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The central drama in Tolstoy’s great novel Anna Karenin is provided by the love of the passionate Anna for Count Vronsky. At one point Tolstoy writes

Vronsky was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what should and should not be done. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but in return the principles were never obscure, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment’s hesitation abut doing what he ought to do. This code categorically ordained that gambling debts must be paid, the tailor need not be; that one must not lie to a man but might to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult but may insult others oneself, and so on….Vronsky felt at ease and could hold his head high.

Hearing that read, questions immediately arise in our minds. Surely the poor hard working tailor should receive priority over gambling debts to rich friends? Surely if it is wrong to lie, it is as wrong to lie to a woman as a man? And so on. We see at once that Vronsky’s moral code was the product of his class and circle and by our standards was deeply flawed.

Yet we all have a moral code which is the product of our upbringing and the circle we move in now. How will future generations regard it? I would like to suggest that the Christian faith both affirms the principles and values that have have gone into making us what we are now, and at the same time gives us a critical distance from them. God is in our early upbringing, shaping us through the love and support of those who cared for us, who share with us their values. God is in our growing up, and the standards imparted to us by our schools and any role models we were fortunate enough to have there. God is continuing to form us now, in this environment, through books and friends, teachers and colleagues. To much of this Christianity says a resounding “Yes” whether or not we have had a religious upbringing. At the same time there is a “No”, for the Christian faith gives us a critical distance from all that has gone into us, however much good there is in it. It is not, definitely is not, a question of black and white-but of moral discernment-and to grow in the Christian life is to grow in the capacity for moral discrimination . What is there in the influences that have gone into the shaping of me about which God says a resounding “Yes”. What is there that I am beginning to question?

If we take the teaching of Jesus, the critical distance in which he stands to all other moral codes is very great. It is true that the reading set for this evening ended with a moral injunction common to all religious traditions, “Treat others as you would like them to treat you” but what about the earlier verses? Love your enemies..pray for those who treat you spitefully…turn the other cheek and so on. And what are we to make of verses like Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep: and cursed are the rich, the well fed, those who laugh now? The teaching of Jesus, lived out to his cruel end on the cross, puts a huge question mark against every human code.

Then we have to face the fact is that the church in all its forms has struggled with that teaching and in what way it applies to life now, and has never come up with a wholly satisfactory answer. We have recently had a vivid example of that struggle in what has happened at St Paul’s Cathedral in relation to the protestors. Read tonight’s lesson again if you would, and you will see what I mean-how difficult it is to understand how this should be worked out in what you might call common sense living. Yet would it not be a strange Christian who did not feel herself or himself continually haunted by that teaching and the question mark it poses against so much of what we take for granted?

How did Vronksy come to get it all so wrong? One reason clearly was the set he moved in. Amongst rich high stake gamblers paying debts does come top of the priority list. Tailors are little people who don’t count. Another reason is put by Tolstoy in the words “He never went outside his circle”. For the fact is that we take on the values and outlook of the circle we move in and if we stay in that circle long enough we lose sight of the fact that we have done this, and assume, like Vronsky, that these are absolute, certain principles.

Some of the most formative times in my own life, when I have been led me to question the standards I live by, have been when I have moved outside my own circle. One was when I had the great good fortune to spend time in and around Soweto at the height of the struggle against Apartheid in the early eighties. The courage, the faith and the joy of the churches there, epitomised by Desmond Tutu of course, significantly raised the bar of what I thought the Christian life involved. Another time was when my wife and I visited a squatters camp for some of the four millions rural landless poor in Brazil. Again, their extraordinary courage, faith, joy and dignity of the life they shared with one another, made gave me a glimmer of understanding into what Jesus meant when he said “Blessed are the poor”

Some of you have done a gap year perhaps teaching or working on a project in the developing world and you will know what I mean. Those who find it is possible to do something like this when you go down will discover a great truth.

All this poses a big problem to anyone who is seriously interested in following a Christian way of life. To put it starkly, the New Testament seems to suggest that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor. How on earth can I who lead such a comfortable life possibly be said to be one of the poor to whom that Kingdom belongs? It is an unsettlling question.

There is a partial way into an answer by realising that when the Bible talks about the poor it does not simply refer to the materially poor. It refers those who lose out in the world as it is now, but who nevertheless put their faith in God and hope for the coming of his Kingdom. More of that meaning comes out in the other version of the Beatitudes in Matthew Chapter 6. This for example talks about “Blessed are the poor in spirit” or “Blessed are those who know their need of God.” However, this should not lead to the other extreme of taking the word poor in a purely spiritual sense, as some have done. It means more that this.

What it suggests I think is that even if we are not someone who is losing out in the world as I is now, we are called to stand beside those who are: imaginatively, prayerfully, economically and politically. For example, to ask about the outlook and policies of our own government or of Europe, what their effect will be on those least able to work the system to their own advantage? The word solidarity is not heard so much these days , but it can still work to express what is required of us-standing alongside those who lose out now, prayerfully and practically aligning our faith and hope and endeavours to theirs.

So at every stage of our life we have the task of moral discernment and to grow in the Christian life is to grow in Christian discriminadtion . For there will be that which has gone into our making, our outlook and values for which we will want to bless God. At the same time Jesus sets us at a critical distance from so much in every culture ; and he invites us to stand with our faith and hope and action beside those who are pushed to the edges in the world as it is ordered now; alongside those last, whom Jesus said are first in the Kingdom of God.

Lord Harries of Pentrgarth
30th October 2011

Freedom! What a wonderful thing! This year, we’ve seen it fought for and greeted with rapture across North Africa. Those of us who are older can remember the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And someone seriously old like me can just recall the strings of faded bunting and the jam sandwiches with which we celebrated liberty in 1945. We all respond to scenes of liberty because we yearn for liberty ourselves. Holidays are liberty. And what are universities? For the dons they are a place of freedom to study and enquire, for students that too, but just as important, an acceptable way of escaping from Mum and Dad. This university began as a bid for freedom. It was set up by teachers and learners themselves, not by any authority, and they came to Oxford because it was the furthest town in England from meddling Church authorities. Even this college started its life as an escape route for monks to leave their monasteries and study at, but not too near, a university, which explains why Worcester, compared with the other old colleges, is so inconveniently situated.
The joy of liberation shines through today’s Old Testament reading. In 597 the Babylonians captured Jerusalem, abolished the kingdom of Judah, and destroyed the Temple – the centre of the worship of God. Many of the people of Israel were moved away from their lands and scattered through Babylonia, and outsiders were brought in to take their places. It seemed that nothing could give the people their freedom again, but fifty years later something did: as unexpectedly as in 1989 or 2011. Up in the mountains of northern Iran, an obscure prince named Cyrus was on the move. First he conquered the Medes, then in 539 he swept down on Babylonia and conquered that too. But he came not only as a conqueror; he brought liberty. He let the people of Israel return to Judaea, he allowed them to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. No wonder the writer of Isaiah saw Cyrus as God’s agent, although Cyrus did not know God. God works through people who do not know him as well as through those who do.
Of course, the freedom Cyrus gave was not perfect freedom. He remained the lord of the Jewish people, and for most of the rest of Biblical history they were under emperors of one kind or another. And the joy of freedom in Isaiah eventually wore off. By the time of Jesus, the Romans were in power, and people grumbled about it, as they do in today’s gospel reading. Should we pay tribute to Caesar? The question was a good way of challenging Jesus. If he says, yes, he’s a Roman collaborator. If he says no, he can be denounced to the Romans as a trouble-maker. So Jesus asked for a coin and held it up. Some of the coins of the Emperor Augustus which were going the rounds in the time of Jesus had the emperor on the front and an altar on the back, so by turning the coin round Jesus could have made a good point – render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and then, showing the back – to God what is God’s.
The words of Jesus may seem to lie a long way away from those of the Book of Isaiah. Jesus seems to be talking not about freedom but about obligations – things we have to give to Caesar, things we have to give to God. We no longer live in the Roman Empire, but there are still a lot of Caesars in our lives. In your case, the provost. The director of music. Your teachers and tutors. The government, and the forces of law and order. All these Caesars expect us to render them things: attention in the choir, essays on time, good behaviour in college, payment of taxes, and so on. But if they are good rulers, they offer freedoms in return: the freedom to study, to walk about unmolested, to receive health care, to drive on the roads. And Jesus approves that: render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and you will get these back.
God’s kingdom is like that but better, in that earthly kingdoms are shadows or partial resemblances of the kingdom of heaven. On earth you have to belong to the political system in which you are born, unless you get permission to move. God’s kingdom is open by invitation – it is based not on compulsion but on love. Going into it involves harmonising yourself with it, so to that extent it involves obligations: to love God and to love your neighbour. But whereas Caesar’s kingdom is limited in its freedoms – roughly speaking you get out what we put in – God’s kingdom offers unlimited ones. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus uses a string of colourful metaphors to express this. The kingdom of heaven is like a tiny mustard seed that grows into a substantial bush. It is the yeast that makes bread expand and lighten. It is a treasure lying in a field. A fine pearl. A net full of fish. A cupboard of stores, old and new. A man who forgives what is owing to him. An employer who employs everyone. And so on.
These are vivid ways of describing how generous God’s kingdom is, how enabling and fulfilling it is for those who come in. Just think how much more you gain by loving God than by not doing so. Loving God gives you someone to talk to, someone to ask for help, to heal and forgive what is wrong, to give you guidance. Just think how much your own life improves if you love other people. Loving them lifts you up above your own preoccupations, gives you greater understanding and wider horizons, enables you to be sociable, to help those in need. In fact the obligations of God’s kingdom turn out to give you far more freedom and capabilities than you had before. The old Book of Common Prayer expresses it in the words God’s service ‘is perfect freedom’. The Latin from which the Prayer Book was translated says ‘to serve is to reign’.
God’s kingdom exists back to back with the kingdoms of earth, like the two sides of the coin. It isn’t somewhere else, or something for the future when we die: it is close by us now, and if we love God, we can enter it now. Whatever kind of life you lead, entering the kingdom enriches that kind of life, and makes it more fulfilling than before. So, to use the metaphors of Jesus, the kingdom for you at university is the treasure in a field, or the beautiful expensive pearl, for which, Jesus says, you have to spend everything you have. Clearly he was foreseeing student loans! But the treasure and pearl of learning are still worth the money – wisdom, says the Book of Proverbs, is worth more than rubies. And then, the kingdom for you is the store cupboard out of which you take things new and old – well that’s the Bodleian, or the college library. It is the net that you put in the sea which comes up full of fishes, good and bad, that you have to sort out. That’s research, learning how to choose what a great heap of books and websites, and how to reject what is worthless. And finally, the kingdom for you is the tiny seed that grows into a large bush. That’s the progress you make, the knowledge you gain in three years.
So your studies, like other worldly things, are a shadow or map of God’s kingdom, and I pray that like a map they may show you the way into his kingdom. May you all find the kingdom, may it give you the freedom that is perfect, and bless you and enrich your lives now and for ever more. Amen. 1,319

Canon Prof. Nicholas Orme
16th October 2011

I want to welcome you all to Chapel tonight – welcome back students, boys, parents, staff and fellows, and especially to welcome new SCR members, Freshers and, of course, our new Provost, Jonathan, Paula and their family. This is a wonderful occasion and, I always feel, the beginning proper, of the new academic year.
All of you who have come here have done exceptionally well, whether as school pupils, or graduate students, or Junior Research Fellows or senior academics. But, do you ever find that, just when you think you’re getting somewhere, when you’ve passed some exams or got a new job, when you’ve really got to grips with life, that someone comes along who is cleverer, or richer, or has more status than you?
There’s a Mitchel and Webb sketch set at a drinks party, probably not unlike some of the drinks parties you may have been to even this week. As people sip their cocktails and champagne in walks Lionel with a swagger and is offered a drink by the host. He walks up to a couple and proclaims ‘Parking’s an absolute nightmare around here isn’t it. You have to reverse into the tiniest of spaces. Still, I managed it. I mean, it’s not exactly brain surgery is it … and I should know’
‘Why’s that?’, asks the woman, ‘are you a doctor?’. ‘Careful’, admonishes Lionel, ‘not a doctor, a brain surgeon. BIG difference. Brain surgeon. So what do you do?’ he asks.
‘I’m an accountant’, the man replies.
‘Oh, that’s good’, Lionel replies patronisingly, ‘Yeah, I could do with an accountant. Filling in those tax forms can be really confusing can’t it? Still, not exactly brain surgery is it? Are you an accountant too?’, he asks the woman.
‘No, I work for a charity’, replies the woman
‘Oh, that’s a very selfless job isn’t it?’ Lionel exclaims, ‘I really admire you. I don’t think I could do what you do. I say that because it’s emotionally draining, not because it’s hard. I mean, it’s not exactly brain surgery is it?’
Now in walks Geoff and Lionel makes a beeline. ‘So how do you make a crust?’ he asks Geoff.
‘Well, I’m a scientist’, answers Geoff, ‘I work mainly with rockets. It’s pretty tough work. What do you do?’
Lionel cannot resist the bait. ‘Well, I don’t mean to boast but I’m a brain surgeon’.
‘Brain surgery?’, considers Geoff as he takes a sip of champagne, ‘not exactly rocket science though is it?’
The sketch is a salutary lesson about boasting about one’s status, and I hope you don’t meet anybody like that in Oxford, and especially not here at Worcester College. For tonight’s bible readings speak very clearly about genuine status and about how, in God’s economy, everything is upside down. The writer of Proverbs tells us that wisdom and understanding are better than silver, gold or jewels or any worldly power, status or treasure. What is that wisdom? It is keeping God’s commandments of love, loyalty and faithfulness. In the gospel, the rich man has kept all these commandments, and yet he cannot let go of his status in wealth, even to find freedom with Christ. How hard it is for him, says Jesus, and indeed for anyone who gives up their worldly potential or power, status and wealth, in order to gain a greater peace and freedom. In God’s kingdom it is the one who serves who most to be honoured. The first shall be last and the last shall be first.
How can this be illustrated in reality here at Worcester College? Well, this college was founded in 1283 as a Benedictine monastery and so here is a Benedictine story, which might indicate how we are best to live together, at least for the next eight weeks.
There was once a monk who was abbot to a small community. Things had not been going well. A lethargy had fallen on the brothers so that saying their prayers together had become a trial rather than a delight. The brothers were finding it increasingly difficult to get on with each other. Squabbles had broken out and monks who had been friends for years found each other annoying. Few guests came to visit the old monastery and no one had joined their community for years, so the small community felt dejected and lonely. The abbot was worried and sick at heart to see the brothers he loved so much tired and depressed. He had heard that there was a very wise nun who lived many miles away and wondered whether she could give him some advice as to what to do. So he set out on the journey, which took many weeks, during which time he travelled over mountain, through desert and across the sea. At last he came to the convent of the wise nun who was mother to her community. Tired and exhausted after his long journey he asked if he could see the Mother superior and she brought him into her room, laid food before him and insisted that he rested before he was able allowed to talk. After a good night’s sleep he asked if he could see the Mother Superior once again and was shown into her room. This time she silently listened to all his troubles and concerns. When he finished he asked he if she would be able to help, to offer any advice. She said, ‘Yes. What I am about to tell you, I will say only once and then I will never repeat it. Take what I say back to the brothers, say it to them one time only and then it must never be said again’. The Abbot leaned forward in anticipation of her words and she said very softly, ‘One of you is the Son of God’ The Abbot looked at her stunned and perplexed. He left the convent the next day with his head full of questions but he knew that the wise nun would never answer them.
On returning to his monastery the monks came to greet him, eager to hear what the advice was that he had been given. True to his word the abbot gathered everyone together and said ‘I will only say this once and then it must never be spoken of again’. Every member of that community leaned forward, straining to catch every word. ‘Among us is the Son of God’.
There was silence and the brothers looked at each other, wondering. The brothers went back to their daily chores and regular round of prayers. It was as if nothing had changed. But as the days and weeks and months went by, the brothers started to notice that an imperceptible change came amongst their little community. The daily office of prayer became a delight once again. As the brothers continued to wonder which one of them was the son of God, the began to see each other with new eyes and a deep reverence and respect for one another descended on the community. The brothers became more eager to serve one another than to find fault. The abbot found peace and others gradually began to join the community again and it became renowned. No one could say why, but it was often said of them that, there, one felt as if one was in the presence of Christ.
The story raises many questions that linger in the mind. But my question this evening is this – in the community, the family, of Worcester College, does one feel that one is in a place that respects the same values that Christ stood for? Is there kindness and gentleness? Is there generosity, patience and humility and keenness of service that seeks to help others? Do we find reverence for each other and diligence to see good prosper here? For these qualities are the values of the kingdom of God and are more precious than all the riches in the world. One act of kindness can transform our lives, whether we give it or receive it.
So welcome to Worcester College, and may we all, this year, consider one another as children of God, each created as uniquely precious to him. Amen.

Rev’d Dr Jonathan Arnold
9th October 2011

I wonder if any of you have read a recent study of why people ‘deconvert’ from Christianity? It was intriguing. Those surveyed were between 20 and 50, and from different Christian denominations. There were three main reasons. A key one was ‘intellectual and theological concerns’. Science, hell and human suffering made people ask how a loving God could be worthy of such devotion. Another reason was unanswered prayer. Here it was acknowledged that God existed, but some felt they had done so much for God – praying, attending church, leading a moral life – yet experienced God doing little for them in return. The broken relationship was even described as a ‘divorce’. The third reason was frustration with the beliefs and actions of other Christians: sincere questions of doubt about the Bible and about the Church were too often given trite and unhelpful answers, whilst ‘rule enforcement’ dispensed with an element of hypocrisy were also too much to take.

The Christian life is never easy, and many of the teachings of Jesus make it clear that not everyone will stay the course. As we near the end of the academic year it makes me think of where we’ll all be in, say, ten years’ time. How many of us might ‘de-convert’ – whether gradually or suddenly? Being in the comfort zone of this wonderful chapel and with the richness of Christian resources at Oxford is one thing; embracing the new and unfamiliar is quite another.

As I reflected further, the words of a Prayer Book Collect kept coming to mind. The prayer is for the 4th Sunday after Trinity, and because this is usually a Sunday in late June or early July, we never hear it in term-time. This is a shame: like so many of the Prayer Book Collects, it is rich in theology and spirituality.

O God, the Protector of all who trust in Thee, without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; increase and multiply upon us Thy mercy; that Thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake our Lord. Amen.

I want to focus on the phrase ‘that we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal…’ This is a clever juxtaposition of ideas: it suggests that we can actually find the eternal within the temporal: it’s not something we wait for at the end of life’s journey. So often we think that we have to travel on through the temporal, until we arrive at the eternal at the hour of our death. But I don’t think this is what this Collect means, and I don’t think it’s what some of the New Testament teaches either. And yet a foretaste of the eternal within the temporal could be sufficiently compelling to support us whatever the threats to faith might be – whether intellectual, experiential or social.

One of the greatest reminders of our ‘temporality’ and transience is change. From our early childhood onwards all of us have had to learn how to come to terms with change. Throughout our lives – at school, university, or whether working, parenting, retiring – we are constantly faced with the fact we are constrained by the temporal. Some of us might remember our first day at school: or moving house and losing close friends; or moving up to secondary school; or a family break-up and broken relationships. Some of us will have vivid memories of leaving home; or the illness of grandparents and even parents; or of our first job and first home; and perhaps the loss of work, or financial troubles, or difficulties of being parents or spouses; and then there is the life-changing prospect of retirement. Transitional psychologists tell us that in each case several responses are possible. We could simply deny it is happening to us. We could fight it and be angry. We could ‘negotiate’ by making small changes which give us the impression that we are really in control. We could sink into depression, feeling we cannot go on. But we could move into a state of acceptance, and adapt ourselves to it.

So how do we learn such acceptance and stability? How do we pass through things temporal without losing the things eternal? And how do we find the eternal within the temporal?

There is a partial answer to this within our Old Testament reading tonight. There we heard how the prophet Elisha had to come to terms with transience and change as he witnessed the ‘passing on’ of his master, Elijah, a great prophetic figure, whose ministry in many ways foreshadowed that of Jesus of Nazareth. The story of Elijah being taken up to heaven might remind us of the account of Jesus being taken up to heaven which we reflected upon last Thursday, Ascension Day: it is vividly depicted in the stained glass window immediately to my left. In our reading today, Elisha, Elijah’s disciple, had to learn to say farewell to the familiar and embrace something new and unfamiliar: he was soon to be a prophet on his own. Note his cry of despair as he watches Elijah disappear: “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horseman” meaning – “What will I do and what will God’s people do without you in our midst to guide us?” Elisha’s response is so like that of the disciples at the time of Jesus’ Ascension: the disciples’ last words to their master, just before his being ‘taken up into the heavens’, was about how the kingdom was to be restored to Israel – again, meaning – “What will we do and what will God’s people do without you in our midst to guide us?”. The disciples, like Elisha, had to learn how to say farewell to the familiar and embrace the new and unfamiliar: they too had to learn how to be disciples without the earthly presence of their Master.

This reading of Elijah and Elisha has been deliberately chosen to follow Ascension Day. Note how Elisha was promised a portion of the Spirit of the Lord who had worked through Elijah of Gilead; so too the disciples of Jesus were promised a portion of that same Spirit who had worked through Jesus of Nazareth. And just as Elisha was then equipped to perform miracles and speak the prophetic word through the power of the Spirit, so too those first disciples were equipped to perform miracles and preach the Gospel through the power of the Spirit. So in each case neither Elisha nor Jesus’ disciples were left on their own to face the new and unfamiliar: in each case the Holy Spirit becomes the bridge between their temporality and the eternal presence of God still in their midst.

The problem with applying both the Elijah and Ascension stories to our own situation is that we could claim they are about exceptional periods in the history of the People of Israel and the history of the Christian Church; and because nothing quite this dramatic happens to us, we cannot apply this to the vicissitudes of life in the twenty first century. In a way, this is right. Those were exceptional times.

And yet there are clear connections, too. We all face constant challenges where transition reminds us of our temporality. And we, like them, have been given the Holy Spirit as a reminder of the eternal within our midst – actually a theme we will be thinking of much more next Sunday when we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost.

So it is appropriate to ask: how can the Holy Spirit be a bridge between the temporal and the eternal in our lives today? How does the Holy Spirit enable us to pass through things temporal, so that we do not lose the things eternal?

It is important to realise that, even within Scripture, the Holy Spirit is not only seen as that mighty force which impelled Elisha and the first Christians to perform miracles and speak with power, but he is experienced as ‘a still small voice’ as well. Elijah himself discovered this on Mount Horeb, when he found that the voice of God was not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in a ‘still small voice of calm’. This is what is being referred to in the hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’:

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!

And, not surprisingly, this is also what Jesus Christ also discovered in his own earthly ministry. The same hymn says it far better than I could:

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!
So let us focus on what is possible: how can we, like Elijah and Jesus, experience the eternal through and within ‘the changes and chances of this fleeting life’?

The first and most obvious way is in prayer. However, if a ‘still small voice’ is speaking, then we have to be listening: if we too are speaking, we will drown it out. How often, I wonder, do we fail to hear God’s Spirit, and so fail to experience the eternal now, because we spend more time talking to God than listening to Him? The art of finding the eternal as we pray is to listen first and, perhaps, to speak later.

A second way of discovering the eternal in the temporal is through learning to listen to Scripture. As someone who critically analyses Scripture as a profession, I know how vital it is to learn to listen as well as to question, dissect and evaluate. Just as a score of music both has to be taken apart, and then heard through performance, so to Scripture has to be studied analytically and listened to as well.

A third way of experiencing the eternal here and now is through the worship and sacraments of the Church, and most especially through the Eucharist (or Holy Communion, or the Mass). Here, as the bread and wine are offered to us, by Christ and through the priest, we have to be receptive. There is nothing we can do other than accept the gifts offered to us. Kneeling or standing on the chancel steps, here we are given another opportunity to taste eternal life – through physical elements.

A fourth way is through the preaching of the church, where God’s Spirit works through the spoken word of a sermon as it interprets the written word of Scripture. This is another time when we are in position simply to receive whilst the preacher (however imperfectly) seeks to be a medium of the Spirit and in another way incarnate the eternal through the temporal.

A fifth way is through the gift of music, particularly sacral music. I would be surprised if there was anyone here tonight who had not at some stage been touched by the eternal Spirit of God as they listened and responded to the music of our Choir. Tonight we have been reminded of the Kingship of God in their singing of Psalm 47; had the psalm been simply said, we just could not ‘feel’ the words of the psalm in the same way. Similarly the triumphant singing of Purcell’s ‘O God the King of Glory’ can touch us far more profoundly through music than the recitation. .

A sixth window onto the eternal is through the power of art. Many of us have found that the bizarre iconography of this Chapel is actual a creative aid to worship; it might be through the skilled walnut carving of the animals on the pews, or the delicate frescoes against the windows, or even the windows themselves, where we can see the intersecting of the temporal and the eternal in the themes of the life of Christ. ‘Imaging eternity’ in art stirs our imaginations in manifold ways.

And the seventh is through the beauty of Creation. We have to be fairly hard of heart not to be touched when we leave the Chapel and see the summer evening sun playing on the wisteria and on the stonework of the cottages. And as we leave the church for the world, we realize that the Spirit of Creation and the Spirit of the Church are one and the same. Whether it’s in the scent of the roses as we walk down the north side of the quad, or of the cut grass after a summer shower, we are offered so many glimpses here at Worcester of the beauty of eternity captured within time.

And so this is my own ‘reworking’ of the seven gifts of the Spirit. You might have noticed how this involves all our senses – what we hear, what we see, and what we touch and taste and smell. All that is required of us is that we stop, and listen to that ‘still small voice of calm’ and hear ‘the silence of eternity, interpreted by love’. To pass through things temporal, without losing the things eternal, is not just something which saints learn to do. It is a challenge for all of us: we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. And by practicing it here we can create a way of life which will prevent us ‘de-converting’ when life might seem more – bleak.
A man may look on glass,
On it may stay his eye,
Or if he pleases, through it pass,

Dr. Susan Gillingham, Fellow in Theology and Lay Minister, Worcester College
5th June 2011

‘I’m going fishing’ was my father’s way of signalling to us that he was feeling stressed and that he wanted some space. He usually decided to go fishing for one of two reasons: either he was under a lot of pressure at work, or there had been a family disagreement and he felt that, for a day or two at least, it would be wise for him to maintain a low domestic profile. He never told us which of these two circumstances applied on a particular day, but we could tell what was going on from the tone of his voice. If he had been under pressure at work, there would be a listlessness in the way that he said ‘I’m going fishing’: but if there had been an argument, ‘I’m going fishing’ would have a stronger sense of determination about it.

At the beginning of this evening’s second lesson Peter said ‘I’m going fishing’ (John XXI,3) and, true to his word, that’s precisely what he did, with six of the other disciples: but what we cannot tell from the text is how Peter was feeling when he said that, or what tone of voice Peter used, because ‘I’m going fishing’ can be interpreted in several different ways.

‘I’m going fishing’ might indicate that Peter was feeling under pressure as a result of the first two appearances of the Risen Christ. Perhaps Peter needed somewhere quiet and peaceful to think about things, and to make up his mind? That’s quite possible because, while it must have been a wonderful experience for Peter to see the Risen Christ in Jerusalem, it must also have been a thoroughly confusing experience for Peter and for all the disciples on both occasions; so where better for them to go and sort it out than Galilee – their home – the place where they had first met Jesus, and where their great adventure with him had begun three years earlier. So Peter might have been feeling the strain of it all, and wanted to spend a night back home, quietly fishing on the lake and collecting his thoughts, hoping (almost beyond hope) that the appearances of the Risen Christ were real and true. That’s one way of looking at it.

Or perhaps Peter said ‘I’m going fishing’ because wanted to escape – because he was so fed-up and disillusioned. Everything that he had hoped for had come to an end when Jesus had been arrested and executed: and the resurrection appearances of the Risen Christ had been so strange and unworldly that they could have seemed like nothing more than a bad dream. Perhaps Peter felt that his three-year adventure with Jesus of Nazareth had come to a tragic end, and so he decided to go fishing to try to forget the whole episode, and to put it behind him. After all, fishing can calm the soul as well as the body: it can soothe a tortured mind and refresh a tired body. And let’s remember that, after the terrible traumas of Holy Week, the disciples were not in good shape – they had been hunted men, who had gone into hiding for fear of their lives; so we can understand Peter’s sense of needing to escape.

Looking at it another way, ‘I’m going fishing’ may indicate that Peter had recovered sufficiently from the trauma of recent days to take up his old job fishing on the Sea of Galilee, and that he was trying to lead the other disciples back to fishing as a way of life. Peter was a natural leader and he probably realised that the others would look to him for an example and for encouragement, if they were to rebuild their shattered lives after the Jesus experience.

On a different tack ‘I’m going fishing’ may indicate quite simply that the disciples were hungry and needed some food: and what could be more obvious than for professional fishermen to go out onto the lake to catch fish. Of course, throughout their three years with Jesus the disciples had not had to worry about finding food – the women who followed Jesus had gathered and provided food for Jesus and his disciples: but, now that everyone had been scattered, the eleven were left to fend for themselves once again, and it’s certainly possible that they were hungry and were short of the money that they would need to buy enough food to eat.

Well, there we are: four quite different (but equally plausible) interpretations of just four words of Holy Scripture ‘I am going fishing’. As I am sure you will agree, ‘I am going fishing’ is not one of the most significant phrases in the New Testament, but it is a splendid example of the need for us to look carefully at each sentence in scripture and then try to imagine what was going on in the hearts and minds of the characters in the story.

Now I cannot tell you which of the four interpretations I gave you might be the right one: none of them may be correct, or perhaps they all have an element of truth in them – in a sense, it doesn’t matter too much. What is important is that, having thought through all the possibilities, the story that we heard as this evening’s second lesson has become much more alive and interesting for us: it has become less flat and more three-dimensional, and so it becomes much more engaging as a result. That’s the first point that I want to make this evening – the importance of using our imagination when we read the bible, so that we bring the text to life in our minds and in our hearts.

The second point that I want to make follows from it, in that, once we have brought the text to life, we need to listen to what the Risen Christ is saying to us today through his word of Scripture. So let’s return to the lakeside for a moment to illustrate what I mean.

Until that night’s fishing on the lake, the Risen Christ had appeared to his disciples only in Jerusalem. And that raises an important question: why did the disciples leave Jerusalem, if that is where the Risen Christ was appearing? We cannot be sure of the answer to this question, but I have a suspicion that Peter and the disciples were overwhelmed by their Easter experience and that they were trying to run away from the consequences of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead – running back into their old jobs – back to their former way of life. And what could be more natural? It is true of even the greatest saints that there were times when they wanted to give up practising the faith and to turn their back on their particular calling. Perhaps the same is true for some of us here today? There may have been times when we were tempted to give up the Christian way of life: times when we have made a serious mistake; times when we have faced what appear to be overwhelming difficulties; times when we are feeling tired or even desperately weary.

Peter and the other disciples must have been facing just that kind of dilemma in those first few days after the Resurrection of our Lord. Peter was still painfully conscious of his forthright denial of Jesus and of his inability to stand by his promise to lay down his life for Christ. This experience of failure had a profound effect on Peter: it shattered his illusions about himself. No wonder Peter left Jerusalem and returned to familiar home territory: he was ready to give up following Jesus. But even though Peter might have been ready to give up on Jesus, our Lord was not ready to give up on Peter: and so the Risen Christ made an appearance in Galilee – miles away from Jerusalem – in order to seek out Peter, to assure Peter of his renewed life and presence after crucifixion, and to recall Peter to the task of being a fisher of men and women.

Peter’s experience, then, is a lesson for us today: a lesson from which we learn that acceptance of our failures is an essential part of our growth in the faith. As we look back over the decisions and events of each day, we have two options. Our first option is to allow our mistakes and failures to lead us into depression and disillusionment, or to run away from our calling. Our second option is to allow these painful experiences to turn us humbly back to Christ, who will lead us to a more mature and realistic faith and to a greater love of God. The fact that we are gathered here this evening suggests that, by the grace of God, we are inclined towards the second (and more constructive) of those two options.

As we do so, let us pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and call on the Risen Christ to be present with us in our lives today. Let us ask our Lord to bless us as we go out to cast the church’s net to fish for men and women of all ages, for that is the task to which he calls you and me each and every day.

Canon Andrew Piper, Precentor, Hereford Cathedral
29th May 2011

Lord may this word be spoken so that it is your voice that is heard and your name that is honoured. It’s a great pleasure to share your worship this evening and a privilege to give this address.

Our reading from S Luke’s gospel tells of Jesus’s final approach to Jerusalem. He knew full well what this meant, whatever the success of his public ministry in the north, in Galilee he was now going to the heart of the spiritual battlefield, Jerusalem, the city which stones the prophets, and as he climbs towards it from Jericho he knows that a Rubicon has been crossed. There is no going back.

With his disciples he stands on the Mount of Olives and looks across the Kidron valley to the city of Jerusalem and its magnificent temple, and Jesus and his party from the north, provincial folk, like virtually every visitor to Jerusalem must have caught their breath at the beauty of it all.

The temple was one of the wonders of the world. And the man responsible for that most remarkable of religious buildings was king Herod. He was not a pleasant man – indeed he was a mixture of contradictions.

He’d had been imposed on the Jewish people by their Roman overlords as King of Judea, but he was never really a king of the Jews, because he never won their hearts & minds – they feared him at first, & then they hated him.

His behaviour confirmed their view. He was a tyrant, adamant, ambitious, imaginative, merciless – a highly volitile mixture of policy & passion. He built cities whose foundations lasted into the 21st century, yet his name became a byword for cruelty. In fits of insane rage he slaughtered his own wife & two sons, whilst, S. Matthew’s gospel tells us of the babies he slew in trying to kill the infant Christ, whom he, mistakely assumed would be a rival for his earthly power & pomp.

A developer of massive projects Herod transformed the appearance of Judeah’s cities & the money for all this came from harsh taxes – he razed to the ground any town or village who refused to pay, & sold their inhabitants into slavery. His temple project, replacing that built after the return from exile in Babylon, was designed to be his crowing glory.

But under Herod, even the priesthood in the temple had become corrupt, with the office of high priest being bought & sold, so when he decided to rebuild the temple, the priests became suspicious – they protested, but they were overcome. Herod proceeded with his grand design. He allowed nothing to get in the way of his project.

The priests said that their faith required that no sound of hammer or chisel could be heard in the temple precincts during the construction, clearly requiring a miracle. Herod had the stone quarried & worked upon elsewhere & carted in silently.

The priests said that only they could undertake the work, & unfortunately they had no skills as artisans – Herod set up a civil engineering training programme for the priests, & before long a thousand of them were employed in construction.

The result of their labours was an architechtural triumph. It was said that from a distance, because of the profusion of its white marble, the temple glittered like a snow covered mountain.

It was this wonderful human construction over which Jesus stood on the hillside and wept to the bemusement of his friends and enemies as he spoke the scandalous, ridiculous words, “not one stone will be left upon another.” Such challenging words and actions the following week took him into conflict with the powers that be, religious and political, until the people of Jerusalem crucified this latest prophet.

“Not one stone will be left upon another.” Jesus said, Was he mad? Not in the judgement of history for the years following Jesus’s execution saw the land beset by difficulties, with a series of rulers who had little knowledge of Jewish ways, and who cared less.

It had always been a troubled land – in Galilee a rebel army had sacked two roman legions & were punished in the Roman style – 2000 men nailed to crosses but some thirty years after Jesus’s death things came to a head. In Judeah for four years the Jews fought the Roman forces, then in the year 70 ad four legions laid siege to Jerusalem for five months, the city was reduced to starvation. Its inhabitants died in the streets. Jewish zealots made the temple their last fortress, but the Roman forces stormed in, & burned it to the ground. There was nothing left of Herod’s temple but ashes, not one stone was left upon another.

Christians, as much as Jews were horrified by this desecration. But as they reflected upon all this, incidents & words from the earthly life of their lord & master began to take on a new significance.

They remembered how Jesus had been horrified at all the materialistic activity in the outer courtyards when he had come to the temple. How he had turned the tables of the money changers over & drove out the traders, “my house is to be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.”

They remembered how Jesus, when approaching the city from afar & seeing the great temple glittering in the sunlight had wept over it all, “oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that murders the prophets & stones the messengers sent to her. How often have i longed to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not let me.”
But above all they remembered how he had said mysteriously, “destroy this temple, & in three days i will raise it up again.”

Now the temple which had taken 46 years to build was dust & ashes, but Jesus from Nazareth, crushed & crucified, was in their belief, Jesus the Christ, risen, ascended, glorified – the foundation stone of the Christian church. A different sort of temple was being constructed.

The first epistle of St Peter put it like this, “come & let yourself be built as living stones, into a spiritual temple,” And it was this temple of living stones which planted itself in every city and town around the Mediterranean sea, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ bringing forgiveness and reconciliation to the people of a broken world.

A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, when preaching at the opening service of a Lambeth Conference in Canterbury cathedral, pointed to the stone arches supporting the roof of the magnificent nave and chancel.

He asked us to look up and note that each arch was made up of many blocks of stone and that each block was both supported by a neighbour, and was holding up a neighbour. It was this framework of reliance and support, he maintained, which provided the flexibility and strength of the whole edifice.

And so it is for us. In our life of service of others, in this community called church we need to both lean upon our Christian friends and help support and encourage them and by so doing we create a community which is both good for itself and a blessing for others.

As we’ve heard, we have a good opportunity this week to give expression to this network of faith and service, for Christian Aid Week begins today, when the churches of Britain put aside any doctrinal or historical differences and work together for the good of others, helping people in poverty to move out of poverty

Around the globe today it’s estimated that there are one billion people living in poverty. One billion. If we started to count them, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on, it would take us 32 years to reach the final figure. Put that way bringing people out of poverty seems to be a hopeless task. Why even try?

“Well I always reflect upon the two companions walking along the sea shore on an African coastline after a severe storm had stranded tens of thousands of small star fish. The fish lay dying on the beach under the hot tropical sun. As they walked and talked one of the companions kept stooping down and picking up a star fish and throwing it into the sea. After a while his friend said, “I don’t know why you’re doing that, it can’t make any difference, you can’t rescue them all.” His companion bent down and picked up yet another creature and threw it into the sea. “No,” he said, “But it makes a difference to that one.”

And so it is with global poverty. It will take the political will of people and leaders at national and international levels to impact upon the enormity of the challenge. It will take skills of financial and development management hardly yet seen to impact upon the scale of poverty growing worse in times of financial crisis and climate change. And nothing we do in support of Christian Aid week should excuse us from being involved in such political and economic challenges, and some of you, I hope, may spend your professional lifetime so engaged.

But this Christian Aid Week in Britain some 22 thousand churches will be working together. Some 350 thousand volunteers will be visiting a fifth of the households in Britain. And the result of their efforts will be the raising of some 15 million pounds to help combat poverty.

It will make a difference to that one and that one and that one, and it will be an indication that the community called church which meets for worship Sunday by Sunday is also prepared to meet in the service of suffering humanity. In that way the spiritual temple made up of the community of hearts and souls, meeting for worship in beautiful buildings of stone such as this chapel, becomes also a spiritual temple reflecting the saving holiness of God.

People of God, may God bless you and your own efforts for the common good, this week and long into the future. Amen

Rt. rev’d Tom Butler, Former Bishop of Southwark
15th May 2011

When the chaplain gave me the topic of sloth in this series on the 7 deadly sins I wondered for a moment if this was a bit of sub-conscious type-casting. I ought therefore to confess at the start that I am not immune to the temptation and I have not always resisted it. I am not claiming to be an expert but I will give you three thoughts: the character of sloth, the causes of sloth and the cure for sloth. In the culture of today sloth may seem a relatively minor character defect but hardly a “deadly” sin. After all, given the modern definition of sin, it doesn’t hurt other people; it may not help them very much but it doesn’t harm them. It is simply a “life-style” choice, different rather than evil.
So why is sloth a sin? First we should identify it and distinguish it from tiredness, or even a symptom of depression. Such physical or mental states that affect our functioning are not moral defects. They are best dealt with by rest or counselling aided when necessary by medication. But sloth is that attitude of mind that tells us life is not worth the effort. It is when looking at the blank piece of paper as we start that essay for Tuesday’s tutorial that we feel, “We just can’t be bothered”.
It is not however simply mental or physical laziness – it goes deeper than that, and it is deeply corrosive. Its foundation is the premise that life is pointless. It is also the endpoint of a circular argument – if you choose to believe life has no meaning or purpose, then life will become pointless. But let’s not deceive ourselves that modern science has shown us that life is nothing but a freak, meaningless accident in a random universe. Science tells us no such thing – it is not equipped to make such value judgments or reach such metaphysical conclusions. It is intellectual laziness that accepts uncritically an atheist interpretation of science. This may simply suit our inclination to believe that we will not be held to account for how we have used the precious gift of life.
Sloth corrupts all that is good and true and beautiful. It breeds a cynicism that sees only the worst in people. It leads to self-deception and unwillingness to face the truth about ourselves. It develops a spiritual crustiness so that we fail to be inspired or ennobled by beauty in art or music or persons. It robs life of joy. It denies life itself. It is the ultimate insult to God the Creator. It says to God “Maybe, maybe not, you created a universe of awful majesty and immensity and peopled one small corner with creatures that could be conscious and aware of your power and glory. You shared this human experience, suffered and died as one of us in what they say is a saving act of love … but so what, I don’t give a damn.” Yes, sloth is a sin. It wilfully misses the point of life. The slothful can’t be bothered to find out if life has a point. So sloth enslaves us and robs us of freedom and joy in life.
Sloth may be most obvious in those who are physically inactive but mere activity is not the anti-dote. If sloth is a sin because it misses the point of life it is possible to miss the point also by misdirected activity; by busyness, by driving ambition, by pursuit of material wealth and security. A headless chicken can look convincingly busy, for a while! Perhaps that is why Luke places Jesus’ parable of the watchful servants in the context of his master’s teaching about materialism. The true servant of Christ has his loins girded and his lamp burning, actively serving his master. The wise and faithful steward is the one who understands that this life is not all there is. It is part of a longer story, a larger picture, a work in progress. Therefore he or she is active in doing God’s work. That is the real meaning of zeal. It is enthusiastic, hope-full working for a purpose – showing God’s love in the world. It energizes men and women to give up riches and security and to serve others as Christ’s hands and Christ’s feet.
But what are we to do about it? What is the cure for, and the prophylactic against, sloth? Dante offers a purgatorial vision of endless running as the penance for a life of sloth. But this is not “headless chicken” running. It is an urgent desire not to waste time –
“Quick, quick! Let not the precious time be lost for lack of love!” “In good work strive till grace revive from dust”.
The moral is clearly directed to us to be active before death and we are turned to dust. It is not however much help to be told that the antidote to inactivity is to get active. Getting active is the problem – if I could do that then there wouldn’t be a problem. What can I do, if I lack the willpower?
The immediate context of Dante and Virgil’s encounter with the penitent slothful is a discourse on love and free will. Firstly Virgil points out that we are created with a capacity to love and love leads to action to obtain the beloved. Dante asks if there is then any virtue in what we do if it is simply the result of what God has put within us. To this Virgil replies that however we are made, we have the capacity to choose – we have free will. This is where it begins – with a choice.
So the remedy for sloth is built in and available to each of us. We are made to respond to grace. When we choose to accept God’s help then things can begin to change. When life seems empty and pointless and not worth the bother – it is because there is an empty space inside us, – a God-shaped hole – that only God can fill. The opposite of sloth is enthusiasm for life, eagerly reaching for all the joy it can give as from God. Enthusiasm comes from two Greek words: en theos, a god within. That is what the Christian has. He or she is one who has chosen to receive God’s Holy Spirit into their very being. It is not willpower we need to overcome sloth, it is just the will, God will give us the power.
My job then, as a Christian, is to do God’s business and as C S Lewis says, “Joy is the serious business of heaven”. It was Jesus’ reason for coming for he said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
So our life becomes an exciting adventure. A life enthused, empowered and enabled by God himself to fulfil his purpose for us. His Spirit within energises our self-discipline and encourages us with love and joy and peace. So with God’s strength we can be set free from the slavery of sloth and become masters of ourselves that we may be servants of others. We look forward then, not to purgatory, but to meeting our Master and to hear his greeting, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Prof. Paul Ewart
13th February 2011

The Chaplains’ Event taking place all this week, Exploring Faith, is an event that used to be called ‘The Chaplains’ Mission’. In essence, this week’s talks are also a mission in that the audience will consist of Christians and non-Christians, those looking for faith and those who are sceptical. The main headline speakers of any mission have always formed the backbone of the initiative, but there are also often fringe events that one can enjoy. A few years ago one such fringe offering was an exhibition in the Wesley Memorial Church. There was a single work in the exhibition, which was an amazing art installation by Paul Hobbs called ‘Holy Ground’. It consisted of a large, circular Hessian mat littered with stones. In the centre there was a beautiful sculpture of silver metal, which twisted and spiralled out into arms like a tree or bush. Lights were shone onto it so that it shimmered and flickered giving a representation of the burning bush. All around the edge of the mat were pairs of shoes, thirty in all and next to them was an A4 card that told you something about the owner and what it means for them to believe in Christ. Paul Hobbs had travelled around the world gathering their stories. Each one is unique, but as he writes, ‘all have encountered the living God, arriving at a place of holy ground, where, like Moses, they must, metaphorically at least, remove their shoes on acknowledgement of God’s holiness.’
One pair of shoes was that of an itinerant evangelist in Africa. His sandals were literally worn out from the many miles he had trekked to preach the gospel and escape persecution. Another were the high-heeled pink stilettos of a former prostitute who, through her faith, turned her life around and now walks the back streets of New York to care for vulnerable girls. Finally, and perhaps the most emotive of all are Rosemarie’s plain and unassuming shoes. Her father had been Hitler’s bodyguard for the 1936 Olympic Games and Hitler became her Godfather. Before war broke out, her Dad, a Christian, risked his life to help persecuted Jews escape from Germany. However, in 1938 he was forced to swallow a cyanide pill for his actions. It was a deeply moving artwork and in itself created an incredible holy space in our city and in the lives of those who entered into and encountered it.
In this evening’s reading from the thirteenth Canto of Dante’s Purgatory, the shoes of the poets Virgil tread from the first cornice of Pride and into the second Cornice, where the sin of Envy is purged. And here, the travellers hear the story of Sapia of Siena and they see the envious inhabitants, huddled with their backs against a wall and their eyes, gruesomely sown up with wire so that they cannot see. Like all the sins to be cleansed in Purgatory, or roots of sin as I mentioned in my introductory sermon two week ago, Envy is a sin of desire, a distorted kind of love: either too much, too little or perverted in some way. Envy is all about looking, and desiring to have what you do not have. This is why the envious in the story have their eyes sown up, because their envious looking was the root of all their sinful deeds: their resentment of others wealth, power, possessions or lifestyle, so that their existence was given over to the acquisition of more status and money and things, to keep up with the Joneses, whilst the virtuous and healthy path of being grateful for what one has, and helping others who are less fortunate, is lost in one selfish act after another. Envy is never satisfied, because there is always someone who appears to have just that bit more and every acquisition just leads to a greater desire for the next item.
Therefore, in a world dominated by media advertising that constantly tells us we don’t yet have what we need to by truly stylish, or happy, we are conditioned, if we are not careful, into thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side, or to use another metaphor, the journey we are travelling is not as good as the other persons. I don’t want to be in my shoes, I’d rather be in you shoes. It is very much a 21st century sin. Envy can also be that resentful spirit that says, ‘It’s all right for you, you don’t have to out up with the problems that I have to put up with. If I had a better set of circumstances, then I would be happy.’ Again the envious heart has a kind of blindness, because it fails to look properly at the world, it fails to acknowledge others’ harships whilst exaggerating its own.
The letter of James tells us that ‘where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness’, but there is an antidote to envy, which we can all self administer on a daily basis. It is gratitude. Gratitude for the shoes that we have walked in on our pilgrimage so far, and gratitude for the places those shoes have taken us, and the people we have known along the way. Gratitude too, that our shoes will eventually take us to the ends of our life, where our journey will end with love, the love of God. This gratitude is itself a gift from above and James calls it ‘Wisdom’ that is pure and peaceable, gentle and willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits and it leads to generosity, impartiality and an end to hypocrisy. Envy brings division, but a grateful and generous heart brings peace to all.
I wonder, if we were to leave our shoes in that art exhibit of Paul Hobbs, and leave the A4 card with our story on it, whether it would be a story of a life gratefully and generously lived. May God give us the strength to walk such a path, for it has been generously given to us to walk it, and cannot be trod by anybody else but ourselves.

Rev. Dr. Jonathan Arnold
30th January 2011

I was having dinner in Worcester, sometime last term, and the conversation came round to the subject of the sermon series this term. As some of you may know, it has been a recent tradition here to have a themed series of sermons in the Hilary term and some of you may also remember that last year we looked at the Cardinal and Theological virtues: justice, fortitude, prudence, temperance, faith, hope and love. So perhaps it would be a good idea to look at the darker side of life: the vices, or seven deadly sins. But it was Jennifer Rushworth, post-graduate in Italian and French, who came up with the idea of using the stages of Dante’s Purgatory from his Divine Comedy that has brought the idea alive. Therefore, as you will have noticed, the first reading on each Sunday will not be from the Bible, but will be from Dante’s work, as we delve into the murky world of our sin and explore the concepts of hell, purgatory and heaven. This is the challenge for all of our preachers this term and, although Lent and Easter fall very late this year, I hope that they will provide a good introduction to the Lenten season.
So who was Dante? Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265, died in Ravenna in 1321 and was a poet. In Italy he is known as Il Summo Poeta, the supreme poet and his masterpiece The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest works in the Italian language. The Commedia, nicknamed Divina by another Italian poet, Giovanni Boccaccio, was his allegory of life and God as revealed to a pilgrim, written in what Dante called Italian, which was an amalgamation of Latin and regional dialects from Tuscany. Like other medieval writers who broke away from wiring in Latin to write in the vernacular, like Chaucer in England, he established his national language, Italian, as being suitable for the highest forms of expression. Of course Dante has had a profound influence upon western literature ever since.
I won’t give a biography of Dante, but there is one important fact that will be important to remember: that, although he married a woman called Gemma di Manetto Donati, with whom he had, at least, four children; Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni and Antonia, years before his marriage, at the age of 9, it is said that Dante had fallen in love with a certain Beatrice Portinari (d.1290) the young woman in his autobiographical Vita nuova (c1293) (The New Life). The unattainable and distant Beatrice remained an essential part of Dante’s life and works and she is a feature of the Divine Comedy too, as we shall see.
The work, written when Dante was in exile between 1307 and 1321, describes the poets journey through the Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise), guided by the Roman poet Virgil and then by his beloved Beatrice. The Comedy of the title refers to the classical tradition where works which reflected belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word Commedia, the progression of the pilgrimage from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim’s moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.
Il Purgatorio, like the inferno, is, of course, concerned with souls who are suffering the penalty for sin. This may be a rather unfashionable concept these days: the idea of a place where our wrong deeds and habitual vices are purged away in preparation for a greater, sin-free eternity in paradise. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church itself has recently played down the concept, abolishing the idea of limbo only a couple of years ago, and making purgatory a non-essential part of the tenets of belief. But the Purgatory of Dante’s conception, as Dorothy L Sayers pointed out, is a place where freedom is secured for the pilgrim poet. If hell (inferno) is ‘the fleeing deeper into the iron-bound prison of the self … Purgatory is the resolute breaking down, at whatever cost, of the prison walls, so that soul may emerge at last into liberty and endure unscathed the unveiled light of reality.’ For Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century, purgatory was ‘imagined as a region bordering on Hell and rather like it.’ But for Dante, Purgatory is a much more positive place and ‘is as remote from Hell as the surface of the Earth is from its centre.’ Purgatory is not a place of probation from which souls may go either to heaven or to hell; it is not a second chance for those who die unrepentant; and in Dante’s work, repentance at the moment of death is always accepted and souls ‘which have so persevered in virtue till the moment of death as to accomplish their whole purgation in this life, are not detained in purgatory, but pass immediately into the presence of God. These are the Saints.’
This is all rather different to a picture of purgatory that many of us will be familiar with from Shakespeare: the Ghost of Hamlet’s father walking the earth until his murder is avenged. Dante’s purgatory is a place of ‘systematic discipline’. In his journey, the poet joins Virgil in ascending a mountain (Mount Purgatory) with seven terraces, cornices or circles as markers along the way, devoted to purging of the Seven Capital Sins. To each of the cornices is allotted a Penance, a Meditation, a Prayer, a Guardian Angel and a Benediction and the ascent from one to another is accompanied, often, by a discourse on some scientific or philosophical subject. At the very top of the mountain the Earthly Paradise is reached, whereas the 7 circles are preceded, at the foot of the mountain, by the 2 terraces of ante-purgatory. Ante Purgatory is for those who died unprepared and are forced to wait for a fixed period of time before they can begin to ascend the cleansing mount purgatory.
Between Ante-purgatory and Purgatory is Peter’s Gate, through which every soul must pass in order to enter purgatory. This is approached through the three steps of Penitence: Confession, Contrition and Satisfaction. The Seven P’s, which we heard mentioned at the end of our reading, standing for the seven Capital Sins (peccata) are inscribed upon their foreheads, and are erased, one by one, as the soul ascends by the Pass of Pardon, as the exit from each circle, or terrace. It is at Peter’s Gate that our sermon series begins tonight. At that gate the poet begs the Angel to be admitted:
‘Devoutly falling at the holy feet
I prayed him let me in for mercy’s sake,
But first upon my breast three times I beat.
Then did he write with his sword’s point, and make
Upon my brow the mark of seven P.s;
‘Wash thou these wounds within here’, he spake.’
But is this relevant to us now? Haven’t we abolished the whole concept? And isn’t this all about being punished for our wicked deeds so that we can go on and get pie in the sky when we die? Well, No. This story is not about the act of sin at all. It is about cleansing the stain of sin in ourselves, not individual acts as such, but those habits of mind from which bad deeds come: the very roots of sinfulness. Again Dorothy L Sayers is helpful with the example of cruelty. Why is cruelty not a capital or deadly sin? Because cruelty, although a wicked act, has its roots in selfish feelings towards others: pride, from jealousy, resentment or fear (envy), from ill-temper or vindictiveness (anger) and so on.
It is our habits of mind that change who we are as people and direct what actions we take. Of course, this idea was not new to Dante, or to Aquinas or to the Church Fathers, such as Origen who developed the idea of purgatory. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, exhorts them to ‘be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ (Chapter 12:2). Likewise in this evening’s reading from the second letter of Peter, he encourages his readers to make every effort to support their faith with goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection and love. It is in the habits of these practices that goodness flows, not a single act, but a daily, hourly, renewing of one’s mind with regard to the roots of our selfishness, deliberately conquering imperfections and temptations with intentional acts of virtue and kindness. The place to start if you want to create a giving, loving and kind heart is with your mind. If you think about the practice of goodness, then you are on your way to achieving it. May we look to be transformed by the renewal of our minds and hearts this term. Amen.

Rev’d Dr Jonathan Arnold
16th January 2011

Prince Harry came to Wiltshire this week. He was present when a new Field of Remembrance for those killed in Afghanistan was dedicated at Lydiard Park. 349 young men and women so far are commemorated in that good earth with small wooden crosses. 349 crosses have their photographs on them, but members of the public can also buy crosses from the Royal British Legion. Even now only a few days on 35,000 people have already marked their respect and remembrance by leaving just such a cross.
Lydiard Park is in the parish of Wootton Bassett which itself is next door to RAF Lyneham. You’ll doubtless know that about once a week a C17 aircraft bringing back the bodies of those killed in Afghanistan flies over Wootton Basset. Then a repatriation ceremony takes place on the base sometimes in the presence of senior military personnel, members of the government or even members of the Royal Family. But this is chiefly a moment for those whose loved one lies in the coffin.
· This is inevitably a bureaucratic moment: the armed forces need to deal with their dead in as respectful but orderly a way as possible. The Coroner awaits a post mortem report on the death. The family needs to arrange a funeral.
· This is also an intensely personal and grief-stricken moment: for comrades, friends and families the sight of a flag-draped coffin means their worst fears enacted. As the psalmist once said they have been fed with the bread of tears.
· This is also a religious moment: the coffin is accompanied by an army chaplain because, whatever the faith or none of the family, we believe that the mortal remains of someone should be treated with ceremony and respect, and in the face of death we declare our Christian hope that those we love will yet live.
· But Wootton Basset has also turned this repatriation into a moment of shared significance for us all. As the cortege makes its journey from the chapel on the base to the John Radcliffe Hospital here in Oxford it has to travel through the life of the town, and so the town stops what it’s doing for a few moments. People gather at the war memorial, they line the main street, they chat about what is happening in their lives but then the traffic is stopped and the church bells begin to toll and there is a profound silence. They never knew the young people who now pass before them in the hearse but they honour their sacrifice, they give dignity to their return and they assure those grieving of their gratitude.
On this Remembrance Sunday we’ve no trouble remembering the misery and costs of war. All of us are aware that British soldiers are engaged in the most intense and prolonged theatre of operations since the Second World War. More than 140 times have the people of Wootton Basset turned out. And then there are those with life-changing injuries caused by improvised explosive devices. The sacrifice of young people is real at a time of war and we honour it today in our remembering.
The poet Wilfred Owen, who was awarded the Military Cross for bravery but then killed just a few days before the Armistice in 1918, once described the experience of the war dead as being like autumn leaves. They fall to earth, their life decomposes and is gone but then their sacrifice brings the hope of Spring. For Wilfred Owen’s generation this earthly life was only a small part of the equation of what matters to us. There was a sense of a grand scheme or divine purpose whereby we know who holds the keys of death and hell, whereby in the end God makes everything right. The sacrifice we make by forfeiting our security and comfort is intrinsically meaningful to us. Sacrifice may be deeply sorrowful but it makes sense to us.
Wootton Bassett happens to have a simply splendid parish priest and he would be the first to tell us that it doesn’t feel like that anymore, even in the conservative villages of north Wiltshire.
Firstly they’re less sure about the justifications for war. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing because certainly the Christian starting point has to be that war is always and absolutely evil. We’ve occasionally tried to glorify the experience, to dress it up as a ‘crusade’ or present it as a sanctified moral endeavour but violence will never be the chosen way of a God who, as our gospel reading says, longs for us to know wellbeing and peace. And in our other reading the aspirations of the prophet Isaiah were, as he described it, for the wolf to live peaceably with the lamb, the leopard to share a bed with a kid – there would be no aggressors in a world full of the knowledge of the Lord.
We recognise that war is sometimes a necessary evil, to preserve higher values. We live with the responsibility of having British soldiers in Afghanistan because we believe that without their presence our safety and freedom to live without terror would be compromised. It still ought to be a difficult debate for us as a nation not least because the Cold War and globalisation have brought with them a sharper moral question of whether aggression is a justified response to potential threat? What are our proper responses to militant ideologies and atrocities in distant places?
The Salisbury diocese, of which Wootton Bassett is a part, has a 40 year link with the Episcopal Church of the Sudan and so we count as friends people who live on the other side of that debate. A billion citizens of our world live with the suffering brought about by the mix of poverty and war. The conflict our soldiers are experiencing in Afghanistan is endemic to societies where the economy is weak and the State failing. And lest we forget, it affects us all; for instance 95% of the global production of hard drugs comes from conflict ridden countries.
Perhaps the issues are more complex, the causes of conflict more intractable and the solutions more elusive: for whatever reason the good people of Wootton Bassett are less sure about the justifications for war than they were when their war memorial was erected.
Yet what prevails for them is a desire to protect the dignity of sacrifice. Wars may cease, or seem a very distant reality to us, nevertheless the importance of sacrifice remains critical to our self-understanding as a human community. The ability to surrender what we badly want for the sake of something more meaningful gives your life and my life a dignity which it’s hard to achieve through self-interest alone. The moral and spiritual values of our nation matter to us, not only because they sometimes hold us back from war or properly send us into it, but because without such principles we devalue the sacrifices we all make when we choose the costly option of self-offering. As Jesus speaks of His own sacrifice, moving as He is towards his death, it isn’t the hope of a Spring to come and His resurrection which drives Him on and keeps Him brave: it’s partly knowing what sacrifice will achieve.
So on this Remembrance Day, in the midst of our ongoing debates about the justifications for war, let’s remind ourselves that how we view the sacrifices we ask of other people, of military personnel, has consequences for how we see the dignity and importance of sacrifice in our own lives.
There’re some things we want for ourselves and those we love which can only be achieved by risk and letting go of our security. Sacrifice is the price we pay to discover something more meaningful and to capture a greater prize. Think of the sacrifices the likes of you and me might be asked to make in the years ahead: as a husband or wife we may give up the chance of promotion because the cost is too great for our family: we may sacrifice our leisure and ease in order to do better by an elderly relative: we might resist betraying someone or put another’s welfare before our own.
Sacrifice may not be exalted any longer because it’s seen as nobly part of a grand plan or majestic purpose but the dignity of sacrifice remains at the heart of what achieves our human goals. Whether its integrity, or trustworthiness or faithfulness we’re unlikely to live up to who we want to be without immense sacrifice. So let’s treat it with dignity and get used to calculating the cost.
Another poet who uses the image of autumn, this time the burning of trees, is Mary Oliver. She talks of the resurgence of natural life through the sacrifices made at the end of a year. Let me finish with part of her poem ‘In Blackwater Woods’
“Every year
everything
I have learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
In our moral scepticism about war, in our sorrow about letting go, in our loving what is mortal, let us also protect the dignity and importance of sacrifice. It’s what makes us more than we dare to hope we can be.

Very Rev’d June Osborne, Dean of Salisbury
14th November 2010