Our Lady in Glory 2010 (for vigil Mass only)

Digital cameras are changing the shape of the world; and especially, they are changing the shape of the people in our world.

When we consider what most Christians say they believe about the BVM, it's as if the Church has taken a digital photograph of the mother of Jesus and spent centuries editing the blemishes away to make her into their version of “perfect”.

We see edited images like that all the time.

I met a man once who produces them for the front cover of a men's fitness magazine. “There is no man on earth who actually looks good enough for our front covers”, he said. He went on to tell me: “We just take a picture of someone with a nice face, then add in the upper torso of a guy who goes to the gym six times a week. Then I stretch things about a bit and touch them up. You don't get such perfection naturally. You have to create it on the computer.”

(So, guys, when you see the front cover of those magazines: don't feel guilty about being unfit. No one really looks like that in the flesh. “It's all smoke and mirrors”, they used to say; nowadays we say “It's a digitally re-touched image.”)

The Church has evidently done similar things with its images of Mary. Western Church tradition has a lot to answer for when we consider the person of Mary, mother of the Lord, Mother of the Church, Mother of God.

This feast of Our Lady in Glory tries to redress the balance in our thinking about Mary. The feast has been given a variety of names over the centuries of Christian theology: the “Falling Asleep of the BVM” (the Scottish Episcopal Church's description), the “Dormition of the BVM” (the Eastern Orthodox Church's title), or using a very modern (1950) RC description, the “Assumption of the BVM.

Although some Protestants may bridle at what they wrongly imagine is a non-Biblical dogma, in fact this feast proclaims a doctrine that lies at the heart of all orthodox theology: the belief that the destiny of Christians is a restored relationship with God, in the fullness of God's kingdom, in heaven.

In this feast we celebrate the fact that Mary, foremost amongst the followers of the Lord Jesus, has gone before us and shares already in the banquet of heaven, in company with all the other Saints of God.

Much of the blame for the neglect of giving a proper place for Mary in some branches of Christian theology must be laid squarely in the Church's own back yard. For Mary has been hi-jacked by a part of the Church which seems to have problems with a developed theology of humanity that takes account of physicality and sexuality.

When the Church talks about Mary it so often labours the point of her perpetual virginity – a much-over-rated “virtue” – which it contrarily links with her fecundity as recorded in the gospels; her sinlessness, her obedience (especially), and her humility. Now, all of these characteristics may be true – and all of them are trying to convey essential elements of an integrated theology surrounding Christ's humanity and his divinity. But they have also allowed our thinking to be sidetracked into thoroughly unhelpful bye-ways.

The end result is the pre-occupation of conservative Christians with what they imagine to be the most desirable attribute of all human life: sexual purity; compound that with distorted notions of the rôle of women - leading to a meek submissiveness and an apparent unquestioning acceptance of everything, good and bad, that life presents us with.

All societies have strict, usually obscure regulations about sexual purity. The Church has rather colluded with many of these accepted but unexplored mores , to the detriment of the development of a more inclusive and comprehensive theology of human sexuality. The effects of this inadequate theology are all too apparent: a block on the development of the rôle of women in the Church and, until very recent times, in wider society too; in the Church, a preoccupation with petty sexual rule-keeping, and a fear of exploring what the diversity of human sexuality may be saying to the Church and the world.

Our stained glass windows, our statues, (and yes, even some of our icons) often show Mary to be a rather simpering, usually blonde-haired, china-doll or a manifestation of a buxom Renaissance idea of womanhood; certainly not a real person.

The earthly Mary was, of course, a dark-skinned, peasant Jewish woman, barely more than a child when she first discerned God's particular call of her life. She was a young woman frightened by faith, full of terror at what God had apparently done for her. Up against disgrace from friends, family and community she preserved with courage in her resolve to become the person God was calling her to be.

She sets out on a journey to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, who proclaims, “Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb…. Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made to her by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

Mary's reply to Elizabeth is positively revolutionary. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord…. the Almighty has done great things for me…. He has shown the power of his arm, he has routed the proud of heart. He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich sent empty away.”

Notice that she does not say “He has made me a perpetual virgin, an unattainable ideal, an impossible model for other women.”…

These are the words of a disgraced peasant woman in a country under occupation by a foreign army, in a country where the only women who might possibly ever have their voices heard were from noble birth.

Rich and proud Christians throughout history have tried in vain to rob Mary's words of meaning. But they have failed. The Magnificat remains as a clarion call to all Christians to recognise those principles that lie at the heart of the Gospel.

Mary's words are revolutionary. All religions tend to attract predominantly conservative personalities, folk who prefer to maintain the status quo in matters of faith and politics. But Mary overturns conventional religious expectations. Her proclamation is radical as a political agenda, and as a religious text it points to some uncomfortable questions for those who would hear her voice.

Even those of us who would like to think that we have glimpsed even a little of the radical challenge presented by Mary's rôle in the history of salvation so easily retreat into our religiosity.

But here is the woman who comes to mourn, her heart pierced by pain, at the foot of the Cross. And here is the woman who shares, first and foremost, in the joys of her Son's Resurrection.

Today we celebrate this strong woman's life of faith being rewarded. Today's feast is about the reward which God has in store for all who keep faith – the joy of heaven which Jesus has won for us all. Today's feast is indeed a celebration of the Resurrection – the renewed life with God which is the goal of all our journeying.

Today's feast proclaims that Mary is with God - body and soul, yes, body and soul. Today's feast proclaims loud and clear that her flesh, as ours, is redeemed and made holy . It's not our ‘souls' that are saved (whatever they are…); it us as whole , entire human beings. And that includes our fleshly reality. The Creeds call it the resurrection of the body: Jesus' body, Mary's body, and our body.

This is indeed Good News: good news that our bodies, beautiful and ugly, young and old, abused and cared for, celebrated and exploited, our bodies, yours and mine, are worthy to sit with God.

Mary has been taken into heaven, to the glory of her Son's love, and all the hosts of angels rejoice. May her example of faithfulness inspire us. May her prayers join with ours in thanksgiving to God for the gift of Jesus, her Son. May her radical challenge to the Church and to the world continue to disturb us to work for the values of justice and mercy which lie at the heart of the Gospel message. May her Assumption into heaven remind us that we are all worthy, body and soul, of life with God. May her gracious, strong and self-giving love enfold us in one community of thankfulness and praise. Amen.

Trinity 8 2010 – prop 12 at Carrington

There is the apocryphal story told – usually by Scots against themselves – that when you go to visit relatives or friends in the middle of a Sunday afternoon you are quite likely to be greeted with the immortal lines, “You'll have had your tea?!” The Scottish reputation for meanness is probably, I hope, undeserved, but the myth remains.

As a partial rebuttal to that in an AA survey a few years ago (that's Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous), the runner up in the “guesthouse land lady of the year ” competition was a Scottish couple: in fact, two gay men, running a B&B in Dunoon, Argyllshire, Scotland, were, apparently, runners-up in the international competition to be known as the most hospitable, welcoming and generous ‘landladies' in the business…..

Sometimes there's nothing quite so satisfying as discovering and dispelling misconceptions about us. People may think they know who we are and what we think, but often their opinions are way off the mark.

Take a moment to consider all those times in our lives when people have been completely taken aback by a reply, a reaction or a decision we've made. Think about the replies you received back: “But I never knew you thought like that”, “I was convinced you'd hit the roof”, “I'd always thought you felt differently”. Or, of course, the classic “Have you been drinking?”!

Whatever the reaction – such moments are often occasions when a new understanding, and indeed a new intimacy can grow between people. Suddenly perceptions change and you can sense the opportunity for something new, and perhaps exciting, in a relationship or association.

Jesus could be said to be touching on the same point with his teaching on prayer in today's Gospel. He is almost saying to his disciples ‘forget whatever you think it is that God wants to hear about you or from you, and just bring it all – forget the potted highlights: be real, be intimate with God in prayer; bring it all – even the nasty bits.

Be prepared to realise that not only do you share in wanting to bring about what God desires, but that you are really a part of it too.

So, if you want forgiveness, then start by forgiving others yourself. It's simple, it's intimate, it's something that those who heard Jesus now know they have in common with God. This is something they share with their Creator.

Jesus encourages those around him to be prepared to ‘stick at it', to persevere in their prayer, to keep going back to the door that might appear locked and to keep knocking – no matter how impertinent it might feel.

In today's gospel, we hear Jesus teach his first followers to call God “Father.”

Two thousand years of Christian history have masked the scandal that calling God “Father” must have caused when Jesus first did it.

The Jewish people once thought that the name of God was so holy that they never even allowed it to be written down in its entirety. “Yahweh”, one of the names of God in the Hebrew Bible, was treated with so much reverence that it was only ever written with the vowels missed out.

And Nazareth , the village where Jesus grow up, was also something of a joke to people at that time, a bit like Mansfield or Bulwell can be today. And now this man, this son of a joiner from Nazareth (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth ?”), had the cheek to tell people to refer to God as a parent.

And not only did he teach people to address God as a parent, he also got them to call God by a special name. Not even just plain Father. No, the word he used in Aramaic was “Abba”.

Abba - it's nowhere near as polite or formal as “Father”. Abba means “Dad”, “Pops”, “Daddy”, “Pa”, - not the formal “Father” but an intimate, loving, totally familiar way of speaking to a loved and loving parent.

Some people find it difficult to use the term “Father” as a title for God. Their human fathers may have been absent or, worse still violent, or demeaning in other ways. And after all, it's not as if God is actually father, a male. God, as the Scriptures assure us, is neither male nor female. God is God, and if we think of God as being male or female, we've missed something of God's mystery, and we've tried, wrongly, to picture God as someone like us, with a body and other inconveniences.

No, in the end, the title “father” isn't the important thing about what Jesus taught his disciples to pray. In the end, there are just two things that matter about Jesus' command to call God “Abba”. One is that he was teaching us to speak to God informally and tenderly. The other is that he was reminding us that we are adopted sons and daughters of God.

Despite the often cited search for ‘spirituality' Western civilisation has, in many ways, turned away from God – and certainly from the God they once received from the Church. It's no wonder that many of our families and our communities are in a state of dis-integration. If the pattern of our human relationships should be modelled on God's relationship with us, it's no wonder that a nation which has forgotten God has also forgotten the duties its members owe to one anotherIf our fellowship round our table at home should be a reflection and a continuation of what we enjoy here in the Eucharist - (note that this is the way round it should be!) - then it's no wonder that a nation which has forgotten its need of the Eucharist should also be a nation which has forgotten its own spiritual story: to become a nation that eats Chicken McNuggets in front of the television, rather than a people that feeds on the Body of Christ at the foot of the cross.

Jesus taught us to call God “Abba, Father”. Ignore him we might, yet this is the Father who always welcomes his children home; this is the parent who will not hand us a stone when we ask for bread, the Father who, in another parable, makes a feast to welcome home - not the good son, the hard worker, but the wandering failure of a sinner. That prodigal, lost son is an image of you and me.

As we learn from Jesus we discover that prayer is much more than a particular formula, or talking to God, or bringing a laundry list of concerns, needs, or wants to God's attention. First and foremost we discover that prayer lives from the relationship we share with God in Christ Jesus.

The prayer paradigm that Jesus teaches to his disciples in today's Gospel looks to God to vindicate God's own self, to bring forth God's own reign; to provide for the vital stuff of daily living, to forgive us as we seek to embody forgiveness to others.

In prayer, therefore, we participate in God's own character.

True prayer has little to do with what we want, and everything to do with God's loving purposes for God's own creation.

And so we ask, we seek, we knock – repeatedly – not in order to wear God down by our persistence, but so that we may enter into the mystery that is God and to be transformed from within.

Amen.

Pentecost Sunday 2010

There's a story in the Book of Genesis, about the Tower of Babel . Most of you will know it. The story-teller paints an idealised picture of a world where everyone shared one language, and how human beings, united by their common language, came to think that they were invincible and began to fear that God would knock them back into shape. "Come,” they said, “Let us build ourselves a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." By our own might, the people thought, we can be greater even than God himself.

But the story suggests that God saw the tower and said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."

The tower in this story stands for the age-old human desire for greatness and personal achievement.

But today, on the feast of Pentecost, we hear a very different story. The old judgement is reversed. In today's story, many languages are spoken, but all understand. The false unity made by human beings is replaced by the true unity of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Truth, promised by Jesus, is now with his people, the Church, to guide them, to inspire them. And the command given at the Ascension: to go out and preach the gospel to all the world, becomes not just an idea but a real possibility. “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do” says Jesus. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

It must have been an amazing experience, to feel your life being changed as the lives of those disciples was changed, to feel the gift of God's power setting you free, giving you courage. The timid and shy discovered new gifts of confidence, the noisy found peace, and all of them at last could go out and be the people Jesus wanted them to be, because the Spirit had transformed them, changed them, made them new.

Fishermen became evangelists - preachers of the Good News of Christ risen and ascended from the dead. Those who had left their nets to follow him now became fishers of men and women.

But, of course, the command to share faith didn't end with those first disciples. If it had done, we wouldn't be here today. The command to share faith with others is for every generation of Christians. If we don't obey it, there won't be a Church here in Carrington when we are long gone.

Bishop Jack Nichols, one-time Bishop of Sheffield but now retired, tells the story of his first experience of being evangelised. At the tender age of 13, he was taken to an evangelical mission at the Ebenezer Baptist Chapel in Bacup. The preacher went on and on about sin. He went on, in fact, about sin for a full forty minutes (not unlike, it is said, a certain suffragan bishop…). He told the congregation how bad they were, how there – literally - wasn't a hope in hell for them, and how they were all doomed. But then he relented - slightly. Today, he said, the door of heaven has been opened - just a little. And any who come up to the front at the end of the sermon and declare their faith in Jesus would be spared and saved.

The 13-year old Bishop Jack was up there like a shot! Well, who wouldn't be if, young and impressionable, they'd been offered the sure and certain alternative of hell and eternal damnation!

Reflecting on this later in life, Bishop Jack realised that, horrid though this experience had been, it had set him on the journey of faith and for that he was thankful. But as he came to know God, and something of God's deep love and forgiveness, he realised that all those years ago he had probably been conned. For if God is so loving and so forgiving to be worth believing in, there must be other ways of bringing people to respond to his love without blackmail or threat of damnation, without a hard sell, without coercion.

And that brings us to the story of the 19th century French priest, John Vianney. As you may know John Vianney wasn't a brilliant, intellectual priest. In fact he was so bad at academic work that he had trouble getting accepted for ordination. Unfortunately, John Vianney has become something of a hero to those who go through ordination training with an anti-intellectual chip on their shoulders! But anyway, because he wasn't especially brilliant, even after his training, the Bishop sent John Vianney to a small town called Ars, a poor, remote and boring place: in fact the French equivalent of Bacup… or Bulwell…

John Vianney of course became the Curate - or Curé - of Ars. And by his preaching and holiness of life he transformed his parish. He died in 1859. He is recognised by both the Roman Catholic Church and our own Church as a saint.

The story goes on, though, because Bishop Jack told us that he had once met a very old woman whose Grandmother had been converted to Christianity by the preaching of the Curé d'Ars. This grandmother came from a wealthy family, and when she was young, she had gone to France on a Grand Tour, as wealthy people in those days did.

She'd gone to France to sample the sights, and one of them, already famous, was the very un-clever priest of the small town of Ars , who was filling his Church by his preaching. So she made it in her way to go and listen to him.

Many years later she told her granddaughter how, on hearing the Curé preach, her life was changed - and changed utterly. She became a Christian and found a faith which never left her for the rest of her life.

But as her granddaughter said, the real miracle was that the Curé d'Ars didn't know a word of English and always preached in French........ and her grandmother hadn't a word of French and so couldn't have understood a word he had said.

It wasn't what the Curé said that mattered, it was who he had become.

And that in the end is the sort of thing which converts people. Not guilt, not threat, not fire and damnation, but the experience of holiness in other people's lives. Not who we were , but who we are becoming.

When people look at you and me, they see God's shop window. They might see – we hope - God's Spirit at work in our lives. They see God's Holy Spirit making the best of what he's got, as she always does.

God can - and will - and does - use you and me to bring others to Jesus. The question is, will we let him?

That magnetic holiness which the Curé d'Ars transmitted to all he met didn't come easily. It was a product of many hours of prayer andcontemplation, of letting God use him as a vehicle of love for the world.

Are we so busy building the towers of ambition that we leave God no time to use us for his glory? Are we so busy trying to build individual success into our personal lives that we have no time left for worship or prayer? Are we so busy with the details of our domestic lives that the life of faith takes second (or even a lesser) place?

These questions might also, of course, be applied to our wallets and bank accounts.

Do we allow the Holy Spirit to break down the towers of our faults, the sins we commit again and again: of judging others, and gossiping, and failing in love?

Today, on this feast of Pentecost, God calls us all to be one in mind and spirit and he gives us the gifts we need to be the people he longs for us to be.

Today, we, with Louise and with Christians down the ages, can pray “Come, Holy Spirit”. Come afresh into my heart. May your Spirit shine, past the towers of my sins, and out through my eyes and my actions so that seeing them, others may discover that you are at work in their lives, and may respond to the wonder of your love, the love you have for me and for everyone. Amen.

Easter 2 - 2010

“Jesus showed them his hands and his side”.

You can tell a great deal about someone by looking at their hands. We can tell if a person is a manual worker or a keyboard operator, a doer of housework, or someone waited on hand and foot by others.

As someone who prefers to present an assured, confident face to the world I'm embarrassed by my hands, because folk can see the torn and bitten nails and skin; and so my usual state of mind is all-too-obvious!

“Jesus showed them his hands and his side”.

All the gospels are full of references to the hands of Jesus. We see Jesus putting his hands into the hands of people in need. Jesus takes Simon's mother-in-law by the hand as he raises her up from fever. He takes the blind man by the hand at Bethesda , the pool of healing. When people thought the epileptic boy was dead, Jesus took him by the hand and raised him up. And we see Jesus stretching out his hand to touch the leper and laying his hands on the sick at Nazareth to heal them.

He takes children into his arms, and with his hands, he blesses them. His holy hands touch the tongue and ears of the deaf man. And it is these samehands which reach out to save Peter from drowning.

“Jesus showed them his hands and his side”.

Jesus hands are creative hands. The hands which made the universe, are his. Now they work with wood in a carpenters shop, now nailed to a cross, now risen in blessing.

In these human hands we see none other than the hands of God himself, reaching out to us, touching us, welcoming us, healing us, forgiving us, blessing us.

Jesus' hands are God's hands, and so God's hands are scarred, wounded hands; hands still showing the imprint of the nails, the price paid for us, the signs of love.

“Jesus showed them his hands and his side”.

On Good Friday each one of us had opportunity to touch those hands again, to meet those holy hands, outstretched in welcome, to grasp them in our hands as we dared to embrace the cross.

Perhaps you were touched by it all: the words, the liturgies. Perhaps on Good Friday you buried your embarrassment and did something very unreserved. Perhaps you crept to the cross, and, holding it for a moment in your hands, maybe actually kissed it. And perhaps as you did this the living wood came to life for you and you found yourself there, a longtime ago, at another cross, on that little hill outside that Holy City , whereon was hung the Saviour of the World.

But now Holy Week is over, done. Easter is here.

Yet there's a sense in which Holy Week can never be over, done and dusted. There is a sense in which we are called to live Holy Week – or, probably more correctly, the Triduum, the Great Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Day - every day of our lives. For Christians, every pain and failure is a sharing in the cross. But, of course, we can only bear to contemplate this because the corollary is also true: that every joy and triumph is a glimpse of the true resurrection which awaits us all, and is the prism through which we can dare to claim to understand something of the pain of it all.

And, most certainly, this and every Mass is a showing forth, a celebration, a bringing-into-the-present of everything Jesus did for us in that first Holy Week and on that first Easter Sunday.

Every time we stretch out our hands to share in bread and wine, we are linking ourselves with those hands hung on the cross. Every time we stretch out our hands to share in the blessed sacrament, we are aligning ourselves with those hands, risen.

“Jesus showed them his hands and his side”. He shows them to us at the altar - today and every day.

The temptation is that we leave it at that. The temptation is that we look up and say, with Thomas, “My Lord and my God”, but fail to make the connection with today.

But Jesus did not die to give us nice feelings. He did not commission his disciples to set up an organisation which might provide an interesting hobby for the retired. He died to save the world. And he commissioned his disciples to go out and preach the good news of salvation and forgiveness to all.

And we are the successors of those first disciples.

Remember that wonderful prayer of St Teresa of Avila :

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours, no feet but yours,
yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion is to look out to the world;
yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.”

“Yours” – or rather, “ours” - your hands and my hands are called to be the healing, saving, forgiving hands of Christ in our world today.

And, most certainly, acting as his hands must mean a change of life. And it must also mean a change of heart too. We must never see our involvement in Church as thought it is (say) just another hobby, a convenient social meeting, or, even at best, a place for spiritual highs. We must see Church as the people of Christ, his agents in our world today. The sight of those hands nailed to the cross, and those same hands risen now in blessing demand from us a response: Go in peace to love and serve. In other words, ‘ Be my hands in the world today…'

As we reflect on our Christian pilgrimage – as individuals and as a faith community – we are recalled, especially during this Easter season, to the centrality of baptism. In the early Church Easter was the core time to celebrate this fundamental sacrament, and much of the rest of the Church year, and especially Lent, was devoted to preparation for this essential rite of incorporation into Christ.

As we began our liturgy today – and as we will do throughout Eastertide – we are reminded of the grace of baptism, given to us all. Through baptism we are all bound to Christ in his death and his resurrection; and we are all ‘commissioned' for a ministry that is not ours alone, but which is the very ministry of Christ himself. There is no higher calling than to be baptised into the Body of Christ.

As the hands of Christ we have two major tasks facing us at St John's : the first is that we must all be proactive in welcoming others into this faith community – in order to spread the word and share the load. And secondly we need to discern how our hands might be used – individually and collectively – to be of service to others.

And then, as with Thomas we can truly say “My Lord and my God” around this altar every Sunday; and so too, we will be empowered to say those same words in all our relationships and in the communities of which we are a part.