Sermons from St Peter & St Paul, Seal, Kent

Second Sunday before Lent 2012: Words of God

2012-02-12T15:26:00.000Z

John 1.1-14, Proverbs 8.1,22-31

I wonder what Jasper’s firstwords were. Can you remember? A wise midwife once told me to make sure mychildren’s first word was “Daddy”, so that that was what they would call out inthe middle of the night…

It is exciting for parentswhen their children start to talk, whatever they say. Those early words are animportant clue to their personalities, to their likes and dislikes, to whatthey are thinking. Actions matter too, of course, but words help to explainthose actions. I know that Jasper is chattering away very well now, and thatmeans you are getting to know him in a different way. If children aren’t ableto communicate for some reason, it can be intensely frustrating for them. Not beingable to talk, whatever age you are, can make you feel isolated. It’s muchharder for people to know you if you can’t express yourself. Words matter.

Our Gospel reading today hada lot to say about words, or rather about the Word. It’s a reading we aremore used to hearing at Christmas: it’s traditionally the final reading atCarol services, and it’s read at Midnight Mass too. That’s because it is John’saccount of the coming of Jesus into the world. He doesn’t give us stories ofshepherds and angels, or wise men and stars. He launches straight in with apiece of poetic theology in an attempt to capture what this man Jesus meant tothose who had lived alongside him.

And John describes Jesusfirst and foremost as God’s Word. As I’ve said, words are ways of expressingourselves, so John is telling us that Jesus was God’s expression of himself. Inwhat he said and did, he showed what God was like, what mattered to him, whathe cared about. John is saying here, “if you want to know God, look at Jesus –the word that sums him up.”

It is an extraordinarilypowerful thing to say, especially as actually, there wasn’t anything veryobviously special about Jesus. He wasn’t some kind of superhero, just a firstCentury Palestinian Jew from an artisan family in an ordinary village. Therewas no halo. There were no choirs of angels or processions of trumpets goingbefore him. But John seems very convinced that God was speaking very powerfullythrough Jesus, and he gets that certainty from the fact that he was drawing onthe stories of those who had been Jesus’ first followers, those who had livedalongside him and travelled with him. We don’t think John knew Jesus himself,but he would have had contact with those who had known him, and they couldtestify to the fact that knowing Jesus had transformed their lives. Many ofthem went on to face persecution and death because of their determination tolive out and pass on the message they had learned from Jesus, so we can see howdeep an impact he’d on them. You don’t take those risks for something youaren’t convinced of. In this flesh and blood, vulnerable human being, they’dhad seen a love that they had never imagined, an acceptance which healed them.They had been drawn together into a community where it didn’t matter whetheryou were rich or poor, male or female, what you had done, or who you were – youbelonged. They’d had a glimpse of the divine, something utterly beyond them,and they knew it. They didn’t understand it and they couldn’t explain it. But theyknew it.

In Jesus they had seen God’spriorities – the priorities expressed in the Old Testament – lived out. Therewas a passion for justice, loving care and respect for those whom life hadtrodden down. That’s what brought Jesus into conflict with the authorities andgot him crucified. In an age when might was right a Word that spoke out for thevoiceless – the poor, the disabled, the outcast – wasn’t going to be one thatthose in power would want to hear.

So here was God, they felt,embodied in human form. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And the first reading weheard, from the book of Proverbs, essentially says the same thing in a slightlydifferent way. It introduces us to Wisdom, personified as a woman, present withGod from the beginning, sharing in his work of creation, present among humanbeings, close to them - “delighting in the human race”. God isn’t sitting on acloud in the sky looking down on the world with disapproving judgement, says LadyWisdom. He, and she, are right there in the thick of the world, rejoicing init.

Now, all this is very well –lovely images, beautiful words – but what has it got to do with Jasper and hisfamily today? What has it got to do with the rest of us, come to that?

It is this.

The God who spoke throughLady Wisdom, the God who spoke through Jesus, the Word made flesh, has notfallen silent now. He still speaks. A medieval mystical writer called MeisterEckhart once said “All creatures are words of God.”* Each of our lives canspeak of God, passing on something of his love to others if we let that happen. “To all who received him, who believedin his name, he gave power to become children of God,” said John. Translatedinto plain English that means, if we want to be a part of what God is doing wecan be. We can live as part of God’s family. We can show his family likeness inthe things we do. When we love others, when we speak up for those who can’tspeak for themselves, as Jesus did, we are being words of God to the world.

Today, as we bring Jasper forbaptism, we are asking not just that God would bless him, but that through himGod would bless us too. That he will be God’s word, that his life will countfor something and make a difference.

To do that, though, he isgoing to need all the support he can get, so that his life can speak loud andclear of love and justice. He needs people to talk to him in order for him tolearn to speak in the ordinary sense, people to tell him stories and read himbooks, talk to him about the world around him and build up his vocabulary. Healso needs to hear the words of God before he can be a word of God himself. Thatinvolves all of us playing our part – his parents, his godparents, his familyand friends, and the church too. We need to make sure he hears that he is lovedand welcomed, so he can grow up to love and welcome others. He needs to hearthat what he does matters, so he can grow up to act with integrity. He needs tohear that when he gets things wrong it isn’t the end of the world, that he canbe forgiven, so he can learn to forgive others too.

The Bible says that Jesuswas, supremely, God’s Word to us, but it also says that each of us is a wordthat speaks loud and clear too. Let us pray that the story our lives tell isone that helps Jasper and all God’s children to grow as they should.

Amen

*German sermons DW53

Third Sunday before Lent: That hunted feeling...

2012-02-05T11:47:00.002Z

Mark 1.29-39

“Simon and his companionshunted for Jesus…”

I don’t know what yourreaction was when you heard those words from our Gospel this morning, but minewas a feeling of tremendous sympathy. There’s something very poignant aboutthis story. Jesus has begun his ministry in a whirlwind of activity inCapernaum. It all starts with Simon Peter’s mother in law, laid up with afever. Jesus heals her, lifting her up not just physically but spiritually andemotionally too, giving her back her life. It’s a very personal favour, helpingout a friend. But of course, everyone else gets to hear of it, and Jesus isbesieged. By evening “The whole city was gathered around the door” saysMark. That has to be an exaggeration, but that’s how it feels. In Jesus’ world,what help was there for those who were sick or troubled? Precious little. Lifewas precarious, especially for those who were poor to start with. When word gotout that here was a healer who could raise a woman from her sick bed just likethat, no wonder people flocked to Jesus. And he responded. “He cured manywho were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.”

Finally, when the lastpatient went away healed, Jesus could rest. And then, in the early morning, we aretold, while it was still dark, he crept out of the town to find some space topray, some time to be with God. It was still dark, and no one saw him go. Butas soon as dawn came, so did the next wave of sick people wanting his help. Thedisciples didn’t know what to do, but they knew that Jesus would. They wereriding high on a wave of excitement. So out they go, and they hunt him down.The Greek word Mark uses is the same one you would use of hunting an animal,pursuing it until you catch and kill it. They don’t just look for him; theyhunt for him, without any apparent thought for what his needs might be. Andwhen they find him they tell him “everyone is searching for you…”Who is this “everyone”? Didn’t he have the “whole city” at his door the daybefore? Didn’t he work his way through every disease this town could throw athim then? Where have these people come from?

The fact is that human needwas endless then, just as it is now. Anyone who works in any sort of publicservice – teachers, medical staff, social workers, emergency services - willknow that. The job is never done. You can help one person, but there will beanother and another and another coming along behind them. If you do somethingwell, you can be sure that you will be expected to repeat the miracle, and doit better, and faster, and probably for less money next time…If you fail, itwon’t escape attention. Everyone has an opinion on what you are doing. We’veall been to school, so we think we are all experts on education. We’ve all beenill, so we know how the NHS should be run. We feel free to sit on the sidelines, to criticise and demand. Today is Education Sunday, a day when we areasked especially to pray for those who work in that particular part of ourpublic service – if you are a teacher or work in a school, thank you for allyou do. We do know how hard it can sometimes be.

Those in other jobs are alsohounded by the demands of work, of course, especially in the current financialclimate. There is always pressure to do more with less, to work ever faster andsmarter. It is easy to find yourself looking constantly over your shoulder,having to stay ahead of the competition all the time. And whatever we are doing, if we have aconscience we want to be doing it well, not letting others down, working withintegrity.

For those who have no work thepressures can be just as bad; despite what the tabloid press says, life onbenefits, for the vast majority of people, is extremely tough. It can befrightening, humiliating and depressing.

And working or not, any of uscan find ourselves beset with family struggles, health problems and a host ofother worries which drive us to despair.

Sometimes we all feel houndedby our responsibilities, hunted down. Apack of demands bays at our heels, and we don’t know where to turn to get awayfrom them. All we want to do is sit and rest for a while. And that is where wefind Jesus at this very human moment, hunted down by people who want one morehealing, one more word of advice, just a minute of his time…

We could just stop there, andthis story would have given us something precious to take away. Sometimes it isenough simply to recognise that Jesus has been where we are. We can see hisfootprints in our own human lives. But if we read on we discover that as wellas sharing our exhaustion, Jesus’ example can also help us to deal with it,because somehow, from somewhere, he finds the strength not only to continuewith his work, but also to broaden it. “Let us go on to the neighbouringtowns,” he says “so that I may proclaim the message there also; for thatis what I came out to do.” When Ihear that response I think to myself, “Whatever Jesus was on, I need some of ittoo…!”

The clue, I think, is in whatJesus is doing when he is discovered by Simon. He hasn’t got up in the earlymorning to worry, or to plan, or to get some other jobs out of the way. He hasgot up in the morning to pray. It is prayer which is the key to the way hecopes with pressure. That probably doesn’t sound very exciting or revolutionary,but it is true.

My experience is that churchgoersoften have a very ambivalent attitude to prayer. Many people feel it issomething they ought to do – like going to the gym or cutting down on cakes –but somehow they don’t get around to it. Praying at services is one thing, orin desperate situations, but regular prayer is really for the professionals – “sayone for me, vicar!” People are often rather coy about prayer, as if it is anodd thing to do. And does it really matter that much? Will it really make sucha difference?

According to Jesus, andlooking at his example, yes, it will. Not because it will magically solve ourproblems, but because it will help us to see them in a new light, to set themin a new context. When we are feeling hunted, in particular, it seems to methat prayer can do two things which nothing else quite achieves.

Firstly it reminds us, quitesimply, that God is there. When Jesus prays he re-discovers again and againthat he doesn’t have to fight singlehanded against the powers of darkness. He giveshimself permission to need help, and to ask for that help. When we pray we dothe same, and that’s tremendously liberating. I don’t have to save the world. Idon’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to know what to do. I can acknowledgemy limits with great gratitude and relief. Prayer helps us to cut ourselves some slack. Our hands can only hold somuch – that’s how it should be – so we put ourselves, and those things whichare hounding us, into the hands of a God who has no limits.

The second thing that happenswhen Jesus prays is that he draws on the strength of a whole community offaith. I say that because at this time the normal practice of prayer, which Iam sure Jesus followed, was to pray seven times a day, using words from theBible, Psalms and set prayers. Of course people also simply poured out theirhearts to God in extemporary prayer too, but the backbone of private devotionwere these common prayers that were laid down and shared. Christians carried onwith that pattern, and they still do. In monasteries there is a daily round ofprayer, starting with Matins in the early hours and going through to Compline, whichfinished – completed - the day’s prayer.

You don’t have to be a monkor nun to pray in this way, though, and there are countless simplified andshortened versions of these daily forms of prayer around. I’ve included some inthe leaflets on prayer on the table at the front. So long as whatever you do suits you, becomesfamiliar - and you don’t beat yourself up if you don’t always stick to it - itwill do fine. Praying this way - leaningon an inheritance of faith and using words that reflect the struggles and thewisdom of those who have gone before you – reminds you that you aren’t ploughinga lonely furrow. You are slipping into a tide of prayer, like a river whichflows on taking you with it. It isn’t the only way of praying – prayer can takemany forms – but it is particularly valuable in those hunted moments, when youhave nothing left of yourself to give.

If you have been watching theSunday evening drama “Call the Midwife” you’ll have seen this sort of prayer inaction. The programme is about a young and not particularly religiously mindedmidwife in the 1950’s who finds herself, more or less by accident, working in anursing order of Anglican nuns in the slums of the East End of London. Time andagain she comes to the end of her tether, weighed down by the pain and squalorshe encounters. How can these nuns have endured it for decades, deliveringbabies through the Blitz, facing the suffering around them day after day? Theanswer gradually becomes clear to her. Punctuating each day, there is prayer,come what may. If they can gather together they do, but if not they pray alone,in the words they know their sisters in the convent are also using. It is ananchor that holds them, a context into which to put all the burdens of the day,a reminder that, whatever has happened, God is still there, and so are others.

In prayer we tell ourselvesthe truth; that we are not alone, that it isn’t all down to us. When the houndsof overwork, unrealistic expectation, failure or fear have hunted us down andgot us cornered, alone and afraid, it is prayer that holds us steady, andprayer that will put us back on our feet again.

Amen

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b2w74

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Call-Midwife-True-Story-1950s/dp/0753823837

“Call The Midwife: A TrueStory Of The East End In The 1950s” by Jennifer Worth.

Candlemas: Growing old gracefully

2012-01-29T12:05:00.001Z

Luke 2.22-40

When anyone asks me how old I am, I usually answer “21and a bit, and don’t ask about the size of the bit.” I’ll let you into asecret, though, if you promise to keep it to yourselves; I’m actually 51. Now,depending on how old you are, you’ll either be thinking that I amterribly ancient – most children regard anyone above 20 as over the hill – or you’ll be thinking “she’sno more than a spring chicken – what’s she doing standing up in that pulpit?”It all depends on your point of view.

And of course the number of years we’ve lived doesn’ttell the whole story anyway.

How old do you feel inside? I’ve met plenty of 70 year olds who stillfeel 17 to themselves.

Age and aging are complicated. Many people spend theirchildhoods wishing they were older, and the rest of their lives trying to clawback the years that the locusts have eaten. People go to great lengths to holdback the signs of aging. We know that whether we seem young or old people willmake snap judgements about us based on our age. They will assume they know whatwe like, what we think, how we should behave, but those judgements will oftenbe quite wrong. There’s no fool like an old fool, and some children have oldheads on young shoulders.

It was today’s Gospel story which set me thinkingabout age and our attitudes to it. It tells the story of two very old people –Simeon and Anna – and a very young one, the baby Jesus, just 40 days old, andbrought to the Temple by his parents for the rituals prescribed by the law ofMoses. Age meets youth; those near the end of their lives meet one who is atthe beginning of his. Luke underlines Simeon and Anna’s age. It’s clearlyimportant. But I wondered why, and what it brings to this story that can helpus think about ourselves and how we can live well in whatever season of life weare. I’d like to pick up two points that come out of this story for me for usto think about.

The first springs from the sheer unlikeliness of thisencounter happening at all. How do Simeon and Anna spot Jesus in the throng ofthe Temple? How do they know who he is?

The Temple was huge, crowded and noisy. There wereanimals being sacrificed, people coming and going from all over the world. Itwasn’t just a place of worship either, but a forum for debate and discussionabout theology and politics too. It was nothing like a church might be today, aplace of quiet prayer. This was probably more like Bluewater in the week beforeChristmas.

And yet in the middle of all this Simeon and Anna spotJesus, recognise who he is and acclaim him. How? He’s just an ordinary lookingbaby, with ordinary looking parents, coming to do what was an absolutelyordinary thing at the time, no doubt one among many other families in theTemple. There was nothing special about his appearance; he didn’t glow in thedark, despite what you tend to see on the Christmas cards. I’m sure Mary andJoseph would have been able to pick him out of a line-up, but to everyone elsehe just looked like another baby.

So what do Simeon and Anna see in him? The answer,according to Luke, is nothing. It is simply that they are in tune with God,open to the prompting of the Spirit. “Guided by the Spirit Simeon came intothe temple” we are told, and when Anna turns up on the scene later, she somehowknows exactly who this child is and what he is going to do for Israel as well.We aren’t told how they have felt God’s guidance. Was it a voice that theyheard, or just the nagging sensation that something important was happening andthat they needed to be paying attention?

Whatever it is, it all sounds a bit strange, butactually I don’t think it is as unusual as we might think. I’ve heard manytales over the years from people who experienced something like this. I recallone woman in a previous parish of mine who popped out to get a pint of milkfrom the shops one Sunday morning. Her route took her past the church and asshe went by she suddenly had an overwhelming urge to go in; there was noreason, no crisis, no gradual build-up of interest. She just couldn’t resistit. In she came, and in she stayed. Something about that moment made it theright moment. She could have easily just told herself to stop being daft, getthe milk and go home, but she didn’t; she listened to something beyond her understandingrather than to cold hard reason, and she was very glad of that. We are oftenrather reluctant to talk about moments like that, worried others might think usfoolish. This isn’t how sensible grown-ups behave, we think – there are thoseassumptions about age-appropriate behaviour again - but it is far more commonto feel these unexplained promptings than most people realise, and they can bevery important in our lives.

The young bloods in the Temple, those with revolutionin their minds and hearts, missed Jesus that day. The mature leaders, the onesin power missed him too. They knew what was what already. Their minds were ontheir own agendas. But Simeon and Anna were people who had opened themselves toGod, opened themselves to mystery, through a lifetime of prayer. They didn’tassume - however long they have lived – that they had seen it all and knew itall, and so they didn’t write off the non-rational, intuitive aspects of life,the wisdom that was beyond their own.

That’s something which comes naturally to very youngchildren. The world is a mysterious place when you are small anyway; you don’texpect it to make much sense. But as we grow we try quite hard to leave thatmystery behind us. We are keen to be in control, to understand, to be in theknow. We mistrust anything we can’texplain. And that can mean that we shutourselves off to those promptings that come to us from the depths of our ownspirit or from God, the things that nudge us in directions we’d never thoughtof by ourselves. Not so for Simeon and Anna, though, who hold onto that vitalgift of childhood, the humility torealise that they are in the hands of a God who is infinitely greater than theywill ever be. As a result each day is a day on which God can surprise them withsomething new.

And that brings me on to my second point. Simeon andAnna are ready, quite literally, to embrace God’s new work in the world. Simeontakes Jesus in his arms, and gazes with joy at the face of the future, despitethe fact that he knows he won’t see that future come to pass himself. Annacelebrates a redemption that will come long after she is dead. But neither ofthem seems to mind. They care just as much about the world which theirchildren, grand-children and great- grandchildren will live in as they do aboutthe one they are living in, and they are going to do everything they can, rightup to their last breath to encourage the ministry of this child who they knowwill shape that world.

There’s a phrase I often hear people use, especially ifthey are not as young as they used to be. It’s the phrase “in my day”. “In my day people respected each other andthe trains ran on time…” It alwaysfascinates me though, because by definition the people using it are still aliveand kicking. Isn’t it still “their day?” And yet, somehow they feel as if theyhave now become invisible or irrelevant. The real action is all happeningsomewhere else, and they have no power any more to influence it. I canunderstand that – we live in a society which often seems to idolise youth - butthe truth is that as long as we breathe we have a role in the world, gifts togive, a part to play.

I always rejoice that the Church is one place which isrichly gifted with older people. I know people sometimes worry about the ageprofile of the church nationally, and I am glad that here we also have a verygood number of younger folk too, but it is great that there is no retirementage from Christian life. You are as valuable at 99 as you were at 9, or 29. Youmay have different things to offer, but there is never a point at which youbecome useless to the Christian community. I recall an elderly woman I knewmany years ago. Dora couldn’t get about easily any more. But she could pray,and she did pray, faithfully and often, and because she prayed she noticed, andbecause she noticed, she cared. As a young and rather exhausted mother , whowas evidently on her prayer list, I would be invited around to share tea andscones with her, told to sit in a comfy chair and simply relax – just what Ineeded!

You never heard any nonsense from Dora about “in herday”. This was her day, just like all the others she had lived, and she wasgoing to do what she could with it. It made all the difference to me. When shedied, everyone was aware of what they had lost. I don’t know whether shelamented the things she couldn’t do - if she did she didn’t say so – but I doknow that she served God, loved others and was loved by them to the day shedied.

How old are you today? The number of candles on thebirthday cake can only give us one, rather inadequate answer to that question.The truth is that however many or few days we have lived on the earth, Godcalls us to be born again on each of them as Simeon and Anna were. Their eyesopened afresh every day to a world of wonders. And God puts the future into our hands, just as surely as Jesus was putinto Simeon’s arms, and calls us to do what we can to make it a good future forwhoever inherits it. We may not be able to hold back the tide of time physically,but spiritually it is always “our day” a day to live and to love as God callsus to.

Amen