Big Society – Big Temptation: Sermon at Great St Mary’s Cambridge on 13th March

 

Matthew 4.1-11 

¹Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ ⁴But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’ ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you”, and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’ ⁷Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’ ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; ⁹and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ ¹⁰Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’ ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

 

“Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.” Yes, the Round the Bible in 40 Days Challenge has reached Leviticus 19, and every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is indeed starting to get a bit challenging. But it’s great to have found that so good a company of people – perhaps a thousand or so – are joining in with me in one way or another in taking on the task of reading the Bible cover to cover before Easter. All too often we behave like the great heretic Marcion and just read the bits that suit us or our lectionaries, even if we don’t go as far as he did and actually cut the rest out. There’s something to be said for just taking the Scriptures neat, letting them come at us and to us, instead of taming them and cutting them down to size. And as literature too, there is something of the Grand Story that you only sense if you sit through the whole show, instead of rushing out at the first interval to file your review.

So I’d like to encourage you this Lent to respond to the reminder that we do not live by bread alone not just by cutting down on the bread, but by sizing up on the scriptures. It’s not too late to join in the round the Bible adventure.

I’m using the “not live by bread alone” verse because it was of course in today’s Gospel, the account of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, as told by Matthew. It’s a fascinating piece of Scripture, and one aspect of that fascination is that unless the whole thing was just made up, then we have to assume that at least to some extent what the Gospels tell us goes back to Jesus’ own recounting of the incident to his disciples. There simply wasn’t anyone else there, the devil and angels apart, to take notes.

Fascinating too is the way in which both Christ and Devil both use Scripture to clinch their arguments. In terms of the culture of the time, they go to it like a pair of rabbis, firing off texts at each other. I rather like that approach. Leaving Scripture on the shelf either because we find it irrelevant on the one hand, or because it is too sacred to engage with on the other, doesn’t appeal to me; and I don’t think this is just a matter of taste.

I think there is a problem with these approaches because there is a problem if we treat God in the same way. At the heart of our faith is the belief that he is irrevocably in relationship with us, walking through history with us as the Old Testament so graphically records; walking our history in our very shoes as the New Testament so movingly tells us; and now always with us, to the end of the age. Most of us are quick to seek out a friend or family member to talk to when something is up, and find value and help in talking things through, arguing them out. How much more so with God.

400 years ago the people who worshipped in this place would have been full of anticipation and perhaps anxiety as the publication date drew near for a new version of the Bible in English which tried to square the circle of being officially authorised on the one hand but open for everyone to use on the other. Some of them will have sat in the translation committees, wrestling their way through their allotted books. All of them knew that these words were potentially a matter of life and death. Man shall not live by bread alone. This Lent, let’s share their hunger.

I could stop there, but the sort of life that God gives us is not meant to be an alternative existence, but a serious transformation of the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of God. Jesus said no to the temptations to just be a miracle worker on the one hand or a worldly ruler on the other. The two must collide. And if I stopped the sermon right here we’d be left in a far too churchy place; read the Bible and everything will be all right, in heaven if not on earth. Indeed – but God did not send his Son into the world to save us from it, but to save us in it, to save the world he loves. So however awkward it is, part of the arguing things out is letting the word and the world go into overlap now, and seeing what they have to say to each other today.

The temptation story, like so many Bible passages, can take us in many directions. The one I want to go in now is to do with fine words and parsnips. Let’s go back to the way in which Jesus and the Devil fire proof texts at each other. There is an underlying issue of how such texts should be used. Be a devil and take the text out of context and if you’re not careful you are just left with a con. Or promise things that you can’t actually deliver, and you’ll leave your victim in free fall, even from the finest cathedral. Fine words, but no parsnips buttered.

Now it doesn’t take long to see that this is leading us straight towards what has to be the big question in many of our minds at the moment, which is of course to do with the so-called Big Society. Are we really at the exciting if challenging beginning of a new sort of way of doing society, something that might even be part of the kingdom of God; or is it just a Big Smokescreen, all words and no substance. Should we be shouting about it from our steeples; or watching in case we are lured off them?

The choice is not, of course, as stark as that; and I am as allergic to unthinking support or unthinking antagonism here as I was for the scriptures. We need to engage, argue it out, work out what is really the best for us all. I am exploring, for instance, the idea of getting a group of movers and shakers together to convene something we might call the “Cambridge Conversations” later this year or early next, when speakers, an audience and a smaller group over supper afterwards can really chew over – on the record but without simple sniping – just what has been gained and what perhaps lost.

For now, we mostly have questions not answers, and many of those are in the area of the potentially dangerous gap between the fine words and the parsnips. Honesty, transparency and fairness are the value-words of the moment, and I suggest that while we have to accept that the current economic situation does indeed require some economy, and that we elected a government on that basis, we must share with government the task of sifting out the gaps between rhetoric and reality that are always likely to open up, and making sure that we really can work together to do things differently where we need to.

So for example, and to finish, the quick examples of the sort of things people have raised with me:

• There is a shortage of posts for midwives and the Prime Minister says we will recruit 3000 more. The Nursing Standard reports that 6 out of 10 Strategic Health Authorities are cutting midwifery training places, and midwives graduating now face an uncertain future. A Big Society needs big joined up thinking, and government has responsibility to help it happen.
• Faiths are named as a positive force in society; but inter-faith organisations have lost both regional and national budget support and many of the intermediate bodies on which they had seats seem to be disappearing. The Big Society needs these other estates of the realm to be empowered not handicapped.
• Rebuilding local community is very important to the Big Society project; but rural bodies are worried about loss of public transport, and a model that seems better suited to more urban and more prosperous place. The Big Society needs to cover all our not so big country.
• Cuts we are told will fall primarily on those most able to afford them. The mobility component of Disability Living Allowance was withdrawn. DLA were unconvinced that this was reform not reduction and felt vulnerable. In a Big Society that is also a Good Society, the neediest are protected.

I suspect that I am telling you what you already know, and there is much here that I do not know in any detail myself. How can we in a church community like ours not retreat from it into our ecclesiastical towers, seeing it as either irrelevant to faith or too awkward to engage in, but use the position we have to foster a healthy debate, and a healthy society too – perhaps even, the kingdom of God.

Filed under: Sermons and Talks, Uncategorized

Sermon at the Institution and Induction of the Revd Alasdair Paine as Vicar of St Andrew the Great, Cambridge

2 Timothy 3.14 – 4.5

3 ¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

4 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: ² Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. ³ For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ⁴ They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. ⁵ But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

But as for you. Paul is not going to let Timothy off the hook: his ministry matters. And Alasdair, your ministry matters too. As someone called to the leadership of a local church you hold a serious responsibility not only for yourself but for those committed to your care. So what has Paul got to say to Timothy and to us about how that care should be discharged?

I’m holding in my hand one of my most precious possessions, the Bible given to me at my baptism, and it is the Scriptures which Paul presents as the foundation of our ministry. My Bible is precious because it is the King James Version whose 400^th anniversary we mark this year and to which our forebears here in Cambridge and the Diocese of Ely made a notable contribution. It is precious because it was the gift of a saintly godmother who even now in her old age is an example and inspiration to me. But it is precious most of all because its greatest gift to me is God’s Word, the Word written witnessing to the Living Word who is our salvation.

That of course is just the argument that Paul is using to inspire Timothy. He began this letter with a reminder of the sincere faith which first lived in Timothy’s grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, and which Paul is now persuaded lives in Timothy too; and now he

urges him to “continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it”.

It is no bad thing, and often a positive encouragement, to remember and honour those who have gone before us in the faith, as we remember and honour Mark and the many others who have led and helped us and this church on its journey of faith over the years. But they would be the first to remind us that our focus like Paul’s must swiftly turn back to the Scriptures themselves which are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

This is the first major theme of Paul’s advice here, of the vision which is held at St Andrew the Great, and which I commend to you Alasdair for your ministry as I seek it also for mine. Stay rootly securely in the Scriptures and through them prayerfully in Christ. This way lies the joy of salvation, and the transformation of our lives.

Our roots then must be soundly and securely in Christ; but that is not the end of the matter. Paul writing to the Colossians reminds them that once rooted in Christ they must also be ^built up in him and strengthened in the faith. So – sound roots, but also strong shoots; and that is the theme which Paul now takes up here as well, as he goes on to tell Timothy that, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

“Teaching, rebuking, correcting and training” – I think the best way of reading this powerful piling-up of verbs is to take the middle two together, and then – if we stay with the parallel picture of a growing plant – Paul is reminding Timothy that the Scriptures are relevant and powerful at every stage in our discipleship. They are the teaching that stimulates our growth, our feeding; they are the standard against which our growth is tested, our pruning; and they are the framework into which our growth is shaped, our training.

I am not very good at anecdotes, but I know a man who is, and I looked up William Barclay’s old commentary at this point, and his pages were full of stories of how the Bible had made an amazing and critical difference for people at all these points. A nursing sister on a night shift picking up a Gospel left for the patients, which in her words “shone and glowed with truth” and led her to salvation. A Brazilian nobleman pulling a Bible apart to try and burn it more easily, reading the words of the Sermon on the Mount, and reading on all night and into faith. You’ll have read such stories yourself and they may be your story too.

I know that when my faith came particularly alive for me at one point in my ministry I wore out a Bible in just a few years, and I hope I wear out a few more yet. This Lent I’m setting myself the challenge of reading through the whole book again: I’m calling it Round the Bible in 40 Days. There’s a special website you can go to; 40 people in the diocese have agreed to contribute reflections; and you might like join me.

And the point of it all? This is Paul’s second theme, and the second part of the vision here at StAG, and my second charge to you Alasdair: that we should all grow in our discipleship. Not to pass an exam in in Scripture Knowledge, but to grow in righteousness, to grow into the likeness and maturity of Christ. That’s what it’s all about. Not us, but Christ.

Finally, roots and shoots lead naturally to fruits, “so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” If we are in Christ, if more and more it is Christ in us not just we ourselves that matters and motivates our actions, then we are in a position where we can like Christ be about the Father’s business. We can pray to discern what the Father is doing, and make it what we do too.

This I think is the best way to approach the whole business of “good works”. They are a consequence of our holiness, rather than a cause of it, and they are God’s work before they are ours. Given those provisos, then we must give ourselves to such works without reserve, and Paul goes on to make sure that Timothy really has got the message too: in season and out of season, with patience and endurance, do the work, discharge the duties of your ministry.

The work – of an evangelist. It means here the whole gamut of gospel teaching and proclamation, but Paul also reminds Timothy that in an age then as now when there are plenty of alternatives around to satisfy itchy ears, there is work to do not only in teaching the faithful but also in with the public debate around us and letting the gospel be heard there too. So here is Paul’s final theme and the third part of the vision here, and so the third charge I want to give you Alasdair to share with me: reach out ever more strongly to the university and city around you here and especially to its young people and students and offer them the Word of life. If you are here today but have not let this amazing Word speak into your life, then look out for one of the bright red Gospels I’ve put at the back of church and pop it in your pocket to read at home. And if you have already been touched by this amazing book, then be a walking word of life as you leave church today, ready to share that life with others in who you are and what you say.

St Andrew’s has a good deep rooting in this Word of life; it has been greatly used by God in growing that life in generations of young people especially and equipping them for the work of their lives; and it is set strategically at the very heart of this humming city. Alasdair: there is work to do. Your ministry matters; this church matters; and because you and they matter to God, we can pray today with confidence that Christ whose life is in you will strengthen you and sustain you as you do his work. So be it. Amen.

Filed under: Christianity, Sermons and Talks

Diocese of Ely, Ordination Charge 2010

Luke 4.14-30: Jesus Begins His Public Ministry

^14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ^15 He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. ^16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. ^17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: ^18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, ^19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

^20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, ^21 and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

^22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

^23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your home town what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ ”

^24 “I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his home town. ^25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ^26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ^27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

^28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ^29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. ^30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

As far as we know, Jesus never served a curacy in the Church of England, though I am waiting for Dan Brown’s next novel with bated breath just in case new evidence has emerged. Jesus did, however, have a public ministry like you, and that ministry had a public beginning, just as yours has. The Spirit of God was seen to descend on him at his baptism, and then that same Spirit drove him into what I suppose we can call his ordination retreat. (A feature of the Spirit in the New Testament is that he helps all the right things to happen, but not necessarily in what we might think is the right order: this is the Morecombe-Wise doctrine of pneumatology with which I am sure you are familiar by now.)

And then Jesus has to start preaching and teaching, just like you, and we have just heard the account of his first recorded sermon from Luke chapter 4. It is one of those “I wish I was there” moments. Tickets will be available to go and listen for yourself just as soon as I have perfected my time machine, but until then we are as ever grateful to God for the Holy Scriptures which bring it so vividly to life for us.

By now you’ll realise that my own sermon training means that I find it hard not to think in threes, so I want to open up three features of this episode for you, which to my mind have a lot to say about our own public ministry as well as that of Jesus.

First, Jesus goes to church. He teaches in the synagogues, and specifically teaches here in the synagogue of his home town of Nazareth. Just as he does not abrogate the Law and does not stop going to the Temple, so he does not back out of bowling up at his local synagogue either. For Nazareth it was the place of prayer where local people could gather locally to bring the whole needs of their locality to God.

So too it is not possible for me to ordain you today other than to a title, to a particular place and a particular group of people; and I suggest that the first call on you as an ordained minister is to be a person of prayer in that place and gather others round you to pray with you for it and its people. The historic holy houses of that place will be obvious and natural places for such prayer, though not the only places – a truth to which we shall return. Those old inherited buildings are not to be scorned: they are places where generations have commended in love their loved ones into the love of God in life and in death, in sorrow and in joy; and it is a substantial privilege for us to be those who are trusted to minister to them there. They are the places too where generations of Christians have met together to grow in their love of God and of each other and become the body of Christ, sharing in his work. So, in church and out of church, we are first of all to be people of prayer in the place to which God has sent us, gathering round us others who will share in prayer and ministry too.

Secondly, Jesus unrolls the scroll and opens the Scriptures. The members of the other Abrahamic faith communities are called “The People of the Book” by Muslims, and ours is no ordinary book. Our Scriptures are both our words about God and God’s word to us. Jesus himself was soaked in and formed by the written word of God and it is a poor theology which lets daylight show between that and the incarnate word of God – or indeed the word of God through the Spirit now, to which both bear witness, and to which we will also return. The magic books of a Harry Potter story or a Terry Pratchett novel have letters that come alive; this book is more than magic, and in its letters are life itself, the life of God. Perhaps ever copy should not just say Holy Bible on the front in a sober typeface, but Handle with Care in letters of fire.

So unsurprisingly it is the Scriptures which will be placed in your hands later today as the sign of your authority as a minister, because all our authority depends utterly on God and his word. Canon Law requires a large reading Bible to be available in every church and another of convenient size to be in the pulpit for the preacher. Our liturgies are shot through with Scripture and give the public reading and exposition of it prime place. So the second call on each of us as ministers is to be people of the book, people who open the Scriptures, are open to their word, and open them to others too.

Thirdly, Jesus does not only read the Scriptures to those in the synagogue but proclaims that they are to be fulfilled in their hearing; that the Spirit to which the Scriptures bear witness is going to alive and effective not just then but now, not just in worship but in the worldly realities of poverty, imprisonment, illness and oppression. I can see the TV programme now: “Spiritwatch”, with Ms Humble or Mr Oddy following with whispered awe the transforming work of God, moment by moment, day by day.

So at heart of your ordination is the great prayer for the coming of the Spirit, the Veni Creator and at the heart of the ordination prayer itself my petition is, “Send down your Spirit.” Then in the power of that Spirit our prayer is and will be valid, and the scriptures will be open, and the Spirit will be at work not just in our churches old or new but in our schools and our shops, in our houses and hospitals, in our inns and our institutes. God did not so love the church that he sent his only Son to us, but he so loved the world. So in God’s name we go out into that world to share his love and call those we meet into his kingdom, even as Jesus himself did. So the third call on us is to be people of the Spirit, people blown away by God and blown out in his mission to redeem the world.

I could have ended the reading from Luke 4 at this point, but faithfulness to the word means reading to the end of the passage, so we cannot avoid facing the reality at this point that this awesome message and mission of Jesus was not exactly received with acclamation by the people of God in his place. The narrative is a bit confusing: the congregation seem at first to applaud him – the NIV text says that “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips” – but a few moments later they are trying to throw him off a cliff. The clue to understanding what’s going on might be that the underlying Greek text does not say that they were amazed at his gracious words but at his words of grace. And that, at least according to Tom Wright whose Greek is a lot better than mine, could also mean words about the grace of God, and in particular the free saving grace of God shown to Jews and Gentiles alike – a difficult message perhaps for a Jewish community gathered in a Gentile area like Galilee, and often a difficult message now. Similarly the words translated “spoke well of” and “amazed” can have negative force as well as positive – “everyone started talking about him and was staggered at his words about grace.”

But whatever the precise exegesis, the thrust is clear. Something Jesus said took the congregation out of their comfort zone, seemed to be opening up God’s grace and God’s kingdom in a way that went well beyond what they had become used to. And it will be very surprising if your own proclamation of God’s grace – which still goes way beyond our boundaries and expectations – will not sometimes have the same effect, precisely because we have taken God’s word at its word, we have prayed for the Spirit to come, and we have opened ourselves to its life-giving power for today. We do not ourselves set out to provoke or disturb, but we are not blind either to the fact that the very act of blessing, proclaiming God’s grace, can itself disturb, whether we do it from the pulpit or in our pastoral conversations. But proclaim it we must; blessing is what we are about.

And that leads us to my final point. Although your ministry may in some ways be like that of Jesus, you are not Jesus. Rather, you are the people of Jesus the Christ, commonly called Christians. In doing everything we have talked about you will not be doing it for yourself, but for him; you will not be offering yourself or relying on yourself, but on him; and if your ministry has an effect, it will be his effect not one you have either looked for or not looked for. And because it is in his service that you are faithfully ministering, it is he who will also sustain you and save you when the going in it gets tough. As you bless others, so he will bless you. In the beginning – Jesus. At the end – Jesus. He is our Alpha and Omega, and in him we place our trust. Amen.

+ David

3^rd July 2010

The Feast of St Thomas
and the second anniversary of my own ordination to the episcopate

Filed under: Sermons and Talks

Royal Anglian Regiment Service of Thanksgiving at Ely Cathedral

Sermon preached by the Bishop of Huntingdon

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Matthew 5.9

It is both a privilege and a joy to be able to welcome home, with much thanksgiving, the members of our Royal Anglian Regiment after their tour of duty in Afghanistan. I am also very glad that Jesus’ famous Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount have been chosen  as our New Testament reading. They remind us that underpinning all our own duty and devotion there is a God, a good God, who has himself laid down his life for his friends. If he calls us into his service, he has undertaken that service first himself.

One line in particular stands out today, of course. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” I am clear in my own mind that what our regiment has been doing in Afghanistan is to try to make peace, and at a considerable personal price; at indeed the ultimate price for some whom we remember today but who are with us no more. We honour and remember them. …

Peacemaking like this is no trivial pursuit. It is a way in which we join in with the activity of God, whose great work in Christ was precisely to come into what had even for him become dangerous and disputed territory in order to remake peace. His love went way beyond the conventional boundaries of his family and friends as he loved and laid down his life for those from whom he had become estranged, for even his enemies. It is because our peacemaking is a sharing in that great peacemaking that those who make such peace will be called the children of God: they are living in their Father’s likeness, showing his family traits, chips off a very great block indeed.

How can such a demanding work be undertaken and sustained? We know all too well that whether we are soldiers or civilians, colonels or councillors, we are far from perfect. Cats get kicked; families fall out; words are said that should never have been said and deeds done that should never have been done. There is little point in assuming that we will all achieve perfection, but there is every point in striving for perfection, for we surely share the ideal that not a single person, even a single part of our environment, will be hurt in any way if it is at all possible to avoid it; that peace will indeed come on earth, full stop.

I would like to suggest that whatever our walk of life three key elements come into play if we are to sustain such a challenging work. I will link them for ease of memory – mine if not yours – with the three words character, companionship, and compassion.

It is a generally accepted principle across the philosophies and faiths that peace starts in the heart and soul of each single person. If there is fighting and turmoil there, there is little chance of it spreading any wider. There has been a move back in recent years to remind us that building character, growing good things in the individual person is a prerequisite if we are to hope for good actions from them. I suspect that I hardly need to remind those in our armed forces of this; but I also suspect that we in the church and civil society in general could up our game. All the main faiths offer some sort of path to such a peace, and a society that marginalises the role of faith is in danger of losing the roots of right living. Perhaps we have indeed seen something of a paper chase after policies and projects, all well-intentioned, but also leaving the feeling that they are not getting to the heart of the matter. So I suggest that it is indeed our hearts that matter, and that the Christian faith that has been fostered here in this Cathedral for more than a millennium still offers the same message of peace that the angels sang at Bethlehem. Be still for a moment and sense that peace, a peace that passes our understanding because it comes to us from something, from Someone who is greater than us, the Father of us all.

From character to companionship. It is not only as individuals that we must find and live out peace. Much of our turmoil is indeed inside us, but much of it too is between us, and relationships are perhaps the most important part of most of our lives. Having a proper sense of our own self-worth, knowing ourselves to be loved and finding inner peace are a good start; but things cannot stop there. There is an analogy here with child development. There comes a point when a child, dearly loved by its parents we hope, nevertheless has to learn that there are other children who are also dearly loved, and that this is actually going to be a good thing not a bad one, a strength not a weakness, a joy not a sorrow. To put it bluntly, they have to learn to share their toys. Anyone who works in education or social care will be familiar with the current motto, “Every Child Matters”. Our faith that every child is a gift from God, all made in his image, turns this from a passing slogan into an eternal truth: every child matters because every child is a child of God, just like us. So it is no surprise that the word you in the New Testament is so often plural not singular, that one another keeps cropping up – love one another, pray for one another, honour one another, accept one another. Nor is it s a surprise that the central action of the church became the communion, sharing bread together – which is what companionship literally means. Again I suspect that I hardly need to underline the importance of such companionship to the members of a regiment. But again I do have a worry that in our wider society we have become over-individualised and stumble in our efforts to express the values or indeed faith that we share. The God who has made us and who loves us has promised, however, to still stay with us and share in our companionship on the way, and he has not finished with us yet. Be still for a moment and sense the presence of Christ now, his call to you in how you are living out your life with others. …

Then finally and briefly, compassion. You might think that if everything I have been talking about so far came true the kingdom would have come. Well nearly. But there remains that one final challenge; the one we so often come back to in the Christian life; the challenge of the Cross and of Christ who died for our sake without in human terms even knowing us, for our sake when we may not have wanted to know him even if he did, for our sake even if we would have been glad to see him gone. Can we be compassionate not just to our friends, to those we know and like and love, but to everyone else too? Everything God gives us is designed to be given away, to be used not just for ourselves but for others; and that principle holds true all the way, from sharing our sandwiches to sharing our lives; from a present for our spouse to founding a hospital in Africa. It is why we remember with such honour those who have over the years and in recent years given their lives, in the armed forces but in many other ways too, especially when it is to the point of death but also when they made it the point of their lives. Compassion: suffering with and for the sake of someone else; in our families and amongst our friends; across our counties and nation, delighting in our diversity; and across the world, because there is no one living that I dare not call my brother or sister when all of us are children of the one same God. It’s a tough call, but God has promised that his Holy Spirit will be with us, confirming us – the word means strengthening us – to live the life of Christ, whatever the cost might be. For one last time, be quiet for a moment and consider what Christ’s call of service to you might be now, at some cost to yourself.

Then, together, through our character, our companionship and our compassion, and in the strength and grace of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we will make the peace that will show us to be indeed the children of God, active in his service today.

+ David Thomson

Filed under: Sermons and Talks

Youth and Children’s Leaders’ Lunch

I’m just back from a super day at St Mary’s School, Ely with about 60 youth and children’s leaders from across the diocese. Jan Payne led us in some uplifting worship, and then Julia Chamberlain, David Waters and I introduced the company to the national Going for Growth report on work with young people.

My bit was to introduce the central sections on mission and theology. Look below the fold for the powerpoint slides about Sharing in God’s Mission and the Five Marks of Mission.

Filed under: Church of England, Resources, Sermons and Talks, youth

We are Judged by our Deeds

Each year the members of the Cambridgeshire Regiment Association and the Royal Anglian Regiment Association gather for a reunion service at Ely Cathedral. This year (which is also the 150th anniversary of our Cadet Forces) I am the preacher, and I was struck by an old badge of the “Cambridgeshires” – a foot regiment that is an ancestor of the present formations – and its challenging motto.

“We are judged by our deeds”. This day is a very special one in the annual calendar of Cambridgeshire. Young Cadets gather together with County workers and seasoned veterans to remind ourselves of our communal cause, remember those who serve now, and honour those who have gone before us. None of us here today, though, will I think have worn in any official way the old brass badge of the long-disbanded XXXth (The Cambridgeshires) Regiment of Foot – one of the ancestors of the Cambridgeshire Regiment and its own successors. But you may know the badge, and if you do you may remember that on it stands a challenging motto : SPECTAMUR AGENDO – we are judged by our deeds.

Filed under: Sermons and Talks

Gardening with God: the Cambridge Mott Sermon 2010

In 1762 Alderman William Mott gave £5 p.a. to endow an annual sermon at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge. A memorial tablet in the church records that 10/6 should go to the preacher, 5/- to be divided between the minister, wardens and overseers for their trouble, and the rest to go to the poor. The money (I am told) has long since gone (though the poor, the vicar says, are still with them), but the tradition continues as part of the Mayoral Civic Sunday, and this year it is my privilege to deliver the sermon, on a theme close to my heart.                                              (photo © Cambridge 2000)

Thankyou very much for the privilege of preaching for you on this special and historic occasion. Our local civic government is seriously important to us, and we are grateful to those who serve in it, and keep them regularly in our prayers as Scripture says we should. Those prayers today are particularly with our new Mayor Cllr Sheila Stuart in what will be a demanding but exhilarating year, and in her honour I have dug out my own proper episcopal dress, which is still mercifully, I fear, a little cooler than mayoral fur.

Most of the time, of course, both the mayor and I will be dressed as you are, whether that is for undertaking our duties, or digging the garden. I don’t know whether Alderman Mott whose sermon I’m delighted to be preaching today (and whose 10/6 I would once have had) was a gardener, but Jean and I are totally Titchmarshed out after maxing all last week on the Chelsea Flower Show. We’re not born gardeners, but have twice been given large gardens to take on. The first was at a Cumbrian country rectory. It was a damp, sheltered spot and everything green grew like crazy. I used to dream of pruning. Now we have a lovely mature garden in Ely, where we can grow a wonderful variety of flowers and veg and we took ourselves off to the Beth Chatto gardens (pictured) a few days ago and came home well laden with new ones. Her motto is very much getting the right plants in the right places so they just romp away perfectly naturally. It’s a lovely image of how I think God wants it to be for each of us – growing splendidly, each in our own way, because we’re planted as we should be.

The idea of God as a gardener is of course built into the very structure of the Bible. It’s there at the beginning with the Garden of Eden. It’s there at the end in the image of the new Jerusalem. On the wall of the temple in the old Jerusalem, was a great garden vine because that was one of Israel’s main pictures of itself – as God’s vine in God’s vineyard. Jesus picks up the picture in several of his parables, and it was probably in front of the great golden vine that he gave the teaching we’ve just heard today, en route through the temple precincts – not unpoignantly – to another garden, that of Gethsemane.

Filed under: Gardening, Sermons and Talks

Real Presence

Yesterday was the Feast of Corpus Christ, the Body of Christ. The feast properly falls on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday (and is therefore a moveable one – next year it will be on 23rd June which may as late as it can get). It was introduced in the thirteenth century in the context of a eucharistic devotion that emphasised the real presence of Christ in the elements, and so was open to visions of hosts producing drops of blood such as the one at Bolsena that Pope Urban IV investigated in 1263. Behind this in turn lay the importance of maintaining a Christology that gave due weight to both the humanity and divinity of Christ.

So the theme I proposed in my sermon for the feast at Ely Cathedral was the Real Presence of Christ in the Body of Christ, looking at that as meaning the person of Christ himself, the bread of the eucharist, and then the church, also of course called Christ’s body.

• The important issue is not the language we use or our commitment to a particular stream of theology (I beg to suggest that any one set of words or concepts will fail to define out this mystery). The important issue is whether Christ is to be really encountered. So:
• In our life of faith, do we encounter and recognize the real presence of Christ; and do we enter into the reality of that relationship. Put this way, issues of churchmanship can be set to one side – but not the need to be in Christ if we are a Christian.
• In our worship do we open ourselves in all seriousness to that presence, expecting and desiring to stand open to the intersection of earth and heaven; or at least do we not let go of the desire to have the desire to desire it – for all is gift and grace.
• In life of the church, our church, do we live out the real presence of Christ in the way we behave to each other and to the world around us. It’s sacrifice all the way.

I found myself to my amazement managing to cope with all the incense and humeral veils and divine praises (it was the full works!), and my Mirfield-trained dad would have been proud of me. The ECOS sang beautifully as ever, and of course the propers for the feast mostly go back to the pen of Thomas Aquinas (as well as hymns like Pange Lingua, Tantum Ergo and more), which can’t be bad. The photo though is from Vaduz, not Ely. Sorry.

Filed under: Sermons and Talks

The Teapot of the Spirit

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation (Isaiah 12.3)

Have you ever felt what it is like to run on empty?

So much to do, so many problems, so little time

Not allowed to stop, rest, recharge

Afraid you’ll collapse, not make it

Ready to die?

That’s life

Our human experience

But not life as it is meant to be

We’re like a teapot

Well made

Some good stuff inside

Able to choose where to pour it – usually

Lid safely on

In fact, lid so safely on

That when the precious liquid is gone – it’s gone

And we’re done

No-one can fill themselves up again on their own

Others can help a bit – but it only goes so far

We’re done

Now imagine that’s not the end of the story

That someone far greater than us can lift the lid

Pour in new water

Get us going again

Not just once – but for ever

Streams of living water, flowing in, flowing out

Just like when Jesus was in the upper room

Peace in, peace out; joy in, joy out; Spirit in, Spirit out.

That’s it; that’s what coming to Christ is about

What getting confirmed really is

The trouble is, we don’t always remember to take off the lid

Which makes a mess, not tea.

So – what’s the lid, and how do we make sure it’s shifted?

I’ve talked about how we are wonderfully made

And well filled to start with

The trouble is, we forget the Maker

We grow a sense of self that is self-centred, self-sufficient

Even self-ish

We forget the Maker, or rubbish him, or just try to go it alone

And then, because of course aren’t really the Maker after all

We can’t cope and get scared

We go wrong and get guilty

We try out other ideas and get confused

And so the layers build up

Now perhaps you can see why

When someone gets baptised and confirmed

I ask them to turn again to God

To say sorry

To say they want to give up trying to go it alone

They can’t take the lid off themselves

But know they know again a man who can

And when we ask, he does

And the Spirit comes, and lives in us again

With joy we draw water

from the wells of salvation.

And in that day we say:

Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name

Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things

for great is the Holy One amongst us.

Before we go any further

Let’s pray now

Lids off

Spirit come.

Filed under: Sermons and Talks, theology

Little Gidding Pilgrimage 2010 Sermon at Evensong

Micah 6.6-8

Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

I wonder if there is just a touch of quaintness in our commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, his community, and their friend George Herbert? We come to it as in the midst of our over-busy lives, and it is easy to see the latter parts of theirs as rural idylls by contrast. No doubt they like we had moments when they wanted to get away from it all, be that from commerce or the court, the pursuit of profit or the hope of promotion. Unlike most of us, they also had the cash and connections to turn their dream into a reality. It would hardly have been their style, but it is amusing to think of them as the star subjects of a seventeenth century version of Location! Location! …

Filed under: Sermons and Talks