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Portuguese, Polish, Punjabi – these are just some of the languages I hear when I walk around Leamington. They’re just the ones beginning with P. There’s a lot of people who speak Hindi. I know that there are Afghans, and so many others speaking in tongues other than English. Our language goes wherever we go. The languages we hear have been carried far from home, often through great hardship and danger.

Language is so important. Our words carry our meaning and find our understanding. The good news of Pentecost is a miracle of language and hearing. 

Filled with the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Their hearers were “amazed and astonished”. In their amazement and astonishment they asked, “are not all these speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?”

How come, so many people, so far from home, from so many different places, could each tell what the disciples were saying in their own language? They came from as far apart as Libya, Cappadocia in Turkey, Egypt etc, etc. They weren’t near neighbours, they were Jews from different countries, even different continents, and they all heard the disciples speak in their own native languages, in their mother tongues, taking them back home. How come?

It shows what love can do.

These people were all staying in Jerusalem. They will have been using Greek to get by in the city because that was the common language of empire at the time. They will have known Hebrew from their scriptures. They would have only been using their mother tongue in their family groups. Their ears would have been picking up the Greek of commerce and the sound of foreign tongues – but NOW they heard and understood love speaking in their language. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, young and old, men and women, members of sub cultures, gay and straight, slave and free – all of them heard love speaking to them in their own native language.

Luke tells us that there was a sound like the rush of a violent wind.
We talk about a breath of wind.
The Spirit came in a breath, like the wind, in a moment.
The disciples had been waiting for this moment.
They’d stayed together – all of them, not just the 12, but others with them, men and women together.
Then the promised moment came, like a breath of wind.
They breathed her in, and then breathed her out in words that carried on the wind all the meaning of love.

And their hearers breathed their words in, and they breathed out.
They breathed in the Spirit, and they breathed out their amazement and astonishment.
They breathed in their relief and breathed out their relief.
At last, they said, someone speaking my language.

One of our greetings is “The Lord is here”.
We hear that greeting.
We breathe it in and we breathe out our response: “His Spirit is with us”.
That breath, in and out, is full of joy. “The Lord is here”, “His Spirit is with us”.
We know his Spirit is with us when we hear love speaking our language, when we know we are understood.
Then we know love can hear our cries, our prayers, our broken hallelujahs.
The Lord is here. His Spirit is with us.

Here begins the life of the Spirit through the acts of the apostles and disciples of Jesus. In his book of Acts, Luke goes from this opening act to describe one act after another of the apostles and disciples engaging with the movement of God’s Spirit going out to people of all nations, accommodating their different diets and cultural practices, not demanding that converts come to them but bringing the good news of Jesus to meet everyone where they are – in the language of their heart and home.
Men, women, children, prisoners (and their jailers), soldiers, strangers, disabled, eunuchs – even murderers (because that was what Saul aka Paul was) – they’re all included in this mission of the Holy Spirit.

And here we stand, in this church, in this church in the heart of England, breathing in the Spirit of God.
The Lord is here.
His Spirit is with us. 

And we’re all speaking English.
And we speak it in a certain way.
For so much of our Christian history we have spoken in a certain way – the king’s English or the Latin language of Roman empire, rather than the vernacular.
People stay away.
The astonishment and amazement of those who hear us is often not the astonishment and amazement of the apostles’ hearers on that day of Pentecost.
Theirs was an astonishment of love.
Too often the astonishment of our hearers is one of confusion.
They can’t quite believe us.
“Toxic” is how one commentator described the church.
“The Conservative Party at prayer” is another damning description.

The call of the gospel is not to settle for the one language, but to translate God’s love into all the languages and ways of life.
This is the mission of the Holy Spirit and the mission of the church.
This is the reason for the church, and why God has a church, for the act of translation so others can know that they are seen and heard for who they are, so we can be seen and heard for who we are.

When I was first ordained I served in a church dedicated to Saint Aidan. It was in Sheffield, on CIty Road.

Aidan lived in the 7th century at a time when paganism had taken over from Christianity in large parts of Britain.
He was an Irish monk based in the Iona community founded by St Columba, another Irish monk.
Also there, there was a king-in-waiting, Oswald.
His aim was to bring Christianity back to his people.
His chance came when he was made king of Northumbria.
He requested monks from Iona to do this.

They sent Aidan.. He made Lindisfarne his base.
He walked everywhere.
He went from one village to the next, chatting politely with the people he met, gently and slowly interesting them in Christianity.
That way, he spread the gospel amongst the nobility and the socially deprived.

He was given a horse.
Presumably they thought he could get round more easily on a horse,  that he could get further and faster, that he could be more efficient.
But Aidan famously refused the horse. I think he gave it away. 
Going horseback would have put him out of touch, on a different level.
The way he was going to share the gospel was by being on the level with people, not on his high horse.
He refused the horse power and shared the gospel using the transport of the poor.

He had to learn their language to speak their language.
To do that, he needed to listen and learn from them.
There was a language barrier.
Aidan’s language was Irish, but he came to speak the language of their heart.

The name Aidan means “born of fire”.
He’s the “little fiery one”.

He wasn’t Iona’s first choice to send to Northumbria.
The first they sent was a bishop called Corman.
He returned to Iona a failure.
He alienated people by his harshness and returned to Iona complaining that the Northumbrians were too stubborn to be converted.
Aidan’s methods were so different and far more effective.

We take inspiration from “the fiery ones” when we celebrate Pentecost.
We are amongst those who have heard the apostles in our own language.
We have taken the gospel to heart.

The fiery ones show the way the gospel goes – not on the high horse of judgement or prestige.
Love makes her way gently by walking: listening and learning the language of the heart.

The Lord is here. His Spirit is with us.
She walks with us, alongside us,
the way we walk, the pace we walk,
as slow as we like.
She comes, like the wind,
rushing to us, never past
the slowest, the weakest,
the poorest and turns her mind
to where we’ve been,
the troubles we’ve seen,

in step along the path we tread,

less Corman, more Aidan
and Jesus on the way to Emmaus:

the wind beneath our wings.

Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs – in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning, No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
Blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

This sermon explores a small passage that leads to the rooms love builds in our lives. It’s a passage of just four words from the gospel of the day (Easter 6B) that leads into the house of so much room and so many dwelling places (John 14:1-6).

John 15:9-17
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Sometimes our spiritual discipline hangs on just a few words, a phrase we can cling onto when life is difficult, when we are tempted, when we are distracted, when we could go another way. Abide in my love is one such phrase.

As the Father has loved me so I have loved you: abide in my love. There is the hint of an imperative here. Abide in my love. Abide – a funny word these days. It’s not a word we use much unless we turn it into a negative in saying “I can’t abide you/him/her/them”.

Abide. Sometimes, the strangeness of a word can make us alert to its fuller meanings. In the word abide  are the elements of waiting, expectation, delay and survival. The Oxford English Dictionary admits the word is “somewhat archaic” but underlines its meaning of waiting defiantly and withstanding particularly when it comes to combat. 

I prefer the fuller meaning of the archaic. Abide in my love. We might prefer to roll the phrase “stay in my love” around our hearts and minds. Or “dwell in my love”. I suggest, whatever works for you – particularly when you’re anxious, or tired, or threatened. That is when we need to hear Jesus saying to his beloved community, Abide in my love, stay in my love, dwell in my love, don’t let your hearts and minds be tempted to be anywhere else.

In our work, in our comings and goings, as we consume the news media (with its not wholly honourable commitments) – in our everyday there is that calling of Jesus, Abide in love.

Love has no chance to build when we choose to dwell in anxiety, or while we nurse our hurts and grievances, or while we wish we were in someone else’s shoes, or when we get washed away on a tide of hatred, or while we are indulging our obsessions, addictions and greed. There’s a discipline to staying in love – and, note the word, there is disciple in the word discipline. When we choose to stay in love rather than any other state we are following Jesus, learning from Jesus as disciples of Jesus, giving love her opportunity.

Love builds for those who are looking for such a place to stay. Love builds around those who make love their choice, around those who have chosen, above all places for their hearts and minds, the place of love as the place to stay. Around them, love carries on building. When love builds we find ourselves entertaining the very people we could not abide, the people we had no time for.

Love builds her place around those who abide with her. She builds room by room, shelter by shelter, so that those who stay there find themselves the people others turn to for help and shelter. Her place gets bigger and bigger as the person who stays there discovers all the people they can abide in spite of their many dangers. The family grows, there’s room for strangers – and even room for enemies.

Love builds room in our lives. Love prepares the place for the time of our lives. 

I don’t know about you, but I have always been troubled by Jesus’ “father’s house” as told in John’s gospel (chapter 14). You know the passage. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s house there are many dwelling places. You may be more familiar with the translation of the Authorised Version: In my father’s house are many mansions. How does that work? So many mansions in one house! It’s not helped my reading of this passage that this is a favourite for funeral services and has perhaps become for us just a promise for when we’ve died.

But the place he prepares for us is here and now, down to earth, not there and then, pie in the sky. Being alive is very much about the place of love in our lives here and now and our decision to dwell in that place permitting love to carry on building in our lives till in the end we find room (time and space) for what we never imagined that we would be able to abide or find room for.

This isn’t about romance. The landscape Jesus and the gospel writers paint is not one of romantic walks, or staring lovingly into the horizon. Abiding in my love is about staying in love in times of trouble, even when our inclination is to do anything but love one another. Such love doesn’t come cheap. It takes our life in so many more ways than one. A cross marks the spot.

I’ve just finished reading a novel by Ken Follett which is set in 14th century England at the time of the plague of Black Death. One of the heroes is a woman called Caris. Her very name, Caris, carries the meaning of love, full of grace and truth. She lives up to that name. In spite of being condemned by the church as a witch, she finds sanctuary in the nunnery. Their hospital is a place for the sick to lie while they die. 

The monks flee the town when the plague hits. But Caris rallies the nuns, stays in love with the town in their suffering. She adopts modern measures for dealing with the plague – including the wearing of PPE, social distancing and lockdowns. When the plague dies down the monks return – and they take over the hospital, scoffing at Caris’s methods. The town helps Caris to build a new hospital for her to run. When the plague returns after a few years – guess what the monks did – they ran for their lives. When the temptation was to run, Caris stayed in love. People turned to her for help. They flocked to her and were guided by her. They found their protection and care in the rooms love had prepared for Caris.

There is always room for Caris. There is always room for grace, for the love that stays. Even when the world turns against those who stay in love, even when they silence them, kill them and crucify them love carries on building their place in our lives – in the thin spaces, in the places of pilgrimage, in hospitals, in shelters, love carries on making room.

As long as we keep Jesus’s commandments we stay in his love. He only gave us one commandment, that is that we love one another as he has loved us. When we stop doing that then we have left love’s building and then there’s plenty of room for hate. Love can only build in our lives when we abide in his love.

Abide in my love. Just four words about the place to stay. A four word phrase to cling onto when life gets difficult, when we are tempted to go another way. Abide in my love – such a small passage for our lives, but a passage for us to walk in, a passage that reaches deep into love’s building, to the many rooms love builds with us and for us.

Note: Ken Follett’s book is World without End, part of his Kingsbridge series.

There are some profound prayers in Cole Arthur Riley‘s Black Liturgies. This is a prayer for aging that follows her letter “to mortal souls”. Her prayers are long and articulate. They may not be our first prayer language and need some work by us if we are to make the prayer our own. I have added the line breaks and retained her American spellings. There’s a lot of love in them. One line particularly resonated with me. I have made that bold.

God of old,
Some days it’s as if the world is looking right through us.
Comfort us as we are bombarded with a hundred tiny reminders that to some we matter less and less.
In a world that devalues and discards the elderly, make our dignity known.
We have been cast to the margins of society’s most pressing conversations.
…
Help us to possess a stability of heart as we are forced to question our worth and contribution daily.
Protect us from the ageism of a culture that fetishizes youth.
They want every trace of our days erased from our flesh, our skin, our hair.
Reveal the toxic irony of this, for it is in the days that we’ve lived that we have become more human.
Each year that passses brings us closer in alignment with our true selves.
May we know our own interior landscapes by heart, that we would be familiar enough with our own thoughts, fears, and loves to find rest with ourselves.

Grant us imagination for new ways of existing in the world, that we would not be confined by time’s expectations, but would retain a sacred vigor for life in the company of those who love us.
We have lived.
Give us the wisdom to make sense of our days.
This body has carried us.
Give us courage to honor it, as we meet it anew each day.
Amen

Black Liturgies was published by Hodder and Stoughton in January 2024. In her preface, Cole Arthur Riley promises her readers: “every word in this book has been written, interrogated, and preserved with an imagination for collective healing, rest, and liberation.

This is a contribution to a Lenten sermon series on Old Testament prophets. I chose to focus on Anna. Instead of using the gospel appointed for the day from John’s gospel we followed Mark’s version, reading both Mark 11:15-17 and 12:38-44 (texts below).

March 3rd 2024 – Lent 3B

Prophets speak the truth. The word prophet means interpreter/proclaimer/caller/speaker. They use body language, symbolic actions as well as words to make their points.

They seem to come from nowhere. They don’t have credentials or pedigree because they are chosen and called by God. Paul noted long ago that when God goes choosing and calling he doesn’t choose and call those who are wise by human standards, nor those who are powerful, nor those of noble birth. “God chooses what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, he chooses the weak to shame the strong.” (1 Cor 1:27). 

Those who are chosen and called to be prophets are no exception to this rule of heaven.

There are many prophets (some false, some true) – and among them many women. Given the social, cultural and religious context this is staggering, given that the human institutions locked them out of so much. For example, there are no women priests. But when God does the calling and the choosing there is no distinction between male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave or free. God calls and chooses who he likes, male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free.

And this means that truth comes to us in strange ways. It’s the proclaimers, the prophets who speak the truth and interpret the times.

I have chosen to focus on one of the many women prophets mentioned in the Bible: Anna.

We meet Anna in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel. Even though we only meet her in the New Testament, our Christian brothers and sisters in the Eastern Orthodox tradition celebrate her as one of the last of the Old Testament prophets (along with Simeon).

Luke tells us that Anna was a “prophetess”, a daughter of Phanuel – a name which means the face of God. She’s from the tribe of Asher. 

She was of a great age. 

We have thought that she was 84 – but we might be mistaken in the translations we’ve used. The text might mean that she had been widowed for 84 years. If so, she would have been at least 105 – if she got married at 14. She was married for 7 years and widowed for 84. 14+7+84=105 – meaning that she was widowed as young as 21.

Incidentally, Anna has inspired a recent initiative for developing Anna chaplaincy in local communities to support older people emotionally and spiritually. They use this prayer:

Faithful God, you have promised in Christ to be with us to the end of time. Come close to those who have lived long and experienced much. Help them to continue to be faithful and, within the all-age kingdom of God, to find ways to go on giving and receiving your grace, day by day. For your glory and your kingdom.

Luke tells us she spent all her time in the temple, praising God. God, in her scripture and ours, is the one who can’t be bribed and “executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing”. (Deuteronomy 10:18)

Such daily devotion prepared her for the sight of Jesus when Mary and Joseph presented him in the temple (as was the custom) and gave her a ready tongue for talking about Jesus. 

Luke doesn’t quote Anna but lets us imagine her speaking to all sorts of people gathered in the temple looking for redemption, freedom from exploitation, alienation and oppression. According to Luke Anna proclaimed the child to all who were looking for the redemption in Jerusalem.

The gospel reading appointed for today was John’s account of the so-called cleansing of the temple. I asked to change that to Mark’s account – I couldn’t see why in the year we focus on Mark’s gospel we would switch to John’s gospel for this Sunday. I added the sequel – the so-called story of the widow’s mite which I know some of you were exploring in your small group on Wednesday night. (I say so-called because it’s so much more than the cleansing of the temple, and so much more than a story of generous giving).

We are jumping from Jesus’ first visit to the temple when he was a toddler to his last visit to the temple in the week before his crucifixion. And we are jumping from one widow to another to highlight Anna’s proclamation.

Anna’s proclamation is amongst those looking for redemption and she proclaims Jesus as the end of their longing. 

What redemption looks like and feels like is answered by those who are bound and those who have been set free, but it is summed up well in the title of a commentary on Mark’s gospel. The title is Binding the Strong Man. That commentator, Ched Myers, sees the strong man as Satan, the temple authorities, the Roman empire and any other domineering forces. The “strong man” we see bound in today’s gospel stories is the temple authorities and their binding witnesses to the truth of Anna’s proclamation.

Anna may have known the widow Jesus watched at the treasury, particularly if she too had been widowed for a long time. She might have been one of those Anna spoke to in her proclamation about Jesus. Jesus deliberately took his seat opposite the treasury. He watched the wealthy putting in large amounts and studies the contrast with this widow putting her two small copper coins, worth a penny. (Incidentally, I wonder whether this is where we get our expression “can I put my two penn’orth in?” Google disagrees!). Mark tells us “she put in everything she had, all that she had to live on”.

The temple, the religious institution, “the strong man” had taken everything. There was nothing left. This isn’t the story of a widow’s generosity. This is the story of a widow’s tragic abuse. It’s a safeguarding scandal.

The abusers are the scribes. Jesus has them taped. He says, “Watch out for the scribes who love to walk round in long robes, and be greeted with respect, who take the best seats in the congregation and places of honour at banquets. Keeping up appearances they say long prayers, grooming widows to trust them with their affairs. With their scams and extortionate schemes they devour widow’s houses, taking everything they had. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are the strong men.

Their long prayers are supposedly addressed to God who is the one who is known for defending the orphan and the widow while in fact they attack the very people God defends and leave them with nothing. Jesus binds them with a “greater condemnation” for their heartless hypocrisy.

Seeing the widow at the treasury in the temple was the last straw for Jesus. It was then that he left the temple. He didn’t cleanse the temple. He condemned the temple for being a den of thieves, full of dodgy dealers exploiting the poor when all the time it was supposed to have been a place of prayer for all the nations, for everyone on all sides of conflict a place of reconciliation.

He binds the strong man and, according to Mark, people flock to him, and are spellbound by his teaching. Redemption is theirs, the strong man is condemned. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” proclaimed Jesus.

We live with the promise of Anna’s proclamation – Jesus the redeemer whose work

Is always with us, to the end of time, redeeming his suffering servants.

So, I give you Anna. There’s my two penn’orth – with a caution for us not to look for truth in the usual places amongst those who love long robes, who are widely respected, who get the best seats and are the guests of honour at banquets, but to look for truth amongst those God chooses and calls – those whose hearts are pure, those who hunger and thirst for the righting of wrongs, those who are poor in spirit, from the very young to the very old, these suffering servants prophesy, teach and evangelise – like Anna.

Mark 11:15-17
Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?

Mark 12:38-44
As he taught, he said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’
He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’