Category: Sermons

Worcester Coll. Evensong; 2.2.14; John 4;46-54 (Is 55;6-13) B228

Signs and wonders: what place do they have in the Gospels and indeed in the Christian faith? 

The question is asked in the context of this evening’s reading from John’s Gospel, where Jesus is dismissive of signs and wonders.  It is not meant to be a compliment when Jesus says ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe’.  But then comes the response from the official, which everyone who has a heart will understand: ‘Come down before my little boy dies’.  The fever leaves the boy and this is seen as a sign of Jesus’ significance and purpose.

            So you might try to sum up Jesus’ actions: suspicion of those who want spectacular interventions by God, yet at the same time bringing compassion and healing.  Usually the wise advice to a preacher is to avoid the subject of healing, as one would a field full of land-mines.  But it is important to ignore all that advice and tackle signs and wonders head on.  How does God act in the world and indeed make himself known?  Is it, for example when we miss the flight that subsequently crashes; when the rain holds off for our wedding; or indeed when I’m hard up and find a £10 note blowing in the wind? 

            What are the ways of God?  And add to that the question: if he acted there in Palestine, why does he not seem to act so wonderfully here and now?

            Of course, there are some who think God does act now in a spectacular manner, and they take it to extremes.  Morris Cerullo was preaching in Mexico City this week at what he calls a ‘Prophetic Healing Breakthrough Rally’.  It was he who once wrote to his British followers promising them supernatural deliverance from debt.  What they had to do was to send him £30 per month (instead of the usual £15) and they would experience an unprecedented thing called ‘a debt cancellation miracle’.  They were to pray over the paying-in slip while letting the anointing power flow into their lives.  God would do the rest and all would be well.  There would follow healing of their debt.  Well, I am told that we are more likely to be struck by lightning than to win a substantial amount on the National Lottery, but even the Lottery is a more practical approach to debt-cancellation than Morris Cerrullo and his magic.

            Yet it would be a mistake to go to the other extreme and say that God does not act and that there are no miracles. I once talked to someone just back from Zimbabwe.  He spoke movingly of his experience and of people’s faith in God.  We then talked about praying for rain.   I thought his answer was fascinating.  He said ‘Well, it certainly isn’t right to pray for rain in Zimbabwe between May and September, because it never rains there between May and September.’  So it would be foolish – mere belief in magic – to pray for rain at that time.  But at other times, it is natural to pray for something which is central to everyone’s survival: praying for rain, while at the same time conserving water by building dams and so on. 

            So perhaps we are to pray for God to work on what is possible within the world which is his creation.  Like a carpenter, working on wood, I believe God works with the grain of the world, encouraging, loving, prompting, inviting.  That way of thinking also applies to healing: God not so much cutting across the world and working against its ways, but rather working with the surgeon, the hospital, the prayers, the family – to bring healing and wholeness.  And when someone is happily and surprisingly healed, do you call it a miracle?  Yes, you do. 

            There is room/scope in the natural world and in us for change.  So the right language may be to says that God does not so much act on the world or indeed on us, but rather that he interacts with the world and with us – God not a conjuror or manipulator, for he leaves us, and the world we live in, with some freedom. 

     What then about the official’s son in John’s Gospel?   The healing showed what is possible and indeed desirable for us all to work towards.  After all, Jesus did not heal everyone he ever came across, and many of them no doubt got ill again and in the end they died.  So the healing was a sign of the way things can and should be.  A sign.  And as shown by the passionate plea of the official – the father –  ‘Come down before my little boy dies’, the sign, like the other signs, was not trivial.  It was a serious matter of life and death. 

            So I think we need to see that God is concerned with serious matters like peace and healing and justice and fullness of life, rather than being treated – as he sometimes is by Christians – as a kind of errand boy: topping up my bank-account, making sure that I don’t get wet, or of course, sorting out our parking…..in the immortal words of Wendy Cope’s poem: ‘When I went out shopping/ I said a little prayer:/ Jesus, help me park the car/ for you are everywhere./ Jesus, in his goodness and grace,/ Jesus found me a parking space/ In a very convenient place/ Sound the horn and praise Him!.’ That’s fun, and it admirably sends up the idea that I’m God’s favourite and he is going to look after me, probably at the expense of everyone else. 

            God is indeed infinitely loving and he invites us to new life in Christ, but he’s not a trivial God who runs petty errands for us and we have to be careful of how we interpret what happens to us.   Austin Farrer has a nice piece in his book ‘Faith and Speculation’ (1967 p 68) – a tale of piety improperly triumphing over reason:

‘Mr Jones’ rheumatism was a judgement, until his daughter swore to you on the bible that the tale of his secret drinking was a baseless slander. Her father was a saint.  His rheumatism was, therefore, a trial.  But then the bowling club went on a day’s outing and drove their charabanc into the sea; and Mr Jones’ rheumatism, since it kept him home on this occasion, proved a blessing in disguise, and a providence indeed.’

            Mr Jones’ rheumatism: judgement, trial, blessing?   Probably none of those.  For whatever reason, he just had rheumatism.

            God is with us, patiently working/interacting with us and with the world in which we live.  Sometimes a sign/ a miracle: more of them in New Testament times because that is how they saw the world, but that does not mean that there are none of them now.  Yet the sign will not be an empty parking space.  More likely to be a profound sign of the ways of God and of his creation, like the healing of a child with a fever or like peace brought to a place where it seemed impossible.

            At Candlemas and in every season, we can point to signs of the ways in which God reveals himself (and to the ways in which he does not).  There is an admirable middle path between what might be called the rationalist and the ridiculous.  I believe it is to see God interacting with us and with the natural creation – working patiently, subtly.  Inviting – longing for everyone and everything to realize its potential in him.

 

 

Believing in the glory

Jn 2.11: Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

‘Our Lord Jesus Christ was himself a guest at a wedding in Cana of Galilee’ – as a parish priest, I have said that so many times as part of the introduction to the marriage service in the Alternative Service Book – and longed secretly for the sonsorous cadences of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee’. Nowadays, Common Worship includes this sentence: ‘St John tells us how Jesus shared in such an occasion at Cana’. Any way, whatever words we use to describe it, is the point of this gospel passage really that Jesus was a wedding guest at Cana? And, let’s remember, not a very good guest – having. a very public domestic with his mum, taking control of the wine list, generally stealing the limelight of the bride’s big day.

But in fact the truth at the heart of this gospel passage is not that Jesus was at Cana to express his approval of the institution of marriage; a wedding does provide the context in which this, ‘the first of his signs’, is performed, but it is not the meaning to which the sign refers. For me, the point of this first sign, the transformation of water into wine, is the abundance, the super-abundance, even the excess of the provision which God offers to his people. Think of the figures involved. There are six stone jars, each of them holding 2 or 3 firkins, 20 or 30 gallons, and each filled up to the brim with water. Taking the lowest figure in the range that St John offers, we have 120 gallons, i.e. 545 litres, of wine. A standard bottle of wine today is 75 cl: Jesus has produced the equivalent of 727 bottles for a party which has already drunk its way through its host’s provision. If we take the upper figure, the stock taking rises to 1090 bottles, I think. Even by the standards of a clergy event in the Diocese of Southwark, that is prodigious; indeed, it is prodigal.

And this super-abundance, this exuberance undaunted by anxiety over wastefulness, is a theme which appears again and again in the New Testament. In the parable of the Sower, the grain is scattered everywhere; most of it is lost, but that which falls on good soil produces astonishing yields – thirty-, sixty-, a hundred-fold. In another parable, the workers who are recruited to labour in the vineyard late in the day are rewarded with the same generosity as the others, much to their bewilderment. St Paul writes  that the love of God is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the ungodly, and it is in their justification that the justice of God bears the fruit of amazing grace. Christian faith speaks throughout of undeserved, unexpected, unscientific abundance; and this is the sign which Jesus sets before us at Cana of Galilee.

In enacting that sign, says St John, Jesus revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. This is a sign set in the most basic of human settings, that of a wedding; it is performed through ordinary human actions, the drawing of water from a well; it uses the everyday stuff of human consumption, wine; it is described in markedly understated human language, a simple past participle form ‘water become wine’. Yet we know that we are being pointed beyond the boundaries of normal human experience, to the burgeoning abundance which is the sign of God’s presence – a reality which cannot be adequately described, but for which John uses the word ‘glory’.

Of course, ‘glory’ is not a word coined by the New Testament writers; the divine glory repeatedly breaks into the narrative of the Hebrew scriptures too. In our first reading, Isaiah speaks of the glory of the Lord that will arise upon Jerusalem and draw the nations to his light. The gospel message is, that in Jesus that attracting, dazzling light is embodied in a human being: ‘we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth’. How is such an economy of divine prodigality received in our world. What difference might it make to the way we live, if we are among those who have seen his glory?

Well, let’s go back to what John says at the end of his story of Cana – Jesus ‘revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. Think about each of those three words in turn: ‘revealed’, ‘glory’, and ‘believed’.

In the first place, as always in the gospels, this revelation of God’s glory takes place in a particular place – at Cana of Galilee – at a particular time – during a marriage feast – and through a particular person – Jesus of Nazareth. It is in these specific interactions that ultimate meaning is disclosed, and it is through telling and re-telling this specific narrative that that meaning is brought to others. And that means that Christians should always be wary of any general theories which try to predict what is going to happen; always approach with a hermeneutic of suspicion any reporting that generalises how groups of people are going to act or think; because if God’s glory was revealed in a Galilean wedding feast, we never know what might happen anywhere, or who might do what when. It is in the telling of particular stories of particular people at particular times and in particular places that revelation happens, and one of the great strengths of the Church of England is that through our presence in parishes, schools and chaplaincies across the land we are daily hearing thousands and thousands of such stories. As a bishop in South East London, I never cease to be struck by how very much more interesting, more compelling and more meaningful are the real human stories that I hear, compared to the opinionated stereotypes that I read in newspapers or see on TV. It is in the particular that God reveals his glory.

And, second, what he reveals is just that, glory: an overwhelming, life-giving grace which cannot be reduced to our limits, which infinitely exceeds our expectations. No doubt the chief steward at Cana had estimated how much wine should be bought; no doubt the guests felt he had underestimated; but all calculations are as nothing before the enormous quantities God’s glory dispenses. Whether 727 bottles or 1060, the numbers are vast beyond measure: glory cannot be measured.

To set something immeasurable and unimaginable as that which we value most is to be profoundly subversive in today’s world. We live in a society which is obsessed with measuring targets, with paying by results, with putting a numerical figure on every value, with looking for a financial analysis of any transaction. But the economy of God’s glory does not work in this way: knowing that we always fall short of any target that his infinite holiness may set us, we rely on his illimitable grace; it is that grace alone that gives us true value, and it is that standard that sets us a new way of relating to one another. It is not easy to learn to relate to one another according to the economy of glory, because we are very suspicious of this way of thinking. Like labourers in the vineyard, we grumble at God, envious because he is kind.

But then, thirdly, becoming kind as God is kind is what we have to learn to do if – like the disciples – we believe in Jesus, the one who has revealed his glory. Believing in Jesus means staking our lives on the hunch that the divine glory he reveals is the most important reality we can know, and then living our staked lives according to the economy of that glory in the world. That in turn means, taking the risk to give of ourselves to others generously, prodigally, to forgive as we have been forgiven, to believe in others as God believes in them, to expect great things from the God whose grace is at work in them as it is in us. That is a challenging way to live, and it’s much easier to slip back into suspicion of others, into defensiveness, cynicism, criticism.

I see all those attitudes in my own church much of the time; I see them in myself nearly all the time. But two days ago I was in Lewisham at a memorial event for a great little girl of Nigerian heritage, Ella Kissi-Debrah. Ella was a devout server at her parish church, St Swithun’s, Lewisham. Last year, she suddenly died, aged 9, from the severe asthma that had been with her through much of her short life. A few weeks before her death, Ella said this to her mum: ‘Mum, life is too short to use it being horrid to people’.

‘Life is too short to use it being horrid to people’ – simple words, but out of Ella’s short life they speak to me powerfully of what it means to believe in the Jesus who reveals his glory among us. In Cana, in Lewisham, in Oxford, he gives us gallons of the new wine of his glory so that we can love one another as he loves us – or at least not be horrid to one another.

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY 2013

Worchester College Oxford

The Venerable Ray Pentland CB QHC

 

Isaiah 55: 1-5 – Hope for the future, and John 15: 12-17, Greater love

Introduction

There are few sounds more evocative than this, the of the chilling sound of a trench whistle breaking the silence that was the prelude to a generation of young men leaving their trenches,

going over the top and becoming engulfed in the storm of war, many of whom would never return

home.

 

Joolz Denby a British Poet asked to write some words for a new war memorial, penned the

Stanza

 

Read their names, and call them home

Chant the litany of remembrance.

 

And I believe that in a real sense that is what we are about today when we gather to Worship and

remember and to reflect, and as we do so I suggest that we are engaged in three activities,

first of all we commemorate the past, we consider the present and we make a

commitment for the future.

 

1. Commemorate the past

 

Tomorrow I will stand at the Cenotaph, that iconic symbol of our nations remembrance and

observe the 2 minutes silence at 1100 on the 11 day of the 11 month. A few days ago I had

the opportunity, to walk through the Field of remembrance at Westminster Abbey. It is all too

easy to think of the vast numbers of those who gave their lives in the wars that we might have

life. And yet as I walked through the gardens and stopped quietly to look at the small crosses

with their poppies and messages.

 

One simply said Granddad 1915, another a photograph of a young boy, John, aged 16 died Flanders, 1917.

 

Soon I passed by Names I recognised, Phil a young man in his 20’s, the message, – never

forgotten – love Mum and Dad.

It made no difference, Flanders fields or almost a hundred years later, a different land, a

different war, but still simply a soldier doing his duty, seeking to bring freedom to an oppressed

land, and so row upon row the names continued, from 99 years ago to 9 days ago.

 

Read their names and bring them home

Chant the litany of remembrance.

 

As I stood I was challenged to remember that though the names may be Legion, each one was

a unique individual, a son, a daughter, a husband a wife, a father, a mother, ordinary

everyday people, who in doing their duty gave their life that we might live. And as we

commemorate the past, as we read their names and call them home, let us remember them,

vibrant and full of life…,

 

And as we do so we give thanks to God for their sacrifice and for our freedom, and remember

that generation after generation has stood against the invasion of our homeland, and

fought against the evils of dictatorships or terrorism far from home.

 

And so as we pause to

 

Read their names and bring home

Chant the litany of remembrance.

 

2 Consider the Present

 

Part of remembrance is to consider our response to their sacrifice,

Remembrance must be more than an act of worship and some silence once a year. Indeed

for the members of our Armed Forces remembrance is not an annual event, but rather

a fact of everyday life.

 

To honour their sacrifice, is to live life to the full, It is to set high standards and work for a better

world. Those who have not been there cannot imagine

what is experienced on the front line, whether the trenches of the Somme or the hills of

Afghanistan, but perhaps a warrior from another generation captures something of their feelings.

 

Lt Gen Hal Moore in ‘We Were Soldiers Once and Young’ writes,

 

‘We went to war because it was our duty. That is

one kind of love. Another and far more

transcendent love came to us unbidden on the

battlefields as it does on every battlefield man

has ever fought. We discovered in that

depressing, hellish place, where death was our

constant companion, that we loved each other.

We killed for each other, we died for each other,

and we wept for each other. And in time we

came to love each other as brothers. In battle

our world shrank to the man on our left and the

man on our right and the enemy all around. We

held each other’s lives in our hands, and we

learned to share our fears, our hopes, our

dreams, as readily as we shared what little else

good came our way.’

 

They learned the gospel truth in the words of Jesus, that Greater love has

no one than to lay down his life for another. So,

 

Read their names and bring home

Chant the litany of remembrance

 

Sacrifice is not a word often heard today, but without it we would not be here. It is the sacrifice

of youth and potential that we remember. Experience informs us that sacrifice is a remedy

for selfishness and is an important part of maturity. We live in an age when we want

everything today – often without responsibility or cost, where the greatest achievement is to

become a celebrity of a few moments of infamy on X factor, and yet as we gather here there are

young men and women of our nation still serving

in danger, putting their lives on the line. There are many stories of heroism from our current

conflicts but one will suffice.

 

Corporal David Hayden of the Royal Air Force Regiment became the first airman to receive the

Military Cross. This is his story.

 

When one of his colleagues, Leading Aircraftsman Martin Beard, was fatally wounded,

Cpl Hayden was not prepared simply to give up on him. Against all odds he went out under

heavy fire and hoisted the injured man on to his shoulder and ran, upright, another 200 yards

across many obstacles to safety. Then he went onto rescue the rest of his section.

Cpl Hayden citation read that ‘he showed the most outstanding courage, selflessness and

personal example, risking his life repeatedly with absolute disregard for his own safety’. He said ‘I

am what the RAF has made me’ I was only doing my job – ‘

This is an example of service and sacrifice in the finest traditions of our Armed Forces, but there is

more, for our scripture reading reminds us that  these are the words of Jesus, and that He put

His words into action by laying down his life that we might have a new and everlasting

relationship with God our heavenly Father and so this morning as we commemorate the past

and consider the present, let us take time to remember that we have a God who loves us and

who has a different and better purpose for us, and that part of our responsibility is to work

towards that very aim of a better world. Sacrifice, brings its own rewards, of giving rather than

getting, of loving rather than hating, and of caring rather than just not caring. Of standing up and

doing something, speaking up rather than just standing idly by and doing nothing. If we do sit

idly by then we betray those whose lives we commemorate today, as we read their names

and call them home do we honour them by making our world a better place? So what of our

 

3. Commitment to the future

 

We live in a world struggling with evils of terrorism in a way we have never known. The

Armed Forces of our nation are called to respond to situations in places previous

generations had forgotten existed.

 

Our reading from Isaiah 55 offers us both an invitation and a promise. The invitation is to

those who are thirsty and hungry, but not simply in the physical since, rather in the spiritual

sense – and I suggest that this is all of us – we all have a spiritual need, and here we are

invited to find the answers. The writer then offers us a promise. A promise of good things of

a better world, and I can’t imagine that any of us can’t want that, and scripture points us to the

answers and the fulfilment of that promise in Jesus himself, the same Jesus who laid down

his life, the promise that our spiritual needs will be met in Him and that a better world can and

will be ours if we accept the invitation to drink and eat in the kingdom of God. Hope for the

future is opened up, based on faith in the promises of God, and therefore a new and a

better world is not an idle dream -but a matter of faith and love and courage. It is not the

inevitable result of some supposed natural progress of the human race – it is the

consequence of our resolute determination in faith that evil shall not triumph. Today is an

opportunity to remember the sacrifices of those who lost their lives as a result war, to read their

names and bring them home. Since last remembrance Sunday 9 members of our Armed

Force died on duty in Afghanistan 9 families’ whose lives have been turned upside

down, 9 families for whom this remembrance Sunday

has a new meaning, and we the remember hundreds who have

experienced live changing injuries.

 

They may see it as their duty and service. We may not agree with the whys or even the how.

However this is part of the price of living in a democracy.

From the trenches of the Somme, to the Roar of Spitfires over our island home, from guarding

our coast to the battle of the Atlantic, from the beaches of Normandy to the South Atlantic,

from the flight of the Dambusters to Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq to Afghanistan, and many other places the men and women of our Royal Navy, Army and the Royal Air Force represent you and me.

 

We must never forget, and we should be give thanks for their commitment to our future.

 

For today is also about

The partners who grieve

The injured who suffer

The families who struggle

The veterans who remember

The aircrew who fly

The children who wait

The homeless who shiver

The seamen who sail

The unemployed who despair

The soldiers who fight

The disabled who strive

The heroes who serve.

Today we will pray for them,

Today we will remember them

 

Today we will

 

Read their names and call them home chant

the litany of remembrance

Worcester College, Oxford: 20 October, 2013

 

“Because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts” John 16⁶

 

 

Woody Allen’s most recent film “Blue Jasmine” is not one to see when life is getting you down.  It’s a story of a Manhattan socialite whose world has fallen apart when her former husband is jailed for running a crooked financial scheme.  She arrives in San Francisco, broke but still flying first class, and is forced in desperation to turn for help to her estranged sister Ginger.  In the film Jasmine can’t control her snobbery and pretentiousness which contrasts with her sister’s earthy, shambolic but essentially contented life.  Reaching frequently for the vodka bottle, the fear, the panic and the emptiness just below the lacquered surface becomes ever more obvious, and in the end Jasmine is all alone, muttering to herself of a park bench.

 

Well, it’s probably dangerous for a preacher to theologise too much about a Woody Allen film.  But it’s worth pausing to ask – “What is Jasmine really afraid of?”  What is so scary about her loss of an artificially comfortable life that it drives her to drink and to madness?  And what if her fear is deeply uncomfortable for us because it is the fear which is endemic in our society?  That is to say that it is fear of mortality, of which every small loss, every cumulative limitation on her former life is an unwanted reminder.

 

Well, let’s test this a bit more, and suggest that our culture’s basic assumption is that our greatest problem is that we are going to die.  Therefore human flourishing is most likely to be achieved by putting energy and endeavour into all those projects which reduce risk to human life – ill health, poverty, malnutrition, limited natural resources, adverse weather and so on.  And mortality is best resisted by celebrating youth and vigour: making an immense global festival of the Olympics as a universal metaphor of triumph over limitation: which increasingly marginalising and neglecting the elderly who act as an uncomfortable reminder of our key problem.

 

And we could argue that the limitations which the human race was used to living with (until 100 years or so ago) are now seen as challenges to overcome and transcend.  Human vulnerability is not something we now learn to live with; it’s something we expect to conquer.  And doing so is part of our self-assertion, our identity: it is what defines us as human beings in contrast to the animals.  Words often read at funeral services, pointing not to death as a final destination but to the relationships beyond it.  The key project then of our species could now (in the light of all the technologies we’ve developed in the last century) be described as the alleviation, avoidance or even transcendence of mortality.  Look carefully at how some cars, exotic holidays or even perfumes are advertised, and you’ll see that they appear to be offering something very much like eternal life.

 

But it may not be loading too much on to one film to suggest that it asks us a question about all that.  What if the fundamental human problem is not mortality but isolation?  Endlessly extended life, if we’re alone, is not what we want or need.  So Jasmine ends the film in hell, speaking to herself, irreversibly isolated.  While Ginger muddles happily along with her mates and her unpredictable romances.

 

To put this into theological language would be to say that salvation comes not through overcoming limitation but through relationships – what Christians call communion – with each other and with God.  That is what lies at the heart of the Gospel, and what is affirmed week by week in services of Holy Communion in this Chapel.

 

Yet St John’s Gospel, read to us this evening, suggests that this is a hard message to hear and really internalise.  And it goes even further than that to show us in chapter 15 and 16 that the disciples didn’t get it either.  Jesus gently rebukes them for anticipating his death with so much despair “Because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts”.  And he shows them the purpose of his life when he says: “In my father’s house are many dwelling places, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will com again and take you to myself”

 

Last week during a debate on the Social Care Bill in Parliament, I couldn’t help feeling that the starkest example of this is the marketisation of care of the elderly to the point where carers have to restrict visits to fifteen minutes and reduce patients to choosing between having a drink or going to the loo.  Fixating on scarcity by increasing isolation seems to be the consequence of a culture which is deeply uncomfortable with death.

 

This life then from a Christian perspective is primarily about opening people’s hearts to each other and the prospect of hearts opened externally to God.  And pause for a moment to think about how radically that challenges our social and political culture.

 

Sitting as I do from time to time in the House of Lords, I see how much of our political discourse is framed by a desire to overcome limitation: it is a discourse about scarcity, about not having enough; about our overriding need to subordinate everything to the elimination of that scarcity and its consequent limitations.  And the assumption is that isolation, the collapse of relationships, the withering of the social bonds and networks that sustain healthy living is a price we must at the moment all pay to overcome scarcity.  Yet Jasmine, in her anguish, if she was sober enough to speak, might tell us that while doing that we are really missing the point.

 

So, one more film to finish the point.  Those of you who remember “The English Patient” from fifteen years ago will recall the agonising decision Count Laszlo has to make, when his lover Katherine is lying grievously injured in a plane crash in a cave in the desert.  Should he walk three days to Cairo to get help, leaving her all alone or should he stay with her in her desperate need?  He goes off of course to get help and returns to find her dead.  As with our culture, so with Count Laszlo, avoiding death is the overwhelming priority – but the price Katherine pays is that she dies alone at the moment of greatest vulnerability.

 

Mortality or isolation?  Which is the real problem?  This Chapel and its worship offers us an answer.

 

Freshers’ Evensong sermon, 13th October 2013, Rev’d. Dr. Jonathan Arnold

Readings: Isaiah 51: 9-16; John 15: 12-end

Words from St. John’s Gospel: ‘I have spoken to you, so that my joy may be in you, and your joy complete. This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.

I want to begin this first sermon of the academic year by testing your knowledge, bearing in mind that everyone here is well educated. The simple question is this. Can you tell me where this literary quotation comes from? The first one to give the answer will win a prize. If you don’t get it the first time, I shall give you a clue the second time. And

“…  the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

The quotation comes at the very end of that remarkable work Middlemarch by Mary Ann Evans, otherwise known as George Eliot. I was lucky enough to be able to re-read the work recently and familiarise myself once again with its glorious prose and the story of provincial life, which finds nobility and grandeur of character in the ordinary. The final words relate to the most endearing character, Dorothea Brooke, who seeks to do good and find a great cause in life. We have to endure reading about her marriage to the dry, shrivelled pretentious scholar Casaubon, who is embarked, he  believes, upon a work of erudition that is so important, it is too precious for public enjoyment. Dorothea sacrifices herself to assisting in this hopeless task until she is eventually released by his death and she can find a more fruitful outlet for her kindness and benefaction, and indeed find a more fruitful relationship. The same Final chapter of the novel has words that are very apposite for the beginning of a new academic year:

 ‘Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years?’ As members of this College and Chapel community, you are members of a family for the rest of your life, and so, this is an exciting and re-vitalizing time for our college, with new members of the family to welcome and a new future ahead for each one of us.

But there is one more quotation challenge and, indeed, another prize for this, which may appeal to the younger members of our gathering. Here it is, and I quote:  ‘It is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities’. Anyone? Here it is for a second time with a clue inserted: ‘It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than out abilities.’ Of course it is from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling published in 1998, p. 245. Words spoken by Professor Dumbledore.

If you did not manage to guess correctly, do not worry, for not everyone is an expert in popular culture. Each year I take part in a village quiz, and our team is entirely composed of Church of England Clergy: a Canon Professor and Principal of a theological college, another College Chaplain, a Professor at Oxford who is also a clergyman, a vicar and myself. We must know something, you might think. One of our number was tested with the question: ‘Who was the last person or group to win the X Factor?’. He replied: ‘What’s the X Factor?’

But let’s get back to our quotations, and indeed to the scripture readings tonight, which speak of choice. What decisions have we made in our lives that have brought us, by twists and turns, to where we are right now? I don’t mean simply deciding to come to Chapel this evening, although may I commend you on an excellent choice is so doing, but the hundreds of other choices that have formed us: our parents’ choice of where we were brought up and where we went to school; the choice of friends we make; the subjects we chose to take and those we decided to reject; our A level choices; our decision to go into higher education and so on and so on … And why choose Worcester College? The wonderful grounds and buildings, the friendly reputation, the teaching, the sport or the music? Or is it more that Worcester chose you: chose you to study here, or chose you for a certain sporting team, or chose you to sing in the choir as a student or as a boy chorister. And what does Worcester expect in return? What fruit are we expecting you to bear? Academic success, sporting excellence, a glittering career? Great expectations indeed. I was saying the other day that it is difficult to find the right words to describe the work/life balance needed in a place like this.

It seems to me that the most important choice we have to make about how we should live, through this new academic year, is one of response to the words of Christ – that appeal of his that we should love one another. I particularly admire this version of the greatest commandment in John 15, because it does not say ‘Love one another as you love yourself’, which is sometimes a very difficult concept, but ‘Love one another as I have loved you’. The love of Christ, self-giving and sacrificial, is not only our model, but also our impetus and our strength. We are able to love because he loved us first and, although taking the road of selfless love can often be hard, we will always be given sufficient grace for the task.

 Moreover, the consequences of this love in action is the bearing of fruit: the kind of fruit that we hear about from St. Paul: patience, self control, joy, peace, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness and kindness. And the consequence of this work of God is joy ‘I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy complete.’ The consequence of our response to the love of God is life in all its fullness.

The practical means by which love can be expressed in action in an Oxford college is though a mutual sense of care, kindness and responsibility. In fact, rresponsibility encompasses a number of virtues: humility, generosity, diligence, thankfulness and patience amongst others. These are all virtues that require certain amounts of self-sacrifice and discipline. Responsibility and family, or community, life go hand in hand. For if we were to be left to our own devices as individuals unaided and uncared for, and not helping others we could only fail.

This morning I was preaching the University sermon at St. Mary’s on the High Street on the day when the benefactors of the University are remembered. These patrons of learning are always commemorated in public and their legacy lives on as they are praised for their generosity. But living a good life need not necessarily mean giving on such a large scale, or receiving the glory for it. Indeed, if the gift is not in the spirit of the love and kindness Christ speak about, then it may not bring the giver much joy. I was talking to a wealthy, highly educated and distinguished philanthropist the other day, who had achieved a great deal and in turn for his generosity, had received a great deal of glory and praise for his work. I did not ask him about his motivation in life, or belief system, but he said to me that he wished to finish his life ‘a good man’. Some would say that his goodness is plain for all to see in his generosity, but he himself was still striving to feel that he was ‘good’. It reminded me of Dorothea’s words to Will Ladislaw in Middlemarch who confides to him her belief …

“That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil — widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.”

This Michaelmas term, let us desire what is good, respond to the call of Christ to love one another as he has loved us, and to live lives that acknowledge the responsibility and inter-connectedness of each one of us to the other. May we do this with the help of God’s grace, freely given to us, so that we may have joy, and our joy complete. Amen.

University Sermon. October 13^th, 2013 Rev’d Dr. Jonathan Arnold

2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

The late writer and journalist, Keith Waterhouse was plagued by a recurring nightmare that when he died he would be visited by an angel, and taken by the hand and led into an enormous library where he was shown a long shelf of books. When he asked the angel why he was looking at this particular shelf, the messenger replied, ‘Those are all the books you should have written’. Indeed, to add to the nightmare,  in real life, Waterhouse once left 10,000 words of the first draft of his play, Billy Liar, in a taxi, although he later admitted that losing that ‘pretentious twaddle’ was the best thing that could have happened to him.

The fear of not having met one’s own targets, or of losing one’s work, is prevalent in Oxford at this time, as we begin the academic year. Someone once told me that, if you ask a scholar, ‘How was your summer?’ and he or she answers ‘It was productive’ that means they did some work. If they answer, ‘Not as productive as I had hoped’ then it means that it is likely they did next to nothing at all!

Whether this is your first year at Oxford or your fortieth, the beginning of the Michaelmas term is always an expectant one, full of possibilities and hope as well as some anxiety, trepidation and  maybe even some regret, perhaps from uncompleted tasks, or because the beginning of this year marks the end of something else. As T.S. Eliot wrote in Little Gidding, from his Four Quartets:

‘What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.’

It is difficult to make a start here without making an ending somewhere else, even if we have seen many academic years come and go. In effect, in order to make the start we have to come to terms with the loss of something else, whether that be saying goodbye to relatives, friends and homes, or to projects of work, or to a past lifestyle or place.

But the benefits of closing down, perhaps temporarily, parts of our life in order to enter a new one are great. In remembering our benefactors in the prayers today, we are reminding ourselves of the opportunities open to us because of the generosity of those who have given so much in the past. People who gave, and continue to give, precisely because they were, or are, grateful for the opportunities afforded them and wish to give in return. Remembering those who have blessed us is an important task in itself, for without the love and support of others, we could not be here today. We have every cause, at this point in the year, to be thankful and our scripture readings this morning reflect that theme.

St. Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, exhorts the disciple to ‘Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead … Remind them’, he says, that, through Christ’s death, we live and reign with him. In the gospel, it is the one Samaritan leper, from the ten who were healed, who postpones his visit to the priest, as Jesus has commanded, because he is compelled to turn back, prostrate himself at Jesus’ feet in order to thank him and praise God.

The healing that the grateful Samaritan received is, in some ways, the end of a sad story. The end of his illness and of a life of pain and exile. Jesus offers the man a gift, but not just a one-off gift. It is a gift that begs for a response and action in order for it to be meaningful. To truly receive the gift – the transforming gift of new life itself – means accepting a new way of being, of physical wholeness and opportunity, but also of continued discipleship. What happened to the other nine, we are not told, but if they considered their healing to be the end of something, they were not entirely correct. Because what Jesus offered was a beginning. The start of a new life, which is centered on the new wisdom and kingdom of God brought in by Christ himself. Christ gives life, not just a restoration of the body, but a whole new kind of life, that begins, as the healed lepers’ inspirational and instinctive act reveals, with praise and thanksgiving to God. In Luke’s Gospel, the very next verse sees the Pharisees ask ‘When will the kingdom of God come?’. It is a dramatic juxtaposition of text that show Theophilus, the intended reader, and us that they have missed the obvious. The kingdom is here and Christ has just revealed it by deed and word, once again.

The location of this drama in Luke’s Gospel is in the region between Samaria and Galilee, a place where Jews would not normally have travelled or feel at home. For some, even Oxford may seem like a strange land at the moment, as many are displaced from their homes. But as the gospel scene suggests, it is in just such luminal places and at such times that God’s blessing can be perceived and apprehended. For if we reflect, with gratitude, on the gifts that we have been given in our life, we are drawn, by God’s love and his call, to acknowledge the source of all gifts, God himself. For our response to that gift is not just to accept it and be thankful, but to use it and nurture it as we are capable by the use of our intellects and talents. It is in the daily act of thanksgiving that we understand that our lives, our minds, bodies and souls are something to be protected and fed with care. They is precious and, if properly used, can bring us to a wisdom, understanding and fulfilment that God intended for us, as his created beings who are uniquely made, and uniquely precious to the one who made us.

This year, each one of us will bring a unique perspective on the world, one that has the potential to persuade, enlighten and move others. Such exploration and expression does not end with the finishing of a degree, or thesis, or even at the end of a lectureship, fellowship or professorship. What we learn here may take us on many other journeys and find our ultimate fulfilment in the light of eternal truth yet to be perceived or known. That time when we shall know and be fully known.

In the Rule, St Benedict gave his monks a set of tools by which to create and cultivate a holy life. One of these rules reminds the monks to remember each day that they will not live on this earth for ever. Perhaps a taboo and seemingly morbid subject these days that is certainly out of bounds for every day conversation. But St Benedict knew that to contemplate the notion that we may not be here tomorrow, is to see today in a different light. Each day is as a new beginning, a precious gift to be savoured and enjoyed, each person is loaned to us for a brief time to be known and loved, creation is to be cherished with wonder and delight, life is here in this moment in all its fullness and not just a future hope. In this light, life is not simply a round of endings and beginnings, achievements and successes, the next essay, the next degree, or job, or new house, or title, trying to find some purpose in our success and glory before it comes to an end. No, it is, as the Samaritan leper realized, about life itself, it is about knowing and believing that in this moment is wholeness, all our endings and beginnings are one now, life has been given to us in Christ in all its fullness.

And in each moment of precious time we can only learn, or know, teach and explore because of the infinite variety and possibilities with God’s creation. In our exploration of the finite and the material we are led by God’s wisdom to touch upon the transcendent and infinite, just as in the Eucharist, which we will celebrate this morning, the sacrament with thanksgiving at its heart, we encounter both the physical and the spiritual, the human and the divine, leading us back to encounter that divine spark within us responding to God’s call and know him afresh, as if for the first time.

And so I encourage you, whether you are starting college as a student, a Don, a parent, or like everyone, someone who is taking another step into the future, keep your antennae alert: watch, listen and seek to find the divine within all things in every moment: in nature, in art, in words, in music and in the relationships that are and will be established in this place and the love that is yet to come. What I want to express is captured beautifully by some words of Aldous Huxley, with which I shall end:

 

We apprehend Him in the alternate voids and fullness of a cathedral; in the space that separates the salient features of a picture; in the living geometry of a flower, a seashell, an animal; in the pauses and intervals between the notes of music, in their difference of tones and sonority; and finally, on the plane of conduct, in the love and gentleness, the confidence and humility, which give beauty to the relationships between human beings.

Amen.

Leaver’s Sermon, Sunday 9^th June 2013. Genesis 9:1-17; Mark 4: 1-20.

Rev. Dr Jonathan Arnold

We apprehend Him in the alternate voids and fullness of a cathedral; in the space that separates the salient features of a picture; in the living geometry of a flower, a seashell, an animal; in the pauses and intervals between the notes of music, in their difference of tones and sonority; and finally, on the plane of conduct, in the love and gentleness, the confidence and humility, which give beauty to the relationships between human beings.

                                                                                                Aldous Huxley

When William Burges decorated this Chapel in the 1860s he didn’t pull any punches. It is an amazing collage of colour and splendour that captures the imagination. I’m sure that, along with the beautiful gardens and other places in this college, that the chapel walls and pews will not easily be forgotten by anyone who has been here.

As you know, the imagery and words that surround us have more than one theme, but a key one is the idea that the whole of creation is blessing God, giving praise and thanks for the world around us. Just as this chapel represents divinity through nature, so our readings tonight both draw heavily upon the natural world to explain our relationship with God and with each other. Firstly the covenant established between God and his people after the flood, symbolized by a rainbow in the sky, and secondly, the parable of the sower, with the resulting growth representing those who receive the seed of God’s word and allow it to blossom into a fruitful life.

With regard to the first passage, I don’t think that there is a depiction of a rainbow in here to represent the imagery in the Genesis passage is about God’s covenant with the whole of creation, but it could easily have been included.

God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

This is such a powerful vision and very a effective connection between natural phenomena and spiritual reality: when God shows the sign of his covenant, the bow in the clouds, it is to reassure us of his promise, not just to humans but to all creation. Nothing could be simpler than the visual trigger of image and idea. And so it is with Burges’ Chapel. Image and idea relate, including the parable we heard in this evening’s Gospel, which is beautifully portrayed. You may not have even noticed it yet amongst the busyness of the building but it is here, behind me: Ecce Seminans Seminandum : A sower went out to sow. And from his seed on the ground we see the tendrils of growth which spread throughout the altar area. The fruit of that harvest is apostles, evangelists, teachers, saints. 

These are the ones who are not distracted by false idols in the world, or the ones who have no roots and fall away when persecution comes or the cares of the world, says Jesus. The ones who bear fruit are the ones who receive the seed of God’s message on good soil, and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty and a hundredfold.

The Gospel message is often related in images drawn from the natural world, in the Gospels, and by the God of Israel in the Old Testament. Likewise, it is represented in art on these walls, and the floor and ceiling.

The two metaphors that we consider this evening, the rainbow and the seed that gorws in the ground relate directly to college life. Not only because the heritage of this college is one which is based upon service to God, from its Benedictine religious foundation in 1283, to its connections with Orthodox Christianity and Thomas Cookes’ foundation in 1714, which all emphasise service to God and one another at heart of our statutes, and that the chapel should be at the spiritual centre of its life. But also because, as students, fellows, staff, children and parents, we make a covenant with each other, not only to abide by certain rules, but to actively work towards a greater collegiality, based upon humility, respect, honesty, and a common purpose. Moreover, at the heart of college life is the notion of growth: the purpose of nurturing what is best in human life, and that comes in many forms, like the varied depictions of the chapel walls. Thus, in all of us here, the seed of knowledge has been sown, skills of research, writing and scientific experimentation have been honed, alongside the fostering of talents for sport, music, art, drama, or whatever it may be – skills that you will take into future careers, places of learning and research,  and to new schools.

The variety of potential that has been nurtured in this place is a reflection of the divine potential within ourselves and in the world. I think Burges knew that when he worked on this place, for the diversity of creation portrayed reflects the glorious diversity of all of you who have come here to pray, to worship, to sing, or to find peace, guidance or spiritual nourishment.

But most of all, I hope that this college, for you, has been about relationships: those between one another, our relationship with the wider world and with God. For all learning and talent is best employed in the service of the greatest kind of wisdom, which is love. 

I hope that, if you are leaving this college community, at least for a while, that you will remember this chapel, with its riot of colour and imaginative art inspired by the divine creation and the world around us. I hope that you remember the paintings, the carvings, take them in and observe them now and when you venture forth into your new lives; be inspired by the world around you. But above all, I hope that you remember us, and the people you have known here. Because it is still your college and chapel community and you will always be welcomed back whenever you wish to come. Dare I say it, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter and the website. Wherever you are in the world, you can keep in touch.

And so I encourage you, whether you are a college leaver, a student, a chorister, a parent, or like everyone, someone who is taking another step into the future, keep your antennae alert: watch, listen and seek to find the divine within all things: in nature, in art, in words, in music and in the relationships that have been established in this place and the love that is yet to come.

‘We apprehend Him in the alternate voids and fullness of a cathedral; in the space that separates the salient features of a picture; in the living geometry of a flower, a seashell, an animal; in the pauses and intervals between the notes of music, in their difference of tones and sonority; and finally, on the plane of conduct, in the love and gentleness, the confidence and humility, which give beauty to the relationships between human beings.’

Amen.

Worcester College 2^nd June 2013

Mark 3: 7-19

 

Thank you for the invitation to be here this evening.  It’s a real joy to be able to come into this beautiful chapel and to hear such wonderful singing.  It’s something we don’t really get in my little country parishes but, having worked in Durham Cathedral some years ago, it’s something I really miss.  So thank you.

When I was at Durham we used to view visiting preachers as something of a mixed blessing.  It may be that you are the same and wondering just what the experience of the next few minutes is going to be like.  You might have pricked your ears at the mention of a few minutes – clearly he at least thinks that he isn’t going to be talking for too long.  That’s encouraging.  On the down side II have to tell you that a parishioner brought be a little present last Christmas.  It was a book – called ‘101 things to do during a boring sermon.’  Many of those who came to the Cathedral obviously came with the view that they needed to preach the best sermon of their life – the trouble was that they tended to preach three sermons in one slot!  So, with that in mind, I will try not to take up too much of your time and will endeavour to say something of some interest.

I have to say when I took a first look at the readings for this evening that I wondered whether that was going to be possible.  Cain’s murder of Abel and the ensuing consequences didn’t seem to me to provide the sort of material needed to say something encouraging.  It’s all a bit hopeless.  Cain killed his brother out of jealousy – killed him simply because his offering was found to be more acceptable by God.  There was a bit of denial – ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ – before the realisation that what he had done was wrong and wad going, in today’s terms, to attract a life-long tariff.  There was to be no end to his punishment for as long as he lived.

It’s a really depressing story – but it’s one which continues to be reflected in today’s society.  There are those who, for whatever reason seem to believe that they have the right to take another life.  We only have to watch the news or to read the papers to see that is true.  Whether it be the death of April Jones, or Lee Rigby, or Georgia Williams or any of the countless victims who never make it into the media there is, for many of us, a sense of shock and revulsion, helplessness and even numbness.

But it isn’t just the violence that we see against individuals which must give us pause for thought.  I don’t want to rehearse the politics of Afghanistan or Syria – I don’t see much point in trying to work out who is at fault because all I know is that day after day people are suffering loss – whether of life, of home, of livelihood or of loved ones.  Their blood cries out from the land every bit as much as Abel’s did.

And if our first reading doesn’t help us to find some encouragement then what about the second?  One the face of things it’s a bit bland.  Jesus performing some more healing miracles and being ready to get into a boat followed by what feels a bit like the calling of a register at school – the names of the twelve whom he appointed as apostles.

I was lucky enough to be born and grow up in a place called Alnwick up in Northumberland.  Around ten years ago it was voted as the best place to live in England.  It’s a market town and the home of the Dukes of Northumberland in their splendid castle.  The people are friendly and there certainly used to be a whole range of independent shops selling pretty well everything you might need.  The local butchers full of beautifully reared meat and game.  Fish from the coast five miles away.  Tea rooms, tourist shops, pubs and restaurants and even a toy shop to rival anything outside Hamleys.

And we had all sorts of choices about where we might like to go.  The beaches of the Northumbrian coast are gorgeous – mile upon mile of golden sand raking back from the into sand dunes where young boys and girls can play for hour after hour.  Or out into the wild beauty of the west of the County – rolling hills and the history of Roman occupation and the Roman Wall.  Or up into the border country – or to Lindisfarne, seat of Christianity and home in days gone by of Aidan and Cuthbert, two of the great northern saints.  Or up into the Cheviots, the hills that stand at the northern end of the Pennine way.  The town is a lovely place – but the area in which it is set is even better.

And so there’s a part of me that feels that I fully understand why Jesus would want to take himself off up a mountain and call those who were close to him to be with him.  It had been a long day with people clamouring for his attention.  Why wouldn’t you want to enjoy the beauty of their surroundings and take a little time to rest and relax – to recharge batteries?

But then, if you look a little closer you’ll realise that’s not right.  If you look closely, you don’t see a group of men relaxing at the end of a day – you are far more likely to see them engaged in earnest conversation.  Jesus might be doing most of the speaking with the apostles asking the odd question.  What we are witnessing is not something ordinary – we are witnessing the start of something truly extraordinary – something which is going to turn the old order of things on its head.

As we heard, there were those who had seen Jesus in action who were beginning to realise his significance – to understand who he was – the Son of God.  That isn’t news that he is ready to be heard widely because both the Jewish and Roman authorities weren’t likely to react well.  And as the Son of God gathered around those who were closest to him, it is no coincidence that they were twelve in number – corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel.  What is very clear in the symbolism of what we see is that Jesus isn’t simply here to heal – he is here to bring about a restoration at every level and he goes up the mountain with his disciples to shape the movement that is about to launch.  It will challenge society at every possible level and will herald a new relationship between God and His people. 

What we see in our two readings are, if you like, the two extremes, the highs and the lows – the worst of what has been and the best of what can be.

In a very real sense it is for us to play our part in making possible the best of what can be.  It is for us to play our part in dismantling the barriers which cause so many of our troubles – whether between people of different race, or different religion, different sexuality or even different gender.

Last summer the Olympic Torch relay came through the village that I live in and we decided at church that it would be good to offer tea and cakes to those who came along.  Initially we thought it would be a good fund raiser but one member of the congregation challenged us with the idea that this was, perhaps, an occasion when it would be better simply to offer hospitality – in other words, rather than selling tea and cakes we should simply give them away.

It seems like such a small thing but I was struck by the reaction of many who came along – struck by the massively positive reaction of the majority to a simple bit of hospitality freely offered.  And with that simple thought it seems to me that we glimpse a way towards achieving the best of what can be.  A spirit of giving, a spirit of hospitality, will play a huge part in bringing people together and breaking down the barriers. 

And isn’t that what we all hope for?

“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine…But…we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ”

 When I was a child I thought as a child. Specifically, when I was about 9 years old I went through a phase of refusing to wear any clothes that weren’t either white or black.

 Now that I’m an Anglo catholic priest of course I have left childish things behind me, but at the time my sartorial choices were strongly influenced by a desire to emulate Han Solo – the hero in my opinion – of the Star Wars films, although in truth I also very much wanted to be a Jedi Knight, like Luke Skywalker, the official blue-eyed boy of George Lucas (soon to be extended) Sci-Fi series.

 And the Jedi bit was trickier to pull off. Not having any diminutive Jedi masters at my disposal, my training in the ways of the Force consisted of blindfolding myself and, using one of my Dad’s golf putters as a ‘lightsabre’, hurling a tiny rubber ball against my bedroom wall, and trying to deflect it by ‘reaching out with my feelings’, whilst it hurtled unerringly towards where my dressing gown offered scant protection to my feelingest reaching out parts. 

 Fortunately, it wasn’t just the swordsmanship that appealed. After all, who wouldn’t want to be able to levitate, or have Jedi Mind Control at their disposal, but, I think it was the combination of chivalry and spirituality that really fired my lasers. If there had been a Shaolin Monastery in Southport-on-Sea (they were the only actual Warrior-Monks I’d ever heard of), I would have shaved my head and signed up on the spot.

 Even so, as I say, these weren’t straightforward fantasies – it was still Han with his wisecracking worldliness that I admired most, not the airy-er, fairy-er, Luke, for all his latent Jedi tendencies. It was a confusing time. It’s a miracle I turned out to be so stable…

 What I needed in those days, of course, was Han’s ability to realise that life isn’t always black and white, and Luke’s ability to recognise that clothes needn’t be either. But in truth, thinking in excessively black and white terms isn’t reserved to 9 year-old Star Wars fans. It is something human beings are always strongly disposed to doing, and transcending those categories can be even more demanding than the Jedi ability to defy gravity.

 Which brings us to the story of another sky walker, to the Ascension, and to the numerous challenges it presents.

 At first glance we might be tempted to dismiss the details of Luke’s accounts – in our Gospel tonight – and at the beginning of Acts – as the stuff of childish thinking. Heaven isn’t in the sky, and ideas of Jesus making his way up into the clouds seem more like Jack & the Beanstalk or the Indian Rope Trick than grown up religion. But the Ascension, like the whole story of the man Christ Jesus, is one that deliberately defies black and white thinking.

 Above all, the Ascension, and the ensuing outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, completes the work of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of our Lord, in undermining the black and white divisions between heaven and earth, between humankind and the Divine. And it does so by adopting, and subverting, our most basic religious vocabularies. 

 Of course a god, or a deified human would rise into the sky – after all in nearly every culture, the earliest gods worshipped, have been variants of a sky god – as though people looked up at the roof of the sky, saw light coming through it, and jumped to the obvious conclusion: that somebody must be home.

 Indeed, a great many of our more sophisticated expressions of worship have maintained something of a fixation with height. We’ve built towers or totem poles; our Holy men have gone up mountains or our gods frequented them, and our angels or messengers had wings and come down from on high. And at the same time our fear of crumbling back into the earth, has made soaring into the air a basic human aspiration. So, naturally, our heroes from Etana to Superman are skywalkers.

 But whilst the Judeo-Christian tradition is not less, but more keen to emphasise the otherness of God, his exalted status as set apart from his creation – the Ascension is neither about a rare individual attaining the status of the divine, nor a divinity returning home after a brief visit to the shop floor; any more than the resurrection is about a hero entering the underworld to rescue some treasure from its clutches, and return triumphant.

 We have such stories, but they only serve to reinforce the distinctions between high and low, life and death, sacred and secular, and to buttress the human hierarchies that arise from those ideas.

  No, this story is about the separating veil between the celestial and terrestrial being torn apart, about the beginning of a process that will see death destroyed, the heavenly city descend, the most high god make his permanent dwelling in the midst of his creation, and humanity itself bodily taken up into the eternal godhead.

 Just as the Incarnation saw the Divine and the human joined inseparably in the person of the man Christ Jesus, so the Ascension marks the beginning of humankind being taken into God through his dying and rising again. Just as the resurrection opened the grave, so the ascension opens heaven, not only for the Risen and Ascended One, but for all who are become part of his risen and ascended life – as inseparably, Paul says, as a body is part of the life of its head…

 There have been a great many mythologies and philosophies which have grown up out of the foundation stages of human thinking – that inevitable tendency to categorise, and divide this from that, out from in, white from black; there have been no shortage of sages calling for a blurring of those boundaries, no shortage of heroes transgressing them, or prophets refining them, but the Ascension reveals the possibility of finally uniting those things that we have had to hold separate, and transcending those categories our nature requires us to create.

 It calls us not simply to grow up in our thinking, but to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, the one in whom God is reconciling all things to himself. It calls us to live even now lives that defy the old distinctions – the eternal life of heaven itself, in the down to earth realities of the here and now.

 When I was in my black and white phase, I was unwittingly enacting a very old idea – one deliberately woven into the Star Wars story in its homage (witting or otherwise) to the Ascension – by trying to put on the clothes of my hero…

 In the first film the young Skywalker’s mentor mysteriously disappears leaving only his cowled Jedi cloak behind, and several films later, we see Luke wearing just such a cloak, having literally taking up his master’s mantle.

 The writer of the screenplay, just like the writer of our Gospel, no doubt had somewhere in mind – Elijah’s ascent to heaven, the passing on of his cloak to his young apprentice Elisha – which gave us the phrase that, as it happens, has filled our papers in recent weeks.

 “Moyes takes on the Masters Mantle.” “The Mantle passes to a new Pope…a new Archbishop…”

 We refer to Elijah’s Ascension more frequently than anyone might reasonably expect, but, in so doing, we remind ourselves of the core message of our Lord’s Ascension also.

 That where he goes we are to follow.

 That the whole reason for his going is precisely our following, not simply to demonstrate his exalted status, but to pave the way for ours. That in his going we are called to take on his mantle, we are ‘clothed with power from on high’ to take up his mission, to live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

 And we are challenged, not to look up into the sky, but to grow up, together, into the likeness of the One who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things

 Finally, corporately, to be conformed to the image of the one who is above all, and through all and in all.

 “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine…But…we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

 

 

University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford – Three Choirs Festival Service (Britten’s God) 1 May 2013

 

Tiny and apparently simple, but perfect.  Composed in a few hours in the sick bay during his last school term at Gresham’s, the 16 year old Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin – as you heard it just before the Gospel reading – is a jewel.  It may well have had more performances than almost any other Britten piece, but because most of these have been at church and carol services they largely escape the official tally.  As John Bridcut the filmmaker and author of an excellent companion to the composer says, ‘New Britten listeners can start here – but it still works wonders for old hands too.’

 

And it’s that reason that points us immediately to why we’re celebrating Britten particularly this evening in this musical feast.  It’s not only that he was born 100 years ago – there’s plenty of recognition of his centenary in concert and festival programmes throughout the year – it’s also because his creative gifts continue to intrigue, delight and inspire performers and listeners alike.  As I stand in this pulpit tonight, having heard that sequence of Britten anthems sung by our three excellent college choirs, my mind goes back to when I preached a few years ago at the Aldeburgh Festival in the parish church renowned for its John Piper memorial window to Britten and where the composer is buried.  I confessed to an extraordinary sense of marvel on that occasion – and I do so again!  ‘Marvels unfold’ declares the mysterious Traveller in the opera ‘Death in Venice’ when he first appears to Aschenbach – and they have!  The music of Britten evokes for me the huge East Anglian skies and the bleak and stony Suffolk beaches.  I live in Buxton on the edge of the Derbyshire Peak District – as far from the sea as you can get.  We have our own Festival – not as old as the Aldeburgh Festival – but equally full of surprise and delight, and a few years ago we put on ‘Noye’s Fludde’ in the town’s Georgian parish church.  As I watched it, I remembered the art historian Kenneth Clark’s description of how he sat in his pew in Orford Church, dutifully awaiting some spark of divine fire.  And it happened – an overwhelming experience during one of the early performances of that Chester miracle play so brilliantly set to music by Benjamin Britten.

 

The extracts from Britten’s cantata ‘St Nicolas’ we’re hearing tonight remind me of the Saint (sung by Peter Pears) standing again in that Aldeburgh pulpit, and the Pickled Boys walking up the central aisle singing Alleluia.  And I remember above all a concert in that church with the Britten-Pears Chamber Choir when I felt very honoured to be asked to sing the short bass solo in ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’ – ‘For H is a spirit and therefore he is God’ – those strange words of Christopher Smart which point to the mystery of the God who is all around us and also the very breath of our life.  H – huuh….

 

Now it would be far too easy to spend this entire sermon reminiscing – which would be very self indulgent for me and very tedious for you!  But allow me just one more memory:  the year when I was a music student working at the Aldeburgh Festival – 1976 – a long hot summer – the last Festival that Benjamin Britten was alive and the joyful garden party at the Red House we were invited to when the announcement of his Life Peerage was made public and we were able to talk to the great man sitting, smiling in his wheelchair in the bright sunshine.  During that extraordinary week the twelve students I was with thought we might put together a little concert of chamber music, songs and piano duets and present it on the stage of the Aldeburgh Cinema.   It’s now a regular feature of the Festival I gather, but it was quite a novelty then.   I was the compère and I recall my panic when I walked through the curtain and saw in the audience, sitting side by side on the front row, Peter Pears, Mstislav Rostropovich, Joyce Grenfell, Laurens van der Post the travel writer and Mary Potter the artist – all of them sadly no longer with us.  All I can say is that they were incredibly gracious………

 

‘I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly,’ said Jesus in our Gospel reading tonight.  And the Greek phrase for having something more abundantly means to have a surplus – a superabundance.  I certainly had that in the summer of 1976 – it took me months to come down to earth!  And for the Christian, to be a follower of Jesus – to know who he is and what he means – is to have a superabundance of life.   Whenever I’m deeply moved by a painting or a poem or particularly a piece of music – as I have been many a time when I’ve listened to something by Benjamin Britten – I know that I’m living with some immense significance surrounding me, something that points towards what is infinite and eternal and awe-inspiring – something, that in the language of faith, speaks of the glory of God, of abundant life.   But for the artist, the writer, the musician who strives to create that painting or poem or piece of music – as I heard Jude Kelly, the distinguished artistic director of London’s South Bank Centre, say at a Radio 3 gathering we had some time ago – they mustn’t be afraid to go to the heart of things in search of that creativity, maybe to hard places of doubt and darkness.  ‘Artists cannot expect to live with certainty,’ she said.  ‘That’s protecting their self interest.  If you’re going to change the world, you need to go through the darkness so you can proclaim the truth.’

 

In other words there’s a cost.  And that’s really the essence of what I want to say this evening – to acknowledge that cost.  Of course it’s the same for all who would call themselves Christians.  Jesus never said the way of discipleship would be easy, but what he promised at the end was abundant life, eternal life.  Meanwhile we hang onto those glimpses of what we’re promised that we’re granted by the grace of God.  Glimpses of glory, moments of transcendence – this is what makes the arts so vital to our well-being.  They’re able to lift us above the humdrum and the ordinary to the level of the sublime.  But let’s not deny that there is a cost.  I don’t just mean a financial one either: I mean the emotional, the spiritual cost.

 

Benjamin Britten knew that cost all too well – and he often wrestled at a deep level with doubts and depression.  Peter Pears, his partner, ascribed Britten’s strong moral sense to his evangelical upbringing – the strictly disciplined work schedule he maintained throughout his professional life.  But, as has been extensively chronicled, his identifying with Christian values fluctuated so that there were times when relationships would sour or suddenly be brought to an end.  ‘Britten’s corpses’ as they sadly became known.    He did occasionally reflect on the nature of God though – particularly with his good friend, the then Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Leslie Brown.  They talked about God the Spirit – the energising, inspiring, giving power that takes over people.  Britten said on one occasion: ‘I’m coming to feel more and more that all my music must be written to the glory of God.’  And when, as his life was drawing to a close, Bishop Brown brought Holy Communion to his bedside at the Red House in Aldeburgh, after reciting the service from the Book of Common Prayer, he asked him, ‘Is all well, Ben?’  Britten replied, ‘How could all not be well with those wonderful words ringing in my ears?’

 

At his funeral, Bishop Brown gave the address and said that attempting to describe Britten’s music was like ‘trying to keep sunlight in a string bag’ – what a marvellous perception!   But he also pointed out that Britten was scrupulously honest about his faith. He looked back nostalgically to the clear untroubled trust he had as a boy.  Whilst he believed deeply in a Reality which works in us and through us and is the source of goodness and beauty, joy and love, he was often uneasy because he wasn’t sure that he could give the name of God to that Reality.

 

But that’s the experience of so many.  ‘If you’re going to change the world,’ said Jude Kelly, ‘you need to go through the darkness so you can proclaim the truth.’   Jesus did precisely that.   Like a true shepherd, he unhesitatingly accepted the rigours of a tough life with the inevitable risk of rejection and suffering.  In that total commitment to the Cross we see the truth of God’s sacrificial love.  Jesus went through the darkness in order that we may have life, and may have it abundantly.   Pray then that each of us may know that abundance, even though sometimes it may seem far away – that each of us may discern God’s will – his plan for us in the fullness of time. And may the music of Benjamin Britten inspire us in our quest.     ‘Ben will like the sound of the trumpets,’ said Bishop Leslie Brown at the end of the funeral address, ‘though he will find it difficult to believe they’re sounding for him.’   They’ll sound for us too – be sure of that – though maybe not quite so loudly!  So let’s be ready for them.   Amen.