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.

Ordinary, extraordinary and inconvenient - Mary the mother of Jesus, a role model for us all

 Mary the mother of Jesus is perhaps one of the best known women who has ever lived. She is one of few women from antiquity whose names we know, and she is one of even fewer women whose words are recorded. To give a sense of how few women’s words are remembered from antiquity, as compared to men’s, only 1.5% of all recorded speech in the Bible is spoken by women.

This makes Mary an extraordinary woman, remembered for what she said and did. And at the same time, she was also a very ordinary woman, born into an ordinary middle eastern peasant family, nothing to mark her out as special, chosen by God not for her status but for her willingness to answer God’s call.

And she was an inconvenient woman. She was inconvenient in becoming pregnant while not married. In her culture, this would have been something that brought shame on her whole family. This is why Joseph, who she was betrothed to marry, was going to quietly end their relationship, to avoid the shame falling on him too, until an angel persuades him to stay with Mary.                

Much of what we know of Mary is from these early days, around the time when Jesus is born. The handful of times we see Mary after this, present what seems to me a rather lovely and ordinary picture of a mother – a mother telling off her child for not being where she expected him to be when they left the temple, a mother telling her grown son what she thought he ought to be doing, when they were at the wedding in Cana, a mother trying to get her son’s attention when she was following him as he was out and about doing preaching to the crowds.

She remained inconvenient too – a refugee, fleeing from persecution with her family, forced to find shelter in another country for fear of their lives. Mary was also inconvenient in speaking out these prophetic words that we have just heard. She wasn’t the first woman God called to speak words of prophecy. Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah are all remembered in Scripture as prophets. And so when Mary speaks these words, glorifying God and proclaiming a vision of God’s kingdom, she stands in a tradition of inconvenient women, breaking religious norms and daring to speak as the Spirit led them.

And of course she remained extraordinary. The first disciple of Jesus, answering God’s call to bear Jesus and to bring him up, she remained faithful to the end. Even if at times she didn’t totally get what Jesus was doing, she never left him. And at the cross, when almost all others had run away, including all but one of the twelve, she was there, with just a handful of others. How she could bear to stay there, I don’t know, but then how could she bear to leave her son in that bleakest of moments?

Then came that hope beyond all hopes, when the disciples encountered the risen Jesus, though for Mary I’m sure that joy was tinged with sadness, as the joy of reunion at the resurrection would end with the ascension of Jesus to heaven. And the last time we hear of Mary in Scripture is just after that day, when the disciples in Jerusalem gathered together in prayer, and from this little group is born the church of Jesus, followers of the way, builders of the kingdom.

Too often, I think, the church has constrained Mary, painting a picture of an idealised woman, saintly in an unattainable way, a role model for women to follow that was never achievable. But this does a disservice to Mary as much as it does to the women it was aimed at. Mary was an ordinary woman, an extraordinary woman, an inconvenient woman, and so much more. And if women are to follow her example, we should be just that – ordinary, extraordinary, inconvenient and so much more. And if you’re not a woman, then join us, walk beside us, living your own ordinary, extraordinary, inconvenient life.

(This picture hung on my Granny and my mum's walls, two wonderfully ordinary, extraordinary and inconvenient women!)

In our culture of celebrity, with so much of life performed on social and other media for all to see, the ordinary can seem, well, ordinary. But the longer I live the more I see the blessing of an ordinary life.

In the ancient Greek myths, there is a story that Achilles, that great hero, was foretold to live either a glorious life and die young, and be remembered throughout the ages, or to live a long and uneventful life in obscurity. He chose the former, and we know the story of his glorious and tragic death outside the walls of Troy. And yet the myths also record that years later, when that other hero Odysseus went down into the underworld and met the spirit of Achilles, he said that he had made the wrong choice, and given his time again he would choose a long ordinary life and be happily forgotten.

Ordinary lives are seldom remembered more than a few generations after they were lived. But I don’t think that they are really forgotten. They are woven into the fabric of those who come after, whose lives are unknowingly shaped by what went before.

In the history of our own congregation and the Episcopal Church in Glasgow, Roger Edwards has done a power of work to find the names and the stories of women who went before us, shaping our congregational story. Women like Anna Paterson and Margaret Fleming, who were injured when the Episcopal congregation was thrown out of the cathedral in 1689. Then there is then an unnamed woman remembered in a sermon from 1731 – the preacher, George Graeme says of her “when health allowed her how constant an attendant she was on the public worship of God … with what gravity, reverence and attention she behaved herself in it, how greatly she adorned her Christian profession by her exemplary conversation.”

And of course many women are remembered in the fabric of the building, in the art and the windows, and the bells that greet us Sunday by Sunday, given “to the praise and glory of God and in loving memory of Louise Marian Pearson, a maker of sweet music.”

For each of these women we know of, there were hundreds more who have prayed and sung and worked for the good of this place and its people. Our congregation now has been shaped by them and their ordinary, faithful work, and though we don’t know their names God does.

Then, in the midst of our ordinary lives, there are extraordinary moments. We generally don’t see them coming – I don’t suppose that Mary knew what would come to pass when she said to God “let it be to me according to your word”.  We do know that she treasured in her heart all the extraordinary moments that were to come. Would she have changed her answer to God if she knew what was to come, as Achilles wished he had? I don’t know, but I think not, as she remained faithful to that promise throughout her life.

And to guide us through our ordinary and extraordinary lives we have these words Mary prophesied, calling us to work for a world where the rich are sent to the back of the queue while the poor are fed, where those on the margins make the rules that the powerful have to obey. At times we will be the ones whose comfortable lives are being disrupted, at other times we will be the ones doing the disrupting. None of this is convenient, but then God promised us an abundant life, not a convenient one.

Marilynne Robinson says, in her novel Gilead, there are many ways to live a good life.  May God show you the way to live your good life, your ordinary, extraordinary, inconvenient life. And as you find that way, may you honour Mary, a woman who showed us how to live – ordinary, extraordinary, and inconvenient, all to the glory of God.

 

We need to talk about dying

The difference between the hospital and the care home’s attention to end of life care planning was stark. 

Mum was admitted to hospital during the second lockdown and so all conversation about care planning was challenging, but that is no excuse for the way hospital staff raised the issue. My sister, who had power of attorney, received a phone call around 10.30pm on a Saturday night from a doctor on duty. “I’m just looking at your mother’s paperwork,” he said, “and the Do Not Resuscitate form hasn’t been filled in - can you consent to that now?” She said a very firm no, of course - the conversation was held another day, as an actual conversation. 

They were somewhat better in the hospital at managing end of life care than talking about it.  There was a day when mum had a raging infection that wouldn’t respond to antibiotics, and she was fading fast. She was in the cottage hospital, and while they could have transferred her to the general hospital for more intensive treatment they didn’t think she’d survive the ambulance journey, so they planned now simply to keep her as comfortable as possible for her for her final hours.  We agreed with this, and the hospital called those of us close enough to come that evening to say our goodbyes - as I drove, all I could think of was that this was no way to die, in a hospital ward during lockdown, and I prayed hopelessly for a better ending than this. 

The nurses on duty quietly worked around us as we sat with mum, counting each rattling breath, playing the music of Phil Cunninghan and Aly Bain, as much for ourselves as for mum.  Until the shift change happened. When my sister arrived after a three hour journey, to say her last goodbye, as we thought, to our mum, the nurse who greeted her declared “well, she’s not actually going to die tonight so you can’t come in.”  My sister had come, as called by hospital staff, and was now turned away at the door, after a shift change.

Mum did make it through the night, thankfully, and she made it to her better ending, with many happy days with family and friends still to come.  She moved from hospital into a care home, where the end of life form was one of the first tasks after admission.  It was still lockdown, and as one of mum's only two designated visitors, it fell to me to complete the form with her. The form was full of medical questions, but it also covered pastoral care - what music does she like, is there anyone you would want to visit at this time?

The form allowed mum and me to have a full conversation around the end of her life.  The music choice was easy - Phil and Aly of course, or a bit of Beethoven.  And we talked about how to make the decisions around end of life treatment.  Mum could remember nothing of the time she had nearly died, so I told her of the conversations we’d had with the staff, how they thought she was too weak to make it through, how we agreed that they would stop any treatment and simply keep her as comfortable as possible.  Mum looked straight at me and said, “when the time comes, you have to let me go.”

It was months before the time came, but when it did, the care staff walked the journey with mum and us.  In the summer, as mum’s energy took a significant dip, I asked a nurse if we were coming towards the end.  “Not yet,” she said, “but maybe with the turning of the seasons that's where we're going.”  Come December, I asked another nurse the same question.  “Yes, I think that is where we are,” she replied, and gave me a hug.  The nurses cared for mum with dignity and gentleness, and they spoke plainly and openly with us through those last few weeks of palliative care.  It was nasty and brutish, but mercifully short, and when the time came, we did as mum had told us, we let her go.

I don’t know what I think about assisted dying, and whether or how we should change the law.  I do know that whatever is decided around that, we need to pay as much and more attention to how we manage palliative care.

It's been seven weeks...

Mum with me and my sister Angela 

There is a scene in the first Lord of the Rings film, Fellowship of the Ring – the fellowship have passed through Moria but Gandalf has fallen into the depths and is lost.  His friends are now in the forest of Lothlorien, mourning the loss of their beloved leader.  The elves of Lothlorien are singing a lament for Gandalf, and Merry asks Legolas “what do they say about him?” Legolas answers “I have not the heart to tell you.  For me the grief is still too near.”

Mum died seven weeks ago, and when people in their kindness ask how I am, I don’t really know what say – for me the grief is still too near.  I feel like I’m under a blanket of snow, not frozen, but insulated.  Occasionally a gust of wind blows the snow away and the pain is raw, and then it settles again.  In time it will melt and I will find what is below.  But for now I am blessed to have the words of others which hold me in this time and place.

The first words I am held by are mum’s words.  A few months before she died, we were talking, and she told me “I think I’m getting ready to say goodbye.”  Mum’s stroke had robbed her of her independence, and though she made the best of every day and brought life to those around her, she was tired, and was ready to go.

It was hard to walk those last months, as mum’s energy left her and she sank deeper into herself each time I saw her.  The words that held me then came from Richard Holloway.  In his book, Waiting for the Last Bus, he talks very honestly and simply about what it is to live at the end of life.  I had stood at many a bus stop with mum over the years, and these words helped me as I sat with her now, waiting till she caught that last bus.

Mum died on twelfth night.  Her cousin Donall told us that this was Nollaig na mBan, the day when by tradition in Ireland the women took their rest after all the hard work of Christmas.  Another word to hold me - a fitting day for mum to take her leave from the world, for her final rest.

In the day s following, I lost myself in the words of Jane Austen.  Mum and I shared a love of Austen, and so as I re-read Sense and Sensibility (and re-watched the TV adaptaion, and read Joanna Trollope's modern adaptation) I was able to find relief from my grief, while staying connected with mum.

At this time, friends and relatives offered many words, hugs, cards, flowers, most of which are now list in my memory and yet each played their part in holding me in that strangest of times.  I also found a blessing in music.  Whether in church listening to the choir, or at Celtic Connections listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter, music gave me much needed space for feelisngs to come, to simle and to cry, without having to think too much about it.

The last word goes again to mum.  Years ago, we were talking about my dad, who died when I was 19, and mum was the age I am onw.  Mum and I talked aobut how the grief changes over the years, and as life goes on it is less about the sharp pain o loss, and more about the ongoing sadness that the person we love is not around to share in the sorrows and joys of life.

My grief will never leave me, but I have the rest of my life to find the words for it, and in the mean time I will lean on the words of others.