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This Sunday's Bible Readings Parish News - May 2008 Parish Gallery 2001 Homilies: October 2001 - February 2002 This Month's Calendar Thinking about Baptism Thinking about Marriage Faith & Action - inclusiveness and opportunity Aids to Prayer Children & Holy Communion Homilies: Easter-tide 2002 Homilies: May - November 2002 Parish Review 2002 Photo Page 2002 Homilies: December 2002 - February 2003 Celebrating 2003 - people in pictures Homilies: Lent & Easter-tide 2003 Ordinary Time - Sermons 2003 Pictures - summer 2003 Sermons - Advent 2003 - Epiphany 2004 Annual Reports 2007 (APCM 2008) Sermons - Lent & Easter-tide 2004 Sermons - Ordinary Time 2004 Sunday School Sermons - Advent + Christmas 2004, Epiphany 2005 Sermons - Lent & Easter 2005 Sermons - Ordinary Time 2005 St. Paul - a series from St. Cuthbert's Sermons: Advent 2005 to Trinity Sunday 2006 Sermons - Ordinary Time 2006 Sermons 2007 Sermons 2008 Contact Information for Parish of Saint Cuthbert, Benfieldside Links for Parish of Saint Cuthbert, Benfieldside Guestbook Mail Form Homilies from St. Cuthbert's It has to be said that many sermons don't get written down in any form that can be easily understood - and probably just as well. But some of them make it onto the word processor, and some of these might make it onto this site. The most recent contribution will normally be found last on this page. One of the Vicar's Lent resolutions has been to give up scripted sermons - so there are no on-line homilies for the Lenten period. But with the end of Lent you can find a new series for Easter - starting with an Easter Day sermon, 31st March 2002 A further series continues from Pentecost 2002 follow this link for most recent sermons A Sermon from Rosie Junemann Rosie is one of our two Readers-in-training. She heads up our worship group, and has preached in a variety of contexts. But this is her first 'full-blown' sermon at our main Eucharist. Sermon for Parish Eucharist - Sunday 14 October 2001 2 Kings 5. 1-3, 7-15c 2 Timothy 2.8-15 Luke 17. 11-19 Leprosy is a terrible disease. It causes damage to the nerves in the face and limbs and can lead to skin damage, blindness and disfigurement. Many people think of leprosy as extinct, but it still exists today. The World Health Organisation estimates that there are about 20 million sufferers, mainly in Asia, Africa and Central and South America. And a few cases are even diagnosed each year in the UK. The disease is now curable. But until modern times, it was regarded throughout the world with very great fear and horror. In Biblical times, the term ‘leprosy’ was used to describe not only the full disease but also various other forms of skin disease. The diagnosis and treatment of skin diseases was covered by Jewish law. [If you’re of a morbid turn of mind, you can read all about it in Leviticus 13 and 14, but it doesn’t make good bed-time reading!] The law was particularly concerned with ritual cleanness and uncleanness. All skin afflictions had to be reported to the priest, who would make a diagnosis. (I’m sure that Martin is pleased that priests no longer have that responsibility!) If the disease was diagnosed as ‘leprous’, the sufferer was regarded as both physically contagious and spiritually corrupt. He (or she!) was isolated from the rest of society and couldn’t participate in worship. The leper had to wear torn clothes, let his hair hang loose, and cry ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ so that people would avoid him. The priest’s approval and purification rites were needed before the person could re-enter the community. In today’s Old Testament and Gospel readings, we encounter a number of people with leprosy. In the Old Testament reading we hear about Naaman, who was a commander in the Syrian army. In view of the fact that Naaman was not isolated from other people and was an important and successful man, it seems likely that he was suffering from a skin disease similar to leprosy, rather than the disease itself. When his wife’s servant suggests that the prophet Elisha could cure him, he travels, with some pomp and circumstance, to Israel. He is initially angry and insulted by the prophet’s apparently offhand manner and the simplicity of his instructions. But he is persuaded by his servants to do as Elisha commanded - and he is cured. But that’s not the end of the story. Naaman returns to Elisha and declares his new faith: ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel’. In the Gospel reading, Jesus is travelling in the area between Samaria and Galilee. As he enters a village he is approached by ten lepers. In accordance with the Jewish law they are outcasts and keep their distance. But they call out and ask Jesus to have pity on them. Jesus commands them to go to the priests and, as they go on their way, they are healed. Like Naaman, one of the ten returns to his healer, to give thanks and to praise God. But what happened to the other nine? Ten people have been miraculously cured of a dreadful disease, which not only disfigured their bodies, but also made them outcasts from their families and community. When they see that they are free of the disease, we can imagine their feelings of amazement, relief and joy. We might also expect them to feel gratitude, and wonder for their healer. We know that only one returned to express his thanks. Where were the other nine? Were they in such a hurry to return to the pleasures of life that they couldn’t make time to say ‘Thank you’? Or did they refuse to acknowledge that they were made whole only through God’s healing power? Last week we met together as a church family to thank God for His creation and His many gifts to us. But we’re not always so good at giving thanks and praise. There are times when we’re so involved in enjoying the good things of life that we forget to acknowledge their source. A thankful heart can spill over into generosity of spirit. Since God has given us so many good gifts, we have much to share with others. Last week we sent Harvest gifts to the People’s Kitchen and the Church Missionary Society. But we could do so much more. Even the poorest of us in this community is rich by comparison with the refugees from Afghanistan. We are afraid to travel abroad on holiday– but they have to travel, often on foot over rough terrain. We’re concerned about what to eat today, or what to wear today – but they have no choice – and often no food or water. We are worried about our long term security, about investments and pension funds – but they have no homes and live in fear of bombing. And there are many other suffering people in the world today. The Bishop of Manchester, quoted in this week’s Church Times says: “For all the tragedy that took place on the 11 September, with the loss of nearly 7000 lives, that number is relatively small compared with the number of people who die each year through lack of clean water and poverty. Yet we do not marshall all our troops and energy…..to support the relief of poverty in the world.” It is difficult to express gratitude and wonder at times of hardship or suffering. This is particularly true at times of personal grief. But in the past few weeks I (and no doubt many others) have struggled, in the face of world events, to acknowledge God’s goodness. But God’s goodness to us encompasses more than natural and material bounty. He also gives us spiritual gifts. And it is exactly at times like these that it’s important to turn to God and say thank you. When times are tough it is God who gives us the vision of a better future. It is God who gives us hope and courage. It is God who helps us to sort out right from wrong. And it is God who surrounds us with his love. It is through our faith that we can be made well. In today’s New Testament reading we find Paul imprisoned – ‘chained like a criminal’ - and awaiting execution. But Paul rejoices while suffering – he rejoices in the hope of salvation and eternal glory, and in the faithfulness of God. And he is concerned less for himself than for others. He will ‘endure everything for the sake of God’s chosen people’. If at times of trouble we turn towards God and consider all his goodness to us, we should be able to respond not only by sharing more of our material wealth, but also through a recharging of our spiritual batteries. In the light of God’s compassion and wisdom, we can strive for love for all God’s children and for a better understanding of the cultural and religious differences between us. In today’s readings we have encountered God’s healing power at work through Elisha and Jesus. And God’s healing power is still at work in the world. If we, as individuals and as a Christian community, turn to him in faith, with thanks and praise, we and all God’s world may be restored to wholeness. Through active sharing and caring we may become ‘channels of his peace’. Remembrance Day 2001 – preached by the Revd. Martin Jackson (Micah 4.1-5; John 15.9-17) A few years ago, people were asking how long we could go on observing Remembrance Day with any real sense of its true significance. With two world wars now thankfully long past, with few left alive who served in the first of those wars, and with the survivors of the second well into their pensionable years, how long could we go on with ceremonies at war memorials and the laying of poppy wreathes in churches and village squares? But the significance has not been lost, and this year we mark Remembrance Day with a new and painful awareness. This year Remembrance Sunday falls on the 11th day of the 11th month – and it comes also exactly two months after the terrorist attack on the United States with its catastrophic taking of life in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, in the Pentagon and on those four hijacked airliners. It’s this most recent anniversary which so much disturbs us if we try to make any sense of past wars because a new dimension has been introduced - and its implications are as yet unknown. “A people without a sense of history are a people condemned to repeat history’s mistakes.” These are wise words, but our problem is to know what we can learn from the past. From which lesson do we take heed? W.H.Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939” was quoted widely after the recent terrorist attacks, written as it was on the streets of Manhattan as the Second World War broke out. It well brings out all the human uncertainties and doubts, and yet also affirms our human strivings: All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. But perhaps it is another of Auden’s poems, “Spain”, written two years earlier during the Spanish Civil War, which speaks most clearly of the dilemma of the present moment, caught between the lessons of the past and the hopes of the future. All the triumphs and advances of the past he narrates simply as “Yesterday…. But today the struggle.” “Tomorrow” may bring “the rediscovery of romantic love… the weeks of perfect communion…. But today the struggle. “Today the deliberate increase in the chances of death, The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder ….to-day the Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.” “...today the struggle.” The hope of those who gave their lives - who fought in the great wars of the Twentieth Century - was that they would bring about lasting freedom with justice, not only for themselves and their families but for peoples in other nations too. Now more than ever we need to learn from the past, and we start to learn by remembering, but it may be a new lesson that we must learn. The Prime Minister has exhorted those who doubt the wisdom of the present action against Afghanistan to remember September 11th. And surely he is right that these atrocities are a horror which must not recede in our memories. But we need also to learn the lessons of war itself, to hear the wisdom of those who have served in time of war and known its harsh realities, to remember the sacrifices of the past and the victims of war – victims on all sides and in far-off lands, whose way of life rarely enters our consciousness. Those who take a nation into war must hear the experience of those who know what is really involved. It’s rather a shame that the series “Band of Brothers” has been rather hidden in the television schedules with its main showing on BBC2 and its BBC1 repeat going out rather late at night. It’s far from being yet another celebration of how the Americans won the war, but rather an insight into the actuality of war. Soldiers dug into foxholes in the snow as they seek to hold the line, not knowing when or where the next shell is coming from or where it will land. No sense of where the enemy is for most of the time, but only the deadliness of the encounter when it comes. The strategies of Generals which are set against the ferocity of hand-to-hand combat. The regrets, isolation and alienation. The sense of futility - but matched by dogged perseverance and individual acts of heroism. And the problem of identifying the enemy: without a sense of where they are coming from, there can be no engagement with them as human beings with their own stories... Except for the brutality of battle. Perhaps our greatest problem two months into the present “war against terrorism” is to identify who the enemy really is. We are wary these days of calling anyone an “enemy,” we don’t like to cause offence or alienate potential allies, and our leaders both in this country and America are anxious to assure us about who we are not fighting. But still we are less than clear about who the enemy is. We know there is an enemy harboured in Afghanistan and we’ve taken action against that country’s brutal regime. But perhaps we are less ready to acknowledge other sources of injustice which we are more reluctant to tackle. We dodge the issue of whether similar action might be taken against other culpable but stronger nations. And we barely dare recognise our powerlessness against the havoc wrought by perhaps one unknown individual with a supply of anthrax at his disposal. “For evil to triumph it is necessary only that good men should do nothing.” Edmund Burke was right to state this, but we would be wrong not to reflect deeply upon just what men and women of goodwill may actually do. If we need to identify an enemy, then we can see the enemy has identified itself in the callous taking of so many lives on so great a scale. The enemy which must be fought is one which considers human life expendable, not least their own as they act upon a readiness to die which arises from a distorted world view and a religious impulse based on a defective response to God. But if the “enemy” considers human life of little value, then that must affect the way we fight that enemy. The resort to arms may be necessary but must be a painful one. A U.S. Secretary of State for Defense who baldly states that his bombing strategy is designed to kill as many Taleban as possible is in grave danger of mistaking humanity for labels – and to demonise the enemy is to fall into the trap of using the very same rhetoric as those we seek to fight. Of course, rhetoric is understandable. I don’t think that we in this country can fully understand how Americans must feel in the wake of September 11th. I don’t think Americans themselves will be able to come to terms with it for a very long time. And that is all the more reason to remember… Remember those lives cut short two months ago. Remember all those who before them have died in time of war. We make a start here in this church - in this community - as we seek to recognise the preciousness of each human life. Each name on the memorials in this building records the loss of someone from this community, who was a dearly-loved son, brother, husband, father. We read their names and recognise them – people like us, people who are our own flesh and blood – and we feel our own vulnerablity. In our act of remembering, we dare to call upon the name of God who sustains all life, and we look to each other who give that life true value. The prophet Micah looked forward to the time when people would say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ And that is a true hope because it is based on his understanding of the God whose nature bids us work for peace with justice for all: He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; .... for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. It is a hope to strive for, and not without cost. As we hear Jesus’ voice in our Gospel reading today: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Words spoken by one who was to die upon the Cross – for love of those who put him there. And we remember with thankfulness those millions who in time of war have laid down their own lives for the sake of others. But let the last words be those of W.H.Auden as he wrote amid the confusion of September 1939: Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame. Feast of Christ the King - preached by the Revd. Martin Jackson Eucharist – 25th November 2001 Jeremiah 23.1-6; Colossians 1.11-20; Luke 23.33-43 The new issue of Newslink, our Diocesan Newspaper, has a centrefold tribute to Bishop Alan as he comes near to the time of his retirement as Bishop of Jarrow. One of the pictures - in a gallery portraying aspects of his ministry over the past 11 years - shows him at work in a school. It reminded me of a day he spent with us in this parish: a lot of listening first of all, spending time with me, trying to understand something of our needs here… and what we are trying to do, a few visits to parishioners, and then the climax of the day – a special assembly at Shotley Bridge Infant School. Bishop Alan did just what you see him doing in the Newslink picture. He didn’t wear his episcopal robes. Instead he took them into the school and invited one of the pupils to “become” a bishop for a few minutes – and so one of the children, aged no more than seven years old, was dressed up in alb and cope and mitre with episcopal staff in hand. The Bishop kept his pectoral cross on, walking around to show it to everyone. Which left just one thing he hadn’t shown to the children – his ring, given to him when he was consecrated Bishop. It was too small just to show on his hand, so he took it off, to be passed around all 120 children in the school. The teachers and I watched with hearts in our mouths; Bishop Alan simply carried on talking quite unconcerned. And then, of course, our worst fears came true - the ring didn’t come back. Who’s got it? The children were asked, but no one seemed to know, they were all so excited and engrossed by what the Bishop had been saying. I could feel the anxiety of the teachers, when I had an inspiration. “Get the children to stand up,” I said, “and shake themselves.” And to our relief as they stood up there was a clinking sound as the ring fell from the folds in someone’s clothes onto the floor. We have much to be thankful for in Bishop Alan’s ministry. It’s been a ministry of compassion and simple kindnesses, of generosity and care, of listening to all sides and a slowness to pass judgement. He’s been ready to wrestle with issues and matters of conscience alongside individuals and groups of people, not least the marginalised – and he’s been ready to do his own wrestling with difficult issues in public, even when it’s attracted unfavourable publicity and critics have said that he has produced more confusion than enlightenment. But the fact is that Bishop Alan is a true Christian who won’t be taken in by facile solutions. In a time when people want simple answers to any questions they can be bothered to ask, Bishop Alan is often up ahead with the questions that no one else has actually faced – and in place of sound-bite answers he demonstrates the need to apply intellect, honesty and patience to the process of reasoning. And through it all he brings to bear his own faith, a faith of depth rather than one which is worn on the sleeve. I think the incident in the Infants’ School sums up so much about Bishop Alan. His desire to talk about important things coupled with an openness to the youngest of children, those who might be thought least able to understand. A Bishop who has no concern for pomp and ceremony, though he has the most profound recognition of what it is to be Deacon, Priest and Bishop in the Church of God, and who puts it into practice as a much-loved shepherd of the flock. And visibly we could see it as he came not wearing robes of office, but bearing them – not quite inviting people to put themselves in his shoes, but actually putting the children into his robes. And then frighteningly passing round that precious ring for all to handle. We’ll miss Bishop Alan, and I hope many people will be in Durham Cathedral early next month to wish him well as he moves on (it’s hard to say “retire”). But I’ve said all this really because his robes – his episcopal finery – struck me as having a bearing on today’s Feast of Christ the King. Think of royalty, and what do you think of? Perhaps that’s a difficult question to answer when the Press does so much these days to try to undermine the Royal Family and cheapen notions which have long been held dear. It’s tough being a royal when specialness and stand-offish behaviour can be so readily linked, while human fallibilities are swiftly scraped up for public rebuke. But at least a child might picture a king or queen by what they wear on the great State occasions - the dressing up and trappings of royalty, fine robes, ermine, diamond-encrusted crowns and orbs and sceptres. In fact, royalty is just great when it’s like that – its problems begin when people look beneath the trappings. If that’s a problem for today’s royal family, we have to ask if it’s a problem if we talk about “Christ the King.” Do we give any real importance to Christ’s kingship of all creation? Do we have any real sense of what it means to say that the ascended Christ rules at the right hand of God the Father? Or is it language which has had its day? Americans these days seem to outdo the citizens of this country in their enthusiasm for our royal family. Until we delve a little and realise that what they love to see here or welcome on a visit to their country, they certainly don’t want to have for themselves. And of course I need to watch the way I describe the people of this country – we’re not after all recognised as “citizens” but as “subjects” of the Crown… and that is the basis of the republican’s objection to royalty: that it requires us to be a subject people rather than a free people, each equal with one another in true citizenship. So how do we relate to Christ the King? What we see in Jesus is a king with a difference, rather like the Bishop who passes around the ring which symbolises his office without any thought of whether it would come back. Jesus comes to us, as a long-expected Messiah. As Jeremiah puts it in today’s OT Reading: “… I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” But this is a king who comes without the trappings of royalty, whose purple robe will be torn from him as he is nailed to his only earthly throne, a Cross, whose Crown will be plaited in thorns. St. Paul will look back on him in Colossians, our NT Reading, as “the head of the body, the church,” the one through whom and for whom all things are created, “and in him all things hold together.” Yet he lives among his people, not issuing divine or regal decrees of unswerving certainty, but in vulnerability and openness even to the most despised of society. When we speak of “Christ the King”, we do so because it is for the coming of his Kingdom that we pray. And each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, asking “thy Kingdom come”, we need to pray it and mean it. The kingdom of Christ is not of worldly power, of invincibility or riches untold, but the recognition of the signs of which Jesus himself spoke: “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offence at me.” The disciples had jockeyed for positions of importance in what they hoped would be a mighty kingdom ruled by Christ with them at his right hand and his left. But the Gospels leave us finally with one who hangs on a Cross under the scornful inscription “This is the King of the Jews,” where those on his right and left are two criminals, paying the price of their offences. And here it is we see what it means for Christ to be a King: it is to step down from power and exalted glory to share our human condition; to dispense with the robes and trappings of royalty to be clothed in vulnerable, mortal flesh; and to share our humanity so fully, that God’s Son may die upon the Cross – yet die with words not of condemnation but of forgiveness. As the preface to our Eucharistic Prayer will put it, Christ comes to be our great high priest and king of all creation: As king he claims dominion over all your creatures, That he may bring before your infinite majesty A kingdom of truth and life, A kingdom of holiness and grace, A kingdom of justice, love and peace. And to seek this kingdom is to live in loving relationship with Jesus Christ, the true and eternal King. Be ready! - preached by Paul Heatherington Advent Sunday 2nd December 2001 “We're doomed! Doomed” Do you remember Dad’s Army, the 60s and 70s BBC comedy? The Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard platoon led by Captain Mainwaring, the pompous bank manager played by Arthur Lowe, assisted by his chief clerk, Sergeant Wilson (John Le Mesurier). John Laurie took the part of the miserable old Scotsman, Private Frazer. "We're doomed! Doomed!” was his favourite saying. And he was ignored or laughed at as an eccentric old fool. Now imagine life somewhere in the Middle East. The weather is sunny. There is a risk of sandstorms. The pollen count is high. The temperature is 100 º F. But the outlook … that is changeable. A very old man begins building a boat in his garden. Many of his neighbours do not notice. Others simply think he is an oddball. People are living as though God did not exist. They are immoral. Their every thought is evil. They go about doing what they do. Soon, it is too late for them. They are doomed and the Flood sweeps them away. Noah was not a crank. He listened to God and he took action. In the New Testament reading, we heard Paul tell us: the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealously. We live in a 24-hour culture. We have non-stop television. We have global trade. Sporting events are beamed round the world, whenever they happen. We can find out what is happening in Afghanistan or Jerusalem, every second of every day. Closer to home you can now shop during the week at the MetroCentre until midnight! We cannot avoid reminders about the countdown to Christmas. For weeks, a television advert has been telling us that Christmas in three words is “Marks and Spencer”. Today, on Advent Sunday we think of preparing for Christmas, but for a different reason. Let me digress just for a moment. We now have a three-year cycle of Bible readings. And today is the start of a new year in the Church Calendar. It’s Year A in the Common Worship Lectionary and in this year, the Gospel we shall mainly look at will be St Matthew. As we gather here today around the Lord’s Table, isn’t it wonderful to know that the way we read the Bible week by week is the result of Christians of differing traditions cooperating and collaborating together? Our readings today are also being read up the road at St Mary’s RC Church, Blackhill and in North America, in Africa and other parts of the globe. Back to preparing for Christmas…The reading from Matthew’s Gospel reminds us: For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. There were so many hopes for the year 2000 and the rest of this Millennium. The Millennium Prayer summed them up: Let there be respect for the earth Peace for its people Love in our lives Delight in the good Forgiveness for past wrongs And from now on a new start. But what a year this year 2001 has been! Who could have ever imagined the effects on the world from events that took just a few hours on one day this year? A memorial service this week has reminded us of the Britons killed in New York. The lives of those families who lost their loved ones have been changed. For them Christmas will never be the same. This Christmas, they will recall happier times – what they did last Christmas, or perhaps some other Christmas. The Gospel reading today reminds us: Keep awake … for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Those ensnared in the tragic events of 11 September and all others involved could not have anticipated or been prepared for the losses they have suffered. Our lives have changed also… or have they? Time management gurus teach that all our tasks can be divided into four categories: * The URGENT and IMPORTANT. * The IMPORTANT but not urgent. * Those things that are urgent but NOT important * and the things that are NEITHER urgent NOR important. Time is a precious commodity we have each day. It is irreplaceable. Busying ourselves doing tasks that are not urgent and not important, by definition, means that we are wasting our time. If we are to learn the lesson of today’s Gospel, we must be prepared. It is important to live our lives knowing that one day we shall stand in the presence of the Lord. And we don’t know when that will be. Advent is a time to prepare for Christmas and to review how we spend our time. We all of us need to focus, not on the tasks that pull us about here, there and everywhere – like a persistent ringing telephone demanding to be answered – but on the tasks that are really important, because we just don’t know when the Son of Man is coming. We just don’t know. At the beginning of last century, Jews suffered a great deal in Russia. There is a story of a Rabbi who at midday every day crossed the market square in a town to go to the synagogue to say prayers. One day a Czarist policeman spoke to him as he crossed the market square. He asked the Rabbi, “Where are you going, Rabbi,?” The Rabbi answered him quietly and politely, “I don’t know.” The policeman immediately got angry and said, “What do you mean, you don’t know? Every day I see you cross the market square at this time. Every day you go to the synagogue. I’ll teach you to try to make a fool out of me.” So, he stopped the Rabbi going to the synagogue, arrested him, and threw him into prison. As he was being put into the cell, the Rabbi turned to the policeman and said, “You see, you just don’t know”. None of us knows what the future has in store for us. We do not know when our Lord will come. Before the Flood, people acted as if there were no God. We are not doomed, like them. We can take action in our lives. God is everywhere – that is everywhere we let him in. Like Noah, we can choose to allow Him into our lives and to listen to Him. We can resolve again, as in the Millennium Prayer, to make a new start. To combine the words of Matthew and Paul: … be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Ready for Christmas? - Rosie Junemann Sermon for 10am Eucharist Sunday 9 December 2001 Second in Advent Isaiah 11.1-10 Matthew 3.1-12 Are you ready for Christmas? It’s the question of the moment, isn’t it? You can hear it everywhere – at work, in the shops, at the hairdressers, even at the dentist’s. My answer has to be “No”! I do have a friend at work who had all her Christmas presents bought and wrapped by the end of October! But that’s not me! I’m afraid I’m the sort of person who can still be found wrapping presents on Christmas Eve! In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist also poses a question. Not, ‘Are you ready for Christmas?’ but ‘Are you ready for the kingdom of heaven?’ The question is an urgent one. There are still two weeks to go to Christmas. But the kingdom of heaven is imminent. It’s so close we should be able to see it, touch it, feel it! John Roberts, the Diocesan Stewardship Adviser, tells a story about a church in another diocese which started up a discussion group and advertised it through the local paper. One entry stated: ‘The discussion group will meet next Wednesday at 7 o’clock in the Community Centre. The subject for discussion will be ‘The Kingdom of Heaven – what is it and how do we get there?’ Transport will leave from the church at half past six’!! Christians pray every day: “Thy kingdom come.” But what does it mean? What is God’s kingdom? Is it a real place, like the United Kingdom? Or is it an imaginary world like Narnia or Middle Earth? Or is it an ideal state like Utopia or Atlantis? Or none of these? There are some clues in today’s readings. The prophet Isaiah tells us of a world in which the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the lion, will live in harmony, and the weak and the vulnerable will be safe. This could be the sort of world where the Pashtun and the Tajik and the Uzbek will live peaceably side by side and where the Catholic and the Protestant will happily be neighbours in the same street in Belfast. This isn’t a NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard - world where communities reject people who are homeless or mentally ill or ex-convicts or refugees from a foreign culture. This is a world where compassion and concern and gentleness rule. Isaiah’s vision was, of course, of a future for the Kingdom of Israel. We have adopted his vision of the perfect earthly kingdom as our vision of God’s perfect world – the kingdom of heaven. And we have adopted Isaiah’s vision of the perfect ruler for Israel as a prediction of the coming of Christ – Christ the King who will rule the whole world with wisdom and understanding, with justice and goodness and faithfulness. But the coming of the kingdom of heaven is not a matter of sweetness and light. John the Baptist has a powerful message for us. We cannot expect to be a part of God’s perfect world unless we are prepared to change. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were highly respected people in the Jewish society of the day; they were devout and rigorous in their practice of religion. And yet John warns them that they cannot rely on the spiritual capital of the past. People who fail to meet God’s standards, people who are useless to God, will be rooted out and destroyed. It’s as if John is saying: “It’s no good relying on the fact that you live in a Christian country, that you had a Christian upbringing and that you come to church every Sunday. You must wholly adopt God’s way of doing things and always be true to God in the way you behave.” Last week a card advertising a new business opportunity was put through my door. I was not impressed by the business opportunity but the question asked did make an impression: “Do you have a sincere and immediate desire to make a very positive change to your life?” This is what John the Baptist means when he speaks of repentance. Those who have a sincere desire to enter God’s new society must make a very positive and immediate change. They must turn away from sin, from all that keeps them apart from God, and turn towards God and the life that God wants them to live. It’s a tough message. Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed – the smallest of all seeds, which grows into a great tree. From small beginnings – from the changes which take place in the hearts and lives of individual people – God’s new society will grow into a great kingdom. God will rule over all people and all nations for all time. “Mighty things from small beginnings grow”: Jesus, the baby born in a stable, is Christ the King who breathes life into us through the Holy Spirit and who purifies and enlightens us with the fire of his presence. Jesus, the teacher and healer, is Christ the King who reveals to us the ways and the power of God. Jesus, the man who suffers and dies on the cross, is Christ the King who opens up the doors of the kingdom to all who believe in him. At Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the King of Heaven, we ask him to come to us again, to change us through his presence, to make us fit for his kingdom. As part of our Advent preparations we need to be asking ourselves: Am I ready for the Kingdom of Heaven? Am I ready for Christmas? "Are you the one?” Sermon for Advent 3 Year A - The Revd. Martin Jackson Eucharist – 16th December 2001 (Isaiah 35.1-10; James 5.7-10; Matthew 11.2-11) The other day I was in this church helping to build the stage for Shotley Bridge Junior School’s Carol Service, the major part of which was their Christmas musical “Sheikh, Rattle and Roll.” The school caretaker had enlisted the help of a friend with a pick-up to transport the staging and to carry it into the church. As we lugged the different bits in, he was full of curiosity about the church: how old is the building? - who was the architect? – and as we were getting the stage set up, he asked, what’s this? He meant the screen which separates the chancel from the nave. I didn’t want to give too technical an answer. Most of us probably just take it for granted that it’s there – we’re used to it. When one of my predecessors proposed taking it out, he apparently doctored a photograph of the church to show what it would look like without the screen. And that was enough for most of his parishioners. The screen stayed! And of course it is rather a feature, as well as being a memorial to my revered and long-lived predecessor, Canon George Harrison Ross-Lewin. It doesn’t block the view of the altar, doesn’t get in anyone’s way,… except for members of the string section in visiting orchestras who find they can’t draw their bows as fully as they might wish. But I doubt whether anyone could say what it’s real purpose is, other than to be a nice piece of woodwork and an enduring memorial to the second vicar of the parish. So why is it there? It was erected in the early 20th century, and there was probably something of a fashion for building them then. There’s one up the road at St. Ives’, Leadgate as well – it looks very similar, quite possibly by the same craftsman. But the rood screen was really a mediaeval invention. One of its purposes was to mark the division of the church between the sacred and the secular – on one side the altar in its sanctuary to be approached with awe and wonder; on the other side the congregation with all their worldly cares and concerns. Screens in some mediaeval churches and cathedrals were so solidly built-up that there was only the smallest of doors to pierce them through which the altar might be barely glimpsed. But the other purpose of the screen was to support the “rood”, the Cross which towered above the people in the nave – and that’s what you see the screen doing here in St. Cuthbert’s. Except a mediaeval “rood” would have been rather different. It wouldn’t be just a cross, but a crucifix, with a life-like, near life-size depiction of the suffering Christ held to it. And on each side there would be a figure: Mary his Mother, weeping but constant in her love for Jesus; and John the disciple who, we’re told, “Jesus loved.” And from the Cross, Jesus entrusted each to the care of the other: Mary who had given him birth to John; and John, with whom he’d shared his deepest intimacies, to Mary. Together they were a model for the Church: people would look upon this group and say – yes, it’s at the Cross that we start; it’s at the Cross that we are formed in our faith. Well that’s just about enough history of church architecture. Except to say that if you go into a church whose roots are in the East, say Greek or Russian Orthodox, you’ll see that it looks rather different. Where we have an open screen with its cross on the top, the vestige of that group of Jesus, Mary and John the Disciple, you’ll see instead a solid screen (the iconostasis) covered in icons, the sacred pictures of the Orthodox Church. There are doors in different parts of the screen through which different ministers and the priest make their way to the altar, but no one else goes through them. In the centre are the “royal doors” and it’s there that the priest stands to administer Communion; the people go up to him there as it were to the gates of heaven. What it’s important to realise is that the icons (the pictures) on the screen are not just a matter of decoration, and the screen itself is not intended simply as a barrier. Each icon speaks of the action of God in our world through his people. Each saint whose picture is fixed there is one who lives now in God’s presence. And at the centre instead of a cross, there is an icon of Christ in all his glory, the Christ whose presence fills all creation. And just as the Cross does not stand alone on a mediaeval rood screen, but includes the figures of Mary and John the disciple, so also that Orthodox picture of Christ in majesty is not alone. On his right you would see Mary – not weeping but in the glory of heaven – and you see that without her, God’s purpose could not be fulfilled through his Son. And on his left there is an icon of John, but not this time John the disciple – the John you see at Jesus’ side in an Orthodox Church is John the Baptist, or as Orthodox Christians call him, John Podromos – the Forerunner, the one who clears the way for Jesus. The other saints depicted in Orthodox icons may differ. But invariably Jesus is surrounded by Mary and John the Baptist. When Orthodox Christians enter their churches they pray before the icons, and without fail before the royal doors with that group of Christ, Mary and John the Baptist – that’s to say, this is the way to God, and Mary gives birth to God’s Son, and John the Baptist points us to him. John the Baptist points us to Jesus, but not simply by saying “This is the one you should listen to – just have faith and believe.” John himself had known what it was to be a popular preacher, to draw the crowds… who were even willing to come and listen to him in the desert, and to be baptised by him in the Jordan. But crowd-pulling was not to be the measure of John’s success. When he fell foul of King Herod, there wasn’t anyone to take his side, no petitions were drawn up or deputations sent to demand his release from prison. The Gospel-writers tell us that John had encouraged his followers to have special hopes about Jesus. Of course it might be simply that the Gospel-writers want you to think that... But what we can say is that Jesus couldn’t do anything to save John from his fate at Herod’s hands. So perhaps it’s understandable that John wondered whether this man Jesus really could be the hoped-for Messiah. He sends a question to him: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” If we talk about John as pointing the way to Jesus, we need to see that he does so as much by his doubts and questioning as by his preaching. Jesus gives an answer which echoes today’s reading from Isaiah. Not, Yes, I’m the Messiah, but simply “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them…” It’s not a straight answer, and we don’t know even if the answer he gives gets back to John. Jesus says simply, you know what you are hoping for – how does it match up with what you see? And then he adds, “blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.” Jesus could have used other words from the prophets to describe the hope of those looking for a Messiah. In the synagogue at Nazareth he’d spoken of the one who comes “to proclaim liberty to the captive.” But not here. For John the Baptist, there is to be no freedom from his prison, only the continued questioning, but a questioning in faith. John is the “Forerunner”, one who opens the way to faith, but that is a costly vocation. John is part of the “not yet” which is the mark of Advent – to hope that finally we shall see what God will give us, to live in that hope even before it is finally revealed. And that tells us all something important about Christian faith. That getting the clear-cut answer we may hope for is not the solution when it comes to Christian living. Our calling is to live in the world as it is, not to apply text-book answers as if the world ran perfectly according to the same book of rules. We need to be ready to live with the “not-yet” of Advent if we are to make sense of a world of so much contradiction, where we are confronted by real evils, where sickness comes like a betrayal, and our own actions and beliefs let us down. Yet at the same time we can live with a real hope of the Messiah who makes the lepers clean and brings life to the dead by his own resurrection. “Are you the one?” asks John the Baptist. We do not know if he hears the answer. We do know that Jesus gives the answer, that it is our hope as we live with our own anxieties and doubts. John will be remembered as the Forerunner, opening the way to faith even by his own fears. And we have our own call to Christ’s Kingdom, where even the least is greater than him. Seeing & Staying - beholding the Lamb of God Epiphany 2 Year A - The Revd. Martin Jackson Eucharist – 13.i.2002 (Isaiah 49.1-7; 1 Corinthians 1.1-9; John 1.35-42) “Look! Here is the Lamb of God,” says John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading. And he points at Jesus – this is, John tells his own disciples, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Other translations of the Gospels give the Baptist’s words as, “Behold the Lamb of God.” And when you hear those words you can’t miss an echo in some words which appear at the end of St. John’s Gospel: “Behold the man.” Again, someone pointing at Jesus – but in this case it’s Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, and he says those words about Jesus after having him flogged and humiliated before sending him to his death on the Cross. Almost a whole Gospel fits in between those two injunctions to look at Jesus: “Behold the Lamb of God,” at the start of St. John’s Gospel; “Behold the man,” at the Gospel’s end. And what do we see? Will we look upon Jesus? Over the turn of the Millenium, from September 1999 and some months into the year 2000, a statue stood on the empty fourth plinth of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. It was one of a number of commissions which have been placed there recently. Statues of subjects whose names most people can never remember occupy the other three plinths. The fourth has never been occupied in nearly two centuries, so it was thought a good idea to try out a variety of ideas. And that’s how that particular statue came to be placed there, a statue of a man – life-size, though of course that meant it looked rather under-sized against its monumental surroundings – and with the name “Ecce Homo”. People didn’t need to be told who it was. “That’s Jesus”, passers-by would say if they were asked about it. They said that despite the fact that he didn’t look particularly the way Jesus is normally depicted. No beard, and he had short hair. Plain marble, so you couldn’t tell whether his eyes were Anglo-Saxon blue or Mediterranean brown. And the sculptor, Mark Wallinger, himself admitted that he himself had no real Christian understanding of faith. But you couldn’t miss who he was. Some people thought he looked sad,… and his arms were bound behind his back and his eyes looked out across the square from beneath a plaited crown of thorns. Some felt he should have been bigger or match more closely the way Jesus has been traditionally portrayed. Many wanted the statue to be retained, because this showed Jesus who was the true subject of and reason for the Millennium. Nearly everyone was moved. And people would stop and look – in a way that people simply didn’t notice the heroes of war depicted so epically around and above him. “Ecce Homo – (literally) Behold the man.” And for the first time many people did notice him, and were made to think. And seeing him looking as “just a man”, life-size and rather unremarkable in his features, challenged many about their assumptions, perhaps made some people think about who Jesus really was and is. “Behold the Lamb of God” – Ecce Agnus Dei – says John the Baptist about Jesus. Some scholars have argued over what John means by those words “Lamb of God.” We repeat them week by week in this service, but they’re really not that clear as to what they mean. The Baptist says these words twice, once followed by a phrase familiar to us, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” But what do those words we sing before Communion mean? Sacrificial lambs were offered in the Jewish Temple, as an on-going sacrifice to be repeated day after day. But they weren’t offered for the purpose of taking sin away – more as a sign of the community’s relationship to its God, perhaps with an element of thanksgiving, or in recognition that the people knew their place… to be obedient, offering this sacrifice day-in, day-out, because they’d been told to, whether or not it seemed to accomplish anything. So what good was it to speak of someone – of Jesus - being the Lamb of God, if the lambs used in the practice of Temple religion serve their purpose only when they are dead? Perhaps the people who hear John the Baptist speak of Jesus as the Lamb of God need to hear the words with a new meaning,… like those people who saw the statue under Nelson’s Column had to look at Jesus and in a sense see him for the first time. John’s disciples would have known all about how sacrifices were to be offered for religious purposes – and the general opinion of Bible scholars is that John the Baptist and the people he mixed with weren’t too impressed by Temple worship. It represented a dead end. It was so often a matter of going through the motions without ever really getting anywhere in a relationship with God. So they wouldn’t have seen the offering of lambs as a very high priority. Perhaps if we’ve got all-too-used to singing “Jesus, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,” three times every Sunday in the Agnus Dei, and before that during the Gloria – then we need to ask, what are we saying? what does it mean? what do we expect Jesus to be doing? And is sin of very much relevance to most people’s thinking these days? “Look, here is the Lamb of God,” John tells two of his disciples. Perhaps John was thinking of the lamb eaten in the Passover meal, the reminder of how God had brought his people out of slavery in Egypt into a new way of life and a new relationship with him. But too easily people can just look back. As John speaks he points to a break from the past – God will work something new through this man, Jesus. John himself has completed his own work, he has brought the people out in crowds to hear him speak, and to be told most of all what was wrong with the way they were living. John was an angry man, indignant with so much that was rotten in the lives of individual people, of society and religion – so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that when he called Jesus the Lamb of God, he also talked about deliverance from sin. And I suspect that maybe John just didn’t know where Jesus would take people if they were to follow him. It’s as though John can see what is wrong with everything around him, but doesn’t have the answers. Does that ring a bell for us? – it’s so easy to criticise, and show people their shortcomings; rather more difficult to set a positive direction. But in saying what he does, John at least points two of his disciples towards Jesus. They hear what John says, and go off to spend time with Jesus. They follow him, we’re told. Jesus asks them what they are looking for, and their reply is to ask where he is staying. And his invitation is “Come and see.” That’s what is necessary – not to know what they are looking for, but to be ready to discover it. And it takes time and willingness. They go and see – they stay with him for the day. And we don’t hear anything of what Jesus says or what they may learn. Simply that it is the encounter, and the readiness to spend time in Jesus’ presence which changes them. Now they can say “We have found the Messiah” – this is the man who will make a difference, but they can only tell people what it means to them by saying “come and meet him for yourself!” Which is exactly what they do. “Behold the man”… “Behold the Lamb of God”. It doesn’t seem to me to be an accident that these words frame almost the whole of St. John’s Gospel. How are we to make sense of what God is saying to us? The Gospel writer’s answer is “Look at Jesus… Come and meet Jesus… Come and spend time with Jesus…” This is the second Sunday of the Epiphany season. “Epiphany” means showing something so that it can be seen for the first time, manifesting God’s presence, letting the light shine. It’s seen dramatically as the wise men worshipped the child of Bethlehem, the glory of God revealed in the vulnerability of a baby. But the Epiphany continues for us all if only we let Jesus meet us as he met those first disciples – who knew him, not because they understood what they were searching for, but because they came to him to learn… and simply to be in his presence. The words, “Behold the Lamb of God…” find their place not only on the lips of John the Baptist, but in the invitation to share Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion at the Eucharist. It’s an invitation from Jesus himself: to come to him, meet him, feed on him, learn from him, know him and love him… even as already he knows and loves us. Follow Me - The Call to Discipleship Epiphany 3 – Eucharist – The Revd. Martin Jackson 20.i.02 Isaiah 9.1-4; 1 Corinthians 1.10-18; Matthew 4.12-23 Jesus said to Simon Peter and to Andrew, his brother, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And – St. Matthew’s Gospel tells us – “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Another version of Jesus’ words that I’ve seen is "You will still be fishers, but of men." The first disciples are called to stay in the same job, but with a different catch to bring in. But fundamentally they have to make their response to Jesus’ words, “Follow me.” What does it mean to decide to follow Jesus? What difference should it make to our lives? How can we set about sharing our Christian faith with others? What does it mean to go fishing for people? Making new followers of Christ tends to be seen as much the same as bringing people to membership of the Church. Perhaps that’s our problem. “Come and join the Church!” doesn’t have quite the same ring about it as Jesus invitation “Follow me.” We need to go back time and again to see that it’s Jesus who stands at the centre of our faith – that it’s Jesus who calls to us. It’s his voice we need to hear, just like those Galilean fishermen as they worked at the lakeside. And Jesus keeps calling to us…. to everybody. But I get worried about what people hear. One of the things I’m putting off at the moment is thinking about the renewal of our church membership list, the Electoral Roll. Renewing the Electoral Roll is something we are required to do every six years. It’s the list of all the people who are considered in a formal way to be members of St. Cuthbert’s. Every parish has a Roll. The Roll tells you who can vote at our Annual Meeting, who can stand for election to the Church Council, who can get married here if they don’t live in the parish. And unfortunately it’s mainly a legal thing. The good thing is we have to throw it away every six years so that everyone has to sign up again – that’s to try to get people to think about what it means to be a member of the Church. The problem is the way the qualifications and conditions for membership are explained. Basically, to get your name on the list all that is necessary is to live within the boundaries of the parish. You don’t actually have to attend the church, unless you live outside the boundary. You should be aged 16 or over, and you should be a member of the Church of England – and if you’re not a member of the Church of England, then you can declare yourself to be a member of the Church of England. So there you are, now you know what’s involved – just look out for the forms in two or three weeks time! But I wonder if that’s really enough to get excited about? It was Groucho Marx who said that he would never want to join a club that would accept him as a member. Do we think enough about what it means to be a member of the Church? All you need to do is tick the two relevant boxes and sign the form – and that’s it for another six years! Remember, you’ve got to get the form in (I’m not wanting to out people off!). But what does it mean to you? Is membership of the Church something you can take really seriously? It’s a strange sort of membership that doesn’t tell its members what is expected of them. There’s no set of rules on the form, there’s no sense of expectation of those who sign up, there’s nothing about cost or obligation – and there’s nothing about God. Which is all very strange, because you don’t have to come to church for very long before you hear words like “We are the Body of Christ…” and “We believe in one God.” You can become a member of your local church and be more or less oblivious to that and never even put in an appearance. But actually get into church and it starts to dawn on you that our real business is about God, about finding him in Jesus and seeing him in people around us – and it’s realising that God has already found us. Actually clergy are not allowed to be members of their church’s electoral roll which rules out Harry, Dobson and me. Ian Waugh can join, but we’ll be scrubbing his name off the list once he gets ordained later this year. And it must be said that Jesus doesn’t ask his first disciples to become members of anything – and certainly not to join the Church. He invites them instead, “Follow me.” See where he is going, even if that means leaving their nets, their livelihoods and their families. Jesus shows us a direction for travel – not a comfortable club where we can dwell secure in membership. He calls… and it’s up to us to follow. He was doing the same in the Gospel we heard last Sunday. To those disciples of John the Baptist who wanted to know more about Jesus, he didn’t give a manifesto or a membership form; he simply invited them, “Come and see.” The only way they can find out about Jesus is to go and spend time with him. To get to know him, and to stay close. Yesterday I went to Durham Cathedral for the consecration of John Pritchard, our new Bishop of Jarrow. As I went in, the first person I bumped into was David Jenkins, the last Bishop of Durham. He’s a man who caused much controversy in his time, but despite all the controversy over what he said or didn’t say and all the attempts to make him into a political maverick, his faith was something that could be boiled down to just a few simple words. As we chatted, I couldn’t help thinking of them – a sort of refrain which would come into his preaching: “God is as he is in Jesus, and so there is hope.” It’s the Gospel in 11 words, 10 of them, as he would point out, with only one syllable, and the other is “Jesus”. God is as he is in Jesus, and so there is hope. That’s the heart of Christian faith. While the press tried to sell newspapers with stories of a Bishop who didn’t believe in the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection, and some elements within the Church called for him to be tried for heresy, the man himself addressed huge audiences from the back of an envelope and won the hearts of ordinary people who hadn’t been inside a church for years. For David Jenkins, faith should not be simplistic, because it was about facing difficult issues. But at the same time faith is simple, because it’s about the God who is known to us in Jesus. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people,” says Jesus to those Galilean fishermen who would be his first disciples. And we need to face the question, do we carry Christ’s message to others? Do we put Jesus at the heart of that message? Do we put Jesus at the centre of our lives… of my life? We need to keep going back to Jesus. I’m not being pious – just acknowledging the reality of things if the Church is left to itself. It’s so easy to think that being a Christian is paying lip service, or about church membership… and this is something we can get into just by signing a piece of paper. And it’s nothing new. You can see that in today’s NT reading from 1 Corinthians. Just a generation after the death and resurrection of Jesus, within a few short years of having the Christian message preached to them, members of the Church in Corinth had forgotten what it was all really about. You can feel Paul’s distress as he writes to them – a church which had split into factions, who belong to the faction that has taken Paul’s own name, or to the followers of Apollos, or those who say they “belong” to Cephas (the Apostle Peter). It’s like today’s Church where people argue over whether or not they have women priests or count themselves superior because of the size of their Sunday School or Youth Group, those who sing choruses from an Over-Head Projector ranged against those with a full choir singimng Latin settings of the Mass. And they all miss the point. Our calling is in Christ, and we have his gospel to proclaim, “so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.” “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Perhaps we wouldn’t use St. Paul’s exact words so much these days. But they bring us abruptly to face our calling as Christians – first of all to hear Jesus call us. “Follow me,” he says to the first disciples, and first Andrew and Peter, then James and John, get up and leave their nets, even their boat with their father in it. People have debated whether they were irresponsible – or perhaps they’d had time to make arrangements for their families previously, and this was simply the final leave-taking. But of course there are many ways to answer the call of discipleship. Fishermen are called from their nets, tax-collectors from their desks, and a rich young man is called to sell everything he has and give it to the poor. “No one, having put his hand to the plough and then turning back, is fit for the kingdom of God,” says Jesus. But while some are called to give up everything for the sake of following Christ, there are others equally who first find everything taken from them and then hear the call of Jesus. Like Mother Maria Skobtsova whose words are quoted in today’s pewsheet [see below] – from a rich aristocratic family in Russia, she lost all her possessions at the time of the Revolution, found her marriage break down, was forced into exile and there lost a child to meningitis. It was only then that she recognised her true calling in Christ, which took her to seek out destitute refugees in prisons, hospitals, mental asylums and in the slums, which saw that “each person is the very icon of God incarnate in the world.” This is why Christ came into the world – so that we can find him in the people around us. Under Gestapo surveillance she worked to help the Jews of Paris, even smuggling imprisoned children out of their confinement in rubbish bins. And her faith finally took her to the death camp where she died in the place of another woman. We are not all called like the first disciples, nor will most of us be Mother Maria’s. But nevertheless in the midst of daily life, we need to be able to hear the call of Jesus. Not for most of us a call to dramatic change in lifestyle, family responsibility or occupation. But nevertheless a call to see what a difference Jesus makes in our lives…. what a difference he makes to our relationships, and in our concerns about work, security and earning a living. It’s not for us to pre-judge that change. Jesus doesn’t come to fit into our comfortable assumptions or our uncomfortable prejudices. Instead he offers that invitation: “Come and see;” “Follow me.” They’re the words spoken to those first disciples, and still addressed to us – they can change a signature on an Electoral Roll form into a sign of discipleship, a mark of commitment… into a real desire that Christ’s kingdom may grow, and that we should be part of it. __________________________________________________ The bodies of fellow human beings must be treated with greater care than our own. Christian love teaches us to give our brethren not only spiritual gifts, but material gifts as well. Even our last shirt, our last piece of bread must be given to them. Personal almsgiving and the most wide-ranging social work are equally justifiable and necessary. The way to God lies through love of other people and there is no other way. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked if I was successful in my ascetic exercises or how many prostrations I made in the course of my prayers. I shall be asked, did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners: that is all I shall be asked. -- Mother Maria of Paris The World and a Wedding Epiphany 4 – Eucharist – 27.i.02 The Revd. Martin Jackson 1 Kings 17.8-16; 1 Corinthians 1.18-31; John 2.1-11 In this week’s “Church Times” you can find the first results from a survey carried out by the paper during the last year. 8,569 readers of the “Church Times” had taken the trouble to fill in a detailed questionnaire, so 3,569 of them should be a bit fed up that the paper processed just 5,000 of the answers – though it does point out that that number is five times the size of sample normally used for national surveys. Great claims are made for the findings. The people who answered are ‘the backbone of the Anglican Church – people who take their commitment seriously enough to be regular readers of the “Church Times”.’ Well,… I must admit that my main interest is to look at the appointments page to see who’s on the move, and I know very well another clergyman who looks first to see who’s died – perhaps that at least backs up this week’s main headline: “Poll reveals sharp church age divide.” But I’m sure I ought to have a look at some of the results of the survey. I’ve glanced at them so far. Here’s one for today’s Gospel reading: “Jesus really turned water into wine”. 65% of respondents agree with that statement, 26% were not certain (and sadly we may wonder whether they would know the difference) while 9% disagreed – I found that last figure surprisingly low. In total 66% of lay people agreed, though only 61% of rather more sceptical clergy. But was it the right question? I was more interested in the statement “I am helped in my faith by reading Christian books.” 84% agreed with that, 11% were not certain and only 5% disagreed. And here an impressive 91% of clergy respondents found themselves improved, against 82% of lay people. But then I was sorry not to find any further exploration of reading habits. Hopefully people are helped by reading religious books. But I wonder if they might be helped even more by reading history books, or philosophy books, or works of science; books on current affairs; or poetry – and particularly, do they read novels? Religious books are all very well – I wish clergy in particular would read more theology books. But sometimes they do leave the reader cocooned in a rather safe world of unchallenged assumptions. Religious books should teach you something about how God relates to the world, and what a difference that makes for you, but so often I wonder if their authors have the foggiest idea what the real world is really like. And if they can’t deal with the world as it really is, then what difference is it going to make if they bring God into it? So often I hear people say, I just don’t understand what is going on in today’s world… And I know what they mean. Over the last 20 years since I was ordained, the world has changed at a furious pace. In technology obviously, but also in the assumptions people make and live with, in the whole field of human relationships, in readiness to accept authority – whether that be the authority of other people, of employers, teachers, the state, or of God and the Church. When it comes to matters of moral debate we face the fundamental question, is it possible to have a moral debate? Who knows what anybody else is talking about, starting from or living with – and who has the right to tell anybody anything? That’s why I’d like to see people reading more novels – not I’m afraid historical novels which can be rather like those religious books that try to take refuge from the real world – but novels about the way people live. Books that may challenge our assumptions, open our eyes, and make us think about the way other people live. Unless we are able to come to recognise something of the reality of the world around us, how can we expect to understand the Christian’s calling in the world today? – why should we expect that anyone will listen to the Church? – and what do we think we can realistically offer? So that’s my reason for reading novels. The last one I’ve read is Tony Parson’s book “Man and Boy,” which you can pick up at Waterstone’s or W.H.Smith’s for £4.99 (it’s on offer). I’ve seen most of Tony Parsons on that high-brow show “Late Review”, though you can also read his column in the Daily Mirror, and his ex-wife, Julie Burchill, snipes at him regularly in The Guardian. “ A tabloid voice with a broadsheet mind,” one reviewer calls him. And the book exceeded my expectations. God does get a mention – or at least the Church – because there’s a wedding and a funeral in the course of things. But otherwise it’s a secular book dealing with the most pertinent of contemporary issues. Marriage breakdown, what to do with the child of the family, material expectations, the easy temptations of sex and money (thankfully, not much about drugs), and how to live in the resultant mess. And I have to say that it’s one of the most Christian books I’ve read in a long time. Because it shows how easily human self-centredness can bring about disaster in our relationships. In Genesis it’s one bite of forbidden fruit which gets Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden. In “Man and Boy” it’s one casual act written off with the words “It didn’t mean anything” - which in fact changes everything. If we live in a world where people say “There’s no such thing as Original Sin”, this proves just how wrong they are. Harry, the main character, knows where he’s gone wrong, he knows what’s really important to him in his relationship with his wife and his son, he even thinks he knows how to put it right – but it just doesn’t work. What he does doesn’t get called “sin”, yet it’s still no less capable of wreaking havoc. But it’s not just grim. It’s finding that he can’t cope on his own, it’s discovering his responsibilities and where he falls short, that points Harry on the path of Redemption – if we can use that neglected Christian term. This is a character who has to learn you can’t take love for granted, but nevertheless how there is still so much more love to be found – and unexpectedly. His journey leads him down blind alleys and back, it reveals his selfishness, stupidity and vulnerability – but then it also gives him the opportunity to recognise how he can live more fully, not only for himself but for those closest to him as well as those estranged from him. Sin and Redemption are two of the themes which never get those names attached to them. Love is named, as you might expect, but what allows love to do its work is finally Harry’s recognition of what the Christian might call Grace – the opportunity to be open to the working of love, to recognise that opportunity and to put ourselves in its way. This is a book which deals with a world where so many people say “why shouldn’t I do as I please?” - and shows them why. But it also deals with the fact of our selfish acts – and how we can live with and grow from our brokenness. Well, go and read the book perhaps. It’s got what’s probably a happy ending – but ending is not really the right name; more like fresh grounds for starting again. And as Christians we need to recognise that we live in a world where everything cannot be tied up neatly to everyone’s satisfaction – yet where our openness to God and to each other can enable us to live more fully with all life’s complexities. I’ve left that sounding terribly complicated. But if you like, “The World is a Wedding”. There’s a book has that name – and it’s a religious book! But now I’m thinking of that wedding at Cana in Galilee. A wedding is more than just the marriage of two people, and hopefully a marriage is rather more than the big day itself. But think of a wedding, and you might recognise just how much more is going on than meets the eye. All the preparations. The question of who to invite. The problems there are when people who might not get on are sat down together. The past histories of people brought together – the couple themselves, their families, the estrangements which have happened along the way, the complexity of all these relationships. And then hopes for the future and their fine balance against expectation. The wedding itself is the Feast where all these are brought together – a world in microcosm. And, for a time, time in a sense stands still. The moment of a wedding is in a sense the fulfilment of all that is past, the joining of lives, the bringing together of a diversity of people, and it has the potential to open out into a whole array of possibilities: all that lies ahead in the lives of a couple brought together in marriage; but also the future for all those other people brought together because of them, who meet for the first time, or who can no longer avoid meeting despite past hurts, and those who can re-kindle relationships which had been allowed to grow cold. The first of Jesus’ signs of glory is the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. And he does it with barely a word. There is no preaching here on Jesus’ part, no sense of what we should understand because of what he does. And perhaps that is what is so important here. What Jesus does is about relationship. He does it because his mother asks him, and not without a perhaps slightly tense discussion first (in effect, Mary: they’ve run out of wine. Jesus: so what do you expect me to do about it?). But Mary knows she can count on Jesus. Jesus knows he will not let her down. And Jesus does it too for the sake of the wedding – for all who are gathered there to celebrate. The preface to the Marriage Service tells us this wedding in Cana was “blessed by the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I used to wonder why. Wasn’t this like saying marriage is a good thing because Jesus once went to one? But this is the real point – that because Jesus was there, the celebrations could go on. The bride and the groom were not to be disappointed as the celebrations fell flat. And the guests could stay on – no one was going to leave while the wine held out, and they discovered that the best was just beginning. God calls us to his Feast. Not just to receive bread and wine in tokens which are a foretaste of his kingdom. But to the Feast of Life. To recognise the world is a wedding. To be open to all those around us. To be able to look beyond them. To understand something of lives which are quite different from our own, but nevertheless lives which God wishes to - and does - touch. He touches us in relationships we count as a blessing, and in our brokenness, sinfulness and need he reaches out with healing. And this is healing for our world in its entirety, not just the bits which are congenial to us. “The message about the cross is foolishness,” writes St. Paul in today’s NT reading. It makes a mockery of us in those very things where we count ourselves discerning and wise. But it’s our only hope – and hope for the world: “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” Presentation of Christ in the Temple - Candlemas Eucharist – 3.ii.02. Preached by Martin Jackson Malachi 3.1-5 Luke 2.22-38 Buying books always makes me feel a bit guilty. I bought several books yesterday – and was very glad to find them second-hand at reasonable prices in good condition… and they’re books I want to read (or have read and want to keep close to hand). But meanwhile I know that there are piles of books I’ve meant to read – or started, and not persevered with. One of these books I started reading when I was a curate, 20 years ago, as part of my Post-Ordination Training, and then I picked it up again when I was doing some work 5 or 6 years ago in the University’s Department of Theology. I’m still meaning to get through it. From the start, I thought that the title of the book was rather contentious.... "In Memory of Her." The book's subtitle is "A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins,” and so, without actually reading the book, I had decided straight away that this was just another instance of what seemed to be a fashionable rejigging of Christianity to fit in with contemporary, politically correct, culture. I reasoned that the words "Do this in remembrance of me," are so central to Christian understanding - Jesus says them as he takes bread and wine and commands his followers to do likewise - that this must be just another assault by fashionable feminism on the notion that we should use male language about God. In other words, when we take bread and wine in the Eucharist, we do it in obedience to Christ's command, "in memory of him." So that book title, "In memory of Her" looked like an attack on a central aspect of Christian faith. Would the argument be that we should take bread and wine, and do this, not in remembrance of him, but in remembrance of her, as if we could think of Jesus in feminine form? These are some of the fears, I think, which were to be found in much of the opposition to the ordination of women... The idea that it must be a man who stands at the altar during the Eucharist because Jesus, who gave us this sacramental meal, was himself a man. And so, conversely, the fear is that if a woman presides at the Eucharist, then it will conflict with the notion that this is the Lord's Supper - it's an argument that it is no more possible for a woman to exercise priesthood in the Eucharist than for us to take bread and wine, and use them for the worship of a feminine Christ-figure..."in memory of her." Most of us, of course, have discovered these fears to be unfounded,…. there is no problem with Jesus being male, and at the same time there is no problem with a priest being female. The argument for me is not that Jesus was male, so priests must be male, but Jesus shares in our humanity, and human beings are male and female, so it's quite appropriate – indeed necessary - that the priesthood is male and female too. But so easily we tie ourselves up with our fears and anxieties, and find that we miss the point. And the fact is that when I first picked up that book, "In Memory of Her," I jumped to the wrong conclusion. The words are not about Jesus' action in taking bread and wine at the last supper. They are words, in fact, spoken by Jesus about the woman who anointed him with costly ointment in the house of Simon the leper in Bethany. The crowd around them reproach the woman for her action - she's wasted money, she's presumed to break in on a private party, and...something else: there's an unspoken indignation that this is a woman who has been so presumptuous, entering into what is probably an all-male gathering, by the act of anointing taking up something of a priestly role. But Jesus turns on his audience in defence of the woman: "She has done a beautiful thing...she has anointed my body beforehand for burying. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her." Wherever the Gospel is proclaimed, there that woman should be remembered. The book, "In Memory of Her," was written because we have so manifestly forgotten to remember that woman and her beautiful, daring act of love for Jesus. The author, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, points out that we do not even have the record of the woman's name. Jesus commands his followers to tell of her deed "in memory of her", but the Church has forgotten even who she was. And so many other women have been forgotten too, women who have always been the majority of the Church's members, women who have worked hard, even sacrificially, but who - a few virgins and martyrs apart - have remained largely anonymous. A few years ago the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England produced a report called "Making Women Visible." It looked at the matter of the language we use in our worship, and suggested that there was considerable space for improvement simply in acknowledging that there are women present in our services - so that it is quite fitting to amend the wording that we use, and admit that Christ did not come to save all men and stop there, but that women have a place too; and that the sins we commit do not have an effect only on our “fellow men” but also on the women in our midst. Part of this is, of course, simply the need to recognise that we use language in a way which continually changes. The Alternative Service Book of 1980 made a start in modernising the language we use for worship, but rapidly it came to be seen to be inadequate – language, and wider assumptions in our society, changed rapidly in the last 20 years of the last century (I look at some of my sermons from the 1980s and can’t believe I would write them as I did). Common Worship has taken the process further. We’ve now been using it for only a little more than a year, but I wonder if we could ever again feel comfortable about returning to some of the assumptions which lay behind the services it replaced? But to "make women visible," it's important that we do more than simply tinker with the language of our worship. What do we think we are doing when we tell the stories of the Bible? Do we feel that we can tell them as if the patriarchal nature of two to three thousand year old societies really has something to say to us? Do we ever wonder what bits must have got missed out? Sarah, the wife of Abraham gets something of a mention, but when she laughs at the idea that she really can give birth to a son at the age of 90 she gets the retort, "Get back in your place, woman, and wipe that smile off your face." Deborah, in the Book of Judges, gets a fair bit of power into her hands, though it seems she was made to share it with a man,… just to keep it kosher, I suppose. It's Jael that my wife cheers for - if you don't know the story, then you should read the book of Judges: Jael is the woman who brings victory to the Israelites by driving a tent-peg through the head of the male chauvinist Sisera. But such stories might only confirm our worst suspicions. I'm truly asking, what gets left out? What about all those undervalued women who simply don't make it into the pages of the Bible? What about those who are there, but who still get left out? Today we have a case to make the point. We celebrate the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the set reading for the Gospel shows us Mary and Joseph proudly taking their son to the Temple to make the customary offerings. St. Luke's intention seems to be to show us how they fulfilled what the Jewish Law required of them, and at the same time to say that the whole of God's relationship with his people points to the coming of Jesus. And he brings this out with a "human interest" story that he's added. Luke tells us how the Holy Family are met by Simeon, who looks on Jesus and in him recognises the fulfilment of God's promise. Now Simeon can die in peace. The Messiah is here. We sing of that every time we use the Nunc Dimittis, and we shall celebrate it with a special act of worship that will conclude this morning’s service. But what so easily gets missed is that Simeon was not the only person to greet the Christ-child in the Temple that day. Luke goes on, in a short paragraph, to tell us about the widow, Anna, who for many years had fasted and prayed in the Temple. Simeon may give his blessing to the Holy Family, but look closely and you see that it is Anna who goes out and starts telling people of what she has seen. But until recently the Church's lectionary missed Anna out – the reading would end at verse 35. Perhaps it was felt that the story was too long in its entirety – but then we need to ask why it is Anna who gets missed out. Simeon looks at Jesus and says that he can die happy – but we need more than contentment in religion; we need the Anna’s of this world who will go and tell people what they’ve discovered. This is not just an academic matter. It's truly about how we read and understand the Bible, how we put it into practice. It's about who we take notice of. Do men have more authority to speak than women? Do we take more notice of white people than black? Do we only listen to people who have achieved a certain social standing? Do we pay more heed to people with a good job or money? We need to ask these questions, because God asks them when he sends us Jesus, his Son, not to be born in a palace, but to find a birth-place in the stable at Bethlehem. And our celebration today takes us to the Temple, where his family makes the offering expected only of the poor, and where his coming is greeted and spoken of by an old woman. 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