Pentecost (sermon 2: preached at Sunderland Minster)

John 16:4b-15

Listen.

What do you hear? Can you hear the sound of the Spirit moving in our midst?

Moving in the midst of men and women, young and old, people gathered together from diverse countries and cultures? Each with their own God-breathed vision and dream of what we long to see birthed in our midst? Visions and dreams that, on the surface, can seem to pull in different directions. One comes in search of breathing space, a precious retreat in order to return to demanding families and workplaces refreshed, renewed; another, in search of human connection, an oasis in a desert of disconnection from our neighbours. One comes looking for us to be stretched beyond our comfort zones; another, looking for the comfort of the familiar. To borrow a Pentecost-al image, we come from different places and speak different native tongues, or first languages.

Listen, again. What do you hear? Can we hear one another? Or are we so excited to share our vision, our dream, that we drown one another out?

I want to suggest that the primary work of the congregation is to listen. To attend carefully to God’s voice. To listen deeply to one another, in order to hear what we are really saying when we say what we think we are saying. Hear, O Israel…

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit, as our Advocate, ‘will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgement, because the ruler of the world has been condemned.’ (John 16:8-10) What does that even mean? And how might it help us to hear one another?

Firstly, sin. The world says that sin needs to be punished – and so usually encourages us to believe that ‘I am not a sinner’ or, at the least, ‘I am more sinned against than sinning’ (though sometimes, when we are vulnerable, tells us instead that we are the worst of sinners and deserve punishment). The world says, ‘Your actions have made me feel smaller, in relation to you; and so I must counter-act to make you smaller, in order to redress the balance.’ But the world is wrong. Jesus says, sin needs to be forgiven. Only those who recognise themselves as sinners can receive the forgiveness that is in him.

Sin; then, righteousness. The world says, ‘I justify my actions, I determine that I am in the right’ – and, by extension, whether you are in the right or in the wrong. Jesus says, I do not need to get my own way for the Father to be glorified. Being in right relationship with others flows from going to our Father, day by day, in the hidden place no one else sees, not the public arena. Are we doing that?

Sin; righteousness; and lastly, judgement. The world says, ‘Who is God to judge me?’ or, perhaps, ‘God judges in my favour, and against you.’ Jesus says, who is the one who has usurped humanity’s position under God as ruler of this world to judge you? For the Father sent the Son into the world not to condemn but to save; and the Father and the Son have sent the Spirit into the world, poured out on all flesh, as our Advocate. As Paul also writes, God is for us, corporately, and nothing can now separate us from God’s love (Romans 8).

When the Spirit comes, the perspective that I must pursue my vision at all costs is proved wrong. Instead, we find ourselves speaking in new languages – in the native tongues of others. We discover vocabularies of praise we had not known; and we come to recognise that our own native vocabulary of praise is inadequate for enabling others to join in. And in this encounter – which is nothing less than a sign and wonder revealing that God is in our midst – we discover that there is unity in our diversity, and that God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.

Look around.

What do you see? A company of sinners, come in need of forgiveness? Sisters and brothers, beloved children of God? Those for whom the Spirit advocates? If we can see these things, as we are gathered together in this place, then our visions and dreams are being woven together, to the glory of God.

Come, Holy Spirit!

Pentecost (Sermon 1: published, but not preached)

In England today there is a marked divide between those who live on the land – who tend to vote Blue – and those who live in the cities – who tend to vote Red. Perhaps this divide is universal; it certainly features in the Bible. But however badly the city-dwellers and the rural peasants related to each other in practice, the Jews lived-into their Story through a bringing-together of the Land and the Temple. Jesus, his disciples, and everyone we read about in the Gospels, would have known and in some form taken part in three annual pilgrim festivals. Each one told part of the foundational Story of God’s people; and each one was tied to a particular harvest.

The land they lived in was famous for bearing two grain crops – barley, and wheat – and five fruit crops – grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. The first two festivals belong together, marking the seven week period over which the grains ripened, from the bringing-in of the barley at Passover to the bringing-in of the wheat at Pentecost. In other words, Pentecost marks the completion of something begun at Passover. The third festival, the festival of Tabernacles, took place later in the year, marking the bringing-in of the fruits.

Here, then, is the story that unfolds from Passover to Pentecost:

A long time ago, the brothers from whom the tribes of Israel would descend sold one of their number, Joseph, into slavery in Egypt. They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Through this Joseph, God saved the Egyptian Empire from a catastrophic seven-year long famine. But, far from gratitude, the Egyptians enslaved all of Joseph’s family for four hundred and fifty years. Then God sent Moses, to proclaim judgement on Egypt if they did not repent, and to rescue his people. Pharaoh and all Egypt hardened their hearts; and their world came to an end when they awoke to find every first-born son had died in one night. Those Israelites who listened to Moses – and not all of them did – were led out of slavery on that night. Seven weeks later, the refugees now camped in the wilderness at the foot of Mount Sinai, God spoke with Moses, giving the Law that constituted them into a new people.

(Like the Egyptians, they turned out to be an ungrateful people. God allowed them to wander the wilderness for forty years; living in tents; the whole generation he had led out of Egypt – with the exception of one man, Joshua – dying, before their children inherited the land God had promised to give to Abraham’s descendants. This is why they needed the third festival – but that is not our concern today.)

Seven weeks ago, Passover. Jerusalem was full of pilgrims, gathered to give thanks for another harvest; gathered to eat roast lamb and unleavened bread, and to remember that God had brought them up out of slavery in Egypt; gathered, wondering when God would set them free from the Roman Empire. A potent mix of past and present and future; of celebration and lament. And Jesus, re-interpreting the Passover. Jesus, sent to Israel as Joseph and Moses had been sent to Egypt; rejected, by those who in rejecting him had sealed their own judgement; believed in, by those who in believing in him had secured their deliverance, their survival of the end of the world.

Seven weeks later, and Jerusalem is once again full of pilgrims, gathered to give thanks for the harvest; gathered to hear the Law of Moses being read out, and to remember that, at Sinai, God had constituted them into a people. Still asking, when, O Lord, will you overthrow Rome and restore David’s kingdom? Except that this is not going to happen – at least, not obviously, not any time soon. Within the lifetime of many of those pilgrims, Israel would rise up against Rome and be utterly destroyed, the very stones of the temple thrown down on to the pavement below. The end of the world is coming. What Jesus and his first followers are acting out is this: that God has rescued a remnant from the coming destruction; and that God is fashioning them into a new community.

In the first act, a hundred and twenty are rescued. In the second act, the Church explodes from Jerusalem to every corner of the Roman Empire, from where she will grow until Rome is overthrown not by might nor by power but by the Spirit of God.

The end of the world happens all of the time. Ask any member of our congregation who has sought asylum in the past twelve months. Ask any member of our congregation who has been bereaved in the past twelve months. Ask any member of our congregation who has received a life-changing diagnosis in the past twelve months. No wonder post-apocalyptic dystopias are so prevalent a theme in young adult fiction at present. In the midst of life, we are in death.

Pentecost says, the end of the world is real; but it is not The End. Pentecost is the Spirit of God giving birth to a community that will survive the end of the world: and not a community that can survive the end of the world once, just about limping along; but a community that can survive the end of the world over and over again, and give rise to the world reborn; a community that carries within itself the seed of the world made new. Jesus said, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains but one seed; but if it falls to the ground and dies, it bears a harvest. Pentecost is our carrying to God the first-fruits of that harvest, with great celebration.

Pentecost is where we gather together – old folk and younger folk; men, women, and children; from England, and West Africa, from the Middle East, from the Indian sub-continent, and South East Asia – and start dreaming God-inspired, God-empowered dreams of what life after death looks like, here in our midst, at Sunderland Minster. Visions of a new world for the asylum seekers – and everyone who steps inside this building is seeking asylum from this world, within the world that is coming among us.

We all get to play: the young in faith, and the elders among us; the women and the men. It doesn’t happen overnight; happens, mostly, by tiny almost imperceptible degrees; but it changes everything.

So go: Go, and have visions and dreams. Go, but gather again, often; and when we gather, share those visions, those dreams. Speak them out for others to hear. And together we will see what God will do with us, and for us, and through us. Amen.

160th (Wearside) Brigade

We have come here today to dedicate a memorial Standard in honour of those who served King and Country in the 160^th (Wearside) Brigade. It is a new Standard, and it bears the motto of the Royal Field Artillery, which translates from the Latin UBIQUE QUO FAS ET GLORIA DUCUNT as ‘Everywhere sacred duty and glory lead’. But in your order of service you will also find a coat of arms drawn up and adopted by those men themselves. On the shield we read the Morse code for the letters ‘I’ and ‘D’ which stand for ‘the Idle and Dissolute’. Above the shield there is a very large bottle of port. The shield’s supporters are a horse, symbol of the gambler; and a woman wearing only stockings and a diaphanous negligee, standing on a money bag, and holding a glass and a tiny captive man in her hands. Between the stallion and the prostitute we read the Greek motto KLEPTO – ‘I steal’.

Which representation is true? By which ought we to remember those Wearside men? By which would we want to be remembered ourselves?

The truth is to be found not in one or the other symbol, nor even somewhere in between, but in holding these two images in tension.

According to Saint John, the first sign by which Jesus reveals his glory is providing the equivalent of 800 bottles of wine, give or take, to keep a village-wide wedding celebration going. This, a sign of heaven breaking into earth. As his ministry unfolds, we see Jesus call fishermen and tax collectors alike from their employment, to join him at so many tables that he was widely accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. Jesus and his disciples are the original Idle and Dissolute brigade. He surrounds himself with the company of publicans – a term that refers to those who had bought into the privatisation of the tax system in hope of making a profit, the ultimate gamblers of their time – and prostitutes. Indeed, he is so at home in the company of disreputable women that even women of good reputation were wrongly accused: on no evidence in the Gospels whatsoever, no less a figure than a Pope would later proclaim that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. And while stealing is generally frowned upon in the Bible, Jesus describes himself as having tied up a strong man in order to steal from him: referring to stealing back from the devil what this shadowy figure had stolen from men, women, and children, including health and hope and a future.

Jesus, I think, would have been happy to operate under the coat of arms of the 160^th (Wearside) Brigade. And yet he is clear that he went wherever the Father sent him, doing only what he saw the Father doing, with the result that people glorified God. In other words, Jesus holds UBIQUE QUO FAS ET GLORIA DUCUNT and KLEPTO in dynamic tension, and it is within that tension that heaven invades earth and claims it back for us.

We see this, too, in our servicemen and women at their best, giving of themselves in order to steal back a stolen future for the most desperate women, children, and men, whose lives have been oppressed by self-proclaimed ‘strong men’ today. And, for all that was disastrous and tragic about the First World War, we see it in the service rendered by those we honour today.

We have come here today because in one way or another we are the heirs of the 160^th (Wearside) Brigade. And while we come to dedicate a memorial Standard, we also come to dedicate ourselves before God, to live within the tension: to respond to the call of sacred duty and glory, to live a life that is both Idle and Dissolute. May you know the truth that is only found in that place, and may the truth set you free. Amen.

Ascension Day

Once there was a father who had two sons. The first-born son was dutiful, took the burden of responsibility that he felt upon his shoulders most seriously. As is so often the way with eldest children, he was not much given to celebrating life, and, truth-be-told, struggled with those who did. Working alongside him, his father would from time to time speak words of affirmation; but they felt more like a wound, because he could never live up to his own expectations. At the end of the day, his father would encourage him in to the circle sat around the fire, telling stories in the darkness; but he preferred his own company, or told himself as much.

The younger son was wild and free. From childhood, he had filled the estate with laughter and the slap of running feet. Both sons, in different ways, felt constrained by the boundary wall that marked their home – and they were meant to. Home is where we start out from, and return to; it is not the wideness of the world. But while the older brother conformed himself to that constraint, the younger son kicked against the walls until they broke and he burst free. Out, out he went, having secured his share of their father’s fortune, seed-money to seek a fortune of his own. He travelled to a far country, where he fell in with a crowd of other run-aways, and there he squandered his father’s wealth with revellers and gamblers, with prostitutes and conspirators. What his older brother would say, if he could see him now! And what would knowing do to his dear father?

The money – as I’m sure you can imagine – soon ran out, as money has a want to do; and with it, most of his new-found friends ran out on him too, except those so lost they had nowhere else to run. And then, of course, he took an inevitable beating, from those who prey over the weak, who refused to believe that there was nothing else to take from him, if he was who he claimed to be.

Then he set out for home. There was quite literally nowhere else to go. The journey took him forty days. Along the way, he had several adventures. He met several old friends who no longer even recognised him, at least not a first. With each encounter, each revelation, he came to himself – not the young man who had left home, but the man prepared to come home, his true self exposed.

At last, he arrived – his father running beyond the boundary to meet him. His brother, on the other hand, refused to recognise him at all. He could not, for he had never really recognised his own surroundings – his father, his home, his own self.

Why did the father embrace his lost son, I ask? Because he loved him, you reply. Yes, he did; but that is not the reason: after all, he loved his elder son just as much. No, the father embraced his younger son because he himself had gone on a similar journey long before. He had descended from heaven onto Mount Sinai, to befriend a broken rabble of outcasts; had descended even further, to tabernacle in their rebellious midst; and had then ascended Mount Zion, from where he established a wounded-but-healed people to bless all the surrounding wounded peoples from one horizon to the other, to the ends of the earth. The way home is down, down, up. Earth, hell, heaven.

The ascension is Jesus’ homecoming. It marks the end of a first journey, which takes us away from home in order to return home recognising home for the first time. Seeing home as we were never able to see it before. Those who have never left home can never see home in this way. And it is the beginning of a second journey – still unfolding – which sees Jesus widen the family to include all of humanity.

This is a journey we are called to walk too, as we follow after Jesus, as he does what the Father has done. We are called to return home; having first travelled far from home. That is why Adam and Eve always had to leave the Garden (and they had to be tricked into it, because few of us want to leave the security and comfort and provision of home – though in this we see another deep truth: that God transforms what was done with evil intent for good, includes the fall from grace in the triumph of grace). That is why scientists tell us that all matter is expanding outwards from a moment, to which all matter will eventually contract back: for all things come from God and will return to God.

I experienced something of this Eastertide, when we went up to Scotland to see my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, nephew and niece, and my brother. I left Scotland twenty-four years ago, and have never missed it. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but that is not quite the same thing. This visit, it felt like coming home. Not that I want, or need, to move to live in Scotland – I know that we are called to England – but that I had come home. That I am free to leave again, because it will always be there, in a way I had never known it before. A twenty-four year journey.

Our home is in God. This is where we start out from, and where we return to. Ascension-tide – from now until Pentecost – is a gift, an annual opportunity, to practice coming home. To learn how to return home, together. A time to tell stories of home, to awaken dreams, to stir up hope. A time to stumble towards love, and a time to be transformed more fully into our true selves as we live in the tension between Jesus’ departing and his return.

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 8:26-40

Listen, and I will tell you a story. One day, long ago, God appeared to an old man named Abram. And God spoke to Abram and said, though you are old and you and your wife have no children, yet I will give you a son; I will give you descendants more numerous than the sand of the shore and the stars of the sky; and through them all the peoples shall be blessed. And God said, the descendants I give to you will suffer at the hands of those they serve, but after they have suffered I will raise them up.

Listen, and I will tell you a story. One night, long ago, God appeared to a young man named Joseph – Abraham’s great-grandson. And God gave Joseph dreams concerning his future, of being raised up; but Joseph misinterpreted the dreams, forgot the words that suffering must come first. So Joseph offended his brothers, and they sold him into slavery in Egypt. There, he was falsely accused and thrown into prison and forgotten about, until, when hope was all but lost, God raised him up and set him as Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer over Pharaohs’ kingdom. In this role, Joseph saved Egypt and all the surrounding peoples from famine, buying up cheap grain in years of plenty and controlling its distribution in years of crisis so that rich and poor alike had as they needed, and the rich could not exploit the poor.

Listen, and I will tell you a story. Joseph’s family joined him in Egypt and prospered. And like all immigrants they were welcomed with open arms when they could serve and help rebuild, only to be later demonised as a threat to the local way of life. And so Abraham’s descendants were enslaved, for four hundred years. Then Moses was born, and saved from genocide by the daughter of the Pharaoh, and grew up in the royal palace aware of his dark secret. One day when Moses had grown up, he saw an Egyptian overseer kill a Hebrew slave, and took revenge. The next day he came across two slaves arguing, and attempted to reason with them. But they rejected him, and threatened to expose him, and Moses fled, seeking asylum across the border. Forty years later, God appeared to Moses. And God spoke to Moses and said, I am sending you back to your people as their lord and rescuer.

Listen, and I will tell you a story. Moses led the people out of Egypt, and in the fullness of time they settled in the land God had promised he would give to them after they had passed through suffering. A land from where they could be a light to all the surrounding nations. And God exhorted them not to forget him and their calling, when they entered the land and enjoyed its goodness. But the people did forget. Over and over, God sent messengers to them, calling them back. But they would not listen, and eventually God allowed them to be carried off into exile in a distant land.

And there, far from home, they wondered why God would allow this to happen to his chosen people. And as they wondered, as they went back over their own story, some of them came to realise a pattern that had been there all along: that God was looking for a people who would serve their neighbours, even when their neighbours abuse them in return; that God would honour such an attitude; and that, having failed to live up to their calling, God’s chosen people needed such a servant as much as every other nation.

Listen, and I will tell you a story. Jerusalem was full of news, that the servant had come. His name was Jesus, and he had suffered at the hands of the leaders of God’s chosen people and of the surrounding peoples. He had been tortured and murdered for embracing the outcasts, for healing the sick, for bringing peace to those with troubled minds, for eating with men and women who lived inappropriate lives. And three days later, God had raised him from the dead, and vindicated him as lord and rescuer, according to the pattern revealed to Abraham and Isaiah, the pattern revealed through Joseph and Moses. But those who had Jesus murdered could not stand to hear this story told, so they had some of the story-tellers thrown in prison, or beheaded, or stoned to death, and others displaced from their homes, becoming refugees. And wherever they went, they kept telling the story.

Listen, and I will tell you a story. At this time, a man travelled from Ethiopia to Jerusalem. He was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a prominent man but a servant. He must have heard about the God of Israel, have heard stories of this people called to be a light to the peoples, must surely have heard that even the other nations could enter the outer court of the great temple. And so he came. Perhaps only when he arrived did he discover that those who had been castrated, as he had been castrated, could not enter the temple at all. And so he looked around, and asked around, and bought some sacred scrolls, and turned around to go home, perhaps puzzled, perhaps disappointed. And God spoke to one of the refugees who had headed north from Jerusalem and said turn around (repent) and head south, for the road that runs through Gaza down into Egypt and beyond. So Philip set off, and on the way he came across the Ethiopian. He was sat in his chariot reading aloud (for in those days, no-one had learnt to read silently inside their head) from the scroll written by the exiles. Philip approached (the chariot was moving at walking pace) and asked him if he understood what he was reading. He did not, although he was intrigued, because he was reading about a man cut off, a man who could not have descendants, a servant. It was like looking in the mirror. Tell me, he asked, who is this man I can so identify with? And starting from there, Philip told him about Jesus, the suffering servant made lord and rescuer for a suffering and servant people. The story called for a response: repent and be baptised. Turn around, and be identified with Jesus by symbolically dying and rising with him. In this case, turn back from Jerusalem, head home, but now identified with a group of persecuted refugees who insisted on loving their neighbours whatever the cost.

Listen, and I will tell you a story. The Ethiopian decided to respond, to enter-into this story. Passing by water, he jumped in, through the door of baptism. Then he and Philip went their separate ways, and as far as we know never crossed paths again. But there is a Christian community in Ethiopia today that traces its family tree unbroken back two thousand years to that man who could not have children, to whom God gave countless descendants; that servant who suffered at the hands of others and was raised up by God.

This is our story, a story we share with our brothers and sisters across the world, some of whom have lost their homes, their families, their nationality, even their lives for the sake of the good news that in Jesus, our lord and rescuer, God has brought us into the great calling of being part of his purposes to bless the whole earth and all the peoples. Alleluia. Amen.

Sunday Next Before Lent

2 Kings 2:1-12 and Mark 9:2-9

‘Good morning, Elisha.’ I was woken from sleep, as so often, by God’s voice, speaking to me, inviting me into another day. Not an audible voice, of course; but a whisper that I have come to recognise as not being my own thoughts. Elijah trained me to hear and recognise that voice. And this morning, he – the Lord – woke me to tell me that today he would come and take Elijah from us, take him to his side. And how am I supposed to respond to such news?

Elijah himself – my master, my mentor – said nothing of this. But as we went on our awkward way, he instructed me to stay where we were, while he went on an errand for the Lord to Bethel. I would not have it: if this was to be our final day together, he was not walking out as if it were any other day; I would accompany him, come what may.

And so we set out. As we walked, in silence, my mind went back seven, eight, years, back to the day we first met [1 Kings 19:19-21]. I had been ploughing my father’s field. He was a wealthy man, a man of standing. Twelve pairs of oxen pulled our ploughs – a sign of his status – and on that day I was overseeing the whole operation. Elijah, the man of God, simply walked up to me, threw his mantle – the sign of his status – over my shoulders … and just kept walking, without a word. It was a call, to follow him; my commissioning, to succeed him as God’s prophet. It was irrevocable; and yet, I ran after him, called out, ‘Let me kiss my father and mother, and then I will follow you!’ – for I knew that to follow the call would cost me everything.

He cried out, in pain; for he realised that he had been so caught up in responding to God’s call on his life that he hadn’t considered mine. ‘Go back again;’ he said, ‘for what have I done to you?’ I went back, said my farewells; slaughtered the pair of oxen I had been walking behind, broke up the plough to make a fire to roast them for the whole village. To celebrate a new status for my family; and ending, and a beginning.

I guess it would be fair to say we had an awkward meeting, Elijah and I; and now, these years later, an awkward parting. There is a symmetry to that, for sure; though, does it best reflect all that we have been through between?

I wasn’t the only one Elijah trained to hear God’s voice, to speak for God. Yes, he trained me to listen, and to speak, for the nation, before kings and other such important figures. But he trained countless other men and women, to listen, together, for their communities, for their neighbours, learning to weigh what they heard and how they might best deliver the news. It was to the company of prophets at Bethel that God had sent Elijah today – to tell them what he could not bring himself to speak of with me. Out of respect, I waited outside. Out of concern, they came out to me: did I know? Of course I knew. ‘Keep silent.’

Elijah would have me stay with them, while he went on to Jericho. But I would not have it: I had said what I had said, and I would stand by it. He knew that I knew. Was he seeking to shield me from pain? Was he seeking to shield himself from pain? Was I seeking to shield myself from pain, refusing others the mercy of being able to speak of the unspeakable burden on their hearts for me? So much pain. And where was God in the pain? Was he silent? Was that why words were not to be trusted here? Was silence the deeper communion?

At Jericho, again, I stood outside while he broke the news and said his farewells to those he had invested in. Once again, they came out to me. Once again, I told them to be silent. Shut up the mouth of God. His word is too hard to endure. I should rather remain in this moment of glory, stretched out endlessly, than have it end, and return to something … something less.

Elijah would have me stay with them, while he went on to the Jordan – not very far at all. But I would not have it: for I knew that our time to part was drawing very near now. The others sensed it too, sensed the new weight on my shoulders; they followed us at a respectful distance: there for me, even if I could not welcome it.

As we walked, my thoughts turned to what I might say, in parting, what blessing I would ask of this man who had become … who had become like a father to me. A father. That’s what I would ask.

Still silent, he took his mantle, rolled it up, and struck the water with it. The water parted, and we walked across on dry ground. That should have been something like no other, an entering into the stories I have known since my childhood, of seas and rivers parting and God’s people walking out of slavery and in to their inheritance. But we were walking in the wrong direction: out of our inheritance. This was just wrong.

Only then did he speak. Only then, symbolically cut off from the past I had left long ago, did he enquire what he might do for me before he was taken from me. Dare I ask? I looked into his eyes, and found the courage I needed: ‘Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.’ A double share. The share of the oldest son, or daughter. I know that I am already to be your successor, to inherit your mantle as the man of God, as the overseer of the companies of the prophets. But a servant can inherit, as Eliezer of Damascus stood to inherit Abraham’s estate. Let me be counted as your son, as your first born son over all these other children, these other prophets. Will you claim me as your own? Will you declare yourself to be my father, in place of the father God took from me? Let my offspring by counted as yours.

His response was measured – and rightly so: ‘You have asked a hard thing; yet, if …’ Yet, if. For to be father and son and to be parted is to inflict pain on one another and to endure pain far greater than even the loss of a mentor and master or of a faithful servant. So let us place ourselves in God’s hands.

And that is what we did, and having done so we walked on our way, freed to talk, somehow lighter even despite the weight lying on our hearts. And then, all of a sudden, we were separated – the chariot of heaven, burning with fire yet not consumed, like the bush from which God spoke to Moses, sweeping Elijah up, carrying him away. I stood and called after him, as I had done on that day years ago, that day when I had set plough and ox alight to burn and be consumed. But now I did not cry out, ‘Let me kiss my father!’ but ‘My father! My father! Farewell, my father! Farewell!’ For today, Elijah became my father; and I became his son.

When he was hidden from my sight, I took hold of the garment I was wearing and tore it in two, from the neck down, right down the middle of my chest; for I was undone, I was torn in two. And in that moment, in that place of pain, after the fiery chariot and horses, the hoof-shaken earth, and the whirlwind – after the recollection of the day God told Elijah to anoint me as prophet in his place [1 Kings 19:1-18] – in the sheer silence, God spoke to me. I wrapped myself in Elijah’s fallen mantle, and stepped forward into the unknown.

Step into silence, and listen …

Conversion of Paul

Acts 9:1-22

Today we remember the Conversion of Paul, and also celebrate the baptism of Annabelle. And as we hold these two events together, I’d like to draw three things out of the account we have heard read to us from the Acts of the Apostles.

The first thing I want us to take notice of is the way in which the Christian community is described as ‘any who belonged to the Way.’ Jesus described himself as the Way and the Truth and the Life, through whom we come to God, the Father. He made that claim in Jerusalem, at the Passover, on the night before his death; and the image ‘the Way’ would have brought to his disciples’ minds is of following a guide through the narrow- and jam-packed bustling-crowd-filled streets. You have to stay close or you get lost. The way to know God is not through Believing The Right Things (though creeds and statements of faith help us to talk about the God we can know) but through following Jesus, in whom God has revealed himself to us; and through following Jesus in community with others who are seeking to follow Jesus. Paul discovered that on the way – on the Way – to Damascus. On the way, on the journey through life Annabelle is starting out on, we encounter Jesus …

… which brings me to the second thing I want us to take notice of: that Paul – or Saul, as he was known then – had an encounter with the risen Jesus that he was not able to process but which nonetheless changed the course of his life. And that is exactly what is happening today as we baptise Annabelle. She has no conscious thought-processed idea of what is going on, and she will have no conscious memory of this day. But when I speak to her and declare over her the words ‘Christ claims you for his own,’ those words will be stored deep in her soul, and they change her very identity - just as Saul’s identity was changed, from enemy to ambassador. Paul spent the rest of his life reflecting on the event we heard retold today (indeed, it is retold two more times, both in the first person, in Acts). His onward journey held drama and hardship, and other events which he could not understand but in which he again met Jesus and discovered that meeting Jesus was enough. You can read about some of his adventures in the Acts of the Apostles; and some of his reflections on life and faith and Jesus in the letters Paul wrote. We have no way of knowing what the future holds for Annabelle, but she, too, has an adventure ahead of her full of opportunity to explore what today begins.

The third thing I want us to take notice of is that in the act of being united with Jesus in baptism, Paul receives a new family. Ananias – one of the people Saul had come to Damascus to arrest - comes to him and addresses him as ‘Brother Saul.’ And again, this is what will happen to Annabelle today. She is already part of a family along with her parents, Rory and Victoria. But from today she will also be part of a bigger family that includes [name some of the people around the room] and over 2 billion other people around the world. Paul’s letters are full of greetings and references to many friends he made walking the Way together. As well as the facing difficult circumstances, and the wrestling with things too deep to fully understand, we see a lot of love in the pages he wrote. Our prayer for Annabelle, as we welcome her into the Way and as we bear witness to Jesus claiming her for his own, is that she will always find herself among family in this place.