Evensong, First Sunday of Lent, 2018

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 and Luke 13:31-35

I wonder whether you have ever been to the Poison Garden at Alnwick Gardens? It is billed as the most poisonous garden in the world. So long as you do exactly as you are told by the tour guide, you will be perfectly safe; but decide that the rules don’t apply to you, and you might make yourself violently sick, or even die.

The Lord God, we are told, planted a garden and took on the human as apprentice, to learn the care and use and misuse of plants. One of the trees in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, had fruit that was poisonous to us. Of course, humans are not the only creatures the Lord God created and provides for, and there are plants whose fruit is poisonous to us but good for some other animal or bird. There are also plants whose flowers, or berries, or leaves, or bark are highly toxic, and yet whose bark, or leaves, or berries, or flowers, rightly prepared, have medicinal properties. It is almost impossible for us, who do not have to discover these things for ourselves, to imagine how frightening the world might be for our ancestors, were it not for divine protection and tutoring.

Note that evil is already present in the world, the result of some element of creation, here represented by the serpent, being in rebellion against the Lord God. The human gardeners will need knowledge of good and evil, will need to learn how to do good and avoid evil. And there is provision for this: but God would avoid them learning it by a Russian roulette trial-and-fatal-error. (Not that either Russia or roulette had yet been invented, you understand.) Note also that death is already a reality in the world. The humans would have experienced it. There is no “all animals were plant-eaters before the Fall of Man” nonsense here. But again, God would have the humans avoid a sudden and premature death, with all the fear that brings.

So, the Lord God provides a tree, among the trees, with purpose and parameters. But the parameters are broken, and the purpose remains at least partially unfulfilled—although the consequences are ameliorated.

This tree of the knowledge of good and evil comes up, albeit unnamed, in our Gospel reading. Jesus declares, “I am casting out demons and performing cures.” In other words, he has knowledge of evil, and how to cast it out; and knowledge of good, explicitly how to cure the sick. Jesus has mastered what the first apprentice failed to do. Even so, it is a risky business: and he too will die, even if not today or tomorrow or the next day.

We are called to join him, in growing in our knowledge of good and evil under the direction of God’s instruction. To get our hands dirty, with Jesus—and at times under his protection. But are we willing?

This week, yet again, we have heard news of children who went to school and grew in their knowledge of good and evil, as classmates were gunned down and a football coach laid down his own life to protect the children in his care. Yet again, we see sly political leaders offer empty ‘thoughts and prayers’ while refusing to address the cause of death. From where we stand, the American obsessive love-affair with that tool of violence, the gun, is beyond understanding. The danger is that such reports obscure to us our own context, to the evil we are called to cast out and the cures we are called to perform. Jesus gave his followers power and authority to do the things that he had been doing. May God open our eyes to see, and our ears to listen.

First Sunday of Lent 2018

This sermon comes in two versions: the one that I will preach; and the extended one made available [in footnotes] for those who want to go deeper over Lent.

Genesis 9:8-17 and 1 Peter 3:18-22 and Mark 1:9-15.

The common thread that holds together our readings this morning is the question, what does it mean to be the community of the baptised? For that is what we are: those who have been baptised into Christ, and those who are preparing to undergo such baptism. And today, and throughout the Season of Lent, we are invited to be formed as precisely that community, as we reflect on the experience of Jesus immediately following his baptism. Because the forty days he spent in the wilderness are the template for the practice of Lent. [a]

Firstly, the community of the baptised are those who are being trained to discover the whole world as sacred place. Sacred (or, connected to God) space is represented by the wilderness. The wilderness is not simply land that has not been turned to agricultural use or built on by urban planners; but the wild-and-free essential nature of place, its naked-and-unashamed self. The use of the land surrounding this Minster church has changed many times, streets of houses swept away in living memory. What remains constant is the possibility of encountering the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ out there—not just in here—because it is God’s steadfast love, and not global economics or regeneration funding cycles, that undergirds Sunderland. The community of the baptised are called to live as if this was true, as those who see Sunderland deeply, and so seeing, love this city deeply. That takes story-telling the past, present, and future; as in the enduring memorials and temporary exhibitions we host. It takes symbols of covenant commitment, and regular reminding one another. At times this building may feel more like an ark for the faithful few than a rainbow of hope; but, again and again, we are driven out by the Spirit to discover the world anew. [b]

Secondly, the community of the baptised are those who are being trained to discover every moment as sacred time. Sacred time is represented by the forty days—forty days, and sometimes forty years, being a recurring motif in the Bible. We have already noted the changes to Bishopwearmouth through time. Young boys who played ballgames in the street have become old men sitting on armchairs on the same spot but now surrounded by the shopping centre. They were baptised here; they return here for their funerals. These occasions are understood as holy moments: but what of all the time between? Time has become our collective obsession and enemy: fast food, faster transport, fastest broadband; “I’d come to church more often, but I never have the time.” There is no mercy in such unforgiving time; no grace in such demanding time. In contrast, Jesus declared, “the time is fulfilled”: that is, time finds its fulfilment in beholding the sacred—and this is what allows us to name the time: now. The funny thing is that it takes time—a deliberate slowing down—to see time as it really is (yes, God can stop us in our tracks in a split-second; but rarely seems to do so in the first few seconds). The community of the baptised are called to live as if this was true, as those who move together at walking pace, at praying pace, at the pace of the very young and the very old. The best advice I have ever been given by a member of any congregation I have served was this: “Slow down, young man!” [c]

Thirdly, the community of the baptised are those who are being trained to understand themselves—and, potentially, those around them—as wild beasts and angels. Following Jesus, we don’t come to know place and time as sacred on our own, but in community. Like Jesus, we will experience resistance, the temptation to confine our understanding of sacred place and time to the Minster on Sunday morning. But God’s vision is bigger than that! Now, if you’ve ever watched anything David Attenborough has narrated, you’ll know how precarious and miraculous life is for wild beasts. We accompany one another as wild beasts by encouraging one another in our dependency on God. And angels are messengers sent from God, in response to our need, to encourage and support. We join with St Michael & All Angels in participating in such interdependence. But this is not simply about looking after our own. Jesus was neither a beast nor an angel. We both give to and receive from ‘strangers’ beyond the congregation, as we participate in reimagining the world together. One example would be the redistribution of surplus food from local shops to those who experience the locality as rough sleepers. [d]

Fourthly, then, the community of the baptised are those who are being trained to extend this discovery to, and for, others. At the end of forty days in the wilderness, Jesus brings back with him to Galilee—to ‘everyday’ place and time—the possibility of a new awareness of sacred time and sacred place: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” It is good news to discover that every place and every time is sacred, or, connected to God; that a rainbow is more than the reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets; that there is an everlasting covenant between God and the earth. It is good news to step-into such a world, and to give shape to it, to make it concrete. But that proclamation flows out of our training (or, re-training). [e]

So, how might we live-into our identity as the community of the baptised this Lent? Let’s keep this really very simple. Each Sunday in Lent, after the second morning service, we will be sharing our soup, bread and fruit lunches. You are all invited to take part. And as we eat together, tell one another where you caught a glimpse of God’s presence in the past week.

And if you don’t think you have anything to bring to that conversation, you do. Even if you don’t have a story to share, you might have questions to ask—and being asked questions helps us tell our stories better. Listening to someone else, you might even get some pointers for yourself: it could be that you glimpse God while watching the waves crash on the beach at Roker; or in the face of the kindly assistant who served you in Boots the Chemists. And if you can’t answer the question, “where have you caught a glimpse of God’s presence in the past week?” today, then over the coming week, why not take five minutes during the day, each day, wherever you might be, to sit and be still and silent, and see what happens?

So, may I invite you into a communal Lenten discipline, of grounding ourselves in place, and stilling ourselves in time, and sharing what happens with one another?

Footnotes:

[a] Immediately following-on from his baptism, Jesus is driven into the wilderness for forty days by the Holy Spirit. In Lent, we, who have been baptised into Christ—or who are preparing to undergo such baptism—follow in his footsteps into both sacred place and sacred time. The prevailing culture seeks to conform us to the view that sacred place and sacred time are firmly bounded: no-one would object to your meeting God at Sunderland Minster between 9.45 and 11.00 a.m. on Sunday mornings. But the baptised are the community who, together, are being trained to discover and populate the whole world as sacred place and sacred time. That is the exhilarating invitation the Season of Lent holds out to us.

[b] In his book Parish: An Anglican theology of place, Andrew Rumsey writes about place formation. Firstly, he notes that, being grounded in God, place exists as a reality prior to our perception of it (Rumsey calls this, being). The Nicene Creed begins, ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.’ [emphasis mine] Secondly, he notes that we come to know place through revelation, not by deduction or by human decision. The wilderness is not simply land that has not been turned to agricultural use or built on by urban planners; but the wild-and-free essential nature of place, its naked-and-unashamed self. Thirdly, we take up our part in the formation of place through cultural interpretation, through tradition, through making the local place ‘storified.’ And fourthly, Rumsey speaks of vocation, or the performance of place, the way in which place calls us to respond.

Now, I appreciate that that is all quite technical, so let me offer an example. Before ever anyone gathered here, there was a small hill overlooking the river, not far from where it emptied into the sea. By the time of the conversion of the settlement to Christianity, we think there was already a temple here to the pagan gods: it was already understood to be a sacred place, but, with a fuller revelation, it was renamed in honour of St Michael, who leads the faithful angel host in triumphing for God over the rebellious angels, powers and authorities. In addition, the dedication to St Michael & All Angels emphasises that this was considered a ‘thin place’ between heaven and earth, somewhere where the unseen is visible in the corner of the eye. Since around 930AD that revealed insight has been ‘storified’ in wood and stone and stained-glass, in spoken and sung liturgy, in the written and oral history of this place and the congregation. And a millennium on, this remains a place of prayer for the people of Sunderland, doors open, visited daily for that purpose. In fact, more people who are not members of the congregation come here through the week to pray than do the congregation. Nonetheless, there remain others who do not see, and so the being-revelation-tradition-vocation cycle is repeated many times over.

[c] The ‘maker of heaven and earth’ is, of course, the maker of time as much as of place. God created and shaped time, and it was good. Moreover, God is present to us in time: but we are unaware, until, as with place, we experience revelation. Jesus declared, ‘the time is fulfilled’: that is, time finds its fulfilment in beholding the sacred—and this is what allows us to name the time: now. The funny thing is that it takes time—a deliberate slowing down—to see time as it really is. In the footsteps of those who prepared the way before him, it is over a period of forty days that Jesus comes to experience time in this way. But more than his simply experiencing this at the time, it is in the person of Jesus that place and time are now (revealed to be) anchored in the sacred, or, connected to God. For us who still follow him today, it is through the annual discipline of Lent (tradition) that we learn to play our part in the forming of kairos time from chronos time: ‘sacred’ or ‘things-unseen’ time from ‘measurable and passing-away’ time. [In chronos time we are moving into death with every passing second, while in kairos time we are entering more fully into life.] And the fitting response, our (vocation, or) performance of time, is to repent and believe: to see time from a new perspective—as sacred—and to act differently in the light of this reality.

[d] Following on from [c], how might we act differently? As well as sacred place and sacred time, our Gospel reading speaks of the role of others within a fuzzy-edged and outward-looking baptismal community. In the face of resistance—represented by the satan, or counsel for the prosecution—we are called to be as the wild beasts and angels to one another. Unlike domesticated animals, wild beasts are totally dependent on God, living a precarious but miraculous existence; while angels are messengers sent from God to bring support. As members of the baptismal community, we are to help one another grow in our dependence on God and interdependence one with another. Again, this takes place in the context of forty days in the wilderness, in experiencing sacred place in sacred time: it is a participation in divine gift, in God-initiated covenant. This should free us from fear, and for generosity; and be expressed in ways that shape the world around us, such as the redistribution of surplus food, connecting what would be thrown away by local shops to those who experience the locality as rough sleepers.

[e] To return to Rumsey, the proclamation of good news is our vocation (the ‘performance of place’—perceived locality calls for practical response) in response to being (‘All that is, seen an unseen’—the reality of locality prior to human perception), revelation (the subjective apprehension of place—local reality ‘meets’ human perception), and tradition (the cultural interpretation of place—locale is ‘storified’).

It is quite easy to see this building as a sacred place, but what about the place beyond our boundary wall? Can we see the city of Sunderland—its roads and shops and tower-blocks and docks and beaches; its regeneration—as sacred place? What existing or newly-needed traditions will help this formation? How might ‘sacred’ pilgrim trails connect with ‘secular’ heritage pilgrim trails, for example?

It is quite easy to see Sunday morning as sacred time, but what about Monday morning, or Thursday afternoon? How might we encourage one another to meet God where we spend most of the week? Again, what existing or newly-needed traditions will help this formation? Prayer during the day? Eating meals with others?

And how might this be held out as good news?

It may be that the enduring nature of the Minster (albeit that it was rebuilt in the 1930s) makes it a more accessible sacred place than much of what surrounds, and that this makes it a focal-point and a gift in that regard. The fact that people come here throughout the day, throughout the week, may also indicate that there is a general perception of any time being sacred time, at least within the circle of culturally-recognised sacred space. It may be that, alongside expanding our openness to the sacred, we should make even more than we do of curating the sacred experiences of the people of Sunderland within our building; and strengthening connections between this space and that place beyond our wall. The immediate surrounding area is currently being regenerated, under the banner ‘the Minster Quarter’: what distinctive appreciation of space, and time spent in those spaces, might we bring? While our church congregations might feel in the cultural wilderness, I have a growing sense that our church buildings (at least, the ancient ones) are the wilderness our society craves.

Ash Wednesday 2018

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 and 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 and John 8:1-11.

This year, Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine’s Day. The reminder of our mortality gate-crashes the celebration of romantic love. A-week-and-a-half ago, I helped two friends of mine renew their marriage vows, in the presence of all their family and friends. I’ve been involved in services of thanksgiving for marriage before, most often to mark the milestone of a Golden wedding anniversary, and once when an older couple wanted to reaffirm their commitment to one another at the point where, simply through age, he was moving into a room in a nursing home while she remained in the family home. But this was unlike any vow renewal I have ever been involved in. On their tenth wedding anniversary, my friends renewed their vows in the context of living with cancer.

The marriage vows are a remarkably honest summary of life, as experienced by all of us—whether married, or never-married, divorced or widowed—with two people committing to face this life together: ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.’ Life and death are a package deal. As my friends sat side-by-side in front of me, there was no hiding from what Jesus describes as life in all its fullness—not simply the parts we like the look of. And I think that is what made it the most holy of moments, and the greatest privilege of my ordained ministry so far.

Our first reading this evening comes from the book of Joel. It is a book originally written for an agricultural community that frequently experienced locust swarms, sometimes devastating swarms that turned the sky black and devoured that year’s entire harvest in hours. They might go several years between such total devastation, but it was a common enough experience for them to need to find a way to address it. And by address it, I don’t mean find a way to prevent it from happening. That was beyond their control; as, if we are honest, and for all our scientific advances, much of our experience of life is also out of our control. Indeed, being in control of our lives is an illusion. By addressing the issue, I mean facing up to it, and finding a way of living life to the full in the face of not being in control, in loss as much as in bounty.

Joel points the people back to God. God is the one who holds our lives, our circumstances, in his hands. This God does not protect us from every circumstance; but in some mysterious way, God is present to us and at work for us in all circumstances. Even in the utter disorientation of a locust swarm, Joel points the people to what is solid, what is beneath their feet: that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love; a God who relents from punishing. That is, Joel brings us back to God’s character: one whose fundamental disposition towards us is faithful, steadfast love. A love expressed through compassion (mercy) and generosity (grace). A love that will confront whatever is ultimately harmful to self and neighbour, not in the heat of the moment but after due consideration and setting clear limits to its punitive sanction.

Those are the terms in which God revealed the nature of his goodness to Moses (Exodus 34:6-7), and they are the consistent testimony of the many and varied witnesses whose words are recorded in the Old Testament. But Joel goes even further: if we, as a community, help one another to press into the presence of this God in our midst in the experience of disaster, we might even find that God leaves a blessing for us—a grain offering and a drink offering. Note, we might find this: it is not a matter of finding the magic words with which we might control God. Nonetheless, it is in keeping with this God that he may turn even disaster into the opportunity to bless. Now, the grain-offering and the drink-offering were part of the daily practice of morning and evening prayer for the Israelites since the time of the exodus (Exodus 29:38-46). They were part of the daily reminder that the God who had rescued them from disaster in the past still dwelt among them, still meet with them, as a community. The people were to bring these things. But Joel suggests that in the context of devastation by locust—that is, when the people cannot uphold their part—God himself might provide what they are unable to bring.

It should not pass us by that tonight we gather around a grain-offering and a drink-offering, the bread and the wine set on this table in our midst, against the backdrop of various personal and communal disasters. Of secondary cancer moving through our body, or dementia stripping away our memories, or having to seek asylum in a foreign and often unwelcoming land, or the prospect of the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the wake of Brexit.

Writing to a different community in a different time, Paul says the same thing: be reconciled to God. Now is the time! He goes on to list some of the ways in which he and his companions have been able to testify to God’s grace, mercy, and steadfast love in the most awful of circumstances. For insisting on this truth, they have been treated as imposters. For owning life in all its fulness, for being honest about its trials and yet hopeful even in them, they are shunned by those who do not want to face reality. But in loss, they have found bounty; in grief, they have found joy—neither one cancelling the other out, but union with God being experienced in every season.

And finally, in our Gospel reading, we are invited to find ourselves standing alone before Jesus, our accusers having fallen back. Our accusers, of course, often include our own inner voices of condemnation, our own projection of the voices of those we are connected to. But the face of this gracious and merciful God of steadfast love, whose justified anger at our sin against our neighbour and our neighbours’ sin against us moves at a slow pace, is revealed in a man crouching down to write in the dust, words the dust will not record, will not hold against us—before straightening up to ask, who is left to condemn you? ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’ And that is just what we, animated dust, the walking dead, need. When the world crashes down around us, we may yet know provision, liberation, empowering.

So tonight, we come to receive the imposition of ashes, the visible reminder that we are dust and to dust we shall return. And to receive bread and wine, the visible expression—a reminder, yes, but more than just a reminder; these elements are efficacious—of the gift of God’s presence in our midst.

And today we enter once again into the season of Lent, perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the last. Forty days to assemble-together: the old and the young; those who have been in this place many times, and those for whom it is unprecedented and frightening. That together we might go deeper into mystery, more fully into life. To that end, I do not commend a programme of activity to you this Lent, but invite you to come together in this place, as often as practicable, to sit in prayerful silence, and so to enter-into the goodness of God...

Second Sunday before Lent, 2018

Proverbs 8:1, 22-31 and Colossians 1:15-20 and John 1:1-14

“…then I was beside him, like a master worker [another reading is ‘like a little child’: isn’t that interesting?]; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” [that’s the voice of Lady Wisdom, Proverbs 8:30, 31]

“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things…” [that’s Paul and Timothy, speaking of ‘our Lord Jesus Christ,’ Colossians 1:19]

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” [and that’s John, speaking of Jesus, John 1:14]

Delight. Rejoicing. Pleasure. Reconciliation. Glory. Grace. Truth. Our readings today fizz to bursting with these good things.

The Church year is rooted in ‘seasonal’ time and ‘ordinary’ time. The goal of seasonal time—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter—is to form us, as a community, into the likeness of Christ, according to the story handed-down to us in scripture. The goal of ordinary time—the short window between Epiphany and Lent, and the much longer portion that sprawls across our summer and autumn—is to train us to encounter God in our everyday lives.

Today, we are in ordinary time; and our three readings are all concerned with creation. Our first, from Proverbs, retells the story of God creating the world from the point-of-view of wisdom, which is personified. Wisdom, we discover, is expressed in delight and joy flowing back and forth.

Our second, from Colossians, is an outpouring of praise for Jesus, but the context is another creation-retelling or recalling: this time repeatedly describing the gospel—or, good news—as bearing fruit and growing in the whole world; describing what has happened in the lives of the saints as the separating-out of light from darkness; and describing Jesus as the means by which God exercises life-giving, ordered rule over the rebellious forces of chaos.

Thirdly, our gospel reading, that introduction—or, Prologue—to the Gospel According to John, recalls and reframes Genesis chapter 1—with it’s repeated ‘And God said’—with a fresh focus on the creative Word itself, still creating light, and life, and a new humanity.

Earlier this week, we had an un-seasonally warm afternoon, and I went for a walk I Backhouse Park. I think it is my favourite park in Sunderland, and this time of year, with the snowdrops and crocuses bursting out, is my favourite time to walk there. The park was full of dog-walkers and birdsong; couples, both young and old, hand in hand; grandparents with their grandchildren; a father with two young daughters.

In Proverbs, Wisdom and Folly are personified as female characters, women with agency to build-up or to destroy. And when Lady Wisdom is recalling her own beginnings, it is as a little child, a young girl out for a walk in the park with her father, delighting in discovering a world bursting-forth with life, delighting in one another.

Sometimes we awake, as from a hibernation, to the realisation that we have forgotten all that. Left it far behind, long ago. Like Susan Pevensie, for those of you who are familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia. We have outgrown that childish innocence—and lost much; though, like the 21-year old Susan, we need not be lost forever.

Sometimes we have much to learn from the very young, and the very old—those who have found their way back to childhood. And sometimes God comes to us, in the mystery and wonder of the world that has sung of its creator through all human history, and says, “Why wait? This is the day I come to you. Will you receive me?”

So, when you go out from this place, go expectantly. May you know delight and joy in your encounters, whatever you come across, and whoever crosses your path; may you know more day-by-day of the depth of the Father’s pleasure; and may your eyes be opened to see traces of glory, grace and truth, the footprints of Jesus in the world.

And all the people said, Amen.