How do we pray?

David Herbert2 Comments

My eyes were turned by the simplicity of Psalm 123, the psalm appointed for the 6th Sunday after Trinity (year B), prompting this brief exploration of how we pray.

Psalm 123

To you I lift up my eyes,
to you that are enthroned in the heavens.

As the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their master,
or the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,

So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God,
until he have mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.

Our soul has had more than enough of the scorn of the arrogant,
and of the contempt of the proud.

July 7th 2024

Can you smoke while you pray? No. Can you pray while you smoke? Of course you can. So goes one of the old jokes about prayer.

How do we pray? I googled “why we pray with our eyes closed”. The answer from Christian Stack Exchange: “For many, prayer is a private matter, an intercession between a person and another higher power. Closing your eyes as you do it is a way to block out distractions and focus on the conversation. Instead of using your eyes to communicate with others, you shut them and turn your thoughts inward.”

The psalm appointed for our worship today (Psalm 123) has been described as a “primer on prayer” (Richard Clifford) and as “one of the loveliest prayers in all of scripture, simple and direct, trusting and confident, spoken out of need and in much hope”. (Bellinger and Brueggemann)

The eyes of the prayer are very much open – and the prayer is very much a public matter.

How do we pray? Poet Naomi Shihab Nye explores Different Ways to Pray:

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms –
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,
and were happy in spite of the pain,
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.
When they arrived at Mecca
they would circle the holy places,
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America.
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
  Time? – the old ones rayed for the young ones.
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.

How do we pray? As Jesus taught us so we pray. They’re the words that launch our prayer – “Our Father ……” But surely we want to join Jesus as he prayed. The book of Psalms was his prayer book as it is for all Jews as well as ourselves. The prayers of the Psalms came readily to Jesus’ lips, as we know from the time he was crucified when he directly used the words from Psalm 22. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” which, incidentally is a cry of trust, not a cry of abandonment. That prayer goes on:”All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they shake their heads …… Dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me …… they divide my clothes among themselves and for my clothing they cast lots. But you, O Lord, be not far away! O my help, come quickly to my aid! Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog! Save me from the mouth of the lion!” The psalms and the tradition behind them is where Jesus and his fellow Jews got their prayers from.

Psalm 123 is one of a collection of psalms of ascent – prayer-songs of pilgrims on their way up to festivals in Jerusalem. It’s a personal prayer that becomes a shared prayer. It starts with “my eyes”. “To you I lift up my eyes” which becomes the eyes of the whole pilgrim community. Not “my eyes”, but “our eyes”. This is the prayer of a people matching stride for stride on their way to Jerusalem. Stride for stride, shoulder to shoulder – their eyes lifted to the one “enthroned in heaven, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, or as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress”.

Those of you who have dogs will know that look – as they wait for us to recognise their need, whether that is food, water or a walk. So the eyes of the pilgrims “wait”. They wait “until he have mercy on us”.

This is the manner of the prayer of the pilgrim community – the community who believes in God’s mercy and the people promised God’s blessing by Jesus: those who are poor, those poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the ones reviled and scorned – the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:1-13)

This is the prayer of those, who in their own words “have had more than enough”. They’ve had more than enough of contempt, more than enough of the scorn of the arrogant, of the contempt of the proud.

This is how we pray if we join Jesus – himself scorned by his own village and by the powers that be. We join Jesus as he joins others who have had enough, who have had enough of contempt, who have had enough of the scorn of the arrogant and of the contempt of the proud. The arrogant and the proud never look up. They don’t walk as part of the pilgrim community – because they don’t lift up their eyes to the one enthroned in the heavens. Their eyes look down. They look down their noses at the poor, the refugee, the unfit, the least, the lost and all those Jesus promises God’s blessing – the meek, the merciful, the persecuted, the scorned.

I don’t know about you but I’ve had more than enough. I’ve had more than enough of the scorn of the arrogant, I’ve had more than enough of the contempt of the proud. I’m ready to walk with them, stride for stride, shoulder to shoulder – our eyes looking up in hope and expectation to the one who answers our call for mercy, love and a new earth.

When we pray we lift up our eyes. Because of the hope that is in us, we refuse to be be downcast, with eyes cast down, self-defeated. We refuse to look down our noses – we defy the gaze of the proud who admire themselves and look down. 

We know the words of “we’ve had enough”. We’ve got the music of the psalms to articulate our prayer. Shall we answer the call to prayer, to join the prayer of Jesus who only joins the prayer of the scorned and those who seek mercy?

Are we going to join Fowzi in his prayer? Are we going to join his laugh? Remember, he’s the fool. Or, rather, he’s the one the proud call foolish. Like us, he’s had enough. He has had enough of the scorn of the arrogant. Shall we follow his eyes as he lifts them to the one enthroned in the heavens, fixed in his search for help and mercy – as the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their master, or the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress?

Note: Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem Different Ways to Pray is from Words Under Words: Selected Poems published in 1995.

For the shamed and ashamed

David Herbert1 Comment

Here’s a sermon for the 5th Sunday after Trinity (year B) for a group of churches who on the 5th Sunday of the month come together for their “Gathering”, together with a poem which inspired me for this – Harry Baker reading Unashamed. The gospel for the day is Mark 5:21-end.

June 30th 2024

The preacher’s task is to bring the gospel to life. The test is whether you love the gospel more after the sermon than before and whether it has a greater power.

To start, I wondered whether we could spend a few moments hearing from one another any words or phrases that particularly struck you, shouted at you or surprised you ……….

Just as today’s gospel comes to us in two parts, so this sermon has two parts. In the first we will look for Mark’s meaning. The second is an application to us.

Mark 5:21-end
When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him, and he was by the lake. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well’.
Immediately her haemorrhage stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”’ He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe’. He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping’. And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

The gospel has two parts – as expressed by our two readers. There’s the story of an unnamed woman and the story of a girl who we know as Jairus’s daughter. Both of them are healed by Jesus. The story of the woman’s healing is sandwiched into the story of Jairus’s daughter. The story of one interrupts the other.

By arranging the stories in this way, Mark, the gospel writer makes sure that we read them in the context of each other. He downplays one in relation to the other, leaving the reader with the task of amplifying the other.

There’s an overlapping timeline. Unusually Mark gives us precise detail about how old Jairus’s daughter is. She’s 12 years old. And he tells us that the woman had been haemorrhaging for 12 years. Their stories overlap. The woman  became ill just when Jairus’s daughter was born. 12 years ago. 

We always need to prick our ears up when we hear the number 12 in the gospels. It’s a number pattern that sums up Israel’s identity. The 12 tribes of Israel. The 12 disciples. 12 baskets of food left over at the feeding of the 5000. By including these details Mark is wanting us to realise that these two stories are about Israel and the kingdom of God.

The woman had suffered 12 years of haemorrhaging. Mark tells us she endured much under many physicians. They’d taken all her money. She had nothing, and far from getting better she’d got worse. This is what the institutions of Israel did to people.

It was worse than that. There were strict rules for people like her. They were listed in their scriptures. “When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period … she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge … Any bed she lies on will be unclean … anything she sits on will be unclean … anyone who touches them will be unclean. They must wash their clothes and bathe with water. (Leviticus 15:25-31)

For 12 years this woman would have been told she was unclean, and would have known those who came into contact with her would have been unclean. Not only is she poor, she’s in pain – and she is isolated and cast out because people had to be kept separate from things that made them unclean. She reminds me of the widow in the temple who Jesus watched as she put two coins into the treasury. It angered Jesus to think that her religious leaders had taken everything from her. She was left with nothing. Here, too, this woman is left with nothing. Her physicians had taken everything.

The rules of society were kept by the synagogue – people meeting together to observe the rules and be bound by them. Jairus was the ruler of the synagogue, the ruler of the rule-keepers, that ruled people in or ruled people out, that ruled people like our friend in the story out, and that made all women like her unclean, untouchable outcasts of society. Jairus had the power, privilege and prestige of being the ruler of the synagogue – and his daughter will have benefitted all her life from the prestige and protection of bring his daughter. There is such a contrast between the woman and the girl.

Did you notice how the crowd outside Jairus’s house laughed at Jesus? I was hurt when I read that. How dare they? But then I realised that this was the ruler’s family, his house, his daughter. They were used to being the most important. They were used to being first. They were probably offended that Jesus had put them last because he had allowed the least to interrupt him and make him late.

He was late because he wanted to know who had touched him. He’d felt something. She comes forward and tells him “the whole truth”. It was this that made Jesus late for his next appointment. He had put the last first. He had been touched by the least, the outcast – this poor woman. He listened to the whole truth from her. I love that phrase “the whole truth” – the truth of her suffering, the truth of her isolation, the truth of her treatment, the truth of her poverty, the truth of her loneliness and the truth of her faith in Jesus, that he, of all people could bear her touch.

This would have taken time. Jesus listens to her whole truth and finds in her faith the whole truth. He loves her. He calls her “daughter”. She is a true daughter of Israel. Her faith has made her such. She has been last but she comes first. She comes before the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue. The one who was used to coming first was going to have to wait. They were all going to have to wait while the last came first.

Where does this leave us? Loosely connected to all this I wanted to dwell on one of the words that struck me when I was reading this in preparation for today – that is the the word “crowd”. It’s mentioned three times in this passage. Hearing performance poet Harry Baker prompted me on this. He’s touring with his show he’s calling “Wonderful”.

Harry Baker performing Unashamed at his favourite place, Margate

For a moment I want to put us in the crowd around Jesus. We are, after all, here for “the gathering” (all the churches coming together). Gathering is a more genteel way of saying crowd. We’re not quite in the Glastonbury league, but we are a crowd. 

We’re with the woman who wants to reach Jesus. We’re with all those who believe Jesus can bear our touch – however unclean we may feel, or however ashamed we’ve been made to feel. We’re with all those who believe they’re a lot better for knowing Jesus than if they’d not. We’re careful not to crowd people out, particularly those others who know they only need to touch Jesus to feel better.

Shall we tell Jesus the whole truth of our lives, knowing he welcomes the interruptions of the poor, in spirit or otherwise? Or just the edited version? Or just our best side?

Shall we see in each other the whole truth, the whole truth of those we see around us, the whole truth seen by Jesus – that in the words of the psalmist (Psalm 139), that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”? Is that how we are going to see each other? Is that how we are to make others feel? Not “unclean and ashamed”. There are already enough people making us feel like that. But “fearfully and wonderfully made” – not many see that in us, and not many are interested in “the whole truth” about ourselves – except, we hope, this crowd, these our brothers and sisters, claimed by Jesus as his sons and daughters – children in the kingdom of God, people in whom Jesus sees the truth that despite all appearances we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

We’re all at sea in our small boats

David Herbert2 Comments

This is a reflection on the sea and the troubled waters we call life for the 4th Sunday after Trinity (B).

I spotted “the other boats” in the gospel reading for the day, from Mark 4:35-end (text below). They played on my mind as we prepare for a UK election which some want to turn into an election on immigration. It made me think – “we’re all at sea” and the forecast is for more storms. This sermon comes with a health warning – it is metaphor heavy.

The first verse we see when we open our Bibles is “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while the spirit of God swept over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2) 

The last verses in our Bibles are also about water – the “river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city, feeding trees bearing fruit for all seasons and leaves for the healing of the nations”. (Revelation 22:1-2)

In the beginning of the Bible there is total darkness. In the end, there is only light – no darkness and no hiding.

The Bible begins in water and ends in water. And between the two there is all the difference in the world – as different as night and day.

The Bible begins in water. The water is chaos. The first thing God does is make light. The second thing he does is sort the waters out. He separates the waters of heaven and earth, gathered the water together and let dry land appear. That’s how it began. 

This is a theological view of life. This is how we open our Bibles. We open them with an understanding that we are all at sea. From the very beginning we have been surrounded by water, the sea, the deep. We’ve been on flood alert since the time of Noah.

Probably all of us here have had times in our lives when we have felt overwhelmed, engulfed or drowning – and used these metaphors to describe how we felt, using so many metaphors drawn from our collective experience down the ages of chaos and the sea. So much of our language reflects this. Like “we’re out of our depth”, or “we’re in it up to our neck”, or “we’re all at sea”.

The Bible begins with water and ends with water. From day one there is storm after storm. The waves crash all around us until that day when the waters become calm and do God’s bidding of giving life and healing to the whole of creation.

These are the times we live in, when there is one storm on top of another. For the time being we are between the devil and the deep blue sea. (Another popular saying.)

These are the times Jesus lived in as well. The storms he faced were different to ours. With his contemporaries he was assaulted by religious oppression and exclusion, a taxation poor which kept them in poverty and debt, and an occupation by a foreign power which robbed them of their freedom.

His attitude at times like these is captured in the snapshot we have of him in today’s gospel reading. They’re all at sea. A great gale arose, and the waves were beating the boat and swamping it. And Jesus slept. Calm as you like.

There were other boats. It’s strange how you miss details like this. I must have read this passage hundreds of times, but I’ve never seen those four words before. There were other boats. Have I never noticed these other boats because the focus has always been on Jesus’ boat? Have I only spotted these boats now because of the small boats that desperate refugees are taking to to escape to safe havens. 

(Isn’t it terrible that some people are turning the election into an election about immigration and the people in these small boats?) It is Refugee Week – and we need to spot their boats, not stop their boats. There is a growing refugee crisis – that means a crisis for a growing number of refugees. 1 in 69 of the world’s population is now displaced, largely because of conflicts around the world. It’s important we respond to their Mayday.  M’aidez. Help me! It is, after all, the refugees who have the problem – all those who have no safe routes for escape. They have enough problems without being turned into a political football.

We’re all at sea. We’re not all in the same boat. We’re not in the same boats as the refugees. We’re all in our different small boats. We’re all at the mercy of troublemakers, powers-that-be, the forces that make waves, and the sea so dangerous. 

There’s a well known fisherman’s prayer that captures our plight. It’s become known as the Breton Fisherman’s Prayer: 

Dear God,
be good to me;
the sea is so wide, and my boat is so small. 
Amen.

They’re words from a poem by Winfred Ernest Garrison.

It’s not surprising that so many make that prayer their own. The words fit the experience we call “being all at sea”.

The sea is our life with its currents and tides, its ferocity and deceptive charm constantly eroding and undermining us. The challenge of our lives is how we navigate these waters.

We are like those who, in the words of Psalm 107 “go down to the sea in ships and ply their trade in great waters”, who have seen the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. While they were at their wit’s end as they reeled and staggered like drunkards, they cried to the Lord in their trouble and he brought them out of their distress. He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were calmed.

Our lifetime at sea is summed up in our baptism. We are soaked in deep water, and brought through water as if this is an acknowledgement of our life at sea, weathering the storms faced by us all, Jesus included. The question we’re asked in baptism is, “Do you turn to Christ?” Our response then is “I turn to Christ”. It’s stated as a promise. Perhaps it should be stated as a habit. 

In the storms of life, when you’re all at sea, when you feel you’re drowning, do you turn to Christ? The faithful ones, like the ones in the psalm, will say, “Yes, I turn to Christ. He’s the one who can sleep in the storm. He’s the non-anxious presence. We turn to him to hear him say ‘Peace! Be still!’ – and when we do, the wind dies down and we feel the calm.”

It’s easier said than done because in the midst of things it is too easy to panic.

The waves that have panicked me have been so slight compared to what others have faced. Dare I say I’ve done enough doom scrolling to sink a battleship? I am only beginning to learn to wake Jesus in my mind, to hear him in the head of the storm, to find better things to think about, to take his word as gospel. 

I know that when the sea calms for me, it calms also for all the other small boats.

Here we gather. We call this gathering place the NAVE – the Latin word for ship. We are shipmates in our small boat.

Here we are, all at sea, our metaphorical sea. The metaphorical weather is awful. Even though the long term forecast is for beautiful, calm weather, immediately, all we can expect is one storm after another. There are dark forces within us, and all around us, threatening us – driving so many from their homes, driving them to the edge, condemning them/us to their/our fate on the sea of life.

We are shipmates. We’ve been through it before. We’ve been through the waters of baptism. We’re used to turning to Christ – who in today’s gospel we see in the same boat as ourselves. In the rage of the storm he makes himself heard. We hear him call us “beloved”. The wind and the sea hear him. ‘Peace! Be still!’ they hear him say. For the moment they obey him.

Here we are, churches in the Bridges Group of Parishes – like a bridge in troubled water for all those who live in these six parishes. When we’re weary, feeling small, when times get tough, when we’re down and out, when darkness comes and pain is all around – we know the words of the one even the wind and sea obey.

Mark 4:35-end
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’

An uprising – the mustard seed and the seed growing secretly

David HerbertLeave a comment

Here’s a sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity focusing on Jesus’s parables of the seed growing secretly and the mustard seed. They speak of uprisings and encouragement, perseverance and patience.

June 16th 2024

Our scriptures are the creation of a bruised and battered people, treasured and passed on by bruised and battered people for the sake of other bruised and battered people. It is a troubled people who have chosen the scriptures we inherit, and who have handed them on.

I keep saying this to remind myself whose these scriptures are and to remind myself to read the scriptures from that point of view.

Today’s gospel features a couple of parables used by Mark to end a sermon by Jesus. The sermon is given from a boat, to a crowd of people on the shore.

Their place on the shore is significant. Jesus and the crowd are from poor peasant communities, subsistence farming communities pushed to the edge by the taxation policies of the temple and Roman authorities. They were clinging on to life in any way they could. Jesus is one of them. 

His sermon was  particularly for them, the least and the frequently lost in the kingdoms of the world. Appropriately, for an audience of the least Jesus uses what is the least to make his points. Today, he picks a seed that grows secretly, and a mustard seed, “the smallest of all seeds”, which amazingly grows to be the “greatest of all shrubs” – and that picks up the prophecy of Ezekiel in our first reading. 

Ezekiel points us to a “lofty tree”.
In his mind it stands for empire and the highness and might of emperors and kings and all those who problematically lord it over others.
Ezekiel sees God cutting a sprig from the lofty top and planting it on a high mountain so that it produces boughs, fruit and shelter for all kinds of bird.
He calls this a “noble” tree rather than a “lofty tree”.
What makes the lofty tree is its highness, whereas the nobility of the noble tree rests in the shelter it gives.

Jesus is the sower.

He sowed seeds in his preaching – seeds of faith, hope and love – seeds of imagination which would grow in the hearts and minds of those poor enough in spirit to have the ears to hear and the eyes to see Jesus’ meaning of love in these parables. 

They will have loved his talk of the seeds for him highlighting the smallest of things as being full of life. They will have known that about themselves though generations of occupation, foreign rule and religious oppression will have eaten at their self belief.

Jesus takes two seeds. That in itself reveals so much about the kingdom of God, namely that the rule of God focuses on the smallest of things, the miniscule, on the least. When did you last hear an emperor, or a Mr Big, or a gang leader wondering about the smallest and least in creation?

Jesus casts the mustard seed as the smallest seed, which grows to become the greatest of shrubs giving shelter, shade and blessing to all the birds of the air. His hearers will have loved that. This is what can become of us is what Jesus is leading them to imagine. This is what can happen to the least of us. The least of us can become the most hospitable. The least of us can be the shelter, shade and blessing for so much and so many.

These are parables for the poor in spirit, for the weary, for the belittled.

They encourage us to believe
life will change for the better for the least, the lost and the last –
that the little, least, lost are great in the eyes of God and come first in his kingdom,

They remind us that the seeds of the kingdom are already embedded in the world
by Jesus the sower,
in our own paths and ways
a seed in edgeways

And those seeds have a life of their own.
We don’t know the effect of them – and we can’t control the effects of a kind word, or affirming gesture.

And they make small beautiful.

Small is beautiful in the eyes of the one who puts the least, the lost and last first.
We don’t need to lie
about how little we are
or what little we have
when Jesus sees the kingdom in a seed.

These parable have always encouraged the church,
particularly encouraging us these days
when the church is struggling,
when you’re feeling like there is so much to do
with fewer and fewer people – in a vacancy as well
we can love being small,
being the unlikely seed of the kingdom,
for ever unsure how it’s going to turn out,
just going day to day
with our small seed of faith
our small seed of hope
and our small seed of love,
sprigs cut from the high and mighty,
cut down to size and carefully planted
to be noble in the kingdom.

These parables encourage us to persevere with patience,
to carry on scattering seed in our small ways along the paths of our lives,
never put off by the idea of a harvest we will never see,
to carry on with those small things
that come naturally to those with a joyful heart:
a smile,
a touch,
a word of welcome,
small kindnesses
in all our ways
scattered like seed.

There was a song Jesus heard at home. He’d heard his Mum singing it. We know it as the Magnificat. It goes like this:

Her song praises the work of God showing mercy on those that fear him from generation to generation, scattering the proud in their conceit, casting down the mighty from their thrones, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things, sending the rich away empty.

This is the song that seeded Jesus’ imagination.

It is no wonder that he turns to the smallest in his preaching, to seeds to show us faith, hope and love. The seed growing secretly and the mustard seed represent an uprising – an uprising of the least, the tired and the broken.

Mark 4:26-34
He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’
With many such parables he spoke the word of to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Ezekiel 17:22-end
Thus says the Lord God:
I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out,
I will greek a tender one
from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it
on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel
I will plant it
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind.
All the trees of the field shall know
that I am the Lord.
I bring low the high tree,
I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
and make the dry tree flourish.
I the Lord have spoken;
I will accomplish it.

Who is the strong man who needs binding and casting out?

David HerbertLeave a comment

This is the question I explore with a small congregation in rural Warwickshire for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity (year B) at the end of a week where we have celebrated the bravery of the boys involved in the D-Day landings in Normandy, who forced their way to a toehold in the strong man’s stronghold. The gospel, binding the strong man, is printed below – Mark 3:20-end.

D-Day 75 Garden at Arromanches-les-Bains
D-Day 75 Garden at Arromanches-les-Bains – photo by Alan Wilson, picturing a 97 year old veteran looking back at himself as a 22 year old climbing on to the beach.

The Ins and Outs of the gospel.

Today’s gospel passage is crucial for the gospel of Mark. It is so crucial that one of the most important commentaries on Mark’s gospel lifts words from today’s passage for its title, Binding the Strong Man, as if this sums up Mark’s gospel and the mission of Jesus (and work of God).

In the week we’ve celebrated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings it becomes appropriate to explore this understanding of Mark’s gospel and the particular verse: no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man. By doing so we will honour the bravery of those involved in the D-Day landings – and the bravery of Jesus.

The strong man, Hitler, was always driven by his need for lebensraum (living room) and his occupation of France was a mighty extension of his living room. The D-Day landings were very much about the allied forces breaking and entering the strong man’s house, getting a foothold in his door on the beaches of Normandy, to tie up the strong man and free France.

Those who break into the houses of the strong man are brave – some, as we see in today’s gospel, think them foolish.

Mark wants us to know the ins and outs of his gospel.

Mark’s gospel is a journey. It starts in the wilderness, then working its way through Galilee (land of the poor and weakened) and then onto Jerusalem, the capital, the heartland of the STRONG MAN, with its fine buildings, its temple and its palace. Mark’s gospel follows Jesus all the way into the house of the strong and oppressive man.

These are the ins and outs of our gospel reading for today.

On the inside is Satan
and his demons
and Jesus
and those around Jesus.

On the outside
are the demons cast out by Jesus
and Jesus’ family – his mother, brothers and sisters.

The scene is set inside a house.
It’s the strong man’s house that somehow Jesus has got into.

Satan is a mythic figure who stands for actual people.
The demons too are mythic figures, and we know them in real life too. We often have to fight them.
The house too is metaphorical – just a domain name.

The actual people Satan stands for according to Mark is the STRONG MAN – who needs tying up and binding. 

Our popular imagination easily goes to the likes of Putin when casting for the villainous strong man.
But if we cast our search wider

The strong man is the cruel man,
the ruthless man,
the exploitative, oppressive, abusive man.
The strong man is the boss man.
He takes over our lives,

our opportunities and freedoms.
He grooms us, traps us,
and uses us
to build his empire
his power, his glory.
The strong man is the human trafficker,

with his demons his agents.
He is the scammer, the bully, the tyrant.
He’s the media mogul who hides the truth.
He’s the guarded.
He’s the first, the entitled,
and the one who puts himself first.
He’s the one we’re afraid of
in all his guises, the liar,
the master of disguise.

He’s the one
who sets his people onto people,
or against people.

But if truth be known
he’s also you and me,
no longer pronoun HE,
but you, me, she, we
whenever we are cruel like him

whenever we speak like him,
act like him, profit like him.
He’s #metoo, #wetoo,
with our power and strength
crying out for love’s binding.

This is how Mark portrays Jesus – as breaking and entering the house of the strong man, to bind him and tie him.

This is what God does.
This is what our scripture witnesses –
the binding of the strong man:
the Pharoah,
the Emperor,
the Dictator,
the Tyrant,
the High Priest,
the Devil incarnate,
the ones who come first
and the ones
who put themselves first.
This is what God does:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
in perfect unity
they break into the house
the strong man has made
his strong hold
and makes it their kingdom,
the kingdom of God.

It reminds me of the way Jesus speaks in John’s gospel of the house he prepares for us. You know, “the house with many rooms”, the house with enough room even for us – with all our differences and diversity.

Mark takes us inside the house.
We’re his readers on the inside, the inside of the house seized from the strong man and Satan.
(I’d call it “the house of Israel” were it not for the cruelty that has taken over the strong men acting in Israel’s name in Gaza.)

Mark takes us inside the house.
We’re with Jesus, on the inside.
There’s an air of celebration.
We can sense victory.
We can see the end of the strong man.

But then comes an incoming call,
from the outside.

Outside the house are Jesus’s mother,
his brothers and sisters.
They want to see Jesus.
They call him OUT.
They think he’s gone out of his mind,
breaking into the house of the strong man
like that. They’re worried for him.
They’re worried for themselves,
and their reputations
and what the strong men
will do to them and their village.

They don’t hear Jesus’ response because they’re outside and Jesus is inside.
Inside, Jesus looks at those sitting around him, in the room he has prepared for them by binding the strong man.
Looking at those sitting round him he says: “Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

With all its “ins and outs”, Mark’s gospel begs the question of where “the strong man” is now, and whether we are insiders or outsiders.
Are we on the inside? Are we among those doing the will of God, in that place of bravery with Jesus, binding the strong man – even the strong man in us – with Jesus?
Or, are we outsiders, along with the outcast demons, amongst the scoffers and accusers of Jesus?

Mark 3:20-end
and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons’.
And he called them to him and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’
And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’

Love translates: a sermon for Pentecost

David Herbert1 Comment

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.”

Abide in my love: a tiny passage into Love’s building

David HerbertLeave a comment

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.

A prayer born of old age

David HerbertLeave a comment

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.

A fierce gospel for savage times – reflecting on the Good Shepherd

David HerbertLeave a comment

A sermon for two rural churches without a “pastor”. The gospel for the day is John 10:11-18 (text below).

I am, I am, I am.

This is the name that rolls round the mind of the beloved community.
I AM, the very being of God as disclosed to Moses. Simply, I AM who I AM.
I AM, I AM, the name given even to Jesus by the community of beloved disciples as they explore the meaning of the God they find in Jesus.
I AM
This is what being is all about.

I am, I am, I am.
There are seven I AM sayings of the beloved community in John’s gospel.
Seven, as in the days of the week, as in the sign of perfection and completion.
This is how they loved Jesus. This is how they found God. This is how they saw salvation.
I am, I am, I am.

I am the bread of life,
the light of the world I am.
I am the door,
the good shepherd I am.
I am the resurrection,

the way, the truth and the life I am.
I am the vine.
I am.

This is how the beloved community singles Jesus out, in these seven sayings. Jesus is who we say he is. Jesus is who he says “I am”. This is who Jesus is to the beloved disciple – incidentally ruling out who he is not. 

Today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, known as Good Shepherd Sunday. These are the words ringing in the ears of the beloved community this morning. “I am the good shepherd”.

I know how important sheep and lambs are in your lives round here – how much you care for them and how you’ve worried for their welfare through these months of exceptionally wet weather. You know what good shepherding is all about.

I also know that you are waiting patiently for good shepherds to pastor you, and that you are praying that those the diocese appoints to these parishes will be good shepherds who will themselves have ruled out what the beloved community know Jesus isn’t – the opposite of the hired hand, the opposite of the one who leaves the sheep and runs away as soon as he sees the wolves coming, thinking only of themselves and abandoning the  sheep.

That’s not the Lord, our shepherd, who stays with his people even while they walk through the valley overshadowed by death, spreading a table before us so we can eat even while others trouble us.

I am the good shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. These are the words at the heart of the people God makes his beloved community. And we, the beloved community know the truth of what makes a good shepherd. 

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep he owns and knows.

Have you thought about this? The good shepherd lost his life to the wolves. The wolves circled and he didn’t run.
The wolves licked their lips and he didn’t budge.
The wolves scented blood and he gave them his own.

These are metaphorical wolves. Actual wolves have virtues and they have their rightful place in our animal kingdom. Metaphorical wolves have none. They are devious and deceitful. They are around us and they are savage.

They can eat your grandma and then disguise themselves as grandma to little Red Riding Hood. “Grandma, what a deep voice you have!” “All the better to greet you with”. “Grandma, what big eyes you have!” “All the better to see you with.” “And what big hands you’ve got!” “All the better to embrace you with.” “Grandma, what a big mouth you have!” “All the better to eat you with.”

These metaphorical wolves are masters of disguise. The good shepherd sees their danger. He knows wolves come in sheep’s clothing and infiltrate his beloved community. Sometimes the wolf even takes on the shepherd’s clothing and grooms the metaphorical sheep, (beloved disciples) for his wicked ways. (I believe that is a storyline currently being explored in Eastenders.)

The wolves are around us in their many disguises. I don’t know where you’re at in your personal journeys. Some of you may be enjoying  a relatively easy path in your lives. Others may be on rockier roads, in the pits, even walking the valley in the shadow of death. 

For some, their road is very dangerous. They are particularly vulnerable to attack from those who would groom them, harm them, ridicule them, profit from them, even kill them. 

We must never forget the long and really difficult journeys refugees from around the world are having to take. Hounded from their homes by metaphorical wolves, they are prey to wolves in every twist and turn of their journey as they put their lives into the hands of one agent after another – each wanting their cut and their piece of flesh. And there are those living in the crossfire of wolves in warzones, such as Gaza and Ukraine.

I’m reading a book set in England in the middle of the 14th century – the time of the plague. Is plague one of the wolf’s disguises? Was Covid?

Good shepherds stand with their sheep. They don’t run away when they see the wolf coming. They sound the alarm. They take precautions. They stand firm.They take the front line. They absorb the shocks. They become shelter. And sometimes they lose their life.

Like Jesus. The wolves savaged him. They were disguised as religious leaders and political leaders. The following he was getting (the sheep and the size of the flock) frightened them. They came for him, so that they could get at them. They took him away. They accused him. They mocked him. They stripped him. They slashed him. They crucified him.

by David Hayward at http://www.Nakedpastor.com

The Naked Pastor draws many gospel cartoons. His name is David Hayward. This cartoon by the Naked Pastor is of the naked pastor. Pastor means shepherd, and here we see the good shepherd, the pastor stripped naked on the cross. In the foreground we see the wolves. They are taunting Jesus, making fun of him. They’re laughing at him, gritting their teeth at him, flexing their muscle against him, and raising their arms, their weapons of war, showing their killing teeth.

This is Jesus being savaged by a pack of wolves.

Over and over again we marvel. The good shepherd does not run away when the wolves come. He lays down his life for the sheep so that the wolves can’t scatter and snatch the sheep. I dare say we have sweetened this gospel over time – but what John is describing here is fierce. The opposition to the beloved community is fierce, but the attachment of the good shepherd to the flock is just as fierce. Blood is spilled and life is lost. But just as the good shepherd has the power to lay down his life, so he has the power to take it up again. And that places this gospel in our Easter liturgy – this fourth Sunday of Easter.

It’s a fierce gospel for savage times when metaphorical wolves roam our streets in their many disguises. It’s a gospel for our times – our mean time in which we need the protection of good shepherds – the sort who will give their lives for the sheep – the sort you wait to be pastor in your community.

At the moment, wolves and sheep remain enemies. The wolf continues to prey on the  sheep who rely on the protection of good shepherds – the sort who will give their lives for the sheep – the sort you wait for to be pastor in this community. But the time will come when there will be a peace way beyond our understanding and way beyond our imagination when the wolf will lie with the sheep. That’s what God lives for. The time will come when the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf, the lion and the yearling together, and instead of tyrants and empire builders, a little child will be the leader. (Isaiah 11:9) Until that time we follow the call of the good shepherd as he leads us through the valleys and low points overshadowed by wolves and our fear of them.

John 10:11-18
‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep who do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’

Being Believed we Become Beloved – on seeing our wounds

David Herbert1 Comment

A sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Easter for a lively congregation in a Warwickshire village. The gospel for the day is John 20:19-end (text below)

 ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ So says Thomas – who is not really “the doubter” but the scientist who needs to see the evidence.

Nail Mark by Li Wei San.

Jesus showed him. He said: ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side”. Normally we read Thomas’s response as a confession of faith – “My Lord and my God!” with a sense of joy. We could read it very differently – again with Thomas, the forensic scientist examining the body, probing Jesus, talking to to Jesus, as if a patient sufferer, while processing what he is seeing. “They did this to you?” “How deep that wound goes.” “This is what you put yourself through?” “You did this for me?” 

The realisation this examination evoked would have  a very different tone to the one we are used to. Read it differently. Instead of the tone of triumphant joy – as in “My Lord and my God” there may have been the tone of “Myyyyyy Looooord!” “Myyyyyyy God, what have they done to you?”

Thomas is the one who sees the wounds of Jesus, and the truth is in what he sees.

I want to explore what it is to see the wounds of others and our responses. It’s a growing question because there seems to be a battleground developing between those who want their wounds to be seen and those who very intentionally refuse to look, dismissing people for their whining. The battle has been fought down the ages, but is now being fought with a renewed intensity in the forefront of our politics.

The battle lines have been drawn between those who are “woke” and those who are “anti-woke”. The word “woke” made its way into our vocabulary through its usage in the African-American communities where it means staying “alert” to the wounds of racial discrimination. Its use spread through the Black Lives Matter movement and  the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017. Being woke is being alert to the woundedness of others. But, most recently, woke has been turned into an offensive word and a term of abuse by those who are anti-woke who accuse the wounded and their sympathisers of being “snowflakes”.

“Unless I see your wounds” – that’s what this is about. The inspiration is Thomas and the wounds he sees, and the wounds Jesus carries. They take us to the heart of the battle.

Can we see one another’s wounds and the pain we bear. 

Can I see your wounds? Can I see how hurt you are? Can you tell us what hurts you?

We can only believe when we see the wounds and understand the back story to those wounds.

Gareth Malone has recently done a series where he put together a choir of eight singers to perform St John’s Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. Some of you may have seen it. What made it so interesting was getting to know the eight people who formed their choir, hearing their stories and seeing their wounds. 

For example, a close relative of one of them, a niece, had been killed in a road traffic accident the previous week – and there Simon, her uncle, was there rehearsing, finding the rehearsing something that helped with the wounds.

Another of them, Joy, was one of the few who knew the passion story. She grew up in the church. Her wounds were wounds of rejection. She carried the scars of having been rejected by her parents when she was a baby, and then again felt rejected by her church at the age of 12 when it became clear to her that she was gay. (Incidentally, that has been thought to be an appropriate age for the Holy Spirit to confirm faith in a service of Confirmation.) Here we have a rejection, not a confirmation – with all the wounds and scarring that go with it. Her faith is still important to her. She was wearing a prominent cross of another rejected one.

Already, in two of them, we see their wounds. The wounds we were shown were fairly typical – the wounds of sudden loss and the wounds inflicted on some who are gay. It was only the surface we were touching. We obviously weren’t shown the complications which are personal to each wounding.

Bach himself was sore wounded. By the age of 10 he had lost both his parents. His first wife died after they’d been married 13 years. 12 of his 20 children died before they were 3. Research by John Eliot Gardiner reveals the violent, thuggish world of the young Bach. Gang warfare and bullying typified his schooling with inspection reports showing that boys were brutalised. They were “rowdy, subversive, thuggish, beer and wine loving, girl-chasing, breaking windows, brandishing daggers”. He missed 258 days of schooling in 3 years – kept at home, like many for fear of what went on in school. Do we understand his music more, do we see his musical score better for seeing the scarring and scale of his wounds?

Can we see the woundedness in others? The wounds of those who are gay. The wounds of those who have grown old and tired. The wounds of those who have had to fight through war. Can we see the woundedness of those who have had to flee – the refugee, the jilted. The wounds of those who are black those who are disabled. So many of their wounds have been inflicted by those who haven’t cared for them/us as they should

These wounds matter. The wounded don’t want to hide their wounds. Their wounds are who they are. Our wounds are who we are. They have made us who we are. As I said, it’s the Black Lives Matter movement which has encouraged wokeness. Members of the Black Lives Matter movement insist the wounds are part of who they are. Their history matters – their wounds matter.

With our own loved ones it is important to see their wounds. When a child is upset we want to know where it hurts. With a partner, we want to understand the story of their scars and the wounds they carry.

And all of us want to be believed for the stories we tell about ourselves, our battles, challenges and wounds. That is what is so important about a community like this. Our best chance of being believed is being amongst people who trust one another – who we can trust with our very lives – sheltered from the indifference and cynicism of those too wrapped up in themselves to see the gaping wounds so many have to hide because they fear they’d never be believed.

Some of our wounds are self-inflicted – maybe a relationship breakdown which was my fault, or the wounds may be the result of personal neglect, or the way we’ve misused our bodies. Our sense of shame covers up the wounds. 

Through prayer and encouragement
we may begin to open up
to the one who wants to see,
to the one who says “let me see”,
to the one we can trust
with the shame we are showing them,
to the one we trust will believe us,
even God who wants to see, to heal
what matters to us matters to him
what’s wounded us, wounded him,
crowned with agony.

It’s not “wokeness” that alerts us to the pain and wounds of others. It’s our passion for the other which we call compassion. We mustn’t let the anti-woke brigade prevent us seeing the pain and suffering of others. Not seeing why, how and what is hurting rubs salt into the wounds and isolates them from us.

When we are trusted enough for people to show themselves to us, and when we truly see them, we believe. Seeing is believing – and our hearts go out to those who have so trusted us to believe in them. They are believed and beloved. They are known.

Thomas said: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Nor will we believe people unless we also see the marks of the nails, the cuts in their bodies, the scarring of their minds. Unless his/her/their/our nail marks are seen and his/her/their/our wounds felt he/she/they/we will not be believed and will not be beloved.

John 20:19-end

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord’. But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’
A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.