Author: reverendally

Human, parent, priest, (hymn)writer, painter, vegan, amateur. She/they. Chaplain @catz_Cambridge (views my own). Trying to do justly, love mercy & walk humbly.

John 5.1-9 Do you want to be healed?

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A sermon for Sunday 5th May 2013

I wonder if any of you have an aspect of yourself that you wish was otherwise?  Some besetting sin, or some character trait that you perceive as a weakness, or some flaw that you feel defines you, though you wish it didn’t. Or something that’s been central to the way you explain yourself for so long that it’s become part apology, part excuse, and you’re no longer sure whether you want it to change, or whether it’s better simply to take refuge in it and let it keep defining you?

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then good for you!  But I certainly have a few of these things.  The easiest one for me to talk about is “I’m disorganised”.  You’ve probably all heard me say it.  It’s an apology, sure, but it’s also an excuse. And I know that for me, when I say it, I’m accepting something as inevitable, rather than working to grow beyond it.  Whenever I say “Sorry I’m so disorganised” I’m taking refuge in my own flaws and making it harder for me to be anything other than what I say I am.

Why am I telling you this?

If we leave aside for a moment the fact that the story of the man by the pool at Bethzatha was probably a true story, and that a real miracle of healing took place, we can treat it more like a parable and ask ourselves why that particular story was preserved in the gospels and what its deeper meanings might be.

When we do this it turns out that there are several: one concerns Jesus’ willingness to go round healing people on the Sabbath, even though he knows it will get him into trouble – there are other stories that do this, too, so I won’t go into that today.

The deeper meaning that struck a chord with me today is the question of what healing really meant for the man by the pool.  He’s spent 38 years lying in the same spot, always thinking that if he could only be first in the queue for the magic healing waters he would be well again, and always finding that someone else was faster than him, beating him to it.  38 years of trying the same thing, again and again, and still expecting the outcome to be different.

38 years of telling passers-by, “It’s because I don’t have anyone to put me in the water” until that’s all there is.  He is the man who never gets healed, it has become what defines him.  It’s been so long that he can’t remember what it was like before he was ill, and he’s not sure what he’d do if he was ever made well again.  Yes, the man’s paralysis was real, but metaphorically he can stand for all of us who take refuge in something that’s been holding us back for years, unsure if we really want things to be different.

This is where I am that man, stuck saying “I’m disorganised” even though I know it doesn’t help.

So when I hear Jesus ask the man, “Don’t you want to be made well?” I hear him saying to me, “Don’t you want to be more organised?”  And I think to myself, “But if I didn’t have my constant refrain as an excuse, then I’d have to take more responsibility.   I wouldn’t be able to write off and explain away the many things that slip through my net, attributing them to some general sense of disorganisation, as if it were an illness that is beyond my control.

“Get up, take up your bed and walk” says Jesus.  And the man does. He receives healing without going anywhere near the magic healing waters, and he will have to find a new story to tell about himself, he’ll have to find a new way to define himself, because he’s no longer the man who never gets healed, no longer the man who can’t get to the water first.

So when Jesus says those same words to me, he says them through the people he’s sent to me to show me that just because I’ve been disorganised, doesn’t mean that that’s what I am and always have to be.  That I can actually change, be better, and rewrite my own story so that I’m no longer peddling a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Is it simply about willpower?  No, it’s not. It’s about the way that God can act on our will and enable us to make choices that we wouldn’t have the strength to make on our own.  It’s about the power of God to show us how much of our healing and wholeness is not to do with making sure we get access to the magic water, but showing us that we can, in fact, through his grace, redefine ourselves and not be ruled by our flaws.

I’ve shared with you something of my own response to this story, confessed something of the way that I’ve let my flaws define me (and believe me, I have worse ones than disorganisation!).  And I do so as one whose process of healing and new life is still a work in progress.

If anything I’ve said has struck a chord with you, then consider that the words of todays gospel, on that same metaphorical level, can speak to any individual, or group, or organisation, or community, who is aware of a flaw, or negative tendancy, that they know is holding them back, but who has given up any hope of things being different.  Such groups have a choice: to wait around, hoping for some external solution which will probably never come, or always trying the same solutions, which have never worked and never will – or to hear Christ asking the question, “Don’t you want things to be different?” and respond not by repeating the same story that we’ve always told about ourselves or heard others use, but by really opening up the question honestly, and working out what it would mean for things to be otherwise.

But it’s not some magic water that makes change possible.  It’s Christ right here with us, asking us to look at ourselves and become what we might be, not get stuck with what we’ve always been.    It’s Christ right here with us, asking us why we’re letting our flaws hold us to ransom and offering us another way.  And it’s Christ looking at us, including our flaws, and unlike our own self-image, being able to see beyond them to what we could be.  And it’s Christ showing us that the power to be otherwise is within us, not because it’s all about our willpower, but because he, Jesus, is active within us, and has promised to work within us to make us whole and strong.

When we invite Christ to dwell within us we should expect to be changed. We should expect to lose our excuses and have to rewrite our stories. We should expect to be changed, to become more than we are.  The question is, are we ready for that kind of healing?  Some days I’m not sure I am, but by the grace of God I pray that when God next asks me to stand up and bundle up my excuses, I’ll find that I can.

Easter 3: John 21.1-19

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The first time I ever experienced making my individual confession to a priest, the penance I was given was to read John 21. I remember that my immediate feeling was a combination of very relieved (clearly I wasn’t all that bad if all I had to do was read a chapter of John’s gospel!) and disappointed (would it feel like a proper bit of penance if it wasn’t actually difficult to do?).

It turns out that I needn’t have worried. Making me read this passage from John’s gospel was, I think, a stroke of genius on the part of my confessor, and it was just what I needed, in so many ways. Here are just a few of them.

First, at that stage in my life I was at my final year at theological college, a time when over-confidence and anxiety battle it out for the upper hand.  I needed to read the part about the disastrous fishing trip to realise that God does not waste or deny the gifts and experiences that we bring from our earlier life, rather, he enhances them and uses them.  The disciples must have thought back to their own initial calling when Jesus promised that he would make them fish for people here he was again, showing them how what they were and what they had to offer could be made more, and better, by doing it God’s way.  At that stage in my life (as I suspect is still the case) I needed to hear both that my past experience was of some worth, and that God could help me use those experiences to greater effect in the ministry to which he’d called me.

Second, I needed to see not only Peter’s impulsive jumping into the water, but also the other disciples’ more sensible gathering in of the miraculous catch of fish and slower return to shore. I needed to be reminded that there are people who make a splash in ministry, and those who work more slowly; there are people for whom leaving the safety of the boat is normal, and those for whom fishing from the boat is the most fruitful place to be. And that both ways of reaching the shore are effective.

Third, I needed to remember that some of the best fellowship and growing in discipleship takes place in the context of hospitality, and that as God’s ministers we share in that.  Jesus is the one who got the barbeque going, but it is the disciples who bring the fish to cook on it.  Jesus is the host, but we bring and offer what we have to his table, and it is our gathering around him, bringing what we are and what we have, that makes the whole thing special.

Fourth (and I suspect that it was for this reason that I was asked to read the chapter in the first place), I needed to read Peter’s threefold commission, that wonderful moment when Jesus takes him aside and reminds him of that other occasion, also gathered around a charcoal fire, when Peter had denied Jesus three times. Here, he is given three opportunities to affirm his love for, and loyalty to, Jesus. Here was my penance, and my absolution, here were my three chances to reflect on the times when I had wandered away from God or rebelled against him, in my own mediocre way; here were my three chances to affirm, prior to my ordination, that I really did love God.

But more than that, this little story of Jesus and Peter makes something absolutely clear which has been hinted at throughout the Easter narratives: belief in God, and love of God are not an end, they are a beginning.  Read through the Easter stories and you will see a very clear pattern that every act of recognition of the risen Christ, every realisation of the truth of the resurrection, every declaration of faith, is followed immediately by a commission.  Peter’s love for Jesus is just the beginning, but it is the firm foundation from which he will make his next leap of faith – Jesus’ response to Peter’s affirmation of faith and love is not ‘thank you’ or ‘well done’ or ‘you are forgiven’, but ‘feed my sheep’, ‘tend my flock’, and ‘feed my lambs’.

With repentance and absolution, with any declaration of faith, with any moment of conversion (as we hear in Saul’s story in Acts today) comes vocation.  Disciples can only be true to their identity as disciples by turning into apostles. Those who feed on the body and blood of Christ must respond by becoming the body of Christ in the world, continuing his work, and empowered by his Spirit, his very breath of life. This was his commission to his friends almost 2000 years ago, and it is still his commission to us, his friends now.

We know what this ended up meaning for Peter and the other disciples, and for Paul.  But what will it look like in our lives, this week, this month, this year?  How will our own faith respond to Christ’s commission, continuing his work? How will the new life that we experience in absolution flow from us to be a force of life and forgiveness in the world?  How will what we do in this service with the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Christ, help to shape us into individuals and a church that is truly Christ-like?

Love Life Live Lent Wednesday of Week 5: Listen!

Love Life Live Lent

If there’s one thing that makes me the envy of my local clergy colleagues it’s that  my parish has a very well supported and well organised good neighbour scheme, meaning that a lot more people get visited and helped than I could possibly visit and help on my own.

A large part of the remit of ‘Friends in Deed’ is listening. Listening to people who are housebound and have stories to tell and nobody else to whom to tell them; listening to people whose burdens in life are more than anyone should have to bear; listening to people whose stories have never been told before, not to anyone.

But tonight all the volunteers came together to listen to each other – we set aside an evening to talk about what we do, and to listen to what we ourselves were saying. We dared to voice which parts of our work are most satisfying, which bits feel draining and which bits we wish we didn’t feel duty-bound to do. And because we were joined by some new volunteers, we were also able to listen to their ideas, and their reflections on what they’d heard.

It was a really good opportunity to ask ourselves some important questions, and to listen to our own answers, and each other’s answers, and to leave some questions unanswered.  It was a chance to grow and evolve, rather than simply perpetuate what we’ve always been.

If we’re never given an opportunity to listen to ourselves, we may never reach the point of learning from our experiences.  Having someone listening to us as a witness, or as a mirror, reflecting back our own words, enables us to hear clearly the thoughts of our hearts; and the way that our articulation of those thoughts gives us more clues as to what’s really going on.  And just sometimes, we might be the only people who give that same opportunity to others.   When we listen, we don’t need to judge, but we do need to give people a chance to hear themselves, and to know that their words, and their thoughts are being witnessed and valued, perhaps for the first time.

So thank you, Friends in Deed, for giving that chance to so many people in my village.  And thank you too for all the people who’ve listened to me over the years, and for the way that that listening has helped me to grow into the person I’ve become. And thank you, too, to everyone who has honoured me by telling me their stories, and trusted me to hear and honour those words.

A sermon for Mothering Sunday (with baptism) – John 19.25-27 & Colossians 3.12-17

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I have to admit that I’ve never done a baptism on Mothering Sunday before, but it’s great today to have baby Hannah and her mum, Sam, with us – living breathing witnesses to the joy and miracle of motherhood, but also of its challenges.

Because this is Mothering Sunday, everyone here today comes with a different set of experiences – some of us come with thanksgivings, others with sadness, some with guilt, and others with worries and concerns, some of us come in joy, and others come with a whole mix of confusing feelings.  Because of this it can be hard to find the right words to meet everyone where they are, and I rely even more than usual on God’s unerring ability to reach out to people’s hearts, whether through my words or in spite of them.

Colossians 3 seems like the easier reading this morning: it’s a list of good characteristics and habits that we probably all wish we had more of or were better at. Sam will need every single one of them as she embarks on the lifetime’s vocation of being Hannah’s mum.  And she’ll hope to teach Hannah to grow into those characteristics, too.  The reading talks about these things as if they were clothes: “Clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, patience… above all clothe yourselves with love…”  At the moment Hannah can’t dress herself, but as she grows, she’ll need to learn not only how to put on socks properly and how to do the buttons on her school shirt, but also how to start every day by clothing herself in all the virtues in this reading, and more besides.  Like all of us, some of them she’ll find easier to wear than others. Hopefully most of them will become so familiar that they are like old clothes, well-worn and comfy.

If Colossians 3 is the easy reading, then the very short gospel reading we heard from John 19 is the hard one – in this reading we see Jesus on the cross, about to die, and his mum standing there beside him, together with his best friend.

In a way, John 19 is the ultimate test of Colossians 3.  Are those ‘clothes’ in Colossians 3 really up to the task of real mothering?  The sort of mothering that’s done at the foot of the cross?  Sometimes it seems as if the ‘clothes’ of patience, kindness, and the rest are worn so thin by the challenges of life that they go beyond the ‘old and comfy’ stage and become no more than rags.  Maybe that’s how Mary felt at that moment.

Mothering Sunday contains within it not only thanksgiving for the great gift of motherhood, but also:

–        The patience of the person who longs to be a parent and the frustration and heartache if it doesn’t come to be;

–        The love of a parent that turns to overwhelming grief at the loss of a child – or a child at the loss of their parent;

–        The wisdom of a parent in teaching their child right from wrong, and the endless worry of that same parent about whether those lessons will stand up to the rigours of real life decision-making;

–        The forgiveness by a parent of their child’s misdemeanours, but the often crushing guilt about their own failings as a parent.

–        The compassion of those who care for others, often at great cost, and the anger at those who were supposed to care, but didn’t.

Mothering Sunday is all this and more.  It is complex and ambiguous for most of us – an annual nightmare for some, and an occasion for great joy and thanksgiving for others. Can all of these things possibly be reflected in our readings?

What we see in Colossians 3 is a model to live up to, a list of virtues that we know would make the world an infinitely better place if only we could all live up to them.  It is the gold standard not just for motherhood, not just for parenting, but for human existence.

But what we see in John 19 is God’s way of dealing with it when it doesn’t work, when we fail to be all that we’re called to be.  Jesus is only on the cross because humanity isn’t living up to that call to compassion and kindness, patience, humility, peace, wisdom, and the rest.  The cross is what happens when God meets all our failings head-on.

And in this one tiny moment during the passion of Jesus we see God’s unstoppable and creative capacity for redemption and new life. Even from the cross, Jesus looks down at his mum and at his best friend, and entrusts them to each other, creating a new family out of what looked like irreparably broken pieces.

John 19 tests Colossians 3 to the limits, and finds that actually, a narrow definition of motherhood and mothering is not enough.  There’s a well-known saying, origin unknown, “It takes a village to raise a child,” in other words, every single one of us needs more mothering than any one mother could ever provide.  And although motherhood is a unique honour and challenge, all mothering takes place within families and communities and networks of support and influence.

All through his ministry, Jesus redefined the idea of our accountability to one another, he challenged people to rethink what compassion and forgiveness meant, and showed again and again that love has no limits.  He kept on doing all of this even up to the moment of his death.

Jesus was starting to create a community that really did live up to the ideals of ancient Israel, and the commandments to respect and care for all people, including the widows, the orphans, and the strangers. The letters in the New Testament pick up where Jesus left off, showing the embryonic church how to order itself in such a way that every single person gave and received love and care, every single person was provided for, every single person reached their potential, and fulfilled their God-given calling.

Parents have a unique role in shaping their children to be the people God made them to be – as Hannah’s mum, Sam’s responsibility is immense.  But she is not alone.  Not only does Hannah have grandparents who love her to bits, she also has five godparents, each of whom, I know, has taken their role seriously, and in a moment will promise to be there for Sam and for Hannah not just for today, but for a lifetime, to walk with them on their journey of life and faith, and to work out what the baptism promises mean in real life, at every stage of life.

The huge importance of Godparents at baptism points to the role of the whole church community in the formation of children (and indeed of adults, too) into individuals who ‘wear well’ the patience, kindness, love, peace and humility of Colossians 3.  At the same time the church is also called to become a community that is defined by those same characteristics.

In the old days, before Mothers’ Day was invented, Mothering Sunday was a feast of the Church, celebrating ‘Mother Church’, drawing her children to her like chicks under the hen’s wing.  If we live by the values in Colossians 3, and test them in the fire of John 19 and of all the most difficult and hard-to-bear situations faced both by the people close to us, and by our fellow human beings across the world, then we really will have a church that lives up to the ideal of motherhood, and we’ll have a church that supports all those upon whom the burden of care falls most heavily.

Whatever feelings this Mothering Sunday brings for you, may this be a place and a time for you to receive through the grace of Christ in scripture, in holy communion, and in fellowship with one another, the assurance of the overwhelming, creative, mothering love of a God who would and did do anything and everything for her children, and in whose arms we are all, living and departed, held and treasured for all eternity.

Amen.

Love Life Live Lent Thursday of Week Four: relax to some music

Love Life Live Lent

This evening it was Ground Floor Group* and while I thought we might think about the Lord’s Prayer (having just done a school RE day based on it), the group had other ideas: ‘We haven’t done today’s action yet!’ And so we spent most of the evening sharing some of our favourite music and even downloaded some.

We hatched plots to start a very occasional informal church orchestra to go with our informal choir, Angel Voices**; we hatched further plots to meet up one evening and sing really nice music and drink wine (or eat chocolate, or both); and while we talked and listened to an astonishing range of music (Johnny Cash to Herbert Howells), we ate quite a lot of fairtrade biscuits and drank a great deal of tea.  Then we said Compline together.

All in all a wonderful evening, and all the better for the fact that largely we were all able to sit and listen respectfully to each other’s musical preferences even if they were very different from our own, and spend time in companionable quiet, too.

So, thank you, Love Life Live Lent, for making sure that we didn’t have a worthy hour reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer but instead spent a thoroughly enjoyable hour and a half sharing something lovely.  And I do feel more peaceful…

* The Ground Floor Group is a home group which started four years ago as the Foundations Group, as in ‘Christian Foundations’, for those new to the faith or wanting a refresher course on the basics. After two years and showing no signs of fizzling out or drawing to any kind of conclusion, we renamed ourselves the Ground Floor Group, and we’re gradually moving upwards. Next term we will become the Mezzanine Group.  Really. 

**Angel Voices is a genuinely all age group of people who are led by one of the Ground Floor members and her husband and who in turn lead the music at our monthly all age service. The youngest member is 6 and we don’t ask how old our oldest member is.