Month: November 2019

Romans 13.11-14, Matthew 24.36-44 

Advent Sunday, 1 December 2019: Eldroth, Keasden

Advent Sunday, 27 November 2022: Austwick

It may trouble us a bit that Advent gets lost in the clamour leading up to our Christmas: it’s during Advent itself that most of our Christmas celebrations take place these days. By Christmas Day it’s mostly all over: those  carol concerts, and nativities, and parties and so on. So Advent, which we imagine used to be a time of fasting, is now more like a time of feasting. 

The reality, the historians tell us, is that people have always gone overboard in Advent, shopping for excessive amounts of food, and all sorts of other things towards the celebrations: and this over-the-topness has its good side, because it expresses an important part of Christmas – the chance to be generous towards others. [1]

So, over many centuries the message about Advent has had these two aspects to it: that we shouldn’t get carried away – but we should prepare to be generous. 

Don’t get carried away – as Paul says, writing to the Romans: ‘live honourably’, he says, ‘not in revelling and drunkenness… quarrelling or jealousy’. 

And prepare to be generous – as Paul says, ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’, in other words, let his character fill our own, his love, his grace, his generosity of spirit, particularly towards life’s lost ones, society’s little ones.

The readings for Advent tell us that Advent is a time for preparing for the coming Christ. The last two weeks of Advent look forward to the coming of the baby Jesus; the first two weeks of Advent are about the second coming of Christ as the judge of the world. 

Don’t get carried away might sum up the gospel reading which we’ve heard. No one knows the hour when the Son of Man will come, says Jesus, the angels of heaven don’t know, the Son himself doesn’t know, but only the Father. Keep awake then, for you don’t know when your Lord is coming. 

Now a series of books called Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have sold millions in recent years [2], and their popularity is due to the way they interpret these verses in Matthew. The two in the field: one taken and one left behind – the way they see that, it is the godly people, the righteous, who are taken away and the ungodly, the corrupt, who are left behind. If you hear anyone mention ‘the Rapture’ this is what they are talking about. The message of the Rapture is, ‘don’t get left behind’; or if you like, ‘do get carried away’. Get yourself carried away from this awful earth and its fallen people.

But I want to suggest that the real meaning of Advent is don’t get carried away. Or, if you like, do get left behind. And I say that because Jesus himself didn’t get carried away. He got left behind. 

The Christmas story tells us that Jesus got left behind on earth, the Son of God translated into the body of a vulnerable little child; so that God could be one of us and as he grew up, could live among us, live like we live, and in that way could introduce the kingdom of God as a meaningful force for good with us here on earth. 

Then the Easter story tells us that Jesus got left behind on the cross, the Son of God allowing himself to be the most vulnerable of all, the victim of all the world’s violence. No Rapture saved him from the cross, he didn’t escape its pain; but through all that came the Resurrection which meant he had established God’s Kingdom, that Kingdom of love and grace, here on earth. [3] 

We can reflect that at Advent we are baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ. And just as Jesus didn’t get carried away, but came to earth and stayed on earth to live out the way of the kingdom, so he invites us to live each Advent day in the light of his love. And just as Jesus was generous in his life and death and resurrection, so he longs to help us to spend Advent preparing to be generous, towards others, towards God, even towards ourselves. 

Because Jesus did get left behind one earth we understand that he knows about the things we know about, in our everyday lives, that he cares about the things we care about. We know that he’s with us in all of them. He did, of course, get carried away eventually to heaven, with the promise of his Holy Spirit to help us be his eyes and ears, his hands and feet, on earth until he comes again.

And this means that we can carry on preparing, carry on shopping, and carry on working in good faith, knowing that Jesus is with us here, encouraging us to walk in his light, telling us gently: you needn’t be anxious, you needn’t get caught up in the madness and competitiveness of the season. Living in the light of his love and the peace that comes from his grace towards you, quite simply this Advent don’t get carried away, but prepare to be generous. 

 

 

Notes

A rewrite of Isaiah 2 / Matthew 24 – Don’t get carried away; prepare to be generous, preached at the Good Shepherd , Liverpool, Advent Sunday 2007. For a fuller treatment of Left Behind / Rapture theology see also Left behind with Jesus, Waterloo United Free Church, Advent Sunday 2013.

[1] Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain; Michael Perham, Celebrate the Christian Story: An Introduction to the New Lectionary and Calendar.

[2] Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind.

[3] Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary. Reflections: Proper 10C.

Sermon for Bellringers Service

Clapham, Christ the King, 24 November 2019

 

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

So sang Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and singer who died in 2016. The message, of hope in darkness, we may find striking in these troubled times.

But of course, as you know, bells don’t ring very well if there’s a crack in them. Which is why Clapham’s Bell no.6, last recast in 1930 was also probably recast in 1662, for at its waist is the inscription, ‘My Crack is Cured Now Aloude I Cry Come Pray Repent Heare Beleeve Learn to Dye’. [1]

Bells are signals, calling signs to people of a village, town or city, to come – people like us, cracked, bruised, imperfect folk – to come to a place where we may find that it’s possible to pray; come to a place where we might encounter the liberation in repenting; come to a place where we might hear words to help us through our unbelief, to learn to live better, learn to live well, learn what it might mean to die well.

“Ring the bells that still can ring,” said Cohen, explaining his song: “they’re few and far between but you can find them. This situation does not admit of solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.” [2]

Like Bell no.6, we come here somewhat cracked – seeking the light. Summoned by these six powerful, wonderful bells. On this Christ the King Sunday our instinct is that it’s this king, and his strange kingdom of the poor and the mourners, and the meek and the merciful and the pure in heart; the peacemakers and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; this king and this kingdom which shines light into the dark corners of our world. 

For the gospels portray God in Jesus as a completely different kind of king than all the other human kings in history. If God exercised kingly powers in those sorts of ways then it would make little difference if God is our king on earth as in heaven. But Jesus’ power is a power of absolute self-giving love, given freely in forgiveness and grace, as demonstrated throughout his life and especially on the cross – as his fellow-sufferer, fellow-criminal saw and believed.

So it’s not through the ways of Trump the messiah or Johnson the messiah or Corbyn or Swinson or Farage the messiah; not through the ways of the Market or the Nation or other such messianic cults – but through the way of Jesus the Messiah God redefines kingship, leadership, and power, and in doing so fundamentally changes the shape of the world. Through people like us, astonishingly. [3]

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

 

Notes

[1] Ken Pearce, A Joyful Noise Unto The Lord – the story of Clapham’s bells. North Craven Heritage Trust Journal 2012.

[2] Cassie Werber, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”: The story of Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”. Quartz, November 11 2016.

[3] Closing section extracted from my 2019 Christ the King sermon, If we really believed that the living God was king, Austwick, Keasden.

Colossians 1.11-29, Luke 23.33-44

Sunday 24 November 2019: Christ the King

Austwick, Clapham, Keasden 

 

Once upon a time the people of Israel asked their old judge Samuel to give them a king. ‘Give us a king to govern us. All the other nations have got one, we want one too,’ they said. And when Samuel reported this to the Lord, the Lord said, ‘If you appoint a king, this is what he’ll do: he’ll take your sons into his armies; he will put everyone else to work for him, to plough his ground and reap his harvest and make his weapons of war. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers – and he will give them one-tenth of your produce too. He will take your workers, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you will be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’ [1]

Can you guess how the people responded to that? Yes, of course: ignoring the best advice God could give them they said, ’We want a king. All the other nations have got one, so we want one too.’ They got a king… and guess what happened then…

… All the way down through the ages to Herod the Great, the jealous king who ordered the first-born sons of Israel killed when he heard about a new king being born in Bethlehem; and further on to his son Herod Antipas, the compromised king who succeeded where his father failed in plotting the death of Jesus – though leaving it to Pilate to make the order for his execution.

The scriptures seem to be telling us, watch out for kings, they’ll take away your freedom, they’ll make your lives a misery, by shaping the legal and economic systems to fulfil their own desires they’ll chew you up and spit you out, these kings of the world. And yet today in the Church’s calendar is Christ the King Sunday – a day in which we make the claim that our God is also our King. The respected writer N.T. Wright says that this is what the Gospels are all about: that God has become king through Jesus and established the divine reign – his kingdom – as the power of renewal and transformation that is bringing Creation to fulfilment: [2]

In telling us this story of “how God became king” the gospels raise the question: what would our lives look like, what would our Church and our world look like, if we really believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven? [3]

The gospels portray God in Jesus as a completely different kind of king than all the other human kings in history. If God exercised kingly powers in those sorts of ways then it would make little difference if God is our king on earth as in heaven. But not through the ways of Trump the messiah or Johnson the messiah or Corbyn or Swinson or Farage the messiah; not through the ways of the Market or the Nation or other such messianic cults – but through the way of Jesus the Messiah God redefines kingship, leadership, and power, and in doing so fundamentally changes the shape of the world.

He does this in his life and ministry where he preaches a kingdom centred on the outsiders – the poor, the meek, the lost, the criminal, the oppressed, the damaged ones, with whom he spends much of his time, scandalising the respectable ones of society whilst at the same time inviting them too, to come and share the life of this liberating kingdom.

And through Jesus, God redefines kingship, leadership, and power on the cross of Calvary, where it becomes clear that the power this king exercises does not consist in possessing and punishing, but in giving and forgiving. Absolute self-giving, complete forgiveness. Forgiveness, says Terry Eagleton, is ‘the most strikingly gratuitous act’. It punctures ‘the reciprocities of justice’, ’the eternal cycles of vengeance’ and the ‘wild justice’ of revenge which are the basis of every other kingdom, and inaugurates a new order, one in which equivalence gives way to excess… an excess of giving; an excess of grace. The gospel writers show us how Calvary is ‘both poison and cure’ – ‘Jesus’ execution involves the unjust spilling of human blood; but since it is also the act of pardoning it’, the way of the world’s kings and their kingdoms – the demanding, diminishing, demeaning cycle of ‘crime, guilt, sacrifice, reparation and yet more crime – is brought to a close’. [4]

We see that so very clearly in Jesus’ exchange of words with his fellow-criminals, fellow-sufferers, on the cross. The first man is wrapped up in the world of sin, guilt and condemnation which is the way of the kingdoms of the world; the second man accepts that he, too is condemned to receive his just deserts. But this man also senses that the innocent Jesus is doing a new thing here, and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” That kingdom, it has already come, says Jesus, to his fellow-condemned man. Today, you join me in it.

Do you really believe that the living God is king on earth as in heaven? The power of God’s kingdom, the power of overflowing grace shown in undying forgiveness: is that the power which drives your behaviour through each day? Is that the power which defines the shape and direction of our Churches and our Christian institutions? 

Speaking of which, in the kingdoms of our world today the Church has moved from a position of power to a place of weakness; from a position of strength to a vulnerable situation; once well-respected, the Churches are now viewed suspiciously; once influential, few believe the Churches are worth listening to any more.

And yet – if we believe that in Jesus, God became king, we understand that the weak things, the despised things, the forgotten things of this world are at the very heart of God’s reign. We may understandably lament our decline and bewail our losses; but if we really believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven wouldn’t we see that our position of vulnerability is at exactly the same time also our strength? It’s the meek, not the strident, who inherit the earth – if we believe that God is king. It’s the humble in spirit who receive God’s blessings – if we believe that God is king.

We might still ask, “If God is really king, why is there still cancer? Why are there still tsunamis? Why are there still tyranny, genocide, child abuse, and massive economic corruption?” We might worry about the idea of God as king being triumphalist; or that it could lead us toward “theocracy”- that dreaded world where priests are the ones in charge – just as they were in the days of Samuel, and doing it very badly: which is why the people wanted a king instead. [5]

Questions like these are important. But the underlying question which will help us understand them is that gospel question. That question we should keep on asking each other, we who care so much about the future of the world and the Church: the question of how God became king, and what our world could look like if we really believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven.

 

 

Notes

[1] 1 Samuel 8.

[2] Paul Nuecterlein, Girardian Lectionary. Reflections: Christ the King C. Discussing N.T. Wright, How God Became King – Getting to the heart of the Gospels.

[3] N.T. Wright, How God Became King – Getting to the heart of the Gospels. pp. ix-xi. Adapted.

[4] Terry Eagleton, Radical Sacrifice. p.124-125.

[5] N.T. Wright, How God Became King – Getting to the heart of the Gospels. pp. ix-xi. Adapted.

 

 

 

 

Malachi 4.1-2, Luke 21.5-19

Second Sunday before Advent, 17 November 2019

Austwick, Clapham

 

“An apocalypse happened,” said Antonella Rossi, a jewellery shop owner in St Mark’s Square, Venice on Wednesday evening, as she and other shop owners mopped their floors and cleared debris while assessing the cost of the damage caused by the worst floods since the 1960s. St Mark’s Square was submerged by more than a metre of water on Wednesday and the adjacent St Mark’s Basilica flooded for the sixth time in 1,200 years – but the fourth in the last two decades.

Meanwhile Claudio Vernier, president of the St Mark’s Square Traders’ Association, avoided the word ‘apocalyptic’ but not its spirit, when he said, “We feel helpless in the face of nature, but we are also disappointed that either politics or technology has failed. They’ve been talking about defending this city for decades but that’s all they do – talk.” [1]

In this week’s bushfires in New South Wales a man called Barry Parsons died alone. Just days before his body was found, Parsons had left a message on Facebook detailing the terrifying scenes around him, saying “it seriously looks and sounds like apocalypse out there”. [2]

Australia’s climate has been trending toward more bushfire weather over the last 30 years. Without needing to mention ‘apocalypse’ Australian researchers have detailed evidence that climate change is making hot days hotter, and heatwaves longer and more frequent, as human activity has caused significant changes in Australia’s bushfire season. [3]

Are we a little bit free and easy with our use of the term ‘apocalypse’? Or can such language guide us towards the truth? An editorial in the Spectator this week, said, of the floods in South Yorkshire, like those in Cumbria and Somerset before them: we keep suffering them, but they are not apocalyptic: they are symptoms of our failure to manage the threat of flooding which is, for the most part, avoidable. [4]

What do we mean by ‘apocalyptic’? The word is often used to describe scenes of devastation – ones we can see with our eyes today, and ones we foresee coming. It’s tied in with judgement: ‘The days are coming…’ people say, apocalyptically, as they prepare to overturn unpopular leaders; and it’s also an expression of hope. ‘The days are coming…’ people say, apocalyptically, when looking for a new world to break through the old.

If we think we’re reasoned level-headed people we might tend to dismiss apocalyptic talk as scaremongering or as a form of folksy revenge fantasy against the powers-that-be; we may judge it to be the talk of people being misled into panic by circumstances beyond their control.

But if we are to be true to our faith tradition then we can’t dismiss apocalyptic talk out of hand. Our scriptures are full of the apocalypse; look at today’s examples. These are readings to make us tremble. Malachi’s vision of God bringing down fire on those who would stand in God’s way, whilst energising the faithful; and Luke’s portrait of Jesus in full apocalyptic flow, describing the imminent  fall of the Jerusalem temple and its terrifying aftermath.  

In these passages the imagery of judgement is dark – stubble and fire, stones cast down, war, famine, and plague. Even the positive imagery is strange and awesome – the Lord as a rising sun, dreadful portents and signs in the skies; and in the midst of all this, the faithful leaping like new-born calves. This is apocalyptic language – and although it may discomfort us, it is language for today, carrying truth for today. Disturbing truth, no doubt, but God’s truth, if we would allow ourselves, trembling, to embrace it and believe it. 

Apocalyptic language always flows from peoples under pressure, like Malachi’s people newly-returned from exile striving to find ways to rebuild their society, and Luke, seeking to encourage the nascent Christian community at a time they were encountering oppression and martyrdom. Today we hear it from from peoples under pressure in our world, from Venice to Fishlake to New South Wales. Take for instance Native Americans, their ‘ghost dance’ religion rejecting the white man’s conquest of their land as a short-lived and chaotic bad dream, looking forward to waking up one day to a new world restored and healed of the environmental destruction of today. 

Apocalypse is such an over-used and cheapened term, [writes Mike Davis]. It is important to recall its precise meaning in the Abrahamic religions. An apocalypse is literally the revelation of the Secret History of the world as becomes possible under the terrible clarity of the Last Days. It is the alternate, despised history of the subaltern classes, the defeated peoples, the extinct cultures. [5]

He could be describing Luke and the people he wrote his gospel for. Although it’s unclear from today’s reading, when Luke wrote those words ‘the Temple of the Jews no longer existed. The city of the Jews no longer existed. The country of the Jews no longer existed.’ For Luke was writing in the wake of the Roman siege of Jerusalem in the middle months of AD70, which ended with the burning and destruction of the Second Temple, and the sacking of the Lower City. 

Luke’s Apocalypse was him looking backwards from a position of weakness. With all the passion and creativity at his disposal he wrote to try to rally and encourage the Christians living vulnerably  at that time. His Jesus, reading the signs of the times, then offers his people words and a wisdom with power exceeding that of anyone seeking to harm them. [6]

Luke’s apocalyptic language carries truth for his today, God’s truth about the way God’s world really is. Like all the apocalypses described in scripture Luke’s apocalyptic Jesus awakens us to the awesome power of God, who is still at the heart of the world, in our today. It’s enough to make us terrified – and the tragedy of modern faith is that we seem incapable of being terrified. We aren’t afraid of God, we aren’t afraid of Jesus, we aren’t afraid of the Holy Spirit. As a result, we have ended up with a form of faith that attracts few people… and transforms no one. 

Apocalyptic invites us to open our Bibles with our hands shaking because of the Truth we find there. Unfortunately, those of us who have been entrusted with the terrifying, frightening, Good News have made Christianity awfully safe. We have defanged the tiger of Truth. We have tamed the Lion, and now Christianity is so sensible, so accepted, so palatable. [7]

Today’s apocalyptic talk carries truth, about the way our world really is. Truth, which can awaken us to the awesome power of God, who still holds history in his hands. Truth, enough to make us terrified, and by the grace of God, to make us wise. We should tread lightly around Apocalyptic language then, but never reject it. We should always be open to receiving it as a commentary on our present times – often from the insightful perspective of those suffering the most, and who thus can express most vividly just what are the signs of the times.

 

 

Notes

[1] Angela Giuffrida, ‘An apocalypse happened’: Venice counts cost of devastating floods. Guardian, 13 November 2019

[2] Olivia Lambert, ‘Downright apocalyptic’: The chilling last post of man found dead among bushfires. Yahoo News Australia,14 November 2019.

[3] Wikipedia, Bushfires in Australia: Climate change; Navene Elangovan, Explainer: The cause of Australia’s deadly bushfires, why they are worse this year and climate change’s role. Today Online, 12 November 2019.

[4] Our flood defences aren’t fit for the climate we have now. Leading Article, The Spectator, 16 November 2019.

[5] Mike Davis, Dead Cities: and Other Tales. p.31. Quoted in my 2003 sermon Apocalyptic/Fear.

[6] Emmanuel Carrère, The Kingdom. p.322-323; Wikipedia: Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE).

[7] This passage about being terrified by God’s truth, quoted in my 2003 sermon Apocalyptic/Fear, originates in Mike Yaconelli’s essay The Safety of Fear, which also features in Michael Yaconelli: Selected Writings. [PDF Download]

 

Wray Parish Church, 6 November 2019

 

I deliver many eulogies in my line of work, but this is one I never imagined I’d be giving when Diana and I moved back up north just a short drive from here early last year, after almost a decade in the West Country, happy to now have the opportunity to renew one of our oldest, closest friendships, with Jim and Glen, and – well it hurts, but yes, I’ll say it, looking forward to our all growing old together. So it’s raw, this occasion. It hurts us all to say goodbye to this beautiful, generous, gentle spirit of a woman so soon, and we feel desperately and pray hard for Jim, Katie and Genie and all the family in your loss.

Many significant moments in life with Glen were shared over a cup of tea, and so it was perhaps inevitable that on a gorgeous sunny Thursday last July, after the four of us had enjoyed a picnic on the lawn of tiny Eldroth Church, in our garden back at our house in Austwick, supping tea, Glen broke the news of her brain tumour – and something shifted in our world……

I say ‘a cup of tea’ – for I love a good strong treacly cup of Yorkshire, myself – but in Glen’s case ‘a cup of tea’ meant a cup of water which had had a tea bag fleetingly introduced to it, I could never understand that. 

There were a few things I never quite understood about Glen, thinking about it, and maybe you feel the same way, for she did carry a certain mystique around her, in all sorts of ways. This was endearing. Let’s talk about her name, for instance. Glenys Davies, she was born with – no relation, as far as I know, though I’d be happy if I were. But at some point into her maturity she started to introduce this other persona, Pippy, or Pip, or Pips, or for all I know maybe to some of you: Pipster. 

And then to her climbing fraternity she introduced herself as Tim – did no-one ever think to ask why? Jim of course would call her ‘Chap’ but that was their private thing, the likes of which many loved-up couples have. More recently Pippy told Jim that she has started to feel more comfortable about herself as Glen again, which is why she’s mostly Glen or Glenys in this service today – but in your heart and mind whenever you hear me say that name, you’ll be using the name she shared with you.

What other things did she share with you? I’m told that Glen’s siblings will remember her in her younger days as the ironer – as each of the brothers and sisters were given a defined housekeeping role Glen was the one who perfected the fine art of ironing, producing piles of perfectly smoothed and folded clothing and bedding and so on – something she proudly did throughout her life. 

What did she share with you? Glen’s daughters tell me that this domesticity never really stretched to cooking – that’s more Jim’s forte. Glen would have a go, having maybe found, or been given, a recipe, and if it worked then she’d simply repeat it ad infinitum. So Katie and Genie talk about Chick Pea Curry, as being ‘the only thing they lived on for a whole school year’…

Some of you are here because Glen – Pip – Tim – shared some form of sporting or outdoor pursuits with you. She was an award-winning young runner, and later an accomplished fell runner, who also variously enjoyed climbing and caving. No wonder she loved this second half of her life spent here in the Forest, the Dales and the Lakes with all that this area offered her in the outdoor life. Glen was always intent on keeping fit, and Katie and Genie tell me that for a long long time wherever she went, maybe visiting relatives on Merseyside or even on holiday, their Mum would take her Cindy Crawford exercise video with her, which she had to work out with every day.

Glen had her musical side, her guitar-playing – an interest she shared with Jim, and for a season she was out and about enjoying performing. She loved her garden, of course. And wherever she was in the outdoors Glen shared with us her love of its creatures: birds and butterflies and all the bugs she’d find in the hedgerows, all the amphibia she’d discover in ponds and streams, moths at night-time, the Great Crested Newt whilst she was out surveying. 

Glen had a number of jobs in her life and I always thought her surveying work was remarkable. How she used to spend the small hours of her mornings in the dark in all sorts of weather standing in ditches counting bat numbers, or recording sightings of rare newts on scrubby patches of land earmarked for industrial or commercial development. One afternoon a decade or so ago Glen walked me around Sutton Manor Wood outside St Helens, the site of an old colliery, talking enthusiastically about how a colleague of hers had organised the planting of trees on the old spoil heaps, developing the area so that it was becoming a pleasant, living arena for varieties of flora, fauna and human beings. This work brought great joy to Glen I know.

And then she was a beauty therapist – driving around with her cumbersome massage couch taking up all the room in her car, which she, that tiny woman, had to pull out and then shove back into the car each time she used it – and I wonder if anyone here today has had hairs removed by Glen’s fair hand? I can’t imagine why anyone would want to put themselves through that – when my wife does it to me, taking me unawares, it hurts… badly… I guess that the service Glen provided, with the pleasing scents of aromatherapy, also came with that other great gift of hers – conversation. Her questions to her clients, I imagine, would go beyond the level of ‘are you going anywhere nice on your holidays this year?’ for Glen was – in a nice way, most of the time – inquisitive, keen to get to the heart of what a person was about, and well practiced at the sorts of questions you’d never see coming, you’d never had anyone ever ask you before, which opened out whole new areas of discussion. Or maybe she was just nosey.

I think this side of her character was what brought Glen and Jim together, for they share a natural inquisitiveness about life, the world, its creatures and people, both sharing a scientific perspective, but also a wider, deeper outlook. They first got to know each other, and take a keen interest in each other, on a holiday shared with friends in the Lake District. I wasn’t there, which gives me licence to imagine the scene: one evening, sat by a roaring solid fuel fire, over a cup of tea – if you could call it that, in Glen’s case – them discussing, what would it be, let’s say: the love life of the common beetle; Jim speaking authoritatively based on a Radio Four documentary on the subject he’d recently heard, Glen speculating on the inner life of the beetle, imagining herself into the beetle’s heart and mind to try to understand their emotions and motivations. A conversation which I imagine would have lasted well into the wee small hours.

Glen took pride in her looks, maybe at times she worried too much about them. Katie and Genie smile about her obsession with here fringe: did she suit having a fringe or no fringe? She might change her opinion on this several times a day. And her compromise – brushing just five pieces of hair forward – really didn’t work at all. 

And fashion, likewise – she took it seriously, although she could be distracted. There was that legendary day she took herself to Manchester shopping for a dress – and came back with a tarantula….

Recently Jim has dusted off an old shoebox containing, among other things, an old photo of her which she must have kept there because she liked it – a soft-focus portrait of Glen made up to look like, as Jim said, Joanna Lumley as Purdey. 

The box is full of Glen’s personal papers – letters and postcards sent to her by others, pages of poems she has written, ranging from some delightful nonsense verse to some teenage-angsty sometimes angry stuff which shows another side of Glen she may have moved on from in later life. There are also some notebooks in which Glen has written short stories. Often they’re observational, seemingly based on real-life encounters she’d had, often the most fleeting or mundane incidents which she’s embellished and embroidered with great skill and entertainment value. 

There’s one entitled ‘Omar’ which is about a shifty antiques seller who she refuses to buy from after he guesses her age wrong and – whereas most people guess lower than she actually is – he puts ten years on her. Then there’s the one called ‘Anything Brown’ which invites us to picture Glen sitting in the lobby of an Insurance building waiting for Jim to emerge from the lift, eavesdropping a conversation between colleagues who are that coming weekend sharing a meal together at the home of one of them. He asks brightly, “Is there anything you don’t eat?” to which the other replies, “Anything brown.” At this point Glen – who is hiding her face behind an in-house magazine she’s picked up – imagines the host’s face becoming crestfallen and as his colleague departs she pictures him slumping back upstairs to the office demoralised at the thought of having to come up with a meal that contains nothing brown in it….

These stories get to the heart of something really special about Glen. She loved people, she was fascinated by them. She loved observing, and speculating on people’s lives. She loved engaging and learning through conversation.

In their first home at Hougoumont Grove, Waterloo, Glen started playing a game of postal chess with her next-door-but-one neighbour the elderly and long-since passed Ron. He’d drop a card through her letterbox with his move on it, and she’d respond by posting her next move though his door. After just three moves into their first game, Glen, studying the chess board, said to Jim, “I know three things about Ron now: he doesn’t like losing his Knights; he thought hard about that last move; and his wife’s a little bit jealous of him.”

Ah, Glen, we love you and we’ll miss you so much for all this joy in life, this joie-de-vivre, as they say in Formby. You’ve showed us how to embrace it in all its fullness, and – though I don’t think you were big on legacy or anything oppressive of that sort – surely to honour your memory and continue in your spirit we should learn from your wonderful nature and take every opportunity to live, love and grow, to embrace the earth and its wonderful creatures, to embrace people, and shine.

In the earliest attempts at the reform of our Catholic liturgy, as directed by Vatican II, the text of the Mass of Requiem, known from the first word of its entrance song, was replaced by a text called “the Mass of the Resurrection.”

An important thing happened in the first blush of that liturgical change. People discovered that, with all the new emphasis on the hope for resurrection of the dead with Christ, mourners had no fitting ritual way to express their grief. The celebration of the joys of the last day, which no one but Jesus had experienced in their fullness, not even the blessed, was premature. The church’s prayer was calling on people to rejoice and be glad, when at the moment their greatest need was to grieve.

And so, quietly, almost imperceptibly, after a year or two, the triumphant “Mass of the Resurrection” yielded to the more realistic “Mass of Christian Burial.” Its prayers and readings are filled with faith, but they are less euphoric. The Lord will in the future wipe away the tears from every eye – but not now. The person who is dead has been totally freed from the power of sin-but we who live on have not! jesus knew something of the glory he was called to-we simply do not. We do not know where our loved ones have been taken to and we want them back. The pain of separation is intense, as it was for jesus’ friends after they lost him. We may not forget that the eucharistic meal that we eat commemorates a departure: a wrenching, tearful separation.

Your grief is your own, all the days of your life. Let no-one deprive you of it, not even out of love. Pain is inseparable from love; that is a truth we must live with. It is a proof of our own inner reality, a judgment of ourselves, as to how and with what courage we face and accept that truth.

– Gerard S. Sloyan. From Virginia Sloyan, A Sourcebook about Christian Death. p.102-103.

Ephesians 1.11-23, Luke 6.20-31 

All Saint’s Day: Sunday, 3 November 2019, Eldroth

 

We don’t celebrate All Saint’s Day like we used to. This most primal time of year has ever been a time of the setting-of-fires, of trickery, and of the remembrance of the dead: it’s deeply ingrained in us. According to the historian Ronald Hutton, ‘By the end of the Middle Ages, the Christian feast of the dead, known as Hallowtide, Hollontide, or Allantide, had developed into a spectacular affair.’

After lamplit processions and lavish entertainments, revellers dispersed to their respective parish churches for evensong for the most famous ritual of the night, the ringing of church bells to comfort the souls in purgatory after the congregation had offered prayers for them…. In these ways the opening of the season of darkness and cold had been made into an opportunity to confront the greatest fear known to humans, that of death, and the greatest known to Christians, that of damnation. [1]

Now as Hutton points out, the Protestant Reformation outlawed many of these activities, doing away with the notion of purgatory and the need to ask the saints to intercede for us. All Saints became ‘a day on which to commemorate saints as outstandingly godly human beings, not as semi-divine intercessors; the prayers for the dead were, of course, abolished once more.’ Opposition to this was strong. Especially in the particularly-Catholic north of Lancashire, where bonfires blazed on the hills along the Ribble Valley. In Whalley families would gather on the hills at midnight on the eve of All Saints’, one holding a large bunch of burning straw at the end of a fork while the others, in a circle, prayed for their dead. 

In our ecumenical times we gather here today as a company of people who have embraced Protestantism but who may also still have a feel and a respect for the value of some of the older rituals. We understand that rituals can and should alter as society constantly shifts. We can live with the contradictions this brings, even embrace them and learn from them.  Today I imagine that most of us here probably don’t regard the saints as semi-divine intercessors. Though we may respect those who do. Do we, though, still regard saints as outstandingly godly human beings?

Some of us struggle with this idea. A friend of mine wrote about his experience of soul-searching about his own life and faith, saying: “I needed to recover words like ‘saint’, the ‘righteous’ and ‘prophet’ from the religious ghetto where they mean long dead people who weren’t ordinary like me. They did magic things, and God spoke to them in magic ways and theologians had buried them under mountains of words. I decided that the real, breathing men had to be like us if they were to be of any use to us.” [2] When we talk about saints we assume we’re talking about the great people of faith. Those who put their lives on the line for their faith, those who made amazing sacrifices to witness for God. But we can also embrace the seeming contradiction that the saints were not perfect. That is something which today’s Halloween invites us to see: that we each have a darker side. We are all riddled with contradictions. The church at its best also recognises this. We mustn’t forget that even the greatest saints were – and are – also sinners. 

From Mary Magdalene right through to Mother Teresa of Calcutta – whose working methods have been posthumously questioned, causing some to call Mother Teresa ‘a sign of contradiction’, that is, a holy person whose holiness is nevertheless under dispute. [3] So the saints can be ‘signs of contradiction’. Even the saints are human. And this opens up for us the beautiful truth that even you and me, we – flawed contradictory humans, can be saints. 

Jesus himself was called ‘a sign of contradiction’, by Simeon in the temple. The old man held the child Jesus in his arms and praised God, calling Jesus ‘a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.’ But he also said that Jesus would be ‘a sign that will be spoken against’. The early Christians were also held in question, being a sect of people who others were wary of. In the current questioning in our society, we practicing Christians know how that feels. 

And the teachings of Jesus seemed to embrace contradiction too, not least his sermon which opened with the words ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ – a statement which suggests that the least likely people are the sainted ones. Jesus regards the unlikeliest people as saints. The most blessed ones are the little ones, the struggling ones, the hungry ones, the wounded ones, those who feel the injustices of the world so keenly that it upsets them deeply. 

These blessed ones contradict all expectations. They sound, oddly, rather like you and me, trying to live faithful lives, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. How then, do we come to this question of what makes a saint? 

We might come to this question feeling poor in spirit, but if we come to Jesus then he tells us that the kingdom of heaven is ours. 

We might come mourning, but if we do then God promises that we will be comforted. 

We might come meekly, nervously, with just a tiny bit of faith, but if we come in this condition Jesus says we should expect to inherit the earth. 

We might come hungry and thirsty for righteousness, full of concerns about the world’s suffering ones, aching to see wrongs righted. And if we do then God promises to respond. 

So, if we come as we are – that is, if we come to Jesus as we are – then we find that he places us in the company of the saints. It is astonishingly simple. It is all there is to the kingdom of heaven. 

The saints are those who accept their membership of the kingdom, and despite feeling unworthy, despite being mocked, perhaps, or opposed, despite imagining themselves to be ‘signs of contradiction’, the saints are those who hold on to their membership of the kingdom and let it deeply affect the way that they live. Remain in the love of God – and belong in the company of all the saints.

Now that is something worth lighting fires for; that is something worth ringing bells to celebrate. That is something to dispel our fears of death, and of damnation; that is something to enlighten us at this dark time of year. 

 

Notes 

Previously preached in Liverpool in 2008, St Columba’s Church Gruline and Sparkford, Somerset 2017. The beatitudes section of this talk borrows heavily from my earlier sermon Kingdom healing and the beautiful game, 2005.

[1] Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun; A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, p.371 

[2] Jim Hart, quoted in my blog of July 28, 2004.

[3] At St Columba’s Church Gruline I here discussed the ancient saint Columba, holding in tension being a warrior-prince with Irish blood on his hands, and being the leader of a monastic missionary community.

Job 19.23-27, Luke 20.27-38

Remembrance Sunday, 10 November 2019

Austwick, Clapham

Based on a blog post by Connie Ruzich.

 

Like a soldier in the trenches terribly burned by a bomb blast, so Job’s skin was awfully ruined by a skin disease. Like a napalmed child in a contemporary conflict so too Job’s flesh had melted away. And yet in the midst of his awful suffering – amplified by the loss of his family, his home, his livelihood – he had this to say:

I know that my Redeemer lives,

    and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

and after my skin has been thus destroyed,

    then in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see on my side…

In the valley of the shadow of death that was the Great War, soldiers and civilians across Europe found comfort in assuring themselves that God was on their side. Yes, on their side in terms of the rightness of their cause – but also onside with them in their suffering. Writing long after the war, British soldier-poet Robert Graves recalled that

Christ was being evoked alike by the Germans and the Allies for victory in a new sort of total war. This paradox made most of us English soldiers serving in the purgatorial trenches lose all respect for organised Pauline religion, though still feeling a sympathetic reverence for Jesus as our fellow-sufferer. Cross-road Calvaries emphasised this relationship.” [1] 

As evidence of this common connection forged between Christ and soldiers, Graves quotes an excerpt from Wilfred Owen’s poem “At a Calvary near the Ancre”:

One ever hangs where shelled roads part.

In this war He too lost a limb,

But His disciples hide apart;

And now the Soldiers bear with Him.

In his poem “Solomon in All His Glory,” First World War military chaplain Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy likens the “bloody sweaty tatters” of the wounded to “the robes of Jesus Christ,” and Paul Fussell, in The Great War and Modern Memory, writes, “The sacrificial theme, in which each soldier becomes a type of the crucified Christ, is at the heart of countless Great War poems.”[2]

But perhaps the best-known poem of the war that linked Christ and front-line soldiers was written by a woman on the home front. “Christ in Flanders” was written by Lucy Whitmell, former president of the Leeds Astronomical Society, wife of astronomer Charles Whitmell, and sister of a war nurse.  The poem first appeared in London’s Spectator on September 11th in 1915, and it was reprinted as a leaflet, card, and gospel tract, selling over 50,000 copies.[3] Lucy Whitmell did not live to see the end of the war, but died in May of 1917 and is buried at Lawnswood Cemetery in Adel, a suburb of Leeds.  The inscription on the side of her headstone reads, “She wrote ‘Christ in Flanders.’”

Christ in Flanders – Lucy Whitmell

 

We had forgotten You, or very nearly –

You did not seem to touch us very nearly – 

Of course we thought about You now and then;

Especially in any time of trouble –

We knew that You were good in time of trouble –

But we are very ordinary men.  

 

And there were always other things to think of –

There’s lots of things a man has got to think of –

His work, his home, his pleasure, and his wife;

And so we only thought of You on Sunday –

Sometimes, perhaps, not even on a Sunday –

Because there’s always lots to fill one’s life.

 

And, all the while, in street or lane or byway –

In country lane, in city street, or byway –

You walked among us, and we did not see.

Your feet were bleeding as You walked our pavements –

How did we miss Your footprints on our pavements? –

Can there be other folk as blind as we?

 

Now we remember; over here in Flanders –

(It isn’t strange to think of You in Flanders) –

This hideous warfare seems to make things clear.

We never thought about You much in England –

But now that we are far away from England,

We have no doubts, we know that You are here. 

 

You helped us pass the jest along the trenches –

Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches –

You touched its ribaldry and made it fine.

You stood beside us in our pain and weakness –

We’re glad to think You understand our weakness –

Somehow it seems to help us not to whine.

 

We think about You kneeling in the Garden –

Ah! God! the agony of that dread Garden –

We know You prayed for us upon the cross.

If anything could make us glad to bear it –

’Twould be the knowledge that You willed to bear it –

Pain – death – the uttermost of human loss.

 

Though we forgot You – You will not forget us –

We feel so sure that You will not forget us –

But stay with us until this dream is past.

And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon –

Especially, I think, we ask for pardon –

And that You’ll stand beside us to the last.

Some critics think this poem sentimental, yet “Christ in Flanders” was deeply comforting to many.

[For] Rather than using abstract concepts of Christian spiritual belief, like “glory,” Whitmell imagines how thoughts of Christ help comfort the men in the trenches …. Christ becomes a comrade, a sharer in trench life and its jests.  Though wartime suffering and death is still portrayed as the will of God, it is the will of God humanised, prayed for by a man suffering on his own, personal cross.[4]

Two years after the poem was first published, the Spectator published another poem, presumably written by a soldier, entitled “To the Writer of ‘Christ in Flanders:’”[5]

On the battlefields of Flanders men have blessed you in their pain:

For you told us Who was with us, and your words were not in vain.

All you said was very gentle, but we felt you knew our ways;

And we tried to find the Footprints we had missed in other days.

When we found Those blood-stained Footsteps, we have followed to the End;

For we know that only Death can show the features of our Friend.

In the Mansions of the Master, He will make the meaning plain

Of the battlefields of Flanders, of the Crucifix of Pain.                       – E.M.V.

Remembrance services like ours today express the irony that the forces of human nature which can be so life-affirming and life-giving are equally capable of tearing us apart; that we as individuals, as communities, as peoples and nations, carry in us the power to be both death-dealing and world-creating; that civilisation is both divine and demonic in nature. [6]

Even while we destroy each other we yearn for healing; even while we punish and scapegoat and exclude others we long for life. The poets we have heard from this morning had an intuition – that the God who suffers when we do, is the God of life, the God who only deals in life, even at the time of death; the God to whom all – living and dead – are alive. In a world of suffering these voices carry through the ages, entreating us to know that our Redeemer lives.

 

Notes

This talk is a slightly edited version of the blog post by Connie Ruzich, Behind their Lines: Poetry of the Great War. Christ in Flanders. 

[1] Robert Graves, 5 Pens in Hand, Doubleday, 1958, p. 123.

[2] Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford UP, 2000, p. 119. 

[3] “By the Way,” New Outlook, vol. 113, 9 Aug. 1916, p. 878. Additionally, a notice in the Spectator appearing on 14 Sept. 1918 advertised, “Mrs. Whitmell’s poem ‘Christ in Flanders,’ which, since its first appearance in the Spectator for September 11, 1915, has found appreciative readers throughout the English-speaking world, has been set to music by Mr. Henry Guise (Novelle, 2s. net).”

[4] Amy Helen Bell, “Nought were we spared”: British Women Poets of the Great War, Master’s Thesis, Dalhousie University, 1996, p. 169.

[5] E.M.V., “To the Writer of ‘Christ in Flanders,’” Spectator, 13 Jan. 1917, p. 45.  The poem appeared next to another poem featured in Connie Ruzich’s blog: Mary Adair Macdonald’s “Epiphany Vision.”

[6] Terry Eagleton, Radical Sacrifice. p.17.