Sermons & Other Words

So, there’s this garden. In it we see a woman crying. She’s blinded by grief.

She has stumbled her way there. She hadn’t slept.

So, she doesn’t notice the signs of beauty and newness around her. Like the dew on the grass, or the flowers reaching for the sun.

She knows only sadness.

So, her gaze is downward when she hears footsteps through her veil of tears, a question stumbles out.

A question that mingles, sadness and anger.

The voice of love replies.

A voice that she cherished more than any other.

A voice she longed to hear and would know anywhere.

A voice that calls her by name.

The love song of God that have we recalled over the last few days has sung a new song of life into the lifeless body of Jesus.

The faith and trust that Jesus placed in the way of love on Friday has been fulfilled.

He is risen!

Jesus is alone. Last night Jesus girded himself with a towel and told his followers that if they were to follow him they were to love one another.

Then he broke bread and shared wine, his body and blood. Gifts of love to sustain those whom he loved then and those whom he loves now.

The way of love then took us to the garden. We kept watch with him as the way before him was revealed.

From there came his arrest. The steps from the garden to the prison made, then trial, sentence and onto Golgotha. Each step costly along the way costly.

Those who said they would never leave him have fled they have taken a different path leaving Jesus alone. Alone to face his end.

They’d sat at the feet of Jesus.

They had listened on hill sides, on sea shores. In houses without a roof. In holy places and whilst walking along.

Time and again they missed the point, they heard but didn’t understand. Now his words were to take on even more depth of meaning because they were to be enacted.

They weren’t to be words of an instruction manual rather they were words embodied in action.

His talk of love was to find expression as he wrapped a towel around his waist and washed their feet, as he broke bread and shared wine symbols of his message, of his self-giving, life giving love.

These actions embodied those too easily spoken words – ‘I love you.’

A few years ago, the priest I worked with then came to his last celebration of Holy Week and Easter as a parish priest where we worked.

He approached these three days keen to share what he believed about what it was all about.

I cannot remember much of what he said but the sense of wanting to define what these days are all about is a question I return to each year.

This year, of course, things feel very different for us all yet the answer to the question for me remains the same the death and resurrection of Jesus is all about love.

Over the last few weeks our outlook on life has shrunk. Whereas just a few weeks ago we could come and go as we pleased, not just here in our country but around the world.

Nowadays that world seems different, smaller and somehow more fragile. It brings into perspective how despite all our apparent progress how vulnerable we really are.

For us here at St. Mary’s our church is closed.

And all of us spend our time at home, our freedom is restricted.

Consequently, the world looks different and our outlook on life has shrunk. Perhaps it’s inevitable for though wonderful acts of kindness and generosity have been manifest amongst us, at a time like this we tend to focus on our own concerns and worries.

From the practical – will have enough food to eat?

Will I have work, get paid, pay the bills.

To the profound – what shall I do with all this time, or even will I survive this?

These questions are seldom asked for we have become accustomed to a life of plenty and an abundance of opportunity.

Whilst we hope and pray that these days will soon be forgotten the feelings kindled by them find echoes in the story of Jesus.

“You’re not a very tactile minister are you!” were the closing words after visiting someone a few years ago. Perhaps they expected a hug when I left. And whilst I know I’m not a ‘hug a vicar’ type of cleric, I’m really not averse to a hug or putting my arm around someone as a sign of my support for them.

Over the last few weeks as we have struggled to cope with how to respond to Covid 19. The handshake which in our Eucharist symbolically expressed our desire for reconciliation and to be at peace with our neighbours was suspended.

It’s felt strange not to enact the words with that simple gesture, for actions in some ways do, as saying goes speak louder than words.

In the Gospels many of encounters Jesus had with people involved touch.
He touched people to heal them.
He washed people’s feet.
He was a very tactile Saviour.

“Thank goodness that’s over with!” a colleague of mine said that as one year we packed away the Christmas decorations in our office.

Christmas has gone in the blink of an eye, the retailers know it, the programme schedulers know it. The lights and decorations may have been packed up for another year (or will be ) but still, the crib scene remains.

The season does not end so abruptly here. We still have an opportunity to gaze at the crib scene. Today marks not an ending, but a beginning of another journey.

Today we begin the Epiphany season – shifting from rejoicing at God’s coming among us to reflecting on what it means – to us and to the life of the world.

We know well the story from the gospel of the Wise Men or Magi who first visited the Christ Child to “pay homage”, but what did it mean then and what does it mean for us now?

There are two strands, that I hope connect at least a little that I want to explore a little this evening. The first is about Joseph and his remarkable story.

He was a beloved son, adored by his father but hated by his brothers. They beat and abandon him in a ditch. He is sold into slavery.

He ends up in Egypt and becomes the trusted number 2 to Pharoah. He meets his brothers again who come to him for help. He is reconciled to them, and is reunited with the father who thought he was dead.

In the reading this evening Joseph is looking back over his life following the death of his father Jacob.

He reflects on his betrayal by his brothers who fear that once their father is dead he might seek retribution. But he says these remarkable words to them ‘even though you intended to do harm to me. God intended it for good.’

‘We believe in one God, maker….of all that is, seen and unseen.’ These are words from the creed that we shall say in a few minutes.

I often dwell on these words for it’s encouraging to me that in the midst of words that seek to define and pin down something of what we believe about God there is still a space for the unknown.

‘We believe in one God, maker….of all that is, seen and unseen.’

The first sentence in our first reading from the Letter to the Hebrews says something similar ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’

Here the writer of that letter wrestles with the nature of faith, and writes of a ‘conviction’ that the presence of God is pervasive, even in the ‘things not seen.’

So, both those who fashioned the creed and the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews knew that whilst they wanted to say something about God, that which is ‘seen’ they also needed to leave space for that which is unknown about God ‘the unseen’.