Month: July 2021

Ephesians 4.1-16 , John 6.24-35 

 The Ninth Sunday after Trinity, 1 August 2021, Eldroth

You need to grow up, Paul tells the Ephesian believers. Now, they were grown up – fully-formed adults who’d taken the familiar paths through family life, work life, community life, including that big decision to deviate from the practice of the religion of their birth, to follow Christ. But nevertheless, to this audience of responsible adults, Paul said, you need to grow up. You need to come ‘to maturity [in the faith], to the measure of the full stature of Christ’.

Now if I said to you, ’you need to grow up’ – how would you take it? For you are grown up.  Let me approach the question in another way: by asking you, when did you become an adult?

Think hard about this one. I don’t mean what year was it when you reached the age of majority? In asking when you became an adult I’m inviting you to consider something deeper: to recall that experience in life which changed you from what Paul describes as a child, tossed to and fro by other people, into a person with your own knowledge – self-knowledge, and knowledge of the world and how it works and of other people and how they behave: adult knowledge, not necessarily comfortable knowledge, but knowledge which deepened you and strengthened you in a way which makes you think, that was the time when I grew up, that was the experience which turned me into an adult.

A friend of mine who is fond of doing things like this, once asked his wide circle of friends this question, when did you become an adult?, and invited us to share our answers. [1] One person said, “In some ways I’ve been an adult since I was about 8 years old. I had to look after myself for significant periods of time, get myself to and from places like school etc. My mother is very much a child in an adult’s body, and I have had to look after most of my needs as a child as she was just not able to. I think I have always been the adult in my family, as neither of my parents were available to be that person, so I learned quickly how to be independent, look after myself and look after others. At other times, I still wonder if I am an adult now? I’m 40, but there are still so many times when I just don’t feel like I’ve grown up at all! I struggle so much with relationships and being level headed, that I feel like I can still act like a difficult teenager! I can still throw an almighty strop when my buttons are pushed and act out or be moody!”

This person wonders if their having to act grown-up whilst very young meant that they’ve never really had the chance to be a child – and maybe that’s why they sometimes act childishly now!

Another person thought that they became an adult when their parents divorced when they were around 14. They said, “Suddenly I felt the need to be the man of the house, this created huge amounts of friction with mums new partner, eventually leading to me moving out. A bit of a bump start to adulthood!” Again, another person said: “I know it sounds like a cliche but I think I became an adult when I reached 30 when my first child was born: I had to go through the fear of looking after and responsible for another person, although sometimes I still feel as if I’m a little boy now.”

When did you become an adult? My grandfather would say that he could never enter his second childhood as he hadn’t finished his first one yet. Maybe you feel like that too!

Another person, when asked this question, replied that, “Becoming an adult is not about responsibility, it’s not about age, it’s not about taking on a family or a financial commitment because having kids and a mortgage doesn’t make you an adult. What defines being an adult is your own stability, realising you are an adult is when you wake every day and stop having those moments where you just want to vanish and hide. As an adult, whatever your circumstances, you will feel stable and have so many good things in your life that you couldn’t possibly walk out on them, even if you had the desire to do so. Being an adult is realising the grass is not always greener and feeling secure enough to ride out the hard moments in life without feeling like you just want to run away and start again somewhere else.” This same person ended their story by saying that, “Me personally, I’m not an adult…I still want to run.”

What did Paul mean when he said to the Christian believers, you need to grow up; you need to come ‘to maturity in the faith, to the measure of the full stature of Christ’…? The question he poses to us is, how do you become a Christian adult?

And helpfully, he gives us three answers. First he says, you become a Christian adult when you’re no longer childishly ‘tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming’. You mature when you cease being influenced by other people’s whims and desires and determine to follow the way of Christ, in all things, every day.

The second thing Paul says is that we become Christian adults when, ‘speaking the truth in love, we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head of the body.’ This encourages us to see that growing into Christian maturity is not a solo effort but something we do together; as we share our lives, our hearts, our thoughts, as we work together with Christ in service of the world: we grow together in maturity of our faith. In turn, the demanding common task of maturing together in faith creates community. [2] 

Paul’s third and last point is to tell us that Christian adulthood involves our recognising that each of us is equipped to play our part in the body of Christ. That’s right, it’s not just the vicar who has the means to do this, it’s all of us together who make this body function, by the grace of Christ. Paul tells us that when each part is working properly, then the body grows in building itself up in love. ‘The gifts God gives us are that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.’ You are gifted, and you mature as a Christian when you recognise the gifts you have and find ways to exercise them for the good of all.

When did you become a Christian adult? Or are you still on that journey of becoming?

One sign of maturity is when we change our diet, from the sweet but unhealthy foods beloved of children, to those foods which we choose because we know they are good for our health. For Christians maturity comes when we recognise the unedifying parts of our diet in life – those unhealthy influences, obsessions, and desires of ours – and when we determine instead to eat of the bread of life; recognising that this is how we’ll be filled and fulfilled, that our faith will make us whole. 

May God help us all – whatever our maturity in years – to keep growing into maturity in Christ, and to enjoy all that means. God help us to keep encouraging each other in our Christian  maturity, and in working together to feed the world around us with this wonderful bread of life.

Notes 

See also my previous sermon on these passages,  John 6: The bread of life and the growth to maturity, preached in Devon, 2012.

[1] Pip Wilson, BECOMING QUESTIONS Number 15. When did you become an Adult: why and when? Pip Wilson blog, 7 August 2016. Pip, a ‘worker with people’ invited his friends to give their permission to share their answers with others online. These testimonies are drawn from this web page.

[2] George Macleod, founder of the Iona Community, is often cited as having said, ‘Only a demanding common task can build community.’ Neil Paynter (ed), This Is the Day: Readings and Meditations from the Iona Community. p.21

Ephesians 3.14-21, John 6.1-15 

The Eighth Sunday after Trinity, 25 July 2021, Austwick, Keasden

 He has given us so much – that we want him to give us more.

They couldn’t get enough of Jesus. The crowds who constantly pursued him, hanging on his every word, watching his every move, craving his attention, wanting to be close to him, be fed by him. Like fans surrounding an Olympic sports star outside a Tokyo hotel, the Galilean crowds hemmed Jesus in. He taught them, and they wanted more. He healed them, and they wanted more. He had no time to himself, even to eat, and they wouldn’t leave him be. Jesus tried to escape them to recuperate. They kept on looking for him until they found him again. 

That’s what we, the masses, do: we convey greatness on those who stand out from the crowd, and then follow them everywhere for a taste of, and a share in, their greatness. Crowds crave to turn gifted or original people into heroes, put otherwise ordinary people onto pedestals, whether they’re sportsmen and women, or show-business icons, or political or religious figureheads: that’s an undercurrent of so many of today’s news stories around our Olympic athletes. Our craving for them is insatiable: Tom Daley, Adam Peaty, Laura Kenny, Dina Asher-Smith: they have given us so much – that we want them to give us more.

We know that Jesus ‘was moved with pity’ for the crowds ‘because they were as sheep without a shepherd’, [2] and they just couldn’t get enough of him; they had an unlimited appetite for Jesus; they were addicted. He’d started as their teacher, then became their healer; they began to call him a prophet, and now, after eating their fill of the miraculous loaves and fishes, they wanted even more from him: they wanted to make him their king. This endless urge of unrequited desire is an aspect of human nature which theologian Gil Bailie calls a ‘famished craving’. [3]

The famished craving describes that urge within our societies to be always craving something new. It describes our desire for the attention of others, and what they can give us, a hunger which is always unfulfilled.

The Galilean crowds desired to make Jesus a king, this figure who fascinated them for a while. Like celebrities, kings are really sacrificial victims with a suspended sentence, ones who fascinate us for a time, until our famished craving devours them. Those we elevate we eventually turn our backs on. Poor old Mo Farah – we elevated him to a knight of the realm and now we’ve relegated him to the twilight zone of reality TV show appearances. And similarly, the Galilean crowd who had earlier wanted to make Jesus a king, rejected him at Calvary, chanting Barabbas’ name instead. [4]

At those moments when our country is in the grip of an Olympic obsession, or a Wimbledon obsession, or a Gareth Southgate or a Prince William obsession – is that a famished craving? Or our current urgent drive to get back out into the shops, to crowd together into restaurants and theatres and concert halls – is that a famished craving? Or the booming desire for more novelty in our diet, spurring-on an ever-expanding global market in food, an underlying cause of the rise in viral catastrophes and pandemics – might we call that a famished craving? Our addiction to social media and our smartphones – is that a famished craving? Or the astonishing boom in production and sales of every kind of consumer item over the past four decades, exponentially higher than ever before, at the very same time we have known more clearly than ever how our rapacity is destroying the planet – is this the ultimate famished craving of all?

Our hunger for others to feed us, physically and emotionally, is insatiable. We have received so much – that we want to have more … and more … and more…

The pleasure in such things is intense, but fleeting; and in this pandemic, and in this end-time of global overheating, we’re more aware than ever of the added physical risks posed by our unbounded appetites. And yet how quickly we will turn on our leaders and on each other when we come up against the finite limits of our ability to fulfil our, and each others, desires.

But – in this world of famished cravings, notice how the compassionate Jesus doesn’t give the crowds what they want or think they need: he refuses to feed into and off their obsession with him. Rather, he simply sees that they are hungry and feeds them loaves and fish. With a little boy’s help he shares a gift to release these masses from their world of craving – and to invite them to simply trust in his provision instead. The miracle of course – the ridiculous overspilling of food he produces for them – shows just how superabundant his provision is.

In a finite world where our cravings will never stop famishing us, Jesus invites us to receive instead of his abundance – where there is no limit at all on how much our compassionate God can do for us. Some Christians have understood this and lived joyful celebratory lives craving nothing in this world except, in the words of Paul to the Ephesians, ‘to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, [to] be filled with all the fullness of God.’

One of the happiest, most fulfilled people I’ve ever known was a Franciscan brother who I used to visit at his communal home just off the teeming Whitechapel Road in east London, a townhouse which was a haven of peace and contentment. In his tiny room Bernard’s worldly possessions amounted to little more than a change of clothes, a couple of books and some writing materials. And yet he craved nothing else, for he had learned to trust alone in God’s abundance, and to receive from it every day. 

Now the ascetic lifestyle isn’t for everyone, but we can each make Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians our own: that setting aside our famished cravings we may find health and healing by looking to God hour by hour – so that ‘we may be strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are rooted and grounded in love’. In today’s parlance, this is about cultivating good mental health, spiritual well-being.

Paul’s prayer speaks explicitly to us, today’s crowds with all our famished cravings. He announces the good news of Jesus’ world of abundance. His prayer is ‘that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’

May we make this our prayer for ourselves, to learn to leave that world of restless craving behind and to focus all our desires on God, who provides for us profusely. So that we can join in Paul’s wonderful affirmation: 

[That] to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Notes

[1] This is a rewrite of The famished craving: He has given us so much – that we want him to give us more, preached in Somerset in 2015, which was in turn based on John 6: The famished craving, a sermon I first preached at the time of the 2012 London Olympics.

[2] Mark 6.34

[3] Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Proper 13B, especially the section referencing Gil Bailie’s audio tape series, ‘The Famished Craving: The Attention of Others, the Fascination for the Famous, and the Need for Faith’. Bailie draws on a line in T.S. Eliot’s poem Gerontion, ‘And what [History] gives, gives with such supple confusions / That the giving famishes the craving….’

[4] Nuechterlein on Bailie, op. cit.

Jeremiah 23.1-6, Psalm 23, Mark 6.30-34, 53-56

 The Seventh Sunday after Trinity, 18 July 2021

Clapham, Eldroth

Gathering the mountain, Ingleborough 2021. Photograph: John Bentley

We have been wandering the wilds for some time: how we long to be gathered in safety.

Out in all weathers from foulest to fair: how we long to be gathered in safety.

Blown by the wind, scorched by the sun, soaked by the rain, stuck in the mud: how we long to be gathered in safety.

How we long to be gathered safely again with those who lost track, on the way.

How we long to be able to chew cud together once more, and pass the time of the day.

How we long to be able to call and respond all those things we’ve been longing to say.

That very atmospheric photograph of some of our local shepherds ‘gathering the mountain’ on Ingleborough last month, illustrates something which is a deep part of our cultural heritage around here: the gathering-in of the sheep for shearing is one of those centuries-old shepherding practices which mark out our year, every year, and it’s fitting for us to contemplate it today, this being one of those Sundays in the Church’s calendar when our scripture readings invite us to see God as our good shepherd, and ourselves as the flock who he gathers. [1]

And this theme of gathering together again after a long time apart, is so very current, as tomorrow in England sees the lifting of legal restrictions on our meeting and travelling. This will be both a relief and a cause of anxiety: what politicians are calling ‘Freedom Day’ feels less liberating than it might, as we’re asked to enter it with caution, and with particular care for others, especially those who are most vulnerable to Covid-19. 

How we long to be gathered together again with friends, family and neighbours who we may have kept in touch with over the past 16 months but who we’ve not been able – or felt able – to see.  But we long to be gathered in safety. 

For some, church is a gathering-place which has felt a little off-limits during this pandemic. Besides the obvious risks involved in being in an enclosed space with others, the experience of worshipping without singing, of wearing a mask in the pew, of being unable to kneel alongside others at the communion rail and not taking the wine from the common cup, has been strange – and for some, strange enough to keep us away. Understandable.

But church also offers something very rich, very real, to those seeking reassurance in this shifting situation. It offers us the riches of our faith tradition. For as surely as our local shepherds gather in their flock from the mountain each year, so also surely our God promises to bring his flock back to our fold, the place of safety, security, community.

If we are feeling that ‘the world beyond our doorstep no longer makes much sense’; if we are feeling that the ‘pressure wrought by changes [has become] too much to bear’, [2] God promises us that we ‘shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing’.

Just as the shepherds combine together to gather in their flocks, so the three persons of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, work in perfect community to gather us in and restore us to ourselves and each other. 

The Father, the creator and source of all life – in whom each person is uniquely formed and by  whom each person is uniquely valued; through whom we can be the people we were made to be; gathers us to become ourselves again, to renew our sense of our place in the world.

Jesus the Son, who has compassion on those whose world has lost all meaning, who longs to lead into better times those who now feel like sheep without a shepherd; gathers us to know we are loved.

And the Holy Spirit, whose presence at all times and in all situations can help us to pray; gathers us  to renew our sense of the certainty of God’s care and direction for us all.

The thing about gathering the mountain, I’d imagine, is that it’s a joint effort. It’s the work of men and dogs and sheep together in motion, united in a common task, moving towards a common goal, each understanding the ways of the other and responding in kind. 

The thing about being God’s flock is that we share in his gathering together. It’s never an isolated experience. And so as we gradually emerge into company again to tentatively meet and catch up and hear each other’s stories we rediscover the joy of realising ‘that each [of us] affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.’ [3] 

We can help each other come to terms with the circumstances of our day and times by sharing how we are dealing with them. In doing so we strengthen and shield each other – physically, emotionally, psychologically – in ways which resonate today and will continue to resonate beyond this pandemic. [4] 

Notes

[1] Thanks to John Dawson for sharing John Bentley’s photograph (with his permission), and for his comments on it which informed this paragraph.

[2] Billy Bragg, I will be your shield. Billy Bragg © 2021. YouTube: https://youtu.be/DL7bjuGcRFU.

When things start to unravel

and days fill you with dread

and comments dent your confidence

confide in me instead.

 

When every little setback

just makes you want to cry

and the whole world seems against you

and you don’t know why

 

In the battle against your demons

I – I will be your shield

when the world has lost all meaning

together we’ll stand

for our love is the one thing that’s real

 

When pressure wrought by changes

becomes too much to bear

and pain stops you from functioning

trust in me to care

 

When the world beyond your doorstep

no longer makes much sense

and hostile thoughts surround you

I’ll come to your defence

 

I will be your shield

when the angry waves are pounding

I will be your shield

when the wind whips up the shore

I will be your shield

when you hear the thunder sounding

and the rain beats on your door

 

I will be your shield.

[3] Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, p.208. Thanks to Sheila Gooch for sharing this book.

[4] Billy Bragg, introductory notes to I will be your shield. Billy Bragg website.

Amos 7.7-15, Mark 6.14-29

The Sixth Sunday after Trinity, 11 July 2021: Austwick, Keasden

Hers is an old, old story but we moderns are still fascinated by Salome. We know her through the paintings of Gustave Moreau – over a hundred of them – in which Salome is ‘a seductive woman in gauzy fabric’, and through Gustav Klimt’s cold-eyed, bare-breasted Salome, with John’s red hair running through her bony fingers. We’ve revelled in watching Rita Hayworth dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils in her 1953 film; we’ve uncomfortably watched Oscar Wilde’s play and Richard Strauss’s opera, with their ‘nauseating’ action of Salome kissing John’s decapitated head on the mouth. [1] 

Salome: in popular imagination she is the quintessential femme fatale; or what one 19th century writer called ‘the symbolic incarnation of undying Lust, the Goddess of immortal Hysteria, the accursed Beauty exalted above all other beauties … the monstrous Beast, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning.’ [2] 

I want to tell you something which you may find surprising, even shocking, about today’s gospel passage. There is no Salome – there never has been a Salome – in this story. Mark never names the girl who dances at Herod’s birthday party: here she is known simply as ‘the little daughter of Herodias’. [3] 

The little daughter. Dancing away at the family party. If you think of family parties you’ve been to over the years, then you can imagine that this little daughter may be the toddler tumbling around the dance floor without skill but full of innocent joy, causing delight; the little daughter: she may be the youngster spinning and hopping and skipping around with wonderful abandon, raising smiles; the little daughter: she may be the bright-eyed one performing with skill and heart the moves she has so earnestly and delightedly learned just for this occasion, to the admiration of the adults watching.

The word which Mark uses to describe this girl is the same one he uses for Jairus’ daughter. Which suggests that, in our lingo, she’s a pre-teen. Today’s message is that we need to clean up our minds and change our ideas about Salome – and let this little daughter dance her childlike dance…

Some decades after Mark, the Jewish historian Josephus said that Herodias had a daughter called ‘Salome’; and from that time on, in popular thinking, the bible’s dancing little daughter somehow became an older girl, and sexualised: ‘the personification of the lascivious woman, a temptress who lures men away from salvation’. [4]

The scholar and dancer, artist and minister Angela Yarber says that,  

If we chalk the plays, the opera, the paintings, and the choreography up to extreme poetic licensing, then perhaps we can return to the heart of the text. And we’ll see the story of a little girl who was asked to dance by a family member at a party. I have many such memories from my own childhood [she says] as 1 cried “Watch me! Watch me!” to parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents while I leapt and twirled, filled with the childlike innocence that adults often forget … I am convinced that Salome’s dance was no different. [5] 

Based solely on what the text says, and even [the earliest] artistic renderings, it’s obvious that this scripture is about a little girl dancing for play and fun and then being taken advantage of by a conniving mother and uncle. [6]

This brings us to realise that as this little girl twirls and swirls in glee on the dance floor, she is oblivious to the whirlwind of lusts and desires of the adults encircling around her: sibling rivalry; the toxic love triangle of Herod, Herodias, and Herod’s brother; the murderous triangle of rivalry and desire between Herod, Herodias, and John; the action facilitated by the power of the crowd – the guests – in front of whom, despite himself, Herod felt obliged to perform the deadly task which would forever haunt him; incestuous undercurrents; the violence of misogyny.

The story does not disguise these desires, they’re too naked to be hidden; and we all know where they lead. They lead to a tiny daughter being handed a bloodied head on a plate to pass on to her waiting mother.

There is nothing in the story to suggest that the little daughter had any desire of her own to end John’s life. ‘Children don’t know how to desire and must be taught,’ writes Rene Girard. ‘Herod does not suggest anything to [her] because he offers her everything and anything. That is why she leaves him and goes to ask her mother what she should desire.’ Her mother’s desire becomes her own – an intense and urgent desire which so alters the little daughter that she rushes back to Herod with her demand. [7] She misunderstands her mother who in asking for John’s ‘head’ is really just saying she wants John dead. In her childish misreading of her mother’s words, the little daughter takes Herodias literally, looks around the dining room for ideas, and asks for the prophet’s head to be presented on a dinner plate. [8]  

Suddenly this ancient tale hits home; it’s as contemporary as this week’s regional news and the story told by a young woman called Kirsty McKell. Kirsty was a 15-year old dancer in a Legends show on Blackpool’s Central Pier back in 2002 when a 43-year-old performer in the same show, Clayton Sandlin, targeted her for abuse of various kinds including rape. She was someone’s little daughter caught up in an adult’s whirlwind of lusts and desires; a child who did not know how to desire and so was entirely vulnerable to Sandlin’s urges, in whose eyes Kirsty was a Salome. 

After the show ended Kirsty never danced professionally again; she said the trauma destroyed her life. “My first blueprint of men has been shrouded in rape and manipulation and grooming and so I’ve struggled my whole life to trust men,” she said. This week Sandlin was gaoled for eight years for these crimes. Only now, 20 years on, can Kirsty say she feels release from the control he has held over her life. [9]

Salome’s story is one with all the misunderstood stories of dancing girls all over the world. It is a  history which needs to be redeemed. [10] Recall how elsewhere in scripture ‘Jesus encourages us to see the child – the archetypal weaker, inferior ‘other’ – as our spiritual equal, from whom we have so much to learn and receive, through whom we encounter the kin-dom of God.’ [11] 

‘Let the little children come to me’, he said…. ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.’ [12]

Jesus calls us to clean up our minds; to do away with those things circling inside us and in our society which create creatures like Salome out of childlike girls. To give our full and pure attention to children for children’s sake, not ours. As we do so we make space to let the little daughters dance.   

Angela Yarber: Salome

Notes

[1] Wikipedia: Salome.

[2] Joris-Karl Huysmans, A rebours (Against Nature), pp. 65-66. Quoted in Ela Nutu, Salomé in Text and Performance: The Bible, Wilde and Strauss.

[3] The key word here in the original Greek is thygatros meaning a female child, or ‘little daughter’. See Angela Yarber, Painting Salome. Feminism and Religion, 12 November 2012.

[4] Wikipedia: Salome.

[5] Angela Yarber, Dance in Scripture: How Biblical Dancers Can Revolutionize Worship Today.

[6] Angela Yarber, Painting Salome. Feminism and Religion, 12 November 2012.

[7] René Girard, The Scapegoat. p.130-131.

[8] René Girard, The Scapegoat. p.136-137.

[9] Abbie Jones, Woman speaks out over Elvis performer rape ordeal. BBC North West Tonight, 6 July 2021.

[10] Angela Yarber, Painting Salome. Feminism and Religion, 12 November 2012.

[11] Al Barrett and Ruth Harley: Being Interrupted: Reimagining the Church’s Mission from the Outside, In. p113.

[12] Mark 9.42.