Month: May 2023

Isaiah 40.12-17,27-31, Matthew 28.16-20

Trinity Sunday, 4 June 2023, Eldroth, Clapham

‘Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles…..’ 

I don’t know about you but – in the week when I turn 61 – I feel like I’ve reached the time of life that whenever I rise up – from my bed, from my chair – I can’t do so without letting out an involuntary groan…. ‘Aaaaaaaagh…..’ I exhale: ‘My back; my knees…’ Far from mounting up like an eagle, I feel more like an overweight pigeon wobbling slowly towards more food.

The scriptures are full of encouragement for the elders: last week we heard God declaring that he will pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, and … ‘your old men shall dream dreams’ – of a better future for all, which the Holy Spirit gives us power to shape. Today, we hear this promise: that God gives power and strength to the faint and weary; this wonderful image that ‘those who wait for the Lord’ will renew their strength and ‘mount up with wings like eagles’. 

Now, waiting is something which we are very used to doing. Whilst I mention my aches and pains, these are nothing compared to the extreme pain felt by those whose hip operation has been delayed for months, even years, on a waiting list. 

Waiting is a common human experience, of course, whether waiting at the traffic lights or at the pharmacy, or for exam results, or for a wedding. Last weekend, with friends far and wide, I was waiting with dread for my football team to be relegated… thankfully in the end we were spared. [1]

Probably the profoundest experience of waiting, which humans share with all the other creatures, is in a pregnancy: a lengthy time of waiting, with all the physical changes and challenges the mother experiences, and her, and others’, emotional ups and downs whist the unknown arrival time gets closer. 

And think of the bald eagles, incubating their eggs for 35 days, with the much larger and tougher female bird taking the longer incubation periods overnight or during storms to protect her precious young.

Life teaches us to wait with patience; though we wait impatiently too. Life teaches us to wait with confidence; but nerves and fears can overcome us in our waiting. Life teaches us to wait in hope; but sometimes we give in to the prevailing spirit of the world which wants us to give up and give in to the lie that the way things are, are the way they always will be: this, I suggest, is waiting without the Lord.

So, what does ‘waiting for the Lord’ mean? If those who wait for the Lord renew their strength, and mount up with wings like eagles, if they run and not be weary, if they walk and not faint, then we should consider this question deeply and often, for it will help us in our times of waiting.

Pat Bennett, a writer with a dual background in medicine and theology, who specialises in exploring the boundary between religious practice and health, has some helpful things to teach us about waiting for the Lord. [2]

Waiting for the Lord, she says,  is not dead time, but a dreaming time, through which new ideas and insights are engendered. We may take and use the dreaming times to re-imagine the world.

Waiting for the Lord, she says,  is not lost time, but a liminal time, a time of transition, within which new possibilities and patterns take form. We may inhabit and use the liminal times to discover the patterns of God.

Waiting for the Lord, she says,  is not quiescent time, a time of inactivity, but a quickening time, from which new life and love emerges. We may embrace and use the quickening times to learn how to live and love.

Waiting for the Lord is an act of will, a decision of the heart. It is founded on our trust for him, and we show our trust by seeking him out in reading the scriptures, speaking and listening to him in prayer,  

We confess that sometimes we have waited without thought, and so have stifled fruitful possibility.

We confess that sometimes we have waited without generosity and so have constricted fruitful connection.

We confess that sometimes we have waited without hope and so have limited fruitful action.

We confess that sometimes we have simply been too busy or too distracted to wait, and so have missed God’s moment.

Whenever we turn and look for God, he will forgive the poverty of our waiting. When we turn and  wait for him, God will touch our dreaming, stretch our living and energise our acting.

You know, our times of worship are times of waiting for the Lord; and especially here, around the communion table, where we ‘inhabit God’s time’. This is a place where ‘we recognise that the One for whom we wait is also the one who is already, and always, here with us’.

So whether we come here ‘hopefully, like we are watching for the dawn, or anxiously, like we are dreading first light, whether we come waiting with hope, or hiding our face; however we come, we can come with quiet confidence because God is already here, watching for our coming, and waiting  with love and joy to welcome us in.’

Here we remember Jesus, who, whilst waiting to be betrayed, shared supper with his friends, blessing and breaking bread, and pouring and sharing wine, so that we might re-imagine love.

Here we remember Jesus, who, waiting in the tomb for God’s moment, threw down the gates of hell and drew the sting of death so that we might re-imagine the world.

Here we remember Jesus, who knows what it is to wait, and who shows us what it is to wait well.

May we allow the Holy Spirit to transform our times of watching and waiting into times of watching and waiting for the Lord. And in that way may we find that we may rise… on wings…and renew our strength.

 

Notes

[1] Everton 1 Bournemouth 0. Match Report. evertonfc.com, 28 May 2023.

[2] The second part of this talk is based substantially on the words of Pat Bennett, In This Season of Waiting: A communion liturgy for Advent, ionabooks.com. Pat Bennett, Oxford Brookes University, Religion and Theology, Post-Doc, CV.

Acts 2.1-21, John 20.19-23

Pentecost, 28 May 2023, Austwick, Clapham, Keasden

We know that the world is more than what we can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. Life has taught us to comprehend that, beyond these senses, there are forces just as active, just as potent, just as real. We use the word ‘spiritual’ to explain them. And the term ‘spirituality’ describes this numinous dimension of our lives which we might experience alone, through prayer or contemplation; or through acts of worship, praise or ritual which we share with others. Whether in church or concert hall, synagogue or sports stadium, whether celebrating a coronation or protesting it: there is a spirituality to each of those group activities: there is a spirit to whatever people gather to do.

There are some times when the spiritual forces in the world erupt so strongly that everyone can see their effects. Our news media is quick to alert us when a spirit of violence erupts on our streets, as it did in Cardiff this week, for instance. [1] But there are many other moments when people come together in a spirit of goodwill, a spirit which transcends the usual barriers between them.

Pentecost, which we celebrate today, is one such occasion. It was an interruption to the usual way of life; it was a rupture in the material world which upset the normal balance of things, and opened up new horizons for the many-and-varied peoples who experienced it.

Within the sights and tastes and smells of Jerusalem’s streets at festival time, by the Holy Spirit people found themselves speaking to others they’d previously never contemplated approaching. By the Holy Spirit some found themselves being blessed by strangers they’d never expected to meet. We might imagine the joy in those streets, where suddenly everyone knew and was known, where everyone understood and was understood, accepted and was accepted, each by the other, each by all, as their tribal, racial, religious, differences melted away. By the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost proclaimed that the deepest work of the Holy Spirit is reconciling people ‘to God, to creation, to one another and to themselves’. And, as Samuel Wells declares, reconciliation is the work of all people who seek God: it is ‘the central work of the church in ministry and mission’. [2]

Reconciliation will upset the normal balance of life, for the new relationships and horizons it opens up are contrary to the prevailing spirits in our world.

The world’s prevailing spirits persuade us that we are individuals, islands to ourselves. But the Holy Spirit draws us into community, where together, however different from each other we may be, we share our God-given humanity.

The world’s prevailing spirits persuade us that we must be divided by our nationalities, classes, sexualities, genders, each struggling to be known and valued, in competition with the others; and that our way is the normal and only way to live and see the world. But in the Holy Spirit these distinctions are eclipsed by mutual appreciation, mutual understanding.

The world’s prevailing spirits persuade us older folk to ‘give up on the future’; as we see that the old materialist promises of a wealthier, healthier life for all, are built on human misery and the exploitation of the earth; as we sense that ‘it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to [this present system which rules and divides us]’; [3] but in the Holy Spirit, we are told, ‘our old men shall dream dreams’: of a world where all peoples are reconciled to each other and to the earth itself.

The world’s prevailing spirits disavow young people when they try to raise their voices in protest or in hope; but in the Holy Spirit, we are told, ‘our sons and daughters shall prophesy’. Prophecy, in scripture, means defining the signs of the times, speaking truth to power. In the Holy Spirit our young people’s truths vitally contribute towards reconciliation between generations.

The world’s prevailing spirits ensure that those who are enslaved remain unseen and unheard; but in scripture God says that ‘Even upon my slaves, both men and women, … I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy’. In the Holy Spirit a trigger towards reconciliation is that those most marginalised by this present system which rules us, will be heard, as they proclaim God’s truth in their way. 

In a broken world, reconciling disparate peoples is a great challenge. As they gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival, did the Parthians and Medes always see eye to eye? Did the Mesopotamians and Judeans have very much in common? Would the Egyptians and the Libyans have avoided each other? How did the native Jerusalemites view the Jews who visited from Rome?

Jerusalem at Pentecost was a multi-racial place, where people of quite different cultures and world-views, habits and behaviours, rubbed up against each other. Mostly they were people on the move, travelling people, coming into the settled city of their hosts. The Holy Spirit’s release of understanding leading to reconciliation is all the more remarkable for having taken place in a situation of such tension and flux. 

And so to our world today, still in tension and flux. What are we to make of the truth that, far from shrinking, as it may seem from our English countryside, Christianity is flourishing worldwide? How do you feel about the news that our brothers and sisters in Christ are growing by the thousands daily in Asia and Africa? And that in England, too, there is significant growth – among the black-majority churches of our cities. ‘In the borough of Southwark in south London alone around 20,000 people attend church every Sunday. This is the greatest concentration of African Christianity outside Africa’. Mostly Pentecostal, their life and worship is driven by the promptings of the Holy Spirit. [4]

Does such news rupture our view of the world, and upset our normal balance of things? Does it make us wonder whether this means we have to change our ways of worship to the way the black-majority churches do it? I’d say not. For after Pentecost, we can be sure that the Mesopotamians and Judeans returned home still being Mesopotamian and Judean; but having experienced the Holy Spirit they might then have been supportive, and open to learning, from each other.

All people of faith are on a journey, even those who have lived most of their lives in one place, and worshipped most of their lives in one way. We are are all fellow-travellers. After Pentecost, would the natives of Jerusalem have more fully embraced those Jews who had visited them from Rome?

If we are dreaming of a good future for God’s church, then we needn’t necessarily embrace Pentecostalism; but we must embrace the Spirit of Pentecost. When we call on the name of the Lord we shall be saved. When we pray, ‘Come, Holy Spirit’, God will come. Each morning that we open ourselves afresh to the the Holy Spirit, begins a good day in the journey of faith we share with so many different, wonderful, others, here and across the world.

 

Notes

[1] Tyler Edwards, Cardiff riot: Ely crash death boys were followed by police. BBC News, 24 May 2023.

[2] Samuel Wells, Catalysing Kingdom Communities. Address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, May 23, 2017. [PDF]

[3] “It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism”. Phrase attributed to Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, in Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: is there no alternative?, p.1.

[4] Tomiwa Owolade, Is the future of Christianity African? How immigration is revitalising British churches. New Statesman, 29 March 2023.

Acts 1.6-14, John 17.1-11

The Sunday after Ascension, 21 May 2023, Austwick

The resurrected Jesus had a habit of appearing out of nowhere, and leaving in the same mysterious way. His ascension was his final disappearing act, as he left his friends staring into the cloud which had enfolded him; and to add to the strangeness, two men in white then appeared, to tell the disciples that Jesus had been taken up into heaven, and would one day come back in the same way.

All of this gives the resurrected Jesus a ghost-like quality, but let us recall that Jesus persistently  assured his friends that he was no ghost – he was a human being fully alive: ‘Put your fingers in my wounds,’ he told them, and they did, and they believed. ‘Eat this bread I am breaking with you,’ he said, ‘Come to shore and share this fish with me’. The resurrected Jesus cooked breakfast; the resurrected Jesus had a healthy appetite. Jesus, when he ascended, was a man fully alive. 

What this means for those left behind gazing upwards, wondering where God has gone; what this means for us, is that ‘Now there is in heaven One who understands us’, a man fully alive to every human experience, a man especially attuned to struggle and suffering, this One now in heaven ‘who intercedes for us’. Our God in heaven is no distant deity, but One just like you and me. What confidence this can give us that when we pray, we are fully heard, and fully understood. [1]

And what this also means for those left behind gazing upwards, what this means for you and me, is that ‘Jesus is no longer restricted to one place, but, seated on the throne of heaven, he is present in all places.’ When he lived in first-century Palestine he showed us how God acts in a particular place at a particular time. Now, ascended, he is everywhere all at once; he has departed East Jerusalem to now live, ‘not in one place, but in each heart.’ [2]

Now, his friends and followers, you and me, all have the joyful chance to act with him and for him in our particular place; to take what we have learned from him, and to apply those lessons here: what he taught about loving God, and loving our neighbours, and loving our enemies, and the way he manifested those teachings when he lived in Galilee, by his routines of regular prayer, by his generous self-giving acts towards those on the edge of society, by his words of forgiveness on the cross.

‘Now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world,’ he prayed to his Father.  And to his followers, that day on the Mount of Olives, he said, ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’

Now, we know that the disciples were slow to comprehend much of what Jesus told them, particularly about what was coming. Understandably so, for what he told them about his future and theirs was unprecedented, unparalleled. We might excuse them if, in those first encounters with the risen Jesus, they thought they were seeing a ghost. And any of us who have experienced loss might identify with these disciples, that in those moments and days after he first left them, they were haunted by his absence.

All that he had promised while he was with them, all the potential of a better life…. evaporated. 

All the hopes he had awoken in them of a kinder, more loving world…. withered away. 

His healing touch, his broken bread, his spoken words…. de-materialised. 

In such times of loss life can seem hopeless, like ‘the present has given up on the future’. [3]

But those who gaze upwards, wondering where God has gone, are not left alone. For in just these sorts of times God ruptures the present with an ‘eerie entity’ which does promise a future; ‘the spectre of a world that could be free.’ [4] 

The followers of Jesus are haunted by a vision of all his earthly promises being fulfilled. The more we devote ourselves to this wonderful vision, the more it comes to life; and this awakening is enabled by One who the Church calls a ‘ghost’. 

By the Holy Ghost, our dreams of a better life in Christ, re-emerge with real potential. 

By the Holy Ghost, all the hopes that Jesus awoke, of a kinder, more loving world, take shape. In the broken bread of communion, in the spoken words of liturgy, Christ re-materialises to us. 

By his Spirit we know his healing touch: through prayer, and through the life of the community of those who gather in his name, to minister his love to each other and to the world.

The late theorist Mark Fisher made the chilling observation that our society ‘has given up on the future’; that the old secular promises of continuing human progress have been revealed as lies; that the old materialist promises of a wealthier, healthier life for all, we now know are built on human misery and the exploitation of the earth. Capitalism is revealed as being an increasingly ruinous system; and where ‘it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism’, despair sets in. [5]

Fisher held the view that ‘When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.’ [6] 

For Christians, we may find ‘the unactivated potentials of the past’ in the words of scripture which carry such power to transform broken lives, and to repair a broken world. 

Let the gospels witness to the regenerative power of Jesus’ life and teachings; let the Acts of the Apostles and the later New Testament books show today’s believers how to live and thrive in communities of faith which will transform the world around them. Let the Psalms help us sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. Let the prophets inspire our social action in a world we have the power to change.

 ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Austwick, in all North Yorkshire and the UK, and to the ends of the earth.’

 

Notes

[1] Wild Goose Worship Group, Stages on the Way: Worship Resources for Lent, Holy Week and Easter.

[2] John L. Bell, The Saviour Leaves in John L Bell / Graham Maule, Enemy of Apathy (songbook).

[3] Mark Fisher, The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology.

[4] Matt Colquhoun, Acid Communism. Krisis, Issue 2, 2018.  Quoting Mark Fisher and Herbert Marcuse.

[5] Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: is there no alternative?

[6] Mark Fisher, The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology.

Isaiah 40.12-17, 21-31, Psalm 21, Luke 22.24-30

The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Sunday 7 May 2023, Eldroth

 

Yesterday in Westminster Abbey The King was greeted by a young chorister of the Chapel Royal, who said, ‘Your Majesty, as children of the Kingdom of God we welcome you in the name of the King of Kings.’ To which Charles replied, ‘In his name, and after his example, I come not to be served but to serve.’ [2]

There was an unprecedented symbolic opening, quite different to any previous Coronation. First, for the monarch to be greeted by a child, a representative of innocence and powerlessness, whereas in the past it would have been the most supreme Churchman, the Archbishop, who would have taken this role. Then, for the child, whilst calling Charles ‘Your Majesty’, then introducing themselves as ‘children of the Kingdom of God’ and welcoming Charles ‘in the name of the King of Kings’… establishing from the very start of the service that in their view, whilst they accept Charles’s kingship their eyes are on another and greater King, God himself.

This welcome was designed to be humbling for the King – but by no means humiliating.  For throughout the service he – and everyone present – acknowledged the supremacy of our Father God before all else; and in The King’s Prayer Charles asked for God’s help – to be a servant of all God’s children, saying, 

God of compassion and mercy whose Son was sent not to be served but to serve, give grace that I may find in thy service perfect freedom and in that freedom knowledge of thy truth. Grant that I may be a blessing to all thy children, of every faith and conviction, that together we may discover the ways of gentleness and be led into the paths of peace. through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The notion of the monarch being a servant of the people is also unprecedented. There was nothing in Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation liturgy of 1953 to imply that the monarch was at the service of the people. Whilst the people were urged to do “their true service to God and to our Sovereign”, and the monarch was to be established with “a princely spirit . . . of wisdom and government” and set over the people, nowhere was it explicitly articulated that being the monarch is a ministry of public service. [3]

But the idea of the monarch being the people’s servant was well established by the late Queen, from her 21st birthday in 1947, when she declared, “that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.” The notion of monarch-as-servant increased as the late Queen’s reign progressed. 

BY 2013, on the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation, prayers offered in Westminster Abbey in a great national service of thanksgiving developed this language very directly, giving thanks for “Her Majesty’s example of humble service; for her commitment to the needs of others; for her affectionate service of her peoples”. The Gospel reading on that occasion recounted Christ’s own ministry to serve and not to be served — the text on which the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby, then preached.

Concluding a message to her people after the weekend of her Platinum Jubilee, our late Queen signed herself, “Your Servant, Elizabeth R”. In the King’s first address, he spoke at length of the late Queen’s life of devoted service, which His Majesty renewed for himself before promising “to serve you with loyalty, respect, and love, as I have throughout my life”.

We have become so used to this explicit language of service that we could easily underestimate it, but this kind of leadership is rooted in Jesus’s own ministry. This  Jesus washed his disciples’ feet as the symbol of service. Serving others is a feature of Christian discipleship. 

But we should also remember how, in the previous chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus’s own feet have also been anointed by Mary of Bethany, before he washes those of his friends. The servant of the people is served by the people: this is a mutual relationship based on love, trust and respect. This dynamic enriches and sustains the organisation of human society. This model of Christian leadership throws a profoundly critical light over all other models. and poses questions to all other forms of leadership in our country, in this century.

Now, some might question just how much of a people’s servant the British monarch really can be, with their lives of such excessive wealth and privilege which they are clearly committed to maintain and defend. 

It’s a question which Charles will try to answer, by insisting that the highest office in the land, consecrated to rule, is most fully expressed in the service of the vulnerable. The King’s passion for refugees and marginalised communities, for example, the continuing work of the Princes Trust which he established.

Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ 

If we take just one thing from the liturgy of the Coronation, with its great symbolic power, let it be that opening exchange between the child and the King. Let this encourage us in our role as children of the Kingdom of God, who can welcome others in the name of the King of Kings. Let this inspire us to strengthen our service of the King of Kings in being among our neighbours as ones who serve. 

 

Notes

[1] This talk makes substantial use of the text of Jamie Hawkey, Not to be served, but to serve, Church Times, 28 April 2023.

[2] The Coronation Liturgy for HM King Charles III [PDF].

[3] The Form and Order of Service that is to be performed and the Ceremonies that are to be observed in The Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster, on Tuesday, the second day of June, 1953