a ministry scrapbook
You can tell a culture is in trouble when its elders walk across the street to avoid meeting its youth.
Quoted by Meg Wheatley in Finding our Way and attributed to Malidoma Some from Burkino Fasso and Parker Palmer. Meg Wheatley’s has written a very appreciative and moving essay Maybe you will be the ones: to my sons and their friends.
a sermon for Easter 3C for St John’s, Weston in Runcorn.
Hallo.
‘Allo, ‘allo.
One of the running gags of TV sitcom ‘Allo, ‘Allo! was the line, delivered in a French accent, “I will say this only once …….”, which was said over and over again, in a comedy called “Allo, allo”.
And we can perhaps imagine the market trader saying, “I’m not going to give you this once, I’m not even going to give you this twice, I’m going to give you this three times.”
That is what we get in today’s readings. We get it three times.
In the gospel, Jesus gives it to Peter three times. “Do you love me?” “You know I do.”
Three times, to correspond with the number of times Peter denied Christ before the cock crew.
Three times to emphasise that Jesus had got over that, that Peter was forgiven.
Three times to underline Peter’s particular pastoral responsibility
I wonder what he says to each of us, this Jesus risen from the dead. What his call is. “Mary, do you love me?” “You know I do.” “Then feed my lambs, teach my people, help them find their freedom.”
It’s not just once that Luke gives us the story of Saul’s conversion. It’s not just twice. It’s three times.
Why?
First of all, I presume it was because he thought this is a story worth telling.
And I presume that it was Luke’s intention that this story should capture the imagination of the church, and help us in our own journeys and our own transformations and conversions.
It’s worth remembering also that it’s not just one, it’s not just twice, but it’s three times that Luke tells us how brutal and callous Saul was towards the followers of the Way.
What on earth was Jesus doing with Saul?
This is a story of conversion told three times, intended to capture our imagination.
I want to look at this in not just one way, not even just in two ways, but in three.
I want to look at the idea of “going out of our way” (in the sense of waywardness), “mending our ways” and “finding our way”.
And I want to refer not just to one person, Saul, nor even to just two people, but three. I refer to Saul, to the prodigal and to ourselves as the people this story is intended to inspire and transform.
Firstly, Saul.
Saul went out of his way to find the followers of the Way.
It comes across as an obsession.
There are two places named. There’s Jerusalem and there’s Damascus. It’s hardly Runcorn to Liverpool in 20 minutes, so long as there are no lane closures on the bridge. This is 135 miles away, across rivers and mountains, on horseback – perhaps 4 or 5 days away.
Then, lo, Jesus meets him, risen from the tomb.
Lovingly he greets him.
“Who are you?” Saul asks.
“I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”
And he said to Saul, “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what to do.”
And Saul had to be led the rest of the way by hand, and then he was told his way forward.
And what a long way he went.
Luke emphasises all the places Paul went, by road, overseas, through storms carrying Jesus’ to all the nations.
The way was found for Saul, and the way was followed by the convert all the way, all the miles, through trial, suffering, all the way to his death.
Saul’s way, Paul’s way, reminds us of the ways of the prodigal son.
His way was to get his inheritance and run for the time of his life.
Until his luck runs out, and he sees the error of his ways.
The father’s way is to tuck his skirt into his belt and run out to embrace the son he thought he had lost.
Lovingly he greets him, in such an outrageous way that the elder brother protests.
“This isn’t the way.
This isn’t the way to deal with someone who stripped you of half of your money, and who let down the family business.”
And the father says “This is the only way.
The only way to share your father’s pleasure is to forgive your brother. That is the only way. That is my way.”
What about ourselves?
What are our ways? Are they his ways?
Our waywardness may not be as dramatic as Saul’s, or the murderer who becomes a preacher, or the prodigal’s.
Or as awful as Peter’s, who when he realised what he had done just broke down and wept.
Waywardness is part of our reality which is realised in our worship. We confess the ways in which, whether in thought or in deed, we have sinned against our brothers and sisters, and sinned against God.
We ask for God to help us to mend our ways.
We let Jesus lovingly greet us, lead us, his way, so that we may “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with you our God.”
That is the way God wants us.
He wants us to walk with him. He wants us to be yoked to him, on the way and all the way. This is the way of life.
Before Jesus’s followers became known as Christians, they were known as followers of the WAY. The followers of the WAY were known because they had a way of life.
And that way of life is spelled out not just once, not just twice, but three times, by both Jesus and Luke in today’s readings.
Through both Peter and Saul Jesus experienced betrayal and persecution.
To both he showed forgiveness.
For both he gave them a way to go, a direction.
For both there is the prediction of suffering, but for them that was another aspect of walking with Jesus and following his way.
Ourselves, we help each other on our way at the end of our liturgy.
Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord. “In the peace of Christ, we go”.
We don’t simply get on our way.
We commit ourselves to his way, to keep in step with Jesus, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God as we meet other Sauls, Peters, Sharons and Janets.
What is our way with them?
“This task [of giving hope and changing lives] moves beyond what the city council or national government can do, not least when budgets are being reduced drastically. It will require the combined energy, resources and wisdom of everyone to address some of the fundamental economic and social issues we face, and to protect those who are most vulnerable in our communities.
“I am aware that I am taking a leap of faith that we want to promote another’s fulfilment at the same time as our own. As we seek the welfare of the whole city, may we know that we are committed to Giving Hope and Changing Lives when, in our relations with our fellow human beings, distant respect moves to deep appreciation and mere tolerance becomes full participation.”
David Urqhuart, Bishop of Birmingham, writing in the report Giving Hope Changing Lives on the future development of Birmingham, as reported in the Chamberlain Files. Jenny Gillies brought this to my attention in a tweet @revjennyg.
What shape is the Diocese of Chester in? Received wisdom casts the Diocese as a tea pot Following the shape of the old Cheshire. I’ve never quite seen it. I assume that the handle is to the east, and the spout is the Wirral peninsula to the west. It’s like those gestalt pictures through which we jump to conclusions about what we see.
What do you see here?
For me it’s got to be a bird. And the shape it’s in is as a dove. The tail feathers are in the west. It would be better if we could tilt the Wirral down a bit, but we don’t have to be precise. The beak district is in the east, the Peak District. The doves markings are the map pins identifying the churches of the Diocese. One episcopal eye winks at Altrincham. The other suffragan episcopal eye is in the tail feathers giving a steer to issues of poverty and life expectancy exposed by the contrasts between Deeside Wirral and Merseyside Wirral. Chester (with Cathedral and Bishop’s House) is the reproductive egg laying organ.
Or it’s a scary monster waving its hands in the air. You see what you want to see don’t you?
Metaphors generate meaning. The metaphor of the teapot may have been a godsend to those whose concern was to create a sense of fellowship. But would you rather have a diocese which is like a teapot, or a diocese which is like a bird? But not just any bird. Would you like a church that is like a dove?
What shape is the church in?
Forgiveness doesn’t change the past, but it releases us from the power of the past. Forgiveness doesn’t rewrite history. But it prevents our histories from asphyxiating us. Fundamentally, forgiveness transforms our past from an enemy to a friend, from a horror-show of shame to a storehouse of wisdom. In the absence of forgiveness we’re isolated from our past, trying pitifully to bury or deny or forget or destroy the many things that haunt and overshadow and plague and torment us. Forgiveness doesn’t change these things, but it does change their relationship to us. No longer do they imprison us or pursue us or surround us or stalk us. Now they accompany us, deepen us, teach us, train us. No longer do we hate them or curse them or resent them or begrudge them. Now we find acceptance, understanding, enrichment, even gratitude for them. That’s the work of forgiveness. It’s about the transformation of the prison of the past.
Sam Wells from his Easter Day Sermon 2013
In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger’s act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.
“We need to “go out”, then, in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the “outskirts” where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters …. giving what little ointment we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all.
A priest who seldom goes out of himself [herself], who anoints little …. misses out on the best of our people, on what can stir the depths of his [her] priestly heart. Those who do not go out of themselves, instead of being mediators, gradually become intermediaries, managers. ….
It is not a bad thing that reality itself forces us to “put out into the deep”, where what we are by grace is clearly seen as pure grace, out into the deep of the contemporary world, where the only thing that counts is “unction” – not function – and the nets which overflow with fish are those cast solely in the name of the One in whom we have put our trust: Jesus.”
These quotes are taken from a sermon preached by Pope Francis on Maundy Thursday 2013. The full text of Pope Francis’s sermon is here.
News of Arab Springs
reverberate down the ages
through times of austerity.
Green shoots through desert sand.
For that Arab Spring
we don’t ride with Josephs & Sons
into an Egypt promising sanctuary
dragging chains in an Egypt of plague,
with a Pharoah begging
“Moses, go. Get me a blessing.”
For that Arab Spring
hope and moonshine
for a people on the run from oppression.
An uprising thirsty
for the blood of lambs,
and Egyptian oppressors.
For another Arab Spring
we ride with Joseph’s son
into a full moon of another garden.
This time a lamb questions,
“do you thirst for this blood shed?”
“Is there a blessing for Pharoah?”
This Arab Spring,
an uprising for tormentors
of chalice shed for them. Cheers,
a kiss, and the strange taste of freedom.
Today, Pope Francis has been celebrating Mass at Casal de Marmo, a juvenile detention center on the outskirts of Rome, and washing the feet of the prisoners there.
This is one of the many gestures that has captured the imagination of people around the world, along with his willingness to get out of his car to shake hands with people without the fear of getting shot, wanting to pay off his hotel bill, and choosing to live in a simpler apartment. I don’t know about you, but I find all of this very exciting. In recent years the Roman Catholic Church has had problems with its PR (rightly so, because of the ways in which it has covered up abuse scandals). But with the white smoke has come a whiff of excitement. Maybe, the church in its impoverished state, can become the church of the poor, for the poor. And, without doubt, what the world needs is, according to Pope Francis, a wounded church that goes out onto the streets, rather than a sick church that is withdrawn into its own world.
There has been far too much inspiration and charity from within the Roman Catholic Church for it to be hidden behind a smokescreen of scandal.
The juvenile detention centre has 48 prisoners. The majority of them are Muslims. Pope Francis will wash the feet of 12 of the prisoners.
I wonder how they will feel. I wonder what will go through their minds. I wonder what sensations will travel from their feet and from the ground of their being. Will they know, through this action, that God loves them? Will they know that they are dear to him? Will they know that they are forgiven for the wrong paths those feet have taken them?
I wonder what Pope Francis will feel through his hands, in his mind and at his heart. Will he feel the journey those feet have made? Those feet of young people. Will he feel inside their shoes, their trainers, their boots, their bootees to the life they have led? Will he understand their running away from their homes, rival gangs, the police? Will he feel the cramping of life in those shoes and why they have kicked off?
This is what Maundy Thursday is about, that we love one another. It is a new commandment which is fleshed out in Jesus example of foot washing, and which is reenacted across the world this evening, including prisons and a detention centre in Rome. This is a love which is prepared to lovingly tend the other, whatever the state of the other’s feet may be, wherever those feet have been. This is a love which feels for the other, and which forms the foundation for a community of vulnerability, compassion and love with the least, the last and the lost.
It is a transformative act. The two parties will never feel the same about each other again. He felt for me. He understood me. He held me dear. He loved me.
Another Francis has hit the news this week. The Francis Report is the independent inquiry into what has gone wrong with the NHS in the light of the Mid Staffs Hospital. The important thing highlighted is the question of how to restore compassion to the National Health Service, and how safe care can be given to every patient every time. The publication of the report had nurses ringing in to Radio 5’s phone in, frustrated that they are unable to provide the level of care that they should be providing. Their hearts were going out to those who have been neglected, but their hands were tied up in so much other work.
I looked for a response to the Francis Report on Twitter from nurses. Mara Carlyle, now singer, but was a NHS nursing assistant for 7/8 years, mostly on wards so understaffed, tweeted:
If you give nurses enough resources and time to do their jobs properly, guess what? They will and they do. Because there weren’t enough staff for everyone’s basic needs to be attended to which inevitably led to some poor standards of care, that we often had to choose between attending to patients who were (variously) crying, dying, hungry, thristy, dirty, fallen out of bed …
Alison Leary, a registered nurse and macmillan lecturer in oncology writes of the work of a nurse (work described by Florence Nightingale as “women’s work which should be done quietly and in private”) and she asks:
How would you feel about dealing with a stranger in such an intimate way? A stranger who is so humiliated at his or her inability to control their own bodily functions that they weep? Then imagine having to care for him or her and 29 other patients with only two colleagues to help you.
So we have the juxtaposition of the Francis Report and its admissions about compassion, and Pope Francis and his expression of compassion, feeling for the other, loving the other.
Nurses want to alleviate suffering – physical, psychological, social and spiritual.
The dilemma for nurses is how they can show compassion in a system which expects so much from them.
If that is the dilemma of the nursing profession, it is perhaps the dilemma of our society. Don’t we want to be the answer to the problem of suffering, however that is experienced?
But how?
How does the NHS recover its capacity for compassion? How do we become compassionate? How do we feel for one another? How do we love one another?
The answer is repeated in story after story – from the story of the care of the Good Samaritan, to the story of the nurse most likely referred to as an angel. All of them are touching stories.
The answer is hinted at in tonight’s liturgy, and in Jesus own example of footwashing and his encouragement (“should”- is that command or encouragement?) for us to do just the same. This is the practice of loving one another, just as Jesus loves us.
It is taking one step at a time, one gesture at a time.
If the time has come for you to be asking where compassion has gone from our dealings with one another, if society has become so complicated that you don’t know where to start, I can tell you the place to start is HERE. It always has been. The first step is in the here and now, in truly local initiatives like Jesus washing the feet of his dearest friends, like Francis washing the feet of the prisoners in a Rome detention centre, like the nurse holding the hand of a patient who is afraid – who through that touch reaches beyond the physical condition of the patient to her heart of hearts.
[Everyone] should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of [their] life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful implanted in the soul.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Grits and Grains 
