The 10,000 year clock, part of the Long Now Project
“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.”
Our two readings come from the end of Luke’s Gospel and the beginning of the Book of Acts. (Acts 1:1-11 and Luke 24:44-53)
Luke ends his Part One and begins his Part Two with a celebration of Jesus’ Ascension.
At first glance it looks like these two volumes are addressed to a particular person called Theophilus. But Theophilus is a strange name. Translated, it means “God lover” – which leaves us with a question. Are these two books addressed to one person called Theophilus, or to all “God lovers”, including ourselves?
And the story of the Ascension is one that causes us all sorts of difficulties. It’s a story that stretches the dimensions of our lives, where earth and heaven connect – a tall story that is difficult to fathom.
40 days and nights have passed since Easter Day (40 days and nights!). Those 40 days were packed with Jesus’s appearances and his talk of the kingdom of God. The 40 days end with this – a blessing, a promise and a withdrawal as Jesus was carried into heaven, carried out of the sight of the disciples on a cloud.
So what?
Flight paths
It seems like only yesterday that we were landing at Heathrow after visiting our son and his girlfriend in the Philippines. It is actually 40 days and nights – we landed on Easter Day, having been on a plane for 17 hours. The flight path reads like a where’s where of the world’s trouble spots.
Bosnia, Beirut, Bangkok, Iraq, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia etc etc – flying into Manila, regarded as the second most dangerous city in the world.
How weird was it? Flying 38000 feet in the airspace above those trouble spots, with all their tensions, sufferings, betrayals, poverty and uncertainty, as if they weren’t there. We were flying over deep divides and no go areas as if they didn’t exist. We were like birds flying over reality and missing all that counts in human life. It was as if we were travelling in a totally different dimension.
(Another example would be our city’s flyovers)
For the last 40 days and nights it has been back to earth with a bang!
Which, I suspect is where we belong. We are, after all, Adam – humans made from the earth, to walk the earth, with our feet of clay. And for that, we believe that God loves us – and we may believe that is where God wants us to be – down to earth, earthy and earthed. That seems to be the message that Luke is leaving us “God lovers” as he describes Jesus’s goodbye to his disciples, as he leaves them us to be “witnesses … to the ends of the earth”.
Grounded as birds without wings
I don’t know whether any of you have read Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernieres. I’ll try to describe the story without giving anything away for any of you who want to read it.
The story is set in innocence at the turn of the 20th century in a town called Eskibahce in south-western modern-day Turkey, then a part of the waning Ottoman Empire. The village potter, Iskander, a Muslim, makes clay bird whistles for his son, Abdul, and his Christian friend, Nico. Their whistles make different bird song. One is a blackbird, and the other is a robin. They take on the nicknames of their birdsong – Blackbird and Robin.
They are birds who fly over the hills overlooking their town. They play at flying, but, of course they can only fly in their imagination.
Reality soon becomes quite different, as the population of the town gets caught in events. They find themselves caught in the tensions between Greek nationalism and Turkish nationalism which destroyed the fabric of the town. The boys are of course, birds without wings, and they are caught up in the violence of the conflict. There is no way that they can fly over their divisions. They are earthy and they are earthed – and they suffer the consequences of down to earth historical realities. Such realities can only be overcome by living through them.
We all have flights of fancy, don’t we? But at the end of the day there is no escaping the day to day challenges of our lives. We cannot rise above them, but have to engage with them. We can’t ignore them, because that would be irresponsible and careless. We have to live with our circumstances, and through the events of our lives.
That is what Jesus leaves us to do. That is what Jesus leaves us for.
Left behind for good
The picture that Luke paints for us is a farewell scene, which might remind of us other partings, and snapshots of farewell greetings with the waving of hands, the dabbing of tears, the heartache and the parting words.
Jesus is saying goodbye to his friends, but this goodbye scene is so different. It is not tinged in sadness, but explodes with joy, because Jesus’ parting words are full of promise. The promise is that the disciples, the God lovers, would receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them. That promise must have helped them to look forward with hope instead of looking backwards with sadness. The gift of the Holy Spirit transforms all our partings and farewells since that good bye described by Luke and celebrated by us today on this Ascension Day. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a blessing for all those who mourn. It is the help we need to live through what seems to be the dead ends of our lives. It is the comfort to ….. It is the strength to overcome.
The disciples were indeed left behind, but left with joy “continually in the temple blessing God”. They were left behind for good.
The good they were left behind for was surely to live through their lives as witnesses, in a way that God’s blessing shone through. Their lives weren’t easy. They faced hardships, imprisonment, persecution and death. They were hard pressed on every side, but they lived through those times.
The good they were left behind for was to convey the spirit of Jesus, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to prisoners, to help the blind to see and to let the oppressed go free. (Luke 4:18f)
The good they were left behind for was to live through all of this, to keep their feet to the ground, to take the long walk through difficulties to freedom, down to earth, with feet of clay.
Like those God lovers, we have the same blessing – treasure in clay, earthenware pots. Is the challenge that Luke addressing to his dear readers just this: to be down to earth witnesses for all the earth by living through the tensions and challenges of our lives.
Have we been left behind for good? Has the church been left behind for good?
But this isn’t saddening. There is no reason to lose heart because of it.
This is the great farewell. This is the goodbye that gives all goodbyes hope and joy. This is the goodbye which spells out its meaning. “God be with you”, his spirit is with us.
Therefore, we go. We go in peace to love and serve the Lord, realising that it is now up to us.
Adapting a prayer of St Teresa of Avila:
Christ has no body but us,
no hands, no feet on earth but ours.
Ours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world,
ours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
ours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Ours are the hands, ours are the feet,
ours are the eyes, we are his body.
Christ has no body now but us,
no hands, no feet on earth but us,
Ours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but us.
We are left behind for good, with his blessing and spirit.
Maya Angelou died yesterday, aged 86. She was born poor and black and her gifts were born out of pain and hardship. She knew why the caged bird sings. Her son, Guy, writes: “she was a warrior for equality, tolerance and peace.” She helped many through the passion, hope, humour and compassion of her autobiographies and poetry. She is a wise woman of our age, and eminently quotable. On this Ascension Day I choose her poem Touched by an Angel to remember a woman who had a love with the power to live and see through so much.
Touched by an Angel
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
in the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and all will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
A sermon for Easter 4A at St Alban’s Church, Offerton.
We were lucky enough to be able to go to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Barnsley last weekend.
This is one of the photos I took. It does reflect the beauty of the landscape, at bluebell time. I thought it would help us to think about today’s gospel which is about openings and doorways.
There were a lot of sheep and lambs around at the Sculpture Park – in the pasture outside this walled and sheltered area. There is a gateway here for the sheep to find shelter if they need it – and I can think of many cold Yorkshire days when they would need the shelter of that stone wall.
Jesus talks about this gateway in our gospel reading (John 10:1-10). He talks about the sheep being sheltered, and the sheep finding pasture – the gateway is for their comings and goings, for their to-ing and fro-ing.
But it’s not quite an open gateway. An open gateway would be dangerous. There is a gate. Jesus says “I am the gate”, “I am the door”. Perhaps you can picture Jesus in that gateway in the photo. For me, I see him sat on the ground, sideways on, with his back to the gatepost, one leg bent up and one leg stretched along the ground, looking out for danger and looking in with care.
Today is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. This image of Jesus which John has given us in his gospel is what we celebrate and love as the Good Shepherd.
It is an image that captures our imagination. For example, there is a Hospice in Chester called The Hospice of the Good Shepherd – a name which may have appealed to its founders because of their faith that Jesus guards the door in and out of life, and the promise that if we go through Jesus Christ, our Lord we enter into life that is fulfilling, complete and in which we want for nothing.
And that is how we say our prayers isn’t it? Our prayer to God is “through Jesus Christ, our Lord” …..
Jesus is the door, the gate. He is the way, the truth and the life…….. If we let him.
This next image is of the famous painting by Holman Hunt called the Light of the World. The painting is in the Manchester Art Gallery.
This is a painting about another door – the door is the door to our lives, the door to our soul. It is a long time since that door has been opened. Look at all the weeds that have grown round the door.
The painting is a reminder of what Jesus said. “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you.”
He knocks and waits. The door has no handle on the outside. There is no way in for the light of the world until the door is opened from the inside.
Are we going to open up?
We have been talked into a fearful way of life in which we lock our homes away from others.
It is a long time since we dared to leave our back door open. We’ve put some extra bolts on as well – and alarms. And there’s a code for getting in, and a code for getting out. We triple lock things.
But do we lock ourselves away as well?
Are we too busy to respond to our neighbours when they are in trouble? Sometimes we’d rather not know. We don’t want strangers knocking on the door. We don’t want people selling us things. We don’t want political canvassers – and we don’t want religious callers. No thank you. That door is going to stay closed, and if we hear anyone knocking we are going to pretend that we’re not in.
Jesus stands at the door and knocks.
Where there was once openings there is now just brick walls, dead ends, no go areas.
But that has always been the case, back to the day when Adam hid himself in the garden, back to the day of resurrection when the disciples locked themselves in because they were afraid of who might come looking for them. Jesus stood at those doors and knocked, though that time couldn’t wait for them to open up for him.
Where there was once openings there is now just brick walls, dead ends, no go areas. And that has always been the case.
But where there was just dead ends, brick walls and no chance, there is every chance, possibility and new openings. And that has always been the case as well.
Fists that are clenched are being opened. Minds that are closed are being opened. Hearts that have hardened are being softened. And it is happening all the time. We are amazed when we see it happening, aren’t we?
Yesterday, I was just pulling out from a parking space in Ellesmere Port when someone cut in to the space in front of me. I thought he’d come in tight – and then drove off. Then I saw the driver of the car run to the corner where I was turning, signalling me to pull over. He told me that he had damaged my car. He needn’t have gone to that trouble. He used that moment well. I told him that I appreciated what he had done.
These are the moments to write home about. These are the openings that we have in our lives. These are moments of grace and opportunity.
I was amazed.
Similar amazement is written all over our first reading (Acts 2:42-47) because of the devotion and fellowship of those who followed the apostles teaching. All that they managed to do, the way they shared everything, their generosity of heart amazed everyone. They had the goodwill of all the people.
There may well have been a lot of comings and goings in our lives, and it is understandable that many people become less trusting, even bitter ……. as a result.
But, it doesn’t have to be like that. There is a way out. That way out is offered by Jesus as the door, as the Good Shepherd.
Jan Richardson offers a way of blessing for this day. She says:
Press your hand to your heart.
Rest it over that place in your chest that has grown closed and tight, where the rust, with its talent for making decay look artful, has bitten into what you once held dear.
Breathe deep. Press on the knot and feel how it begins to give way, turning upon the hinge of your heart.
Notice how it opens wide and wider still as you exhale, spilling you out into a realm where you never dreamed to go, but cannot now imagine living this life without.
Why be our own doorkeepers and safekeepers when Jesus Christ offers himself as our gateway? As the Psalmist says, “The Lord will watch over your going out and your coming in, from this time on and for evermore.” (Psalm 121:8)
Through Jesus Christ we have amazing grace. Through Jesus Christ we have new openings, all the time and any time.
Sermon notes for Easter 2A for St Alban’s, Broadheath. Again, it could be said better, and I hope it will be. I share it anyway. The Gospel reading is John 20:19-31
Still Doubting by John Granville Gregory
The Incredulity of Thomas by Caravaggio
Who likes ants?
We are told to learn from the ants. Proverbs 6:6 – “Go to the ant, you sluggard: consider its ways and be wise.”
It’s true. We can learn a lot about community and industry from ants. We can also learn that if they get lost they die. When ants get lost, they follow a simple rule. The rule is to follow the ant in front. But they don’t know that the ant in front of them is only following the ant in front of him. They finish up going round and round in circles, blindly following the one in front until …. They die.
There is a famous example of this deathmill from the Guyana jungle. The ants were just going round in circles – it was a trail of ants which just kept marching in a column 400 yards long (the length of a running track). It took them 2 days to complete a circuit. On and on till they died from exhaustion.
Consider its ways, and be wise. What do we learn from the ant? We learn the importance of thinking for ourselves. We learn the importance of seeing for ourselves.
“Seeing is believing.” That’s what we say, isn’t it?
“We have seen the Lord” is what the disciples say in today’s gospel reading. “We believe”. “We have seen the Lord” is what the disciples say to Thomas, who wasn’t there to see and believe. He is the odd one out.
He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and missed seeing Jesus.
Seeing is believing is the theme of John’s gospel. Time and again John refers to the disciples “coming to see”. The frequency increases as we move to the end of John’s gospel.
Mary Magdalen came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed,
Peter and the beloved disciple ran to the tomb and saw the linen wrappings lying there. They went into the tomb, and saw and believed.
Mary Magdalen told the disciples that she had seen the Lord.
Mary Magdalen, Peter, the beloved disciples come to see the Lord.
And then, that same evening of the day of resurrection, the disciples “see the Lord” – apart from Thomas. Where was he? What was he doing?
Seeing is believing.
But if seeing is believing, what about those who are not there to see, like Thomas?
And what about those who can’t see? What about those who not even Specsavers can save?
This was a problem for a friend of mine who became blind. He was troubled about all that the Gospels say about “seeing” and “believing”, and about “light” (good) and “darkness” (bad). How could he believe when he couldn’t see? How could he be saved when he had been cast into outer darkness?
Do you see his problem?
He worked it out in the end, eventually realising that there are other ways of seeing. He called it “whole body seeing” and wrote the story of his blindness and his later whole body seeing in a book called Touching the Rock.
This is how he discovered his “whole body seeing” (WBS for short). He was staying at Iona. He had been told about the altar there by people who had described it to him. Then he saw it for himself. This is what he wrote:
“After several nights, I discovered the main altar.
I had been told about this, and I easily recognised it from the description. It was a single block of marble.
Finding one corner, I ran my fingers along the edge, only to find that I could not reach the other.
I worked my way along the front and was amazed at its size.
The front was carved with hard, cold letters. They stood out baldly, but I could not be bothered reading.
The top was as smooth as silk, but how far back did it go?
I stretched my arms out over it but could not reach the back. This was incredible.
It must have a back somewhere. Pushing myself upon to it, my feet hanging out over the front, I could reach the back. I did this again and again, measuring it with my body, till at last I began to have some idea of its proportions. It was bigger than me and much older.
There were several places on the polished surface which were marked with a long, rather irregular indentations, not cracks, but imperfections of some kind.
Could it have been dropped? These marks felt like the result of impact. The contrast between the rough depressions and the huge polished areas was extra ordinary.
Here was the work of people, grinding this thing, smoothing it to an almost greasy, slightly dusty finish which went slippery when I licked it. Here were these abrasions, something more primitive, the naked heart of the rock.”
When I read that I just went WOW. He had seen things which would not have been noticed by the casual observer with her naked eye. With his whole body seeing he had found things there which I am sure he’d be telling others about over breakfast the next day. “Come and see” he’d have been telling everyone.
I mention this because I think there is something in today’s gospel about the importance of seeing things for ourselves. When we see things for ourselves we are not seeing through other people’s eyes. We are not conforming to their vision, and we are seeing things that nobody else sees.
This brings us to the beauty of Thomas who is the focus of our gospel reading.
Thomas is a disciple who captures our imagination, isn’t he? That’s shown in the number of Thomases there are. (How many here are called Thomas, or have a Thomas in their family?)
Two of our children have Thomas in their names, after their grandfather.
We often talk about “doubting Thomas” and then refer to him as typical of us, who are often “doubters” like him.
I’m not sure that this is helpful. Thomas is actually someone who sees and believes, but in a different way. Isn’t that a more helpful way to remember Thomas?
Thomas sees things differently. This is brought out in the gospel. He wants to see through his hands and fingers. He uses his body. He doesn’t just see with his eyes. He inspects. He uses his senses and his sense. He sees with feeling. He sees from the heart.
That is the way that Thomas comes to see.
He puts his hand into Jesus’ wounds. He reaches beyond first impressions. And then he sees. He feels the love in those scars and jumps to his joyful conclusion that he is seeing our Lord and our God. This is the staggering realisation which comes from seeing from the heart, which comes from seeing with feeling, which comes from his insistence that he should see things for himself.
Thomas is not the doubter. He is one who was willing to see.
Thomas is a twin. That is how he is introduced in the gospel. “Thomas the twin”. We don’t know whether Thomas had a twin brother or sister. IT’s more likely that “twin” was Thomas’s nickname because the meaning of the name Thomas is “twin”. But if Thomas had a twin, who might it be?
That might have been a question that entertained John’s community. “If Thomas is the twin, who is his twin brother or sister?”
They could have played with that question and wondered “is that me?”
We can play with the same question. If Thomas is like us in his doubting, can we be like him in his seeing and believing? How much like him can we be? Can we be his twin brother or sister in the way that we are so much like him in wanting to see Jesus from the heart?
Jesus made many “resurrection” appearances – or should I say that Jesus makes many “resurrection” appearances. John admits that there are so many ways that Jesus showed himself and supposed that “if every one of them were written down the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” Jesus wants us to see him for ourselves. He wants us to be witnesses.
Mary Magdalen, Peter, the disciple (disciples?) Jesus loves/loved, Thomas and ourselves come to see in their different ways. Together we are a body of believers who through our whole body seeing see things differently.
It is in such company that Jesus shows himself so that we might see life differently – with compassion that is able to feel for scars and wounds, and with the hope that love is stronger than death.
It is in such company that Jesus shows himself to us so that we might follow him in a way of life that is life giving, instead of blindly following others till, like the ants, we drop from exhaustion.
If army ants are wandering around and they get lost, they start to follow a simple rule: Just do what the ant in front of you does. The ants eventually end up in a circle. There’s this famous example of one that was 1,200 feet long and lasted for two days; the ants just kept marching around and around in a circle until they died.
We learn a lot from ants. “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise.” (Proverbs 6:6). The death mill of the ants remind us of another biblical truth, that “where there is no vision the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18). Helen Keller remarked that “the most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.”
The lesson we learn from the ants is that blindly following our leader is no guarantee of better times. We might just be going round in circles. The person in front of us might not have a clue where we are heading. Call him/her a leader? I don’t think so. But in bad times we will look round for the people we think can get us out of the mess. We will not always search out the same person. Someone who can get us through a forest of emotions may not be the same person to get us through deep water.
We talk about vision in leadership as if there is only one vision to be had, and as if there is only one person to have it. But we don’t have a single vision, we have visions. Some of those visions are immediately relevant, but other visions will only be useful once we have got over the hill we are currently climbing, for which we are depending on someone else who can help pace our climb and who can help us envisage cresting the hill. A community will thrive on the visions of its visionaries, not on the vision or hallucinations of its appointed leader.
Intelligent living means picking up information from the data around us. Where have you been? What have you seen? What have you found? Why do we see what we see? Why do we see it that way? These questions of curiosity shape what we see into something wiser. Vision is 360 degrees, and arises from looking all around us. My own work is supporting ministers in their parish ministries. Looking all around is so important for them if they are to be numbered among the visionaries (and leaders) of their communities. They have to look behind them to be aware of how they have arrived at their current position and to appreciate the journeys made by the people who make up their communities. They have to look round them to listen to the visions of those around them and the longings they represent. And they have to look forward with all these horizons in their mind’s eye to try to discern their foci.
David Runcorn underlines the importance of looking backwards in a sermon he preached at Lee Abbey. He comments that the best pastoral counsellors have learned to be “careful historians”. We all live in and from our history and none of us can leave our past behind. He said: “The need for understanding and healing of memories; to be reconciled to people, events and hurts there, remains one of the most commonly expressed needs. It is also vividly illustrated through the experience of asylum seekers and victims of abuse or torture in our time. Before they can embrace any kind of new life they must find a way of recovering their past from the horrors they have endured. What is not remembered cannot be healed.”
There are many histories, longings and visions in a community. Vision needs to be celebrated as a complex process. It should not be reduced to a leadership task but should be allowed to develop as the height of intelligence.
What we learn from the ants is the importance of independence. According to Surowiecki “independent individuals are more likely to have new information rather than the same old data everyone is familiar with. The smartest groups are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn’t imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you’re independent, you don’t make the group any dumber.”
Oppressed communities have leaders and views imposed on them, but when we are free we are able to choose the leaders who will help us. Those choices aren’t based on position and status. Instead we turn to those who have deep knowledge and understanding of where we are. They are our wise guides. In their hands we feel safe. They will help us find our way.
The Fault in our Stars is the first book I have read by John Green. It is a book that gets in the skin of teenage cancer survivors who under varying degrees of duress attend a support group “at the heart of Jesus”. They are a community set apart by their cancer. The book is about Hazel and her friends Augustus and Isaac. Their relationships are intense, beautifully romantic and tragically short-lived. Their conversation is full of witty repartee and honesty. Each of them is a “grenade”. They are well supported by their parents whose own pre-mortem and post-mortem plights are understood through Hazel’s sensitive understanding and fear of them. The book is a delight.
Spoiler alert: Gus’s funeral doesn’t go as well as the pre-funeral in which Isaac and Hazel had been able to speak their hearts out in front of Gus. The funeral is constrained by inter generational expectations and the priest is seen to totally miss the mark with his pious platitudes. What could he have done differently? (That is the same question as what could I have done differently so many times in similar situations?) He took the easy road to consolation, which of course is a road that goes nowhere. He could have taken his directions from Hazel and Isaac. He could have listened to them. He could have read the book that had inspired first Hazel and then Gus, and he could have had his eyes opened by their discovery that some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
Hazel, in her pre-funeral eulogy didn’t know what to say. “I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: there are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and of, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
The book has been turned into a film which is due to be released in June. I can’t believe that the film is going to be able to match the book, but here’s a trailer anyway.
Sermon preached at the lovely reordered St Mary’s Alsager for the meeting of Congleton Deanery Synod. It commemorates Archbishop Oscar Romero. It could have been said better – but I share it anyway.
27 bishops wrote to the Daily Mirror a couple of weeks ago complaining about the Government’s welfare reforms. They pointed out that recent cuts have forced tens of thousands of people into a painful choice of “heat or eat” and reminded us that half a million people visited a food bank last year, and 5.5 people were admitted to hospital with malnutrition.
The letter caused a minor stir. Why? Was it because the bishops were dabbling in politics? Was it that they chose the Mirror rather than the Times? Was it because they knew what was lamentable and lament?
The letter raises the question of the place of church in society. What is this place?
Is it at the centre of things? Hopefully the answer to that is “yes”, so long as that means the “heart of the community”, as opposed to wanting to look big.
Is its place to be on the side, on the edge? Hopefully the answer to that question is “yes”, if by yes we are meaning that we are on the side of those who are overlooked – those who are overlooked because of their poverty, because they don’t fit in, because they are shied away.
On this day 34 years ago Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot dead while celebrating Mass. He was Archbishop of San Salvador, Archbishop of a church which took the people of El Salvador to heart, a church which had been edged out by a violent government, a church which was on the side of the landless poor. He spoke out on their behalf and became known as the Voice of the Voiceless. His voice became stronger. People packed into the Cathedral to hear him. They listened to him on the Archdiocese’s radio station. And then he was silenced, by a gun fired from the doorway of the chapel in a cancer hospital as he celebrated Mass.
He was the third bishop to have been murdered in the sanctuary. Bishop Stanislaus of Krakow was killed in 1079 (for scolding the Polish king for his sins), Thomas Becket was killed in 1170 for defending the Church’s rights and freedoms. Oscar Romero was killed in 1977 as an outspoken opponent of injustice and defender of the poor.
Oscar Romero, other martyrs, other ministers, remind us what these spaces are for. They are spaces where we become occupied with God and by God. They are spaces where we occupy ourselves with what occupies God – spaces for the sinner (rather than the righteous), for Lazarus (not the rich man Dives, or the celebrity Divas), for those whose cries are heard by God (and ignored by others). It is the poor, who, according to Romero, “are the ones who tell us what the world is and what service the church must offer to the world.”
We need to safeguard these spaces of blessing and salvation, where truth is told and lives are rebuilt. They are dangerous, countercultural breathing spaces in which lives are lost for the sake of gaining the kingdom.
Romero said this in one of his sermons: “An accommodating church that seeks prestige without the pain of the cross is not the authentic church of Jesus Christ.”
This is the Jesus who comforts his followers in the face of the hatred of the world. He reminded followers then, as he reminds us in this evening’s gospel, that the world didn’t love him, but hated him. “If they persecute me, they will persecute you.” But “if you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own.” Going the way of the world is not following Jesus’ way. That’s not the way Jesus had in mind when he calls people to follow him.
There has been a lot of ink spilt about the identity of the “beloved disciple” in John’s gospel. Was it John Zebedee, Lazarus, Thomas, Nathanael, John the Elder, or even Paul? Or, was it none of these people? Whoever it was had a special place in Jesus’ life. That place is stated as “the place nearby” at the cross (John 19:25), and “reclining next to him” (13:23).
The beloved disciple is the one who “leant back against Jesus”. He is the one who had the physical contact. He is the one who was at Jesus’ side.
Who is the beloved disciple? Is it you? Is it me?
The beloved disciple is THERE, just there (indicating heart/shoulder). The beloved disciple is at the side of Jesus, and because of that SEES and understands what the others couldn’t. That closeness means that he/she is able to hear the whisper of Jesus. (13:23).
Oscar Romero was at that place. He could see, understand and articulate the truth of what was happening. He was able to name the injustice and the suffering.
The place is the “kolpos” or “bosom” of Jesus.
There is one other use of the word “kolpos” in the gospel, and that is at 1:18, where it is Jesus who is described as being at his Father’s bosom, or “close to the Father’s heart”.
The beloved disciple is the one who is at the heart of Jesus, who is close to the Father’s heart, who hears what occupies Jesus’ heart – who sees and hears as Jesus hears.
That is the space we are called to be in as beloved disciples.
It’s the space Oscar Romero occupied as he celebrated Mass in the chapel of a cancer hospital (a place at the edge and on the edge of life). His place was close to the Father’s heart, occupied with what occupies God.
In that most dangerous of places he was shot – a life given for the sake of the kingdom.
A prayer to finish with, from Oscar Romero:
“Let us be today’s Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today’s church. With Christ’s light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation, in mere human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man.”
Here’s a sermon preached by ++Rowan Williams on the 30th anniversary of Romero’s assassination.
It was the long awaited return of Rev to BBC2 last night. You can watch last night’s episode here. The clip above shows one of the many moving pastoral encounters from the previous series which are typical of ministry.
Rev is poetry, not prose. It is inner city parish life dramatised, moving and comic. It rings so many bells.
There is a wonderful cast of actors playing a wonderful range of characters. This series introduces the Area Dean, the Diocesan Secretary, the local Imam and Baby Smallbone. Colin is still there, staking a claim as godparent for baby Smallbone, and crack addict Mick offers to babysit for money to visit his dying Mum in Southend (hasn’t she already died three times?).
There are signs that Reverend Adam Smallbone is an endangered species as the Area Dean and Diocesan Secretary scent blood and are on the tracks of pastorally reorganising St Saviour in the Marshes out of existence. There are signs that there is no room in ministry for the Micks and Colins of the world. Presence and engagement are what satisfies the Adam Smallbones of the Church of England. Up and down the country clergy are present, engaged and overwhelmed by the poverty and deprivation of their parishes. (And research suggests that clergy have the most satisfying occupation.)
Area Dean, Diocesan Secretary and Archdeacon all scoff at Adam’s “presence and engaging”. They probably think that Adam has had his chance. If he was any good he would have a larger congregation. (Archbishop Justin later apologised for the impression he gave that good vicars mean growth. It’s not as predictable as that.) I hope the Area Dean and Diocesan Secretary don’t win. There aren’t many people who Colin can talk to, and there aren’t many doors that Mick can knock on. Presence and engagement ought to be the measure of ministry in such communities, not bums on seats.
It is true that Adam is out of his depth. He probably did do better in his previous country parish. But here he is in inner-city London. He and his achievements look very small when compared to the Imam and his achievements. Adam wonders whether his ministry would be more successful if there were more rules. But, unlike Islam, little Christianity is very short on rules and perhaps feeling out of our depth should be typical for clergy. Isn’t it natural to feel overwhelmed by the dilapidated children’s playground, the crushing poverty and the huge culture gap between church and community?
Adam Smallbone, Reader Nigel, the congregation of St Saviour in the Marshes and the community they are a part of need our support. They need a pastoral reorganisation that makes their presence and engagement more sustainable and fruitful. Area Dean and Diocesan Secretary please take note.
Grits and Grains 