CurateBlog

Sermon for Cranleigh School, Trinity Sunday 2011

2011-06-20T22:17:00.003+01:00

Matthew 28.19-end

And surely I am with you always, unto the end of the age.

The big media story of the past month or so, beyond the global obsession with Pippa Middleton, has been the fate of Ryan Giggs. A string of affairs now means that Britain’s twentieth richest sportsman is now generally considered to be professional ‘sex addict’, and, indeed, the tabloids have taken him to their heart as their very own Tiger Woods. And while the disaster area that is Giggs’ love life is clearly fascinating, more interesting in a way has been his attempts to keep it all a secret. Giggs tried to use one of these super-injuctions to keep his love life out of the public eye. A super-injunction, if you haven’t already picked it up, not only prevents journalists reporting on some aspect of your private life, but also prevents the reporting of the injunction itself, thus allowing many wealthy people to keep their private lives strictly private.

Unfortunately, though, superinjunctions don’t really seem to work that well in the age of Twitter. Even while the newspapers couldn’t publish any details about the superinjunction, it wasn’t long before tens of thousands of people had named Giggs on Twitter, and it was deemed somewhat unfeasible to take each of these people to court. And, quickly, it all descended into a bit of a farce, until a LibDem MP stood up and named Giggs in the House of Commons using his parliamentary privilege, and all hell broke loose. Of course, this was bound to happen in the end. Privacy in the new media age is almost non-existent, and Twitter delights in its ability to seduce millions of people that they want to convey every aspect of their lives to the rest of the world in 140 characters or less.

And, most of the time, of course, this works well for those celebrities keen to remain in the public eye. Earlier this year, Liz Hurley and Shane Warne, icons at the Millennium now fading somewhat into middle-aged obsolescence, decided to liven up their PR machines by flirting outrageously with each other on Twitter. It did the trick, as both were catapulted to the front pages even as their marriages were collapsing. Perhaps I’m being a little too cynical, but it seems that our celebrities and politicians can’t really have it both ways: at one moment, to flaunt their lives to the public and, the next minute to be trying to sue members of the public when they know too much. The overriding question for the Age of Twitter then seems to be, What is an authentic revelation? How can we distinguish between the real and the seemingly real when our modes of communication have become merely a marketing device in the news-cycle?

And this isn’t just about the celebrities. It’s also true for those who have facebook and twitter accounts; each update is – generally speaking – crafted in such way to show that we’re not idiots. We, no less than the celebs, have become quite adept at marketing ourselves on Facebook and Twitter: we put up the right photographs, detag ourselves from the photos we dislike, and many of us work hard to ensure we make witty status-updates, and exhibit the quality of our banter.

But does any of this actually bear true testimony to whom we really are? Or do we not ourselves, a bit like the Twitter celebs, end up becoming parodies of our true selves as we seek to be attractive to others on these social networks?

Today is Trinity Sunday, when Christians across the world are invited to give praise to a very different sort of revelation from that of the Twitterati. We heard in our reading today, the risen Jesus on a mountain-top at the end of Matthew’s gospel, where, giving the disciples their great commission, the work they have to do, he tells them that ‘I am with you always, to the end of age’. By that, he doesn’t mean that St Peter can keep up with Jesus on his iPhone. Rather, when Christians talk about God as Trinity, they seek to find language to describe how the Father has revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus, and continues to reveal, to make himself known to us, by his Holy Spirit. Most importantly, this revelation is categorically different from the salacious revelations of our public figures. Rather, the New Testament testimony, and the testimony of billions of Christians worldwide, is that it’s a revelation that not just titillates, but rather cuts to the heart and actually changes us at human beings at the deepest level.

I was in a church service not so long ago, where in the hush before the Holy Communion a toddler shouted out, ‘Mummy, where is Jesus?’ The kid had a point; what does it mean to say that Jesus is still with us, that he reveals himself to us even now?

Well, St Paul in his letter to the Galatians, makes some rather bold statements. He suggests that by dwelling in Christ, we have the Spirit of God poured into our hearts, that is God reveals himself within us, and that the Spirit is seen within us by works of love, by a deep joy within us, by peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We ourselves actually become vehicles for God’s revelation, which – when you think of it – is pretty incredible. We mirror God himself in our own lives.

I’ve only been ordained for a year, and one of the most compelling aspects of being a clergyman has been accompanying people to their deaths. I haven’t quite reached my quarter-life crisis yet, but seeing people die really puts your own life into perspective, and you see that as people draw to the close of their lives, their status in the world, their possessions, or education all become essentially meaningless. What is meaningful is whether they have loved well, whether they have been patient listeners during their lives, whether they have been gentle, generous, and faithful to their friends, family and community. When you encounter such a person drawing close to death, as everything else falls away, what is left can only be described as the marks of God himself, even in considerable suffering and pain. You see a revelation that sweeps aside the superficial presentation of ourselves on facebook or Twitter, and you see something of what St Paul is describing in Galatians: God himself made visible in human flesh through the dwelling of his Spirit. Here, at this very raw stage of human life, you can distinguish between the true and the seemingly true.

I am not of course suggesting the meaningful relationships might not be strengthened, or even begun on social networks, and that charity, patience and kindness are impossible to find on the internet, but this Trinity Sunday it’s worth us thinking about how truth is displayed in the new media age. What in the end is meaningful and truthful? What is an authentic revelation? Let us learn how to distinguish between those revelations that are true and those that are seemingly true, and let us ponder more deeply those striking words from the risen Christ, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’.

Quasi-Gnostic Sermon

2011-03-22T19:06:00.003Z

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3.16

God so loved the world. Maybe so, but looking at that

horrific footage of tidal waves sweeping across northern Japan last week, one might naturally want to question the nature, and outworking, of that love. The immense destructive power of the tsunami wave as it swept away thousands of lives, homes, and communities in a matter of minutes leaves one dumbstruck and it would be odd if, looking at such scenes, one did not doubt the existence of a loving God.

Some people might trot out a variety of philosophical explanations for this terrible event: suffering as a punishment for human sin, suffering as a way of testing or improving our character, or suffering as the price we pay for free-will and liberty. Such explanations for suffering and destruction on this scale are philosophically unsatisfactory, if not pretty offensive and gross. If God, who the philosophers tell us, is supremely good and all-knowing, knew that creating the universe would involve this sort of horrific waste and suffering, was he justified in creating it?

I’m sure many of you at some point in your lives will have encountered some form of human suffering, or even animal suffering, for which there is no adequate explanation beyond what seems like the brutal face of nature, ‘red in tooth and claw’. When people say at such moments, ‘it is all part of a wider plan; God works in mysterious ways’, the most appropriate response can feel like a left hook.

God so loved the world. In the face of such catastrophes, then, can anything really be said? Certainly, there are philosophical responses, ways of justifying what has happened by reference to some greater good, whether that be our free will, or our freedom to show compassion and love in these situations. But the New Testament does not seem really very interested in trying to explain why there is suffering and how such suffering can be reconciled with belief in a supremely good Creator. The New Testament, if you hadn’t already realized, is mainly concerned with a man called Jesus, and how his life, death, and resurrection have radically altered the world. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. As Christians, to describe God as ‘love’ means to talk about his Son. For the Christian, to think and talk about God is to have our hearts and minds respond to His Son, that is Jesus Christ. When we try to justify our belief in God to others in the face of such horrific suffering, we cannot disconnect what we say about God from what we say about Jesus of Nazareth. That is what marks out our conversation.

But how does thinking about Jesus help us to understand these horrific disasters? Well, Jesus provides no pithy answers for explaining why the world is the way it is. Jesus does not come to explain but to heal. Think of his many miracles, his many acts of forgiveness, grace and restoration. When we read the gospels we catch a glimpse of Eden restored, of a world freed from suffering as lepers are healed, fearful storms are quelled, sinners are forgiven, and the dead are raised. To use John’s metaphor, it’s a world in which the light shines brightly in the darkness, though the darkness does not understand it. When we meet Jesus, we encounter a God who weeps in love for his dead friend Lazarus. This is not a God who stands afar off, indifferent to our pain and suffering, but a God who enters into it all, weeps over it, and, to bring it all to an end, goes to Jerusalem to be betrayed, trialed, whipped, and hammered to a rough-hewn cross outside the city walls. This is a God who knows absolute alienation in death itself, and he conquers it.

God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Christians cannot, any more than any other philosopher or believer, then, offer satisfactory explanations for why we know suffering and pain in this life. We see but through a glass dimly, as St Paul wrote. But what we can know in Jesus is that God does not desire this state of affairs, that he desires to bring it to an end, and promises a new life to all those who trust in Him. Jesus’ resurrection is a sign, a foretaste, a promise of that age to come when, as John the Divine puts it, ‘God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things [will have] passed away.’ (Rev 21)

There are no easy explanations, but we can say there are signs of hope, promises of change, and that God is not absent. He is found now, I suspect, in those men and women comforting and reassuring the many Japanese homeless, orphaned and widowed. He was with the mother who handed her children to their grandparents seconds before she was herself swept away in the tsunami wave. He is found in the sacrificial work of those at this very moment in the Fukishima power-plant trying to cool the reactors. He is found in the family member who reaches out, despite the arguments of the past, to forgive and to care for a family member in their terminal illness, and so on… God is found in all these Christ-like signs of hope, life and light in a world overrun with death and decay.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. A character in a novel by Rebecca West says at one point, ‘What’s the point of music, if there’s all this cancer in the world?’, to which someone else responds, ‘What’s the harm of cancer, when there’s all this music in the world?’ If this is to some degree true of music, then it is all the more true of the love of God as seen in Jesus. There’s no intellectual solution to the suffering we’ve seen in the past month, but the Spirit groans with us in longing for the healing of creation, and for all things to be renewed in Jesus Christ. So let us take food for the journey, and pray for the nations at this altar. Amen.

Kierkegaard and the Birdies

2011-03-01T20:37:00.004Z

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Matt 6.25

For the past couple of weeks, the Vicar has been taking us through some of the more challenging passages of Matthew’s gospel, various teachings of Jesus that have come to be known as the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ – the new law that the new Moses serves up to his disciples on the Galilean hillside. And, as we’ve learnt, following Jesus is not easy: the moral demands made by Jesus are challenging, and this great chunk of teaching climaxes with that memorable moral one-liner, ‘Be perfect therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ (5.48). Easy, really, and I’m sure you’ve all been implementing Jesus’s command with ease and style this week.

So, when I came to the readings this week, I was initially pleased to discover that I didn’t have any of that hard, gritty moral stuff from Chapter 5, but these charming words from chapter 6: Do not worry about your life, Jesus says, what you will eat or what you will drink,^* or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? It seems like sweet honey compared to the challenging commandments that we’ve had over the previous couple of weeks. And, to be sure, there is plenty to be worried about at the moment: the steady unravelling of north Africa and the Middle-East, the subsequent rise in the price of crude oil, social unrest across Europe, the steady decline of the West, rising inflation, the prospect of higher interest rates in the near future and so on…it all feels a bit like the last days of the Roman Empire, and what’s more, we’ve also got clear evidence from www.wecanknow.com that the Jesus will be returning on 21^st May, and God is going to destroy this world on October 21^st, which, while it leaves me less anxious about sorting out my summer holidays, does create another set of problems to worry about, not least who’s going to look after you lot once the Vicar and I have been taken up in the Rapture.

And in all this anxiety, not exactly soothed by Jesus’s harsh words on the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord comes up with a marvellously simple spiritual exercise: Look at the birds! And not in a BBC Springwatch sort of way, or in that rather disturbing way that all those twitchers rushed down to Chipping Norton last week to see that oriental turtle dove which had landed in some chap’s back-garden (though I suppose you could do worse, a picture of the said bird is above).

Rather, Jesus is saying, if you really want to know what living in the Kingdom of God is like, if you really want to be live lives worthy of our Heavenly Father, then look at the birds! He doesn’t say recite the Jewish law a few more times a day, or read this book of theology, or even study the Scriptures. Rather, he says, make your offerings and fast in secret, don’t pray like the hypocrites on the street corner but go quietly into a room, and what’s more, if you really want to know what it’s like to live in the kingdom of God, then just look at the birds! Kierkegaard, one of your gloomy curate’s favourite writers, wrote a beautiful homily on this passage, and he said if you want to learn joyfulness, then look at the birds and the lilies of the field. He called them the ‘joyous schoolmasters’. And unlike the human teacher who has teaching kept in folders and books, and sometimes finds himself embarrassed if he has forgotten certain key facts, Kierkegaard says that these school-masters, the lilies and birds, are totally without embarrassment, they show in their movements and growth and daily business, in their very being, unconditional joy by their absolute dependence upon their Creator:

‘What joy when the bird – who does not merely sing at his work like a joyous labourer, but whose essential work is to sing – joyfully begins its song; what new joy when thereupon its neighbour begins, and then its opposite neighbour; and when the whole chorus joins in, what joy; and when at last it is like a sea of tones to which forest and vale, heaven and earth, respond, a sea of tones in which he who struck the first note now tumbles head over heels with joy – what joy! what joy!”

Whoever thinks Kierkegaard just a gloomy Danish philosopher should read this homily. It’s packed full of such wonderful images, and surely we too should be like these birds, tumbling over ourselves with joy and singing, unconditionally joyful in the presence of our God. But, think about the birds: they live purely for the present, not worried about tomorrow, and its problems, or the ‘what ifs’ and possibilities; the morrow is non-existent to them. Rather the joy lies in the here and now, the being present to yourself before your God. ‘Joy’, Kierkegaard says, ‘is the present tense, with the whole emphasis upon the present. And therefore it is that the lilies and the birds are joy, because with silence and unconditional obedience they are entirely present to themselves in being today.’

Of course, though, when you begin to think about it then surely this command of Jesus is just as, if not more, difficult than some of the commandments from his teaching in the past couple of weeks. When Jesus commands us to let go of all of our anxieties, to forget about how we shall eat, or what we shall wear, we naturally think he’s being rather irresponsible. But this, Jesus (and Kierkegaard, by extension) says, is the beginning of joy; this is the beginning of the genuine freedom that we are promised by God: not to be tossed about by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, but to find in our radical trust in God the beginning of a life free from worry and anxiety. And, as Jesus says, if God has the deepest care and love for the lilies and the birds, then how much more will he ensure that we might face the challenges of this world without fear or worry.

So, as Lent emerges on the horizon and you’re beginning to think how we might draw closer to your God, let us do as Jesus commands us: look at these flowers, the spring blossoms, look at the birds, and begin to wonder what it would be like to trust in the present, in yourself, and in God, like them.

January Depressives and Decomposing Saviours

2011-01-04T19:32:00.015Z

People are sad in the Barfords. Not only has the stunning snowfall (left), which had us bounding about like bunnies, frolicking madly and throwing snowballs at each other whilst singing 'It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas', melted. But, furthermore, we have all come to the sad realization that Christmas is about to end. Or, at least, it is about to dissipate on Thursday as our lives are eclipsed by the Festival of the Gentiles that is Epiphany. This is the day that the Magi (elegantly portrayed as fatigued academics in the 'School of Babylonia' in the BBC's weep-fest The Nativity) arrive at Bethlehem and fall down before the God-child in an animal's trough and offer fantastically wonderful gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense. And all this, too, after King Herod raised VAT to 20%. These guys were serious. Because Barford seems to be, on the whole, rather Gentile in character, we should probably celebrate wildly and perform mystical oriental dance-routines dressed as magi, happy as larry that the God of Israel has manifested himself to us in the person of Jesus. Sadly, however, after we failed to see the partial solar eclipse this morning because it was too cloudy and because we don't see that much sun for living in a deep valley, everyone is now clearly depressed, and all we've got to look forward to is the Film Club's showing of 'Beatrix Potter' on the 19th. You can just feel that sinking feeling as you drive through the village playing Mozart very loudly on Radio 3. Well, I say, 'Cheer up, Barford'! That is the campaign I will be waging as I walk around the village, smiling and waving inanely at everyone, over the coming four weeks. Look out for me! Oh yes, I will be there.

I don't know why I'm so cheery, but perhaps it was because Christmas was so splendid. To be frank, I had almost lost the plot half-way through Advent 4. If someone made me sing O Little Town of Bethlehem again on Dec 23, I would have nutted them, robbed them of their wallets, and fled to Sweden to buy large quantities of thickly knitted socks. Fortunately, however, everyone was snowed in and it was all rather magical. People trudging through the snow to our beautiful church on Christmas Eve to worship the God who had made Himself vulnerable in childbirth was an amazing sight to behold as a newly-minted clergyman. Perhaps it was because I was a terrible Christmas churchgoer before I became a deacon, I don't know, but I loved it, even if our church reached a maximum temp. of about -8 celsius that night. Coming out on a night like that is love, I tell you, and God honours that sort of thing. Well done, Barford. You did the Almighty proud.

I'm probably also cheery because I had a jolly holiday after St Stephen's Day. After a splendid visitation from la famille over Christmas (my father was somewhat bewildered by his son in a pulpit), I cleared off to a charming village outside Zürich to visit a good friend of mine. She and her family were enormously hospitable, and in three days I managed to see an awful lot: the Appenzeller mountains, the city of Zürich itself, and Basel. I've never been to Switzerland and, like most Britons visiting this Hilltop Nation of Banks and Chocolate, I was probably most excited about the efficiency of the train network. I nearly cried at the beauty of Basel station (see left, much to the incomprehension of Dr G, my Swiss hostess), with its bold 1940s murals and trains departing to Moscow, Barcelona and Paris. I should have brought my ebay-purchased vintage suitcase, smoked a cigarette, and muttered something about fog rising over the Bristol Channel to a svelte lady in red (or whatever intelligence officers do nowadays).

Basel, as I am sure you are all well aware, was the home of the Great Master of Twentieth-Century Theology, Dr Karl Barth. As a second-year undergraduate I nearly jumped off the cliff into nihilism after reading a lot of liberal German theology from the nineteenth century. This was clearly not good for a zealous young Evangelical like myself and - while I have since rediscovered the Joy of Schleiermacher (a companion volume to the Joy of Sex due out sometime in 2011) - I was rescued from the Pit by Dr Barth and his critical dialectical theology. Whattaguy, whattacriticallyrealisticdialeticaltheology! My love of the man was so ridiculous that I even spent all my 21st birthday money on his multi-volumed Church Dogmatics. Anyway, that is why I had to visit Basel, the great man's birthplace and where he was a professor from 1935 to 1962. And it's a great city, perched on the Rhine and a beacon to all those who despise natural theology and its entrails across the Christian tradition. More on him another time, perhaps.

Barth aside, the Swiss do Christmas well. We sang wonderful German carols, I played Bach drunk on good wine and filled with Emmental and goat's cheese, and my hosts even had a Christmas tree with real candles. Walking through Zürich, one could have been in a fairy tale, it was so beautiful with its Christmas lights and snowfall, and a world away from the kitsch grimness of most British Christmases (I exclude Barford in that damnation).

If you're now feeling vaguely nauseous by this description of alpine Noël, then look at this splendiferous painting in the Kunstmuseum Basel by Hans Holbein:

One should save it for Good Friday, but Holbein's 'The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb' is surely one of the masterpieces of Western Art. Look at it! Decomposing hands and feet, sallow face, pointy beard: utter humiliation for the Son of God. The frame emphasizes the gruesome image with the inscription 'JESUS CHRISTUS, REX IUDAEORUM'. Protestants delight me with their preponderance for the dark, foreboding No that hangs over us daily. They make it so grim - with horrific images like this - and then, just when you think life's not worth living, they remind you of the almighty, overwhelming Yes that God pronounces over each one of us as a result of the resurrection of this frail, decomposing body. It's a terrifying portrait of our Lord, and one that captivated Dostoyevsky when he saw it in 1867. It must have appeared totally alien to one steeped in Russian Orthodoxy, and its shock-value has not lessened over the course of the century. Quite different from the darling baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, I tell you. If you're depressed now, Barford, ponder this one (and then ponder the Resurrection).

Anyway, this is all too much and whilst I could tell you about my friends being chased across Oxfordshire fields by feral pigs on New Year's Day, or an epic production of Tannhaüser, it's time to watch Silent Witness. But before I go, I must advertise Steele Translations. My friend, Debbi, is a translator extraordinaire and is now freelance, translating all sorts for all sorts. If you need something translated into German or French, contact her. She's terribly good at it, and when I asked her this week to translate 'I'm a Lumberjack' into German so that I could make a career-move into tree-clearance in Bavaria, she sent me this clip, which I had hitherto never seen. Happy New Year one and all, and relish our Lord's revelation to three wayward academics on camels on Thursday.

Christmas 2010

2011-01-01T18:02:00.007Z

Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ to the Shepherds by Govert Teunisz Flinck, 1639

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours’ (Luke 2.14)

Central to any British Christmas, in my mind, is what’s on the box. In fact, to be honest a not so wholesome part of me is extremely excited about the Christmas special of Eastenders. In my family, shamefully, the highlight of most of our Christmases (beyond the perfection that are my Nigella roast potatoes) is, in fact, that Moment when something supremely awful happens in Albert Square: that moment when, though half-stupified by our lunch, we’re still able to gasp in astonishment, and raise our hands to our mouths in disbelief, as the ultra-depressing plotline reaches its climax (although after tonight’s episode, I can’t imagine how any more misery is possible). But there’s something almost religious about our preparations for Christmas television, isn’t there? Buying the Radio Times seasonal special is an essential Advent discipline, as we prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of the Big Day, and its feast of costume dramas and comedy specials.

No doubt you too will have your own rituals, televisual or otherwise, that mark your own Christmas: Dad falling asleep in front of The Queen, your Boxing Day walk, or that moment around 10am tomorrow when Mum just totally loses the plot with the kids, who are high on e-numbers. And, if you think your family life is full of rituals, you should live the life of the clergy: the liturgies of carol services, crib services, Christingles, Nativity plays. All of it’s transformed my experience of Advent, almost to breaking point, and that’s even before we get down to how many homemade mince pies I’ve eaten in the past two weeks.

And yet, tonight, in the midst of all these delightful Christmas rituals, we hear again with the shepherds that mysterious song of the angels: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’ As a message, you might think, there’s nothing really special about it; singing God’s praises is pretty 9-5 for angels. Yet their words echo another appearance of angels, some seven hundred years earlier, to a prophet called Isaiah. In one of the most thrilling visions of the Old Testament, the prophet sees God sat upon a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filling the Temple. The God of Israel is surrounded by angels calling to one another “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is filled with your glory” (Is. 6.3). In Isaiah’s vision, the music of their voices is so loud that the doorposts and thresholds shake, and the Temple is filled with smoke. So when these angels appear before some rather surprised shepherds seven hundred years later on a Judaean hillside singing a similar song, the implication is that these shepherds are not about to encounter any ordinary baby, but the God of Israel himself; the same God who appeared in might and power before Isaiah; the same God who created the heavens and the earth, who flung the stars into space and who brought Israel out of Egypt. This God you will now see in a manger, wrapped in bands of cloth. Your God has drawn near, shepherds. Go to Bethlehem and worship Him.

When you think about it, it’s really quite an astounding picture: the creator of the Universe, wrapped in swaddling bands, lying in a manger, nursed by his parents. While the rituals of church and family in themselves are – generally – delightful, beneath all of it lies this extraordinary truth, sounded in the angels’ chorus: that God has dwelt among us as an infant boy in his mother’s arms; what the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins described as ‘God’s infinity reduced to infancy’. God makes himself vulnerable and shares in our sufferings, our pains, our joys. Love leaps from heaven into the frail life of a baby; it is the beginning of a new creation in which God is with us in an extraordinary new way. Through this baby, God will transform the very structure of the universe and plant in our midst the promise of a world freed from sin, from brokenness, suffering and death.

So in the midst of your rituals this Christmas, perhaps find a moment, pause for a second, perhaps even in the deep misery of Eastenders, and let that song of the angels echo within you. Let the truth of God’s passion for you, manifested in this little babe, reverberate through your heart, body and soul. Here is a reason for hope, for a new start and new possibilities in your life, here and now. ‘Do not be afraid’, says the angel, but draw near and worship; trust and believe, for a new world is dawning in your midst. God is with us.

Sermon for Advent 3

2010-12-14T20:30:00.000Z

One of the most intriguing theological questions I’ve heard in the parish since arriving in July came from the lips of a boy in the reception class at Deddington Primary. The Vicar and I were just returning from an intense Q&A session with the youngest ones, who had been flummoxing me with questions such as What is your favourite colour? This boy, however, was outside in the playground, and, on his little bicycle had swerved in front of the gate, stopping us in our tracks. He looked quizzically at Fr Hugh and asked him ‘Are you God?’

Now, at this point I was naturally expecting the Vicar to give a brief summary on divinization in the writings of the Greek Fathers, but I can now reveal exclusively to you all this morning that the Vicar is, in fact, not God, and the young boy was told as much. He could return to his frantic bicycling around the playground, safe in the knowledge that he had not in fact encountered the Almighty. But for this boy to ask such a thing is itself, I think, fascinating. It raises the question, How do we as humans come to know what we mean when we use the name ‘God’? When you come to think about it, a four-year old’s conviction that the man who comes in occasionally dressed all in black, talking about things quite supernatural, might in fact be the God is not altogether strange. Four-year old boys, of course, don’t have a preconceived understanding of God as a Being all-knowing, all-powerful, such that they would recognize that the Vicar was, in fact, not God. Rather, along with most children, this young lad will begin to grasp who God is through prayer, through the rituals of church and school assemblies, through the stories of the Bible and the saints.

Before I go off on an extended ramble about children’s spirituality, this boy’s question does make one think, How do we recognize God in our lives, especially when we’ve come to realize that he doesn’t take school assemblies every Tuesday morning?

Well, Advent is, in large part, a journey in recognition: after however many weeks of ordinary time, we are then invited to recognize anew who God is, who we are in response, and what might be our future together. And, that process of recognition, or lack of it, is at the heart of our Gospel reading today, and indeed throughout these middle chapters of St Matthew’s Gospel. Last week, if you were at Hempton, you’ll remember we heard the words of John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness, calling on the people of Israel to repent and be baptized. This week, John’s surroundings are even less congenial than the muddy banks of the Jordan. By this point, he’s been thrown into prison by Herod Antipas, and it’s only a matter of time before his head’s dished up on a platter as a sort of Herodian equivalent to After Eights.

But John, you’ll remember, baptized Jesus in the Jordan, believing that he was the one who would come after him, the one whose sandals he was not worthy even to carry; the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. Yet, some time has passed since then, and John is naturally keen to figure out what Jesus is doing. From prison, he sends out his followers to go and find out whether Jesus was in fact the messiah, or, whether they had to wait for another. Why did John doubt? Because, I suspect, if he believed the Messiah was going to be the vehicle of God’s righteousness and judgment, sweeping up the chaff and throwing it into the unquenchable fire, Jesus was, well, turning out to be rather disappointing. How could this man Jesus be the Messiah, John might have been wondering, while the legions of angels stand afar off, while the Romans continue to oppress us? Why, perhaps John was wondering, am I still in jail?

Jesus, however, brooks no nonsense with such talk. ‘Go and tell John,’ he says, ‘what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’ Jesus is making an unmistakable reference to those beautiful verses from Isaiah 35: “then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” (Isa. 35.5-6) By quoting Isaiah, Jesus is, in unequivocal terms, suggesting to John’s disciples that they are failing to see what lies in front of them; I’m doing what the prophets foretold, Jesus is saying, and yet you still question my identity. Don’t look for political revolution and military triumph. Don’t seek the supremacy of Israel. Look at God’s kingdom breaking in around you: healing, the forgiveness of sins, people discovering the wonder of God’s love for them.

Well, if even John the Baptist fails to recognize God in his midst, what hope, you migh ask, do we have? Well, the gospels do give us some clues about where God is, and where is not. He’s not, you quickly learn as you the New Testament, found much among religious leaders; Pharisees and Scribes come in for a pretty hard time. Nor, the gospels suggest, will God be found amongst the proud, in the exercise of power over others, in those who fail to build others up in love, by the failure of people to forgive. God will not be found among the envious, or those who exclude others from their table because they are deemed unacceptable to polite society. God will not be discerned by those lacking in generosity, and those who judge others mercilessly.

If God cannot be found among such as these, where then will we find him? How will we recognize him? Well, Jesus points to some surprising behaviour and surprising people; a few chapters earlier, at the beginning of his so-called Sermon on the Mount, we learn that God is found among those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, the humble, those who long for righteousness, those who forgive, those who make peace, and those who are persecuted for all of this (Mt 5). And, as we’ll hear next week, if you really want to know what God is like, if you really want to see your long-awaited King, O Israel - the hope of nations, the Creator of all the universe – then, with the magi, come and worship this child laid in an outhouse feeding-trough in an unremarkable town south of Jerusalem.

So with John the Baptist, let us rediscover the remarkable ways in which God is present in our lives. With John the Baptist, let us be surprised to discover God at work in the world, ultimately, to share in that healing work of Jesus: perhaps in forgiving that friend who hurt you so deeply, perhaps in making peace with that difficult family member this Christmas, perhaps in reaching out to that disreputable character who lives down your road. Let us take a moment, find some silence, and ask God to show us. For as Jesus tells the disciples later in Matthew’s gospel: “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.”

Following the Vicar’s lead from Thursday evening prayer, I thought I’d end with R.S. Thomas’s poem, The Kingdom:

It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.

When the Son of Man comes in glory, and all the angels with him, may we not be found unable to recognize our Servant King, born in a manger. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Charles de Foucauld and Rabbits

2010-12-01T21:38:00.005Z

Appropriately enough for a day in which people who left their houses in Britain were turned into collectibles for the Queen of Narnia's frozen Showroom, the church today remembered a hermit. Charles de Foucauld was one of the modern masters of Getting Away From It All. In 1886, aged 28, Charles had a dramatic conversion experience having returned from a jolly with the French Army in north Africa, and it was to there that he returned as a hermit in 1901. He set himself up high in the Sahara, and lived alongside the Tuareg people, making a study of their language and traditions whilst devoting himself to prayer, silence and fasting . He was shot by bedouin outside his compound on this day in 1916. Appreciated as a martyr by Roman Catholics (though his French nationality probably had more to do with his death than his identity as a Christian), and beatified by the current Bishop of Rome in 2005, Charles exemplifies the paradoxical fulfilment one finds in retreat, of letting go of power and all that you believe keeps you safe in the world, and submitting yourself to others and God in love and service. He was, and remains through the Little Brothers of Jesus (the religious order founded in his memory in 1933), an inspiration to many. SO, if you are stuck at home good people of the benefice, my recommendation is that, if only for five minutes, you turn off Deal or No Deal, and embrace your God in prayer (prayer that, obviously, is totally unrelated to Noel Edmonds). Either that, or go outside and start gritting my road as a spiritual discipline so I can go and pray for you.

This weather's pretty crazy. Many people will be deeply troubled by closed airports, dysfunctional trains, and a broadcast of Gardeners' Question Time from Northumberland being tragically cancelled due to adverse weather conditions. Since north Oxfordshire hasn't suffered too much from the snow, most people have clearly been able to go out and buy the Guardian to read the latest on the Wikileaks scandal(s). Either that, or they've been reading in the Express about how Kate Middleton has inadvertedly raised house prices. The best leak so far has been the astonishing news that President Sarkozy, before he was elected, chased rabbits around France's equivalent of the Home Office. This delightful image certainly seems to have humanized the French President, with the American attaché describing it as a 'rare glimpse of a relaxed Sarkozy'. This is what a friend of mine calls 'backstage' information about our public leaders, and apparently Generation Y (of which I am proud to be part) loves such details; it's the political equivalent to watching 'Dr' Gillian McKeith be covered in tarantulas in the jungle on I'm a Celebrity. I'm looking forward to more animal-related stories in European politics in the near future.

If you are fed up with being stuck inside, and don't have a rabbit to chase around the house, you could do worse than follow the exercises suggested in this charming offering from MeatyFlavour on YouTube.

Uppsala Cables

2010-11-28T19:53:00.012Z

First of all, Happy New Year. There is nothing quite like opening one's shiny new lectionary to discover the delights that the Bible has in store for us this liturgical year, and finding out the legally acceptable Sunday to which Epiphany might be transferred. People have gone stir crazy here in Barford St Michael: setting off fireworks, singing 'Come, thou long expected Lectionary' and - peculiar to this village - sharing Garlands of Onions to ward off Evil Spirits from the previous liturgical year. People are marching through the village with torches, waving their little pink books in the air screaming 'Year A! Year A! Year A!'. Or, at least, this is what they will be doing come the Revolution (Rise up, Barford!).

Many of you, I'm sure, will be intrigued by the revelations of American diplomatic cables, but, far more interesting are the remarkable photographic revelations that I offer you today.

Yes, courtesy of Gunilla in Uppsala, I can now present below the photographic mastery of Magnus Aronson/IKON: evidence that Jan-Olof Johansson (Still at No.1, a week on, going Platinum) is now the Bishop of Växjö.

Here you can see Jan-Olof being presented with his mitre at the High Altar of Uppsala Cathedral. Note the Grand Swedish Cope Convention that was his consecration.

Here is Jan-Olof with Anders Wejyrd, the Archbishop of Uppsala, outside the cathedral. As you can see, if the two men were to have a fight with their croziers, Jan-Olof would surely win.

Here they ALL are, including the Crown Princess and Prince Daniel looking rather awkward in the middle of all these bishops (and who wouldn't?) in front of the Cathedral. You can also see the banners of the Church of Sweden and the Diocese of Växjö lingering in the background.
This photograph would have been on my Christmas card, had I not just ordered the Primary School's designs in bulk. I now regret not buying the Royal Wedding tree decoration for a mere one hundred kroner: Victoria and Daniel on a small porcelain plate to hang on your Christmas tree. What was I thinking? Life is about living with those regrets and moving on. For more images of the day, have a look here.

With Advent now upon us, you may like to know that there is an alternative to one's Peppa Pig Advent Calendar (as some friends bought me the other day). Never missing an opportunity to communicate eternal mysteries across the interweb, Deddington (or, rather, David R) has produced a sparkling online calendar. Just click here to savour it from 1 Dec onwards: with photographs from Deddington, music from the choir, and suitably terrifying words from the prophets, it's a marvel. And there's not a Bethlehem shepherd in sight. It's Advent, innit.

Jan-Olof becomes a Bishop (whoop!)

2010-11-21T15:45:00.012Z

After an eventful twenty-four hours, I am pleased to report that the Diocese of Växjö has a new bishop, and the curate of Deddington hasn´t been arrested by the Swedish police for having inadvertedly assaulted the Crown Princess with a webcam. I didn't assault her, that's just a stab at irony.

Having arrived yesterday in a snowy Uppsala, we managed to record Vespers in the cathedral, and this morning we broadcast (with a few breaks in transmission to allow me to run up the pulpit to reset the plugs) the consecration of Jan-Olof Johansson. I had a chance to chat with him, and he was delighted that we had managed to put together this weblink with the Diocese of Oxford. He is definitely my favourite Swedish bishop - right up there, top of the charts, no question about it. I conveyed Deddington's warmest greetings to him, and said that we looked forward to welcoming him to our Epiphany Party where the Vicar and I would be performing a rendition of the '50s classic ´Sisters´. I didn´t say, this, obviously, but I think he got the gist, and, if you ever find yourself reading this blog, Jan-Olof, you are most welcome in Deddington any time. As I have said, you are my favourite Swedish Bishop (no.1, right up there, woohoo!).

I'm sure many of you tuned in to DeddingtonTV to watch the occasion, but if not then you won't have realized that most of the Consecration and High Mass was conducted by the SvenskaKyrkan's formidable Archbishop, Anders Wejryd. Now he is obviously my favourite Swedish Archbishop, but since there is only one of them about in this country, he is probably not surprised to be placed in this exclusive category. Many of you will also point out that he is still a bishop, but I don't want to get into a fight about this. This is Jan-Olof's day. Archbishop Anders conducted himself admirably through the liturgy and he must be breathing a sigh of relief, as the cathedral was swimming with bishops today. Sweden, you may not realize, only has thirteen diocesan bishops which is rather frugal, but essentially Good. Who can ever remember the names of all 42 diocesan English bishops? How would you ever pick your favourite bishop from so large a number? 13 is a good number and keeps the overheads low. Swedish bishops don't confirm people, which may explain the smaller number; pretty much everyone in Sweden gets confirmed and so the job is delegated to parish priests and chaplains. Reasons aside, I reckon this Austerity Episcopate is a Good Thing, and we could learn a lot from Sweden about cutting costs and giving people a realistic chance at picking their favourite bishop without reaching for Crockfords Clerical Dictionary or, obviously, consulting this blog.

Sweden's Thirteen were today accompanied by a host of colourful be-mitred wonders from across the world, including Bishop Alan from Oxford. He is, of course, famous for his Blog, and I spied him in Terminal 5 with an iPad and immediately realized that it must be He, the Bishop of Buckingham. He read some prayers as Our Man in Uppsala. Yet there were also bishops from Scotland, Wales, Palestine, Germany, and, of course, Finland. Finland, as you may remember, is close to Sweden. I attach a map for further consultation.

Bishop-fatigue has led me to retire to the Peter Fjellstedt Foundation, where the Vicar has kindly lodged me. It's a stately building on the edge of the river, opposite the cathedral, where Swedish priests come for further

education, and also people who'd like to learn more about the Anglican Communion and its spirituality. I didn't realize the Communion did have a spirituality beyond back-biting, Jesuitical sniping, and Cake. Nonetheless, it's great that the Swedes take the Porvoo Agreement so seriously, and are so committed to strengthening our bonds. We could, and should, do more. Well done, Vicar, I say, for taking it all so seriously, and being so committed to Porvoo; most people in the pews probably think it's a new Volvo model. Only last week, I was sitting around mourning the ending of Downton Abbey on ITV. This Sunday, as a result of another mad-cap scheme from Deddington, I am in Uppsala pondering whether I can face any more salmon. It's been underbar, as they say here.

Indeed, beyond salmon, bishops, and Porvoo, readers must understand that basically Sweden is great. People are incredibly friendly, and warm-hearted, and all this in a country where the sun goes down at three and it would probably be cheaper to buy an Irish holiday-home than a bottle of wine. When Swedes chatter away to me in their native tongue, and I look blank and mutter something that probably sounds like "I eat dogs" in Swedish, they look surprised and say, "But you look so Swedish!" This is certainly a compliment, if only of my alpaca-wool jumper which looks rather Scandinavian in design. I need more of those jumpers to compliment the grimness of my clerical shirts, and those jumpers I shall seek out tomorrow when I should be in the Bodleian reading obscure letters from Oxford clergymen of the nineteenth century. Why? Because, ultimately, if Edward Pusey and his pals in Oxford had known more about Sweden back in the day, we Anglicans would probably be less known now for our homophobic quiche addiction and anxiety over the quality of our lace cottas, and famous instead for good design, superb knitwear, and a commitment to being Wholesome. This is Scandinavian Lutheranism at its best, and I've been proud to be part of it, if only for a long weekend. I shall post some photos of the Consecration in due course. The Crown Princess, it must be noted before I sign off, was wearing a lovely hat. Kate Middleton could do a lot worse than pop over and have a wardrobe-sesh with HRH Victoria in the next few months, if only to have a warm, comfy jumper to wear at Sandringham this Christmas.

2010-11-19T21:27:00.002Z

Tune in to Deddington Church at 10am (GMT) on Sunday morning to watch my appalling camerawork capture the moment that Jan-Olof Johansson becomes the next Bishop of Växjö. If all goes to plan, there will also be an anticipatory vespers in Uppsala Cathedral at 5pm (GMT), led by the Archbishop of Uppsala and with a choir from Växjö Cathedral. I have about twenty different audio connectors to ensure transmission. What can go wrong...??

Uppsala Adventure

2010-11-15T19:33:00.006Z

Later this week, yours truly is off to Uppsala, the ecclesiastical capital of Sweden, to record the consecration of the new Bishop of Växjö (pron. Vayk-shur, or so I think) for Deddington ChurchTV. Växjö is the twin diocese of Oxford, and is one of the thirteen dioceses that make up the Church of Sweden. Thanks to the Porvoo Agreement, we are in full communion with the Lutherans in Sweden, and many links are being established between the Church of England and the Church of Sweden. Deddington, for instance, is twinned with the church in Jönköping. Your devoted curate has the awesome responsibility of relaying the consecration of Växjö's new bishop to the Church of England, armed only with a webcam and some cables. Because the Crown Princess and Prince Daniel are going to be present, I am now accredited as a journalist by the Royal Court of Sweden. This is definitely the proudest moment in my career thus far, and has revolutionized my CV. I have no doubt that the Swedish Court is simply spinning with excitement at the prospect of the Curate of Deddington heading their way for this very special event. I will attempt to record this extraordinary adventure on this blog for the benefit of you all, and hope that you will tune in next Sunday to see Jan-Olof Johansson become the next Bishop of Växjö and - maybe- a fuzzy image of the Crown Princess in the Cathedral. It'll be streamed live on the Deddington website, providing that I am vaguely competent at establishing the link. The likelihood of my screwing everything up is obviously high, but I shall do my best for Dedders and Diocese.

Grief, Silence and the Promise of God

2010-11-08T19:33:00.004Z

God appears to Job, who's been having a bad time of it, and scraping himself with pottery;

as depicted by William Blake

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. Job 19:25-27

At the beginning of November, one can’t help but have one’s life coloured by the dark, brooding tones of grief and death. We’re caught this week between two acts of remembrance: All Souls’ Day on the one hand, when we commemorated the dead whom we have loved and see no longer; and Remembrance Sunday, when we call to mind those who have given their lives in war since 1914, and pray for a world not rent apart by such violence. If one were not involved in either of these ceremonies, one could not help but notice in this corner of the world the signs of decay that surround us as our trees are emptied of their autumnal glory, and the earth seems to retreat into itself as cold winds and darkness descend.

And one dark evening earlier this week I watched The Big Silence on BBC2. It’s based on a very simple and seemingly dull premise: five people are extracted from their busy existence in the British city and sent into silence with a monastic community, and then we the viewers observe what happens. Last week’s episode saw the five sent to a Jesuit community, deep in the countryside, for two weeks, into silence and all that that meant. It was absolutely fascinating to watch what happened to these five people as, in the total absence of human noise and chatter, they began to face their own fear, their own anger and frustration. Above all, the silence presented to the participants the terrifying and disorientating sound of grief. I found it enormously moving to watch one woman, who had for much of the time been resisting the silence by using her mobile ‘phone, choose to put it aside and, in the silence, begins to confront the harsh, penetrating sounds of grief within her. Finally she confronts the loss of her father and the loss of her long-term partner, and in the silence, something changes: God becomes present to her; she breaks down and trusts in the eternal Father.

Both All Souls’ Day and Remembrance Sunday formalize and open up that grief to us. In the middle of busy lives we too become exposed, in those two minutes of silence, to the collective grief of a nation. In that space we face the cutting memory of a whole generation slaughtered on a small patch of earth across the Channel. Grief for a wasted generation that in recent years, has been compounded by almost weekly losses in Helmand. Similarly, the silence that accompanies our lighting of candles at our All Souls service exposes each one of us to the wounds of loss. To enter that silence requires a certain amount of courage, as we begins to hear our deepest desires and anxieties, and it can be distressing. Think of C.S. Lewis's comment in A Grief Observed, ‘I never knew grief would feel so much like fear.’

That fearful grief is something that Job knew well. Our reading of the King James Version in Deddington is just about to reach this book of the Bible, and they’ve just read Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah; part of me can’t help but pity our faithful band of readers - Job is forty-two chapters of, essentially, human agony. And they thought Numbers was bad. And yet it’s probably one of the most fruitful insights into the human condition that the Bible has to offer. Standard Hebrew thinking in the sixth century was that, if you experience suffering then you must – to some degree – have deserved it. You have surely been wicked, and God is punishing you; justice is being exercised. And yet what makes this book so fascinating is that this chap Job is totally blameless. He’s a godly man who’s subjected to intense suffering: his family is killed, his flocks and herds are destroyed, and poor Job is afflicted with sores, left in the dust to scrape himself with broken pottery. Scraping yourself with broken pottery is probably the only spiritual practice that Madonna has yet to try. But this is a man acquainted with grief and filled with sorrow, and there is no argument that can be advanced to give adequate explanation for his horrific condition. Moreover, the man does not curse God for his condition, despite his wife’s encouragement for him to do so. In one of the least romantic moments in world literature, his wife turns to him, ‘Curse God, and die’. All this is part of his being tested by Satan who cannot believe that Job’s faithfulness to God is totally watertight. ‘Does Job fear God for nothing?’, Satan asks incredulously. Can this man really love God while he has the blessings of house and home, flocks, herds, wife and children? Well, of course he loves God, Satan says. He has everything. We’ll see about that, Satan says, and sets about his destruction. Job bewails his condition: ‘[God] tears me down on every side till I am gone; he uproots hope like a tree…I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped by only the skin of my teeth.’

And yet…here in the darkest pits of despair and suffering, Job will not curse God. He truly does love God for nothing. He doesn’t need a comfortable home, a loving family around him, or even warm feelings of God’s presence or satisfactory arguments that explain his condition. He loves God nonetheless; and, it is that love, that commitment alone that gives him hope in his suffering, so much so that he can come up with those extraordinary words, made famous in the third part of Handel’s Messiah: “I know that my Redeemer liveth…and though afterwards worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.” (19.25-27) Loving God for God’s sake, and not for what we can get out of him, is the wisdom presented in the book of Job; indeed, it is the presented as the beginning of life itself. While Job might have looked to the ground, become bitter and cursed God for having forgotten him, Job looks to God alone, to his freedom and majesty in creation, and there finds life even in the face of death, of worms destroying his mortal frame.

And here’s the crux. Loving God for God’s sake, even in his near-annihilation, allows Job to begin to acknowledge the value of creation as a delight in itself. He begins to see it as God himself sees it: freely and wonderfully made in God’s love. He can begin to open herself again that creation, and to love. That, the book suggests, is the beginning of wisdom, and a life well lived.

Now, all that might seem a little complex, but this pattern of trust in the face of grief struck me as being present in The Big Silence last week. Here is a woman who can find no ostensible reason to love God. She has lost so much in her life, and fills that void with endless social engagements, work, shopping, and the business of modern human life. And, to all intents and purposes, I suppose, she gets by. And yet, when stripped of all these things, she begins to faces that grief, she faces the emptiness and waste of much of human life, all her regrets and pain. In the silence, tears begin to flow, anger and resentment rise to the surface. And then, in the barrenness of the silence, she begins to trust: to let go and to love God for God’s sake, and loving God for God’s sake, she, like Job, finds light in the darkness, hope in the grief. There are no fancy theological arguments, no subtle examinations of divine justice, just a committing of oneself, in the darkness, to God.

What, of course, this woman does is nothing other than trust in the pattern and promises of God in Jesus Christ. That man knew that true power and security in this world lay in abandonment to his heavenly Father, even to the point of death on the cross. Christ’s resurrection is a sign to us that God honours that trust, that to give ourselves to the world and each other in love, to let of all those things that we think make us safe in the world, that that is the beginning of life in the face of grief: we become, as Jesus says, ‘God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.’ (Lk 20.36). Baptized into the death of Christ, we trust and hope in the promise that we too shall rise at the last day, a trust that affirmed by God's faithfulness to us in the here and now as we look to him for healing and forgiveness.

So, in the midst of the grief that often accompanies this season, here is perhaps the greatest challenge of them all: in those lonely silences, not to be afraid, not to look to the floor in sorrow, but to fix our eyes on God through that darkness, and, trusting in Him, find the beginning of life itself.

I thought I would end with a passage from one T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets:

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning. (East Coker)

Advent Bible Study (for the diaries)

2010-11-01T12:40:00.005Z

This Advent, there'll be a series of Bible studies available to all in the Benefice. We're going to explore the Incarnation in three of the gospels, looking at the Nativity in Luke and Matthew, and the first chapter of the Gospel according to St John. We'll meet at mine on the first three Thursdays of Advent at 7.30pm. All most welcome, and festive refreshments will be provided. If you think you'd like to come, it would be helpful to know in advance, either by calling me on 338582 or sending an email to curatedan@gmail.com.

2nd December: The God of Surprises: Luke

9th December: The Birth of the King: Matthew

16th December: The Word was made Flesh: John

Silence and the Meditative Life

2010-10-28T20:23:00.002+01:00

An outstanding documentary started last week, examining what happens when five ordinary people steep themselves in silent meditation. On BBC2 on Fridays at 7pm, The Big Silence is a brilliant introduction to the values of monastic spirituality, and the way those might be incorporated into our manically busy lives. It's the perfect antidote to the brashness and arrogance featured weekly on The Apprentice...tune in, or watch on iPlayer.

Or, if you're in the Deddington area, and fancy trying out a bit of silence yourself, come along to church at 8.15am, Mondays to Fridays, where we wait upon God for twenty minutes in the quiet of the chancel.

Sermon for Bible Sunday

2010-10-25T21:28:00.005+01:00

Barford St Michael & St John Hempton

Isaiah 45.22-25; Luke 4.16-25

At the coronation in 1953, a Bible was handed to the Queen with the words, ‘We present you with this book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is wisdom; this is the royal law. These are the lively oracles of God.’ It’s hard to imagine this act having quite the same power in 2010; it would just seem a bit peculiar to many British people, many of whom have never picked up a Bible, let alone read any of it. If you wanted a book that was part of the common mental furniture of the British public nowadays, you might be more likely to offer the Da Vinci Code than the Bible. You can just imagine the scene in Westminster Abbey as Charles is handed a box set of Harry Potter by the Archbishop of Canterbury, can’t you?

And yet there’s no doubt that this is an extraordinary book. In fact, it’s a book of books, written over 1000 years by scholars, kings, Galilean fishermen, wise old priests, and zealous prophets. The literature is immensely varied too: law codes, history, wise sayings and proverbs, prophecies, letters and biographies. And there are many different views about God and the world within it. The author of Ecclesiasties utters, ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!...Everything is meaningless!” (Eccl. 12.8), and God’s presence seems minimal; other parts of the Bible are abounding in hope, the authors’ confident in God’s redemptive work and activity in the lives of His people, such as the later parts of Isaiah: ‘I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy’ (Isaiah 65.18). In short, if you want to get a grasp of the human condition, there’s probably no better book to read than the Bible.

So why then have we as a society stopped reading it, referring to it, legislating by it? Part of it, I suspect is that people browsing through Chronicles or Numbers, will probably not find much that will necessarily inspire them, except perhaps to mass homicide or religious warfare with the Edomites. There’s a group currently reading the King James Version of the Bible all the way through in Deddington, and almost every time I’ve contributed to this mammoth task thus far I’ve been allotted some bizarre reading from one of the earlier sections of the Bible which invariably means I end up laughing uncontrollably and the microphone having to be turned off. It’s getting quite embarrassing, as it probably appears to everyone as though I find the Bible ridiculously funny. Anyway, suffice to say that a lot of the Bible lacks the charm and comfort of Psalm 23 or John’s Gospel, and many people are either put off by the violence or are just bored.

Many other people probably think that to read the Bible on a daily basis you are probably slightly mad, and believe that every word of the book to be totally true; that you’re one of those so-called ‘Bible-bashers’ who’s about to try and convince you that the world really was created in six days and that Jonah was really swallowed by a giant fish. At the other end of the spectrum, you find the 1970s vicar who, with having spent several years reading German theology comes to the conclusion that almost all of the Bible is entirely mythical, the collected writings of long dead old men with overactive imaginations. The best thing, the well-informed vicar reckons, is to grasp what essentials you can from the mythological morass, and throw the rest aside. Neither the Bible-basher nor the liberal scholar make the Good Book seem very inviting, or worthwhile.

Well, a lot could be said to counter both these characters in our church life, but I want to state briefly principles which I think give us good reason to keep the Bible at the heart of our Christian lives.

And we should begin by saying what the Bible is not. Many people have enormous expectations about the Bible; they expect it to offer condensed truths on every page, and offer factually inerrant accounts of ancient history in the middle-east, comparable to the sort of histories you’ll find in your local bookshop on the battle of Stalingrad, or the life of Churchill. And, of course, the Bible is far from being anything like this. You only need to read the gospels to identify quite significant discrepancies. Matthew’s Gospel, for instance, says that it was Mary Magdalene who sees an angel roll away the stone from Jesus’ tomb (Mt 28.1), whereas John records that the stone had already been removed once Mary had got there. And there are many more. Yet, it’s not as if the early church was unaware that there were significant differences in the stories of our Lord’s resurrection; that John disagreed with Matthew about the pattern of events did not result in his exclusion from the canon of Scripture that we have received in the Church of England. So even if the author of 2 Timothy can say with confidence that ‘all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness’ (2 Tim. 3.16), I don’t think this compels us by any means to believe that every word in the Bible is factually true, or that the gospel narratives are comparable to modern historical biographies.

Nonetheless, that does not mean that the gospels are consequently not worth reading. And our second point is that the Bible does contain everything necessary for salvation. The Roman Catholic catechism puts it this way: ‘the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures’ (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, ch.3, para. 11). Indeed, reading the Bible is to confront the God who calls us into relationship with him. G.K. Chesterton once said that ‘When a man reads the Bible he is not merely reading a book, or indulging in a literary exercise; he is being dealt with by God.’ And that, I think, has got to be right. As we read, we are brought into a world, as Eugene Peterson puts it, in which ‘God is active everywhere and always, where God is fiery first cause and not occasional after-thought, where God cannot be procrastinated, where everything is relative to God and God is not relative to anything.’ Here is a testimony to God’s commitment to us and to the world he has so lovingly made, and to read it is to be caught up in the record of God’s dealings with the world, and to be transformed by them. So, our second point is that in the Bible we discern God’s will for us and for all his creation, as people across the centuries bear witness to God’s acts of faithfulness and love.

And the third point is a little more radical, and you may well disagree with me. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are described as ‘religions of the book’. But I think that’s wrong. The Holy Qur’an of Islam is believed by Muslims to be the exacts words of God which He uttered to the Prophet in the Arabic language. The Bible is not this, as we have already said. Moreover, when we talk about God’s revelation of himself, we are not taking about God uttering a bumper pack of doctrines to be received without any human interpretation in the form of the Bible. Rather, we believe that when God reveals himself he does so by dwelling in human flesh, Emmanuel – God among us, and that Jesus is still available to us today through His Spirit. As our Gospel reading makes clear today, when Jesus reads from the Scriptures in the synagogue, he sees himself as the fulfillment of those Scriptures. To know God, for us, is to know, love, and follow Jesus, not a text. Jesus, it might be noted, wrote nothing and didn’t hand out a collection of his favourite sayings to his disciples the night before he died. No, he gives bread and wine, and instructs them to eat and drink in memory of him.

The revelation of God that we believe in is not ultimately a book of infallible divine speech, but a new life in Jesus Christ through God the Holy Spirit, as we are brought back into a loving relationship with the Father. We cherish the Bible because it is our only real record of that extraordinary life, but ultimately it is personal presence of the Christ, not the book about Him, that we proclaim.

So this Bible Sunday, three points to consider: first, we mustn’t expect too much from the Bible; it’s not an infallible guide to human existence. Secondly, though, it invites us into a world in which God is active and present and in which we discern who we are and what is our future in the love and promises of our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. And, thirdly, our reading of the Bible should lead us, not into a worship of a text, but into a deeper and more real relationship with Him who fulfills all Scripture: Jesus Christ, who promises now to be present to us, mysteriously and most wonderfully, in broken bread and wine outpoured.

Sermon for Harvest

2010-10-04T22:08:00.005+01:00

Sermon for Harvest Evensongs, Barford St Michael and Deddington

Deut 26.1-11; John 6.25-35

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be thirsty, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’

I am not sure whether I am sufficiently able to give a harvest sermon. Last week I was given the dubious honour of auctioning off Hempton’s harvest produce after their evensong, and it quickly became apparent that I wasn’t altogether certain about the difference between marrows, courgettes, and cucumbers. I’m still not entirely sure if I’m honest. I put it down to growing up in Surrey, where food was just there in Waitrose.

And it’s probably true to say that the clergy nowadays generally aren’t that knowledgeable about the land like they used to be (those halcyon days when they owned most of it…). When historians discuss the decline in churchgoing and Christian belief since the eighteenth century, a lot of people think that when farmers stopped relying upon God for good weather, good crops and healthy livestock, the church in the countryside was in serious trouble. This approach has not altogether disappeared. Even as recently as 1960, priests in the south-west of France were being asked to bless corn and say masses for sick pigs. And even in Deddington, I was surprised to hear these sort of practices continue: George Fenemore told me only the other day that he asked the Vicar not so long ago to bless one of his new combine-harvesters. By contrast, however, he did joke that this would almost certainly bring total calamity upon the workings of the machine. But, in all seriousness, the agricultural revolution transformed the way farmers thought about religion and the land, partly because farmers soon realized that chemicals were invariably more effective for increasing crop yield than the village priest’s prayers. There’s an account of a farmer in France in the late nineteenth century telling his local priest,

‘Monsieur le curé, I’ve tried everything. I’ve had masses said and got no profit from them. I’ve bought chemicals and they worked. I’ll stick to the better merchandise.’

Tonight I want to ask the question: do we still need God at harvest? And in a revolutionary departure from the three-point sermon, I’m going to suggest two ways in which we might have good reason to continue trusting in God in the countryside.

And the first is that, whatever else we might say about the land in our modern age, at the end of the day we receive it as a gift. Our reading from Deuteronomy talks of the Israelites coming into the land that God has given them as their inheritance. But, throughout the Bible, one should be in no doubt that, to use our introductory verse tonight, ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof’ (Ps 24.1). Think back to Genesis 1. God says to man and woman, made in his image, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it…I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.’ Humans are to have dominion, are to be God’s stewards of his creation, but – quite crucially – creation itself is in God’s gift, it is the LORD’s. We plant seeds, we harvest, we eat, we multiply. But we all do this, the Bible repeatedly tells us, because of God’s generosity and loving-kindness.

Artificial fertilizer does not in the end remove this command to be good stewards of God’s creation; to lovingly tend that which he has given us. That is why in our reading from Deuteronomy, the Israelites are commanded to give the first fruits of the ground to the LORD in his holy dwelling place, as a reminder that they lived in the land of milk and honey not as an inalienable right, but because God himself had brought them into the land. To recognize the Creator, the giver of all good gifts, is to recognize that we live and move and have our being not because it is our right, not because we have been clever enough to develop fertilizers and tractors, but primarily because God has entrusted the gift of his creation to us. And what’s more we should celebrate this fact. The Law also tells the Israelites that, having made their offering to the LORD their God, ‘together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, you shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.’

What we do here today, and in our harvest festivals year after year, is a continuation of that command: proclaiming that no celebration of our year is complete without recognizing and giving thanks to our Creator and Sustainer for all his good gifts.

My second point is far less cheery, and probably suggests that the curate is entering a period of Seasonal Affective Disorder. But I want to ask, What do we ultimately get from all our toil, on the land, in our offices, or wherever we work? Many of us, farmers or regular workers, will feel at the moment that, at best, we’re just getting by. It won’t just be farming that will feel the pain in the coming years, either. With VAT set to rise to twenty per cent, and severe public spending cuts on the horizon, many British families will soon begin to feel the pinch if they haven’t already. And, of course, our economic struggles are really nothing compared to many other nations across the world. Only last month the rising cost of bread in Mozambique led to fierce protests and clashes that left thirteen dead.

Part of the response to these crises are, of course, sustainable farming, fairer markets, and a less gluttonous West. Part of it is, however, goes a bit deeper, and suggests something more difficult about what it means to be human: and that is that the sweat and grind of our everyday life is inescapable To quote a part of the Bible not regularly heard at harvest, God tells Adam in Genesis 3 as he sends him and his fruit-loving wife out of Eden: ‘cursed is the ground because of you…in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life’ (Gen 3.17). And much later in the Bible, the author of Ecclesiastes in his usual perky way, writes, ‘What do mortals get from all the strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is meaningless.’ And although we give thanks today for a reasonably good harvest and food to eat, shelter over our heads, the working year can nonetheless for many of us feel deeply unrewarding, and, dare I say it, meaningless: endless toil, and for what, Ecclesiastes ask, except to return to the dust? I would add at this point that I enjoy my job.

But that yearning for a life free from toil was no less in the hearts of those men and women who sat on the Galilean hillside listening to Jesus all those years ago. They come in search of this teaching that offers meaning and hope in a life of drudgery and toil. We, with them, can only imagine what it must have been like to be there with Him, not least when our Lord breaks bread and shares fish, so that five thousand eat from a few loaves. To be in Jesus’s company that day was to be spared the toil and labour of human existence; food was readily available to the Galilean crowds, and they saw it as a sign that the Messiah has arrived: like the manna from heaven, here they see a new Moses. Like the food made miraculously available to Elijah, they see here a new prophet, the coming of the new age, and they want more of it. They chase Jesus, trying to make him a king. Would we not be the same? It would be like David Cameron this week, standing up on the Tory conference platform and offering free food, free housing, free public services. Who could say no?

But to this crowd Jesus tells them, quite bluntly, ‘You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.’ The crowd is befuddled; bread that lasts forever! The true bread from heaven! ‘Sir,’ they say, ‘give us this bread always’. To their pleading, Jesus comes back with this astonishing reply: ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ His reply is in some ways beyond fair trade, sustainable food supplies and good harvests, good though those things are, and it touches not just our bank accounts, but the very core of our being: our deep longing for a bread that endures; for a wealth that is satisfying, and a way of life that begs for nothing. To these people, from farmers with crops yielding plenty to City financiers delighting themselves with complex fiscal equations, Jesus lays the challenge starkly before us: don’t work for that which perishes, chasing after earthly satisfaction, but work for the food which endures for eternal life.

So, this harvest, with fertilizers aplenty, and a way of life that really begs for nothing, there are two good reasons to continue trusting in the God: firstly, we have all this because God has entrusted it to us, and we rightly give him thanks today. But, secondly, even if modernity has delivered the clergy from saying masses for your pigs, the toil and meaningless labour of life is no less apparent to many; in a period when many, both in the city and in the countryside are starving for a wisdom and way of life that offers meaning and hope, we offer them a food that satisfies: Jesus Christ, the bread of life, who says ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him who sent me.’ (Jn 6.29)

Evensong and English Religion

2010-09-25T17:46:00.004+01:00

The Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson, has written an excellent piece about the nature of English churchgoing and evensong, as part of a series of articles in the Guardian about the Book of Common Prayer. It is interesting to note that cathedral congregations continue to rise as many seek, as Grace Davie has suggested, 'believing without belonging'; evensong offers an anonymity in church than many prefer to the embrace of community. Read Bishop Alan's article here.

Sermon for Trinity 16

2010-09-19T19:04:00.000+01:00

“For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle.” 1 Timothy 2.7a

On this day, one hundred and eighty-five years ago, a young priest arrives in Deddington from Oxford. He comes to dine at the Vicarage with the illustrious Richard Greaves, whose fiery Calvinistic preaching filled this church week after week, with people flocking from the region and the University to hear one of the most celebrated preachers of the day. This young clergyman comes to Deddington, however, not merely for supper with Greaves, but to make a speech at a gathering of the Church Missionary Society. Very likely in this very space before us, he rises before the assembly to make what he records in his diary as his first ever speech. Neither the Churchpeople of Deddington, nor the Vicar, could ever have imagined that the man that stood before them would in due course become one of the most controversial men of his century. They would have been roundly flabberghasted had you told them that almost two hundred years later the same man would come to be beatified by the Bishop of Rome in a park near Birmingham. The young clergyman of which I speak is, of course, John Henry Newman: academic, leader of the Oxford Movement, infamous convert to Rome, cardinal and very probably the greatest English religious thinker since Hooker.

Now, why, you may ask, do you wish to devote our Sunday sermon to thinking about a man chiefly famous for rejecting the sound teaching and authority of the Church of England? What has Newman to teach us today, here in 2010? Well, a lot I think can be learnt from the speech that Newman made to Deddingtonians all those years ago, and it relates well to our epistle reading today from 1 Timothy. Newman comes to Deddington to talk to the Church Missionary Society, and in his speech he explores the question: Why spread the good news of Jesus Christ? Why do all of you, Newman asks, want to give money to a mission agency and its work overseas? And, in our time, we might comparably ask, Why should we surrender our hard-earned savings for a youth worker, for overseas aid, for the diocesan share, for the ongoing existence of this church itself?

And why indeed? The necessity of religion is far from obvious to many people nowadays. So often now you’ll encounter the person who says, ‘I know how to live a good life, I’m very spiritual, I’m kind and generous, I don’t need to be told at Church Sunday after Sunday how to live my life’. It’s very hard to know what to say to such people, many of whom are searching in their own way, on their own terms, for truth and meaning in their lives. Only last weekend I was reading that illustrious journal, the Sunday Times ‘Style’ magazine, which profiled Julia Roberts in her upcoming appearance in the film Eat Pray Love which is released this week. It’s based upon the book of the same name and it’s about a woman who, unhappy in her marriage and encountering a sort of existential crisis, leaves her husband and sets off round the world in search of personal and spiritual fulfillment. Like many books and films of its type, we are told that spiritual fulfillment comes primarily through eating organic food, yoga, and getting in touch with the Inner You. I obviously caricature this sort of New Age paperback, and I’m a great fan of organic meat, but we can’t ignore the fact that books like Eat Pray Love are bestsellers…and no doubt the film adaptation will make an awful lot of money to help Julia Roberts in her ongoing quest for spiritual enlightenment. But the point remains, if the search for fulfilment is now comparable to finding a good bargain on eBay, how does the Church respond?

Well, you may be surprised to hear that things were not altogether different in 1825. When Newman stands before the people of Deddington, he speaks about those people who are able to talk eloquently about the principles of morality and duty towards one’s neighbours, but who shy away for explicit language about Christ and salvation. Their view, Newman claimed, was but ‘partial and defective’. ‘We turn our backs’ he tells them, ‘to the sun of righteousness, then think we see without its light’: if you’re born in the light of Christianity, in a Christian nation say, Newman reckoned, you don’t know what darkness is, and so often end up confusing the benefits of Christian community with the gospel itself. To all those people who had pitched up in Deddington to hear why the CMS should reach out to the Indian subcontinent or the Southern Cape, Newman turns it round on them. What is your reason for being a Church? Why do you do what you do? Is it for community? Is it for fellowship? Is it as an offering of hospitality and service to each other?

Let us return to our Epistle today. Paul writes to Timothy instructing his community how to pray, and reinforcing his message by saying that he himself has been appointed as a herald, as one who is sent to the Gentiles “in faith and in truth”. Why is he sent and for what purpose? The preceding verses read quite bluntly:

“For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for many. For this reason I was appointed as a herald and an apostle.” (vv.5-6)

Community, hospitality, service to one another, visiting the sick: all these are essential, and good. Indeed our Lord commands that we should do these things until he returns in glory (Mt 25). But, ultimately, Newman and Paul suggest, it is Christ whom we proclaim. Underneath our civic duty, underneath the swell of goodwill and hospitality, underneath the ritual of our daily liturgy a healthy church will make manifest in its speech and in its practice that earth-shattering truth: that God sends his Son to die upon a cross as a ransom for many, to free us from our sin and brokenness. In Jesus, we are brought back to God, and share an intimacy with God which itself is but a foretaste of that which we shall enjoy in His new creation. It is this truth about who we are – not equality legislation, not a weekly yoga session, nor even a mature appreciation of art and good literature – that guarantees dignity, purpose, and hope for humanity in a cynical and tired society. Here is where we find our value in the sight of God: loved immeasurably, being changed from glory into glory in the likeness of Christ. This truth we must cherish in Word and Sacrament and this truth we must proclaim even if, like Paul and Silas in Thessalonica, we are accused of ‘turning the world upside down’ (Acts 17.6)

I’m going to leave the final words to Blessed John Henry Newman taken from his Deddington speech:

“[The] flame [of the gospel] has now been lit 1800 years, and thus the tradition of many hands and the succession of many generations is come down to us. And we should feel it a sacred gift and precious deposit which is to be by us transmitted pure and healthy to our posterity. And not only pure, but stronger and more vigorous and more widely extended. It is but a timorous and unbelieving policy, to hide the light of life under a bushel, as if every gust of wind would put it out instead of setting it up that it may profit the whole family of man. Whoever heard of a quiet and inactive flame? We but poorly guard the honour and welfare of religion while we keep on the defensive, instead of offering it to every people, nation, and language…in forwarding the cause of Missions we at once promote our own spiritual welfare and that of the heathen – our hearts are opened – our feelings excited – our views enlarged – our minds warmed – We bless and our blessed – we water and are watered”.

May we who come now to receive our Lord’s body and blood, treasure that sacred gift of our salvation, and hold the flame of the gospel aloft in our own generation. Amen.