The Day of Pentecost 2012

The dubious legacy of Pentecost is that it allows the Church to behave like a man in the throes of mid-life.

We don't know how old the apostles were on the day the Spirit descended, but the story is too often told as the story of twelve men in the throes of mid-life. At Pentecost twelve men re-invent themselves, the story goes. They throw themselves into new activity. They leave behind for ever their former careers as fishermen, tax-collectors and tent-makers. They leave behind for ever the towns and villages where they have lived. They leave behind for ever the religion of their ancestors. They begin again.

Perhaps they were approaching the age at which it is not uncommon for men to re-invent themselves. Today, they acquire biker jackets, fast cars and inappropriate haircuts. Such re-invention is intended to fend off the encroachment of age. A new look, a new career, a new relationship: these are the resort of those who fear the future. Martin Smith from Croydon will never play guitar at Madison Square Gardens; he will never again receive his first-born child from the midwife;  he has lost the lean, taut physique of twenty years ago. So he re-invents himself, throwing himself into new activity that will disguise the inevitable. Because anything is better than just waiting.  

And the risk of telling the story of Pentecost as a story of energy and power, of frenzied activity, of re-birth and re-invention is that we tell Martin Smith's story - the story of a Church in the throes of mid-life, determinedly acting in the present because it is frightened of the future, frightened of waiting, frightened of God. But those who tell it thus tell it wrong. Pentecost is a story of waiting. By the time it arrives the apostles' moment for biker jackets and fast cars (or the first century Palestinian equivalents) is long gone. Christ is with them for forty days after Easter, forty days which challenge everything that they know about him, forty days which challenge everything they know about human life and human death. They are with Christ when he is taken up to heaven - and they are assured by angels of his glorious destiny. And their response is to wait, as they have been told. Despite seeing their dead friend raised, despite seeing the heavens opened to receive him, they wait. They go back to the city, back to their upper room, and they devote themselves to prayer. They do the one thing that Martin Smith would find it impossible to do.

Men in the middle of life re-invent themselves because they cannot bear to wait. The apostles are re-invented because they dare to wait. They have seen and heard mysteries beyond imagining, but their waiting is their acknowledgment that they are utterly dependent for everything on the one whom those mysteries reveal. The ministry for which they are re-invented at Pentecost is not theirs. It is never theirs. It is Christ's.

This is a truth that the Church needs to hear and that we need to hear, because the rush to activity as a displacement of or a disguise for something else is not confined to the middle of life. Waiting is no one's favourite occupation. It conjures immediate images of drab, functional rooms with hard benches and chewing-gum-spattered  floors. It is suggestive of long, uncertain, painful months while a diagnosis is reached or a bed is made available. It is reminiscent of the apprehensive agony that fills the time before the exam result is sent or the job offer is made. Yet it is because the apostles wait that the Spirit comes upon them.

If I appear in church wearing unfeasibly tight trousers or if I begin telling you about the piercings I'm planning I hope you'll remind me of what I've said this morning. The middle of life is difficult - in fact life is difficult. At whatever stage we are, the future is always uncertain and the demons of failure, envy, and anger are always threatening. Activity is always seductive and alluring. Yet activity that we devise and lead will ultimately disappoint. Such activity is the hallmark of a middle-aged, frightened Church. In the waiting places we are called to pray, we are called to be patient and we are called to be faithful. We are called to learn not to trust in our own experiences, our own wisdom, our own resources. We are called to wait on God and to rely on him alone. Everything else is vain. If we pray, if we are patient, if we are faithful, then God will find us. In rushing wind, in tongues of fire, in overwhelming love God will find us. We cannot force his hand. 'He measures us by our need'  Jeremy Taylor wrote ' and we must not measure him by our impatience'.

Look at little Jemima. We baptize her with great joy today. We baptize her although she cannot name God or worship him. We baptize her because her infancy reminds us of ours. As she is utterly dependent so are we utterly dependent. She will have to wait if she is to understand the gift poured out on her today. She is a symbol to us all of the waiting that we have to do too. Our impatience and our strength lead only to the follies of the middle of life. God's patience and God's strength lead to the glory of Pentecost. Amen.   

Ascension Day 2012

Contemporary English idiom suffers no lack of expressions employing metaphors of altitude. The psychedelic effect of taking illegal drugs, for example, is, even in this post-hippy era, still known as a 'high'. The surgical procedure that stretches the skin and removes its wrinkles is known as a 'face-lift'. The soles and heels of shoes and boots that raise their wearers several inches above the ground are known as 'platforms'. A high; a face-lift; a platform - each of these expressions employs a metaphor of altitude, of distance above the ground. Each of these metaphors implies a process of change, of altered experience.

The drug-user believes that his perceptive powers are sharpened, and senses a powerful disjunction from reality. The face-lift patient looks in the mirror and sees a younger self. The fashion victim, tottering around in her  platforms, gains height and loses the appearance of weight, or hopes to. Each goes through a process of change, of altered experience.

But for none of them is the change permanent. The high doesn't last. The effects wear off; the user crashes back to earth, sometimes with devastating consequences; and next time he has to use an even higher dosage to achieve the same effect. The face-lift doesn't last. Despite the surgeon's intervention the patient's skin continues to age; the wrinkles return; the taut flesh gives; and the operation has to be repeated if the effect is to be maintained. The platforms don't last. It's not just that no one could possibly sleep comfortably in a pair of Christian Louboutins: it's that they aren't that easy to be awake in either, as Naomi Campbell discovered when she collapsed on the catwalk while modelling a pair of Vivienne Westwood's creations.

A 'high'; a 'face-lift'; a 'platform': three metaphors of altitude, three metaphors of distance above the ground. Three metaphors which imply a process of change, of altered experience - or, rather more brutally, a process of temporary disfigurement. The heights to which drugs, cosmetic surgery and designer shoes take those who indulge in them are not heights at all. They change nothing for those who pay through the nose for them, and not infrequently lead to ill health, debt, misery, or any combination thereof. Drug abuse; body fascism; naked consumerism: three contemporary plagues.

Of course, 'Ascension' is another metaphor of altitude, of distance above the ground. It must be a metaphor because in our post-scientific era we cannot plausibly maintain that Jesus went up, that he rose through the clouds and reached a place called heaven which is just beyond our vertical horizon. 'Above us only sky' John Lennon once sang, and in a purely literal sense he was right. Above us are the great expanses of space which we are still discovering. 'Ascension' is a metaphor of altitude like the other metaphors I've mentioned, a metaphor which implies a process of change, of altered experience. At the Ascension Jesus is changed, and his disciples' experience of him is altered. And there is nothing metaphorical about that.

The change is to his physical body, the body of a carpenter from a small Galilean town, the body that has been nailed to a cross, the body that has been raised wonderfully from the tomb. After the Ascension that body can no longer be seen in the way that it has been seen for thirty-something years. The disciples cannot look him in the eye, or receive their breakfast from his wounded hands, or place their feet where his have left marks in the dust. They know that he lives; they will spend their lives proclaiming that he lives; and many of them will give their lives for their proclamation that he lives. Yet their experience of him has altered. Jesus is not confined by his wounded body, by the boundaries of space and time that confine the disciples and all of us. We can see only as far as our eyes permit; we can be heard only as far as our voices will carry; we can touch only what is within our reach. What we call the Ascension is the change in Jesus that means that there is no limit to what he can see, no place where his voice cannot be heard, and no person that is beyond his reach. Saint Paul expresses it by writing to the Ephesians that after the Ascension all things have been put under the feet of Jesus, who now 'fills all in all'. There's nowhere you can be that isn't where he is. This time I'm misquoting John Lennon.

The dubious achievement of those other metaphors of altitude, the chemical high, the reclaimed youth, the borrowed stature, is a temporary distortion. The triumphant achievement of the Ascension is everlasting glory. Everything that is, is in the presence of Jesus, crucified, risen, and ascended. That same Jesus calls us to follow him, and offers us - in place of the addiction, self-hate and inner shame that the contemporary plagues feed on - complete healing, perfect security, and unfeigned recognition. So much for the plagues. Ascension. There's a metaphor of altitude that's worth believing in. Amen. 

Vicar's Report to the Annual Parochial Church Meeting, April 2012

'This is a time for Godly ambition' said the Bishop of London. 'What would we hope to see developing here in five years time?'. Well, we've invited him back, and he'll be here on Sunday 1 July, five-and-a-half years after he issued that challenge at my collation as Vicar of St Peter's in January 2007. This, my sixth report to the Annual Meeting, seems like an appropriate moment to reflect on what we have seen develop here. What have we done?

Let me begin with some Statistics

We have grown our Electoral Roll. In 2007 it stood at 408; today it stands at 534. Inevitably that figure will shrink when a new Roll is opened next year. Inevitably it contains the names of many who've come and gone in the last five years. But nevertheless the overall picture is of growth.

We have grown our average Sunday attendance. In 2008 I reported to the APCM that it stood at 216. Today it stands at 246. Reassuringly this confirms that the growth in the Electoral Roll is the growth of a worshipping community.  

We have grown our commitment to  tax-efficient and regular giving. In 2007 100 members of the congregation had signed Gift Aid declarations in favour of St Peter's. That figure now stands at 170. In 2007 we received £35,000 annually through Standing Orders; today we receive £42,000.

We have grown the funds raised by the biennial May Fair. In 2007 our profit was just short of £16,000; last year it topped £20,000. Last year's Fair was a triumph in every respect: stripping the auction out of it gave a wonderful focus for community and children's activities. I know that all who served on the committee would want to pay particular tribute to Katherine Stephens, whose energy and industry played an immense part in the Fair's success.

Statistics are just statistics. They are not bricks and mortar. What about the Building of which we are the custodians?

We have secured long-term tenants for the crypt. As well as generating a long-term income for us this has also meant, certainly at the western end, that the fabric has been refurbished to a standard that we could only have dreamt of.

We have installed a state-of-the-art fire detection system throughout the building.

We are in the middle of the most extensive restoration and maintenance programme that the church has had in twenty years. The roofs to the Meeting and Committee Rooms have been replaced; the high-level nineteenth-century masonry is being repaired; and work is now being done to repair and clean the iconic Portico.

What about the parish's institutional structure and its human resources?

We have streamlined and modernized our structures by establishing the St Peter's Eaton Square Trading Company to receive the income from our churchyard car-parking operation, and the Pimlico St Peter Trust as an independent body that safeguards some historic assets and makes the income they generate available for spending on our mission.

All our staff, employed and self-employed, now have job descriptions and are properly on our pay-roll.

We have equipped one priest, James Mustard, to move to a good first incumbency in East Barnet; we have trained another, Mark Lowther, from his ordination as a self-supporting deacon to his taking on a stipendiary priest's role; we have played a part in nurturing the vocations to ordination of two more, David Armstrong and Philip Krinks.

Worship remains our primary purpose.

We have refreshed and re-refreshed the liturgies of the Family and Sung Eucharist, using the best of the material that Common Worship makes available. We have refreshed the ritual with which we celebrate them, and have recruited new servers and Lay Eucharistic Ministers. We have introduced special rites to commission them.

We have introduced the Parish Eucharist, enabling our congregation to worship together at key points throughout the year.

We have devised new acts of worship and established them: the occasional Taize service; the Parish Nativity Play; Christingle (celebrated at Epiphany this year); the Advent Carol Service and the Anonymous Carols (enjoyed last year by nearly 300 worshippers).

We have celebrated nearly 150 Baptisms and prepared 103 candidates for Confirmation. On Sunday that figure will rise to 115.

Discipleship was a key ambition of our last Mission Action Plan.

We have run a number of Life courses at venues in the parish but away from the church. These have offered participants the opportunity of discussing a variety of faith-related issues.

We have hosted lectures and heard from a range of guest preachers, including members of our congregation, ensuring that diverse voices are heard within these walls.

We have co-ordinated Lent and Advent programmes of teaching and worship, culminating in significant musical and liturgical events such as last year's performance of Liszt's Via Crucis.

We have reinvigorated the parish magazine, re-imagined Crossed Keys, established a Facebook group, and re-launched the website.

If all that sounds rather introspective we have also looked beyond our walls

We have established a relationship with the Victoria Business Improvement District, who have sponsored our Christmas flyer and whose Carol Service we have hosted for the last two years.

We have followed closely plans for the redevelopment of Victoria, and are registered as an interested  stakeholder by Land Securities.

We have raised funds for the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, the Passage, the St Margaret's Drop-In Centre, the Society of Mary and Martha, the Christian Aid Haiti Appeal, and for children's homes in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

We have funded the building of a school in the parish of St Joseph's, Huambo, Angola, and hope that it will be complete and open for its pupils very soon.

We have become a Fair Trade parish.

Our concert series have become well established and attract remarkable talent, an achievement that would have been impossible without the tireless commitment of Carl Muller.

We have maintained and extended the close relationship with our Primary School. One of the clergy has attended the Year 6 School Journey every year, and as well as presiding at the weekly Eucharist now we go into class to help the children write their prayers. We have overseen competitions to write a school prayer, led discussions in playtime, and, through our excellent PCC Governors, have appointed an outstanding new Head and supported her in her bold initiative to expand the School.

We regularly lead assemblies at Westminster City School, Francis Holland School and Eaton House School as well.

We have established a parish Youth Group.

Thanks

What have we done? I think we have done an awful lot: I think we have done an awful lot. One of the great privileges of serving here has been the opportunity of working with so many committed, hard-working people among our staff and volunteers.

Larry Aldridge keeps the grounds beautifully tidy and manages the lucrative white van trade which is a valuable source of our income; Susan Redwin is an unflappable book-keeper who is unfailingly efficient; the office that she shares with the equally unflappable and efficient Olivia Reed is always a happy place where my problems can be shared and solved. Our verger Douglas Longstaffe is not only able to cope with whatever he is asked to cope with - be it removal firms, May Fair storage, gluten-free Communion bread, or the Vicar's next delivery from Majestic - but he does so with immense patience and grace. Together they are a marvellous team. This was brought home to me very sharply in the weeks leading up to Easter when James had left, Mark was yet to arrive, I was the sole priest in the parish and was slowly going round the bend, and Susan, Olivia and Douglas rose to the occasion and carried me - and all of you - through.

All our musicians continue to provide us with exquisite fare. The Sung Eucharist Choir has once again offered music of the highest quality - my sincerest thanks to Andrew and to Dan - and it has been particularly good to see Andrew Sackett working with them collaboratively across the two services.

I have said goodbye to two priest colleagues since we last met. We all enjoyed Claire Maddock's ministry here. She is a wise pastor and an intelligent preacher. We were lucky to have her for a little while, and wherever she next picks up the threads of ministry will be equally lucky to have her. When we said farewell to James Mustard on Mothering Sunday I commented on his gerbil-sitting and cocktail-making skills. What I did not mention was his lively mind, his capacity for talking to anyone and everyone without any hint of condescension, and his unerring nose for those who are on the margins of the institution. I am sure he will flourish in the Diocese of St Albans. We are also about to welcome Mark, although he scarcely needs a welcome. When he expressed an interest in leaving the BBC and joining us as a stipendiary priest the Churchwardens and I gave him a very thorough grilling - but we were delighted to have the opportunity of taking on someone who we knew so well and esteemed so highly.

There is not nearly enough time for me to name all the volunteers who bear so much of the responsibility for our common life here, so let me give you just a few examples. They will hate this, because they are self-effacing people, but they are typical of those upon whom we all depend. Week after week Judith Richardson attends the Sung Eucharist, but only after she has also attended the Family Eucharist and has given time to welcoming our young servers, reassuring them, wherever necessary coaching them and, on occasion, donning an alb and serving with them. Or there are Lesley Casey, Helen Strange,Ted Gush, Nigel Gerald and Louisa  Elder, the PCC Governors of the School, all giving Ms Cottier excellent and much-valued advice and practical assistance as she negotiates with architects, caterers, teaching agencies and OFSTED. Or there is Betina Scanlon, the most recent in a series of Mums who have run the St Peter's Poppets, who has secured for it a wonderful selections of toys, offers liturgically seasonal craft activities, and has even taken it into the blogosphere.

One complaint that you will never hear me make is that this is a parish where no one is prepared to take any responsibility for anything. We are surrounded by exceptionally able, dedicated people, who give exponentially of their time and their talents, and I am very grateful.

Looking forwards

So - to repeat the Bishop's question of five years ago - 'What would we hope to see developing here in five years time?' What will St Peter's do next? When the Bishop comes on 1July we aren't simply going to invite his episcopal approval for what we've done. We're going to tell him what we'd like to do, and invite his episcopal commission. This has occupied the PCC since their residential meeting last summer. At the beginning of Lent you were all sent a draft version of our plans and these, in their final form, will be agreed by the new PCC and will form the basis of the next phase of our life together.

Underlying the plans is the purpose that I put to last year's Annual Meeting, that St Peter's exists to form disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of God's world. Underlying the plans is an acknowledgement that we have particular strengths as a community. I've touched on them already. We are good at going to Church on Sunday mornings. Our numbers are impressive. We are also good at getting stuck in. Whether it's baking cakes, moving furniture or looking over accounts, we volunteer for things and do what we say we'll do. However we also have particular weaknesses as a community. We are less good at going to Church outside Sunday morning. The great liturgies of Holy Week were this year attended by less than 10% of the Electoral Roll - disappointing for a parish of our catholic pedigree. We are less good at attending the courses and lectures offered. James was pleased that an average of 10 turned up to the last Life Course: twice that number attended the 2012 Lent course regularly, but even that is substantially less than 10% of the Electoral Roll. We have very few teenagers in the congregation - in fact very few people between the age of 13 and 30. The Bishop has asked me very pointedly why a parish of our size is sending no one to his commissioning of 2012 Young Ambassadors for Christ next week.

To gloss, our congregation of children and of thirty-something adults comes to church on Sundays, and does church-related tasks. But my sense is that many of its members would struggle to articulate very convincingly why they do either, or what the connection between them is. And that is because many of its members are as yet paying little concentrated  attention to the faith without which both going to church and supporting the church's work are ultimately rather meaningless. Faith is not getting the nourishment it needs if it is to grow and flourish.

So what are our plans for the next few years?

Let me start with what is immediate. In the weeks ahead we will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the re-consecration of the church, the Jubilee, and the arrival of the Olympics with a series of events intended to build us as a community and enhance our interdependence.

The Church will host the twentieth anniversary Dedication Festival on 6 May, the welcome return of Fathers Tillyer and Chidwick on 20 May, and a Petertide Parish Eucharist with the Bishop of London on 1 July.  The Choir will sing music from the 1952 Coronation to mark Her Majesty's Jubilee and there will be a fund-raising fete in conjunction with the PTA on 16 June. The three Olympics Sundays will be the culmination of an early summer six-week series of the best of sacred choral music from these islands over the last five hundred years. We want to leave a tangible legacy as well. Two small groups are working on proposals to renew the lighting scheme in Church and replace the four statues that we have at present with sculpture that is more worthy of the space. These projects will draw on the 2012 Appeal, which has to date raised over £60,000.

But of course we are looking beyond this year, at how we form children, young people and adults as disciples of Jesus Christ.

We believe that there is scope to increase and improve our work with the young within our immediate community and beyond it. We want to look afresh at the Poppets and at the Family Eucharist. The former has thrived for too long as the gallant work of one or two Mums and has the potential to grow and grow. The latter needs to come of age as an act of Eucharistic worship that is open to all ages - it needs to be shorter and smarter, using Godly Play, drama and all the senses to engage its congregation. We want to increase our work with the school, offering Church-based activities after school or in the holidays. We want to maintain and grow the Youth Group. And, crucially, we want to be what we are: the parish church to two secondary schools that are on our doorsteps. The pupils of Westminster City School and the Grey Coat Hospital are our parishioners, particularly when they spill out onto Victoria Street at the end of the day. We want to offer them a safe and healthy place to be in the crucial hours after school. What I have outlined amounts to a job description for a youth and children's worker, and ultimately we have the ambition to employ one, perhaps through the St Mellitus College scheme that would enable us to take on an ordinand who would work for us while training to be a priest.

We believe that we need a fresh approach to the formation of adults, one that takes account of our community's willingness to get stuck into activities, but is less inclined to commit to courses. We don't want to be the sort of church whose members go from church study group to church holiday to church book club and never encounter anyone who is not within the charmed circle. But we want to help people grow in confidence about the connections that we believe exist between baking a cake and worshipping God; between sitting on a committee and saying a prayer. We want to find places for answering the questions that we suspect they are longing to ask. We will start with an unashamedly indulgent Wholeness Day, offering complementary therapies alongside the opportunity for quiet and for spiritual counsel. We will ask people to join working parties and look to find ways of connecting the redecoration of the downstairs loos with the God-given vocation to service. We will look at how people are welcomed into St Peter's and enabled to feel at home and part of our life. We will look afresh at home groups, more regular study, pastoral visitors, and a rule of life for time-poor people.

And because we believe that formation is never undertaken for its own sake we will also place a new emphasis on the transformation of God's world. We will continue to support charities to whom we can make a real difference both through financial aid and, ideally, through recruiting volunteers. We will seek out those of our neighbours who are isolated and alone and invite them in. We will remember our responsibility to Belgravia's unseen army of domestic staff. We will build our relationship with St Joseph's Humabo. We will demonstrate our care for God's creation by conducting an environmental audit of our plant. And we will continue to write in support of prisoners of conscience identified by Amnesty International.

Lastly, we will not neglect this building and will continue to develop it so that it can play its proper part in our mission of formation and transformation. We will build a proper ramp to the portico to enable access for all. We will refurbish the Meeting and Committee Rooms and their ancillary facilities. We will refurbish this Parish Hall, creating on its south side a room that can be a base for work with the young. We will make the Welcome Room live up to its sobriquet as a cafe-style gathering space adjacent to the church itself, and easily accessible from the road, with its own toilet facility. We will attend to the office space and common parts so that the inheritance of twenty years ago and longer is preserved, enhanced, and handed on as a living legacy.

I have made many mistakes since I arrived here, but I have learned a great deal and have grown immeasurably. I believe that similar learning and growth awaits us as a parish and I look forward to it with eagerness. 'Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward'. Those words, spoken to a people who were heading towards an unimaginable future, are inscribed on our doors. They were the rallying cry of the generation that raised St Peter's from the ashes twenty years ago, just as they had been the rallying cry of my great predecessor George Wilkinson, when he was Vicar here in the late nineteenth century. They can be ours today. We go forward, confident in the God who is faithful. Thank you.

Sunday 6 May 2012, Dedication Festival

Twenty years ago the Bishop of London re-consecrated St. Peter's Eaton Square. He went around this building, raised marvellously from the ashes of the fire that had destroyed it, and in every place around the walls where a candle burns today, he inscribed the sign of the cross with the Oil of Chrism. He anointed the walls and thus consecrated this space to God.

It is this anointing that makes this building a church: not the cross hanging over me, not the altar or the font, not the hymn books and Bibles, and not the vestments and candles. The sign of the cross, inscribed in oil around our walls, marks out this plot as a sacred place. It is a place where worship is offered, prayers are said, and where, in the celebration of the sacraments, God is realized for and among his people. It is a piece of the creation given back to its creator.

Of course, worship can be offered anywhere, prayers can be said anywhere, and the sacraments can be celebrated anywhere. And they are, from boardrooms to battlefields. God is not confined to these walls; God is not contained within them; nor, in any sense, is God limited by them. But out of love God's people choose to reserve this small part of the face of the Earth for God, a small part of the face of the Earth reserved for the one who sustains the Earth out of love. Set apart for God, this place is a holy place.

The St. Peter's consecration crosses have formed the backdrop to the logo that we have used for several months in preparation for this celebration. It is on the front of your service sheets today. It ought to be a resonant image for each of us. It is not just our church that is marked with it. Every baptized person is marked with it, marked with the cross, and what is true of a building thus marked is true also of a person thus marked. Of course, any person - any person - can worship God (that is, give worth to God); any person can pray; any person can make God real for another; and many people who are not baptized do all those things and do them effectively and sacrificially. But we who are baptized, we who are inscribed with the sign of the cross, are, like this building, pieces of the creation given back to their creator. We are marked out to be spaces for God, spaces in which and from which God is offered to the world. A 'reserved' sign hangs over each of us as surely as it does over this building. We are made of the same stuff as the dust of the Earth. We are, quite literally, a part of the Earth, a part of the Earth reserved for God's presence and for God's action.

I have said often that the purpose of St Peter's is the formation of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of God's world, and disciples share a vocation with the buildings in which they worship. Disciples are consecrated to holiness. Twenty years after the re-consecration of the building the vocation to which we who have inherited the building are called is this: the  vocation to holiness, conspicuous holiness. That does not mean conspicuous religiosity, for which I have remarkably little time. Holiness implies a discipline of prayer, a habit of worship, and an irresistible tendency to make God and God's love real to and for others. Holiness means a transparency to the love of God. When strangers enter this building for the first time they often gasp in awe. The building speaks of God. We might ask ourselves whether strangers encountering us for the first time have the same response. You can judge a person by his friends. What sort of God do we appear to be the friends of?

Last October we reminded ourselves that the baptized are those who have responded to Christ's offer of love; last February we reminded ourselves that the baptized are those who have been redeemed by Christ; today we remind ourselves that the baptized are those who have been released by Christ: released to carry the God they encounter within these consecrated walls to the world outside them, released to be Christ's presence in that world, released for world-changing holiness. We are released to be pure, to be meek, to be merciful, to seek righteousness, to make peace.

'Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward'. Those words have inspired the generations who have worshipped in this place for nearly two hundred years. We are called forward, to be living stones, to be a consecrated race, to be a holy people. To the One who calls us be glory in the Church and in all creation, now and in all eternity. Amen.

Fourth Sunday of Easter, 29 April 2012, All Saints Margaret Street

The young man was going to plead guilty to a charge of burglary. He had been to prison many times before and he was about to do so again. I had expected that the twelve months that he would undoubtedly have to serve would be like water off a duck's back to him, old hand that he was. But when I arrived in the cell under Lewes Crown Court he was pacing the floor, highly agitated and utterly obsessed. Would his sentence definitely be twelve months, he wanted to know. Might it not be nine, or even six? I remember feeling righteous exasperation. He had sixty or seventy years of life ahead of him. His girlfriend was expecting their baby. He'd never had a job and he had no qualifications. I couldn't understand why he was so wound up about the prospect of a few months inside. He could do it standing on his head. It was the rest of his life, I thought, that he ought to be worrying about. I should explain that before I was ordained I practised as a barrister. For nearly twenty years I have interpreted that story as a significant signpost in my journey towards ordination. I have understood it as the moment when I realized that I would ultimately become dissatisfied with my wig and gown and the role they consigned me to. I have understood it as the moment when I became sure that I was called to a more holistically rounded role than that of a lawyer. I wasn't interested in his case. I was interested in him. I wanted to encourage him towards a better and more productive use of the years ahead of him. But last week, as I tried to write that interpretation up for you, an authentic illustration of a key stage in the vocational journey, I realized that I could no longer do so with integrity. Instead I read what I'd written and blushed for my former self. I still don't know why that young man was so agitated. Perhaps, despite his record, he was simply frightened. I wish I had met him with less righteous exasperation and more generous compassion. I wish I had schemed less about what his future life might hold and shared more in what his present life did hold. I wish I had not made him a case study and related to him better as a human person. He almost certainly needed a priest as much as he needed a lawyer, but he needed a priest who would share his fear and accompany him through it. He did not need a priest who would brush under the carpet the pain of today in the interests of an unimaginable tomorrow. He needed someone who would be for him the good shepherd who walks through the valley of the shadow of death. Father Alan's invitation to preach on vocation is the first such invitation I've received since becoming Area Director of Ordinands. By the time I sit down he may well be on his BlackBerry ensuring that it's the last. A sermon is a risky place for a preacher to attempt a re-assessment of his own story - a sermon preached when the preacher is a guest even more so. The encounter remains a seminal moment on my journey towards ordination. But whereas I once understood it as confirmatory of God's call to priesthood, I now understand it as confirmatory of the inadequate poverty of my grasp of God's call. In what appear to be our moments of greatest clarity, when God and God's purposes seem to be set out before us without any possibility of misunderstanding, then we most need to be on our guard. We never know the whole of our story. We may know that we long for bread, but we cannot know that manna will rain down from the heavens. We may know that we long for meat, but we cannot know that the skies will fill with quails. In the landscape of the wilderness of our lives, the immutable rocks around which we plot our course are revealed as shadows; the pleasant oasis where we drink our fill is revealed as a deceiving mirage; the star upon which we set our sights is revealed as a trick of the light. The discernment of what God is calling us to does not consist of our determining the things we would like to do or the things we would like to be. It does not even consist of our determining the things we would like to do for others or the things we would like to be for others. It consists of our listening to what the Spirit is saying. It consists of our asking God to reveal to us who we are, and who we are becoming. It consists of our opening ourselves up to those who know us best. It consists of our engaging with Christ's body, the Church. And above all, it consists of our waiting on God in prayer, of our daring to linger in our interior wilderness, of our conquering the shadows, the mirages and the tricks. It consists of our reading the new name that God presses into our hands. Then "...very, very occasionally," writes Rowan Williams, "around an unexpected corner or with an unexpected person, we catch a glimpse of the fire, the desert filled with flame". .

Maundy Thursday 2012

Red House stands in an unremarkable residential road in Bexleyheath, close to the principal corridors that connect London to the south-east. When William Morris moved into it in 1860, one year after his marriage to Jane Burden, its site was less cluttered. He had chosen it because the new railway meant that it was accessible from London and because it enjoyed an isolated, rural location. It was surrounded by an orchard of apples and cherries and afforded views of the Cray valley. But Morris did not conceive of the house as a romantic retreat for two. In its bricks and tiles he realized his vision of a great medieval dwelling reborn. Red House was built for friendship. Its doorways are wide and its porches spacious. Its bedrooms may be modest but its common areas are most definitely not. The grand dining hall, the airy drawing room, the long gallery and the wooden central staircase dominate. Morris was enchanted by Arthurian legends and by the myths of the high Middle Ages, and for his house he had in mind the castle keep in which the order of knights feasted, or the common home in which the band of artisans plied their trades.

So he gathered his friends, Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Swinburne, and for five years he played the feudal host. Games of hide-and-seek ranged around the corridors and mock battles were fought in the garden. The friends dined together and frolicked together, and they worked together too. It was out of their longing to fill Red House with beautiful stained glass and delicate embroidery that the company was formed that is still selling curtains and wallpaper to the home-owning public 150 years later.

Crucial to the house, crucial to the firm, crucial to the whole artistic movement of which it was the vanguard; crucial to Morris himself was friendship - the company of the like-minded with whom he consciously surrounded himself at every stage of his life.

Friendship is an overlooked theme, both of the life of Christ and of the celebration of this holy night. Rarely do we recall that around the table in the upper room there gathered a group that Christ declared to be a group of friends. Rarely do we preach about their friendship, rarely do we read about it, rarely do we think about it. Yet Christ never wrote a book or established an institution. He drew together that group. His ministry was exercised from among that group, and therefore friendship is surely a vocation that we are called to exercise, a vocation that we are called to proclaim and to live.

If I'm right, then it is a vocation that has been tightly squeezed. The Church has properly upheld the vocation of marriage and has properly upheld the vocation of celibacy, but, unhealthily obsessed with sexual practice, it has too often forgotten the primary vocation of friendship. And in the Facebook era this is desperately important. Today the architecture of friendship is disclosed not in Morris's bricks, terracotta, and brotherly horseplay, but in the idle click of a mouse at midnight. "Posner...has a host of friends, though only on the Internet, and none in the right name or even gender" as Alan Bennett shrewdly observes in The History Boys. So tonight, as we recall the last supper that Christ's friends shared, let us be recalled to the holy path of friendship.

Aelred, twelfth century Abbot of Rievaulx, asked whether a monk, called to be a brother to all in his monastery, could enjoy particular intimacy, and concluded that he could. Friendship's foundation is love, he writes, and it is sought 'not with a view to any worldly good, nor for any reason extrinsic to itself, but from the worthiness of its own nature, and the feeling of the human heart, so that it offers no advantage or reward other than itself.' Friendship is loving and it is disinterested. He goes on, writing 'My friend must be the guardian of our mutual love, or even of my very soul, so that he will preserve in faithful silence all its secrets, and whatever he sees in it that is flawed he will correct or endure it with all his strength.' Friends are stewards of one another's deepest and most sacred depths. And although in certain circumstances friendship cannot endure, still the love that underpins it must. 'If the person you love harms you, love him still. If he is such a person that you think your friendship with him should be withdrawn, still you should never withdraw your love for him...Never betray the secrets of your friendship with him, even if he betrays yours.'

Red House was sold when Burne-Jones failed Morris by refusing to live there and establish a permanent household of co-workers and friends. His plans dashed, Morris turned his back on the house that he had loved, and, bitterly disappointed, never went there again. The friends who sat at table with him failed Christ. Judas betrays him; Peter denies him; the inner circle fall asleep in the garden; they all abandon him. Only Christ is left, loving them with a self-forgetful love, comprehending the innermost secrets of their hearts, never neglecting them despite their neglect of him. Christ is the true friend, and his pattern of loving constancy is set before us tonight in Scripture and in Sacrament: we are called to be the friend he is to us.

'Even if he is chastised, even if he is hurt, even if he is handed over to be burned or is nailed to the cross, he who is a friend loves for all time' writes Aelred. In our faithfulness to God, in our fervour for the Gospel, and in our friendships with one another let us follow the Christ, our brother and our friend. Amen.

The Fifth Sunday of Lent, 25 April 2012

When I got to know Lillian she was in her early 90s. She lived on her own in Portsmouth's North End, not very far from the house where she had spent her childhood. Her family were Plymouth Brethren, but they used to attend Sunday worship at London Road Baptist Church, where they would sit in the gallery with the Callaghan family. She always remembered that in those days their son was known as Leonard.

I used to take Holy Communion to her. Her world had shrunk to one room, where she lived, ate, and slept. She saw her City Council carers every day; she saw me every month; and she received occasional visits from the niece who was all the family she had.

She was very unhappy. She had much to be unhappy about. I remember that one winter afternoon I arrived to find her sitting in almost total darkness. Four of the five lightbulbs in her room had expired, and her carer had told her that health and safety did not allow him to climb a ladder to change them. But over time I discovered that there was more to her unhappiness than the indignity of old age. She told me about the young man who had fallen in love with her more than seventy years previously. 'He was besotted' she said. Her family approved, and gave him every encouragement. He begged her to marry him. But Lillian couldn't stand him, and longed to be free of his attentions. Times were hard and the young man decided to emigrate to Australia. He would go, he said, only if Lillian would follow him and begin a new life on the far side of the world. Seeing her chance, Lillian agreed. She went with him to the dock at Southampton and waved him off, knowing full well that she would never keep her promise. She never saw him again.

Her family were furious and were determined that she would not be so headstrong again. They arranged for her to marry her cousin, and this time she had no choice. Lillian rarely spoke about her husband. I supposed that the photograph that sat on top of the television, of a man a gentle face and wavy hair, was of him. On an early visit I was surprised to pick up a teaspoon and find it emblazoned with a swastika. Her husband had been in the navy, she told me, and the teaspoon was a trophy he'd taken from a captured Nazi U-Boat.

But that was all, until one day when I was visiting another elderly parishioner, coincidentally also called Lillian. She asked after her namesake, and then enquired 'Has she ever told you about her husband?' 'No' I said. 'He was homosexual' she said 'he left her and went to live with a man'.

Suddenly the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place, and the picture the pieces revealed was of a hellish vortex. Lillian's fundamentalist Brethren upbringing; her deceit of that first suitor; her coercion into marriage; her husband whose sexual orientation would at that time have exposed him to prosecution, and would in street-fighting Portsmouth have endangered his life; his abandonment of her: all these combined to produce a toxic mix of shame, guilt, rage and disgust. She was unhappy, and her story remains one of the unhappiest I have ever heard. It is one of the reasons why I believe in redemption, which I understand as death and resurrection.

Lillian was trapped. She was trapped by her guilt at her treatment of the man who had loved her. She was trapped by her belief that as a punishment she had been married to a man who could not love her. She was trapped by the conviction that she was quite alone in the world and she was trapped by the suspicion that everyone else was happy in a way she hadn't been since those far-off days at London Road Baptist Church, where the future Prime Minister's sister had played the piano for the Sunday School.

It is easy to dismiss the notion of redemption as a concept belonging solely to the market place, as a sub-Christian theology, unworthy of the God who is love. But Lillian was trapped by her guilt at her deceit, by her belief in her punishment and by her conviction of her isolation. She was powerless to free herself. She needed to be redeemed. She needed to take hold of her Baptism. She needed to believe that God had forgiven her her deceit of that young man. She needed to believe that her marriage was not a punishment but a tragedy, for her and for her husband. She needed to believe that she was not alone. But the belief that she had been forgiven, the belief that she had not been punished and the belief that she was not alone was, to Lillian, belief that was cross-shaped. For Lillian to believe that she was forgiven; for her to believe that she was not the victim of a cosmic punishment; for her to believe that she was not alone, she would have had to surrender the foundation stones that had constituted her identity for over sixty years. She would have had to die to self and be born anew. And that death and resurrection - that redemption - is, I believe, made possible only by the grace of God's Holy Spirit.

That is what it is to be redeemed. It is to give up whatever we cling to most closely, and to re-discover ourselves as nothing less and nothing more than the beloved children of God. It is to die and to be re-born.

I wish I could offer you a post-script, a happy ending to Lillian's story, but I can't. I often sat with her, longing that through the Scriptures, through the sacrament of Holy Communion, or, more particularly, through my wise words, she might take hold of her Baptism and might believe herself forgiven and beloved. But she did not. When I left Portsmouth she was still unhappy, and she died some years later. And this apparently unhappy ending taught me one of the things from which I need to be redeemed - the false vanity of priesthood which takes itself too seriously. I am still learning, even though there is unimpeachable precedent for the Lord being carried on the shoulders of an ass.

Of course I don't know how Lillian's story really ends, if it has ended, for it ends with the One with whom it began, with whom all our stories began. We have been plunged into the cleansing, killing waters of Baptism, there to die and to be re-born. We are redeemed. And the One who has redeemed us is faithful, and he will complete his work.