Sunday 17 March 2024

Lent 5 2024

Genesis 2.4b-8, John 19.25b-27

You might be wondering why, on this Mothering Sunday, I chose the passage from the book of Genesis we heard today for our first reading. It might not seem to have any obvious connection, but bear with me, because it seems to me it does contain a birth, of sorts. 


God reaches down into the soil of the earth he’s just made, scoops up some handfuls of it, and makes a mudpie in the shape of a human being, this new thing he’s just thought of. Then God breathes his own breath into it – the same Hebrew word used to describe the Holy Spirit – and the creature becomes a living being. 


I’ve given birth twice, and, I have to say, it was rather different from this serene description, but it had some things in common with it. Firstly, both experiences involved the arrival in the world of a new creature, a whole new person, with their own life to live, their own thoughts to think; and, secondly, both were very definitely physical experiences. Creation, whether it’s the creation of Adam from the earth, or the birth of a baby, is a physical business; mud, blood, water, sweat, tears, mess... And in the case of birth that’s just the beginning. Parenting goes on being a physical activity, to do with bodies; feeding them, washing them, changing them, holding them, carrying them. You can’t do parenting in a “hands off”, cerebral way, from afar. It has to be hands-on, sometimes quite exhaustingly so. 


And studies have shown that touch – the physicality of childcare - isn’t just important for practical reasons. It also creates a bond between parents and their children which helps them to develop emotionally and socially too. We can’t live disembodied lives. Matter matters. 


That word “matter” is an interesting one, and worth a little digression. Linguistic experts say that it comes, in a slightly convoluted way, from the same ancient root as the word “mother”. In Latin it’s more obvious. Mother is “mater”, matter is “materia”. It’s the single syllable “ma” that seems to be the link, a syllable which is part of the word for mother in an astonishingly wide range of languages; mum, maman, mutter, amma, majke, matka, makuahine. That last one is Hawaiian; this isn’t just a European thing. 


“Ma” is the easiest syllable to pronounce, and very often the first one babies babble when they are learning to make sounds. Through most of human history, mothers, breastfeeding their babies, would have been the first to hear and respond to those  “mama” sounds.  And because “ma” seemed to get a response from their mothers, it became the name their babies called them. And because mothers bring us into being physically, “ma” also came to mean the source or origin of physical life. We can’t become “matter” except through our “mater”.


Let’s follow that linguistic thread a bit further, though. We use the word “matter” not just as a noun, to describe physical stuff, the matter of the universe. We also use it as a verb, a doing word. I matter, you matter, it matters, we say of people and things that are significant to us. That’s not a coincidence. When we say that someone matters to us, we are saying that they are part of our life, our world, that we can’t ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. They aren’t just a face in the crowd, a name on a list, an idea in our heads, but a real physical being that occupies space in our heads and hearts.   


Mothers – maters - bring matter into being, and that matter matters, to them, and to the children they bear. Mothers and their children may have good or bad relationships. They may become estranged or lose one another through death. They may never know one another at all, but they can’t pretend they didn’t exist, even if only as a distant memory, or a question without answers, a gap that they wonder about. 


But of course, it isn’t just biological mothers and children who matter to one another, who occupy significant spaces in our lives, and that’s why it’s so important that this isn’t “Mother’s Day” as far as the Church is concerned; it’s Mothering Sunday. Biology isn’t the be all and end all of mothering – it’s not even close - and it never has been. TheHawaiian word for mother illustrates that, makuahine, can refer to any adult female who cares for you – aunts, grandmas, cousins, friends. They are all “ma”. That reflects the reality of mothering throughout human history. Death, disease and economic pressures have often meant that children didn’t have their biological mothers around or available. But other people could step in to help and be every bit as good as those lost mothers. Fathers can mother and often do. So can big brothers and sisters, friends, guardians, godparents, neighbours, church members, teachers, leaders of groups and clubs who encourage and care and support. It takes a village to raise a child, as they say. Blessed is the child who has many mothers.


That’s why the few verses we heard in our Gospel story are so good to hear today. Jesus hangs on the cross, close to death. According to John’s Gospel only a few of his followers have found the courage to stay with him – an unnamed disciple described as the “disciple Jesus loved”, often assumed to be John, and a small group of women, including his own mother, Mary. Jesus looks at Mary and he looks at John, and he sees a mother who will soon lose her child, and a man who will need love and support as he mourns the loss of his friend. And in a wonderfully tender and brave moment, this dying man entrusts them to each other – “Here is your son…Here is your mother… You need each other.” They may not be biologically related, but that doesn’t mean they can’t matter to one another just as if they were. Mary will matter to John. John will matter to Mary. 


The early church treasured and preserved this story partly because many of them didn’t have families of their own to relate to. Sometimes following Christ had estranged them from their families. Some were enslaved, torn apart from their families. Some were vulnerable widows or orphans, or had fallen through the cracks of society. But they found in Christ a new place of belonging, with new sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers in their church families, people to whom they mattered and who mattered to them. Biological relationships, precious and important as they can be, don’t say everything there is to say about love. Love is bigger than biology.


When God creates that first mudpie creature, and breathes his own life into it, he declares that all matter matters to him, that all creatures are beloved . He reminds us that whatever the size and shape of our biological family, however happy – or not – it is, we are also part of a wider family, which is girded around with the love of God which is broader and higher and deeper than anything we can ask or imagine. 


This Mothering Sunday, then, let us give thanks for all who mother us or have ever mothered us, and all those whom we mother, and pray for the grace of God to see that in his eyes, everyone matters. 

Amen 


Saturday 16 March 2024

Mothering Sunday 2024

 Genesis 2.4b-8, John 19.25b-27

You might be wondering why, on this Mothering Sunday, I chose the passage from the book of Genesis we heard today for our first reading. It might not seem to have any obvious connection, but bear with me, because it seems to me it does contain a birth, of sorts. 


God reaches down into the soil of the earth he’s just made, scoops up some handfuls of it, and makes a mudpie in the shape of a human being, this new thing he’s just thought of. Then God breathes his own breath into it – the same Hebrew word used to describe the Holy Spirit – and the creature becomes a living being. 


I’ve given birth twice, and, I have to say, it was rather different from this serene description, but it had some things in common with it. Firstly, both experiences involved the arrival in the world of a new creature, a whole new person, with their own life to live, their own thoughts to think; and, secondly, both were very definitely physical experiences. Creation, whether it’s the creation of Adam from the earth, or the birth of a baby, is a physical business; mud, blood, water, sweat, tears, mess... And in the case of birth that’s just the beginning. Parenting goes on being a physical activity, to do with bodies; feeding them, washing them, changing them, holding them, carrying them. You can’t do parenting in a “hands off”, cerebral way, from afar. It has to be hands-on, sometimes quite exhaustingly so. 


And studies have shown that touch – the physicality of childcare - isn’t just important for practical reasons. It also creates a bond between parents and their children which helps them to develop emotionally and socially too. We can’t live disembodied lives. Matter matters. 


That word “matter” is an interesting one, and worth a little digression. Linguistic experts say that it comes, in a slightly convoluted way, from the same ancient root as the word “mother”. In Latin it’s more obvious. Mother is “mater”, matter is “materia”. It’s the single syllable “ma” that seems to be the link, a syllable which is part of the word for mother in an astonishingly wide range of languages; mum, maman, mutter, amma, majke, matka, makuahine. That last one is Hawaiian; this isn’t just a European thing. 


“Ma” is the easiest syllable to pronounce, and very often the first one babies babble when they are learning to make sounds. Through most of human history, mothers, breastfeeding their babies, would have been the first to hear and respond to those  “mama” sounds.  And because “ma” seemed to get a response from their mothers, it became the name their babies called them. And because mothers bring us into being physically, “ma” also came to mean the source or origin of physical life. We can’t become “matter” except through our “mater”.


Let’s follow that linguistic thread a bit further, though. We use the word “matter” not just as a noun, to describe physical stuff, the matter of the universe. We also use it as a verb, a doing word. I matter, you matter, it matters, we say of people and things that are significant to us. That’s not a coincidence. When we say that someone matters to us, we are saying that they are part of our life, our world, that we can’t ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. They aren’t just a face in the crowd, a name on a list, an idea in our heads, but a real physical being that occupies space in our heads and hearts.   


Mothers – maters - bring matter into being, and that matter matters, to them, and to the children they bear. Mothers and their children may have good or bad relationships. They may become estranged or lose one another through death. They may never know one another at all, but they can’t pretend they didn’t exist, even if only as a distant memory, or a question without answers, a gap that they wonder about. 


But of course, it isn’t just biological mothers and children who matter to one another, who occupy significant spaces in our lives, and that’s why it’s so important that this isn’t “Mother’s Day” as far as the Church is concerned; it’s Mothering Sunday. Biology isn’t the be all and end all of mothering – it’s not even close - and it never has been. TheHawaiian word for mother illustrates that, makuahine, can refer to any adult female who cares for you – aunts, grandmas, cousins, friends. They are all “ma”. That reflects the reality of mothering throughout human history. Death, disease and economic pressures have often meant that children didn’t have their biological mothers around or available. But other people could step in to help and be every bit as good as those lost mothers. Fathers can mother and often do. So can big brothers and sisters, friends, guardians, godparents, neighbours, church members, teachers, leaders of groups and clubs who encourage and care and support. It takes a village to raise a child, as they say. Blessed is the child who has many mothers.


That’s why the few verses we heard in our Gospel story are so good to hear today. Jesus hangs on the cross, close to death. According to John’s Gospel only a few of his followers have found the courage to stay with him – an unnamed disciple described as the “disciple Jesus loved”, often assumed to be John, and a small group of women, including his own mother, Mary. Jesus looks at Mary and he looks at John, and he sees a mother who will soon lose her child, and a man who will need love and support as he mourns the loss of his friend. And in a wonderfully tender and brave moment, this dying man entrusts them to each other – “Here is your son…Here is your mother… You need each other.” They may not be biologically related, but that doesn’t mean they can’t matter to one another just as if they were. Mary will matter to John. John will matter to Mary. 


The early church treasured and preserved this story partly because many of them didn’t have families of their own to relate to. Sometimes following Christ had estranged them from their families. Some were enslaved, torn apart from their families. Some were vulnerable widows or orphans, or had fallen through the cracks of society. But they found in Christ a new place of belonging, with new sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers in their church families, people to whom they mattered and who mattered to them. Biological relationships, precious and important as they can be, don’t say everything there is to say about love. Love is bigger than biology.


When God creates that first mudpie creature, and breathes his own life into it, he declares that all matter matters to him, that all creatures are beloved . He reminds us that whatever the size and shape of our biological family, however happy – or not – it is, we are also part of a wider family, which is girded around with the love of God which is broader and higher and deeper than anything we can ask or imagine. 


This Mothering Sunday, then, let us give thanks for all who mother us or have ever mothered us, and all those whom we mother, and pray for the grace of God to see that in his eyes, everyone matters. 

Amen 


Lent 3 2024

Exodus 20.1-17, Psalm 19, 1 Cor 1.18-25, John 2.13-22


I wonder what rules your household lives by? Every household has rules, whether we realise it or not. Do you expect people to take their shoes off at the door, for example? And what happens at meal times – do you eat at the table, or on your laps, together or separately, tv on or off,? As a visitor you usually only discover household rules when you break them, when you realise everyone else is looking at you oddly, perhaps too polite to say “we don’t do that in our household”, but uncomfortable nonetheless. 


Household rules can be a huge source of tension. It’s always the small things, of course, the unwashed teaspoon left on the kitchen counter, the person who finishes the last of the milk and doesn’t do anything to replace it. But often the small things are the big things, or at least they are symbols of them, signs of peoples’ respect and care for one another, or their lack of it.  


How do we live together? That’s the central question. And it’s one we all have to answer, whatever the size, shape or nature of the community we call our household. To the people who wrote the Bible, household meant meant everyone who shared your life in some way; extended family, servants, close friends – anyone whom you supported or who supported you. That still seems to me to be a useful concept, because however small our personal households are – even just one person – we are all part of networks of relationships; neighbours, colleagues at work, friends, fellow church members… Our Lent course this year is looking at the household values of our church, what we do and how we do it here at Seal, as a help towards the next stage of the Churches life after I retire in July. We belong to, and relate to, many different groups of people. The Greek word for household is “oikos”; it gives us “economy”, and “ecology”, both words which remind us of the interlinking of our lives, and the way every living thing depends on and affects every other living thing in the end. Ultimately, we are all part of the community of this one world. We all have to share the same space, whether we like it or not.  “No man is an island”, said John Donne – and no woman either.


Today’s Gospel reading has a clash of household values at its heart. Jesus comes storming into the Temple in Jerusalem, driving out the traders and money-changers who have set up shop there. They were selling sacrificial animals to worshippers, and changing the coins they used in daily life, often decorated with images of emperors and pagan gods, into coins acceptable in this sacred space. So what was it that offended Jesus so much? Opinions differ. It might have been trading in this sacred space, but for Temple worship to happen at all it had to happen somewhere . It might have been that the traders were ripping off the worshippers – there will always be someone looking to turn a quick profit. But the most likely explanation is that it was where they were trading that was the problem, in the Court of the Gentiles, the only place where non-Jews could pray in this vast complex, squeezing them out of their place in the Temple. That would fit with Jesus’ wider message that all were welcome and should have equal access to God. Fundamentally, though, it seems to me that he was angry because these traders, and the Temple authorities who allowed them to be there, had forgotten whose Temple this was. “Stop making my Father’s house a market place”. If the Temple was a household, who was its head? The High Priest? The Temple authorities? No. It was God. 


By the time of Jesus, the Temple had become a powerful symbol of the presence of God, and of the household of Israel, a place where people came to encounter God, and be reminded of their common identity as his people. But religious buildings can be a problem as well as a blessing. Ironically according to the Old Testament, God hadn’t ever really wanted a Temple in the first place; the danger was that people would see it not as a symbol of his presence in and among them, but as a box to contain him, separating him from the rest of their lives and giving those who controlled the building the idea that they could also control people’s access to God. And that’s what seems to be happening here. The small things are the big things; giving these traders permission to take up space which excluded others was a sign that the Temple authorities thought they were in charge. Jesus’ angry outburst challenges that. This is not their house; it is God’s. They are not the head of this household; God is. 


Our Old Testament reading today makes the same point. It comes from the book of Exodus the account of Moses leading the people of Israel out of Egypt – out of the house of slavery, as the reading puts it - towards the Promised Land. As they trek across the desert this rather random bunch of people have to form a community. They will eventually become the nation of Israel, so they have to work out what their shared life might look like’

 

The Ten Commandments, as we call them, were intended to be a summary of their household rules and values, the way they would do things, their basic attitudes, and the way these commandments are structured makes it crystal clear that it all has to start with letting God be God. 


The first three commandments emphasize that; there is only one God, that they shouldn’t make or worship idols, they shouldn’t take God’s name in vain. This is the God who rescued them from Egypt, the God who has committed himself to them. He has shown his faithful love by the provision he’s made for them as they travelled, water from rocks, manna in the wilderness. He is a God who can be trusted.


The fourth commandment, to honour the Sabbath day, forms a bridge into the rest of them. It makes the vital link. They don’t have to labour ceaselessly, as they did when they were slaves, because God knows their need and meets it. There is enough. They don’t have to shore up anxiously their own place in the world, because God has their backs They don’t have to exploit others, either, making them labour without rest. Nor do they need to kill or steal or covet or bear false witness or neglect their commitments to parents and spouses, manipulating and cheating to make themselves feel secure, because they are secure, safe in the hands of God if only they will dare to trust that. 


The Ten commandments challenge us to ask ourselves where our faith, where our household values, are really rooted, whether that’s the household of our immediate family, our church, our nation or our world. Are they rooted in ourselves, our own achievements and anxious striving, or in God’s love. When he clears the Temple, Jesus makes the same challenge to the people of his own time. Ultimately, this Temple will be destroyed. In AD70, the Romans smash it to the ground. It provoked a huge crisis for Jews and Christians alike, and John’s Gospel was written with that traumatic event  very much in mind. Jesus’ promise to raise it up the Temple again in his own body is a reminder to us that God doesn’t need a “bricks and mortar” meeting place for us to encounter him. We meet him in Christ, in one another, in the eucharist, in the word of God, and in all his creation, which is his dwelling place, his household where all are welcome. 

Amen



Lent 2 2024

Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16, Mark 8. 31-end


Human beings are natural storytellers. We tell stories about where we’ve been, what we’ve done, who we’ve met and how we’ve felt about it all. We tell stories about what happened today – “the traffic was horrendous on the way here” . That’s a story – albeit a short and probably not very interesting one. We tell stories about what happened long ago – “And just after that photo was taken, I took a step back and fell in the duck pond”. We tell stories about things that never happened at all, made up stories, legends, jokes, lies. In a way, even our factual stories are made up, because we can’t tell everything in all its detail. It would take too long. So we shape our stories and select the bits we think will get our point across. The horrendous traffic explains why we are late. The childhood reminiscence conveys something about who we are and why. 


Sometimes people belittle stories – it’s just a story, they say, but stories are powerful. Witness the effect of the ITV drama “Mr Bates vs the Post Office”. The facts of the Horizon software scandal, and the wrongful convictions of those who’d had to use it were already in the public domain, but it was only after the story had been told, that it took hold of the public imagination and things really started to change.


Stories matter, but they aren’t straightforward collections of facts. They are shaped by the teller, and the hearers, by where, when and why they are told. 


That’s why Biblical scholars spend so much time and energy trying to pin down the context of Bible stories – who was the author, who were they writing for, when was it written, what might the original agenda have been?


Today’s readings are a case in point. The Old Testament story of Abraham, the founding father of the Jewish people was first written down in the form we have it today while they were in exile in Babylon. Jerusalem had been destroyed, and they exiles didn’t think they would ever go home. They thought it was all over for them as a nation. How could they recover from this?


So the writer of the book of Genesis took some stories that had been circulating orally and told them afresh so that people could hear God’s voice speaking through those stories into their own time. “You may think,” he is saying “that your situation is hopeless, that there is no way back from this cataclysm that we’ve suffered, that we’re too few in number to survive as a people, but listen to this story, the story of a very old, childless man, trekking across the desert with his almost equally old childless wife, on a promise from God that he would become the ‘father of a multitude’? How hopeless was that, and yet, here we are – his descendants. We’re only here at all, lamenting what we’ve lost, because of the faithfulness of God to that old man and woman, and their trust in him. We are the promised “multitude” that came from them. If God could bring so much into being through one man and woman, why should we assume it is all over for us?”   


That’s what this Old Testament storyteller wanted his hearers to grasp.


And just as we’ve put ourselves in their shoes to understand the story of Abraham, we need to do the same to hear the message of the Gospel story too. Mark’s Gospel was written between about 65 and 75 AD. Like the other Gospels it was written for the scattered groups of people across the Mediterranean who made up the early church, people who were living through times of great hardship.  The emperor Nero, who died in 68 AD had just brutally executed many Christians, probably including Peter and Paul, prominent leaders in the church. Nero’s successor, Vespasian destroyed Jerusalem in AD70 and exiled its inhabitants, both Jewish and Christian. If you had been one of those early Christians, with all this going on around you, you would surely be forgiven for wondering what hope this new movement had of surviving, never mind changing the world. We all need a bit of encouragement now and then to feel that we are on the right lines. We need to see some signs of success to keep us going, but everything around them screamed “failure” in worldly terms.


So, Mark, through his stories, called his community back to where it all started, to the ministry of Jesus. Forty years or so had passed since the crucifixion, but stories told about him by eyewitnesses had circulating orally ever since then, and Mark drew on these for his Gospel. “If you feel hopeless, he is sayings, just imagine how Jesus’ first friends felt when they saw him die on the cross, the death of an outcast criminal, surely a sign of failure and disgrace? Listen to this story. Jesus warned them that he would be killed – of course he would, because what he said and did brought him into conflict with the powers that ruled his land. But they couldn’t get their heads around it, just as you can’t get your heads around what is happening to Christians around you, and what might happen to you too. Even Peter, the great Peter, our first leader, couldn’t believe that a painful, humiliating death could be God’s plan for his Messiah, no matter how hard Jesus tried to persuade him. And yes, Jesus talked about resurrection, but who was going to believe that? But it all happened just as he had said. Jesus rose. And sceptical old Peter was so convinced of it that he was willing to stake his own life on it too.”


That was Mark’s message.


The stories of the Bible aren’t reportage or history in the modern sense, simply a record of what happened. They are expressions of the living faith of their tellers, intended to encourage a living faith in their hearers. They are told to help people look back and remember God’s presence with them in the past, so that they can open their eyes to the possibility that he is with them in the present, and will be with them in the future too, however bleak things look? And the stories worked. The exiles returned, and that tiny, battered early Christian Church wasn’t wiped out by the wrath of Rome; it survived and grew and spread to an extent that Mark’s hearers could never have imagined. We often fail to live up to our calling, but God doesn’t stop calling us. Whatever else has changed – our circumstances, the world around us – God has not changed. As God said  to Abraham, his covenant, his promise of love, is everlasting. 


That’s a message which is just as necessary for us as it was for those who first heard these ancient stories. We’re confronted daily with situations that seem hopeless, humanly speaking; climate change, war, the rise of extremism and conspiracy theories, the breakdown of common humanity, as well as the personal challenges which shake our confidence and drag us down. Our readings today, though, call us to look back – not just to Abraham and to Peter, but closer in time, to our own story. They call us to spot the presence of God in what we have been through, to remember the blessings as well as the disappointments, to acknowledge the love that has surrounded us, and the moments when we’ve been drawn beyond ourselves into the wonder of God. When we are swamped by the human things which lead us to despair, God calls us to see the divine things, the golden thread of his love which was, and is, and will be for ever.

Amen



 


Sunday 11 February 2024

Sunday before Lent

 

I came across a video earlier this week, made by an American comedian and radio presenter called Tommy Edison in which he challenged people – ordinary passers-by at a conference he happened to be attending - to describe colours to him. https://youtu.be/91VUFVp1eXk?si=CX1QAY9iEvq4ff_I

The twist in the story is that Tommy Edison was born totally blind, so he’s never actually seen colours. It wasn’t something he felt he was missing, because he’d never known it, but he wanted to try to understand what colour meant to those who could see it, because we so often use the language of colour metaphorically – we “see red” or “feel blue” or “spot the green shoots of recovery”.

 

The people he stopped had a good stab at describing the colours they saw around them.“Red is a colour that stands out,” said one, “a strong colour, so we use it for things that we want people to notice, like fire engines…” “Green is the colour of leaves, of growing things, the colour of spring,” said another.

 

But it was clearly a struggle, and however hard they tried, Edison’s interviewees knew, and so did Edison, that they would never be able fully to convey what “redness” or “blueness” or “greenness” were. Colours are something that we have to experience, and its not an experience we can pass on to someone who hasn’t had it.

 

There’s a word for that sort of thing. It is the word “ineffable”. Something is ineffable if it is beyond human power to communicate, to pin down, to explain to someone else. It’s something that can’t be described, however clever we are, or the person we are talking to is; It can only be experienced.

 

Colour, though it is all around us, is ineffable, but it’s not the only ineffable thing we encounter on a regular basis. Love is ineffable. We can talk about the effect it has on us. We can talk about the people we love and what it is we love about them. But no one has ever really been able to define love or capture it fully in words. Grief is often ineffable too. “How do you feel?” says the TV interviewer to just about anyone who is dealing with some great tragedy. The interviewee stumbles to produce some words, often cliches, but anyone who has suffered great grief will know that it is stranger than anything you can put into a soundbite, subtler, more different, unexpected, and ultimately a mystery.

 

Jesus’ closest disciples, Peter, James and John, have an experience which is “ineffable” in today’s Gospel story. They see Jesus shining with the glory of God, flanked by Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They have absolutely no idea what is happening or why. “Peter did not know what to say,” the story tells us.

 

Unfortunately, though, by this point, he has already said something. I love that little detail. He speaks first – “Rabbi…let us make three dwellings…” but it’s only after he’s opened his mouth and the words have come pouring out that he realises he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We’ve probably all been there, discovering we’re spouting nonsense, but too late to stop ourselves. That’s the danger with ineffable things. We try to make them “effable”, to say something, anything, just to fill the silence, but in doing so, we usually miss the mark, and reduce that huge and complex experience to something banal, like that crass question from the TV interviewer about grief. What is there to say that can ever do justice to the biggest feelings we have? Often, it’s better just to sit in silence with someone, to sit in silence with yourself, to acknowledge that you haven’t got words, and that perhaps, words aren’t all they are cracked up to be anyway, to let the experience be what it is, something to be pondered, but not pinned down.

 

Perhaps that’s why Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about what has happened on the mountain; because he knows that anything that they can say, at this stage at least, is likely to be so wide of the mark as to be worthless. The Transfiguration will always mysterious, but it would have been even harder to understand it at the time it happened, before the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The disciples need those events to even begin to understand this one. They need to discover that God’s glory isn’t just found in shining light on a mountain top, but in a man dying a humiliating death on a cross, that God’s Son is beloved then too, because that will help them to understand that they are beloved as much in suffering and failure as they are when all is going well.  

 

The story of the Transfiguration is always set as the Gospel story for this Sunday in the Church’s year, the last Sunday before Lent.  Lent is a time when we often try to take ourselves in hand, try a bit harder in our Christian lives, give something up, take something up, do something different. But ultimately, it’s not about that. It is about making space for God to come to us in our need, to acknowledge that we can’t do this by ourselves.

 

This Lent we’re going to be looking in our Lent course at a set of statements called the Five Marks of Mission, devised some forty  years ago to help churches ponder whether they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. It’s just as helpful a list for us as individuals too.  The five marks can be summarised by five words, conveniently all starting with T.

First: Tell – proclaiming the good news of Jesus

Second: Teach – helping people to understand and deepen their faith

Third: Tend – caring for those around us

Fourth: Transform – challenging injustice

And Fifth: Treasure – caring for God’s gift of creation

 

We’re going to be unpacking those things together, to see what they mean to us, and how we see them at work – I am hoping we do – in the life of Seal Church.

 

But there’s a danger in these Five Marks of Mission, because they are all about what we do. They are very active, and unless we are very careful, they can lead us to think that living God’s way is just a matter of us endlessly trying harder, doing more. We can end up like Peter, rushing to knock up shelters for those heavenly visitors, and miss the bit that needs to come first, listening, pondering, becoming aware that we can’t pin down, control or manipulate the ineffable love of God. That’s why in the course I’ve written, as we think about each of those T words, the things we do, we will also be thinking about the things we first need to receive and to experience in order to do them.

 

We can’t tell our stories of faith, if we haven’t first heard them, and understood what they mean to us, and heard the stories of others who bring God’s good news to us too.

We can’t teach our faith, if we aren’t also constantly learning and exploring it.

We can’t tend to others’ needs safely, if we don’t let God, and those around us, tend to us and care for us.

We can’t transform unjust situations if we aren’t being transformed and challenged ourselves.

We can’t treasure God’s creation unless we know that we are part of it, treasured creatures too.

 

Like all those other ineffable things, God’s love can only be experienced, never fully captured in words, but we can’t take people to a mountaintop in Galilee to see Christ shining in glory. All we can do is hope people might get a glimpse of it in the one “shone in our hearts” as Paul puts it.

“This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him” says God to these gob-smacked disciples. This Lent, we are called, before we do anything else, to do the same, to listen, to ponder and to let God be God. Amen

Sunday 21 January 2024

Epiphany 3 2024

 Rev 19.6-10, John 2.1-11


There’s sometimes a danger in our worship for us to get a bit above ourselves, I think. Already today, for example, we’ve heard about great heavenly visions of ranks of angels. Our hymns and songs and prayers are full of grand language, the transformation of the world and so on. It’s stirring stuff but what is it all about in practical terms?

I don’t know what was on your mind as you came to church today, but my guess is that it wasn’t the redemption of the cosmos. It was more likely to be the Sunday lunch, or the deadline at work, or the children’s homework, or that tetchy conversation you had yesterday with a friend that you really ought to sort out.

Daily life for most of us, most of the time is small scale. For me it’s “have we got the right service sheets? Have the Messy Church glue sticks dried out?” Even if you do a genuine life-or-death job – like nurses or doctors – you probably find you spend a lot of time on things that seem trivial; box ticking and form-filling and having meetings that don’t really go anywhere. 

That’s why our Gospel reading today is such an important one. It’s a miracle, of course, so not exactly mundane, but it is a miracle which happens in very ordinary circumstances, to very ordinary people, at an ordinary wedding in an out of the way village in Galilee. In fact, most of those present don’t even know it has happened. “The steward tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from” says John. Neither the newly-weds, nor their families, nor the vast majority of the guests have a clue that a miracle has taken place in their midst. If they were aware that there was a problem with the wine, they probably just assume someone has found an extra barrel hidden somewhere.

Apart from Jesus and his immediate circle it’s only the servants who know what is going on. “The servants who had drawn the water knew” John tells us. He puts it in brackets. It sounds like an aside, but actually it’s not. It’s one of the most important points in the story because it sets the tone not only for what Jesus does here, but for his whole ministry, which is primarily going to be focussed on people like these servants, the poor and overlooked. God almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, the Lord of time and eternity, the giver of all good things is at work in this wedding, but most people don’t spot it.

And what is this miracle for, anyway? What does it achieve? World peace? The overthrow of Roman rule? No, it just saves a family from the shame of having their wedding go down in village memory as the one where the wine ran out. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t seem to matter at all. But to that family at that moment, it mattered completely. Their happiness, their ability to hold up their heads in front of their neighbours – not just on that day but for ever afterwards - hinged on it.

This miracle is absolutely characteristic of the miracles of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, miracles are usually done on a grand scale and a very public stage, in the interests of national survival; the parting of the Red Sea, the Manna in the Wilderness, the fall of Jericho. That’s because the Old Testament was written by and for a nation trying to establish its identity. Its stories are mostly about kings and prophets, wars and alliances, national victories and defeats. There are domestic and small-scale stories too, like those of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but these are people who will become founders of the nation, highly significant.

The focus In the New Testament is completely different. It was written by and for a persecuted minority – the early Christians – a tiny group of people, mostly poor, powerless and insignificant, like the servants at the at this wedding feast. People who would never be remembered by history, and who didn’t expect to be. But Jesus’ message, in words and actions, was that whoever you were, you mattered to God and your concerns were his concerns too. Jesus’ miracles are almost all done for people who are anonymous. Unnamed deaf people hear and blind people see, a woman with a haemorrhage which has kept her from being part of her society is healed, another who is bent double is enabled to stand upright and talk to her neighbours face to face again.  They have no obvious influence on the sweep of history. Jesus doesn’t provide miraculous wine for emperors and kings. He doesn’t meet King Herod and the Roman Governor until the last week of his life, and only then because they have dragged him before them to accuse him.  He heals and helps people because they need it, not because he hopes the to win them over to his cause. He doesn’t seem to worry about whether they will follow him afterwards or help to further his wider mission. He welcomes them if that happens, but it is their need, and his ability to meet it that really matters to him.

There are grand themes in his preaching, of course; the kingdom of God and the healing of humanity, but these things grow, says Jesus, from small and humble beginnings in the ordinary lives of ordinary people, people like us. A tiny speck of yeast, a mustard seed, a grain of wheat, says Jesus; this is where God’s work has to begin. The small things are, in the end, the big things. 

In my experience, too, the holiest places in our lives are often those that others might see as rather trivial – those pesky issues at work, the ups and downs of family life, whether we’ve got enough wine for the wedding – because these are the things that make a real difference to us, and through us to the lives of others too. These are the places where we can hurt, or heal, each other, where we can wrong others, or set those wrongs right, where we can lay good – or bad - foundations for the future.

I’d like to finish with a favourite poem by David Scott. It’s called “Letters from Baron Von Hugel to a Niece”. To understand it you need to know that Baron Von Hugel was a very much respected late 19th Century spiritual writer and guide. He is probably best known, though, for a series of letters he wrote to his beloved niece, a young woman who struggled with her health and eventually died young. 

His day was not really complete until

he sealed with a gentle middle finger

a letter to his niece, heralding the arrival

of books. It smelt of camphor. The advice 

was a comfort to her: “Give up Evensong,

and even if dying never strain.”

It was surprising counsel from one so scrupulous;

whose sharp pencil noted on both margins of a page,

and hovered, like a teacher’s, over spelling. 

Walking into Kensington with the letter,

his muffler tight against the frost,

he reassures himself that directing a soul

is not only a matter of angel’s talk, it is 

also the knack of catching the evening post.

“Catching the evening post” – a small thing but one which mattered. The small things are the big things, because in them we find God at work. Whatever concerns you brought to church with you today, if they matter to you they matter to God. And if you pay attention to them, who knows, you might find that they are the places where God is turning water into wine in your life, making it rich in love which can overflow to others.

Amen


Sunday 14 January 2024

Epiphany 2 2024

 

1 Samuel 3.1-20, John 1.43-end

 

In today’s readings we have two stories about people who took a bit of getting through to, who just didn’t seem to be able to hear or see something which they needed to. Nathanael can’t believe that Jesus might be the Messiah; Samuel takes all night to realise that God is speaking to him and the old priest Eli has been unable or unwilling to hear the voice of God for many years. I expect we can all sympathise with them. I’m sure we’ve all been confronted with a truth about someone or something which, looking back, we feel we should have known all along. Worse still, perhaps we realise that we did know it, but couldn’t acknowledge it.

 

Why didn’t governments see Covid coming and make better preparation for it?

Why couldn’t the Post Office have seen that the financial losses they had spotted were a glitch in the computer system, not a sudden outbreak of widespread criminality among their subpostmasters and mistresses.

On a personal level we might ask ourselves why we didn’t we take notice of the niggling symptoms that later turned out to be a serious illness?

Or Why we didn’t spot the warning signs of a relationship that was getting into difficulties?

Or Why it took us so long to realise that were called into, or out of, a particular role or career?

In hindsight it all seems so obvious, but so often our vision is clouded and our ears stopped.

 

In Nathanael’s case it seems to be prejudice which gets in the way of him seeing the truth about Jesus. “A Messiah from Nazareth! You’ve got to be joking” he says to his friends. We’re not sure why Nazareth seemed such a dodgy place to hail from, but presumably people at the time would have understood. It might have been because the northern territory of Galilee was more mixed ethnically and religiously than the southern lands of Judea around Jerusalem. It was also where the majority of the occupying Roman soldiers were stationed, forcing the people into greater collaboration with them. Or perhaps Nazareth just had a bad reputation – a backwater, hicksville place people wanted to avoid. Whatever it was though, Nathanael seems convinced that Nazarenes are not Messiah material, and he can’t get past that.   

 

It‘s only when he meets Jesus that he realises his mistake. This man knows him, somehow, even better than Nathanael knows himself, because he sees Nathanael’s potential as a disciple, something which was also way off Nathanael’s radar. Seeing a new truth about Jesus enables him to see a new truth about himself.

 

The Old Testament story of Eli and Samuel is a more complex tale, and a sadder one. Eli was the old priest at the shrine of Shiloh where the Ark of the Covenant – the symbol of God’s presence in Israel - was kept. He had two adult sons who should have followed him as priests in this important position. But they had gone off the rails and are abusing their positions. They are stealing the offerings that people are bringing to Shiloh. Eli knows this at some level, but he’s never quite found the courage or energy to confront them. In the end, of course, they are responsible for themselves, but at least Eli could have tried to influence them, and it seems he hasn’t.

 

And that’s where Samuel comes in, a young boy whose mother, Hannah, had brought him to the sanctuary for Eli to bring up as his own. It might seem like an odd thing for a loving mother to do, but there is, of course, a back story. Hannah is one of two wives of her husband, Elkanah . The other wife has borne him lots of children, but Hannah hasn’t been able to conceive, and her co-wife and step-children never let her forget it, making her life a misery. In desperation, Hannah comes to the shrine at Shiloh and prays for a child. Her prayers are so passionate that Eli thinks she must be drunk, but when she explains the situation, he assures her that God had heard her prayer, and that she will have a son. It all happens as he said it would and once the child is weaned, Hannah decides that, in thanksgiving, she will entrust the child to Eli to help at the shrine as soon as he is old enough to leave her. As I said, it seems like an odd decision, but maybe he will be safer there than at home with step-brothers and sisters who treated his mother so badly, and will probably do the same to him. Whatever Hannah’s motivation, it is clear that Hannah has realised that her child matters, not only to her, but to the people of Israel and that God is calling him to do something important.

 

But, as the story says “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread”, so when God literally calls to him, one dark night as he lies asleep in the sanctuary at Shiloh, it takes a while for both Samuel and Eli to work out what is going on. And when Samuel finally does say, “speak Lord for your servant is listening”, the message he is asked to give Eli is grim.

 

It is the end of the road for Eli’s household. His sons will eventually be killed in battle, and Eli himself will die of sorrow. No wonder Samuel seems reluctant to pass this message on. But Eli finds the courage to urge Samuel to tell the truth, no matter what it is, and by doing that he teaches Samuel a vital lesson which he will need to draw on often in the future – that the truth, however painful, can’t be avoided forever.

 

Samuel goes on to be one of Israel’s most important prophets, instrumental in the lives of King Saul and King David. He is often called by God to challenge them – and those who challenge kings need all the courage they can muster. I like to hope that Eli would have been glad, for all his own failures, to know that he had been able to play at least a little part in God’s work.

 

And that is what it is about – God’s work. Because it is most often where the pain and the mess are that God is. We see this in Jesus, born in a dung-strewn stable, growing up in that dodgy town of Nazareth, dying on a cross, alone and reviled, looking to all the world as if he had failed. Who would have thought that God could be in these squalid places, in these squalid things? Not the Magi who headed first for Herod’s palace. Not Nathanael with his blinkered views. Not the horrified disciples who ran away from the crucifixion. But that is where God was, at work in the world through Christ. And that is where he still is. In the places, the people, the situations we would rather not see at all – the things within ourselves we’d rather bury or ignore. It is there that God waits patiently with his healing and his love because it’s there that we need him most. Turn away from that place and we turn away from God too.

 

I wonder what would happen today if we were to say, as Samuel does, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening?” I don’t know, and that’s why it frightens me, as perhaps it does you, but if we are serious in our search for God’s presence in our lives and in our world then the places where we least want to be may turn out to be the very places where we will find him. Amen