Trinity Sunday 2016

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 (Romans 5:1-5 and John 16:12-15)

A question: Who is Lady Wisdom? She is generally understood to be a personification of God’s Spirit, proceeding from God and sent into the world. But I would tentatively suggest that this woman, given poetic voice by the compilers of the Proverbs, embodies the deep connection – the union, or communion – between God’s Spirit and the human spirit. Either way, this is an appropriate text for the first Sunday after Pentecost.

We meet her moving throughout Jerusalem. She is to be spotted:

‘on the heights’ – that is, the Temple mount, the focal place to which pilgrims stream. Transfer her to Sunderland, and that might be the Stadium of Light, or the Empire theatre;

then ‘beside the way’ – on any main route within the city: such as the central Library, or the Winter Gardens and Museum, or the cafés on Holmeside;

next ‘at the crossroads’ – perhaps, the point at which various sellers of wares try to entice passers-by to stop, turn aside, and buy. That might describe the Bridges shopping centre (which happens to be a staggered crossroads in its layout);

also ‘besides the gates in front of the town’ – or, the main gathering-place where business was transacted and legal disputes heard: which might be the Magistrates Courts, Keel Square, and developing Cultural Quarter;

and finally ‘at the entrance of the portals’ – the various other points of entry into the city: which might include the bus interchange (or even bus stops), the train station, and indeed the river mouth and port.

What form does Lady Wisdom’s wisdom take? On the basis of a deep appreciation of God’s ongoing work of Creation (verses 22-29), wisdom is expressed as:

experiencing mutual delight and rejoicing between Source and that to which the Source gives being (verse 30);

recognising creation as a whole to be a generous and considered gift (verse 31);

and taking delight in all people, and in the diverse social interactions that make us persons (verse 31).

There’s something of this same wisdom in our Gospel reading, where Jesus speaks of a deep mutual sharing with the Father, and of the Holy Spirit as our street guide in entering deeper into this deepest reality. (It is there, also, in our lesson from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. But that is another sermon in itself!*)

I think we are well-invested in the idea of finding God in special places, be that a building like the Minster or a mountainside, or in special moments such as a stunning sunset. In withdrawing from the crowds to meet with God – and Jesus certainly modelled that for us. But the scandal of Jesus’ parables is his insistence that we might stumble upon God in the midst of the world: while working in our allotment, or investing in a business opportunity, or standing in front of a heartless civil servant, or as we search the house with increasing desperation trying to find something we have mislaid. Or that we might even stumble across God while observing someone else doing any of those things: if Jesus can see God’s hand in the flour-covered hands of a woman kneading bread, might we catch a glimpse of God behind the counter at Greggs? According to Proverbs, the whole city centre is alive with opportunities for our spirit to meet with God’s Spirit. Even standing at the bus stop.

So, how might we train ourselves to become more aware of what is right under our own feet?

Firstly, we can Learn the patterns by which God is at work creating. This time of year, it is in the cherry blossom and unfurling leaves; but perhaps it is also in the building sites around the city centre, evidence of regeneration? Might we take a more child-like interest in our changing urban landscape? Might we go exploring, taking detours from our familiar routes, if our legs will still carry us?

Secondly, we can Offer everything back to God in thanks and praise. For every good news story – for what has been, what is, and what will be – give thanks. Thanking God for buildings and services provided, and for those who will work there, in that college, that venue, that hotel, that shop. And offer ourselves: our attention, our care, our participation.

Thirdly, we can Value our surroundings. Visit the library or the museum. Eat lunch sat out on the grass. Pick up litter. Speak up for threatened services. Speak well of Sunderland.

Fourthly, we can Enjoy people. They are endlessly fascinating. They can be hilarious. They are often laden with burdens, that can be lightened – if not removed – by a smile, by looking them in the eyes, by sitting next to them on a bench and sharing whatever passes by. They can also disarm and reveal ourselves to us, where we have tried to hide from ourselves – though a warning: this often happens, if it happens at all, just after they have done something that has made us reach for a curse rather than a blessing.

Learn, Offer, Value, Enjoy. El – Oh – Vee – Eee. Love. Say ‘yes’ to entering into the love that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share, and invite us into, and the city becomes a playground of that love. And that is wisdom, in its glory. Amen.

Intercessions

Let us pray for the city centre that lies to the north, south, east, and west of us.

Spirit of the living God, poured out on us and on all, we look north. We pray for the Empire theatre, and for the great theatre of dreams beyond the river. As our human nature is laid bare in the stories that are told, may we be slow to judge others and quick to show compassion.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Spirit of the living God, poured out on us and on all, we look south. We pray for the bus interchange; for those who come into the city, pass through, or leave the city behind; for the young people who gather there in search of safety in numbers.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Spirit of the living God, poured out on us and on all, we look east. We pray for the Bridges, for those who work there, for those in search of something, for those who wait there to appear in court, and those who are just passing the time of day. We pray that as the Day Pastors is re-established next month, that we would see you in others, and be able to point to you.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Spirit of the living God, poured out on us and on all, we look west. We pray for the university, for those who teach and those who work in supporting roles, for students and for their families; asking that they might flourish and that they might not simply discover new information, nor even mere knowledge, but grow in wisdom.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Spirit of the living God, poured out on us and on all, we take a moment to bring before you our lives, the places we will go this week, those we will meet and those we carry in our hearts.

Merciful Father, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

*BONUS MATERIAL

It is there, also, in our lesson from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, in his insight that ‘suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.’ When we come across the word ‘suffering’ in the New Testament [and the same English word ‘suffer’ might translate one of several different words in the Greek] it does not simply mean ‘difficult or painful experience’ – though it may include that – but carries the sense of being in a situation where something is done to you, or happens to you, which you can resist or embrace but, crucially, differs from a situation of your doing or making happen.

Being a recipient of the gift of being – which we did nothing to bring about – is the ultimate example of suffering, of having something done for us that we could not do ourselves. To receive our life, and the world in which we live, as gift in turn produces endurance: the ability to keep on going through (in particular) the painful experiences – even to delight in people, when their actions towards us or others are far from delightful. Endurance in its turn produces character: or shapes us for wisdom, for that communion between our spirit and God’s Spirit – and the kind of impact our spirit has on other people’s spirit. And character produces hope, which enables us to keep finding ourselves with Lady Wisdom in the public square, even in the face of all evidence that suggests that more people will ignore her than will listen.

Evensong on Pentecost

Exodus 33:7-23 and 2 Corinthians 3:4-18

‘Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.’

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a man whose name was Moses. Every morning, Moses would get up and go out to visit his friend, the LORD. And every day, everyone else would stand and look on from a distance, because it was at-one-and-the-same-time a very strange idea to them that you could be friends with God, and yet a deeply compelling one.

The LORD and Moses would meet; and afterwards, Moses’ face would shine. It shone so brightly, after they parted, that no-one else could bear to look on Moses’ face, and he was forced to hide the glory-halo behind a veil until the radiance faded. That strange-and-compelling idea kept niggling away at them, disturbing their thoughts.

‘…if I have found favour in your sight,’ Moses asked the LORD, ‘show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favour in your sight.’ Or, ‘if you would like to be my friend, tell me about yourself – what you like, and what you are like – in order that I might get to know you better, and so be a good friend to you.’

And again, ‘Show me your glory, I pray,’ Moses asked. To which the LORD responded, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, “the LORD”’ … ‘But,’ he added, ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.’ Or,

Moses: ‘Show me what really makes you tick, what gets you out of bed in the morning.’

The LORD: ‘That’s easy: what does that is the opportunity to show goodness to others, to bless their lives with unexpected gifts and to lighten their load … But, you can’t see me for whom I am without dying to yourself – that is the cost of true friendship.’

On the Day of Pentecost, Jesus’ disciples were gathered in the upper room – where, fifty-two days earlier, Jesus had told them that he no longer called them servants, but friends – when the LORD turned up. The LORD; Moses’ friend. The one who had brought his people out from slavery in Egypt, into freedom.

The one the people stood at a distance to see when he came calling on his friend was back. And in case anyone was in any doubt, the encounter left his new friends’ faces shining with the reflection of his glory, as if tongues of flame were dancing round their heads. Like Moses. And, indeed, like the bush where Moses first met the LORD, which burned without being consumed.

What is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh at Pentecost for? Whatever else, it is the invitation to be friends with God – an invitation extended to those nearby, and those standing far off.

Now, that is massive. Here in the north east, where men don’t speak with their best mates about anything of consequence, but bottle things up inside until they can’t cope and it takes a toll one way or the other, it is almost unbearable. Alright for the vicar, perhaps, so long as he hides it; but not for the likes of ordinary folk. Except that ordinary folk are exactly who Pentecost is for: young and old, men and women. All of us, being transformed from one degree of glory to another, as we continue in our friendship with the LORD.

What does it mean, to have and to be a friend?

What does it look like?

What does it do in, and for, us; and through us, for another?

What does it do to us, not having friends, or at least, not having friends with whom we can speak openly, face to face, about the deep and true and often shunned things that make us who we are?

How might we grow together, as friends of God?

How might we do that in a way that is both appropriately authentic to the culture of the north east and yet at the same time counter-cultural and transformative, where our culture is not serving us well?

I don’t have the answers to those questions. But we have been given one another, male and female, young and old. And we have been given the Spirit of God, come out to meet us day by day. And where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is freedom. Freedom, to live into, over the course of a lifetime.

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 16:16-34

At the risk of sounding rude – which has never bothered me – I wonder how you feel about your body? Maybe you lament the fact that your body sags more and is somewhat wider than it used to be – or perhaps your expanding girth is to you a very approximate outward measurement of every act of love you have given and received over the years? Maybe you cannot bear to hold your gaze in the mirror, for creasing and indeed increasing wrinkles – or perhaps you treasure them for every carefree laugh that etched them on your face, and every tear that flowed between the lines? Maybe you are ashamed that you cannot bear your body; or frustrated that it seems unable to bear you – or perhaps you have embraced it as a gift, from Someone with a sense of humour?

Thursday just gone was Ascension Day, the day we remember that Jesus ascended into heaven, not as a spirit or a soul set free from its used-up body, but in flesh and blood. This is a mystery, which is to say that it is beyond us to answer how this might be so, but that it reveals to us something incredibly important: that our bodies matter to God. That matter matters, as author Barbara Brown Taylor puts it.

One of the best disciplines I can commend to you is to take your weekly pew sheet home, and to make time to read the Bible passages over and over, out loud, allowing them to get under your skin. As I have done that very thing with our reading from Acts, I have been struck by just how physical an account it is.

Paul and Silas are seized – imagine a fist grasping hold of your collar.

They are dragged – imagine your feet scraping the dirt as you stumble and trip and try to keep up without falling.

They are stripped – roughly: feel your collar catching on your collar bone, your sleeve catching on your armpit.

They are beaten with rods – involuntarily, the muscles of your back tense: do you sense the smarting sting of the beating? And afterward, can you see the bruised flesh ripen purple; feel it flinch away from every touch?

Their feet are fastened in the stocks – feel the unyielding wood that scrapes your shin – where skin is stretched across the bone – every time you shift your weight, trying to relieve your aching back.

And in response, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.

Why on earth would they do that?

Perhaps they are expressing trust in God, who has history in setting his people free – and association with those who trusted God, even when they, themselves, were not rescued? Perhaps Paul is remembering the time he stood and watched while Stephen, being murdered by a rock-throwing mob, saw heaven opened; perhaps this experience was for Paul somehow redemptive? Perhaps they recalled Joseph, handed over into captivity by his brothers, able to declare that while they had meant it for evil, God had taken hold of the circumstances to bring good out of them? Perhaps they recalled Jacob, wrestling with God all night long, left with a permanent limp as a reminder of the blessing he received in the darkness – when enmity with God and fellow human was transformed into new relationship, first with God and then with human brother?

Perhaps they are thanking God for their bodies, which we so easily take for granted when all is well – for how amazing they are and what they make possible? Perhaps their bruises remind them of grazed childhood knees, and a mother who wiped away the blood? Perhaps the way they sit now, backs hunched, reminds them of a much-loved grandparent, bent by the years, a wonderful story-teller? Perhaps they are thanking God for particular people; or perhaps they are thanking God that for every one who has rejected them, others have become sisters and brothers?

And then they are taken, again, but this time their wounds are washed; they are brought, and others set food before them. This, too, can be painful – or, at least, bitter-sweet – to have to surrender to the vulnerable intimacy of being washed by another; of teaching your broken body to hold cutlery and feed itself again.

‘Do not harm yourself’ Paul shouts for the jailer to hear. Do not despair. Salvation – the experience of God coming to you, doing for you what you cannot do, bringing hope – is for the body as much as the spirit. The spiritual is physical; and the physical is spiritual. The spiritual body is pressed down under water in baptism, and brought up again to share in a meal, of bread and wine and company (lit. sharing bread).

A-week-and-a-half ago, I had a headache that was so disabling I was taken to hospital in an ambulance. Paramedics came into the office, stuck electrodes all over my body, strapped me to a chair and carried me down the stairs. I was laid out on a trolley in the back of their ambulance, and then on a bed in the Accident & Emergency Services ward, where I was wired to a heart monitor and had a cannula inserted into the crook of my elbow, and from where I was wheeled to Radiology for a brain scan. For most of the time, I was aware of what was going on around me, but for some time I was unable to respond: unable to grip or squeeze with either hand, or move my legs, or open or track with my eyes. My speech was impaired.

Now, to be clear, the treatment I received was excellent, and found nothing of lasting damage. I have now had two such headaches, eleven years apart, which is scary at the time but not warranting medical management other than in the moment. If I start to have headaches more frequently, then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it; but for now it simply is what it is. The human body is both fragile and resilient.

But, while this was taking place, all I could do was let things unfold, within and around me. And I discovered certain things. I discovered that people care about me, people here, who know me, genuinely care. But I also discovered that complete strangers, who might not expect to meet me ever again, also care about me. And both those things are worth prayer and singing – when my body was ready.

And I also learned – not for the first time, because this is a lesson we need to be refreshed in from time to time – that my body is not my enemy who frustrates what I need to get done, but my companion closer-than-a-brother, through which I am empowered to meet God and to meet other people – even when I am too pre-occupied or too afraid or too much in need of being in control of what happens to enable such encounters by my own strength. As Paul discovered through an experience he could only describe as like having thorns stuck in his flesh – which might be as unpleasant as a cannula needle – God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. Or, God’s power at work in and for and through us is most free to move when we stop resisting. May our bodies teach us how to pray and sing to God. Amen.

BCP Sunday after Ascension Day

1 Peter 4:7-11 and John 15:26-16:4

Thursday was Ascension Day. Ascension Day marks an end and a beginning. It marks the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and the beginning of his heavenly one of interceding for us at the right hand of the Father. And yet even in the end, there is continuity: because Jesus ascends, not as a soul set free from the body, but in the flesh, as a physical being. That is mystery: we cannot know how it is possible, but believe it to be so, and so believing we know that our bodies matter very deeply to God. So, an end; and a beginning. And yet ‘In the beginning,’ there is a waiting to see what is to happen when the Spirit comes – which takes us right back to the very first verses of our Scriptures. There is a prayerful expectant waiting between Ascension and Pentecost.

And that is where we are. And we are at our own ending and beginning. This is the last time, for the foreseeable future at least, when we shall meet at 8 o’clock on a Sunday morning at the Minster to hold a service of Holy Communion as set out in the Book of Common Prayer. But it is not the last time that we shall meet together to do so. Unlike being put out of the synagogue, which refers to building and community, we are leaving the building but not the church: for the church is, wherever the church meets. Indeed, we are going back to the beginning, when the church met in one another’s homes to break bread and drink wine in remembrance of Jesus our Lord and Saviour.

In the world around us there is a steady stream of endings and beginnings. On the global stage, we are coming to the end of an American presidency, and wait to see who will take up that mantle. In politics in particular one has the sense that an end is always waiting to happen – who will stab whom in the back? – and often potential outcomes are portrayed as being The End Of The World – staying in the EU or leaving are both warned against in terms of Doom.

In a very immediate sense, the end of something is at hand. And this may be a reminder to us that the end of all things is at hand. That end is not to be lamented, but longed for; and so perhaps all endings along the way might be to us a renewal of our hope. Nonetheless, Peter’s instructions are particularly fitting as we stand in that point between what has been and what is to come.

First, Peter says, ‘be ye therefore sober.’ That is, have a measured judgement. The unfolding of history around us is so often portrayed as either the thin end of a terrible wedge, or as the vanguard of a wonderful new dawn. Viewed soberly, events in the world are the ever-changing context in which we are called to be the church, called to be faithful to our Lord and Saviour. In recent days I have read some insightful articles on the rise of tyrants within late-stage democracies; and I have read a great deal of scaremongering; and my reading and my response to what I read needs to be informed by Peter’s wise caution: ‘be ye therefore sober…

‘and watch unto prayer.’ If we are to understand the times in which we live, we must also pray the times in which we live, asking God to shape us for those times, to shape us to be his in those times.

Pray for those who have been elected to political office, for those who stepped forward but were not chosen, and for those who have been deposed from their seat. Pray for our sisters and brothers, in this city and this nation and throughout the world, that we might love our neighbour in the power of the Holy Spirit and bear witness to the Son who sent the Comforter into the world and the Father from whom the Spirit of truth proceeds.

‘And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. Use hospitality one to another without grudging. As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.’

Understanding the times in which we live. Praying the times in which we live. And with prayerful understanding, acting as God’s representatives in the times in which we live. Seeing one another as those who are exposed by sin in a multitude of ways and are therefore in need of the covering of love. Offering hospitality, within which healing of the soul takes place. Serving one another with the resources of heaven, entrusted to us, through words that strengthen weary hearts and minds, and actions that bless weary bodies.

These things are counter-cultural, in every age. We can live this way only empowered by the Comforter. Therefore, let us spend these days between Ascension Day and Pentecost praying earnestly for the gift of the Holy Spirit to be poured out on our lives afresh, and continually. Amen.