Back to School Sunday!

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 43:2-7, Psalm 23, Ephesians 6:13-18, Luke 4:14-21

This Gospel is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. In terms of Luke’s understanding and memory of Jesus, we can’t overstate how important this passage is a statement of Jesus’ person and mission. I always think it’s quite an imaginable scene: not dissimilar to how we are here and now. The context is a religious service. The regular congregation is there as normal, There is, perhaps, a bigger sense of anticipation;  a growing reputation. That sense of a moment in history approaching.

People are alert to the sense of change; Of revelation; Perhaps revolution; and here is Luke’s Gospel, a social Gospel: Good news for the poor; Comfort for grief; Healing; Vision; Freedom; The kingdom of God come near. Things are happening HERE and NOW.

Essentially – for all the difficulties of the world –  Material want, loss of heart and sense of purpose, the disasters that befall us – There is a promise of restoration in this new beginning that Jesus is announcing. But as will become all too clear, this kingdom is not what people were expecting.

First days tend to stick with us. I can recall something of the excitement of first days at school in Septembers long gone. The sense of possibility – of new subjects, new challenges. Of beginning universities in new towns. Uncertain first days at new jobs; First days travelling with the freedom of the open road, or in days gone by perhaps even an airport, in front of you. An overwhelming first day as an ordained minister in Paddington, wearing a clerical collar for the first time. A very nervous first day in the army. A first day of marriage, where my mother-in-law woke me up at 7:30am to take the empty bottles down to the recycling because she was worried about wasps. Start as you mean to go on. A first day as a father, full of fear and trembling; My first day here; Returning to parish ministry, with the energy and anxiety of a new beginning.

Even if the details slip away – you can still recall the feeling of these key moments: Trepidation, enthusiasm, possibility, uncertainty. When that day arrives, one way we can reassure ourselves is through our preparation. Whether it’s school uniform, army uniform, a suit or something else – there’s a certain comfort in laying out our clothes and dressing with that sense of preparing ourselves for the day. And in my experience, if you look the part you can get away with most things. Certainly, in the Armed Forces if you don’t look the part you’ll be told very quickly.

St Paul in today’s epistle famously describes faith like preparation for battle. ‘take unto you the whole armour of God… your loins girt about with truth,  the breastplate of righteousness… your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace… taking the shield of faith… the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: There’s an exercise of prayer here, in facing a difficult hour, where you mentally put on the armour of God to withstand the hour, the day that is coming.

Similarly, before services, there are vesting prayers to help the priest prepare, which refer to this Scripture. The prayer as you put on the stole reads: “Lord, restore the stole of immortality, which I lost through the collusion of our first parents, and, unworthy as I am to approach thy sacred mysteries, may I yet gain eternal joy.”This prayer refers us back to creation and Adam and Eve. Our Old Testament likewise reminds us that God created, formed and redeemed us.  It is that first day traced back to the actual first day – however you conceive it – that is the measure of our confidence: the belief that we have been made, formed, redeemed, in a creation where love is the first principle. Were it an indifferent world – our lives would truly be nasty brutish and short as one philosopher put it. Chased from insecurity to illness before death, With moments of pleasure snatched from the inescapable jaws of suffering.

The work of faith is to defend the belief that each of us is formed with care and purpose.  And to show that same care to the world around us. That is the shield of faith that will protect us in adversity. That is the helmet of salvation that will cool our thoughts. Here, today, faith is our common assent to the Gospel of Jesus’ first day: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.’ And to say: ‘This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.’ To believe that despite the difficulties of life, we are ultimately safe in God’s hands.

Even those among us who have lived a great long time in this world have known a few new first days in the last 18 months. The uncertainty remains – At 10am we have our first all-age service in 18 months and nothing creates uncertainty like children. As we return to colder weather we may well have to buckle back on the whole armour of God, And raise up the shield of faith.

Living with faith will not prevent disease, anxiety or death; Rather we put on the whole armour of God in order to overcome these obstacles. Knowing that despite the valley of the shadow of death, our last day will be like our first,  Like that first day when Adam walked easily with God. Like the first day of the week, when Jesus rose from the tomb and met his disciples. When we will say again, as on every day: ‘This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.’

Every day is a new beginning. After all, tomorrow is another day. We are here to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. So let us put on the whole armour of God. And let us preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Amen.

The Blessed Virgin Mary

My soul magnifies the Lord.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

At the end of the book of Revelation, from which our first reading came, John speaks of the book of life, in which are named all the saints and those destined for the New heaven and earth. I was reminded of this when Daisy and her father came into the office to talk about today’s baptism, and I was able to show Daisy her father’s entry.  There is something quite beautiful about being in a register alongside your child, as a genuine measure of time in generations. We could start referring to people by their entry number. Maison would be 254 to  Daisy’s 747. It’s probably less common in London but it’s not inconceivable you might find in a church records of multiple generations going back and back. And who knows perhaps Daisy will one day get married and have her children baptised in this church, looking back to pre-historic times when Grandpa Maison was baptised in the 1990s. Similarly, just before Isabel Fresson got married a few weeks ago she showed me her baptism certificate from St Margaret’s. These records have a certain beauty and weight in that they give a proper account of time – not measure in minutes, but generations. And perhaps if we can – for a brief moment – step back and see time in this context we might not be in such a hurry over every last second. I wonder if that line from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem: ‘if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run’ truly gives a helpful assessment of what it means to be a  man. Sometimes we need the words of Welshman WH Davies:

‘What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.’

Though this, as the poem goes, likens us not to men, but sheep and cows. Thus spake the Welshman. But for all of us who agonise over a wasted 5 minutes, or just never stop, remembering the broader span of time can be helpful.

Today the Church remembers Mary, first of all as the Mother of Jesus, But also as, herself, his first and most faithful disciple, following him from birth to death.

Mary and Jesus are in certain respects inseparable. He, the Word made flesh, is flesh of her flesh. His passion is her passion, as we are told of Mary from the beginning of the Gospel – ‘and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’ So while Jesus speaks to us of the vulnerability of the body; Mary speaks to us of the vulnerability of the heart. The anxiety of love;  the pain of looking on, and of grief, that like a dragon appears at the birth of a child, in every threat and worry that accompanies that journey of parenthood.

If you have taken on a child, and to some extent a smaller furrier creature, you will know this. A friend warned me when he had his first child he could no longer watch nature documentaries without floods of tears. Parenthood can bring on a hyper-sensitivity and an empathy that unlocks our compassion. It reminds me of the words of St Paul: ‘our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours.  In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.’

The novelist Jeanette Winterson writes the most beautiful story of adopting a puppy, and all the difficulty and love that springs from it. Shockingly at the end, they send the puppy back as the ordeal of loving another creature proves overwhelming. Parents will likely remember Rod Campbell’s Dear Zoowhere somewhat irresponsibly a zoo sends a child inappropriate animals for a pet like a lion, a giraffe and a snake, which are too fierce, too big, too scary. Each time the line is “I sent him back”. I did look into this but it turns out that hospitals have a “no returns” policy.

There is no doubt when faced with the enormity of fragility, innocence, and the immense pain and terror in the world, to which we largely have grown accustomed, That the heart suffers. We suddenly know that reality that everyone is someone’s son or daughter. Love changes the way you see the world; This is the vulnerability of love; The anxiety of love; And a lot of those first years of responsibility feel like a gruelling trade-off between love and exhaustion, or which is to say the same thing – Between attention and the limitation of being human.

The passion – of both Jesus and Mary – is the endpoint of this trade off –  where the totality of attentive love meets the natural limit of being human; And this point – captured in art in the crucifixion and in the pieta, as the body of Jesus is returned to his mother –  This point is the revelation of God’s love – shown both in sacrifice and unspeakable grief. Summarised in the relationship between the two of them: Human and divine.

But the character of love is its openness. Widen your hearts. As my friend now weeps at nature documentaries. Because this attention to, this concern with, vulnerability makes us alive to it everywhere. So Mary in today’s Gospel experiences God raising her up. And her response is to magnify, to praise the Lord. But she understands that in her heart, so, in the blessing she sings, God expresses his preference for the vulnerable in this world: God looks ‘with favour on the lowliness of his servant’ God has ‘lifted up the lowly’ ‘filled the hungry with good things’

Our response to protect, to nurture the vulnerable things of this world is an echo of the divine love, which is proclaimed first by Mary and is incarnate in Jesus. Love’s anxiety, the vulnerability of the heart, is a proper response to the fragility of the world. When it informs our desires it is prayer; When it informs our actions it is mission.

So widen your hearts. Cry at the dulcet tones of David Attenborough. Find within you that vulnerability of heart. And let it fuel your prayer and mission.

As the proud owner of three animals, two of which are mostly human, I must confess I struggle to think generationally. I’m mostly concerned to get to the end of the day with everyone alive and asleep. Five minutes is a golden opportunity to get washing on, fill the dishwasher, put away trains, take Rhiannon’s plates and glasses downstairs. My sermons are mostly written gently bouncing a baby to sleep; And whenever possible I aim to do three things at once – Walk the dog (and the toddler), go and see choo choos, pick up bread (and wine), get the baby to sleep.

Of all people I should know better and find time to stand and stare. To be attentive in love. And to remember that time is measured in generations as well as minutes. It’s God’s gift to us that time slows down as we slow down; Luckily I still have plenty of time with these animals to stand and stare, and watch theme grow. But this morning let us celebrate the love we have in our lives;  let’s think not in five minute tasks, but in the passing of generations that leads to eternity. Let’s widen our hearts. Let us magnify the Lord. Amen.

Take baptisms like they're life and death. Take funerals like they're death and life.

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-13, Psalm 78; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35

Funerals have become a defining part of St Margaret’s work in the last year. They vary enormously and the pandemic has exacerbated this. I took a funeral last year where no one attended. The only local mourners, a brother and son, were shielding due to age and health.  I visited them before the service and gave them an order of service through their flat window. They died recently within a week of each other and had their funeral together this week. Then there was a burial in the winter of a woman recently become a great, great, great grandmother; It was a celebration of 6 generations of mainly women. There have been those who were unhappy enough to end their own lives – with the terrible, palpable anger that is left behind.

Taking funerals keeps you honest. To be in regular touch with the reality of death is a reminder of the character of life: Brief, complicated, with an all too often abrupt ending. Not many of us get the word of the Lord as it came to Hezekiah: ‘Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.’ None of us make it out alive. We instinctively believe in last minute reprieves. We are the heroes of our own stories and, dutifully taught by the movies, we believe we may be the exception and spared the inevitable tragedy and premature closure that is the reality of most lives. Rare are the deaths of our ancestors: ‘and he died old, fat and sated with life’. Sated with life.

I did some research on resilience in the army and learned of a strategy called premeditatio malorum the premeditation of evil. It’s basically thinking forwards through any scenario and imagining the worst that could happen. I’ve actually always done this – so on trains or planes, or when Rhiannon’s driving – I imagine some dreadful accident and what I would do. I was pleased to learn this was an ancient practice of preparedness endorsed by psychologists, not just neurosis. But I suppose the slightly unrealistic thing is that in any of these thought experiments you always end up surviving and winning through. Again, like the movies, by a whisker and nerve you get through, win the girl and are back in time for tea and medals. Taking funerals is an urgent reminder that this is not everyone’s story.

The borderline of death puts our lives in context. If you were given 2 weeks to live, what would you be doing? Would you still be in church? Would you be in church more often?! What if it were a year? And if you would radically alter your life, cut short to a year, is it worth starting to make some of those changes now? On the other hand, if your first thought is, “no, I’d probably just go on as I am” then that should be very reassuring.

I’ve mentioned my ridiculous youtube yoga teacher before who loves a banal expression. They’re often repeated in the vicarage: “you are exactly where you need to be.” There is a truth to that phrase though. Part of the point of yoga or any form of exercise, and prayer – is to be just in the moment. And if you live in a house with dogs and housework, and admin and babies – there’s usually some little hand trying to pull you away. But if you’re doing something which is enjoyable and good for you; That is at harmony with your values and sense of self; Then that gives us the best chance of that feeling we are in the right place.

It’s a truth of all religions that human beings are most themselves, most self-aware and closest to God when they are engaged in the present moment. It’s when we’re at our best, and there’s a sense in which any activity if done with 100% presence of mind, without distraction, is prayerful. So if right now you’re fully engaged with this sermon, and you’d be happy to be here even if the world is about to end – which between the weather and the pandemic is not unlikely – then you’re in the right place.

In today’s letter to the Ephesians Paul starts by begging the church ‘to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called’.  For the early church the threat of persecution and violence kept the church honest. You were staking your life on your faith. There’s nothing wishy, washy; they’re no agnostics, in churches under fire.

We’re not persecuted but we have been living with a sense of threat over the last 18 months. Everyone has learned a lesson in dependence.  We are better connected now. But do we still feel strong in our own self-dependence? St Paul reminds us that we are only called ‘with humility and gentleness’. We cannot learn dependence on God until our self-dependence is crushed by the wheel of life. It’s a question for each of us, having gone through this pandemic, has the threat of weakness and death made us more prayerful; Or have we just drawn up our defences tighter? Or do we still believe we are invincible?

I’m not wishing for the church to be under any more threat; More often than not it seems to be a threat to itself; but affluence and security make everything less important. For the last hundred years church attendance has suffered against leisure activities. The bicycle, amateur sports, shopping on Sunday, Netflix, all chipping away at numbers in church. If Church deals with the most serious of subjects: eternity, meaning, good and evil, community, births, marriages, deaths; It has fallen prey to the lightest of subjects: entertainment.

Not that church is boring.  We have a pipe organ, the body of Christ, and we can even sing and drink coffee together now. It’s an interesting thought experiment. To say to a twenty-year-old: “The world is ending. There is one day remaining, what will you do with it?” Would he come to church with you?  Or think that’s perfect for one more season of Jack Bauer before we all go.

And I wonder whether the effect of the pandemic will be to make people more aware of their mortality? I suspect that having missed out on so much entertainment, it’s not moral seriousness but our social life we’ll be drawn back to. Spanish Flu was followed by the Roaring 20s. Still, God save us from all that Jazz.

I came across a wonderful expression this week concerning the seriousness of ministry: That we are to baptise, like it’s life and death, And to take funerals, like it’s death and life. Being reminded of our mortality is not necessarily to be gloomy and fatalistic.  It’s just a reminder to be engaged with our lives in their finitude; To not just drift through seasons of entertainment, but to engage with the seriousness of life in its sadness and its beauty. As Billy Joel sings in ‘All about Soul’: “it’s all about joy that comes out of sorrow.” What is the resurrection if it’s not bringing joy out of sorrow?

So Paul writes from prison to the church in Ephesus, reminding them of the seriousness of their calling; Asking them to lead lives worthy of this calling; The call is to be the church. To be this ‘body, in one spirit, with one hope, one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all’. We are called ‘to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ’ ‘building [ourselves] up in love’. 

I had a glance through the service register this week and was astonished to find that over the last three months adult Sunday attendance, despite the pandemic, has been higher this year than the same period in any year in the last decade.  And that’s before we count those who join us faithfully online each week. This has been a hard year. All of our lives have been touched by death, If only hearing the dreadful figures each day, the national memento mori. As a church, as people of the resurrection, we are here to proclaim that every day is a death and life matter. We are here following a calling to build up the body of Christ in love. So let us stay with the most serious things of life. Let us find the present moment, where we can. And let us now find that vocation, to bring something to church, to build one another up in love. To bring joy out of sorrow. Amen.

St Margaret's Day

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 91; Revelation 12: Matthew 5:1-12

Today is, first and foremost, a celebration of our church and community. St Margaret of Antioch is said to have been martyred on the 20th July over 1700 years ago, converting many to the faith by her preaching before her death. It might seem gruesome to be celebrating death but Christianity holds death and life very closely together. St Margaret persevered. She fought the good fight, she finished the race, she kept the faith. Through the worst persecution in Christian history. Through torture and death. Allegedly, through the belly of a dragon – She is a shining example of the resilience of the early church. The refusal to be overwhelmed by the world. To give in, give up, or give out anything except love.

It was interesting looking back to a year ago. We had endured four months of epidemic. At the time it had seemed like an age. We thought at the time we’d got through the worst of it. Optimistically I preached from the latin expression ‘Resurgam’ I will rise. As with so many dragons, there was a sting in the tail. We are all being tested in these days. In more ways than one. Now, we’re more than half way through this year of lockdown. And even the hope of some sort of freedom-day, is blunted by rising infections and growing fears.

And the country is increasingly divided. I’ve been to two pubs recently that make no pretence at any covid regulations.  One of them I saw was hosting a karaoke night. And yet in the two weddings we’ve hosted this week, we’ve faced impractical difficulties in making the weddings as joyful and social as possible within the law and guidelines. Just look at these flowers. It can be done, With perseverance. From death into life.

But how can the saints inspire us through difficult times? The dedication of churches and keeping of saints’ days probably seems fanciful or decorative to many. Part of living in a modern society is a view that we’re living in a better and better world. Civilisation means progress. Through the years and generations we feel things are getting better. Under this view the saints appear as warnings from the past; Or quaint unrelatable figures.

We look for our inspiration in contemporary figures. And looking back, it’s hard to think of a great figure untainted by racism, #metoo or some sort of prejudice of its time. The hermeneutic of suspicion we operate under tends to assume that anyone who’s done well, has done so either by exploitation or complicity, and should be held accountable for the wrongs we have been wise enough to uncover and hold to account.

But when we look back at the Christian saints, we quickly discover they are not among the established or powerful.  A surprising number of the early saints are women, at a time when women had zero social status. We really don’t know very much about Margaret of Antioch. She’s also known as Margaret the Virgin, Saint Marina the Great Martyr. She was born towards the end of the third century and executed as a teenage girl. Apparently for refusing a forced marriage and renouncing her faith. In her various trials a number of miracles occurred. Favourite among them was the moment where she was swallowed whole by a dragon but escaped when the dragon’s digestion was irritated by the cross she was wearing. In St Margaret the dragon bit off more than he could chew. Like Jonah from the whale she was vomited forth. Presumably it’s because of her safe delivery from the dragon that through the Middle Ages, somewhat perversely as a childless teenage girl, she became a patron saint of childbirth.

Now the dragon story may or may not be true; There are no shortage of dragons around our building; so clearly some of our forebears thought it important enough to put into the fabric of this Victorian church. But it is in itself quite extraordinary that the witness of a teenage girl should inspire the faith and the dedication of churches across the world. 

We have a couple of teenage girls we admire – Malala and Greta – but for the most part we idolise glamorous and ‘talented’ people. We’re more enchanted by the Britney Spears and Amy Winehouses. What’s obvious from even a cursory view of the saints is that the church has most honoured resilient people. Those who have not given up. Those who have stayed true. Those who have overcome the world – That is to say, those who haven’t taken any easy way out but have taken up their cross in following Christ.

There are fewer opportunities for martyrdom in Britain today. Resilience though is more important now than ever. The last sixteen months have been hugely testing, but through the efforts of many we have held together as a church and community. The prayer life of this church on a daily basis is stronger than ever. The weekly Tea and Social, and twice weekly playgroup, the weekly recital, mean this church brings people together. When we started the playgroup a young mum told me that she’d come all the way from Bromley because this was the nearest mother and toddler group she could find. Mind you, any reason to get out of Bromley, right?

I’m sure our present troubles are not yet over. From tomorrow all legal restrictions cease to be effective.  The Church of England has once again left it to its vicars to determine the course forward. So we will have to find a way forward that protects everyone while providing for people’s spiritual freedom and enrichment. Like Margaret inside the dragon, we’ve lived with a great number of restrictions for a long time now. It was not the dragon that killed Margaret, though, but the beheading that followed it.

Resilience remains the key virtue for our time. An old-fashioned resilience built on the faith demonstrated by Christ and the saints. Disease and death – we have half the apocalyptic horsemen – they can take many things from us, but St Margaret is a witness to the eternal reward of true discipleship; To Christian hope. Whether or not we return to the belly of the dragon we can be certain that there is nothing in heaven or earth that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

This faith is the centre of our church and community.  The love of God is the inspiration, source, and example we have, to love one another and take that love into the world. The refusal to be overwhelmed by the world. To give in, give up, or give out anything except love. Here’s hoping that next St Margaret’s Day will be a little different. Though we will take what we’ve learned from this pandemic, And maybe the tipi. And we will still be celebrating the victory of life from death. Resurgam. Amen.

On Baptism

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85; Ephesians 3:1-14; Mark 6:14-29

It’s a chilling reminder –  for someone about to take a baptism – that John who embodies the practice –  he is called John the Baptist after all – In the end gets beheaded for it. But those were more difficult times. Jesus, whose ministry begins with his baptism by John – meets an even worse end. 

Baptism is a symbol of resistance. And because of that, ever since, baptism attracts danger. Our very own St Margaret of Antioch – is counted among the many baptised martyred in the fourth century Diocletian persecution. Christians worldwide remain the most persecuted faith group. 

It might seem strange, but the Romans weren’t very religious as a culture. To begin with they stole most of their gods from the greeks. And any culture that turns its emperors into gods is likely to attract a certain degree of scepticism.  Imagine if Boris suddenly decided he was a God. Even among the Conservative party faithful there might be some eyebrows raised. He might well find himself stabbed in the back by backbenchers. There is precedent.

But to the Romans conformity was everything. It didn’t really matter what you believed, but you had to show obedience. The Christians were unusual for the time because they took religion seriously. It must have been perplexing for Romans to see the lengths Christians would go to for their faith. That witness, of course, leads to the conversion of what becomes the Holy Roman empire. Western Civilization is built on 300 years of the martyred baptized, beginning with John the Baptist and Jesus. 

Today, things are a little different. Christianity is the established religion. Baptisms are a normal way of celebrating a birth; Like a sequel to a big wedding; They may be seen as part of our cultural inheritance –  following grandparents and great-grandparents; to be British, Christian and a Royalist, and make fun of the way Americans say Oregano. Baptism are also a step towards a church school, with its cultural and educational credentials. And they may be seen as a sort of eternal life insurance. We’re not completely sure how to get to the pearly gates and avoid the overheated basement, but joining the historical club in the old building seems like a smart move. Church, “repairing wayward souls for 2000 years; your one-stop-shop on the road to paradise.”

But for all the established, cultural, niceness of the Church of England, the tea and biscuits afterwards; the baptismal liturgy is pretty direct. I always warn families to make sure the godparents have recently seen the liturgy. It’s not every day you get asked if you ‘reject the devil and rebellion against God’; or ‘the deceit and corruption of evil’ Or ‘to turn to’, ‘to submit to’ and ‘come to Christ’. For one thing it’s just not very British to publicly assert such things. Only of course for nearly two thousand years it absolutely has been.

And for many now inverting the martyrdom of the saints, the words trip out with crossed fingers and toes, echoing the pax romana; the pragmatic keeping the peace. While for others it is the opening of the soul to God It’s not for me, or the Church of England, to make windows into men’s souls (as Elizabeth I said), but godparents should beware they may be letting in a little chink of divinity into their lives; As the old vestry prayer puts it – what we speak with our lips, may we believe in our hearts and show forth in our lives.

Which takes us neatly to John the Baptist himself. He’s a figure who stands for honesty and judgement; both currently culturally unpopular. John removes himself to the desert and lives simply. It’s like Love Island but with worse food and stricter quarantining. Hearing of this holy figure the people leave the city to come out, repent and be baptized.

We tend to think of repentance as a reckoning with guilt. We think of criminals acknowledging some great crime, or children stealing pears from a neighbour’s garden, the office affair you had years or weeks ago. How you snuck out to the shop when you’d been told to self-isolate, And deleted the app. Your drive to Barnard castle; Which is to say, we think of the thing on our conscience; What keeps us awake at night; We think of the guilt we carry. What we’d be ashamed for our neighbour to know. And it may be that every time we come to the prayers of penitence, you think of the same thing. This can solidify in our mind into a heaviness we carry with us everywhere. Sin quite easily translates into guilt and shame.

But repentance need not be so emotional. Repentance is about honesty. Part of the problem of guilt and shame is that they tend to make us dishonest – with ourselves and others. They make us cover up to others; They lead to obsessing or sublimating. For this reason, I can say with some confidence that guilt and shame as feelings have little to do with God. You can tell this, because those feelings are rarely changed by hearing the words of absolution – The voices of guilt and shame will tell us that we are not yet absolved or free. Which, theologically, is dishonest.

And John the Baptist came for honesty. He’d want to baptise you of your fake news echo chamber, your Instagram filtered profile picture, your friends’ alarmingly cheerful holiday snaps status updates. Your weak excuses. What penitence requires of you is ‘the word of truth’, an openness with God and yourself. A friend once told me you can’t be fully employed, a good father and a good husband. I think you can be good enough. But now at the point of confession I will normally be thinking about my failings in at least one of these areas, But it shouldn’t be a lament, a self-scourging. Sometimes we can do no more. Sometime we might understand instead that we should be kinder to ourselves. The point is not to find something to wring our hands about, but to face the current reality of our life honestly in the light of the love of God. If we can adopt that, we might be thinking less about guilt or shame and more about acceptance and grace –What Paul speaks about in ‘the riches of his grace that he has lavished upon us.’

But John the Baptist also came with judgement. Like Amos, he is the plumb-line God has set among the people to measure justice. John the Baptist more frequently gets compared to the Son than The Sun Newspaper but they share the job of holding powerful figures to account.  It’s an uncomfortable task being the voice of honesty to others. For a country that’s struggled over the past years with very vocal points of division, the next few weeks will be challenging in different approaches to the easing of social distancing. When dancing becomes legal once more we may also find some people losing their heads. Even in church we’ll have to negotiate the return to singing, handshaking and the chalice. I’m looking forward to the guidance, which I expect will be received at least 24 hours before. But judgement matters. We must try to discern right from wrong, with humility.

We should remember, then, that baptism is a radical gesture. Not of conforming but of standing out: It serves a moral imperative. To honesty, to justice; a reminder that as well as belonging to a state and society, we belong to God. God consistently judges people throughout Scripture on their integrity and how they treat the most vulnerable in their society. Our baptism is a reminder of this. Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil? Do you come to Christ, the way, the truth and the life?

To be baptised means not conforming to the standards of the world; like the players at Wimbledon, and of course later tonight: 

to ‘meet with triumph and disaster
and treat those two impostors just the same’

but don’t be conformed to the standards of the last 55  years; and

‘keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you’;

John the Baptist may have met with disaster, he may like  Gareth Southgate 25 years ago, have lost his head, but now John the Baptist is venerated throughout the world, while Salome is routinely confused with a cheap cured sausage. So today, remembering the disaster and triumph of John the Baptist, we are reminded of our shared baptism. Of the call to be honest with ourselves and with God and find the riches of grace in that. To renounce the deceit and corruption of evil, and to turn to Christ.  Amen.

Thanksgiving on the Anniversary of the National Health Service

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Ecclesiasticus 38:1-9, Psalm 147:1-12, Revelation 22:1-5, Luke 10:29-37

To meet the needs of all. Free at the point of delivery. Based on need not wealth. The three core founding principles of the NHS. Also, a pretty adequate analysis of the Good Samaritan. And that shouldn’t surprise us, as the NHS came into being when Christianity still had a strong hold on the politics and ethics of the nation. Archbishop William Temple was instrumental in the setting up of the welfare state. Writing before the pandemic the current Archbishop of Canterbury wrote that ‘Healthcare is a key marker of our values… [and] Public Health is the greatest catalyst for solidarity. Its absence on a sustained and fair basis across all sectors of society is likely to increase inequality dramatically, and to diminish solidarity.’ (Reimagining Britain) The fact that the nation has shared the cost, the loss, the restrictions and the solution to this pandemic on an equal basis, has been a great spur to solidarity. it’s not insignificant that members of the Royal family received the vaccine at the same time as their age cohorts, without advantage. Nothing fits so well with the British sense of equality and justice. Which is no doubt why individuals who have flouted the rules from public office have created such anger. Nothing cheapens inequality like a health minister breaking his own rules.

And the NHS is a tremendous symbol of equality. The danger of equality is always that in trying to cover everyone, its overall effect is to lower the bar for everyone. The faith that the nation has in the NHS – amply demonstrated in the last year – and proving Lawson’s ill-intended remark that the NHS is the national religion (though others may apply) – suggests that equality has not just led to a diminished health care for all. Nye Bevan said in the year the NHS was founded: ‘[W]e ought to take pride in the fact that, despite our financial and economic anxieties, we are still able to do the most civilised thing in the world—put the welfare of the sick in front of every other consideration.’ That statement, it seems to me, is more true than ever. The story of the Good Samaritan is Jesus’ response to the question – what does it mean to love my neighbour. From the parable we come to understand that it means we treat the person according to the need – not our own prejudices. Within the story it’s clear the Samaritan has a grasp of first aid and is well resourced. He has what he needs to offer aid effectively. And he’s not concerned with personal gain or reward. The act of service is enough in itself. The NHS can be seen as an attempt to insitutionalise the Good Samaritan at the heart of our national health. To publicly fund the Good Samaritan.

Love is particular. Love acts in a particular situation towards a particular person. I asked two young doctors to speak at today’s 10am service. Jack will speak to how as young doctors they were reminded at the outset of their careers that “every day at work you will see people on the worst day of their life”; and he describe some of the heroism he’s seen in the last year: the ICU nurse who stayed late to plait the hair of the lady with covid in a medical coma she had been looking after all day; the medical consultants who came in on their own time to facilitate video calls between patients and relatives; a junior doctor colleague who realised one of the nurses hadn’t had a break and covered her patients for an hour; another junior doctor who fought for a homeless patient with no one to advocate for them to be admitted to intensive care

And this kind of love is costly. So Evie speaks of: ‘the overwhelming sense of loss, sadness and distress when thinking off all the souls we cared for to the end of their lives, all the families unable to give proper farewells and all those patients stories you carry home with you in the hopes that by remembering them you gain a sense of meaning to the suffering you saw. It isn’t what any of us imagined when we started medicine, and without my faith I’m not sure it would have been a path I was able to walk. To sit in the quiet of a palliative ward, to accept that our science wasn’t enough and to relinquish control. To say I am here, I will act out of love and that is enough goes against the grain for the modern scientist in us and I think I have learnt much in that stillness of love about what it is to really care for someone in need.’ Love is personal. Love is the Christian ethic.

But what happens when you try to put love at the heart of a public service? When you institutionalise love? Well undoubtedly sometimes it falls short. Sometimes, as we have heard, it exceeds all expectations, And takes the character of grace. And when love does become available to all; When love meets equality, you get something a little different. We call it justice.

This is how you effectively meet the prophetic demand to care for the poor, the widow and the orphan. This is how a society fulfils the song of Mary, to raise up the lowly, to echo Jesus’ ministry – when the Spirit of the Lord is upon me – to bring good news to the poor; There is nothing greater that a society could do to bring the kingdom of God near, than to provide adequate healthcare for all.

So today we honour physicians. We give thanks for the gift of healing. And for medicine – ‘Which the sensible will not despise’! And we give thanks for all those who in their everyday life serve in love the needs of their neighbour – In whom we find the face of Christ – The embodiment of love; And today we give thanks on this day for a Health Service that in its ethos attempts to raise love, through service, to the ideal of justice. Thanks be to God.

Saint Peter and Saint Paul: Vocation

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Acts 12:1-11, Psalm 125, 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18, Matthew 16:13-19

God is calling you. But to what purpose? And are you listening?

When I was 17 I chose to do theology at university. I didn’t believe in God at the time so it was an odd choice. I had an excellent Religious Studies teacher; They also didn’t offer philosophy at Olchfa Comprehensive; so for a boy interested in the big questions, theology was more straightforward.  Plus, I knew I’d get to study texts, languages, history and more. I’ve always been a generalist. Or perhaps just indecisive.

Theology at Exeter University was fairly split between Christians – mostly evangelical – and atheists, so discussions were lively. The main point I took from my first year was the discovery that it was actually reasonable to believe in God. Philosophy of Religion was my favourite subject, and I was surprised to find that my adolescent reasons for rejecting belief in God as silly, superstitious and outdated – the problem of evil, the problem of suffering, the problem of different religions – All had reasonable defences refined over centuries; And that the concept I had thought impossible – the intelligent Christian, was in fact a possibility.

This matters because at all points in our lives we shut off certain possibilities as impossible or incompatible.  No one lives in perpetual uncertainty. At some point we decide on things we deem trustable: The today programme; Scientists; The Queen; Roger Federa. And those things not trustable: Piers Morgan, Anti-vaxers, Emails from Nigerian Billionaires offering to share their wealth with you; England on penalties.

When we’ve closed the door to something, nothing gets through.Except German penalties. A staunch atheist could easily see the approach of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and put it down to a freak astronomical occurrence, a psychological episode or aneurysm. Once you close the door to the spiritual world; once the wardrobe has been shut; you’ll always be able to find another explanation, however unlikely.

In my second year of university a girl convinced me to go to church with her. I think I thought it might end up as a date, but as St Paul reminds us, the Lord often uses the things of the world for our spiritual benefit. It was a traditional evangelistic service. An attractive band playing worship songs that sounded like Oasis; Donuts and coffee in the middle. Then a sermon asking the question if you feel the call of God on your life. Do you want the glorious liberty of the people of God,  Freedom from sin and confusion; Are you ready to meet Christ?  To give your life to him? At that moment – though I hadn’t known it half an hour earlier – I was. And I stepped forward for prayer, utterly surprised and convicted by the presence of God. It could have been a psychological episode, and what is an encounter with God if not a psychological episode – psyche – Greek for Soul – But that moment determined the course of my life. But not in just one moment. For the next few years I felt the presence of God alongside me on more or less a daily basis. The call is always a beginning, never an end.

My call to the priesthood was less dramatic. There were key moments.  As with many people, it probably started with someone suggesting I might be called to it, or good at it. I felt dissatisfied with the idea of life in a university which was my original direction. I’d started working for a chaplaincy team; I’d started saying morning prayer regularly. Things gradually came together and one conversation led to another, which then became the endless, infuriating, interminable process by which you’re accepted to theological college. And if you can get through all those interviews packed with invasive questions stretched out interminably over a year, yes you probably have a calling, Or at least the patience to put up with Anglican bureaucracy.

One of the strongest senses of calling I’ve had though was to return to parish ministry. I enjoyed my time in the British Army. It had no shortage of challenges and rewards: Theological college does not prepare you for marching 50 miles carrying full kit across the North Downs in less than a day. I’ve never come across the Church of England liturgy “prayers before parachuting” But after four years I felt an intense frustration at the constant moving, just when you’d felt you’d established some relationships. At one of my churches when I arrived in Germany there was only one person at the Christmas Day service.  By the time we left there were up to twenty each week. That community will once again be dispersed now. The majority of a chaplain’s work is pastoral, looking after soldiers. So you’re sorting people’s problems; giving support;  and in the churn of people everyone moves on. The call I felt was that God wanted me to build something. And it was those words – build my church – that stuck in my head, as I made the famous seven clicks to leave the army and come to Putney. Of course, that was a close-run thing and if one of the Churchwardens hadn’t felt God speaking to them on that day this church would be a quite different place today.

God speaks to us in different ways at different times. If we can approach him with an open heart and open hands we may experience that most intimate and reassuring sense of God’s Word spoken to us. Of course, as with Paul, it may be forced upon us, even as we have murder in our hearts. But, equally, we may also be able to discern the movements of God on our life, only as we look back. Seeing now the reason for an experience that seemed perplexing, unimportant or distressing at the time.  As TS Eliot put it: “we had the experience but missed the meaning.” The use of our reason and study may direct our paths to truth. We may feel in our bones a conviction for a course of action. The words of others may guide us on the way; We may carry a truth within us and, when the opportunity arises, know it as the path ordained for us.

The saints Peter and Paul are perfect examples for us. Perfect in their imperfections. Peter misunderstands the messiahship and denies Christ. Paul holds the coats of killers. Our vocation must always be open to the truth that we might have got it wrong. The road of our vocation will always be winding. Peter is nudged along the path gently. After his failures he must be nurtured back to health. St Paul make a 180 degree turn around. Sometimes God is very clear. But both put the service of Christ and the Church at the centre of their lives. And through it find both the pain of the cross and the joy of resurrection, in meeting and serving God.

The rabbis tell a famous story, whereby the soul is not able to ascend to heaven until it hears its name being called by the angel. It may be left indefinitely waiting until it’s quiet enough to hear and recognise the voice calling its true name. The point of the story is that all of us have our unique name – our calling, our place in this world. But it may take our whole lives, or after, to learn it. The noise of this life, the cares of the world, the clamour of people around us may all block out the voice of that calling. St Peter was lucky enough to have the voice alongside him, training him for the role he was to take. St Paul got knocked off his horse by that voice.

With everything shuddering to a stop in the last year; with the skies empty of planes, we’ve had a sudden break in noise. Life now is itching to resume. The Wimbledon ball boys will be running up and down. England will be practising penalties. But things that should never have been lost will be forgotten. What have we heard of that voice to carry with us? And in the moments of quiet today, let us ask ourselves: what is God calling us to now? Are we hearing our name being called? Are we listening for it? Amen.

Riders on the Storm

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Job 38:1-11, Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32, 2 Corinthians 6:1-13, Mark 4:35-41

The Lord speaks to Job out of the storm: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? It’s perhaps too easy in these days to think of those that ‘darken counsel by words without knowledge.’

The book of Job is the voice of someone wrestling with God over the justice of this life. His suffering is spread out over thirty chapters of sickness, infirmity and bereavement, for which he finds no reason, and demands of God an answer. God does not answer Job’s complaint. Instead, out of the storm, he details the vastness of the universe, the climactic movements of heavens and earth and ocean, And so the smallness of Job. The implication is that Job has lost perspective.  His little troubles are a tiny erratic wheel in the great hurly-burly of the cosmos. Understandably, Job approaches life from the perspective of ‘do the good things in my life outweigh the bad things’ Is my life fair? Through overwhelming personal suffering, it’s the very reasonable, timeless question: “what’s the point?”

God speaks out of the whirlwind – the storm – a symbol of understanding and power beyond our own: What Job understands through the storm is that within all the complexity of life and the great conflicting forces of the natural and supernatural world; In the context of all time and space and eternity, his suffering is a small thing. Now it’s no-one’s place to say to another – ‘look mate, in the grand scheme of things you and your suffering are just not that important – But as Job encounters the wonder of creation and creator, he takes on humility and this is what gets him through.

But the central point of the story of Job is honesty. Job’s friends come up with reasons why Job is suffering – his failings, his sins, his fault. They’re determined to find a simple narrative: Bad things happen to bad people. Another universal human trait – when things are going well, we assume we deserve it. Job’s friends come off badly. Suffering is not always justified. Job maintains his integrity. He defends his character and maintains his faith, despite suffering; and in this finds righteousness.

But now consider St Paul in the letter to the Corinthians. He’s talking about suffering. This isn’t just a list: ‘in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger’ That’s Paul’s life – torn and under threat at every moment. St Paul lives in the storm. He is a rider on the storm. And how does he cope: ‘by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech and the power of God’ The calming of the storm. The resilience of the soul.

Remember, also St Paul: ‘we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint’ (Romans 5). By the time he’s got to the end of the list in today’s reading, he’s ecstatic, he’s on fire. This is the pep talk of the whole Bible: Rhetoric cranked up to 11. in honour and dishonour, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors and yet are true; as unknown and yet are well known; as dying and see – we are alive; as punished and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing and yet possessing everything.

Paul turns suffering into victory. And we should not be surprised. For 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… God’s weakness is stronger than human strength (1Cor 1). St Paul is following the path of the cross, so he can glory in his weakness; The storm is his calling, and it’s telling that the Book of Acts finishes with Paul’s arrival in the holy city, the city of his martyrdom,  Death and glory, through storm and shipwreck.

Job is shaken by suffering but because he hangs on to his sense of self and God, perseveres. Paul, who finds in the soul’s response to suffering the character that prepares us for the kingdom of God, and the path of discipleship, not only perseveres but is rapturous in suffering.

We must be careful not to judge another’s suffering or their response to it. But it strikes me if the highest values in your life are pleasure, security, possessions, sensuality; Suffering will be devastating. Suffering is a direct attack on your life’s meaning and worth. If your biggest asset is your pretty little nose, a punch in the face is an existential crisis. If your highest values in life are service, sacrifice, charity, the development of character, following Christ, suffering will be expected. And it will build you in your sense of self and meaning. Your higher purpose will keep you going.

We will all have known suffering that is destructive, and suffering through which we’ve grown. What doesn’t kill you won’t always make you stronger. But there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Neither death nor life (Romans 8).

The storm may, as for Job, remind us of the unknowable pathways of heaven and earth, and so create humility ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?’ Or, as the psalmist says, ‘At his word the stormy wind arose and lifted up the waves of the sea. They were carried up to the heavens and down again to the deep; their soul melted away in their peril.’ Against the divine storm our human splashing quickly finds its limits: ‘Thus far shall you come and no farther and here shall your proud waves be stopped’.

The storm may be the testing ground of the soul, as with St Paul. As with both, the storm will one day bring us directly before God.

Our storm here today seems to rage on indeterminately. We may well feel in our present situation that our prayers are unanswered. Those who were with Christ also lost patience with him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’  Jesus’ response is: ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’   He fulfils the words of the psalm: ‘He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were calmed.’ The storm mirrors the emotions of the disciples and fear and faith are set against each other as enemies. Jesus has within him the power of the whirlwind. He will face the full impact of life’s storms. But he has also overcome them – So while the disciples are emotionally incontinent,  Jesus carries peace within himself.

In all this we can see the storm as the testing ground of faith, the vale of soul-making. And in this Jesus is the one who says: ‘come in, I will give you shelter’. The storm is not evil. On the contrary, it’s the meeting place of the soul and God, where you find your limitations, your mortality, your fear; we discover our boundary with the other world.

If we have set our hopes on the things of this world, we shall be blown about and overboard. ‘One deep calleth another…  all thy waves and storms are gone over me (Psalm 42). But if we cling to Christ we will hear him say: ‘peace, peace, be still’.  Amen.

God's Costume Drama

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Ezekiel 17:22-24, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, Mark 4:26-34

We’ve recently had the beginning of a discussion about vestments at PCC. Vestments have a history of causing controversy in the Church of England.  And it’s often fascinating.

So after Henry VIII’s death the extremist John Hooper returned from the radical reformation in Europe but refused a bishopric offered by the king. The Reformation was a very particular Brexit, and he was a Nigel Farage opposing the English bishops’ laissez-faire wearing of surplice and cope, which stank of European popery.  The Church of England, which loves a compromise and unnecessary use of Greek and Latin, declared vestments ‘adiaphora’ – indifferent or unessential.  Meaning, it neither forbade their use nor encouraged it. A position it maintains today. Hooper was vehement, though and, in his refusals of the king’s preferment and protest against vestments, justly got sent to Fleet Prison.  Eventually he relented, preaching before the King in vestments, so they made him the bishop of Gloucester. All’s well that ends well.

Under Elizabeth I vestments remained in general use, but those radicalised by Europe protested, sometimes being deprived of their living. Around this time ‘puritan’ was coined as a term of abuse for such non-conformists. One such, Crowley, having refused his deprivation confronted 6 of the parish choir wearing surplices and drove them off for wearing ‘superstitious rags of Rome’. He was discharged by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who regarded anti-vestment feeling as rebellion against the queen, and put under house arrest. Under the Puritans anything colourful was set on fire, though curiously those superstitious surplices survived in common use; but Christmas, musical instruments in church and the theatre all went on the bonfire of vanities. By the time of the nineteenth-century, though, the positions were reversed, and it was those wearing vestments who were arrested.  Five clergymen were imprisoned following the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874. The House of Commons (championed by the other parish of Putney’s hero Oliver Cromwell), and unlike the House of Windsor and its forebears, has always had a puritan streak. 

Since our discussion, several on our Church Council voiced a dislike of ‘drama’ in liturgy. I was slightly floored by this as drama has long been a significant theological category, championed in the twentieth-century by its greatest theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar in his epic five volume Theo-Drama.

Historically, it’s also worth remembering that English drama has its origins in liturgy –  English plays began with the tenth century ‘quem quaeritis?’ dialogues, lines from the Easter liturgy meaning ‘whom do you seek?’ The response is: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, O heavenly ones’ – the answer to the angels at the tomb. But this text was the springboard for the liturgical drama and mystery plays of the medieval period that began English theatre.

But, more than this, liturgy is drama. I don’t mean ‘drama’, as in exaggerated emotion or reaction; Nor in the sense of false performance or similitude. If the line in our reading caught your attention, Liturgy is not like Home and Away. Drama is a form of social interaction. It’s engaged and engaging; It involves personal response; It involves the telling of a story, socially. It’s based in repetition. It looks to transform those involved. The word ‘cathartic’ is common today – a purging of emotion. It’s origin is in the audience’s response to Greek tragedy.

Drama shouldn’t be escapism or a spectacle. In its own terms you might say that worship is, following Brecht, a form of Epic theatre –  Not about suspending disbelief, but about seeing the world as it really is. So in Brecht’s theatre, the actors will often speak to the audience, much like Phoebe Waller-bridge in Fleabag. Though to be clear – everyone’s behaviour in that series, if you’ve seen it, is terrible, especially the so-called ‘hot’ priest. But even in Shakespeare’s great soliloquies:, Hamlet: ‘what a piece of work is a man’

Macbeth: ‘… Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

 Between the poetry and the drama, there is a truth in the expression of real experience, that drama articulates, pushes us towards, or reminds us of.

The Eucharist is structured and scripted. In the Church of England, I don’t have to swear to a doctrinal statement, or even that I believe in God, But I do have to swear to use the particular forms of the Church of England services. We’re led through penitence into absolution and praise. The stories are layered with Old Testament, Psalm, epistle, building up to the Gospel, all related thematically, as this morning in reference to the natural world and agriculture. The sermon interprets for today, hemmed in within the orthodoxy of the creed but reaching out through the congregation’s prayers. In the peace we gather in unity, forgiveness and offering. The Eucharist leads us through the story of redemption, the last supper, the invocation of the Spirit, the remembrance of the cross, leading to praise, communion and blessing. There is more detail, but each week the service leads us through these essential elements, in the expression of our spiritual life and worship. It isn’t spontaneous; It’s a scripted drama leading to the point of consecration and reception of grace. But for those of you who secretly yearn for more charismatic worship with bands and altar-calls, I can assure you there is nothing more orchestrated than worship at HTB or Hillsong. They are leading you on an emotional journey, only in a less obvious and more manipulative way.

The charismatic church will use drama through lighting, contemporary music and a carefully constructed song-list. The anglo-catholic through gothic vaulting, bells, incense, a complex dance of servers, candles, silk and choral music. Every church uses its own forms of drama, to involve congregations in the drama of worship. If they didn’t churches would simply be schools or lecture-halls. But the drama, here done well, here badly, is what engages the soul in seeking God. And in seeking God being transformed by God.

Now today we have a baptism. The form has not distinctly changed in two thousand years. It’s what gives it the weight of resonance:  knowing your parents, your grandparents, your great, great grandparents said these words, affirmed these promises anew to each generation. Being a part of the Church of England, is not about believing this or that; Or feeling a certain way in church; It’s about joining in this liturgy: Which literally breaks down to ‘leit’ and ‘ergos’ The work of the people.

Today in baptism and communion; It’s participating in the drama with the people of God. Elizabeth I did not want to make windows into men’s souls, but she did make them conform to public worship. The Church of England’s services have never been adiaphora.

But it’s not just that services create a drama in which we’re all called to participate. They also immerse us in the drama of Scripture. So listen to the prayer over water in baptism: Over water the spirit moved in creation. Through water the Hebrews were freed from slavery In water Christ was baptized. In water we are buried with Christ, And share his resurrection.

We could say more. Noah is saved through water. Water has a rich symbolism of salvation, and as Emily and Kate come for baptism, they are being immersed in these narratives. They are joining this drama of salvation, Finding their part.

In a garden of Eden picture book, or scientific text book they can picture the Spirit hovering over creation; when they play with a colourful wooden ark, they can imagine being there, not with the unicorns. When they’re watching the prince of Egypt, they’re pushing through towards the promised land; When they come to the Good Friday children’s workshop, and our Easter Egg hunt, with warm up liturgy, they’re following the story, the passion play we’re reading in church, in hope of arriving at the Easter morning with Christ and the Easter Rabbit.

The truth is that the God’s story is a play. We even know the ending. We have our hour upon the stage. And doesn’t it go fast? But as well as finding jobs – a business development manager, or ballerina – And husbands or wives – Homes in Parkstead, Hawkesbury, Upton Snodsbury; we find ourselves each year running down to Bethlehem, entering the wilderness for 40 days, having supper in an upper room; praying in a garden at night; standing at the foot of the cross. Surprised by joy on Easter morning. It’s the drama that criss-crosses our lives, and in which Emily and Kate find themselves testing the water.

And it doesn’t matter what you wear. Costumes are all adiaphora – whether it’s copes or baptismal gowns. But the drama matters. Our telling the story together, passing it to our children, matters. And through the years, and rites of passage, this drama has the power to give shape and meaning to our own little dramas. The theatres may still be shut, and let’s hope Andrew Lloyd Webber stays out of prison, but let’s celebrate this eucharist; this drama of God’s salvation. Amen.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 3:8-15, Psalm 138, 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1, Mark 3:20-end

Familiarity breeds contempt. I’ve been at St Margaret’s two and a half years now. I’ve felt the twinges. I’m not the new vicar anymore.  Familiarity breeds contempt.

In today’s Gospel those who know Jesus best, reject him. For those of you who read through Mark’s Gospel with us in Lent, I spoke of a particular way the author often puts his material together. He takes a subject, in two related passages, and then intersects them with something a little different – but is a key to understanding the other two parts. So today we have two stories of Jesus’ family. To begin with they hear of the crowds and popularity of Jesus, and go out to restrain him – With as little effect as I have with Oberon. Secondly, we hear of his family trying to find him, and Jesus effectively renouncing them, accepting instead his disciples as his true family. Between these two passages we have a stronger condemnation of the religious authorities who claim he is possessed by an evil spirit and performing black magic, rather than performing the will of God by the Holy Spirit. These we are told, darkly, will not be forgiven.

What we see in common in these incidents is a misunderstanding of who Jesus is by those who should know him best. And as Jesus acknowledges in the key middle section - a house divided against itself cannot stand. Presumably this is as true for the house of God as any other.

But we can understand this lack of appreciation in families – can’t we? When your annoying little brother grows up to be a judge; The thought of our little piglet doing any job is hilarious, but I do hope he does get a job one day. Perhaps as a hair stylist. Joseph for all his gifts didn’t fare very well at the hands of his family either, and the claims Jesus made for himself are pretty extraordinary – if you imagine your sibling, your child suddenly claiming to be the Son of God. You probably immediately remember how they cried when you took away their submarine, or how, with great delight, they wee-ed in the bath. He’s not the Messiah – he’s a very naughty boy.

Mark is highly aware that those closest to Jesus have rejected him. By the time of writing Jerusalem has fallen; The synagogue has ejected Christians. The church knows what it means to be a house divided. The Church that remains faithful, is Gentile. Of all those closest to Jesus, his family, the first disciples, the crowds, none are left.  Those who are responding to Jesus now are un-familiar. Growing throughout the Gentile world is a new family of Jesus, those who do the will of God.

Familiarity breeds contempt. But what’s the opposite of an attitude of familiarity? You can’t really have an attitude of unfamiliarity! Familiarity is really about a sort of closed-mindedness. An expectation that things will be as they’ve always been. Where everything is known and already anticipated. The Church of England has a comfortable relationship with familiarity.

So the opposite of familiarity is really wonder. To walk outside this church, which you may have been in a thousand times, and see the billion exciting things happening in the garden which walking quickly you brush past; just as our ancestors walked in the garden in the cool of the day. [Our garden of course, is not beset by nasty surprises like serpents.] Or you could even head down to the East windows and notice a detail in the glass you’ve never bothered to look at. Or have lunch with your partner of thirty years and not think – I know you; I know everything you’re going to say; and to ask them a question without anticipating their answer.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Wonder begets praise.

In one of CS Lewis’ best loved sermons he begins by trying to talk about wonder – which as adults we mostly experience through a certain sort of beauty. Often it’s a half remembered ache of transformation we felt when we heard a string quintet that somehow registered the peculiar pain or loneliness we felt aged 19; a line from some Romantic poet or a quiet Bible study that has always stayed with us; the first time we saw the ocean rolling in a storm; or it may have been Roberta Flack or Lauren Hill strumming your pain with her fingers, singing your life with her words; [Incidentally that song’s inspiration was the 19-year-old Lori Lieberman feeling that way to Don McLean singing Empty Chairs. Good Pop Master knowledge there.]

It’s harder to recapture that moment as you age. We often look forward to an opera, remembering how music can restore that feeling – call it wonder, connection, transcendence – only to find ourselves asleep by Act 2. But the music hasn’t changed; as Louis let on: the world is no less wonderful; it’s just our hearts have grown a little colder.

In extreme situations wonder returns. No one on having a child – even for a second time – escapes the baffling sense of wonder. Last year I was moved to tears by the generosity and self-sacrifice I witnessed from time to time; and also the undisguised humanity laid bare in grief. Further back, I remember being shouted down by staff, training with the parachute regiment, when I marvelled at the beauty of the Yorkshire hills we were relentlessly running up and down. Pain and fear are no object to wonder –  quite the reverse. You never love the world so much as when you feel you’re about to leave it. But, as I said, wonder begets praise. Or as St Paul says in today’s epistle: ‘grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God’. When we feel that wonder – we catch a glimpse of eternity – In the world fitting together, in our own acceptance, in perfect beauty and harmony; a reminder of the divine promise that this fallen world and all time will be restored – will be filled with glory: ‘Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.’

The ethical problem for us if that if this world is to be filled with glory, our duty now is to respond to it in that light. So Gladys, who whistles through her teeth when she speaks and has the opposite view to you on Brexit. She must be approaches as the immortal vessel of God’s grace that she is. Oberon in all his chaos, shall be like Christ, judging angels in God’s temple. We are all being prepared ‘for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen [and] what cannot be seen is eternal’.  We should not take each other too seriously – but as CS Lewis says, ‘there are no ordinary people… it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object present to your senses’ – in her, Glory is hidden.

Familiarity breeds contempt. But psalm 123: ‘O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.’ Perhaps our families will surprise us. Perhaps they will judge angels, or mortals. But let us be more full of wonder; more wonder-full. Let us appreciate around us this wonderful world, and in our neighbour find the hidden glory of God. Amen. 

Corpus Christi

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 14:18-20, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 6:51-58

This week the Church celebrates the feast of Corpus Christi, now sometimes called ‘Thanksgiving for Holy Communion.’ It was introduced at the suggestion of Thomas Aquinas, historically the most influential theologian in history, to Pope Urban IV in the thirteenth century. Most Protestant churches, including the Church of England, abolished it in the sixteenth-century; But it has since made a come-back across many churches, and the Anglo-catholic revival in the nineteenth-century saw a return to processions of the Blessed Sacrament, which were a feature of the day across all Europe in the middle ages. For us it may provide a point of reflection on a contentious area of theology. What is the relationship between the historical, resurrected body of Christ, the body of Christ which is the church, and the body of Christ received in the Eucharist.

That is the crucial question. We frequently speak of these three things as the body of Christ: Jesus, the Church, the sacrament. Why? What do we mean by it?

But related to it is a question – not one of the causes of the Reformation – but a central fracturing point within it: What happens in the Eucharist? Specifically, are those little wafers in some way changed by the prayer of consecration?

There is a second and more pressing question that goes with these: What change happens to our bodies? And what change will finally happen to our bodies? After death and decomposition, what is the final state of our bodies? Are they left in the earth? Or regathered? Or transformed into something new?

We should not lose sight of the fact that the dominant forces within the Reformation are political. The unrest, the persecutions the wars came as a result that the Reformation empowered secular princes to take back control. They were also a democratic movement like the Arab Springs, and between these stirred up new nationalistic forces. But the theology matters, not least because the Reformation began a new age of secularism which undermined all religion – an age of scepticism, demythologising, disenchantment and materialism.

The Eucharist became in some ways a first battlefield between faith and secularism. The language used of the Eucharist always ends up sounding technical. It doesn’t help that the way people spoke about things was quite different in Aquinas’ day to the Reformation and then today, so it doesn’t translate very well – or, if it does, it just makes people of older times sound a bit naïve or ignorant.

For Aquinas, in essence, in the Eucharist, while the bread and wine still appear, touch, taste, look, like bread and wine, they become in their inner substance the body and blood of Christ. Thus trans-subtantiation – a change in substance.

Luther rejected many Catholic practices and obviously didn’t use the same medieval language as Aquinas; his position was not remarkably different, though, in asserting the real presence in the Eucharist. Even Calvin, though, as much as he wants to avoid the capturing of the Christ in material elements, wants to assert the real presence of Christ received in the Eucharist, writing: ‘the true and substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord [is] exhibited to believers under the sacred symbols of the Supper, understanding that they are received not by the imagination or intellect merely, but are enjoyed in reality as the food of eternal life’. And actually Calvin wants a greater sacramentality of life: ‘Christ can exert his energy wherever he pleases, in earth and heaven, can manifest his presence by the exercise of his power, can always be present with his people… can feed them with his own body, communion with which he transfuses into them. After this manner, the body and blood of Christ are exhibited to us in the sacrament’.

So if the majority of the church acknowledges the real presence of Christ received in the Eucharist, we might wonder at all the squabbling that’s gone on over the last 500 years.

One aspect is our attitude to things. Under more catholic positions – things that are consecrated or blessed remain holy in themselves. Consecrated wafers and wine can’t be just thrown away. Even if intellectually we could justify a casual attitude – it’s just bread – Is it really respectful to treat items as ordinary when we’ve spoken Christ’s words over them? And if we believe that God’s blessing remains with us after it’s pronounced should we not expect all creation to be able to receive blessing and consecration?

I think what we see in a writer like Calvin is a desire for increased sacramentality: that God is not just seen in specific functions of the church called sacraments, but everywhere. Too often the Protestant attitude has been to rail against the excesses of Catholic sacraments seeing in them idolatry or magic. This has been a great inspiration and contributor to secularisation and the pushing of God and faith out of the world, what has been called ‘the disenchantment of the world’. But the great Reformation theologians saw sacramentality in all of life – they wanted people to see God at work in all things not just limited to certain priestly activities.

So let’s return to our original questions. What’s the relationship between the sacrament, the church and the historical body of Christ. It’s a deep and interesting question. There must be a relationship between the three that goes beyond metaphor. The Church of England has a broad enough theology to allow different answers, but it’s perhaps enough to say that Christ and so God must be really  present in all three, or they’re not what they say they are. Having said that we should not want to limit God’s presence to these three areas, and although sacraments are a sign and a promise of God’s covenantal presence with us – like a fixed date night in the week – that does not prevent God being discovered and received anywhere and indeed everywhere.

Should we treat blessed and consecrated elements as holy? Yes – if we take the promises of God seriously. They are vehicles of God’s presence. And what will happen to our bodies? I think I’m not out of line with either Catholic or Reformed theology in viewing our bodies as sacraments; And certainly those that have consumed the sacrament, become part of the church, have that physical bodily incorporation with the body of Christ. As we in our limited ways have treated and reverenced the body of Christ as holy, so we can trust that God in his infinite mercy will regard our bodies as holy. They may suffer any amount of deterioration or desecration, but what is sewn in dishonour will be raised in glory. As St Augustine wrote long before Aquinas:

“Whatever has perished from the living body, therefore, or from the corpse after death, will be restored. Simultaneously with what has remained in the grave, it will rise again, change from the oldness of the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, and clothed in incorruption and immortality. Even if the body has been completely ground to powder in some dreadful accident, or by the ferocity of enemies; even if it has been so entirely scattered to the winds or into the water that there is nothing whatever left of it: still it cannot be in any way withdrawn from the omnipotence of the Creator; rather, not a hair of its head shall perish. The flesh will then be spiritual, and subject to the spirit; but it will still be flesh and not spirit.” 
Amen.

Trinity Sunday

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 6.1-8, Psalm 29, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17

Traditionally Trinity Sunday is when preachers begin their sermon by offering their apologies and excuses for boring congregations with the doctrine of the Trinity.  And I’m a big believer in tradition. So [pause], sorry.   It’s also traditional for theologians to use analogies to help us with that central Christian truth of how God is both three and one; Mostly by some bad metaphor relying on a dead plant, poor science, bizarre family dynamics or awkward third wheel relationships.

There is also great merit in Thomas Aquinas’ position which is to say of God that we know only ‘that he is and what he is not’.  That, of course, did not prevent him writing an awful lot more on the subject.

But for our 21st century world we need something more modern, up to date;  a fresh expression of trinitarian analogy.  And perhaps the Trinitarian analogy for modern times is that of Take That. You see Gary Barlow has the talent – he has originality, the song writer, the prime energy behind the group. Then Mark Owen is sort of perhaps a bit like the Son in enjoying a brief disastrous solo career before returning to the group.  And then there’s Robbie.  Originally just a dancer but proceeded out of Take That to enjoy a highly successful solo career.  So much so that poor old Gary, the Father so to speak, has almost entirely disappeared from view appearing only occasionally in adverts for Marks and Spencer’s and the Conservative Party.  In 2010 the others rejoined Robbie for the full glorious reformation of Take That on Earth, bringing about the end of the world, but like the reunion of Friends, it didn’t quite live up to the hype and everyone remembered that actually the 90s weren’t that great after all. Apocalypse That.

It’s a bit of a stretch but it could be worse.  Because the pop bands that I grew up with were all like Take That, with simple collective names that covered everyone.  I’ve read in the annals of time, though, there used to exist groups that took the name of their lead singer, Diana Ross and the Supremes or Bob Marley and the Wailers.  Now if we’re talking about bad theology, these 70s bands scream heresy.  a heresy rife in congregations today; where the Father is seen as the real God, the frontman, while the Son and Spirit are sort of a backing band.  

And it’s no wonder when you look at our creed.  Personally, I don’t much like creeds - I’ll come back to this in a minute;  But the modern translation of the creed that we normally use here has almost slipped into heresy.  You see in the Greek, Latin and traditional English versions the first line provides the essential clause of the whole creed: “I believe in one God;”  following this we have all the subclauses which qualify this belief –  ‘in the Father Almighty...,  And in one Lord Jesus Christ...  ‘and I believe in the Holy Spirit,’  all these qualifiers of that first essential “I believe in one God; are connected and held together in one statement.  The modern translation, however, has confused this by splitting the creed into sections each starting “we or I believe...”  So ‘I believe in one God, the Father’, then ‘I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ’ and ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit’.  Given that the point of the Nicene Creed was to stress that there is one God who is three persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it’s a bit misleading.  They’re not three gods, or one God and two other things. We believe in One God.

So if you remember one thing from this sermon –  God is more like Take That and definitely NOT like Diana Ross and the Supremes. 

[Oh and if you’re worried about Jason Orange or Howie D... Don’t.  No one else ever has.  In any case Jason and Howie are a good reminder that all analogies (and pop groups) ultimately fail.]

Now it may seem odd that a vicar doesn’t like creeds.  Surely this is your job; you say, your very career depends upon it. But the thing that troubles me about creeds is that they’re about power more than truth.  So the original ending of the Nicene creed reads: But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,'… — they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church. “condemned” or “anathema”. The Nicene creed was designed to solve an argument and it did so by cancelling the weaker party.  There’s no position of orthodoxy or truth without a good deal of political backing.

Consider the case of Marguerite Porete.  Marguerite wrote a spiritual text at the beginning of the 14th century called “the mirror of simple souls”.   It was decried as being “filled with errors and heresies” and she was then arrested, tried and burned at the stake.  The crowd is recorded as being moved to tears by the calmness with which she faced her sad demise. During the trial she was referred to as a “pseudo-mulier”, a fake woman.  After her death, though, the book was again distributed anonymously but became widely regarded as a spiritual classic. Whether it was her gender or simply being ahead of her time orthodoxy’s violent “truth” lacked Christian mercy.

Such sniping from orthodoxy still occupies us today.  There’s always someone wanting to exclude someone else – because of their gender or sexuality, or other spurious reason. And we should always be asking ourselves who we see as outside the grace of God? Have we drawn any boundaries that shame or exclude others?  And is everyone in our social circle just like us? Or have we declared anathema Fulham supporters, Liberal Democrats, or other unfortunate souls whom the world has hated.

Because God is bigger than our creeds,  God’s bigger than Take That, he’s even bigger than the Beatles.  Whether you’re in the heights of the heavens or the depths of Hell there is nowhere outside his love and mercy. One of the greatest Christian witnesses to my mind is the philosopher Simone Weil, who until just before her death, refused baptism because she preferred to count herself with those the Church said were outside grace. Perhaps we don’t need to draw lines of where and who is in and out.  We can let God be God.

Analogies aside, we can know God best through the two great acts of God:  Creation and Salvation. By Creation we can know something of God.  As all things come from him each bears the mark of their creator:


To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour.

Equally, though, being created they are none of them God, who is uncreated.

By Salvation we have the specific revelation of God as love.  This God cares for all creation. His command is for us to love God and our neighbour. His promise is our hope for peace. That for us who are always between life and death, there is something more which gives us meaning and hope. And Salvation is effected by God being with us.  First as one of us in the person of Christ, and then through his Spirit which remains with us to the end.

What these tell us is not so much who or what God is, but how God is related to us. When we try and think about the nature of God we tend to get tied up in knots.  We inevitably think of God as Father, as an old man up there in the heavens. And when we think of the Spirit, our mind’s eye conjures up the darkness of space and the spreading of light, or of some vapour, or gas, like a creepy horror movie. If we remind ourselves that these are just pictures, that’s fine, but they limit how we see God, and where we see God in the world.

Dante’s Divine Comedy gives us a truer picture, when he writes: ‘now my desire and will, like a wheel that spins with even motion, were revolved by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars’. Or if Europe is anathema to you, an American/English poet wrote: At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is… Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement. Which is to say, in the words of that other great poet, Richard Curtis: ‘Love actually does make the world go round’.

So whether you’re here celebrating the love you’ve found in this world, or the recent return to communion abruptly stopped after a lifetime of faithful attendance; or if it’s a first entry for one in your family to that great cloud of witnesses who have lived and died in the belief that God is love; this is the God who in our small ways from 9 months previous to 90 years and a day, we strive to bear witness to, in the love we have for one another. Amen.

State of the Parish Address, Pentecost

George Herbert’s poem for Whitsun begins:

Listen sweet Dove unto my song,
     And spread thy golden wings in me;
     Hatching my tender heart so long,
Till it get wing, and flie away with thee.

 
Where is that fire which once descended
     On thy Apostles? thou didst then
     Keep open house, richly attended,
Feasting all comers by twelve chosen men.

Whitsun, aka Pentecost, tweely referred to as birthday of the church. The Holy Spirit descends and the disciples are upgraded to apostles – from ‘following’ to being ‘sent’,  it’s a sort of graduation. And the Spirit specifically comes in the gift of tongues – languages – so that the Gospel can be taken to all nations. But as well as the birthday of the church, it’s also the birthday of the Church of England. The Book of Common Prayer was brought into use on this feast in 1549, 472 years ago, the first time English had ever been used liturgically in the Christian church. And it was no accident it was on Whitsun – as English became one of the gifted tongues and Latin, the universal language – a sort of old-fashioned Esperanto –was outlawed. In Herbert’s eyes the gift of the Spirit was enough to make earth seem like heaven. His complaint is that the Spirit received by the apostles is too little seen today: 

Such glorious gifts thou didst bestow,
     That th’ earth did like a heav’n appeare;
     The starres were coming down to know
If they might mend their wages, and serve here.

Thou shutt’st the doore, and keep’st within;
     Scarce a good joy creeps through the chink:
     And if the braves of conqu’ring sinne
Did not excite thee, we should wholly sink.

Inspiration comes and goes in the church.  Traditionally this is the time for fetes and Morris dancing, so not all inspiration is either divine or wanted. On the other hand, it’s at Pentecost that the knights of the Round Table saw a vision of the Holy Grail – and so began the great quest to restore the spiritual life of the realm.

2020 was a year of sickness, of fear, of death. It will become a year of reference – like 2001 – the year of 9/11, Like 1989, (the fall of the Berlin Wall and birth of Taylor Swift), 1963, 1945. But unlike many celebrity years, the effects were personal, felt everywhere, and the ability to make a difference was local; People talk about community all the time – so much that it usually means nothing. But for a good part of 2020 you probably had a much better idea about whether you belonged to a community, or not.

The year for the church started well.  2019 was a year of plenty – Sunday attendance was up 30% and our income had increased by £35,000. Year on year, the first quarter saw an increase in the Sunday congregation of 20%. I was installed as vicar and there was a “social occasion”. You hardly need to be reminded how the year turned. One moment Nick was playing an organ recital with an orange, and within two days, just before Mothering Sunday, the church was shut and the world made strange.

If Pentecost is the sending out of the Spirit to take the church into the world, in streaming our worship has taken up a new language. I know of churches that have deliberately not invested in streaming for fear that people will not return to church. What was immediately apparent to me, was that streaming immediately took church to people who had been excluded. If streaming enables even one person to reconnect to our community, who through ill health, distance or being housebound has been excluded, it’s worth the cost. A church that doesn’t stream cannot call itself inclusive. And it’s worth remembering that it’s only in 2020 that the sound system was installed which has done so much for improving the accessibility of our church. Given that the sound system was already being installed we were able though generous donations to put in a first-rate streaming system, and the quality of our services exceeds anything I have seen in other churches. And for all the difficulty and stress, and I’m thinking as much of everyone who had to sign up to Facebook and navigate social media in order to connect, But for all the difficulty I look back on those services streamed from homes across the country, and the zoom chats, with a sort of fondness. I think everyone learned something through that first lockdown.

But the most enduring development for the church was in the streaming of morning and evening prayer. Many told me they enjoyed having them as a structuring point in interminable days. With time it’s developed into an ongoing community of prayer. More people are leading services and it’s given new momentum to the spiritual life of St Margaret’s: We’re no longer a church that prays together weekly. St Margaret’s genuinely comes together to pray daily. Even if you’ve no time in the week, I hope you draw strength from the fact that every day people are coming together to pray for you and our community.

Our Sunday services have seen total disruption. Many taken for granted elements – hymns, the chalice, sharing the peace, Sunday School, coffee – often the things we look forward to most in coming to church – are long gone and even now it’s not clear when things will return. Other elements like facemasks and social distancing are very damaging to the pastoral and fellowship aspects of church. We have been treated, however, to some of the best singers in the country. And while the spirituality of our services has changed, and I especially lament the loss of hymns, I think there have been some extraordinary moments in the last year in which, despite the constraints, our souls have been lifted. People pray in many different ways.  Having a focus, however, is helpful and making things clear and easy for people is how to be inclusive.  John Marston’s cross sat behind Mark Steward’s garden became a focus and meeting point for people outside the church, while Gil’s votive candle stand has become an essential part of the daily ministry of the church. There is never a day when at least a couple of candles are lit, and it’s wonderful to have developed this space in the church which was hitherto left unnoticed.

The pandemic most directly required a response in our pastoral care for one another and the wider community. I was able to gather a tremendous community of volunteers almost immediately, numbering over 100, and we set about meeting the needs of those isolating, who called from our leaflets or were referred to us by GPs, Age UK, Wandsworth Hub and other charities who had heard about our work. For the most part the volunteers were not church-attenders, and these formed the initial group to deliver our soup and cake run, which last week drew to a close. There’s something very Anglican about a church organising volunteers from the community who minister to all who have need. One of my favourite reports from the year was from Anne, our Reader who was delighted to have soup handed to her from a young woman she’d never met telling her she was ‘from the church’! The other comment that sticks in my head is a volunteer delivering soup and cake who had gone back to work, but still delivered because it was the favourite part of her week. When charity is working well, it’s a blessing to everyone.

So many have been involved in care – from pastoral calling to deliveries. We operated a foodbank when the local foodbank closed and the generosity was inspiring. We have supported Regenerate-Rise, the Scrubberies bags of treats for hospital workers, made a tremendous effort with Rackets Cubed to send 140 Christmas hampers to struggling households in Roehampton; continued as best we could with Glass Door, and raised a huge amount of money for them; and much more besides, with individuals stepping up to support in myriad ways through their own gifts. All through this we’ve been helping households suffering for all sorts of reasons, but most notably bereavements – and the attendant difficulties of not being able to say goodbye, or attend funerals, which tripled in 2020 to 44. It’s perhaps fitting for the year that liturgically and musically the most involved service was the All Souls’ Requiem – a beautiful moment to remember those we love before the November lock down closed churches again.

Much of our ministry has been depleted – supporting schools and Ashmead care home has been very difficult – with only videos and zoom calls. Likewise with the limits on socialising, the Community Development Team has had little opportunity – though the Advent walk was a great success. Our plans for the garden have taken a push-back.  A positive impact of this has been that a volunteer task force led by Andrew Gairdner has stepped in to make interim improvements.  So while the major works which have long been needed, especially replacement fencing, are still on hold, the garden is already visibly improved, and with the new signage designed by Laura, making good strides. Alongside this we’re continuing to take forward the eco-church agenda, which is given the highest priority by the deanery and diocese, and have a small group to do some significant work, not only around the garden, limiting waste, and spirituality and education, but also looking at how we use and generate energy. 

Finally, we should recognise as a church that we have made a considerable impact on the life of the arts in the past year. We now have a reputation as a place for rehearsal, recital and recording, and with our excellent acoustic and quiet location are proving very popular.  Our very open and positive outlook has given us a reputation as a generous and friendly church, which will benefit everyone, bringing in some exciting music with a stream of revenue, boosting the arts and supporting musicians through a very difficult time.

St Margaret’s has changed. Shifts in congregation, in the style of our worship, reflecting the limitations of the pandemic, in the need that we are aware of, in the opportunities that are presenting themselves. Moving forward I have 4 key areas where I’m looking to develop our mission.

Firstly, we need to remain focussed on our Sunday worship as our core business. This will change under regulations, but I want to continue to think about how we develop our choir and music. It’s vital we remain connected with our children as they move through Sunday school and so we will begin to look at creating a children’s choir and integrating children into our serving team. Having moved the altar forward we also need to extend our current lighting,  and having replaced the choir’s robes we’re now researching vestments.

Children are the second area of development. As well as serving and singing, we will continue to review Sunday School, looking to recruit more volunteers and consider what materials we are using and whether we can be bolder in our activities and events.

The Garden and Eco-Church are the third area. Ultimately we’re looking at resurfacing, replacing the fencing and creating a ramp for access to the side of church.  There are further developments to connect with children, education and the spirituality of outdoor space. We currently have a bronze award and my aim is to have achieved silver by 2022.

The final area is to establish St Margaret’s as a Centre of Music and the Arts. In 2020 we have successfully established a weekly recital series. Nick has composed a Mass Setting and we’ve premiered several contemporary pieces, including last year’s Requiem. We’re used more and more by professional and amateur groups, but we’re now thinking through some more ambitious projects that could bring new connections.

With these four areas of development there is also a need to develop our space. We have good resources here but with some investment we can make better use of what we have.  To this end we are beginning to look at whether we can join the church and halls, creating separate access to the halls, which would immediately increase revenue.  Alongside this safer access to the crypt would open-up more space, and having access to more toilets in church is essential for the use of the church we’re now seeing. Such a project will take time but some ground work has already been done by a previous generation, and now is the time to start thinking ambitiously and positively about the future.

I have more things to say but you cannot bear them now.

They say that the time to invest is when there’s blood on the floor. Our nation, our community, has been pressed as never before in the last year. Some would shrink back and lick their wounds. I do not believe this has ever been the advice of the Spirit.

We have connected more, worked harder and accomplished some quite special things in recent months. There is a Spirit, an energy, here that is recognised in our community, and in the Church. Now is the time to prophesy, to see visions, to dream dreams. Now is the Lord’s great and glorious day. When St Francis asked the Lord what to do with his life the Lord spoke openly: ‘Francis, go and rebuild my church, which as you see is falling down.’ Let us set to this task in this place.  Let us pray for the strength and the vision to accomplish these things.

Lord, though we change, thou art the same;
     The same sweet God of love and light:
     Restore this day, for thy great name,
Unto his ancient and miraculous right.

Desire Lines

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Acts 1:15-17, 1 John 5:9-13, John 17:6-19

No one tells you when you’re young, or perhaps you just don’t listen or believe, but on passing 30, as a man, you become engaged in a fight to the death battle against your waistline.  I have been slugging it out against a 32-inch-waist for quite a few years.  Lent, this year, saw a promising offensive on my part, but paternity late-night snacks have brought about an almost desperate retreat.

Running is my artillery here and the last few weeks have fought a come-back with me finding some new routes. On one such occasion I turned down a new path on Wimbledon Common only to find myself diverted off towards the golf course, which I loathe for fear of judgement raining down on me from above and the hellish vision of plus fours below.  Keen to minimize my detour I was soon hacking through long wet grass, cursing the wombles under my breath. I was not the first to take this route, though; my footsteps were tracking those of others already cut into the long grass. In this way, usually through misdirected runners, or large dogs, trails emerge and turn into established paths. A lot of innocent grass suffers but that is the price of innovation. This phenomenon is charmingly called ‘desire lines’. Architects, town planners and transport controllers all study these desire lines as they create a freely evolving picture of movement –  democratic route construction, if you like.  And with the best planning in the world, you can’t quite predict how humans will behave –  desire lines may be short-cuts, they may be aesthetic, they may intend time-wasting –  because they reflect desire. 

Now we’ve entered a sort of between-times in the Church calendar. Ascension was last Thursday, when Jesus was seen no more. Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, God, part 3 if you like, is not till next week. We’re left figuratively looking into the sky; and if following Jesus is our desire, much like trying to travel West on a Hitachi train, we have a serious problem.

The story of Ascension is of an unusual desire line. Less horizontal, more vertical take-off, Jesus intends us to follow him on a new path, following his desire to reconcile creation with God; as the Christmas carol tells us: ‘and he leads his children on to the place where he has gone,’ or in the standard funeral Gospel:  ‘if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.’

It’s a confusing story and leads to all sorts of difficult questions – like ‘where is Jesus’ body now?’ And it’s odd what the angels say to the disciples: ‘why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’ If Jesus is to return as he left, then there’s clearly good reason to stand looking up towards heaven.

The point is, though, that the disciples need to change the way they relate to him. They need to stop looking for the man – now close, now far away – they need to see in Jesus the revelation of God, linking heaven and earth like Jacob’s ladder. 

We may find ourselves in a similar position. The creed almost encourages us to believe that there’s the Father who is God – creator, mysterious and transcendent. And then the Son who we have the stories about and is basically a great guy, someone we can relate to, and feel for. And if this is our Gospel then we’re still clinging to Jesus the man, looking for him in the distance. Instead of desiring just the man, we need to desire what he desired. We need to follow his ‘desire line’, seeking to join earth and heaven. We also need to ascend to God. 

Now before you get your glue and feathers out — and we know how that ended for Icarus and the Heaven’s Gate cult — what I’m talking about here is being taken out of ourselves, raised by our desire for God. The early church experienced this in the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost – a strange empowering flood of quasi-magical activity. Whatever we think of this sort of charismatic religious expression, moments like these often define our faith. Experience of God as feelings is certainly not essential, but experiences of conviction, beauty, passion, compassion can transform our faith, our understanding of what God and we are about. And that brings us closer to God in that sense of ascension. This might be through prayer or meditation; a moment of realisation as scales fall from our eyes in realising a deception, or a very genuine truth – like Archimedes’ shout of ‘Eureka’ in the bath, – a sudden flood of compassion for a person or situation; in prayer, music and liturgy, or even as it was for St John of the Cross, hearing a popular Spanish love song, we may be raised. It might be a rush of wonder at a mountain-top panorama. In our relationships, an ecstatic taking out of ourselves, the sudden empathy with a stranger, the incomparable love felt for our beloved or children: transformation and ascension.  This is most important when it is a ‘rational passion’.  Feelings often pass quickly, and cold sense-making doesn’t change us – but rational passion can alter the course of our lives, a transforming ecstasy. Rational passion is what takes you from the outrage of witnessing prejudice to social action.

The nine days between Ascension and Pentecost are traditionally a time of prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit. We should desire this gift – and seek to emulate Christ’s desire in rising to the Father, in marrying heaven and earth. And even if we feel a strong discrepancy between the formality of our prayers and our real desires, which are often chaotic and unruly; and if it’s late night snacks to perhaps strive harder to emulate Christ’s weightlessness. Knowing the difference between what we want and what we know we should strive for is a way of understanding ourselves, trying to be better, and getting further up the ladder to the place where he is gone. 

For us, now, we’re on that mountain with the disciples, only it’s our worship we’re raising up to heaven, in word, song and sacrament. Here we are witnesses to the union of heaven and earth wrought in the story we are retelling.  And our prayers are what drag up our desires from the gutter to gaze briefly on the stars.  Here we may follow the desire line initiated by Christ and trampled over by countless generations of Christians. Here we are blessed by Christ, as our great high priest blessed those he was going before.  The story of Ascension is a story about the bringing together of heaven and earth. For us now, in the middle of life, it’s a reminder to follow Jesus, to seek the love of God, and pray: ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’. Amen. 

Ascension: Forces of Attraction

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:44-end

Some years ago, before children stole my life, I was at a gym on a running machine.  The machine was quite unfortunately lined up, though, and I was facing the right half of my reflection where the mirrors abruptly stopped. I have a slightly obsessive need for order and hate things not to be lined up. This was nothing to do with vanity. Anyway as I ran I found myself unconsciously leaning to the right in order to catch my full reflection. This in itself probably looked a little odd, but as I continued my right foot hit the side of the machine off the treadmill sending me into a double twisting backwards pike, landing in a painful shambolic mess ten metres behind the machine.  I have since developed a deep mistrust of running machines.

Now, I was running in a park more recently and had another awkward moment, running straight at someone, both of us side stepping towards each other in both directions. Like dancers. We avoided crashing into one another but it was pretty close. Afterwards though I had a moment of self doubt, questioning my motives. The person I was running towards was very attractive. Had I deliberately stepped towards them. Read their body language and subconsciously drifted into their way.

When we talk about beauty and desire, we very often use the language of attraction. We speak of being drawn to someone. Pretty people are said to ‘turn heads’. In clubs in the 90s people went ‘on the pull’; ‘falling in love’ suggests some involuntary movement. When we see something beautiful, when we feel attracted, we often find ourselves drawn in, pulled towards the object of our affection, caught up in a gravitational orbit of our delight. 

The story of Jesus, which ends today; the story from the Incarnation to the Ascension, is the story of the desire of God.God so loved the world that he sent his only Son. The Son that revealed God to be love, love for the world. This love, this desire drew God into creation in the Incarnation. God was pulled into the centre of human history. The Ascension is the story of love returning, love reciprocated. Jesus, in his humanity loves God, and so is drawn back up to God, and offers in himself on our behalf the proper love of creation back to God. It’s the consummation of the marriage of heaven and earth.

There’s a prayer traditionally said during the preparation of the Eucharist, while the priest mixes water with the wine. “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” This captures the essence of the Ascension. God comes full circle. On Christmas morning we sing “he came down from earth to heaven”, while the anthem you want to hear on Ascension is Finzi’s great “God is gone up with a triumphant shout”. The point is not so much that God did a thirty year dip, a cosmic road-trip, causing the Christmas shepherds to scatter in terror and the disciples at the Ascension to stare bewildered into space – like Superman falling from the heavens and rising in Lycra – it’s more like the hand of God plunging into creation and lifting the whole thing up into his bosom.

Having said that the mythological trope of resurrection and ascension has set itself at the absolute heart of our culture; It’s the industry standard form for all superhero movies. Consider any Batman movie. Is there not always a moment when Batman is believed to be dead but makes a seemingly impossible come back, before disappearing again - usually to be found silhouetted on a roof top with the bat symbol projected on to the night sky.  ‘Men of Gotham, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This batman, who has been taken from you into the sky, will come in the same way as you saw him go.’ Christopher Nolan’s superb batman, in The Dark Night Rises, gets dumped down a well into a dark pit, a good Hebraic metaphor for Hell. Eventually he escapes and saves everyone, before, at the end, heroically ascending in his aircraft ‘the Bat’ to haul away a bomb that detonates over the bay. 

Now you might be forgiven for thinking – well it’s all just mythology isn’t it. Obi-wan Kenobe is quite a bit like Jesus; only despite claiming to be more powerful than you can possibly imagine after being strucken down he doesn’t really seem to achieve very much.  Despite the 2000 census there’s still no jedi church; and Gandalf has his moments of resurrection and ascension: ‘Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time...  The stars wheeled overhead, and every day was as long as a life age of the earth... But it was not the end. I felt life in me again. I've been sent back until my task is done.’

But isn’t this just stories? A variation of Elijah ascending in his fiery chariot, or some crypto-Egyptian or Babylonian myth.  In the 60s there was a short-lived movement that attempted to demythologise Christianity, expurgating all the more far-fetched elements. I can imagine that the picture of Christ ascending into the clouds would quickly have been rationalised to a more straight-forward reading that the resurrection appearances ceased as the time of Pentecost approached. There may be some milage in this, but I’m reminded of Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited. Charles asks him after mass about all that catholic nonsense to which he replies “Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.” Then Charles asks about Christmas and the star and the kings, the ox and the ass. Sebastian replies, “Oh yes. I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.”  Undeterred Charles says, “But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.” but Sebastian replies, “But I do. That’s how I believe.”

The Ascension is certainly a figure by which we understand that transition the disciples made from the experience of the resurrection appearances to the experience of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The story, though, has more depth, not least because of its prevalence in myths, legends and fiction ever since; and because actually it’s by stories and anecdotes, not abstraction, that we make sense of the world. More importantly, historically, is the theological significance of the image of Christ descending and ascending, the tying together of heaven and earth, symbolised by the mixing of the earthly water and the heavenly wine.  Born a hundred years after Christ’s death Clement of Alexandria interpreted this saying:  ‘[T]he Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.’ Athanasius, who we can thank for the creed, wrote more concisely: ‘For He was made man that we might be made God.’ It may seem very grand to say that we might come to be divine, but really it’s more to say that learning who God is in Jesus, we might become more like him, and when we finally approach eternity we might share in the fullness of that divine vision. 

More often than not, for us, it’s the things of this world that gain our attention, that attract us, that pull us into their sway. Such things will most likely cause us to topple and fall in our pride and vanity.  Every now and then, though, we will glimpse something of beauty, experience genuine heroic self-giving love for another human being, discover the divine in worship, beauty or charity, and be drawn a little closer to follow Jesus in that movement of ascension.  Our ascension remains as yet incomplete but it is prefigured with Christ lifting up all creation to the Father. Through love He has shown us the way.  By love we will follow Him. Amen.

"You did not choose me, but I chose you."

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: 1John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17

‘You did not choose me but I chose you’. These words are written on the icon in Westcott chapel, where I trained to become a priest.  I spent a lot of time staring up at those words, at a time when I was rediscovering who I was, trying to understand myself for the first time as a priest. When you’re ordained, other people have no idea whether you’ve been a priest for ten minutes or ten years. They treat you just the same. Within weeks of being ordained a man pulled me off the street to tell me that he was going to commit suicide. You can’t apologise and say “Well, I’ve only been ordained a few weeks, would you mind if I phone up a colleague and ask them what I should say.” 

In the same way on joining the army as a chaplain on day one you immediately put on rank. Never mind that you have no idea what’s going on or how to salute, everyone treats you as an officer and it’s up to you to work out what to do at double quick time. Or at least bluff it.

There’s little real preparation for becoming a parent. You don’t get a qualification or a practice run. One day you just wake up and realise your diary’s got very full. We all feel like frauds some of the time.

My favourite prayer is written by Cardinal Newman. I’ve shared it with you before:

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

I feel like it’s a good prayer for this year.

The prayer turns on a single clause, that almost gets lost in the purple prose. It’s a prayer that throws its hands up in the air, saying, “I’m not sure what this situation is about, I’m not sure what the world is about, I’m not even really sure what I’m about.”  It’s a prayer that throws everything over to God in trust in that single clause: ‘He knows what He is about”. 

The only provision, the only exception, the only qualification is the little clause in the middle:  “If I do but keep his commandments.” His commandment is, as we’ve heard in the letters of John again and again since Easter, and again today: ‘that you love one another’. Do this and wherever you find yourself, however you find yourself, you are serving God, you are accomplishing your mission. “you did not choose me, but I chose you”.

So much of this life is completely out of our hands. I was thinking on Thursday, it must be a terrible liberating moment when the polls close for politicians. Finally, they can do no more. Up to that point they must be smiling till their mouths ache, talking to people they’re not interested in, being charming inside out. And then it’s out of their hands. And the vote comes in and it’s all or nothing. Adulation or unemployment. No tribunals; no haggling – even for mighty Trump. But I wonder, now polling has got so accurate, it seems like you could mostly call an election months before that date. All those trips to Hartlepool may be a bit of a waste of time. Our efforts make less difference than we imagine.

Whatever we might think about politicians, we should at least respect them for so publicly putting their lives and careers on the line. Modern life, in pensions, health care, employment rights and so on makes our lives usually quite safe.  It’s a good thing, but it also creates an illusion of invulnerability which can then be shattered. Like when a pandemic suddenly hits. Then we find out something of what we’re about. “You did not choose me but I chose you.”

Last week I talked about how theological concepts, like sin, sacrament, or spirit, can often become vague and lose meaning: just words. I don’t know what the word grace means to you. Certainly it’s quite important in the New Testament. But this is as good a definition as any: Jesus saying to you now: “You did not choose me but I chose you.”

Which is to say that we are where we are by the grace of God. And in the words of an annoying youtube yoga teacher:  “you are exactly where you need to be.” Our own perception of ourselves may be that we should not be there.And other people may question it. And then there is our vanity which tells us that we have earned our position. And it’s here that the idea of grace rubs against us a little bit. Because we like to think that we have worked hard to get where we are, to do what we have done. A little pride creeps in. “I am a self made man” we may think to ourselves. It’s “because I’m worth it”.

Sometimes theology and politics agree. Meritocracy is a very unpopular idea at the moment – two of America’s leading intellectuals, Daniel Markovitz and Michael Sandel, have both recently trashed the idea – that in America people succeed by their own efforts – But few on the successful side of life like to admit that its fortune and privilege, not hard work, that has got them there. Christ is clear: ‘You did not choose me but I chose you.’ Everything is grace, and if everything is grace, in everything we must give thanks. To be a Christian is to understand that everything in life is a gift. Sometimes that might be hard to hear but we are told that we have not chosen him. He has chosen us.

And as Cardinal Newman’s prayer, puts it: wherever we find ourselves, however our life has turned out, we all have our service, our work, our mission. And it’s unique to us, as each of us occupies a unique position in the world. Each of us is a unique point of connection between other people. Each of us here connects the people we know to the Church. And our Gospel tells us, just as the Father is made known by his love abiding in Christ, so Christ’s love is made known by his abiding in the disciples. The care of Christians for one another is a witness of who God is, to the world. Each of us is a link in that chain.

And what can be of more value to God than that? Especially when we’re in dark times. “whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.” We might not be great speakers, or socially adept, physically fit or full of helpful skills, but if we love our neighbours as we are able, we are serving that mission. We are that “link in a chain, [that] bond of connection between persons”.  You did not choose me, but I chose you.

And so we have confidence. “He knows what he is about.” We of course know what we’re about. Perhaps it’s security, wealth, family, friends, work, leisure, watching Line of Duty on a Sunday night. If we lose these we fret and worry. We’ll feel insecure and undermined.  Will there be a seventh series? But if we remember that God knows what he is about and that our mission is just to love our neighbours wherever we find ourselves, then the loss of the trivial causes of our happiness will not bother us. The purpose God has set before us is what matters.

So whether we’re questioning ourselves and what we’re called to do;  or if we’re worried what others think; if we feel like a failure – or a triumph;  we need only remember that God has chosen us.  And that all we need do is love one another with the love that God has given us.  That’s it. And with that we’ll see how the connections we make; the link we perform between people;  fulfils our mission of revealing God’s love for the world.  There is no higher calling.  And no greater reassurance. “you did not choose me, but I chose you”. Amen.

God is an Action

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: 1John 4:7-end; John 15:1-8

Oberon, our two-year-old, has for some time spent some of his days with a wonderful childminder. In the morning when I run him over before work, I’ll say “we’re going to Nicolette’s house.” With two-year-old charm this has contracted to ‘lette’s house’ Unfortunately, with two-year-old charm, Oberon has also understood this to be her name; So at the end of the day he now says to her ‘Bye lette’s-house’ Malapropisms are a continuous event for 2-year-olds. At present he understands the concept of colour. He knows the name of all the colours. But his probability of correctly identifying the right colour is no better than if he were entirely colourblind. Which is also looking like a possibility.

Speaking of malapropisms, I heard recently that at a former church of mine, the cantor went slightly wrong at the acclamation. She was supposed to sing “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life. Come Lord Jesus.” Unfortunately, she sang “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you destroyed our life.” A rather bleak take on the Easter miracle.

On our way home from Lette’s house, for quite some time we would rehearse all the noises animals make - The lion – roar The camel – ppppprr The octopus – fllbllbllbbblbb It’s only occurred to me recently that while he enjoyed the game he had no idea what half those animals even looked like. This has all changed now we have been to Battersea zoo. The glorious freedom that ends lockdown.

Now, I mention this because we’re in a similar position to 2-year-olds when it comes to religious language. Words referring to abstractions we’re not completely sure about. I can’t draw a picture of grace; I can’t point at sin; Though there’s a couple of sinners out there I could point to! I can’t show you God.

Jesus knew this. So he told stories and he acted in the world. When he told the story of the prodigal son, who wasted and dishonoured and rejected his father at great personal cost; But was welcomed home without resentment, with joy, he drew a picture of grace. When all the old men are pointing at the disgraced woman and crying ‘sinner’, And Jesus says, ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, And all depart, beginning with the eldest, He points at what sin is. And in solidarity with all things in heaven and on earth; in speaking truth-in-love to power-in-violence; to point to the value that God has for the least of us; to demonstrate the redemption of our suffering in time; and the care we should have for one another; in crucifixion and resurrection; he shows us God.

Now we have learned as humans to count things. Things are real, everything else is shadows. 7 billion people, 35 million camel, 300 species of octopus, And one God.

Only this confuses the matter. God is not like the great octopus in the deep. The Christian God is really much more like an action. And with proper reflection, we find that actions are much more real than things. What is more real, the photograph album, which may or may not be in your attic, should you ever get round to looking for it – Or the grief you still feel ten years on for a friend or partner or parent? Does it really help an hour into your dental surgery, or having trapped your finger in the car door, to know that pain is “just in your head”? Can you articulate the fearful, joyful, adoring frustration you have for a child, which is the most important thing in your life, in such a way that would make someone who does not have children fully understand? Actions define our lives in a way that things just don’t.

Jesus didn’t point at, or draw things, he told stories – because that’s how you convey actions. And when Philip is asked to explain Scripture, he tells the story of Jesus, because the Good News is something that happened. God is not experienced as a thing, but as an action.

And as a sidenote, atheists are usually quick to tell you – or me at least – that there is no God. It answers the wrong question. The right question is not “is there a thing called God out there?” but “can you in the work of creation, the beauty of this life, and the actions of men and women, see the activity of God?” The answer might still be ‘no’! but at least it’s a better question.

Today’s epistle tells us that God is love. Love is another vague term. Second rate preachers love to bang on about the four Greek words for love. In truth there are many more than four types of love and not all of them have Greek words like storge – which I’ve always felt sounds more like a heavy English pudding. Nor do they all have anything to do with Christianity. The Gospels don’t all agree on much but the injunction to love thy neighbour or love one another is in all of them. For St Paul it’s the highest theological virtue ‘faith, hope and love, abide these three, and the greatest of these is love’ And here for St John, one step further, God is identified as love itself. But more than this, more than the vague abstraction, it’s the story of God choosing involvement in creation, of serving others, of choosing truth over compromise, others over himself, commitment over freedom, suffering over self-interest, that we have this primary account of what love is. And this is God. Christianity defines love as an action made by God.

Which is why St Paul can say that faith without love is meaningless, because it’s faith without God. Why St John can say ‘whoever does not love does not know God’ – because God is love. And to know love is experience it as an action, not a thing. And, never mind your prayers, your singing, your deep thoughts, your position on the PCC, it’s really the simple act of putting someone before yourself which is the basis of all Christian spirituality.

I ‘ve taken a great many funerals in the last twelve months and it’s this epistle from John, which is never requested, but I very often quote from. Because the evaluation, the significance, the meaning of a person’s life as it is seen at the end is always ‘how did they love?’ I’ve never heard people comment on how many or what sort of thing a person had. As I said, things are never as important as actions. But rarely do people comment on whether someone was ‘moral’ and even for Christians I don’t often hear very much on their faith – their opinions or church attendance. Perhaps surprisingly, there’s usually very little mention of whether they were successful. Maybe we’d find it gauche; Perhaps a long retirement makes worldly success seem a distant memory.

The final shape of a life, what defines it, is almost always articulated in how a person loves. Their place in a family; Then their friends and community; What was the joy and comfort they brought to other people. And also that they received from other people. I would say that it’s a universal feature of every funeral arrangement I’ve ever made. And it would probably do us all some good to remember that this is the criteria by which we will finally be measured and understood.

Two-year-olds instinctively understand this. And two-year-old boys are men of action not things. At least until their toy ambulance gets left behind on the beach. And as much as we may wrangle and wrestle with the abstract terms of theology; We are hearing stories from day one. We are experiencing love and vulnerability from day one. The action of God’s love in giving life and accompanying us to the end begins before day one;  So no wonder Jesus said ‘let the little children come unto me.’ God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. Let’s believe not in things but actions. Let us love God and our neighbour; And in doing the one let us recognise the other. Amen.

"I am the Good Shepherd"

Sermon by Hilary Belden
Readings: Acts 4:5-12, Psalm 23, 1John 3:16-end, John 10:11-18

I am the good shepherd – one of the joys of recent days has been seeing various shepherds with their sheep – James Rebanks and his 9 year old son Isaac on Twitter helping a sheep with the birth of her twins - and Ben Hollings with his 7 year old ‘farmer in waiting’, Jamie,  on the Fordhall Farm website. Each of their 100s of sheep is a treasured individual.

I am the good shepherd.

There are several massive rows going on in the world around us –  the huge football row  seems now to be over  -  there’s a row between Taylor Swift the singer songwriter and her former manager. In both of these we don’t need to know the detail – we can see the fallout. There are the massive rumblings about the integrity and openness of life at the highest political levels – and about the awarding of contracts through the pandemic.  (I had to bite back all sorts of comments when a very lovely man in a Serco jacket was supervising the queue at the testing station at the Putney Leisure Centre – he could hardly be held responsible for all the problems with Serco.)  What about food poverty and Marcus Rashford’s campaign? What about Hammersmith Bridge – blighting normal life for so many local residents? What about the Grenfell enquiry: that company which knowingly allowed the installation of inflammable cladding ; the failure of building regulations to pick up the problem, the ignoring of residents’ complaints….the lives lost.

‘I am the good shepherd’  ‘This is his command: to believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.’ ‘he leads me beside still waters.’

Such a different picture – so pastoral and gentle. When we look at these two pictures, is this showing us that religion and politics are at loggerheads with each other – with nothing to say to each other? Would we be content to picture a kindly, loving shepherd while we are here and then, outside church, to act as though nothing can be done about the prowling wolves who attack the flock? I don’t think so.

In John’s letter, he pointedly asks ‘If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?’  From earliest times, we know Christian communities have been respected for their emphasis on loving, non-discriminatory actions – building hospitals, for example, and refuges for orphans and vulnerable people. Building schools and - in this country – the beginnings of an education system. Peter’s action at the Gate Beautiful enables the disabled man to walk again. It was typical of so much action by Jesus and then by his followers then – as it is today. Education, medicine, shelter and support – practical kindness: the monasteries, for all their faults, were centres of worship, healing, education, farming and food production, hospitality to travellers, for centuries. They challenged the prevailing conditions for so many people.  

Christian love inspires ethical action. We have done our share here through this last year and long before:  in the service of our working lives, and with the foodbank, with prisoners and the resettlement of former offenders, with homeless people, with those at risk of being cut off and isolated, simply with our own neighbours, with Christian Aid.

What if our politics were grounded again in what is best for people – and not what will bring in the most money? The Football row, as far as I understand it, was felt to be the assertion of profit over precious community history  - the working class pride - of the UK clubs involved. Taylor Swift has rerecorded her most successful songs to get them out of the hands of someone she describes as incessantly manipulative and bullying. The current storms around No 10 are about money, gain, greed, as well as about desperate needs in the pandemic.  If you have followed the extraordinary story of the sub post masters’ battle with the Post Office, or Hillsborough, you will be so aware of the crucial part played by moral conviction above profits, face saving and lies.

Suppose Grenfell Tower had been built to the sort of safety standards that we would all like to believe we can always take for granted? It was noticeable, in the first days of horror, that the local Methodist Church, the local Muslim community, and the local government team of Ealing were among some of the most effective operators because they understood and prioritised the needs of the survivors and offered practical, well-organised care. And don’t let’s start on the citizenship issues now arising for people who came to the UK as babies or young children, or the current treatment of many refugees.

Moral judgement and moral value: how well does the Christian message translate on the big stage of our politics and on the world stage? The Vaccine distribution debate is showing this up pretty clearly. We know there are no easy answers and no simple solutions. But the aim has to be morally grounded, morally  right: if it is  – for instance – to vaccinate the world so that we are all safe – or to build blocks of flats that anyone would feel proud and safe to live in – or to educate and rehabilitate  the many offenders who turn to crime because – at some point – their education failed to capture them, or to promote the opportunities of people of every ethnicity rather than writing yet another report when earlier recommendations have been ignored  – if we aim at morally strong outcomes, we  have a chance to reach them. 

I hope you’ll read the piece about her pandemic experiences as a young doctor which Evie Taylor-Davies has written for the magazine. 

If I had to answer the question, what is somewhere like St Margaret’s for, I would say that it is here to provide space to feel and see love in action, to receive God’s message of hope and love in the sacrament, to be a place of prayer, forgiveness and inspiration, to be a fellowship and to offer thought  that strengthens, that emboldens people  with moral courage and moral insight as they go out into the world. 

‘Dear Children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth.’

Amen.

First Mass of Easter

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”  One of the most famous opening lines of any political work – Rousseau’s The Social Contract.  Perhaps the only more famous opening I quietly paraphrased – mostly to my own amusement – on Palm Sunday from the Communist Manifesto – Not with any political intent but as a reminder that the Gospel is intended to be revolutionary. The manifesto ends deliberately referring to Rousseau: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.  They have a world to win.  Workingmen of all countries, unite.” Both Rousseau and Marx looked at humanity and saw bondage. Like the Hebrews under Egypt. That people weren’t free. And this bondage applies to both rich and poor: Rousseau’s second line:  ‘Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.’ All social relations are ties, hold back our God-given freedom. Only the man or woman who has nothing left to lose has freedom;   once you have renounced the world, its people and judgements,  you are no longer beholden to anyone. But we, functioning members of society, are in everywhere in chains.

If you’ve heard me preach at Christmas, you’ll know that Christmas, for me, is the reminder that the world has meaning. That it’s beautiful and has this delicious core of love at the centre – like a Cadbury’s Cream Egg or a Kinder Surprise. In the beginning was the Word. In his great cosmological vision St John sets out how from the first stroke of creation, at the heart of the singularity that lit the big bang, was a core of love, expanding to 50 billion shades of Love exploding out into the world.  In all the magic of midnight mass, in the candles, the liturgy and music, pulses this affirmation of hidden, structural love making the world go round. We’re not remembering Christ’s humble birth this night but there is something of this magic with the primal fire, the darkness and light, the sense of an altered, special time. The divine love here is revealed and hidden, not in a child and a stable, but on a cross and in an empty tomb.

But what is Easter? You might think that Easter is really about eggs and bunnies, or some sort of bargaining done by God and the devil in order to buy our souls;  But no. Easter is about freedom. If you didn’t doze off during the vigil you heard a set of stories, all concerning the history of the free person.  The creation story tells how we were born free but became everywhere in chains. 
 The stories of the flood and Abraham begin a covenant between humanity and God, transforming a false authoritarian theology, granting us freedom from arbitrary destruction and child sacrifice. The exodus story is The story of political liberation from bondage, whose imagery has dominated all Western ideas of liberty ever since. Jeremiah looks to a time of freedom from the law and external coercion as the law is written in our hearts and sin is no more. The resurrection of the dry bones concerns the restoration of the people of Israel: ‘our hope is lost; we are cut off completely’.  And now, ‘This is the paschal night’, the passover, where we are ‘freed from defilement’, we are ransomed, the chains of death are broken; 
 the night has become as clear as the day as ‘the morning star has risen never to set’.

But is this just some sort of church-speak? What does it mean to say that because of Easter we are free? 
Well, if we have gone through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, we have passed through death. 
 The church is dismantled, we have walked to the cross with Jesus and are now in the tomb. 
 At this hour we are dead men (and women) walking. ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’
 Only at the point of birth and now death, we have no chains. 

This is why at Easter we regain our freedom.  We are about to pass from death back into life. 
 We’re at one of those hours – like at Midnight Mass – or when we wake in the magic of the predawn – An hour that for two thousand years has been recognised by half the world or more as the holiest moment of the year, But in the quiet here passes almost unnoticed by our neighbours – Except for the rustling foil of the Easter bunny; It’s a time when anything feels possible.  It is the time of freedom to be the person you choose.

So what we might ask ourselves this night is what are those chains which we have burdened ourselves with? 
 Right now you are dead people, free people. 
 When you walk out you will emerge back into life. 
 But the chains that you walk out with are of your own choosing and God wants you to be free.

That is not to say that we should relax into thoughtless selfishness, Just relieved it’s finally Easter and we can gobble chocolate egss. There’s a freedom from here, a freedom from constraint; 
but also a freedom to – a freedom to be yourself in the image of God – as you were created. 
 The most serious constraints to which we are tied are those that pull us into our anxious selves. 
The chains of insecurity, which lock our eyes down to our problems, the chains of acquisitiveness and vanity which chain us to objects and appearances, the chains of selfishness and pride which chain us to the relentless drive of our own ego. The chains of addiction that speak for themselves. Freedom means being free with ourselves, to look beyond ourselves and be free-handed with what we have and are. 
 That is the freedom of the resurrection.

So now we are here at the empty tomb, like Mary Magdalene, arriving while it was still dark. 
 For Mary the Easter experience was first of all a liberation from grief; grief that prevents her from seeing what God is doing, from recognising Jesus, and grief that makes her cling to Jesus. 
 Being set free, she is released to be sent to the other disciples as the first person to proclaim the risen Lord. 

There are many things we may wish to be set free from this Easter. 
It may be grief, it may be fear of death for ourselves or another. The wearisome constraints of lockdown. 
 we may need to be set free from self-indulgence in any of its many forms; I didn’t lose quite as much weight as I’d intended and am a bit shocked by my reliance of afternoon tea; Perhaps we need to take a moment to consider our relationships with others and our own sense of self-worth. Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. 
 But tonight you have died with Christ and are risen again, a new creation. 
 You are free to love and be loved should you choose to cast off these chains. 

 ‘But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.’ (1Cor. 15:20)
 ‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’ (2Cor 5.17) ‘I was buried yesterday with thee, O Christ; 
 but today I rise, resurrected with thee. 
 Yesterday I crucified myself with thee, O Savior. 
 Now glorify me with thee in thy kingdom.

Good Friday

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

John’s Passion should surprise us. It is not like the other Gospels. If we look closely, Jesus is never out of control. In the other Gospels Jesus seems sometimes like a rag doll thrown about on the cruel winds of human vindictiveness. We feel sorry for him. Here, at every stage Jesus has the power to stop events. When Jesus speaks to the arresting party, they immediately fall to the ground, such is his power. Jesus stops the disciples from protecting him. And his response is telling: ‘Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?’ It’s the exact opposite of the so-called agony in the garden. Jesus here cannot imagine a life where the cup is not his to drink, still less, pray for it to be taken from him. Under interrogation Jesus is calm, reasonable.  He is positively sassy towards Pilate: When asked if he’s the king of the Jews he responds: ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ Pilate becomes frightened by the crowd, but Jesus gives him no answer. The Jews complain because Jesus is announced as the thing they fear: the king of the Jews; Pilate executes a man he believes is innocent; Who has power in this situation?

It’s Jesus. On the cross, he arranges for his mother to be looked after by his friend. Even at the point of death he’s speaking to fulfil scripture; His control of events is such that he narrates his own death: ‘it is finished.’

In sin, uncertainty, anxiety, fear, confusion, desperation, all those who seem to have power lose it. The high priests, Pilate, the crowd; They have no freedom – They’re acting against their own will and desire. There’s a desperate storm of humanity rushing around and against the stillness of Christ.

The Gospel is always asking: are you following the standards of the world or of God? When you look for freedom is it the freedom to do whatever you want, to satisfy every passing desire, to change like the wind? Or is the freedom to be yourself?  Unswayed by the world, or passing influence,  but to be true to your character, your beliefs, your God?

When you look for power, is it the power to affect the world as you’d like; to employ the functions of office as high as you can achieve them? Or is it the power to be in charge of your life, independent of influence? To do the thing you know is right?  To make an unpopular decision, to take a stand? The power to be your own person.

In John’s Passion Christ alone has freedom, Christ alone has power. Only he acts according to his own nature. It is the truth of the Gospel. The ability to be honestly and with integrity, yourself.

In the other Gospels, we hear the events unfold with compassion. We might feel our own fear at the kafka-esque bewilderment of how things can go so wrong so quickly without reason. We’re reminded of the injustice of totalitarian states, sham trials, torture, capital punishment. We pity Christ. Here, in John, we are left in a state of awe. The crucifixion is a willful act of love. A determined effort to show what humanity is; And what God is. Jesus endures the cross for the love of the world. It’s less the fearful cross of injustice. More the cross of glory for which hour Jesus has come. This is the faithful, wondrous cross, the noble tree; The cross that is venerated, worshipped. A cross transformed from punishment and sin to the power of love; A cross that has become an altar.

I have spoken before of how John is a master of irony. How he surprises us through the Gospel with reversals of expectations. How the villainous high priest Caiaphas receives the true prophecy that one man must die for the people, even though he doesn’t understand it. How in the divine raising of Lazarus we find Jesus weeping; And yet at the godless cross we see divine resilience. How the supposed power of Pilate becomes impotence before the crowd. John uses irony to nudge us to faith. To help us understand why St Paul would say, ‘may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’ Boasting in this cross. And again, that ‘the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.’ We see how the cross is taken by the early church and transformed from a grotesque and feared sign, Into a badge of honour, a sign of love; To become the symbol of Christianity, So not withstanding a rather different irony, the Christian Holy Roman emperor Constantine, can say of the cross, a few centuries later: ‘in this sign conquer’. And so begins the reign of Christendom.

The cross for us may inspire compassion. It may command power. On this day we come it to rediscover the love of God for the world. To see how Christ transformed this sign of fear and violence, into a worldwide symbol of love. To repent our foolish notions of freedom and power; And find in Christ the way, the truth and the life. Amen.