Maundy Thursday

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

The hour has come. The Gospel first talked about ‘the hour’ in chapter 2, way back at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, celebrated in January’s Epiphany season. The hour is now here. The familiar drama begins; We are transported to the upper room, on the first steps of the via dolorosa – the way of the cross.

There’s an inevitability to the Passion in John’s Gospel. It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy, where we know that everyone’s going to end up dead; And like Juliet, like Macbeth, they mostly premeditate it with a certain horror. But for Christ it is glory. Glory because it’s the revelation of God; the meaning of the world laid bare; the demonstration of the highest principle of human living; It is philosophy, theology and ethics; of God and men: love. The reason for creation;  The force that maintains it;  that moves the sun and other stars. The means by which the created can be like its creator. But love is a terribly wishy-washy term. It’s flung about in soap operas; And even more dramatically in operas; Reduced to a feeling;  To ‘being in love’ sentimentalised in a song – ‘you must remember this’; bent out of shape by lust.

And so Jesus gives us pictures: Parables of seeds and pearls – to show how precious love is and how it grows; Parables of sheep, coins, debtors and a prodigal son, to show how it forgives all and will stop at nothing; Parables of Samaritans, and the very rich and poor, to show that it surprises, that it cares for, that it goes the extra mile.

But if a picture is worth a thousand words, an action is worth a hundred parables. And so in the washing of the disciples feet, Jesus demonstrates how we should love those closest to us. ‘Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.’ To the end meaning both in time – while he still lived; And to the utmost – as much as a person can love. He loved them to the end…

It can be harder to love – and show one’s love – for those closest to us. Love in families and very close friendships is usually complicated. Despite, or rather because of, the strength of feeling, the history, we’re more likely to be negotiating, to make demands, to expect a return on the time and energy invested in love. We should love our wives, our children, so much more than little known acquaintances; And yet we might forgive strangers for not thanking us, for some slight, where our wrath for our most loved would know no forgiveness for the same small crime. Love can be tyrannous where it ought to be most generous.

So Jesus demonstrates this foot-washing, as the act which has most dignity in the kingdom of heaven; And so it is that the king stoops to wash the feet of the lowly fishermen. Foot-washing is under the covid-ban this year and secretly I think a lot of people will be terribly glad. It’s a minority that don’t feel uncomfortable during it. But ask yourself this – would you rather be washing feet or having your feet washed?

Having a baby and a dog, menial and servile tasks are a way of life. Rare is the hour when I’m not cleaning up after someone. And if I get too high and mighty there is she who must be obeyed to serve, honour and adore. Washing feet would not make me uncomfortable. Bath-time with Oberon is much more perilous.

But like Simon, I’m more uncomfortable being washed. And the Gospel teaches that we begin not by giving but by receiving. ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’ Are we willing to accept help? To allow others to minister to us?

We shave seen this a little in our efforts over the last year. Some people who have in their lives gained the resources to be completely independent have needed help – and found it uncomfortable. And when we sent soup and cake out, it became clear that many didn’t like the experience of what they perceived as receiving charity. Even though the volunteers have all been delighted to help, and one told me that delivering soup was the highlight of her week. To admit vulnerability, need, weakness, can be galling; And even the sense of some co-dependence, an inference that we might not be in masters of our fate, many find alarming and resist, even to their detriment. There is a powerlessness in being served. Still others will have thought that they don’t deserve it, that others have a greater need.

This difficulty with being served may be especially true with God. We want God to be majestic, an object of praise and glory; Powerful, immaculate, perfect. At a distance. The old Archbishop William Temple related that: ‘We may be ready to be humble with God, but are we ready for God to be humble with us?’ Can we worship the God in the manger, the servant who washes feet, the crucified? Can we make the shift from pity to veneration? Christianity may engage our wonder at the fragility and vulnerability of birth and children at Christmas and our desire for justice and compassion in Holy Week, but has it converted us to find God there? Or are we still looking for celestial crown jewels and glory?

Christianity requires a total overhaul of our values. And we need reminding of this time and again. Because the world constantly reinforces its values:  That worth is found in wealth, beauty, control, influence, prestige, recognition; And especially in having people work for you;  Being in command. This is how the world is structured and organised. Even within the Church there are bishops and Archdeacons and those who must be obeyed.

And yet the values of the kingdom of God are the opposite. Would Jesus have made it to bishop or archbishop?

The king of heaven calls these fishermen friends. It is he who washes their feet. He’s demonstrating another way of being in the world. And it’s more than service. Service can be done with pride and condescension. There are many who give their lives to public service, who we can’t imagine genuinely washing feet. Humility begins in receiving from others. It encourages others by taking value and recognition in their giving to us. And so it puts others first. It does not seek recognition but calls attention to the value of the people around us.

We might think of this as a levelling up. Which is what we also have expressed in the last supper. We share in the broken body of Christ. We are united in this body as equals. And it is the love that is demonstrated for all time, we are called to see, to point out, to give thanks for, to adore; The love that begins by washing feet and culminates in suffering sacrifice. The same love we are now asked to have for one another.

Jesus has spent his ministry preaching love, telling stories, healing and helping to demonstrate that God is with them. In these last days it is these actions, washing feet, sharing supper, And finally being lifted up from this world, In which God is revealed as serving, sacrificial love in perfect humility. It is the example we are to follow, the hidden meaning of the world, and the object of our worship.  The hour has come. Amen.

Spy Wednesday

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 50:4-9, Hebrews 12:1-3, John 13:21-32

Sometimes called Holy Wednesday or Great Wednesday, but also called Spy Wednesday, we are approaching the darkness at the end of Holy Week. On the day before the Last Supper, Jesus dines with Simon the Leper at Bethany and is anointed. But it’s called Spy Wednesday as Judas plots his betrayal. From tonight the Church has often held dramatic Tenebrae service – Tenebrae meaning darkness, in which candles are snuffed out one by one. And we notice in today’s reading from John’s Gospel, Judas goes out and, we are told, it was night. He has left behind the light of the world.

Judas is a character that should give us pause. For most of Christian history he has been a figure of un-redemption. The worst betrayer, the greedy man, the thief, the suicide; ‘It would have been better for that man had he never been born’ Dante, of a medieval mindset, places him eternally in the central mouth of the devil – next to Brutus and Cassius – all treacherous characters. If the world is to be divided into the elect and the damned then Judas is team-captain of the losing side.

The many cultural, scientific and ethically shifts that we have experienced since the 60s have gone a very long way towards eliminating the concept of moral evil. Ask yourself now – is Judas deserving of judgment, condemnation, eternal suffering? The one who betrayed his friend Jesus, who the church purports to worship and adore, to torture and death. Is our love matched by righteous anger, with such that we might defend our children, our parents?

It’s symptomatic of a shift of worldview that Brutus in the early modern period – by Shakespeare – has become a hero. It would really make sense if the play was called Brutus and not Julius Caesar. Brutus is the democrat and republican against tyrants, the upholder of political freedom, He’s a champion of the modern world, in which humans are good in themselves.

And if we look at society, government even, we see today all the good things – In general a system which works for the benefit and betterment of all. We are protected from nature red in tooth and claw – the exploitation of force. And now even absolved of the worst forms of corruption that have historically blighted civilisation, Even of institutional racism it appears. Humanity has been revealed as intrinsically good.

So much of the Bible and Christian writing is given to finding in the nooks and crannies of every human soul fault. Is it now out of sync with a world when humans seem to be on an upward trajectory? It’s an intriguing facet of how we think today – that we believe in freedom more than anything else. We are justly horrified and worried by human rights violations in China and Hong Kong, in Myanmar, Russia and across the Middle East and North Africa. We believe wholeheartedly in political freedom.

And yet we are highly ambivalent about personal freedom. What was called moral evil – willful misdemeanors – We will put down to poverty, mental illness, generational differences, culture, parenting, education. Are those guilty of crimes, responsible for their actions? Are we, for our hidden faults, responsible? Is there, in short, a moral universe at all, or is it just the outworking of indifferent biological and psychological forces?

Well in the same manner that we should fight and pray for the political liberty of all humans, so we must also assert our personal moral freedom. It is within me, whether to do better or worse. To tell an easy lie, To have an affair, To take something I have no right to. These things are within our power, and Judas was not compelled to betray Jesus in the garden. He chose to.

We know this, and hold a difficult tension; Both of wanting to forgive and understand human error, but also knowing in our heart when we have let people or ourselves down, or have succeeded – evaded temptation.

The Gospel is clear on this, And actually it’s really why it is good news. Because it reminds us that everyone sins, everyone commits moral evil The spirit is sometimes willing but the flesh is always weak. And no amount of wrongdoing prevents us from returning to God. His grace is sufficient, even for you. His grace is sufficient even for Judas, Or treacherous Brutus. And that grace has the power to transform us; Not only to redeem but to reshape us in lives of virtue.

There is a strange damnation in not believing in moral evil. Not only are we left without a response to the sometimes terrible, or just pettily mean, things that we do – other than the thought, you could not have done otherwise. Blame someone, something else, some cause. But it also prevents us from believing we can be better. We are neither absolved, nor given hope.

Judas takes the bread before going out into the night. Might we still believe that he is a part of the broken body of Christ? He recognises and suffers for his evil. It is not necessary for us to judge him. And, actually, we might still have hope for him, pray for him. As with the prodigal son, there is no crime too wicked, nor is there any day too late to turn. And, as for us, the greater the crime, the greater the sin, the more grace will we know in returning to the arms of our loving father. Let us take the darkness of Spy Wednesday and examine our own heart. In turning from evil we may return to the Lord.

Palm Sunday: Meditations on the Cross

Introduction

The Stations of the Cross are usually, as is the case this evening, accompanied by the singing of the Stabat Mater; a hymn that follows the Way of the Cross from the position of Mary. We witness Jesus’ suffering from his mother’s perspective, a mother losing her first child. It’s an invitation, not an emotional manipulation, but an invitation to come as near as possible; to experience Christ’s love for the world from the position of the person who loved him and knew him best; to look upon suffering at its hardest in love at its strongest.

This year we come at Holy Week from a year of death; of daily death counts, a year of temporary hospitals and morgues. And a year of increased suffering, of disenfranchised grief, of deaths in isolation, funerals unattended, Of personal and national tragedies. The stations of the cross are there to connect us in solidarity with all who face these hardest aspects of life. We hear this story of injustice, suffering and loss together; That whatever our own experience, we might share it with one another and with God, knowing that love is always redeemed, always held, always cherished, never forgotton, even when cloaked in the darkness of the tomb, in the promise of resurrection.

The stations are from a Roman Catholic church known as the Hidden Gem in Manchester. They are by Norman Adams, an artist and professor of painting at the Royal Academy, who painted them in the 90s, and believed them to be his best work.

Jesus is condemned by Pilate

Injustice quickly becomes normal. So normal we don’t notice it. Some injustices in our society became quickly apparent at the beginning of Covid. The human mind, though, has a natural gravity to ease and forgetfulness. I wonder as we emerge from lockdown if any of those concerns will remain.

The last year has also highlighted injustices of race, and violence, hidden in the home, and against women.  It is an effort of consciousness to remain stirred up by injustice. To continue to see it. To act upon it. To not consign it to a land far away I don’t understand; or as too big an issue for little old me to face.

The truth is always being told - on the radio - even sometimes on the internet. But we rarely hear the truth from below. The truth from the poorest and most without power. And we don’t want to hear it - because it’s exhausting. It’s easier to watch the Crown, Downton Abbey, Bridgerton, Love Island. Since the birth of tragedy, literature has always focussed on kings; We remain in the thrall of wealth and beauty. The Gospel is an ugly story about poverty and impotence. The lead is unexpected. The plot is an unfamiliar twist. It reminds us to look at our world again. From below. to tell the truth slant. To look for the other story, not told. To seek out injustice, and the suffering that trails in its wake.

Jesus takes up the cross

John Donne wrote that ‘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’.  Whether it’s Brexit, Covid-19, which has meant for many perpetual isolation, age – with its many challenges – Or just the reality of modern life, our connectedness with one another is more diminished than ever, and even at a time dominated by disease, we still largely push death out of sight to covid wards, hospices and crematoria.

The purpose of this service is to draw us back to solidarity with those who suffer, to connect us with one another, and remind us of our common mortality; to help us consider our humanity and draw us towards the divine love revealed in Christ through this story.  In the same sermon Donne writes that ‘any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind’. How much more then does this death – of injustice and torture – diminish us when we reflect upon it? And do we feel involved in mankind? Do we feel diminished by the deaths of our neighbours? Of Ethiopians, of countries without vaccines? Are we connected to this present grief so widely felt?

It’s not easy to look upon suffering. To look on Jesus taking up the cross. Typically we avert our eyes or walk on more quickly.  Change the subject. We don’t want to disturb our grieving neighbour.

Tonight we may reflect, within the safety of this gentle liturgy and beautiful music, upon those things that trouble us most; to look on death and to believe in life.  And as we reflect on this story of death, this memento mori, we might imagine the bells also ringing out in Putney Vale, in Mortlake and Lambeth with Donne’s injunction: ‘never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

‘NUNC LENTO SONITU DICUNT, MORIERIS. Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.’

Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene

Suffering is never an individual matter. We often see and think of a single cross, of Jesus alone as a sacrifice before God. That forgets the two thieves crucified alongside him; the innumerable other Jews crucified as rebels against the Roman occupation; the millions who have died for political expedience. Not to mention the women who followed steadfast to the end, the Marys and the women of Jerusalem. And we have this station with Simon of Cyrene forced to share the burden of the cross. All of these people share in Jesus’ suffering. He was not a man alone, but a person connected by bonds of love and friendship, a man who was grieved over. 

How we react to suffering says a lot about our own character and strength of conviction. Artists have long enjoyed painting the three crosses.  In Easter gardens our children make three little crosses on a hill. The thief who scoffs is usually portrayed as agonizingly contorted, pulling away from Christ, his face in shadow. The good thief leans towards Christ, sometimes with a trace of the peace ordained by Christ’s words: ‘today you will be with me in paradise’. We shouldn’t be too hard on the scoffing thief. Under the duress of crucifixion, who can blame him? The good thief, though, is remarkable. His suffering does not drive him within himself.  His attention remains outward, thinking of Jesus before himself.  In the same way, the women cry for Jesus, and their concern is reflected back by Jesus’ concern for them. Simon, a foreigner, steps in to help Jesus who has fallen under the heavy cross. 

Our suffering often provides us with these alternatives: to fall in upon ourselves, and, even if it is not quite self-indulgence, to lament our own losses; or suffering may be a springboard for the alleviation of others’ pain. To find in our own experience of weakness an inspiration to protect and serve our neighbour. Christ is the pattern here, the man of sorrows by whose stripes we are healed. T. S. Eliot called Christ the ‘wounded surgeon’, writing:
his ‘dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

By death redeems the world.

It should never stop striking us as odd that the centre of the Gospel is the death of the man said to be king. It is unlike any other religion. There is no miracle, no magic. It is the most human of experiences, encountering meanness, pain and death. The most surprising thing about Christianity though is to say that it’s actually here, in this seeming total lack of God and the supernatural, the strange cruelty of humans, the experience of forsakenness, here that God is most present; that God is revealed. Even 2000 years later we’re still tempted to look for Christ where there is power and authority; to think that God is with us when we are strong and blessed and to worry that God has deserted us, or to question whether there is any God at all, when things get difficult. 

For us, quite often, religion is an added extra; a pleasant thing we might do when we are feeling good about things, something to enjoy for an hour or two on Sunday. Our faith though is something rooted in the most basic experiences. It looks for God in godlessness; it takes a situation which seems unjust, irrational, inhuman and says ‘here is true divinity’. Not in miracles, magic or power, but in love, sacrifice and generosity. Things which we all have access to; and which at any moment we may be transformed by. 

George Herbert famously wrote ‘seven whole days, not one in seven, I shall praise thee’, echoing St Paul that we should pray without ceasing.  In the letter of James we read that true religion is this: ‘to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.’

It is a comfort to find God in beauty and friendship. The crucifixion though is a reminder of where the heart of God really lies. The disciples expected a Messiah to come in power and were surprised by a God of love. When we are looking for God, we should be careful that we do not do the same.
 

The Tomb

The Stations of the Cross leave us at the threshold of Holy Saturday. The Jewish day, following Genesis, begins in the evening:  ‘And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.’  So as Good Friday ends at the tomb in the light of the dusk we are at the beginning of a long day. Dominating the mind is an experience characterized by betrayal, injustice, suffering and death. But the close of Saturday promises a new beginning – a new creation, a liberation and a putting to right of the world. 

Here is the world we inherit and in which we mostly live.  Between the memory of suffering, of a generation, a nation, a person whom we loved and lost, with the fearful knowledge that we are the inheritors of this broken Good Friday World; and the promise, we dare to hope in, that the fragile meaning and uncertain hope will emerge with the dawning of a new day. 

Saturday is also the final day of creation, the Sabbath on which God rests.  Holy Saturday the day when Christ rests in the tomb. At any time the agony of the cross, the grief of the pieta, may threaten to choke us with the fear of Good Friday’s return.  What makes Christians different, what marks us out from secularism, which can only ever look backwards to the angel of death working its way through history, is the belief that love is somehow eternal.  What is sewn in love on Good Friday, for Christ, for us, is reaped in joy on Easter Sunday.  That is to say that the agony of the darkness of noon is pregnant with glimpses of light from the coming morning. And for our pilgrimage on Holy Saturday, this means that all our grief and suffering, the falls we have endured and the end we grow ever more conscious of, may be given meaning, may be borne in the hope of resurrection.

Passion Sunday: 1944/2021

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 51.1-13, Hebrews 5.5-10, John 12.20-33

In preparation for the arrival of the baby, I’ve been putting up photographs in the downstairs loo. This has included a photo in some respects I’d rather forget, from the rather challenging all-arms pre-parachute selection course I found myself on exactly 3 years ago. The course mostly involved running up and down hills carrying half your body weight, while being screamed at. A particular joy of the course was that, as a padre, I had to carry an iron cross, the same weight as a rifle, – for fairness. By the end of the course, my back was black and blue, which given that the course was in Lent, was highly appropriate. A very literal interpretation of taking up your cross. It’s a peculiar trait of the British Army that it makes a particular effort to commemorate historic battles, and on a free weekend in the course, after a particularly destructive 10 mile yomp over the Yorkshire hills, I drove down to Portsmouth and caught the ferry to Normandy, joining my battalion to take a service of Remembrance at Bruneval.

Normandy has a place of special importance for the Parachute Regiment. They were the first on the ground at D-Day in 1944 and had the critical task of securing the beaches.  The battalion 9PARA had a particularly interesting time. On the eve of the drop with all very nervous, their padre led a service beginning with the well-known lines: “Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. There was no one there.”

Afterwards, the brigadier James Hill addressed them: ‘Gentlemen, in spite of your excellent orders and training, do not be daunted if chaos reigns. It undoubtedly will.’

As it turned out, everything went wrong for 9PARA. Their jump was woefully handled by the RAF – standard. Of a battalion of over 600, only 150 made it to the Rendezvous point. Over 200 dropped into water and drowned. More than 200, stranded miles from the drop zone, were rounded up by the Germans as Prisoners of War. Many were killed by misdirected Allied indirect fire. With only a quarter of his battalion the Commanding Officer then led an attack on their primary target, the Merville battery. The battery overlooked Sword beach, the beach onto which the D-Day British forces were landing in just a few hours, with the potential to wreak havoc on the incoming Brits trudging up the beach. 9PARA took the battery and managed to destroy or damage most of the guns but lost half their men. Reduced to less than 70 men, they withdrew to a defensive position where they dug in to protect the Allied invading force from the German counter-attack, and waited for reinforcements. The battalion did not make it back to England for three months, by then a very different set of men.

Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. There was no one there.

What is faith in this context? If we turn back to 1944 we see there’s something of a crisis moment in theology. Liberal theology had become very popular. There was a chap called Rudolf Bultmann, who argued for a demythologised Christianity.  He wanted to take out all the miracles and superstition, and cut it all back to the ethical teaching. The world had come of age. It had grown up and could now explain everything in terms of predictable, repeatable laws of science. The realm of God, which for most of human history had covered everything, was now this very small fiefdom, which people could ignore altogether if they wanted. But there were also conservatives who argued that liberal theology was the problem. The first half of the twentieth century was a judgement upon an arrogant humanity. The great atheisms of Nazism and Communism were apocalyptic, and only Christianity prevents humans from sliding into war and barbarism. Returning afresh to the Bible will return us to stability and decency.

But there was also a German theologian called Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was one of the first to argue that the Nazi party were unchristian and incompatible with Christianity. He was involved in a plot to kill Hitler, imprisoned and executed in a concentration camp shortly before the end of the war. But his theology, mostly written informally in letters to a friend, has become very influential.

The question that most concerned him, was who is Jesus Christ today? He didn’t accept the liberal premise that the area of God was the ever-decreasing sphere of activity that science couldn’t explain. But he didn’t want us to simply return to the Bible and a way of looking at the world that had been dead for 2000 years.  Nor did he feel that Christians should turn in on themselves and be satisfied with putting on lovely services with organ music and tell once again the old stories. He wanted to look at the world as it is. Which in 1944 was pretty horrific. Europe was burning. Life was cheap, in some cases valueless. Nothing was certain. He was in prison, engaged but never to marry, in an ever-worsening situation.

And it’s the right question. In a concentration camp in 1944,  In Covid-stricken-2021 – Who is Jesus Christ today? Where is Jesus Christ today?

After ten years of resistance to Nazism he wrote: ‘It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled,  in short from the perspective of the suffering. [we have learned] ‘that personal suffering is a more useful key,  a more fruitful principle than personal happiness for exploring the meaning of the world’.

Now I suppose the point is this. People don’t come to faith after making some rational decision of the likelihood of the Bible being true.  It’s also a mistake to think there’re certain areas of life we call religious. If the only time faith is going to impact your life and decisions is Sunday morning, You’d be better staying in bed.

Faith is less a subject to be studied, than a pair of spectacles with which to understand the world. As our Old Testament lesson advised: ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.’ So faith means putting on its spectacles to look at the world and ask — who is Jesus Christ today? 
Where is Jesus Christ today?

Let me put it this way. Say you woke up this morning with a blinding headache. A liberal Christian might say, ‘Well the Bible talks about pain, but science gives us a better understanding. So take pain killers to solve the problem, but maybe pray about it because that might have a psychosomatic effect, and there are some aspects we don’t understand about human experience of pain and maybe God acts there.” The conservative Christian thinks: “Ach! I have a blinding headache! Where does this happen in the Bible? Well Jesus went around healing people who were sick right? So if I pray and have faith like the centurion then Jesus will heal me and I’ll feel better.”

In both these examples, the Christian is experiencing the world and then turning to religion to find help. But our faith teaches us to see the world through the lens of faith. So, not to read about the crucifixion and say, what terrible suffering! But when you’re in pain or grief, see the cross; when you see someone affected by homelessness, see Christ. When someone forgives you, even if it’s for something silly, to feel something of the joy of resurrection. When you feel inspired to see the rush of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Which is not to say don’t take painkillers. But see the resonance of these bible stories in our lives. understand that every experience of human suffering is cruciform; that it matters;  to God, to all of us. And until every human suffering is eradicated we still live in a world dominated by Good Friday.

So where is Jesus Christ today? Don’t be like the liberal who only brings him out on a Sunday morning. Don’t be like the conservative who sees the world then tries to force it into ancient texts not designed to be read in that way. But find the suffering of Christ in the experiences of suffering we are all aware of. Find the washing of the disciples’ feet in the acts of service you’re able to perform and in those you see going on around you. Find the joy of resurrection in the new life that is constantly being reborn in and around us. That is what it means to have faith. Not to find Christ in an old book, but to see Christ in the world today.

This Sunday is Passion Sunday.  The story of Christ told each year has moved to those final events. I would invite you to enter into those stories this year.

Life may have become very difficult for you in this last year. In 1944 the reality of good and evil, of betrayal, of triumph and adversity, of suffering, cruelty, the via dolorosa and death, were all too evident. The passion narrative was told by a nation. And in these fearful days, the omnipresence of death is still with us.

But Easter is just around the corner.

Chaos reigns. And fear still knocks at the door, waiting for an answer.

Mothering Sunday: On experience

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: 1 Samuel 1:20-end,Psalm 127:1-4, 2Corinthians 1:3-7, Luke 2:33-35

Experience changes us. Not just through memory and expectation. But it changes how we see and experience the world. It changes our understanding, Our framework.

I am colour-blind. My brain can’t differentiate between green and grey so it guesses. Sometimes I will see a green wall and Rhiannon will point out that it’s actually grey; Or I’ll see a lovely grey cardigan, And Rhiannon will point out that it’s green. But the strange thing that happens is this: Once she’s told me – Supplied my humble brain with that added information. I will see it as the colour I’ve been told. My brain says “thank you very much” and changes the colour I am seeing. Weird.

What I’m saying is, experience can change what we see. So when in 1942, radar observers failed to notice the two German warships, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau enter the English channel, it wasn’t a momentary lapse in concentration, or because they’d nipped off to make a cup of tea, but a prolonged period of concentration trained their brains to ignore what was on the screen in front of them – even though that was precisely what the observers were there for! Their prolonged experience prevented them seeing what had changed.

Our eyes seem so trustworthy, we tend to view them as objective – our direct window onto reality. We forget that our eyes are filtered through our brain. And our brains are constantly editing. They focus on what they expect to be important. They exclude what seems peripheral. Their lens is shaped by their experience.

Experience can be good, can be bad. We tend to see it as expanding our understanding, even when it’s bad. The Italians haven’t won a 6 Nations game since 2015 – the last time against Scotland obviously – But that doesn’t mean the players haven’t grown and improved in the last 5 years. But bad experience can also narrow our vision and distort our understanding –  as is the case with trauma. Repeated experience can help us to anticipate and recognise likely outcomes. But it can also blind us to the unexpected. If we think it’s all happened before we won’t see what’s new.

We can see the conflict of these positions in the classic Mother’s Day track: Father and Son by Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam. The older voice advising a patient conservativism, the younger voice demanding change.

While Mothering Sunday historically relates more to Mother church than actual mothers – culturally it’s Mothers who have the ascendancy and our readings today reflect that. Our Old Testament reading tells of Hannah who, after struggling to have children, dedicates her child, Samuel, to the Lord. Our psalm reminds us that children are a blessing. The last verse of the psalm is omitted which is a shame because it’s my favourite. It reads: ‘Happy are those who have their quiver full of [children]: they shall not be put to shame when they dispute with their enemies in the gate.’ It doesn’t say but I assume the psalmist meant the school gate. I like to imagine Natasha Hume or Helen Hargreaves going to collect their quiver of children, and lording it over their enemies.

The Gospel relates the amazement of Jesus’ parents at the prophecies made of their boy, but poignantly includes the pain that accompanies parenting. I can’t speak to the experiences of motherhood. And there are many who do not experience parenting, and that may be a particular loss and burden. But anyone who has become a parent, will know something of the transformations that occur in how you experience and relate to the world.

A friend of mine said to me shortly before Oberon was born: ‘you’ll never be able to watch nature documentaries in the same way’ and confessed to weeping at the trials of anonymous animals – a baby seal who was untimely ripped from the icecap by the mauling paw of a polar bear. And of course the constant terror of injury and death, The unreasonable responsibility placed on men to prevent falling and choking and drowning and the myriad ways this tiny collection of particles could come to harm. Oh, and the feelings – of impotence, frustration, contentment, exhaustion, love –

Batter my heart [small, break-neck] god, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend,
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend 
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.

Children are something like gods in the way they overthrow our lives and transform us, Bruising us with sleepless, noisy, nights – With constant watchfulness,  Consuming energy from every part of lives, sucking us into their orbit,  But overwhelming us with love we did not know we had in us. With a standard of dirty beauty, breathless innocence, and careless devotion that we thought only existed in fairytales – but now crushes against us in the most painful delightful overwhelming way. Who is not changed by parenthood? Who is not forced to re-evaluate everything in the light of such urgent intense need and attention?

Only of course in the Gospel we have this early warning: ‘And a sword will pierce your own soul too’ Like the evil fairy this prophecy hangs over the gospel –  Mary’s experience in this I cannot comprehend. But grief is also an experience that transforms us. All grief is different and I wouldn’t dare speak to another’s grief. But I have seen the devastation losing a parent even in your 70s can create; That even a lifetime cannot prepare you for.

I have experienced sudden grief for a friend that changed me. I would have guessed before that grief eases with time, you become accustomed to loss and the memories and emotion fade. That is not my experience. I have found that the grief remains the same. The person’s presence remains hauntingly with me. But I accommodate myself to him in this form. I can light a candle for him. He does not diminish, but I have adapted to this new strange absence presence in my life. This will not be everyone’s experience but no one whose world has been turned upside down in this way can think of ‘getting back to normal’.

Faith can also operate in this way. Hannah’s overwhelming joy at the answer to prepare leads her to give her most precious child to the care of another. St Paul in our second reading finds now that even the most terrible suffering – with this new experience he has of God and Christ –  Has its consolation in faith. And this faith brings him closer to empathize and share in joy and hardship with his fellow Christians. Mary receives these promises, good and bad, becoming a mother in the knowledge that this the baby will not only change her world but the world.

 Life’s most urgent experiences – love, grief, faith – don’t add something to us – Or take something away. They change us. Every other experience is felt and understood differently when there is a mewling piglet in the cot, when the permanent fixture in our life is removed; When we have found eternity and the love of God, which gives shape and meaning to creation. And I suppose a second child won’t be just more of the same, but another hurricane passing through our lives.

And actually every experience: Every novel read,  every piece of music performed,  every child who enters our lives, every warship that suddenly appears in the channel; every sermon delivered, every sacrament received is not intending to add another experience, to tick off another item from the bucket list, but is seeking to change us somehow; to nudge us in the direction of beauty, truth and love; and eternity.

And for all that children take from us, For all that death can take from us, And even the sacrifices we make during Lent; These are the things that bring new colour to our lives. They can turn a horizon from grey to green; And transform us with an experience that meets us with the force of a revolution. Amen.

Lent 3: Master of my Fate, Captain of my Soul

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16 Psalm 22.23-31 Romans 4.13-end Mark 8.31-end

You will remember the famed story of the wind and the sun. And their argument over who could remove the traveller’s coat. Where the harder the wind blew the tighter the traveller drew his coat around his neck. And then the sun just shines, and the traveller takes off his coat and puts it in his bag.

When St Paul describes the cross as weakness:  ‘God’s weakness is stronger than human strength’, We may be inclined to think in these terms: The cool suavity of the sun, infinitely more impressive than the desperate bluster of the wind. And we might hear Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek and picture Arnold Swarzenegger cooly taking the punch of the ordinary mortal, before lifting him up off the ground by his neck or reaching for his Uzi 9mm. As Sting said, ‘an Englishman will walk but never run’; The British love an amateur, love an underdog, love the charm, the camp, the seemingly-unconcerned.

Americans, classically, love the braggart, the self-made man, full of sound and fury, grit and hard work.
The British, traditionally, prefer someone who’s just inherited everything – our famous distaste at the nouveau riche –  only British people would understand or find amusing the remark made of poor Michael Heseltine: ‘The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy his own furniture’ Still, I doubt Lord Heseltine’s children will need to buy their own furniture.

Modesty, likewise, is a British tradition. In no other language would you say, “it’s quite good” or “it’s really not bad”, meaning “it’s very good”. We are very far from either humility or Christ’s weakness here though. More in the realm of manners than ethics. There is in fact something quite self-protective about British modesty. By playing ourselves, things we like, down, we reduce the risk in someone cutting us down to size. It also suggests our own sophistication: If this kobe beef served with an 1869 Chateau Lafite, is only ‘pretty good’, we must be pretty smart. If this twice-baked goats-cheese souffle is something I just threw together, I must be really quite good at cooking.

It’s unlikely Jesus ever drank an 1869 Chateau Lafite. And this is not the humility or weakness we find at the heart of our faith. But likewise, the victory of the cross is not a victory of endurance. It’s not some man-up test. It’s not about courage; still less poise.

I noticed in a café in Roehampton before Christmas a poster with a famous poem written on it, regularly recited by Nelson Mandela while in prison, quoted by Churchill in ’41  and more recently by Aung-sun-su-chee. It reads:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole, …
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the Bludgeonings of chance
My head is Bloody, but unBowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

It’s a curious mixture of Christian and anti-Christian. I won’t go into depth here; It has inspired. But it’s a different message to the cross. And the difference matters.

So if we were to imagine ourselves in the dreary underworld of reality television. I occasionally catch glimpses of shows Rhiannon has in the background, of American housewives in wealthy suburbs. We might imagine people who put their sense of worth, value, and make judgements of others on the basis of stuff: cars, houses, money etc. The things of this world, their situation. Speaking broadly, we might classify this as superficial. After all, all these things can be taken away.

Secondly, we might imagine a person who finds their sense of worth in their relationship to other people. Who they’re married to, who their friends are, who likes them, who respects them, what power and influence they have.

This can also be taken away. So the Nelson Mandelas, the Aung-sun-su-shees, Dante or Oscar Wilde; All prisoners and exiles, have to find within themselves the means, the worth, to remain themselves. As Whitney Houston sang: ‘Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.’ These people are the masters of their fate, The captains of their soul. They don’t need anything or anybody, but themselves.

But not so with Christ. He had entered the desert. Rejected the things of this world. Material possessions he could do without. In the passion he is abandoned by all. The trial scenes before Herod and Pilate are mirrored in the trial of Peter and his promise not to deny Christ. But. Peter denies. Judas betrays. The crowds cry crucify. On the cross Jesus will find no affection or respect to sustain him. His human relationships fail him. 

But in the face of this hardship does he rely on himself, the captain of his soul, to win through? Does he endure through strength of character, an unbreakable inner core, to win the prize? I think this is not the way to see it. The point is not that he trusted in himself, but that he trusted in God. He humbled himself. He sacrificed himself. He gave up the mastery of his fate. He resigned the captaincy of his soul.

As we follow Christ to Good Friday, we are encountering weakness and failure. He does not convince people. He doesn’t win through like a hero. He’s tragically executed. The story has gone wrong. This is not Marvel; it’s not Hollywood. It’s not Baloo the bear, or Superman flying round the sun; The central story of our faith is a man edged out of the world. There is no last minute reprieve. This is the weakness of the cross: To be on the wrong side of history; The wrong side of society. To be powerless and foolish. Can we side with that person?

It is very hard for us to take ourselves out of the centre of our story. To think nothing of ourselves and everything of others.

One of the things that makes Christianity so unlikely, is that it’s central character and the God it describes, is one who to most of the world fails. As we’ve seen recently in Mark’s Gospel, faith is a sort of secret, by which those who are close to Jesus understand what is happening but those outside don’t. This is most of all true with the cross. To the secular, the sceptics, the rationalists, the faithless, all those who measure by the standards of the world – it’s a failure. So that’s that then. We didn’t think Jesus could really be anything other than a man.

But to those who believe, it’s the necessary, most inspiring, part of God’s revelation. How else could God have shown the redeeming love he has for all creation? How else could God shift our notion of power from total self-reliance to total self-giving? How else could God shift our ethics from strong self-mastery to the weakness of self-giving?

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

The truth that we know better today than a year ago, is that everything is taken from us. Our possessions, our friends and family – all people, and finally ourselves. The wisdom and power of this world. We cannot rely on things, people or finally even ourselves. I’m sorry – you are not the master of your fate. But in the cross we have a hope. That as one man found when he put all his faith in God, he was sustained, he was raised by God. So we can believe that as we give up everything, so will we receive the gift of that man and that God: what is only still a whisper, halfway through Lent, in the midst of our desert: Resurrection. After the wind has blown, and blown and blown, the sun will simply shine.  Amen.

Lent 2: Theology of the Cross

Sermon preached by Anne East 
Readings:  Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16 Psalm 22.23-31 Romans 4.13-end Mark 8.31-end

When my friend Jane moved to a small village in North Cornwall I had difficulty finding her on my first visit. I had a rough idea of where I was going and indeed the village was named on some of the signposts I passed. I started following the way but the hedges in those Cornish lanes – as some of you may know - are so high, I couldn’t see the countryside. The journey was unexpectedly hard, because the road didn’t do what I thought it should. It turned aside into different territory.

We’ve reached a moment like that in our journey through St Mark’s gospel. Up until now we’ve galloped (you go at speed in Mark’s narrative) through an urgent sequence of events: Jesus has healed, preached, told parables, fed thousands with a few scraps of food, walked on water . . Where was this leading? What was he up to? What did people make of him?  Jesus asked his disciples’ “Who do people say that I am?’ “John the Baptist, Elijah, a prophet,” came the reply. “But who do you say that I am?’ And Peter gives the stunning answer, “You are the Messiah.”

Well done Peter, you got that right, go to the top of the class. But now this: “Jesus began to teach them that he must undergo great suffering.” Suffering, rejection and death shouldn’t be on the agenda with the Messiah. Prestige, power, dominion, the throne of David, a crown but not a cross. Peter gets it spectacularly wrong. He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him. And Jesus in front of all the others calls Peter by the name of the Tempter – ‘Get behind me Satan!’ The Tempter who had approached Jesus in the wilderness “ Come on – there’s an easier way of doing this.” 

‘Oh Peter,’ says Jesus, ‘you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

.”my  thoughts are not your thoughts,” we read in Isaiah (55:8) , “neither are your ways my ways," says the Lord.

Jesus began to teach them what it meant for him to be Messiah. There were differing messianic expectations around at the time but one idea that was prevalent was that the Messiah would deliver the Jews from Roman oppression. Galilee was a hotbed of revolutionary activity. Those Galilean disciples of Jesus might have shared that view. Certainly no one expected a suffering and dying Messiah. 

Yet Jesus tells them that this is his destiny:  rejection by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, great suffering and death.  This is what messiahship means for Jesus. And while he also says that he will rise again after three days, the disciples don’t seem to notice that – and no wonder!  How can they bear what they are hearing? The unacceptable is followed by the unbelievable.

Mark has put this pivotal moment at the centre of his Gospel, literally, 16 chapters in Mark and this is chapter 8.

We can only imagine how all this was received by those who heard it for the first time: Jesus disciples and those who would be his followers must also take up the cross, must lose themselves for the sake of the gospel, must even be prepared to die. 

We might push to one side Peter’s shock and revulsion at the prospect of a suffering and dying Messiah because we know the end of the story—the triumph of resurrection, the coming of the holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit. We may prefer to look backward at the compassionate and welcoming Jesus and forward to the triumphant Christ without pausing to reflect on the Cross. 

The 16th century theologian, Martin Luther drew a contrast between what he called the “theology of glory” (theologia gloriae) and the “theology of the cross” (theologia crucis). 

The theology of glory is built on assumptions about the way a god is expected to act in the world. The theology of the cross is grounded in God’s self-revelation in the weakness of suffering and death - the self-emptying of God (kenosis is the Greek word).

The theology of glory confirms what people want in a god; the theology of the cross contradicts everything that people imagine that God should be. For Luther, to know God truly is to know God in Christ, which means to know God hidden in suffering. “The cross appears as foolishness,” says Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians, “it is weakness to a world that looks for wisdom and strength in its god”(1 Cor. 1:18–31). 

William Vanstone’s book ‘Love’s endeavor, Love’s expense’ expresses this beautifully (and it is a book that I return to again and again ,- if only for the hymn at the end.)  Vanstone looks at the cross and writes 

Thou art God; no monarch thou 
thron’d in easy state to reign; 
thou art God, whose arms of love 
aching, spent, the world sustain. 

The truth about who God is contradicts what we expect from a Divinity. The truth is that God’s mercy is given to sinners, it’s not reserved for the righteous; God’s strength is exposed in weakness, not displayed in power. God is found in uncertainty, danger, and suffering … precisely where ’ human wisdom’ would  perceive God’s absence. 

I remember a striking moment in my own journey of faith – at the time of the Dunblane massacre – where in March 1996, a gunman invaded a primary school in the small Scottish town of Dunblane and shot to death 16 young children and their teacher before turning a gun on himself. I asked a member of this church at the time: “Where was God in all this?” And she said, “He was on the floor with those bleeding children.” 

To confess Jesus as Messiah is to recognize his dying body on the cross, and to recognize that discipleship is our own ‘way of the cross’. This first call that Jesus makes to the disciples is our call too. 

Jesus rebukes Peter: “ you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things”. We are asked to take a different view – where power, possessions, status, are not the driving force in our lives. Someone has said that that the image of a cross is like the letter ‘I’ crossed out. When I was trying to get to my friend Jane’s house, the road I wanted to take would have brought me to the wrong destination. 

‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’. We go through the door at the end of a service – to pick up our crosses, to continue our journey of faith as we return to the world of home and family, work and commerce, service and play. Opportunities are daily before us, times when we may give our lives sacrificially to acts of love, compassion, justice, and peace. 

In Lent we hear again that call to discipleship. May it be so. 

Lent 1: Anastasis

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 9.8-17 Psalm 25.1-9 1 Peter 3.18-end, Mark 1.9-15

The late Bishop of Europe, Geoffrey Rowell, was an excellent raconteur, and by the nature of his job spent half his life travelling and schmoozing with minor European royalty on slightly esoteric but grand occasions.  Usually spending time with him was punctured by a series of clangs as names and titles were dropped heavily into conversation. But the story that’s stayed with me from him,  which I’ve probably shared with you before because it shows perfectly the simple intuitive wisdom that children occasionally occupy, and the grace of God, is of him taking a school assembly and asking: ‘where was Jesus the day after Good Friday?’ It’s a good theological question because it forces us to use a bit of imagination, in the light of what we know about Jesus and God. The perfect answer, given by this child, is that Jesus was in the darkest pit of hell looking for his friend, Judas.

Now that might come across as picaresque –  the lovely naïve innocence of children – Or sentimental –  after all I was preaching about romantic comedies on Ash Wednesday –  And now in Lent we’re on school assemblies. Every week’s a family service here.

But there’s a substantial theological point here about grace. The most serious hardline presbyterians are very keen to assert that there’s nothing we can do to merit the kingdom of God. We don’t earn our salvation. But, with equal seriousness, we must also agree that there’s nothing we can do that puts us beyond salvation. We don’t buy our way into hell, even with pieces of silver –So where else would Jesus be on the day after Good Friday, other than in the end depths of the outer darkness – seeking out his lost friend.

Today’s New Testament reading tells us of the Anastasis. (that’s not a doe-eyed floozy with bad taste in men.) Anastasis doesn’t feature as much in the Western church as the East. In Orthodox churches you’ll very often see depicted on their icons and the iconostasis, illustrations of this moment, which we sometimes also call ‘the harrowing of hell’. Peter describes it here as ‘a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey’. Jesus turning around even the fallen angels, the ‘watchers’. Anastasis is now a medical term for recovery, especially from radiation, Anastasis is healing; But it means resurrection. [I would like to call our second child Anastasis – who is due at Easter – but sadly Rhiannon has vetoed this.]

In the Western church we commonly think of resurrection as one man bursting from the tomb – like the Pierro della Francesca painting, with his little England flag and sleepy soldiers. Or like superman. The Eastern church sees it more like Aragorn returning to the battle at Minas Tirith with an army of dead-oath-breakers to overcome the evil hordes. This has the advantage of making it clear that the resurrection is not just the story of one man, but the axial event which defines forever the relationship of God, humanity and creation. In the icons Christ is usually depicted with his hands leading Adam and Eve from their coffins. Not the resurrection of a single person, but the defeat of death and the regeneration of all humanity. What the rainbow means for flooding, the resurrection means for death. It is the victory of God. ‘The kingdom of God has come near.’

This also tells us something about how as Christians we should view time. In the most straightforward way we move forward. It’s now 2021 Anno Domini, or as perhaps we’ll now start calling it 1AC. Anno Corona. But the Church has always also understood time in cycles – so the liturgical year starts with Advent, then Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Ordinary time, marked out by the annual great feasts on perpetual repeat. So we sing every Easter ‘Jesus Christ is risen today’ and at Christmas ‘Yea Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning’ – striking out in the present moment 2000 years, much as we all might enjoy striking out 2020 from our collective memory.

But equally, to God all time is immediately present. So every day is the day of resurrection; We’re connected now, not least by the sacrament, to the harrowing of hell and return of Jesus. In the hour of our death, we too will be summoned forth from the grave on the Easter morning to rise with Christ. This anastasis, this resurrection, is filling the world with life even now. It may not seem it. It may look like a grey February morning where joy and life has gone, (though tiny daffodils and snowdrops now adorn the vicarage garden) And with forward-moving time the dead are still carried off in hundreds and thousands; but our faith tells us that these too are gathered in on Easter morning. Because it’s not simply that 2000 years ago a man finally came along who did something rather special. The incarnation is God plunging a hand into time, and dragging all of it up to eternity. With Christ’s hands effectively reaching back to our first parents but equally to our children’s children. That is the harrowing of hell. Nothing less than the defeat of death and every power that puts itself against God.

Now you’ll say to me “WOW – this sounds more like a Stephanie Meyer novel (she wrote Twilight) than the cold reality I know of clinical trials, G7 summits, England’s opening batsmen, and signing on at the labour exchange. And it’s the test of the modern mind to hold these two things together. The dull statistics of science, the shifting gears of technology, the concrete and steel; with the hidden knowledge of the unity of humanity.

But do we know nothing of eternity? Of transcendence? Something heard, something read, a moment in the rain, the crisis felt in love and heartbreak, the connected power of being part of something bigger; the resonance of generations in a place like this, the weight of history; that little shiver you feel when you hear Churchill speak of ‘defending our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.’ When you hear Martin Luther King dream of a day ‘in Alabama [when] little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.’ When by words, or music, actions or love, you know the unity that exists, however scarred, in a nation, in humanity, in creation. When we know in our bones that love is strong as death. Then you are touching that spiritual force by which we were one in Adam and are one in Christ. This is a resurrected body; a connected body that is more than an outgoing circulatory and respiratory system, beating and breathing its way to a standstill. But a body that has dragged itself through hell and into the light of Easter morning, and pulled with it all the sons and daughters of Eve.

Now where was Jesus the day after Good Friday? He was in hell looking for his friend Judas. Can we be that bold? Were we to see Hitler or Stalin slink in together to the back row of heaven and awkwardly join in with the hymns – could we let it go? The bloke who bullied us at school, the disappointing parent, the unworthy son-in-law. Dominic Cummings? How will we greet them on Easter morning? How much more grace do we need? And for ourselves, the hidden faults we don’t speak of, the angry resentment that is barely contained, the shame we can’t admit, can we let in anastasis, healing, here? What will it take for us to forgive and allow ourselves forgiveness? What is keeping us from fully rejoining the unified body of Christ?

Anastasis: Healing. Reconciliation. Resurrection.
‘Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.’ Amen.

Ash Wednesday: Have a Woody Allen Lent

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 58.1-12, Psalm 51.1-18, 2 Corinthians 5.20b-6.10, Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21

Last night, as a forced-frivolous Shrove Tuesday activity, in preparation for the seriousness of Lent, I watched a Woody Allen romantic comedy. I was struck that, in romantic comedies, two things are happening. Firstly, the characters are all restlessly moving around, circling to find their soul mate – the person they’re meant to be with. But secondly, and partly through the various trials that go with trying to impress people and striving to be better, the characters are understanding, coming to terms with, and finding out who they really are. Romantic comedies tend to focus on young characters because they’re an education, formation – a kind of Bildungsroman. Coming of Age stories. Usually, there’s a world of opportunity ahead of someone, but they need to let something or someone go first, in order to find the new thing ahead. With love as their motivation, the characters will discover what they’re missing, or the new horizon that their soul is calling them to.

Lent is really playing the same game with us. Our souls are drawn to all sorts of things, the pretty lights of this world. We have attachments that we’ve had since Highschool, or earlier. We’re on a journey to find the one who gives our life meaning, who alone can fulfil. And this involves finding out who we really are.

So in Lent we’re asked to let go of some of our relationships. It may be eating habits, alcohol, lie-ins, television, social media, parenting – some guilty pleasure in which we seek fulfilment, that we know is not ultimately fulfilling. And through this to find our soul mate –  the one in whom is every fulfilment – With the added bonus, that along the way we may discover something more about ourselves; We may even become more ourselves, The person we’re meant to be.

The reading from 2 Corinthians is one of my favourite passages in the Bible. It captures the passion of Paul, and no one could say that Paul is not earnestly in love with Christ –  seeking him, seeking to please him. His difficulty journey could read as the plot to a romantic comedy – Endurance in affliction, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots – Okay maybe a Russian romantic comedy; Sleepless nights – very romcom –  And we see how he’s grown, been formed in virtue: Purity – these films always require a certain chastity, a sacrifice for the beloved, Knowledge, patience, kindness – holiness, genuine love,  truthful speech – Romcoms always turn at the key moment on an act of genuine honesty – finally, ‘as having nothing, and yet possessing everything’. And every Romantic comedy from Pride and Prejudice to Brigit Jones’ Diary asks the question, would you give everything, would you sacrifice your dignity, your pride, the careful protected person you are, for love - the person you have discovered and the person you might become?

That is the question. And it’s the question of Christianity. Will you follow Jesus, despite how this will turn you away from the things of the world. And it’s specifically the question of Lent: How for these 6 weeks will you turn yourself away from the world. And turn yourself towards truth, charity, holiness.

But the point is not to become more miserable. To take away what little joy is left to us in life. Especially in these days. This is what Jesus warns us about. Don’t do it for the sake of hardship itself. Don’t look miserable to show how “Christian” you are. Don’t go trying to prove something. Just as in Isaiah, the prophet proclaims that real fasting is addressing social injustice; Taking our eyes off our own navals and looking to our neighbours.

As the characters in Romantic Comedies succeed only when they have integrity, so we must find our integrity. We should look forward to Lent. Like that feeling after you’ve eaten too much at Christmas, Or had a little too much wine the night before; There’s a joy to be found in cutting back, In simplicity, In giving ourselves more time; In cutting through the flabbiness, the wooziness, the waste. We may not be able to travel to the desert this year, but there is also a desert within ourselves, if we can stop ourselves pressing the ever-near distraction button.

I read on Facebook yesterday how someone enjoyed being the designated driver because then they could not drink without feeling like a weirdo. Sometimes we need that excuse not to behave like everyone else, To follow conventional social patterns, To break-up our stale lockdown pattern of take-aways and self-medication. Lent is a gift of these few weeks to be a little bit more ourself – to give ourselves a little bit of space from the clutter of living and social pressure.

The Gospel ends ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’. If we are resolved to follow our true heart – and recognise it as such – How could Lent be anything but a joy? I’m going to spend this 6 weeks getting closer to what really matters in life. I’m going to learn something about myself; I’m going to become more independent, more present; Find truth, beauty, love; Lent should be quite exciting.

Self-understanding is the key to this. Every romantic comedy begins with people who are dissatisfied with life. Something is missing or something is wrong. We may not know exactly what it is but we begin knowing that change is needed. Entering Lent, this is the Spirit of repentance. It is not about shame. Shame is the devil’s instrument, not God’s. But if we don’t believe that there’s something missing, that there’s more, we won’t look for it.

Oberon loves trains. He quite often finds himself with his hands and arms full of trains, but because he’s a very lucky little boy, there’s usually one more precious train that he desperately wants to pick up. And nine times out of ten, to do this, he will end up dropping all the other trains – which might also cause a little sadness and frustration.

Lent is a time to drop our trains, to empty our hands, To see what more there is to grasp. And it’s a time to realise that however young or old we are, we are still being formed, still discovering the person we are becoming. And as we renegotiate our relationship to the world in these six weeks, let us pray that our restless hearts will find their rest in him, our soulmate, who alone can give us the peace we are created to desire. Amen.

The Secret

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: 2 Kings 2.1-12, Psalm 50.1-6, 2 Corinthians 4.3-6, Mark 9.2-9

Who is Jesus? And am I prepared to follow him?

One way to answer this is to pick up the New Testament and start at the beginning. The first line of the first book, the Gospel of Mark, reads, in the modern translation: ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ And with a stroke of a pen, or a quill, the world is transformed.

The King James version of 1611 began: ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;’  which given it’s called the Gospel makes a lot of sense. Intriguingly modern translations still call the four Gospels ‘Gospels’, but the word Gospel in the Gospel is now translated ‘Good news’. For the nerds out there, Gospel is old English from God-spel – good message – which translates the Greek: euangelion. Euangelion is a combination of eu and angelion – eu meaning good  (as in euthanasia – eu and Thanatos – good death – or eulogy – eu and logos – good words) and angelion – message – from which we also get the word ‘angel’, meaning messenger. So the Gospel is the announcement of this good news, this good message, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

In today’s Gospel we have this revealed to the disciples – Jesus falls into some good lighting and is transfigured – and the divine voice booms ‘this is my Son’; Again, the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God. But then this strange thing. As they’re coming down the mountain, Jesus orders ‘them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.’

 Jesus has come to reveal God to the world. He is the revelation of God in the world.  This book is written to tell the story of those events. Why on this and many other occasions in Mark’s Gospel is Jesus keeping a low profile? Why is he acting in secret? Why is he shhshing his disciples? Was he, like so many children, embarrassed by his Father?

In Mark’s Gospel he forbids demons, the disciples, even those he cures of speaking of his power.  This seems particularly odd when he raises a girl from the dead – Jairus’ daughter. Crowds are already there to mourn her. It seems this unusual act might just draw attention. Then in the parables, we’re told he’s deliberate obscure so not everyone will understand: ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that
“they may indeed look, but not perceive,
   and may indeed listen, but not understand;’ (4.11-12a)
Parables are to conceal as much as to reveal. He also frequently withdraws and sometimes hides. There’s a consistent sense of the hiddenness of the mission. And this is strange. It’s also wholly at odds with the Gospel of John.

The most plausible explanation for this is that Mark’s Gospel bears witness to a clash of answers to the question ‘who is Jesus?’ and this is played out until the resurrection under a cloak of secrecy.

So the first answer to the question ‘who is Jesus’, is that he’s the messiah; not a very naughty boy, but the Son of David. The expected Messiah of the day was a political leader, like king David, restoring the independence of the Jewish nation. Mark’s Gospel does infrequently speak of him in these terms, but he plays down these elements, especially compared with Matthew. Peter famously refers to him as the Christ but seconds later is rebuked for not understanding that his role is to suffer, not start a revolution; Likewise, Jesus chastises the disciples for wanting privileged places at his right and left. And it’s notable that in this Gospel, Galilee has a more prominent place than Judah in Jesus’ ministry, And while the Jerusalem Church was waiting for Jesus to return with Messianic thunder, Mark’s theology, like St Paul, has already moved beyond the expectations of Judaism.

The second answer to the question ‘who is Jesus’ is that he’s a divine-man, like the Greek gods. And we can see this in Mark. Jesus controls the natural world – the storms and sea. He has complete authority over the supernatural. Demons obey him. He’s a wonder-worker. We heard today how he was transfigured. This very likely would be how initially gentiles would understand him: a god-man.

Mark doesn’t dismiss these answers. But he prioritises the title ‘Son of God’, and uses that to the question of who is Jesus. As I said earlier, the Gospel begins by announcing the good news of Jesus, the ‘Son of God’, not the Messiah or the Son of David. And at the key moments Mark reaches for the term ‘Son of God’. At Jesus’ baptism, the voice speaks: ‘You are my Son’, as also in today’s Gospel at the transfiguration.
Jesus refers to himself as ‘the Son’ (13.32), as do the demons who recognise him (3.11). And at the crucifixion, witnessing Jesus death, the Centurion will pronounce, ‘truly this was man was God’s son!’ This title ‘Son of God’ is frequently associated with the divine necessity of his redemptive suffering and death. So although Jesus is the Messiah and the divine Superman, on both counts the definition is qualified by this surprising twist: That the revelation of divine love is made not by shock and awe, or through the political emancipation of the Jewish people, but through the Son of God on the cross.

This is the secret that is carried through Jesus’ life – such that even the disciples don’t understand it. And explains why the first disciples get it so wrong.But after the resurrection, the true meaning of this life and these events is understood.

Throughout Mark, the disciples represent the ‘Son of David’ messianic outlook as they have their moment in the sun entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; The demons recognise the divine man, and the people know him through healings and miracles; But the hidden nature of Christ as the suffering servant; the theology of the cross embodied in the title of Jesus as ‘Son of God’, as the centurion hails him in his dying moment, is hidden from the crowds, from the authorities and from the disciples. It’s only realised after the resurrection. And not by all, as St Paul says: ‘our Gospel is veiled to those who are perishing’

Now this might seem like a technical issue. The wrestling of the Early Church to make sense of what they had witnessed and what the Spirit was teaching them. But the question remains a live one? Who is Jesus Christ? Who do you say that I am?

The last book of the New Testament gives you the opposite answer to the first.  To expect the Return of the King, to bring a final victory on earth to the Church is not the message of Mark’s Gospel. The nineteenth century is probably the closest the world will come to total Christendom and some odd things happen when Christianity gets confused with power. If you’ve watched the Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll know exactly what I mean. And I’ve certainly met Christians who have become caught up either on the return of Jesus and the judgement of the world; Or on the power of the god-man over the world and the route to becoming #blessed. Both answer the question ‘who is Jesus Christ’ in ways that Mark warns against. The victory of the Son of God is the victory of love, not the victory of power. But Jesus is misinterpreted in the Gospel and still today. He remains highly visible. Lifted up. But people very often find in him what they want to find, and it’s as easy to find the Gospel of Judas as it is to find the Gospel of Mark.

But if we’ve understood who Jesus is – the next question is, ‘can I follow him?’ Which is to say ‘Can I become like him?’ If he’s a political leader or a god-man this is easy to answer – but like Peter and the disciples we may fall away later. To follow the suffering Son of Man is a harder task; but it’s a good question to ask as we enter Lent, and it’s a good question to ask in a pandemic. As we now return from the mountain top, and prepare to enter the desert, we should ask ourselves: ‘Who is Jesus?’ and ‘Am I ready to follow him?’ We have the reassurance, from the beginning, that it’s still good news. And that’s even if, today, it seems like the world’s best kept secret. Amen.

De Profundis - Out of the Depths

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: proverbs 8.1, 22-31; Psalm 104.26-37; Colossians 1.15-20; John 1.1-14

Around Easter in 2001, I was entertaining some friends with dinner in my student bedroom when my landlord, who lived next door, knocked to say my mother was calling. A friend had called her in desperation as she’d been unable to get hold of me and we were flying together to France – at Ryan Air early – the next morning for a training week for a dream job we’d landed in Provence. Now I had forgotten. But ever flexible I packed my bag and an excellent friend agreed to drive me to the airport in a couple of hours. All was well and I arrived at the airport in plenty of time, only for my friend to arrive just 45 minutes before the flight. Her boyfriend’s van had broken down. We rushed through the easy going check-in –  This was early 2001 – And ran to the gate. However, on the way Emma decided she needed a Burger King breakfast bap, so we stopped albeit briefly. But by the time we reached the gate we were told our bags had been removed and we were unable to board. We sullenly watched the take-off.

Now that was twenty years ago, and while I couldn’t tell you anything that happened more than 8 days ago, I have a very clear recollection of all those events. It’s the only time I’ve ever missed a plane, and I can never again truly enjoy a burger king breakfast. Obviously, everyone knows it’s possible to miss a flight. We’re mostly quite careful about it. But actually missing a flight changes your behaviour. It’s like losing husbands – losing one is a tragedy; Losing two would be careless. Rhiannon told me that she’s been getting life-insurance quotes this week. If anything happens to me, please do ask questions. With regards to missing planes, we can describe this as a sort of learned knowledge. To allow experience to instil more practical behaviour. And the Christian word for this kind of knowledge is wisdom.

So yes, changing energy companies every year, avoiding Hungarian wine, putting waterproof trousers on your child every time they leave the house, all counts as wisdom. And wisdom is most effective, most transformative when it comes from suffering. Those are the moments most likely to change our behaviour. Strangely, the one immunity to this, the area where wisdom is most absent, is having children. No amount of suffering with indefatigable toddlers, it seems, can dissuade you from having more children.

Which brings us neatly to this Word made flesh. The reading we heard from Proverbs, is clearly a source of inspiration for John. Wisdom is a section of the Hebrew Bible – sayings, songs and stories designed to teach us how to find the good life. The overall message is that faithfulness to God will lead to a good life, but there are enough swerve balls to put that in context. Ecclesiastes found that life is a great unhappiness and vanity, that ‘in much wisdom is much vexation’. Job found little justice in this world, but through his suffering found God. But in this section of proverbs wisdom is the master worker, working alongside God in creation. Which is to say that there is sense and meaning in creation; purpose; creation gives itself to be known and reveals its creator. John takes this up, echoing the language, ‘in the beginning’; here the Word, itself complimentary to the idealisation of Wisdom, but more directly related to God: In the beginning, not created; the Word, the divine speech, not another being; as St Paul writes ‘in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell’.

But this Word is not an abstract knowledge; it’s not the clarity of objective science; it is wisdom; the transformative knowledge of experience; and so the Word became flesh and lived among us. And what we will see as we move through Lent and the Desert, and into the Passion, is how suffering teaches; how suffering reveals; how it transforms; how it redeems.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Jesus – if you looked at his life against other religious figures – Is an absolute unity of his teaching and life. So he teaches us to love our neighbour, and through parables and kindnesses, expands on how we must forgive, and not judge; serve and not be distracted by the world; be patient in suffering, But extravagant in generosity. But all this is revealed in concrete in the story of his life and death. If wisdom is a sort of incarnate knowledge; Christ is the incarnate divinity. And as wisdom is gained through experience and reflection, through suffering and perseverance; so Christ reveals God through his kindness and teaching; then through suffering; through ‘loving them to the end’.

For various reasons I’ve been reading Oscar Wilde’s great letter De Profundis this week, written from prison; and, what’s worse, Reading prison. The train station is bad enough, and I imagine the gaol 120 years ago was quite a bit worse. Incidentally, he was held initially here in Wandsworth prison, and endured the horror of being humiliated on parade at Clapham station before jeering crowds.  What Wilde is working out through this letter is how to make sense of this profound experience of suffering. Now I would preface this by saying that every person’s suffering is individual. It is not for me to explain why someone is suffering or how it is justifiable or secretly for the best. I don’t believe we can add up the good things of this world and subtract the bad, as in an equation. But Wilde find that he is able to thank God for his suffering. Suffering surprises him but gives his life new meaning. And at this point he describes that he has found ‘something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field’ and that is ‘humility.’ It’s worth remembering how completely Wilde was ruined by his experience of justice. Not only was prison physically dreadful, and permanently damaged his health, such that he died a few years later; but even afterwards he could not rejoin society. His children were taken away from him. He was impoverished. Ruined. He had to move to France.

But he can write humility ‘is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery… It could not have come before, nor later. Had any one told me of it, I would have rejected it… Of all things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it.’ And this humility is a revelation, as suffering is a revelation, of what matters, of what is true, and the basis of how we can understand another person and love them. So he says that ‘if the world has… been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love’ and  ‘Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling’.

What Wilde describes is the experience of intense suffering, that brings about a state of humility. And this gaining of wisdom teaches the soul to love. Really, what we see in John’s Gospel is the same thing from the opposite angle:  Wisdom becomes incarnate in Christ. And is revealed to all in the humility and suffering that comes from love. Humility is the form of wisdom that both hides and reveals love, as it’s found among us.

The last year has shaken the world. It has shaken each of our lives. We have known sorrow. We will know more. Our faith challenges us to turn this experience, this sorrow, into wisdom. It may be that we can follow Christ and begin in humility; it may be that suffering teaches us humility; but if we are to grow through the hardships of this last year; if we are to remain true to our calling as Christians then we will choose wisdom over despair in finding meaning in creation; and not just sorrow. And we will choose love over self-protection, in bearing witness to the light that shines in the darkness. And we will be transformed by this incarnation; in coming to discover the meaning behind the universe, and its purpose in our lives. Amen.

Candlemas: sharing vulnerability

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Malachi 3:1-5, Psalm 24:1-6, Hebrews 2:14-end; Luke 2:22-40

As many of you will know, funerals are difficult at this moment. There are difficulties with saying goodbye, with receiving support; with being able to arrange the service; with no wake; with no physical contact on the day. There can be good funerals; that with solidarity and shared memories underline sorrow with joy and thanksgiving; but it’s difficult – at present. And, if I may share this with you, it is affecting to witness grief, to be able to do so little to comfort, to not even shake a hand, sometimes to find yourself alone, praying only with the dead.

There was a moment recently when I was climbing the stairs, returning home after a funeral, and our two year-old Oberon was coming down, dressed in soft grey and yellow striped pyjamas, smiling from ear to ear. Naturally, I hoisted him up and he clung to my neck. Emotions can be difficult to fix in words. I remember the dissonance between my heaviness and his lightness; and an overwhelming, impotent urge to protect him from this hostile world. 

Over a year ago, I had a similar feeling when he was sat next to a friend’s slightly older child. This child is less temperate in nature and at one point screamed with no real reason very close to Oberon. Inevitably as he processed this new behaviour he got upset and started crying. And I thought – I just want to take you away from all this. But at the same time – this is the world though – rage and confusion screaming without reason at you. Better get used to it.

I can’t protect Oberon from the world. I can’t even protect the world from Oberon anymore.

 Simeon, this grandfather of the church, comes into the temple, guided by the Spirit and he sees Jesus. And, we’re told, ‘Simeon took him in his arms.’ There’s something very human about this scene. It’s very physical He takes this baby, from its mother, in his arms. A natural reaction to beauty, vulnerability, innocence, to something precious, to the fragile hope that we receive in this world, and the beauty of innocence that stands out in this world. He takes up Jesus in his arms and blessing God he says: ‘in peace I now depart’.  The vulnerability of the child is something he owns. Unusually, he is narrating his own death. But he also knows in this terrible moment of the death of the child: ‘a sign that will be opposed’ ‘and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’ Simeon knows the hostility of the world. In this dissonance of age and youth, in their equal exposure to the forces of life and death, he does the most human thing, He took him in his arms.

What we see in this picture is a shared vulnerability. Across age and generations. A picture not unknown today.

There’s also a symbolic shift going on. We’re moving quite literally from the Old Testament and the Law and sacrifice to the New Testament and Jesus. We’re crossing the Rubicon of the year 0AD. From the Temple of Jerusalem to the temple of this little body. But in all these figures we see that to be human is to be vulnerable; but faithfulness can bring the strength to endure and to care; and that God’s people share a solidarity in their suffering; that it’s not in vain; that Simeon will depart in peace; and that despite the difficult future that lies ahead for this little family, there will be light and glory and resurrection.

I’ve now been your vicar for exactly a year.  Do send your feedback forms in to let us know how the last year has been for you. I notice there’s no cake to cut today. But what we do have now more than ever is a shared sense of vulnerability. There’s a strong desire to protect one another. There’s solidarity in the suffering we are going through, and in various ways the attempt to reach out. It’s worth remembering that there are people in our community who may not have touched another human being in the last year. There is something terribly inhuman about that. Remember Simeon: ‘he took up Jesus in his arms’. Christianity is a religion of sacraments, It’s a faith you can touch. This is something we are struggling with. We are still in the middle of the hurricane, and whether or not we master this virus with vaccine and treatment, there will be a long aftermath to deal with. Because we are all human, terribly human.

Our Gospel is about shared vulnerability, and of holding one another. But it’s also about vision. It’s a little appreciated fact that in the Old Testament God is more associated with darkness than light. So even while God is associated with fire –  in the burning bush, the pillar of fire and the fire on the mountain; there is also the pillar of cloud, while the fire on the mountain creates the thick cloud, and all Moses’ dealings with God are in darkness, for as he is told: ‘there shall no man see my face and live’  (Ex. 33.20) The God of the Hebrew Bible is shock and awe. He is approached as one English medieval text puts it through the Cloud of Unknowing.

What we have in today’s Gospel could not be further from this.  We have Simeon holding up ‘the light for revelation to the Gentiles and the Glory of the people of Israel.’ As proclaimed at evensong in every church and cathedral in this country for 500 years, and before that through the office of compline, the last of the monastic prayers before bed. And every funeral.

And this light is recognised by Simeon, the faithful servant, in a child’s face. And it’s no coincidence that Simeon moves from this proclamation of revelation, of glory, to one of suffering: his own death; the opposition this child will face, the grief his mother will suffer. Because God is revealed in Jesus Christ in suffering and in solidarity.  And I return to this again because I know how hard it is to shift in our mind from seeing God as the superman, God as the fixer of everything, to God with us in suffering love.

The Gospel, though, is unequivocal. This light to the gentiles, this glory of Israel, is seen in a forty day old child, through the weakened eyes of the dying. God is revealed in love suffering alongside us. And we are most like God when we share and stand alongside those who are not doing well. God is with us when we – if only metaphorically at present – lift up a child with love. God is with us when we cling on to an old man – metaphorically – with little pudgy arms. And if you struggle to see how this is the light of the world, you have only to consider how the lifting up of a man, who chose the path of vulnerability and love, on to the cross, changed the world. A light to the gentiles, and the glory of Israel.

These are Gospel times. Vulnerability, the fragility of life, is on your radio and in your inbox. Sacrifice, suffering love, is visible alongside us. As we bless our candles today, after 40 days of Christmas and Epiphany celebrating the light in the darkness, we remember the faithful servants departed in peace; we pray for all those flickering lives, being born into a distressed world, andpersevering on hospital beds; we praise the light of the world, the love that suffers alongside us, that guides us to the one equal light of eternity. Amen.

Epiphany: Tonight will be fine, for a while.

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 14:17-20, Revelation 19:6-10, John 2:1-11

On Fridays, if it’s a good Friday, I get to listen to Desert Island Discs, sadly no longer presented by Kirsty Young. This week was a good Friday, and they had a fascinating woman called Samantha Power on, who despite being Irish seems to have ended up at the heart of American government.  She held key roles in Obama’s administration, had a minor blip describing Hilary Clinton as a ‘monster’, but is now back in the in-crowd with Mr Biden. One of the songs she chose struck me: ‘Tonight will be fine’: a Leonard Cohen song sung by Teddy Thompson. The song is a typical lament, of regret, inequality in love, passing desire, and the difficulty of sustaining human connection. The refrain goes: ‘but tonight will be fine, will be fine, will be fine, will be fine, for a while’. It’s a song about imperfection. And getting by. And that repeated ‘will be fine, will be fine, will be fine’ emphasises the forced, strained effort to get along; or the echo of its fading memory; and its limitations: its impossibility to sustain, in that final, ‘for a while.’ I myself am, from time to time, picked up on using the word ‘fine’. If your partner asks you how they’re looking, or how was dinner, it turns out ‘fine’ is not a correct response.  Of course, I mean something more like the American ‘fine’ or ‘mighty fine’, but this doesn’t translate, and some people just don’t appreciate British understatement.

Today’s Gospel is about imperfection. In this first sign of the Gospel, Jesus steps in to rescue a wedding celebration that is falling apart; theologically, he’s stepping in to repair the broken relationship between Israel and God, usually depicted by the prophets as a marriage, one where the bride – Israel, the church – has gone astray. I won’t use the more prophetic language. Now typically, the vicar would say isn’t this great? Jesus takes the 6 imperfect jars of water for purification and transforms them to wine; As Crashaw said, ‘the modest water saw its God and blushed’ 6 for water jars is chosen by John as an imperfect number; As is frequently said, it’s an abundance of wine – more than any party of 6 could consume in a year; and it’s fancy wine: “taste the difference”:  ‘you have kept the good wine until now.’

Epiphany is a season of celebration; liturgically, we’re still in white like Christmas. We’re still celebrating the light that shines in the darkness, that is revealed to the world. The book of Revelation (as usual, reticent and measured) cries out: ‘Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready…  Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And yet, at a time when weddings can only happen in exceptional circumstances, no more than 6 guests – it’s death’s door stuff – hands we are told should be washed before and after the exchange of rings. Wedding receptions are not permitted. Where is the marriage supper of the Lamb? I hope it wasn’t that party in Stamford Hill.

This year, we are at the wedding feast, but it seems Christ has not yet arrived. Our wine has run short. For the church, the time is out of joint. Lent is already here, and like the seasons in the desert taken by the Hebrews, by Jesus, we do not know when it will end. We are somewhere between, the forty days, the forty years.

Lord knows we don’t need discouragement, but this moment is about resilience. We are constantly being pushed off balance by good news, then bad news; breakthroughs and set-backs; the oscillation of optimism and despair will have anyone’s mental health in pieces. I used to enjoy listening to Radio 4 in the morning; now I limit myself to not more than 15 minutes of the daily misery.

The Christian faith is a story of victory. It is God enduring the pain and suffering of this world, then ripping through the gates of hell to demonstrate that there is nowhere in all creation hidden from the love, the light and the victory of God. But we are still within that journey,  like so many of the parables we are waiting, with our lamps, for the bridegroom to appear. Dinner is not yet served.

The most useful piece I’ve read on resilience is known as the Stockdale paradox. He was a prisoner of war for seven and a half years in Hanoi. If you want to feel better about your last year his trials, his endurance is worth a read. But in interview, he was asked why prisoners didn’t make it out of Vietnam. He replied:  “Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.'  And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.'  And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again.  And they died of a broken heart.  This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose— with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Now Putney ain’t Vietnam, but Hope and realism. That’s a message for today.

In that good and rousing film ‘the Darkest Hour’ –  something you can still enjoy in lockdown – Mrs Churchill says to the great man:  ‘You are strong because you are imperfect.  
You are wise because you have doubts.’ If St John is speaking here of Jesus coming to bring fullness and joy to the imperfection of the Jewish rites, of the wedding’s failure; he speaks also to us, in today’s poverty. We know we are imperfect. We must be honest about how we are doing. And we are right to have doubts. We must not lose hope, but we must retain our realism, but still have the strength to encourage one another.

That darkest hour, when Britain alone in Europe resisted Nazi Germany for nearly a year, would become its finest hour. Just as Jesus in today’s Gospel speaks of his hour, which will become both his darkest and finest hour. In our simpler times we are unlikely to receive medals, or to transform the relationship between creation and God; but we can still make a difference, even if it’s to one person. Samantha Power in the last sentence of her memoir writes: ‘People who care, act, and refuse to give up may not change the world, but they can change many individual worlds.’ It is Epiphany. St Margaret’s can still be a place of light in the darkness.

And if you’re going through hell, keep going. Because tonight will be fine, will be fine, will be fine, will be fine. For a while. But the wedding feast is coming. Our hour is yet to come. And we will rejoice and exult and give him glory when the lamb is come, and his bride has made herself ready. Amen.

Epiphany: time to worship

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: 1 Samuel 3.1-10, Psalm 139:1-5, 12-18, Revelation 5:1-10, John 1:43-end

If you’re cheered up by hearing of someone who’s got it worse than you, consider reading the book of Job. Everything is taken from him, his wealth, his family, his health; He’s left in poor company with nothing but sores. We’re told: ‘Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped.’ In the words the funeral service has adopted, he pronounces: ‘the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ His response to all the evil that has come upon him, to fall to the ground and worship.

Well it’s January. Lock down. Raining. Fulham lost and are again in the relegation zone. Tear your robes, shave your heads, it’s time to worship.

But have we not even in church had the things we love, the things we value, taken away. People come to church for different reasons. For community. we can no longer socialise. For the religious education of our children, or at least to occupy them. No Sunday School. For the delights of music, but our hymns are unsung, our choir is forbidden, our organist is isolating. [We still have Mark and Emily. All is not quite lost.] For a place of calm and lack of distraction, but we must wear facemasks and sit in the cold with the doors open. For the beauty of our building, but most of us are now watching services at home. For the tea and biscuits afterwards? Not seen in a year. Like Job, St Margaret’s is stripped and shorn; now is the time to worship.

And many churches have voluntarily closed. We’re in the minority. There is great pressure to close. I’ve been reassured by the sacrifice of many staying away, mitigating risk. The Telegraph and Spectator have lamented the timidity of the church – but who can really accuse pastors for protecting their flock?

And yet. We’ve just celebrated Christmas – the Word made flesh. Who dwelt among us, or better who tabernacled, who pitched his tent with us. Our religion is incarnate. In carne – In meat. Christianity is spirituality embodied. Raw and wriggling. Its sacraments wash you, then feed you.

Theology here corrects philosophy. Philosophy since Plato worked to make God more and more abstract. God is very far away, God is eternal, outside time; God is neither male nor female, sexless, God is powerful and good, but has no personality, no preference; does not suffer or change; the still point of the turning world; the unmoved mover. Christianity nails down God in time and space. He suffers, he is with us. And God is in the heart of your brother and sister. in frost and fire; God is closest to you in your neighbour in distress, in the least of these. God is incarnate. In person. Christianity requires connection – which is at present difficult, if not dangerous.

Whether we’re here in person, or in another time and space, we have had the good things of this life taken away. In the face of this unprecedented – aren’t you bored of the word – suffering and privation, like Job, we are called to worship. And what is our claim here in our impoverished church? Why should we risk coming to church? Why do we participate online and not binge-watch awful Bridgerton? ‘Forgive us all that is past’, ‘keep you in life eternal’, ‘transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace’, ‘God has made us one in Christ’, ‘you take away the sins of the world’.

The church finds itself in the eyes of governments and outsiders in the strangest position. It’s either the most important or the least important thing in the world. It’s either the point of connection between earth and heaven, or nothing at all. It’s fascinating both that governments have allowed public worship to continue, and that churches have voluntarily closed their doors. I say this not to criticise other churches, nor to encourage more to attend in person. But I think two things are worth pointing out.

Firstly, that right now, our worship is stripped back; refreshments, music, singing, friendship, company, gone. All the good bits. And even Emily and Mark suffer a little through transportation onto small screens – and that’s without microphone issues. But still over 100 devices streamed our services last week. And some I know are watched by 5 people. It may be that Prime and Netflix are utterly exhausted, but there’s something in the liturgy, in knowing you are watching with friends, something in this space that connects us – that brings hope and meaning.

And the second thing follows. That this act, individual and corporate, is the most important thing we do. To receive forgiveness. Grace. Blessing. To be joined to each other in Christ. To be fed. To be sent out in the Spirit.

It’s easy to get hung up on the privations of lockdown. It is also an opportunity. I hope we’ll never again be this fearful, this bored, this restricted. But we know better our priorities. If you haven’t helped a neighbour by now, you probably won’t. If you’re not concerned about the homeless and the elderly, your empathy has got choked. If you haven’t searched your depths on a lonely, tedious evening; you probably don’t have any. One pillar of Western civilisation stands on the simple phrase: ‘know thyself!’ If this year has given us anything it has helped with this task. For better and for worse. As we have torn our robes and shaved our heads, (or stayed for days in our dressing gowns and become a shambles,) Now is the time to worship.

And it’s not about being a saint. In my dining room there’s a whiteboard that still has a calendar for December littered with services, weddings, funerals, carols, concerts, to help prevent me not showing up. On the 12th when we again had to needlessly isolate because of some unfortunate circumstance, someone has written: ‘We are all sad apart from Rhi who cooks’. It’s a year where small kindnesses have made a big difference.

This Sunday is about our calling. Our calling is our response to the meaning we find in the world. Whatever it is that you have decided the world is about: people liking you, power and influence, being good at something, money and stability, desire, loving God and your neighbour; your calling is your response to that. Samuel heard, but it took time to realise it was from the Lord. The disciples followed but it wasn’t until Jesus had been pushed out of the world onto the cross that they understood their calling. Finding our vocation is always a stripping away of the world. A peeling back of the surface to reveal what’s really there. Our experience in the last year will be very different, depending on our situation. But all of us have experienced this stripping, and with it a call to help others, to question more deeply and with this the Lord has given and the Lord has taken away.

I hope that we are not as beset as Job; or Fulham. But when all is taken away, when we are left bereft and shorn; when the world has pushed us out on to the cross; we know that Christ has gone before us, and that the love of God reaches further than this world has power to take us. And that it is in this time that we may find that all that is left to us is to fall to the ground and worship. Amen.

Epiphany loneliness

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Matthew 2:1-12

In TS Eliot’s best poem, near the end, he meets a ‘familiar compound ghost’, a sort of personification of the poets who have gone before him. And the figure speaks saying:

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

With this poem Eliot is bringing to an end his career as a poet, which has of course already climaxed with the West End smash musical Cats. From there he turned to writing idiosyncratic plays that no one performs anymore. But in our youth-dazzled culture it’s worth remembering there are gifts reserved for age. And some tasks, some crafts, require a lifetime’s effort. In some of the key moments remembered in the Epiphany season, here with the Kings, later in the temple with Simeon, we see the older generation welcoming the one who is to come. And we see this disclosing of the gifts reserved for age – the wisdom of the magi - in the reading of the stars, the famous gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, recognising Jesus (as the hymn tells us) as king, priest and sacrifice; and in Simeon’s prophecy – the gifts reserved for age – for a lifetime of prayer and faithfulness, the vision to see God. The gifts reserved for age prepare the way of the Lord.

Dante’s great poem, the Divine Comedy, begins:

Midway in the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark forest,
for the straight way was lost.

Dante had been one of the 6 city rulers of Florence, but was then exiled – never to return – and lost everything. But out of a midlife crisis and the loss of all his dreams he wrote Europe’s greatest poem, and received this vision of heaven, which reformed his own path. A gift reserved for age and suffering.

Age and experience are what make people interesting. Not always. But interesting people usually have age and experience. And as the dreadful virus has robbed so many people of grandparents, we will spend this year mourning the loss of age and experience. And in the terrible compromise every family has known between enjoying their elder statespersons and protecting them; we will perhaps appreciate more age and experience. And not especially those who have changed the world, the celebrity deaths of 2016. The wise men pass quickly from the Gospel story as cameos.

And

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

But as fathers and grandparents, friends we value them in the love they make known in our lives. This week we have lost two of our longest standing church members, Jack and Jean. Each shared their gifts with us and their children have also played prominent roles; it’s too little celebrated that churches are one of the few places where generations meet and contribute equally. The gifts reserved for age: For wisdom and for running up and down.

So today we are remembering those gifts reserved for age which come with the passage of time. For friendship and shared company that spans decades. For the sharing in worship which sustains this community, linking past and future, and the world to come, as the Eucharistic prayer calls us all to the feast that joins earth and heaven, with all the saints and angels. Our Magi who continue their journey now by another road.

I broke my phone-screen walking Zz a few weeks ago, who leapt at a frisky whippet. Like most people’s it still works but is covered in a spider’s web of hairline cracks. It feels like a metaphor for society at present. Unless you are American which is more like your phone falling down the toilet. But I’m sure some will feel that words like communion, fellowship, the concept of ‘online-community’ are a little hollow. And while some will feel it’s irresponsible to keep churches open, I’m also mindful of those for whom church may be spiritually or mentally necessary; especially those who are alone and unsupported.

It occurs to me that at this time, for some, loneliness may have become a more serious threat than the virus. Part of the problem with loneliness is that it’s not talked about. It has a stigma. Being lonely must mean you’re not popular; not fun. It might suggest you’re a bit needy, a bit dependent. We might associate it with odd children or teenage boys. As a problem it sounds like something that could be fixed with a good deodorant. The truth is deeper and more serious. It’s also more prevalent. It is possible to be lonely even within a busy household, because loneliness is the result of insufficient connection. It is felt every time we are misunderstood, unacknowledged, underappreciated or unrecognised. But it’s sharpest when we’re alone, as so many are today. Theologically, it is crucifixion.

As the Gospels progress we see a growing divide through Jesus’ ministry with those around him. The disciples misunderstand; they vie for power and position; they betray, deny and finally abandon him. The crowd turn from ‘Hosanna!’ to ‘Crucify!’ in less than a week. Pilate can’t understand him. The Jewish authorities deliberately misunderstand and misrepresent him; this is the loneliness of the Gospel. As we heard at Christmas in a verse rarely commented upon: ‘He came unto his own, and his own received him not’ (Jn 1:11). Which will become: ‘My God [even], My God, why hast thou forsaken me’ (Matt 27:46). The story of our redemption is a story of loneliness. For Jesus this is because the truth of who-he-is is entirely at odds with what he shows the world to be. We have only to look at the White House to see that even now the world is armed against truth and love.

For us, it’s more often the personal prisons of our private worlds. The anxiety that’s developed within us; the craving for affirmation that creates a false image of ourself; the fear and difficulty of communicating with others. Dare we be totally honest with others? Do we trust and respect others enough to be open with them? Here begins loneliness. And every note of falseness in ourselves, in others, in the world, is a step towards loneliness. Our respite from that is the people we love. Where we are loved despite our faults, or better, because of our faults, where we are truly seen, we are not lonely. Age and experience can take this from us, just as distance and vulnerability can separate us. This is the loneliness of this winter.

TS Eliot in his poem of the magi has them ask:

were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth
and death,
But had thought them different

Jesus is marked from the beginning as different: a king, but not accepted; a priest, not recognised; a sacrifice. And so begins the loneliness of the Gospel.

The truth that put Jesus at odds with the world is that God loves all of us, not for the self we project but for the complicated and hidden creatures that we are. Which is to say he loves us in our loneliness. So whether you have 5000 followers or 5, whether your Instagram profile is you including warts, or the fantastic hyper-you you’re desperate for people to see, or if you don’t know what Instagram is; God is with you in that loneliness.

But let us in these weeks to come reach out. Our Liverpudlian director of music has COVID in Bath so is with us only online, but to quote another scouse musician: It’s just you; You’ll do. So let it out and let it in. Let us love one another. And for all those whose age and experience has brought a new isolation, who brought gifts, reserved for age, years ago at the birth of a child, Whose journeys have been a lifetime’s effort, and for those who grieve someone who saw and loved them. Let us return the gifts of epiphany with the love of the child the Magi of old came to adore. Amen.

Christmas: Time

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:15-21

The poem that summarises how I feel in this strange interlude between Christmas Day and Epiphany is by John Riley. Riley was from Leeds, served in the RAF, went to Cambridge, became a teacher, and then at the age of only 41 was attacked and murdered near his home in 1978. It’s impossible not to already read that tragedy into his poetry, but this is my favourite poem of his, ‘Fragment of an Argument about the Feast’:

How shall we behave the day after the feast?
If there is no elation to recall at least

There's little enough disappointment : so act
As if things were usual, which they are in fact.

A little flat perhaps a little lacking
In fire in dramatic cadences we sing

'Our streets are not paved with gold and never were'
As best we can as consolation for a threadbare

Everything it seems at times is our complaint
Complaining it seems falls everywhere like rain

And great's the tension to be merely quaint
To recreate a golden age and to refrain

From further effort - and there I would have loved
And there I did – superbly conscious not unmoved

No moved but reconciled to some sort of end :
'The historical drama is over and

Only the epilogue remains though it may
As with Ibsen be drawn out into five acts.'

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.

It’s not exactly an upbeat poem; There’s a heavy slice of realism. But in a year that has been, on reflection, quite disappointing, it strikes a chord. And always Christmas seems to rush headlong from one thing to another in preparation, and then immediately be gone. It’s different as a child; the excitement of new toys makes it last longer; were you to have guests or be guests that can help sustain festivities. But even as a child I remember a flat feeling. Not that Christmas had disappointed, but simply the build-up and anticipation had promised some sort of end or new beginning, but now we were simply back on the wheel with nothing really changed. 363 days to Christmas.

And perhaps it’s that as a culture we’re more materialistic – which lends itself to an instant but short-lived gratification; and less social – which would provide some stimulus for longer celebrations – But Christmas lasting 12 days seems too much. Too decadent; too much time spent staring at the same people you’ve been locked in your house with all year. How shall we behave the day after the feast? act/ As if things were usual, which they are in fact.

Our faith asks us to see time in a peculiar way. The way the world sees time is like a road. 1AD, 2AD, 3AD, 4AD – 4 miles out. The world sees time as progress so the higher the number the further along we are; 
the more advanced we are. Yes – it’s the easiest form of smugness, which anyone can enjoy, to look back on people a century ago and think how much more sophisticated, how much more cultured, thoughtful and educated we are. Would that it were true.

As an aside, I once had a conversation with someone who remarked what a coincidence it was that Jesus just happened to born in the year 0. I think they had misunderstood our dating system. As it happens, the system was based on Jesus being born on the year 1. There is no year zero. And as strange as it may sound, the system was only invented in the sixth century. The Venerable Bede is the first person recorded to date events BC, before Christ, and the whole thing was adopted widely with Charlemagne only in the 9th Century. It is a pleasing thought, though, to think of people counting backwards, getting excited about reaching year zero.

However, and again how extraordinary, our faith has divided the dating of almost all the world with the historical person of Jesus. And as a crucial turning point, rather than a beginning.  So, rather than counting progress, It would seem that the higher the number the further we are from the centre. 2020AD has its parallel in 2020BC. It’s hard to be sure exactly of things occurring in the 21st century BC. Possibly Abraham was around then, the beginning of the Assyrian empire. Seahenge may have been constructed in Norfolk. There are probably not many parallels with our own time, except for the prevalence of disease. And possibly arguments with the French over fishing rights.

But it’s not just that Christianity placed Christ at the centre of history. Even in our secular age, the year turns on the life of Christ. So between Christmas and Pentecost we race through the events of his life and resurrection, half the year following his story, half the year in ‘ordinary time’. And while the world has worked steadily to flatten the seasonal changes of life – the church insists that the rhythm of the year is helpful – that we need seasons of penitence, seasons of celebration. And the church keeps inventing more: Creation Season in September, Kingdom Season in November. But seasons are helpful, and actually, perhaps the Christmas champagne does taste better for only drinking prosecco in Advent.

But is this way of looking at time so odd? Most people I know are surprised at their age as they get older; it’s not uncommon for grand ladies in their 80s to still feel like little girls; and that’s before our minds retreat into childhood. We are not linear creatures; we are not creatures of progress. As Roald Dahl tells us:  ‘You are still yourself in everything except your appearance. You've still got your own mind and your own brain and your own voice, and thank goodness for that’. We change with time, but there are repeats, there are fortes, there are pianissimos; there are themes and variations. Our lives are more like music than journeys. So how are we to behave the day after the feast?

It would have been easy to cancel Christmas this year. Perhaps given everything, we could have said morning prayer, and continued through Winter without it. At least we’d have kept the White Witch and some COVID martials happy. But even if our celebrations are small. As with so many life-events in the past year, the gathered celebration is deferred; there have been moments I hope, when something of the hope and joy have been rekindled; where even if it is just in the yearning of our hearts for something remembered, we have known that spirit of Christ’s birth; which is at this time of year, only as yet a promise of something wonderful to be revealed, a promise hidden in the world that is not yet realised.

Austin Farrer once remarked upon coming across an odd phrase in a medieval text: ‘ad septem horas de clocca’, obviously referring to what we would say as ‘at seven o’clock’. A ‘clocca’, though, is a bell, So the phrase could be translated ‘at seven hours by the bell’. That time is measured by bells should remind us that time is as much circular as it is linear; but also that time has long been foremost measured by churches. As well as keeping the order of the day, they have also called us to worship, and through the joy and sadness of life’s own timetable. So in churches the bell used to always be rung at the consecration to say Christ is here, so even those out working in the fields would know; just as at Christmas and Easter, and every Sunday, the bell is rung to call people to worship wherever they are. To mark ‘the fullness of time.’

Time stands in constant need of redemption, but bells remind us of God’s eternity in time. So when we measure these days between feasts, and when we hear the bell of St Margaret calling out the hour, we know that God is still with us. So act/ As if things were usual, which they are in fact.

Amen.

Christmas Morning: Interested Love

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: The Angels appear to the Shepherds

There is an episode of Friends, the most popular show of the 1990s, in which Joey states that there is no such thing as a selfless deed.  Phoebe contests such a negative worldview and helps a neighbour, gets stung by a bee and then phones in to donate money to charity, but each time Joey is able to find a way in which the action has helped her and so is, in some way, selfish.   “I will find a selfless good deed. 'Cause I just gave birth to three children and I will not let them be raised in a world where Joey is right.” For many people this sort of “disinterested love” - where you do good deeds purely for other people – is the best thing you can do – the definition of what it means to be a good person.  If Joey is right then that’s because humans are actually nasty, brutish little creatures incapable of thinking beyond themselves.  As Samuel Johnson said: “I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.” 

I’m not really sure this selfless worldview is right though. It goes hand in hand with a philosophy that looks to always be objective, to find the God’s eye view as it is sometimes called.  This has at times been very popular especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s all a little cold, logical, and bureaucratic. And the main problem is that it’s also led to the worst human behaviour.  While Fascism had its faults, inciting nationalist fervour, and trading on emotive concepts, it was Stalin with his science of socialism that killed – sorry liquidated – more people. When people become numbers on a sheet, terrifying things happen.   Take even a simple objective question – who are of more worth 10 people or 20 people? It’s seems easy to the objective eye. But what if the 10 people are the ten best medical researchers in the world? What if the 20 are at death’s door, or teenagers? Who can possibly say if one life is worth more than another? We don’t have quantitative means of valuing the most important aspects of our lives and relationships. And the same is true of ethics. Why should the best possible action be one that I don’t gain from? Why should a good deed be disinterested?  If Star Trek has taught us anything it’s that James T. Kirk made better decisions than Spock. So don’t worry if being good makes you happy.  It’s not a zero-sum world. Some things are win-win.

And this is what Christmas is all about. We have the fidelity and perseverance of Mary and Joseph, the gift of a child.  And to this celebration come the angels, the shepherds and the kings in the sharing of joy and gifts - with the other worldly, the poor and uneducated, and the rich and learned. And none of it is disinterested. The most quoted verse in the Bible does not run: God was so level-headed about the world that he made an excellent, well thought-through to decision to send his only son.  

A mother’s love is anything but disinterested. She cares and later she will begin making demands. And the visitors all came with their excitement and interest – taking selfies and enjoying some Bethlehem punch. And in this little scene is a little picture of heaven. If you think back to all those charming nativity plays you’ve seen -  at the end everyone comes together in the mutual joy of company, singing ‘Away in a Manger’.  It’s not a miserable pious crush of people falling over to themselves to serve other people and ensure that they themselves have a miserable time.  

As we get older we change roles in the nativity story. Oberon, last year, was Jesus, the special child. This year he is perhaps a waif off the streets of Bethlehem, or a young shepherd boy toddling down the hills. Again this year, we’re with the exhaustion of Joseph and Mary, in pregnancy and as young parents; others may identify with the wise elders sending gifts to the new generation. The news is simply full of Herods plotting mischief and massacres! If we can imagine Christ being born in each generation we may see how much we and the world still need redemption, and how much it still needs hope; that after two thousand years of wrong, the angels’ strain can still be heard.  This won’t be achieved by the few who manage to martyr themselves by selfless deeds, and that’s if they manage to prove Joey wrong. But it will be improved by a Christmas where people are kind to those that they love, and see that love spill over to rich and poor, the shepherds and kings who pop by each of our stables for a socially distanced call. Cicero wrote that “Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.”   That seems like a good aim for this Christmas;  a win-win holiday where we bring a little joy to the people around us and set ourselves up for a brave new 2021.   A year that’s going to need a whole lot of joy to get us back on track.  Amen.

Midnight Mass: Just a Cosmic Word

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: John 1:1-14

In the Beginning was the Word. For me this immediately conjures in my mind some image of galaxies, like something out of Star Trek. The vibe is cosmic. And it’s deliberate.

John had probably read Mark’s Gospel, which begins with the same word ‘arche’ ­‘beginning’; But while Mark starts the beginning of his Gospel with John the Baptist, John takes us back to the beginning of creation. John is thinking Big – Because the other book that starts ‘in the beginning’ is Genesis, and nothing comes before Genesis. Unless of course you’re Phil Collins in which case there was a few small acting jobs and a band called ‘Flaming Youth’, before Genesis.

In the beginning was Phil Collins. Sorry ‘In the beginning was the Word’. Technically this is really before the beginning. Creation isn’t starting till verse 3. Perhaps ‘at’ the beginning would be better. And the ‘Word’: ‘logos’ In Greek, it can refer either to ‘thought’ or ‘speech’. For the stoic philosophers it meant ‘rational thought’; We’ve already referenced Genesis with the first words of God ‘let there be light’ so we might also think of it as something like ‘creative power’, or ‘revelation’.  As the psalms tell us: ‘by the word of the Lord the heavens were made’ (33.6) Or as we hear through the prophets ‘Now the word of the Lord came to me’ (e.g. Ezek. 1.3, Amos 3.1) In both these cases the Word is not abstract, but active – creating, revealing.

And the Word is probably best associated with Wisdom. So in the book of Proverbs (8) we read:

“The Lord created me [wisdom] at the beginning of his work,the first of his acts of long ago. 
Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 
when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 
then I was beside him, like a master worker”

So John in this first sentence, ‘In the beginning was the Word’ has pulled together a fusion of Jewish, Greek and Early Christian thinking to say that at the beginning, before, without creation, a universe; there is a thought, an expression, wisdom, something active, creative, revealing. To paraphrase: within the universe, there is hidden meaning, that seeks to reveal itself. It’s like the universe is a great Punch and Judy show with all the nonsense, violence and crocodiles you can imagine, but behind it – spoiler alert! – there’s actually a puppeteer trying to tell a story, though these toys seem to have a life of their own.

So this first line. The line we remember from each Christmas, along with  ‘It was Christmas Eve babe, in the drunk tank’ This line, is a statement that life has a point. And I think, this year, that’s almost enough in itself to contend with.

Now, organised religion has not fared terribly well in Europe since the 60s. And yet, curiously, people remain ‘spiritual’; They often believe in life-after-death, in the supernatural; they practice meditation, mindfulness and keep gratitude journals. It’s only a small number who are die-hard fundamentalist atheists. I always think they’re curious. It’s like if you want to play cricket and you’re looking to see if there’s a cricket ball in the bushes in your garden – An accurate summary of most of my childhood – If you find it, you have it.  You know it’s there. It’s in your hand. Though you might be surprised that it doesn’t look like you expect, having soaked up rain and been nibbled by squirrels. But if you don’t find it, can you really be sure it’s not there? Especially if your brothers are playing catch?

But actually, it may be that the spiritual non-religious people are more perplexing. Religions present world-views and cultures which have been reflected on for hundreds or thousands of years; they’ve been developed, examined and critiqued by great minds of our species; they’ve been illustrated, given expression, in the finest arts and culture that we possess; and yet people so often seem to think that their ideas, formulated out of teenage anxiety, a bad relationship and a whiskey-fuelled conversation late one night, have more validity and greater perception than the combined wisdom of millions.

And actually there is such diversity within Christianity, so many voices who have wrestled to uncover the truths hidden in our fabric, building on past generations, that I think we might be justified in asking people to consult outside of their own experience. And it seems people can believe in ghosts and not God; follow horoscopes, but not philosophy; practice meditation, but scoff at prayer. But what do I know? I’m biased.

What this first line of St John’s Gospel has been telling us for two thousand years, is that there’s meaning in the world. But it’s not just your truth, your wisdom, your experience, It’s wisdom and truth for the whole world. And it’s active – it wants to be revealed, to be discovered. It is a light shining in the darkness.

But how easy is it to believe that life has meaning today? What threatens most people’s beliefs is when the world isn’t as they want it, or think it, should be. Which is extraordinary if you think about. “I realise God that, according to Wikipedia (which you’ve probably come across), the universe is 13.8 billion years old and 558 billion trillion miles in diameter, and I’m only 5’9” and 26 years old, but let me tell you…” But regardless, in a world where disease is at the forefront of our minds, and news, it’s natural to ask why, and does this meaning justify the suffering we see?

The Gospel’s answer to this is that no amount of suffering can correspond to or outweigh the infinite value of love. So if a statistician were weighing on a scale, on one side suffering, on the other love, our faith says that even the smallest act of love is enough to tip the scale against all the suffering of the world. It’s not the suffering doesn’t matter, it’s simply that love matters infinitely. John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus came to reveal the love of God to the world. And yes before Michael Ball and Alfie Boe, John revealed that: This love is the light that shines in the darkness. And no amount of darkness can snuff out a candle.

In a sense we can see this with how people have reacted to the pandemic. I was reading through the statistics last night. 94% of deaths are people over 60. 99% of deaths are people older than me. And mostly those missing percentage points are covered by people who have other health conditions, who are poor, overweight, or smoke. Natural selection is not on their side.

But we’re not hearing a great clamouring to open the nightclubs, the malls. Apart from 400 youths on Saturday in a disused Marks and Spencer’s in Putney, which is according to the Sun a ‘posh suburb’. There’s a wide recognition that we must protect the vulnerable. And when you think how quickly we’ve adapted; how completely humanity has changed to protect a small and largely economically unnecessary part of the species, we should be a little impressed. And unless you’ve completely departed this planet, I’m sure you’ve also noticed in the last year some remarkable sacrifices; an upsurge in fundraising and charitable activity; in care within streets and communities; there is a light shining in the darkness.

This revelation, this Gospel, that John penned two thousand years ago, he wrote having witnessed this truth that God loved the world. Not in order to make it perfect, to make everyone happy, to get everyone the things they like at Christmas Which is how we usually judge God’s work – the cosmic Santa – but for the sake of love. Love is what makes us the best version of ourselves, even in suffering, and even in death. And this love shines in the darkness and neither suffering nor death can understand or overcome it.

And perhaps faith is difficult in these times.  Trying to make sense of a frenetic and anxious world. But if we can put the metaphysics to one side, our own preconceptions about religion; our grief, fear and stumbling science; we can perhaps grasp that this life does have a point; and that meaning hidden since the foundation of the world is love;

And actually that’s very simple. Because we know it instinctively in our families; we are already living it and seeing it through this hellish year. And the joy and light that springs from showing another person love, or having love shown to us, is for many enough to convince that it’s the most important thing in the universe. Or, to put it another way, since it’s Christmas, and at Christmas you tell the truth – Love actually does make the world go round. Amen.

Carols in the Garden: Courage

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

Courage. It can take many forms. There’s courage that’s prepared to take risks. To brave the elements – To brave the outside world. There’s the moral courage required sometimes to reduce risk. To protect others; to go against what everyone else’s saying, to speak out when others are careless; to be a voice crying out in the wilderness. Of Putney.

And when is courage recklessness? And when is courage just caution, or anxiety?

There’s no shortage of courage in the story of Christmas. The kings are willing to travel to strange lands. The shepherds brave a descending host of angels, which I imagine came down like the apaches at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, We are told ‘they were terrified’, But they stood their ground, and made their way to Bethlehem. Then there’s Mary. I’m sure there’s worry enough in pregnancy, without long journeys in occupied territory, when the hotel booking’s fallen through, and your only transport is a donkey. One of the benefits of restrictions this year is not having to sing ‘Little Donkey’, which, let’s all agree, gets a little bit whiney. But yes, the little donkey did have courage, plodding onwards with his precious load. Don’t give up now little donkey.

The story of Jesus’ birth is fraught with peril, noisy, messy, mud and blood and mangers. And that’s before Herod kicks off an infanticide. But then perhaps there was also the moment imagined by the carols – the silence of night, O Bethlehem – how still we see thee lie – When all is calm, all is bright.

Perhaps like the Christmas Truce, the shells fell silent, the cattle ceased lowing. Amid the snow, or what passes for snow in the Middle East – Bethlehem is currently sitting pretty on 15º – ‘Winter's a good time to stay in and cuddle but put me in summer and I'll be a ... happily vaccinated’. Perhaps there was a moment in the glow of a safe delivery, if you can get a slot, that the family rested easy. Perhaps there is a moment for us too, this night, to lay aside our fear, rest easy, and enjoy it being Christmas. With all our memories of Christmas past. 

Christmas is about courage. And it shows us where true courage lies. Because it’s the story of a life begun that will teach us to love one another; of a life given to show what love means, what sacrifice means, what courage means. Because true courage is always courage for the sake of others.

The soldier from 2Scots currently on guard duty in Afghanistan, the paramedic waiting in her ambulance, the shopkeeper letting go of his last bottle of port to sustain a busy Santa Claus. The person who picks up a little something for their elderly neighbour; all those who this night continue in their work to serve their community and nation; a baby born who will take the slings and arrows of human meanness to prove that love shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

So this Christmas let’s pray for courage. Courage to go out, where necessary, where friendship or need demands, where the beauty and solemnity of this night calls us to worship; courage to stay in despite boredom and the company of our families.  To have courage for others. To love one another. Amen.

Christmas Carols: Tiny, Hidden Things

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

Tiny hidden things. Everything begins with tiny hidden things. The paralysis and trial of the world in a sweeping pandemic: Tiny hidden things. Hope, where it arises, tiny hidden things.

The news we hear is always big things. Politicians – usually going down with COVID – Or ruining people’s Saturday night. Multinational Pharmaceutical company breakthroughs – Captain Tom raising £33 million. But for every Captain Tom there’s a hundred thousand volunteers quietly fundraising, quietly helping. Fetching their neighbour’s groceries every week, month after month. Dropping off a piece of cake; making a phone call. Tiny hidden things.

Christmas is a visible noisy thing. Lights, carols, live-stream! Which is why our story starts in March, like most tiny hidden things. Our first reading is the annunciation, 9 months before Christmas. Rhiannon, my wife, is convinced that human gestation is 10 months, something to do with when they count the first day of pregnancy from. This is why our baby is due on Easter Monday. It’s a hard way to begin life: on a mathematical error.

But the annunciation is the tiny, hidden moment on which creation turns, the Gospel starts to spin. There is not even a second heart beat yet. But there is life, and that life is the light of the world. And now, at Christmas that tiny hidden thing is ready to be revealed to the world, though he will still be small and wrapped in swaddling bands. In a poor family, in a remote part of the world. Tiny. Hidden.

The thing that people usually find hardest to reconcile in Christianity is its particularity. A bit of ritual and music, love thy neighbour, a higher power, gratitude and forgiveness, mindfulness – we can all get behind that.

But a God becoming human. That sounds like a cult.

But if you wanted to say, as most people do today, that bodies matter, as much as mind or spirit. If you wanted to say that God is not some remote, uninterested, mechanical, logical astral-computer, but involved in humanity and all its struggles; if you wanted to say that God is not knowledge or power but love – reciprocal, self-giving love – such as is first found between a mother and child; if you understood that to communicate to humans, you need not a set of laws or a rational proof, but a story; if you wanted to bring meaning to suffering, not by removing freedom or adversity, but by enduring through love, and promising redemption in love; if you wanted to show that within humanity, and most especially our relationships, our fragility and the incredible miracle of birth, are the most holy and sacred traces of the divine; and that in the divine can be found what is most precious within our humanity; then how else would you reveal to the world who you are. How else than by this Incarnation; this tiny hidden thing.

Whatever good that comes out of this pandemic will not justify it. There may be yet further stings in the tail. But for all the present darkness, I have seen daily the twinkling light of human kindness.

Each year we return to Bethlehem, it looks a little different. We may understand the anxiety of the couple a little better this year; their poverty, the difficulty of travel; the quiet of the empty sky, fear and wariness of others; loneliness. The gentle hope of “we’ll meet again” sustained us through March. The melancholic sadness of “have yourself a merry little Christmas” is the sobering reality for this week.

But we are here to greet God with us, God within us. And if we can grasp that God has embraced humanity in order to tell a story of a body given over for love; then perhaps we may find those traces of the divine, the twinkling lights of heaven; in those we love: from those we have sought this year to protect, to this broad new generation which are even now coming into the world, just as he did.  Tiny. Hidden. Amen.