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We come to the final term of another academic year, which has been the first for some and will be the last for others. In between now and the end of term there are still challenges for many here, not least examinations, be they school exams, prelims, mods or finals. And for those who are beyond examination age I dare say there are other challenges to face in our work. But this is no time to be downhearted, for we are in the season of spring and of Easter.
The comedian Milton Jones has written of Easter that: ‘Sometimes religion can seem like the last person in a long game of Chinese whispers. Once Jesus said ‘Love on another’ and now we have the Easter Bunny!’
In fact we marked Easter at the beginning of this service by the introit, which speaks of the hope of spring and of Christ’s resurrection.

“Awake, thou wintry earth – Fling off thy sadness! Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth Your ancient gladness! Christ is risen.”

But also, in singing this chorus from Bach’s cantata number 129, we were reviving a tradition once encouraged by Provost Masterman of this college, that this piece be sung at the beginning of each Trinity term to mark the beginning of the cricket season. Well, why not?

One piece that we will not be singing tonight is the 1848 hymn by Cecil Frances Alexander: All things bright and beautiful, popular though it is at baptisms and in schools, which contains, in its original version these words:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
GOD made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Not surprisingly this verse has long since been deleted from the version of the hymn that we sing these days. Professor Rodney Barker, Emeritus Gresham Professor of Rhetoric has explained why this verse is so unpalatable today:

For the Victorian writer ‘… The relative positions of the rich man and the poor man were as immutable, natural, and God given as the purple headed mountains or the river running by. God made them what they were, high and lowly, and ordered their estate but there is an equally interesting assumption in the verse that is less noticed: rich and poor are synonymous with ‘high’ and ‘lowly’. Social status is not only fixed and God given, but it is measured, equated with, determined by material wealth.”

How very different from our gospel reading this evening, which challenges us about privilege, poverty and religion.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus, or Dives and Lazarus as it is sometimes known, was in fact, a well-known story is Jesus’ time, probably originating in Egypt and was popular among Jewish teachers as a depiction of the fate in store for the good and evil after death.

But, characteristically for Jesus, he alters the meaning of the story, as that it is no longer simply a warning about rewards or punishments, in fact nothing is said about the piety of Lazarus.

The story is all about the character of the unnamed rich man, apparently a rich Saducee, who had no belief in the afterlife and who devoted himself to luxurious living, choosing to ignore the poor man at his gate, in favour of a life of self-indulgence. Even when he realises his mistake in the afterlife, to his cost, Abraham refuses to send any messenger to the richman’s brothers to warn them of this impending fate; if they were not persuaded by the prophets, they would neither be persuaded by apparitions. The rich man fails in two ways, by the use of his wealth and his religion. Because his mind was closed to the revelation fo God, his heart was closed to the demands of compassion.

So what does this parable mean to us? We could see it as a portrayal of events if we do not live a life of generosity. Indeed, just two chapters later in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is telling a rich man to give away everything that he own to the poor and follow Christ.

Others would argue that, in this parable the rich man stands for the Jewish nation who enjoyed God’s favour and blessings and Lazarus represents a people who lay at Judah’s gate, the Gentiles, those who were outside the covenants and promises of the Jewish people. The only benefits they enjoyed were the crumbs, they might be fortunate enough to gather. So the parable contains within it a prophecy that the two characters mentioned are to change places. The rich man is to suffer rejection, pain, poverty and punishment and Lazarus to enjoy comfort, peace and honour with Abraham. The Gentile nations are represented by Lazarus the beggar, who now by faith is able to be blessed in Abraham’s bosom.

If this interpretation is correct, what Jesus is saying, as a Jew let’s not forget, is radical. He is overturning centuries of Jewish history and theology. For our reading from Deuteronomy this evening, taken from a passage where Moses has delivered the Ten Commandments, alerts us to the historical relationship between the Israelites and God:

‘Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. 10

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus reminds his listeners that the Jewish nation had been privileged to enjoy the instruction of “the law and the prophets,” and since the ministry of John the Baptist, they have also been blessed with the added light of the gospel. He then shows them what will be the consequence of not taking advantage of these opportunities during this life.

Just two verses before this story in Luke, Jesus is reported as saying: ‘The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed.’ So Christ is relating to those around him, that since John the Baptist proclaimed the coming of the Messiah, a new kingdom of God has been brought in and those people in Jesus’ presence are witnessing to it. In the next chapter, Jesus explains that, even though this kingdom might seem illusive, it has an exact location: asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming he answered

‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’, or ‘There it is!’ for, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’

So when Jesus tells a story about what the kingdom of God is like, we have to place that parable in the context of who is telling it: God himself: the one of whom he speaks is indeed the one who is speaking. God has sent someone to us, Jesus tells his followers: himself and through the cross, he will gain a victory for his Deity and for the world; he has ultimate victory over sin and the grave.

In her poem Still falls the Rain (the raids, 1940, Night and Dawn), Edith Sitwell used the metaphor of rain for the bombing raids in the second world war, falling on London and for the blindness and sin of humanity which continues to nail Christ to the cross. In this poem she portrayes the rich man and Lazarus as equal, where the beggars sores and the rich man’s wealth are all the same: both are humans in need of God’s mercy.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us—
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one

But she ends the poem with a verse which reminds us of the sacrificial love of Christ, in his incarnation and his death, whose blood continues to be shed by us.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain—
“Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.”

Such love demands to be taken seriously and not for granted. The joy of Easter can only come after the suffering of the cross.

In the story of Dives and Lazarus is about privilege which ever way you look at it: the privilege of the Jewish people, the privilege of wealth, prosperity and education and, most important of all, since the coming of Christ, the privilege to all humanity, Gentiles as well as Jews, of the new kingdom of God. We are a privileged people, not only to be in this place, given all the opportunities we have, but most importantly, as children of the kingdom of God. With that privilege comes responsibility. This term, whatever it has in store for us, may our minds be open to the revelation of God and our hearts open to the demands of compassion.
Amen.

Rev’d Dr Jonathan Arnold

22nd April 2012

It is a delight to be back at St. Paul’s and I am astonished how quickly time has passed since I sang as a member of the choir here, ten years ago. It’s good to hear them on such good form. As luck would have it, I have just been on an ecclesiastical history conference, where I learned that, in the 17th century, sermons were expected to be at least an hour at St. Paul’s, and at Paul’s Cross outside, between 2 and 3 hours. You will be relieved to know that I am restricted to just a few minutes.
On 30 June in 1860, Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, known as ‘soapy Sam’ because of Benjamin Disraeli’s description of his slippery or evasive words, spoke at a famous meeting of the British Association in Oxford about the nature of human ancestry. Legend has it that he attempted to pour scorn on Darwin’s Origin of Species, but that his scepticism about evolutionary theory was roundly defeated by a certain scientist, and inventor of the word ‘agnostic’ T. H. Huxley. In this memorable encounter Huxley’s simple scientific sincerity apparently humbled the clerical superiority and religious certainty of Soapy Sam; the idea that the Church could dictate to scientists the conclusions they were allowed to reach was decisively defeated. The relationship between science and religion, we are told, has never been the same.
There is no accurate account of the event, but according to some sources, Wilberforce turned to Huxley and asked: `Is it on your grandfather’s or grandmother’s side that you claim descent from the apes?’ whereupon Huxley retorted: ‘If the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence (meaning Wilberforce himself of course) and yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion – I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.` In other versions it is more simply quoted as ‘I would rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop’
Either way, the statement was so shocking that, apparently, a certain Lady Brewster fainted on the spot and had to be carried out. If only such emotional sensitivity towards the public sensibilities of bishops were evident these days.
But how times have changed. Indeed this very weekend marks the occasion of the 7th annual evolution Weekend, an interfaith conference emphasising the compatibility between science and religion. So that’s that then. Or perhaps not?
I was watching, the other day, on that wonderful invention, You Tube, a staged re-run of the debate in the Oxford history museum, between Richard Dawkins, the famous scientist, atheist and campaigner against religion, and John Lennox, a mathematician and philosopher of science, but also a Christian. At one point, when they discuss the possibility that the universe has an intelligent design, John Lennox says this:
‘The fact that we have the language of DNA points … to the existence of a logos, a divine logos who started it, rather than the notion that it’s going to be exhaustively explained in purely naturalistic terms … I’m not just terribly tempted to believe it’s all been designed. I believe it’s all been designed.’
Dawkin’s reply reflects Huxley’s sentiments, 150 years before, in accusing the Christian of abandoning reason in favour of myth and magic: ‘when you feel like it’, he said ‘you smuggle in magic, you smuggle in magic for miracles, in the bible, and you smuggle in magic to explain the origins of life… ‘
Fundamentally, therefore, the accusation is the same in both debates: whenever Christians cannot explain the workings of nature and the universe, we fill in the gaps with a divine explanation: the God of the gaps. In this context I find Lennox’s use of the term logos is very intriguing, as he is tapping into a very strong theological tradition which finds its origins in this morning’s readings. The beginning of John’s gospel, where the meaning of the Greek ‘logos’ is the eternal and uncreated ‘Word’, ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.’ And in his letter to the Colossians, Paul expounds the idea that Christ is the ‘visible manifestation of an invisible God’, uncreated, eternal, existing before all creation, through it and in it, sustaining it by his presence.
The logos is a way of trying to describe the indescribable. But I am a little uneasy with using this theology as a rebuttal of scientific atheism. The notion of a logos does not work as a decisive argument against a purely naturalistic explanation of the origins of the universe and is easily dismissed in such a context, as Dawkins has demonstrated. However, far from being a meaningless concept, it is, in fact, about something much more important. It is about a deeper truth and reality, primarily concerned with intelligent design, or explanations, but to do with very personal questions of purpose and meaning and the spiritual life.
For St. John and St. Paul, the fact of creation is one thing, with all the questions it raises, but it cannot be separated from another fact. The fact of Jesus Christ, the historical figure who lived, taught, died, and rose again. Once Jesus’ life and death are taken seriously, St. Paul would say, then the question of how the universe came into being, and how it exists, are seen in proportion to a profound question of why life exists, and for John and Paul, their personal experience of Jesus Christ, his life, teaching and resurrection, not as an ancient myth or magic, but as a recent and fresh reality in their lives, gave them a strong conviction of the significance of Christ for their own lives and for the whole of humanity. Clearly their first hand experience of Christ, the logos, made such an impact upon them as to cause them to reconsider their preconceptions about literally everything.
If, as Christians, we are to get anywhere near that kind of passionate belief, without switching off our rational minds, we must also experience something of the reality of God, albeit two thousand years later. I want to suggest that we can do this, for there are more ways of knowing something than simply absorbing facts. One analogy might be that of music; the beautiful singing of the choir, a Bach Cello suite, a Beethoven string quartet, can be explained scientifically in terms of sound waves and frequencies interacting in an organized pattern, but the meaning of music which is clearly a personal encounter that can move us to tears and transform our lives, goes well beyond such a set of facts. The philosopher Roger Scruton calls it ‘aboutness’. A Mozart Sonata is about something. We may not be able to articulate it, indeed we cannot and may not want to, otherwise why have the music? But it is about something that touches us deeply. It transcends the mathematics and physics of the sound and transports us to another reality, more about spirit than about sound.
One person who understood this clearly was the French Reformer of Geneva, John Calvin. For him knowledge of reality was not simply merely a matter of cognition in the narrow sense of the term, as though such knowledge were merely a matter of patterning the mind. Knowledge involved love, trust, fear, obedience, and worship. It embraced mind and heart, affections and will and work. It rested on God’s free grace towards us, and focussed on the duties of love toward God and toward one’s neighbours. Calvin argued that we come to fully understand this kind of reality when we gather together, just as we are gathered this morning, as the Church, the body of Christ on earth. For the Church provides the means of grace, through scripture, baptism, the Eucharist, preaching and teaching, without which faith is impossible. He called the church both mother and school, in which everyone here has a theological responsibility to keep each other encouraged in the faith, whether lay people or clergy, because together we create a social body through which the Holy Spirit forms a new creation. Calvin would have agreed with John Welsey’s idea that there is no such thing as a solitary Christian. Even a solitary Christian hermit takes a part as a member of the body of Christ on earth.
I’m not sure that anyone would have left the Dawkins/Lennox debate with any of their fundamental ideas challenged, on wither side. But there have been billions of lives utterly transformed to the depths of their souls by the presence of the indescribable gift of the eternal Christ. Faith in that living presence, may be a gift, but it is a gift which is there waiting for all of us and as we respond to it, especially as a gathered people, and particularly in the Eucharist, the logos draws near to us. So whatever has brought you to this place today, and from wherever you have come, it is here, in this celebration of the Eucharist, that we, as a community of believers, or perhaps those who want to believe, turn again to God, to accept and share his free, and very real, gift of love. Amen.

Rev’d Dr Jonathan Arnold

12th February 2012

Were you not raised to life with Christ? Then aspire to the realm above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, and let your thoughts dwell on that higher realm, not on this earthly life. Col. 3:1
1. Sister Pauline Mary was an elderly Anglican nun to whom I had the privilege of ministering in the days before she died. As she slipped in and out of sleep, or maybe even in and out of consciousness, she would awake and describe her meetings with the saints – even describing what they were wearing and doing and saying. I still don’t know if they were the hallucinations of a dying woman, or if indeed she was having a genuine conversation with the saints, although what had been certain throughout her 60 years as a nun was that she always felt that she was surrounded [as the letter to the Hebrews puts it], ‘by so great a cloud of witnesses’. The saints were not only God’s friends, they were also hers.

2. The saints have always played an important part in the lives of those who are often described as Celtic Christians – the saints are part of our history and culture. The Celtic saints largely belong to the first six centuries of Christianity before that period of history when Augustine came to convert the English. The Diocese of Monmouth and its Cathedral in Newport have as their patron saint, St Gwynllyw although it is said that the English had difficulty pronouncing it so they called him St Woolos.

3. Gwynllyw was born around 450 AD and is described as a king and confessor although others have been known to describe him as a tribal chief and a pirate! The account of his life – his Vita – was written in the Middle Ages and the problem with the medieval lives of the saints is that we are relying on legends that have been passed down for 600 years and which are coloured with exaggeration, romanticism and contradictions, but out of all this it is possible to get a glimpse of possible history, and when I am in my cathedral I am very conscious that I am worshipping on a site that has been hallowed for fifteen hundred years as a holy shrine, and where there is a tomb in the centre of the most ancient part that clearly belongs to a prominent Christian, possibly St Gwynllyw himself.

4. St Gwynllyw was King of Gwynllwg (named after him) in South Wales and his name is recorded in lists of Welsh kings. Tradition says that he was a feared warrior and that accompanied by 300 men he abducted Gwladys, the daughter of a king of Brecon who had refused to let Gwynllyw marry her. The Life of Gwynllyw makes no mention of this battle and says that the marriage was accomplished peacefully – and Gwladys is herself counted among the Welsh saints. Gwynllyw and Gwladys had a son, Cadoc (Cattwg) who became a monk and an abbot and also a saint, and tradition says that his holiness of life and his godly preaching was what persuaded Gwynllyw to abandon his life of warfare and violence and to pursue a life of holiness. It is often said that people will not be persuaded by intellectual argument alone but when they see holy lives, lives that have been changed by an encounter with God, then that is persuasive.

5. Then Gwynllyw had a dream. Now dreams are important in the biblical and Christian tradition as a means of listening to our souls, and Freud said that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. In his dream, an angel spoke to Gwynllyw and he saw a vision of a white ox with a black spot on its forehead. A little later walking on a hill, Gwynllyw saw the white ox with the black spot that he had seen in his dream, and there [on what is today called Stow Hill] he built a wooden hermitage and Gwynllyw said these words, ‘There is no retreat in this world such as in this space that I am destined now to inhabit. Happy therefore is the place, happier then is he who inhabits it’. There Gwynllyw was to become a hermit and following his death his cell became an important shrine and a wooden church was built there. Later in the 9th century, it was rebuilt of stone and stone churches were rare in Wales in those days which points to the significance of his shrine. The cathedral that stands on that site today has the Saxon remains from that stone church, and has been extended over the centuries with its Norman arch and roof timbers dating from the early 15th century.

6. St Paul wrote to the Colossians, ‘let your thoughts dwell on that higher realm not on this earthly life’ and by becoming a hermit, Gwynllyw gave up his kingship and his worldly power, abandoned his life as a soldier to become a soldier of God and the stained glass window in the cathedral dedicated to Gwynllyw, Gwladys and Cattwg depicts Gwynllyw in mediaeval knight’s armour. His decision to abandon worldly power and seek a life of prayer is a common theme amongst Welsh saints and St Illtyd is said to have done the same.

7. To be a hermit is not the same as being a recluse, and there have been hermits in the Christian tradition from the fourth century. Vatican II restored the Order of Hermits and there are a number of hermits in Wales (and elsewhere) today. When Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion and the persecution of Christians ended, the so-called ‘red’ martyrs gave way to the ‘white’ martyrs, – men and women who went out into the deserts of Egypt and Syria to be hermits and to live lives of asceticism, fasting and prayer and to imitate the example of Jesus who went into the wilderness to battle with spiritual and human temptations in order to prepare himself for ministry.

8. You may be wondering what happened to Gwladys when her husband become a hermit. Well, she joined him and they lived together on Stow Hill, fasting, eating a vegetarian diet and walking naked each day to bathe in the cold waters of the River Usk. It conjures up an Adam-and-Eve type scene of a man and woman in their innocence walking hand in hand to taste of the waters of life, although for those of us who live there, we know that Newport is not the garden of Eden, and the picture is one of punishing the flesh – perhaps to ensure that whilst living together they would nevertheless live lives of celibacy and chastity.

9. For Christians, water is a powerful symbol of life. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well and asked for a drink, he engaged her in conversation. He knew that she had had five and a half husbands and he offered her water springing up into eternal life. But why had she had so many husbands? There could only be one explanation – she was barren so they kept divorcing her. Water is a symbol of life and fertility, and of course, it finds its fullest expression in Christian baptism as the waters wash away human sin and we are born again – maybe that was why Gwynllyw and Gwladys went skinny dipping every day –as a seeking after spiritual cleansing and re-birth. Later Gwladys moved away to a hermitage of her own.

10. The cult of St Gwynllyw grew after his death and not only the Welsh, but the Saxons and Normans who came to settle in Newport also revered him. Many miracles were attributed to him and today there is a renewed interest in the legends that tell of his former life as a pirate, a thief and a man of violence who was to become a saint. He also had a brother St Petroc who is revered by the Cornish and the Bretons and his son, St Cattwg was a major contender to be patron saint of Wales.

11. If you come to Newport, do visit Newport Cathedral, the site where St Gwynllyw lived and where he is buried. You can also see the wonderful modern sculpture by Sebastian Boyesen in the centre of Newport which is called The Vision of St Gwynllyw depicting the ox that Gwynllyw saw in his dream, but above all as we recall the Celtic saints and those who have been canonised throughout the centuries, we need to be reminded that we are surrounded by ‘so great a crowd of witnesses’ and that we, like them, are called to be saints.

Rt. Rev’d Dominic Walker, Bishop of Monmouth
5th February 2012

‘The servant of the Lord is he who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord, and leans upon his God.’ Isa 50:10

The Festival of Candlemas, February 2nd, brings to an end the Church’s Season of Light. It began in Advent when we heard from Isaiah that the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light (Isa 9:2). The imagery of light borrowed from the Greeks carries the immanence and the transcendence of the Incarnation into the heart of the Church’s mission. St John, in his Gospel and first Epistle, intertwines the parallel concepts of light and love. The wonderment is that they not only find their source in God, but are also capable of being exemplified in ordinary human lives.

So, while Jesus said of himself, I am the Light of the world (John 8:12), we have seen for ourselves that baptism into his death and resurrection affords a share in that light.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matt 5:16).

This is the light of faith. Artists, poets, composers have offered insight into our ability or inability to see this light. Isaiah, referring to testing times, contemplates the servant of God whose faithfulness is measured by a willingness to continue his journey when there is little light to show him the way, who trusts in God’s name, and leans upon his God. Whilst the imagery here is that of a figure picking his way through the gloom, barely able to see the path beneath his feet, who has within him the confidence to keep going, and who leans on his stick to derive balance and momentum, the metaphor is that of the spiritual journey, the attitude of mind and heart. Like all good metaphors of the soul, it has a dynamic. It presents the idea of movement, of changing circumstance, even of mood, on the part of the servant. God, by contrast, is constant in name and steadfast in support. It also implies solitude, the need to do this alone, perhaps in barren and inhospitable places.

Why resort to this image, this text from Scripture, in deciding what to say to you this evening? I’ve been asked by your Chaplain to speak about a British divine, whose writings or lifestyle might have something useful to offer. Julian of Norwich was already spoken for in this series, so I’ve chosen a northern bishop and saint who is remembered and loved in the north of England not for his writings but for his example of holiness and humanity in a period of religious and political upheaval.

Cuthbert was born in 634, and lived and served in the lineage of Aidan. On the night Aidan died, Cuthbert had a vision of angels bearing a soul to heaven. He saw himself caught up in that vision, and as a result presented himself at the monastery at Melrose to receive the Celtic tonsure. He served here first as a monk and later as Prior. In 664, the Synod of Whitby was called to resolve the conflicts between Celtic Christianity which had prevailed in Iona and Northumbria, and Roman Christianity. The presenting issue was the date of Easter and the shape of the monastic tonsure. It was a controversy of major proportions, a turning point in English history. By choosing in favour of Rome, the Church of England established herself firmly within the Catholic tradition. Soon after the decision of the Synod, the Bishop of Lindisfarne took himself back to Ireland, and Cuthbert, having first fended off attempts to make him Bishop of Hexham, was asked to be Prior of Lindisfarne.

As one who had been nurtured in the losing side of the debate, he immediately set about healing the conflicts of loyalty. He worked for reconciliation and stability by fostering Roman orthodoxy without rejecting Celtic traditions, to begin with by promoting Celtic manuscript illumination. And by personal example he taught and modelled the solitary contemplative life, one of the greatest strengths of the Celtic way. At first he built himself a cell on the nearby Thrush Island. But he became overburdened by visits (in between the flood tides) of pilgrims seeking advice, teaching and healing of diseases. After twelve years, now in his 40’s, he moved to another hermitage cell on the Inner Farne Island, which was considered to be uninhabitable. Despite severe weather and isolation, he continued to be sought out for counsel and comfort. Efforts continued to make him a bishop, such was his wisdom, holiness, oratory and personal charm. Finally, on Easter Day 685 he was consecrated Bishop of York. But it didn’t work out! He didn’t take to the organisational function of a bishop; he found it a distraction, and within 18 months he had returned to Inner Farne in order to give his whole and undivided attention to God. It was not to last: In 687 Cuthbert fell ill and died. True to the tradition of the primitive Church, much attention was given and recorded regarding his death and burial; to the construction of a tomb in 698 and the subsequent reburial in Durham Cathedral. A cult of St Cuthbert developed in which his protection was sought in the struggle with the Scots. For mariners the naming of a ship after the saint was thought to be prudent.

Bede in his history records the debt that the English Church owed to Aidan and Cuthbert. They both modelled rigour and humility, in stark contrast to the prevailing ‘slothfulness’ of the day where the political convenience of Christianity was expressed in royal courts and aristocratic households. Aiden and Cuthbert helped establish a Christian tradition that was true to its roots, and also shaped the identity of the region, which has never been lost. What is fascinating is that Cuthbert achieved this not by conventional skills of leadership, certainly not what we today would call ‘management skills’.
Rooted in the Benedictine way, bent upon listening, listening to the word of God, his ministry was directed to the poor whose neighbouring hamlets and cottages he loved to visit whenever he could. The movement of the soul that he had seen that night when Aidan died was a movement that led him closer to God, by means of solitude and prayerfulness amongst the rocks, the howling of the wind and the crashing of the waves against the shore. As a hermit, he turned his back on society, not out of contempt for it but in order to be single-minded, living out the Lord’s command to be attentive and obedient. St Benedict hints in his Rule that the life of the hermit is the perfection of the monastic life. Cuthbert exemplifies the primacy of the spiritual in all our lives.

What might we draw from this remarkable model of ministry and witness? First, anyone who knows the North-East of England, and especially the coast of Northumberland, will readily identify with the impact of the natural world upon Cuthbert’s thinking. The grandeur and savagery of the elements, the meeting of sea, sky and land, the harsh struggle to maintain daily life amidst the extremes of weather and loneliness, concentrates the relationship of Creator and creation. Reciting the psalms, morning and night, alone would see to that.

Secondly, Cuthbert’s simplicity and holiness attuned him to the hearts of local people who struggled to make a living and bring up their children. There is something very contemporary about this. The leader in the Independent on Thursday, commenting on the bishops’ intervention in the social benefits debate, stated robustly that poverty was a matter of politics and economics. It has nothing to do with spirituality, it claimed, and if the bishops believe that it has, then they should confine their comments to the pulpit rather than the House of Lords. It is an astonishing statement partly because it reveals such little understanding of what poverty is like, and of how it is far more the lack of money. But it also disregards the common memory or any sense of history. For all its shortcomings, the Church has the authority of God’s love, and the voice of Jesus, in and through identification with the poor.

St Francis exemplified that in the 13th century. In the 20th century what first became known as liberation theology, later to be called contextual theology, went a stage further when the Church not only identified itself with the poor, but saw that the only authentic expression of the Body of Christ could be of the poor themselves. It is not possible to see God, other than through the eyes of the poor, so it was said. If you question that, try reading the Magnificat, the Song of Mary.

Thirdly, the most enduring element of the Cuthbert tradition – and he was not alone in this – was his utter dependence upon God. It was partly a pronounced sense of vocation, of being called into a way of life and a form of ministry that was counter-cultural, even in that fairly primitive society. It was partly a sense of humility that no doubt grew out of his life of prayer. So Ecclesiasticus, that collection of wisdom in the Apocrypha, teaches
The greater you are, the more you must humble yourself…for great is the might of the Lord; but by the humble he is glorified. (Ecclcus 3:18-20).

For Cuthbert, solitude and humility led to the discovery of God within. As St Ignatius would teach centuries later,
If we allow ourselves the space to say the ‘Our Father’, we are giving God the chance to speak and be heard.’ (Exercises)

The great spiritual writer of the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, Henri Nouwen, developed the vocation of servant-hood which so much informed Cuthbert’s thinking and life-style. Nouwen came upon the loneliness of those who lived with mental illness, and whose poverty was found in the social isolation they endured. He referred to the tradition of deutero-Isaiah whereby those who are frail are carried, physically or figuratively by one who is stronger; carried to a place of safety, protected and enfolded in arms that are strong and loving and dependable. The prophet writes,
Even to your old age, I am he, says the Lord. Even when you turn grey I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.
(Isa 46:4)

It was this consciousness of the God who reaches to our infirmities by carrying us when we are too weak to walk, that so caught the imagination of Henri Nouwen and contributed to the foundation by Jean Vanier of L’Arche communities for people with mental frailties. I’m told that a visit to one of the L’Arche communities is to experience a household where each person gives and receives, and where it is not immediately obvious who are the carers and who are the cared-for. Nouwen and Vanier could transliterate the words in Colossians 3:16
Let the word of God dwell in you richly
as you ‘live among those whose mental isolation so often diminishes; carry them in a household of loving, supportive care; cherish them out of your own weakness and disability; for in the humble and in humble existence, God is glorified.’

So, finally to the verse from that same section of Isaiah with which we began.
‘The servant of the Lord is he who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord, and leans upon his God.’

The Lindisfarne coast at night is magisterial, made all the more dramatic by distant flashing lights warning of treacherous rocks. Cuthbert in his hermit’s cave on these islands would have been entirely familiar with total darkness, where the stars themselves would often have been blotted out by storm clouds. The elements in almost every respect defined the parameters of his journey with God. He was sure-footed, and not just with his feet. For he knew, whether he learnt it or whether it came as a gift, how to walk in darkness where there is no light, and lean on his God. And in the walking, there is sharing, empathy, teaching by example. The walking was sometimes to carry another in the darkness where there is no light; and sometimes to be carried by the Saviour in whom he had gladly and joyfully placed his entire trust.
To this same Saviour, for each of us on our own perilous journey of faith, be praise and glory this night and for ever.

Very Rev’d Graham Smith, Dean of Norwich
29th January 2012

Chaplain, I wonder if you have ever thought of devising a series of chapel sermons on the female saints who are depicted here in Chapel? There are enough of them! I can see four clearly represented in the fresco on the north side of the chapel, behind the choir: Monica, Helena, Catherine of Siena, and Elizabeth of Hungary. And then on the south side, again behind the choir, there are others who died as martyrs: you can see Catherine (with her wheel), Perpetua, and Cecila (with her pipes). There are two others, on the floor of the Chapel, set amongst the twelve mosaics of the kings, scholars, martyrs and builders of the church in England: the mosaics lead up to the lectern as you enter the Chapel. The two female saints are the first you’ll walk over: if you look down you’ll see the names Etheldrida and Frideswida.
These two mosaics create an interesting pair, for these saints’ lives, some fifty years apart, share several details. Saint Etheldrida, from East Anglia, lived in the late seventh century, and her hagiography (some of it mediated through Bede) informs us that she was from a wealthy and noble family but obliged to marry against her will – twice, for her first husband died. Threatened with cruelty and violation, she left her home and found sanctuary in a small mixed monastic community at Ely. There she eventually became Abbess. After her death, her shrine attracted many stories of miracles of healing; by the eleventh century she was known as the patron saint of Ely and its Cathedral.
So what of Saint Frideswida, the subject of this sermon? Her hagiography (which is not recounted by Bede) tells us that she too was born into a wealthy and noble family, in the eight century, in southern Mercia – perhaps somewhere near what we now know as Didcot. Unlike Etheldrida, she took her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience at an early age and became part of a small community of nuns here at ‘Oxenford’. But –and here this has some parallels with the Etheldrida story – she was persistently threatened by an aggressive suitor, Aelfgar, a minor prince of Mercia; apparently she escaped in a boat down the Thames, and hid for some time in the forests of Mercia in order to escape Aelfgar’s attentions. On her return to her convent, her suitor apparently sought her again, almost breaking the city gates of Oxenford to take her by force: Frideswida invoked the help of the martyr-saints Catherine and Cecila, and Aelfgar was afflicted with blindness. His sight was eventually restored through Frideswida’s prayers for his repentance: neither she nor Oxenford was threatened again. The story then follows a similar pattern to Etheldrida: Frideswida established a community of monks and nuns, here at Oxford, near the city’s southern walls, near the future site of Christ Church, where she became Abbess. Later in life she retired to a small hermitage at Binsey, but after her death was probably buried in her monastery in Oxford. Her shrine also attracted hundreds of pilgrims, as it too was the source of many miracles.
By the twelfth century St. Frideswide’s Priory had become part of the Augustinian order and this in turn became the foundation of Christ Church Cathedral. Somewhere between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries Frideswide became the patron saint of Oxford and its Cathedral: certainly by the late fourteenth century, Chaucer, in The Miller’s Tale, allows John, provincial carpenter of Oxford, to invoke her name as his patron saint.
Some would argue that this is the stuff that legends are made of. A noble woman escapes in a boat down the Thames and hides in the woods from a prince who has a fettish about nuns; we read that she lived in a hut with swine and she encountered the devil who smelt like sulphur; that she had the power to bring about both blindness and sight, and could heal lepers. She even created springs of water which creates Binsey’s well.

Indeed, there’s an apocryphal story that in 1933 the shortest sermon on record was given at Christ Church at the Feast of St Frideswide. ‘Saint Frideswide’ said the preacher, Canon Jenkins, ‘Saint Frideswide never existed’ . End of sermon!

Even if this is right, in our day, Christ Church Cathedral certainly provides evidence for the cult of Frideswide, even though here may be little solid factual information of the saint herself. In the Latin Chapel her twelfth-century shrine has been reconstructed from its post-Reformation remains, and at least some of her relics, apparently mixed with those of another woman, are said to lie inside it. Also in the Latin Chapel there’s a magnificent pre-Raphaelite stained glass window, designed by Edward Burne-Jones in the 1850s, showing dramatic details of Fridewide’s life. And in the Lady Chapel there is a paving stone carved with her name, where the anniversary of her death, somewhere in the 720s or 730s, is commemorated on October 19th each year.
So why was Canon Jenkins so cynical about Frideswide’s life and death? Mainly it’s because her historical record is so unclear. Even if there were written accounts, the fire at St Frideswide’s Priory in 1002 must have destroyed everything. There are a few early references to her monastery and to ‘Oxenford, where the blessed body of Frideswide rests’ but the first written record of the actual events in her life comes from the Latin historian William Malmesbury (from the very same monastery which provided the first monks here at Gloucester College) and this was in about 1125, some four hundred years after Frideswide’s death. William had visited the shrine of Frideswide at Oxford and also the holy well at Binsey and he put together the story of her life from what he had heard there, perhaps even influenced by the stories from Ely of Etheldrida. Part of this was told in our first lesson tonight, in Ruth Buckley’s vivid modern translation. However, not only is there a long interval between Frideswide’s life and William’s short ‘biography’, but also his account is in part contradicted by a slightly later longer one. This latter record embellishes the first one, informing us more about the monastic ideals in the twelfth century than those in Frideswide’s day: it is fascinated by the tensions between married life and monastic vows, by noble ladies escaping from royal suitors, and it dwells upon the glorification of the saints because of their miracles and it exalts in the virtues of virginity. So we are forced to ask: was the Frideswide cult which grew up in Oxford one of Frideswide herself, or about some imaginary figure? Does it matter?
This issue is something I deal with every single day I research or teach. When I use the Old Testament, I have to ask myself: are the figures in it, to put it starkly, real or imaginary? The further back in history we go, the more difficult it is, with limited sources, to answer this question, because most of the Bible’s characters are rarely referred in sources outside the Bible. Sometimes archaeology can help; sometimes comparative material is enlightening. But mostly what we read in stories of the Old Testament are not found anywhere other than in the Old Testament. So when we read of the fantastic miracles and heroic exploits of, say, the prophets Elijah and Elisha, I have to ask the question: are we really encountering the lives of these prophets, or are we reading stories which others have imagined about them? This applies to so many Old Testament characters – to Moses, set in the thirteenth century BCE, to David, from about 1000 BCE, and to Amos, in the seventh century BCE. It’s even an issue, some seven centuries later, within the New Testament, concerning Jesus Himself. When we read the variant stories in the Gospels and see how they contradict each other – stories as important as the resurrection, for example – we have to ask ourselves: do we put our faith first, and history second? Is our quest one of ‘faith seeking historical understanding’? This issue matters a good deal when it comes to the birth and death of Jesus Christ. But it also matters, perhaps in a lesser way, with the figures who came before, such as Amos, some seven centuries earlier; and it matters, too, with figures who follow afterwards – figures such as Frideswide, some seven centuries later.
Frideswide as the patron saint of Oxford City and Oxford University is a curious phenomenon: for whatever we make of her life, her story certainly has some extraordinary details. Why did the priests and canons of the Cathedral elect a female saint? We all know that Oxford University, until the first part of the twentieth century, did not even admit women to its membership. And why did they choose one whose life was so ill-documented? Not even Bede referred to her. And why did they choose a woman who preferred a life of prayer and teaching to an ordinary family life? Most women in the Middle Ages would have aspired to marriage and bearing children. And why did they choose someone whose fame, in the main, was due to the many healing miracles which were recorded after her death?

Perhaps you can see where I am going. The subversive elements in Frideswide’s story have corresponding elements in the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Why chose a carpenter’s son? Why is his life first documented only by those who were already persuaded by him? Why do we follow one who, unlike most of us, refused the comforts of family life and chose instead a life of prayer and teaching? Why does our faith have to rest so much on the miraculous, not least on the greatest miracle of all, his resurrection from the dead? Why is his life so unpredictable – so subversive? Yet, as the writer James Francis records the ‘solitary life’ of Jesus Christ has inspired millions: “All the armies that ever marched, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned are absolutely picayune in their influence on mankind compared with this one solitary life” .
In making these comparisons I am not in any way suggesting that there are absolute parallels between Frideswide and Jesus Christ. We know far more about the history of Jesus from outside the Bible’s accounts than we do about Frideswide’s history; and the effects of that ‘solitary life’ of Jesus Christ have of course had dramatic universal repercussions, compared with the local cult of an Oxford saint. It is clear that Frideswide is the servant, and Jesus Christ is the Master. But this is what sainthood is about: saints are those who, through prayer and constant communion with God, stand midway between Christ’s exceptional life and our all too human existence. Jesus name means ‘Saviour’; Frideswide’s means ‘Bond of Peace’. He brings redemption into the world; Frideswide testifies to that redemption by living peaceably in a restless world, knowing that, like Jesus himself, neither rank nor gender ultimately matter in the presence of God.
So in her distinctive way, as a woman in a male world, yet with a free and independent spirit, St. Frideswide point us to Jesus Christ, her only Saviour and only Lord. She shows us of the relevance of our New Testament reading tonight: ‘If you think that you are wise in this age, you need to become fools so that you may become wise… For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; …. God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God’.
So perhaps this is what the story of Frideswida, and also that of Etheldrida, and indeed the stories of all the female saints in this Chapel can teach us: that the true servant of Christ has the boldness of faith to live out that ‘holy wisdom’ which subverts the so-called wisdom of their age. So, despite some skepticism about many details, Frideswide’s story is, for me, real, not imaginary. She challenges us all to aspire to servanthood, even if sainthood is too high an ideal. Our lives may never be depicted on the walls or floors of a chapel, nor glorified in stained glass, nor written on a stone pavement; but if we seek to find and interpret the wisdom of God offered through Jesus Christ, then to hear the words ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’ should be reward enough.

Dr. Susan Gillingham, Fellow in Theology
22nd January 2012

It’s very good to welcome you all back to Worcester College Chapel to start this new calendar year and the Hilary term. We have a splendid range of preachers this term who have all chosen a writer or saint of the British Isles, from any period, who is of special interest to them. Some of the saints are depicted in the mosaic floor tiles in front the choir stalls in this chapel. We have the Bishop of Monmouth preaching on St. Gwynllyw, about whom I know nothing at all; Dr. Gillingham is preaching on St. Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford, Canon Prof. Sarah Foot, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical history will be preaching on Bede, the Venerable, and an early historian of the English; we also have the Bishop of Norwich, who has chosen to preach on St. Cuthbert and Emma Pennington on Julian of Norwich. Our own Provost has kindly agreed to preach on that great poet, pastor and writer of the English Church, George Herbert and the series is book-ended with a look at two great reformers of the English and Scottish Churches: Thomas Cranmer and John Knox.
Every year at Worcester College there are at least one, if not two, Gaudy meals for old members of the college, who come back for a wonderful dinner, to recapture the magic of their undergraduate days and to reminisce with old friends. In recent years, one Gaudy a year has been highly populated by members who were undergraduates in the 1950s and 1960s. In those days, Chapel was compulsory for students (who were all men), who had to attend either Mattins or Evensong on Sunday. Those same men, now in their twilight years, are the same people who, after a Gaudy meal, which often finishes late ay night, unfailingly get up early on the Sunday morning here, to attend the 8 a.m. Book of Common Prayer Communion service. In fact, it is not uncommon to have 40 or 50 people in Chapel at that early hour and nearly all of them, I would say probably all of them, know the words off by heart. The words of the Book of Common prayer, those small green books which you see in the pews before you, are part of our heritage in this country. Our language and culture has been shaped by it and, it goes without saying, that it is still very much at the heart of the Anglican Church’s liturgy today. This service of Evensong uses the words of the book of common prayer and Evensong, matins and communion is said and sung in Churches and cathedrals with exactly the same words as have been used for the past four and a half centuries.
Well, this year, the BCP, as it is known, celebrates the 350th anniversary since its restoration after the civil war, in the 1662 version. It is this version, with perhaps minor alterations in the early 20th century that we retain today. The same version that ‘Wills and Kate’ used for their wedding ceremony in Westminster Abbey last year, and therefore the marriage liturgy that has come back into fashion for many couples wishing to wed.
But the Book of Common Prayer has its origins many years before 1662 and the man primarily responsible for its authorship and influence is that man I shall be considering as one of our great British spiritual writers, if not saints, Thomas Cranmer. I want to look briefly at his life and work and then to examine one aspect of his theology that may be pertinent to us today.
So, who was Thomas Cranmer? Put very simply he was the English priest who, as Henry VIII’s friend, counsellor and ally, and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1532, facilitated the theological complexities of Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, the King’s and the English Church’s break with Rome, the slow process of Church Reform in England, and the production of the book of Common Prayer in the reign of the boy king Edward VI, with its liturgical and theological development for the ‘common people’. All of this, of course, ended with young Edward’s death and the accession of the Catholic Mary Tudor, and Cranmer’s execution here in Oxford. So how did he manage all this, and what is his lasting legacy? I’ll give the briefest of outlines.
History tells us that Thomas Wolsey had failed to promote Henry VIII’s argument that divorce from Katherine was justified, because he had failed to persuade the canon lawyers of the case. But the young Archbishop Cranmer appealed not to Canon law of the matter, but to Statute law in order to establish the Royal Supremecy over the Church, which the Anglican Church retains to this day. But Cranmer was more that Henry’s lapdog. He was clever enough to manipulate Henry’s capriciousness in this matter to further that cause of a reformed Church in England. In the 1530s Cranmer promoted Royal supremecy, but only, in a sense, because he believed it reflected a greater divine order. Indeed throughout this decade Cranmer’s theological mind was being expanded by the developments on the Continent and, in particular, the nature of Christian commitment expounded by the Wittenberg professor, Martin Luther. From the works of Luther Cranmer began to grasp the answer to a fundamental question about life and death: how am I saved? What is the path to salvation?
Cranmer began to grasp that, for him, the way to salvation owed much to Luther’s ‘rediscovery’ of the gospel as well as Erasmus’s approach to the Bible in terms of philology. That is, unpacking the details, derivation, translation and meaning of the words. Therefore Cranmer’s sermons on the 1530s show an influence of Luther and, therefore, Saint Paul, in the doctrine of justificatio sola fide, justification by faith alone. For Salvation, simple faith has priority over good works. Now, at the time, this theology was still in contrast, even conflict, with Henry’s conservative commitment to Catholic Christian tradition, as well as in conflict with the theology of most other English bishops. Nevertheless, Cranmer wove a discreet and diplomatic path until, in 1547, with the death of Henry and the Accession of Edward, Cranmer was able to produce a book of homilies which explicitly set out his reformed views on salvation, faith and good works. It is the homily on salvation from which we heard this evening.
Three things must go together in our justification… Upon GODS part, his great mercy and grace: upon Christ’s part, justice, that is, the satisfaction of GODS justice, or the price of our redemption, by the offering of his body, and shedding of his blood, with fulfilling of the law perfectly & throughly; and upon our part true & lively faith in the merits of Jesus Christ, which yet is not ours, but by GODS working in us…

Such views received hostility from Cranmer’s Episcopal colleagues, such as Stephen Gardiner, bishop fo Winchester, who still regarded justification by faith as a Lutheran heresy and a threat to tradition catholic doctrines. However, Cranmer’s theology found its expression most clearly in liturgical reforms. The sacrifice of the Mass was turned into a Communion of the People in everyday language and in 1549, with the production of the first Book of Common Prayer, the kingdom was, in effect, legally bound to comply with these changes in worship, which retained the structure of old liturgies, and yet Cranmer’s skill was in augmenting them with a range of prayers which were sympathetic to the new doctrines of the reformation. Therefore, the Latin medieval missal, breviary, and so on were now available to ordinary people an clergy in English as Common Prayer, not only for use at the altar but also in handy size as we see before us. Some of the old practices were kept and some discarded, and thus Cranmer might be seen as the first exponent of the Via Media, the middle way, which went on to become the hallmark of broad Anglicanism today, somewhere between Catholicism and Protestantism, depending on your point of view.
We could hardly call Thomas Cranmer a saint, and his denunciation of the pope as the antichrist is hardly a model for 21st-century ecumenism, but whatever his faults, I think he was ultimately genuinely concerned for the spiritual health of a his home nation and contributed greatly to the development of ordinary people’s faith, spirituality and worship, which is still felt today. Often it is said that the great life is marked as much by the manner of its end as to how it was lived. If we are to believe the polemicist John Foxe, then Cranmer’s final speech on Broad Street here in Oxford before his burning on 21 March 1556 contained an admirable exhortation to his listeners, and ironically perhaps a prophecy for future generations of Christians, including today’s Church as we begin the week of prayer for Christian Unity this week, and it is with this that I shall end:
“Every man desireth, good people, at the time of their deaths, to give some good exhortation that others may remember after their deaths, and be the better thereby. So I beseech God grant me grace, that I may speak something at this my departing, whereby God may be glorified and you edified. My exhortation is, that you love all together like brethren and sisters. For alas, pity it is to see, what contention and hatred one Christian man hath to another; not taking each other, as sisters and brothers; but rather as strangers and mortal enemies. But I pray you learn and bear well away this one lesson, To do good to all people as much as in you lieth, and to hurt no one, no more than you would hurt your own natural and loving brother or sister.
Amen.

The Chaplain
15th January 2012

In all religions, Christianity in general and in carol services in particular, we make a great deal of the use of light, both literally and metaphorically. We began our service by lighting candles and the words of the bidding prayers reminded us of those who dwell now in a greater light. Isaiah chapter 9 tells us of a people who walked in darkness who have seen a great light and so on and so on. Indeed the advertising for this service included and amazing depiction of the nativity by the fifteenth-century artist Geerten tot Sint Jans, in which the light source for the scene, illuminating the faces of all in the stable, is depicted as the Christ child himself – Jesus is radiant with light, piercing the darkness of the night, echoing our readings this evening and the writing of the fourteenth-century St. Brigid of Sweden who wrote that, in her visions, the light of the new-born child was so bright that the sun was not comparable to it.

But as we gather this evening, are we here merely because we like carols and candles, or merely to celebrate the miracle of child birth in general in a kind of festival of light? Or, as we anticipate the birth of Jesus, is there something more? What is this image of light about and is our world really so dark that we need it at all? I believe we do.

The Austrian psychologist Carl Jung once wrote about a life without God: He wrote that “The vast neurotic misery of the world could be termed a neurosis of emptiness.
People cut themselves off from the root of their being, from God and then life turns empty, inane, meaningless, without purpose.
So when God goes, goal goes.
When goal goes, meaning goes.
When meaning goes, value goes, and life turns dead on our hands.”
Thus, the darkness we inhabit is, of course, the darkness of our own turning away from goodness and love, that is God, and choosing paths that are harmful to ourselves and others. We know this in ourselves and we see it daily in our world, in our newspapers.
Our darkness is also the grave, which remains a final door from which there is no returning, but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

Jesus sheds a powerful light on the our fear of the blackness of sin and death.
And for us there is no longer any reason to fear. His light has broken down the door of death and has freed us from its terrors.

But His light means more than just victory over the darkness of the grave. It also means Jesus will light up the very life we live now. Jesus explained to His disciples:
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” John 15:11

God has stepped into a world that was a dark and empty place. He came down in human form and allowed Himself to be put to death for our sins. “Immanuel”–God with us.

I was sitting in a lecture the other day in Schools and on the white board was projected the university crest with the motto ‘Dominus Illuminatio Mea’ The Lord is my Light. As we celebrate the birth of Jesus this Christmas, may this be a reality for each one of us. Amen.

The Chaplain
27th November 2011

Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. (Mk 13.33)

This evening we might be said to be sitting uncomfortably between two points of perspective. On one hand, we are at the end of the church’s year: we are in the week of the feast of Christ the King, when we celebrate the eternal reign of Jesus Christ in heaven over all things. On the other hand, in our readings and in our hearts and minds, we are looking forward to Advent, the season when we prepare to commemorate the incarnation of that King who, despite a royal ancestry, was born in a stable and laid in a manger by the humblest of earthly parents. The church year begins, we are reminded, not with the Christmas story, the remarkable birth of God made man in Christ, or with any other grand episode of God incarnate, but with anticipation.

God can seem very far away from us at times, a point emphasised frequently in the Old Testament, both in our first reading and in the Psalms: How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever? How long will you hide your face from me? (Ps 13.1) and the prophet Isaiah: There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. We live in a fallen world full of evil and unhappiness, famine, war, and distress; a world where a propensity to acquire wealth and spend it is met by vitriolic, self-congratulating criticism from those who seek to position themselves on moral high ground yet alienate themselves from the society whose morals they are trying to uphold. Sometimes our world seems irreconcilable with the world we know to have been saved by a loving God who gave of himself for our salvation, in which all Christians seek the coming of his kingdom on earth.

In previous years during the carol service – itself an anticipation of the rest of Advent – the choir has sung the text which begins I look from afar, and lo, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth. This is a text which our medieval predecessors sang every year on Advent Sunday: the first in a long series of musical reflections on that day of the season to come. As Christians we know what is to come: in our own immediate future the joy of Christmastide, the time when we commemorate the coming of God WITH US – Emmanuel – and in the time to come, the appearance of the Son of Man in glory, at the end of our lives and at the end of the world. The arrival of a Messiah was long anticipated by Israel: O that you would tear open the heavens and come down writes Isaiah. But rather than gratification in an instant, we, like Israel, are compelled to wait. The medieval Cistercian St Aelred of Rielvaux preached that the season of Advent was instituted to allow Christians to experience the longing of those generations who had not known a Redeemer. In the light of Christ we can pray that through this four week meditation on his first coming we may have an even greater longing for the return of our Redeemer who has already come, and whom we know will come again.

This sure knowledge is the bedrock of our faith, the ‘already’, if we can use the awkward division of salvation history into the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’. And our comprehension and hopes for the ‘not yet’ are in clear knowledge of the ‘already’. We are not at the end of God’s relationship with creation. To paraphrase a well known prime minister, we are not even at the beginning of the end. We may be, in this knowledge of Christ’s incarnation and assurance of his return, at the end of the beginning.

As Christians, our daily lives are always already in anticipation of the coming of God’s kingdom on earth: we pray: our Father… thy kingdom come… a kingdom which we are working for, an end which is desired and the consequences of which are already known, but which is perpetually to come. Christ’s rule over us and over all things is never more in our minds than in this week when we celebrate his kingship. We already make memory of the incarnation of Christ in the sacrament of his body and blood, a material sacrament for a material world. But the coming of Christ’s kingdom in the end of the world does not seem for us, as it did for St Paul and the early church, a material reality which is likely to manifest itself in the near future. Yet, Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.

Today’s Gospel from St Mark relates the last words of Jesus to his disciples before the Passion narrative, when he was betrayed by those for whom he came. Those words tell them, and us, that the Son of Man shall come to judge the living and the dead at a time unknown to us. All who hope to meet the master of the house when he comes must keep awake. We might be reminded here of the agony in the garden, when Jesus wakes Peter and asks, Could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Mt 26.41).

Like the disciples, we are not good at waiting around, being patient and watchful. There are many burdens on our time and it is very easy to say, even as someone who professes to be a follower of Christ – like the disciples – ‘Oh, yes, Jesus Christ is Lord’, and be done with it, failing to realise the responsibilities which we acquire from that assertion: responsibilities which must pervade the ways we live our lives in the knowledge of God made man, inspired by his teaching and ministry.

So perhaps we can come up with three ways to keep alert this Advent.

First, we might anticipate, with great concentration, the anniversary of the Nativity. This is very easy, as there are many reminders to do it: whenever we see or hear something which proclaims the impending arrival of the Christmas season, we can remember what that arrival means, and why it appears every year, and so strive to keep Christ’s coming in mind.

Second, we might make ourselves ready to come before that incarnation of Christ by leaving ourselves open to means of grace, namely through prayer and worship. We might develop a discipline in addition to our usual spiritual diet which will help us focus on the remarkable concept of God made man in the world. This may come clear in a particularly special way in the Eucharist, which is the way we remember his presence among us in reality.

Third and finally, we must prepare ourselves through the first and second ways to meet our Lord at the end of our days and at the end of time. Both may seem equally distant in our busy, preoccupied lives, but we will all die, and some of those whom we know will die before us. We must accept death as soon as we are born. But God has made the ultimate sacrifice of self-giving love: a death which has forever destroyed death, made possible through birth into our flesh, where his shelter was a stable and his cradle was a stall. All this we know. It is why we anticipate the coming of the Kingdom.

Advent is a model for Christian living. In the middle of the journey of our life, we must wait for the predicted coming of Jesus Christ, bolstered by the Eucharist and meditation on the Nativity, in the assurance of the presence of God among us, even in God made man, who died and rose for us, and in the anticipation that he shall come again and place us at his right hand in heaven. The assurance of Christ’s coming to us is the assurance of life everlasting.

The Word became flesh – and dwelt among us. As we approach the altar and so through grace behold his presence, let us pray for strength, discipline, and wakefulness in the coming season of Advent, that we may we ever be near him, dwelling now and in the fullness of time with him, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all honour and glory, world without end.

Matthew Cheung-Salisbury
23rd November 2011

Remembering the dead in war takes many forms. Some memories come unbidden: men who fought in the trenches or were imprisoned in the camps have woken drenched in sweat as they re-live in dreams the horrors of what they once suffered, once did, see again the faces of lost companions. Other memories are framed and preserved. Parents, widows, lovers treasure letters, photographs, or lockets. And while these are personal memories, tokens of love in grief, a nation forms and guards a collective memory in its memorials and museums, its poetry and novels, from high art to Downton Abbey, its biographies and historical analysis, while it pays respect to those who died in the ritual of Remembrance Day.

Tonight’s Gospel invites us to set such personal and communal memories in a further frame of remembrance. This Gospel is set not amid the violence of war, but is taken from Christ’s farewell discourse at the Last Supper, as violent forces of evil close in on the figure of Jesus. Those forces will scatter the community of disciples gathered around him, as soldiers first arrest Jesus, then mock and torture him, before he is taken to judgement and an excruciating death. Yet all is not lost. The disciples are not to lose heart. For the Spirit they are to receive from the Father will enable them to remember and so keep to His teaching. What is more, in that act of remembrance they will find a new peace which comes from the presence of Father, Son, and Spirit, a communion with God.

These are startling, perhaps bewildering promises. We may not at first see why it takes the Spirit for us to remember what Jesus said and did – until we reflect, that is, on the forces which shaped Roman politics and history, the narrative of imperial power in which this holy man was held a criminal; and until we realise that keeping the commandments is a matter of both heart and head, requiring insight into what is truly good, and courage to pursue that good. For ours is a world where love of God and neighbour sets us at odds with injustice, collusion in deceit, indifference, and sin in its myriad forms. Doing good is not so easy.

At this point, we may wonder even more how the Spirit could bring us peace. It appears on the contrary that such remembrance will set us in conflict with powerful forces which could do much to destroy our comfort. And that’s surely right. Those who speak out for justice are often brutally silenced – like the Catholic bishop in Guatemala battered to death with a concrete post for speaking out against abuses of human rights, or the religious sister killed in the Amazon for her opposition to illegal logging.

What peace can there be amid such violence? We need to reflect more on the teaching which Jesus would have us remember. For that teaching wasn’t only nor first a list of moral ‘do’s and ‘don’t’s. It was a message of forgiveness, of the love extended to us by God in Christ. It is an invitation to discover ourselves as loved by God with the infinite love that the Father has for His Son, and an invitation to love God in return with the infinite love that the Son has for His Father. What is more, Jesus did not only teach by what he said. He taught by what He did and suffered for us. And through the Gospel we remember and learn how the Father raised Him from death at the resurrection to eternal glory.

To recognize such love, to enter upon such a communion, does not disengage us from the political or economic mess around us. It does not shield us from the horrors of war or terrorism. But it reveals the deepest meanings to the conflicts in which we are caught up, as we see what love of God asks of us amid these difficulties; and peace which Christ gives flows from the knowledge that nothing but sin can separate us from that love of God. That love may cost us dear in different ways; it costs the martyrs everything. But there is nothing we can suffer which cannot be redeemed as we share by grace in the risen life of Jesus Christ.

The modern university may stress the value of cutting-edge research, of new discoveries and technologies, of enlarging our scientific understanding of the world. This is in itself may be well and good. But such advancement of knowledge is not itself the wisdom which we need to think well about our mortal lives, to come to terms or grips with the changing world. This hunt for new knowledge alone cannot equip us to deal with the memories of past wars, or square up to present climate change and to an unknown future. Christian remembrance does offer such a wisdom. It directs us to Christ as one who can share with us that spirit promised by the prophet Isaiah, of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. In its central liturgy or rite of Holy Communion it remembers the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and recalls the final Kingdom in which every tear is to be wiped away, where ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’ Directing us thus to our final destiny, may it enable us by the grace of God in the power of His Spirit to honour those who have fallen and to think and act well in this present life.

Fr. Richard Finn, Blackfriars, Oxford
13th November 2011

I gather that your rota-ed preacher of two Sundays ago, Canon Mark Oakley of St Paul’s Cathedral, had to cancel his preachment – no great surprise with the way in which events at St Paul’s Cathedral have dominated the headlines in the last two weeks.

I was going to preach on the Wisdom literature of the Bible – a sample of which gave us our first reading tonight. The Bible – especially the Old Testament is frequently thought of as exclusive rather than inclusive and sometimes even apparently sanctifying ethnic cleansing and genocide: the Books of Joshua and Judges for example. But the Wisdom books are the opposite: they are inclusive and universalist: and are as much a part of the Canon of Scripture as any other. Well that’s the summary of the sermon I am not preaching tonight because the St Paul’s Churchyard occupation deserves some serious Christian reflection, reflection I hope you will engage with and continue, whether you agree with my ‘slant’ or otherwise. I was a Canon of St Paul’s as Precentor from 1989 – 1996 where I first met Jonathan your Chaplain as a Vicar Choral. I have been biting my tongue up until now as it is a good rule to refrain from commenting about your previous posts when you have moved on – though I note bishops have not always abided by this wise rule.

I asked for the ‘render unto Caesar’ passage not because it gives us answers to questions Jesus was not asking, but because it does indicate that Jesus took the economic systems of the day seriously:
Bring me a denarius and let me see it.
And there it was, with Caesar’s head.

A very Orthodox Jew would have considered himself defiled by using a Gentile coin. That’s why the Temple had money-changers, so the Temple tax could be paid in ‘pure’ coinage. Jesus doesn’t seem to be worried about such defilement but draws a lesson even out of the secular economic systems of the day.

I am always suspicious of the argument ‘what would Jesus have done?’ The only answer is that he would have surprised everybody. So blanket condemnation of ‘capitalism’ and ‘banking’ is not a serious lesson to draw from what has happened. But – neither is a sort of docetic Christianity which thinks that no worldly, economic, real life, income, welfare state questions are of concern to God or the pious – who is only interested in things ‘spiritual’. A docetic Christianity, in which incarnation was taught to be spiritual rather than ‘in the flesh’ (so not in fact a real incarnation) was condemned centuries ago by the Church. Some interpretations of Jesus’ answer in today’s story have however been pushed this way – as also St Paul’s. The result was, for example, a German Church in the early 20th century which did not have the theological resources to challenge the rising pagan ideology of the Nazi State. Caesar was left to Caesar – not surprisingly Heil Hitler was the result. Returning to economics, there is an integrity to financial systems but the Market Place must never be idolised. It must always be open to public, economic, philosophical, political and theological criticism.

There are plenty of clues as to what a theological critique of economic systems would look like from a Judeo-Christian – and Islamic – perspective.

The Old Testament encourages lending – though not at interest. John Calvin’s Geneva carefully argued – as the Swiss would – that reasonable interest rates could be justified by the Church. Of course there is always debate about what is ‘reasonable’. But not too much disagreement when we see ‘loan shark’ companies raking in a huge percentage. And what about credit card debt? Banks still encouraging personal loans clients have no realistic hope of repaying and then 20% and more interest in some cases. That is not the spirit of the Bible, which stresses the duty to lend to the poor, our neighbour, for the common good.

One supplemental set of Commandments in Exodus says this:
If you lend money . . . to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor. If you take your neighbour’s cloak in pawn, you shall return it before the sun goes down, for it may be your neighbour’s only clothing. (22:25)

St Luke’s Gospel actively encourages the Christian to lend to a neighbour (6:35) but not to extort. The so-called early ‘communism’ of the Acts of the Apostles is more like a Common Welfare Fund than a political system or class ideology

And profits? Are they gods without regulation or control? Some years ago at the Bank of England’s Tercentenary celebrations there was a concert at the Barbican. The Chief Cashier – who originally used to personally sign the earliest banknotes – the Chief Cashier of England of the day was both a practising Christian and a lover of music. He arranged for the concert to include William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. An irony there – which he was well aware of – as the King of Babylon toasted in the stolen vessels of the Jerusalem Temple to ‘the gods of silver and the gods of gold’ – and then ‘the writing on the wall’.

In that much maligned book Leviticus what does it say about harvesting and total profit?
When you reap the harvest of your land you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes . . . you shall leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God. (Lev. 19:9)

The regulation that modern banking ethically requires will be very different to the ethical regulation of lending and agricultural profits in the Old Testament – of course. But there are some principles: principles relating to neighbour, about the poor and about the common good.

A tale of two banks. Some years ago, you may remember the collapse of Barings international bank in London. Behind the collapse lay the unregulated activity of just one trader – Nick Leeson. He had borrowed and invested with the expectation of a rise in the Tokyo market. It did not happen. Undaunted, he did what he had done before: he singlehandedly raised the Japanese Stock Exchange. The only thing that went wrong was – an earthquake. Theoretically, that kind of entrepreneurship cannot now happen but is the spirit of Nick Leeson dead? (see Grace and Mortgage, Peter Selby, DLT, 1997).

The reasons for the iconic collapse of Lehman Brothers are complex and to some extent still disputed: but the story suggest that that casino spirit was not dead in New York or elsewhere in 2007-8. The Sub-prime mortgage crisis was at least in part caused by the bank believing it could and should make bigger and better profits ad infinitum. Then Lehman’s – according to the court examiner in 2010 – used cosmetic accounting to cover up its financial weakness. Just before the collapse, management rejected a proposal for its executives not to receive multi-million dollar bonuses. The proposal was intended to send a constructive message to employees and investors that the Bank was not shirking accountability for its disastrous performance. From Lehman’s failure followed the global recession and collapse in financial confidence we are far from through yet.

In the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Financial Times article last week Rowan Williams encourages a debate on a ‘Tobin’ tax on speculative financial transactions. This would no doubt be dismissed as Marxist by the Daily Mail, were it not for support from very successful capitalists such as Bill Gates. Mr Cameron has given a cautious welcome to the exploration of the idea – more supported in the rest of Europe than in the City of London. This would create reserve capital as a buffer against a financial crash. The Vickers Report also has firm recommendations about the separation of savings from casino-style speculation: Investment banking to be separated from High Street banking. Both these devices would have their pros and cons, but discussion of them both is surely in line with theological and biblical principles relating to the ‘common good’.

Questions about investment regulation, and radically asymmetrical incomes which are surely divisive of the ‘Big Society’ (and I must include footballers as well as investment bankers here) have suddenly arisen in a ‘forum’ outside and now, by invitation to a debate by the Bishop of London, inside St Paul’s Cathedral. What began disaster for St Paul’s – claiming the ministry of two good clergy – has now become a marker that the Church can be a forum (a forum amongst others, including Parliament) for an overdue national discussion about the ethics of the market-place.

The sociologist Dr. Grace Davie said some time ago that the churches had become places where the nation expected a ‘vicarious’ Christianity to be practiced on its behalf: ‘I don’t go to Church but some people ought to’. Has St Paul’s Churchyard – not a stranger in history to great debates of the times due to outdoor sermons at St Paul’s Cross, some of which fed the Reformation and others inspired significant philanthropy and education of the poor – has St Paul’s Churchyard become a place for a ‘vicarious’ debate about ethics and the market place? Can the Church of England in service of the ‘common good’ of the national community be a sacred and safe space for such a wider debate? Why not?

Rt. Rev’d Christopher Hill, Bishop of Guildford.
6th November 2011