Category: Sermon

Sermon: Attitude of Gratitude

Given on 12th October 2025 at St Mary’s Church (Iffley, Rose Hill, Donnington)
Luke 17. 11-19

One of the games I remember playing as a child, that we played when our children were little was Happy Families (we still play it sometimes!).

The traditional Woodland version (unquestionably the best version) has families of animals – moles, mice, hedgehogs, shrews and they are they are shuffled and mixed up and you have to bring the families together by asking each other if they have Mr, Mrs, Miss or Master shrew, hedgehog etc.

The twist to our family games is that if when you are given the card you didn’t say thank you, you had to hand it back again. This meant that your competitor knew what cards you had and so you then invariably lost the game.

Woodland Happy Families

It was a very clever way of teaching us a lesson in manners and in learning the importance of saying thank you.

Thank you.

The first phrase most of us were taught as children. We have been drilled into us the importance of saying our p’s and q’s – (please and thank you’s) – I bet every single one of you said thank you when given an order of service when you arrived. It’s an automatic response and so we don’t often think about it very much.  

In our Gospel reading we heard the story of the thankful leper. It could be read as a moral tale about the politeness of one leper over and above the other nine, seemingly rude lepers who don’t bother to say thank you to Jesus who had brought about their healing.

“Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?“

We could read it as Jesus being rather like the grandparent being a bit affronted that they haven’t received a thank you letter three weeks after Christmas.

But this is not a story about the polite leper. It is not a moral tale about the importance of being a good citizen.

Let’s look at the passage.

The Cleansing of the Ten Lepers, c. 1035-1040, Codex Aureus Epternacensis (Wikipedia Commons)

Jesus is on a journey towards Jerusalem and as he goes on his way he is confronted by ten people with a skin disease. The bible gives them the generic term ‘leprosy’, but this wasn’t what we understand that to be now ‘Hansen’s disease’ – it was a term that covered a whole range of skin diseases.

These conditions were considered impure by Jewish law and so these people were outcasts from society, separated from family, unable to go to the temple to worship.

These 10 lepers kept themselves apart (as was lawful) and so when they saw Jesus they cried out to him from a distance.

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us”

We often read this and think that the lepers here were asking for Jesus to heal them. They weren’t. They would have had no expectation that they would ever be cured from the disease. In the New Testament Lepers are not healed, but made clean. It is an important distinction. There was no understanding of healing for leprosy. You either had it, or you didn’t. If you had it, then you lived as if you were dead. It’s why lepers often lived in the tombs or in the uninhabited parts of cities. If you didn’t have it, then only Priest could declare you clean and you could enter back to society.

The lepers who cried out to Jesus weren’t asking him to heal them. They were asking for mercy. For kindness. They saw in Jesus someone who might be kind to them, even though they were outcast, feared, sick, alone.

And Jesus sees them, and tells them to go back to their community, to go and show themselves to the priests. (Note: did they feel dismissed by Jesus at this point I wonder?).

And as they do as Jesus says, they are made clean. They are restored from living as if they were dead, to being fully human again – with family, community, companionship.

We don’t get to know what happened to the nine lepers. They do just as Jesus asks of them.

But one leper seems to be aware of the magnitude of the kindness he had experienced that he turns back to Jesus – “He prostrated himself at Jesus’feet and thanked him”.

“And he was a Samaritan”. Samaritans were the outsiders and so this man was the outside of the outsiders. Perhaps this is why he was so thankful – because he knew so deeply what Jesus had done for him.

And in turning back to Jesus in thanks he is told that:

 ‘your faith has made you well’.

‘Made well’ in Greek is – σῴζω (pronounced sod-zo) – it can be translated as “made well,” in the sense of being healed. But it can also be translated as “saved,” in the sense of being brought through mortal danger. And it can be translated as “made whole,” in the sense of being completed and made to be what you were meant to be all along.

The Samaritan is ‘sodzo’. He’s blessed by being made clean and then when he turns to Jesus to give thanks he’s blessed again: he has been physically healed, but more than that – he has been made whole, he’s come back from the dead, he’s fully alive again. And he can’t help but respond in thanks.

Thanksgiving is such an integral part of the Christian life. Not just politeness, but recognising all we have is gift. Not just in the good times. The psalms are full of prayers of thanksgiving in the midst of troubles and difficulties.

I’d like to tell you the story of a Lutheran pastor named Martin Rinkart

Rinkart served in the German city of Eilenburg during the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War — a time of violence, famine, and plague. In 1637, when the plague swept through the city, he was the only surviving pastor left. That year alone, he conducted over 4,000 funerals, sometimes fifty a day — including the burial of his own wife.

Martin Rinkart (1586–1649)

And yet, in the midst of such sorrow, he wrote the hymn “Nun danket alle Gott” (Now thank we all our God) that we still sing today:

Now thank we all our God,
With heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices;
Who from our mother’s arms
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.

Rinkart’s thanksgiving was not naïve. It was defiant faith.
Like the healed leper, he turned back in gratitude — not because life was easy, but because God was still good.

We are not, I hope, going through anything like as grim as the plague in C17th Germany but we do go through times of struggle and hardship. Can we develop lives that have thankfulness at it’s core – an ‘attitude of gratitude’?

Not just because this is known to be good for us, but because it helps to make us more whole.

Social researcher Brene Brown found in her study of people who lived what she calls ‘whole hearted lives’ that:

“without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or described themselves as joyful actively practiced gratitude and thanksgiving”[1]
She goes on to say:

“It’s not joy that makes us grateful; it’s gratitude that makes us joyful”.

So let’s embed gratitude into our lives.

Imagine you hare having a meal given by a great friend. Everyone enjoying each others’ company, when there is a pause and someone decides to toast the person who provided the meal and thanks them for all they’ve done to support them over the year. It changes everything doesn’t it. It makes that other person feel seen and valued.

Let’s do this this week. Not just being polite, but really thankful. Find someone we are really grateful for and let them know. Tell them, write them a card, call them on the phone. I assure you it will bring you, and them, joy.

And let us be thankful to God for all the blessings we have in our lives. 

We are about to come to the Eucharist meal in just a moment. Eucharist means thanksgiving. When we come to this table we are not just saying ‘thank you’, we are living it.

The Eucharist reorients our lives towards Jesus again. As we share in this thanksgiving meal we, like the thankful leper, are turning towards healing, wholeness and sodza.

End with the words of the hymn:

Now thank we all our God,
With heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices;

Amen

[1] Brene Brown, Gifts of Imperfection

Sermon: The Good Samaritan

Trinity 4C – 13.7.2025
Deuteronomy 30. 9-14; Luke 10. 25-37

All Saints Church, Bracknell Road, Ascot, Berks – Wall painting (Wiki Commons)

I read that parables are meant to ‘comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable’. (1) The trouble with parables like the one we’ve just read is that we have heard it so many times that it’s hard to hear it afresh and hear what God might be saying to us today.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is probably the most well-known of them all. Most of us can’t remember a time when he hadn’t heard the story. And of course even the word Samaritan now conjures up the image of someone you can call up in a time of crisis.

Just yesterday a friend of mine visited our house and she was in a wheelchair and was struggling to get to the house from her car and a couple of tourists helped her. She told me she’d met a couple of ‘Good Samaritans’.

The trouble with this parable is that we all know what it means already, or perhaps we all think we know what it means. We should be nice, kind people like the Samaritan, and help others in need, and we should not be people who cross the road on the other side like the priest and the Levite.

I’m going to be bold here and I’m going to assert this morning that the parable of the Good Samaritan might not be what you think it is – a story about how we should help others. Instead we’re going to think about what in this parable might ‘afflict’ us alongside the more ‘comfortable’ message

Luke tells us that Jesus was approached by a lawyer, who sought to test him asking ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life’ (v.25). This kind of debating was common in their culture – it was a way of honing ideas and sharpening understanding – it wasn’t necessarily a negative thing. 

Jesus doesn’t answer the question but asks the lawyer what he thinks. He draws from the Shema (the law), correctly quoting Deuteronomy and Leviticus: ‘you shall love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself’.

Tick. Gold Star.

The lawyer asks a follow up question, ‘and who is my neighbour’ (v.29).

The lawyer often gets bad press. It’s a good question – we need a bit of clarity on this. We might ask the same. We can’t love everyone, surely. We can just about manage our own families and friends. We only have to walk down Cornmarket and see numerous people at the side of the road – it leads to constant guilt. Where are the boundary lines here.

Our street, our parish, our city, our country, people like us, people who are Christians as well?

What the lawyer is really asking is perhaps, ‘who is NOT my neighbour’.

He was a lawyer and lawyers want clarity. I read somewhere that he presumably wanted something on the order of:

“A neighbour (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one’s own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbour to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever.”[2]

Jesus doesn’t answer this directly, but responds with the story we know so well.

A man is robbed and left for dead at the side of the road. The religious people see the man but pass by on the other side, presumably because they were afraid of contaminating themselves by touching a dead or dying body and then being unable to fulfil their duty. 

The Samaritan man sees the man and walks over the road towards him. He is moved with compassion, he treats and binds up his wounds, puts him on his animal, makes sure he’s cared for going the extra mile.

‘Go and do likewise’.

It’s a beautiful example of how we might live, loving and caring for those in need.

A few years ago on Christmas Eve my son cut his hand really badly whilst wrapping presents. We had to leave our evening meal to rush to the hospital and on the way a tire blew out. We’d left so quickly we hadn’t remembered to take a wallet (before the time when our phones were wallets!). A passing cyclist saw us and stopped. He not only helped get the car to the side of the road, but he hailed a taxi to the hospital and insisted on paying the taxi himself.  Truly a Good Samaritan.

But where we see ourselves in this parable makes a difference to how we read this.

On a good day we might see ourselves as the Samaritan helping the man, and I suspect this is the role we’d all like to think we play!

On a bad day we might see ourselves in the priest and the Levite walking by on the other side.

But there is a third option – we might be the beaten man, lying helplessly in the dirt on the side of the road.

So, where might Jesus’ Jewish hearers have seen themselves?

It is very unlikely they would have seen themselves in the Samaritan. In first century Palestine, Samaritans and Jews hated one another. This was a bitter and entrenched hostility along religious, geographic and ethnic lines.

They might be the priest or the lawyer, but Luke’s readers were more likely to have imagined themselves as the man in the ditch than the Samaritan. Jesus deliberately chooses an enemy to be the one who acted like a neighbour to make his point, adding another layer of challenge to his story.

‘Who is my neighbour?’ – in this situation the neighbour turned out to be the least likely person they could imagine.

This brings us to the heart of the gospel message of salvation. That Jesus, seeing our deepest need when we are in a metaphorical ditch, battered and bruised by life, sees us, is moved by compassion, binds up our wounds, picks us up and heals and cares for us, and pays what we owe so we don’t have to.

In this way of reading the parable we are not the Samaritan – Jesus is. We are the one in the ditch needing Jesus’ healing touch.

All of which makes me wonder whether there is yet another lesson in this parable: that God often shows up where we least expect God to be, and though the people we least expect.

Who, we might ask, do we have the hardest time imagining God working through? And then we should probably expect God to do just that!

The challenge in this parable is that Jesus pushes the very notion of boundaries or line at all. For Jesus, there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’ at all. The Samaritan and Jew were divided by history, culture and theology, yet their obligation to love supersedes it all.

All the boundaries we humans put up, be it race, sex, gender, sexuality, conviction, these are all challenged here. Our call to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength goes hand in hand with our call to love our neighbours. And this love looks like a man in a ditch being helped by his arch enemy.

And so, like the lawyer, we’re left not with the comfortable question, “Who is my neighbour?”, but with a far more afflicting one:
Will I allow myself to be loved by someone I would rather keep at a distance?

This parable isn’t just a call to compassion: it’s a challenge to our categories. It invites us to look again at who we are willing to receive love from, and who we are willing to become vulnerable before.

The story of the Good Samaritan reminds us that God’s grace and goodness can come from unexpected places, through unexpected people. And perhaps, the real test of neighbourliness is not only how we give love, but how humbly we receive it.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, we give thanks for this familiar parable and for the power it has to both comfort and afflict us. Thank you that you showed us the way to life and love, and that way is one that crosses boundaries and challenges assumptions. Help us to see you in those we encounter, and help us to both give, and receive love from those we least expect. Amen

Sermon: Guiding Light

A reflection at Eventide – February 2025
Revd Clare Hayns

John 1. 1-7
The Bright Field by RS Thomas

I’d like to tell a little story as we think about the light in the darkness.

When my son Simeon was 15 years old my sister took him and his younger cousins on a challenge. They set out to walk the three peaks of the British Isles within 24 hours. Ben Nevis (Scotland), Scarfell Pike (Lakes), Snowdon (Wales). In order to do this in the time, one mountain – Scarfell Pike – has to be scaled at night-time. They set off but at some point got disorientated. They were near the top on a section with small hills on top of which were piles of stones (cairns). But to the side was a steep drop, so they needed to follow the course of the hills and the stones.

But it was really dark, and they couldn’t make out their steps to stop tripping or going off course. So, they came up with a plan. Simeon offered to go on ahead of them to the top of the next hill. And he stood by the cairn and shone his torch back towards the rest of the group, and they all then made their way safely (they also made it with 15mins to spare!)

I remembered this because we’ve been thinking about light and darkness throughout this Eventide season. Last month we turned off all the lights in church and reflected on what was dark and difficult, confusing and disorientating.

Much of life can seem like stumbling along a hillside in the dark wondering what on earth it’s all about, and not quite sure of the way ahead, or why we’re here, or where we’re heading.

 John’s gospel begins in a way which mirrors the creation story of Genesis.  Which begins with darkness, formlessness, and void:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Genesis 1. 1-3

And John’s gospel begins:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1. 1-5

This is a profound theological statement. That Christ was there right at the beginning of all things, when light was created out of darkness. And that this light was now to be seen in the person of Jesus who was born as a child in Bethlehem, and that through his spirit, each of us is given that same light.

You may have read Richard Rohr, if not, I encourage you to. I heard him speak at Greenbelt once and he told us that Christ is not Jesus’ last name, not his surname! It is a description who he is. Which is why in John’s gospel we get these ‘I am’ statements, which seem almost boastful.

Jesus says, ‘I am the Light of the world’. Remember, light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything else.

Simeon’s light enabled the hikers to see everything clearly. One of the challenges of the Christian life is to learn to see as God sees. In other words, we have faith in Christ so we can have the faith of Christ. That is the goal.

So often what we first see as disaster can turn out to be an opportunity.
What once seems darkness, turns out to have a crack of light as Leonard Cohen sings in Anthem (“there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”)
What seems to be death, turns out to be life.

Contemplation is one of the ways we can align ourselves more closely with Jesus so that we can learn to see.

Richard Rohr says: “Most people do not see things as they are because they see things as they are, which is not to see at all”. And he says: “We need to look at Jesus until we can look out at the world with his kind of eyes”[1]

I will end with the words of the beautiful poem The Bright Field by RS Thomas  which invites us to stop hurrying, to turn aside, to look towards the light which will stop us from stumbling in the darkness. This light is revealed to us most gloriously through Jesus, the light of the world:

Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
RS Thomas, A Bright Field

Epiphany Awakenings

Sermon for Epiphany 2B
preaced at College Communion (Christ Church) and Wesley Memorial Church (Oxford)
January 14th 2024

Readings: 1 Samuel 3: 1-10 and John 1. 43-end

Before moving for my curacy in 2011 we lived in Horspath, just beyond the ring road behind the Mini factory. The village had two central buildings on either side of the road. On one side was the Church of St Giles and on the other side was the village shop and Post Office run by Vipin and Jayshree Patel.

As I was moving I heard rumours that the post office had been closed because Mr Patel, formerly a pillar of the community, had been accused of putting his hands in the till.

I confess I didn’t do anything about this. It seemed odd and unlikely, but we were moving away, and who knew what was true.

I now know the truth, as do we all. I also now know that although many in the village were kind to Mr and Mrs Patel, others bullied and vilified them. They even had a cross placed outside their shop and home, with a wreath on it and RIP Vipin Patel. They were prosecuted and acquitted in 2021 but, like so many others, have still not received a penny and so can’t retire despite being elderly and unwell.

Vipin and Jayshree Patel were cleared in 2021 but have still not received compensation. You can read more here. Their son, Varchas Patel spoke eloquently on behalf of his father on BBC Breakfast.

We’ve been hearing stories like theirs all week, particularly since ITV aired the brilliant Mr Bates v. the Post Office. If you haven’t seen it I commend it to you. If you’ve been living under a rock this week, over 900 sub-postmasters were charged with false accounting, fraud and theft, and many lost their livelihoods, their standing in the community, and some even their lives.

For years these poor people have been trying to make themselves heard but no-one seemed to be listening. Not the Horizon helpline they called endlessly. Not the Post Office corporation who pursued them through the courts. Not the politicians they appealed to.

And it took a drama to finally wake us all up to what’s been happening. And we’ve woken up to a huge injustice, probably the worst corporate scandal of our era. And it’s caused national outrage. It’s been a national epiphany in a way. I think of an epiphany as a lightbulb, or ‘aha’, moment.

We are in the church season of Epiphany, where we consider the manifestation of God in the person of Jesus. We hear how, in numerous ‘aha’ moments in the bible, ordinary people have their lives transformed and changed by encountering Jesus.  

And our Bible readings today look at three aha moments. Three people who have an epiphany, an awakening moment of one kind or other.

In our OT reading we have Eli and Samuel; and in the Gospel we have Nathaniel.

The story of Eli and Samuel might be a familiar one to you.

Samuel was the longed for son of Hannah, the woman who went to the temple every day to cry out to God for a child. She cried so hard the priest Eli thought she was drunk (you can read Hannah’s story here) .

Eli teaching Samuel depicted in a window at Christ Church Cathedral, by Edward Burne-Jones

A child eventually came (Samuel), and when he was a young boy he was given to the Lord as promised by his mother, and lived under  Eli’s protection to work in the temple. His job seemed to be to guard the holiest space ‘the ark of the Lord’ as this is where he was sleeping in our reading.

Samuel was literally asleep when he was woken up by word of God. Not once but four times!

The first three he didn’t understand who was speaking. He assumes it’s Eli. Perhaps he was the only person to ever spoke to the boy. Perhaps Eli regularly called out for help in the night – he was elderly and so maybe he did. Samuel certainly doesn’t think it’s God, and frankly why should he, he’s never heard God before.

It’s a great story. 

Samuel gets up and runs to Eli’s room ‘here I am’, and each time he’s sent away. This happens three times and on the last time Eli works it out.

Eli tells him to go back and say to God:

Speak Lord, your servant is listening

1 Samuel 19

There’s a difference between hearing and listening isn’t there.

Samuel heard a voice, but he wasn’t actually listening.

I’m often blamed by my sons for not listening. I’m distracted by many things, and they talk a lot. Often I’m hearing words and do the hmm hmm thing, where I can then zone in when a question is asked. If challenged I can usually parrot the last thing they said, but if honest haven’t really been listening, and they can tell!

Listening is hard, but we know what it’s like to be heard, and what it’s like not to be heard. 

The producer of the ITV programme on the PO said she thought it had hit such a nerve with people as it ‘stands for all the ways everybody feels unheard’.

Samuel hadn’t yet learned to listen to God.

Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

1 Samuel 3.7

Listening is something we learn to do, it’s not easy. It takes practice. And the same applies when we listen to others, and to God. True listening is a skill and it takes practice and we often need guidance. Taken me years and still not always very good at it.

Many use contemplative exercises to learn to listen. We need to guild up slowly, and can often benefit from the wisdom of our elders for this.

One thing is true though. It is impossible to truly listen whilst doing something else at the same time. Maybe this is why God speaks to Samuel whilst he’s lying in bed at night.

The old man Eli also needed an epiphany, an awakening, and this came through the prophetic words of his young prodigy Samuel.

Eli spent all his days in the temple taking care of the life and work of the sacred space. But despite this it seems that this didn’t bring him close to God.

The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread

1 Samuel 3.1

This seems rather an understatement as in the passage beforehand it seems that Eli’s sons had been doing just the thing our poor Sub Post-Masters had been wrongly accused of.

They were ‘scoundrels’ and thieves. They had been waiting for people to offer meat for sacrifice and then they would steal the meat for themselves. And they did this in full knowledge of their father who made a feeble effort to bring them into line but wasn’t able to stop them. (1 Samuel 2.25)

The message that Samuel was given in the night was a difficult one for Eli to hear.

I am about to punish the house of Eli, from beginning to end… because his sons were blaspheming God and he did not restrain them.

1 Samuel 3.13

It was a hard message, and all credit to Eli that he enabled Samuel to speak up with this message, telling him not to hide anything from him.

Prophetic truth-tellers are not often popular, but they are doing the work of God.

Perhaps Alan Bates is a prophetic voice in this recent Post Office situation. He spoke the simple truth even though that was unpopular, and he brought an injustice into the light. That’s surely the work of God.

Prophets wake us up. And if we’re honest, sometimes we’d prefer to stay asleep. I confess there are many issues I can’t quite wake up to.

In our Gospel reading we see another character who experiences an awakening to the truth. Nathaniel.

Jesus is gathering his disciples and he’s already recruited Andrew, Peter and Philip, and Philip goes to tell Nathaniel what they’ve experienced.

But Nathaniel’s first reactions reveal how he’s kept from seeing truth, even when it’s right there, in the person of Jesus.

Can anything good come from Nazareth?

John 1.46

Nathaniel can’t believe the messiah could come from a backwater, small town place so far from the centre of things. His prejudice almost keeps him from seeing Jesus. Nathaniel might have been prevented from seeing Jesus, but Jesus saw Nathaniel:

I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you

John 1.48

Despite all these very human failings, God comes close to Samuel, Eli and Nathaniel and reveals himself to each one of them, in different ways. Each of them is called to serve. Each of them has an awakening.

Jesus sees and hears us, and each one of us is called in some way. Perhaps we are all invited to wake up in some way. The challenge is that sometimes we might prefer to stay asleep, as once we wake up we often then have to do something, change in some way, love people we find it hard to love, confront an injustice we might prefer to ignore.

I wonder who we relate to most in these characters from scripture, or who we are most challenged by?

Is it Samuel who is physically and spiritually woken up as he learns how to listen to God and, despite being young, begins his prophetic ministry? Do we feel we are asleep to God? Perhaps we feel we wouldn’t have a clue what God sounded like if he called our name? Might God be gently challenging us to wake up to hear his voice lovingly calling us into his service. Perhaps he has something unique for us to do or say if only we’d listen.

Or perhaps we feel more akin to Eli, tired in faith and going through the motions. Perhaps God is waking us to the fact we have something to offer that we can share with others. Perhaps, like Eli, we could be guides to those young in faith. Or perhaps we can see God speaking in the lives of others even if we’re not sure we can hear him ourselves in our own lives.

Or, like Eli, do we need to wake up to a particular injustice that’s happening under our very noses and in our own neighbourhoods.

I wish I had done more in Horspath, gone round to speak to the Patels, and asked more questions.

Or might we be like Nathaniel, not noticing Jesus right there with us because we think he couldn’t possibly be in somewhere as backwater as with us in our little lives.

Because that’s exactly where Jesus is. With each one of us, calling us by name, into a life that’s awake. Awake to God, to others, to ourselves.

It’s a challenging life, but one that is far better than being asleep. And it begins with us saying these simple words:

speak Lord, your servant is listening

1 Samuel 3.19

Amen

Prayer in the Wilderness

A sermon for Advent 2
Mark 1: 1-8

I wonder if you can think back to a time when you were lost, really lost. That sense of wandering around alone waiting to be found.

It might be a time as a child when you lost your parents in a supermarket; on a hiking trip when your map reading skills failed you, or stuck in a strange city with no data left on your phone so you can’t use google maps.

I remember being lost in Clapham Common in the days before mobile phones. I was 19, at that time I didn’t know London at all but had gone to see a friend. I was early so I stopped off to go for a walk in the common. I parked my car, spent an hour or so walking around and enjoying the afternoon, and then I went back to my car.

I had no car keys. I’d dropped them somewhere, and my wallet was locked in the car.  I had no money, and was alone in a city I didn’t know. The sun was going down.

I retraced my steps. Nothing. I searched high and low. Nothing. I wandered round and round in circles and eventually sat down in the middle of the park, in the dark, and cried.

Wildernesses come in all shapes and sizes. Not many of us have experienced a physical wilderness, or true desert. Clapham Common is hardly a wilderness! But we do know what wilderness feels like. That sense of being lost, out of control in the unknown, of being without bearings.

Wilderness is an uncomfortable place.

Mark’s gospel opens dramatically in the literal wilderness with John the Baptist appearing as if out of nowhere, looking wild with his camel-hair clothing and honey and locust diet.

The gospel begins with words from prophets Malachi and Isaiah:

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his path straight.”

Mark 1.3

There had been prophetic silence for around four hundred years before this moment when John the Baptist bursts onto the scene. The last prophetic voice recorded in the Hebrew bible had been that of Elijah’s in the book of Malachi and since then, pretty much nothing.

And throughout that wilderness time of silence God’s people were waiting for the one they’d be promised, who would free them from oppression: The Messiah.

In the Bible, time in the wilderness isn’t to be feared; it’s a place of learning, transformation, and growth.

In Scripture we see over and over again of God’s people being led into the desert or wilderness in order to be taught something important. We remember Moses and Miriam leading the Israelites through the wilderness years as they learn to trust God’s provision; Hagar who hears God’s voice whilst sitting in desert in despair; Elijah, who is led into the wilderness before hearing God’s still small voice in the silence. And of course Jesus himself is led there after his baptism.

Miriam led the women in singing and dancing once they reached the safety of the wilderness having escaped Egyptian slavery. (Exodus 15) – Image by ©MicahHayns

And so it’s from wilderness that John bursts onto the scene proclaiming Good News.

Mattia Preti – San Giovanni Battista Predicazione, circa 1665

Someone is coming who is greater than I
Get ready for him
Turn around and make a path for him

Back to my story in Clapham Common

It was dark, I was vulnerable and alone. I had a very new Christian faith and realised I needed at this time, in that place, to exercise it.

So I sent up a quick ‘God, what do I do now’ prayer. And I had the strongest sense that what I needed to do was to get on my knees and pray. So, in the middle of the park, in the dark, I got on my knees and prayed. And as I did so I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my keys had been found. I knew it was going to be OK. And what I needed to do was to turn around and go back to the car.

So I walked back to the car and as I did so I saw a man walking towards me calling out to me:  ‘Excuse me, Miss, are these your keys’?

He’d seen me wandering around from the upper window of nearby flat, had come down from his home, and had searched around the undergrowth, and found the keys.

And in doing so had not only given me the means to get home, but also strengthened my faith at a time when I really needed it, and for years to come.

Advent is a time when we recognise our lost-ness, that we can’t find the way on our own, that we so often wander round and round in circles not quite knowing where we are heading.

In the biblical wilderness people are never left there for ever. They are called from the wilderness into something far better – into deeper faith, clearer vision, stronger resolve.

God, the creator of all, didn’t remain silent, and doesn’t just watch us wandering around from his high tower. Instead he came amongst us, as one of us, in the form of a child, to enter into our lostness and to show us the way through the dark. This is the Good News of Jesus Christ that Mark proclaims in his gospel.

Jesus was ‘God with us’ (Emmanuel) in human form for a while, and remains with us through his Holy Spirit until the time when he will return. And John the Baptist, like Elijah before him, and Isaiah before him encourage us to prepare the way for him.

God is with us, and is coming to be with us. How do we make a clear path for him? That is the task for Advent.

Repent. Stay awake. Clear out the obstacles which get in the way.

If you are in a wilderness stage of life, feeling like you are wandering around in circles, you are not alone. Perhaps we are invited to welcome the wilderness, to hear what God may be saying to us within it, or to listen to how God might be guiding us through it. God doesn’t always sent an immediate answer to prayer in the way that happened to me on Clapham Common – in fact I don’t think I’ve experienced anything quite as clear since then. But it sustains me nonetheless.

And so, this Advent, let us prepare the way to welcome Jesus, perhaps by getting on our knees to pray (maybe not in the dark in a park!), being prepared to sit in silence, by turning around…

and by being willing to be found.

Amen

Not what we might expect

Sermon given at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford
3rd September 2023
Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
Revd Clare Hayns, College Chaplain

Exodus 3. 3-15; Romans 12. 9-21; Matthew 16. 21-28

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me

Matthew 16.24
Taize 2023 – photo credit Ian Macdonald

A couple of weeks ago I joined a group from the Diocese of Oxford, with some students from ChCh to spend a week in Taizé in France. You may have heard of it? It’s a Christian community near Cluny established as a place of peace and ecumenism after the Second World War. It’s now a place of pilgrimage and prayer for thousands of predominantly young people from across Europe. As Chaplain at Christ Church I joined with a small group from the university. 

There was much of what you might imagine from being with several thousand 16 – 25-year olds. Late night singing in the bar, some strange game that looked a little like twister on benches, and lots of intense conversations and discussions about issues such as climate change, the challenges of mental health, and sexuality and gender.

Three times a day a bell sounded out and everyone there stopped what they were doing and gathered in the huge hanger-like chapel, joining in with the beautiful chants that are the communities’ particular charism*, and in the middle of which, for 10 minutes three times per day, we all sat in total silence.

The depth of prayer was palpable and hard to describe. We were on holy ground.

And on the Friday, the cross is taken down and laid on the floor in the centre of the chapel, and hundreds of young people silently lined up and then gathered round it, bowing their heads to the wood of the cross, some staying for a few moments, others for a long time.  

Some young people bowing before the cross in Taizé, France

It was awe-inspiring to see and unexpected, perhaps because we are so often led to believe that young people aren’t interested in faith any more, that the Christian faith is in decline, and that devotion of this kind is something relegated to past times.

I want to share that with you as we reflect on what it means to follow Jesus, to be a Christian, in the light of this mornings’ readings. If we began with the reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans we might think it’s about being good, decent human beings and loving one another. But is there more to it?

Following God might not be quite what we expect.

Rather than starting with Paul I’d like to look at both Moses and Peter and see what these two men can teach us about what it is to follow God. Both men are called for a particular purpose, both argue with the one that calls them, and both are led to a place they least expect.

For Moses, following God’s call means to first encounter God in the awe and holiness of the burning bush. Just before this passage in Exodus, Moses had fled Pharaoh’s palace after having killed an Egyptian in a fight and is now living as a shepherd in the mountains of Horeb. And it’s here on the mountain that he encounters God who reveals himself within the fire of a burning bush and calls him from within the fire. ‘Moses, Moses’. Moses realises he is on holy ground, takes off his sandals and hides his face in awe. And from that position of worship Moses is called to go the very place he’s fled from. He’s to go Pharaoh, to plead for the freedom of the Israelites and to lead them into that freedom.

His reaction? He reminds God that he’s just a normal human being:

who am I that I should go

Exodus 3.11

He later argues that he’s not eloquent enough, he doesn’t know what to say, and that he won’t be believed. All his pleas are simply answered with:

I will be with you

Exodus 3.12

For Moses, following God’s call was to first encounter God, and to then be prepared to obey the call to lead the Jews into freedom and away from their oppression.   

Following God might not be quite what we expect.

For Simon Peter, following Jesus had been going pretty well until this point. In the passage directly before this Peter had been on his own personal mountain-top. He had publicly recognised Jesus to be the Messiah, and as a result Jesus had given him a new name ‘the rock’, a new mission ‘on this rock I will be build my church’, and he had even been promised the keys to the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16. 13-19). He must have been riding high.

And so can blame him that when Jesus starts talking about imminent suffering and death that Peter strongly objects:

God forbid it Lord! This must never happen to you

Matthew 16.22

Suffering and death wasn’t part of Peter’s plan for this Messiah he had found. Surely Jesus was going to save the Jewish people and lead them into freedom from the oppressors of the day. Surely Jesus would be like Moses and would lead them into a promised land.

But this wasn’t God’s plan. And for speaking up like this Peter the rock, had suddenly become Peter the stumbling block. Jesus even calls him a Satan, rebuking him strongly with ‘Get behind me, Satan’. We often think that Jesus here is calling Peter the Devil, but that’s not quite right. A Satan (here it is a noun not a proper name) is better translated as ‘the adversary’. A Satan is someone who opposes, normally an opponent in a court setting. Peter at this time was opposing Jesus.  Peter was standing in Jesus’ way, being like the tempter in the desert.

And so for this Jesus rebukes him with ‘get behind me’. In the light of what Jesus then goes on to say about following him I wonder if Jesus’ rebuke to Peter is a reminder to Peter that he needs to follow BEHIND Jesus, rather than from in front of him.

Following God might not be quite what we expect.

For Peter, following Jesus would eventually lead to glory and a promised land, the kingdom of heaven, but the way to that wasn’t what he expected at all. The way was through a Messiah who suffered, who denied self, who was taken through the streets of Jerusalem with a cross on his back, and who was nailed to that cross.

So, what does all this mean for us?

Following God might not be quite what we expect.

I think it’s unlikely any of us will be called like Moses to speak to an oppressive ruler to liberate a captive people. Or will be called, like Peter, to be the foundation of the Church.

So what does following Jesus’ way mean for ordinary people like us, with ordinary lives, ordinary struggles and ordinary challenges that come our way?

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Matthew 16.24

To ‘deny yourself’ doesn’t mean forgetting about yourself, debasing yourself, or being a doormat for others to walk on. But it does mean putting Jesus first which is practice means not putting ourselves at the centre of everything, and putting others’ needs before our own.

One of the nation’s favourite songs for funeral services is Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’. You know the verse:

‘And more, much much more, I did it my way’.

It is the direct opposite of this! We are not called to do it our way, we are called to do it Jesus’ way.

We are not alone.  Jesus led the way for us. Jesus denied himself, refused to be tempted by Peter away from his call, and took up his cross, and with it he took all that is painful, sinful, wrong with the world, and it was nailed with him on that cross.

That is what I think I was seeing when I watched all those young people on their knees at the cross in the Taize Chapel. They were connecting their own story with God’s story. And from that place of reverence and awe, they, like each one of us, were sent out to live. To live lives shaped by the cross.

And this is why we end with Romans 12 rather than begin there. Because this passage in Romans is a wonderful description of what denying self, taking up our cross and following God looks like.  

It looks like ‘genuine love’, honouring one another, persevering in prayer, and living lives of radical hospitality.

So, when it comes to following God what should we expect?

Like Moses, we should expect God to challenge our view of ourselves in light of His call.
Like Peter, we should be challenged to set aside our own fixed ideas of who Jesus is.
And we should expect to live radical lives of service as a result, in the knowlege that Jesus is with us walking ahead of us on the way.

Amen

* This chant ‘Herre, visa mig vägen’, was a favorite of our group.

Welcoming the ‘wished for comer’

A sermon for Trinity 4:A
Christ Church Cathedral
2nd July 2023
Revd Clare Hayns, College Chaplain

Matthew 10: 40-42

‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me’

Matthew 10:40

I hope that each and every one of you arrived today to a warm welcome from our lovely stewards team.

Over the past few days Christ Church has welcomed a LOT of people. On Wednesday and Thursday we had our College Open Days where we welcomed around 6,000 people – young prospective students and their parents. Each was welcomed by one of our undergraduates, and given a pen and a branded goodie bag (anything to show a warmer welcome than our rival colleges!). One young welcomer told me her face ached after two days of smiling so much.

Welcome/ Willcomen. The root of both the English and the German word is the Proto-Germanic word ‘wiljacumo’, which literally means ‘wished-for comer’ – someone whose coming you desire. To welcome is to invite another to cross the boundaries of your space, be it your college, home, church, meal table. It goes beyond obligation or toleration. It is to invite in the ‘wished for comer’.

We heard the word ‘welcome’ several times in today’s gospel; 6 times in just 2 small verses, to be exact. 

This little passage comes at the end of a section of teaching where Jesus sends his twelve disciples out as missionaries into the community around them. They are sent out with a job to do – to heal the sick, proclaim the good news, cast out demons –  but they are sent without everything they need as they are to rely on the kindness of strangers and to have faith in God’s provision.

And they’re warned that this wouldn’t always be easy – “I am sending you out like sheep amongst wolves” (Matthew 10:16) – they wouldn’t always be  welcomed.

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to you shake off the dust from your feet as you leave the house or town.

Matthew 10:14

I’m sure we all know what it is to be not welcomed. It’s painful, particularly when that involves a church or religious community.

Siobhan Garrigan, Professor of Theology at Trinity College, Dublin, wrote a book called ‘the Real Peace Process’[1] which documents Ireland around the time of the Good Friday Agreement. She writes about how the Irish peace process worked out in the reality of peoples’ homes and churches.

She tells a story that once she arrived for worship at a Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland. She was greeted by two (seemingly) nice women at the door who began a conversation with her. They were welcomers of some sort. They asked her name and the first names of any other approaching strangers who came to morning worship. She then figured out what was happening. Their job was to question new-comers as they arrived. Those with protestant sounding names, such as Billy and Elizabeth, were shown to their seats; those with apparently Catholic names, the Mary’s, Patricks and Siobhan’s, were told they were surely in the wrong place and shown to the Roman Catholic church round the corner! This was not the dim and distant past – this was 1990s Northern Ireland.

But before we get too judgmental and think this could never happen here, we should remind ourselves of all the subtle and not so subtle ways in which we include and exclude people.

I remember turning up to a village Church not far from here with young child to be told by the welcomer that, ‘the family service is next week’. She was a well-meaning and kindly woman, but she gave me the impression that I didn’t belong.

And we (all of us – I include myself here) exclude in all sort of unconscious ways, be it due to not prioritising disability accessibility, assuming a level of academic ability or tutting if a child cries.

I’d like to pause to say that if any of you here have ever felt unwelcome here, then on behalf of the clergy team – sorry.

Jesus’ teaching reminds us that each person is made in the image of God, and when we welcome another, we welcome the person in whose image they are made. Jesus’ followers probably were quite uncomfortable hearing him talk about this kind of welcome.

In order to understand that, we have to take a step back into the Judea of the 1st century. In this context everyone was defined and identified by the groups they belonged to: family, tribe, religion, region, social status, profession. So people were usually identified by their family ties – think of James and John, the sons of Zebedee – or by their place of origin, like Mary of Bethany.

And in Jewish society of the time, who you welcomed in your home/synagogue mattered. Clear religious and cultural boundaries delineated who belonged, who was ritually clean, and who was part of the community.  

One of the main criticisms levelled at Jesus was that he kept breaking these rules. He kept welcoming, and allowing himself to be welcomed by, all sorts of unsuitable, unclean, unsavoury people.

He received a cup of water from the hands of a five times-married Samaritan woman by the side of a well in Samaria; – John 4: 7-15
He stayed at the home of the hated chief tax collector Zacchaeus – Luke 19: 1-10
He allowed his feet to be anointed by a ‘sinful’ woman – Luke 7:36-50

It’s no wonder the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying:

This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.

Luke 15:2

Jesus was constantly extending and expanding his welcome to bring in more and more people. What would it be like if our church community was a place which also extended welcome in this way?

There is a church notice board in Scotland which inspired me (which I’ve adapted slightly).

“WELCOME:
We extend a special welcome to those who are single, married, in a partnership, divorced, widowed, gay, confused, filthy rich, comfortable, or dirt poor. We extend a special welcome to wailing weans and excited toddlers.
We welcome you whether you can sing like Pavarotti or just growl quietly to yourself. You’re welcome here if ‘you’re just browsing,’ just woken up or just got out of prison. We don’t care if you’re more Christian than the Archbishop of Canterbury or haven’t been to church since Christmas twenty years ago.
We extend a special welcome to those who are over 60 but not grown up yet and teenagers who are growing up too fast.
We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted. We welcome you if you’re having problems, are down in the dumps or don’t like ‘organised religion.’
We offer a welcome to those who think the earth is flat, work too hard, don’t work, can’t spell or are here because you are at a loose end. We welcome those who are inked, pierced, both or neither. We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now, had religion shoved down their throat as children or got lost and wound up here by mistake. We welcome pilgrims, tourists, seekers, doubters . . . and you! You are very welcome.”

Could we welcome others in this way? What might that look like? How might we begin to offer others this kind of radical welcome?

Because when we welcome others, we don’t just welcome them, we welcome those communities they belong to, and we welcome Christ in whose image they are made.

It’s not enough to just say ‘welcome’ if we then don’t act in a way that makes a person know that it is real. We can offer more than just a smile and a cup of cold water. And the reward will be great, in fact the reward will be eternal life. We could make a start.

But our human welcome will always be far inferior to the welcome that we receive from Jesus. Remember the story of the Prodigal Son, when the father runs out with open arms to invite his son back home? That’s the welcome we receive from the father.

The Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn

Shortly we are about to be invited to the Eucharistic table. It’s a meal where everyone is invited and welcomed.  

I will end with some words by John Chrysostom preached on Easter Day in the 4th Century, which speak of the feast wherein we can all participate and experience this welcome,  where Jesus offers himself to us.  

Wherefore, enter you all into the joy of your Lord; and receive your reward, both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poor together, hold high festival. You sober and you heedless, honour the day. Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.[2]

From the Paschal Homily of St John Chrysostom

We are Jesus’ ‘wished for comer’ at his table.

Amen

[1] Garrigan, S. (2016). The Real Peace Process (1st ed.). Taylor and Francis. Retrieved from https://www.perlego.com/book/1567517/the-real-peace-process-worship-politics-and-the-end-of-sectarianism-pdf (Original work published 2016)

[2] https://orthodoxwiki.org/Paschal_Homily

A sermon for Barnabas: signs of hope on the journey

Acts 11: 19-end
John 15: 12-17

A sermon at College Communion, Christ Church
11th June 2023

We’ve been watching the BBC series ‘Race Across the World’.

We love it. Pairs of travel companions travel thousands of miles over land (no planes allowed) between checkpoints to compete to reach the final destination and win £20,000. It’s a great blend of travelogue, competition, and personal human drama. The pairs are given a map, the cash it would take to fly there, and all technology, including phones, laptops, bankcards, are forbidden.

The best part is seeing each person change and grow through the journey. It’s also a long time to spend with one person. Most couples get on, but every now and then they annoy each other, and at times fall out. It’s a little window into human relationships. All the pairs realise at some point along the way that the destination and prize isn’t the main goal, but it’s what they learn from it, the experiences they have, and how they grow as people through it all.

This week sees the end of the academic year before the long vacation over Summer. Some in our chapel community are reaching the end of their journey here. Over the term we’ve been reflecting on ‘images of resurrection’. We’ve looked at the painting of the Emmaus Supper in St Edmund Hall, artwork depicting Miriam’s freedom dance, we’ve walked a labyrinth, and reflected on poetry by RS Thomas.

We end by going back to the beginning – to the early church and seeing what images of resurrection hope looked like to those who saw it 2000 years ago, and what they might mean to us today.

I have two images to leave you with, in hope they are encouraging.

The first is St Barnabas, whose feast day is today.

Barnabas and Paul were travel companions for much of Paul’s ministry. An early church Race Across the World partnership! Barnabas was actually named Joseph, and he was given a nickname to describe his character, as someone who encourages others.

36 Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”), 37 sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Acts 4. 36-37

He’s unassuming, generous, cheerful, and dependable. All great qualities to aspire to. When the early believers were (understandably) wary of Paul, Barnabas advocated for him and persuaded them he was sincere in his transformation. (Acts 9.27)

When there was a church with disagreements and they needed someone dependable to send… the apostles chose Barnabas. (Acts 15)

In the extract from Acts we’ve just read Barnabas is in Antioch, the crossroad of culture and trade – a thriving, cosmopolitan city. Here he sees potential in the fledgling church and encourages Paul to come and teach them. Above all:

‘He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith’

Acts 11.24

This would be a pretty good epitaph for any of us.

The second image is an extract from the Epistle of Mathetes (which just means disciple) to Diognetus, thought to be from around 2nd Century – one of the earliest depictions of the early church.

You can read Chapter V: The Manner of the Christian

Notes: The epistle survived only in one manuscript. It was initially discovered in a 13th-century codex that included writings ascribed to Justin Martyr. The 13th-century manuscript was mostly intact, exhibiting damage only in one place, several lines in the middle of the text. It was first published in 1592, and attributed to Justin Martyr because of the context of its discovery. Unfortunately the original was subsequently destroyed in a fire during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870,[8] but numerous transcriptions of the letter survive today.

The paragraph that often inspires me is:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign….And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives.

From the Epistle to Diognetus

And he describes the way in which they live:

  • As if passing through
  • Sharing meals, not their wives!
  • Obedient to laws, but transcending them
  • Live in poverty, but are generous, and live in abundance
  • They suffer, but they are not destroyed by this

It’s a deeply moving account and portrayal of the journey of faith and the way of life of followers of Jesus. It can be helpful to look back to heroes of faith, like Barnabas, and to the early church for inspiration.

However, a word of caution.

Just a few chapters on from this in Acts Paul and Barnabas fall out spectacularly.

They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord.

Acts 15: 39-40

They have an argument over another member of the community, where Barnabas feels Paul is being too harsh in refusing to allow John Mark to accompany them. They part ways for a while. It’s all very human.

It is perhaps a mistake to hold up any one person or community as if they were perfect.

When I first came to faith I travelled to Rome to live and work with a wonderful Christian community. I met people of faith who lived their lives in a way that was different to what I’d encountered before. They spent their time serving the poor, meeting together to pray, living joyfully (pizza helped).  It felt to me like the early church, and in many ways it was. This time had a profound impact on me.

However, as this community got bigger, problems emerged, disagreements grew. I have since learned that some elements of it were deeply manipulative, and some of my dearest friends were hurt by it.

It is deeply shocking and painful when a Christian community goes wrong, or when a leader we admire turns out to be all too human.

Christian communities, leaders, churches, can be signs of resurrection hope in our world, and have been ever since those first followers were called Christians at Antioch. I have some of my deepest, soul-healing and soul-inspiring friendships from amongst my church family and couldn’t imagine life without them.

But we are also human and sinful, and as such can be deeply disappointing and flawed, which is why we continually need to come back to this table to repent, be forgiven, and put back again.

We need to keep going back to Jesus’ command:

love one another as I have loved you

John 15.12

as it’s from that basis of love we can live out the next command…

and I have appointed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last

John 15.16

As we go from here we can be inspired by the ways these early Christians lived, and by Barnabas, the encourager, the loyal friend, the advocate.

Life is not just a race to get the prize at the end of it all (neither is our time at university, although a degree would be nice!) It’s about the journey – one where we can be distinctive and different, loving one another. We can be signs of resurrection hope in the world. We can live extraordinary lives, not because we are necessarily extraordinary in ourselves (we’re not!), but because of the quality of our relationships, the way we live and love, and the difference we make along the way.

Amen

Life as a grander thing to be lived

A sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter at College Communion, Christ Church
Given by Darian Murray-Griffiths, History and Politics
30th April 2023

Acts 2. 42-end
John 10. 1-10

Lord, hear me and inspire me, that I may be ever faithful to your service. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen

In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus presents himself as the Good Shepherd tending his flock. He tells his confused disciples and listeners that:

I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.

John 10.9

St John tells us that ‘Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them’ (John 10.7). And, 2000 years later, we may equally find ourselves compelled to re-read and re-understand this passage. I remember in this very Cathedral hearing a priest preaching that Jesus positioned himself in direct contrast to shepherds throughout the ages who loved and tended their flock out of pure self-interest. A well-tended flock, fattened and healthy, make for the best meats that the shepherd will eventually sell or consume himself.

Jesus here is the Good Shepherd, the antithetical Shepherd, who cares for us so much that he willingly took upon himself the burden of the Cross.

Attributed to Jean Baptiste de Champaigne  (1631–1681)

The man who preached sociability and charity was instead condemned to being the centrepiece in a spectacle of public entertainment, where masses were drawn together not by love or goodwill but by the desire for cheap entertainment, obedience to the naked display of authority, and the mindless contemplation of that thing they called ‘justice’. That burden Christ took upon himself is one which countless Christians, in varying circumstances and ages, have also taken upon themselves ever since. And one which rightly should inspire us today in our struggles, and stall aggressors to check themselves in their volleys of scepticism.

Truly, Jesus was the Good Shepherd, who in his moment of truth, decided to sacrifice not his flock, but himself. He decided not to sell out or cash in, but to accept his fate, so that we may be saved. It is a decision that two millennia has perhaps dulled in our minds in the constancy of its retelling.

In this Gospel Reading, we see Jesus at pains to intervene against the odds, to disrupt the cycle of human vanities and natural instincts, and to interpose in its place a new conception of life. Jesus says to his audience words which are profound: ‘I came that they may have life and have it abundantly’ (John 10.10)

I do not see this as Jesus simply saying that he saves us from Death or at least the early grave. I see this as something which I hear every time at Evensong in this Cathedral and stirs and reinforces me personally: he is talking about: ‘that peace which the world cannot give’ (John 14.27). In talking of not just life, but a life in abundance, Jesus is talking about the way in which life itself does not solely have to be a dreary march from pillar to post, from resting point to resting point, or even, for us students, from bed to library.

He talks of life as a grander thing to be lived, if only we may halt ourselves in our tracks, and calmly contemplate. He bids us to stop up the fears and vanities, the half-truths we tell ourselves, and the arrogant presumptions we cling on to for matters of prestige and hierarchical self-assertiveness. He bids us, in short, not to live half-lives. To be, as I have long told friends, ‘our true best selves’. Indeed, that abundancy of life comes not from licence or delinquency or selfish abandon, but from the moral abundancy that we may find in the wisdom of Christ’s teachings.

This is, as I have said in a previous sermon, not just a philosophy, but a way of life. And what is this way of life? Well, we see in our first reading today, the utopian vision that Jesus inspired the early Christians with: one where meals are eaten together, and people are charitable. What a lovely vision. All are gathered together, achieving that value which has eternally escaped and passed by many generations: happiness; true, long-lasting happiness. Joy found not in having conquered the world but having conquered some part of themselves. Joy found not in extravagance, but in simplicity.

Note that the circularity of life and death, of struggle and sacrifice, or of hardship and want, has not disappeared. But their centrality to life has. God has not promised an end to all struggles. But God has promised, I think, something greater and more difficult to accept: that we do not have to face our battles alone. That we are loved, despite all our weaknesses, and failures, and frailties. And that we do not have to retreat from the world in order to prosper in it.

The Christian spirit and message do not promise us a free lunch. It asks of us something which has failed many before us, many now, and, I have little doubt, many in the future. It demands of us vigilance, perseverance. And, above all else, courage. The courage not just of bravery in the field, but of a moral courage. Today, that courage is needed. The late Queen, who as many of you know is a source of very deep inspiration to me, in 1957 said:

Today, we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right…We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics.

Queen Elizabeth 11

We are often the makers of our own miracles, but it is the spirit and drive we are given by God, amongst others, which will drive us forward to conquer our demons, overcome our obstacles, and live fuller lives. It is a daunting challenge, but it is one that we should accept. God is not simply the dispenser of good and evil, to be embraced or rejected as the fortunes of our lives vary. Often, God is something we cannot always necessarily discern.

And life itself may very well feel like a country driver facing intermittent weather, where the satnav has died. We may feel that God is like the radio signal, coming in with great éclat, going out with a drivel of quiet, faltering noise. We may curse it. We may dance melodiously to it. But there the radio is still. On this country drive, we would never blame ourselves for the quality or our skill. But blame others. It is by far the easier thing to do. We may stress ourselves out, fearing we shall never reach the intended destination. And in the great fire of our stress and our anger, we may fail to see the beauties of the green fields and new sights that we behold. Sometimes, in the great heat of our struggle to find our way out of the morass, we may need to apply gentle pressure to the brakes. We may even need to do that thing which any competent driver may dread, for fear of looking weak or inexperienced: we may need to pull over. We may need, in fact, to recalibrate and be still. Be still. And discern God in the distances striding to our rescue. We may need that space to discern him better by actively letting go of our struggles and our anxieties, and allowing him to take over, to direct us, to steer us, to embrace us. We may then get back on with our drive. Later, we may even try and erase that memory of when we needed help, perhaps through embarrassment, but God will not judge harshly, he will not reject us like the spurned lover.

What I’m trying to say is that the Christian faith, indeed life itself, requires vigilance on our part. I know this because I too, despite outward appearances, have found God, in the end, to be the most reliable of constants in this abased world. I have learnt harshly what it means to be alone or to feel abandoned by the passing forces of this earth, and to have felt as if I alone can fix things. I have sometimes even tried to deny God by inserting myself in His place, the mover and shaker of all things. But, as my young life has stretched out before me and maturity has dawned, I have accepted what is hard to accept for any proud or just human person: that there are some things which we need help on, some others whom we must turn to. And I am so very grateful to have such great friends who have helped me to realise this and be there for me.

Like the country driver when things are going wrong, it is the very act of acceptance and confident belief that has improved and shaped me, even rescued me from others and from myself, as with so many others.

Churchill once mused about whether history only teaches us the constant of the unteachability of Man. Well, perhaps he had a point. How many times have we, have I, trusted in those things which are not stable or durable: in the fool’s gold and decomposing promises of fellow beings, of fitness quick fixes, or of moonshine mercurial manifestoes of eternal ease and minimal effort. Amidst it all, though He may at times be hard to discern, I have found myself trusting in God. It has taken time, sometimes too much time for my liking, to find out what He has in store for me. He often gave me the most unexpected of boosts, as well as of lows. But He reassured me that right would come through.

And in that process, I became imbued with that thing rarer than hope: confidence. Confidence not just in the Church or society, but even rarer, in myself. It may falter at times, but it has derived from the rock and refuge of Christ, not the shifting sands of Man or of man-made structures.

So, what was Christ, the supposed Good Shepherd, saving us from? Was it war or strife? Possibly. But I think the Good Shepherd saved us from something far worse: he saved us from ourselves. If we choose to follow the teachings of this mighty faith, we are offered the chance of ourselves reborn and resurrected.

As you may have gathered from this morning’s sermon, religion (like many other things) is not just philosophy, not just a way of life either. Religion is psychology too, I think. The questions of life: how we might better ourselves, how we might better others, how we might save ourselves from despair and cynical fatalism, how we might trust that things might turn out okay. All are met in the empty tomb of Christ resurrected.

Throughout all the challenges and changes of life, not all bad, not all good, I have come to a stage where, thanks to the confidence I have in the teachings and bolstering support of the Christian religion, I too may say in the words of Pilgrim’s Progress:

and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who now will be my rewarder.

John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

Now, for many of us, a term of great momentousness beckons. It shall not be easy. And at times we may feel that we are incapable or unworthy of the challenge. I pray for you all daily that you may find time, like the country driver, to accept that we are not alone, that we are not helpless, and that, though great difficulties may attend us, we shall reap fully our rewards. Things will come aright! But, to do all this, one needs constancy, vigilance, perseverance. That is not just the foundation of hope, but indeed of confidence, self-confidence, too.

I have found that trusting in God has led more and more to trusting in self. That God-given confidence I pray you may all find in your own way and in your own time. In the tranquil calm of this Cathedral, where a thousand ancient stones tell their own stories of countless peoples’ struggles and battles, I pray too that you may find truly what Christ promised: that peace which the world cannot give. Amen.  

Glimpses of Glory from the Mountaintop

Sermon at Christ Church Cathedral, 19th February 2023
Transfiguration of Jesus
Sunday before Lent

Exodus 24. 12-end; 2 Peter 1. 16-end; Matthew 17: 1-9

“The Lord said to Moses ‘Come up to me on the mountain’”
“Jesus led Peter, James, John up a high mountain, by themselves”.

In 1950 a French climber called Maurice Herzog led the first expedition to summit and return from Annapurna, the Himalayan peak in North Central Nepal. It was one of the most dangerous expeditions ever completed and was the first 8,000 meter peaks ever successfully climbed. Herzog wrote about it in a book Annapurna in which he recounts a mystical experience at the peak of the mountain.

“I felt as though I were plunging into something new and quite abnormal. I had the strangest and most vivid impressions, such as I had never before known in the mountains. There was something unnatural in the way I saw Lachenal [his climbing partner] and everything around us. I smiled to myself at the paltriness of our efforts, for I could stand apart and watch myself making these efforts. But all sense of exertion was gone, as though there was no longer any gravity. This diaphanous landscape, this quintessence of purity–these were not the mountains I knew: they were the mountains of my dreams[1].”

Those of us who aren’t mountaineers, but who love a hill climb, will know of the wonder, awe, and sense of achievement that we get when we reach the top and the world opens out in front of us. Some of us may have had some kind of mystical experience, or sense of the divine in those occasions.

And if we have, we’re not alone in this.

It was on a mountain the Moses encountered God in the flames of the burning bush where God revealed his name and commissions him to go to Pharoah and release the captive Israelites; And it was on another mountain, in the reading we have this morning, where Moses encounters God again in the glory of the cloud and is given the tables of the covenant.

One of the words for God in Hebrew is El Shadai ‘God of the Mountain’

And so it’s not surprising that it’s on a mountain that the full glory of who Jesus is revealed to his disciples. 

Rather like Maurice Herzog’s experience on Annapurna, the transfiguration has a dream like quality to it. Jesus’ face shines like the sun, his clothes glimmer, a bright cloud overshadows them. He’s joined by Moses who represents the law, and Elijah who embodies the great prophets, and into the scene there is an audible voice from heaven.

Tranfiguration of Jesus by Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890)

The disciples fall over in fear.

It’s a moment when the boundary between heaven and earth seems to open up and intermingle. The other moment like it is at the moment of Jesus’ baptism. And almost the same words are heard:

‘this is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased: listen to him’.

Matthew 17.5

It’s a moment when Jesus’ divinity is shown in all its glory. And it’s fleeting because almost as soon as they experience it, it’s gone.

It’s unlikely that many of us will be able to say we’ve had a mountaintop experience anything like as dramatic as that experienced by Peter, James and John.

But we may be able to recall times when we have experienced something of the Glory of God. Not as dramatic. But wow moments. Probably just glimpses, as St Paul says ‘as through a glass darkly’ or ‘reflected in a mirror’.

  • The sense of deep peace when at prayer or listening to a beautiful piece of music
  • A eureka moment when suddenly you hear the answer and can’t quite explain where it came from.
  • When a person pops into our head, we later find out they needed help at that moment.

We get glimpses of the glory of God in these ‘mountain-top moments’, and we are to be thankful for them as they can sustain us, especially in the dark times, in the wilderness times.

But we can’t capture them or hold onto them.

On seeing the glory of God on the mountain top Peter wanted to capture the moment, build tents, hold on to the moment; ‘it is good for us to be here’.  We know that feeling when we’re on holiday or in a wonderful place and think ‘wouldn’t it be great to stay here forever’.

But that’s not what that moment was for at all. It was good, but it couldn’t be contained in that way. Jesus brought them up so they could witness who he truly was, his divinity would be revealed and this would sustain them for what was to come.

And what was to come was the journey to Jerusalem, Jesus’ arrest and death, and each of them would be challenged in their faith.

Moses came down from his mountain to find that the Israelites had forgotten everything they’d been taught and had built golden calves. He had work to do. At the foot of the transfiguration mountain there was a man having seizures who needed healing.

The Christian life is not to be lived out on the heights but in the depths.

Rowan Williams writes that the life of the Christian is:

‘in the depths: the depths of human need, including the depths of our own selves in their need – but also in the depths of God’s love; in the depths where the Spirit is re-creating and refreshing human life as God meant it to be’. [2]

Maurice Herzog says of his experience on the mountain top:

‘Annapurna, to which we had gone empty handed, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our days. With this realisation we turn the page: and new life begins’.

I believe that down the mountain we need people who have this treasure, who shine with God’s radiance. People who are transfigured into radical bearers of God’s inclusive love.

Who love their neighbour
Who use their gifts fully
Who are fully alive, with faces that shine with life
Who are hope filled
Who care about creation

Today is the Sunday before we enter into the season of Lent. The wilderness season of the Christian calendar. As we enter into Lent it’s good to remember the glimpses of glory we’ve been given, as these will sustain us.   

A question we might ask ourselves as we move into Lent is:

How might we model our lives so that we might pay attention to these glimpses of glory?

Because they are so easy to miss. We’re busy. We’re distracted. We have things to do.

I have two suggestions.

Firstly, by making space to notice, to listen, to pay attention. Peter in our second reading says ‘you will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place’ (2 Peter. 19) We can’t do that if every waking moment is filled with screens, work, social media updates. I’m speaking to myself here. The forty days of Lent are a good time to create a new habit or let go of one that’s destructive. Or to add in space alone with God.

Secondly,  by paying attention to where we feel most alive. Where do we think our eyes shine and our face glows? That might be really simple things. Like listening to beautiful music, painting, baking a cake, speaking up about something we care about.

This is where God is.

Not just on a mountain top. God is with us when we are filled with his Spirit and living lives that are fully alive.

Have the mountain top experiences, but be prepared to then be sent down into the planes to serve.

There’s a book on prayer which a title that I love: ‘After the Ecstasy, the Laundry’ [3]

And I will end with a quote from CS Lewis in his sermon ‘weight of Glory’  – ‘heaven beckons but meanwhile there’s Monday morning’.

[1] Annapurna: the first conquest of an 8,000 metre peak, by Maurice Herzog, Vintage Classics, 2011

[2] Rowan Williams: Being Christian, SPCK, 2014

[3] After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, by Jack Kornfield