Evensong : Trinity 7

Deuteronomy 30:1-10 and 1 Peter 3:8-18

Recurring themes running through our readings today:

blessings and curses;

being scattered and gathered,

(or, turning from and turning to);

deep and mysterious matters of the heart...

and the overarching theme of Covenant, one of the great structural themes of the Bible.

What is a blessing? Anything in your life that is good, anything – be it a skill or a relationship – that by practice bears fruit. Whatever is life-giving to you, and through you life-giving to others, bears witness to your response to God’s invitation to enter into fullness of life. And when we bless others, we speak that same invitation to them: ‘Be fruitful!’ Something within them will always respond, however complicated that response might be, because it is the nature of creation to do so.

What is a curse? A curse is not the opposite of a blessing, or even the absence of a blessing, but a particular form of blessing that places temporary constraint* on fruitfulness, creating room for others. Let me illustrate it like this: if you hold out your hands in front of you – palm facing palm, like a fisherman recounting the size of his catch – to represent a blessing, and then widen them to represent further blessing, and widen them again to represent yet more blessing, by now you are hitting the person sat next to you in the face. Sometimes blessings need boundaries – boundaries that help us re-examine our blessings in the light of the blessing of, and for, others – and that is how curses function. They humble us in our pride, in order that, in due time, God might lift us up again. When we hit up against such boundaries, they are an invitation to turn back to God.**

The images of being scattered and gathered are another way of describing curses and blessings. What feels like being abandoned by God, and being reconciled with God, are both expressions of God’s fidelity towards us – and reveal the fidelity he longs for from us in return. You see, the overarching theme here is covenant fidelity.

In the Ancient Near Eastern world, tribal chieftains would make life more secure for their people by entering into covenant agreement with the heads of other tribes. They would cut animals in two, creating a corridor of blood between them, and stand at either end. Then they would pass each other, taking one another’s place, symbolically identifying themselves as the chief of the other tribe, before returning to their own place, their own tribe. And they would often mark themselves with a cut that would leave a scar, as a permanent reminder of the covenant they had made: becoming blood brothers.

From then on, if either tribe was attacked, the other would come to their aid. This is the covenant that God – as chief of the heavenly beings – and Abraham – as chief of a nomadic group of herdsmen – entered into. It was the covenant restated when the people of Israel created a door of blood, as God passed by them into Egypt to fight for them and they passed out of Egypt to Sinai to meet with God and to travel together through the wilderness and to the Land of Promise. This is the covenant restated when Jesus came into the world, smeared in blood, and gave up his life, again smeared in blood. And even though death could not hold him, Jesus bears his covenant scars on his wrists and ankles for ever.

So, where is our covenant scar? It is not on our body, but on our heart. In the symbolic language of the Bible, the heart is the seat of our will, our decision-making. And that is where God has marked us with a scar, a tender place, a permanent reminder. If you have a significant scar, you can feel it long after the sharp pain of the initial wound is a distant memory. Not all of the time, but at certain predictable times, such as when there is a change in the weather. In a similar way, at turning-points we feel our covenant scar. When we face a decision, a choice that will move us closer to Jesus or further away from Jesus, our scars are a reminder of our covenant – as his scars are to him.

So, where do you see evidence of blessing in your life? Remember to give thanks. Remember to include God in the circumstances, so that you share the fruit together: Jesus loves a celebration! Remember to include others, so they might benefit too. Remember to tell others, so they can learn what it looks like to have God as our covenant partner in an uncertain world.

And, where do you experience curse, constraint? What isn’t flourishing as you might hope? In what part of life does it feel like you keep hitting a brick wall? Here is an opportunity to ask God, as Jesus did from the cross,

‘Where, O Lord, are You to be found in this place, this circumstance?

When will you come and rescue me?

And what unseen work are You up to, in my heart, in the meantime?’

*In the symbolic language of the Bible, curses stretch for 3 generations, while blessings stretch for 1000 generations.

**Even when people malign others – when we curse others or are cursed by others, with no intention of blessing – God works to bring good out of the circumstances, ensuring that curses are a particular form of blessing even where blessing was never the intention of the one who curses. Jesus’ covenant scars exemplify this.

Trinity 6

Amos 7:7-15 and Ephesians 1:3-14 and Mark 6:14-29

This week, I have been at the Durham Diocese Clergy Summer Gathering, where our theme was children and young people. Among other things, we reflected on biblical images of children. In our readings this morning, we are referred to as God’s adopted children; but we also heard the story of a young girl who was exploited, by men for whom she was brought in as a sexualised fantasy object and by her mother who manipulated her to manipulate her step-father in order to bring about a murder. That seems very contemporary to me. The Bible never shies away from holding a mirror to ourselves, in our beauty and our brokenness. And in some of the free time around the margins of our time away, I reflected on today’s readings in the light of all we were considering.

I was struck, reading Amos, by the question, who does God speak through? It is clear that there is an expectation that God speaks through those in power – the priest, and the king – and that they mediate God’s word in such a way that their interests are protected – the king’s sanctuary, and the temple. If they were to look at the vision God showed Amos, they would have seen an impressive wall, a sign of strength. But Amos sees a plumb-line, which reveals that the wall has been built without necessary care, and has become precarious.

Amos’ voice is dismissed. He is not qualified to speak here. He does not have the right background, the right training. And yet, he replies, the Lord had spoken to him and sent him.

We need to listen to the voice of those on the margin of our worshipping community, the ‘untrained’ who speak from a different experience, from everyday life – and who may bring the word that brings us life by putting to death our self-importance. And those on the margin include our children.

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul repeats the words ‘us’ and ‘our’ and ‘we’ and ‘you/your’ [plural] again and again. At the heart of the passage Paul states that ‘With all wisdom and insight he [the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ] has made known to us the mystery of his will’ which is ‘to gather up all things in him [Christ]’. But this is not made known just through the few: God speaks to us through us. We need to listen to what God is saying through one another – again, including our children.

Our Gospel reading stands as a warning, of what it looks like when those with power seek to silence the voice of one speaking from the margins – and even exploit others, vulnerable others, in order to achieve this. It is a desperate situation – and one that, ultimately, does not achieve its aim. But it is easily done when we believe that the role of the priest is to speak rather than to enable each to find a voice.

We discern what God might be saying to us – as a community and personally – as we listen to one another. So that is what we are going to do. First, take a moment to reflect: was there anything in particular that stood out for you as the lessons were being read out today?

... Now take a couple of moments to share that thing with the people sat next to you. Don’t worry if you have nothing to say: the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak through everybody on every occasion; but the Holy Spirit does speak through everybody over time, if we create the space for that to happen.

... If someone shared something, they have already acted in response to the Holy Spirit’s question ‘What do you see?’ and prompt to, ‘Go and tell’. But it may be that there is a further response that is necessary, either for them personally or for us as a community. Let me encourage you to discuss that further over coffee after the service; and if you feel that there is something that we need to hear as a community, to write it down and/or share that with myself or Fiona or Sheila. Thank you.

Second Sunday after Trinity: BCP

1 John 3:13-24 and Luke 14:16-24

The genius of the parable as a form of teaching is that parables can be adapted to suit different contexts. Matthew and Luke both recount Jesus telling the parable of a great banquet, but telling it in different ways.

Matthew frames Jesus’ whole ministry in terms of proclaiming impending crisis: the call to ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’ (Matthew 4:17). That is to say, turn back, return to God, in the light of an imminent day of judgement! In the same way that the immediate prophetic horizon of the Old Testament prophets was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire (which took place in 587/586BC), so the immediate prophetic horizon for Jesus was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire (which would take place in AD70).

Luke frames Jesus’ whole ministry in terms of proclaiming Jubilee: God’s favour expressed as good news for the poor, freedom for captives and the oppressed (Luke 4:16-21, where Jesus reads from Isaiah 61:1-2. For more on what Jubilee meant, see Leviticus 25 and 27). That is to say, Matthew and Luke focus on different dimensions of Jesus’ message, Matthew looking to an event in the near future (the now-and-not-yet kingdom of heaven is coming), and Luke to an event in the now (the now-and-not-yet kingdom of God has come).

So Matthew records Jesus telling the parable of the great banquet as a parable of God’s judgement on unrighteous Israel, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem. Behind the action of the false god Caesar, in which those who currently enjoyed power and prestige would suffer horrific death, stands the judgement of the true King of heaven. In contrast, Luke records Jesus telling the same parable as a parable of Jubilee, in which those who had been pushed to the margins found themselves included. While the powerful experience a marginalisation they have not previously known, there are no gory deaths: the focus is justice, not bloody overthrow.

Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. But they all alike began to make excuses. If the excuses sound at all reasonable to us, that should be a warning to us of just how far we have accommodated worldly power in our own lives. The first has just bought land, without even seeing it. This is a clear violation of the Jubilee, where all ancestral land that had been mortgaged to a creditor had to be returned, liberating families from the burden of debt and the captivity of poverty. This restoration took place only twice every century, and so to take property in this particular moment was effectively to hold others captive for a full fifty years.

Another invited guest has just bought five yoke of oxen, and wants to try them out. Again, this is a clear violation of the Jubilee, in which the land was to lie fallow for a year. It is not only the tenants of God’s land who are to experience release: Jubilee extends to the land itself. Of course, to embrace a fallow year requires trust in God’s provision. To buy oxen and put them to work in this particular moment is to disregard and dishonour God.

Yet another invited guest has just married. Surely this is not a violation of the Jubilee? Don’t rich and poor alike marry? Well, in Numbers 36, Moses is called upon to settle a dispute. It has already been established that daughters can inherit land; the concern is that if unmarried daughters inherit land and then marry into another Israelite tribe, and if the land is subsequently mortgaged to a creditor, then at the Jubilee redemption it will be restored to that tribe and not her ancestral tribe. The concern is that marriage can result in the permanent loss of connection to the land, which was the inheritance of the people. In this version of the parable, where the first two excuses reveal violation of the Jubilee, Jesus’ listeners would have understood marrying in this particular moment as an attempted land-grab in violation of the Jubilee.

The RSVPs come in, and none of the invited guests are attending. So the owner of the house instructs his slave to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. This is done, but the slave reports back that ‘there is still room.’ The master sends his slave out again, to compel people to come in, that his house may be filled. As far as Jubilee is concerned, once you have fulfilled the letter of the Law, there is still room to go further, to bring more people in to the experience of justice and freedom.

How might this parable of the Jubilee relate to us, in Sunderland, today? Our reading from 1 John instructs us to love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. Love is expressed in providing help to those in need. This week has seen the publication of the Cinnamon Faith Action Audit, which has found that in Sunderland, faith communities – overwhelmingly churches – run over 400 projects serving the community. These include work with children, young adults, the elderly, the isolated, those in financial crisis, asylum seekers, those with addiction, those trapped in trafficking or prostitution, alleviating homelessness, skills and employment, and creating safer communities. More than 2,000 volunteers reached almost 80,000 beneficiaries in 2014, delivering services of a total financial value calculated at over £3.5 million. On average, each church or faith group was delivering 7 social action projects; with 4 paid staff working 1,939 hours; and 39 volunteers giving 5,553 hours; providing support for 1,395 beneficiaries; at a financial worth of £62,666 (paid staff hours, plus volunteer hours calculated using the living wage of £7.85 and a small supplement for management time).

The poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame are being brought in. And there is still room. The Jubilee that Jesus proclaimed is alive and well in Sunderland, because it is still, and always will be, needed.

We return to this place, to the house and presence of our Lord and master, in order to receive his word. First, he feeds us, nourishes us – but this is not the banquet itself. Then he says, go out…and bring in... Let us be strengthened in our duty, and serve with joy.

First Sunday After Trinity

Genesis 3:8-15 | 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 | Mark 3:20-35

On our dining room wall there are photos of our children, including one of each of them on their first days at school, which happened to be in three different cities, Sheffield, where they were all born, Nottingham, where I was at theological college, and Liverpool, during my curacy. What can be seen is temporary. Who I was at birth, at seven, at fourteen, at twenty-one, at twenty-eight, at thirty-five, at forty-two – or, at least, who I understood myself to be, and who others took me to be – differs one from the other. Like icebergs, only a small and melting part of who we are is visible; most of our selves are interior, hidden as much to us as to others, buoying us up in an eternal sea.

Today I want to consider the temporary outer nature, which is [beautiful in its many stages of] wasting away; the eternal inner nature, which is being renewed day by day; and the crucial role hiding plays at the meeting-point of the two.

Let me set the scene for the reading from Genesis. The human family, embodied in our first parents Adam and Eve, were given three gifts by God: firstly, the gift of a vocation, to enable harmony within God’s creation, characterised by fruitfulness and rest; secondly, the gift of abundant provision, which is what fruitfulness looks like; and thirdly the gift of limit-setting, which is actually what rest looks like, given in order to spare us from being overwhelmed by the wonder and mystery of life. But we, again embodied in our first parents, ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; our eyes were opened to our nakedness; we were afraid, and hid. As embodied persons this surely includes physical nakedness, but actually describes being overwhelmed by a glimpse into the enormous, mysterious life we were created for, terrifyingly desired and just as terrifyingly costly.

We are made to be a particular person who stands in the presence of other particular persons, including God; and who enjoy ourselves and the other as gift. (This is what it means to be made in the likeness of the Trinity.) This being present in the presence of another is easy in innocence, when we have no idea that it will cost us everything – just this week, I watched a baby interact with every adult in a café – but is overwhelming when our eyes are opened to the enormity of our own possibility and that of every other person. When I was fourteen, all I wanted to become in time was a husband and a father. When I became a real husband to a real wife, and a real father to three real children – all of whom change through time – I discovered that I hoped for something far beyond the ability of the person I have become.

The man and the woman hide. Now, the instinct to hide is a reflex common to all animals God has created, and learning to hide well is an essential skill. Hiding gives us the space we need in order to closely observe, to observe ourselves as well as others; a place where we will be safe until we are ready to step into the presence of another person, not as an innocent who knows not what we are doing but as one created for real relationship with real others. Indeed, hiding, done well, is good – as we will see in Jesus. But when we fail to hide well, we fall back on hiding badly, because we have presented ourselves too soon.

The first place the man and woman hide is among the trees of the garden. The calling to fill the earth [provision; fruitfulness; including relationships] and subdue it – that is, calm its raging storms [limit-setting; rest; involving struggles] – has become overwhelming to them; and so they hide in that part of their vocation they can see in the present – as gardeners of the Garden. And here they hide well, by which I mean that from their hiding place they carefully observe God, and what they observe enables them to overcome fear and step out from the trees.

But in this beautiful story we also see what hiding badly does to us. The thought of filling the earth is overwhelming. Adam hides within the immediate relationship he can see in the present - ‘the woman you gave me’. But he does so badly, the encounter defined by blame and not delight. Fruitfulness is frustrated. The thought of subduing the earth is also overwhelming. Eve hides within the immediate struggle she can see in the present, represented by the serpent. She also hides badly, the encounter defined by deceit and not honesty. In shifting blame [movement, with false intent] rather than owning responsibility, rest is frustrated.

Both male and female hide from what is invisible, or too large to see, in what is visible: the temporary, passing, wasting-away outer edge of our vocation and relationships and struggles. Even though this edge is falling away, it provides the place from which we can see the next step emerge, the place from where we can step into our ‘being renewed’ selves rather than being pushed unprepared.

Jesus also hid and watched, but always hid well. He hid within his vocation: for thirty years of obscurity as a builder, forty days in the wilderness, at the festival of Booths, in the tomb. He hid within his relationships: observing others with compassion before stepping from hiding to respond to a woman ostracised by her neighbours, a woman longing for her child to be healed, sisters weeping for their dead brother, a woman in a garden weeping for her lord. And he hid within his struggles: asleep in the bottom of the boat while his friends wrestle the storm that rises within them as much as about, until he is ready to step forward and restore calm with a word.

Hiding is an essential skill; and God is so gracious in recognising this. Eavesdropping as two guilty children are being questioned, can we glimpse the knowing gaze and loving smile of a wise parent? God’s response is to re-state the vocation of humanity to enable harmony in creation; and, in parallel promises, to re-affirm first to the woman and then to the man that, though their labour will be hard, they will ultimately know both fruitfulness [met desire] and rest [under the protection of human relationship, in life; under the protection of the earth, in death]. In three successive declarations, the eternal perspective on vocation, on relationships, and on struggles are revealed, beneath the surface of what is presently visible.*

We hide, holding on to a role in the community that has, in part, defined us, before we let it go and step into the next chapter in the story of our inner nature. We hide, holding on to our children as, well, children, before we know them, and are known by them, as adults. We hide, holding on to perceived enemies [including ourselves], before we dare to meet them as potential friends.

Letting go of what is temporary and stepping into the next temporary season has its own timing. This is a mystery; and mystery is not meant to be understood but, rather, to be experienced. Wherever you are hiding today, whatever immediate past you must let go of, whatever immediate future you must take hold of, God comes, looking for you, wanting to know you and to be known by you in that intimate moment where we disappear and appear. Parent and child, caught up in a game of hide-and-seek. It is a beautiful encounter – and it can be yours today.

[*By such steps, the man and the woman are able to move out from the Garden into the world that must be tamed. Finally, God sets an angel to prevent them going back, for hiding is instinctive to us, and while it stops us from charging ahead too soon, it can also prevent us from stepping out at all. We can never hide in the same place twice, for once a hiding place has served its necessary purpose, it is lost to us forever.]

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.