Luke 10:38-42 - Jesus in the home of Martha and Mary.

Have you ever had that feeling on a Sunday morning that you just don’t want to come to church?  It’s not that you’re struggling with faith, or unhappy about church particularly, but it’s Sunday morning, you’ve had a long week, there’s so much else to do, and you’re just tired.

I had that feeling a few weeks ago – I had been at a day long committee meeting the previous day in London, and then my train home was delayed by an hour and a half so I didn’t get home till late.  That Sunday I wasn’t on duty, and I had got up planning to go to the 11am service, but I was going out straight after church for a work thing, so I was faffing about getting ready for that, and when the time came to leave for church I was still in my pyjamas and I realised I couldn’t come to church in my pyjamas.  Except then I realised I could.  I made a cup of coffee, sat down on the sofa, and joined you all on the live stream.

As I read this morning’s gospel reading, I found myself thinking back on that morning, going to church in my living room in my pyjamas.  It’s not so long ago that we were all doing that, during lockdown.  Then, we did it because we had to, because we weren’t able to come together in church buildings.  Now we have the choice, and I’m glad we still do the live stream here at St Mary’s, for me it was just what I needed that Sunday morning, to enable me to stop, in the midst of a busy weekend, and to sit and listen to Jesus.

I don’t know about you but I spend a lot of time being distracted by my many tasks, or perhaps I should say distracted from my many tasks.  As I was writing this sermon I was sitting in a house that needed tidied, trying to ignore all the life admin that I really need to do.  Meanwhile my work bag was sitting in the corner of the room, reminding me of all the things that are waiting for me to do on Monday morning when I get into the office.  And even when it comes to fun and relaxing things, there are still plenty of tasks that need to be done to make them happen.  My sister and I have been talking for weeks about that trip to Austria we are planning in October, we’ve searched for flights and accommodation, but never actually got round to booking it, and if we don’t it won’t happen (I did actually pause as I was writing this to text her to say again that we need to book it!!).

Life is full of tasks, stuff to be done.  And the anxiety, for me at least, comes from trying to balance the demands that these competing tasks place on my life – what is urgent, what is important, what do I want to do, what am I dreading doing, what just needs to be done? 

And I don’t think that Jesus wants us to think that these tasks are not important.  I’m pretty sure that he was happy to eat the meal that Martha spent all that time preparing.  But he wants her to know that something else is important too.  Something else that is important before anything else.

And here, if you’ll forgive me, I’m going to quibble with the translators of the NRSV.  I just read you their translation of Jesus’s words:

Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

There are two words in the English here that I can’t find when I read it in the Greek.  The first is “only”.  There is need of only one thing, we read, but the Greek doesn’t use the word only.  It says simply “but one thing is needed”.  The second word I can’t find in the Greek is “better”.  In the Greek, we read “Mary has chosen the good part”.  So let me suggest what Jesus might, in fact, be saying.

Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her.’

Jesus is not scolding Martha.  He is directing her to the thing that matters, the place where she needs to start, the time she needs to give to listening, to being with the one who made her and who loves her.

And so in listening to this I give myself permission to put aside my many tasks and to listen, to be with the one who made me and who loves me.

I recently did this for a week, as I walked St Cuthbert’s Way, following the journey made by the Northumbrian saint from his monastery in Melrose, to the holy island of Lindisfarne.  I closed my laptop, deleted WhatsApp from my phone, and set off on my pilgrimage.  Sometimes I chatted to my friend as I walked, or I listened to my audiobook, or just walked in silence.  When we got to Lindisfarne I was both exhausted and refreshed – it was a gloriously sunny day and yet the picture I had as I arrived was of standing bathed in longed for rain falling on a parched and weary land. 

One of the special things about Lindisfarne, as you probably know, is that it is a tidal island.  When the tide is low, you can drive over the causeway, or walk like the mediaeval pilgrims over the sand.  And then when tide comes in, the sand and the causeway are covered and Lindisfarne is separated from the mainland by the sea.  There was something very special about being there when the tide came in and cut us off, and I honestly think I could have stayed there for weeks, months, years.  But I had just a day there, before I had to head back over the sands, back to the tasks that were wating for me at home. 

Because those tasks, the things that fill our lives day by day, these do matter.  I have quoted before the words of St Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Ephesians: We are each of us God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  The way we live – the things we do and the way we do them – bear witness to the God we love, and build God's kingdom, piece by piece, here on earth as it is in heaven.

Just as the tide ebbs and flows on Lindisfarne, so we each need to find those rhythms of grace that sustain us, the times we spend at the feet of Jesus to equip us for going back in the midst of it all to do the work he has given us to do.

I’d love to say that, as we weave our prayers through life, the worries and distractions will fall away, and we will each glide through life in a serene and Godly way.  Oh that that were the case.  Our time with Jesus doesn’t remove the worries and distractions from our lives, but it does equip us to get through them. 

On the second day of my walk on St Cuthbert’s Way, we had a our longest day with a fairly hefty climb in the afternoon.  We set off after lunch, after the rain stopped, and the first half hour or so we were walking along a road looking for where the path crossed the stream to take us up the hill.  “Ah,” said my friend, when we found the ford.  “I think the stream is flowing faster than usual.  We’re going to have to take off our boots and socks for this one.”  “Are you sure there’s not a bridge nearby?” I asked.  “No, no,” she assured me, showing me the map.  “It’s marked as a ford.”  So, slightly grumpily, I took off my boots and socks and waded through the water – it was cold but not icy, and came to our ankles so we crossed with relative ease.  We dried our feet and set off, and just a few metres down the path my friend declared, “ah, there is a bridge we could have crossed.  Isn’t that funny?”  I did not think that was funny, I have to confess, in that moment.  But as we started the climb up the hill, I noticed something.  My feet had walked many miles that day, and still had many miles to go.

But since walking through the stream, they weren't as sore or as tired as they had been when we stopped for lunch.  The walk through the water didn't make the hill any less steep or hard to climb.  But it did mean that my feet were refreshed, and just a little bit more prepared for the task that was ahead of them.

St Cuthbert's Way

 
It started with the bus dropping us off in the wrong place. 

To be fair, the driver dropped us off where I asked him to, but it was the wrong place.  Fortunately I had a map with me, and also a friend who could read a map.  We were walking St Cuthbert’s Way and we were starting about 6 miles along the first stage - for various reasons, we couldn’t start the walk until mid afternoon on the first day, so I’d picked a random point on the first stage to join the walk (we planned to go and do the miles we missed on the last day).  With a bit of pushing through undergrowth, and avoiding the field with the bull in it, we found our way to the path and started on our way.

St Cuthbert’s Way is named for the c7th Northumbrian saint Cuthbert.  It is a contemporary creation by Ron Shaw, bringing together his work in tourism development with his personal interest in Anglo Saxon Northumbria.  Shaw worked with partners north and south of the border (or east and west as it is in this part of the world) to establish the route, weaving together a mixture of ancient ways such as the old Roman road Dere Street, and more recently developed rights of way, to create the long distance footpath.

While not an ancient pilgrim route, St Cuthbert’s Way echoes the journey that Cuthbert made from his original monastery at Melrose to Lindisfarne, where he was called to serve first as Prior and then Bishop.  Cuthbert’s life was marked by the pull between the two callings on his life.  As a monk his ministry was not limited to the monasteries in which he served.  He would travel to the surrounding communities, bringing God’s word and the sacraments. And yet his desire was to live as a hermit and to devote his life to prayer and meditation, particularly on the psalms.  He did this for several years, first on the small tidal island at the foot of Lindisfarne, now known as St Cuthbert’s Isle, and later on the Farne Islands.  He was persuaded out of his hermitage to become Bishop of Lindisfarne, but he returned to his hermitage on Inner Farne shortly before his death.

Following his death, Cuthbert’s reputation grew and he was venerated locally as a saint, with people making pilgrimages to pray at his remains, first to Lindisfarne and then to Durham, where his remains were moved to following the Viking raids on Lindisfarne.  While pilgrimages to the great holy places like Jerusalem, Rome, or Santiago were beyond the means of most, local pilgrim shrines such as Lindisfarne and Durham became well trodden routes.  For Mediaeval churchgoers, the mass could be a distant ritual, practiced by priests behind the rood screen and proclaimed in a language they didn’t understand.  The shrines to the saints, by contrast, were a place that they could come right up to, and often touch, and pray in their own words, asking the saints to intercede for them for forgiveness, for healing, or giving thanks.  Each pilgrim could approach with their own intention, and leave with their own blessing.

I had a few different intentions in walking this pilgrimage.  The first, to be honest, was to see if I could do it.  I’m not as fit as I was, nor as fit as I want, and I want to change that.  Obviously the sensible thing to do would be to build up to a long distance walk, but I didn’t quite manage to get round to that, so I was starting from my baseline not-very-fitness.  Turns out I could manage the distance – as my mum always used to say, we’re from Irish bog trotting stock, and we can’t go fast but we can go far.  The bigger challenge wasn’t the distance so much as the height.  I hadn’t twigged that we’d do the equivalent of two Munros worth of height gain over the course of the walk, and on days two and three I struggled with each successive thwocking great hill that appeared on our way.  My friend would faithfully wait for me at the top of each climb, and when she asked how I was doing, she would get the same scowl and grunt as I tried to catch my breath.  But I did it – yay me!

The second intention was a question – what’s next?  It’s a question that has been quietly brewing in my mind for a few months.  This isn’t to say that I’m looking to make big changes.  Quite the opposite in fact – the past few years have been plenty full of change and I’m quite content to move forward through life at a walking pace, not in leaps and bounds.  I’m passionate about my work (80% of the time I love it, 20% I hate it, but I’m always passionate and I reckon that’s pretty good odds!)  I’m in a church I never would have chosen and am really enjoying learning in a new spiritual tradition.  I have family and friends who love me.  All in all, that’s a pretty strong basis for a good life.

But I’m also aware that I’m past half way through my life.  I’m probably not close to the end – if I live as long as my mum I’ve got thirty years left in me.  But if I live as long as my dad, I’ve got not quite two years left to go.  I can’t plan to either of these timescales obviously, but it has made me pause and think about the things I still want to do.  The list only seems to get longer as my life gets shorter, and if my experience so far is anything to go by, I’ll end up going in ways I wouldn’t have predicted.  So this is as good a time as any to take a breath and think about what I hope to do in the years to come, and to look at weaving these things into my life.

One of the things that I know I want to do more of in the years ahead is writing.  Which brings me to the third intention.  I have a list of folders on my laptop of writing projects that I want to do, and one of these is titled Pilgrimage.  I’m interested in the stories of the Mediaeval Scottish Saints, and in the people who made pilgrimages to their shrines, as well as in what pilgrimage means to people today.  I have made several pilgrimages in the past few years and it has become a significant part of my spiritual practice.  For me it is a practice which allows me both to step out of my own life for a few days – I deleted WhatsApp off my phone before I started my walk which was just bliss – and also enables me to connect, with the environment I am walking through, with the history of the places I’m walking through and the people who have walked these ways before, and with God.  And so this walk (and this blog) is the beginning of my writing on pilgrimage – look out (if you’re interested) in more to come in the coming months.

“The end is where we start from.”  So said TS Eliot in his Four Quartets.  And so it was on this pilgrimage.  Because of the way the tides worked, we couldn’t walk onto Lindisfarne on the traditional route taken by pilgrims over the sand, but had to walk on the causeway – safer from the incoming tide but less devotional as we stepped out of the way of the cars.  So as we left, we took the pilgrim route off the island, walking in the morning sun across the sand to the lives we’d set aside for a few days.  Perhaps this was fitting, walking the pilgrim route away from the retreat of Lindisfarne back to the everyday.

And on to what’s next. 

On dealing with those people we find difficult...

 

Easter 7 - Acts 16:16-34 and John 17:20-26

There are people that we read of in Scripture that I would love to have met.  I wish I’d heard King David sing.  I think I could have sat all day and all night listening to Isaiah preach.  Peter and I could have spent hours together, comparing notes on all the different ways we mess things up.  And I would have loved to have eaten dinner at the home of Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus, and I hope I’d have been thoughtful enough to get up and help with the washing up.

But if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I’d have gone out of my way to spend time with the Apostle Paul.

We spend a lot of time with Paul in the season of Easter – during the weeks between Easter Day and Pentecost we don’t read the Old Testament at our services but rather we have a reading from the book of the Acts of the Apostles.  Apparently this is a very old Christian tradition, which can be found as far back as the time of St Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century.  The idea was that in the days leading up to Easter, and in particular at the Easter Vigil, we look back and see how God was at work on earth from the very beginning.  Now, in the glory of the resurrection, we are called to look forward.

And so we find ourselves spending time with Paul.  Who, I confess I struggle with.

I struggle with Paul’s theology, but then, in some ways this is a good struggle.  Theology isn’t easy, it’s not meant to be easy.  Theology is, as St Anselm said, faith seeking understanding, it’s working out how we talk about and live out our faith.  And this can be challenging.  In the book of Acts we see the first followers of Jesus setting out on their journeys of faith, trying to make sense of what it meant to live together as the community of God’s people, learning as they went, often through their mistakes.

Paul is a major character in this story, both in the book of Acts and in the letters we have that he wrote to various congregations.  In reading these letters I feel that I am listening in to a set of conversations that I want to join in with – to agree, to argue, to question.  And sometimes I want to just sit in awe at the beauty of his words.  Some of the words in Paul’s letters have become the words that I live by, words that anchor me and lift me.

And then I encounter Paul in the book of Acts, and I find him difficult.  He is difficult obviously because of his history.  This is a man who persecuted the first disciples, this is a man who stood approving at the stoning to death of Stephen.

We talk of the dramatic transformation of Paul, and we rightly celebrate this. The word repentance literally means to turn around, and Paul’s was one of the most dramatic turn arounds in the whole of Scripture.  If there is hope for him there is hope for us all.  God’s forgiveness knows no bounds. 

And yet, though he may have turned away from his former ways, the consequences of these ways could not be so easily left behind.  God was asking Peter and James and the other disciples to take on their enemy as a partner in the Gospel.  How on earth are you meant to find common ground with your enemy, the one who cheered on the murder of your friend?

When I think of this, the people I find myself thinking of are Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley, two men who grew up on opposite sides of the religious divide in Northern Ireland.  Paisley was a man who proclaimed from his pulpit an enmity for his fellow country folk who worshipped in a different church.  My mum, who grew up in County Antrim around about the same time as Ian Paisley, said of him that he may not have called people to violence, but he spoke in such a way that his words enabled that violence in others.  Martin McGuinness was on the other side of that divide and he did perpetrate that violence.  And then these two men, McGuinness and Paisley, found themselves sitting together in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont.  They had to work together, they had no choice.  Well, in fact they did have a choice.  We’ve seen plenty of examples of people, in Stormont and in other assemblies the world over, who are faced with a choice, to remain stuck in their enmity or to work with their enemy.  In choosing the latter, they managed to build not only a peace for their country folk, but a genuine relationship with one another, so much so that when Ian Paisley died, Martin MMcGuinness was able to say he had lost a friend.

True inclusivity is incredibly hard.  It means including those we oppose, whose views we profoundly disagree with.  It means not waiting for them to change their minds, but working with them anyway, finding tiny patches of common ground where we can, to begin, however tentatively, to work together.

If we are lucky we will find, as Paisley and McGuinness did, friendship across the difference.  And if we are very lucky, we will find reconciliation across divided communities.

Paul is difficult because of his past.  But he also comes across, to me at least, as someone who was quite difficult to get on with, someone who seemed to often find himself disagreeing with people or rubbing them up the wrong way.  It’s not that he didn’t care about other people, and indeed at times he comes across as thoughtful and compassionate.  But he was mission focused in such a way that attending to relationships came second.  That mission focus is admirable, but it’s also difficult to work with.

When I read this passage through the first time when preparing this sermon, there was something that irritated me about the way Paul dealt with the enslaved woman.  His response to her was to be annoyed, to seemingly try to ignore her for a few days, and only eventually to cast out the spirit that held her captive alongside her enslavers.  I found myself wondering why he was annoyed not compassionate, and why it took him so long to respond to her need.  To be fair, Luke does not tell us Paul was annoyed by her, so much as by the distraction she provided, and the response to his actions shows the risk he was taking in intervening.  But still, I found myself irritated by the way he dealt with the situation.

I spoke before about the challenge of working with people who have been our enemies, or those with whom we have profound and deeply held differences of belief.  But often I think we find it difficult working with people we agree with, but where we have different ways of doing things, or even just different personalities. 

Years ago I heard a programme on the radio which was discussing whether we could be friends with people we disagree with.  There was lots of talk about how to get on with people where we disagree on politics, religion, and other values.  Then one of the people on the programme started to talk about becoming friends with people when we didn’t particularly like them but it was convenient.  The others on the panel were a bit bemused at first but she went on to talk about people she’d met at the school gate when their children were friends, or went to some of the same clubs, and their paths crossed so much that even though they didn’t particularly hit it off, it just seemed sensible to become friends. 

In church we find ourselves living and working alongside people we haven’t chosen.  This is the nature of discipleship.  We are together not because we choose one another but because we choose to follow Jesus in this place and this brings us together.  One of Jesus’s last acts on earth was to pray for his disciples – and not just those disciples gathered, but all those who would come to follow him, including us.  That is an awesome thought, that in his last hours before the cross, Jesus was thinking of us, praying for us.  And his prayer was that we would be one.  The call for us to find common ground across with those we disagree with and with those who are different from us or we don’t get on with, this is a call from Jesus – a call to live differently from the divided world around us.  Jesus said that our unity would be a sign to the world that we are his.  And so when we struggle with one another, as we will, let’s lean on the prayer of Jesus and ask him to guide us into that unity.

And so I come to my last point in thinking about Paul.  He is difficult and yet I can still learn from him.  We see him today landing in a prison cell, and we know he ended up in many other tough situations as he followed the Spirit.  And again his response is not what mine would be.  I suspect I would be feeling miserable and feeling sorry for myself, stuck in the weeds of my sorrows.  Maybe Paul felt this way too, but his response was to pray and sing – to lift his head up and look to God. 

On Easter Saturday a few of us gathered in the Synod Hall for a vigil, to sing together songs of lament and hope.  Being good Scots I think our songs tended to lament – but even the songs of lamentation I think were good for our spirits.  In singing together we connected with one another, sometimes listening and sometimes singing together.  We connected with those beyond our group, as we sang their songs and stories.  And we connected with God, as we sang of our faith and our doubts, our sorrows and our joys.  For me, singing does that – lifts my head from my own sorrow.  For you it might be something else, the thing that reaches you when you are stuck in a situation and lifts your head. 

And for all of us, there is prayer.  I don’t mean that to be glib, suggesting that we should pray and everything will just be fine.  Sometimes God will break in to our situation dramatically, like God did here for Paul and Silas, changing their sorrow for joy.  And at other times, we may find the doors of the prison cell remain stubbornly locked. 

Paul wrote to his friends in Phillippi years later from another prison.  As far as we know he did get out of that prison but he landed in another, and ultimately was executed for his faith.  So, when we read him telling his friends that he had learnt to be content in all circumstances, he wasn’t being glib.  And so I can lean on the words of Paul.  I wrestle with them, I am irritated by them at times, but I can lean on them when I am stuck in my own sorrows:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.  Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Lighten our darkness - a sermon for the feast of Candlemas

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord.

We pray this prayer all year round but through the months of winter perhaps we pray it a little more fervently.  The days when we get up in the dark and come home in the dark are wearing - and then of course here in Glasgow, there are days when it feels like the sun never rises at all.  We need light in the darkness to sustain us through the long nights of winter.

And there is light coming.  Yesterday was the feast of St Brigid, known as Imbolc in Celtic tradition, a feast which marks the turning of the seasons.  We are nearly half way from the winter solstice, heading towards the spring equinox, and we are beginning to notice the lengthening of the days - it’s still winter but we can see signs of spring.

And so on this feast of Candlemas, half way between the dark of winter and the light of spring, we light our candles, and we spend time with three old friends, Simeon, Mary, and Anna, each of whom has an encouragement for us.

Simeon is a faithful servant of God.  We don’t know how old he is, though we can guess he’s coming towards the end of his life from his words.  He’s been waiting for the fulfilment of a promise God made to him, a promise that he would see God’s Messiah, the chosen one who would come to bring God’s saving grace into the world.  

And now that promise is fulfilled.  As Simeon takes the baby into his arms we can almost feel the hope, as if he had finally found the thing he had been waiting for his whole life.

“Now I can go in peace,” says Simeon.  Because he knows he is holding in his hand the light that has come into the world, a light for all nations, a promise that peace will one day come to our fractured world

We can be encouraged by Simeon to have hope.  But if Simeon’s hope is fulfilled, ours is a restless hope.  Light has come into the world, a light that the darkness cannot overcome.  And yet the darkness is still working hard to dim and hide the light wherever and however it can.

Our task is to bring the light into the open.  And this is no easy task, our world is not in an easy place.  It can be tempting to look away from all that is challenging.  But that’s not what God calls us to do.  Jesus told his disciples not to hide their light away but to shine in the world, bringing God’s light wherever we go.

This starts with prayer.  Prayer is the beginning of all we do, the source of all our actions.  We start with orienting ourselves to God, rooting and grounding ourselves in faith.  Then we turn to the world.  If you’re not sure how to pray for the world, I commend to you the words of Bishop Mariann Budde, Bishop of Washington, that she spoke in a service to mark the inauguration of President Trump.  I’d commend the whole sermon to you, but for now I want to share her closing prayer.  She prayed:

May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people in this nation and the world.”

We can pray this prayer for our divided world.  And as we pray, we can listen for the Spirit prompting us to be the answer to our own prayer.

If Simeon reminds us to hope, then Mary reminds us to trust.  Simeon’s words to Mary are not easy words.  “A sword will pierce your heart” he says to her.  We know, because we know the rest of her story, we know how Mary’s heart will be broken, and healed, as she follows her son to the cross and the resurrection.  Now, though, she is a young woman holding a baby.  I don’t know what she made of these words.  I don’t how many times over the years they came back to her.

 Søren Kierkegaard said that life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards.  So often in my life I have looked back over my life and seen how God has led me, though I didn’t see it at the time.  Or I can see how God has worked for good in the challenges I have faced.  And there are still things in my life I don’t understand and wrestle with God over. 

From Mary I am reminded to trust the future to God.  To hold on in my heart to the words that God gives me, to wait to see God at work in my life and in the world around me, and to trust - not in my own strength, but in God.

Simeon reminds me to hope, Mary reminds me to trust, and Anna reminds me to look for the joy in life.  As she sees Jesus Anna is filled with joy in the gift of God’s grace - Anna’s name itself means grace.  And that joy cannot be contained but spills out as she shares it with anyone who will listen to her!

Anna was a woman who lived many years longer as a widow than as a wife.  She was a person of no significance in the world’s eyes, and I don’t imagine life was kind to her, but she had found her place in the house of God.  Here she had a purpose, and here now she finds joy in this little baby, joy she delights in sharing with other 

When times are hard it can seem frivolous to look for joy.  Serious times call for us to be serious, don’t they? Well yes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look for joy too - perhaps in serious times we need joy even more than at other times.

Winter has been long but it won’t last forever.  We can already see the signs of spring.  As Karine Polwart puts it in a song:

Oh how the nights are long,

But life is longer still,

And the sun’s coming over the hill.

So we light our candles.  With Simeon, we hope for the peace that will come, and we pray for that day.  With Mary we trust that God is at work in and through us, even when we can’t see how.  And with Anna we look for the joy to sustain us in the midst of the darkness.

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Advent 4 - Elizabeth and Mary

 "Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets"

So says the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. 

A few of these prophets led the people of Israel, many stood beside their leaders.  Sometimes they were heeded, sometimes ignored or even punished for what they said.  But still they spoke, proclaiming God’s word to the people, to anyone who would listen.

And then the prophets fell silent.  No new words were spoken for centuries.  The silence wasn’t total – the words of the prophets had been written down and preserved.  The prophets of old, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Zephaniah and Micah and the rest, their voices echoed down through the years, and their words continued to speak to those who had ears to hear, with new resonances for each generation.

Until one day a new prophetic voice spoke – two voices – and they were not what anyone was expecting.  A pregnant teenage and a middle class woman of a certain age.

We don’t know how old Elizabeth was, but we do know she was past the age when she would be expected to be able have a child, and yet here she is, pregnant, and being visited by her young cousin Mary.  Elizabeth is filled by the Holy Spirit and speaks out the words given to her by the Spirit.

"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?  For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.  And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."

Elizabeth’s own child is a miracle, a gift beyond all expectation.  And yet she recognises that the child in the womb of the woman before her is an even greater miracle – a gift not just to a faithful old couple who had been patiently waiting, but a gift for the whole world.

There is a beautiful humility in Elizabeth’s words.  Who am I, she asks, that this has happened to me, who am I that the mother of my Lord would come to me?  She is honouring Mary’s faith in believing what was spoken to her, but I think these words also speak to Elizabeth’s own faith.  We spoke about Elizabeth at the study group last Tuesday and two words that I took away from our conversation were steadfast and trusting.  Elizabeth had put her trust in God and lived according to God’s ways.  And that trust was steadfast and unwavering, even when, to those around her it looked like she had been forgotten by God. 

I am sure these words were precious to Mary too.  These last few months would have been tough on her.  She had accepted God’s call on her life, but it had implications.  We know Joseph took some persuading to accept that this was all from God.  I wonder how many people looked on her growing pregnant belly with judgment in their eyes – perhaps Mary had come to visit her cousin to get away from this judgment.  So Elizabeth’s recognition of Mary’s faithfulness matters.  There’s an encouragement in this for us to follow Elizabeth’s example, and to say out loud to others the things we are thinking, to tell them about the good we see in them.  It’s always good to say good things to people when we have the chance, and just sometimes these words, prompted by the Spirit, will be the very thing that someone needs to hear.

Elizabeth blesses Mary and her baby, and then Mary speaks her own words of blessing for the God who has done all this.  In a sense, Mary was a prophet like no other.  Her call was to literally bring the Word of God into the world, to carry and give birth to Jesus, all the fullness of God contained in the tiny body of a baby. 

 

Mary puts into words the hope that this baby brought to the world, words we speak and sing in this place week by week.  She speaks of the promise of God, she speaks of a world turned upside down, she speaks of a saviour come to show us the way back to God.

 

I don’t need to tell you the ways in which you fall short of God’s ways, you know how you do.  I know you do because I know how I fall short of God’s ways.  As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, I know the good I want to do, but then I don’t do it.  And I know the things I want to avoid, but then I tangled up in them again.  I do delight in God’s ways, I do want to follow God’s ways, but I have this little pull in my nature that, time and time again, draws me away from God.

We have each gone astray and turned to our own way.  But the good news is, God doesn’t expect us to find our own way back.  In Jesus, God came to us. Jesus walked among us, shared meals and told stories, showing people the way to God.  Jesus died as one of us, and Jesus rose again, overcoming death and giving life to us all, life in all its fullness.

This is our hope.  And it is hope not for each of us, but for the whole world.  The systems and structures of our world reflect our human nature – the desire to do good and the pull to act selfishly are woven together in the institutions across our society as they are in each of us.  Some systems or institutions stand out as particularly oppressive and there is nothing we can do but to work for them to be overturned.  Often, however, our institutions are like us – capable of doing great things and at the same time capable of great failure.  There will be times when we can work for justice within a system, working to take power and resources out of the hands of the few who are hoarding power, and sharing them fairly with all.  At other times it may be impossible to work in the system and we need to stand outside it and work to build new and better systems.  Wherever we stand, outside systems or within, our task is to work towards the promise in Mary’s words.

Mary and Elizabeth’s words have come down the centuries as an encouragement to us.  But they were first of all an encouragement to each other – one woman who had received an unexpected gift, the other who was going through an unexpectedly challenging time.  I don’t know what the days and weeks ahead hold for you, what mix of gift and challenge you will face.  But I pray that you will find companionship like Mary and Elizabeth found in each other, and so will find God’s blessing for the year ahead.

Amen.

Looking to the light - the first Sunday of Advent

 

Down through the centuries, Christians have been waiting for the fulfilment of the promise that came with Jesus.  The angels sang of peace on earth, and goodwill to all, and we still long for that peace, for the kingdom to fully come on earth as it is in heaven.

Some have looked for this to come about through human progress, and the gradual improvement in society, though the evidence of history suggests progress and decline seem to cycle around one another, and if progress is to outstrip decline, it has quite some way to go.  Others have looked for sudden and spectacular end, with the present earth passing away to make way for a new creation – some may even think that events in our world right now are beginning to show some of the signs that would herald this end is approaching, though many generations before ours also thought they were living in the end times. 

I do not profess to be a good enough scholar to be able to make a judgement on this, I can’t say if we’re close to the end or not, I can’t say how it will all come to pass.  I do believe that somehow, God’s justice will one day be sovereign on earth.  I do believe there will be peace, and goodwill to all, that all of creation will be reconciled to God.

This means it matters how we live now, whatever times we are living in.  It matters because we are already building the Kingdom of God, bringing heaven to earth.  Whenever we have the chance to good for someone else, to work for justice, to care for creation, when we do these things we are making the kingdom of God a reality here and now, in however small a way.  And what we do now for good will, somehow, echo through eternity in a restored creation.

It matters also because in doing so, we become a sign.  Jesus told his disciples to pay attention to the signs in the world around them, but in building the kingdom here and now, we become a sign to the world.  Like the budding leaves on the trees are a sign of summer coming, so as God’s people live in God’s way, the world will know the promise of peace and goodwill that has come in the person of Jesus.

It matters how we live, but it is not always easy to live in this world.  We live in times that feel uncertain, unstable.  When we turn on the news and hear about what is happening in Syria, Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, when we hear of people struggling in our own country with unemployment or homelessness or domestic violence, it can be tempting to switch off.  But that is not what we are called to do.  We are called to engage with this messy, complicated, beautiful world.  We are a sign of the coming of the kingdom, and the world cannot see this sign if we are hidden away.

So, what encouragement can we find in Jesus’s words this morning?

One thing Jesus tells us to do is pray.  When we look at the world it can be hard to know where to start praying, but perhaps we should turn that around.  We don’t start with the world, we start with prayer, we start with orienting ourselves to God, rooting and grounding ourselves in faith.  Only then do we turn to the world.

There is an old hymn which we used to sing at my first church, you may know it.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.

I remember my youth group leader used to say the hymn, lovely as it was, had got it slightly wrong.  As we looked at Jesus, it wasn’t that the things of earth would grow strangely dim, it was that the things of earthwould grow clearer still, in the light of his glory and grace.

That’s not to say that we will always be able to make sense of the world.  But our prayer together here, week by week, our prayers as we go through life day by day, these help us keep our perspective, and help us see our way through the changes and chances of this world.

Jesus also calls us to get ready, to prepare ourselves to face whatever is to come, to keep ourselves safe in the midst of the world.

What do we need to do to get ready?  I guess we are to do the opposite of what Jesus warns us against.  Jesus warns against distracting ourselves in human indulgence, or letting the weight of our worries burden us so we cannot act.  That’s not to say that we should be ascetics, separating ourselves from the world, and avoiding all earthly pleasures.  But when these become a coping mechanism, a way of avoiding the realities of life, that is a problem.  Likewise, when we look at the world today, it is a very rational response to be worried.  But we need to find our ways of managing that worry. 

Audre Lorde, the American civil rights activist, said “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”  You care for yourself so that you can fight for justice without burning yourself out, you care for yourself so that you can help others when they need it, and they in turn can look out for you.  We take the time we need to keep ourselves safe, to protect ourselves from danger, so that we are still able to live, together, in this difficult, complicated world.

There is also a word of encouragement from our old testament reading this morning, from the prophet Jeremiah – not a place we often look to for encouragement!  As Jeremiah speaks these words he is living in a land besieged by a foreign empire, and he has been put in prison by his own king, who is angry with what he is saying.  And yet he speaks of how God will make good God’s promise to bring justice to the world.  In the midst of difficult times, he holds on to hope.

We are having a running argument at work at the moment about the correct time to put up Christmas decorations.  As a good Anglican I am, of course, clear that the correct time to put up decorations is 24 December, when the season of Christmas begins.  Turns out I am in a minority of one in this position. My team are all excited to get properly Christmassy, and at some point this week our office will probably look like Santa’s grotto. The thing is – and don’t let them know I said this, I don’t want them to think I think they have a point – the thing is, they have a point.  In the midst of darkness, we need to look to the light.  I might quibble about just when we put up those Christmas lights in the office, but it is these lights that remind us of the light that came into the world, the light that the darkness cannot overcome, the light that will bring peace and goodwill to all.  And even as we wait through Advent, we hold on to the hope of Christmas.

When Jesus spoke these words, he was in the temple in Jerusalem, which would in just a few years be destroyed by the Romans.  I’ve visited that temple, our guide was an archaeologist, and she kept showing us how the stones of the torn down temple had also been used to build what came next, and what came after that.  The stones of the temple where Jesus taught were cast down, and they were built up again, and I have walked on those stones.

I don’t know how God will break into our world to fulfil the promise of the kingdom that Jesus brought.  But I know it will happen.  And I believe that whatever the kingdom looks like, it will be built from pieces of this world. 

The powers of the heavens will be shaken.  But don’t be afraid.  Because your redemption is near.

 

 

 

Finding yourself in a story

 My sermon for today, on Hebrews 4:12-16 and Mark 10:17-31

I love reading. I was brought up in a household that was full of books – those were the days, some of you won’t really remember this, those were the days before we could access so many things on a screen, and books were where we went for information and for enjoyment.

I loved nothing better than losing myself in a book – it could be fiction or non-fiction, I was as eager to know about the world we lived in, as to travel into other worlds. Even now, there are few things I enjoy more than having a few hours or, better, a few days, with nothing to do but read.

I love losing myself in a book. 

But even more than that, I love finding myself in a book.

As a child I read the Narnia books, over and over again, and these were the first stories that God spoke to me through, though I didn’t realise it was God speaking then. I found myself in Jill Pole, a girl who didn’t quite fit in the world she lived in, who tumbled into Narnia and was given a task to do, which she almost messed up because she got distracted, but she made it with the help of her friends and with Aslan’s guidance.

I was probably approaching 20 when I first read Pride and Prejudice, another story I’ve read many times. My sisters and I all argue over which of the Bennet girls we are most like – but now I find myself in Charlotte Lucas, though with a twist – to find her way in life, Charlotte had to marry a vicar, the dreadful Mr Collins. I am so much more fortunate – I don’t have to marry Mr Collins, I get to be the vicar!

And sometimes I find myself in unexpected stories. I’ve just finished reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, the story of an elderly preacher, in the 1950s, looking back over his life which spanned back to the late 19^th century. A world away from my life, and yet time and time again I heard echoes of myself in his reflections on his life.

Stories help us make sense of the world, and our place in the world.

In the Bible we find a collection of stories, stories others have told one another to make sense of the world as they navigated their way through it. But we find more than that.  All scripture, Paul told Timothy, is God-breathed. These are stories that have been inhabited by the Spirit, in their telling and re-telling, in their writing and rewriting, in their reading and re-reading. These are the stories that God has gifted us to help us make sense of the world. These are the stories in which we find God. And these are the stories in which God finds us.

I have studied scripture for years. It is one of the declarations I made at my ordination as a priest, to be a diligent minister of God’s word. I have shelves of books to help me to do this, to help me to understand scripture in its social and historical context. I have made an attempt to learn the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew, to better understand these texts. All of these are important, and I will continue with these studies.

But just as important as my academic study of God’s word is the lesson I learnt from my childhood reading, of losing myself and finding myself in the story.

Because, so often, it is in these moments that God word cuts through into our lives.

There are certain stories in Scripture that I come back to again and again, certain characters that I see myself in.

When I have a decision to make, I walk alongside Gideon, always checking and checking again with God where God was leading him.

When I am waiting, I wait with Sarah, who waited and waited again, until God’s blessing came to her and Abraham.

When I am worried, I go to the mountainside and sit down with the crowd listening to Jesus, to the words that John opened up for us last week, as Jesus comforts and comforts again those who are anxious.

As I come to today’s Gospel reading I take time to reflect, to see if I can find myself in this story.

Jesus had been teaching a crowd of people that day, and when we encounter him in our Gospel reading he is just setting off to the next thing, when the young man comes to speak to him. Perhaps I’m in the crowd who was there listening – there are days when I might be at the front of the crowd, eager to hear every word Jesus has to say, and then there are days when I might be lingering at the edges, only half listening. Wherever I am, I can overhear the young man as he comes to ask his question of Jesus.

Or maybe I am the man asking the question. I do ask a lot of questions of God. I wonder, if I could ask any question of God, what question would I ask? I’ve got a list. I’m not sure I’d frame my question in quite the same way this young man does, but I have been thinking a lot recently about what it means to live a good life. I do want to know what Jesus has to tell me about this, how does Jesus say I should live my life. And so maybe in this story I do see something of myself in this man, asking the good teacher how I should live and receive a blessing from God.

Am I surprised that Jesus answers the question with another question? Or that he goes on to say that the answer is obvious, as if I need not have asked in the first place? As the reader standing outside, we know that this is just so typical of Jesus, we see him often talking at a tangent to the expectations of those who come to him. But I’m in the story now, how do I react? I think I’d probably react just as this man did, to come back and try and justify myself.

And Jesus’s next words are hard for him to hear. “You have plenty. Get rid of it, and give it to those who need it more than you do.” As I hear these words I think of the many books I have now, lining the walls of my living room. And the clothes, and the shoes, and the bags. I don’t consider myself rich, but then I think of all these things I have at home. And then I think of the home I have, safe and warm, food in the cupboards, with running water and a flushing toilet. I may not think of these things as making me rich, and yet when I stop to think of those who don’t have these, I begin to realise just how rich I am.

And of course riches come in other ways than possessions. What time do I have and how do I use it? Could I use some of my time to help someone who is struggling? And what about influence? Do I take the opportunities I have to speak up for others? I can’t change the world. But is there a small corner of the world that I can use my money, my time, my influence, to change? And if I change the world in this small corner, I have chanced the world, even just a little.

The man in the story is unhappy with how Jesus answers him, he doesn’t have another comeback but instead he walks away. I wonder if the man knew how Jesus felt about him, that Jesus loved this bold, questioning young man. Do I hear these words for myself, as I walk away? Do I know that Jesus loves me? Do I need to hear this again today?

There is another group of people in this scene, a group who have heard a lot of Jesus’s teaching and are still confused. I definitely find myself in the disciples.

They have found Jesus’s words just as challenging as the young man. God’s standards are so high, who can be saved? “For God, all things are possible” Jesus tells them. This phrase echoes the words that the angel said to Mary, when announcing the birth of Jesus. Mary’s response was humble – “I’m God’s servant, let it be to me according to God’s word.” Peter’s response is not quite so humble. “Don’t you realise what we’ve all given up for you?”

Maybe you can guess who I’m more like, in these two moments. I aspire to Mary’s humility and quiet acceptance of God’s will, but my prayers echo Peter far more – I talk to God as if God doesn’t get it and I need to explain things to God – I hear Peter here asking to be seen, and I hear myself asking the same.

Jesus answers him “I see you. I see all that you do for me, and I see all that is ahead of you as well – amazing things, and hard things too.” It’s not reassuring exactly, but it is real. It’s enough, in the moment, to keep Peter going. And it’s enough, in the moment, to keep me going.

And now at the end, I step out of the story and look back from here today. Because from outside the story I can see what Peter and the disciples, what the rich young man and the crowd, can’t see. I can see that the next few days ahead will take them to Jerusalem – to a triumphal entry with the crowds singing Hosanna, to broken hearts as Jesus is executed, to hope beyond all hope as Jesus rises, bringing the salvation he promised to Peter and to us all. I can see what it will cost Jesus to make all this possible.

In a few minutes we will gather round the table of Christ, where we remember this.  Because this is not just Peter’s story, or the rich young man’s story. This is our story too. The record in scripture finishes at the end of the book of Revelation, but the story goes on. Down through the centuries the Spirit has been working on earth, bringing about God’s Kingdom, and bringing Jesus’s promise of salvation to each generation.  

We can find God in the stories of scripture. We can listen to Jesus with the crowd, we can ask questions like the young man, we can get confused like the disciples. And through these stories God can find us just where we are, with a word that cuts to the heart of things. Jesus sees us, he hears us, he loves us, he saves us.

And so we approach God with boldness, and so we receive God’s mercy and grace to sustain us in all our needs.