reverendally

It’s the 5th time this gospel reading has come up in the lectionary since I was ordained and I still don’t know what to say about it…

baptism, church resources, random thoughts, sermon, sermons, worship

This isn’t a sermon, it’s some thoughts that might lead to one.

Luke 12.49-56 is a really hard gospel. I like to find good news in the gospel, and I also like to inhabit the grey areas, but today’s reading leaves me very little scope for either; it seems full of judgement and harsh dividing lines, and destruction. And although I like complex, I like my complexity to be, well, happier.

One of the things I encourage my ordinands to do when they’re preparing to preach is to identify the ‘gospel in the gospel’ – a process which involves letting the scripture reading converse with the time of year, the occasion, the church context and local/national events, and the preacher’s own perspective, experience and insights. Sometimes (=often) this process results not in a neat and tidy conclusion, but in more of a ‘way in’ – a starting point for what is likely to be a longer journey of reflecting and mulling-over, and responding.

Today is one of those days. There was a particular phrase that I found myself drawn to, and I’ll treat this, if I may, as the rabbit hole through which to explore this gospel, and see where the journey takes us.

“I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

This isn’t the first time that Jesus has talked about baptism the context of his coming time of suffering, and his approaching death. Remember Mark 10.38-39? You do not know what you are asking, Jesus replied. “Can you drink the cup I will drink, or be baptized with the baptism I will undergo?” “We can,” they answered. “You will drink the cup that I drink,” Jesus said, “and you will be baptized with the baptism I undergo… In this rebuke to James and John, who are seeking the highest place by Jesus’ side in heaven, Jesus connects both baptism and the drinking of a cup with suffering. It sounds awfully like Baptism and Holy Communion are deeply and inextricably intertwined with suffering, both in the life of Christ and in the life of his followers, since they are key markers of our belonging to him.

In the early church, when many of those new to the faith, who had just begun their journey towards full membership of the church, were martyred before they could be baptised, the church began to teach that their martyrdom was a ‘baptism of blood’ – the blood shed at their death stood in for the water of baptism and united them fully with Christ. It’s possible that Jesus’ references to a baptism of suffering were the early church reading their own experience of martyrdom back into Jesus’ own teaching. It’s a powerful image, and a powerfully hopeful one for a persecuted church.

In today’s gospel there is no cup of suffering, but there is something else: ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’ The phrase that sprang immediately to my mind, hearing these two images side by side in the reading, is the ‘baptism of fire’ that John refers to in Matthew 3. It may refer to a purging fire, or perhaps more likely to the fire of the Spirit at Pentecost. But the way we use the phrase now is as a way of talking about a difficult start, a challenge for which we may not be prepared, but which may test us and allow us to rise to it, proving us capable of facing whatever may come next. Oddly, given the reference to baptism, it is near-equivalent in meaning to ‘in at the deep end’ – an first challenge that reveals whether we will sink or swim.

If a baptism by fire is difficult (or at least challenging) start, then it is the start of something new, something that is (hopefully) going to be ongoing, something which we will (hopefully) survive, and through which we will ultimately thrive and grow. Think of the fire that Moses encountered on the mountain – the bush that burned but was not consumed. Think of how his new vocation emerged from this fire, overwhelming him but not destroying him, ‘burning’ him into being the person God was calling him to be. Think of the fire of Pentecost, both the birth and the baptism of the church, terrifying, yet full of joyful power, enabling the few to grow to thousands.

Fire, in the gospel, is at once destructive and regenerative. It demands our absolute attention right here and now, in the present moment, when it may inspire terror, awe, wonder, fear… and yet it’s orientation is towards the future, towards what it will give birth to, what it will enable. The wound that is cauterized is for the sake of life and health; the forest is managed by controlled fire in order that new growth may replace old; the ore is refined in the flames to bring out the gold. The references to fire (and even to the weather at the end of the reading) are about the relationship between what is happening now, or about to happen, and the ultimate, more hopeful, trajectory in the future. Suffering, purpose, vocation, life and death, hope and judgement – all of these are bound together, woven together, in this complex and richly allusive (and elusive) gospel.

But what of us? The two central rites of our membership in Christ – baptism and Eucharist – are both connected by Jesus to his passion. When we are baptised, when we welcome others in baptism, when we share the bread and the cup, we participate in Christ, we are his body on earth, sharing in his death and resurrection, his suffering and his glory. This is our baptismal and eucharistic vocation. And it’s our life’s work to work out what that looks like in real life, and to do it. The hard fact of today’s gospel, much as it pains me to admit it, is that being good does not make for a quiet life free from suffering or from argument. It is in the nature of sin to battle with the good, both between us and within each of us. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, reserved a special place just on the outskirts of hell for those who ‘lived without praise or blame’ and had therefore ‘never really lived’ at all. These, in Dante’s mind, were presumably those who had lived out their lives in denial of the reality that living in the world and truly engaging with it in a meaningful way will involve making decisions, working out what to believe and then standing up for it, and being willing, once standing, to be counted. Even (or especially) if you stand up and are counted for the sake of truth, justice and righteousness, you will make some enemies and piss a lot of people off (sorry about that). The prophets of the Hebrew Bible, and Jesus himself, are testament to that.

When we read the ‘signs of the times’ (ie what’s happening now, in the church, in our own local community, in the nation, in the world), we are confronted with a question: what sort of Christians, what sort of church, is required? Who do we need to be in response? What does it look like when we (individually, communally, ecclesially) fulfill our fiery baptismal vocation to be Christ’s presence in the world?

I don’t have an answer for you, but if it is any consolation, I shall take away the same questions for myself.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Advent

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Actually it isn’t. But I wrote this on the train the other day, as a very belated response to someone’s request for a song to go with the lighting of the Advent wreath, and I thought I might forget about if it I waited till November.

Advent Wreath Song
to the tune ‘Father we place into your hands’

Mothers and fathers of the faith, who lived in time of old,
Leaders and judges, kings and queens were faithful, true and bold,
Travelers, heroes, shepherds, all with stories to be told:
Still they show us how to follow you.

Prophets and seers who spoke the truth in answer to your call,
finding new ways to bring your word to people great and small,
living their lives to show your love was meant for one and all,
still they show us how to follow you.

John, in the desert calling out, ‘The Kingdom has come near.’
‘Come and repent, and be baptised, there’s nothing then to fear.’
‘Jesus is coming now, the One you’re waiting for is here.’
Still he shows us how to follow you.

Mother of Jesus, angels called her favoured, full of grace,
Holding the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, in her embrace,
She is the one whose ‘yes’ helped God to save the human race,
still she shows us how to follow you.

And this last verse, for Christmas day, is by my friend and colleague Gill Robertson:

Jesus our Saviour, born a king, we welcome you today,
Lord of all time, Immanuel, with joyful hearts we say:
You are the Christ who came to earth for us; and now we pray,
Help us all to daily follow you.

Teach us to pray…

sermon, sermons

Some sermony thoughts on Luke 11.1-13

I’ve always found the parable of the persistent neighbour rather troubling. Our habit is to map parables onto the real world – us and God – as an exact one to one allegory, and in this case, that would cast God as the grudging friend with his own family safely behind a locked door who only responds to nagging.

This can’t be right, and setting the parable alongside the teaching of the Lords prayer helps us unpick it a bit.

The first thing to notice is that the late night request for bread isn’t out of the blue. The two are friends – they have an ongoing relationship, and there is probably more to that relationship than asking favours of each other. If the friendship in the story is supposed to tell us something about our relationship with God: relationship with God is not purely transactional, a series of favours being asked and granted. We go to God with praise, with our deepest desires and concerns about the world, with our basic needs, with our guilt and our bitterness, and our fear of the evil that others may do do us, or that we may do ourselves. In fact, all the things that the Lord’s Prayer describes, and which we can find unfolded both in our worship (try it, you’ll see what I mean) and in our daily lives.

The second thing to notice is the key phrase towards the end of the reading: ‘How much more…?’ What God does for us is more than we can expect from a human relationship. And the imagery switches back from the friendship model to the parent-child model, indicating perhaps that this is a closer comparison. Jesus invites us to call God ‘Abba’ – an intimate, unguarded term, reassuring us that we are not randomly demanding neighbours banging on God’s door at midnight, but rather we are (or we can be) the children tucked up safely in the bed.

The friends/neighbours vs family issue here reminds me very much of the phrase ‘children of Abraham’ that appears a few times in the gospels. At the time of Abraham, God was experienced as the family God, and Jesus’ own contemporaries placed huge significance on their heritage as part of the family that God promised to Abraham would be more numerous than the stars in the sky and the grains of sand in the desert. And yet we can also read in the gospel that, ‘God can raise up children of Abraham from these stones’. This story too, invites us to work out where we are in relation to God, and to reflect on our identity as children of God, members of God’s household, and all that that means, and all that might get in the way of that.

One of the things that that means becomes apparent if we let go of the one-to-one mapping of the parable, and instead mix things up a bit. What if the comparison is not so much that we can extrapolate who God is not by saying ‘God is like us in this story, but better?’ What if, instead, we say, ‘Our neighbourliness and our relationships must be modeled on God our heavenly Father, and what we know of God from the testimony of scripture and the life of Christ?’ What would it mean if we looked at the story not from the point of view of the neighbour knocking on the door, waiting for our prayers to be answered? What if we approached the story as the children in the bed, who, hopefully, take after their parent, and who know that their heavenly Father is a generous God, and that there is enough bread in the house to feed many neighbours and travellers?

Would we, on behalf of our Father, climb out of the bed and open the door, and offer God’s hospitality? Of the many wise things Pope Francis has said, one of my favourites is this:
“You pray for the hungry. Then you feed the hungry. That’s how prayer works.”

Liturgical objections

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Some people may not agree with everything in this post. Normally I just post useful resources, but this actually has some questions and possibly contentious things in it. I took the post down yesterday, as it might have been contravening my rule of life.* But I’ve re-written it now, so it’s hopefully nicer, and has benefitted from the many insights that others have shared with me.

It was a great blessing to be at the consecration of the new bishops of Dorking and Repton. It was the first time I’d been to the consecration of a woman (in this case two). That meant it was also the first time that I’d heard ‘live’ the objector, who has sought to make his views known on each occasion that a woman has been consecrated (he hasn’t always been allowed to do so, mind). You can read the press release issued by WATCH about this issue here. And I recommend that you do before reading further. You can also read Archdruid Eileen’s response here.

I echo everything that the WATCH article says. As an ordained woman, it pains me to have the vocation of my fellow female clergy publicly called into question, and the liturgical and sacramental offering of that vocation disrupted with a ‘No’ that feels like a gut punch. It could possibly be argued that the objection is a reminder of the reality of the church’s brokenness – something often said about the fact that Anglicans and Catholics are unable to share in communion. It could be interpreted as a reminder that the church is not the kingdom of heaven – things have changed, but they are not yet fully transformed. But this isn’t enough of a reason to keep perpetuating it.

I would be very happy indeed never to hear another objection. The consecration service for male bishops proceeds perfectly happily without it, as do the ordination services for deacons and priests. The objector has been heard, the church has made up its mind, and it is time simply to move on and celebrate the vocation of women and men to all expressions of ordained ministry.

But, in becoming part of the liturgy, as the WATCH article says, the objection has caused a curious thing to happen. This is a summary of the ‘script’ at that point in the service:

The Archbisop asks for the people’s assent
The People assent
The Objector objects
[and, at the most recent service, the Resistor resists the objection]
The Archbishop responds
The Archbishop asks for the people’s assent again
The People respond, more loudly.

Without the objection there would be no response from the Archbishop, and no second affirmation. And I think I might actually miss those.

First, the response. For a start, ++Justin’s response at Canterbury Cathedral was rooted in and framed by prayer (and I am grateful to my friend and colleague Julie for reminding me of that). And, from memory the main thrust of it, in addition to prayerfulness, was (a) the story of how the church came to recognise the vocation of women to the episcopate, and (b) the legal provision for the consecration’s validity. These two aspects of the response are both about mandate and authority, but they function differently. The latter is a statement of what is, factually, the case, while the former is rather more than that: it’s a narrative, a story, if you like, as to how we came to be where we are. It reminded me of those places in the Hebrew Bible in which the People of God are helped to remember how they got to be where they are. They remember their stories. Because the stories tell them who they are – it’s not just the events themselves that were formative, but the telling and retelling of the story is also formative. Liturgy is a key custodian of the story that gives us our ecclesial identity.

So, a question: once the objector finally stops disrupting consecration services, will there still be a need to tell this story or will we have reached a stage when it is no longer needed, or when it does more harm than good? I’m looking here to my friends and colleagues who are more well versed in liberation theology to help me out here, and I’m grateful to Rosemary, another priest-friend, for reminding me that in liberation theology the story of oppression only works to liberate if it is told by those who are themselves oppressed. A genuine objection is quite different from a scripted question placed into the liturgy as a deliberate part of the controlling narrative. Although we may enjoy the response, the objection itself is still an act of oppression, and as such, has no place in the church. The question remains, though: without the objection, is there still value in retelling the story of how we changed?

Then there is the second affirmation. I have to confess I was looking forward to that bit, and it was every bit as rousing, joyful and sincere as I had hoped. By the time we got to that second affirmation, it felt like something that we are bursting to shout aloud. Without the objection, could we find a way to make the first and only ‘yes!’ (for all consecration and indeed ordination services) just as affirmative as that second ‘yes’? Without the objection, would we need to? Many clergy do in fact repeat the congregational question at weddings if the gathered people are not enthusiastic enough with their ‘We will’ – is this something we would want to see at a consecration or ordination service? One would certainly need to find ways of doing it that increased the joy and sense of agency in the response, rather than descending into pantomime – this has been proved possible at weddings, but could it work at a consecration?

My conclusion, if I have one, is that the objection unwitttingly provoked something it never intended. It triggers the retelling of a story of transformation (while reminding us that that process of transformation, while representing the vast majority of the church, is not yet fully embraced by the whole church). And it galvanizes the gathered people into raised voices and heightened passions. My final question is whether these responses to the objection are in themselves sufficiently powerful and valuable that they might, in some form, have a place in the liturgy even after the objector has stopped turning up (as I hope he will, and soon).

I would be happy never to hear the objection again. An undisrupted liturgy of consecration (whether that’s because the York Minster police have escorted the objector out before he can say a word, or because he has eventually stopped turning up) is probably the most powerful testimony to a church that has truly transformed, that has grown into its decision and is at ease with its new equality and its mandate to defend that equality.

At the same time I long for a church (and a world, for that matter) in which all our remaining inequalities and injustices are a distant memory, and in which we have both learned to disagree well and have come closer to the diversity-in-unity of the kingdom of heaven. But we are not there yet. We have many remaining inequalities in the church. If we need to retell the story of women and the episcopacy, it may be as a reminder of the fact that we can change. Our current experience also provides us with a range of models for the way that we might deal with those who feel threatened by that change, and how our responses to objection may evolve over time.

If – no, let’s say when – the Church of England embraces equal marriage, we may be faced with a similar situation, in which objectors disrupt what should be a joyful and celebratory liturgy. How will our experience of the consecration of women as bishops inform the way that we handle this pastorally, practically and liturgically? We may conclude that, there being no legal or theological grounds for such objections, the only response that would have any integrity would be for the churchwardens to escort the objector from the building as soon as he or she spoke up (or as soon as it had been ascertained that they weren’t objecting on genuine legal grounds – the marriage service and the calling of banns allows for this, of course). Could the service then simply carry on, as if nothing had happened, or would there be an emotional and pastoral need to respond to such objection with a narrative of transformation, with prayer, and/or with the opportunity for congregational affirmation? And would we consider slightly rearranging the order of the elements of the marriage service so that if objections arise the liturgy itself is ‘ready’ for them, and has its own answer?

As ever, I’m left with more questions than answers. I think I can now repost this without transgressing the relevant bit of my rule of life (which, in case you’re interested, is that “nothing I say can cause more hurt than healing”) but if there are things that you feel contravene this principle, please do tell me, and I will totally do something about that. Even if you disagree, please keep comments constructive and helpful. My blog is generally a happy place!

The Good Samaritan

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Maybe I am doing him a disservice, but the lawyer reminds me of one of those people who ask a question to which they already know the answer, so that they can demonstrate their expertise. He knows the right words to say, he correct formula, but he’s clearly struggling with the implications. He’s not quite grasping the all-encompassing nature of love. To attempt a definition of ‘neighbour’ is almost certainly to try to limit the sense of obligation and accountability and generosity that the Summary of the Law implies. Love has no limits, and the lawyer hasn’t really grasped that yet. Hence the story that follows.

But the story is all wrong.

Most people, when they hear a story, will gravitate to the first or main character, and assume, subconsciously that this is ‘someone like us’. Straight away we are wrong footed, because the person with whom we have begun to identify, albeit only briefly, turns out to be the victim and not the hero. His main role is to be beaten and then lie, passively, in the gutter, at the mercy, or lack of mercy, of whoever may see him.

We’d like the victim to be someone else. Secretly, we’d probably prefer it if the victim is ‘not like us’. The foreigner, the low-class outcast, the Samaritan – that’s who ought to be the victim, so that we can be the hero. We can do our charitable bit, reach down from our uprightness and respectability, and help those less fortunate than ourselves. And there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s one of the things that makes societies work.

But if we’re the ones in the gutter, it’s much less comfortable, much less satisfying. Lying there, beaten, who do we want to come to our aid? I remember once at theological college, I had just recovered from flu, and for some stupid reason I had decided to go for a run before morning prayer. It didn’t go well. Almost at the end of the service, I started feeling woozy, and tried to leave discreetly – I got half way to the back of chapel and then passed out. I remember coming to and hearing a particular person (whom I will not name) saying, loudly, ‘Don’t worry, I know first aid!’ and thinking, to my shame, ‘Oh no, anyone but you!’

Receiving help is not easy. Depending on the charity of others is not easy. It makes us vulnerable, it can chip away at our pride and self-respect, especially when have to look up from the gutter at those who are helping us from their position of benevolent power – a position that really should be ours…. Who would it be hardest to accept from, right now? We might all give a different answer, but each of our answers challenges us, through this best known of gospel stories.

And the end of the story is wrong too. Jesus’ closing question turns the definitions around. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ at the start is a question that assumes that we are strong ones, and the neighbour is someone who, in their weakness, needs our charity. ‘Who was a neighbour to him?’ assumes that the neighbour is not the victim but the saviour, the one who gives the love.

So, when Jesus says, ‘Go and do likewise’ he is telling us to get up from our gutter, where we had unexpectedly and uncomfortably found ourselves, and go and be the Samaritan, go and be the outcast, the low-life, the one who stopped and helped because he knows what it’s like to be at the bottom of the heap. ‘Go and do likewise’ Jesus says, ‘remembering that you, too, are dust, that you, too, come from the gutter.’

Christological laptop.jpg My son, who is nine, came up with an interesting theory about this a few months ago. He noticed that he can only see what’s on his laptop screen when he looks straight at it – if it’s tilted at the wrong angle, the image distorts and then disappears. He said to me: ‘It’s like God is the image on a laptop screen, and the screen is tilted downwards. You can only see God if you’re really low down. Like if you’re ill. Or if you’re not very important. The people who can see God most clearly are the ones who are right at ground level, not the people who can stand upright. So, if we want to see God clearly, we need to get down on the level of the people who are ill, or poor, or not very important. Helping people where they are is how we are most close to God.’

And he’s right, of course. If we really do get down on our hands and knees, as it were, and come alongside others in their hour of need, we are likely to find Christ already there. But if we look down from above, we’ll see no clearer.

The responses to some of the recent terrorist and other attacks around the world express this sense of solidarity rather clearly. It started with “Je suis Charlie” in the aftermath of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris. And it has continued, more recently in Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, Gay Love, which you may have seen, in response to the murder of 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando. This, too, expressed the sort of solidarity that St Paul hinted at in 1 Corinthians 12: ‘When one member suffers, the whole body suffers’. This is the sort of solidarity, when words flow into loving action, that points to the fundamental truth at the heart of the Summary of the law: Love your neighbour. Be that neighbour. Be loved by that neighbour. These are all one command: mutual, reciprocal, humble, generous, joyful. The sort of love that allows help to be given and received without condescension. The love that rejects the pursuit of power, the preservation of hierarchies, and instead basks in the belovedness that we all have in God, which underpins all our own giving and receiving and invites us to see one another, to love one another, and indeed, to love ourselves, as God loves us.

In the nation at the moment, the question ‘who is my neighbour’ confronts us constantly. It is being asked in our local communities, in the news media, in the political arena, and implicitly in our awareness of the very many challenges that we face in our current political and social turmoil. We need the story of the Good Samaritan, together with the Summary of the Law, now more than ever, to teach us afresh what is means to be children of the same heavenly Father, builders of his kingdom on earth – a community of people who need each other. It’s been wonderful to see the grassroots movements that have been springing up in the last few days: #loveyourneighbour and #movementoflove spring to mind, encouraging ordinary people to go the extra mile for one another, in ordinary and extraordinary ways. The challenge is great, and the story is exactly what’s required, though it may be hard to hear it, and harder still to live it out – but there is no greater command than this: that we love God with our whole being, and love our neighbour as ourselves. mollogo

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