Month: October 2019

Romans 15.1-6, Luke 4.16-24

(The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity) Bible Sunday, Sunday 27 October 2019

Austwick, Clapham 

 

Whilst preparing this talk this week I’ve been haunted by that terrible news about the Chinese people being trafficked to the UK who lost their lives in a refrigeration trailer discovered in an industrial park in Essex. I’m sure you have too. And by the questions it raises. How could we – humans – act so inhumanely towards others? Why do we tolerate people-smuggling in this day and age? How can I, having read this news story, then just move on to the sports reports and carry on with my day? And where is the Church in all this? [1]

The cynical answer to that last question is that the Church is to be found making pious statements in the media about the abhorrence of these crimes and offering prayer for the victims families – which to critical minds is a feeble response, another example of the Church’s impotency and irrelevance in today’s harsh world. [2]

However, the weight of the evidence tells another story. Following the announcement of these 39 deaths the churches of Grays, Essex, opened their doors for people to come, light candles and pray. Shaun Sawyer, the National Police Chiefs Council lead for modern slavery and human trafficking and the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall Police, said the incident was a tragedy that law enforcement, NGOs, the church and faith groups are working “every single moment of every single day” to prevent. Those groups include The Salvation Army whose network of safe houses and outreach workers provide support to people rescued from modern day slavery; and the charities Hope for Justice and Stop the Traffik which have Church foundations. Then there’s The Clewer Initiative which enables Church of England dioceses and networks to raise awareness of modern slavery, identify victims and help provide victim support and care; aware of how modern slavery in rural areas is under-reported, they offer training to equip rural churches and communities to respond to modern slavery and help victims get the support they need. If you’re interested in that, let me know. We could do that here. [3]

Who is the Church for? Surely not just for its Sunday regulars alone, but for all people – we’re a non-membership body, open to all and reaching out in love and compassion into the world around. And what is the Church for? The more fundamental question. Surely it is for celebrating and finding ways to respond to the love of God for us and all the earth, to spread that good news around. That’s why PCCs use our income on the one hand to preserve our historic buildings and traditional services – the essential if inward-looking aspect of what we do, and on the other hand to reach out in compassion to promote and share the faith with those outside.

Last week The Bishop of Ripon Rt Revd Helen-Ann Hartley came to our Deanery Synod meeting in Gargrave Church – a building which imaginatively combines the ancient and the modern, enabling us to sit in pews for an opening presentation then gather at the back on comfy chairs in an informal space for refreshments and further discussion. She came to invite us as churches to start engaging with the new Diocesan Strategy – but recognising the coldness of that terminology she put it a different way, and posed the simple question to us: “What is your church’s story?” [4]

What is our story? The cynical answer to that question is one of declining attendances, particularly among the young, a sign of the Church’s impotency and irrelevance in today’s world. However the evidence invites us to tell another story. Take this season for instance, as the year cycles on towards winter. We defy the dark evenings by lighting bonfires, we deny the cold by burning fuel indoors. And the life of the church cycles on also, into a time of remembering – lost loved ones at All Souls, the saints of the ages at All Saints, and with the war-weary world, those lost in conflicts at Remembrance. May God hold us, in our remembering. These services which we offer, these times of meaningful worship presented with sensitivity and care: we know that they draw people, serve people. We understand that those who are usually found outside, find compassion and the blessing of the faith within these loved and valued historic buildings which are here for all.

The life of the church cycles on in other ways. This month we are being reminded of the financial costs of running our churches and invited to reconsider our giving. It’s an invitation extended to all for whom the church remains important in these times of great change. Most of us are caught in another cycle – sometimes called The Cash Triangle – a process leading from Education to Mortgage to Pension which then, through the generations, cycles around again. The church exists in this cycle, and we understand the ways it affects us; but the church also invites us into another cycle of life – in which a search for the Spiritual / Sacred / Mystical leads on into a place of Healing and Wholeness, and deeper on into a place of Acceptance and Love in community – which then, through the generations, cycles around again. [5]

In Leeds Diocese we are committed to a programme called Leading Your Church into Growth. It’s not naive, it’s fully aware of the reality of diminishing attendances, deteriorating finances and a shrinking and increasingly stretched paid workforce, a ‘spiral of decline which we may have learned to manage but not to reverse’ according to the priest and church growth consultant Bob Jackson. We can be a fatally self-apologetic body: Jeremy Paxman has commented that, ‘faintly embarrassed by the suggestion that there might be something more to life, it seems the Church of England thinks God is the ultimate ‘good chap’.’. But there is confidence in the Church of England continuing on as an amazing network of thousands of local churches, expressing and supporting community.  The Church’s hands-on work with victims of human trafficking is just one example of this; look at any area of need in our world and you’ll find people of faith pioneering, leading and getting involved. From foodbanks to befriending, from prison visiting to meals on wheels, and in countless other ways, we are there – you are there, I know, for I see you doing it day by day, here in this place. [6]

“What is your church’s story?” Rather than settling for a tale of woeful decline, and rather than using the vague language of ‘being community’ let’s defy Jeremy Paxman, and be bold and say we are here, sharing the love of God – practically and through traditional and new ways of worship, with all the generations, in this place. 

Yes, it can feel like winter is approaching – but we live in faith that after winter comes spring, as we unapologetically commit to defying the darkness, and invest in the means to keep the lights shining. And so this coming year I will be leading our PCCs and people into a process where we engage with the questions raised by our Diocesan Strategy, and where we establish in our pattern of worship and Church activity, some of the good practice of the Leading Your Church into Growth programme. The vision is for us to be ‘confident Christians, growing churches and transforming our communities’. [7] I hope you’ll embrace that vision and find in it good reason to continue to support the church financially to provide the resources to help us – together – live this vision out.

A closing prayer from the Leading your Church into Growth programme:

God of Mission

Who alone brings growth to your Church,

Send your Holy Spirit to give 

Vision to our planning, 

Wisdom to our actions, 

And power to our witness. 

Help our church to grow in numbers, 

In spiritual commitment to you, 

And in service to our local community, 

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

 

Notes

[1] BBC News. Essex Lorry Deaths. October 2019.

[2] Diocese of Chelmsford. Grays lorry container tragedy: Bishop of Bradwell’s response. 24 October 2019.

[3] Grays churches response reported in Hattie Williams, Lorry tragedy sign of ‘deeper problem’, says Essex bishop, Church Times 24 October 2019. Shaun Sawyer widely quoted via Press Association eg. in Bodies of 39 people found in lorry were Chinese nationals, sources say, Yorkshire Post, 24 October 2019. Salvation Army: Modern Slavery; Hope for Justice; Stop the Traffik; The Clewer Initiative.

[4] Diocese of Leeds, Maturing in Christ, a strategy for the Diocese of Leeds 2019 – 2024.

[5] ‘Triangles’ quoted in Leading your Church into Growth Course Manual, Perfect Paperback 2018.

[6] Bob Jackson and Jeremy Paxman quoted in Leading your Church into Growth Course Manual, Perfect Paperback 2018.

[7] ‘Confident Christians, Growing Churches, Transforming Communities’ – Diocese of Leeds, Introducing the Strategy framework.

2 Timothy 3.14 – 4.5, Luke 18.1-8

The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, Sunday 20 October 2019

Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth

 

Every good church leader’s strongest desire is to encourage the people in their life of faith. So, wanting to encourage Timothy, Paul wrote: “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Imagine that you walk into a room and find it full of all the people you have ever known. They are all there – because this is a party for you. They turn and smile and welcome you, and you find yourself walking through a throng of friends. Music is playing and the air is full of chatter and laughter. Stories are being shared and connections made. You have plenty of time to talk with everyone you want to – friends and relations, heroes and neighbours. Some you haven’t seen for many years, and there are conversations that need to be finished, or even begun. You realise that this room sums up your life, your presence in the world, for it contains all the people you have touched and affected in some way or another. Inside, you experience a wonderful, warm glow as you feel known and cared for and understood.

Slowly, one by one, the guests start to leave, and the room begins to empty. The music quietens down and you are left with your family. The host of memories and stories you share is like treasure – treasure that you gave them to cherish and look after: your deepest, most significant, most vulnerable being. The cracks where it has been dropped in the past remind you of the fragility and the pain you felt in unhappier times. But today, it seems, is not to be such a time. Today, you are held carefully and with respect, and you feel secure.

Finally the last guests leave, and you find yourself standing alone.‘Hello there,’ says a voice. You turn and there is someone who seems familiar but you can’t quite place, smiling, who says, ‘You haven’t seen me before, but I’ve seen you. Or, should I say, I’ve been watching you, since – well, since before you even existed, actually. I knew you when you were tiny, growing inside your mother’s womb. Yes, I was there with you. I was there in the room when you were born, when you took your first gasp of air. I was there in those early months, I saw inside you, the things you couldn’t see. I saw your fear when you were left alone and your joy when your mother returned. I was there when your first tooth came – and when the first tooth fell out. I saw you take your first step, and when you cried once when you fell on your nose. I watched your hair grow, being washed and cut. I was there at the school gates when you first went in, feeling your anxiety as no one else could. I knew your first house. I was there at your birthday when you were given that toy you had asked for and asked for.

I was there, too, when you thought no one else was looking, no one could see. Yes, I saw it all. I was there when you thought no one knew or cared or understood, in the night when you were alone, crying inside. I felt it with you. I have felt everything with you. And now, I know what you do – each morning, when you wake, how you feel about the day, and about yourself. I know what it means for you to face another day. I have been there in your greatest victories and your greatest defeats. I have watched your life take shape. I’ve watched as you’ve hidden parts of you away, I see the scars, the anxieties about other people. I know what you long for in the deepest part of your being. I know what you believe you can achieve, and I know the frustration you feel at not being able to do it. Each night, I hold one by one your regrets for all the mistakes you have made, and I hold the shards of your shattered hopes so that they don’t fall to the ground’

This oddly-familiar stranger pauses and then says your name, says it as if they know it very well, as if they have been saying it for years. ‘I came here to tell you one thing: that to me, you are the most special and precious person in the world. I want you to know that whatever happens to you now, in the rest of your life, nothing will change that, and you will never be alone.” [1] 

Now, keeping that picture in mind, holding the feelings it brings, I invite you to consider the question: Why do I come to church? …. Could it be, at least part of it, because each time I come I hear again those words I’ve learned from childhood, the sacred writings which assure me that I am deeply held and loved by God, that I have salvation through faith in Jesus Christ….?

Church is not the only place, but for many of us it’s perhaps the primary place where we’re reminded just how much we are valued and loved, by the One who made us and this earth, it’s where we’re reminded that no matter what we do, however we may stray from His Way, God is open-hearted in compassion and grace towards us. And we know this because of what we learn here.

Now you may be thinking, what does this have to do with Stewardship – for we are in the middle of three weeks of reflection on our church’s finances and our own giving. I’d say it has everything to do with it – for our giving comes not at first from our purse or wallet or bank account; it comes from our heart. Our giving is a response to all that God gives us. Remembering just how much we are loved, we give in gratitude.

And further to that, our giving is also informed by what the scriptures teach us about how we should live as followers of Jesus. We give also out of a sense of God’s justice which we’ve learned in church, in scripture reading and teaching.

Consider just one bible book alone – the Gospel of Luke, which you’ll have noticed we have been following for the past few months. It’s full of stories about people and their money. We’ve had the parable of the Good Samaritan – how he and the innkeeper used their resources to help a man in need; and we’ve had the story of a man obsessed with building bigger and bigger barns but dying sad and alone. Elsewhere in Luke the forgiven tax collectors Levi and Zacchaeus repent and redistribute their ill-gotten gains, the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son speak of the interplay between our material values and our deeper spiritual values. In Luke, the meals which Jesus hosts are sacraments of fellowship which blur the social distinctions between rich and poor, and also serve to sustain the poor. [2]

So when we consider our giving to the work of God, let scripture guide us – first of all towards a gratefulness for all we know that God has done for us, for all we understand of God’s great love for us; and secondly towards a sense of the justice which God requires from us – to live lives which are generous towards others, generous in giving of our time, talents, and whatever money we can also afford.

 

Notes

[1] Simon P. Walker, The Undefended Leader. p.103-105. Altered.

[2] Giving in Grace, Sermon notes: Background notes on four passages in Luke’s Gospel [PDF]. From the web resource Giving in Grace: Stewardship resources for the local church.

2 Timothy 2:8-15, Luke 17:11-19 

The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 13 October 2019

Keasden, Clapham, Austwick

 

Why did that one leper come back? Let’s think about that today. But let’s first set the scene. On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. Now people saw this as dangerous territory, bandit country. A border land, where two enemy countries met. The sort of edge-place which can feel dangerous, so that folks feared walking between Samaria and Galilee in Jesus’ day, with its reputation for danger, populated by edgy people, society’s castoffs. Like the lepers, these people who had been cast to the outskirts of town because they had a gruesome skin disease which people thought was contagious, and who were further stigmatised by the priests – society’s authorities – who pronounced them ritually unclean, and thus unable to be included in society. That’s where the story takes place, and that’s the sort of person the leper-who-came-back was. 

Except the one leper-who-came-back wasn’t just a leper. As well as being an outcast who people avoided because of his skin condition, he was a Samaritan, a foreigner, an enemy in that region. In the fearful hateful language of today, he wasn’t just a druggy, he was an asylum-seeker druggy. And that’s important in this story because it points to the reason he – alone – came back to Jesus. 

Jesus, when he saw them, said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. So, notice that the healing of their skin came first. And then the priests – who had the power to validate their healing – gave them the means to get back into society. 

The priests had the power to set people free, Just as housing officers have the power to give homes to the homeless, or employers jobs to the unemployed, or immigration officers legal status to refugees, priests were the ones who could inspect a leper and say, “yes, you are clean now, go free”. 

All but one. The Samaritan one, the one tainted not just by his skin condition but also by his race. I suggest that the reason he came back to Jesus was because unlike the others, this man could not go to the priest. His race disbarred him. The priest wouldn’t see a Samaritan, still less absolve him. 

The Samaritan was trapped in a strange place halfway between healing and wholeness. Like a refugee given legal status as a British citizen but unable to find work, or someone signed-off their drug addiction but unable to get onto the housing ladder, this one leper found that Jesus’ instruction left him in limbo. 

Until something dawned on him. Something wonderful and liberating, something which made the trauma fade into the distance. He realised that he didn’t need what the priest could offer him. He didn’t need society’s absolution. He didn’t need the legal status or the freedom of the city or the job opportunities which the others would get. All he needed he had been given, he realised – Jesus had made him clean. We see this in the text; the only one of the ten who did this: He saw that he had been healed. 

That was why he came back, praising God with a loud voice, throwing himself at Jesus’ feet and thanking him. Jesus’ cleansing was enough for this one man. He saw that he had been healed. 

Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?’ He knew the answer to his own question, of course. The other nine, having being absolved by the priest, were happy to be part of society, able to get a job, or a house, or a bit of status, and forgot that God’s goodness lay behind their well-being. In their excitement they lost sight of God’s graceful role in their lives. 

The Samaritan leper realised that he didn’t need what the priest could offer him, society’s absolution, that he didn’t need the legal status or the freedom of the city or the job opportunities which the others would get, the Samaritan connected to something more powerful and liberating than any of these things. 

Because Jesus had made him clean, the Samaritan experienced an inrush of the greatest power there is. The power of faith. His faith made him whole. 

Nothing else has the power to make you whole, he realised. Nothing that money can buy or laws provide, nothing that status or power can offer. Only faith. This is good news for all who live on the edge, for all who society rejects. It is good news in this, Prisons Week, for all those cast-outs who are ministered to by chaplains and visitors in our prisons day by day. [2] It is good news for anyone who doesn’t feel completely free, good news for any one of us who knows we are only part-way there. For faith grows in us each time we return to Jesus with thankful hearts.

So as we prepare to share in the bread and wine which Jesus offers us, let us prepare our hearts to accept the healing he offers us in that meal, and in our gratefulness towards him, for all he is to us and all he has done for us, let us be renewed with the greatest power of all, the power of faith. That faith – and faith alone – which can make us whole. 

 

 

Notes

[1] A rewrite of The one who came back preached at Christ Church Norris Green in 2004. Also preached at Sutton Montis, 2016.

[2] Prisons Week, a week of prayer.

 

2 Timothy 1.1-14, Luke 17.5-10

The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, 6 October 2019

Austwick, Clapham

 

“I am reminded of your faith,” wrote Paul to Timothy. “The faith that your grandmother and your mother before you had, and now lives in you.” This made me think – and I invite you to think, on this Harvest-morning – what did my grandparents teach me? What did I learn from my forebears?

What did I learn from my grandfather, that rough diamond, that man’s man, that one who used to boast that as a child he began many of his schooldays escaping back over the school wall and playing on the nearby beach instead. Once, when no-one else was around, he taught me how to make a roll-up cigarette in the way I’d seen him do so many times each day. But, on this Harvest-morning, I especially remember when he taught me how to hold a bird in my hand, and feed it. I never forget seeing how those large rugged workman’s hands could be so gentle and kind to another living creature. For Cyril was a homing pigeon enthusiast; he devoted himself to the care of the birds he kept in the pigeon loft which filled the back yard. He would never express in words just how much these creatures meant to him – but I learned it from his hands.

What did my other grandfather teach me, the one who died when I was only seven and who I remember mostly for visiting him upstairs in bed, aware that it was a condition stemming from injuries he sustained in RAF combat in the Second World War that was slowly killing him. But there at his bedside, with him often in obvious pain or discomfort, he taught me poems, he told me stories, he delighted me with tales and jokes. His love of words touched something deep in me – for I’ve always been a wordsmith too. But, on this Harvest-morning, I especially remember Alf in those earlier, healthier times of his life I can just about recall, when he was doing what he loved best – gardening. Doing what so many city dwellers do: turning their only, tiny, patch of land into a haven of beauty. He showed me how to weed and plant and prune. And without knowing it, he impressed on me how much he deeply cared for the plants and trees and flowers which were so much part of his modest life; and how much these things of the earth gave blessing back to him.

On this Harvest-morning – what did my grandparents teach me? What did I learn from my forebears? A sincere faith – it was there in the background of our family homes; but it was the two grandmothers who expressed it openly, who impressed on me the value of faith, who taught me the implications of faith, who showed me how I could live out that faith.

Gentle Jessie, whose kitchen door was always open to visitors and whose home was thus the hub of family life as we dropped by and met each other there day by day. She taught me the importance of always having the kettle on the go, ready to top up the teapot; the value, I guess you could say, of simple hospitality. But, on this Harvest-morning, reflecting on how faith and everyday life combine, I most remember how she closely guarded one particular half-hour each day – the half-hour when the radio broadcast The Daily Service. And when her door would be closed to visitors – as we each learned one by one – for she was then in reflection, she was then in prayer. She never made anything of this daily ritual, never spoke of it, and if someone did call in during that time, unwittingly interrupting her devotion, she would switch off the radio and pour them a cuppa; I imagine, with an almost imperceptible sigh. From her I learned the value of daily prayer, prayer as part of the everyday round of domestic life, prayer as the means to face the rest of the day with grace. 

And then my Yorkshire grandmother, straight-talking, no-nonsense Edna whose roots were in Shipley in a family of cobblers and, once the family shoe shop closed, had worked in a shoe section of a department store. She whose committed weekly chapel-going must have helped her bear the trauma of Alf’s decline and to rebuild her life after his untimely passing. On this Harvest-morning I especially remember that job she did for the church each year, with such care and devotion (never looking for any recognition, for her Jesus was the one from today’s gospel, who taught that faith is no privilege but requires hard work). She would spend months before Harvest collecting shoeboxes, and covering them with coloured paper – I remember her teaching me how to neatly wrap crepe paper around these boxes as I helped her from time to time. And then she would organise the filling of these boxes with the people’s Harvest gifts, and organise the people who would take out these boxes to the lonely, the sick and housebound. Every box had to be just right; and she made sure that every person who needed to know they were cared about, were included on her long list of recipients. 

Today I’m struck by how she, the cobbler’s daughter, chose shoeboxes to best express her faith. When I was a bit older I spoke to her about the time and care and attention she gave to that Harvest-time task. It was the only time she ever explained her faith to me, so it sang in my ears then and I’ve held it in my heart ever since: “Well, if you’re doing something for God,” she said, “You do the best you can.”

It is good to think, on this Harvest-morning, on what our grandparents taught us, on what we learned from our forebears. For Harvest-time is part of the rhythm of our year, a discipline we keep, a time for giving thanks for all we’ve been given through the earth and its creatures and through our relations with all others in our everyday lives.

And so at Harvest-time we celebrate those steadfast women whose simple understated faith is so wrapped up in the way they live out the rhythm of their days. And today we celebrate those men, the stories in their mouths and the work of their hands signifying their hearts being open to the creatures and the crops and the good soil, and the human companions for whom they care.

The church leader Paul wanted the disciple Timothy to be encouraged – just as I want you to be encouraged, this Harvest-time, in how you are living out the way of faith. Let these words of Paul  speak to you and me again:

“I am reminded of your faith, the faith of your grandmother and your mother before you, and which now lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you… for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”