Disruptive love

Today is the feast of the conversion of Saint Paul, and we heard the dramatic events of this in the reading from Acts, it was followed by a tiny gospel reading which feels deliberate to not overshadow the main event of today, which is Saul’s life-changing experience of the road to Damascus, after which he changes his name and his life’s purpose.

Without Paul who knows what we’d actually know of Jesus, because Paul’s role in evangelising and spreading the Gospel, through teaching, preaching and of course letter-writing, was central to getting the message out into the wider Roman Empire – which God knew would be the case, and eventually that message reached these isles, some 2000 miles away from these events.

The narrative of what led to Paul finding his true calling – the purpose which God had for his life, followed that amazing reading from Jeremiah which also talks about call – and there’s a thread of calling, change, and purpose through all our readings today.

Each passage shows God interrupting everyday life, changing its direction, and inviting people into something so much bigger than themselves. And that feels rather timely as we look ahead to our church planning day on the 14th of February. We’ll be asking big questions about who we are, what we’re called to do, and how God might be reshaping us for the future. And each and every one of you are invited to join us for that day.

Jeremiah’s story shows him protesting:

“sorry God! I can’t do this, I’m too young for all of this”. He feels he’s too young, too inexperienced, and too small for what God is calling him towards. God’s response isn’t stern, he doesn’t chastise Jeremiah, but reframes his protests

“Don’t say ‘I am only…’ how can you be ‘only’ anything with me beside you? I’ll give you the words you need, I’ll send you where you need to go”. Jeremiah’s calling isn’t based on his own ability but on God knowing he’ll be right beside him in that calling.

I think many Churches can fall into this “only” language:

We’re only a small congregation.

We’re only volunteers.

We only have so much time or resources.

But God says: Don’t say “only.”

God’s call begins not with our capacity, but with God’s, which is limitless.

As we anticipate our planning day, Jeremiah’s story invites us to leave behind the narrative of limitation and ask instead:

What might God be planting in us, collectively and as individuals, that we haven’t yet recognised or named?

Saul is a man on a mission, he has his purpose and his calling, and that means bad news for any Christians he encounters.

Yet when Saul encounters Jesus, he’s not punished, as you might have expected if we were in the Old Testament, but Saul experiences the disruption Jesus can bring into our lives when he enters in with generous, unending and undeserved love. For Saul this disruption comes as a light, a voice and a question:

“why do you persecute me?”

This question, directly from God, dismantles Saul’s worldview. It forces him to see that those people he’s hurt or harmed are, in fact, all part of God’s kingdom.

Paul’s conversion isn’t just about a change in belief but it’s also about recognition. He recognises that God is present in the very people he’d excluded.

For Paul this is both costly and liberating as his old life falls away and he allows himself to be changed by love, the love that God shows him.

Contemplating how changed Paul is by this experience invites us to open ourselves to what might be possible – what or who might God be asking us to see differently? What question might God be asking of us? How could God be calling us to be changed?

To go back to the purpose of our planning day, it’s an opportunity to allow God to interrupt us, to ask us uncomfortable questions, and to widen our imagination about who we’re called to be.

Peter’s question in the gospel reading is so very real, it’s probably what the others have been thinking but, of course, Peter is the one to open his mouth “We’ve left everything to follow you. What’s in it for us?”

They’ve sacrificed so much, and Peter wants to know it’s going to be worth it.

Jesus’ response could have been anything, we know he can be quick to chide or rebuke the disciples when they show self-interest, be here he offers a vision of renewal—a world made whole.

Building the kingdom isn’t about personal reward, it’s about making all things whole in God.

As we think about our future as a church - our mission, our priorities, our resources – we shouldn’t ask what’s in it for us, but rather: through the work of this community

Who can be lifted up?

Who can be welcomed?

Who can find healing, dignity, and belonging because we exist?

What do we need to do to join in God’s renewal of all things?

It can sometimes be a struggle to see how all our set readings fit together on any given Sunday, but it’s always good to remember that they always do –

a lot of thinking from clever theologians went into planning the 3-year cycles of readings. These three readings today are one story, and it’s also our story.

Through Jeremiah we see God calls us even when we feel inadequate.

Paul’s conversion demonstrates God transforms us, usually in ways we don’t expect.

And Jesus reminds us we’re being sent into a world that’s being renewed.

So, we invite you to be part of something next month where together we can imagine:

what’s possible for us with God alongside us?

What can be transformed in us?

where does change need to happen?

And what part might you have to play in all of this – where are we being called communally, but also where is the Spirit leading you?

It’s good to remember that whilst the conversion of Paul is big and dramatic, most transformation is much, much quieter. It happens in our conversations, in happens in our prayers, and in happens in our planning days, in moments of honesty and courage. It happens when we ask:

Where is God at work - and how can we join in? 

Amen,

Readings: 

Jeremiah 1:4-10 Jeremiah’s Call and Commission

4 Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,

5 ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’

6 Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ 7 But the Lord said to me,

‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”;

for you shall go to all to whom I send you,

and you shall speak whatever I command you.

8 Do not be afraid of them,

for I am with you to deliver you,

says the Lord.’

9 Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,

‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.

10 See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,

to pluck up and to pull down,

to destroy and to overthrow,

to build and to plant.’

Acts 9:1-22 The Conversion of Saul

9 Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ 5 He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’ 7 The men who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9 For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

10 Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, ‘Ananias.’ He answered, ‘Here I am, Lord.’ 11 The Lord said to him, ‘Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, 12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.’ 13 But Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; 14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.’ 15 But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; 16 I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.’ 17 So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ 18 And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

Saul Preaches in Damascus

For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, 20 and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’ 21 All who heard him were amazed and said, ‘Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?’ 22 Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah.

Matthew 19:27-30

27 Then Peter said in reply, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ 28 Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.  29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife[a] or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

Finding your work

May I speak in the name of the one God, who is Speaker, Word and Breath.

Stu mentioned a couple of weeks ago about the theme running through our readings and sermons recently around faith and acts – the belief that if our faith really reflects who God is, that will then be reflected in how we conduct ourselves in the world- the people we are, the things we do, the decisions and choices we make.

This seems to neatly come together this morning in probably the most famous example of loving action, the tale of The Good Samaritan – and it is a tale rather than a parable. There’s nothing in it that’s metaphorical, it’s very clear. It’s our job to be merciful, compassionate neighbours in the world.

Those of us who’ve been or are nurses will know there’s two types of nurse; if when you’re going about you normal life there’s some sort of medical emergency – someone collapses in the middle aisle of Aldi - and there’s a shout for medical help, are you the nurse who immediately runs forward, or the nurse who waits 10 seconds to see if someone else runs goes first?

I’m definitely in the second camp, I’m a fantastic nurse in a hospital-based emergency, but out in the wild is a different matter! I think the older and wiser we get the less likely we are to immediately jump in there – with age and wisdom we recognise our limits.

Or maybe we recognise what is ours to do and what isn’t. An up to date first aider might actually be more useful in that situation than someone who’s used to being surrounded by all the help and equipment you could wish for.

That level of self-reflection isn’t, as far as we know, seen in our priest and Levite this morning. They’re not waiting to see if someone else jumps in, thinking if someone else doesn’t step forward then they will, or reflecting there may be someone better equipped, it’s a very clear head down, walk-on-by scenario.

We’ve heard this story so many times - I can remember at priest school having an activity where we re-wrote it in a modern setting - but examining the story through our current lens, reflecting upon faith leading us into action, why did these people of faith not act? Considering this might help us to understand the times when we ourselves have felt we could do nothing but look the other way, despite our faith in God.

Fear could be one answer. What if he’s contagious? They may not have looked closely enough to see he’d been attacked – they just see a man lying there, half dead. He could have a contagious illness. If they catch it and become sick who’ll provide for their families? They have important jobs and responsibilities. Who’ll see to those?

There could be the fear that it’s a trap. If this area is renowned for attacks, it may be known that this is one way the thieves operate to lure in victims.

There’s Mosaic law to consider – if the man is dead, and they can’t tell at this point – if they touch him, they can’t do their jobs for 7 days, they’ll be ritually unclean. They can’t let that happen, again they’re important, relied upon. They’re men that matter.

Another explanation could just be complacency -how often do they see bodies or people collapsed by the side of the road? It could be over-saturation, compassion fatigue. Maybe they’ve stepped in before and it cost them in some way, maybe they see so many people collapsed along that road that if they stopped to help everyone they’d never get anywhere.

So we have fear, personal cost and complacency. I’m not going to lie, that sounds pretty familiar to me at the moment. Whilst writing this there was a charity advert on the TV in the background which I’ve seen dozens of times – a young boy in an African country at the risk of going blind. If I stop to actually pay attention to it, think of the enormity of the issue it's implications, It’ll break my heart. Sometimes we feel we have to protect ourselves from feeling empathy because it could break us.

We do have to have boundaries and protect ourselves from over-saturation of media and news and sadness, just so we can go about our lives. If we let every awful thing we have knowledge about into our hearts we’d be paralysed by not only the sadness but the knowledge that we simply can’t help every person or situation we’d like to. There’re things that are just too big for us to tackle or effect. Those in need are simply too numerous.

How does this fit with our theology of faith leading to action? How can we navigate this alongside our belief in the universal neighbourhood? The whole point of Jesus telling this tale is to help the young lawyer see that anyone who needs our mercy, or who shows us mercy, is our neighbour, and there’s a big scary world our there very much in need of mercy.

I read something by the wonderful Revd. Nadia Bolz-Weber a couple of years ago – I was actually talking to Joanne about this yesterday – to summarise, as I can’t find the actual quote, Nadia wrote that the way we’ve been created, and the world be now inhabit are out of alignment. We we’re created to be people of community and created to be able to carry the worries, concerns, anxieties and stresses of that community, or village or tribe.

With 24-hour news cycles, our connectedness and the global nature of modern life we’re trying to carry the worries, concerns, anxieties and stresses of an entire world, and we simply can’t do it, we’re not built for it…so what do we do?

Seeing the suffering and looking away, turning a blind eye, isn’t an option, because we see our neighbours, those in need of mercy, and our hearts ache for them, because we are people of faith, people who hunger and thirst after righteousness, people who like the Samaritan of the story are moved from our very guts with compassion- that’s the literal translation of the Greek – compassion you feel in your spleen.

Nadia Bolz-Weber also has this to share when it comes to the burn-out that can come from carrying global sorrows in our heads and hearts:

Every day of my life I ask myself three discernment questions:

What’s MINE to do, and what’s NOT mine to do?

What’s MINE to say and what’s NOT mine to say?

And the third one is harder:

What’s MINE to care about and what’s NOT mine to care about?

To be clear – that is not to say that it is not worthy to be cared about by SOMEONE, only that my effectiveness in the world cannot extend to every worthy to be cared about event and situation. It’s not an issue of values, it’s an issue of MATH.

It’s ok to do what is YOURS to do. Say what’s yours to say. Care about what’s yours to care about. That’s enough.

This is all part of being the body of Christ; we each have our role, our separate functions that ensure the body keeps working and moving.

The hope is that if we’re each finding out what work is ours to do, then all the things which need work, the peoples and situations that require our mercy, that require someone to be a neighbour, will eventually have people, enough people, and the right people, whose work it is to be a Christ-like, spirit-filled presence there.

We won’t need to fear, worry about the personal cost or feel complacent in the suffering we see, we won’t need to cross over, pretending we don’t see what’s happening, because someone will already be there, tending the wounds, and we’ll be tending to the wounds we’re called to bandage.

And if we’re outraged by a situation and asking where the mercy is, where the neighbours are, then maybe that’s a sign of the work which is ours to do.

I’m sure you all know that one of my great passions is inclusion – not just inclusion but belonging. I want anyone to walk through that door and feel they belong. That’s part of my work.

My years as a nurse have led me into my current role in staff support and improving culture. That’s part of my work.

Your work might be speaking out against the Palestinian genocide, standing with refugees, fighting for the rights and inclusion of older people, working to support our local domestic abuse charity.

Where is God calling you to carry Gods name and do Gods work? Where are you moved to your spleen with compassion? Listen to the calling and the feelings, if you’re coming back to the same issue or situation time and time again, chances are that’s the work God is showing you is yours.

See it as an invitation, or even a challenge from God. Identify where you’re being called, answer that call, and start the work. Amen

Anything to declare?

May I speak in the name of the One God, who is Speaker, Word & Breath.

Very much like the last time I was with you, I wasn't expecting to write a sermon this week, so again I’ve just tried to put some thoughts together around the readings – and they are an amazing three readings!!

I didn’t know where to look first – we have the earthquake, wind and fire, followed by the silence where God was to be found. 

We have a reading that I, as someone who is passionate about justice and equity, love - There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

And then, the weird and wonderful gospel story of Jesus healing the demoniac who lived naked among the tombs, sending the demons who call themselves Legion into the herd of pigs and over a cliff.

There’s so much to unpick in the gospel reading, but I get uncomfortable when contemporary writers or preachers try to explain demons or relate them to our modern understanding of various mental health or psychiatric conditions.

I’m sure than if like me you have people in your life, or even yourselves, who've experienced or are experiencing various mental health challenges, you wish that faith or prayer could heal them, but it's more complex than that, and there’s a lot more nuance needed when venturing into this area, so that’s not the road I’m going down.

What strikes me when we put these readings together is the sense of God’s power and how unexpected it is in relation to humankind’s idea of power – and that’s often the case when we look at God through the lens of Jesus.

There was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

Elijah witnesses the power of nature, of God’s created order – the power of the physical world. But that’s not where Elijah finds God. Elijah finds God in the quiet that comes after that, and maybe some of us can think of times that this was our experience as well.

There’re two very good films about the nature of faith and silence and I’d recommend them both – the first is Into Great Silence, an almost wordless film which follows a year in the life of silent Carthusian monks who live high in the French Alps – it’s a 2 hour and 40 minute meditation on how silence and prayer in extremis shape the lives of these men.

The other is Martin Scorsese’s Silence, one of the most complex and challenging films of this century – both intellectually and spiritually. It tells the story of Portuguese Jesuit priests in feudal Japan. For me the film is about how complex faith and our relationship with the divine is, especially displayed in the character Kichijiro, locked in a cycle perpetual penitence as he continually renounces then reaffirms his belief. It’s in part a film about what we do with our faith when we don’t hear God in the silence, and the power God still has in that.

The reading from Galatians for me demonstrates the power of God to make all people equal because There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

God’s love through Jesus is the great leveller – when Mary sings the Magnificat and declares: He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly, it doesn’t mean raising one above the other but bringing them both to a place where they’re equal – it’s true equity, and that’s the power God has to bring justice into our world.

The labels we put on each don’t really matter as we’re all part of the body of Christ, all uniquely and beautifully different, all contributing our own thing, but all beloved children of the same divine parent.

In the gospel reading there’s so many ways we could interpret God’s power at work, but for me it’s all summed up in the last words we hear from Jesus in the passage: Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.

The everyday power God has in our lives is letting us see that now matter who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done or what we’ve experienced, when we welcome the power of God into our life the old narratives of who were, or thought we were, whatever other people may think we are, everything can be turned around, everything can change.

It can sometimes happen in a miraculous and dramatic moment as in our gospel, it can provide that powerful testimony capable of changing the lives of other people, or it can come, probably more often, in the way we evolve and change over time, with God’s powerful love working in us and being reflected to those we connect with.

I’m reminded again of The Magnificat: the Mighty One has done great things for me, and has done great things for us, and when we recognise this, it becomes our turn to go and declare how much good God has done for us.

Our lives and how we choose to live them are each examples of God’s power at work – and that power may be in silence, or in seeking justice and equity, or in our own stories of how our lives have been healed or reconciled, drawing us further into communion with Jesus.

Amen.

1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a

1Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” 3Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. 4But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” [5Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” 6He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”] 8He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

9At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”10He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” 11He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake;12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” 15Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.”

Galatians 3:23-29

23Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Luke 8:26-39

26Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. 28When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— 29for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) 30Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. 31They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. 32Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. 33Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. 34When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.35Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.36Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 37Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. 38The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39“Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

Ignatian Contemplation

Every Autumn when I go on retreat, I work my way through the Ignatian Exercises. These are the exercises first practiced by St Ignatius of Loyola and passed on to his order which we now know as the Jesuits. This October the exercise I was concentrating on was Ignatian Contemplation or Imaginative Prayer.

Kevin O’Brien from the Society of Jesus writes the following about this practice:

“Ignatius was convinced that God can speak to us as surely through our imagination as through our thoughts and memories. In the Ignatian tradition, praying with the imagination is called contemplation. In the Exercises, contemplation is a very active way of praying that engages the mind and heart and stirs up thoughts and emotions.

Ignatian contemplation is suited especially for the Gospels…accompany Jesus through his life by imagining scenes from the Gospel stories. Let the events of Jesus’ life be present to you right now. Visualize the event as if you were making a movie. Pay attention to the details: sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feelings of the event. Lose yourself in the story; don’t worry if your imagination is running too wild. At some point, place yourself in the scene.

Contemplating a Gospel scene is not simply remembering it or going back in time. Through the act of contemplation, the Holy Spirit makes present a mystery of Jesus’ life in a way that is meaningful for you now. Use your imagination to dig deeper into the story so that God may communicate with you in a personal, evocative way.”

It just so happens that today’s gospel reading was one of the passages used during the retreat. The invitation to practising Ignatian Contemplation with the passage is this:

“We ask the Spirit to show us what Jesus was like growing up. Accompany him as a friend, relative, or neighbour in Nazareth. Though fully divine, Jesus is also fully human. Notice, then, how Jesus grows into his humanity.

It doesn’t matter whether the details you supply are historically accurate. We are not reconstructing history. Instead, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we are coming to know Jesus more intimately so that we can love him more dearly and follow him more closely.”

So, I thought I’d share with you what I wrote using this imaginative method of prayer:

I work in the temple, it’s been so busy with Passover, I was looking forward to a bit of rest – but then I met The Boy. Ordinary looking, but so very not ordinary.

He wanted to talk about God! Why not? That’s the best thing a boy could want, so I took him to where the men were debating. I don’t know what I expected but my goodness….his answers, his questions! The sophistication of his thoughts and understanding of God. So raw, so pure.

I think he would have talked all night but I needed to get home, and I hadn’t seen him stop to eat. I invited him home to eat with my wife and I, and then with seemingly no where to go he stayed overnight.

The next day we returned to the temple and started again. For nearly five days this continued. Of course, we asked him about his parents and he spoke of them with such love, but no indication of where they were. We were getting used to him, both in the temple and at home.

I couldn’t help but wonder if we might have gained a lodger, we’d have been more than happy for him to stay. But then on the fifth day a man dashed in, wild-eyed, a mixture of relief and rage:

“Jesus, where have you been?? How could you do this??”

“you should have known I’d be in my father’s house” the boy replied.

I saw the mother in the partitioned area, wringing her hands. I led the boy and his father over to her and the three embraced, although the boy still didn’t seem to understand he’d scared them half to death.

I invited them all back home, to begin their journey anew in the morning. As I passed by the room where the couple were sleeping I couldn’t help – God forgive me – but over hear what the mother said:

“We’ve become complacent Joseph, since our return from Egypt, we’ve got so used to him being a normal boy, it’s made us forget he’s anything but ordinary. We must hold him lightly, my love, he’s never truly been ours after all”.

I often wonder what she meant? And I wonder if I’ll ever hear from the boy again. I feel like there’s greatness in his future.

The exercise ends with the following prayer:

Lord Jesus, from the start

You invite ordinary people to come to where you live.

When they come, you welcome them

and call them to labour and rejoice with you.

You are the most beautiful among all men,

and I hardly believe you want me for your friend.

You are powerful, Lord.

Draw me more and more into your friendship

and lead me along the way you took with friends.

—Joseph Tetlow

Justice and Joy

Preached on the 15th December and forgot to post...

We’re 3 weeks into Advent already – can you believe it? Without a word of exaggeration about 20 people have asked me this week if I’m ready for Christmas, and I’ve given the same answer every time – I’ve never ready…and yet… Christmas comes anyway. It being the third Sunday of Advent means it’s Gaudete (Gow-d’-tay) Sunday- the Latin for Rejoice.

This theme runs through our readings: Zephaniah’s Song of Joy declares:

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;

   shout, O Israel!

Rejoice and exult with all your heart,

   O daughter Jerusalem!

In his letter to the Philippians, St Paul tells us:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything - Which is pretty much my mantra during Advent.

So far so good, we’re feeling those rejoicing vibes…and then… we get to John in our gospel reading from Luke – what an absolute downer! How can this man have been the baby who leapt for joy inside pregnant Elizabeth when she encountered Mary, pregnant with Jesus? He’s grown into a proper misery-guts.

How can John’s words give us cause to rejoice?

What I’ve read this week is that it’s all about perspective, that what concerns John are the things which will make God rejoice, this flips it on its head and gives us a different way of thinking about John’s words…

…and John doesn’t mince his words, a prophet is a speaker of truth, particularly speaking truth to power, and pointing out hypocrisy and injustice, and when you examine it, it’s justice which is at the heart of the advice John gives to those who come to him, asking what they must do. Justice and joy are at the heart of God’s kingdom.

At the start of this 3rd chapter of Luke’s gospel we hear of Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, his brother Philip, Lysanias of Abilene, and the high-priests Annas and Caiaphas. Immediately after this we’re told; the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

God didn’t send his word to the Emperor, the Governor, the kings or high-priests; he sent it to rest upon an eccentric in the desert. Where humankind thinks power and wisdom reside are very different to where God actually places them, so it may also be worth looking a little differently at what we think John is saying to those around him.

It strikes me what a diverse group of people have been drawn to John. Ada Wong Nagata writes: The crowd seems to represent the Jews who have enough; the tax collectors, the outcasts; and the soldiers, the gentiles. They all seek to change their lives. Even though John is harsh in the beginning, he gives advice to them all. John’s advice is not dramatic, he just asks them to turn from what they are doing their own way, and instead to start doing things the right way—God’s way.

Marcea Paul tells us: John doesn’t ask the people to change the world, but rather to change themselves. He doesn’t tell them to leave their lives and stay with him or start a revolution; he tells the crowds who came to him to consider sharing what they have with the cold and hungry. He told the tax collectors to be honest and fair. The soldiers, he cautioned to act with integrity, avoiding abuse of their power. “Go home,” John told them. Go home to your families, your neighbours, your vocations, your friends. Go home and live your lives as deeply and as generously as you can right now. Do what the Lord requires of you and do it now. Be generous now – Be merciful now – Do justice now.

For me this turns around the perceived harshness of John’s words, into something where if we were to go and live out that advice, I’m sure it would create something which would make God rejoice.

But what about the wheat and the chaff? How can that possibly be something worth rejoicing about? Well, I think that has something to do with what the wheat and chaff truly represent.

Have you ever met anyone who’s completely good? Even the best person you know? What about the worst person you’ve ever met? They can’t have gone through life without, even accidentally, doing something good. Surely no one is all bad or all good? How then will we be judged on who is wheat and who is chaff? I think the answer is, we’re all both.

We’re made of both wheat and chaff, good and bad, our hope is that living as people who love Jesus, who desire to follow his teaching, that when we’re baptised in his Spirit and flame, the Spirit fills our hearts, and the fire burns away our chaff.

Our chaff are the times we didn’t consider the outcast, the times we didn’t share the ways in which we’ve been blessed by plenty, the times we haven’t been honest and fair, when we acted without integrity or abused our power.

The longer we sit in the burning heat of Christ’s love, immerse ourselves in his ways, the more of the chaff gets burned away – it’s like the refiner’s fire of Zechariah 13:9:

And I will put this third into the fire,

    refine them as one refines silver,

    and test them as gold is tested.

They will call on my name,

    and I will answer them.

I will say, ‘They are my people’;

    and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’

I think God may indeed rejoice at seeing our closeness to Jesus, refining us in his fire, and becoming more fully the person God intends us to be.

I think, generally, we’re not very good at doing Advent, the penitential, prayerful preparation that it’s intended to be, but we’re here, trying our best to be close to Jesus, letting ourselves be slowly refined, bit by bit, year upon year. And I think that refinement leads us to change not the world but ourselves, as John advises his listeners, and if enough of us make those changes it does, in time, change us, our families, our communities and then, eventually, can change the world.

To go back to that question I, and probably you, am being asked constantly right now, are you ready for Christmas - how can we ever be ready for Christmas? For Godself to come and live amongst us with his spirit and flame? Where would we even begin to prepare?

So, as John was sent to prepare to way for Jesus, I guess the best thing we can do is follow his advice, and change ourselves, to focus on God’s rejoicing, and on seeking God’s justice and joy right here, today.

It’s comforting. In a world where we can change so little, where our anguish and anxiety are rising over wars, climate crisis and those gaining political power, our comfort comes in seeking what God seeks; justice and joy.

So Gaudete! Rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything.

Amen

My Dual Role - and how I realised EVERYONE can benefit from spiritual care

 

This is the talk I gave at the EMBT UK NAP conference on Friday 18th October.

Good morning, I’m Fi and I‘ve been a haematology-oncology nurse for 24 years. I started work as a newly qualified D grade in September 2000 on the haematology and transplant unit at The Christie in Manchester (my hometown) after falling in love with haem as a student in Liverpool. 

In January 2007, after returning from maternity leave when I had my second child, I became a band 6 and I’ve now been a sister for over 17 years – and my baby has just turned 18. 

So, I’ve been around a while, I’ve seen a lot of developments, I feel like I have a lot of knowledge and skills, and I’m still completely in love with haem and transplant, and I’m particularly passionate about supporting early career nurses so that they hopefully stick around like I have. It’s so important to have skilled and experienced staff on our units and if we nurture our teams, we’ll hopefully retain those who like me find the most job satisfaction at the bedside.

I’m also a Church of England priest. 

 

I was brought up in a church-going family, which was already a bit weird 30 odd years ago when I was still in school, and like a lot of teenagers I stopped going as I had better things to do and many of the things I perceived as the teachings of the church didn’t sit well with my own values, particularly those around the role of women and the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community. 

But then, compelled by something and newly married, in March 2002 I started attending my local church, which had a woman vicar – one of the first – and I learnt I was allowed to believe in things like evolution and that there’s an incredibly wide breadth of beliefs in the Church of England - so wide that I’m sure there’s a C of E community for anyone who follows the Christian faith. I was incredibly lucky that my local church was, and continues to be, progressive and inclusive.

It became a huge part of my life, I had the kids, and I was feeling compelled again, this time drawn to a more formal leadership role in the church, and it felt like that was a call to the priesthood, which made no sense with my vocation as a nurse – I’m sure many of you feel that nursing is your vocation and you can’t imagine being anything else.

I subsequently learned about something called an MSE or minster in secular employment. MSEs are priests or accredited lay people (lay means someone who isn’t clergy) where it’s recognised that their priestly work or ministry is actually in their place of employment, and I met MSEs who were nurses, solicitors, vets, dentists and even tax officers! I went through a very lengthy selection process (it took about 3 years), started training in September 2013, was ordained in 2016 and priested in 2017.

I’m also now a Chaplain at the Christie. 

I’d worked as a staff adviser with the team since 2010, so when I was ordained I took up an honorary chaplaincy role. I have to be very careful and very strict with boundaries, so the honorary contract formalised and authorised the work I was already doing. 

In 2019 the opportunity arose for a paid role within the team, I dropped my nursing hours to 30 per week – the biggest career decision I’ve ever made - and I work one day a week as a chaplain - I’m now the deputy lead for the service.

So that’s a whistlestop tour of how I got here, and I guess what I’ve been asked to convey is how the dual role informs each of my jobs, where there’s overlap, where’s there’s clashes and how it can benefit patients and staff in a transplant setting. I’m pretty sure this is an entirely unique combination of roles within the same trust, but I truly believe that each makes me better at the other.

My personal belief is that each one of us has a spiritual life that needs to be fed, what this needs is as different and unique as we are. For some it may be our faith. If like myself you work in a tertiary or regional centre, you’ll know the joy of working in a diverse, multi-faith and multi-cultural environment. Those of us with a religious faith might practice or express that in vastly different ways.

 

For others our spirituality might be fed by music, literature, nature, poetry, pets, craft, hospitality, baking, meditation – it’s vast, and as a nurse who’s always worked with patients in isolation I’ve always been keenly aware of how our patients can feed and care for their spiritual life whilst isolated from most of the things which nurture and ground them, and what we can do to help.

 

Spirituality is anything that helps us connect- with ourselves, with others, with our world, and (if we have faith) with God or a Higher Power. Spiritual need, and even distress, kicks in when these connections are compromised or broken. 

The role of a chaplain is in essence to walk alongside the patient and assist them in whatever way is right for them to care for their spiritual needs, which keeps a person grounded in who they are at their very core. 

 

They way I explain to people how our chaplaincy service at the Christie works is that we’re the one person who goes to the patient’s bedside with absolutely no agenda, each of us who goes to see a patient in our various healthcare roles has an agenda to meet- an assessment to do, information to obtain, bloods, tests, observations, something to administer, and this is true of the wider MDT as well.

As a chaplain you’re meeting your patient where they are, as who they are as a complete person, not the one aspect of their care I may be concerned with as a healthcare professional but as someone who just wants to check “how are you today, is there anything you want to talk about?” 

We’re the privileged witnesses to and holders of people’s stories, the number of times I’ve gone to a bed side and felt the overwhelming honour of someone sharing their story or that of their loved one.

There can be misconceptions of why we’re there due to perceptions of what a chaplain is, we introduce ourselves as being there for spiritual support, and very little of what we do is religious care. Mostly we give pastoral support, and around 1/3 of the patients under our care are not religious.

 

In 2023 we had a total of 1138 patient contacts, from 10 different faiths or world views, we had 398 new referrals, assessed 127 patients in the last days of life and this was between our 3 paid team members, who between us make up 1 full time equivalent, our Roman Catholic cover 2 days per week and 2 honorary chaplains from minority faiths. This year the numbers are already much higher as our volunteers have finally returned post covid, we try to have a volunteer assigned to each ward and visiting weekly to help build those therapeutic relationships.

 

So, does being a chaplain make me a better nurse? 100% yes. In chaplaincy you’re journeying alongside someone in a different way to how you do as a nurse, and it changes your perspective. The patients who as a nurse we find the most difficult or frustrating -  you know the ones I mean - are often the ones that as chaplains we do the most work with, it helps you to understand their complexities, the origins of those complex, frustrating and obstructive behaviours and therefore how they need us to work with them to achieve the healthcare goals necessary.

I may have known a person for months or years as a nurse, but then the richness of what I learn about them through their significant chaplaincy conversations teaches me things about them I would never have otherwise known and might in some cases transform how we care for them medically. 

One of my boundaries is that, unless it’s an emergency I don’t give religious care on the ward I work on, but this is one of the important ways my work as a nurse informs my chaplaincy – by identifying those patients I’ve worked with as a nurse who will benefit from chaplaincy input, and I’m almost always right! Giving that opportunity for someone to open up and release into the world the things they’re holding inside is transformative.

We’ve very carefully chosen the chaplains who do see the patients on the transplant unit. We have Rabbi Lisa (who sadly has just left us to take up a Rabbinical post in Birmingham), who has extensive training in mindfulness and was employed with a specific focus on the teenage and young adult patients on my unit, which alongside our haematology and transplant programme houses the regional TYA oncology unit.

Our volunteer chaplain is Mary, a retired GP who’s a humanist, she focuses on the adult patients and as well as her medical knowledge has the unique perspective of just returning to us after fighting for her life in ICU. It’s had a huge impact on how she empathises with patients. 

When we recruit Rabbi Lisa’s replacement our focus will be on the needs of the TYA and non-religious patients, including the many going through transplant under our care.

For my chaplaincy work with the oncology patients in the rest of the hospital my nursing knowledge gives me the ability to quickly assess where a patient is at medically as I often don’t even know their diagnosis. I process what they’re attached to, how they look or the snippets of medical information we’re given about them. All these things I’ll interpret in a much more clinical way than my non-clinical chaplaincy colleagues. 

Most of the patients who end up in our care are long stay – at least 3 weeks – and my long experience with long-stay and isolated patients has created the empathy to hopefully understand where they’re at and what they may need. 

The other way the roles complement each other is in my passion for staff support, which is part of my focus within chaplaincy and a huge part of my nursing role. I’ve recently completed PNA training, and the skills honed through this seamlessly feed into chaplaincy, where we also offer debrief after complex or traumatic events, and support staff as individuals and as groups.

Since coming into post, I’ve tried to raise our profile amongst staff as another means of support, entirely separate from nursing structures. We’ve supported staff through cancer and other illnesses, through caring for family members, abusive relationships, disciplinary hearings, pregnancy loss, the death of colleagues, racist abuse, financial struggles and many other things. All our staff data is anonymously recorded.

Chaplaincy might not be someone’s first choice through difficult life events and traumatic work experiences, but chaplains work at the cliff face of trauma and grief. And we have a ritual for any occasion! Something deep within us as humans seems to crave ritual, and we can come up with something religious or secular for any purpose. My colleague Andrew developed a secular service for staff to use to say goodbye to patients who’ve died, knowing that with our long-stay patients staff often grieve deeply. 

Every November I take part in a day where we invite the families of TYA patients who’ve died to collectively remember their loved ones.

In conclusion, in my experience, my two roles seamlessly inform the other, how could they not if I’m to be an authentic practitioner within each role? I’ve avoided clashes by ensuring my boundaries are firm within each role and by helping raise awareness of what good spiritual care can look like.

Come away to a deserted place and rest a while

May I speak in the name of the One God, Speaker, Word and Breath. Amen

I’ve heard today's gospel reading described as a white bread sandwich with the tasty filling removed! Those with keen ears may have noticed that in-between Jesus having compassion for the crowd, and then jumping out of a boat we didn’t know he was in, we should have had 2 of Jesus’ most famous miracles; the feeding of the 5000 and walking on water.

The miraculous is removed and we’re left with the ordinary (well, we do have a bit of healing at the end, but a basic level healing of the sick I suppose is pretty routine for Jesus and the 12 by this point).

There’s plenty of stories which get repeated year upon year as we jump from Gospel to Gospel, getting each of the evangelists’ take on the life of Jesus, but its another 2 years before these miracles appear again in the cycle of Sunday readings. What are those who devised the cycle urging us to concentrate on here?

I’d like to take a quick poll of the congregation, and I’d like you to be honest. Who is tired? Who is feeling weary, or beyond weary. Hands up, don’t be shy….

Yeah….me too! I think about 75% of adulting is saying “I’m tired”. If you come across a fellow adult who isn’t weary it almost feels suspicious! I do try and make a conscious effort in church to not say I’m tired but I fail every time.

I don’t ever want to give the impression of a world-weary priest who’s always busy and doesn’t have time for my St Michael’s family but I’ve utterly failed at that because people thinking I’m super busy is pretty much 80% of my conversations. So I come to apologise for that as I’m not sure, if we look at our reading from Jeremiah, if that’s the way a good shepherd should be leading their flock. But it is the reality in the ordinariness of our lives.

Jesus recognises this in the disciples. He sees their weariness and leads them, or at least tries to lead them, to a place of rest. They’d had no down time, no time to eat and he knew they needed to take some time to recover if they were going to be of any use in ministering to others. Unfortunately, they didn’t get the opportunity for rest as the crowds found them, but the important take away is that recognition that rest was needed, not just for the disciples but for Jesus too. This isn’t the only time we see Jesus seeking rest away from the crowds so he can quiet his mind and truly feel rested, prayerful and connected to God.

We concentrate so often on Jesus as Word, as Christ, as our miraculous God incarnate, but I love to contemplate human, fleshy Jesus, and flesh, our bodies, become tired, and overwhelmed.

Self-care has become an important term in our modern world and within my work as a nurse and chaplain recognising burnout or compassion fatigue in my colleagues is a key skill.

We can’t be compassionate practitioners or ministers if we don’t first care for our own needs. Part of my work is helping others to recognise what they need to care for themselves.

If we develop these skills early in our careers, we’re far more likely to develop resilience and positive coping strategies, leading to longer, happier careers and an increased sense of care-satisfaction. If any of you have been tended to by a health professional with compassion fatigue, or a burnt-out priest, it’s not a positive experience.

Hopefully some of you have read my introduction to this month’s newsletter, where I wrote about Sabbath and Sabbatical.

If we go back all the way make to the creation story, Humans were created on the 6^th day, and then we immediately are given the Sabbath day, we haven’t even done anything yet! God has woven Sabbath rest into creation and yet we are so bad at listening to God and to our own bodies on this matter.

And as humankind loves to create rules and structure we’ve made our Sabbath day into something where we do more. This is what Renita Weems has to say about Sabbath:

Once upon a time Sunday was a special day, a holy day, a day different from the other six days of the week…. This was a time when people like those I grew up with still believed that it was enough to spend six days a week trying to eke out a living, …

fretting over the future, despairing over whether life would ever get better for [us]. Six days of worrying were enough. The Sabbath was the Lord’s Day, a momentary cease-fire in our ongoing struggle to survive and an opportunity to surrender ourselves to the rest only God offered. Come Sunday, we set aside our worries about the mundane and renewed our love affair with eternity…. 

Sunday held out to us the promise that we might enter our tiny rough-hewn sanctuary and find sanctity and blessing from a week of loss and indignities. Remembering the Sabbath where I grew up involved delighting oneself for a full twenty-four hours, ultimately in good company, with fine clothes and choice meals.

 The Sabbath allowed us to mend our tattered lives and restore dignity to our souls. We rested by removing ourselves from the mundane sphere of secular toil and giving ourselves over fully to the divine dimension…We sang, waved, cried, shouted, and when we felt led to do so, danced as a way of restoring dignity to our bodies as well. We used our bodies to help celebrate God’s gift of the Sabbath. For the Sabbath meant more than withdrawal from labor and activity. It meant to consciously enter into a realm of tranquility and praise. 

Sunday was set aside to recultivate the soul’s appreciation for beauty, truth, love, and eternity.The Lord’s Day allows us to bring our souls, our emotions, our senses, our vision, and even our bodies back to God so that God might remember our tattered, broken selves and put our priorities back in order.. 

 

Incredibly powerful stuff. It shows us that Jesus-focused rest is far from ordinary or mundane, it’s a miracle within itself. A miracle where our very souls are healed.

But we’re realists, we know sometimes our experiences of worship can be transformative and transcendental, but that’s probably rare.

So I invite you to contemplate Weems’ words and discern for yourselves where you might carve out that sabbath experience in your own lives, where we can fully be with God in a restful and restorative way, because I believe if we can do this, and do it regularly, it can be transformative as we go out into the world, going about our lives, as Christ Followers and God seekers. I’m more than happy to talk to anyone about this, how we can try to find those sacred moments is the whirlwind of our lives.

This now brings us back to shepherds and flocks, Jesus recognising our need for rest and Huw’s looming sabbatical.

Hopefully some of what I’ve said this morning goes some way to explain why a sabbatical is needed, in order for a shepherd to be able to continue to lead their flock in a fruitful way. It’s a time, as Weems writes, of surrender and offering, a time when a priest can give themselves fully over to God,

to be renewed within their very soul, to be able to have the tools to continue to serve and minister as God intends.

As we contemplate Huw’s upcoming Sabbath time, I invite you to pray with me now.

Holy God, life giver, lover of souls, creator of all that is and all that will be, we give thanks for Huw and for the opportunity which Sabbatical offers. May he be rested and renewed by your Spirit in his mind, body and soul, and return to us filled with your love, light and grace.

We pray for ourselves, for our whole community, that we too may find Sabbath renewal and with it see more clearly your purpose for our lives, growing an ever-deeper love for you, your world, and its people.

In name of Jesus,

Amen.

Becoming Ourselves

Won't get the chance to preach this today as I'm isolating at home with Covid, but as it was written I thought I'd share it.

Well, today’s readings take us on quite a journey, and perhaps take us to places we’re not entirely comfortable with. 

In Deuteronomy we have a prophet promised, a text we might interpret as referring to Jesus, and then some uncomfortable reading about the fate of false-prophets. 

From Revelation we have mystical, mysterious and mythical verses. John’s writing in this book can never be taken at face value, but again our interpretation would be that this poetic birth refers to Jesus.

And then in the Gospel we have Jesus beginning his ministry, he’s been baptised, spent his time in the wilderness and now he’s ready to go public. Mark’s account of this, as we heard this morning, includes a demonic possession and exorcism, and whilst our contemporary interpretations with our modern, scientific minds would try and interpret demonic possession as something more worldly, we do a disservice to the gospel when we don’t acknowledge that the world we’re shown here is one that does believe in demons, there’s 4 exorcisms in Mark even though it's the shortest of the gospels. This probably leaves us, like those present in the synagogue, asking “what is this”.

But I’m not, you’ll hopefully be glad to hear, planning on analysing the nature of biblical possession this morning. I must admit when I read the texts for today I was thinking, like the synagogue congregation, “what is this” and more pressingly, what does this say to us today, on this final Sunday of Epiphany as we come to the end of the Christmas season? 

The mystery and joy of the Incarnation and of the Christmas story are intimately woven through these readings. We have Moses promising a prophet from amongst God’s own people, our very human Messiah, but then we have John’s poetic, mystical retelling of God being born of a human woman, a child who escapes evil and returns to God.

The Gospel reading brings these two things together and shows us the reality of what the incarnation means as Jesus stands up to publicly declare his ministry has begun, and is immediately confronted with something we’d interpret as evil. An evil which immediately identifies who Jesus is, and an evil which Jesus immediately overcomes.

The possessed man is restored to who he was or who he should be, which is what I think a relationship with Jesus, the incarnate God, does for us. We each have a concept of God the Father, or the creator, whichever language you find the most helpful, and for me that aspect of God is awesome and endless and everywhere, so vast and entwined in everything, for all time, that it can be hard to comprehend.

In Jesus God becomes knowable, relatable, and we have a person with whom it becomes more comprehendible that we can have relationship with them, a relationship God wants to have with us, the ultimate goal of which is for God to delight in us and for us to delight in God. It’s a relationship of healing and restoration where, as it deepens, we get closer to seeing ourselves as God sees us, and move closer to fulfilling our potential as the people the creator created us to be.

Jesus restored a demon-possessed man to his true self.  Our demons might not be quite so literal but this is God’s deepest desire and yearning for our lives. Whilst we might not believe in evil as it’s presented to us in today’s gospel there’s many things in the world and in our lives we would perhaps call evil.

There’s the big things like war in the Middle East, child soldiers, institutional racism and misogyny, human trafficking and climate destruction, all huge evils in our world, but what I’m reflecting upon today is more personal, more everyday. Things which touch us personally. What are the evils in our everyday life that interfere with our relationship with God? 

Each of us have to deal with things which can prevent us from fully leaning into our relationship with God. Things that are preventing us from being the “us” God knows we can become. Some are bigger than others, such as addiction or illness, chronic pain or mental health concerns. But there’s also the more mundane, the things we think are a barrier between us and God, and because we believe they are a barrier, they are.

Short tempers, bad parenting choices, bad financial choices, sexual shame. The evil in these things can be how our less than ideal choices make us feel about ourselves, or how we judge others we see exhibiting them. A bad choice doesn’t make us a bad person, but we can convince ourselves that we are, and that makes the barrier between us and God.

One of the things Huw wanted to instil in us when he arrived is that it’s ok to be vulnerable and it’s ok to make mistakes. It’s all part of being human, and in many cases it’s how we grow and learn. I can’t help thinking about how in today’s gospel Jesus expels evil from within a congregation, a community which probably had complexities, relationships and came together in ways not too dissimilar to our own.

The life Jesus models for us – the life the Trinity models for us – is one of community. We’re not just called to be vulnerable and break down the walls between ourselves and God, but also with each other. To grow as God intends is to grow personally but also communally. 

Growing together is how we work towards a world where those bigger evils simply cannot exist, to model a way of living and being in the world that rejects evil by accepting each other, with our flaws and idiosyncrasies, knowing that with Jesus as our companion through life we’re standing with the source of all love and all power, we stand with a God who chose to come and stand here, with us, and share our lives, to live as we live.

As these last few days of the Christmas season pass by and we head so quickly this year into Lent, we go from Jesus standing by us in our wilderness, negotiating day-to-day life, to us standing by him in his wilderness, along with all the evil he was confronted by. This is what it means to be in relationship, to journey together, to share the highs, lows, sadness and celebrations, and as we live and grow, with Jesus and each other, we move ever closer to that revelation of hopefully seeing ourselves, and each other, as God sees us, fully ourselves, fully loved by God and knowing there is no evil that in that relationship, the eternal dance of love, cannot be silenced and cast out.

Heavenly Mother

This sermon was written for yesterday, but never preached due to covid finally paying a visit to our household 

I’m always keenly aware that today isn’t a joyful day for everyone and always hope that I can find something to say which honours mothers, mother figures and our mother church, without disrespecting those for whom today is difficult. 

Whilst I was doing the reading I always do to prepare for a sermon, I came across a phrase I don’t think I’ve heard before- “fictive families”. A Fictive Family isn’t brought together by shared DNA or marriage but shared experience or community. Shared lives can cause individuals or groups to become emotionally bonded to each other and form pairings or groups which have many of the same characteristics or functions as kinship. 

We see an example of this in our Old Testament reading where Pharoah’s daughter chooses to make a Hebrew child a member of her family. We also see it throughout the New Testament as Jesus, though he has his blood family with him, also calls others to help him, and builds a community around himself so close that after his death his mother Mary and disciple John become their own family unit. 

We would probably see our church community as a fictive family; I think faith communities are about the only place we form meaningful inter-generational friendships outside of our families and many of us help each other in similar ways to that which families do. 

In our gospel reading Mary hears the words from Simeon which at first must have amazed her- to be reminded of how important her son was going to be, to be told by a complete stranger the significance Jesus’ future holds, but then comes the sting in the tail “and a sword will pierce your own soul too”. Was this the first inkling that Mary had that her sweet baby boy, although he had a great destiny ahead of him, might be destined to suffer and that seeing his pain would in turn lead to her own suffering? 

I’m often very relived that we can’t see into the future, I think knowing the difficult things that lie ahead would stop us from living our lives fully, as God intends us to, so it amazes me that Mary is able to let Jesus go ahead and do the things he needs to, knowing it will probably end with his suffering. 

What really struck me on studying this morning’s readings together is that our readings involve people, indeed mothers, who are either living in occupied lands or suffering under racial oppression, the Hebrew family Moses was born into lived as slaves under Pharaoh and Jesus’ family lived in an occupied Judea. Both Miriam and Mary have to make difficult decisions for the future of their children. Miriam knows she has to give up her son if he’s to survive and Mary knows Jesus must follow the path set before him even though it may be painful for them both. 

It brings me back to the stark reality of what the people of Ukraine are facing right now, how families and communities are torn apart, how parents are suffering seeing their children go to fight and are themselves caught up in the war. We’ve seen the emotive pictures of maternity hospitals and newborn babies caught up in the destruction. I cannot imagine the decisions parents of small children are having to make right now, both in Ukraine and other areas of occupation, war or oppression. 

Do they wish they had known what was to come and what is yet to come? Would it have been better or worse to know what lay ahead? I’m sure we all wish we could see how or when this might end. I also wonder with what communities are being formed through this horror, among those fighting together and those trying to survive together? We also see people in other countries reaching out to make Ukrainian refugees part of their own families and it reminds me that not everything feels hopeless right now. 

It could almost make it seem frivolous that today is a day of joyful celebration here in the UK, a pause from our Lenten fasting, and at a time when we so needed something to celebrate after two years of postponed-Mother’s Day activities. 

And yet maybe this sadness in our world and all the uncertainties are just the reason why we should be marking today; to respect and honour the maternal figures in our families and communities and as a reminder that the mother church herself should be a place of safety, nurture and teaching to all who need it, that at times like this the church needs to be a place of mothering to all. As a nurturing, loving community it’s our place to see how we can meet the needs we see in the world and come together as the fictive family we are to figure out together how can help. 

Mothering Sunday in the church calendar is always something much bigger than celebrating mums, but that is important too. We can have a nurturing spirit for our world and celebrate the maternal figures who have meant so much to us- our mums, grans, aunts, sister, friends and nieces, mums who are safe with God, mums who couldn’t fulfil what was asked of them, the men being both mum and dad, the amazing strong women who have taught, led, guided, hugged and healed us, those who let us down and those who chose us. We pray for each and every one of them. 

And it’s a reminder that as well as Heavenly Father God is our Heavenly Mother. In the words of Julian of Norwich: "As truly as God is our father, so just as truly is God our mother. In our father, God Almighty, we have our being; in our merciful mother we are re-made and restored. Our fragmented lives are knit together and made perfect. And by giving and yielding ourselves, through grace, to the Holy Spirit we are made whole." 

Amen.

Celtic Lent Day 33

Theophany

The unknown God,
in whom we live and breathe
And have our being,
has promised to be found
by all who seek
with heart that yearns
to know and to be known.
Mystery of eager joy,
already but not yet touched,
closer than breath itself:
the God who comes!
drawing from us
in stillness and in trust
our wonder!
and our need.
In dusky darkness
before the glowing dawn,
embedded in simple dust,
behold
in us
a shining seed

Andy Raine

For us it's always a choice, a life of faith. God is waiting in all things and every moment for us to be ready.

Scripture
Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart
Jeremiah 29.12-13

Celtic Lent Day 31 and 32

I knew all these nights shifts would catch up with me! Two days in one today:

Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home to itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves, utterly and completely, is our true beginning.
Thomas Kelly

If love could say God's name
We'd hear a trillion sounds
Choirs from the balconies
And grass grow through the ground
The sound would ring so true
As every fist uncurled
One human family

All across the world

The prayers of an atheist
Sent from the emptiness
Even they find the way back home

If love could say God's name
And we would just be still
Silence would start to sing
And nature reveal God's will

If love could say God's name
How could we not behold
One light, one peace, one grace
Shining in every soul
Beth Nielsen Chapman

Today marks the day when the readings move from the contemplation and awareness of the divine in all things, in every moment, to meditations reflecting Celtic thought and theology, which again is an affirmation of the presence of divinity in each and every thing in the created order.
An openness or receptiveness to the presence and availability of God opens us up to what is possible when we teach ourselves to find God in every moment- the light, peace and grace which surrounds us. This is what I hope for through the spiritual practices I engage with.

Scripture
One thing I asked of the Lord,
   that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
   all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
   and to inquire in his temple. 
Psalm 27.4

So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
1 John 4.16

We're on a mission. From God.

Sermon preached this morning, based upon Matthew 9:35-10:8

We’re on a mission. From God”
Any of you familiar with the film The Blues Brothers, which just so happens to be my husband’s favourite, will be familiar with that line. For those of you who haven’t seen it I’ll set the scene:

Elwood Blues arrives at Joliet prison on the day of his brother (Jake’s) release. They visit the Roman Catholic orphanage they grew up in, only to find out it’ll be closed if they can’t raise $5000. The brothers then visit a Baptist church where Jake has a divine epiphany; if they reform their old band, The Blues Brothers, they can raise the money to save the orphanage.

As they meet up with former band mates and other folk along the way they tell them “we’re on a mission. From God.” This mission often finds them on the wrong side of the law, and various other groups along the way.

Eventually, and I’m sorry if this is a spoiler but this film is almost as old as me, they raise $10,000 which saves the orphanage, as well as paying for instruments they’ve borrowed along the way. However, just after they hand over the money and save the orphanage the police catch up with them and the film ends where it started, in Joliet prison, with the band performing Jailhouse Rock for their fellow inmates.
They may have ended up as convicted felons but they did complete the mission they believed God had challenged them with.

In today’s gospel we see the 12 apostles being given their mission from God. They’re each named; Simon Peter, Andrew, James son of Zebedee, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Cananaean and Judas.
This is the only place Matthew uses the word “apostle”, meaning one who is sent. I often tell baptism families that there’s very few examples of Jesus saying “do this” or “do that”, but here it’s very clear what he’s sending the 12 to do, clear what their mission is.

He’s sending the 12 to be a reflection of himself; cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons- this is the stuff the gospel writers have told us Jesus did, and yet he’s sending them to do this in a place he never ministered in; Galilee. As Paul will later become the apostle to the gentiles, this 12, one to represent each tribe of Israel, are being sent to preach and minister to Israel. Jesus is very clear; don’t go anywhere near the gentiles or Samaritans.

They’re to declare the gospel to those who should have it already written in their hearts; this mission is a mission to reclaim God’s chosen people, to remind them of their place as a consecrated nation and their calling to a universal priesthood- a kingdom of priests.

But who are these 12 men, what do we really know about them? Might they have more in common with Jake and Elwood Blues than with their saintly images decorating our church?

Churches are filled with images of the 12 as saintly- we have Thomas in the corner of our main window; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John hiding in the corners of the ascension window. If you look closely- as I sometimes get our family praise children to do- you can see some of the other 12 depicted around the church. And don’t they look holy? Any human imperfections hidden by the glow of their halos.

Is this how you imagine the 12? The wise and saintly founding fathers of our faith? Or do you like your Holy men a little more human and earthly?

We know Judas’ flaws and fete, and yet Jesus still chose him. Matthew was a reviled tax collector- although a changed man from meeting Jesus. These men were from such varied backgrounds- rough and uneducated fishermen, a political zealot- but Jesus changed all that? Taught them, trained them, and transformed them- or did he?

The 12 keep getting stuff wrong- Thomas doubts, Peter denies Jesus- in fact Peter gets loads of stuff wrong. He’s blunt and bumbling- emotion always getting the better of him. We know they squabble about who’s the greatest, and we know they hide in fear until the Spirit comes to shove them out of the door and into actually acting upon Jesus’ instructions.

We have in the apostles an imperfect bunch, from all walks of life, who aren’t made perfect even after 3 years in Jesus’ company. And they need a direct and transformational experience of the Holy Spirit before they go out and actually begin the mission Jesus has directly given them.

Jesus calls them, delights in them and sends them inspite of who they are, not because of who they are.

When I was on placement at St Peter’s House, the church and chaplaincy at Manchester University, their readings didn’t end with “this is the word of the Lord”, but “what does this mean for us today”? And that’s the question I’m asking myself about the mission Jesus sets out for our flawed, very human apostles.

I’ve had no choice recently but to think about the nature of calling, mission and being sent as I prepare to be priested next Saturday and stand before you next Sunday to preside over the Eucharist for the first time.

At times like this we’re confronted with our own flaws, with all the things that are a barrier to our mission rather than the things that make us fit for purpose.
We’re the only ones who know our own inner life, apart from God. We know all the darkest aspects of ourselves, the things which stand in the way of our feeling like a reflection of Jesus in the places where we find ourselves.

But, like the apostles, we’re called inspite of who we are, not because of who we are. We’re flawed, we’re human, and because of that we relate to the flaws we see in others. The amazing thing is that despite our imperfections we still reflect Christ, and are made in God’s image.

Each one of us has a mission, and it won’t be the same as that given to the 12. It may be that some of us will be agents for healing, but that was their mission, for their context- a very culturally specific set of instructions for a group of men in 1st century Palestine.

We minister to our own time, in our own context, and take responsibility for our own mission. Our call is to look forwards to where God is leading us.

Jesus was very clear with the 12- don’t look over there, at other people and other places, look here, look at your people. Your mission is your people. Maybe this, in part, is our mission too. Sometimes we don’t have to look far to see where we’re needed, where we can reflect Christ and bring God’s love.

Like Jake and Elwood Blues finding their purpose we must find ours. As members of the church we are, like Israel, a consecrated people, claimed as God’s own and called to the universal priesthood.

We don’t have to look very hard to see examples recently within our communities of the gospel being lived out- as tragedy has struck time and time again in recent weeks I’m constantly overwhelmed by the goodness of people- the helpers, those who contribute- physically, financially, practically, organisationally; those who seek justice for people unable to do so themselves.

We have a mission as a church community to serve the people of this parish, and yet we each have an individual path to tread as well. For me, that inexplicably led to this pulpit- who knows where it might lead any one of you.

Embrace your flaws, they make us human and give us parity with the apostles. Know that God will use them and use us, whatever those flaws may be, if we trust him and the plans he has for us. We’re all on a mission. From God.