The 2020 State of the Union Address

Address by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: John 11.1-45

I am the resurrection and the life.

 The words have a haunting effect. The words speak of hope, of life. But they are the words of death. The words spoken on the final journey, leading the coffin into church. They’re echoed in an antiphon used during this period of Lent in the Middle Ages and adopted by Cramner for the Book of Common Prayer: ‘In the midst of life we are in death’; but equally they suggest the opposite: In the midst of death, we have life.

In this Gospel we have a whole range of opposites coming together. So the divinity of Jesus is most apparent here. He raises Lazarus from the dead, demonstrating the divine power over life and death. But we see him at his most human. He is ‘greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved at the sight of the women grieving. In the only such occasion, we hear ‘Jesus began to weep’.

But at the same time the scene is calculated.  Jesus knows he will die, and remains a further two days. When he arrives Lazarus has been dead four days. Incontrovertibly: ‘Lord, already there is a stench’. This is the final sign, by which Jesus demonstrates both that he is God and the nature of who that God is. The God of life and hope. The God of resurrection.

‘In the midst of life we are in death’.
In the midst of death, we have life.

Now although our Annual General Meeting is postponed, probably till Autumn, I still want to reflect on our last year. Not least because it’s a story of success, which might give us encouragement in these strange days.

 It’s prosaic, but I want to start with numbers. At our Easter services we had 222 adults and 55 children, up from 2018, 130 adults and 13 children. That’s nearly double. At our Christmas services we went up from 757 to 889, and through the year we averaged 87 adults and 21 children on a Sunday, over 30% more than the previous year. We are a growing church, so much so that when we enter the statistics in the diocesan register at each stage, it asks if we’re sure if the numbers are correct.

 What we’re seeing is a church that is connecting more and more with our community and our neighbours and becoming more and more the centre of that community. This is reflected in the use of the church. Aside from services, we have run playgroups through the year, supported baby music classes, art classes, craft club, run talk run, resident association meetings, and of you might remember collaborating with them for the centenary of the Dover House Estate. And this year we’ve been offering the space for musicians to rehearse, record and give concerts. With particular highlights in Rhiannon’s show and the very powerful rendition of Handel’s Messiah. Before the current situation emerged we were looking at running concerts roughly fortnightly through the year, providing both income for the church, charitable fundraising and a centre of culture for West Putney. But most importantly to me, the church is open. For almost all normal working hours Monday to Thursday you can walk inside and rest or pray or show your children what a building of worship is.

This opening up of our church has brought life. It’s also brought revenue. Overall our income has increased this year by £35,000. A good slice of this has come from a phenomenal work by Helen in maximising the hall income – which itself brings more life and activity to our neighbourhood. But in our stewardship, in your giving, in attracting more people, in more events and more fundraising, we’ve grown our capability. So yes, we’ve got rid of the scaffolding. We’ve mended the porch. We have new choir robes coming, We’ll have a new sound system so people can actually hear in church, hopefully by the time we’re holding services again. And especially for these latter two, we are tremendously indebted to a couple of families who have been particularly generous.

 But despite the fact that this year was always going to be hard, having spent so much on repairing the roof, we’ve also raised money for Christian Aid at the Big Brekkie; for the British Legion at Remembrance, for the foodbank at harvest, along with regular contributions, for the Children’s Society at the Christingle; £1000 from the Christmas Tree festival to Regenerate Rise; around £500 for Trinity Hospice this year from the quiz – and Rhiannon made nearly £2500 for Glass Door from her run and recital, which along with our partnership with Mike’s Table a few weeks back, means we’ve raised around £3000 for them.

 Here we should pause for the most significant development of the last year. There were rightly some concerns raised when I suggested we started the Glass Door shelter. As it turns out mostly over the wrong things! What I had underestimated was the amount of administration it would take. But what I’d also underestimated was the generosity of people. It’s been the most inspiring and heart-warming regular event this year to see the donations come in, food and money, each week, and to have around 80 volunteers eager to help in the evening and morning.

And nothing has done more to link us with the community and other churches. Most notably a third of our volunteers come from St Simon’s which makes it a truly ecumenical adventure. We’ll wait till later in the year to properly celebrate this achievement but I’m quite sure there is nothing more central to the Christian faith than feeding the hungry and giving them shelter. And at the heart of it, in what turned out to be almost a full-time job in itself, was Helen. She has managed a food bank, a huge team of volunteers, kept our income above our expenditure and delivered a meal and a shelter that is the envy of the circuit. Each week we’re entitled to claim £50 for food. We have never done so which is effectively an additional donation of £1000. And even after we finished the shelter Helen was still running hot food up to our guests in hotels in Waterloo. It’s a team and we should all be proud of having done this together and putting ourselves on a permanent footing, but there’s no doubt who the medal goes to. So from me it’s a standing ovation for Helen.

 The diocese and deanery’s other central mission effort is making churches more eco-friendly. We’ve taken some big strides here: we held a creation season in September which engaged the children in learning how to protect our environment. We had a creation service, our big harvest festival and of course the dog blessing. We did have two speakers organised to speak on environmental concerns, but these are postponed. There are many things about churches which make them difficult to go green, but we are pushing this forward and, although the garden project will inevitably be pushed back, we had already received some initial drawings and it has not left the agenda. This year we have qualified for a bronze eco-church award, for which we now have the certificate; I will be looking for an eco-champion to push this agenda over the next 12 months and see if we can step forward to silver.

 There is so much to celebrate in the past year. The Community Development Team under Andrew has put on a great series of events, raising money and bringing us together. We had rounders and may still have cricket this year, Harvest, the quiz, St Margaret’s Day and many other celebrations which we hope to get back on track when possible.

 We’ve also had plenty of new services. For children: Good Friday, All Hallows Eve, Shrove Tuesday and this December we will have a St Nicholas Day service. Ben, Bryony and Jo, are doing an exceptional job, and Jo Beasley and Helen have got our older children up and running.

 Then connecting with our music we’ve had carol services at Christmas, Epiphany and Whitsun. And let’s not forget Gil’s wonderful new crib! [And on carpentry, Mark has added a splendid and inclusive ramp to the altar dais, to which Sonja over the summer added painstaking decoration.] Our new director of music has brought in more recitals, silent films and with the introduction of the psalm, and some more contemporary hymns, has added a new dimension to our worship. Deborah’s fabulous flower team has really earned its stripes in the last year, especially with so many baptisms and funerals. Anne has given us Quiet days and we beat the odds to hold together a wonderful and moving deanery Confirmation service, not to mention for me a very important day in my first installation as vicar. Churches Together in Putney and Roehampton, where Clare along with Christian Aid plays a pivotal role, is stronger than ever; and will grow further with two new colleagues joining us in the summer. Our first Lent Course together was going very well until recently.

2020 will be remembered for its challenges. A run of deaths, mostly unexpected, blighted the start of the year. From Christopher Trott in December, Elizabeth Miller, Ralph Bonnett, Alan Fell, Ian Lechmere and Elizabeth Worth. And now we have the gravest threat of a generation upon us. ‘In the midst of life we are in death’. Our Easter services last year brought in 222 people. This year will be single digits. We have lost tens of thousands in lost hall rentals, collections and cancelled events. Worst of all, our people are at risk. You are the church. Any illness, any death diminishes us, so stay safe!

 But in the midst of death we have life. There is no shortage of connecting going on as we look after each other through this storm. Helen Speedy had already revolutionised our social media effort, but now with services online we’re developing new skills and new ways of being church that can broaden our circles and deepen our friendships.  I’m co-ordinating a team of over 80 volunteers across Putney who are running errands, pick up shopping and medicine; and have raised over £2000 to help anyone in need. At a time when Good Samaritans are in need the church is stepping up to the plate. I am confident we will come out of this poorer, yes, but stronger. In the midst of death we have life.

I’m not going to speculate on the next year as we simply do not know what will come. I will save my thanks for our AGM which will probably now be September, but I must again reiterate my own thanks to Helen, and to Anne East, who is always such a sane support; to wonderful Pauline; to the Churchwardens who are asked to stand a little longer than normal. A great deal has been asked of the churchwardens this year and I could not have had a better team both in personal support and for events and the work of the parish. And well done to Tony, Andrew and Helen for getting the accounts together on time.  For the PCC, for Sarah and Evelyn keeping us ship shape, and for everyone who volunteers, leads or simply turns up.

It’s a pleasure and a privilege to serve this community and no amount of pestilence can harm the bonds of friendship and love that hold us together in Christ. We will continue to reflect, connect and grow. We will turn this year from mourning into dancing. We will renew our faith in Him who is the resurrection and the life. 

In the midst of life we are in death. In the midst of death, we have life.

Amen.

The End of the World

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Exodus 2.1-10, Psalm 127:1-4, 2 Corinthians 1.3-7, John 19.25-27

Last Sunday felt positively triumphant. It was almost a Palm Sunday before Holy Week. At the 8 o’clock, we were above average, 11 people, mostly at risk, but with that indomitable British resilience. And at the 10 it was a good turn-out, and the old sea dogs and warhorses were out there braving the inclement times.

The pace of events this week has been brutal and now we are on a very different footing. I suppose calamities that hit a generation are usually like this. It is upon you before the reality has set in.

The song that has been in my head all week is Skeeter Davis’ 1962 hit ‘The End of the World’. It sounds melodramatic, but it’s this beautiful, simple song, and the conceit is the dissonance she feels between a world carrying on as normal and the devastation of heartbreak she is feeling. Perhaps it’s just having spent a week indoors but everything outside looks very much as it did. Only I know of the measures coming in; the disruption of ordinary life; many friends losing their jobs, their businesses; the great uncertainty about, well, everything; the interconnectedness of the world which has caused this rapid spread of contagion; is also causing the whole way of life that we know to shudder convulsively.

This is without mentioning the reports from Italy and around the world.

‘I wake up in the morning and I wonder – 
Why everything's the same as it was.
I can't understand, no, I can't understand,
How life goes on the way it does.’

What it most reminds me of is the morning I learned of the death of a close friend. At times like this we can feel such a fracture between our interior life and the world as it presents, that everything feels like a dream; Reality needs a pinch.

This is a very human problem. We so quickly adapt to ‘how things are’ and are somehow built to believe they will never change. It takes a supreme act of imagination to break out of it. To imagine the world differently. We are suddenly in a world where the old certainties are gone. The confidence is broken. But because of that we are now in a world of faith.

The church of England has always been very good at background music. Saying grace before meals, a bit player in the coronation; sneaking in to people’s baptisms, weddings and funerals. Not the centre of attention, but a steady role; the straight man to the comedy of life; or the light touch of humour within the heavy drama.

But every life has existential moments, which is why we are there at birth, love and death. Faith’s real place is less dressing on the side, but the elemental truths. I blame Jane Austen and Trollope, for whom the clergy always seem slightly ridiculous, leading to that beloved abomination the vicar of Dibley; but despite the niceness of it all, faith is about times of trial. It can be seen in the approach of death. In grief, In the joy of children; In the magic of love; these are all life changing moments. They are scenes of transformation.

 Socially, we keep them hidden.Baptisms have a different vibe to childbirth; sex is cloaked in wedding feasts; the elderly usually fade and slip from society before death. So society hides its elemental, its existential threats.

But now this danger to society, the elemental forces, are present. Our security, our lives, are threatened. The safety net that covers so many of us is wavering.

This matters for two reasons. Firstly, we are given to understand something of the daily plight of many who have never known that safety net. Following the crushing grief of the First World War, there was great reform – they built our Dover House Estate out of a new solidarity. Even more so after World War 2, the shared struggle birthed the Welfare State.  If we are woken to the horror of insecurity; the hopelessness of debt and powerlessness; the vulnerability of lack of access to health and education; then we may see and understand that it existed before COVID-19 and not just in far flung parts of the world. We can find inspiration here to make a better society.

But also we might come to understand the fundamental human vulnerability. That our time is fleeting; as the funeral service puts it: ‘we are but dust. Our days are like the grass: we flourish like a flower of the field; when the wind goes over it, it is gone and its place will know it no more.’ And in coming to terms with the hidden existential questions; with the elemental truths of life, of living and dying; we might find a more honest, less superficial set of values and way of living.

Theologically, we are lucky this has happened in Lent; traditionally an austere season to reflect on mortality. Easter is coming, but Easter always has one foot in the grave.

Today’s Gospel is the crucifixion. Superficially we have all those Maries, and most particularly Jesus’ mother here adopted by the beloved disciple.  More poignantly we have the most unimaginable grief of motherhood. Not the twee – ‘that’s why Mum’s gone to Iceland,’ but the reminder that motherhood is a vocation of hard loving, and perpetual anxiety over the frailty of created life. Flesh of my flesh.

Our little piglet with his temperature has quarantined us this week but he is improving. 

But more theologically the crucifixion is a birth. It could be seen as the answer to those smart-alecs who remark that if it really was a virgin birth, then why wasn’t Jesus born female? Jesus is the mother of the church. When the soldier pierces Jesus’ side, the church comes forth in blood and water, signs of the sacraments of baptism and eucharist. From this moment of agony and death, the church is born in the hope of the resurrection. This might sound academic, or symbolic, but what I’m saying is that the Christian faith is born in godlessness, primal fear, elemental forces and existential angst. It is born here in the faith, hope and love of Jesus. It is the light shining in the darkest of places.  And it waits, it hopes for the resurrection morning. 

So the question we’re asked today, at this dark time, is a question asked of most generations. What is the capacity of our faith? Do we have the strength of character to maintain hope in difficulty? To love whatever the cost? The challenge before us, I believe, is bigger than this virus. This virus may even shed light on areas we have been unwilling to look. But in the short term, how we look after one another in the coming weeks and months and how we begin to rebuild will be defining for our generation. 

It is not the end of the world. But there will be grief and loss. And we have the faith to be an encouragement to one another and in all the uncertainty and fear, to demonstrate the reality of that faith in the strength of our hope and the service of our love.  Amen. 

Flirt to convert

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Exodus 17.1-7, psalm 95, Romans 5.1-11, John 4.5-42

Where does God meet us? And who does God meet? Who is God interested in?

 If you were here last week, you will remember Nicodemus coming to Jesus by night.  A man at the centre of society, who walked away from Jesus for the time being in confusion. But he came and sought out Jesus, outside the temple, against the opinions of the religious elite. Later this will lead to risky discipleship at the crucifixion itself.

 Today we have something quite different. It’s a Samaritan – like the famed “Good” Samaritan – the man from whom nothing is expected, who surprises everyone. The Samaritans, as she says, are routinely discriminated against. For a Jew to share a drinking vessel, as Jesus shockingly suggests, is to be ritually unclean. We could draw parallels with the American South in the 60s, South Africa in the 90s, Princess Diana shaking the hands of AIDS patients; this is a breaking of apartheid. 

 And this is a woman. A woman, who Jesus asks, for a drink. It’s not quite ‘can I buy you a drink?’ but it’s not far off. There’s a little bit of flirt to convert going on here. At the time, a Jewish man couldn’t greet women in public. Even if she was his wife. “Blessed art thou O Lord who has not made me a woman” was a daily prayer, for men; it’s not a Woke time.

Jesus is crossing all sorts of lines here. He’s been disarmingly forward. And this is a well, Jacob’s well. Wells are the night clubs of the Old Testament.  Jacob’s well is in fact where Jacob first meets Rachel and kisses her, before eventually marrying her (and her sister as well – not a Richard Curtis ending). It’s also a well where Abraham’s servant goes to find a wife for Isaac – Jacob’s father. And how does the servant determine if he has found the right girl for his master’s son? It’s the girl who responds when he asks, “Let me sip a little water from your jar!” So with all this precedent, Jesus’ “give me a drink” to an unescorted Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well appears far from innocent.

 And in the exchange Jesus continues to attack these social boundaries. So when the woman suggestively claims she has no husband, Jesus agrees but points out that technically she has had nearly as many as the late lamented Elizabeth Taylor. Normally women come together to collect water in the cool of the day, but here she is alone at its hottest. This woman has all the whisper of scandal about her. 

This is not a #metoo moment, though, as another celebrated leader is shown up. This is Jesus cutting through taboo and prejudice to get to the heart of who this person really is. Not written off as ‘just a Samaritan’ ‘Just a woman’ ‘that woman’ 

This unlikely person is whom God has sought out. Not the learned, powerful man. But a woman of ill repute. And straight away the conversation cuts to the woman’s real anxiety: The Jews having returned from exile had banned the Samaritans from worshipping at Jerusalem, leaving them to mount Gerazion. 

The woman is confused. Is she excluded by God? And why would she not think so? She was born on the wrong side of the tracks. An excluded woman from an excluded ethnic group, why wouldn’t she also be excluded by God?

Jesus’ answer is typical of what will be the calling card of Christianity, a religion which from the beginning was a place of safety and freedom for women and slaves. It doesn’t matter where you worship, It doesn’t matter your sex or ethnicity, God ‘don’t know much about biology.’ We worship in Spirit and truth.

If you can’t come to church, you can still worship God. If you’re shy, ignored, avoided by other people, different, sick, you can still worship God. If you can’t speak out loud the words you can still worship God. If you’re self-isolating, you can still worship God in Spirit and in Truth.

And this relates to the living water. Still water, such as the water of Jacob’s well is stationary, available in one place, owned by a certain group of people, and ultimately stagnant. It’s like the six jars of water at the wedding two chapters ago which Jesus turned to wine – Truly living water!

 Even the water from the rock that Moses brought at Horeb is not this living water. The Gospel writers, especially Matthew, are keen for their readership to understand Jesus as a second Moses, Moses 2.0. So you’ll remember Matthew tells us of Herod slaughtering the children, just like in Moses’ day when he’s placed in the river in his little basket. Then there’s the flight to Egypt, and the main part of Jesus’ teaching is given in the Sermon on the Mount, a reference to Moses bringing down the 10 Commandments from Mount Sinai.

 But John’s Gospel goes one step further. Not only does Jesus feed people with bread, as Moses did with the Manna from heaven, and the living water, as Moses did at Horeb; Jesus is the bread and the water. He is the sustenance of God, our daily bread; In Christ we are one step closer; We no longer need the mediating prophet. We all have access to this grace. 

But living water, which in Aramaic is the expression they used for running water (like in a stream), has a deeper resonance – in the same way that when we say that someone is full of life they are not just very alive but full of energy; living water is freely available to all and cannot be constrained by geographic and social or political borders, or respectability. It flows, gives life and refreshes. It sparkles. It’s this sparkling we see between Jesus and the woman here; The San Pellegrino of waters.

 We see in this passage Jesus’ humanity.  He’s tired; he engages with the woman on a very human level.  He treats her as another person on a level with himself, and he is in a very human way interested and attracted to her.  It’s this engagement that is honest and on an equal ground that transforms the woman in helping to see herself to be of value. And in the joyful truth of what Jesus says, the woman wants to share it; the living water demands movement and so she brings others to hear of the essential equality of human beings that Jesus is proclaiming;  that the love of God is for all people regardless of race or gender and that to deny this is to fail to see that all people are beautiful; they are made in the image of God.

And as the woman comes away feeling valued from the encounter so does Jesus feel nourished in doing God’s work.  Jesus says ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ The woman leaves behind her water-jar.  The gift of valuing people has its own rewards.

Now you may be thinking this is all very well, but what I really wanted was another ten minutes of unqualified quasi-medical advice on COVID-19; I am sorry to disappoint. I began, though, by asking where does God meet us and who does God meet? This episode I think shows us that God meets us at the point of need. This woman met Jesus at a difficult time and uses her to re-integrate her into society and meet her deeper spiritual needs. 

These are difficult and unprecedented times. We don’t know what is before us. But there will likely be a great deal of need; Not just for the sick; but in anxiety, scarcity, frustration, isolation. I will keep the church open and services running as long as I am legally allowed, and will be praying for you as long as I am physically able. But know that God is with you always; and if there’s anything I can provide or help with, then let me know. 

And we know that God meets the outsider: The isolated, the rejected, the person in need. That may be anyone of us. God be with you.

But for all of us who are able there is a need now for Good Samaritans. At a time like this a nation, a community, can turn in upon itself; It can look after number one, pinch toilet roll from a neighbour’s basket, pull up the drawbridge. It can exploit weakness, stealing, rioting, taking advantage.

But there is also that Blitz spirit, which we know we have within us. We can look after one another, protect, care for, one another. I will work this week to create a list of our most vulnerable, that we can check in on one another.  If you know people who should be added let me know. They don’t have to go to church. And especially if people are self-isolating, if they are afraid to leave their home, we can help. And if you would be willing to undertake such trips then let us know in the office. It may only be a couple of people. It may become important later.

 I have also printed out some slips which you can take and post through neighbours’ doors if you feel able. We have been able to lead our community in its care of our homeless guests over the last five months, and we should be rightfully proud of that. This is another opportunity where we can lead our community in loving our neighbours in a time of need. There may be risk and there may be difficulty. We have a number of people who are often at the forefront, who this time we need instead to protect. But if we take our faith seriously and our calling to serve, then this is a task that falls to us now.

We come to Jesus by night

Sermon preached by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 12.1-4a, Psalm 121, Romans 4.1-5,13-17, John 3.1-17

We come to Jesus by night. 

We all have questions. Perhaps it’s as simple today as why is there this Corona virus? Like wasps and mushrooms, it doesn’t really seem to be contributing anything to creation; Nothing that makes it ‘good’. Perhaps, after Elizabeth Worth’s funeral on Friday you’re asking, ‘where was God when she fell?’ Perhaps you have your own loved ones who are sick or no longer with us, for whom the questions remain unanswered.

Perhaps, it’s simpler and that the questions, like Nicodemus, relate to the faith. Why do we need to be baptized? What does it really mean to be born again? What should I believe? What must I believe? What do I believe?

Perhaps you come to church each week and you hear and read the lessons –  St Paul’s weekly thoughts on faith and the Law – and you feel none the wiser. What is he going on about?  We come to Jesus by night, and if you don’t have any questions then that can only be because you refuse to think about it – Faith is about life, and life is full of uncertainty.

We come to Jesus by night. John here means two things. Firstly, he’s saying that the hostility to Jesus from the authorities is such that it would not be safe, prudent, for a Jewish leader to come during the day. This is secret. These questions put Nicodemus at risk. His social standing, his authority, his job is compromised by coming to Jesus. It would be like the Pope going to see Derren Brown for advice. He probably wouldn’t make a big thing of it.

 Secondly, like all the Jewish leaders, he’s in the dark. Jesus is the light of the world. Since the first chapter we know that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it, or as the old words put it. ‘the darkness comprehendeth it not.’ So it’s a spiritual darkness from which Nicodemus comes.

 In this early section of John’s Gospel we have a trilogy of a Jewish leader, the Samaritan woman at the well, and then the Gentile official whose son is healed. Nicodemus is baffled by meeting Jesus, but curious. The Samaritan woman understands a little and is drawn to Jesus. The Gentile official accepts his word unquestioningly. As we move further from the centre of Judaism we find greater faith;

 So when Paul is going on about Abraham today, that’s why. Jesus didn’t spend a great deal of time with Gentiles, but when the disciples start proclaiming the risen Christ who has returned, it’s the Gentile world that responds most immediately; which is why Paul traces Christian lineage back to Abraham, the ancestor of many peoples, not just the Jews,  and the simplicity of his faith, his belief, trust and obedience; against the complicated demands of the law; it’s the passionate response to faith that doesn’t come from the expected places but emerges spontaneously like a revolution.

We come to Jesus by night. So the first question to us is: are we ashamed of the Gospel. Is it something we would be embarrassed for others to know? Like listening to Chris de Burgh or watching Bargain Hunt. Or stockpiling toilet paper. Do we play it down? ‘I go to church, but it’s really just because I love organ music’ Or ‘because it’s such a nice community’ Do we own the faith? 

Do we believe that we’re capable of it? I’m always struck by British Christians that they don’t really feel worthy of faith. Perhaps it seems too serious a thing, and the British are terribly worried about appearing to take themselves seriously. Perhaps it’s because most of us have a terrible insecurity that we’re not as good, as those wonderful creatures who visit the sick, those in prison, that seem to pray without ceasing; The “real” Christians who really believe, or really do good,  while we can never find the time, the energy, the money to contribute as we would like.

 If that’s you I’d say, in the words of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ‘Relax’. The Church is at the heart of British culture.  The number two person in the Church of England, after Jesus, is the Queen. And wherever you find yourself, whether it’s the livery companies in the city, the armed forces, parliament or industry, the Church of England is always there, mostly being polite and kind.

And if it’s the faith you find difficult. Know that there is nothing in mainstream science or philosophy that is not wholly compatible with being a Christian, except maybe veganism and Morris Dancing. (I don’t mean that.) But Christianity is a journey of faith not a list of propositions. No one has got it right. As St Paul is very keen to say it’s not about being a perfect person and doing good deeds. It’s more about trying to engage with God who we will come to know differently as we move through life. It’s trying to be a better person, not a saint. Faith is something that helps us understand who we are, not a tick in a box on a school form or a baptismal register. 

 And it’s good to come to Jesus by night. Night is when our most interesting conversations happen. Between the second glass of wine and the third shot of whiskey. Night is when we usually feel safest to be vulnerable, to have the conversation about something that might not change anything, but might change everything. Night is when we’re able for a short time to put away the busyness, the responsibility, the children, the activity with which we’ve set up our lives. There is space, each night, for us. To ask the questions that do not sit easy with our souls.

And that spiritual darkness is not something to be ashamed of. One of the reasons the young adults ask a monthly question, is because they will often articulate a question people have wanted to ask all their lives. I can’t tell you how many books have been written on theology, but it’s billions. And they’re still writing. It’s not a subject with simple answers. I spent all my twenties at university studying theology and do not feel resolved on all issues.  But I have in that time tested my faith, and am quite certain there are no questions that must be avoided. I have no fear of heresy, doubt or inquisition. Our faith only grows if we challenge it with our experience. It’s only able to help us if we expose it to the things that have been most meaningful, both destructive and joyful, to us.

Nicodemus disappears for most of the Gospel.  He does not return till the end. Possibly he is working through Jesus’s comments; Like a schoolboy trying to fathom all the red pen. The point is that Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. He’s confused because he ‘knows that [Jesus is] a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that [he does] apart form the presence of God’. And he goes about looking for the answer for what this all means.

As I hope you’ll agree, I’m a very moderate man, reasonable, educated, and not wholly brainwashed by esoteric belief, I’ve seen things that I could not explain simply by reason and logic, the immutable laws materialists seem to think are the case. And in love, art, music and prayer I know that you cannot capture what it means to be human in a biology textbook. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Richard Dawkin’s philosophy; The seeking for truth led me to the Christian Gospel and the person of Jesus.

When we next encounter Nicodemus it will be at the taking down of the body from the cross and the laying of the body in the new tomb. The time alluded to here when as Moses lifts up the serpent in the wilderness, so is the Son of Man lifted up on the cross. It’s in these events of the crucifixion and resurrection that Christ makes known God’s revelation to the world. The revelation of God’s love for the world. It’s here that the answers to Nicodemus’ questions begin to be found. It’s here that our faith starts and ends.

‘God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world’

As God chooses the sinner, God chooses those who come at night. We come to Jesus by night. We have our insecurities. We have our spiritual darkness. But by seeking him, wanting to know more; By engaging our experience with our faith, we have that opportunity to go deeper.  Whether we come, then, at night, at noon, or very early in the morning, let us seek this Jesus with our questions; And find in him, and in the love and hope he taught, the answers our struggling world so desperately needs;  taking that love out into the world to carry forward his mission for the poor, the broken-hearted, the sick and those who walk in great darkness. For on them has light shined. Amen.

The stone man made soup. The burning woman drank it.

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 2.15-17;3.1-7, Psalm 32, Romans 5.12-19, Matthew 4.1-11

Ted Hughes in Birthday Letters wrote poems to his wife Sylvia Plath after her death. One particularly struck me, where he remembers a trip when she got food poisoning and became very ill.  His initial reaction was to be a good nurse, making soup and doing everything he can for her. Then he writes:

As I paused
Between your mouthfuls, I stared at the readings
On your dials. Your cry jammed so hard
Over into the red of catastrophe
Left no space for worse.  And I thought
How sick is she? Is she exaggerating?
And I recoiled, just a little,
Just for balance, just for symmetry,
Into sceptical patience, a little.

If it can be borne, why make so much of it?
'Come on, now,' I soothed. 'Don't be so scared.
It's only a bug, don't let it run away with you.'

What I was really saying was: 'Stop crying wolf.'
… Then the blank thought
Of the anaesthesia that helps creatures
Under the polar ice, and the callous
That eases overwhelmed doctors. A twisting thought
Of the overload of dilemma, the white-out,
That brings baffled planarian worms to a standstill
Where they curl up and die.

You were overloaded. I said nothing.
I said nothing. The stone man made soup.
The burning woman drank it.

Hughes, here, can respond to the evident need in front of him. He can love, nurse, trust this woman to whom he is married. But he looks again. Is he being taken advantage of? A trace of scepticism, the overload of caring too much, the sheer effort of continuous loving, easily becomes overwhelming and we can find ourselves withdrawing from the painful trials of love.

We have all been in situations where we have been caring for, helping out, people when it has occurred to us that we are actually under more pressure, our situation is objectively more difficult — it might be our partner, our children, our parents, our friends. The force of resentment can be overwhelming, and sometimes it’s right and we do need to walk away or challenge those who are making demands of us. But it’s a slippery, serpent-like voice very often, that whispers to us: ‘haven’t you done enough’…  ‘it can’t be all that bad’… ‘And what about you; don’t you deserve some looking after…’ We can look on our sick beloved with love and trust. We can look on our sick beloved with suspicion and resentment.

Today’s Old Testament reading tells us of the beginning of sin. But the language of sin no longer resonates. Sure we make mistakes, sometimes we’re a bit selfish, and there are plenty of other people who we might describe as ‘difficult’. Then we could probably line up some historical figures who were actually evil: Pharaoh from The Prince of Egypt, Hitler and Stalin of course, Harvey Weinstein, Jimmy Saville, Draco Malfoy, I’m sure you can think of more. 

But we think of our own judgements and actions less in terms of sin. That would seem archaic.  Perhaps if we commit some tangible act or crime we might think of it as sin — murder, adultery, theft but then we can sometimes go weeks without accomplishing these. Committing a sin can almost seem grand, profound.

So maybe we should drop the language of sin altogether. After all most sinners have grown up in broken homes, or had poor educations, or society has not given them the breaks that would have made them model citizens; or they have a defective gene or a mental disorder; or they have fallen into bad company, or have a different culture with different morals. In fact, human beings are all so different, isn’t calling someone sinful really just being judgmental? My sin is your virtue…

It’s perhaps not surprising that given this brouhaha over personal responsibility, God’s usual recourse in the Old Testament is to punish an entire nation, sometimes the whole world, like in the Great Flood. What this should tell us, though, that sin is not so much a personal failure as a structural problem. To believe the world is fallen does not require the historical certainty of scantily clad gardeners in Eden, the demonization of crafty snakes, or the eroticizing of apples. It’s morally bizarre to suggest that we are still paying for the crimes of our ancestors.

But the fall is a reality present around us and within us — this sickness unto death. ‘Death has spread to all because all have sinned.’ The social ills which a short walk through Wandsworth will expose; the secret thoughts of our hearts which we dare not expose to the world. This rapid spread of contagion; the death toll in failed states like Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan.

But St Paul tells us that now death does not exercise dominion. ‘Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all’; so we seem to have this double situation where on the one hand we’re clearly still a part of a world where death is the defining reality. And, on the other, we are told that we are now under grace and free from this law of death.

Earlier, we saw that Ted Hughes could look with love and see the beautiful, vulnerable person he married; or he could look with cynicism and see the burden; the boring needy whinger using up his time and energy. We can look on the world and see death; or we can look with hope and see grace. The best illustration of these two worlds is the crucifixion - because, depending on your perspective, the cross is a victory either for sin or for love. For the fallen world, the cross is the victory of sin because it shows how violence wins. Jesus is executed. The force of power triumphantly asserts itself. Seen through grace, though, the cross is the victory of love; the demonstration of perfect self-offering, complete vulnerability, a love that gives itself even unto death. A sacrifice that does not flinch from the victory of sin, but testifies that the victory of love achieved in these situations is greater — that the victory of love’s sacrifice eclipses the victory of sin’s violence.

It may well be that nothing changes in Syria or Yemen or elsewhere. Are the sacrifices made in war by those fighting for a better world, those simply trying to bring aid and relief, in vain? Do we judge an act of love by the consequences and results it produces? If we do then we have by another way submitted to the world of power — we are still operating under sin, because love has become a form of manipulation rather than a different way. 

The point of the cross was not that in the end Pontius Pilate or the Jewish authorities were forced out and had to admit they’d made a mistake, but rather that it expressed a different set of values, which were true. If your life is oriented towards power then the cross is an embarrassment, a total defeat. The cross only makes any sense if you believe in love: that love triumphs over all things, including death, just by being love.

So in Christ’s temptation we heard the tempter’s voice testing Jesus. He can use his power to serve himself or he can trust God. He can gain the world, only to lose his own soul. He can allow his vision to be clouded with power, or he can use that power to serve the world with the message and acts of love.

So we have two ways of seeing the world. If we cling to the world of sin, we see it as a conflict of various powers in which we must assert ourselves, become dominant, use force to achieve our goals, to fulfill our needs.  This is the way of seeing the world that Jesus enters the desert to escape from. This is the world under judgment that is brought in by Adam. 

Then there is the way of seeing the world brought about by one man’s act of righteousness. This is the way of seeing the world in terms of love — that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things endures all things; that is patient and kind; the love that gives itself even unto death.

So next time someone asks you for something; next time you’re caring for someone who’s ill; when you’re wondering if the effort you make for others is really worth it and whether it’s time for a little more self care; ask yourself if you’re seeing the world through love or through sin; and this Lent, let us pray for grace to follow Jesus in service and kindness. Amen.

Holy Inclusive, part III

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

There is a sign above the gate. 

I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY,
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL GRIEF,
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN RACE. 

JUSTICE IT WAS THAT MOVED MY GREAT CREATOR;
DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME,
AND HIGHEST WISDOM JOINED WITH PRIMAL LOVE. 

BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
WERE MADE, AND I SHALL LAST ETERNALLY.
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER. 

The vision in my head, when I hear these words, is of another gate, a real gate, above which is wrought in iron: ‘Work sets you free”. We have here between Dante’s gates of Hell, and the gates of NAZI concentration camps, most well known at Auschwitz, but equally Dachau, Gross Rosen, Flossenbürg, Theresienstadt and others, the gates of exclusion. From life, from humanity, from redemption.

Now we know it’s not work, but the truth that sets you free; and it’s only in the sense of the inmates rhyme, that ‘work makes you free through crematorium number three’, that there’s any freedom on offer here. But, against these iron gates, if we are to set our sights on the most comprehensive vision of inclusion, if we’re to open ourselves to the stranger, the physically, mentally, culturally, ethnically, spiritually different, we must believe in a wholly inclusive God.

But do we? I began these sermons a couple of weeks ago with a question: can we be, not just wholly inclusive, but holy and inclusive? The words above Dante’s gate suggest not.

I was created by the Might divine,
the highest Wisdom and the primal Love…
all hope abandon, ye that enter here! 

Primal love, it seems, can make a primal scream. Long enough to last eternity.

But we don’t believe it. I know you don’t believe it. Because if you did, if you took the concept of Hell seriously, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be out in the world in loud desperation trying to convince everyone of this fate that hangs over them. After all, who, passing by a car crash wouldn’t drop everything to help those unfortunates in mortal peril. And could you tell me that as you pass each day thousands who currently stand with an eternity of suffering, torture and exclusion before them, you have no words to speak to them; No urgency to press upon them the Gospel? No. You don’t believe in this hell, described by much of Christianity. I don’t see the fear, the urgency.

I’m taking two funerals this week. One is for a man whose stoicism and faith are exemplary. Who each week with fading vision and hearing, has spoken out prayers grafted in his heart over 90 years. He is now with the Church Triumphant and we will complete our rites as a witness for our sakes, not his. The other is for a film critic, whose life brushed past every star you can name. Strangely, he requested me to take his funeral. As far as I know he’d only been here once to see the silent film King of Kings we played last Easter. We chatted afterwards;  it may have just been Nicky’s playing, or perhaps the silent film, and curiously he came here because, although this man has the vastest collection of films – such that museums and studios come to him looking for rare pieces –  he had never seen this silent version of the Gospel. But I had not gripped him by the hand and called him to repentance. I don’t know his faith. But I believe and trust that he is safe with God.

And, consider, when we stand before Him on Judgement Day, the Day of Wrath, will He not look at us and say, “Why?”
“Why so few?”
“Could you not have done more for your brothers and sisters?”
Should we not feel shame as they walk through those iron gates, and we look on? Should we not walk with them?

 But we don’t believe it. Now it maybe you don’t believe it because it just seems so overwhelming. It makes life too serious to bear. But life is serious. When we’re sick we know how serious life is, and we all know someone unwell. Those people in war zones, on virus-strewn cruise ships, Those dealing with famine and drought, refugees, our homeless friends here on a Sunday night,  The many struggling day to day in poverty in Wandsworth, crucified by debt, reliant on food banks, children caring for adults; know that life is serious.

So I hope that you don’t believe it, because you know beyond all Scripture, all words and history, the imposing buildings, the ritual and the paintings; I hope you believe that God is love. That the firm ground of your faith is rooted in that simple equation. God is love.

The emperor Domitian famously decided to treat his servant for one day like a prince, showering him in the luxury only a Roman emperor could. The next day he crucified him. That is imperial power. That is a little bit what the Calvinist doctrine feels like to me, where some are destined to salvation, some to perdition. If Divine power is simply imperial power writ large I feel we’re all in trouble. But we know that God is love.

I don’t have time to take you through the arguments today. But to me it’s quite simple. What could one person do, in our short time, that could possibly merit an eternity of suffering?

But more. We know that God has created all things. There’s nothing not wholly created by God. Each of us fashioned in his image. He hateth nothing that he hath made. And then we might consider also the biological, psychological and sociological influences that have yes made us the person we are, but also shaped for better and for worse the way we love, and our knowledge of God. What freedom is within us that could merit an eternity of rejection?

But it’s not so. And it’s not simply that it’s not rational to believe that a God of love could create this iron gate. Within Scripture is the beginning of hope for all creation. There are of course verses about judgement, but consider these: Romans: ‘just as through one transgression came condemnation for all human beings, so also through one act of righteousness came a rectification of life for all human beings’ 1Corinthians: ‘just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be given life’ Romans again: ‘God shut up everyone in obstinacy so that he might show mercy to everyone’ Titus: ‘For the grace of God has appeared, giving salvation to all humans’ John: ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will drag everyone to me’ And again: ‘For I came not that I might judge the world, but that I might save the world’ 1John ‘And he is atonement for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole world’ And most famously: ‘For God sent his Son into the world not that he might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.’

And here, the Greek for ‘world’ is kosmos, which might be better translated, ‘cosmos’: ‘Not that he might condemn the cosmos, but that the cosmos might be saved through him.’ Inclusion, you see, has a cosmic appetite.

I remember the first time I preached, 14 years ago, I was nervous not so much with the fear of men but with the fear of God. You never want to preach anything you’re uncertain of, still less to go against dominant strands in Christian teaching. The inclusivity of God, though, and the final inclusion of all creation, is so important to who I understand God to be, that I am convinced it is true. You may disagree, but I believe that the loss of even one soul would constitute a tragedy so great as to question the moral character of the entire universe.  The medieval concept of Hell is the strongest argument against Christianity.

Jesus Christ came to save sinners, and we know how far he’d go to recover the lost sheep. As far as Golgotha. ‘If I climb up into heaven, thou art there/ if I go down to hell, thou art there also.’

But this doesn’t mean that we need not worry. I am content to trust God for the redemption of creation.
I’m not sure we have the administrative capability in the office to take on that task yet. But what we should understand from the passages I quoted from Scripture is our shared common humanity. ‘Just as all die in Adam, so are all made alive in Christ.’ The Old Testament, as is often pointed out, is much less concerned with the individual before God than the nation before God. The New Testament is less a narrowing of this down to the individual as an opening up of the Gospel to all humanity.

Consider John Donne’s famous meditation:

The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated;  God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice;  but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; 

And then most famously:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

if we acknowledge that our God is wholly inclusive, that any man or woman’s death diminishes us because we are involved in humanity, then this concerns us because for a church to exclude is to separate from God. And where we see exclusion in the church and in society we’re seeing the hell that our faith has told us has been overcome in the resurrection. When we pray ‘thy kingdom come’, we are praying for this exclusion to end.

Division, exclusion, is only part of our fallen world. But by identifying as an inclusive church, we are saying that as a church we will strive, whatever bishops may say, whatever actions taken by government and other institutions effect, we will strive and we will pray to overcome the barriers of exclusion. And whether its poverty, sexuality, gender identification, ethnicity, class, or anything else that might mark someone out as different, that they are welcome here.

If Jesus will leave the 99 to find the lost sheep, if he dines with tax collectors and harlots, the excluded, the dispossessed; then our mandate is clear. This broken bread we share is not for those already on the inside. Those who know they are saved. It is for everyone else. And that must be the basis of our mission and purpose. Because the church is the one institution that exists, first of all, for the people who don’t think they belong to it.

Holy Inclusive, part II

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 1:1-2:3, Psalm 136:1-9, 23-26, Romans 8:18-25, Matthew 6:25-34

The story that has most shifted how I see disability is well known and often repeated, where the child asks its parent whether it will have Down Syndrome in heaven. Thinking of reassurance, the parent replies ‘Of course not’. In heaven everyone is the perfect version of themselves. To which the child responds, ‘then how will you recognise me?’ 

It doesn’t take much work to find some quite funny and poignant stories, which illustrate the joy and value families have found in the experience of difference, which is really the case with all families growing up. The writer Kevin Thomas speaks of how his daughter, who also has Down Syndrome, has a simplicity, a trust, and an honesty that make her a better person than he is. He tells the story of how she was acting up once, and he had put her on the naughty step. When she returned for dinner he asked her to say grace. Her prayer was, “Dear God, thank you for Mommy NOT Daddy, Amen.” We also hear how he was playing hide and seek with her. Only she will never hide but just waits in front of him to finish counting and open his eyes. You see, she delights in being found. You couldn’t say that she had not understood the game, or got it wrong. She just found a truly efficient way to take part with wonder and joy. And it was over quickly! The mistake is thinking: ‘In heaven everyone is perfect’. Because your idea of perfect is not God’s.

The account of the first things in today’s Old Testament reading is helpful here. Each day is declared good. Every act of creation is good. Even, perhaps especially, the great sea monsters. It’s not all about the brightest and best of humanity. And when Paul in the letter to the Romans speaks of the last things, it’s the whole of creation that will be set free and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. And even today’s Gospel is a reminder that we can take lessons from the rest of creation. That the simplicity of the birds and the flowers may reveal more of the kingdom of God, than all our strain and stress. The highpoint of God’s creative act was a day of rest, the hope of creation is freedom from decay and perfect peace. The kingdom of God is not found in worry. So where is closest to God? The board rooms and parliaments of humanity or our little garden outside?

 You see, I think humans love hierarchies. Even when we love nature, we still see humans as the pinnacle of creation. The true kings of the jungle. And within humanity there are hierarchies. Consider the most lawless and aggressive part of our society today,  our school system, think of the league tables and the jostling for positions and places; the cynicism and strategies of church schools, the gaming of the system that goes on; We all want the best for our children. We want our children to be successful, to have opportunities. But when do we start valuing success? Judging ourselves and others by achievement? Start rewarding achievement with the expressions of love and warmth? Perhaps it’s the naivete of having a 16 month old, but I’m sure most parents wouldn’t feel that the success of their child would affect the love they have for them; But when we look at the world, do we judge people as better and worse, more or less worthy? Do we look around the pews and see better and worse?

It’s an uncomfortable subject. Because we should pursue excellence. Even St Paul tells us to pursue the higher spiritual gifts. But at what stage do we start valuing people more for their gifts? At what point do we start dismissing people because they are less eloquent, their IQ seems lower, their careers less stellar, their social skills less fluent? Are we content with the hierarchy we have adopted? What is it that we call ‘good’? Are our values what we see in Genesis? 

You may love and enjoy the classic hymn ‘Amazing Grace’. Some of us sang it this week at a funeral. It has those lines: I once was lost but now am found, Was blind but now I see.” But imagine you had been born blind, or lost your vision very early. It would not be a helpful metaphor, not encapsulate the Gospel. It can be demanding but we should be aware where even our worship may exclude others, or suggest they are less of value in the kingdom of God.

 The place where this will be most punishing is our self-assessment. By God’s grace we are largely built to take simple delight in children; The refrain Rhiannon and I constantly use with babysitters is “Just keep him alive” But the standard for ourselves might be quite different. Do we accept ourselves? There is a basic first question of whether we even see ourselves as we really are. Are we able to stop projecting the person we feel others want to see, others like for enough time to acknowledge and like the person we are? But then what about that person? You could write the CV out. You have perhaps completed the online-dating profile. But is that person loveable? Do you accept them? Are you willing to believe that they’re loved by God?

Inclusion has to begin with ourselves. If we don’t believe we’re worthy of love, If we don’t think we’re good enough to be in church, then how will we ever believe that God accepts anyone else. But also we have to think about how we value. If we value achievement we’ll always think hierarchically. We’ll never really be inclusive. 

Most of us grow up to value achievement. We’re told well done you’ve done this. Stood up by ourselves, pronounced the dog’s name correctly, Poured a cup of tea and then added milk; We take it in and keep doing things to maintain approval. It makes us feel good and we can control how much we’re loved by doing the good things and pleasing people. We become emmeshed in a system of grind, where we work to achieve; We achieve to find recognition; The recognition makes us feel loved and valued.

This is not how God loves. God doesn’t love by grind. He loves by grace. He doesn’t care if you play the cello. If you passed your grade 3 with merit. He’s not there for your school pedigree, your alumni magazine, your membership of clubs, your sporting prowess.

I’ve taken a lot of funerals recently and we can’t help it. We say what people did well. We know that this person was extrarordinary. And the easy way to explain it is to say something that they did. Say something they achieved. But if you’ve been to a funeral you know this is a subterfuge.  They may have done some unusual things. They had their moment in the sun. But that’s not why people are there. That’s not why they’re loved. People don’t go to funerals because they were impressed by the obituary.

And this is where we get to the heart of what being inclusive is. When we start valuing people not for what they have done or achieved, but simply because they have that virtue by right. They are created and so we can say straight off, they are of value, they bear the image of God, they merit that love. That is to begin with grace. We all deserve to be loved. And with a solid foundation of love who knows what we might go on to achieve.

If we value ourselves and others on the basis of achievement, we may well go far, have that drive to succeed. But we will forever feel we must work to find that love, and that is exhausting. We risk valuing others on the basis of their gifts, which means we risk excluding and marginalising others for not reaching that standard.

If we begin with that premise that all things are created good, we might succeed in taking the pressure of ourselves, finding the kingdom of God in the simplicity of flowers and birds, and we might start seeing the beauty of creation in surprising and moving ways, and in things we had hitherto considered broken, partial, limited. Being an inclusive church, finding the inclusive God, begins with our ability to accept and welcome difference. And that may need to begin with us accepting and welcoming ourselves.

Today we have accepted and welcomed little Saskia in baptism. She has had to do nothing. Nothing is expected of her. Yet. Let us be that community that loves first, and watches with wonder the achievements that follow when grace comes first.  Amen.

Holy Inclusive, part I

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 112:1-9, 1Corinthians 2:1-12, Matthew 5:13-20

In these three Sundays between Epiphany and Lent, I want to look at what it means to be wholly inclusive. Or rather, what it means to be holy and inclusive.

 Now that Putney has joined the revolution, and having enjoyed the company of our new MP at last week’s service, his name is anathema; but the economist and advisor to Mrs Thatcher, Milton Friedman, began his signature work with an interesting claim that you can’t be socialist and liberal.  The two, he argued, have directly opposed impulses: Socialism to planning and centralised control; Liberalism to the rights and freedom of the individual. You can’t be socialist and liberal. Discuss! 

But in the same way, it could be argued that you cannot be holy and inclusive. Two weeks ago I mentioned that the Greek for church is ‘ecclesia’ – from ek-kaleo – literally ‘called out’. The church is defined as a people set apart; holy. You can read this in our architecture. From the West door to the high altar there are three steps. The space narrows. Holiness is selective. Only the few get to the high altar, mostly wayward children. In Holy Trinity Roehampton, where there are more steps, the feet of the priest celebrating at the high altar are higher than the heads of the congregation in the nave. That is the power play of holiness. Even in today’s Gospel Jesus talks of those who are least and those who are great in the kingdom of God, with the warning that our righteousness must exceed the scribes to enter.

But to be inclusive means to be all embracing. And here’s a little thought experiment. Consider for a moment what you think it means for St Margaret’s to be inclusive. We think perhaps of being more friendly, welcoming, accepting people as they come, having a ramp somewhere, we think of those happy words you read on church profiles, “vibrant”, “diverse”. Mostly, I think, when we think about being inclusive, we think about how we can accept more people into our way of doing things. This is how we do things; Come and join in.

 We are less likely to think: We are the diversity of the people here. And that means that over time we will change as the people change. Imagine if the Polish church fell down and suddenly we had 100 Polish families appear at St Margaret’s every week. Would we be happy introducing Polish hymns, having part of the service in Polish?

 That is unlikely to happen. But we might consider whether our version of inclusion is encouraging people to join our way of doing things, Or whether we’re open to incorporating difference in who we are and what we do. So we should ask – who is the in-group at St Margaret’s? Who is at the margins? Where people sit in church, I always think, can tell you a lot about how included they feel. how close they feel to the centre.

 As a church we want to be holy. We confess our sins, we pray for strength; we try to love our crooked neighbours with our crooked hearts.

But we are also seeking to be inclusive. The PCC at the end of last year unanimously agreed to a statement that as a church we ‘celebrate and affirm every person and do not discriminate’. That ‘we will continue to challenge the church where it continues to discriminate against people on grounds of disability, economic power, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, learning disability, mental health, neurodiversity, or sexuality.’

Helpfully our bishops have led the way on this subject. You may have read recently their pastoral statement on civil partnerships. They reaffirm in somewhat clinical language that the Church only approves of sex within heterosexual marriage, and not civil partnerships. Several bishops have spoken out against it, and there’s a clear desire to be inclusive; So they are also saying ‘God’s love extends to everyone, whatever their sexuality and how they express it, and everyone is welcome in church.’ It’s a somewhat confusing message, which was then apologised for leading to the priceless Times headline: ‘Archbishops ‘very sorry’ for sex advice’.

One always gets the impression of a very English situation. Perhaps there’s a couple of bishops in a drawing room somewhere sipping sherry, and one says to the other “ah yes, you hear Karen and Melissa have got married”
“Ah lovely. And how is baby Beaujolais?”
“oh yes, very sweet really. Darling.” And then some aide comes in saying a pastoral statement is needed about the new law changes on civil partnership, and someone gets out some large dusty tome on canon law and the bishops are very surprised but of course the rubrics in a seventeenth century prayer book really can’t be changed at this late stage so it is a matter of deep regret etc. etc. 

But, to be fair, inclusion here is not simple. The Church of England is part of a worldwide Anglican communion. When bishops make statements it’s heard across the world. In Africa and Australia society and the church are more conservative and they are highly wary of statements coming from Britain and America. Given our, and especially the church’s, colonial history in Africa the Church of England is rightly keen not to exclude these churches. It is very hard to be inclusive if you find yourself steering between the Scylla and Charybdis of colonialism and homophobia. That is the nature of politics and the difficulty of trying to speak across cultural and national divisions.

 But in the church inclusion today is too often restricted to the subject of sex. Isaiah, in some of his most wonderful passages in today’s reading, widens the call to inclusion:

‘is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them… If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness’

There are many damaging things that exclude. Our language and assumptions about gender, sexuality, ethnicity, disability. But poverty has always been the most consistent and ruthless of exclusions.Hunger, homelessness, addiction, oppression, all close access to education, employment and society. For all that we are fixated today on issue of identity, we will have the most success in addressing inclusion if we are able to address the poverty that is within our own community. And lest we forget the visit by the foodbank, 36% of children in Wandsworth live in poverty. It’s a staggering statistic I hope we think about every day. And something we need to keep in mind as we’re thinking about the mission of this church for the future.

There is I hope not an open contradiction between holiness and inclusion. Faith is something that – if we are willing – will always take us deeper wherever we are. It’s call to be better, to develop virtue and honesty, can take all of us further.

But it is inclusive and if Jesus’ teaching speaks to anything it is that externals are of little consequence and he is concerned most of all for the state of our heart. And if there is a persisting negative strain in Jesus’ ministry it is his dislike of hypocrisy and judgement. His call to humility that leaves all criticism of others to God. I am aware enough of my own failings to know better than telling others where they are wrong. To avoid what Isaiah earlier described in ‘the pointing the finger, the speaking of evil’. CS Lewis had that great line that those who are looking down on others will never see the God that is above them. Equally, those who are too quick to give their own opinions, and those who with the established multitude are shouting the loudest, will not hear the voices at the margins of those who have also heard the call of God.

There is a call then to be holy and inclusive, to be wholly inclusive. We need to believe that we can be better. But we need to listen to the experience and voices of those who are different to us.

 Now I have heard from a couple of people that they would like a specific task to take away with them from the sermon.  So this is your homework this week. I’d like you to think about yourself and St Margaret’s. And ask yourself what is your, our unconscious bias? Who fits in easily here? Who might be excluded by our language, our music, our welcome and hospitality? Where can we find greater holiness? How can we be more inclusive?  Amen.

Variations on a theme

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Malachi 3:1-5, Hebrews 2:14-end, Luke 2:22-40

How many sopranos does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 
One. She holds out the bulb and the world revolves around her.

One of the many ‘screw in a lightbulb’ jokes. These jokes are an example of ‘theme and variations’, where part of the humour comes from the build up of hearing how many feminists, viola players, politicians and so on it takes. 

Music itself, though, also frequently makes use of ‘theme and variations’. It has always been a feature of dances, where the structure must remain the same so as not to throw off the dancers but to avoid boredom and endless repetition the players improvise on or develop a melody. Pop music, having discovered that a major part of what people respond to in enjoying a new song is familiarity, makes frequent use of this with covers, remixes, sampling, ripping off and plain stealing. Think of poor Vanilla Ice, real name Rob Van Winkle, having to pay off Queen and Bowie for stealing the bass line of ‘Ice Ice Baby’. The Beach Boys and Beatles both stole from Chuck Berry. Huey Lewis successfully sued Ray Parker Jr for stealing the tune of the Ghostbusters theme from his “I Want a New Drug”. Ray was probably assuming Huey wouldn’t want to own up to it. T.S. Eliot famously declared “immature poets imitate, mature poets steal”. He probably wasn’t thinking of Vanilla Ice or Ghostbusters but I think it still applies. 

More narcissistic musicians do variations on their own theme. Elgar, who with typical humility declared a century ago: ‘I am folk music’, produced England’s most famous in his 1899 Enigma Variations, including the very well known ‘Nimrod’. The variations each relate to friends, though in certain cases also dogs and bicycle rides. In the programme notes to the first performance he warned that the variations are at times only thinly related to the theme and that over the whole set another larger theme goes that is not played. This is the ‘enigma’, the ‘chief character [that] is never on the stage’. 

He never explained the enigma writing that ‘its “dark saying” must be left unguessed’.  As you can imagine everyone’s had a theory on what the enigma is. Guesses have included ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘God Save the Queen’ both of which Elgar denied. ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ has also been suggested along with Bach’s The Art of Fugue, while Yehudi Menuhin was convinced it was ‘Rule Brittania’. Others have suggested a more abstract theme - friendship, or 1 Corinthians 13 - which has the bit about ‘seeing now through a glass darkly’. There is something of an academic game here for scholars, but presumably for those conducting the piece their interpretation of the enigma actually affects the performance, as it might also for the discerning listener. 

Now this might seem like a grand leap, but something similar goes on in the way the Bible works. The opening words of the lesson from the prophet Malachi immediately take us at once backwards to the prophet Isaiah and forwards to John the Baptist as the one who ‘prepares the way of the Lord’. The prophetic call for the purification of the people and the judgement on those that abuse the vulnerable could have come from most of the prophets.  And it’s no coincidence that this call to purification is read at Candlemas, also known as the Feast of the Purification, when Mary returns to the temple after childbirth. 

Liturgically we also have these echoes and variations.  The Book of Common Prayer includes the now infrequently used service for the ‘Churching of Women’, the direct descendent of Mary’s purification.  The Eucharist is a variation on Jewish rituals and the Last Supper. But actually overall Christianity can be understood as a play of theme and variations; what Shirley Bassey would call - ‘just another case of history repeating’.  Christianity suggests that there is a continuity in the nature of certain things - certain aspects such as the nature of God and the redeemable nature of the human soul that mean that the story of salvation is continued in every generation. 

But both parts of theme and variation are equally important. If the theme is lost then the overall continuity is lost; he connection between lives today and those that have gone before disappears. It is the fear of the break down of meaning, a chasm opening up between us and the saints of the past, going back to Christ and the apostles, that pushes those who wish to ground themselves in certainty - looking to biblical inerrancy or stressing the incontrovertibility of the creeds. Yeat’s most famous poem of 1919, shortly after Europe had fallen apart summarizes what it means to lose the theme:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

T.S. Eliot’s jazz-inspired poem ‘The Wasteland’ of a few years later, is often thought to epitomise the broken, godless decadence of a europe which had been pulverised by war and influenza. But it finishes with the line ‘these fragments have I shored against my ruins’. A good deal of ‘The Wasteland’ is a mash-up of literature from classical to modern times, the Bible and other cultural markers.  One can see already the struggle for order, ‘shoring these fragments,’ - hearing the theme -  which will take Eliot to Christianity some years later. It is this sense of connection - being able to make sense of the world in continuity with the stories of the Bible and our experience of church that marks the presence of the theme, the connection between Christians throughout time, which we might call the Holy Spirit; which brings us to the variations. 

What is clear from the history of the Church is its ability to continually reinvent itself.  Most people of course think of the Church as a reactionary old slug dragged unwillingly forward, at present belatedly attempting to acclimatize itself to Victorian England.  On the other hand it is remarkable that an institution as ancient as it is has so frequently reinvented itself. From its inception as a radical, liberalising Jewish sect, through St Francis bringing the poor back to the mission of the church, the reformation attacks on corruption and elitism, the Victorian revivals and church building projects, to the inclusion of women in ministry.  Most of these reforms have come from variations from below. Monastic communities set up out of individual piety and compassion for the poor; a preacher like Wesley with vision and charisma that can move a generation; parish priests who saw industrial poverty and dreadful slums and dedicated their lives to bringing some compassion to difficult gin-soaked lives; tireless campaigning by pressure groups like WATCH to recognise the vocation of women. 

Part of the genius of the Anglican church is that there is scope at a local level to innovate. In the final reckoning the Church is nothing more than the people who gather together. As such every church, as it gathers for worship, performs its variation. Its expression may of course be weak and clashing or crudely done, but also it may be the variation that makes the other variations sound more truly. It may be the virtuoso performance that allows the enigmatic theme to sound more clearly.  It would be a touch hubristic to think of St Margaret’s in this way, but if we are not trying to be an outstanding variation then really what are we doing? From music and liturgy, to welcoming and generous hospitality, to discerning what God’s love means in today’s society, to friendship - every church is called to rehearse its variation to the best of its ability. And within that every instrument, even you, are adding your voice to the piece.

As I mentioned this week has seen the death of Ralph Bonnet and Alan Fell. Between them they had over a century in this parish; it’s perhaps appropriate then that we have just heard the story of Old Simeon and the Nunc Dimittis. It was not so long ago that I took Oberon to visit Ralph and Jean at home, in another movement of a transition of the covenant between generations. They will be dearly missed by many. Their voices now sound in the heavens where the enigma is no longer enigmatic and the variations have come together in a Symphony of a perfect equal music. Amen.

Magic FM in the Chilterns

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 49:1-7, 1Corinthians 1:1-9, John 1:29-42

People in all walks of life, from all backgrounds, of all faiths and none, still today talk about ‘having a calling’. In the vernacular, it refers to anything you do that’s not firstly for material gain. So people often think: ‘no one would be a teacher, a carer, a nurse, a vicar, for the money – it must be a calling’.

But it’s not just about your career. Perhaps you’re an accountant who’s also a jeweller, A nurse who’s an artist, A plumber who’s a pianist – Sometimes we have a vocation, but also have to pay the bills. But notice I didn’t say ‘a nurse who paints, a plumber who plays piano.’ A vocation is not something we do but something we are. How we identify.

 And callings can be broad, across life; I love asking open questions in school assemblies and one of the best questions you can ask children is what they want to be when you grow up. Once I asked this, and after the usual fireman, singer, footballer, vet, answers, a little 5 year old boy put up a chubby hand, saying: ‘I want to be a daddy’. 

So the first thing to note, is that callings are about who we are. I play the cello, from time to time. I’m not a cellist. If I never play again, I would not feel that something was missing, that my life was diminished. I am a runner though. And I struggle when I can’t run, even though now it’s mostly with an enormous clumsy dog and a pram crashing about; it is part of how I understand myself, part of my routine. Even more so I am a priest. If it were taken away, if I couldn’t take services, I would be a different person. My identity would change. I wouldn’t know who I was anymore.

So we might make hundreds of thousands of pounds working for some company, but it might mean nothing to us, not related to how we see ourselves; we might spend 12 hours a day in a dull, dead-end job that’s simply a means-to-an-end; time and money don’t necessarily tell our calling;we might get bored when people ask us what we do,  but come alive when talking about wine or cricket, music or our family.

 Our calling is who we understand ourselves to be; and so it’s what gives our life purpose, meaning; What gets us up in the morning and keeps us ploughing on through middle-age. Despite leaking roofs, terrible toddlers, sleepless nights, stress and anxiety, our calling is the strength to keep on.

 Today’s readings are about calling. We hear how Isaiah was called, and how this calling was from before he was born. ‘while I was in my mother’s womb’, A foetal attraction; This matters. Because the point is here that his call as a prophet isn’t because he’s good, faithful or talented. It’s been chosen before he was born. It’s simply a part of who he is.

 Then we heard about St Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ by the will of God, which was despite him persecuting Christians. Our calling can survive our wayward and ambivalent character, as well as our poor decisions. Colluding in murder is generally a poor decision.

Finally, we heard of the call of the disciples. The disciples are looking for the Messiah; they’ve been with John the Baptist and now they’ve found Jesus. When they ask where he’s staying, Jesus responds ‘Come and See.’ The calling is met by an invitation. But it requires openness to change. Because our calling is part of who we are, our identity, it will require us to change. Callings are not static – it’s following the voice. You don’t become a musician without it changing you; I spent less than five years in the army, but even in that time I did really change. Any calling places conditions on us that form us. Simon here is renamed Peter, meaning ‘stone’ the foundation on which the church will be built. 

So our calling is part of who we are. It’s what gives our life a sense of purpose. It’s something that grows with us. It means change. It means following the call. 

Our faith is a calling. We may hear more or less well like Magic FM in the Chilterns as a former long-forgotten prime minister once said. There will be times when the call of faith is ringing loudly in our ears; Often times of trial and celebration; If you’ve made it here this morning it’s most likely because somehow that still small voice, has pulled you here. Which may or not be a child who really enjoys Sunday School.

 The Greek word for church is ecclesia from ‘ek-kaleo’ to ‘call out’. So church is somewhere that we’re called. If a church is healthy it will be a place of formation and encouragement,  We will be calling each other to lead better lives, to know God more, to connect more, to make time to reflect, to grow; Oscar Wilde complained that he couldn’t be a socialist because it would take up too many evenings. I’m guessing he never joined a PCC.

 But has faith become part of your calling? Part of who you are? Does your faith give you a sense of purpose and meaning? Is it growing? Has it changed you?

 The Christian writer who has meant the most to me over the years is a Spanish chap called St John of the Cross, or San Juan de la Cruz. He wrote an important work a mere four hundred years ago called the Ascent of Mount Carmel. It was a spiritual manual for growing in faith – reaching the mountain top. The follow up, the difficult second album, became more famous, The Dark Night of the Soul.

 The phrase is still in common use, and can mean whatever you want. St John uses it in a specific way. Because faith has its blessings. It rejoices in the high points of life, its energy, its vigour, it blesses families, celebrates children, inspires beauty, builds community, may even grant visions. The saints write about this and we can be inspired by how our faith has shaped the world, and shaped lives.

 But St John found that it is when the world is stripped away that he perceived his closeness to God. That it’s under the conditions of loss that we understand our calling from God. The Dark Night of the Soul describes the conditions under which, like Job, everything is taken from us. At that point we know our calling, and we will find whether we are still praising God. When I am dead to all the world, and all the world is dead to me.

 We have lost friends this winter at St Margaret’s and seen others in distress and grief. Much of our life and culture today focuses on the moment. ‘You are exactly where you need to be’ Mindfulness and yoga, alongside the pursuit of eternal youth. Our faith is a calling – a journey. Even with our children we will talk each year about Good Friday, that we are following a man whose journey took him to the cross. This is also our calling. We look through it in hope to the resurrection. We look back through the history of faith, and the faithful from whom we have inherited it, and we support one another in love. But we know, and through Lent rehearse, the journey our calling takes us on is through the cross and our own Dark Night of the Soul. 

So today let us pause and consider. What is our calling? Is it tied to our faith? Where is our sense of purpose, the values that give our life meaning? And how are we changing? Are we ready for the Dark Night of the Soul? I finish with Newman’s prayer which reminds us that whatever our condition, whatever our situation, we still have a calling:

‘God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain.  He knows what He is about.  He may take away my friends.  He may throw me among strangers.  He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me.  Still, He knows what He is about. Amen.’

Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 3:13-end

“Nothing is more deceitful," says Darcy, [of the Jane Austen Wet Shirt Competition fame], “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.” and Martin Luther, whose Playmobile figure sits on my bedroom mantelpiece: “True humility does not know that it is humble.  If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.”

 There are problems then for the pursuit of humility. Firstly, you cannot appear humble. Nothing is worse than the terrible vice of false-humility, “ever so ‘umble.” But you can’t even know you are humble - the result would inevitably be pride, the most deadly of deadly sins.

 C.S. Lewis’ demon Screwtape offers the advice to his young tempter: “Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.” Admiring your own glorious humility is the most certain proof of its non-existence.

For Christianity humility is the highest virtue. And yet, according to these esteemed writers, it must be both invisible and unconscious. As someone who has perfectly mastered humility, I can tell you it’s a difficult and demanding task that probably none of you could succeed in.

For all these seeming contradictions, though, humility is really much more simple in proof. There are two things that immediately reveal it, or show its absence. The first is when we are aware of the mistakes of others. It’s no surprise that humility and humiliate have the same root, but the opposite sentiment. The desire to humiliate, to put them in their place; the speed and enjoyment with which you correct others is a sure sign of humility’s death. So did you play Trivial Pursuits at Christmas? Did you shout “I KNOW THIS, I KNOW THIS” every time someone else was asked a question? [People sometimes think children are naturally humble.It’s not the case.]

And did you as a Christmas treat serve up some perfectly middle class, over-priced Quinoa? Oh yes, I meant Quinoa didn’t I? But how do you tactfully correct someone’s pronunciation, who neither attended your finishing school, nor shops only in Whole Foods? Correcting others, if it’s to prove ourselves, to show our knowledge or superiority, is a confession of a failure of humility. 

The second thing that shows our humility is our shortcomings. Do we flat out deny them? “I don’t know who did it, and yes I may have been the last person up, but I’m quite sure it was not me that left all the lights on last night.” Or perhaps - like Eve burying her apple core, or Cain burying his brother Able - we prefer to hide our mistakes.

But most especially, how do we react when other people point out our mistakes?  How do we feel on being corrected, chastised, slighted or forgotten? Can we accept our faults in the broad light of day? Can we live with other people’s perceived superiority? Can we live with the injustice of being passed over? Honesty about our failures, our limits and our weakness is the clearest, and most difficult, sign of humility. 

So the proud person will see and point out the failures of others, while covering over and not admitting her own. The humble person will cover, minimise and sympathise with the failures of others, while being open about her own. This ambivalence about the objectivity or truth of success and failure, show that humility is simply indifferent to success (as it appears) or fairness, but is rooted in a concern for others.

*** 

Now, today the Church remembers the Baptism of Christ. It’s an awkward event and hard to explain. When in the nineteenth-century New Testament scholars began a project to determine how historical the New Testament was, there could be no doubt that this event happened. Mainly because the story is slightly embarrassing. Why would Jesus be baptised?
 Does it suggest that actually John the Baptist is more important? That Jesus was repenting? That it’s only here that Jesus is adopted as the Son of God? It’s not a story you’d make up. But you have only to look at some of the paintings of Christ’s baptism - Pierro della Francesco’s in the National Gallery or Verrocchio's [verokio] (with Da Vinci) at the Uffizi to see the strength of the imagery that made it an important event for the early church.  

At once, there’s an echo of the stories of Genesis;  an overcoming of the separation of the seas and heavens in the rising of Christ from the waters,  and the descent of the dove — the Holy Spirit, who broods on the waters at creation, and is sent out by Noah to discover the dry land.  And then Exodus, where Moses parts the Red Sea to free the people of Israel from slavery and death at the hands of the murderous Egyptians — and it’s no coincidence that Christ now moves to his forty days in the wilderness echoing Israel’s forty years in Sinai.  But as the paintings also suggest, this is a coronation.  Christ is commissioned, and as Excalibur rises up through the lake in self-conscious association — the voice speaks to Jesus: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’, quoting Psalm 2:

         ‘I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’
         I will tell of the decree of the Lord:
         He said to me, ‘You are my son;
            today I have begotten you.
         Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
    and the ends of the earth your possession. 

 Christ’s baptism then is not like our baptism. For St Augustine it’s the example that we follow.  He writes: ‘[Jesus] wished to do what he commanded all to do’; that he foreshadows in his body, the Church, the reception of the Spirit at baptism. Christ cleanses the water and consecrates the sacrament of baptism. It is his baptism that makes our baptism valid. And, as the Church is commanded to baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, so does this event suggest the Trinity. As the Son is baptised, the Spirit as the dove descends and the voice is heard in the heavens.

It’s often noticed, though, that while the baptism is recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke’s Gospels, it’s not in John. There’s also no Last Supper in John’s Gospel — possibly for fear of pagans copying and distorting Christian rituals. But John refers to them obliquely in other situations.
 So we have undercover Eucharistic references in the feeding of the 5000;  ‘I am the Bread of Life’. The references to baptism come in the washing of the disciples’ feet. Think of Jesus declaring to Peter:  ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’  

This I think gives us a final clue to what is going on in the baptism of Christ. Jesus’ whole ministry is built on humility. He is a king but also a servant. He comes not on a warhorse but a donkey. His victory is in the cross. It is he who washes his disciples’ feet.

So in this season of epiphany – of the revelation of Christ to the world –  Jesus’ ministry begins in this first act of condescending to be baptised by one of us, reminding us that it’s at the lowest place that we’ll find God. CS Lewis wrote: “As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”

 Or equally from Oscar Wilde in his letter De Profundis: “Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is.  Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.”  And this is why humility is the chief Christian virtue. Because it’s the foundation of love. Without it you can’t love because you can’t put people in front of you. Quite simply, without humility you can be nice; but you can’t love.

 In which case we don’t need to trouble ourselves with the pursuit of humility, or worry whether we’re humble enough. It’s simpler to ask ourselves whether we have put people before ourselves, and whether we have loved enough.  Amen.

Love Languages

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12

When I speak with couples preparing for marriage, I usually talk at some point about the so-called ‘love languages’. There are 5 of these, 5 ways in which apparently we give and receive love. They are: Quality time. Physical Affection. Acts of Service. Words of Affirmation. And Gifts. It’s really a very simple idea which has made Gary Chapman a lot of money. So you can enjoy his range of books: the 5 Love languages. … for single people … for men … for children … for teenagers … in the workplace… military edition. And so on.

 Now I must confess that I’ve never read any of them but as with many books that sell very well, the basic idea is very simple and helpful and can be written on a postcard. The money comes when you can stretch it out and repackage it in 9 different volumes.

But the point which I believe is really helpful is to understand that you may give and receive love differently than the people close to you. So it may be that the thing I most value is when someone takes tasks off my hands. If someone volunteers to take Oberon for an hour, or I come back and the house is totally tidy, that is what makes me feel loved. And, probably, if that’s how I feel, then the way I show love will be to do little things for someone: bring them breakfast in bed; uncomplainingly take the dog for his walks, clean the sink.

But what if my other half has a very different love language? When Rhiannon was in hospital waiting for the stork to deliver Oberon she made it very clear that words were very important. She would frequently shout “Words!” At which point I would have to say affirming, positive, encouraging things. We went into hospital on Sunday morning and Oberon was born on Wednesday evening. That is a lot of words of affirmation.

I think there is a danger at times though that when we become a little lazy, a little thoughtless, a little negligent that we revert to our own language and forget our partner is different. The disaster of this is that we may think we are being loving, kind and thoughtful, but our partner feels neglecting and unloved. When they quite reasonably become cross or upset, then we can become indignant – thinking look at all the love I have shown them, all the things I have done, While she is thinking all I needed was to hear ‘I love you.’ 

Human beings are dreadfully complicated and mostly irrational so the opportunities for misunderstanding are endless. But it’s a tragedy that you could have two people earnestly proving their love in their own ways, and yet both feeling unloved and like they’re the one showing love.

Not so with our kings though. In common with Marilyn Monroe, their love language is obviously gifts –  Next to diamonds, myrrh is a girl’s best friend –  and in today’s Gospel despite their late arrival they absolutely nail it. 

This scene is only in Matthew’s Gospel and has been built up with apocryphal detail. So often they are referred to as kings. We’re told there were three, presumably because there are three gifts and you would never turn up at someone’s house without a gift right? (And of course all great stories run in threes.) And because of these Nativity scenes, and of the gift-connection with both Christmas and birthdays – and what bad luck for Jesus right? being born on Christmas Day; but yes, we imagine them arriving at the stable, with that lovely tableau, the rich kings and the poor shepherds, with the animals in the stable under the star. But it’s clear in the Gospel that they come to the Holy Family’s house, so probably some time after the birth. 

But then we have those famed three gifts, gold, frankincense and Myrrh. As the hymn puts it for the child who would become King and priest and sacrifice. And here we have the reciprocity of love languages as the gifts are matched by the gift that Jesus brings to all creation as an act of service.

So perhaps I should co-author a new book to make Gary Chapman his next million. The love languages for churches. In essence the Gospel is this love story that God has for the world, shown most dramatically in the acts of service that Jesus came to bring to the world. How will we respond? Can we find the quality time, the acts of Service, the words of affirmation or praise, or the gifts to respond to this. And how can we pass on this princely gift to the world?
‘If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;’
Yet what can I give Him? 

The Time Being to redeem

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Jeremiah 31:7-14, Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:1-18

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”

Some words from WH Auden:

“Well, so that is that.  Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes – 
Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school.  There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week – 
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted – quite unsuccessfully – 
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers...  

 The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off...  

                            ...In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance.  The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:”
       (Auden - For the Time Being)

As a child I passionately hated the first of January. School was imminent. Rain unrelenting (it always rains in Wales). The anticipation, expectation of magic stripped away by the anti-climax of Christmas. The hollow feeling that despite the hype, the sparkle, nothing has changed. I couldn’t wait for the thin tinsel which twinkled so merrily on the 24th to be stripped down back to bare surfaces. And it’s not just the physical hangover of food and drink and idle watching of television we have to recover from.  There is also the metaphysical hangover – because for as much as we were able to invest in the magical beauty and the hopeful dreaming of Christmas – the quickly disappointed peace on earth, good will to men – we now have accustom ourselves once again to the daily slog. 

The happy morning is over, 
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon. 

Or, as another twentieth-century poet put it: 

       How shall we behave the day after the feast?
       If there’s no elation to recall at least
       There’s little enough disappointment : so act
       As if things were usual, which they are in fact. 

How shall we behave the day after the feast? For our ancestors winter mostly did mean holing up, eating and drinking until the days lengthen and Spring gets underway. Our church gardeners still take January and February off, I presume feasting until Ash Wednesday. But for most of us, school crashes in, work begins with the inevitable first week demands of a giant catch up before we reach even keel. Where are the young women rejoicing in the dance? When will my mourning turn into joy? 

This may sound like New Year’s blues, but it reminds us that as Christians we live perpetually after the joy of the Christmas morning and before the trial and hope of Holy Week.  We celebrate the promises associated with these events in our seasons, but time and again we find ourselves in the middle of the way, overwhelmed by washing-up, laundry and surprise guests, in a world that turns and turns in apparent ignorance of Christian hope. 

And now, we’re about to enter the season of Epiphany. I always feel that just as Christmas seems to be about children, Epiphany is about age. It begins with entrance of the magi, who I think have a sort of grandparently feel, with their extravagant gifts and short visit. “Change a nappy? Actually, we’d better be on our way, the camels are getting restless and it’s a long way to the orient” And Epiphany ends with the Presentation at the Temple at Candlemas, where the baby is received by Simeon and Anna, great-grandparents perhaps, who find in this moment the time to leave behind the world, Simeon famously declaring: ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel’. The words immortalised by evensong sung daily at the dying of the light.

There is a reminder here in these slightly marginal figures that we are not the centre. In this turning world that has spun us into existence and will turn us out, we are bit parts who strut and fret our hour on the stage before falling silent. This may seem like terrible news. Like Richard Griffiths declaiming: ‘It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself "I will never play the Dane." When that moment comes, one's ambition ceases.’

But it’s really a reminder that worship is a double movement. At once it’s the act of acknowledging, giving thanks, praising what is divine; but it’s also the acknowledgement of our own fragile, temporary, small part in this creation. I think, for many, it is harder to acknowledge the second than the first. But sometimes leaving behind the pressure to be special, to be worshipped, can be a relief, and we can enjoy losing ourselves in our attention to another.

At Christmas we hear today’s Gospel reading, perhaps at the carol service, perhaps midnight mass, and it seems very dramatic, cosmic: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ And it seems triumphant: ‘the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.’

When we hear it in the morning, it sounds different to me. I don’t hear it as a ‘big bang’, the final victory at the last battle. I hear it, not as the lit Easter candle being processed into church, but as the small candle in a side chapel reminding quietly of the presence of God. Which makes more sense of the reading since the world did not know him, did not accept and receive him.

So despite the mayor reading at the carols, the excited children cramming the pews at the Christingle, perhaps this is the real Christmas. The quiet faith of Christmas 2, the day after the feast; as the children are gearing up again for school, and already the things of Christmas are packed away, or like our trees, on their last legs. Life is rolling on in scarves and sandwiches and doctor’s appointments; the real Christmas is this Word made flesh, God in the very ordinary business of life. Sometimes a little hard to make out, but somewhere in the gloomy building, on a dull wet day, a small light is shining. A light which if we take the time is there to redeem the Time being, to give significance to these ordinary events, in work, in life, in death; a light to pull us out of the importance we give to ourselves and our moment, into a light that has a longer wick than our short years.       

So as we come out of the Christmas feast, with (as the Old Testament lesson had it) its young women dancing, its young and old men being merry, and its priests having their fill of fatness - I can vouch for this one; let us warm ourselves one final time in this light. 

It’s the last day of Christmas and already twelve drummers drumming may seem like too much. We have the seal of the Spirit and so we do not need to look for the gathering up of the Kingdom in leaping lords, ladies dancing and such like.  But as the world sets itself back into the solid efficiency of the working week, with the horrors of dry January, or worse Veganuary, let us remember that small candle burning perpetually in the side chapel; that promise that God is with us for life, not just for Christmas. And as our Christmas trees are shedding, our presents gathering dust, and our waistbands expanding, let us this morning commit ourselves to carrying this light within us from that happy morning through the night of agony, to reach our Easter day of resurrection. Amen.

we have the child.

Sermon by Anne East
Readings: Isaiah 63:7-9,Hebrews 2:10-18, Matthew 2:13-23

At our Carol Service earlier this month, the choir sang a beautiful song known as The Coventry Carol. It begins “ Lullay, lullay / My little tiny child / By-by, lullay, lullay.” This is a modern reworking of a 16th Century Carol traditionally performed as part of the Coventry Cycle of Mystery Plays. These plays were Bible stories and were given to each of the trades guilds to perform on carts around the city. This one was given to the Shearmen and Tailors – the men with knives and sharp implements - for this was the story of the Massacre of the Innocents, when Herod ordered all male infants under the age of 2 to be killed. In the play the lullaby is sung by the Women of Bethlehem – as they lament for their children: “this poor youngling for whom we do sing / Bye bye, lully, lullay.” 

What a problematic story this is!  Matthew tells us that Herod’s act was to fulfil a prophecy, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel weeping for her children…” Matthew is very keen on pointing out where he sees Old Testament Prophecies being fulfilled, because he was writing primarily to a Jewish audience and he wants to demonstrate that the unfolding events around Jesus’ birth are connected to Hebrew Scripture. But the murder of hundreds of children in order to fulfil a prophecy is not something that fits with Christian thinking. What we do see here, and starkly so, is that the world our Redeemer comes to is fallen and riddled with violence and the consequences of sin.

It is a terrible scene. Joseph’s dream gives way to a nightmare, a frenzy of activity, seizing a few possessions, walking down the street, out of the town gate and onto the main road to Egypt – the child crying, the mother exhausted, the father’s heart jumping every time he sees a soldier. The terror grows – spreading through the region they have left behind, as the blood of children darkens the earth. Have you seen scenes like this? This year, last year? On your television screens? 

There is nothing sentimental about Matthew’s ‘Christmas story’, set in the turbulence and terror of violent history, where tyrants kill children and families flee in the middle of the night. No shepherds here worshipping in wonder, no heavenly choir singing “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, goodwill ..”  At Jesus’ birth, violent forces seek his life, foreshadowing the violence that will eventually lead to His crucifixion. But what we see too is the providence of God, guiding Joseph to protect his young family, so that the child will be safe and will grow to become the Saviour of his people and of generations to come.  

Then Joseph has a second dream, a dream of relief, Herod is dead, the tyrant is out of the way, the immediate threat is removed and the family can return home. How welcome that must have been! The promise of home, after dealing with a strange language, different food and customs, and the ambiguous status of refugees, they can now go home to their neighbours and friends, to the old familiar places. 

 But this doesn’t happen, Herod’s son is on the throne, and like his father has a reputation for cruelty, so the family have to head further north, to Galilee. There will be no homecoming after all, no return to the old neighbourhood. Fleeing from Judea to Egypt, then briefly back from Egypt to Judea, and finally from Judea to Galilee - the Holy Family is a refugee family.

At our Christingle service on Christmas Eve, Brutus had fun with the children, hiding the figures from our nativity scene around the church for the children to find. Perhaps we could consider extending that: we should take away our shepherds, because they have returned to their fields, and the Magi are in distant lands. We should keep Jesus, Mary and Joseph, just the three of them all alone, no visitors, no cuddly sheep, no friendly oxen. We’ll move them to another location, not in the beautiful surroundings of our altar.  We could move them to a window, or take them to the door – looking out onto the world. They’d see our homeless guests arriving tonight to sleep in the church hall. They’d see London teenagers carrying sharp knives, for defence, and attack. And they would look out further to where there is still violence and oppression, there are still tyrants, and refugees fleeing, people needing protection, support and love. 

The intense compression of the second chapter of Matthew takes us from the visit of the Magi to the escape into Egypt and the return to Nazareth. Within these few verses we are shown that human beings are capable of a passionate desire to search, to find, to lavish gifts. But also shows us intransigence and violence,  the awful failure of systems of military and political power. 

Here are some extracts from a poem that I came across recently. You can decide for yourselves what it is about. It’s by Margaret Pritchard Houston and is called ‘The Holy Family at the Border’ 

They have walked all night
through the desert,
this couple: José y Maria
and the baby. 

duermete mi niño
duermete por favor.
Por favor. 

Their English isn’t great –
they’ve got a bit.
Yes sir. No sir. Thank you sir. They’ve got that down pat.
For the guards with their sunglasses, sidearms,
they know these abstract holy words: Asylum. Sanctuary.

…

And behind them, there are other families
with boys in their arms. 

And behind them the ravaging shadows of the soldiers
kicking down the door, 

….

Maria holds the baby,
her breast in his mouth,
milk like manna in this desert
like water from the hard rock of her body,
muscled and sunburned.
Her t-shirt hiked up. 

 ..... here
in the desert
with the soldiers at her heels,
she feels
they left the angels behind long ago.
And ahead
is a wall
barbed wire,  

....

the father raises his arms
and begs help
from the mirror-eyed men with weapons: 

we have the child.

Matthew dares to see things as they are – and still affirm that God is working even in the worst scenario. Even when we cannot celebrate ‘peace on earth’ we can celebrate Emmanuel - God With Us. 

In his Christmas sermon Archbishop Justin Welby talked about Lieutenant Kurt Reuber a pastor and doctor with the German army at the battle of Stalingrad in December 1942. He was in a hole in the frozen mud, it was Christmas Day and all was grey and terrible. He drew a charcoal picture of Mary holding Jesus. His Mary was a barefoot woman, a refugee cradling her child. Around her were the words light, life, love: Licht, Leben, Liebe. He needed to bear witness even there that the dark could not win. For if you are in darkness what do you desire? You desire Light. If the darkness presses in from within you or without and menaces your existence what do you want? You want Life. If the darkness overwhelms your sense of identity, what do you need?  You need Love. 

We may not be able to draw like Lieutenant Reuber, or write like Pritchard Houston, but when we stand alongside the vulnerable, when we stand up for justice, when we stand against oppression, then we too become witnesses to the light, life and love of Jesus and give hope amidst the deepest darkness. 

Heaven in Ordinary

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2.11-14, Luke 2.1-14

If you want the standard Christmas sermon from dull vicars, they’ll tell you how that, for all the children’s Nativity is pretty, picturesque and charming, the real Christmas was tough, poverty-stricken and painful. They’ll point to the occupied state of Israel, the arduous journey, the trauma of childbirth, Meek and Mild, Dear and gentle, Not a word of it. The birth of our Lord was bleak, bloody and brutal. We’re all too safe and comfortable to really experience Christmas. And we’ll all leave feeling a bit ashamed of ourselves, And the turkey will be like ash in our mouth.

I think the Gospel writers are more concerned with the ordinariness of it all. It’s not that it was the worst possible situation. We certainly have the impression his parents loved him; but it was an event much as would have been the birth of you or I.

I still remember Oberon’s birth in Frimley Park, and I would guess that all births remain terrifying, painful and fraught, and that’s just for men – Aside from Humphrey of course. Safe pair of hands there. And everyone is always travelling at Hanukkah right? Hotels get booked. It’s cold; the donkey won’t start.

The point is that this special birth took place within this most ordinary, universally shared, framework. And this goes to the essence of Christianity. The disciples, fishermen, tax collectors, ordinary men and women; simple people who are still talked about thousands of years and thousands of miles away. It’s just loaves and fishes, but somehow there’s enough for everyone. It was the most ordinary death, an execution, a common fate for the unlucky, but it changed the course and meaning of history.

You might say the meaning of the Incarnation is what is divine, Godly, coming down and taking in what is ordinary, human. You might equally say the meaning of the Incarnation is taking what is ordinary, human and making it divine, Godly.

There’s a Richard Crashaw poem that reads:

Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span. Summer in Winder,
day in night; heaven in earth, God in man.
Great little one whose all-embracing birth
Brings earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

And that is our worship, even on Christmas Day: celebrating the presence of God with us in Tesco’s Every Day bread and wine. Other brands are available. The most ordinary acts of hearing the old stories, singing the old songs and eating and drinking together as God is made known.

So should we be starstruck with the meteoric movements in the shining heavens, or should we see the divine gift in a poor girl surviving her first child’s birth with everyone intact? Should we be listening out for the angelic voices? Or admiring the quiet faithfulness of the shepherds? Should we be bowled over with the glamorous arrival of the kings? or reflect that where two or three of us are gathered as a church, as a family, there God is also.

The Gospel is all about overturning our expectations. The birth of the King of all creation happens in a stable with the animals. God reveals it not to celebrities, the wealthy or powerful, But to the least of all of us. And Jesus comes to bring in a new kingdom, But it’s not of this world. He is a king, But with a crown of thorns.

The people always want signs and wonders, They want a bit of glamour; christmas magic; but God chooses to appear in those difficult and normal experiences that all people are heir to: what makes us human.

Our communion service comes to a climax at the moment of the fraction. Here the bread, the body of Christ, is broken; and we all share in this broken bread. God is not aspirational. The body of Christ is not flawless. We can’t be a part of it until it is broken again for us. God does not meet us in perfection. Not in choirs of angels singing perfectly, Not in kings in their untouchable lifestyles. Not in the perfect Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. God meets us in the ordinariness of life. God meets us in broken bread, not caviar or a well cooked souffle. And usually it’s only when we recognise that we share that brokenness: that we have not done as we ought; that we can’t manage on our own; that, as we are, we’re incomplete; that perhaps we are barely getting by; that God speaks to us. that we’re open enough to hear him.

It’s only when we can recognise God in the newborn child, the executed criminal that we will actually grasp that God is love; And that’s not about the power and the glory, But the compassion that we have for the world.

So happy Christmas. I hope you did hear sleigh bells last night. And in your time in church I hope you feel a little Christmas magic. But when you get home, whatever you’re going home to, In the familiar walls, the person, animal or even the quiet that you walk in to; not transcendent, not terrible, I hope you find God there; As ever the Immortal Word, waiting to be heard. And born today in Bethlehem. Amen.

The First Word

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 52:7-10, Hebrews 1:1-4, John 1:1-14

I am learning about the power of words. Oberon, our fifteen-month-old boy, is slowly accumulating them. He has still not got to mummy and daddy, which doubtless speaks volumes about our parenting. As does the fact that he’s currently sleeping in the vestry. I just hope he gets to mummy and daddy before he learns ‘churchwarden’. His first word, months ago now, was “ZZ”. The dog’s name. ZZ’s name is often called in our house – usually to keep him safe from Oberon, or to stop him stealing cheese, but there is a delight evident in Oberon as he speaks the word, when ZZ arrives in the room, or when he is charging towards him. Other words include ‘wiggle, wiggle’, accompanied by peals of laughter as he shakes his head, and ‘gone’ as food drops from his chubby fingers into the waiting mouth of ZZ. This is a game they both enjoy.

Even ZZ, though, has some understanding of words. Words bring order, intelligibility. Walk, breakfast, garden, bed, give a structure to the day; These words through repetition make sense of ZZ’s life, give him expectations, confidence in what is coming, delight when the word walk is followed always by the jingle of the lead.

And with language also comes the sense of the other. When Oberon sees the dog he calls ‘ZZ’. When we call their names they turn. Oberon’s little head will tilt to the side to see where you are and what you want. The world is no more a mass of feelings and needs to Oberon. There are now discreet objects: ZZ, daddy, mummy; independent of him; other creatures he is in relationship, but not identical with.

And with meaning and rationality, and relationship, comes power. ZZ is not the cleverest or the most obedient, but Bed, spoken simply, sends him to his nest. His name – will bring him, more or less, straight away. Oberon is learning this power. This delight. Calling ZZ. Saying ‘gone’. And how long will it be before he learns the diabolic power; The power of man’s first disobedience; The power of the word, “NO.” ‘Christian children all must be, mild, obedient, good as He.’

Language: Gives us intelligibility, relationships, power.

In the beginning was the Word. Which is to say, In the beginning was intelligibility, relationship, power. It’s the first statement of faith. Even the utterance ‘in the beginning’ is a statement of faith. They are words themselves. And they say there was a beginning, a decisive moment, an act. As King Lear says – ‘nothing will come of nothing.’ And for all that there could be nothing, could be an infinitely shapeless void, This Gospel assures as that there was a beginning. And as with the beginning of a child, from indistinct objects and impulses, What Genesis describes in the beginning: ‘the formless void and darkness on the face of the deep’ From that comes a Word. And as the child names a dog, a feeling, a mother; So does a Word make sense of the world. A Word gives meaning to the world. That Word, which is from the beginning, says that the world has intelligibility. The universe is there to be discovered, to be understood; Its purpose and its ways are knowable.

I took a service twelve hours ago at Ashmead Care Home. It was both heartbreaking and heart warming. What struck me is that with age you can forget where you live, You can forget even the faces of your children; but you will not forget the Lord’s Prayer; you will not forget the old familiar carols. Still sung with remembered joy. So enjoy tonight, these words will be with you to the end.

In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning was relationship. There’s no Christian doctrine more misunderstood than the Trinity. It’s not the pagan notion of multiple gods; fundamental to all Judaeo-religions is the statement that God is one. The most important Hebrew prayer is the Shema – Which means ‘hear!’, as in ‘listen!’ To be written on doorposts, to be the last words of children before bed, of the living before dying; ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one.’

But the nature of this God is relationship. Language is between two; communication. Creation is an act of relationship. God speaks the world into being: “Let there be light, let there be sky and water, let there be dry land’ Man names the animals. In creation God has made an intelligible universe that gives itself to be known. But God has made it to share. Creatures can know one another, they can know God. You are not alone.

In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning was power. Freud talks about his grandson playing a game called ‘fort-da’ This infant would drop a small toy, exclaiming ‘fort’, which means ‘gone’ – as Oberon does with his food. He’d then pick it up again with delight exclaiming ‘Da!’ or “there” as in “there it is!” ‘Gone – there it is’ Freud observed that this is how the infant was learning emotional control over his mother leaving and returning. The game provided reassurance that mother was coming back. The words “gone!”, “there” let the child control the feelings of absence, fear, loneliness, and master himself against the unpredictability of the world.

And we also know the power of words to convince, to give orders, the power a name has. The power of the word ‘please’ which for children is so often the gateway for getting what they want – Of ‘thank you’ to make someone feel valued; ‘sorry’ to mend a broken relationship; Of ‘cancer’ and ‘HIV’ to cause fear; and, if you can’t say it at Christmas, when can you say it? of ‘I love you’ to change everything.

But while words have power they can also give power away. ‘I love you’ is a strange expression. It’s never just a statement. It can be many things, but above all it’s always a question. ‘I love you’ implies, ‘do you love me’? And it’s a formal statement. ‘Me too’ is a not a good enough response. Especially these days. You may remember in the seminal movie Ghost, Patrick Swayze’s ‘Ditto’ is not good enough. The formality of ‘I love you’, demands ‘I love you too’ back. It’s a reaching out. It makes the speaker vulnerable.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Power choosing vulnerability, to empower others, is a different power. What Frankie Goes to Hollywood called, ‘the power of love’.

Words can divide us: Words like ‘Marmite’, ‘Brexit’, ‘Ladbaby’ [I looked up Ladbaby, when I saw he had a second consecutive Christmas number one. There wasn’t much Scriptural reference in his song, though, and I do not believe there was a sausage roll at the birth of our Lord.] Words can divide, but Words can encourage, heal, strengthen, bring together, Words can be rejected, ignored, denounced; Or they can transform, promise and delight.

‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’.

The Word came with meaning, offering relationship, with power, He came as God’s ‘I love you’ to the universe.

There is a sense in which every new child is a new creation. And in every new child we can see that cosmic beginning: A decisive moment when the world becomes intelligible, when a relationship begins, a moment of power and vulnerability. Christmas is about the birth of a child. It’s also about that decisive moment of creation, in the beginning and on a cold winter’s night in Bethlehem. Christmas is the Word made flesh; this child who gives meaning, relationship and power. You have a purpose, you are not alone, you have power. So what are the words you need to speak this Christmas, and to whom? And what is the Word you need to hear? Amen.

The Day of the Nativity Play

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

Dies irae, dies illa. The day of wrath, that day. Today is that day which is looked forward to. Dies illa. The Day of the nativity play. It is a day of reckoning for vicars. You never know what you are going to get. What, you ask, if no children turn up? Do you coax adults into the roles? Easily done with the kings. Men usually enjoy a bit of dressing up, and a king is a strong, masculine figure. Adults look a little more ridiculous as angels and stars though, and although there are many contenders for the position of donkey at St Margaret, it would be very hard to choose. Fortunately, the position is solved by Zz who makes a good to scale donkey for children. I can see each year he looks at me with searching eyes: ‘Again?’ He seems to ask.

Christmas is, I think, then designed as a test of faith. It’s the time of year when traditionally we bring together children, animals and fire. Dies irae, dies illa. And we’re not even at the Christingle yet. And then there’s Mary. There’s something about Mary. You see the little eyes look up, flickering at the prized blue hood, asking, “this year, is it me?” Who am I to crush these dreams? You imagine the therapy, years later, “well it all started with the vicar: I was sure I was to be Mary, but somehow the fool made me ‘second innkeeper.’”

It’s worth reflecting that some little girls never get to play Mary. Not a fate that beset Rhiannon who reprised the role eighteen times due to a series of unexplained stage accidents affecting other would-be performers, long after she had left primary school.

It’s easier being a boy. No one is ever that bothered about being Joseph.

But the nativity play is important. People often remember their part for the rest of their lives. And you can tell. There’s a game you can play with people – guessing the instrument they played at school from their appearance. Thin stick-like people often played the flute. Neurotic, geeky types, the violin. The awkward and bullied are always given a viola, which seems particularly cruel. Lads and tomboys are at the back in the brass. I don’t need to give the type for singers.

But perhaps it’s the same for the nativity, the parts you play come to define you. It’s a terrifying thought. I never made it beyond shepherd, which seems a very safe part for a boy. But not very ambitious. Maries may find it difficult to understand why the world is not paying homage to them.

But the nativity is actually important as it begins for us the process of identifying with biblical characters. The Bible is a book which is constantly trying to draw you in. It’s written as the stories of our forebears, our people; It’s saying this is how you got to be here today, and this is what awaits you. It wants you to listen to listen to Jesus; to go with him to Jerusalem; to be there at the cross, in incomprehension and grief; to experience the resurrection and rejoice.

So at Christmas we can experience the different parts, possibly over a lifetime. We may know the exasperating difficulty of pregnancy and having to travel; or the guilt, the fear, the concern of being with that person, trying to make it easier. Luke – in his Gospel is always concerned with the poor – and so wants us to imagine it as the poorest in society; The shepherds, who come as the first to recognise the baby as God with us. Matthew, who is more concerned with Jesus as the king of the Jews, has the kings of other nations come to recognise and bow before him. The angels look on Mary – in awe and wonder; In praise? In jealousy?

As children, as adults, we can all recognise the vulnerability of a new child in the world. The children will sing ‘Little Donkey’ at the beginning of the Nativity play today which I think is especially appropriate. There’s something about the plaintive hee-haw of the tune, and the Eeyore like lyrics, That’s a little self-indulgent. You always get the feeling the donkey feels he’s having the most difficult Christmas. When I hear people complaining about how busy Christmas is I think, “ah, a little donkey.” “Giddy-up donkey”, I say. Let’s get Christmas done.

So whether we’re children, new parents, poor hard working labourers, wise people from abroad, donkeys or angels, And let me tell you a secret, St Margaret’s does have one or two but I can’t tell you who – the Gospel builds on our experiences and finds new ways of bringing us to the manger. So hear the story again this Christmas, let it be our care and delight to hear again the message of the angels and in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem, past the second innkeeper and third lobster, the ferocious Tiger of Bethlehem, and see this thing that has come to pass and the Babe lying in a manger. And perhaps the Christmas story will speak again to us and build in us the joy and wonder of the holy child. Amen.

Carol Sermon

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

John 1:1-14

People sometimes confuse the reading we are shortly to hear for the beginning of the Bible. It famously, and deliberately, begins with the same words: “In the beginning”. In the beginning was the Word: The word spoken by God, beginning Genesis:  “Let there be light.” As the Gospel continues:  ‘What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people.’ Creation begins with life and light. 

So like Genesis, John’s Gospel is speaking about creation, an act in the past. ‘In the beginning was the Word… the Word was with God, the Word was God.  All things came into being through him… What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people.’

 Then we have the one line in this whole passage, the famous prologue of John’s Gospel, the one line written in the present tense: ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’ Not a statement of the past. A statement about our present darkness. There is a light, shining, That light of creation: ‘let there be light’.

 Christmas gives us a different way of telling time. We think of it first of all as an event that happened 2000 years ago. The far-away past; that Christmas is getting further and further away. But Christmas is celebrated every year. As our parents, our grandparents and great grandparents did, we ‘delight to hear again the message of the angels and in heart and mind go even unto Bethlehem’.  Every carol service deliberately builds from the moment of promise, ‘the root of Jesse’ to the Christmas reading, to celebrate a new moment of Emmanuel – which means ‘God is with us’. That even today, ‘a light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’

There have been some very dark times. The first Christians facing the lions in the arena in the persecutions of Nero and Diocletian. The Black death, which wiped out between a quarter and half of the population of Britain. The Reformation and the burning and decapitating of Christians by Christians. The death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec. And the atrocities go on. Across the world people still suffer for their faith. And if you find each year that like Harry from When Harry met Sally you’re saying: “Every year I just try to get from the day before Thanksgiving to the day after New Year’s”, That can be difficult too.

 But the capacity of humans for resilience, for courage, for hope, is the reflection of that light that shines in the darkness. In every age and situation there are women and men of courage who shine as lights in the darkness.

Our times are hopefully not as dark as these, but the 2020s will doubtless bring problems of their own. For now though let us celebrate Christmas this year, In the cosy candlelight, amid the familiar carols, reflecting on how that hope still shines today, and how we can reflect that light in Putney and London. Let there be light.

Advent Kingship

How do we know that the kingdom of God has come near? 

The blind receive sight. The lame walk. The leper is cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised. The poor have good news brought to them.

We heard it in Isaiah. We heard it in the Gospel.

The kingdom of God is good news for the sick, injured, bed-bound, the elderly, excluded, and those in poverty. You might say, the Kingdom of God is a little like the NHS! So are we closer now than when we first believed?

For better, for worse, we are in the one constituency which in this election had a little something for everyone. Except the Lib Dems – but they also bucked the trend for our neighbours in Barnes.

Don’t worry – I’m not going to give you my view. I don’t even tell Rhiannon who I vote for. And I’m not partisan. I don’t write off Marxists for their bad mouthing of religion as the opiate of the people. I’ve always thought opiate sounds like ‘opal fruits’, which younger listeners would recognise as ‘Starburst’ sweets. In either case that would make religion a delicious treat.

Neither do I harangue liberals as selfish capitalist pigs only out for themselves. I’ve heard a few people claim you can’t be Christian and vote Conservative,  but it’s also a long-established rumour that the Church of England is the Tory party at prayer. But not in Putney, eh comrades?

By the time I was ordained I’d spent over a decade in and out of universities.  Educational establishments tend to be left-leaning; even Exeter University, though it’s the only university to have a guild of students, rather than a students’ union! Anyway, I noticed a certain mental block when I came to my first church in the Conservative-stronghold of the Cities of Westminster and London, attended not infrequently by councillors.  It felt like my language wasn’t getting through to people, and the change of context required a change in approach. Before, I’d spoken about collective responsibilities, about what communities can achieve and social formation. What spoke to people more in this context was individual responsibility, freedom, choice and opportunity.

 Now all these things are important; but how you prioritise them, and how you tell the story of yourself, will certainly affect your politics and how you relate to the Christian faith. So Comrade Putney will see a toxic cycle of poverty, poor health and education, and crime, whereby individuals in certain postcodes have little chance of escaping ‘the system’. There is a statistical determination to our fate.  The answer is central funding – improving education, health services, infrastructure, raising the level of all society.

Lord Granard, however, thinks that what’s needed is a little enterprise. We need to create opportunities so that people can lift themselves out of poverty. Systems just eat up money. If we want our school to succeed, let’s get a few of us to invest in it and take responsibility for giving our children more opportunities. Then it’s up to them to make the most of it. There are plenty of people who succeed in difficult circumstances; You can’t just write people off and tell them that because they’re born poor they won’t succeed.

We will probably drift more or less to one of these philosophies: Either: society forms people and we must improve people by improving society. Or: the individual is responsible for herself. She can improve her situation, then she can look to improve society. Your view on that question may well determine your starting box on the ballot. Our view on that question, though, is also a matter of culture. We’ve had an au pair from Florida the last few months and she, like many Americans, would certainly subscribe to the latter position. And to generalise, Americans are much less happy about paying tax; but they are also much more generous at charitable giving. In 2016 Britons donated £10bn to charity. It’s estimated Americans that year donated nearly £300bn. Their population is roughly 5 times larger, but not 30 times. It’s not that the British are not charitable; But they have different expectations about what is social or state responsibility and what is individual responsibility. I was struck talking to a colleague recently who said he would not start Glass Door at his church as he believed it was the council’s responsibility.

 Whatever your politics, I would say that part of our Christian duty is to watch what’s happening in our country and do what we can within our means for those who are most vulnerable, and most exposed to changes in policy.

Now, today we’re concerned with John the Baptist. He stands in that line of prophets who are concerned with the direction society has taken. So people are coming out of society into the wilderness to turn from their ways and commit themselves to be better. His advice as we heard above is to look after the vulnerable in society. That is how you bring about the kingdom of God.

 But it’s also interesting that they come to John. As we heard John is nearly naked, eating locusts and honey.Not, I’m guessing, as delicious as it sounds. No, I’m guessing it’s something about authority. Jesus in today’s passage is teasing the crowds who had gone to him: “What did you expect to find? Someone dressed in soft robes? Those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces.”

 Normally people look to their leaders for vision. They look to kings in soft robes. In the Old Testament the Hebrews all clamour for a king. God tells them no – the King will just take the best that they have and leave everyone else poorer. In a landslide referendum the people get their way and God relents. The people get their king. Likewise, Socrates in The Republic suggests that philosophers should lead society. And if Plato and God both say that prophets and philosophers should lead society who am I to argue? But of course the prophets and philosophers get murdered and we’re stuck with kings. So I’ll probably keep my hat out of that ring.

As I tried to show a couple of weeks ago Jesus parodies kingship. With the crown of thorns we have something quite different. The prophets do not wear soft robes. But people love the glamour of kingship. Diamonds are not a prophet’s best friend. So this Christmas, as you’re singing your carols, hopefully joining us tonight at 6pm, think every time the text goes to kingship, power, wealth and riches, think about the kingship that Jesus advocates and ask yourself how are you understanding this kingship: “born the king of angels, Glory to the new born king Who is God and Lord of all”

Our mode of thinking tends to be that kingship is good. But we don’t always have good kings. Christ came and judged those in authority and in power; so that in heaven all the positions will be reversed. Jesus and John the Baptist will be in the soft robes drinking martinis.  The kings and politicians will be in the prison cells and headed for the block. Then like stars his children crowned All in white shall wait around.

I think that is not correct. Jesus came to show that God works with a different kind of power. And the kingdom of heaven. If you remember, where: The blind receive sight. The lame walk. The leper is cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised, The poor have good news brought to them. The kingdom of heaven is where those who seem to be on the lowest rung of society will have found their rightful place in a society of equals, with God and sinners reconciled. 

There are many ways to make society better. We have to hope that those in their palaces, wearing soft robes, will try their best to improve things as they can.  But our first inspiration should come from elsewhere, The voice crying out in the wilderness. We should not begin from those wearing crowns; But from the one who was raised up with a crown of thorns. A different sort of power which is found in the lowest in society; So that whatever happens in Westminster, our hearts are set on the kingdom of heaven, and the priorities of God and not Man. So comrades, workers of the world, let’s get the kingdom of God done. Amen.

Remembrance at Christmas

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Luke 2:1-12, Revelation 21:1-7

The two readings we have had tonight, effectively tell the stories of both the first and the second Coming; the first is ever familiar. You’ve most likely heard it since you were an infant. Played the different parts in the Nativity Play. Perhaps seen your children take theirs. The story is very relatable. It’s an ordinary young family. The government is once again making them register. Somethings don’t change even after 2000 years.  They’re travelling at Christmas and there are the predictable difficulties. Donkey congestion and overbooked inns.

What is unusual is the nature of this child. As the second reading describes it, second time around: ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.

Now it’s easy to write this off as mythology. To enjoy the story performed by children in a sanitised mock-stable; the quaint Victorian-ness of it all; to light the candles, sing the carols; enjoy the memories of Christmas past; with a late cup of chocolate or port, beside the Christmas tree.

Our faith, or lack of it, is all different. Our idea of who or what God is. It’s easy to assume that since we all use the same word ‘God’ we all mean the same thing. I think for many God is most easily identified with a twentieth century despot, a remote almighty power with a somewhat arbitrary use of his power over life and death. That may be why they choose not to believe in him. Others imagined a curious scientist who has wound up this complex experiment and sits observing with his clipboard the struggles of the tiny creatures. I don’t believe in this God either.

The Christmas story is that this creator is not remote at all; but that God came and dwelt among us, ‘with the poor, the mean, the lowly’. that he shared our difficulties, our frailty; in order to share with us his divinity. ‘And he feeleth for our sadness, And he shareth in our gladness.’

And the reason for all this, the point, is that God is revealed as love. Love requires vulnerability And so yes, ‘he abhors not the Virgin’s womb’; he comes as infant, ‘so tender and mild’. ‘Little weak and helpless; tears and smiles like us he knew.’ Any parent knows that vulnerability – of both parent and child. And with it the strange, powerful strength of connection. And that child in life and death was to teach and act out of love, as our childhood pattern, with the greater love that no man has than this – to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Christmas is the beginning of the story that puts love at the centre of the universe. Now you may call it a fairy tale and claim instead that there is no meaning to life, that the universe exploded out and will finish with every atom spread out across time and space in ever cooling nothingness. That is one way of looking at the world: that death has the victory; that the only reality is ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Or you may choose to believe this mystery of the incarnation: that ‘ubi caritas et amor deus ibi est’; that where there is love and charity, God is there. That in the vulnerability of a child, maybe God was there. The hidden meaning of the world. And that as God shared this life, its hazards, its suffering, he made a bridge that shows us the way to the Father: ‘and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.’

The reality of death, we know. It may have caught us by surprise once, but the reality and finality of death once known changes us. Christmas is about the reality of love. The enduring presence of our loved ones that we have felt. The hesitant knowledge that what loves and what is loved is never lost but endures eternally.

Christmas is the bridge between these worlds. The promise that we have a friend who came to us with love, who is now with those whom we love and see no more. And that ‘we too will thither, bend our joyful footsteps’, ‘With the dawn of redeeming grace’. That this child was born as our hope, not of something transient, like a new government, the latest phone to make our life a bit easier a bit more glamourous, but born to show us the way of peace and redeeming love: ‘Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth’. Amen.