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Sermon Barkway 8th November 2009 – Remembrance Sunday November 9, 2009

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Second Reading, from the Gospel of John Chapter 20: 1-18

The Rev’d Sonia Falaschi-Ray

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.  So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”  Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb.  The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t enter.  Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.  Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they didn’t understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.  Then the disciples returned to their homes.  But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.  They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t recognise him.  Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom do you seek?”  Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him off, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”  Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).  Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I’ve not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

 

  • 93 years since battle of the Somme
  • That battle alone claimed 1 million 200,000 lives
  • I should like to read you part of an account, written by a young British lieutenant, of one day at the Somme and its aftermath.
  • First, the telegram to his father

20th September 1916

Sir, I regret to inform you that 2nd Lt A A Vandyk, 24th London Regiment was admitted to No.10 Red Cross hospital, Le Tourquet on Sept 18th suffering from gunshot would in head, slight.

21st September 1916  Lady Murray’s ward, No.10 Red Cross hospital, Le Tourquet

My dear parents

I think some days ago I promised you an account of the whys and wherefores.  Well here goes.  My company was in reserve of the battalion where we were holding the line before the attack.  On our right were the New Zealanders.

During the previous days we had gradually been surrounded by batteries of field guns and heavy artillery and the roar was something intolerable.  The place was simply seething with them and the limbers bringing up the ammunition pulled up actually on top of our men.  By the time we left, every available trench was overcrowded by humanity.  On the way, we got a good view of the “Tanks” of which we had heard but had not yet set eyes upon. 

[There are then some details of troop movements.  To continue]  I witnessed the bombardment.  For 20 minutes from 6am every battery for miles around kept up rapid fire.  As we advanced, Red Cross vans were speeding up and away again. Stretchers, German and English walking cases, German prisoners and officers un-wounded were all mixed up.  Everyone had wandered down from the front line.  Germans were being made use of, to carry both their own, as well as our men.

Our special job was to make our way through the wood to reach our first and second objectives.  The wood was at the top of the ridge and the walk “over the top” was not so bad except for shells and shrapnel flying around.  Bodies were lying around us, dead, maimed and wounded and I really thought that some of the men would turn, but they stuck it splendidly.  We emerged [from the wood] and I left the other battalion of our brigade digging in, as we advanced to our second objective 600 yards ahead in a hollow.  I got my men in a sort of line and carried on, taking advantage of shell holes as we could. 

At the first go off the man immediately next to me was shot through the head and fell without a groan.  Another chap got a bullet though his finger.  I managed to get on a bit when I caught a bullet in my head.  I dropped like a log and thought I was done for.  Blood flowed and I became weak, convulsive about the legs and I waited.  I don’t know how long I lay there but I gradually recovered my sense, and crawled into an empty shell hole.  As I got up I distinctly remember seeing three Germans in a shell hole nearby at least one of whom was alive.  I began to feel at home in my shell hole and applied a field dressing to my head.  It was five past six in the evening and I had lost all sense of time. I settled down to spend the evening there.  Shells were landing and bullets whizzing but I felt quite safe in my hole.  I then espied my helmet and I discovered a bullet hole clean through the right front and the steel around the left centre simply curled upwards and outwards in shreds.

[Well around 10pm his sergeant found him and, with some difficulty, they made their way back to the British lines.  He continued] I will not burden you with the wearisome details of my passing from the dressing station to the field ambulance thence to the advanced clearing station, the clearing station and thence to here.  Yours affectionately Arthur.”

That was written on the 20th September.  Remember there were no antibiotics at that time so seemingly slight wound could have serious consequences.  On the 30th September a signal was sent to London.  “Lt AA Vandyk deteriorated from seriously ill to dangerously ill today.”  In fact they took him out to bury him at one point, but he indicated he was still alive!

At this point his parents went out to visit him in the French hospital behind the lines, as he was not expected to survive. A Military car and escort was laid on.

Telegram:October 20th  Lt Vandyk removed from dangerously ill list today.

Eventually he got home and had hole in his head in which he could hide a ping-pong ball, brushing his hair over the top

That Lieutenant was my grandfather whose medals I am wearing today.

Huge memorial arch to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval, designed by Edwin Lutyens, which is on one of slides you’ve been seeing.  This arch is the principal tangible expression of the defining event in Britain’s experience and memory of the Great War of 1914-1918.  On the disastrous first day of the battle on 1 July 1916, there were 60,000 British casualties, of whom 20,000 died.

I’d like to read you a description of a visitor to the memorial in a book by Gavin Stamp. [p172-3]

‘As she came up to the arch Elizabeth saw with a start that it was written on.  She went closer.  She peered at the stone.  There were names on it.  Every grain of the surface had been carved with British names; their chiselled capitals rose from the level of her ankles to the height of the great arch itself; on every surface of every column as far as her eyes could see there were names teeming, reeling over surfaces of yards, of hundreds of yards over furlongs of stone “Who are these…?” she gestured with her hand.  “These” The [gardener] man with the brush sounded surprised.  “The Lost.”  “Men who died in this battle” “No. The lost, the ones they didn’t find.  The others are in the cemeteries.”  “These are just the unfound?”  She looked at the vault above her head and then around in panic at the endless writing, as though the surface of the sky had been papered in footnotes.  When she could speak again she said, “From the whole war?”  The gardener shook his head.  “Just these fields.”’

Here we have a woman shocked by the evidence of death who cannot comprehend that these are just the lost.  Reading that I was reminded of another woman who was shocked at the death of a man in whom she had had so much hope.  Mary Magdalene went to Jesus’ tomb and found it empty

“Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. ……….”They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve laid him.”  His body is lost, we only have his name.…..She turned and saw Jesus, but she didn’t recognise him.  He said, ” Why are you weeping?  Whom are you seeking?”  She thought he was the gardener,… Jesus called name, “Mary!” “Teacher!”. Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me,…But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’  Mary sees the risen Jesus and after that hundreds of people see him before his ascension into heaven.  He is alive and, even though we can’t see it, his Spirit is with us. 

But where was he in the carnage of the Somme?  How could he allow such a thing to happen?  He was there in the trenches sweating blood, terrified; cut down by machine gun and pinned to barbed wire; he was there in the field stations as wounded survived; he was operated on, barely alive; he was in the hands of the surgeons and nurses; up to his neck in mud, blood and curses.  He was at home when the cable arrived.  For you he was crucified, for you he died, for you he is risen and glorified.

He allows us to have freedom of action, wherever that might lead.  He didn’t make us obedient robots, but freedom allows us to perform both good and evil acts.  However he is longing for us to let him into our lives and if we do, if we just say, “Lord Jesus, I’m sorry for what I’ve done wrong in my life.  I now turn from all that.  Thank you for dying for me.  Please come by your Spirit and live in me.”  He will.  He will be with us all the way, until at last we find our rest in him.

Sermon Barley 8th November 2009 – Remembrance Sunday November 9, 2009

Posted by ktweston in Barley, Sermons.
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Micah 4.1-5; Matthew 5.43-48

 The Rev’d Sarah Hillman

I wonder what words you would use to describe war.

Get ideas.

Throughout the ages, people who have been caught up in war have written about their experiences in prose and poetry. The First World War, a war like no other, in which millions were killed led many to write poems. Some of those who fought became famous for their writing – Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sasson, Rupert Brooke, John McRae. Others caught the mood of the time, and though they did not fight, still used poetry to express deeply held feelings about war.

Laurence Binyon’s words are used the world over on Remembrance Day. We have used them already in this service, but what many of you will not have heard is the complete poem from which they came.

Binyon was moved by the number of casualties early in the War, and though not a soldier himself, he penned these words.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of spirit,
fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
and a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
they fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
we will remember them.

They mingle not with laughing comrades again;
they sit no more at familiar tables of home;
they have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
they sleep beyond England’s foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
to the innermost heart of their own land  they are known
as the stars are known to the night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
as the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
to the end, to the end, they remain.

The poem reminds us that, so often, the casulaties of war are young – back then young men, now too young women. Lives that end too early because of carnage and slaughter. Binyon did see the horror for himself later. He was too old to sign up as a soldier but in 1916 went out to the battlefields as a Red Cross volunteer.

Wilfred Owen’s poem Anthem for Doomed Youth echoes that thought in its title, and expresses the agonies of the loss of life.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? 
Only the monstrous anger of the guns. 
Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle 
can patter out their hasty orisons. 
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 
nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, the shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; 
and bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all? 
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes 
shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. 
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall; 
their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, 
and each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Back in the First World War, the bodies remained where they fell, later to be buried far from home. Rupert Brooke’s poem The Soldier reminds us of this

          If I should die, think only this of me,
          that there’s some corner of a foreign field
          that is for ever England.

In the past year, the last three British survivors of the battlefields of the First World War died. They were men who had lived through immense changes in their lives, who had coped with the horrors of what was supposed to have been the war to end all wars. Society had changed for ever.

Soldiers who have died are no longer left abroad, but brought home with ceremony and dignity.

But some things haven’t changed. Wars come and go. We heard last week that more British troops have been lost in 2009 than in any year since 1982 and the Falklands War. It seems that there will never be a war to end all wars.

Today soldiers are still writing poetry to express their feelings about conflict. There are echoes in them of the sentiments we find in the earlier verses.

Here is A Soldier’s Plea by Bradley Shane.

If only all the dead could cry out
in a single roar
and say don’t send a mother’s son
to die a death in war.

They’d say look at how we lay
without life or limb
the bullet that tore our breast so wide
has caused our eyes to dim.

The flash of a musket,
the crack of a bullet’s speed,
a small piece of death is sent
to splinter bone and bleed.

The cannon sends a rain of death
of steel and grit and bone.
Pay no heed to the dying man
or take pity on his moan

The orders are always the same
move forward, boys, make haste:
a yard of ground a league today
don’t think of the horror and the waste.

The war boys, the war’s for all
God’s on the side that’s right.
But the devil owns the battlefield
when you hear the cries at night

A drummer rolls a steady beat,
a bugle plays a mournful tune,
a sword is dipped in honour
for the mother’s son who died too soon.

War begins when dialogue fails. Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, two of the three veteran soldiers who died this year had strong words about war. Patch said: “It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it.”

And Allingham’s words: “War’s stupid. Nobody wins. You might as well talk first. You have to talk last anyway.”

The hard thing about dialogue is that it needs both sides to participate and that rarely happens.

War leave broken people, devastated lands and smashed hopes and dreams. And that hasn’t changed. Harry Patch said before he died: “It’s right that we should think about the fighting men of the Great War. But that still goes for our boys who are sent off to battle now, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Let’s remember them too. They come back bloodied and broken, just the same.”

This is a sermon, but there’s one thing I haven’t yet mentioned: God. Where is God in the battlefields? Many people in the First World War had their faith challenged, and I’m sure many do today. But many also gain hope and courage from faith.

In an interview, Anthony Feltham-White, an army chaplain in Afghanistan, says this: “I am constantly humbled and amazed by the extraordinary courage and commitment shown by our soldiers in this most hostile of environments.

“Our services and Bible studies are always well attended, but what impresses me are the myriad conversations I have with soldiers in the most extraordinary places. Most of my battalion wear a cross on their dog-tags, and are constantly asking me to pray for them and with them; some are even baptised while out here. There is an old expression that there is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole. In many ways it still holds true.”

“A six-month operational tour uses all my reserves of everything. Immediately I think of ‘footsteps in the sand’ as I feel the arms of God carrying me every step of the way. Being among and ministering to the young men and women of our Armed Forces is a remarkable privilege and extraordinarily fulfilling, but on operations it is a roller-coaster ride. I’m on my knees by the end – but perhaps that is the best place to be.”

God is right there in the midst of battle. God does not take sides in war, for God’s aim is peace. It is not God who fights but human beings. What God sees is his beloved people of every creed and colour, destroying each other and the world.

The six moral values of the army – selfless commitment, respect, loyalty, integrity, discipline and courage – are all values dear to God.

Anthony Feltham-White also says in his interview: “My favourite part of the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount. It’s all there in those three chapters in Matthew. If only we all took to heart what Jesus is explaining, then our soldiers would not have to be fighting and dying in this place.”

And what are those words. We heard some of them earlier.

Jesus said: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Sermon Barley & Barkway 25th October 2009 – Bible Sunday November 4, 2009

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Isaiah 55:1-11, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5, John 5:36b-end

The Rev’d Sonia Falschi-Ray

“My word… that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”  “My word”, the word of God, is a dynamic and performative act.  Dynamic, as in a powerful, propelling action of the will of God.  And performative, as the act of speaking brings the intention into being.  On a human scale that can be like saying “Congratulations!”  The utterance of the word is the act of congratulating.  On God’s scale he said “Let there be light” and there was light.”  The word of God.  How do we access the word of God?  Well one important way is by reading the Bible.  The Bible, as you know, is more like a library than just a book, containing as it does a range of different types of books: history, poetry, prophesy, prayer, biography, parables the use of metaphor and mythology.  (By mythology I don’t mean fairy stories or ancient Egyptian and Greek tales of gods and monsters, but of stories which contain important truths of God’s relationship with us and the nature of humankind packaged into accounts which may not be historically factual.)  For example I view as myth and parable the story of Adam and Eve and, in the words of Milton[1],

“Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden.” till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,…….

……Say first–for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell–say first what cause
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the World besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, …..

However, whatever genre the books of the Bible are written in, Christians believe that they are all inspired by God.  That in them he has revealed himself and revealed the  relationship he would like to have with us.  Not all of it is an easy read, and some parts, especially in the Old Testament, can offend modern sensibilities.  Why does the God seem to be so bloodthirsty?  Why do the Israelites have to fight to clear the promised land of its inhabitants and continue to fight to maintain its boarders?  Well tackling that could involve an entire sermon series.  In part, God is attempting to bind a people together and educate them in his will for all mankind.  The diktat of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is to bring proportionality into retaliation, rather than escalating violence and having intergenerational blood feuds.  Later on Jesus developed that thinking further telling us to love our enemies.  However, God always starts with us where we are, drawing us onward to become more like him, if we are willing.  The word of God is to an extent codified in the Ten Commandments.  Many rules and regulations were added on, some in scripture hopefully inspired by the word of God and some, as Jesus pointed out, rules made merely by men. 

Then the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.  Jesus admonished his critics saying, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.  Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”[2]  Jesus in person took some of the words of God, the Ten Commandments and expanded their meaning, most memorably in the sermon on the mount.  “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil……. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”[3]  He also emphasized the underlying spirit of the law, the principles rather than the technicalities, for example, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. …….. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.  …….  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”  Jesus made himself very unpopular with the political and religious leaders of his day by combating their legalism which ran contrary to God’s intentions.  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.  It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.  You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!”[4]  The scandal of our MP’s expenses falls straight into this category.  The purpose of their expense allowance is that they should not be out of pocket by having to maintain a London residence.  It was drafted at a time when MP’s were expected to act as their title suggests, ‘honourable’ members of the House of Commons and the ‘noble’ Lords.  However, many seem to have operated on the basis of “what can we get away with within the “rules”?” to enhance their life-styles.  This got to the stage of some MP’s claiming for imaginary mortgages and one claiming a spare room in her sister’s house was her principal residence, (rather than the large family home in the constituency where spouse and children resided)!  When caught out, so many of them just didn’t “get it”.  “We operated within the rules”, they complained.  The general public may not act all that honourably itself, but it knows a scam when it sees one. 

The Bible, the Word of God is to guide us.  As the letter to Timothy says, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”  The Bible is not just an old book.  It is inspired by God and contains his living word.  It can speak to us personally and the more we read it, the more we will be able to discern God’s voice speaking to us and into our situations, both personally and corporately, as a church, a village community, or even a country.  It is often best to have a systematic approach to reading the Bible, using the lectionary will get you though most of it over three years.  Alternatively, choosing a theme helped by using Bible notes or a commentary.  Or, just starting with a book and, maybe, alternating between the Old and New Testaments.  Many lifelong church-going Christians have a sketchy knowledge of the Old Testament and as Jesus said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.  But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”  By ‘Moses’ Jesus here means the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, which were thought all to have been written by Moses at that time.  The Old Testament shows us how God formed a people for his own possession and without it there can be little understanding of salvation history and the importance of what Jesus did on the cross. 

There is a, possibly apocryphal, story of a man who wanted spiritual guidance, believing that God would speak to him through the Bible, so he opened it at random.  His finger fell on, Mat 27:5 “Judas ‘departed; and he went out and hanged himself” “Oh no the man thought, that can’t be right”, so he tried again, Luke 10:37, “Go and do thou likewise”  In despair he thought he’d have one more go, John 13:27  “What you are going to do, do quickly”.  So, random verse selection may not be the best way to seek God’s guidance. 

However, I will finish with an example of God seeming to speak to me directly through the Bible.  I’m sure many of you will be able to offer your own examples.   Shortly after I had come to faith on an Alpha course at Holy Trinity Brompton, I was approached by a woman, whom I shall call Clara.  She was in my Home Group and was aware that I had had a highly paid job in the City of London.  We were numbered about 10, who met weekly to study the Bible, pray together and enjoy each others’ company.  Clara suggested she and I have lunch together, during which she explained that she was in a tight financial situation, (she was a free-lance journalist).  She then said that God had told her that I would give her £1000 in order to pay a tax demand.  Now I can be a bit of a soft touch, often getting my chequebook out as my heart is moved even before the end of the sob-story.  I felt nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Having listened I left the restaurant table and went to the loo, where I got down on my knees in a very small cubicle.  I was troubled, it didn’t feel right and I prayed, “God if this is from you, let me know.  Please give me a sense that you have spoken to Clara and you want me to give her the money.”  I felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing.  I returned and regretfully refused.  She was pretty put out.  The next morning I was still perturbed. Had God spoken to her?  Was she prophesying?  I turned to the Bible and asked God to speak to me through it and he led me to a passage I don’t believe I had ever read before, 1 Kings Chapter 13.  Briefly, a man of God prophesies disaster to the king of Judah, the king hates it but his arm is withered as he tries to strike the Man of God who, on request, prays and the King’s arm is restored.  “Then the king said to the man of God, ‘Come home with me and dine, and I will give you a gift.’  But he replies, ’If you give me half your kingdom, I will not go in with you; nor will I dine.  For thus I was commanded by the word of the LORD: You shall not eat food, or drink water, or return by the way that you came.’  So he went back another way.  Now there lived an old prophet in Bethel, he went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak tree.  He also invited him home for dinner, but got the same rebuff.  Then the old prophet said to him, ‘I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD: Bring him back with you into your house so that he may eat dine.’ But he was deceiving him.  Then the man of God went back with him, and ate and drank but, as they were sitting at the table The LORD spoke though the prophet, ‘Because you have disobeyed the word of the LORD, … your body shall not come to your ancestral tomb.’  Then, as he went away, a lion met him on the road and killed him.” [5]   The old prophet had said, ‘An angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD.’  But he was deceiving him.  That was what I was given, a deceitful, false prophet.  I am not aware of a similar situation begin described anywhere else in the Bible.  I felt a lot better after that!

So the Bible is the living word of God and the more we read it the more we will be able to discern God’s voice.

[1] John Milton, Paradise Lost opening stanzas 1667

[2] John 5:39-40

[3] Matthew 5:17, 27-8

[4] Matthew 23:23

[5] 1 Kings 1-24

Sermon Reed & Barkway Sunday 1st November 2009 – All Saint’s November 2, 2009

Posted by ktweston in Barkway, Reed, Sermons.
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Isaiah 25.6-9; Revelation 21.1-6a;

John 11.32-44

The Rev’d Sarah Hillman

“As important as it is to mark the places where we meet God, I worry about what happens when we build a house for God. Do we build God a house so that we can choose when to go see God? Do we build God a house in lieu of having God stay at ours? Plus, what happens to the rest of the world when we build four walls – even four gorgeous walls – cap them with a steepled roof, and designate that the House of God? What happens to the riverbanks, the mountaintops, the deserts ad the trees? What happens to the people who never show up in our houses of God?”

That was a quotation from a book I’m reading at present by Barbara Brown Taylor, an American priest.

The book, An Altar in the World, aims to show readers how they can find God’s presence in the world around them without going on long pilgrimages or to special places.

Reflecting on what I’ve read in that book leads me to the conclusion that one of the things the saints managed to do was to be aware of God’s presence in the world around them. No one becomes a saint by notching up a record number of church services, but by living out the Gospel. That, of course, is a calling for all who name themselves Christians.

Of course, we need to remember that church is about much more than a building. Brown Taylor continues with some words about St Francis. “The people of God are not the only creatures capable of praising God, after all. There are also wolves and seals. There are also wild geese and humpback whales. According to the Bible, even trees can clap their hands.

“Francis of Assisi loved singing hymns with his brothers and sisters – who included not only Brother Bernard and Sister Clare, but also Brother Sun and Sister Moon.

“Francis could not have told you the difference between ‘the sacred’ and ‘the secular’ if you had twisted his arm behind his back. He read the world as reverently as he read the Bible. For him, a leper was as kissable as a bishop’s ring, a single bird as much a messenger of God as a cloud of angels. Francis had no discretion. He did not know where to draw the line between the church and the world. For this reason among others, Francis is remembered as a saint.”

So often we seem to lock God into a church building and then leave the divine there. But God is truly everywhere, and the saints were those who recognised that.

If we go back to the Bible, we have stories of God speaking to people in a whole host of places: on the top of mountains, under tress, by rivers, in the wilderness. We have stories of God revealing the divine presence in a still, small, voice, through the stars in the sky, a burning bush, a whirlwind. Jesus teaches using everyday images, showing how God is very much in life outside the building. He uses lilies and sparrows to get his message across, bread-making and shepherding, parties and crop-growing.

There are saints who are known for doing great things, but they were always people who knew God in their daily lives. There are countless stories of the saints and today, All Saints’ Day, we can remember some of them.

But All Saints’ Day also helps us to remember those countless saints whose names we don’t know, who are not famous, but who have lived for Christ, who have known his presence with then and in their communities and who have served him wholeheartedly. There have been many Christian martyrs – what made martyrdom possible was their belief that God was with them this side of the grave and would be with them on the other too.

Those who are saints are those who give attention to God. If we look at our daily lives, I wonder how much of that we actually do. Do we see God in the trees and fields around us as we drive or walk the dog? Do we find God in other people?

Mother Teresa believed that her work with the impoverished people of Calcutta was “doing something beautiful for God.”

She said: “There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.”

Mother Teresa’s life in Calcutta was full of clamour and noise. There is not much peace in the crowded slums. But as with all the saints, she found too that she needed space and quiet. And ensuring that she found these enabled her also to find the presence of God in the dirty, poverty-stricken, forsaken, noisy city.

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. . . We need silence to be able to touch souls.”

It is the times of space and silence and attention to God that enable us to find God’s presence also in the noise and clamour.

In times past, one of the ways in which God’s presence was celebrated and linked to ordinary life was through the festivals. Yesterday evening All Hallows’ Eve was often spent in a quiet vigil, preparing for the celebration of All Saints’ the next day, and then All Souls’ the day after. Now it’s a day of witches and ghouls, trick or treating and celebrating the darkness.

Religious festivals took on greater significance than they do today. For one thing, they were days off work, days for the family and community. Days when everyone would stop and take part. Nowadays those of us who have faith celebrate our festivals while the world carries on. Christmas is really the only Christian festival that is still widely celebrated. And for many the celebration of Christmas is done without Christ.

If we want others to find God, we need to be better at recognising God’s presence in the world than we are. We need to learn to be more attentive ourselves to God. Mother Julian of Norwich learned this. She was ill when she had her first vision. As she looked she saw all creation as if it were a hazelnut in the palm of her hand.

“And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: it lasts and always will, because God lives it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.”

It is about being attentive to God in the world. All the saints managed this. For them God was not confined to church for an hour on Sunday, but was an active part of their daily lives. They were aware that, though separate from God, they were also inseparable; that wherever they were or whatever they did, God was there. Now we may fully believe that God is everywhere, but I wonder whether that knowledge is something we live out or just something that we believe but which makes no difference to our lives.

God is alive, and faith is something living and changing and life-transforming. If we go into a room and there is another human being there, rarely would we ignore them, but we spend most of our lives unaware of God’s presence with us.

There is a religious discipline of paying attention: being aware of God in our daily lives. It takes time and space to start with but as we become more attuned to God we find that we will become more aware of God’s presence with us, wherever we are.

Faith is not just about a God who lives in heaven. It is about a God who came to earth, and lived as one of us. It is about a God who still lives with us, though the power of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes it means turning aside as Moses did with the burning bush, but more than anything it means being aware of God in the now. As R. S. Thomas puts it:

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it.

I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Sermon Barkway, Reed & Barley 18th October 2009 – St Luke October 19, 2009

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Isaiah 35.3-6; 2 Timothy 4.5-17; Luke 10.1-9

The Rev’d Sarah Hillman 

Today is St Luke’s Day, when the Church has traditionally focused on the ministry of healing.

The Christian Church has always been associated with healing. We all know that the Gospels are full of stories of Jesus healing the sick. He passes this task on to his disciples, both the 12 and others, as we see from the 70 who were sent out in today’s reading.

In medieval times, monastic communities were usually the prime source of medicine for ordinary people, apart from witches, and as late as the 19th century, surgeons had to seek permission from the Church before they could operate.

Before the Advent of the NHS, there were three types of hospital – private, voluntary and workhouse. Many of the voluntary bodies had Christian connections – now all that is left is probably a chapel, a chaplaincy and sometimes the name – St Mary’s, St Thomas’s, St George’s, St Peter’s, St Michael’s, St Catherine’s and so on.

Back in the time of Jesus medicine was in a very different state from today. There were doctors – Luke was one – but their methods were primitive, and many people went uncured. Jesus’s healings were part of his wider ministry of bringing in the kingdom of God – healing the sick on this earth was a foretaste of the time to come when sickness would be no more.

But today, things are very different. Millions of pounds are spent on curing the sick, researching new medicines and the causes of disease. Modern medicine is truly a miracle, and I firmly believe that God works through our doctors, hospitals and so on.

I also firmly believe that miraculous healings through prayer still occur, but, as in the time of Jesus, not everyone who prays is healed.

This raises difficult questions. Why are some healed and not others? There are various possible answers – not enough faith on the part of the sick person or the ones praying, God chooses not to heal, the person is seen as sinful and therefore not worthy of healing until repentance has occurred, God doesn’t heal directly any more.

And, there is, of course, the answer that I find I have to wrestle with most – I don’t know.

I don’t know why God allows some people to suffer years of pain. I don’t know why children get sick and die. I don’t know why babies die in the womb or at birth. I don’t know why young people with everything to live for are struck down in their prime.

I don’t know why some are born blind or with limbs that don’t do what they should. I don’t know why some people have severe mental disabilities or why others have to live with the torment of mental illness, which seems never to be cured. I just don’t know.

There is so much that modern medicine can do, but there is so much that it can’t yet solve.

Sickness is part of our imperfect world. One way of coping with it is to look to the world beyond – the new heaven and new earth where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, death and sickness will be no more, pain will be forever banished. That may offer hope that the pain will end – one day – but focussing only on the world to be means that current life passes us by.

Another way in which people survive is by allowing their world to shrink. They become so wrapped up in their suffering that somehow there becomes no room for anything outside – people get pushed away or taken for granted and past interests no longer are important.

I’m well aware that the inability to see beyond oneself is one of the symptoms of a number of mental illnesses, but it is also something into which others can sink too.

And people pray for themselves and for others, and God seems to go silent. Doesn’t God care? Why is God so far from us?

And, of course, those sentiments are nothing new – the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” which Jesus uttered on the cross came from Psalm 22.

Illness may seem meaningless but I believe that with God’s help it needn’t be a purely negative thing. God doesn’t desert us when we are sick, even though it may feel like it. When we pray for others and for ourselves, we often pray for God’s healing, for God to make them or us well again. And we should not assume that because the person’s health is not fully restored that God is ignoring us.

Praying for the sick is important. God should be in every corner of our lives, and therefore when we pray it is natural to talk about those for whom we care, and express our wishes that they recover, just as we might do when talking to a friend.

And sometimes God does restore people to physical health – sometimes miraculously and sometimes through the power of modern medicine. But sometimes God doesn’t.

Healing is about more than physical fitness or emotional well-being. True healing is about our whole selves – our bodies, minds and spirits, our physical, emotional and spiritual life. Sometimes when we pray for healing we miss the answers because we’re looking in the wrong place.

There’s a story about two male churchwardens in a parish where a new vicar has just arrived. It’s the first time they’ve had a woman priest, and these two men are a little confused as to how to welcome her. In the past they’ve always taken the vicar fishing for a day. “Will she like fishing?” they wonder.

In an age of equality and not wanting to patronise her, the wardens decide to invite her fishing as they would have done a new male priest. She agrees to go with them.

The day arrives and they get into a boat and sail out to the middle of the lake. After a while of sitting still fishing, the vicar says: “Actually I’m a bit cold. I’m just going to go back to my car and fetch my coat.”

So she gets out of the boat, walks across the water, gets her coat, walks back across the water and climbs back into the boat. “Typical women,” says one of the wardens, “they always forget something.”

So focussed are they on the inadequacies of women that they have quite failed to notice her walking on water. And we’re sometimes a bit like that with our healing. Sometimes we miss what God is doing in our lives because it’s not what we think it ought to be.

My own experience is, as most of you know, of mental ill-health. I’ve suffered depression on and off for about 30 years since I was 12, and I’m still recovering from the bad bout I suffered about 18 months ago.

Recovery is a very up-and-down process. Struggling on when I’m feeling rubbish is not easy; keeping going when all I want to do is stay in bed is hard. It affects my whole self – eating, physical well-being, spiritual life, relationships with others, sleep, mood, stamina, my work and so on and so on.

I would not wish my experiences on anyone. I have prayed many a time for God to heal me. It hasn’t happened. Symptoms can be controlled more or less with drugs, but they don’t cure the disease. And yet, God has been with me and transformed my experiences into something positive and useful.

When I was student I wrote a letter in response to an article about suicide in the university. It was the sort of letter that is often written anonymously. But I thought it was important that people heard from a real person.

As a result of that letter I was able to help someone else who wrote to me at my college because she too was depressed and didn’t know what to do. After our contact, she sought help.

That’s a specific incident, but I also know that I am only a priest because of my experiences. They have enabled me to develop certain gifts and skills – not least empathy and an ability to listen and understand suffering – which would never have happened without what in itself is a horrible and dark place in which to be.

And I know of many others who have developed interests and careers and voluntary agencies relating to a whole host of ailments, who help others, because of their own experiences. And that in its own way is healing. And others find whole new career paths or skills not related to their sickness but the discovery only happens because of it.

God’s healing is about transforming our whole selves. It is about healing from physical disease, but when we see it only as that, we limit God and the concept of well-being. Of course, we are right to pray for healing for others and for ourselves. But let us not be too limited in our vision that we miss God’s answer to our prayers, which may not come in the way that we expect. Perhaps a better prayer would be for God to transform our suffering into his glory.

And when we do experience or witness healing, in whatever form it takes, let us give thanks that God’s light and hope can indeed redeem the darkness and the sadness and the suffering, and bring something good out of the pain and blackness that many face.

Sermon Barley 11th October 2009 – Trinity 18 October 19, 2009

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 Amos 5.6-7,10-15; Hebrews 4.12-16; Mark 10.17-31

The Rev’d Sarah Hillman 

What is the question you would most like answered? If you met Jesus, what would you ask him?

There are all sorts of questions to which people want to know the answer. One of the most common is why God allows such suffering in the world as there is. A perceived lack of a satisfactory answer to that question leads many people either to deny the existence of God or to accept that there might be a god but not to want to have anything to do with a being who can allow such things to go on.

One of the things that the Church has in recent years been accused of is trying to answer questions that no-one is asking.

Surveys, particularly of young people, have shown that questions of eternal life and salvation are not what they want to know about. Most people have a desire to feel loved, but many people do not feel excited by the prospect of eternal life. This is, of course, at the heart of Christianity – Jesus offers us life. But so, of course, is love. The two cannot really be separated.

And yet if we look around our world at present, the big discussions are about death – can we allow people to die? How do we cope with men and women who facilitate the deaths of others? What should happen to someone who assists in suicide or stays with another while they die but fetches no help? End-of-life issues are prominent in society’s thinking at present.

What hasn’t happened in the debates is any sense of a question of what happens after death.

What is being presented is a clear choice. People either live with suffering until the natural end of their life, or they decide on their own time of death and take their own lives with or without the assistance of others. Life or death. A stark choice.

I’ve not come across any discussion yet about what death means. Does it mean a total end, oblivion, nothing-ness? Or is there some sense that life goes beyond death? And, if it goes beyond death, who will be in heaven and who will be in hell?

All sorts of answers are possible to these questions. They do not appear to be major preoccupations these days. In times past, the threat of hell and damnation kept people in a state of fear; no longer. Nowadays most people have some vague idea that death is not the end, but have no particular sense of what happens next.

All sorts of stories are told in order to ease the pain of separation – Look at that star – that’s Mummy shining down on you; Josephine’s an angel now – God needed more helpers, and so on – even though rationally most people accept that stars are stars and not twinkling humans beyond the grave.

Things were very different in the days of Jesus. Many saw the end of the world as imminent, and people were concerned about where they would end up. To an outsider, the rich young man who approached Jesus would have looked to be a dead cert. for a place in heaven.

First, he was rich. To those looking on, that would have meant a definite candidate for eternal life; to be a rich man was seen as a sign that God had blessed him. And yet, they only had to look back a bit and recall their knowledge of Scripture to know that riches did not necessarily mean acceptance by God.

Look back to today’s passage from Amos, where those who push aside the needy, trample on the poor and tax grain are condemned, though they themselves would have been rich.

Second the young man would have been seen as a good religious Jew. He has been living out the Jewish law: he’s not murdered anyone, nor played around with another’s wife, he’s not stolen or lied or defrauded, and he appears to have a good relationship with his parents. Outsiders would have viewed him as a decent, upright, moral young man.

But let’s look at what Jesus says. If we see which commandments he picks out, they are all about attitudes towards other people. He says nothing about the first commandments which relate to the relationship with God. (An aside – no one seems quite sure why Jesus has turned the command not to covet into one about fraud).

And when we spot that, we come to the heart of this story. The problem for the young man was not in what he did, but more in his attitude to God. Yes – he lived a moral life, as do many people today. But living a moral life wasn’t going to get him into heaven. What was going to do that was his recognition and living out of the first commandments: you shall have no other gods but me.

The man went away grieving. Jesus, in his answer, had hit a sore point. The man was rich; his wealth brought him a comfortable lifestyle. And when it comes to the crunch, he puts his trust in earthly things and not in God. His attitude was one of ownership – this is mine, not of stewardship – this is God’s and I am, caring for it.

He saw his worth in monetary terms. And our society is prone to calculating success in terms of wealth too. Those who are rich are the ones whom people want to emulate.

What many people look to is possessions and building up treasure on earth. I remember once watching a documentary on television, where young men from a large council estate were being interviewed. Most of them were involved in drug-dealing. Why? Because they had aspirations – not to do something with their lives, but to have fast cars.

That’s an extreme example. Those young men looked up to those slightly older than them who had managed to get the sports cars. What do other people in our society aspire to? The number of talent shows such as X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, Pop Idol and so on hook into many people’s desire to be a celebrity. If that wasn’t something important for so many, there would be no contestants for these programmes.

The aspirations of every Christian should be to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds and being, and our neighbours as ourselves.

I wonder how many of us can truly say that those are our greatest ambitions.

The rich man went through the motions of a relationship with God, following God’s commandments, but when faced with a decision between trusting in God for his security and in his riches, he chooses the wealth.

None of us know what happened to that young man after he wanders off sadly. Did he continue to ponder eternal life? Did he regret walking away from Jesus? We just don’t know.

He wasn’t the only one, though, who was taken aback by Jesus’s words. The disciples were confused too by what Jesus had said. He was again turning their world upside-down. They had clearly had no doubts that the man in front of Jesus would already be on his way to eternal life.

Surely, they would have thought, Jesus would have commended someone who kept the rules so well.

Jesus has to remind them that salvation is God’s gift not human wages. Rich people did become disciples – Zacchaeus is a good counterpart to the rich young man. Zacchaeus, when faced with the same decision, was able to give away his wealth, because it meant more to him to follow Jesus than to be rich.

We all have things that stop us following God whole heartedly. For some it’s money; for others family or friends, pride or greed. For many it’s embarrassment – people are just to embarrassed to talk about their faith. For vast numbers it’s time. It doesn’t take much to lead us away from God.

So it’s pretty amazing that God keeps on loving us, not giving up on us. But we all face a choice – the one the young man faced, and we all have to make a decision as to how we will act.

None of us can be saved through riches or power or celebrity or pride. They will only prevent us from being real with God. The young man tried to his behind his money. It didn’t work.

If someone came to you and said: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”, what would you say? I wonder whether Jesus would agree with our answers.

Sermon Reed & Barkway – Harvest Festival 2009 October 5, 2009

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Joel 2.21-27; Matthew 6.25-33

The Rev’d Sarah Hillman 

Remember the poor when you look out on the fields you own,
on your plump cows grazing.
Remember the poor when you look into your barn,
at the abundance of your harvest.
Remember the poor when the wind howls and the rain falls,
as you sit warm and dry in your house.
Remember the poor when you eat fine meat
and drink fine ale at your fine carved table.
The cows have grass to eat;
the rabbits have burrows for shelter;
the birds have warm nests;
but the poor have no food except what you feed them,
no shelter except you house where you welcome them,
no warmth except your glowing fire.

That reading comes from a book called Seasonal Worship from the Countryside, though the book’s compiler has had to label it “author unknown”.

Harvest Festival has changed over the years. Its importance and relevance has had to evolve as life has changed from an agricultural through an industrial and into a service culture. When Robert Hawker re-instated a church festival connected to the produce of land and sea, many people were directly connected with it, and the poor they would have known would have been from within their own communities. To invite them in by your fire as the reading suggested and give the shelter and food was something that could be done.

But life changed and rural communities and their importance decreased with the rise of industry. In villages Harvest Festival didn’t change much but in towns it was forgotten.

In recent years many town and city churches have tried to think of ways in which they can continue to honour the reasons for celebrating Harvest Festival – to thank God for all that we have – while being far removed from where our food is grown. Harvest Festivals have taken place in McDonalds, Tescos, pubs and so on, in an attempt to re-connect the feast with people who rarely, if ever, go out into the fields, and who certainly have never worked in them.

But the other big change that has come about since the 19th century is our awareness of who the poor are. Back then, they would be in your own community. Today poverty has different degrees – hence the idea of relative poverty that some have introduced, which rates poor families within a country to the average wage. This is different to the absolute poverty that many in our world suffer – now defined as people who have less than $2 a day.

Our world has shrunk which means the limits of our Christian care have to grow. We know about people living in absolute poverty in a way that people in 19th century and well into the 20th didn’t.

Harvest Festival is a time of thanking God for the Harvest – for all the provisions we have. It is a time of thanking God for those who provide our food – and thanking them directly, if they are with us. Farmers and food providers are very much taken for granted. It’s usually only when we can’t get things that we stop to think about them.

We are dependent on those who grow and harvest the food we eat, but an important part of Harvest Festival has also been an acknowledgement of our dependence on God: the God who created the universe and gave us plants for food. And, we will soon realise, if we read our Bibles closely, that we cannot truly celebrate Harvest festival without a recognition of the poor.

The Old Testament prophets have extremely stern words for those who live well while others suffer with not enough with which to feed themselves.

And that message remains important for us today. We are part of an interconnected world, and we should not ignore the fact that there are people in the world who have nothing while we live in luxury. And, yes, we do – we may think our house is too small; we may have to count our pennies; but in this country our children have access to education, to health care, clothing can be bought cheaply, food is easily available, and no one lacks access to clean water.

Our New Testament reading came from the Sermon on the Mount, and some of the people to whom Jesus was speaking would have known what it was to worry about food, drink and clothing, in a way that we cannot imagine. Just reflect on the power of those words to people who do not know where the next meal is coming from.

Today in Ethiopia, there are many who are starving. It’s one of the countries that comes in and out of our consciousness as the media remind us of it and then go quiet again. Ethiopia is a country with a population of 70 million; 80% of whom work on the land. Life expectancy is low – at 47.8 years; and 169 out of every 1000 children die in infancy. At least 11 million people there are facing, not just poverty, but starvation at the moment, because the rains failed and the harvest in July was very poor.

Only 22% of the country has a proper water supply, and just 13% have access to proper sanitation. When I see those figures, I well up inside with outrage and anger, that out modern world, so advanced in so many ways, still allows people to live in such difficult conditions.

My anger and outrage is a good thing if it leads me to wanting to change this situation. And so often I fail. I am not generous enough in my support of people who are remedying this situation – or trying to. It’s all too easy to forget their poverty when it’s out of the news and my mind and energies are taken up with other things.

So often I forget too to pray for these people. I becomes concerned about my own needs and ignore the needs of others. It’s not good enough, and yet, I carry on in the same way, giving money to charity each month as if that is enough.

One of the things that will enable people to have a better food supply is access to a reliable water supply. The Bishop’s Appeal this year is supporting Water Action in Ethiopia, an NGO set up in conjunction with Water Aid and now supported through Christian Aid, Oxfam and others.

The money that we give today to this appeal will go directly towards water projects in Ethiopia, which will make a massive difference to people’s lives.

Collecting water is a girl’s and woman’s job. Sometimes they have to spend as much as 12 hours days journeying to accessible water and back home. It prevents girls from getting an education, and horrendously they face rape. Young men know the water routes and lie in wait for victims, knowing that there is little they will be able to do resist.

Without water, people cannot live; these girls have no option. So this is why Water Action is working on brining water into communities. It will be clean – thus ensuring that people’s health improves; it will be nearby – thus allowing girls and women to be safer, and will give more time so girls won’t so easily miss out on education; it will be easily accessible.

They are also introducing irrigation systems, so that the rain that does fall can be used in the best way to enable crops to grow, thus providing food.

Without water, no one can live; with water, lives can be transformed.

We cannot detach our thanksgiving to God for his provision from those who do not have what we have. That is thoroughly unscriptural. Our blessings and our generosity must go hand in hand; that’s why at Harvest time it is appropriate to consider both.

Jesus told people to strive for God’s kingdom first – in God’s kingdom there is no poverty, so in being generous with what we have, we are helping to build that kingdom.

Harvest is about thanksgiving – it is about our dependence on God – but it is also about justice and about God’s kingdom. We cannot separate the two.

Sermon Reed 4th October 2009 – Trinity 17 October 4, 2009

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The Rev’d Sonia Falaschi-Ray

“Eve, will you take Adam to be your husband?
Will you love him, comfort him, honour and protect him,
and, forsaking all others,
be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”

“I will.

I, Eve , take you, Adam ,
to be my husband,
to have and to hold
from this day forward;
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part;
according to God’s holy law.
In the presence of God I make this vow.”

“Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder.”

The ringing tones of the marriage service.  What comprehensive promises those are and how hard it is for us to fulfil them.  Those of us who have married must all have thought about the implication of these sentiments and been more than a little worried about our ability to live up to them.  Even those of us, including myself who married in a civil ceremony will have made similar commitments.  However, we all know for many reasons things don’t always turn out as we hope.  The church has until recently mostly been guided by a very literal reading of our Gospel passage, which is expanded by Matthew to say, ‘Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for Any Matter?”  Jesus answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’  and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”  They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” Jesus replied, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.  And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for Indecency, and marries another commits adultery.”  In interpreting this passage, and relating it to the 1st and to the 21st Centuries, I am indebted to research conducted by The Revd Dr David Instone-Brewer[1].  There are two important technical legal terms used here whose meaning is not clear in translation.  One is the phrase Any Matter, which is often translated as ‘for any cause’, the other the Greek word porneia porneia, translated here as Indecency, rather than the more common adultery.  We will come back to the significance of these later.

The Church of England was of course founded on the matter of divorce.  King Henry VIII wished to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, as she hadn’t produced a male heir and he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, who refused to become his mistress.  You may recall last year that The Vatican had strenuously to deny reports that when they met in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI would give Prince Charles a copy of the 1530 document relating to Henry VIII’s divorce!  Given Charles’s marital history it could have been tactless.  Until recently in this country, divorce has been considered socially unacceptable.  In 1936 Edward VIII abdicated the Crown in order to marry divorcée Wallis Simpson, and Princess Margaret was forbidden to marry Group Captain Townsend, a World War II hero, for similar reasons.  It was only in 1955 that divorcees were allowed to enter the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.  Nowadays there will be few families in this country who have not been touched by divorce.  Probably all of us here have experienced divorce somewhere in our family.  I think it’s no accident that immediately after engaging with divorce Jesus welcomes children.  As we know, children are often the vulnerable victims of failed marriages, and they themselves may go on to have difficulties in forming lasting relationships.

Returning to the Gospels, what we have to remember here is that Jesus was being asked about a very particular interpretation of divorce law, where the wider context is not mentioned because, “everybody knows that!”  Well they may have done early in the first century but following the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD things changed and custom and practice was forgotten.  It is as though someone from another era saw the sign ‘No Smoking’.  “Oh? did these people smoke meat and fish indoors?  Or did they spontaneously combust?”  We know it refers to cigarettes etc. but it doesn’t say that.  The first time I went to the USA in the mid 1970s I saw a car-bumper sticker which read, “Don’t drink and drive.  You might hit a bump and spill your drink!”  We know admonitions not to drink-drive refer to alcohol but a visitor might wonder why cars have cup-holders in them if drinking liquids is illegal.  So it is with the Legal phrase Any Matter and the wide-ranging term porneia.  Porneia covers sexual indiscretion, through what you do with a prostitute to grievous sexual degradation.

According to David Instone-Brewer, “First-century Jewish hearers and readers of Jesus’ words came to the subject of divorce and remarriage with several presuppositions.

All branches of Judaism were agreed that there were five grounds for divorce in Scripture: infertility (Gen 1.22, 28), unfaithfulness (Deut 24.1), and neglect of food, clothing or love (Exod 21.10f), and that these were recognized as the vows implicit in a marriage contract.  The Old Testament example of God’s divorce from Israel illustrated that divorce occurred when these vows were repeatedly and stubbornly broken. They also learned from Scripture that remarriage was allowed after divorce (Deut 24.1–4), and the purpose of the divorce certificate was to state this right. [one group of Pharisees] The Hillelites had popularized a new no-fault divorce called ‘Any Matter,’ which quickly become the basis for virtually all divorces. They had extrapolated this from the second half of the phrase ‘an indecent matter’ in Deut 24.1

Jesus was asked if he agreed with ‘Any Matter’ divorces and said that the phrase in Deuteronomy only meant ‘Indecency.’ He added that if anyone got divorced for ‘Any Matter’ (unless it was a matter of ‘Indecency’) that they were not really divorced, so they were committing adultery if they remarried. [The Jewish Any Matter divorce was similar to our no-fault divorce ruling.][2] 

Jesus also disagreed with many other Jewish presuppositions about marriage and divorce.  He used the Old Testament to teach monogamy and lifelong marriage. He did not deny divorce, but pointed out that it should only be resorted to when a partner is hard-hearted, that is, stubbornly breaking their marriage vows.  He therefore denied that divorce was compulsory for unfaithfulness.  He also denied the idea that marriage and procreation was a command so he would not support a divorce on the grounds of infertility.  Jesus did not say anything about the other grounds for divorce—neglect of food, clothing and love.

Paul, however, did allude to these three grounds when he reminded the Corinthians that marriage includes the obligations of emotional support (1 Cor 7.3–5) and material support (1 Cor 7.32–35). Paul told believers that they must not use the no-fault divorce-by-separation and told any believer who had already separated that they must attempt a reconciliation.  

……….

The overall emphasis of both Jesus and Paul was that marriage should be life-long, and that divorce should be avoided whenever possible.  A Christian should never be the cause of a divorce by breaking marriage vows, and should try to forgive a partner who has broken the vows, unless the partner is stubbornly unrepentant.  Both Jesus and Paul condemned the no-fault divorce of their day.

Within a couple of generations, the church had lost all knowledge of the Jewish background of the gospel divorce debate and consequently thought that Jesus condemned all remarriage as adultery.  The Jewish background of Jesus’ divorce teaching was partially rediscovered in the mid-1800s. Since then, virtually all commentaries have mentioned the [Pharisaic] Hillel and Shammai debate but the churches have not yet applied this insight to practical theology.”[3] 

The Church has in the past been uncompromising in forbidding remarriage, and then restricting whom it will re-marry following a divorce.  If the second spouse was deemed to have been party to the breakdown of the original marriage the Church may refuse to marry them.  Hence Charles and Camilla having to have a civil ceremony and then a service of blessing.  Church of England Priests, (provided they have the agreement of their Bishop) are allowed discretion in this matter.  I agree with Instone-Brewer that, arguably the Church should teach all the biblical grounds for divorce.  “These can be taught on the basis of the marriage vows so that they are seen within the traditions of the Church. The church should teach that marriage vows form grounds for divorce if they are stubbornly and unrepentantly broken.”[4]  Before remarrying it may be appropriate to take part in a service of ‘Repentance for Broken Promises.’  We confess together that we have all broken promises which we have made before others and God.

However, I think all of us have to consider how we can try to keep our marriage vows.  And also, how we may be able to help others maintain viable marriages.  That may be by offering some practical help, so enabling the couple to spend more quality time together.  It might be child care or gardening, or just listening to issues and perhaps helping people to see their situation from another point of view.  We may be able to assist those whose relationships have broken down to recover, and to gain personal insights.  This may help prevent them remarrying exactly the same type of person as previously, and reacting similarly to that behaviour as last time.  Personal growth means we have a chance at a second marriage, not just repeating a failed first one.

May we pray:

[1] Divorce and Remarriage in the 1st and 21st Century, David Instone-Brewer, Research Fellow, Tyndale House Cambridge, Grove Books Ltd, Ridley Hall Cambridge, 2001

[2] ibid p23

[3] Instone-Brewer pp20-21

[4] ibid p24

Sermon Barkway & Barley 27 September 2009 – Trinity 16 October 4, 2009

Posted by ktweston in Barkway, Barley, Sermons.
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The Rev’d Sonia Falaschi-Ray

God takes sin seriously.  He does, he takes it seriously.  Jesus in trying to get that point across launches into Semitic hyperbole, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off….if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off… if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out.  It’s better to enter life maimed than be thrown into hell.”  He particularly picks on those of us who by our words or actions impede others’ path to God.  How do we do that?  Well it may be by just behaving badly when people know we are a Christian.  I’ve found myself in arguments where I have had hurled at me “You’re a priest, you shouldn’t say things like that.”  Even though I felt that I had right on my side regarding the argument, I also knew that their comment was correct.  Maddening!  God is happy for his Spirit to operate through people in ways we may find uncomfortable.  The Israelites and Jesus’ disciples complain that those prophesying were ‘in the wrong place’ or ‘not one of us’.  Jesus was always doing that, healing on the Sabbath, outwitting scribes in their use of scripture, being claimed as Messiah having emerged from an artisan’s family in a small northern town.  (Think plumber from Barnsley perhaps?)  Can anything good come out of Nazareth?  We must take care not to block people’s reaching out to God just because they don’t do it in ways we find seemly.  God cares about this.  God cares about sin.  A few weeks ago we looked at ‘pride’.  If you missed it you can find the text on the Benefice website.  I had a request for ‘lust’ from people who are away at the moment, so that will have to wait.  Today I thought we might look at anger.  Anger is not always sinful and may well be justified.  However, the risk we run is that we may start off with justifiable anger at an injustice and then allow it to get a grip of us until we end up feeling quite murderous.  Jesus pointed out in the ‘Sermon on the mount’ the continuum between calling someone raca, an “ignorant idiot” and murdering them. 

In our Old Testament reading we have the Israelites sick of just having manna to eat, after they had enjoyed a variety of foods while slaves in Egypt. (Apparently manna tasted like fried bread.)  God was angry at their ingratitude.  Moses was furious at God for having all these complaints dumped on him.  Even though God was cross, he sent quails to the camp- but they came at a price, God told Moses to say, “You shall eat meat; for you have wailed in the hearing of the LORD, saying, ‘If only we had meat to eat! Surely it was better for us in Egypt.’ Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat…. not only one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but for a whole month–until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you–because you have rejected the LORD who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’” 

In considering Anger I have been greatly helped by a sermon given by Nicky Gumbel at Holy Trinity Brompton[1]

A while back, The Sunday Times had an article about anger claiming that more than 80 per cent of drivers say they’ve been involved in road-rage incidents. (we will look at one later) 64 per cent of Britons working in an office have had office-rage; 71 per cent of internet users admit to having suffered net-rage; and 50 per cent of us have reacted to computer problems by hitting our PC, hurling parts of it around and screaming abuse at our colleagues.

Rick Warren, a Christian writer, describes four different ways in which people express their anger at work:

1. The maniacs. They are the exploders. These people are walking time bombs – they yell, they curse, they throw things when they get upset or frustrated.

2. The mutes. They’re the silent types. They hold it in and hide their true feelings. They simmer and stew. Selwyn Hughes often said that: ‘Anger is never buried dead. It’s always buried alive’.

3. The martyrs. They are the best at holding pity-parties. Instead of getting angry, they get depressed. What’s wrong with me? But martyrs make everyone else miserable too.

4. The manipulators. They don’t get mad, they get even. They retaliate in an underhand way. They use sarcasm and office politics to express their anger.

When I read this I got quite worried, the only one I am not is a mute!

Anger is an emotion, a natural passion.  Physically, it causes many changes in our bodies: adrenalin flows, hunger disappears, we have a clearer, more focused vision, and an increased supply of testosterone.  So is all anger wrong?  Is there such a thing as constructive anger?  How are we to handle anger?  Jesus said “If you are angry with a brother or sister [without cause], you will be liable to judgment;” Throughout the Bible God himself gets angry. It’s his personal reaction against sin. It’s part of his love. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that, ‘God is wrath’. It says, ‘God is love’. His anger is an expression of his love. Because he loves us, his creation, he gets angry on behalf of the victims, the poor, the downtrodden. C. S. Lewis says such anger is, ‘the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it’. Jesus himself got angry. He was indignant when he saw children not being treated properly. He was angry when religious rulers tried to stop people from being healed for legalistic reasons. He was angry when he saw a place that had been built for worship being used to make money. So anger in itself is not wrong. It’s not necessarily contrary to love.  It’s actually an expression of love, and sometimes, in the face of some of the appalling things that we read about in our newspapers, if we didn’t get angry, it would show a lack of humanity, a lack of compassion, a lack of love. But, like most sins, anger can take something that’s good, which is a proper hatred of evil and injustice, and twist it into something destructive.

There’s a difference, isn’t there, between righteous and unrighteous anger?  One of the problems with righteous anger is that it easily gets turned into self-righteous arrogance that tolerates no difference of opinion or opposition.  There’s constructive and there’s destructive anger.  When Animal Rights protestors turn to physically attacking researchers and their property, that has to be a corruption of righteous anger.  If our anger is channelled in the right direction, like Wilberforce’s, or Lord Shaftsbury’s, into transforming society, that’s a wonderful thing – but we have to be careful that it’s focused not on love of self, but on love of others.  As you look at Jesus’ anger, it was always against sin and injustice towards others.  I think it is easy to justify our own anger and condemn the anger in others. An article in the New Statesman said: ‘You are annoyed; he is making a fuss about nothing; I am righteously indignant.’ In our Gospel reading, Jesus is concerned about hampering others’ access to God by our behaviour, and uncontrolled anger can do that.  So what should we do when angry?

Press the ‘pause’ button

One of the things that it often says in the Bible about God is that God is slow to anger. Proverbs says, ‘The fool is quick-tempered’. And the quick-tempered do foolish things.’ Don’t I know it? As someone said, ‘We should learn the lesson from the Space Shuttle: Always count down before blasting off.’  This is one of the dangers of email. Email allows us to respond very quickly. My grandfather, a solicitor, told me, ‘When angry, write a letter, write it all out and sleep on it. Next morning, re-read it and then tear it up.’ The thing about pressing the ‘pause’ button is that it gives time to reflect. It gives time to talk, even to get advice. Don’t push the anger down – talk it out.  We should ask ourselves, ‘What is the loving response to this?’

Watch the words

Jesus says: ‘Anyone who yells “you ignorant idiot”, will be in danger of the fire of hell.’ I once in the heat of the moment called a friend a ‘silly woman’.  It destroyed our friendship for years.  Jesus is saying that words are very powerful and they can be very damaging.  Proverbs 15 v 1 says, ‘A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.’

Master the mind

Jesus said, ‘You have heard that it was said to people long ago, “Do not murder” and “Anyone who murders will subject to judgment”, but I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.’  If we don’t control what we think, certain patterns of thought can become habitual, which means they become part of who we are.  Then, under stress, what we really think is liable to pop out.  Sir Keith Joseph said of Margaret Thatcher.  “When she speaks without thinking, she says what she thinks.”  We should try to change our attitude to things that irritate us in people, rather than rehearsing what we would like to say, so each time an evil thought slips into our mind, instead of revelling in it and imagining a scenario where we get the better of this person, we should turn to God and ask him to help us love them.  This particular piece of advice I probably need to heed more than most.

Consider the cost

On the 26th September 2009, Simon de Bruxelles of The Times reported, “A father has been jailed for 18 months over the death of his stepdaughter in a high-speed crash as he gave her a lift.  Edward Goddard, 41, was driving at up to 110mph because he was annoyed at being called at 1am to collect Kaylee Goddard, 20, and her boyfriend from a nightclub in Abertillery, Gwent.

A court was told that he lost control of his car while trying to scare them by driving at a concrete bollard.  The car hit the bollard and rolled several times before coming to rest upside down.

Miss Goddard, mother of two, [aged 4 and 2] was not wearing a seatbelt and died from head injuries.  Edward Goddard spent 12 days in a coma with head and spinal injuries and suffered permanent brain damage.  Miss Goddard’s partner Luke Grey, 23 and his bother Mark escaped with minor injuries.  Consider the cost.

Jesus says anger is the first step on a road to hatred, murder, prison, even hell… and the only way to deal with it is quickly and thoroughly.  Pause before reacting, watch the words you use and in the meantime change your attitude while considering the cost of anger.

Pursue peace

Jesus urges us not to get involved in disputes.  He gives two instances. I want to take the one concerning our attitude to those outside the church first: Jesus said,’ Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you’re still together on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you’ve paid the last penny.’ Jesus says, if possible, avoid legal action.  Any lawyer will tell you that in so many cases both parties get unnecessarily hurt.  Going to court is usually not a great idea. 

And then, in terms of disputes inside the church: ‘Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift.’ Be reconciled. This applies within the church; between churches; between denominations.  We have to be reconciled to one another.  We may not always agree and indeed we may have to agree to differ on matters. But we should try to be peacemakers. Of course, it’s not always possible, but St Paul says: ‘If it’s possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone’. We all fall short, but it is possible to be different. It’s possible for there to be this alternative community where, instead of anger, there is acceptance, forgiveness, love, graciousness, goodness.  This is the society that Jesus advocates. How is it possible? It’s possible because of the cross, because we’ve received forgiveness and we’re able to give forgiveness. It’s possible because of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit fills us with God’s love for us and love for others.  However, we are all still work in progress.

[1] 17.6.2007

Sermon Reed, 27th September 2009 – Back to Church Sunday September 28, 2009

Posted by ktweston in Reed, Sermons.
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Isaiah 40.28-32; Luke 19.1-10

The Rev’d Sarah Hillman 

Welcome back to church! Welcome back if you were last here yesterday. Welcome back if you were here last Sunday. Welcome back if you were last here at Christmas. Welcome back if you’ve not been here for five or ten or twenty years. Welcome if you’ve never been to church before.

In short: welcome to you all.

Now I know said that at the beginning of the service but it is important that we all know that a church is a place where every single person is welcome and has a place.

Sometimes, sadly, people don’t feel welcomed in the church.

It can be for a number of reasons: sometimes the fault of the congregation or clergy – perhaps someone comes to a service and can’t work out what is going on; maybe they turn up and don’t feel that they have been given as good a welcome as they could have been; perhaps someone inadvertently or deliberately upsets them; or they come across a rude and grumpy vicar.

But it’s not always the church itself or its congregation that stops people coming to church. Sometimes people don’t feel good enough to come; others can’t walk into a church without being reminded of a sad funeral.  Some people have other priorities on a Sunday morning; others are just too lazy. Some have begun to doubt whether God exists.

But this morning what is important is that, however much or little you attend worship, you are all welcome.

And you are all welcome, not because this morning I’m in a good mood and have decided that you can all be here, but because you are welcomed by God.

Church buildings have for hundreds of years been known as “the house of God”. And in God’s house, whoever wants to be there, is welcomed.

Jesus told some parables in the Bible about feasts and parties, about people who were invited and not, but the one thing all those stories had in common is that the people who ended up at the parties were the ones who wanted to be there. They had accepted the invitation.

And God issues invitations to all of us to come and join his family.

If we look around our church today, we can see young and older; male and female; those who look smart, those who are wearing ordinary clothes; those who are good at academic-type stuff, and those who are much happier and more skilled in the garden or with their hands; there are people here who are 100% well, and others who are not so good.

There are married people, those with partners, those whose husbands or wives have sadly died, those who have always been on their own. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we look like, all of us are welcome to accept God’s invitation.

You can’t be much more of an outsider then Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was the little man who wanted to be big.  Zacchaeus had a job that made him money. It didn’t make him popular though. He was a tax man. Not a popular profession today, but back then it was ten times worse.

First he collected money for the enemy. Second he collected far more money than was necessary. The Romans didn’t pay their tax-collectors but allowed them to collect more money than they were owed and keep the rest. The temptation to ask for more than they really needed was something the collectors often did.

So, as people paid their taxes, Zacchaeus’s wealth grew. But money didn’t give him everything. When he heard that Jesus was coming, he was desperate to see him.

He’d probably heard how Jesus attracted large crowds. He’d have heard about the healings and the miracles. He’d have learned how so many people were finding their needs met when they followed Jesus. Something about Jesus draws him, and when he discovers that Jesus is coming to his own town, he is determined to catch sight of him.

As Jesus makes his way through Jericho, Zacchaeus is desperately trying to see but with no success. He’s not a child who can slip through the crowd’s legs to the front, but a grown man. I sympathise with him: being short in a crowd is not easy. People jostle and push for space but somehow short people always end up behind taller ones – I know, I’m speaking from experience!

So Zacchaeus uses his ingenuity and climbs a tree. Not a place where a celebrity would automatically look when wanting to talk to someone. But Jesus always sees beyond the obvious. He sees more than what is on the surface. He calls to Zacchaeus up in his tree.

The crowds were dumbfounded. How could Jesus choose to associate with that man, a tax collector, a collaborator with the enemy, a cheat, a sinner. They grumbled.

But in their grumblings, they failed to see three things.

First, that Jesus doesn’t mind what we are like before he encounters us.

Second, that they, as much as Zacchaeus, were sinners.

Third, that everyone can begin again.

Zacchaeus recognised these things. Jesus knew he was a sinful man, but he still wanted to associate with him.

Being with Jesus transformed Zacchaeus who promised to put right the wrongs he had done.

This year’s Back-to-Church Sunday slogan is “Come as you are”. You don’t need to dress up in Sunday best to be acceptable to God. You don’t need to lead a sin-free life before you can come to God. You don’t need to be anything other than what you are.

If you came to church in wellies and torn clothing, God wouldn’t mind. If you come with your lawn mower and your dogs, God doesn’t care. Church is not about looking good, but about coming to Jesus, and joining with others who are doing the same.

Sometimes human conventions get in the way of our relationships with God. Don’t let that happen.

For Jesus is reaching out his arms to each of one of us.

As to Zacchaeus, he is saying to us – Come as you are. Come down from the tree; come out of hiding. I want to dwell with you today. Yes – you get things wrong; so does everyone else. You don’t need to be perfect before God loves you. Your life can be transformed.

That’s a promise for us all. Back-to-Church Sunday is about more than coming to St Mary’s, Reed.

It’s about returning to God, a God of forgiveness and love, a God who will renew the strength of the faint and tired, so that they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.