Patronal Festival and Farewell service

 Patronal Festival and final service – July 7 2024

“I thank my God every time I remember you”, writes one of our two patron saints, St Paul to the church in Phillipi. When I pondered which Bible readings to choose for my final service at Seal, there was never any doubt that this would be one of them. 

I don’t know whether I intended to stay as long as I have done here in Seal, but eighteen years later, I’m still here. Now and then, a Bishop or Archdeacon has asked me whether I might feel like moving but my answer has always been “No, why would I, when Seal is the best parish in the universe?” 

That’s not to say it’s all been easy, of course. No community can exist without disagreements - not if it is a real community, where people are allowed to be real people, in all their baffling diversity. But if we stick with one another through the ups and downs, we learn to see God in each other, and once you have seen that, happily, it is something that you can never quite unsee, even if you wanted to. 

I have often described ministry as a “Great God Hunt”, not in the sense that God is hiding from us, making himself hard to find, but that we are invited each day to open our eyes to his presence around us, to wonder where we will stumble across him that day. Usually, if I spot that “good work” of God in people’s lives as Paul puts it, it’s in the things I haven’t planned or worked at. Instead, it will be in the comment of a child in school collective worship, or a story, an idea, a joy or a sorrow someone tentatively shares with me, a moment of connection, a sense that something is happening which really matters. There have been countless moments like this, countless times when I have seen the “good work” of God in you. “I thank my God every time I remember you”, 

But this passage isn’t just about looking back to the past. It is also very much about the future. Paul prays for this little congregation in Phillipi, “that their love may overflow more and more.”  He doesn’t pray that nothing bad will ever happen to them – after all, he’s in prison when he writes these words. Nor does he pray that they will be successful in worldly terms, with thousands flocking to join them. No, he prays that their love “may overflow more and more” so that there will one day be a “harvest of righteousness” because of them, things that have been put right in the world, ways in which their love has made a difference. 

Before I was ordained, my good friend Carol, who was a Reader in the church she and I attended, told me about a conversation she had had with another Reader, called Dot. Dot wasn’t a great academic theologian or a particularly eloquent preacher and yet, somehow, people who came into her orbit seemed to be wonderfully changed by the experience. One day Carol asked her what her secret was. Dot paused and thought, as Carol waited for some erudite pearl of wisdom, till Dot said “you’ve just got to love them…” Many of you will have heard me tell that story before, and I don’t apologise for that, because it is one that I’ve carried with me through the years, and returned to again and again, especially if I was feeling tempted by the latest fad or fashion swilling around in the church, looking for some magic wand to wave over the difficulties of church life – not enough people, not enough money, arguments and frustrations.  “You’ve just got to love them…”, said Dot, and she was right, though I think I’d want to add that you’ve got to let them love you too, and we have both felt mightily loved here.

In church life, some ideas succeed, while some sink without trace. The numbers in church go up and down for reasons that aren’t always obvious. Clergy have to record those numbers in a register after every service, but I’ve learned to be sceptical about those statistics, because as ever with statistics, we only count the things we can count, and we then try to convince ourselves that they are the things which actually count. The problem is that there’s no column in the service register for the most important question of all, which is “did people go away at the end knowing they were loved?”, reminded, or perhaps discovering for the first time, that, just as they are, they are precious to God. That’s what really counts, if only we could count it, because if they did, they will have found a love which can’t but overflow to others, and change the world for the better.

So we look back with gratitude, and we look forward with hope.

But what about the present? What can we say about this moment, now? 

A few weeks ago, as I was decluttering in advance of our move, I came across three ring binders, which turned out to contain the scripts of all the sermons I’d preached in the early years of my ministry, before I had a computer to store them on, including my very first sermon after my ordination as a Deacon in 1993. I was evidently preaching from Romans Chapter 12, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” and  I told the congregation about the point in the ordination  service where those of us being ordained had literally “presented our bodies”. One by one, as our names were read out, each of us took a big step forward towards the Bishop– we were told to make it obvious, a sign of that step forward into a new ministry and a new life.  Retirement may sound like a step backwards, but in reality, like every other part of our journey of life, we have to go forwards to embrace it, and that’s what I hope to do, as deliberately as I did at my ordination, continuing that “great God hunt”, looking for God at work in this new stage of life.  

But this moment is also a step forward for you.  The period between one vicar and the next can be a tricky and unsettling one to navigate. It is tempting to retreat, to hunker down and just wait, but I hope you won’t do that. I hope instead that you will hear the invitation in this time to step forward, to discover new gifts, grow closer together, support and encourage each other. 

And if that sometimes feels a bit scary, as it probably will, for you and for us too,  perhaps we can take comfort from today’s Gospel story, which features our other Patron Saint, Peter. He steps forward, right out of the boat he is sailing in on this stormy sea, and after a few steps, unsurprisingly, he starts to sink. He realises he is way out of his depth, and that people, in any case, can’t walk on water. But in that moment, he cries out “Lord save me”, and the Lord does save him. Jesus didn’t ever rebuke him for getting out of the boat and trying. In fact, it’s Jesus who calls him to do so, not because walking on water is a great party trick if you can manage it, but so that Peter can discover that whenever life overwhelms him, Jesus will be right there.   

I thank my God every time I remember you… and I pray that your love may continue to overflow, as it has done to us over these last 18 years. And I pray that we will all  have the courage to step forward, out of the boat, even if it means sinking a bit from time to time, so that we can learn to stretch out our hands and find that we are held securely by the one who will never let us go. 

Amen

Trinity 5 2024

 Trinity 5 2024

I expect we’ve all been aware in the news over the last week or so of the  search for Jay Slater, the 19 year old who went missing in Tenerife, especially coming hard on the heels of the death of Dr Michael Mosley in similar circumstances. It’s hard not to fear the worst as the days pass.  We’ve seen too, the desperate pleas of his family, in particular his mother, for more help, more action, more feet on the ground to look for him.  The local search and rescue teams probably are doing all they can, but I am sure we can understand and sympathise with the feeling that the family want to throw all they have at this in order to find Jay. Who among us would feel any differently about someone we love?

We meet a parent with that kind of desperation in our Gospel reading today. Jairus, one of the leaders of the local synagogue, comes to Jesus to ask him to help his twelve-year-old daughter who is “at the point of death”.  Jairus is a respected, significant man in his local community, but he thinks nothing of throwing himself at the feet of this carpenter from Nazareth, begging “repeatedly” we are told. But he didn’t need to beg, because Jesus very willingly responds and sets off with him to his house. I am sure Jairus feels a huge surge of relief.

But as they hurry towards his house, just as Jairus thinks a chink of daylight is dawning on the darkest day of his life, Jesus stops, and looks around him, saying that someone has touched him. What’s he on about? They’re in a crowd. Of course someone has touched him. But Jesus won’t be hurried. He waits until a woman steps forward reluctantly, and admits it was her. He listens as she tells him her story - “the whole truth” – and my experience is that can take some time – before he sends her on her way, healed and blessed and restored to her community, which would have considered her unclean because of her illness. 

Can you imagine what Jairus might be thinking and feeling as all this plays out? After all, this woman’s condition was hardly urgent. She’d been ill for twelve years, coincidentally – or perhaps not - the whole of his daughter’s lifetime. Couldn’t she have waited another few hours, another day? For his daughter, every second counts.  

And sure enough, when they reach Jairus home, they find that those seconds have counted, and that she is already dead. The mourners have turned up, and all the rigmarole leading up to a burial, the weeping and wailing, is well underway. If only Jesus hadn’t stopped to heal that other woman, he might have saved her. After all, Jairus has seen that he has the power to heal. He just hasn’t been in time to heal his daughter, because he was healing someone else. 

And who was that other woman anyway? Jairus was a leading figure in his community, and his daughter had all her life before her. The anonymous woman was a nobody, even in her own eyes – she didn’t want to be noticed at all. She’d been marginalised by her condition, and bankrupted by her attempts to find healing. 

But, Jesus seems calm, unhurried, as he takes control of this chaotic, grief-stricken crowd, sending them away firmly, and taking just a small group of the family into the girl’s house. “She is not dead but sleeping” he says.

Biblical commentators argue about whether this was literally true or not. It could have been that she was just so deeply unconscious that she had been taken for dead; we don’t know. But either way, Jesus brings her back to life, back to health, back to her family. All had seemed to be lost to Jairus, as the minutes had ticked away while Jesus’ attention was elsewhere, wasted on this other women, but Jesus knew what he was doing. He knew there was time enough for both of these suffering individuals, and most of all, he knew that in God’s eyes, each was as important as the other, neither deserved attention more, or less, than the other. 

Suffering is a great and incomprehensible mystery. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do some recover, and some not, even with the same treatment?  When we are ill, or a loved one is, we often say that “it isn’t fair – what have I done to deserve this?” We might appeal to science – “I’ve always eaten my five a day, walked my 10000 steps”. Or we might appeal to faith “I’ve always been a good person and helped others”, but underneath it there is an assumption that health or illness are rewards or punishments doled out in the game of life to those who have passed some test or other and are judged more, or less, worthy. 

Whatever else these stories tell us, they knock that idea firmly on the head. In the eyes of their society, Jairus’ daughter is worth more than the woman with the haemorrhage – and if we had to ration their healthcare, I wonder what choice we would make. She is certainly, and understandably worth more to her father. But the woman whose healing delays Jesus is also someone’s daughter, as Jesus points out. Jesus calls her daughter – the daughter of God – just as beloved to God as the child of this wealthy and influential leader. 

There is a deep human tendency to look at life as a competition, one we are desperate to win, but we don’t have to compete for God’s love, these stories tell us. Jairus’ desperate demonstration – throwing himself at Jesus’ feet and begging repeatedly – were no more or less persuasive than the quiet act of a woman who just reached out her hand in a crowd to touch Jesus cloak, hoping never to be noticed. Jesus had the time to give them the time they needed. 

The last verse of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, which we heard earlier, underlines this. He has asked the church in Corinth to help their fellow Christians in Jerusalem, where there is a famine. They have said they would, but then just haven’t got around to making good on their promises. Paul thinks he knows why, and he’s probably right. They are thinking “if we give our money away, what if we need it ourselves?” But as they dither and procrastinate, people in Jerusalem are dying. 

Paul reminds them of the story of the Manna in the Wilderness, God’s provision of daily food to those who were trekking across the desert with Moses on their way out of slavery in Egypt. Every day there was enough for everyone to gather what they needed, but if anyone tried to gather more than that, they found their hoard would be full of worms the following morning.  Gradually they learned that it wasn’t a competition; “the one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

We live in an unequal world. That is not God’s plan, and all the studies show that inequality damages us all in the end. We are called by the Gospel to change that, and the change starts I think, by taking on board that health, wealth and status are not signs of people’s worth to God.

The good news of these stories is that God doesn’t love you more than me, or me more than you. He doesn’t love the young more than the old, or the rich more than the poor, or even the good more than the bad. He doesn’t need to make these calculations. He doesn’t need to ration his love, or his time and attention, because they are inexhaustible, there for all of us.

Amen

Trinity 3 18

 

Ezekiel 17.22-end, Mark 4.26-34

 

Do you remember the Sycamore Gap tree, felled overnight last year in a completely baffling act of vandalism? I’d be surprised if you didn’t. It unleashed a huge wave of outrage and grief, and quite a lot of arguments about why we seemed to care more about this tree than the millions of people whose lives were destroyed by hunger and war every day.

That was a fair challenge, it seems to me, and yet, the loss of the tree, that particular tree, seemed touch a very deep nerve.

Trees are powerful like that. They figure in many different faiths and mythology. Norse myths tell of Yggdrasil, the world tree. The Buddha sat under a Bodhi tree and gained enlightenment, and of course the Bible starts with trees – the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What was it about the Sycamore Gap tree, though, which people found so powerful? It wasn’t an especially old tree, like those ancient yews which can often be found in churchyards, and which might be thousands of years old. It was planted, deliberately by the landowner only about 150 years ago. It wasn’t a rare tree either. The vicarage garden is full of sycamore seedlings, from the trees just beyond its boundaries, lodging themselves all over the place and putting tap roots down to Australia if I don’t spot them quickly enough. Frankly, if they want a replacement they can come and take their pick… It wasn’t even an English native tree. Sycamores were only introduced to England in Tudor times.

 

It was, it seems to me the fact that it stood alone, in that gap between the hills, strong and upright. You couldn’t miss it if you were there. It cried out to be photographed, and it was, thousands of times as well as appearing in feature films. People noticed it, proposed under it, celebrated births and mourned deaths under it. It was often described as iconic in the days after it was felled; its destruction seemed to symbolise the destruction of something far wider, and the fact that seedlings and cuttings have been grown from it a symbol of hope, and a refusal to accept that destruction. The first seedling was given to King Charles, as if those who did so were making a link between the tree and the spirit of the nation.

 

That’s something that the people of the Bible would have recognised, something which Ezekiel, in our first reading, was drawing on. He  was writing for a people in exile, a people who thought that they had lost their place in God’s heart and in his plan. They thought that the family tree of Israel, had been cut down at the roots, and was gone for ever. Not so, says Ezekiel. The kingdom of Judah, as they knew it, may have been destroyed, but God is more than capable of growing it again, he said, from the smallest of cuttings, and see it grow into a great cedar, the mightiest of trees. His vision is about restoration and hope, and it was a vision that was cherished in the centuries that followed, nurturing a belief that  Israel would eventually be recognised and honoured again, looked up to, just like a noble cedar of Lebanon would be, no matter how many foreign armies conquered it.

 

At the time of Jesus, yet another of those conquering armies had taken over Israel. Once again the nation was humiliated. That’s why Jesus’ message that a new Kingdom, the Kingdom of God , was coming was so welcome, and why many  people were so willing to acclaim him as the Messiah, the anointed one who would bring all this to pass.

 

But there is a twist in this story, a twist in the way Jesus tells his parable of the kingdom. The tree Jesus talks about isn’t a cedar of Lebanon. It isn’t even a 70 foot high sycamore. It’s a mustard tree. The precise identification is something biblical scholars argue over, but it’s probably a plant called Salvadora Persica, which is a scraggy, sprawly shrub that grows pretty well everywhere in the Middle East and right across to India. It isn’t fussy about where it grows, and will even grow in salty soil. In Israel it gets to a couple of metres tall, and left to its own devices can grow into dense thickets. It harbours plenty of wildlife, just as Jesus’ parable says, and has various medicinal and food uses, including making toothbrushes by shredding the ends of its fibrous twigs – it’s sometimes called the toothbrush tree – but there’s nothing very splendid about it. It might even turn into a bit of a nuisance if it is growing in the wrong place.

 

Jesus is very deliberately subverting the image of the noble cedar, the symbol of strength. His vision of the Kingdom of God isn’t of something outwardly impressive, all power and glory, but of a stubborn, wild, weedy, tangly shrub, which pops up wherever it wants to.

 

I can imagine a lot of scratching of heads at this. What’s the point of this kingdom if it is so – literally – weedy? If you are looking for something to symbolise your kingdom, something that will look good emblazoned on the armour, you’re not going to choose the mustard tree. And yet, this is a tree which persists. It survives. It welcomes. It provides many things, for many species – space, safety, nourishment - even toothbrushes.

 

What is Jesus telling us about God’s kingdom, God’s work, here? First, that it is God’s work, not ours. This is a tree which grows of its own accord, where it wants to. Second, this parable tells us that God can be at work in the most unlikely of places. He doesn’t need a carefully curated space. He shows up in people and in situations that may seem ordinary, or unattractive or even inconvenient to us. His kingdom doesn’t announce itself with trumpets and a golden glow of glory. Far more often it comes quietly, and is noticed only with those who have eyes to see it. Third, this parable says that the hallmark of God’s work is that it is always hospitable - it welcomes and includes. There is room in it for everyone, something it can give to everyone, if they are prepared not to turn their noses up at something so humble.

 

A faith which is focussed on tidying people up, sorting them out, controlling what they do and say and think may seem appealingly neat and controllable, but it isn’t the kind of faith Jesus came to share with us. He came to bring us life in all its fullness, life that affirms and welcomes the messy realities of life, that is less concerned about how it looks, and more concerned with making sure that everyone knows they are welcome and can belong. That “family tree”, that place of healing, and nourishment, belonging and connection truly is the greatest tree there is.  

Amen

 

Trinity 3 18

 

Ezekiel 17.22-end, Mark 4.26-34

 

Do you remember the Sycamore Gap tree, felled overnight last year in a completely baffling act of vandalism? I’d be surprised if you didn’t. It unleashed a huge wave of outrage and grief, and quite a lot of arguments about why we seemed to care more about this tree than the millions of people whose lives were destroyed by hunger and war every day.

That was a fair challenge, it seems to me, and yet, the loss of the tree, that particular tree, seemed touch a very deep nerve.

Trees are powerful like that. They figure in many different faiths and mythology. Norse myths tell of Yggdrasil, the world tree. The Buddha sat under a Bodhi tree and gained enlightenment, and of course the Bible starts with trees – the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What was it about the Sycamore Gap tree, though, which people found so powerful? It wasn’t an especially old tree, like those ancient yews which can often be found in churchyards, and which might be thousands of years old. It was planted, deliberately by the landowner only about 150 years ago. It wasn’t a rare tree either. The vicarage garden is full of sycamore seedlings, from the trees just beyond its boundaries, lodging themselves all over the place and putting tap roots down to Australia if I don’t spot them quickly enough. Frankly, if they want a replacement they can come and take their pick… It wasn’t even an English native tree. Sycamores were only introduced to England in Tudor times.

 

It was, it seems to me the fact that it stood alone, in that gap between the hills, strong and upright. You couldn’t miss it if you were there. It cried out to be photographed, and it was, thousands of times as well as appearing in feature films. People noticed it, proposed under it, celebrated births and mourned deaths under it. It was often described as iconic in the days after it was felled; its destruction seemed to symbolise the destruction of something far wider, and the fact that seedlings and cuttings have been grown from it a symbol of hope, and a refusal to accept that destruction. The first seedling was given to King Charles, as if those who did so were making a link between the tree and the spirit of the nation.

 

That’s something that the people of the Bible would have recognised, something which Ezekiel, in our first reading, was drawing on. He  was writing for a people in exile, a people who thought that they had lost their place in God’s heart and in his plan. They thought that the family tree of Israel, had been cut down at the roots, and was gone for ever. Not so, says Ezekiel. The kingdom of Judah, as they knew it, may have been destroyed, but God is more than capable of growing it again, he said, from the smallest of cuttings, and see it grow into a great cedar, the mightiest of trees. His vision is about restoration and hope, and it was a vision that was cherished in the centuries that followed, nurturing a belief that  Israel would eventually be recognised and honoured again, looked up to, just like a noble cedar of Lebanon would be, no matter how many foreign armies conquered it.

 

At the time of Jesus, yet another of those conquering armies had taken over Israel. Once again the nation was humiliated. That’s why Jesus’ message that a new Kingdom, the Kingdom of God , was coming was so welcome, and why many  people were so willing to acclaim him as the Messiah, the anointed one who would bring all this to pass.

 

But there is a twist in this story, a twist in the way Jesus tells his parable of the kingdom. The tree Jesus talks about isn’t a cedar of Lebanon. It isn’t even a 70 foot high sycamore. It’s a mustard tree. The precise identification is something biblical scholars argue over, but it’s probably a plant called Salvadora Persica, which is a scraggy, sprawly shrub that grows pretty well everywhere in the Middle East and right across to India. It isn’t fussy about where it grows, and will even grow in salty soil. In Israel it gets to a couple of metres tall, and left to its own devices can grow into dense thickets. It harbours plenty of wildlife, just as Jesus’ parable says, and has various medicinal and food uses, including making toothbrushes by shredding the ends of its fibrous twigs – it’s sometimes called the toothbrush tree – but there’s nothing very splendid about it. It might even turn into a bit of a nuisance if it is growing in the wrong place.

 

Jesus is very deliberately subverting the image of the noble cedar, the symbol of strength. His vision of the Kingdom of God isn’t of something outwardly impressive, all power and glory, but of a stubborn, wild, weedy, tangly shrub, which pops up wherever it wants to.

 

I can imagine a lot of scratching of heads at this. What’s the point of this kingdom if it is so – literally – weedy? If you are looking for something to symbolise your kingdom, something that will look good emblazoned on the armour, you’re not going to choose the mustard tree. And yet, this is a tree which persists. It survives. It welcomes. It provides many things, for many species – space, safety, nourishment - even toothbrushes.

 

What is Jesus telling us about God’s kingdom, God’s work, here? First, that it is God’s work, not ours. This is a tree which grows of its own accord, where it wants to. Second, this parable tells us that God can be at work in the most unlikely of places. He doesn’t need a carefully curated space. He shows up in people and in situations that may seem ordinary, or unattractive or even inconvenient to us. His kingdom doesn’t announce itself with trumpets and a golden glow of glory. Far more often it comes quietly, and is noticed only with those who have eyes to see it. Third, this parable says that the hallmark of God’s work is that it is always hospitable - it welcomes and includes. There is room in it for everyone, something it can give to everyone, if they are prepared not to turn their noses up at something so humble.

 

A faith which is focussed on tidying people up, sorting them out, controlling what they do and say and think may seem appealingly neat and controllable, but it isn’t the kind of faith Jesus came to share with us. He came to bring us life in all its fullness, life that affirms and welcomes the messy realities of life, that is less concerned about how it looks, and more concerned with making sure that everyone knows they are welcome and can belong. That “family tree”, that place of healing, and nourishment, belonging and connection truly is the greatest tree there is.  

Amen

 

Trinity 1 2024

 Deut 5.12-15, Mark 2.23-3.6

 

 

One of the most famous images in Western Art isn’t painted on canvas or hanging on a gallery wall. It is painted on a ceiling, high above its viewers. It was painted, rather reluctantly, by an artist who had at first refused the commission because he said he thought of himself as a sculptor, not a painter. He was only persuaded when he was told he could have free rein over what he painted. The result were the extraordinary frescos painted by Michaelangelo in Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and in particular, the one I am thinking of,  the Creation of Adam, the first in a series of images inspired by the book of Genesis.

 

Everyone recognises it, even if they don’t know anything about art. Most people don’t even need to see the whole picture to recognise it. Just the outstretched hands of Adam and God, almost, but not quite, touching. It’s so famous that it’s been turned into a meme, altered, and captioned  in all sorts of ways over the years. I’ve seen versions where Adam is holding a pin card reader out to God, or where Adam and God are stroking a dog, photoshopped between them with the caption “And God said, ‘Let there be a good boy’ and there was a good boy”. And those are just some that can be shared in a sermon without getting me into lots of trouble.  It might all seem a bit irreverent, but in a way, those meme makers are doing exactly what the image meant them to, pondering what might be happening in that encounter with God, in that small space between God and humanity as they reach out to each other.

 

What brought that image into my mind today was a curious coincidence in our Bible readings. I doubt it was the main reason for these passages being chosen, but it caught my attention. Today’s Old Testament and Gospel reading both talk about outstretched arms or hands.

 

In the Old Testament reading, God calls the people of Israel, coming to the end of their wandering in the desert, to remember that it was he who rescued them from slavery in Egypt, “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm”. That’s why they must keep the Sabbath holy. It’s a weekly reminder that it wasn’t their actions which brought them their freedom, but God’s. Keeping the Sabbath, ceasing from work, helps us to see that we aren’t indispensable, that the world can turn without us, that we can’t do it all, have it all, save ourselves, however clever or hardworking we are,  and more than that -  we don’t have to. It reminds us that we are still loved and worthwhile even if we aren’t doing anything, if we can’t do anything, that we are loved and worthwhile in God’s eyes simply because we exist.

 

That’s a huge relief - especially for someone about to retire! - but more seriously, it ought to prompt us to think carefully about our attitudes towards anyone who finds themselves unemployed or underemployed or facing barriers to work. The phrase “hard-working families” is everywhere as we approach a General Election, and I hate it for the way it disparages families, and single people, who would  love to have a job but can’t find one, people whose disabilities, or society’s attitudes to them, are barriers to work, people whose caring responsibilities mean they can’t earn a wage, asylum seekers who want to work, but aren’t allowed to. Valuing people only or mainly for the work they do is damaging and it runs completely contrary to how God sees his creation.  

We matter to God because we are, not because of what we do.

 

That’s underlined in the Gospel reading. The Pharisees are watching Jesus like hawks, waiting for him to slip up. First, they spot his disciples picking heads of grain as they walk through a wheat field on the Sabbath. But it’s not stealing or damaging the crop that bothers them. That doesn’t seem to be an issue at all. It’s that they are working on the Sabbath, because plucking grain, even just a head or two of wheat, is work – harvesting – in their minds. Jesus has an answer for that, drawn from the story of King David,  and they can hardly argue with David, a great hero to the Israelites. But when a man comes to Jesus in the Synagogue on that same Sabbath day who has a withered hand they think they’ve got him bang to rights. They don’t see the man, whose “withered hand” would have made it very hard to live a normal life; he doesn’t seem to count. All they see  is an opportunity to denounce Jesus.

 

And that’s where the second outstretched arm in our readings comes in comes in. “Stretch out your hand” Jesus says, inviting this man to do what he hasn’t been able to do perhaps for years, maybe never. The man stretches out his hand, and as he does he is healed by the power of God, by that outstretched arm which saved the Israelites from slavery.

 

The Pharisees are outraged, but perhaps triumphant too. Jesus has just given them a stick to beat him with, and they go straight off to conspire with the Herodians, supporters of King Herod, who also want to get rid of Jesus. Normally these two groups were at loggerheads, but “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, as they say.

 

Jesus knew that they would react this way. He knew it would cause outrage that he had healed someone on the Sabbath. But he saw someone in need, and knew that his need was more important than the heartless interpretation of the Sabbath laws which the Pharisees demonstrated. “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath”, he had said, and here was a perfect illustration of that.

 

Those of you who took part in our Lent Course this year may remember that we spent some time thinking about the word “Tend” as we considered our calling as a church to care for others, to tend those around us. Tend, I explained, came from a word that meant “to stretch out”. Tents are made of stretched out material. Tendencies are things we have a leaning towards.  We pay attention to things and people that matter to us, leaning or stretching towards them. Tendons allow our limbs to stretch out, as this man does to Jesus, and finds, for the first time in we don’t know how long, that his tendons work.

 

He can only do this, though because Jesus “tended” to him, paid attention, noticed him, and valued his need for healing above the rules he had grown up with, and the risk of providing his enemies with ammunition against him.

 

This is what that Sabbath is really meant to be about, says Jesus, a day when bodies and minds and spirits broken by the weight of unrealistic expectations can be healed, and a world which values people solely by their economic activity challenged. It’s a day when we practice this idea, so that we can take it with us into the rest of the week. The Sabbath, kept properly, reminds us that whether we are able bodied or disabled, working or not working, we matter to God and are loved by him. It invites us, week by week, to stretch out to God, as he stretches out to us.  

Amen

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trinity 1 2012

 

 

Genesis 3.8-15, Mark 3. 20-35

 

…And they all lived happily ever after… Most good fairy tales end with a marriage, a long awaited union of two souls who have found each other after many trials and tribulations. they stroll off into the sunset together into a life which we are left to assume will be coated with magic dust forever after, a model of peace and harmony. But Life isn’t a fairy tale, and the Bible, thank goodness, recognises that from the outset. Our readings today are perfect examples of its realistic view of the trials and tribulations of family life. 

 

In our first reading, the gloss of true love has worn off pretty quickly for Adam and Eve. She may be the only girl in the world and he may be the only boy, but that doesn’t stop them falling out almost as soon as they have got together, amid bitter recrimination. The Bible tells us that Adam was with her when the serpent tempted her to eat the forbidden fruit, but did we hear him trying to argue her out of it? Not a bit of it – he was quite happy to join in, munching away with enthusiasm, and was just as responsible as she was. Now that God is confronting them, though, it is a different story. He doesn’t just blame her, he blames God as well. “The woman that YOU gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit from the tree…” This couple have no sooner found paradise than they have lost it.

 

And then in our Gospel reading we see another family having one of those little moments most families would rather the world didn’t witness. A son gives his family the brush off in a way which makes me wince, as a mother myself.  “Who are my mother and brothers?” he says, ignoring them in favour of the friends he has gathered around himself. The problem for us is that this particular son is Jesus himself. If you are looking for a poster-boy for traditional family values, Jesus isn’t the obvious choice, and his treatment of his anxious family here underlines that. He doesn’t seem ever to have married. He doesn’t appear to care about what would have been considered his sacred duty to continue the family line, and his message throughout the Gospels is consistent with what we see here. Family can mean something far bigger than simply those to whom you are related to by blood or marriage.

 

The early church seems to have been equally sceptical of conventional family relationships. That was partly because they thought Jesus was going to come back at any moment. If you were married, you should stay married, and live faithfully and lovingly with your spouse, but if you were single, St Paul said, better to stay single like him. But another important factor was that choosing to follow Jesus had cut many of them off from their families and communities – they’d had to create new networks of support among their fellow Christians, and some had never had a secure place in a family. Enslaved people, unsupported widows and orphans, people who were on the margins, were particularly drawn to Jesus, and to those who later preached and lived his message of inclusive love. Traditional family life, wasn’t nearly as high on their agenda as many Christians like to think.

 

So what are we to make of all this? Should we be throwing away all our family ties? I earnestly hope not, because I am rather fond of mine, but this story is a reminder to us that the Bible doesn’t put family or marriage on a pedestal. What matters in the Bible isn’t what form a household takes – Biblical households were as varied as modern ones – but what happens within that household, the quality of relationships, the love that is shown by its members, or the lack of it

 

That was something, of course, which Jesus was passionately concerned about. His central message was about love – whether within or outside family life – valuing others as the precious children of God which they really are. He treats those who are weak and vulnerable in his society’s eyes with particular care and honour, welcoming children, healing the sick and disabled, making it clear that they are not burdens but equals. He calls his followers to take seriously their responsibilities to those who depend on them – supporting elderly parents, not casually divorcing unwanted wives who will have no way of providing for themselves.

 

His attitude to women was especially unusual in his time. In a culture where they were largely confined to the home, Jesus encourages them to take a full place as his followers. A woman at a well in Samaria, or Mary of Bethany, resisting her sister Martha’s call to leave the theological discussion to the men, and come and peel the potatoes, Jesus praises and affirms them. “There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it shall not be taken away from her.”  

 

Jesus is deeply concerned for families in the Gospels. After all, families are the context in which most people live most of their lives, whether they are under one roof or scattered far and wide. But the focus of Jesus’ concern isn’t on the outward appearance of the family – what shape it takes, whether it conforms to the patterns his culture expected it to. It is the inner, real experience of the people in it that he cares about. Families, then as now, could be wonderfully supportive and liberating, or they could be prisons in which the God-given gifts of their members withered and died.

 

That’s why Jesus reacts as he does to this visit from his own family which we heard about in today’s Gospel reading.  Opposition to his message is starting to mount. He is challenging the religious leaders, and they don’t like it. They accuse him of being inspired by Satan, not by God, and the rumour on the streets is that he has gone mad. His notoriety is bringing shame on his whole family and in an honour-based culture where conformity was highly valued, that was a serious matter. They come, says the Bible, intent on restraining him – the word that is used implies force. They want to drag him away, and put a stop to his preaching. Perhaps we can sympathise – they are bound to be anxious. But just because they are his family, even if they are motivated by care as well as shame, that doesn’t mean they are right. Children aren’t the possessions of their families. They are God’s gifts to the world, with callings and tasks of their own, and Jesus is the prime example of this. He needs to resist the temptation to fit in with the wish of his family that he should come home, keep quiet and do his duty as a good son, because if he does that he will have to abandon his message and his ministry.

 

Of course, there are times when we should listen to those nearest and dearest to us – they may be telling us things we need to hear – but we also have to learn to trust ourselves and our own ability to hear the voice of God, which calls out to us “Where are you?”, that voice which calls us back to himself and, back to ourselves too, to become the people he created us to be, each with unique gifts to give to the world, and a job to do. Families which encourage every person to heed that voice, will be ones which are indeed richly blessed, and the source of rich blessings to others too.

Amen

 

 

Trinity 1 2012

 

 

Genesis 3.8-15, Mark 3. 20-35

 

…And they all lived happily ever after… Most good fairy tales end with a marriage, a long awaited union of two souls who have found each other after many trials and tribulations. they stroll off into the sunset together into a life which we are left to assume will be coated with magic dust forever after, a model of peace and harmony. But Life isn’t a fairy tale, and the Bible, thank goodness, recognises that from the outset. Our readings today are perfect examples of its realistic view of the trials and tribulations of family life. 

 

In our first reading, the gloss of true love has worn off pretty quickly for Adam and Eve. She may be the only girl in the world and he may be the only boy, but that doesn’t stop them falling out almost as soon as they have got together, amid bitter recrimination. The Bible tells us that Adam was with her when the serpent tempted her to eat the forbidden fruit, but did we hear him trying to argue her out of it? Not a bit of it – he was quite happy to join in, munching away with enthusiasm, and was just as responsible as she was. Now that God is confronting them, though, it is a different story. He doesn’t just blame her, he blames God as well. “The woman that YOU gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit from the tree…” This couple have no sooner found paradise than they have lost it.

 

And then in our Gospel reading we see another family having one of those little moments most families would rather the world didn’t witness. A son gives his family the brush off in a way which makes me wince, as a mother myself.  “Who are my mother and brothers?” he says, ignoring them in favour of the friends he has gathered around himself. The problem for us is that this particular son is Jesus himself. If you are looking for a poster-boy for traditional family values, Jesus isn’t the obvious choice, and his treatment of his anxious family here underlines that. He doesn’t seem ever to have married. He doesn’t appear to care about what would have been considered his sacred duty to continue the family line, and his message throughout the Gospels is consistent with what we see here. Family can mean something far bigger than simply those to whom you are related to by blood or marriage.

 

The early church seems to have been equally sceptical of conventional family relationships. That was partly because they thought Jesus was going to come back at any moment. If you were married, you should stay married, and live faithfully and lovingly with your spouse, but if you were single, St Paul said, better to stay single like him. But another important factor was that choosing to follow Jesus had cut many of them off from their families and communities – they’d had to create new networks of support among their fellow Christians, and some had never had a secure place in a family. Enslaved people, unsupported widows and orphans, people who were on the margins, were particularly drawn to Jesus, and to those who later preached and lived his message of inclusive love. Traditional family life, wasn’t nearly as high on their agenda as many Christians like to think.

 

So what are we to make of all this? Should we be throwing away all our family ties? I earnestly hope not, because I am rather fond of mine, but this story is a reminder to us that the Bible doesn’t put family or marriage on a pedestal. What matters in the Bible isn’t what form a household takes – Biblical households were as varied as modern ones – but what happens within that household, the quality of relationships, the love that is shown by its members, or the lack of it

 

That was something, of course, which Jesus was passionately concerned about. His central message was about love – whether within or outside family life – valuing others as the precious children of God which they really are. He treats those who are weak and vulnerable in his society’s eyes with particular care and honour, welcoming children, healing the sick and disabled, making it clear that they are not burdens but equals. He calls his followers to take seriously their responsibilities to those who depend on them – supporting elderly parents, not casually divorcing unwanted wives who will have no way of providing for themselves.

 

His attitude to women was especially unusual in his time. In a culture where they were largely confined to the home, Jesus encourages them to take a full place as his followers. A woman at a well in Samaria, or Mary of Bethany, resisting her sister Martha’s call to leave the theological discussion to the men, and come and peel the potatoes, Jesus praises and affirms them. “There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it shall not be taken away from her.”  

 

Jesus is deeply concerned for families in the Gospels. After all, families are the context in which most people live most of their lives, whether they are under one roof or scattered far and wide. But the focus of Jesus’ concern isn’t on the outward appearance of the family – what shape it takes, whether it conforms to the patterns his culture expected it to. It is the inner, real experience of the people in it that he cares about. Families, then as now, could be wonderfully supportive and liberating, or they could be prisons in which the God-given gifts of their members withered and died.

 

That’s why Jesus reacts as he does to this visit from his own family which we heard about in today’s Gospel reading.  Opposition to his message is starting to mount. He is challenging the religious leaders, and they don’t like it. They accuse him of being inspired by Satan, not by God, and the rumour on the streets is that he has gone mad. His notoriety is bringing shame on his whole family and in an honour-based culture where conformity was highly valued, that was a serious matter. They come, says the Bible, intent on restraining him – the word that is used implies force. They want to drag him away, and put a stop to his preaching. Perhaps we can sympathise – they are bound to be anxious. But just because they are his family, even if they are motivated by care as well as shame, that doesn’t mean they are right. Children aren’t the possessions of their families. They are God’s gifts to the world, with callings and tasks of their own, and Jesus is the prime example of this. He needs to resist the temptation to fit in with the wish of his family that he should come home, keep quiet and do his duty as a good son, because if he does that he will have to abandon his message and his ministry.

 

Of course, there are times when we should listen to those nearest and dearest to us – they may be telling us things we need to hear – but we also have to learn to trust ourselves and our own ability to hear the voice of God, which calls out to us “Where are you?”, that voice which calls us back to himself and, back to ourselves too, to become the people he created us to be, each with unique gifts to give to the world, and a job to do. Families which encourage every person to heed that voice, will be ones which are indeed richly blessed, and the source of rich blessings to others too.

Amen

 

 

Trinity 1 2024

 Deut 5.12-15, Mark 2.23-3.6

 

 

One of the most famous images in Western Art isn’t painted on canvas or hanging on a gallery wall. It is painted on a ceiling, high above its viewers. It was painted, rather reluctantly, by an artist who had at first refused the commission because he said he thought of himself as a sculptor, not a painter. He was only persuaded when he was told he could have free rein over what he painted. The result were the extraordinary frescos painted by Michaelangelo in Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and in particular, the one I am thinking of,  the Creation of Adam, the first in a series of images inspired by the book of Genesis.

 

Everyone recognises it, even if they don’t know anything about art. Most people don’t even need to see the whole picture to recognise it. Just the outstretched hands of Adam and God, almost, but not quite, touching. It’s so famous that it’s been turned into a meme, altered, and captioned  in all sorts of ways over the years. I’ve seen versions where Adam is holding a pin card reader out to God, or where Adam and God are stroking a dog, photoshopped between them with the caption “And God said, ‘Let there be a good boy’ and there was a good boy”. And those are just some that can be shared in a sermon without getting me into lots of trouble.  It might all seem a bit irreverent, but in a way, those meme makers are doing exactly what the image meant them to, pondering what might be happening in that encounter with God, in that small space between God and humanity as they reach out to each other.

 

What brought that image into my mind today was a curious coincidence in our Bible readings. I doubt it was the main reason for these passages being chosen, but it caught my attention. Today’s Old Testament and Gospel reading both talk about outstretched arms or hands.

 

In the Old Testament reading, God calls the people of Israel, coming to the end of their wandering in the desert, to remember that it was he who rescued them from slavery in Egypt, “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm”. That’s why they must keep the Sabbath holy. It’s a weekly reminder that it wasn’t their actions which brought them their freedom, but God’s. Keeping the Sabbath, ceasing from work, helps us to see that we aren’t indispensable, that the world can turn without us, that we can’t do it all, have it all, save ourselves, however clever or hardworking we are,  and more than that -  we don’t have to. It reminds us that we are still loved and worthwhile even if we aren’t doing anything, if we can’t do anything, that we are loved and worthwhile in God’s eyes simply because we exist.

 

That’s a huge relief - especially for someone about to retire! - but more seriously, it ought to prompt us to think carefully about our attitudes towards anyone who finds themselves unemployed or underemployed or facing barriers to work. The phrase “hard-working families” is everywhere as we approach a General Election, and I hate it for the way it disparages families, and single people, who would  love to have a job but can’t find one, people whose disabilities, or society’s attitudes to them, are barriers to work, people whose caring responsibilities mean they can’t earn a wage, asylum seekers who want to work, but aren’t allowed to. Valuing people only or mainly for the work they do is damaging and it runs completely contrary to how God sees his creation.  

We matter to God because we are, not because of what we do.

 

That’s underlined in the Gospel reading. The Pharisees are watching Jesus like hawks, waiting for him to slip up. First, they spot his disciples picking heads of grain as they walk through a wheat field on the Sabbath. But it’s not stealing or damaging the crop that bothers them. That doesn’t seem to be an issue at all. It’s that they are working on the Sabbath, because plucking grain, even just a head or two of wheat, is work – harvesting – in their minds. Jesus has an answer for that, drawn from the story of King David,  and they can hardly argue with David, a great hero to the Israelites. But when a man comes to Jesus in the Synagogue on that same Sabbath day who has a withered hand they think they’ve got him bang to rights. They don’t see the man, whose “withered hand” would have made it very hard to live a normal life; he doesn’t seem to count. All they see  is an opportunity to denounce Jesus.

 

And that’s where the second outstretched arm in our readings comes in comes in. “Stretch out your hand” Jesus says, inviting this man to do what he hasn’t been able to do perhaps for years, maybe never. The man stretches out his hand, and as he does he is healed by the power of God, by that outstretched arm which saved the Israelites from slavery.

 

The Pharisees are outraged, but perhaps triumphant too. Jesus has just given them a stick to beat him with, and they go straight off to conspire with the Herodians, supporters of King Herod, who also want to get rid of Jesus. Normally these two groups were at loggerheads, but “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, as they say.

 

Jesus knew that they would react this way. He knew it would cause outrage that he had healed someone on the Sabbath. But he saw someone in need, and knew that his need was more important than the heartless interpretation of the Sabbath laws which the Pharisees demonstrated. “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath”, he had said, and here was a perfect illustration of that.

 

Those of you who took part in our Lent Course this year may remember that we spent some time thinking about the word “Tend” as we considered our calling as a church to care for others, to tend those around us. Tend, I explained, came from a word that meant “to stretch out”. Tents are made of stretched out material. Tendencies are things we have a leaning towards.  We pay attention to things and people that matter to us, leaning or stretching towards them. Tendons allow our limbs to stretch out, as this man does to Jesus, and finds, for the first time in we don’t know how long, that his tendons work.

 

He can only do this, though because Jesus “tended” to him, paid attention, noticed him, and valued his need for healing above the rules he had grown up with, and the risk of providing his enemies with ammunition against him.

 

This is what that Sabbath is really meant to be about, says Jesus, a day when bodies and minds and spirits broken by the weight of unrealistic expectations can be healed, and a world which values people solely by their economic activity challenged. It’s a day when we practice this idea, so that we can take it with us into the rest of the week. The Sabbath, kept properly, reminds us that whether we are able bodied or disabled, working or not working, we matter to God and are loved by him. It invites us, week by week, to stretch out to God, as he stretches out to us.  

Amen

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pentecost 2024

 

 

Acts 2.1-21, John 14.8-27

 

Pentecost is traditionally the time when the Church recalls and celebrates the Holy Spirit descending in power on the disciples as they waited in Jerusalem. Jesus had called them to take his message out into all the world. They didn’t even know how to begin, but the Spirit swept away their questions and propelled them out into the streets; they couldn’t do this, but God could.

 

This isn’t the first time the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit, though. The Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, is full of the Spirit. The Spirit hovers over the waters of chaos at the beginning of creation, and it fills the prophets with the knowledge of God’s word. The Gospels, too, tell of the Spirit overshadowing Mary when she hears she is to bear God’s son, and descending like a dove on Jesus at the moment of his baptism. The Spirit is everywhere in the Bible, not seen, but very much felt in people’s lives, the transforming power of God, God’s “here and now” presence in his creation. People may struggle to describe the Spirit, but the Spirit’s actions are life-changingly real to them.

 

In the story we heard from the book of Acts today, the Spirit comes like a rushing wind and flames of fire, but it also brings the rather puzzling gift of speaking in unknown languages. Visitors from every corner of the world hear the message the disciples proclaim and understand it, as if it is being spoken by a native speaker, someone like them.

 

Who are these people? Some may have grown up in other faiths, but felt drawn to Judaism – the proselytes the story refers to - but many came from Jewish ex-pat communities, founded over the centuries around the ancient world. Some of them, though not all, may have spoken or read Hebrew, but their first language, the language they used day to day, was whatever the majority around them spoke – Parthian, Phyrgian, Libyan, or whatever. And however devout they were, their way of understanding and practising their faith would have evolved over time too.  It’s the same for migrant communities everywhere. They may look back to their countries of origin with nostalgia and affection, but when they go back they often find they don’t really fit in any more. They’ve changed and so have the communities they came from.

 

Language is often a symbol of that gulf. Second generation migrants don’t tend to be “at home” in their parent’s language. It’s not their mother tongue anymore. And that doesn’t just mean their vocabulary changes. Our mother tongue, the language we learn first, both reflects and shapes the way we think. We sometimes say, “I know where you’re coming from”, if we think we understand someone,but it’s only really true if we come from the same place ourselves, sharing a language, a background, a culture, similar life experiences.

 

Whether they expected it or not, these visitors “from every nation under heaven” almost certainly felt a long way from home in Jerusalem, further from home than they expected, maybe a bit homesick  But in the midst of this alien land, they were transported right back to the deserts, mountains, pastures, coastlands, of the land of their birth when they heard their own language spoken, and not as if in translation, as a second language, but as if by someone who came from there too.

 

That’s the point of this detail of the story. It isn’t just there to amaze us. The author doesn’t even try to explain how it could happen. He is trying to tell us a deeper truth about the God whom he follows and serves; the truth that God is at home with us, each of us, with us, wherever we are from, wherever we are, wherever we are going.

 

God is at home with us because we are his creation. According to Genesis 2, after God had made a person out of the dust of the earth, he breathed his own breath – a word that can also be translated as Spirit – into that person to bring them to life. And that same Spirit still dwells within us. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we are told that the Spirit prays within us “with sighs too deep for words”. We don’t have to struggle when we can’t find the words to express ourselves to God, because God already knows us; his Spirit is there in the depths of our being; God knows us better than we know ourselves.

 

The belief in a God who speaks our native language, who knows “where we are coming from”, who speaks from the depth of our experience is a huge comfort, of course. But it doesn’t just affect our personal spiritual lives, giving us comfort and reassurance. It should also affect the way we look at the world around us. That’s because if I believe that God speaks in my mother tongue – the native language of a 64 year old, white, Englishwoman from Devon, a priest, wife and mother, with my own particular life story – then I have to believe that God also speaks in your mother tongue, from the depth of your experience too, and that you therefore have wisdom I need to hear, coming from a perspective that I don’t have.

 

It's often tempting to think that the answers we’ve discovered to life, the universe and everything, the solutions we’ve found to the problems that beset us, should apply to everyone else too. If they aren’t like us, then they should be, and we will do our best to make sure they become so, even if it means doing a violence to their own sense of self. It’s the essence of colonialism, the belief that we know better than others what will make them happy and successful – or even that we know what “happy and successful” looks like for them. It can lead to all sorts of problems when we think like that, especially if we have power, as we try to squash others into our mould. A belief that God may be speaking in someone else’s mother tongue challenges us to listen, deeply and humbly, for their sake, but also so that we can hear the wisdom of God that speaks through their lives and experiences.

 

Today, and every day, God speaks in the mother tongue of each of us, knowing “where we are coming from” because that’s where God comes from too. We may sometimes feel alienated or out of place, as if we don’t fit in the world. We may feel like strangers, or be treated as if we don’t belong. We may treat others like that too. But the Pentecost calls us to see that God is at home in each one of us. And that changes everything, just as it did for Jesus first followers on that Day of Pentecost, long ago.

 

I’d like to finish with a sonnet by Malcolm Guite, written for this day, which reminds us of that God whose “mother tongue” is love.

 

Pentecost - a sonnet by Malcolm Guite

 

Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
This is the feast of fire, air, and water
Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth.
The earth herself awakens to her maker
And is translated out of death to birth.
The right words come today in their right order
And every word spells freedom and release
Today the gospel crosses every border
All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace
Today the lost are found in His translation.
Whose mother-tongue is Love, in every nation.

 

Amen

Pentecost 2024

 

 

Acts 2.1-21, John 14.8-27

 

Pentecost is traditionally the time when the Church recalls and celebrates the Holy Spirit descending in power on the disciples as they waited in Jerusalem. Jesus had called them to take his message out into all the world. They didn’t even know how to begin, but the Spirit swept away their questions and propelled them out into the streets; they couldn’t do this, but God could.

 

This isn’t the first time the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit, though. The Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, is full of the Spirit. The Spirit hovers over the waters of chaos at the beginning of creation, and it fills the prophets with the knowledge of God’s word. The Gospels, too, tell of the Spirit overshadowing Mary when she hears she is to bear God’s son, and descending like a dove on Jesus at the moment of his baptism. The Spirit is everywhere in the Bible, not seen, but very much felt in people’s lives, the transforming power of God, God’s “here and now” presence in his creation. People may struggle to describe the Spirit, but the Spirit’s actions are life-changingly real to them.

 

In the story we heard from the book of Acts today, the Spirit comes like a rushing wind and flames of fire, but it also brings the rather puzzling gift of speaking in unknown languages. Visitors from every corner of the world hear the message the disciples proclaim and understand it, as if it is being spoken by a native speaker, someone like them.

 

Who are these people? Some may have grown up in other faiths, but felt drawn to Judaism – the proselytes the story refers to - but many came from Jewish ex-pat communities, founded over the centuries around the ancient world. Some of them, though not all, may have spoken or read Hebrew, but their first language, the language they used day to day, was whatever the majority around them spoke – Parthian, Phyrgian, Libyan, or whatever. And however devout they were, their way of understanding and practising their faith would have evolved over time too.  It’s the same for migrant communities everywhere. They may look back to their countries of origin with nostalgia and affection, but when they go back they often find they don’t really fit in any more. They’ve changed and so have the communities they came from.

 

Language is often a symbol of that gulf. Second generation migrants don’t tend to be “at home” in their parent’s language. It’s not their mother tongue anymore. And that doesn’t just mean their vocabulary changes. Our mother tongue, the language we learn first, both reflects and shapes the way we think. We sometimes say, “I know where you’re coming from”, if we think we understand someone,but it’s only really true if we come from the same place ourselves, sharing a language, a background, a culture, similar life experiences.

 

Whether they expected it or not, these visitors “from every nation under heaven” almost certainly felt a long way from home in Jerusalem, further from home than they expected, maybe a bit homesick  But in the midst of this alien land, they were transported right back to the deserts, mountains, pastures, coastlands, of the land of their birth when they heard their own language spoken, and not as if in translation, as a second language, but as if by someone who came from there too.

 

That’s the point of this detail of the story. It isn’t just there to amaze us. The author doesn’t even try to explain how it could happen. He is trying to tell us a deeper truth about the God whom he follows and serves; the truth that God is at home with us, each of us, with us, wherever we are from, wherever we are, wherever we are going.

 

God is at home with us because we are his creation. According to Genesis 2, after God had made a person out of the dust of the earth, he breathed his own breath – a word that can also be translated as Spirit – into that person to bring them to life. And that same Spirit still dwells within us. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we are told that the Spirit prays within us “with sighs too deep for words”. We don’t have to struggle when we can’t find the words to express ourselves to God, because God already knows us; his Spirit is there in the depths of our being; God knows us better than we know ourselves.

 

The belief in a God who speaks our native language, who knows “where we are coming from”, who speaks from the depth of our experience is a huge comfort, of course. But it doesn’t just affect our personal spiritual lives, giving us comfort and reassurance. It should also affect the way we look at the world around us. That’s because if I believe that God speaks in my mother tongue – the native language of a 64 year old, white, Englishwoman from Devon, a priest, wife and mother, with my own particular life story – then I have to believe that God also speaks in your mother tongue, from the depth of your experience too, and that you therefore have wisdom I need to hear, coming from a perspective that I don’t have.

 

It's often tempting to think that the answers we’ve discovered to life, the universe and everything, the solutions we’ve found to the problems that beset us, should apply to everyone else too. If they aren’t like us, then they should be, and we will do our best to make sure they become so, even if it means doing a violence to their own sense of self. It’s the essence of colonialism, the belief that we know better than others what will make them happy and successful – or even that we know what “happy and successful” looks like for them. It can lead to all sorts of problems when we think like that, especially if we have power, as we try to squash others into our mould. A belief that God may be speaking in someone else’s mother tongue challenges us to listen, deeply and humbly, for their sake, but also so that we can hear the wisdom of God that speaks through their lives and experiences.

 

Today, and every day, God speaks in the mother tongue of each of us, knowing “where we are coming from” because that’s where God comes from too. We may sometimes feel alienated or out of place, as if we don’t fit in the world. We may feel like strangers, or be treated as if we don’t belong. We may treat others like that too. But the Pentecost calls us to see that God is at home in each one of us. And that changes everything, just as it did for Jesus first followers on that Day of Pentecost, long ago.

 

I’d like to finish with a sonnet by Malcolm Guite, written for this day, which reminds us of that God whose “mother tongue” is love.

 

Pentecost - a sonnet by Malcolm Guite

 

Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
This is the feast of fire, air, and water
Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth.
The earth herself awakens to her maker
And is translated out of death to birth.
The right words come today in their right order
And every word spells freedom and release
Today the gospel crosses every border
All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace
Today the lost are found in His translation.
Whose mother-tongue is Love, in every nation.

 

Amen