Category: Sermons

Sunday 15 November: Worcester College Chapel

Faith and Words

 

I’m sure most of you will remember the encounter between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Alice through the Looking Glass, where Lewis Carroll shows the problems and possibilities of communicating in words.   Alice becomes increasingly confused with Humpty’s questions, and then he uses  a word she doesn’t understand:-  ‘glory’.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir”, said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it”, said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented–and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.”

This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

“That’s enough to begin with”, Humpty Dumpty interrupted: “there are plenty of hard words there. ‘Brillig‘ means four o’clock in the afternoon–the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.”

“That’ll do very well”, said Alice: “and ‘slithy‘?”

“Well, ‘slithy‘ means ‘lithe and slimy’. ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active’. You see it’s like a portmanteau–there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

“And what’s to ‘gyre‘ and to ‘gimble‘?”

“To ‘gyre‘ is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To ‘gimble‘ is to make holes like a gimlet.”…

“And what does ‘outgrabe‘ mean?”

“Well, ‘outgribing‘ is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle.  Who’s been repeating all that hard stuff to you?”

“I read it in a book”, said Alice.

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”

It’s almost two years ago since I preached here on the theme of ‘Theology and Poetry’, when I spoke of how Poetry enables us to view words not only as an intellectual discourse  but also as vehicles which touch our imagination.   Poetry is a ‘raid on the inarticulate’, offering us images, through words, which both ‘conceal and reveal’ the truth within.   I remember speaking of the poet as a ‘wordsmith’, but as one who can only use words.  I argued that the theologian, by contrast, has an additional freedom,  because they can move  beyond  the constraints of words –  not least through art, architecture, and music.

Today I’d like to add some further reflections on that theme, but on a more personal level. Rather than focussing on the relationship between Theology and Poetry, I’ll want us to reflect on the relationship between Faith and Words.   For if Theology is more than a verbal exercise,  how much more so is our Faith:  of course it is important that we can articulate some of the things we believe, but just as important is learning how to exercise our faith  beyond using words.

I’d like to share with you a book I read over the summer.  It is about St. Augustine,  one of the ‘Fathers’ of our Western Church.  (Augustine is actually represented on the mosaic floor of our chapel, with the three other Fathers of the Latin Church: I’m  almost standing on his image  as I speak.)   Augustine is probably best known for his lengthy work called Confessions, which he wrote between 397 and 400 when he  was Bishop of Hippo, in the Roman Province  of Numidia, North Africa.  I have often struggled with some of Augustine’s views,  so it  was most refreshing   to read this succinct,  humane and scholarly work by Henry Chadwick, for he presents Augustine’s theology as it intertwines  with his life. The Very Revd. Professor Henry Chadwick, himself a churchman and theologian of extraordinary stature, died in 2008: some of you may remember that he was Dean of Christ Church throughout the 1970s,  then Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge,  and, just after retirement,  Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge.   He was an unsurpassed expositor of the early Christian thinkers.  This little book, called Augustine of Hippo: A Life , was published a year after Chadwick’s  death. Earlier this year I was given a copy of it by his widow, Peggy, and as you can see, it’s been well read.

So I want to share you some of Augustine’s thoughts,  interpreted by Henry Chadwick.  These are found in The Teacher,  which  Augustine wrote in 388, when he was living with a small Christian community in Thagaste (in present-day Algeria),  just after  he had heard of the death of his son, Adeodatus.  This work –  in Latin, De Magistro – was widely read in the medieval schools of Theology and Philosophy,  so, given that this chapel was designed to imitate  the art and architecture of the Middle Ages,  it seems appropriate to look at what Augustine says, partly  in memory of a son he so infrequently saw.

Much of The Teacher argues that language alone cannot convey the fullness of our faith.  Augustine observes how meaning is understood not so much by individual words as by sentences, paragraphs, long units of discourse – so that the meaning of a single word is dependent upon its context, as well as on presuppositions not articulated at all.    Furthermore, Augustine observes, some of our most profound communication is without words –   by gestures, by the rise and fall of our voice as we speak, by our facial expression.  There is a wide gap, therefore, between thought and language.  This is because thought moves faster than speech.   Often we are saying one thing whilst our minds have moved on and we are thinking of another.   So we sing a familiar hymn,  but our thoughts wander away from the words on our lips.  So, Augustine argues, words, for all their importance and utility,  are not the principle thing in communication.   This is an extraordinary statement from someone who had spent so much of his life teaching Grammar, Rhetoric, Greek Philosophy and Logic.   But in this short piece Augustine observes that we communicate best not by verbal but by non-verbal signs –  what he calls  ‘an interior sharing of minds’.

Henry Chadwick breaks into this engagement with Augustine’s reflections with his own observations about the inadequacy of word to thought,  and about how thoughts lie much deeper than the upper levels of that part of our mind called ‘intellect’.   Chadwick recalls a sermon preached by Augustine when he was Bishop of Hippo:  ‘Man can say nothing of what he is unable to feel, but he can feel what he is unable to say’ (S 117.5. 7-8).   It is as if we ‘know something we do not know that we know’.  ‘Man can say nothing of what he is unable to feel, but he can feel what he is unable to say.’

If the most profound communication takes place at the interpersonal level, beyond words, this has  several implications for the way think about our faith, for it suggests  that faith is both constrained by but also liberated from ‘mere words’.

First, this idea of ‘interpersonal communication’  should help those of us who struggle with private prayer.  So often we use words in prayer,  even though we know  words can never inform God of anything he does not already know or might have forgotten.   Augustine observes that Jesus taught us the Lord’s Prayer not so much to serve as a formulaic exercise but as a communication with God in which the words are simply signs to nurture our relationship the divine.  Prayer often starts with words –  words given to us by others, such as in the Lord’s Prayer,  and also with words voiced privately in our heads –  but the words are not the end in themselves:  they are an imperfect means to another end.   The essence of prayer is an interpersonal relationship with God:  and just as in other relationships, whether of lovers, friends and family, words are, so often, an inadequate expression of how we think and feel.  To cite Augustine, ‘True prayer is in the silent depths of the soul’.

Secondly, this assent to the limitations of words in expressing our faith should explain why Christians throughout the ages have sought to express their faith not only through creeds, liturgies, sermons, and books,  but also through art, architecture, symbolism and sacraments.  Each of these enacts visually and dramatically what cannot be contained in words.  As for art and architecture, this chapel is such an expressive medium in illustrating this for us: each fresco and window, and each sculpture, whether in marble or wood, is a ‘non-verbal sign’, allowing us to hear God speaking to us without words.   What of symbols in worship, and sacraments?   These are what Augustine calls  ‘visible words’.   And so we take ordinary things  from nature,  such as water, wine, bread, oil and light,  and allow them to point us to a reality at a deeper  level than words alone.   So whether it is in the light of the candles we use at our Advent Services,  or  in the anointing of oil used for those who  are ill or dying,  or in the bread and wine which sustains our faith at the Eucharist,  or in the water used at our Baptism and for our continual cleansing – all these communicate to us God’s presence in Christ, through His Spirit, at that deep and inner interpersonal level; these are sighs too deep for words’;  the psalmist speaks of it as  ‘deep calling to deep at the thunder of the cataracts’.

Thirdly, this understanding of our faith consisting of non-verbal signs explains why music is so important in the life of the church.  Henry Chadwick was a man who loved music,  and in the Foreword to this little book his friend, Peter Brown,  speaks of him as  ‘following through’ the theology of great Christian thinkers in the way in which he might also  ‘follow through’  a piece of great music;  to use  Chadwick’s own words,  is it like ‘hearing even familiar music for the first time… continually wondering where the music will go next’.  Augustine, too, described persons as miserable when music was lacking in their lives.   Now obviously music is sometimes communicated through words – in anthems, plainsong, hymns, and great oratorios – but it is the music which gives life to the words, not the other way round. (The fact that so often the medium is in Latin or in a language other than English should make this clear.)

One example of  the primacy of music over words is in the way we use the psalms.   Tonight we started our service with the hymn ‘All People that on Earth do Dwell’.  Some of you might know this is not just a hymn but a metrical version of Psalm 100, originally composed in French  for John Calvin’s church in Geneva.  We may also know of Psalm 100 through the doxology composed by Thomas Ken, with the opening lines ‘Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow…’  Psalm 100 is also known as the ‘Jubilate’, from the first word in the Latin, and countless musical arrangements have been set to it:   the sheer variety illustrates so well how the words become subordinate to the music.  I think of compositions by Christopher Tye, Heinrich Schütz, and Giovanni Gabrieli;  by J.S. Bach, and Handel; by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninov;  and, more recently, by Bernstein, Britten, and Walton. In each case we remember the music first, and then the words that accompany it. This is part of that ‘interpersonal communication’ between performer and listener, and it can take us closer to the presence of God. Those of us who listen to the introits and canticles and psalms and anthems Sunday by Sunday  know this is the case.

 

Fourthly, seeing the limitations of words has implications for the way we view theology and  doctrine.   The word ‘theology’ means ‘words about God’, and  it is inevitably partly enshrined in sermons, creeds,  synodical debates,  liturgical reforms, and  tomes of learning.  I am in no way abrogating the importance of words in any of these activities,  but I am want to encourage us to see this dependency on words in its rightful place.   There was once a very popular Fellow and Tutor in History at this College who, in the days before the REF,  hardly wrote any books or papers at all.  His rationale was:  ‘My students are my books’.   He would have understood what  Augustine emphasised in  The Teacher, about  the interpersonal value of words. I think this is what Pope Francis meant when, two weeks ago, closing the contentious Vatican Synod on the Family,  he said ‘…true defenders of doctrine are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit;  not ideas, but people;  not formulae, but the gratuitousness of God’s love and forgiveness.’

                This  emphasis on faith as interpersonal,  and therefore both constrained by words yet also liberated from them, was a  theme  in  both of our readings tonight.  In our first reading,  God addresses Job by asking,  ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? ‘   When faced with innocent suffering,  as was Job,  no volume of words could resolve his soul-searching. Job is asked by God to look instead to the created order and the greatness of the universe:  ‘Were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding…’ At the end of the book, Job comes to terms with his suffering by realising the need for silence:  ‘…I have uttered things that I did not understand,  things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…’

Some five centuries  after Job,  as we read in our second lesson,  God communicated with his people again without using words –  through  the Word made Flesh. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was  with God, and the Word was God.   All things were made through him… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.’  God’s ultimate word comes to us through  a human life –  the life of God, made manifest in Jesus Christ,  encountering us through  his Spirit in the life of the Church.  Nothing can reveal the interpersonal, non-verbal essence of faith more than the ‘Word-Made-Flesh’.  This should be a great assurance to us:  whenever we feel incapable of expressing our faith in words,  we need to remember that ultimately what matters is that we know the mystery of our faith rests upon the life of God once Incarnate in the world –  as the Word beyond all words.

I close with a third century Hymn, first composed in Greek –  and I like to think that Augustine might have known a version of it in Latin.  The language does not matter;  the meaning is what we need to reflect upon.  We shall sing this together shortly:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, And with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly minded, For with blessing in His hand, Christ our God to earth descending Comes our homage to demand.
                                                                Let all mortal flesh keep silence.    Amen.

All Saints 2015.

 

We are all still reeling from the news of the terrible tragedy in Aberdeen last week, when a 16 year old was stabbed to death by a fellow pupil in front of classmates and teachers. A child psychotherapist, Dr Belinda Harris, was interviewed the next morning on the radio. She said that she could quite understand the immediate reaction of deciding to close the school for a few days following this terrible experience, but that she had concerns about the wisdom of doing so. She worried about how it would leave individual children at home to try and deal with what had happened – and that what they really needed was to come together as a school community and share the collective grief – that counsellors coming in to help would need to think about a group based approach, because although of course children and staff would need support and help as individuals, there would also be the need to address the collective shock and grief of the community of the school – a need to work with them together, rather than fragmenting the community at such a time.

And of course what happened in reality was that children made the decision for themselves – they gathered together at the closed school gate – bringing flowers, but also talking and weeping together, sharing the memory, remembering the boy who died, trying to make some sense of what had happened – to come to terms with the reality, however hard that was. And the headteacher was able then to come out to meet  with them all and talk with them and be alongside them – all of them sharing the shock and grief as a close and loving community.

 

And in the weeks and months and years to come, this story – tragic as it is – will necessarily become part of the shared experience of that school, together with an honouring of the boy who died.

 

All communities need to share the stories of their past – good and bad – happy and sad – by which to make sense of their present, and on which to build their futures. We know that this is true for individuals – we see the rising popularity of family history research – the very name of the television programme “who do you think you are?” gives a clue to how our own identity is necessarily linked to what we know of our ancestry – the stories of our own family’s past. And we hear of those who, however happily brought up by adoptive parents, still feel a real need to know the facts of their origins.

 

And just as this is true of individuals, it is true too of communities – a need to share stories of collective experience. In some cultures, the shared stores are inextricably linked with the land and the natural world in which the community has grown up. Bruce Chatwin’s book “The Songlines” describes how in the Aboriginal culture, there are ancient, invisible tracks all over Australia, made of songs which tell of creation. The Aboriginal religious duty is to ritually travel the land, singing the songs of their Ancestors – “singing the world into being again” with the stories of their past.

 

The North American Indian belief too links the land itself with the shared experience of the people, and with the honoured memory of their ancestors:  in 1885, Chief Seattle expressed this very eloquently when replying to the American President’s request to buy their land from them…

“Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people…

“If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.”

 

So the shared remembered experience of the ancestors – the people of the past – serves to inform the present and give hope for the future.

And today -as we watch the horrifying actions of ISIS – the brutal killing of so many who oppose their ideology, we may wonder why they would spend time and effort on the destruction of ancient stones and temples that have survived for centuries and which they are now reducing to rubble. But this, they know, is a deadly weapon too – because, of course, it is more than stones that are being destroyed – it is the story and remembrance of a people that is being obliterated with the stones.

 

Today is All Saints Day – and the Saints are the living stones of our faith – theirs are the stories we celebrate and remember – those who have gone before us in faith, and who inform our present and give us hope for our future. Many are known by name, and their stories have been passed down through the generations – others are unnamed and their stories are unrecorded, but they are remembered collectively by us as a faith community – remembered as a “cloud of witnesses” to the faith we proclaim.

At the beginning of the 11th century, Symeon, the Abbot of a monastery in Constantinople described the Saints as providing a golden chain linking past, present and future faith, rather like the songlines of the Aborigines.

“The saints in each generation, joined to those who have gone before and filled like them with light, become a golden chain, in which each saint is a separate link, united to the next by faith and works and love. So in the one God they form a single chain which cannot quickly be broken.”

 

The Church has always believed it is important to remember and celebrate the Saints. Our Festival of All Saints has its origin in the Feast of All Martyrs which formed a part of the liturgical cycle from the fifth century onwards – but which was then celebrated during the Easter season – giving it a real connection with the victory of Christ over death. All Souls too was celebrated in Easter week until the middle of the ninth century when both feasts were moved to the beginning of November. And so the Paschal connection has been rather lost, as the two feasts, together with Remembrance Sunday, have turned into a season of remembering the past, with perhaps less obvious emphasis on future hope.

So how important is it to remember the Saints today? Do we, the Church, as a faith community still need to remember and honour those whose stories are often obscured and challenged by time and by our new understanding of history and theology? Do we need the memory of the stories of the Saints for our community to flourish? In this age of celebrity it is the people of the present who are celebrated – those whose success and popularity is there before our eyes. Do we really need to be constantly looking back?……….

There have been challenges in the past of course….

During the reign of Oliver Cromwell, Parliament ran low on the silver used to make coins. So Cromwell sent his men to a local cathedral to search for some.

They reported back to him that the only silver they could find was in the statues of the Saints standing in the corners.

Cromwell sent back word, “Good; let’s melt down the saints and put them back into circulation.”

 

Pam Hathorn suggests that we are again at a time for meltdown. I leave you with her suggestion:

In times past

Saints were worth their weight in gold.

Their deeds were applauded,

Their faith was esteemed,

Their deaths honoured…..

In our times

Sinners luxuriate under the weight of other people’s gold.

The deeds of self-centred entrepreneurs are applauded,

The many-faceted faiths of conmen and charlatans are esteemed,

The deaths of unworthy celebrities are honoured…..

Now is the time

For meltdown;

Saints putting themselves back into circulation;

Fool’s gold

Exchanged for gold from the refiner’s fire.

 

Last Sunday after Trinity (B) Evensong

Worcester College, Oxford

 

Lessons: Ecclesiastes 12; Luke 18: 9-14

 

That greatest of wordsmiths of the last century, in my estimation, T S Eliot, much loved by Anglican clergy looking for a handy quote, wrote in one of his Four Quartets ‘Burnt Norton’

 

“Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.”

 

One of the things that I imagine we have in common is that we all have to produce a lot of words.  I Tweet and blog and write sermons, and articles and welcomes and papers for this that and the other, not learned papers, I hasten to add, but the kind of papers that organisations consume.  And whether they make it on to paper or are accessed on one kind of screen or another, the words have to be produced.  And they remain powerful.

 

Today, as you well know, is the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, for this is Crispin’s Day.  When I was doing my O level history we had to concentrate on critical things like the repeal of the Corn Laws rather than anything as exciting as that battle and the routing of the French.  So like many people my knowledge of that day is drawn from Shakespeare’s retelling of the events in ‘Henry V’.

 

At ceremonies all over the place this weekend that most famous of speeches, that cannot fail to stir the heart, will be declaimed.

 

This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be rememberèd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England, now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

 

Oh that I could deliver it like Olivier or Branagh or like Alex Hassel in his final performance this evening at the RSC.  But whether I have their gravitas or not, the words have a life of their own, the most amazing power to stir the heart and make you believe them.  And Shakespeare, whose 400^th anniversary of death we’ll celebrate next year, is a real person to me.  I live next to the Globe Theatre and his brother Edmund is buried in the choir in front of my stall and there in the nave is a memorial to the Bard and a window above it, with all the characters and Henry V among them.

 

The book Ecclesiastes, from which our first lesson was the final Chapter, was probably written two thousand years before Shakespeare was doing his work.  The passage we heard is sublime poetry – a meditation on what it means to get old.  The speaker is in Hebrew known as the ‘Gatherer’ although in our translations ‘the Preacher’ or ‘the Teacher’ are more common titles.  But I like ‘Gatherer’ as here’s someone expert at gathering words, gathering allusions and using them to terrific effect.

 

Before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.

 

Of course the verse that makes every undergraduate snigger and nod their head comes towards the very end

 

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

 

But these words, these images, these descriptors are as crisp and real and relevant as when they were written.  They haven’t ‘cracked or broken’ as Eliot says words can but like reeds in the wind have bent over time to the eyes of the reader and the ears of the hearer.  And that’s the beauty of words that are so inspired.

 

Jesus was of course a great employer of language, not of the written kind, as far as we know, though that would be a find beyond all finds.  But how he spoke then, how he speaks through scriptures now is powerful.  It was so powerful that when people heard him they passed on what he’d said until someone like – well let’s call him for the sake of argument ‘Luke’ – wrote it down.

 

The parable that we heard as the Second Lesson is a memorable one because of the language used and the immediacy of the characters.  With just a few words they’re drawn for us – the self important arrogance of the Pharisee, the self knowing humility of the tax collector; the easy ability to compare ourselves favourably alongside others, the rareness of the ability to see ourselves as God sees us.  And the beauty of the story is that we’re there, in that space, in the Temple, witnessing what’s going on and seeing ourselves somewhere between the two.

 

‘For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

 

Perhaps we feel that the words we use ‘Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish’ – perhaps they become as ephemeral as some of the means of communication that we use today. I suspect Henry V would not have been as effective with a Tweet to his troops even if he did use every one of the 140 characters available to him!

 

There’s of course a difference between the Gatherer and Eliot, between Luke and Shakespeare and that has to be about what we understand divine inspiration to be but even more than that about that deep inhabiting of word that’s part of our understanding of the divine.

 

I’m fast approaching my first carol service – we keep that until 1 December but it now looks frighteningly near and you’ll soon be at the end of the term before you know it.  And I, in our 36 carol services, will hear the readings again and again.  But if I tire of hearing of shepherds and angels and magi I won’t tire of hearing what St John says of God at the end of almost all our services.  In the first chapter of his Gospel John writes

 

And the Word became flesh and lived among us.

 

The Word for God is not something written on a page, the word is not something heard on the wind, the word is not something received and then quickly forgotten, for God, the word is living, inhabited and the carrier of the divine nature.  The Word is God, Jesus is the Living Word, the incarnate Word, the visible, knowable manifestation of the Word that when it was first spoken brought all things into being; Jesus is the Word that sounds throughout the universe sounding in the particular, in history, in time, for time.  Jesus is the word that will not crack, will not break, will not slip, slide, perish or decay.

 

The incarnate Word is written on human hearts and inspires us to make that word known because we know that it’s a word that when spoken gives life, that when heard and received, gives life.  It’s a word more powerful than that spoken to troops awaiting to enter a battle, a word that moves us more deeply than any actor’s oration can, it’s a word that makes us desire to live the only life, live for Christ, in the now, in the here, in this present moment.

 

The Teacher, the Gatherer, ends by saying to his readers

 

‘The end of the matter; all has been heard.’

 

Enough has been said; you’ve heard these words.  But never allow the words that God speaks to you be like any of the others you hear.  Other words may inspire for the moment but when God speaks to you through his incarnate Word he speaks words of eternity.  And in whatever words you use follow that sacred teaching

 

‘find pleasing words, and [write] words of truth plainly’ for this is Crispin’s Day and God is speaking to us.

 

Andrew Nunn

Sermon Freshers 2015: Joshua 5: 13-6:20; Matthew 11: 20-end

 

‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

 

Thursday was national poetry day, so I thought I would share with you one of the nation’s favourite poems. If you can guess the poet you win a prize. The Provost is banned from answering:

 

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

 

Can any of the children tell me the author of this poem?

 

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”

So they took it away, and were married next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

 

 

Edward Lear

 

When I had the chance to listen to radio 4 on Thursday I heard lots of wonderful poetry, but there has been another vote concerning rhyming verse.

Des’ree’s hit song Life has been voted the worst ever pop lyric according to BBC 6 Music listeners. According to the radio station:III

‘Des’ree, a highly successful UK solo artist, became popular in the mid-Nineties with uplifting songs full of self-help tips and self-esteem makeovers for the love sick and downhearted.

 

But according to 6 Music listeners she’s also responsible for penning the worst pop lyric:

 

I don’t want to see a ghost

It’s the sight that I fear most

I’d rather have a piece of toast

Watch the evening news’

 

It’s an understandable sentiment. I think I too would rather eat toast than see a ghost, but it’s not good poetry. Here’s another less-than-perfect, lyric.

 

And I met a girl

She asked me my name

I told her what it was

(Razorlight – Somewhere Else)

 

No cliff hanger there. It’s true that not all pop or rock music lyrics are great. Oasis’s ‘Slowly walking down the hall, Faster than a cannonball’ isn’t the greatest rhyming couplet in the world, but in the context of the song, with the rhythm, harmony, melody and feel of the song, we might really enjoy it. My point is that perfection is not always an indicator of how much we enjoy something or, indeed, how much it is worth to us. Indeed, there is a traditional song about our first reading tonight:

 

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho Jericho, Jericho Joshua fit the battle of Jericho The walls come tumblin’ down,

 

The words themselves are not a product of genius, but put them to the music and perform them in the right context and they become powerful.

 

So why do I mention all these good and not-so-good words. At the beginning of this new academic year we come together in Chapel, and in this College, once again as a community that is re-formed with undergraduate and graduate freshers, new choristers, choral scholars, parents, fellows and staff. Some have returned after a period away and we welcome them back as part of the Worcester family. In order for all of us to flourish and grow in this community over the next year there are many aspects of behaviour that we might adopt, such as respect, kindness, friendliness, understanding, for instance, but perfection, I propose, is not one of them. In this college, at school or in our work we might strive to be the best we can possibly be, and enjoy the challenge, but perfectionism is a different matter and can lead to a counter-productive result. The problem with perfectionism is that, because it is unachievable in all areas of life, it can lead to giving up completely. At this time of year there are many pressures to be perfect in all areas: academically, at school or work, socially, domestically and, dare I say it, even in our online, social media presence. In the midst of this busy life, Jesus says to all of us: ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

 

Here’s an example of where perfectionism can lead:

 

I don’t want the Great British Bake Off normally, but my daughter and I did manage to see an extraordinary incident on TV. Not so much ‘incident’ as ‘bincident’. It involved a highly-talented contestant, Iain Watters. The task was to make a Baked Alaska. The dish is made of ice cream placed in a pie dish lined with slices of sponge cake and topped with meringue. The entire dessert is then placed in an extremely hot oven for a brief time, long enough to firm the meringue. The meringue is an effective insulator, and the short cooking time prevents the heat from getting through to the ice cream. However, on this day the temperature outside the oven was so hot that the ice cream began to melt and the contestants had to quickly find freezer space so that their ice cream didn’t melt. After Iain’s Alaska had been temporarily removed from a rival contestant’s his ice cream was melting all over the table and it was time to present it to the judges. Sue Perkins was just beginning to suggest how the situation might be rescued when Iain pick up the whole concoction and put it in the bin. It was the bin that he presented to the judges, Paul Holywood and Mary Berry, but they couldn’t give him any marks and he was sent home.

 

What struck me about this episode was not just that he gave up but how the judges reacted, saying ‘was your sponge alright?’, ‘Yes’, said Iain, ‘was your meringue alright?’, ‘Yes’, said Iain. ‘Well we could have tasted those.’ The point was that there was some work to try, and even enjoy, had not the perfectionist in Iain literally thrown it all away. Moreoever, if Iain had raised his head from his own problem for a moment, he might have seen that everyone else had exactly the same problem. Everybody’s ice cream was melting. He was not alone.

 

During this coming year we might find that things do not always go our way, that there are bigger mountains to clime than you thought, the work is harder than we thought or that people are not always as pleasant as we expect. But remember, that we are a family and in any family there are ups and downs, but also remember this: you are not alone – for there is always someone you can talk to, and whatever you are going through, you will not be the first to go through it and there are probably several other people experiencing the same thing. Also remember that you do not have to make perfect work, for it is through our mistakes more than our successes that we learn. Tenacity, not giving up, is a great gift and one to be practised. It was Albert Einstein who said: ‘It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I just stay with problems longer.’

 

Anyway, enough of this advice. This Chapel is your Chapel and you are welcome in it at any time, and the community, the family, is here for you too. May this place remind you of Jesus’s words from our Gospel and may these words stay with you throughout the year to remind you that you are not alone: ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

There is a lovely scene in the recent film adaption of the Michael Bond Paddington Bear books, when Paddington meets Mr Gruber for the first time.  It’s tea time and a toy steam train appears, as if from nowhere, across the back of the study full of interesting sights and smells, until it stops in front of Mrs Brown, Paddington and Mr Gruber.  Hot chocolate or coffee is poured from a tap in the train’s engine and the carriages are full of delicious cakes that Paddington immediately devours.  Mr Gruber comments that a long time ago he had travelled on such a train.  ‘Was it hard to find a home?’ asks Paddington earnestly and Mr Gruber tells his story.  When he a young boy his home became very dangerous, so his parents packed him off on a train to travel the length of Europe alone.  He was met at the station by a great aunt who took him in.  ‘I had travelled fast a very long way,’ he wistfully said, ‘my heart, it took a little longer’.

We continue to hear of other terrifying stories in a catalogue of events which have described the desperate lengths whole families and children will go to leave their homes and risk journeys across high seas in overcrowded and inadequate boats for the hope of a new home.  From the thousands of Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, who are stranded in the Andaman Sea in south-east Asia to the many more fleeing atrocities in north Africa who are daily rescued from sinking ships or dinghies in the Mediterranean sea, that story Mr Gruber tells is for many a present and perilous reality, not a history of a more barbarous past.

For many of us living in Oxford and the surrounding villages the plight of those people who have lost their homes is tragic and calls for compassion and generosity.  We may not have experienced the fear and desperation that caused them to risk their lives but all of us can at some level relate to what it is like to have to leave a home which has been built up and loved to move to another place and start again.  The generation who can boast that they were born, bred, lived and died in one village or even one house is dying out, as most of us these days for one reason or another move around and live in a variety of communities or countries which may not originally have been our own.  From housing prices which young families cannot afford, to going where a job takes us, maybe to the other side of the world, we are a more transient generation.  Home is indeed where the heart is, but as the migrant in Paddington states, creating a home can take a little longer, for the heart does not always travel as quickly as may the body, despite the eagerness with which the body might wish to travel.

Worcester College has always strived to be a home for the fellows, staff and students working and living here. In years gone by a sense of community, or home, was encouraged by the imposition of compulsory chapel on Sundays. I see that we do not need such a rule today. I recently heard a story from an old member, John Davies, who was an undergraduate here in the 1950s. He told me that a student could only be excused chapel, either on a Sunday morning or evening, if they had a very compelling reason or if they were of a non-Christian faith, and then only by express permission from the Provost, who was Masterman at that time. One student petitioned the Provost and requested that he be excused chapel because he worshipped the sun. ‘Very well’, Masterman replied. The next morning the undergraduate was woken at 4 a.m. by a porter knocking at his door. ‘Compliments of Provost Masterman’, the porter announced, ‘he wishes to inform you that the sun has now risen and is awaiting your worship.’ After a week of the early-morning calls, the student decided that he would attend Sunday chapel after all. Those were the days.

Times change, but Worcester has continued to be a temporary home to generations, and today we say farewell to a number of people, students, choristers and parents, who have been part of Worcester and its chapel life for the past few years or months, and who must once again pack up their bags and move on to begin the process of finding and building a new home, a new job or a new school, of learning new names and making new friends. For others, it is a return to home after the temporary one of this college, and time to move back to the familiar, in order to reassess what the future might hold now. Either way, this is a time of ‘moving on’ and of saying goodbye. On this of all days, when we fondly say farewell to them we are given our gospel reading as a gift to us and them.  For, after your years of education in this august establishment, and in the cathedral school, we reflect upon the words from St. John’s gospel known as the Last Supper or Farewell Discourses.

 

In many ways it is the final words of someone who is moving on, who is worried about those he is leaving behind.  His words are all directed to the Father but as you know, if you have ever experienced someone praying over you, the words and intentions are really for you to hear, God of course already knows.  What he says is that he has done everything he was sent to do: he has made the Father’s name known to us, we have believed and in so doing glorified God.  Now he begs that the Father will look after us, for there will be difficult times ahead and he will no longer be around.  Up to this point, Jesus’ prayer is everything you would expect from someone who is going away to reassure those who are left behind that they will be all right, they will be in the Father’s keeping.

But, this is not just anyone who is embarking on a new venture, it is Christ and when he places us within the keeping of the Father, it is not just a hopeful blessing.  In the last section of the prayer he reveals that with his departure everything has changed for us, through our faith in him we have been sanctified and as a result our home has radically changed.  No longer is our home in this world, where we are born, live, work and die, but our home is with him which is above, within, beyond and around all that we have ever experienced or could ever experience as home.  It is as if it is we who have suddenly travelled a very long way and found that our heart was there all the time.

So we speed you all on your way as you journey to different places and new experiences. Remember that you will always be welcome in this place as part of a family to which you belong and that was, for a time, your home.  And rejoice that all of us share one home, our truest and most real home with our Lord above, mindful that we must always welcome the stranger amongst us, for we are all strangers until we meet in Christ and delight in the home to which our heart has already gone before.  Amen.

 

Trinity 1. 7.6.15.

Worcester College, Oxford.

Jeremiah 6.16-21; Romans 9.1-13

 

May I speak in the name of the living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Let me begin by thanking the Chaplain for his kind invitation to be here.  It is a great pleasure and a privilege to be preaching in a chapel that was an important part of my life for seven years.  I bring you greetings from Derby Cathedral.

 

Who do you think you are?  Perhaps that sounds like a rude question, so let me recast that by saying that I am referring to the television programme in which well known people explore their family histories.  In my family, it was my Great Uncle Arthur who was the custodian of the family archives.  He was convinced that his Aunt May had a black box containing documents that would prove the family links to royalty.  When she died and no box was found, he was convinced that she had left a clause in her will that delayed the release of the black box for ten or twenty years.  I stand before you a commoner – no black box has ever materialised.

 

Who do you think you are? It’s a good question.  Who are we? Do we know who we are?  Both of our readings from the Bible this evening direct us to this question.  Jeremiah urges his hearers to “ask for the ancient paths where the good way lies” and warns of dire consequences for those who refuse to do so.  There are resonances here of warning that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana).  And St Paul in our second reading takes part in the practice, common in the Bible and beyond, of retelling the history of the people of Israel, trying to make sense of what God has done in the life of the people he called.

 

Paul’s puzzling over what God has done in the life of his people, may find a parallel in our own puzzling over what God has done in our own lives, and what God might be calling us to in the future.  I want to invite you this evening to take some time and look back over your own life, to notice things, and to try and gain some understanding about what God was doing in and with you. And as we look back at our lives, the first thing to notice is how much there is to celebrate.  For Paul, as he looks back through the history of Israel, there is a whole list of things to celebrate: the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs, the Messiah.  Sitting here in this chapel, there are many things in our lives to celebrate: those who have loved us, the opportunities, the achievements, the victories, the friendships.  Take some time in the coming week to identify at least some of the things in your life that there are to celebrate, and give thanks.  There is much to give thanks for in this place, may God be blessed for ever.

 

So notice what there is in your life to celebrate, and give thanks.  Then notice what there is to surprise you.  As Paul ends his list of celebrations, he moves quickly to tell a story with twists and turns.  The birth of a son to a couple in their nineties, the reversal of importance in that son’s children.  God, it seems, rejoices in surprising us, in taking odd, unimportant and surprising people and working through them.  Think of Abraham and Sarah, called by God in old age to leave their home and have a child.  Think of Jacob, the liar and trickster, who wrestled with God and gave his new name Israel to a whole people.  Think of Ruth, foreigner who broke the rules and came to be the ancestor of Kings and of Jesus.  Think of David her great-grandson, eighth son and shepherd boy who became the great king of Israel.  Think of Mary, childless girl in an unremarkable town, who became the mother of Jesus.  There is hope for you and for me yet.  God who can find great value in these unlikely people may yet find value in us.

 

So notice what there is to celebrate, and notice what there is that surprises you.  And then notice where you have been weak, or failed, or hurt.  Paul performs his historical survey from a place of “great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart”.  We might not all know that, but in all of us there are wounds and failures, weaknesses and sorrows.  And it is in those places, that God can be at work beyond our strengths and our defences.  J.K. Rowling, writing of the darkest time of her life, when she considered herself to be a failure at life, says that “failure meant a stripping away of the inessential … Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way”.[1]  In my own life, I bear witness that my deepest wound – a bereavement when I was nine years old – is also the greatest source of compassion that I have.  I would not for a moment want to go through that again, but it has made me the person that I am.  St Paul knew this too.  In his second letter to Corinth he describes a “thorn in the flesh”.  This was an affliction Paul had, but we don’t know precisely what it was.  He begged God to remove it, but could only conclude that it enabled God’s work in his life.  He concludes: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12.10).

 

So find some time to look back at your life, and notice what there is to celebrate, notice what there is that is surprising, and notice the times of weakness, failure and hurt.  See how God has been at work in you through them.  But the point of this is not the looking back, however insightful or interesting it might be.  Rather the point of this is to look forward.  Jeremiah in our first reading, takes us to the crossroads and tells us to stand there and “ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it and find rest for your souls”.  Jeremiah is not telling us just to find the ancient paths, this is not an advertisement for reading history (or even theology).  Rather, we are to look to the ancient paths, to look to our own histories, to find the paths that are good ways.  Those are the paths we are to walk in.

 

So what is it that God has worked in your life thus far that will take you on into the future?  What kind of a person has God made you to be?  The American journalist David Brooks recently wrote of two kinds of virtues: résumé virtues and eulogy virtues.[2]  The former are the skills we bring to finding a job, the latter are the things that will be spoken of at the end of our lives.  The former are about our accomplishments, the latter are about our character.  In the rush of the need to develop a CV, don’t forget the sort of person you are, the person that God made and calls you to be.

 

So take a moment, perhaps stand on the apron outside the college – it is as good a crossroads as you will find – and ask that question, who do you think you are?  Then look for the way forward that will build on that.  The future, just as much as the past, will have much to celebrate, much that will surprise you, and times of weakness, failure and hurt as well.  Look for the good way and walk in it and you will find rest for your soul.  Amen.

[1] J. K. Rowling, Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination (Sphere, 2105) pp. 32, 34.

[2] David Brooks, ‘The Moral Bucket List’ in The New York Times, April 11, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/david-brooks-the-moral-bucket-list.html

Trinity Sunday 2015

Worcester College Evensong

 

Today is Trinity Sunday, a day which is notorious among clergy as one which preachers want to avoid. It is, I assure you, by accident and not design that the person speaking to you this evening is paid by the College to teach bizarre things such as Trinitarian theology to Worcester undergraduates. It is also a coincidence that some of those undergraduates begin their final examinations tomorrow. Any of them who have found their way into chapel this evening are far more likely to be placing their hopes in the power of prayer than in the power of my sermonising. And perhaps, a sermon is not the right medium anyway. The anthem we have just heard, Vaughan Williams’s setting of Herbert’s The Call is such an excellent example, both musically and poetically, of Trinitarian theology that it is tempting for me simply to sit down as invite the boys to sing it again. A friend of mine, who was for a long time a school chaplain, had a neat solution to the problem of teaching children this most difficult of theological ideas. He said, “I just tell them that it’s simple: three in one, and one in three. Any problems, go and ask your maths teacher.”

 

I’m going to try a slightly different approach. Picture the scene. A group of students gathers together, perhaps on a summer evening. Work is finished for the day, the sun is not long down, the wine is flowing. Idle chit chat puts the world to rights and all is as it should be. Except that two of the group are paying no attention to anybody else. You see, two of the group – as they will eagerly tell anyone prepared to listen – are very much in love, indeed have been very much in love for all of eight days – a practically matrimonial commitment in their eyes. And their time is spent not contributing, not participating but variously gazing into one another’s eyes, holding as much of the other’s hand as they can physically contain, and mostly, and all too prominently, snogging.

 

It is an experience almost all students are forced to endure at one time or another. It is a disease of the young, though not necessarily the young in years, since human behaviour tends to disobey the rules and regulations of chronology where matters of the heart are concerned. Many of us have been there. One of the worst fates in Oxford is to be stuck on the end of a long dining bench and table with only young lovers opposite. Conversation is hardly sparkling. I myself remember two friends from undergraduate days who, if separated by someone sitting between them, thought it acceptable to stretch out and hold hands across them. They were lucky that their neighbour didn’t respond by throwing up on their tightly clasped hands.

 

This is love, of a sort. And God, we are told, is love. So is such cringe making behaviour divine? Definitely not. It is no less a theologian than Rowan Williams who asks us to consider this kind of love, and try to map it on to the relationships which we call the Trinity. It will not work. The love of God is not entirely self-absorbed. The love of God is gratuitous, overflowing, it exceeds itself. When we say that God exists in a communion of love, we do not mean that the Father and the Son enjoy a relationship which is closed, in which they attend to nothing and no-one but each other. Instead their love has an openness, an outpouring which St Augustine of Hippo famously identified with the third person of the Trinity, with that which we call the Holy Spirit. In so doing, Augustine did not mean, as is often suggested, that Father and Son are rather like human persons, and that the Spirit is the abstract concept of love which flows between them. He meant that there are different ways in which scripture requires us to talk about God – as the source of all existence, as the divine presence which disrupts our tidy world of power at a particular time and in a particular place, and as the effect, the working out, the living out of that creativity and that presence in the world and in the lives of human beings such as you and I.

What follows from this is that everything that Christians do is done in the Spirit, done because of the life-giving presence of God which animates all creation. The Trinity, far from being the abstract concern of theological metaphysics, is actually the basis of the entire Christian life. Right at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, the first to be written, we see Father, Son and Spirit active in the baptism of Jesus, in the new act of creation by which everyone and everything will be reborn and renamed through the death and resurrection of Christ.

 

In the life of the church, the Trinity underlies everything which we call Christian. As I read scripture I do so seeking the God who sustains my existence in love, who himself seeks and sustains his people, and I am enabled to meet this God in the person of Jesus Christ precisely because the Spirit gives life to that scriptural encounter – without Father, Son and Spirit the Bible is simply another book. As I offer my prayers I do so knowing that the Father who loves his children sees not them in their sin but his son in their likeness, and so united with Christ I am able to pray, except that it is not I who prays but the Spirit who prays within me. The initiative here is grace itself: the love of the Father, in offering his Son in our likeness; the love of the Son in giving himself freely to the Father as our representative; the overflowing love of the Spirit which allows this relationship between Father and Son to spill out into the lives of every created thing.

 

Genuine love, divine love, is genuinely gratuitous. It is not simply selfless, in that it gives itself entirely to another; it is also endless, in that it cannot be exhausted by any single object of love, even an object as infinitely loveable as the person of Jesus Christ. When we struggle with the world in which we find ourselves, with the decisions, the relationships, the problems, the examinations, which make up our own little parts of that world, we are nonetheless living the life of the Spirit if we try, if only we try, to be loving. An act of love is an act of God, and the true act of God, the true act of love, is something which our own failures and weaknesses and selfishness can never diminish, however much they may knock us back, however determined we are to wallow in our own inadequacy. Divine love is not packaged up, a possession shared by Father and Son but kept to themselves and given to no-one else. It is an eternal act of self-giving which cannot end because the Spirit is always at work bringing life, bringing love, to every creature and person under heaven. The doctrine of the Trinity is the teaching that in the life of God himself there is something which overflows all attempts to contain it, there is an invitation for you and for me, a reminder that giving and sharing can be one and the same.

Worcester College Chapel, Choral Evensong, Sunday 17 May 2015

Luke 4.14-21: Jesus’ Manifesto

 

Introduction

I wonder what comes to mind when you think of Liverpool?  Anfield and Goodison, or Aintree, perhaps; or the Beatles?  The Ferry across the Mersey, maybe, or the Liver Birds (whether in the form of the statues themselves, or, for those of a certain age, in the form of the 1970s TV sit com)?  Maybe you think of Hillsborough, or of the Toxteth riots?  Or Ken Dodd, perhaps, or Cilla Black; maybe you think of Scouse; maybe one or two of you think in Scouse?

Or maybe it’s David Sheppard who comes to mind, the cricketing bishop and icon of ecumenism, who (together with the Roman Catholic Archbishop, Derek Worlock) drew the sting out of a sectarian city.  You may recall how he was a thorn in the side of Maggie Thatcher, a principal contributor to the Faith in the City report, and the author of that ground-breaking piece of practical theology, Bias to the Poor.  And if at least some of that story is familiar to you, then (given two other factors, neither of my choosing) you may by now be listening to me in a state of heightened expectation.  Factor number one is the outcome of the general election, in that, for the first time since 1992, the United Kingdom has elected a majority Tory government.  Factor number two is the particular pair of lectionary readings for this evening: the first from the prophet Isaiah and the second (sometimes called ‘Jesus’ Manifesto’), a passage from the Gospel according to Luke in which Jesus quotes the verses from Isaiah.  Both these texts are mission statements full of promise for the poor and the oppressed.

So: given Liverpool’s recent church history, and my association with one of the two Cathedrals which stand proudly at either end of Hope Street; given the frankly unexpected new political context in this country, which brings with it the prospect of further welfare reform and public sector funding cuts, with their disproportionate impact on communities such as my own; and above all, given the nature of the lectionary readings appointed for this evening, you may, as I say, now be listening to me in a state of heightened expectation – some perhaps in excited, and others no doubt in nervous, anticipation of a highly politicised sermon.  Well, you’ll have to wait and see, whether or not // that’s what // this is.

I want to begin by summarising the reading from Luke, in order to draw your attention to two things about it.  And then I want to illustrate how those two things currently shape our work at Liverpool Cathedral, because I take them to be hallmarks of authentic Christian mission in every time and place.

 

1. Jesus’ Manifesto

First of all then, the reading from Luke: in the Third Gospel, this is really Scene 1 of Jesus’ public ministry.  He’s been baptised and has been preaching in the villages of Galilee to some acclaim, and he comes to his home town on the Sabbath day.  As usual, he attends the Synagogue, where a key element in the worship on the holy day is the public reading of Scripture.  For one such reading, Jesus volunteers.

Luke tells the rest of the story with immense care and precision.  We are invited to savour Jesus, unrolling the scroll, delivering the reading and then rolling up the scroll once again.  And although the scroll of Isaiah is not one Jesus has chosen, it seems that once he has been given it, he does carefully choose the part of the scroll from which he reads – the opening verses of Isaiah 61.

In the light of the single sentence sermon Jesus subsequently delivers (‘Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’), what strikes me about the passage is how self-centred it sounds on the lips of the Lord.  ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me’, he says, ‘because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives’.  Actually, the Greek is arguably even more emphatic.  It could equally be translated, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; to bring good news to the poor he has sent me’.  Me, me, me.  In our culture, those words almost always indicate an ugly preoccupation with oneself.  But generation after generation of Christians has found in Jesus’ self-reference, here, an absolute appropriateness, an extraordinary rightness.

Yet Luke is quite open about the fact that Jesus’ first hearers were by no means happy about his focus on himself.  At the start of our passage we’re told that the Lord’s early preaching in Galilee was praised by everyone.  In the course of Luke 4, however, that praise turns, first, to hesitation, and then, to hostility.  That’s the first striking thing about this passage: Jesus’ preaching is focused sharply on himself.

The second thing I want to stress is that the prophecy from Isaiah, which Jesus has apparently chosen as his mission manifesto, is focused also on the vulnerable.  Listen to these words once again, if you would: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’. 

For whom is the message of Jesus good news?  For whom is the year of the Lord’s favour proclaimed?   That is to say, are we to understand the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed, literally or metaphorically?

Well, Isaiah’s original prophecy was certainly addressed to those who were literally captive and oppressed – literally exiles in Babylon.  And Jesus certainly healed those who were literally blind.  But his gospel also brought sight to those who were metaphorically blind; it liberated those who were captive to sin and guilt, death and the devil.  So there’s no exclusive literalism here.  His good news is for all who confess themselves to be poor.

On the other hand, as I’ve just indicated, it really isn’t possible to evade that literal element altogether, any more than it is in relation to the words the choir sang for us just a little earlier, from the Magnificat, which is, of course, another excerpt from the early chapters of the Gospel of Luke: ‘he has put down the mighty from their seat and has exalted the humble and meek; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away’. 

It was precisely passages of Scripture like these, which led Bishop David Sheppard to coin that phrase, Bias to the Poor.  In his book, he shows (to my mind unarguably) that God has a particular care for the vulnerable: for those who are literally orphans and widows, aliens and strangers, literally poor  – although, as it happens, these same people are also, very often, the spiritually open too.

 

 

2. Liverpool Cathedral and the mission of the church

So, let me say something secondly, about Liverpool Cathedral and about the way those two emphases are currently shaping our life.   In my view, a focus on the presence and finality of Jesus, on the one hand, and on what in Roman Catholic social teaching has become known as God’s preferential option for the poor on the other, are the twin hallmarks of all authentic Christian mission, in every time and place.

In Liverpool at present, we express our allegiance to Jesus by ensuring that at the heart of our life is the call to discipleship: for us, the Christian life is simply this, the intentional following of Jesus.  For this reason we have on our staff a residentiary Canon for Discipleship, we run Alpha courses and offer to new believers a baptism by immersion.  We have conducted over 120 such baptisms in the past two years, and it’s fair to say our congregations are thriving.  Sometimes, it’s true, our unashamed proclamation of salvation in Jesus creates jitters.  We note this jitteriness not least in funders, who are, we think, unduly cautious about awarding grants to faith-based institutions.  We don’t often, thank God, face hostility on account of our Jesus-centred-ness; but we’re well used to facing tentativeness.  The prevailing liberal, inclusive ideology in our society hasn’t quite worked out what to do with the confident commitments of faith.  But in this aspect of our work, we believe, on the basis of Luke 4, that we enjoy the smiling approval of the Almighty.

And our focus on the Lordship of Jesus is matched by an intentional solidarity with the poor.  In the last two years, our Hope+ Foodbank has fed over 15000 guests – that’s about 150 guests a week on average.  Last October, we entered into a partnership with Liverpool Jobcentre Plus, to provide a programme to assist the longterm unemployed back into work.  We have a significant ministry to asylum seekers, supporting them through a tortuous and highly unpredictable legal process.  In the face of such work, again we find central government is not quite sure how to respond.  On the one hand, some seem all too ready to demonise our guests and clients; on the other hand, isn’t this the Big Society at work?  In all this work, too, we believe on the basis of Luke 4 that we enjoy the smiling approval of the Almighty.

Of course, every Christian community is different, and Christian mission is always thoroughly contextual.  And anyway, Liverpool Cathedral is far from perfect.  We could be doing more in both these two key areas of our work, and what we are already doing, we could doubtless do more effectively.  But my plea to you this evening is this: if you are ever tempted to ridicule those who use food banks, please don’t – at least unless you’ve met some them, and have heard their stories.  And if you are ever tempted to vilify those who seek asylum, please don’t – at least unless you’ve met some them, and have heard their stories.  And if you are ever tempted to condemn those who rely on benefits, please don’t – at least unless you’ve met some them, and have heard their stories.

Why?  Because the hallmark of Jesus’ ministry, and the hallmark of authentic Christian mission in every time and place is this: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because he has anointed us to bring good news to the poor; he has sent us to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’. 

Pete Wilcox, Dean of Liverpool

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

Thank you very much to the Chaplain for his warm welcome.  It is always a pleasure to return to this, probably the most visually stunning Chapel in Oxford.  Like yourselves, I have often studied its many intriguing images and messages during the odd moment in a sermon.  The Chaplain’s seat directly faces a rather salutary frieze that I am rather fond of.  It depicts only five of the traditional seven stages of man’s life: a child in arms, the toddler learning to walk, a youth, a young man as he is at this College, then him as a man of the world and finally, at the very top, a funeral pyre with a woman weeping beside it.  Nursing mothers and young children are not unknown in this college, thanks to the wonderful heritage of the boy choristers and now the new blossoming Frideswide Voices with its girl choristers, there are also a few young men and women about the place, but the sight of a funeral pyre or a coffin is a rare occurrence.  On the odd occasion when one is processed from a hearse round into the Chapel, it seems odd, strange, out of place in the world which is so full of life, and youth and expectation.  There are curious looks and awkward pauses from those who rush to get to lectures and have the misfortune to bump into this somewhat unusual spectacle.

 

As parish priest to three beautiful medieval churches and their equally idyllic churchyards the case is very different.  With up to thirty funerals a year I now find that one of my main tasks is to fulfil that work of mercy which is to bury the dead.  Death and the sacred rituals which surround the end of life is a normative part of my world and the world of the villages of Garsington, Cuddesdon and Horspath.   The sight of a hearse driving round the village lanes in which the deceased played and lived is a regular occurrence and the folk who come to pay their last respects invariably will have at least two or three such occasions to attend each month.  Saying that, one of the images which has most haunted me over the last six months has been a photograph on the Medicin Sans Frontiere website that showed an open grave in Sierre Leonne.  Unlike the open graves I see in Garsington churchyard this one was deep and ten times as large, because it was a mass grave that held about 20 bodies, wrapped up in white shrouds lying next to each other.  An aid worker stood at one end and a few people were dotted around including a young girl, not much older than my Katie.  All I could think was why was the grave still left open, why didn’t they cover them over and give them peace, who was there to say the funeral service for them, where was a priest?  At the height of the ebola pandemic last year who was it that was burying the dead?

 

During the equivalent catastrophe in England during the 1340’s and then again in the 1360’s the answer to that question was clear, it was the priests, the ordinary parson who carried out his duty to bury the dead.  Yet of all the victims of the Black Death it was these loyal servants of the church that most suffered with two thirds of them being wiped out in a matter of months.  Even today, so many years later, where our world view is radically altered, it is still the parish priest who buries the dead.  A humanist minister, or Funeral Chaplain may now have replaced the parson at the crematorium but no one can be lowered into a grave within a churchyard without the Incumbent or equivalent priest being present.  It has been commented before by those who have lived through the harrying experience of the death of a loved one, that in the days to follow it feels as if the professionals move in, from the police who must be called out if such an incident happens at home, to the funeral director that takes them away, to the priest who comes to arrange the ceremonial.  They may have a chance to see them in the chapel of rest to say goodbye but it is these professionals who lay the last human hand on their coffin and fills in the open grave.  The most a family is able to do in burying their loved one is to sprinkle some earth or flowers at the service.  For in our modern world burying the dead has become privatised by a series of professionals, who in the most sensitive and compassionate way, help a grieving family to navigate the dark waters of burying their dead.

 

Once I had got over the initial visualisation of the terrible toil that has been exacted on communities by the ebola epidemic, I guess what it was that so shocked me about the Medicin Sans Frontiere photograph was its lack of these figures who have become so necessary in the modern process of laying the dead to rest.  There was no funeral director, no priest and most telling of all no grieving family in this picture only a little girl and an aid worker.  This picture reminded me that to bury the dead is more than just the role of the priest or the responsibility of the family, it is a work of mercy that we are all bidden to do as we live out our faith in practical and real ways.

 

The scriptural basis for including this within the corporeal acts of mercy can be found in the book of Tobit which is one of the Aprocryphal or Deutercanonical books of the Old Testament.  Tobit is probably most famous for his son Tobias who had the archangel Raphael as his guardian angel, but Tobit like Daniel is an icon of a loyal Israelite who even in captivity under the Assyrians kept living out his faith in ordinary and practical  ways.  He fulfilled the corporeal acts of mercy by giving food to the hungry, clothing the naked and ‘if I saw the dead body of any of my people thrown out behind the wall of Nineveh, I would bury it’ (Tobit 1:16).  So he displayed the mercy of God to those he knew and did not know by ensuring that the dead were given some form of respect and burial.  I hope that none of us will find ourselves in such a desperate situation that it is down to us to physically lay the dead to rest, yet there are such people even now across the world whose task it is to do this.  So how can we, in the world in which we do live, fulfil this mandate to bury to dead?

 

At Christmas time in Garsington churchyard a remarkable transformation begins to slowly take place over the weeks which lead up to this central of all festivals as the graves begin to be visited and covered in beautiful wreaths of flowers and candles.  The sight of so many physical emblems of grief reminds everyone who walks down the path to the church that whilst Christmas is a time of family and fun for many it is a poignant reminder of loss and the empty chair that will no longer be filled.  Months even years after a loved one has been laid in the ground there is still the need for someone to act and speak those words of the kindness and mercy of God.  For the professionals soon leave, even though we would wish to be there every day to help that person through their grief there is the next funeral to do, so it is the rest of us who must overcome our timidity and fear of saying the wrong thing to reach out to those who still need help to bury their loved ones and release them into the eternal.  But here we must remember that it is not us who act or speak but it is the mercy of God and we are but his messenger, his angel who through a card or a kind word, a cake or a smile will enable someone to gradually let go into new life and help them bury the dead.  Amen.

 

 

Evensong Worcester College, Oxford 10th May 2015

Song of Songs 4:16-5:2, 8:6-7; Revelation 3:14-end

In nomine…

The college chapels of Oxford and Cambridge are among the great treasures of the Church of England. They vary in scale, prominence and grandeur, but, whatever their size, spiritually they are all places of depth and breadth. The chapel of King’s College, Cambridge must be among the most widely-recognised buildings in the world. But even the smaller, less celebrated chapels are a delight: this beautiful place, for instance, with its profusion of imagery in mosaic, paint, glass, alabaster and wood; or the chapel of my undergraduate years, Lincoln, largely unchanged since it was built in the seventeenth century. Its most famous Fellow, John Wesley, would recognise almost every detail. And then there are the modern college chapels: Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, has as its chapel a beautiful elevated space. Behind the altar is a vast transparent window which opens onto the foliage of a two-hundred year old plane tree in the court outside: at this time of year it is a marvellous place to worship.

Or the chapel at Churchill College, Cambridge. Here the preposition is all-important: not the chapel of Churchill College, but the chapel at Churchill College. Passions rose when the chapel was first mooted as part of the fledgling college: Frances Crick, an atheist, resigned his fellowship at the proposal to build a chapel, but Christian voices were equally strong and the college found itself in deadlock. Finally, a deal was reached. At the far corner of its 40 acre site, the college leased a small piece of land to a Chapel Trust, consisting of those fellows who wanted a chapel. And so, in 1967, a chapel was built. The Churchill chapel is a gem, a modern interpretation, in concrete, glass and timber, of a Byzantine basilica. The chapel may have been pushed to the fringes of the Churchill site, but it is a triumph of modern church architecture, once entered, never forgotten.

Architecturally and artistically the chapels of Oxford and Cambridge are treasures; but they are also treasures liturgically: for their musical and spiritual life. Again and again I meet Christians, lay and ordained, who, like me, identified their vocations amidst the liturgical life of an Oxbridge chapel, and had them tested and stretched there: not just clergy, but teachers, lawyers, civil servants, scientists and businesspeople. And the same can be said of the musicians whose careers began in these buildings and their round of worship: singers and organists, obviously, but instrumentalists too, conductors, composers and academics. These chapels are powerhouses of art, architecture, worship, music with a continuing ability to refine and nurture the gifts of those who pass through them.

I offer this paean to college chapels partly because of the splendour of this place, its life and worship, but also because of the readings that we have heard this evening. On first encounter tonight’s second reading is not the most inspiring passage of scripture. The last of the seven churches of Asia, that of Laodicaea has, uniquely, become proverbial. The Revelation to Saint John begins with letters to each of the seven churches and the writer’s judgement on the Christian community at Laodicaea is searing:

15 ‘I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. 16So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

We who lead our lives amidst the relative comfort of west European culture must stand under the judgement of those words. How far removed is our experience is from that of our fellow Christians in other parts of the world? Loko, for instance, the Ethiopian woman who describes her daily life on the Christian Aid website. ‘I pray to God as I walk’, she writes, ‘asking him to change my life and lead us out of this’. How many of us feel the need to offer that prayer?

17For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

But that harsh assessment is tempered by the words that follow it:

19I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. 20Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

Those words are attributed by Saint John to the risen and ascended Christ. They encompass in miniature the grace of the gospel, which shows us that with God righteousness and mercy go hand in hand: we are judged with justice, but we are also judged with compassion.

‘Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me’. Once, in this country at least, those words were among the best-known in the Bible. The verse was so well-known because it was the text of which William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World was the illustration.

The Light of the World, of course, is one of the most celebrated of all English paintings. It exists in three versions, one of which is here in Oxford, in the side-chapel at Keble. The versions vary in size and colouring, but they all show the same image: the figure of Christ standing beside a door in an overgrown garden. In his left hand he bears a lantern, whose light shines out in to the dusk of evening; and his right hand is raised, poised to knock on the weed-infested door. When it was first shown in 1851, The Light of the World was more or less universally acclaimed as a masterpiece. And a few years later, when it went on a tour of the Empire it was viewed by tens of thousands of people, often queuing for hours. Many were deeply moved. An insurance clerk from New Zealand wrote this after seeing it: ‘the vast crowd stood gazing in silent wonderment at the picture… many [of them] in adoration, as though held by some irresistible magnet. And I, on viewing the wondrous face, was impelled to uncover my head in reverence thereto’. The phrasing is Victorian, but the sense of awe is palpable.

For many people that painting was and still is the definitive image of Jesus. But there are other ways of picturing Christ as the Light of the World. One of them is in another Oxbridge Chapel: Robinson College, Cambridge. The great window of the college chapel, stretching behind the altar, was made by the artist John Piper. The contrast between this Light of the World and Holman Hunt’s painting could hardly be greater. In the window there is no figure of Christ, instead there is a glorious explosion of colour. From out of the dark blue depths at the base of the window a great sun arises, drenching foliage and flowers with its brightness. Instead of the dimly glowing lamp of the painting, here we have an image of the radiance of God illuminating the whole of creation. The darkness covering the face of the deep gradually dispersed by the bright and manifold variety of God’s blessing.

Two great works of art, two depictions of the Light of the World. The first subtle, personal and intimate – the original is surprisingly small – and the second bold, colourful and direct. By their very contrast these two artworks remind us of the two ways in which Christ makes himself known to us. He comes to us personally – as in Holman Hunt’s painting – knocking at the door of my heart (and your heart) and asking to be let in. But Christ comes to us, is present with us, universally as well as personally, and that is what John Piper’s stained glass window in Robinson, Cambridge seeks to show. Christ is the light of the world in both senses: the lamp that gently illuminates the dark and hidden places of our hearts and souls, bathing them with his glow; but also the glorious light of the sun, revealing God’s glory in the world.

The risen Christ promises to come in and eat with those who hear his voice and open to him. This is the sense in which we should hear the words of tonight’s first lesson, from the ancient love lyric that is the Song of Songs: ‘Eat, friends, drink, / and be drunk with love’. Surprising words to hear in church – or are they?

The quickening of the soul and spirit and body that comes from falling in love is not perhaps that far removed from the quickening of the soul and spirit and body that come at the moments when one’s faith is illuminated – set on fire – in a place like this one. I cannot point to a particular moment of conversion during my time as an undergraduate at Lincoln. But I do know that the hours I spent in the chapel transformed me – and that they are transforming me still.

Worship is the primary meeting place between God and God’s people: worship is the time and place where we learn to abide in God as God abides in us. It is not merely an aesthetic or intellectual experience, but an encounter of body, soul and spirit with God, in whom we live and move and have our being: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.