will see the country’s most famous and (to abuse a word) iconic piece of public art. It is Antony Gormley’s 1998 sculpture, ‘The Angel of the North’.
The sea of faith may have receded from our shores, but in its place the beating of angels’ wings resounds. Why? I will hazard three reasons for the popularity of angels and for the devotion they continue to inspire.
The first is that they bring a touch of mystery to a world which has a tendency to be information-laden, a tendency which has reached new heights in the last week. We are bombarded with data by countless media outlets: words, statistics, and images. The mention of angels brings blessed relief. They are other-worldly, ethereal, and transcendent.
The second is that they are highly personal. You can conceive of angels in any way you choose. Few will dare to correct you and tell you that your particular image of the angelic is misplaced or erroneous. So there is huge scope for the subjective imagination, for fantasy even. And the angel thus conceived will of course be your angel; your guardian indeed, your friend and your companion.
The third is that angels come doctrine-light. Conceiving of angels does not commit you to an institutional church, or to a church of any sort. It does not requite that you subscribe to any of the tiresome dogmas with which such churches have encumbered themselves – the Trinity, the Atonement, or the Ascension. Angels take their place on the pick-and-mix counter, along with crystals, copper bracelets and the Loch Ness Monster.
So what sort of response can or should we make to a culture apparently fascinated by angels, even if the angels by which it is fascinated are not recognizable to orthodox Christians?
One response, I suppose, would be to ignore the phenomenon and to concentrate on the Gospel we have received, leaving the psychic, Robbie Williams-humming, Antony Gormley-visiting hordes to stew in their ignorance. But you will have guessed that this would not be my preferred course. My preferred course would be to understand the longing for transcendence, for intimacy and for liberty that I believe the angel-fixation represents as nothing other than a contemporary version of the human longing for God, which is as old as history itself.
People yearn for mystery. All too often we serve up a vision of God which does not answer that yearning. We present God as roughly equivalent with someone you might meet in the pub, a wise soul who listens to our problems and looks kindly upon them. God is our friend, perpetually, to employ a modern cliché, ‘there for us’. Or, rather more traditionally, we present him still clinging to his cane and mortarboard, stern, disapproving, incapable of empathizing with our condition. God is the headmaster or, as Rowan Williams would have it, ‘the management’, perpetually out to trip us up and catch us out. Both presentations are useless. If God is the former, then we would be better off in the pub, where the beer is likely to be better; if God is the latter, then most of us already have to deal with tyrants domestic or professional, and don’t need to add more to the pantheon. Yet we are heirs of an apophatic tradition of spirituality, a tradition that insists that there is more that we cannot say about God than there is that we can say about him, a tradition that values silence rather than words and prayer rather than doctrine. We have something to offer those who look to angels for their dose of the transcendent, or we have nothing to offer at all.
People yearn for intimacy. All too often we serve up a vision of God which does not answer that yearning. We present God as blandly accepting, meeting us where we are, understanding our frailties and failings, weeping over them, and loving us in spite of them. Or we present him as judging us, ruling on those frailties and failings, holding us to an impossible standard, condemning us to disappoint him eternally and offering us cold, impersonal justice. Again, both presentations are useless. Warm affirmation of who we already are is not all we need; neither is everlasting censure of who we have been. Yet we are heirs of a tradition in which God was, God is and God is to come, a tradition in which God the Father loves us into being, God the Son shares our earthly life, and God the Holy Spirit promises to remake us in ways we cannot begin to imagine. We have something to offer those who look to angels for their moments of intimacy and self-knowledge, or we have nothing to offer at all.
People yearn for liberty. All too often we serve up a vision of God which does not answer that yearning. We present a faith of positions and propositions, of claims and creeds. We enact incomprehensible liturgy dressed up with esoteric language and inaccessible rites, and appear an introspective community concerned only with our own survival. Yet we are heirs of a tradition in which faith and liturgy, doctrine and worship have as their end the transformation of the world in which we are set. We seem to be prisoners of our faith; we are in fact the inheritors of a faith that may yet turn the world upside down; we serve a God whom to serve is perfect freedom. We indeed have something to offer those who look to angels for their liberty, or we have nothing to offer at all.
This is the God who I believe the angels still proclaim –a God of mystery, a God of intimacy and a God of liberty. This is the God we too must proclaim – or I fear that we in our way and our whole generation with us will be stuck, ‘loving angels instead’. Amen.
I quote from the homepage of the Psychics and Mediums Network, not because I am feeling the irresistible pull of the New Age but because the quote’s very existence is evidence for a hypothesis that I accept, that, in this irreligious age, angels are enjoying something of a renaissance.
They are to be found everywhere. Any Registry Office will tell you that among the most popular songs to which brides make their entrance is ‘Angels’, recorded by Robbie Williams in 1997. It has sold more than two million copies worldwide. And if musical popular culture does not convince you then perhaps visual popular culture will. Travel to Gateshead and you will see the country’s most famous and (to abuse a word) iconic piece of public art. It is Antony Gormley’s 1998 sculpture, ‘The Angel of the North’.
The sea of faith may have receded from our shores, but in its place the beating of angels’ wings resounds. Why? I will hazard three reasons for the popularity of angels and for the devotion they continue to inspire.
The first is that they bring a touch of mystery to a world which has a tendency to be information-laden, a tendency which has reached new heights in the last week. We are bombarded with data by countless media outlets: words, statistics, and images. The mention of angels brings blessed relief. They are other-worldly, ethereal, and transcendent.
The second is that they are highly personal. You can conceive of angels in any way you choose. Few will dare to correct you and tell you that your particular image of the angelic is misplaced or erroneous. So there is huge scope for the subjective imagination, for fantasy even. And the angel thus conceived will of course be your angel; your guardian indeed, your friend and your companion.
The third is that angels come doctrine-light. Conceiving of angels does not commit you to an institutional church, or to a church of any sort. It does not requite that you subscribe to any of the tiresome dogmas with which such churches have encumbered themselves – the Trinity, the Atonement, or the Ascension. Angels take their place on the pick-and-mix counter, along with crystals, copper bracelets and the Loch Ness Monster.
So what sort of response can or should we make to a culture apparently fascinated by angels, even if the angels by which it is fascinated are not recognizable to orthodox Christians?
One response, I suppose, would be to ignore the phenomenon and to concentrate on the Gospel we have received, leaving the psychic, Robbie Williams-humming, Antony Gormley-visiting hordes to stew in their ignorance. But you will have guessed that this would not be my preferred course. My preferred course would be to understand the longing for transcendence, for intimacy and for liberty that I believe the angel-fixation represents as nothing other than a contemporary version of the human longing for God, which is as old as history itself.
People yearn for mystery. All too often we serve up a vision of God which does not answer that yearning. We present God as roughly equivalent with someone you might meet in the pub, a wise soul who listens to our problems and looks kindly upon them. God is our friend, perpetually, to employ a modern cliché, ‘there for us’. Or, rather more traditionally, we present him still clinging to his cane and mortarboard, stern, disapproving, incapable of empathizing with our condition. God is the headmaster or, as Rowan Williams would have it, ‘the management’, perpetually out to trip us up and catch us out. Both presentations are useless. If God is the former, then we would be better off in the pub, where the beer is likely to be better; if God is the latter, then most of us already have to deal with tyrants domestic or professional, and don’t need to add more to the pantheon. Yet we are heirs of an apophatic tradition of spirituality, a tradition that insists that there is more that we cannot say about God than there is that we can say about him, a tradition that values silence rather than words and prayer rather than doctrine. We have something to offer those who look to angels for their dose of the transcendent, or we have nothing to offer at all.
People yearn for intimacy. All too often we serve up a vision of God which does not answer that yearning. We present God as blandly accepting, meeting us where we are, understanding our frailties and failings, weeping over them, and loving us in spite of them. Or we present him as judging us, ruling on those frailties and failings, holding us to an impossible standard, condemning us to disappoint him eternally and offering us cold, impersonal justice. Again, both presentations are useless. Warm affirmation of who we already are is not all we need; neither is everlasting censure of who we have been. Yet we are heirs of a tradition in which God was, God is and God is to come, a tradition in which God the Father loves us into being, God the Son shares our earthly life, and God the Holy Spirit promises to remake us in ways we cannot begin to imagine. We have something to offer those who look to angels for their moments of intimacy and self-knowledge, or we have nothing to offer at all.
People yearn for liberty. All too often we serve up a vision of God which does not answer that yearning. We present a faith of positions and propositions, of claims and creeds. We enact incomprehensible liturgy dressed up with esoteric language and inaccessible rites, and appear an introspective community concerned only with our own survival. Yet we are heirs of a tradition in which faith and liturgy, doctrine and worship have as their end the transformation of the world in which we are set. We seem to be prisoners of our faith; we are in fact the inheritors of a faith that may yet turn the world upside down; we serve a God whom to serve is perfect freedom. We indeed have something to offer those who look to angels for their liberty, or we have nothing to offer at all.
This is the God who I believe the angels still proclaim –a God of mystery, a God of intimacy and a God of liberty. This is the God we too must proclaim – or I fear that we in our way and our whole generation with us will be stuck, ‘loving angels instead’. Amen.
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