Month: September 2012

‘Remember that the land is sacred’ – The idea that we walk on sacred ground is as counter-cultural today as the idea that every seventh day should be a Sabbath. Counter-cultural because the prevailing culture in which we live, driven by the unrelenting demands of capital, regards the land and time itself as resources to be mined, exploited, to exhaustion.

But when we look within, many of us are uneasy about this utilitarian view of land and time and life. Many of us feel deep within, a spirit in which life and time and land are special, are sacred. Perhaps that’s what brings you here today, for our harvest services and celebrations are special spaces in our year where we can voice our agreement that this land through which we move, this land on which we tread, is special to us, is sacred.

There are many reasons why we feel this way. This land is sacred to us because it is wonderful and beautiful in our eyes; it is sacred to us because events have taken place on it which have deeply affected our lives. The land is sacred to us because on it we have built special places in which to worship and offer thanksgiving; the land is sacred to us because in this soil we have buried our dead. …

– another take on the harvest theme, my latest talk, The Land is Sacred. It owes a good deal to my hoovering up Martin Palmer's Sacred Land and Thomas Lynch's The Undertaking, both excellent reads.

Joint Benefice Harvest Thanksgiving Service

Bratton Clovelly, 30/9/2012

Genesis 1, Psalm 8, and the following verses from Leviticus 25, 26, 31, Numbers 35, Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5

The Lord commands, ‘The land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord;  every seventh day and every seventh year shall be a Sabbath for the Lord;  you will neither sow your fields nor prune your vineyard. If you obey my laws and keep my commandments, then I will reward you with rains in their season, and the land shall yield her produce and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.  And I will give peace in the land.  If you remember that the land is sacred and you do not pollute nor defile the land on which you dwell, if you allow your beasts to rest and respect them and your servants, then you will prosper.’ 

‘Remember that the land is sacred’ – The idea that we walk on sacred ground is as counter-cultural today as the idea that every seventh day should be a Sabbath. Counter-cultural because the prevailing culture in which we live, driven by the unrelenting demands of capital, regards the land and time itself as resources to be mined, exploited, to exhaustion.

But when we look within, many of us are uneasy about this utilitarian view of land and time and life. Many of us feel deep within, a spirit in which life and time and land are special, are sacred. Perhaps that’s what brings you here today, for our harvest services and celebrations are special spaces in our year where we can voice our agreement that this land through which we move, this land on which we tread, is special to us, is sacred.

There are many reasons why we feel this way. This land is sacred to us because it is wonderful and beautiful in our eyes; it is sacred to us because events have taken place on it which have deeply affected our lives. The land is sacred to us because on it we have built special places in which to worship and offer thanksgiving; the land is sacred to us because in this soil we have buried our dead.

On high ground all around us our ancestors lie. At Patchcott Cross to the north of here and high on Sourton Tors, and in many other nearby places, are barrows 5,000 years old, reminders of a time when we relied on the protection of the ancestors and revered the high places where we laid them, ensuring that they would keep a watchful eye on us. More recent generations have laid our loved ones close to us, in churchyards, keeping them at the heart of our life of faith and eternal hope, and in wild flower meadows or woodlands today people return their departed back to nature – valuing the earth and their footprint on it. The land is sacred to us because in all these different ways we have buried our dead here.

The land also contains the mass graves of medieval plagues and the animal burial grounds of the recent Foot and Mouth crisis. And it carries other memories – better ones – of generations of farming in the one place; of significant journeys made often or perhaps just one special time. The land is sacred to us because events have taken place on it which have deeply affected our lives: we hold dear the places where we first met our loved one, where we enjoyed our schooling or learned our trade. We hold dear the places which are most beautiful to us, which constantly rewaken in us a sense of the sublime – the high moors, the rivers, the forests, the sea shores.

And because the land is sacred to us we have built special places in which to worship and offer thanksgiving. The English countryside is full of churches built ‘to command respect and awe and draw the eye to the heavens’, as one writer puts it [1]. And a theologian, Martyn Percy, says that to the English people,

… the [parish] church itself is a sacrament – stone, glass and other materials, not to mention people – ordinary profane materials that God nevertheless blesses, imbues with his grace, beauty and holiness, and allows to be an outward sign that points to a spiritual and inward grace. The local church, just like the bread and the wine, can be God’s chosen broken material that reveals just something of his love for all. [2]

Our Methodist chapels and Quaker Meeting Houses mean the same to us – as do our  synagogues, mosques and temples also – they are signs of the sacred in our land, we build them and maintain them and come together in them at times like this to affirm that which is very deep within us, our sense of the sacredness of land and time and life. 

At the heart of the sense of the sacred character of the land is that it is not ours by right, it is a gift to us. At Harvest time we give voice to this in our songs, and our scriptures phrase what we feel in our hearts is the deeper story of our land:

And God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1)

We remember that the land is sacred when we sense that it is given to us – by One who created it with care and generosity and joy. And when we take it as a gift, it fills us with a spirit which desires to treat the land with care and generosity and joy.

Our Harvest gatherings speak of something which endures – in the annual renewal of seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night; in the land which is special to us, a landscape full of memory and history and spirit – what holds these things together and endures is the One who gives them to us and whose care and generosity and joy we celebrate and share.

 

Notes 

[1] Sue Clifford and Angela King, England in Particular, Churches, p.89 

[2] Martyn Percy, Shaping the Church: the Promise of Implicit Theology, p.63

… Before the space race began and a young boy’s fascination turned to the exploits of aluminium-suited astronauts, my heroes were those who we recall and commemorate tonight – the 3,000 pilots and aircrew who thwarted the intentions of Hitler’s airborne forces in what became known as the Battle of Britain, in the summer and autumn of 1940.

Looking back, I think that they were heroes of an innocent age, an age where the lines between enemies were clearly drawn, and where the rules of engagement were well-defined and adhered to. Those engaged in the Battle of Britain knew exactly who they were fighting and what they were fighting for. They knew precisely what to do and performed their task with precision. Those engaged today in Afghanistan and other complicated conflicts find themselves in arenas of deep ethical and operational confusion.

I’m not sure that today’s youngsters can have the same sort of heroes as you or I did, for we now live in an age where conflicts are complex, where enemies are hidden, slippery, anonymous, where military ethics can no longer rely on a shared sense of common vision or purpose, but have to depend on the morals of the individuals involved in a particular place at a particular time. …

– from Heroes in an age of lost innocence - my talk at the annual Battle of Britain Memorial Service in Bridestowe today.

 

Isaiah 40.28-31, Matthew 5.1-12 

Battle of Britain Memorial Service, Bridestowe, 16/9/2012

 

They mounted up with wings like eagles – my childhood heroes, the fighter pilots, the brave men of the air whose skill and courage saved us from a dangerous enemy. 

I was born into the post-war generation which was the first not to have experienced the realities of war first-hand, but for whom the signs of World War Two were evident everywhere – in the geography of the place I lived in, a city still rebuilding after the blitz; in the stories told by the adults I lived with, my parents recalling childhood air raids; in the culture whose heroes were the victors of the Second World War, chief among them the daring airborne youths of RAF Fighter Command.

One of the first films my Dad ever took me to see at the cinema was The Battle of Britain, an epic depiction of the airborne conflict, with Skipper Robert Shaw leading the brave British fighters to victory.

Back home, my bedroom often became an arena of war, with me at the helm of Fighter Command, in the shape of the Airfix model Spitfire I’d made and decorated, manouvering  it through the air in pursuit of a plastic Luftwaffe plane. And my heroes were the tiny plastic pilots glued into the cockpits, steely-eyed, accurate, lethal craftsmen of the air.

Before the space race began and a young boy’s fascination turned to the exploits of aluminium-suited astronauts, my heroes were those who we recall and commemorate tonight – the 3,000 pilots and aircrew who thwarted the intentions of Hitler’s airborne forces in what became known as the Battle of Britain, in the summer and autumn of 1940.

Looking back, I think that they were heroes of an innocent age, an age where the lines between enemies were clearly drawn, and where the rules of engagement were well-defined and adhered to. Those engaged in the Battle of Britain knew exactly who they were fighting and what they were fighting for. They knew precisely what to do and performed their task with precision. Those engaged today in Afghanistan and other complicated conflicts find themselves in arenas of deep ethical and operational confusion.

I’m not sure that today’s youngsters can have the same sort of heroes as you or I did, for we now live in an age where conflicts are complex, where enemies are hidden, slippery, anonymous, where military ethics can no longer rely on a shared sense of common vision or purpose, but have to depend on the morals of the individuals involved in a particular place at a particular time.

In an age of lost innocence, if there are any heroes at all, then they take on a different shape. We can’t rely on them to always be right and do the right thing. Even today’s comic book heroes are flawed: Bruce Wayne’s Batman is a paranoid character, his self-obsessiveness forces his loved ones away from him.

So we might ask, who are the heroes in an age of lost innocence? Who are those to whom we and our young people should now look for inspiration and guidance and direction? You might expect the vicar to say that the answer is, of course, Jesus – and Jesus is often heralded as an all-conquering hero in a simple battle between good and evil. But if you know your gospels then you’ll know that he himself spent most of his time trying to shake off the hero tag which people would hang on him. And that instead, Jesus pointed his audiences towards a very different type of hero altogether. The type of hero we might adopt for our times.

If you know your gospels then you’ll know that the age that Jesus lived in was an age of lost innocence, a complex political arena with his people, the Jews, under Roman occupation, and himself and the common people and the hierarchy all embroiled in the arguments between various factions pulling in different directions. 

And so the people towards whom Jesus was drawn were characters whose personal qualities were shaped in a complex and difficult world.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’, he said. The hero is not the confident one, but the one who struggles in life, who knows their limitations.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted’, he said. The hero is not a  triumphalist victor, but one who feels deeply the loss and pain of the world.

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth’, he said. The hero does not have military force or political power, but a quiet trust in God to provide them with all they need.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled’, he said. ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.’ The hero looks towards others in compassion, deals with others with grace.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’, he said. The hero is not the ‘peacekeeper’ who carries a gun to enforce stability by intimidation and fear, but the ‘peacemaker’ who has cultivated the ability to resolve conflicts without resort to violence.

‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’ 

The hero should not expect universal praise for their actions, rather opposition in this world. But in Jesus’ view the hero is one whose eyes are fixed on heaven – whose moral code is based not on patriotism or operational command but on a deeper sense of the goodness and righteousness of God. In Jesus’ view the hero is one who lives in anticipation of the promises of God. This hero can live with complexity, because they are living in trust and hope. This looks like a hero for an age of lost innocence.

Some of you knew people who flew in the Battle of Britain, and had the Battle of Britain Clasp added to their 1939–45 Star. You may even have flown alongside them. And you will know that many of these people were motivated not solely by a narrow patriotism or in blind response to operational command, but did have a deeper moral code driving them – perhaps a faith, a sense of the goodness and righteousness of God directing them. That is why they remain heroes to us in our age of lost innocence. 

But you will remember them perhaps, not primarily as heroes at all, but as ordinary people called on to perform extraordinary tasks, and doing that with devotion and dignity. And that, I think, is at the heart of what Jesus tries to teach us about heroes – that heroes are not exceptional people, they are ordinary people who reach out to grasp the ability to do exceptional things.

Perhaps the child who flew the Airfix Spitfire in his room was not as innocent or naive as I earlier suggested – for he knew he was playing a game. In those moments the child who felt able to take on the world knew that he was still just a boy in a bedroom. But he also knew that if called on to perform great tasks he would be able to draw on forces beyond him, he trusted there would be forces of good and guidance to drive him. This is they way all true heroes act – ordinary people asking for help from a greater power so as to be heroes of this and every age.

The Lord […], the everlasting God, 

does not faint or grow weary;
   his understanding is unsearchable. 
He gives power to the faint,
   and strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary,
   and the young will fall exhausted; 
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength…

Wisdom cries out in the street – today's talk is a steal from the wise old John Pridmore, whose Church times commentaries I miss since his retirement.

Bratton Clovelly, Sourton, Trinity 15 (Proper 19), 16/9/2012 

Proverbs 1.20-33, James 3.1-12, Mark 8.27-38

 

(Open with a conversation about wise sayings which people know)

“WISDOM cries out in the street,” the proverb says. We really should listen to her more often. It is much to our loss that we have ignored her. 

Our biblical religion is expressed in three ways: the way of the priest, the way of the prophet, and the way of the wise. 

Priestly religion is about worship, the glorious things and the trivial things. It aims to be sublime, but does not always rise above the ritual. Priestly religion is about services in sacred places. It happens in sanctuaries and at altars. Priestly people know about purificators and patens, cassocks and hassocks, the reserved sacrament. Priestly literature tells you how to do things properly. 

The priestly rules of the Old Testament told the people what to do in the tabernacle; the new priestly codes – Common Worship, for example – regulate what we should do in church. 

Prophetic religion challenges priestly religion. “I hate, I despise your feasts,” says God in Amos 5.21. Prophetic religion stands on platforms in public places. It “speaks out” about what God has done, what he is doing and – even more scarily – what he will do. Prophets speak in the voice of thunder. The words they most often use, their catch-phrase, is: “Thus says the Lord.” 

Wisdom religion, by contrast, is not interested in services, nor does it dwell on the acts of God in history. Wisdom religion is about misbehaving children and mischievous gossip. It’s about chronic illness and how to cope with it. It’s about keeping your temper and keeping to time. It’s about the perils of making money and the joys of making love. 

Wisdom religion is about everyday life. It is about how to keep going. Wisdom religion is more obviously and immediately relevant to the concerns of ordinary people than priestly religion or prophetic religion. Yet it is almost left out of the life of the Church. 

Church life concentrates on the practice of priestly religion and prophetic religion. Its main business is worship and proclaiming the acts of God to save and judge. This is important business, of course, the business of eternal life, but it does seem to be very short on advice about how to cope with the kids. 

The great books of the Wisdom tradition are Proverbs, Job, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. This week’s Old Testament reading is from Proverbs. It complements the reading in James, about the use and abuse of our tongues, and it throws some light on the argument in the gospel about who Jesus says he is and what Peter wants him to say. ‘Give heed to my reproof,’ says Wisdom. James, and Jesus too.

There are four good reasons for spending time with the Bible’s books of wisdom and the religion they promote. 

First, wisdom religion connects our everyday duties with the life of faith. Living faithfully is as much about not festering in bed all day as about being saved. 

Secondly, wisdom religion focuses on human relationships – on getting on with other people – as much as on getting right with God, though that is important, too. 

Thirdly, wisdom religion draws on our experience rather than something ‘out there’ which is revealed to us. It appeals to what we share as human beings, not to the confessions that divide us. 

People of all faiths want to know how look after their children and how to live with their neighbours. Our reading urges us “to walk in the way of understanding”. That is something we can do together, whatever our belief-systems. That’s what the bishop and his Hindu friend were discovering. 

Fourthly – and here’s a very relevant reason – wisdom religion questions the way we educate ourselves and our children. Today’s schools teach children how to pass exams. They do not teach them how to be wise. Perhaps that’s what ‘dumbing-down’ really means.

‘The tongue is a fire … a world of iniquity’, says James. But Wisdom speaks in a very different way.

The importance of the Bible’s wisdom tradition is that it takes the demands of daily life as seriously as the great matters of worship and salvation. Not that we have to go agree with everything the wisdom writers say. Proverbs 22.15 says, ‘Iniquity is bound up in the heart of the child, but the cane will thrash it out of him’ – a little harsh, perhaps. 

But if our sharing of the bread and wine of Jesus teaches us of the love God has for us, then our sharing in the bread and wine of wisdom will teach us how to live in the light of that love in our everyday lives. 

Jesus tells his followers to take up their cross and follow him. Spend time with the Bible’s books of wisdom, and we learn how we can do that, practically, everyday: 

‘Come, eat of my bread 

and drink of the wine I have mixed. [says Wisdom] 

Lay aside immaturity, and live, 

and walk in the way of insight.’ (Proverbs 9)

 

 

Notes 

[1] This sermon is based largely on John Pridmore’s commentary on the readings in the Church Times, 18/8/2006. I preached an earlier version of it in Liverpool in 2006. 

The Tour of Britain peloton passing our house this afternoon. See album here.

My first Harvest Festival of the year today – and my first harvest talk, Wealth creation at harvest-time – on being rich towards God.

Harvest Festival, Mary Tavy Methodist Church, 10/9/2012

Psalm 8, Luke 12.13-31

 

‘So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

This is a sermon about wealth creation. After a wet summer, a damp harvest, in a time of recession, wealth creation is something most of us have on our minds. How to make ends meet; how to gain more wealth. A question born not from greed, more from necessity. And our hearts go out to those for whom living through these times is desperately difficult. Those for whom storing up in barns is clearly not an option, for there is no excess to store, everything they have has to be fully used, and that is hardly enough. 

But the words of Jesus are for all time, for times of plenty and for times of need. So today let us consider a different sort of wealth creation. Let us consider what it means to be ‘rich toward God’

Being ‘rich toward’ something is about what you most value in life – it’s about an attitude of the heart.

And being ‘rich toward’ something is about how that deep attitude of the heart influences the way you live – it’s about your way of life. 

I suggest that if you are rich towards the things of the world – if you most value possessions and wealth, then you’ll be smart with money but you’ll probably be also anxious; by contrast, if you are rich towards God, then you’ll value most highly things like family, community, peace, etc, and you’ll use your money more generously towards others but you’ll be comfortable and satisfied with yourself.

Being rich can buy us many things. But are they the things which really satisfy? Being rich, we can buy:

– a bed, but no dreams;

– books, but not intelligence;

– food, but not appetite;

– jewellry, but not beauty;

– medicines, but not health;

– entertainment, but not joy;

– a crucifix, but not a Saviour… [1]

Those are the limitations of being rich toward things, being rich toward possessions.

The idea of being rich toward God provokes the question: are the things you think will make you rich, the things which come from God?

Being rich towards God involves us in seeing how rich God is towards the world: in his deep generosity and creativity God has gifted us his wondrous creation, in all its beauty and provision – even in a lean year, we can still see that. No wonder the writer of Psalm 8 witnesses the skies, the seas, the land and all the creatures crying out in praise to God: their response to God’s richness towards all he has made. 

Being rich towards God involves you in accepting the gift that God has given you – the world – your part of it – and asked you to care deeply for it. 

Being rich towards God will affect the way you think about money, learning not to see it as a bad thing but not to be dominated by it; instead seeing it as a gift from God to be used wisely, creatively, in service of others, in praise of the Creator.

Being rich towards God is about the way you live your life towards the earth and others; about how you respond to Jesus’ two most basic demands: ‘love God, love your neighbour as yourself’. 

Being rich towards God involves casting your cares on him – not relying on the vagaries of commerce, the bank account, the stock market or the lottery, for security, but learning to trust God for all you need. 

Now that’s a lifetime’s work, cultivating that spirit of thankfulness and trust; you may feel that you’re as yet nowhere near as loving and giving and rich towards God as you should be. I know that’s how I feel.

So let us encourage each each other to be ‘rich toward God’. Let’s create that sort of wealth together. Let’s help each other to live faithful, careful, generous lives, let’s work together in devoting ourselves to the care of the earth, to the needs of the poor and destitute, and to guiding others in the Christian faith. 

Let us help each other to know that a Christian’s treasure is not on earth but in heaven, and to pray and to love [2], to enrich each other’s lives as we focus together on our loving, giving God, and the wealth he has created for us. 

 

Notes

[1] This well-known epigram is unattributed. If you know its source, please let me know.

[2] This line based on a quote from Jean-Baptiste Vianney, the Cure d’Ars. Quoted in full in an earlier version of this sermon, preached in Liverpool in August 2004.

James 2.1-17 , Mark 7.24-end