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The Raising of Lazarus

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 12:05:47 +0100

Westminster Abbey Lent 5

Let us also go that we may die with him

Today is the beginning of Passiontide when we shall repeat the story that some of us have heard so many times, the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Has repetition dulled it? A story repeated, says the great Brazilian writer, Reuben Alves, is never the same and the philosopher, Hieraclitus says, ‘You never step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are always flowing over you’ and Alves adds ‘Stories are like poems they are not to be understood. Their savour is inexhaustible.’

So we listen afresh and learn afresh and like St. Thomas we pledge ourselves to go with him, to enter into the saving events. Today in the story of the Raising of Lazarus the curtain rises. It is noteworthy that the ministry of Jesus begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral. Whether or not the story is strictly historical or not, it points us to the death and rising of Jesus himself, and makes it clear that this event of the raising of Lazarus was the principal reason for the hostility of the Jewish authorities. ‘Let us go that we may die with him’, says Thomas, and we seek to enter afresh into the saving events.

Am I saved? I ask myself. Is the world really saved/redeemed? How would it all look if it were? We sing the Passiontide hymns, say the prayers about the death of Jesus redeeming/saving us and the world. But looking inside myself and around the world I think, would it really be like this if that were all true? What about all the mess we see, the intractable violence and misery, our own sinfulness? In this regard I remember with some amusement that someone said, hearing nuns’ confessions was like being stoned to death with popcorn! But there is nothing trivial about sin in any form.

A few days ago I was re-reading a book whose author, W. H. Vanstone, shares a dream. A garbage worker had collected a vast mountain of rubbish of all sorts, a horrible sight. Yet at the bottom of it all there was, unaccountably, a beautiful face. He knew it was the face of God: God mixed up in the mess of human life, in the struggles of humankind. ‘O love, how deep, how broad, how high! How passing thought and fantasy’, as we shall soon sing in the offertory hymn.

In 2000 I happened to be in Melbourne for Holy Week and Easter. On Good Friday the Chaplain of one of the prisons in the city preached for us in our chapel. He told us that normally at the prison chapel services the lifers, those who had committed the most serious offences and those who were in prison for lesser crimes were separated, entering the chapel by different doors and sitting apart. But on Good Friday they all went in through the same door together. The symbolism won’t be lost on any of us.

Looking at the Gospel story: One of the problems facing the early Church was: How is the death of believers to be understood and faced? What was the real meaning of life and of death’s brutal reality. Death is temporary because it is finally overcome by the Resurrection of Jesus, they believed. Even so, though Lazarus is raised he will have to die again. The resurrection and Eternal life which springs from it overcome death but do not abolish it. And Faith is not theological assent but transformation and commitment. Do you believe, Jesus asks Martha? Come to believe, and from that new horizon you will understand both life and death in a new way.

In this story of the Raising of Lazarus I am touched, challenged and encouraged by a number of facts:

1) The message of the two sisters seems a perfect model of Intercession: He whom you love is sick. In trust we can just lay our concerns for people and situations before God and leave the outcome to God.

1) When Jesus meets Martha and later Mary the cry on both their lips is, If ONLY you had been here. Most of us have a long list of IF ONLYS, our regrets, our disappointments, our sorrows, our failures. We might write a list of them this Passiontide and leave them to the safe-keeping of Jesus crucified and risen. Archbishop Rowan in one of his sermons, Rebuilding the Ruins, speaks of rebuilding our lives with the bricks of our ‘ruins’, our failures, regrets, sorrows….

1) Seeing the grief and confusion all around him, Jesus wept. This is the shortest sentence in the Bible, the most astounding one too. The Early Church would not have invented such a fact. There are various theories about this weeping of Jesus and you can look them up in a commentary, but for me I see God in our flesh weeping with the world’s grief.

1) Perhaps the most dramatic episode in the whole Gospel is Jesus’ calling, some say screaming, Lazarus come forth. Come out. Leave the tomb, leave death, re-enter life. It is stating the obvious to say that he calls out to each of us, N… come forth. But what would it look like if we obeyed this call, if we were to receive the present not from the past with all its IF ONLYS but from the future enclosed in the Resurrection. God’s future can and will break into the mess, the grief and all else with goodness, with hope, with new possibilities. The Hebrew word for salvation, yasha means to be wide and spacious, to develop without hindrance. In both testaments salvation carries with it tonalities of being made whole. Cf. the story of the Valley of Dry Bones…

So to the question Am I saved? Is the world saved/redeemed? I think we can be positive about it but recognise that nothing is complete yet. We are on the way, moving towards the goal.

As we move on May the life-giving Cross be the source of all our joy and peace.

Sister Judith CSC

Wedding in Cana of Galilee

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 10:37:39 +0000

Westminster Abbey

‘There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee; the mother of Jesus was there and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited.’ John 2:1

It won’t surprise any of you to know weddings are rather on our minds at the Abbey at the moment. Despite all the pomp and ceremony of a wedding in this stunningly beautiful, holy and historic place, the heart of a wedding anywhere and any time is really no different: the pledging of one life to another ‘for richer, for poorer in sickness and in health till death do us part…’ Archbishop Rowan said in his Christmas Day sermon ‘Christian marriage is a sign of hope since it is a sign and sacrament of God’s own committed love.’ And through it we may, he says, learn why ‘lifelong faithfulness and the mutual surrender of selfishness are such great gifts.’ We can believe that every such occasion, every couple who come in sincerity and truth to make such a courageous and generous commitment are graced with the divine presence…..

‘There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee.’ Weddings/marriage are endlessly fascinating, for, apart from the romance, they touch on the universal, the archetypal. We see them acted out by children. Little girls dress up as brides in lace curtains and their mothers’ high heeled shoes and prance around, perhaps dreaming of the day when it will be for real. In my case there was a procession of film stars (Gregory Peck and Tyrone Power were two favourites) and celebrities I dreamed of marrying. These included the Australian pianist Richard Bonynge (unsurprisingly Dame Joan Sutherland got in first). Then there had been a little friend, David. I was about 5 and he a couple of years older, ‘Who will you marry when you grow up, David? I’d say, and he would reply, ‘You, Judy. Who will you marry when you grow up Judy,’ ‘You David.’ Then one day he said to his mother, ‘Do I really have to marry Judy when I grow up?’ There is a Website on the Internet for those troubled by Forced Marriage! (I do realise it is no laughing matter). Christian Marriage has to be entered upon willingly by both parties for it is a covenant, a solemn undertaking involving two parties.

‘There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee.’ The prophets image the bond between God and God’s people, including you and me, as a marriage bond, a solemn covenant, a covenant of love. In the first instance we know this applied to Israel as a whole nation, but later also to individuals within it. The prophet Hosea whose experience of marriage had been far from happy, nevertheless writes, ‘I will betroth you to myself for ever, betroth you with integrity and justice, with tenderness and love. I will betroth you to myself with faithfulness and you will know me as your God…..’

‘The rituals for nuns making their Vows mirrors some aspects of the marriage service. As the ring is in placed on the finger the Bishop says, ‘Take this ring as a sign of the covenant of faithful and eternal love between you and your Lord.’ The words said in response are attributed to St. Agnes, ‘ I am united to the One whom mortals and angels serve; to Him alone will I keep faithful, to Him alone with entire devotion I now offer myself.’ A monk writing of the correspondence between marriage vows and religious vows reminds us that in both cases it is not something done once for all in a grand ceremony and that’s it. It has constantly to be renewed when the shine has disappeared and we are fed up with it all.

This monk, Dom Hubert Van Zeller of Downside says that ‘Religious Life like married life has to begin anew every morning.’ The heart of married life and of Religious Life is complete surrender constantly repeated. We know that human beings make a mess of commitments, married people get divorced and people under religious Vows ask for dispensation. It is not a simple matter but full of complications and we can wonder if it is possible. ’God does not ask a perfect work but infinite desire.’ said St. Catherine of Siena whose Feast Day is 29th April. A much needed encouragement.

‘There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee…’ The author of St. John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus is setting up a series of clues or signposts about himself pointing to moments when heaven and earth intersect, when the transforming power of God’s love bursts into the present world. How lovely that this first sign takes place in a village wedding and one to save the blushes of a young bride. For the wine had run out, a social disaster, threatening to disgrace the young couple, a sad beginning to their married life. The servants turn to Mary who must have held some place of importance and she, naturally, turns to her Son. His response seems a bit harsh, ‘This isn’t really any business of yours, mother, or of mine.’ Yet Mary has total trust and confidence in him, shown in her words to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you to do.’ Do whatever he tells you to do. What would that be at this moment? Whatever he tells you to do, DO IT.

What he tells them to do in Cana must have seemed extremely odd ‘Fill the 6 water pots with water up to the brim;’ (750 litres!). the water pots used for the Jewish laws of purification, symbols of the old order which Jesus was transcending and transforming. God is doing through him a whole new thing. The transformation of water into wine is a sign of the effect that Jesus can have on human lives. If we need evidence of it, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s recent book, Made for Goodness will provide it. But we could pray through this story with our own failures and disappointments in mind. Transformation came when someone took Mary’s words seriously, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

But there was something else about it – it was excellent wine, such wine was usually served first ’You have kept the good wine until now’ they said. According to some scholars who comment on the Greek text, the word used has the sense of ‘just exactly now.’ ‘You have kept the good wine until just exactly now.’ The very best had been kept to the last. The renewal of the Covenant with God, for instance, is never too late and the same may be said of the healing of human relationships, though that can be trickier.

Archbishop Rowan said in the sermon I mentioned, ‘Christian Marriage is a sign of hope’, and we might expand that to include every Christian commitment: a sign of hope not only for ourselves in some privatised area of spirituality but hope for society, for our battered world and its battered people for whom we are to hold hope. ‘You are keeping the good wine until exactly now, this moment..’ Amen. So be it.

Sister Judith CSC

Abide in Me and I in You

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:20:06 +0000

Abiding isn't a word you hear very often these days. It has rather an old-fashioned ring about it. After all, it speaks of commitment, and waiting, and being alongside and hanging on in there.

And much of the world isn’t comfortable with those concepts. We live in a fast-paced society where everyone is on the lookout for the next tweet; the next posting on Facebook. Where emails demand an instant answer rather than hand written letters read and re-read before a thoughtful response is penned.

And yet this evening we've heard those familiar words of Jesus, ‘abide in me’. The word is used 11 times in the space of 10 verses, so it's not just a throwaway term.

‘I am the true vine – abide in me. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit."

Vines are interesting plants. Richard is in France at the moment and will have driven past a whole variety of vineyards. Some are neatly trimmed, almost regimented. Others are straggly, their top growth looking neglected. The small vine in our garden grew at a phenomenal rate last summer – and even produced edible grapes (though not even enough to make the wine for a single communion service!). But if it is to flourish, some severe pruning will have to take place – and not just once, but time and time again.

For the vine growers of the Loire, there is also the sense of abiding. You can't plant a row of vines this year and get a harvest next. They take years to establish, to train. But with skill and patience, they will continue to produce fruit for decades, sometimes even hundreds of years. And that requires action – on the part of the farmers – and in effect, the vines!

Abide in me. The road of faith is not about a quick-fix feel-good sensation. It is about commitment, the long-haul, being willing to abide in Christ. But it's not just one way. I will abide in you, says Jesus. God's commitment to us is also the long-haul. The constant caring, the necessary pruning so that parts of our lives which have not yet borne fruit might begin to blossom into fruitfulness. But that's not a one-day wonder. It's a shaping, and growing and changing through the days, months and years of abiding in Christ. Not about just sitting back and hoping for the best.

I was glad that we had the other reading – the one from Ecclesiasticus. It's not a book often read in public worship, and I'm not particularly familiar with it. So I skimmed some of it – and there is much about the value of differing skills; how to prepare for death and live through grief. And the chapter we read this evening is, I would suggest, about abiding.

It praises the one who seeks out the wisdom of the ancients in the study of God's law – something that can't be done in just a few minutes. He (for of course they always left the “s" off in ancient texts!) abides in God's word, seeking out the hidden meaning of proverbs and at home with the obscurity of parables. Not just looking at the words but actively seeking beyond the words.

I love that phrase from verse three. Too often people take a cursory glance at Scripture, decide it doesn't make sense and then dismiss it. Or they use Bible verses as proof texts to justify events, even to induce guilt (as someone might do with verse 7 of John 15). Abiding with Scripture – learning to live with the dynamic tensions of the living Word, to be at ease with obscurity, is about being in relationship with God. Abiding with God's Word in the company of Father and Son, waiting on the illumination of the Holy Spirit. And in that abiding is revealed mystery which cannot be seen through speed reading.

Today we commemorate Richard Rolles, a 14th century mystic. In his late teens he became a hermit – an abider in God's presence. His study of theology and practice of contemplation led him to spend the latter part of his life alongside a community of nuns in Hampole, more abiders in God.

14th century Richard roles wouldn't know what to make of life in 21st-century England. But in all the changes, increased speed and seeking after experience, the call of Christ for us to abide in him has not changed.

Just as those French vines slowly grow, are pruned and shaped so that their fruitfulness is increased and continues, we are reminded to follow the example of Richard Rolles and the company of saints before and after him, to abide in the love of Christ so that God may be glorified even through our knobbly and sometimes misshapen growth. Hang on in there – abide – and be active. And pray that I and the community of the faithful might do the same.

Mary Allen
Ham Common

Mary Magdalene and 25th Anniversary

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:04:07 +0100

Sr Marguerite Mae’s 25th profession anniversary

A reading from St Gregory the Great
John 20.11-18

Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me…’

One of the most famous paintings in the National Gallery is Titian’s ‘Noli me tangere’. It is a beautiful painting: the attention to detail is remarkable: there are the farm buildings on the right, against the blue sky background, with the clouds on the left picking up the light in the sky as the sun comes up. The tree near the centre looks like an acacia, and the pale green of its leaf is struggling to dominate the golden brown of first light. The landscape in the distance still has the greys and blues of the morning mist. There’s a man coming down the hill from the farm with his dog, perhaps heading for the sheep grazing in the paddock on the left. Ordinary life is beginning at the dawn of an ordinary day.

Except that it’s not an ordinary day for Mary of Magdala. Having observed the Sabbath correctly by doing nothing, here she is, early on the first day of the week, come to anoint the body. For Mary it is not an ordinary day.

But the body is not there. Imagine the devastation. Helpless she watched the whole dreadful pageant on Calvary. Helpless she stood at the foot of the cross. And now, having come to do the little that she could do for the one she loves, she finds she cannot even do that. The body has gone; the tomb is empty. In the despair of grief she weeps.

She bends down to look inside the tomb and the angels ask her why she is weeping. ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him’. She turns to see a man who asks her the same question, ‘Why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ In the painting he looks like the gardener, carrying a hoe and ready for work. But when you look more closely you can see the mark of the nail in the foot and the cloth draped around his body is not clothing; it is what remains of the linen shroud.

He speaks her name, ‘Mary’. She turns again and through the tears she sees who it is. She responds with the title she has always used, ‘Rabboni’. The painting captures that moment of recognition when Mary, her left hand leaning on jar of ointment, reaches out with her right hand in a gesture of excitement and love.

‘Do not keep hold of me’, says Jesus, and Titian captures that movement of the hip so that he is just out of Mary’s reach. ‘Do not hold on to me’, he says. It is a present imperative in Greek. If it had been an aorist imperative the right translation would be ‘Don’t touch me’, but it is in fact a present imperative so the right translation is ‘Don’t hold on to me’. Don’t hold on to me because I have not yet ascended to the Father. The work of salvation moves towards its completion in the Ascension when the Son rejoins the Father in heaven. That process must not be interrupted; Mary must let go of the this-earthly relationship she has with her Lord. She has to let go of the this-earthly relationship so that it can be transformed into a deeper and even more life-changing relationship – for the sake of the kingdom.

Letting go of the this-earthly is a hard lesson for us all. It is at the heart of the vows we make at profession. Letting go of money, of the control of property, having to account for everything is irritating, especially at the start of the journey. Letting go of the right to decide for yourself is harder, I think; obedience is specially difficult where you are not in a position to see the whole picture and have to trust the judgement of others. Letting go and trusting others takes you into the area of chastity, the letting go of the possibility of the kind of intimacy which comes with marriage and family life.

The worst of it is that making the vows is never the end of the matter. I may not call anything my own, but I am not exempt from taking responsibility for what is entrusted to me. And the longer you survive in religious life, the more responsibility you get: a librarian has to decide what books to buy; senior members of communities, just because of their experience and wisdom, are called on to enable the growth of ideas, and that could result in the buying and selling of property. Heads of houses and provincials know these sorts of headaches very well. We make lot of mistakes, I do anyway, on the personal level, and we make some mistakes as communities. But what the heck; you do what you can, as faithfully as you can, and that sometimes means ‘letting go’ of the things of the past in order to preserve the principle enshrined in the vow of poverty. It’s in the living of poverty that you come to see that material possessions do have value, not for their own sake, but for what you can do with them, for the sake of the kingdom.

Obedience is a more complicated kind of letting go because it involves our own will, and that most elusive concept, the will of God. Someone asked Fr Kelly once how you knew what the will of God was. He replied, and I quote, ‘You don’t – and that’s the giddy joke!’ SSM’s been living with that giddy joke ever since. You don’t know, and you have to be prepared to be a little agnostic in the religious life. You don’t know, so you live by faith. It’s worth remembering that the opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty -and there are very few things that you can be certain about. So you talk things through, you think things through, you try things out – in faith. We try to listen to one another; sometimes we are good at listening to one another, sometimes not so good. But we try – to listen to one another, and come to decisions together. After that we take our courage in both hands and put the decision into practice using all the talents God has given us. Listening and discovering our talents are two vital ingredients in obedience.

And where do we listen? Where do we discover and train talents? In the community, of course, the extraordinary alternative to marriage and family life into which we believe God has called us. Chastity may make us look wistfully at the families of our relatives and friends. They ask us to be godparents which is great, and it is lovely to see them – even lovelier, I think, because you know that at the end of the afternoon they will go home. Mind you, if you get stuck working in a children’s home it’s a different story… oh well! No, seriously, chastity makes us very aware that close personal relationships are a gift, and so we treasure the friendships we have with people inside the community and with people outside it. Friendship is a gift, and we discover that we ourselves are called to be gifts to other people. I suspect the greatest gift we have to offer anyone is our time: time to be with someone, sharing, learning, sometimes in silence as Mary must have done.

‘Do not hold on to me’, says Jesus. Let go, let go of the things that impede the proclamation of the kingdom. For us in religious life that takes the clear and specific form of the vows, with all their inconveniences and irritations. When I was professed the novice master at St Michael’s said quietly in my ear, ‘Don’t worry, the first 50 years is the worst’. So dear sister, you have only 25 years to go. After that, things can only get better.

In the meantime there are the inconveniences and irritations, but there are also moments of revelation when through our stumbling and tears we recognise the one who is calling us by name, for whose sake we have committed ourselves to letting go.

‘I have seen the Lord’, said Mary to the disciples - and my dear sisters, in some dim groping way, so have we.

Jonathan Ewer
Chaplain General

Different Spotlights on the Good Samaritan

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:53:12 +0100

Trinity 6 Year C Proper 10
Colossians 1: 1-14 Luke 10: 25-37

We live very much in an age of celebrities, a world of reality TV, chat shows and phone ins, go to the web page to cast your vote or ask your question. At the staff gathering this week Noel remarked that today’s Gospel made him think of an introduction to a chat show. “Our guest today is well known to you all and needs no introduction, the Good Samaritan”. Those words together do not actually appear in the text, yet the phrase being a “good Samaritan” has passed into our culture and the concept is where the name of the Samaritans comes from.

We are so familiar with the parable that we are inclined to say “O yes, it means, as followers of Jesus, we are called to go to the aid of those we come across, who are in need, even those we would regard as our enemies”. Because of that I want to tease out a few different levels of this parable, which can perhaps enable us to engage with its challenges to us in new ways.

The lawyer asks Jesus the question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” A strange question as, who inherits is a decision for the giver not the receiver. Jesus gets the lawyer to state what the law says, loving God with all your heart and soul, strength and mind and your neighbour as yourself. By the end of the passage we understand that by putting our love and care into action for our neighbour is the way in which we can love and serve God. We have come very much to emphasise the human personal aspect and to be less concerned with the God aspect. Loving God with our heart and soul, strength and mind is another level from the putting £10 in the Christian Aid envelope. Loving God with our heart and soul, strength and mind means that we need to pay attention, spend time and be in personal relationship with this God of ours. God, paying attention to him, worship both individual and joining with others is not just a hobby we can fit in when we have nothing else we want to do. For followers of Jesus our relationship with God makes demands on us. I came across this quote from William Willimon:

“We gather in church to be closer to God, but how do we like proximity to a God who loves enough not to pass by but lingers long enough among us to judge us and hold a higher standard of judgement against us than that by which we measure ourselves”

I take that to mean not a moralistic punishing God, but one who is gently nudging us on, wanting us to make time for our relationship with him. A loving God who is continually calling us to be our best selves, the me who shows something of Him. When each of us ask ourselves the question “Do I truly love or want to love God with my heart and soul, strength and mind?” It does challenge us.

By inviting us to love our fellow human beings God is inviting us to participate in his very life and being. In the course of our lives we are sometimes the one in the ditch and sometimes the helper the Samaritan. Events happen in our lives that are tragic and sad, accidents, illness, we can find ourselves feeling battered and without hope, left for dead. God is there with us in the ditch. Godʼs love and care can come to us through people, sometimes the most unexpected people. Sometimes we can be the one who is enabling, reaching out to someone, bringing back hope and life, where it had all seemed to have ebbed away and the situation lost. Sometimes we are called to be the innkeeper, caring for people along the way. Both the Samaritan and the innkeeper took care of the personʼs needs.

The good news, the Gospel, is about meeting peopleʼs needs. For most of us who enjoy a reasonable, comfortable life style recognizing and remembering what are the most important values and therefore needs in our life and staying true to them is not easy. We get distracted but at those ditch difficult times they come into sharp focus. The Gospel and our relationship with God can help us to see our deep needs, needs that perhaps we have been unaware of.

Martin Luther King Jr. often referred to the parable of the Good Samaritan. His ideas help to shed some new light on this familiar parable. He named three groups or philosophies found in the parable: The Robbers; the Way of the world and the Neighbour.
The Robbers, the Bandits are those whose attitude is : “What is yours is mine. And if you donʼt give it to me I’ll take it from you”. We might not be people who are mugging others, or defrauding them, but we also are more aware these days of how our standard of living that we feel we have a very reasonable right to, has adverse effects on those living in other parts of the world. For example our desire to have vegetables and fruit out of season provides a demand and market that results in people in their own countries having difficulty growing food for their own needs. Our western worldʼs fuel consumption and carbon emissions is all part of the reason the ice caps are melting and raising the sea level which is drowning some peoples lands.

There is no simple answer to this and it is complicated, but this should not let us be complacent about it. We are challenged to seek ways of changing this and be prepared as a nation and part of the western world to lower our standard of living.
Societies where there is oppression produce bandits. Societies which seek to bring dignity to all are less likely to produce bandits. The good news of the kingdom is about working towards a transformed society, one which has the welfare of not only our whole nation but the welfare of all in our world as its target.

Dr. Kingʼs second group is the Way of the World. We are all familiar with the phrase ‘well, that is the way things are and you canʼt do much about it.’ The priest and the Levite (Temple official) were being very cautious. This was a very dangerous road. Was this a trap? Were the bandits lying in wait ? Was the man already dead? Touching him would make them unclean and could cause “on the job” problems. They would be late and be letting people down. We can all get in touch with the fear. Think of yourself walking alone somewhere at night and someone coming up behind you? So many of us want to pass by on the other side and donʼt want to get involved in a situation, because apart from fear we also donʼt know what it might led to. Even the advice from the police is “If you see someone being attacked, donʼt get involved call 999”.

So one of the challenges this raises is how when we see and hear of situations that call for some response from us how do we risk getting involved and doing what we can. When we see it or hear it, how do we respond or is our stock answer “It is nothing to do with me, it is someone elseʼs responsibility, someone else will phone, someone else will stay with them until the ambulance comes. As followers of Jesus we are called to risk getting involved. We might feel the problems of poverty in our country and world are too big for us to get involved in. Yet God is crying out to us in our Sisters and Brothers in those situations, to do what we can.

Dr. Kingʼs third group is the Neighbour. The good neighbour in contrast to the robber knows that “What is mine is yours”. They understand that all humanity is linked and tied together. Neither predators nor passersby can be safe in a world where misery, famine, plague and hatred are the scourge of millions. Those who seek to bring in Godʼs love and justice live in the kingdom now, not in some distant day to come. For Dr. King the question of the passerby (what will happen to me if I help?) becomes for the neighbour “what will happen to the wounded stranger if I donʼt help?” In a quote from a sermon preached by him on April 4th 1967 he said.

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring" (King, April 4, 1967).

Martin Luther King was assassinated because of his views and campaign for justice. He knew all about traveling down dangerous roads. Apart from his living his life in the kingdom now, those he inspired and encouraged have helped to lead to Barack Obamaʼs election as President, which would have been unimaginable in 1967.

As we travel this road this pilgrimage through life together, may God help us to encourage and inspire one another. May we in the words of the Paulʼs Epistle pray for each other that God may fill us with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. May we be filled with Godʼs grace in this and every Eucharist to receive his blessing and strength to work and pray to bring in the kingdom and to grow in loving him with our whole heart and soul, mind and strength.

Anita CSC

The Healing of Namaan

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:38:55 +0100

The Fifth Sunday after Trinity
Proper 9 (Sunday between 3 and 9 July inclusive)
2 Kings 5.1-14, Galatians 6.1-16, Luke 10.1-11, 16-20

Let’s imagine, for a moment, a present day version of the story of Naaman:

Barack Obama’s top General has brought back from Iraq or Afghanistan a young woman to help his wife around the house. Incredible so far? It goes further.

This General has a shameful disease without hope of a cure: Aids, perhaps? But the young woman knows of a prophet whom, she believes, has the power to heal - and she shares this information with the General’s wife.

It’s not the sort of relationship we might expect to find between a ‘captor’ and ‘slave’… There seems to be a loving quality: a generosity of spirit from the girl - and an equally generous response from the wife, then from the General, and then from king himself!

What depth of affliction would it take for a mighty General to listen to the words of his ‘prisoner of war’… to take them seriously enough to turn to his king… and for the king to take them seriously enough to turn to his enemy, in supplication? Could we imagine Barack Obama writing to someone like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, asking them to heal his General? It seems absurd!

Now it may be that I don’t know enough about warfare between Aram and Israel… so let’s consider it on the basis of two individuals who really aren’t getting along: they’re always having arguments and they don’t see ‘eye to eye’ on anything. Every time they cross paths they're left with bad feeling. They have even come to blows. One of them has an incurable disease, and the other has a maid who knows a ‘healer’. How readily would the diseased person turn to this maid’s healer? I imagine it would not come easily. Naaman must have been desperate!

And so, having swallowed his pride and amassed a small fortune hoping to tempt the healer to help him, Namaan makes his way through ‘enemy territory’ to the foreign king, who imagines the worst… supposing there to be some subterfuge afoot. Fortunately, a ‘diplomatic incident’ is averted by Elisha’s intervention, and Namaan – the big, important General, with horses and chariots laden with precious gifts – drives up to Elisha’s house… and the healer can't even be bothered to come out to meet him?!

Can we enter into Namaan’s experience and empathize with him? ‘I thought that for me he would surely come out,’ Namaan fumes. He storms and rages. I have certainly experienced times in my life when I have been caught in this kind of defensive superiority.

Though it might not look like it, Namaan is terribly vulnerable. Leprosy was an incurable disease with the potential to disable, and even to kill. This outwardly mighty warrior is very fragile, and his fragility is expressed in rage. “Have I come to this… that I must beg from this foreigner?!” he might have spluttered, “This man is lucky that I spared his life! … and yet, he has the gall not even to come out to greet me??!!!!”

Namaan turns away at this point – ready to return home to the waters of his own, much superior, rivers. But then, (very gently, perhaps): “Father”, says one of his servants. This, for me, is the moment of healing. There is a reaching out which enables contact with Namaan in a way that he can accept. This is the moment of release. The defensive superiority gives way: he immerses himself in the Jordan… he allows himself to receive help, and “his flesh [is] restored like the flesh of a young boy…”

Is it just me? or can others recognize a similar pattern in our own lives – where God finds a way through our ‘mighty warrior selves’ – not asking from us silver and gold and fine raiments – but simple gestures: asking that we allow ourselves to receive from one another?

At the beginning of Galatians we heard: “if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness”. If any of us is ‘caught up’ in something, as Namaan was, is there another part of us, or another among us, who can play the role that gently says ‘Father… would you not try it if the healer had asked of you something very difficult?’

This is one of the riches that I have experienced in Community Life. Each of us has our ‘Namaan moments’ in one form or another, I suspect, and, by grace, each of us has the opportunity to become agents of healing for one another. As Paul says: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.”

Turning to the Gospel for this morning: it is difficult to know what led Jesus to say what he did – and how these words came to be recorded. This passage can sound quite harsh – not in the spirit, for example, of ‘bearing one another’s burdens!’ Jesus says: “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.” Well, Namaan’s servant might well have felt like a ‘lamb’ in the presence of a ‘wolf’!

And Jesus says: ‘Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.’ Is there anyone open to receive the healing gift that is offered? Like Namaan, is there anyone willing to be ‘immersed’; to surrender the ‘mighty warrior self’; to receive peace?

And if not,

“Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near…”

and there are several ‘fire and brimstone’ verses which come after this which have been left out of the lectionary.

Could it be that this passage reflects a similar passion to the one Jesus showed in turning over the tables of the money-changers in the temple? Is it a way of saying “Look! This REALLY MATTERS! Your life – all life – depends on it…” The kingdom of God is near when you welcome one of my disciples; when you are open to contact, and to receive healing from another.

One of the invocations to the Holy Spirit which we used to sing quite regularly echoes this theme. You may remember it: “Come Holy Ghost, come to our hearts…” As we sing, we call upon the Spirit to “Bend, stiff-necked pride; warm what is chill” – a prayer that some of us are called to utter over and over again in our lives! It’s not easy, but in those grace-filled moments when it happens, we know that the kingdom of God is near.

Now, to finish, let’s return to where we began: a present-day version of the story of Namaan… Barack Obama (and perhaps we might add David Cameron), Iraq and Afghanistan… an apparently intractable situation; a seemingly incurable ‘disease’? What will it take to find healing? Might we call on the Holy Spirit to “Bend, stiff-necked pride” wherever it is found in these conflicts; to “warm what is chill”? and pray that God might inspire a ‘servant’ to make contact, in a way that will lead to immersion and healing?

And is there any way that we can contribute to this process? It is my fervent prayer, and hope, and sometimes even my belief, that in our own small efforts, in our own small life as a Community, we do make a contribution to the world’s peace. When each of us is released from our own version of ‘defensive superiority’… when each of us makes contact with and owns our vulnerability and fragility… when each of us receives the healing contact of the ‘servant’… we change the world for the better.

As Meister Eckhart proclaimed in the Middle Ages: “If you want to change the world, change yourself.” And as Gandhi expressed it more recently: “Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

So let it be, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Susan CSC

Mutuality - what it means to be a neighbour

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:26:23 +0100

Luke 10:25-37

We are probably all familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. We may have even acted it out at Sunday School. Perhaps we were one of the robbers that attacked the man battered, robbed and left lying on the side of the road that cut through the hills between Jerusalem and Jericho. Or we were the priest or the Levite, religious leaders, passing by the injured man; the first hurrying by with his nose in the air and eyes averted, the other stopping briefly to look at the man and then quickly continuing on his way in case he should be contaminated or end up in the same condition. Then came the hero, journeying into our story like a travelling salesman. Perhaps we wanted to be him. We were told he was a hated Samaritan but that didn't make much impression on us because we didn't know any Samaritans and anyway we knew he was 'good'. He stopped, treated the man's wounds, put him on his donkey and
slowly continued his journey to Jericho where he left him in the paid-up care of the hotel owner. The Samaritan is held up as an example of the love one should show to a neighbour – or is he?

Let us stop and look more closely at the text. A lawyer, wanting to test Jesus, asked him what must he do to inherit eternal life? Jesus directed him to the law and inquired what he understood from it. The lawyer replied using the accepted summary of the law, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself". Jesus affirmed this answer and told the lawyer that if he did this he should indeed inherit eternal life. But the lawyer was not satisfied, he hadn't scored any points in this dialogue so far, so he asked "Who is my neighbour?"

As was often the case, Jesus didn't answer the question directly,
but instead told him a story and then asked the man to provide his own answer. "Which of these three do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
Something is wrong. The neighbour was supposed to be the one in need, the robbed and beaten-up man lying half dead on the road. We are supposed to see our neighbour in the suffering ones. Jesus has confused things. He has changed the noun "neighbour" into a verb.

The lawyer replies as we expect, of course carefully avoiding actually naming the Samaritan, "The one who showed him mercy". He is then told to do likewise, to be neighbourly, but who is the neighbour in the story, and who is our neighbour today?

Jesus was always messing things up and turning accepted ideas upside-down. Such as the notion of the kingdom of God, who was in and who was out, and what sort of relationships were found in it. Here I think is another example which changes who is the neighbour. As a result, I believe we have an example of the mutuality of loving relationships that belong in the kingdom of God and reflect those found in the relational Trinity.

Let us go back again to the story and look at the summary of the law supplied by the Lawyer. He recited the command to love God with your whole being, and then added that you are "to love your neighbour as yourself". It is not one of the ten commandments but rather a summary of some of them, and comes directly from Leviticus 19:18. Jewish scholars tell us that the Hebrew means not so much 'to love your neighbour as yourself' but 'to love your neighbour who is like yourself'. There is a subtle difference here. We are talking about a neighbour who is created by God as we are, a human being, a subject, a real person with a name, of equal status to ourselves, not just an object to control, or disregard. This person and ourselves are neighbours to one another, called into a mutual equal loving relationship.

Now, because I think it is very important, I want to pause and demonstrate what I mean by a mutual equal loving relationship. To begin with we have the priest and the Levite more or less ignoring the injured person and accentuating this by passing on the opposite side of the road – as far away as possible. This man is not even considered a human being, he is given no dignity – he is something that warrants only a glance by one man and looked down on by the other. He does not exist at all or just a dead bit of flesh.

Then comes the Samaritan. At first he helps the injured man from a dominating superior position – from above. He is the healthy one standing above the victim. The other is recognised as a human being but not yet as a subject with dignity, made in the image of God. Oil and wine are used. Then the Samaritan raises the bandaged man on to his donkey. See what has happened. The two men are now more or less at the same height. Neither is dominating the other or feeling less important than the other. The Samaritan must now change his pace, leading his donkey and perhaps helping to hold the man in the
saddle. The two men share the same risky position, vulnerable to being attacked by robbers. If anything, the man on the donkey has a slightly better possibility of escaping. They are vulnerable
neighbours to each other, both watching out for the other and dependent on the other. They are in a mutual relationship of love and compassion with one another.

As we look at this vignette of the Samaritan and the injured man on the donkey slowly fading into the distance, let us notice something else of importance. We have considered the Samaritan and the injured man, but the Samaritan needed help from other directions. First he tended the wounds by using the healing properties of oil and wine provided by nature. Next he was assisted by his donkey. Without this animal it is doubtful that he could have helped the man for 10 kms or 7 miles or more to the hotel. So we see this little group of God's creation demonstrating their inter-connection and oneness with each other and need for each other.

If we should now reply to the lawyer's question, "And who is my neighbour?", our answer could be everyone and everything on this planet. We are all neighbours to each other. As a community of believers and as individuals we are called to respect the dignity of the other and have a responsibility for the well-being of each other, including nature. I believe this parable challenges us to consider who is our neighbour? First, in our everyday life when we help one another, do we always do it in a way that respects the dignity of the other person – allowing them to sometimes make choices and have the opportunity to give as well as receive from us? Do we speak to people in wheel chairs or ignore them and dialogue only with their carers?
Do we realise when hospital visiting that we relate to patients from a dominating position of health, accentuated by a standing position?

Finally, as Australians we are faced at present with the problem of asylum seekers coming to our country – our neighbours in need, asking for a share of what we have, peace, dignity and a home. It is a current political issue. Many of these people are victims of abuse, and have had family members murdered. They have often waited for years in detention centres in Indonesia in appalling conditions described as "unsanitary, unsafe, isolated and utterly inappropriate for children", to be accepted by Australia or some other country. These centres are understaffed by Australian and United Nations' officials. The long delays experienced have caused some refugees in desperation to risk coming to Australia illegally in unsafe boats. The Good Samaritan shared the position of the victim and then provided for his care in the hotel. What is our attitude when asked to share our country with our neighbour who is a victim? - to accept having a little less so another can live?

Who is our neighbour we are to love, the one who is like ourselves? And to whom are we called to be neighbourly?

Helen CSC

Homily for Easter 4 Year C 2010

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:35:13 +0100

Acts 9: 36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9 -17 John 10: 22-33

I shouldn’t think there is anyone in church this morning who is not aware that we are in the run up to a General Election on May 6th. On Friday, some of us will have seen a party political broadcast on behalf of a new party, the English Democrats. One of the things they are setting out to do is to make St. George’s Day, April 23rd a national bank holiday.

St. George is rather a shadowy figure, whom we don’t know much about. All we know is that he was a Roman soldier, who became a Christian and because of that was martyred for his faith in AD 304. Where, you might ask, did the myth of the dragon come in.? It is possible that slaying the dragon was a symbol of overcoming the fear of death, pain and torture and witnessing to new life in Christ. Bishop Stephen Verney, in an article he wrote some years ago, suggested a modern interpretation, which says that none of us have to look too far to find dragons. He suggests that we each have our own personal dragons, our fears and that side of us that we find less desirable and difficult to accept. The part of us that we find difficult to bring into the transforming life of God. We know we are all called “to be Saints”, but we haven’t got there yet. We need to be able to with God’s grace, to face and work with our dragons. Some will perhaps need slaying and others taming and harnessing. All are part of whom we are, our unique selves whom God loves.

In today’s Gospel we have Jesus in Jerusalem at the “Festival of Dedication” . This feast was the most recent one, in Jesus’ time to be added to the Jewish calendar, as it was first celebrated in BC 164. We know it today as the Jewish feast of “Hanukkah”, the Festival of Lights, which is kept in December and comes quite close to Christmas. It celebrates the liberation of Jerusalem from the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, who had defiled the Temple and carried out one of the most dreadful persecutions of the people, trying to wipe out their faith.

Judas Maccabeus and his brothers fought and defeated him. The Temple was cleansed and everything connected with it purified after three years of pollution. It was celebrated with lights in the Temple and in every Jewish home. The seven branch candlestick, the menorah, is the one still used in Jewish homes to celebrate this feast today.

We are told that it was winter and Jesus was walking in the Temple area, in Solomon’s Colonnade, Solomon’s Portico. It was warmer on that side and so people tended to gather there in the winter. The Jews gathered around Jesus and asked “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ tell us plainly”. Jesus replies: “ I did tell you, but you do not believe me, because you are not my sheep”.

What are the Jews really asking? Doubtless there were some like Nicodemus, who really were sincere in their seeking and there were others who were trying to trap him. Jesus himself has not used or claimed, the title of Messiah when talking publicly. The Jews would of course know from the Scriptures what the signs of the messiah were. Jesus had shown by his deeds; the eyes of the blind being opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping like deer and the mute able to speak. He had shown by his words and the authority with which he spoke that he was the messiah.

Did those who asked the question really want to know the answer? We know that as a group they had already decided that Jesus was not the Messiah. We read in Chapter 9 verse 22 , that they had decided that anyone who said Jesus was the Messiah was to be put out of the synagogue. They had already decided that he was not the Messiah, so even if Jesus said he was, they wouldn’t believe him.

This raises for us a reflection on one of our dragons. Do we really want to hear the answer to our questions, especially if the answer is not the one we have already made up our minds that it should be. When we pray and ask that God would help us to see and do his will are we open to his surprises? It also reminds us of our need to be really open to hearing what other people are saying when they reply to our questions. We might not like, might not agree with them but if we listen to what they are saying it gives us a genuine place to start exploring the way forward together.

When people ask us about our faith how do we reply.? I came across this story about someone who was an Amish Farmer. The Amish are a conservative traditional Christian group who still live and work in close, mainly rural communities, without some of the inventions of modern life. This Amish farmer was asked by an enthusiastic young evangelist whether he had been saved, and whether he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour?

The farmer replied, "Why do you ask me such a thing? I could tell you anything. Here are the names of my banker, my grocer, and my farm hands. Ask them if I've been saved." Meaning ask them if I am a practicing Christian.

If people asked those we deal with, for example in the shops, at the doctors, those we we engage for work or those we employ, if there is enough evidence to convict us of being practicing Christians, what would they say.? The best way we share our Christian faith with others is by the way we live and put it into practice, actions speak louder than words. Reflecting on our lives and our actions can give us a lot of information about what we really believe about our values and what we consider important in out lives.

Jesus talks about the Jews not believing in him because they were not his sheep and goes on to add. “My sheep listen to my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish ; no one can snatch them out of my hand . The difference between those, who are his sheep and those who are not is in the question of relationship. Jesus’ followers are in relationship with him, they know his voice. It is that relationship which enables us to be rooted and secure, not able to be snatched away. No one can take away that relationship. Yes we can choose to move out of our relationship with God. We can give up on God as many people do, but God never gives up on us.

The meaning of the word “know” in the Greek carries with it the understanding of a close personal relationship. Our passage ends with Jesus’ statement that I and the Father are one. Jesus and the Father are in that close personal relationship whilst remaining two separate beings. Jesus is saying that he and the Father are united in the work that they do. We as his followers are called to do his work and to become one with Him.

The word used for “one” is the same as in the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one”. It is also used when talking about a husband and wife becoming one flesh. There is a quality of a unique unity and knowledge we share that is not part of our relationship with any other person. That is what we are each called to grow in and develop in our own relationship with God. We need to nurture our friendship and relationship so that it is impossible for us to feel parted.

In some ways it feels like another of those dragons. A letting go of our need to be in control. God calls us to trust in him, to let go of all our desires, wants and needs, to place them in his care. Another way of putting it is to accept our desires, wants and needs, to acknowledge them and let God transform them in a way that will take us beyond our own plans and dreams as we seek to do his will.

Another dragon is the ways we each yearn to be known and accepted for who we truly are, and yet at the same time we fear it. We get to know each other only in little bits and ways and gradually over time. We might feel we know our spouse, our children, our parents, those we live with and to some extent ourselves but we know that even in those relationships the knowing is only partial. God is the only one who fully knows, loves and accepts us. He invites us to face our demons and dragons, to enter into a transforming experience as we journey with each other in following him on our journey through life, to the eternal life he has won for us.

In this and every Eucharist, that promise of victory over death is renewed and we are given a fresh chance to let God in to transform our daily lives and to deepen our relationship with him. And so may other people whom we meet on our journey, come to know our risen and loving Lord through our living out of that relationship in our everyday lives.

Anita CSC

Welcome Service for Linda Mary

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:20:49 +0100

Isaiah 55.1-5, Psalm 34, 2 Corinthians 5.17-6.1, Mark 6.32-44

Jesus had compassion on the crowd, because they were like sheep without a shepherd’.

A few years ago I was told about a young English doctor who went to live in NSW – voluntarily, you understand – and he did rather well, as most GPs do in Australia. So as an investment – or a tax dodge, perhaps – he bought a small property just outside Dubbo in the mid-west. He planted some grain crops, wheat and barley mostly, and then decided to run a few sheep as well. Come shearing time he rang up the contractor, and the conversation went like this: - now for this part I have to relapse into my native dialect – or our native dialect, I should say.

‘Emmeny’. ‘Pardon?’ ‘Emmeny, emmeny sheep?’ ‘Oh, um ten’. ‘Ten thou’ – he could hear the contractor writing it down – ‘ten thousan sheep’. ‘No, not ten thousand, just ten’. Silence – and then: ‘Not ten thousan, jiss ten.’ Another silence. ‘Dja wanna gimme their nimes?’

So many discussions about Christian leadership make use of the metaphor of sheep and shepherds. There is very good biblical precedent, for all the major prophets make use of the metaphor: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel – some of the minor ones as well like Amos and Zechariah. All of these writers point up the dangers of having bad shepherds or having no shepherds at all – and that is the point here in our gospel reading. It is because the crowd have no shepherd, or appear to have no shepherd, that Jesus’ compassion is aroused.

The contrast is made more dramatic by various NT writers. St John has Jesus saying ‘I am the Good Shepherd’. The letter to Hebrews speaks of that ‘great shepherd of the sheep’, and St Peter looks forward to the time when ‘the chief shepherd shall appear’.

However, the problem with images is that they have a tendency to change. The image of looking after sheep has changed. In places like Australia, they tend to deal in large numbers, and to treat the animals simply as commercial items. With large numbers of sheep you don’t lead them, you drive them – you use dogs and stockmen on horses – though these days horses are often replaced by four-wheel drive vehicles.

If you think back a bit, this was the model of leadership the church sometimes projected. It was certainly this model of leadership that the larger religious orders used to project. Leadership was often about control, about forcing people into patterns of behaviour, tried and tested, we were assured in the noviciate, but based on top-down theories of theology, which left little room for initiative or individuality. It could be deadening and it made many of us cry out with Isaiah, “Why do you spend your labour for that which does not satisfy?”

By contrast, the ancient image of the shepherd is of a man leading a smallish number of sheep, a number small enough for him to know each one of them – and for each one of them to get to know him and recognise his voice. The great advantage of small communities is that we do get to know each others’ voices – and body language; we get to know all the ways the members of the group give expression to their thinking and feeling.

Intimacy is an important part of community life, the building up of trust, being comfortable in each others’ company, able to express our ideas, even our fears, confident that we will be heard, and taken seriously – provided we don’t take ourselves too seriously. For if we take ourselves too seriously we may become intolerant of opinions that differ from our own and disparaging of suggested courses of action that we hadn’t thought of first.

Furthermore, though intimacy is important, it has to be that kind of intimacy which respects the other’s need for privacy. There is that deep part inside of each of us that is known only to God, and we need to respect that. There is that hidden part of the self which needs to be nurtured to maturity in God’s own space and in God’s own time. Nurturing is certainly part of leading.

There are other things we can learn from sheep. I used to think they were stupid animals, until we got four at St Michael’s House to keep the grass down in the lower paddocks. But they kept on finding ways of getting through fences to get to flowers or young shrubs where they caused havoc. They weren’t stupid; they were cunning and determined. Well, you know what I’m going to say don’t you! It was only a matter of days after I was first made a prior in our community that I met the force of this cunning determination in one of our brothers. I was tricked into making a decision on the spot; you know when you’ve got one hand on the front door knob, keen not to be late for an appointment… It’s always then that someone needs to ask something. Having got me to make a decision, the said brother waited a day or two until he had an audience, and then with something of a flourish, he aired his disagreement with the decision. I was furious with him – and I was furious with myself for being so daft. But that was all part of the power game we used to play, the power game we were trained to play, I think. People had to find their place in the scheme of things; they had to find where the boundaries were.

The leadership of the Good Shepherd is so different. As often as not, when people asked Jesus a question, he didn’t answer it in a straightforward way. Sometimes he asked another question. Sometimes he told a story and asked the questioner – and us – what do you think of that… The welfare of the person, the power to think and respond, the individuality, the development of mind and spirit is what the Good Shepherd seems to elicit – and an awareness of the consequences of our decisions and actions. ‘Depart from evil and do good’, said the psalmist; ‘seek peace and pursue it’. In the end we have to be sorted – sheep on one side and goats on the other.

The leader has to lead. The shepherd keeps his eye on the sheep and when one of them is missing he can leave the ninety and nine to look after each other for a bit, while he finds the sheep that is lost. But his place is out front, leading the sheep. The shepherd knows where he is going, more or less. The leader of a community will have a vision, sometimes a detailed vision, usually the more general idea of where the good pasture might be. But the vision will not come to fruition if it is not communicated effectively. If the vision is not shared, it will simply fade away. We are back to that matter of intimacy again, the sharing of ideas, the sharing of fears, the sharing of hopes and ambitions.

Bill Countryman argues that we are all called to be priests to one another. I would add that we are also called to be deacons to one another, and to be bishops to one another. I think that our part of the church has a good record of being deacons, of being of service to each other and to people outside of the church. I think that we also have a good record of being priests to one another, of encouraging the exploration of holy things, of enlivening each other’s experience of God. I think the religious communities have had a special part to play in this sort of ministry. However, I don’t think we have been nearly so good at being bishops to each other. That ministry of support, practical as well as emotional and spiritual, has lagged behind a bit. So has the ministry of supervision, keeping a benevolent eye on one another, so that when we see signs of fatigue or temptation we can stand alongside, and sometimes even challenge, if it seems appropriate.

The leader of a community has a special responsibility in this area, but I would suggest that we are all called to this ministry, to know our fellow sheep, and be known by them: Intimacy, yes, but not intrusive. I remember a former Superior of this community telling me once that the novices had given her a piece of paper saying that she had failed in ‘Smothercraft’.

Linda you have entered a goodly heritage. This community led the way of reform in 70’s and those of us who were privileged to know the community then are grateful for CSC’s leadership: for its vision, for its ability to communicate the vision, for its care for other communities and especially for the leaders of other communities. It is a ministry of reconciliation which goes on, a ministry to which we have been called. ‘As we work together with him’, as St Paul says. At the start of this new dimension of your ministry we assure you of our love, and our prayers ‘that we should work together with him’, who is the Good Shepherd. Amen.

Jonathan Ewer
Chaplain General

Homily for Easter 2 Year C 2010

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 11:23:34 +0100

Readings Acts 5:27-32 John 20: 19-31

Well here we are a week after Easter day. I wonder what Easter means to you? Are you someone who has difficulty with believing in Jesus having a physical bodily Resurrection? Do you think those early apostles did have an experience of the risen Jesus but that it was a psychological one. Do you believe, as it says in the Creed we will shortly be reciting that “ that he descended to the dead and on the third day he rose again”.

Whatever our degree of belief or disbelieve there is probably part of us that resonates with Thomas. He was not with the disciples on Easter Day and when he saw them they told him that they had seen the Lord. Thomas, the realist says “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe”.

We talk about doubting Thomas but it would be more accurate to talk about conditional Thomas, Unless I see ........if I see.....then I will believe. At different times we have all heard people say and perhaps we ourselves have said, if God grants my prayer then I will believe there is a God. If there was historical proof ... then I would believe. If Jesus would cure such and such of their cancer then I would believe. Unless .. if such and such happens then I will make a commitment of faith. We are the ones putting down the conditions, wanting God to produce whatever proof we think is necessary.

We know what we would think if our nearest and dearest said if you do such and such for me then I will love you. Love doesn’t work that way. It is not love, if the basis is what can I get out of this relationship for me. Love is a mutual two way process where each loves and truly cares for the other. At various times in the Gospels we have people saying to Jesus “ If you are who you say you are prove it.” ! On Good Friday we have some of the bystanders and the priests taunting Jesus as he hung on the cross with “If you are the Son of God come down from the cross”. Earlier at the start of his ministry at the temptations in the wilderness we have the devil saying to him twice if you are the Son of God .....Remember in the parable of Lazarus and Dives when Lazarus in torment in Hades asks Moses to send Dives back to his brothers to warn them and Moses replies that they wouldn’t believe even if someone went back to them from the dead.

Belief, faith and trust are not about proof but we are lead to them usually gradually by experience. Thomas had returned to hear the others say that they had seen Jesus alive. Maybe Thomas thought the news too good to be true, how could it be? He was going to need some proof. We don’t know why Thomas was absent the first time Jesus appeared. It could have been that he was heartbroken about what had happened and needed to be alone with his grief. So often we are like that when we are in dark times of despair and disillusionment and maybe fear. We are so down we can’t see the glimmer of light of hope. So often we can find ourselves hiding as it were behind locked doors, of our own making. The temptation can be for us to let fear and uncertainty control our lives. A great grief or disappointment can lead people to shut themselves off from others and particularly from God.

Jesus comes and stands among them and says “Peace be with you”. Our translation lacks the full meaning of this greeting. The word Shalom, carries with it the national sense of hope that one day God’s order of peace and wholeness would come on earth and humankind would live together in harmony. Jesus comes and says Peace. He has come not just through the physical locked doors of the place where they were gathered, but thorough the locked doors of their paralyzed and fearful hearts and minds. Jesus presence was the sign of the new order of victory over death. He calls Thomas to come and touch the wounds on his hands and in his side. Thomas no longer needs to but makes the strongest statement of belief in the Gospel, “My Lord and my God”. Thomas calls Jesus God and worships him. Thomas believes that Jesus is God. Jesus replies “Because you have seen me you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen yet have believed”. That is us.

Bishop Stephen Verney wrote in his book “Water into Wine”: “But if we have come to faith then we know that faith in his resurrection lies beyond our faith that the tomb was empty, or that Jesus stood in his material body amongst his disciples. These mysterious events, in which earth and heaven interact, are stepping stones across the river of death, and if we cling to the stepping stones we will never get across the river. But happy are those, says Jesus, who have come to faith in me, for they already know that I am the Resurrection, and they have already entered into eternal life”.

So this Easter season, how can we let Jesus, the Lord of life bring more fullness of life and love into our lives. How can we let God’s love open us up and unlock our fears. How can we as the faith community here in Walton in Gordano be God’s people ? When people come to our Services, when people meet us do they experience something of the risen Christ in our midst. God calls us to be his people, his Easter people. The good news of Christ’s victory over death is not just for us but for all people. Jesus calls his disciples, his body the Church, us to make the good news known. We don’t have to go about preaching. Actions speak louder than words and it is as others experience us, as people who genuinely care and are concerned and respectful of others that they will be able to get a glimpse of the living Lord whom we serve. We seek to become people of peace in that wider way, praying in this and every Eucharist that God will fill us with his grace to do his will and bring in his kingdom here on earth in our lives.

Anita CSC

Easter at Ham

Sun, 4 Apr 2010 06:33:47 +0100

I seem to remember that during my school days we were all given silly things to do. My least favourite activities were all to do with the school gymnasium. Our class of 35 boys wad divide into five agility groups, with group 1 as the best, group 5 the worst. If there had been a group 6, I would have been in it, probably on my own!

Other sporting activities I found less unpleasant. One was a competition in which we had to hurl a cricket ball as far as possible. I wasn’t too bad at that, though I felt a bit sorry for the poor boy who had to run and pick all the balls up and bring them back to the pavilion.

Well, if you were to stand on the edge of the Common nearest the Convent and throw a cricket ball, you would have to be very strong indeed to get it as far as the building I am thinking about this morning. It is right over on the side of the common next to those new flats, and opposite the pub called the Hand and Flower. It is, like this convent, based on quite an old building but which has had other buildings added on. It has grounds at least as large as our garden here.
 I am referring to the Cassel Hospital, which for as long as I can remember has been a centre for the treatment of people with psychological and emotional problems. I first heard of it, described by a psychotherapy consultant at the hospital I was working at, as a Therapeutic Community.

These communities, of which the Cassel Hospital was one, provided a rather revolutionary approach to mental health problems. They were much less authoritarian and hierarchical than much medicine and psychiatry of their time. They had a much more egalitarian approach - a far cry from the ‘doctor knows best’ – or ‘doctors’ orders’ style of medicine of their day.

The fundamental philosophy of these residential communities was that everyone was expected to care for one another and to take responsibility for their own process of healing. There were to be doctors and nurses, and there was treatment, drugs and psychotherapy. But the emphasis was on helping people to help themselves, to rediscover their own strength, their own self-belief, their own potential.

At the heart of the system was group meetings, in which all were invited to bring their personal concerns, fears, worries, their despair and – when things started to improve, their hopes and their joy at being able to make a new start. No-one was bothered about whether you were male or female, young or old, black or white, married or single, rich or poor, gay or straight. Everyone was given a voice; everyone was expected to accept others without question, and as far as possible to help one another along the, often steep, path to recovery.

Our churches, all of them, face tough questions this Eastertide. What kind of church can be the human face of Christ, the living expression of his Resurrection today? What kind of church do we want to belong to? What kind of church does God want us to build for the future? What can the victory of Jesus Christ over the destructive forces of evil do to change the church now?

For me, there is a vision in mind of a church that has up to now so often failed it members in a number of ways. The abuse of children is only one – albeit devastating – example of the ways in which things have sometimes gone disastrously wrong. The way forward might be one in which we begin to learn from secular organisations like the Therapeutic Communities.

Will we ever all come to believe exactly the same things? Will we all come to worship in exactly the same way? Will we ever reach the point when we can say that all the moral, social political questions and problems have been answered? Very unlikely, I imagine. I am not sure if that kind of superficial uniformity would be a good thing anyway.

After the Resurrection, and filled with the Holy Spirit, the infant church began to meet in each others’ houses for prayer, conversation, and the Eucharist. The author of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that they held all their property in common. That doesn’t just mean property in the literal sense. It describes a profound and pervasive sense of belonging to one another – as a new family in which everything is shared. They were living the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This speaks eloquently about a church in which all were accepted, welcomed, supported, challenged, encouraged, healed, and enabled to grow in loving acceptance of one another…..If we could recover that vision, our Church today just might have a chance of being, and proclaiming the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I wish every one of you a Very Happy Easter!

Nicholas Roberts
Ham Chaplain

Harvest Festival in Kempsey

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:37:16 +0000

Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126, Phil. 3:3-14, John 12:1-8

New life comes through shared healing actions

Meals are important. When we eat 'take-away' food on a tray in front of the television, they may seem boring and only something
we do to sustain the life of our physical bodies. We forget about
nature who provides this food and that a meal is a sharing between us and plants or animals, and best also shared with family or friends.

If we take notice of the many TV cooking programs that seem to have burgeoned recently, it matters not only what sort of food we are eating, but the way it is presented, what it looks like, and even how it tastes or smells. The aroma from meat cooking on the barbecue, or the smell of a ripe mango before we bite into it can excite and delight us. We are prepared to eat the offerings of nature and enjoy them thoroughly. If we anticipate food with pleasure, we are told that the benefit of the food for our bodies is increased.

Today's gospel reading is about a meal at Bethany, a village outside of Jerusalem, where Jesus and his disciples ate together in the home of their friends Martha, Lazarus and Mary. It was a dinner in Jesus' honour, held 6 days before that critical Passover when Jesus was to die. Curious people looked on. They wanted to see Lazarus, a man who had returned from the dead.
We can picture the scene. Lazarus, Jesus and his disciples reclining at the table, and enjoying the food Martha is serving. Then something unexpected happens. Mary, Martha's sister, enters with a container of expensive perfumed ointment.

There are many stories in the gospels of Jesus healing people: restoring sight to the blind, straightening the back of a woman bent over, cleansing lepers and so on. Now we have the reverse occurring. Jesus is the one in need and is to receive healing and
strengthening from the gift of nature, and the touch of Mary's hands. Mary opens her jar of ointment, half a litre of it, and pours it over Jesus' feet. She massages his feet with the ointment and then wipes them with her hair. The whole house we are told is filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Everyone present, even the onlookers, smelt it and were drawn into the healing event.

Suddenly the focus on this tender action is broken. Judas was angry. In a strident voice he complained. He saw Mary's act only as a waste of money. "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?" he asked. But this was not the time for such a question. Jesus immediately defended Mary and praised what she had done.

Nature had fed Jesus through his life and uplifted him when he walked alone in the hills near Nazareth or by the sea of Galilee. Now its perfume and penetrating oil was being used to assist him for his journey through suffering and death.

Mary took nature's gift and combined it with her own gift of touch. We too will have experienced the healing of the touch of friends at sad moments of our lives, when we have heard bad news, suffered great pain, or grieved the loss of loved ones. At these times the people we love hold us and we hold them. They might gently rub us to comfort us. Mary used physical touch to convey comfort and love to her friend.

Jesus, the woman and nature are brought together in this act. They are kin, as we are too with one another and nature. We find this closeness between Jesus, women and nature repeated in the story of Jesus' passion when it is earth in the garden of Gethsemane that comforts and supports him as he lies on the ground and prays in his distress. It is the women who stand and watch him die on the cross, and when Jesus dies we are told in Matthew's gospel of an earthquake—the response of earth.

At this time of the year the harvest of summer is coming to an end. Most of our tomato plants have given us of their fruit and are now dying. The pumpkin vines too are coming to the end of their lives. My corn gave us some tasty sweet cobs but now their stalks are on the compost heap. This left the ground empty for a brief time, but a few days ago I planted some small cauliflower and broccoli seedlings which are now starting to grow. New life is beginning again.

In the first lesson this morning we heard from Isaiah that God is
about to do a new thing, there will be 'rivers in the desert'. Animals and people will praise God together. At present water is flowing through our inland desert country, bringing new life for animals, plants and farmers. We have experienced drought but hope is coming. It is like looking forward to a resurrection life after servitude in Egypt, exile in Babylon, and the dead body of Jesus in the tomb.

The gospel reading was full of tender love and compassion towards the other. It was also haunted by sadness before the jarring note introduced by Judas. But in the psalm we were reminded how sorrow can turn into joy. How for us sadness and the healing action given to Jesus can lead on to the joy of the resurrection, a resurrection that cannot be stopped by Judas.

As we give thanks today for the food nature provides for us, there is also a shadow of sadness. We were reminded by Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Copenhagen, that while climate change is left unchecked by the nations of the world, "rich and poor, we sink and swim together".

We now enter the last two weeks of our journey through Lent and move inexorably with Jesus towards Good Friday. We are all, humans and non-humans, sharers in suffering, but we also have the gift and possibility to reach out in healing to one another and emerge together with Jesus into new resurrection life. This is a life imaged in the Scriptures as a glorious shared feast of abundant food with Christ in God. It is a feast foreshadowed here every Sunday in which we and nature are involved in the giving and receiving of Christ's body in the eucharist, the thanksgiving feast.

Helen CSC

80th Birthday for Mary Jo

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 12:00:36 +0000

Isaiah 55:1-9; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

In the name of God who is ever creating us, ever redeeming, and ever sustaining us. Amen.

First of all, I would like to thank you very much for inviting me to join you today, and for the privilege of being asked to preach, and to share in your generous hospitality.

~

What a wonderful collection of readings for a day on which the Parish gathers in celebration and feasting… in the breaking of bread together in our eucharist this morning, and in gathering for a meal in celebration and thanksgiving of Sister Mary Josephine's 80th birthday!

Each of the readings speaks to us of food, of nourishment – God's gifts to us – both spiritual and physical nourishment, and the interrelationship between them.

From Isaiah we heard:

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.

The prophet seems to speak in celebration of the goodness which God provides (and as we know, food holds a place of great honour in the Jewish tradition), then takes it further… as if to say "I will tell you about something that is even better than this!!” and he goes on to talk of the “everlasting covenant” – of God’s faithful relationship with us.

From Psalm 63 we heard:

…my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,  as in a dry and weary land where there is no water…

The psalmist is speaking directly to God but we might imagine him turning to us and saying: "You know how important water is to life in a desert? Our relationship with God is even more live-giving than that!"

Then in 1 Corinthians we are reminded of the food and drink which sustained the Israelites in the wilderness:

They drank from the spiritual rock…
and the rock was Christ.

Today in the eucharist we share in the same spiritual food and drink – as Christians have done through the ages.

Many elements of our liturgies have remained unchanged over the years, but there are a few differences which I would like to draw attention to today.

From about the 5th century, and for many hundreds of years afterwards, if you were to find yourself at a eucharistic liturgy:

You would have seen the [priests and] ministers going down among the congregation and making a very elaborate collection of loaves and wine… from the whole congregation. That was their corporate oblation…

While that was being done there [was]… the spreading of the tablecloth, one deacon taking the end of the long, white cloth and throwing the other end to the deacon at the other end of the altar.

It must have been quite a spectacle!

The bread and wine were then laid upon the altar and the liturgy continued, much as we know it today except for one significant part: the bread and wine which had been gathered from the congregation and consecrated, were then returned to the congregation in the “great corporate communion”: the bread broken and put into bags held by the acolytes, and the wine in the chalice poured into the bowls and flagons.

“The prominent idea was that of the great corporate oblation
offered, accepted, consecrated, and returned
as now Christ’s Body and… Blood
to be the spiritual food for the… souls and bodies of… [the] people and to bind them all into a corporate whole. “

“To bind them all into a corporate whole…” as though the spiritual food and drink are found not only in the breaking of bread, but in gathering and sharing as a community.

As a society, over the last few decades we seem to have lost a sense of the importance and value of community life… that as members of the human family, we are “a corporate whole.” It might be wishful thinking on my part, but I wonder if we are perhaps beginning to reclaim this awareness?

[I say ‘wishful thinking’ because I believe that it is this kind of shift which will help us to address climate change, a fairer sharing of resources, and other major issues facing the world: helping us to recognize that the world and all the creatures in it is essentially one organism (“a corporate whole”) and that individual choices need increasingly to be made ‘for the good of the whole’.]

Though our liturgy today is much simplified from the one I described earlier, following the service we will be gathering together in another form of ritual which ‘binds us together’, as we join to celebrate a special occasion with one of the members of the congregation – today with Mary Jo.

Jesus often gathered with the community of disciples (and others) to share a meal, to eat in celebration – and following in that tradition, our gathering today celebrates and helps to nurture the ‘binding together’ of this parish community.

Mary Jo, as you may be aware, is not particularly known for her association with food! (she can be quite abstemious) – but supporting the life of the community is very much at her heart.

”I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community,
and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.”

These are the words of George Bernard Shaw, but they might as easily have come from Mary Jo.

As most of you know far better than I do(!) Mary Jo has been a member of this parish community for much of her life. She was raised in the very house where she lives now.

As a young child Mary Jo dreamed of being ordained to the priesthood, but it was not a role open to women in those days so Mary Jo found other ways to offer her life in service to God and in support of other people.

Initially Mary Jo helped the Sisters with the children at the Ormerod Home and later felt called to join the Sisters and also to train as a teacher.

Each of these experiences is rooted in a form of ‘community’ and service.

Mary Jo received high praise for her professionalism as a teacher, and the children loved her. Later she returned to the ‘community’ of her family when her parents were not well, and joined the ‘community’ of the priesthood when it finally became possible for women to do so, and for many years has served in the ‘community’ of this parish and is very much appreciated for her ministry here… while at the same time living as a member of the Community of the Sisters of the Church.

Mary Jo has found a way to belong and to serve in many different ‘communities’, giving generously of herself for the good of other people – and today we give thanks for her 80 years of faithfulness, and we celebrate (as the readings call us to do) with a great feast – both spiritual and physical – in the bread and wine of the eucharist, in the gathering to share as a parish ‘community’ and in the special meal following the service.

~

The readings, of course, do not only speak to us of feasting and joy – we are also reminded of God's call to repentance.

At the beginning of the reading from Luke’s gospel we heard a couple of times “unless you repent, you will perish” but then we were reminded of the parable of the fig tree: a story of a generous and compassionate gardener who patiently nurtures and tends.

What are the fruits which God the compassionate gardener is attempting to bring forth through our lives? And what kind of tending and nurturing might be required in order for our lives to bear these fruits? Repentance, in this context, might mean turning our lives in the direction which might enable these fruits to flourish.

In a book called Listen with the Heart, a Benedictine Sister, Joan Chittister writes:

"There is no hope of joy… except in human relations." No work is enough to satisfy the human soul. Only the satisfaction of having touched another life and been touched by one ourselves can possibly suffice. Whatever we do, however noble, however small, must be done for the sake of the other. Otherwise, we ourselves have no claim on the human race.

These are the fruits which have been tended and nurtured in Mary Jo – touching others’ lives and being touched by them.

Today, in honour of Mary Jo’s 80th birthday, we give thanks for God’s tending and nurturing – for sustaining her throughout these 80 years – and especially in enabling her ministry among the people of this parish.

Let us bless the Lord! Thanks be to God!

Sister Susan CSC

Sermon on Mark 5

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:26:15 +0000

We have just heard the story of a remarkable woman and a man who was willing to risk everything for the daughter whom he loves. This particular passage is often thought of as a story of two women – but Jairus’s daughter is never named and has from a certain perspective, a passive role – it is the story of her father, Jairus, that is the amazing one. Then the woman with the haemorrhage, again is never named, but the words that Jesus said to her still live on – Your faith has made you well – words that have been repeated in many and various ways throughout the centuries.

* * *

We begin by having a look at the story of Jairus. I mentioned earlier that he was willing to risk everything for love – I don’t believe that I’m exaggerating. Jairus was a respectable man, a leader in the local synagogue, a man that many would have looked up to and gone to if they had problems, difficulties or just needed someone to talk to – this man, so highly respected, in front of a large crowd, when he saw Jesus, approached him, fell at his feet, and begged him for help. It is very easy for us to miss the powerful impact that this would have had on the community. If you can imagine Archbishop Sentamu, Archbishop of York, having been part of the discussions to excommunicate a member of the Anglican Communion, to cast out someone from our midst because they were shown as a blasphemer, a law breaker, considered mentally unstable and suspected to be a devil worshiper; Sentamu, running up to this person, falling at their feet (bearing in mind that today this would also be televised) and begging them for help; if you can imagine the impact, the controversy, the horror, then you might have some idea of the emotions running around in that crowd. . . . But Jairus, threw ‘caution to the wind’ and did the only thing that he could think of to help the child that he loved – and what a reward! Even after he finally arrived home, with Jesus in tow, and being told that his daughter was dead – faith was kept alive; the unthinkable, the unbelievable happened, his daughter was healed – Jairus’ faith was rewarded in full – for his faith had been what had healed his daughter!

* * *

The woman who was haemorrhaging is much more difficult to try and parallelise – in our modern Christian society we don’t have any laws on whether someone is unclean or not, we have advanced so much in science and medicine that generally speaking, there isn’t a disease or illness that we are too afraid to approach someone with or touch them – but life was so different then. This woman would have been shunned by society; there wouldn’t have been a friendly neighbour to keep an eye out for her, or cook the odd meal, she was the ultimate outcast. However, she risked not so much everything for herself, but everything for everyone else as they would be unclean by her merely touching them – even if they were unaware of the touch, they would still be unclean according to the temple laws. In that picture, this woman, this second-class citizen, this outcast reached out to the one man who she felt could help her. She reached out and touched God himself – but remember that Jesus’ response was not “I have healed you” or “This is God’s miracle”, but left her and us with the immortal words, Your faith has made you well.

* * *

The common denominator was the healing by faith. For me this mirrors something that Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in his sermon some weeks ago – God is weak!

He went on to explain how it is not that God is incapable of doing anything, but without us, he is weak – many, many people throughout the bible and the centuries since, have been asked by God to help him . . . for me this is expressed beautifully in Teresa of Avila’s bookmark -

Christ
has no body now,
but yours. No hands,
no feet on earth,
but yours. Yours are the eyes
through which
Christ looks compassion
into the world. Yours are the feet with which Christ
walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which Christ
blesses the world.

* * *

Jesus, the Son of God, God made flesh, the Word that was from the beginning, did not heal the woman or Jairus’ daughter on his own – but it was in the action, or interaction of us, the mysterious woman, the father worried for his daughter, that enabled the healing, and healings to happen. God reveals his symbiotic relationship with us in this story, and St Augustine many years later expressed this so well –

Without God we cannot
without us, God will not.

* * *

Exegesis on Mark 5:21-43

There is something about this passage that speaks of Christ’s divinity, His theophany – the manifestation of Jesus’ true identity, calling. As we look at this story of awe and wonderment, this illustration of a healing miracle, we will explore in detail three verses in particular and what relevance they have for us today, and what point(s) Mark may have been trying to make/share with his fellow believers and believers to come, including us.

*

In 5:22 we see an example of the contradictions that often appear in Jesus’ ministry. The relationship with the local synagogue was not the best, through out the first few chapters of Mark, Jesus is counter-cultural with the normal protocols of synagogue life - how a proper Jew should behave. Examples of this conflicting relationship are shown in 2:7, 2:24, 3:4, 3:21, 3:22, 3:30: Jesus is shown as a blasphemer, a law breaker, as one who ignores the rules of the Sabbath, as out of him mind, and consorting with the devil.
All this is building up to the image of how Jesus is perceived – yet in the midst of all this negative publicity he is approached by one of the leaders of the synagogue for help. D E Nineham in his commentary ‘Saint Mark’ also sees this remarkable act of Jairus and wonders if “Mark’s first readers would know what conclusions to draw. The Jewish authorities might affect to think Jesus an impostor, but there were those among them who, when trouble forced them to face realities, could not help admitting his power and even begging for its exercise, with a public display of humility which showed that they really recognized its character and source”. Jeffrey John in his book ‘The Meaning in the Miracles’, also commented on Jairus, “Despite his senior position as leader of the synagogue, and in stark contrast to the actions and attitudes of the other ‘rulers of Israel’, he publically falls on his knees before Jesus and humbly declares his belief that Jesus can heal [his daughter].”
Both John and Nineham help to illustrate that it is not only that Jesus helps those with whom society would shun, but those whom He encounters or who seek to encounter him somehow reflect the inner essence of who Jesus is. For Jesus there is no social separation, there is no black and white situation – and there shouldn’t be for us either. If there is someone who needs love, healing, attention, then as followers of Christ we need to seek a way to help them.

*
When we reach 5:25,42 we find that we have been quite deliberately given a number – 12. What is the significance of the 12 years? Mark is not a writer to put this kind of detail in if it were not important. The woman who secretly approached and touched Jesus had been suffering for 12 years, the daughter who was lying sick and dying was 12 years old . . .
12 tribes
12 disciples
12 – the age of maturity, when a boy becomes a man; a girl, a woman
There is, I believe, a strong connection between the two women. It is no co-incidence that the older woman is coming to the end of her ‘monthly cycles’ and the other is at the beginning. The two are healed almost at the same time. There is an assumption that the woman with the haemorrhage was an old woman, there is no need for speculation about the age of the girl because we are told she is twelve. If we go along with this theory, then we can see an even stronger connection between the two women – one coming to the end of her life, one very much at the. This is not an example of two healings, but of one that has two parts. I do realise that this is speculative, but as I have found no reference to the significance of the number 12 in this passage, it seems important to point out this possibility.

*

5:34 Faith is the centre of this story. The woman approached Jesus in faith, a direct action – the father approached Jesus in faith on behalf of his daughter, a 3rd party.

Tom Wright in his book ‘Mark for Everyone’ also talks of this symbiotic relationship between Jesus and the faithful:
“was it Jesus’ power that rescued the woman, or her own faith? Clearly it was Jesus’ power; but he says, ‘Your faith has rescued you.’ The answer must be that faith, though itself powerless, is the channel through which Jesus’ power can work.” Jeffrey John in his book ‘The Meaning in the Miracles’ talks about faith in relationship, “the healing is only confirmed when Jesus has explained that her faith – her response to the person of Jesus himself – is what has made her well.” It is not enough for someone to just reach out and touch Jesus, there is a need to have relationship, for Jesus to be able to reach and out and touch . . .

*

Jesus is shown in Mark as presenting people with the coming of God’s Kingdom revealed in acts of healing, rather than presenting himself. The passage we have been looking at initially shows us two miracles that have been intertwined. But I believe that it is in fact one miracle that is played out in two halves. We are shown that Jesus has no interest in social divides; no concern about what we think of as unclean, untouchable; no interest in glorifying himself in front of others – the healing of the girl was done with very few witnesses. For me there is a very strong message about how we inter-relate with others’, how we reveal God’s message to with world.

*

Bibliography

D E Nineham Saint Mark (Penguin Books 1963)
Tom Wright Mark for Everyone (SPCK 2001)
Jeffrey John The Meaning in the Miracles (Canterbury Press 2001)

*

Teresa Mary CSC

Faith

Sun, 7 Feb 2010 12:21:16 +0000

‘Lord’, we say; not knowing who or what we’re talking to but willing to believe something; bewildered by everything, hoping for anything to validate our being in a world that makes no sense, as we make no sense, unless it and we are yours. (W S Beattie

Faith is a strange thing. We can’t prove what we have faith in, yet we work hard at sharing our faith. Faith in One who is not always visible, is not flesh and blood as we are, and yet . . . But then, even when He is visible there is a struggle with faith, as the disciples discovered in a moment of desperation:-

They went to him and woke him up, shouting, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ Luke 8

Sometimes we wish for signs or portents that are immediately visible. But why look far away for what is so close at hand? (Br Roger, Taize)

How do we rationalise our faith? How do we share something we can’t see? How do we demonstrate the love God has for us when we can’t touch it? The questions are often endless when we are in moments of doubt, uncertainty, desperation, anxiety, fear. And yet words can move from being a burden to a comfort . . . words . . .

Strange paradox of faith – it fluctuates, yet at its very core perpetuates itself – so if we try to struggle free, the more enmeshed we know ourselves to be. Margaret Connor

It is so often when in times of extreme trial: war, disaster, illness that our faith is tested. It is in those moment that we forget that God is with us, carrying us, sheltering us, crying with us, that our faith seems to evaporate. When we need this un-tangible thing the most, it deserts us and fear takes over.

But does it? Is it not then that we are strengthened in our faith. Is it not when someone is dying that we experience Christ’s hands at work in those who are caring for our loved ones? Is it not in war that we hear the voice of Christ in that individual who speaks out for peace? Is it not in disaster that we see Christ at work in the many who drop everything to help?

They went to him and woke him up, shouting, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ Luke 8

It is our fear, not our lack of faith, that sometimes overwhelms us. So, “let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.” Rabindranath Tagor, India

Teresa Mary CSC

Diamond Jubilee for Ann and Ruth

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:10:35 +0000

16th January 2010
Diamond Jubilee of Sisters Ann Mechtilde and Ruth

‘You have kept the good wine until now.’ John 2:10

Sixty years is a lifetime. And here they are, Sister Ann Mechtilde and Sister Ruth, in the Community’s parlance, Twins for sixty years, though definitely not identical! Entering the Community soon after the end of the War, Ann was not long demobbed from the RAF and work at Bletchley Park and Ruth a young Nurse, recently qualified, both rather gorgeous to look at! Their Profession Day was on the Anniversary of another pair of Community Twins: our then Superior, Mother Rosemary and Sister Maud Mary, not identical either!

Sixty years, a Diamond Jubilee so how might diamonds speak to this occasion, after all in the words sung by Marilyn Monroe, ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’..

The word itself comes from the Greek, adamos-unbreakable, seen also in the word, adamant-unyielding Adamos, unbreakable in itself seems to have something to say to this celebration. There may be many reasons why people stand by commitments made in youth, not all of them very elevated or religious. But that doesn’t seem to matter. God is the One who sorts it all out. We are told in the Book of Genesis that God’s Spirit brooded over the waters of chaos in the beginning and brought creation into being. God can do it in our personal lives too and does.

Paul Tillich, whose writings were at one time much favoured by Ann, asserted that no one moment in time could be made to bear the weight of a life time’s significance e.g. in the making of life vows. But the heart has its reasons that reason doesn’t know and traditional theology has seen the possibility of human beings keeping covenants, because of God’s own faithfulness to his creation and Covenant. This doesn’t mean a rigid, static, unyielding stance, for we are always being beckoned on to more life to a lifetime of personal growth and becoming.

Growth and change need a framework in which to happen. In an article for the last CSC Newsletter, Sr. Catherine shared a quotation from a recent book on the Religious Life, ‘There is a maturing that happens to love only when it is subjected to committed life together, in all its fermenting joys and sorrows, over a considerable period of time.’ John Henry Newman expressed this in a beautiful prayer which I will have to quote imperfectly from memory:

O be with me in this great, awful happy change with the grace of your unchangeableness. My stability here below is perseverance in changing.

Newman goes further when he writes, ‘To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.’ There have been plenty of changes in the past sixty years, both externally and internally.

Diamonds are formed through pressure deep in the earth and brought to its surface by deep subterranean explosions. There have been plenty of those as well in the lives of our sisters here, but they have come out of them alive and kicking! ‘Do not leave unfinished the work of your hands,’ cries the psalmist. I am reminded of something Graham Greene wrote in one of his books, The Power and the Glory I think it was, of the whiskey priest in Central America; One should have thought of the invisible victories instead of the visible defeats.

Now at last coming to the text from John 2:10: ‘You have kept the good wine until now.’ (John 2:10). According to some scholars who comment on the Greek, the word used has the sense of ‘just exactly now’. ‘You have kept the good wine until ‘just exactly now’. God speaks to us, say the spiritual writers, through the language of every day events, in the happenings of the moment, this moment, ‘just exactly now.’ But not only that but the very best has been in the Gospel story, kept until just exactly now. So not only does the story tell us that the presence of Jesus makes all the difference, transforms any situation, but that there is always more and better to come.

‘Do whatever he tells you,’ says Mary to the servants (she must have had some responsibility for the occasion). What he told them to do must have seemed extremely odd,’ Fill the water pots with water up to the brim.’ These water pots symbols of the old order which Jesus was transcending and transforming were filled to the brim with water, but it was poured out as wine, lashings of it, 750 litres, that’s 250 three litre boxes, put end to end here would probably cross the vegetable garden to the fence! God’s generosity. Nothing stingy about God, no boundaries to God’s generosity. Not only that but it was excellent wine, ‘You have kept the good wine until just exactly now.’

As we rejoice today with Ruth and Ann and give thanks for their contribution to our Community over sixty years, we might wonder what that will mean, does mean in their lives today. ‘You have kept the good wine until just exactly now.’

This, as the writer of the Gospel of John says, was the first of the signs which Jesus did, manifesting his glory pointing in this event to the transforming of human lives. The Jewish philosopher, Philo who lived around the time of Jesus goes as far as to say that God pours into our souls the wine of joy and gladness, in fact that God is none other than the wine he pours, the wine of God’s very self. AMEN and AMEN.

RIP Sister Elspeth CSC

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:25:42 +0000

HOMILY FOR ELSPETH’S FUNERAL JANUARY 14th 2010

1 Corinthians 15 : vv 50 - end. John 11 : vv 21- 27

Elspeth’s gift of friendship and her gregariousness were constant reccurring themes when I talked to various Sisters about their memories of her. People experienced Elspeth as a very real, genuine, no nonsense person. What you saw is what you got. She mixed very easily with people from all walks of life and they felt comfortable in her company and many sought her out when they needed help or advice.

Our Sister Elspeth was born Elsie Rennells in a pub, “The Royal Exchange” in Canterbury on May 27th 1919. It is one of life’s little ironies that our Sister Elsie’s baptismal name was Elspeth. Two of the things that Elspeth and I had in common were that we were both Maids of Kent and raised in pubs in that hop growing county.

Elspeth’s mother did not enjoy good health so she had a fair bit to do in helping to raise her younger sister Joyce and brother Bill. She helped her Dad in many of his various exploits. In 1941, she joined the Wrens and rose to the rank of Petty Officer, Steward. She thoroughly enjoyed this time and had many stories relating about it. Sadly, her time in the Wrens ended when she fell out of a train, I think as a result of the blackout and thinking they were at a Station when they weren’t. She was badly injured and these injuries were behind many of the bone difficulties, from which she suffered stoically, later in her life.

Before she joining the Community she trained and worked as a Visitor, with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. She took a post with the them in Ipswich and shared a house with her great friend Marjory Mc Grath. Elspeth writes movingly in her “memoirs” of her work with the families and how, for many of them, it was not a case of cruelty but being unable to cope with impossible situations. She talks about how she managed to help a family, who were heavily in debt, to be able to arrange small and regular payments and they eventually blossomed and thrived when they became debt free. Many of the experiences she had had as a child helping her father had given her useful ideas. After she had become a Novice and was on a “Mission” in the Ipswich area, one of her former colleagues an NSPCC Inspector, brought her news of the families that they were still in touch with and their progress.

When she was exploring the possibility of Religious Life, Marjory did some recognisance work on the Community in Liverpool, checking out St. Gabriel’s, our Children’s Home there, and meeting Sisters Judith and Vida. Elspeth then wrote to arrange a visit here and when Mother Rosemary saw her she talked about a date for her coming. Elspeth remarked that she hadn’t said anything about coming to the Community in her letter, to which Mother Rosemary retorted, “Ah, but I can read between the lines”. She knew after her first visit, that despite also being interested in Holy Name, CSC was the one for her.

The Community she joined at the beginning of the sixties was very different from today and there were times when she found her time in the novitiate rather galling, coming as she did from having years of responsibility, experience and using her initiative. Vivien was a Novice at the same time and Elspeth talks about how she took her under her wing. There were various little niceties and customs that had hung on from a precious age. I remember her story of when in the weekly ‘sort out’ of who was doing what, it was the custom to volunteer saying; “Please may I, Sister?”

There were rules about not eating or drinking with people, outside the Community and she wrote that her mother never really forgave the Community for sending them home from her “Clothing”, without even a cup of tea. Elspeth was a very hospitable person and once the custom changed she was able to flourish. She thoroughly enjoyed both the giving and receiving of hospitality. She writes that when on “mission” despite the Community custom she would accept a cup of tea or coffee if offered, particularly from non church people.

Doubtless her time in the Services helped her in those early years, as well as her ever available sense of humour and ability to see the lighter side. It wasn’t long before her experience and talents were put to use. She was professed in 1963 and the next year she went to Perth College. Elspeth loved Australia. At Perth College, she had responsibility for the Boarders and also the House Staff. She was the one who engaged Aphrodite, who so came to love the school and the girls, that she still volunteers in the Cafe there, that bears her name, despite the fact that
she is retired. Aphrodite carries on that same care and concern for the girls that Elspeth and the Sisters had.

The Staff and girls loved Elspeth and found her easy to relate to and talk with. At this point in time, Marg and Elspeth were the youngest Sisters there and so were very much thrown together and got up to various exploits. Marg, can regale you with them, such as the time they were managing a move, in the Caretakers “ute” and the keys, the entire ones for the school as well as the ute fell out at the traffic lights. At Perth College today you can see Elspeth’s name, together with other Sisters who were there in a special memorial in the grounds.

Gillian was another Sister, whom Elspeth got on with really well. They had been together on two missions, and their time together at Perth College, during one of the “Decennial Chapters” cemented their friendship. They had a similar sense of humour and after Elspeth returned to the UK, we had a couple of Christmas entertainments that included Gert and Dais.

Elspeth returned to the UK in 1968 and together with Jennifer made her Solemn Profession. It was good that we were able to celebrate their 40th Anniversary a few years ago. Elspeth and Jenny had a special companionable relationship. Elspeth was returning to the UK to be “Sister in Charge” at St. Mary’s, and was there until ’72. After her mother’s death her relationship with her father grew. It was a time of healing as in her childhood years she had not had an easy relationship with him. The time came though when he could no longer really live on his own so he moved to St. Mary’s and into the Staff Cottage. Lydia’s mother was also living there at the time and at one point Vivien and I wondered if there might be wedding bells, between Pop as we called him and Ma Corby.

Elspeth went to St. Edith’s and was there until it closed. After that she had some time here at Ham and was then asked to be in Charge at St. Raphael’s. Sheila Julian, who was there with her remembered a not untypical experience, except for the venue. She and Elspeth were out shopping and Elspeth wanted to go to the loo. Sheila was outside waiting and she waited and waited and she was thinking Elspeth must have collapsed or something. She went in and found she had met up with someone she knew and they were talking “nineteen to the dozen” and had lost all sense of time and Sheila waiting outside.

After St. Raphael’s closed, she returned to have another part of her Australian adventure. She had some time in Melbourne and then in Sydney, which became another of her great loves. Frances was relating how she knew so many people there and had connections with so many different churches, which particularly in the Sydney Diocese is important but unusual. Frances keeps on thinking of different people she needs to tell of her death. Her great loves, were Christ Church and St. James, but she also attended St. Luke’s on a regular basis. She had a particular involvement with the weekly Healing Service at Christ Church. The group met for lunch afterwards and Elspeth always enjoyed this.

Elspeth had a great Australian friend, Ruth Mc Carthy, with whom she used to go and spend her holiday time. Ruth introduced her to her bone specialist and that led to Elspeth being able to have surgery to help her various problems. All through her life since she had the fall in the Wrens she had suffered with different conditions, but she was not a quitter and had a high pain tolerance. Elisa Helen relates how she came home one day in a taxi, paid for by a down and out fellow. The fact that she always wore her habit, helped. She had had a fall and readily agreed for Elisa to call their Doctor, Louise, to see her, which was unusual in itself. She had broken one finger and badly bruised some others. Three days and an x-ray later it also was revealed that she had fractured three ribs.

Her decision to ask to return to the UK for her final years was one which was mostly influenced by her desire to be nearer her family. She was able to have a few holidays with Joyce and Bob at Bridge and to catch up with the expanding family. She was able to visit Bill and attend some of his fan club meetings, of which she was a fully paid up member. She was very proud of her little brother, who is still involved in radio broadcasting.
By 2006 she had got to the stage where she needed more physical help than we could provide and she was very pleased to be able to go to St. Mary’s, Chiswick, where she joined in everything going. Her health and memory failed, but not her strong will or sense of humour. She never complained and always thanked you for visiting her, though she could make it clear when she had had enough and wanted you to go.

So our Sister Elspeth’s life in this world is over. A life that she embraced and lived to the full. In the Gospel we have Martha, in many ways an Elspeth-like character, stating her belief in the Resurrection on the last day and Jesus replies: “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die, and whoever believes in me will never die.” In answer to his question “Do you believe this?” Martha goes on to state her belief in Jesus, that he is the Christ. Elspeth believed that and gave her life to live out the gospel. She had preached and given talks etc. but the most powerful way she lived out the good news was through her gift of friendship, her ability to be alongside people and to be very human and approachable, to listen in a non judgemental way and to convey to people that God loved and cared for them. We give thanks for her life, all that she gave to each one of us and for her contribution to the Community in its outreach to bring in God’s realm.

May she rest in peace and rise with Christ in glory.

Sister Anita CSC

25th Anniversary of Ordination

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 12:46:37 +0000

Alongsider Catherine Wood’s 25th Anniversary
of Ordination to the Priesthood

I would like to invite you to think back to the early ’80’s. It is hard to remember what our world was like then. The world was somewhat dominated by the USSR, the United Soviet Socialist Republic, the Wall still divided Berlin, Apartheid operated in South Africa and Nelson Mandela was still on Robin Island in prison. It was a time of sanctions and boycotts. The boycott was particularly strong in the area of sport and countries were refusing to allow South African teams to play in their countries. Surprisingly one of the first countries to lift the boycott was New Zealand and as you might expect there were big protests when the Springboks flew in to play against the All Blacks.

There were a group of Baptist students protesting at the Airport in Auckland and the Anglican contingent arrives in a procession all dressed up to show their identity. One of the Baptist Students remarks to another with words to the effect “Could you ever imagine wearing that lot”? The other replies “ You won’t but I might”. That student was Catherine, who at the time was going through a difficult patch and time of discernment on her journey.

When Catherine was sharing with me some of her journey, she spoke of those times in her life when she has been conscious of God’s goodness and support. God’s presence was there for her at various crossroad times pointing out the next step on the journey. If someone had said to her in 1981, well in 2009, you will be celebrating 25 years of ordination as an Anglican priest and you will be in England. You will be living alongside an Anglican Religious Community and working as a Chaplain in a Male Prison. I think she would have replied, “You must be joking”.

Neither would she have thought that the Anglican Co Primate of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, Archbishop David Moxon would be sending her his greetings, congratulations, best wishes and blessings on this occasion. I saw him last night and he was remarking on how Catherine was very much an early pioneer in New Zealand, particularly in the Church, in the whole realm of ecology, care for the planet and mother earth. Now the world is at last beginning to catch up and we all pray that the upcoming meeting in Copenhagen will make real and solid progress.

Catherine has always been very conscious of God’s love and support and that has enabled her to travel lightly on her journey. Some strong threads have woven their way through her pilgrimage and supported her in her response to God’s ongoing call. The threads have been a strong sustaining spirituality, catholic mysticism and celtic earthiness woven with a love of scripture and all that her time as a Baptist gave her.

She is passionate about matters of Social Justice and caring for the environment. That theme of healing both of people and the environment together with the spirituality thread lead her to be one of the founders of a Retreat Centre in New Zealand, whose focus was “healing the earth”. When that unfortunately had to close through lack of funds, she spent some years working as a Field worker both in an ecumenical setting and as part of the Auckland Cathedral team.

She felt called to return to the UK in 2001 and had the amazing experience of being able to be at St. Nicholas, Sutton, here in Southwark and being able to be part of a team of five women clergy. Bishop Wilfred appointed her to the parish of Tatsfield and Limpsfield Chart, where she spent six happy years. Part of God’s goodness to Catherine has been and is the wonderful people who have been and are part of her life. Catherine would say that God’s timing and nudges on her journey and her meetings with people at just the right time, have been wonderful; exquisite was the word she used.

For those of us who reside in the northern hemisphere it seems strange to have ordinations in Advent, though they were a feature of the past. We need to remember that down south December is coming into the height of summer and holiday time. Advent is a wonderful time for ordinations as being at the beginning of the church’s year it resonates with the beginning of new ministries. It reminds us all of our call to share the good news of our incarnate God.

In the most recent “Tablet” periodical, in the short reflection on the Advent wreath, the Dominican Vivien Boland, talks about our two contrasting experience of time, one circular and the other linear. Scholars tell us that the Greeks were more struck by the first and the Hebrews by the second. The year turns and we come to another spring, another Advent, another Easter, another birthday another anniversary. That last circuit of our birthday or anniversary also remind us how time is linear as our maturing and ageing bodies remind us, none of us are getting any younger.

Both ways of experiencing time enrich us with our experiences of God’s goodness and the continual gift of his grace. As we move through the seasons both in the northern and southern hemisphere, we experience a re-visiting of the path we have trod before. Though each time is different, as our experiences of life and God’s goodness in all the ups and downs, build over the years.

In our liturgical celebrations we remember, we enter into making present now, an event that happened historically in the past. Jesus was born over 2,000 years ago, but as we celebrate Christmas we seek to bring Christ to birth in our lives now. Advent is the season of hope and expectation. I was struck by these words of Boland’s. “The theological virtue of hope means we are forever young no matter what our experience, ever growing towards an eternal future, as we become more and more God’s children”. God’s realm is both a present and a “not yet reality”.

This and every Eucharist is both a re-enactment of that first “Last Supper” and a present reality where we enter into that event and through it give thanks for God’s goodness and receive God’s grace. As the line from the hymn goes: “God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year”. We are all pilgrims on this journey, thankful of God’s grace and the call to be the means of God’s goodness to others. Catherine has been and is being a means of that goodness.

We give thanks for her and give thanks that God’s ongoing grace, given to all of us, will continue to encourage and sustain us on our journey as we address the task of bringing in God’s realm of peace and justice for all people and a responsible care for this precious gift of our fragile earth both now and in the future.

Anita CSC

2nd Sunday before Advent

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:37:50 +0000

St. Mary’s

Daniel 12: 1-3 Hebrew’s 10: 11-25 Mark 13: 1-8

This last week has been quite memorable. On Remembrance Day on Wednesday, the 11th of the 11th, a powerful Service was held in Westminster Abbey, which as it was televised, some of you may have watched. This last year has seen the death of the three remaining men in the UK, who served in the First World War, the War to send all Wars. Those of you who watched the Service or saw the highlights in the evening will have seen how the television coverage was interspersed with footage showing the mud, the terrible conditions and the soldiers being caught on the barbed wire and being mowed down like grass. The Dean picked up on some of it as he started the Service by the grave of the “unknown warrior”.

Around the Benefice, the Country, the Commonwealth, from cities to small villages there are war memorials that pay tribute to those who gave their lives in the Service of freedom from oppression. From history and from the war poems of that period, those who went off to fight went full of high hopes and a nationalistic spirit. They were to be disillusioned as what they encountered was hell on earth.

In this last week we have had the bodies repatriated of six of the soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Five killed by an Afghan police man, who had obviously infiltrated the police force for the purpose. The sense of betrayal of being shot by someone who you thought was on your side, must also have been felt in the United States were soldiers were killed and injured by one of their own, at Fort Hood. That feeling of fear and suspicion, when you need to rely completely on those serving with you must be devastating and undermining and for those who went through it a different experience of a living hell.

On a happier note we had the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, which was one of the major ingredients in the fall of the Communist block in Europe and beyond. Events which some of us thought we would not live to see. The Churches in East Germany played a significant role in this. The Churches were the only places where people were able to gather without a special permit and they were a major player in fostering the ground swell which brought about the peaceful revolution. Those who had been killed in the years before had helped in the most costly way to pave the way for the bloodless revolution.

You might well be thinking where is she going with this. It stems from my reflections on the readings today and on what has been happening in our world and my own experiences in this last week. We are approaching Advent and all the readings are about the end times, the second coming, and the final judgement. The Book of Daniel is the only apocalyptic book in the Hebrew Scriptures. The apocalyptic literature comes from times of national or community tribulation. Our reading from Hebrew’s, has this wonderful verse 24. “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,” It begs the question as to how we might encourage one another to do more in living out our Christian life. As verse 25 says; “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but to encouraging one another and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
In the Gospel we have Jesus and the disciples coming to Jerusalem and the Temple and looking around. The Temple, at this point was the one begun by Herod the Great and it was not yet finished. The stones were big, 37.5 feet long, 18 feet wide and 12 feet thick, no wonder the disciples were impressed and here is Jesus saying that it will all be destroyed. Jesus goes on to warn the disciples about people leading them astray. Jesus’ message of God’s love is about liberation. That message which we in our generation are called to implement can be costly as it was for those who went before us. Jesus calls us to bring in the Kingdom of God’s peace with justice, God’s kingdom of valuing every human being.

It is a challenge for us to remember that this is what following Jesus, in the way he taught and showed us is all about. Yes what we do or don’t do in Church will matter to us. There will be things we like and those we don’t like. What happens in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion matters, but all of that pales into insignificance when we are faced with some of the life and death issues, the justice issues that are going on in our world right now.

Last Sunday evening I went with some of our Sisters to a Church in London to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak. It was as you would imagine packed. He spoke powerfully of how God, our God does not intervene directly in the unjust situations in our world. God chose to make himself vulnerable in his coming to birth, his life and death. God chose and called people like Moses, and a young girl by the name of Mary to be his partners to work with him and his grace to bring in the kingdom. God calls each one of us to work with him to bring in his kingdom of love, peace and justice, not to leave it to someone else.
At that same Service, Sue was sitting next to a young Palestinian woman, who belongs to the Free Gaza movement. She came to speak to us the next day in our Chapter meeting. We are all aware that the situation in the Holy Land is very fraught and difficult, but partly because of that there is a huge human tragedy, going on under all our noses. It has all the elements of apartheid, a divided Germany and oppressed Eastern Block countries John Ging, director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said, “This is not a natural disaster. It is a man- made disaster created by policies that are not humane.”

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. A 25-mile-long narrow coastal plain wedged between Israel and Egypt, Gaza is home to 1.5 million Palestinians, over half of them children. Most of its population are refugees or their descendants, driven out of Israel during its founding in 1948. Surrounded by 40-foot high walls of iron and steel, Gaza has only 3 points of entry or exit: the Erez border crossing with Israel, the Rafah crossing with Egypt, and the sea.
The only real way of getting in and out for the Palestinians is the Rafah crossing into Egypt and the account we heard of what happens there to the sick, the disabled as well as the healthy was one of abuse, violence and denial of basic human rights.
Because of this the main way in and out of Gaza is through the tunnels. They are used to get people in and out and to bring in the basic necessities. The Israelis bomb the tunnels and the Egyptians are known to put “mustard gas” down them. An echo from the first World War. The Free Gaza movement wants to get the blockade lifted and to bring about one State where all the citizens Israelis and Palestinians can live together in peace.
The situation is complex. People there and in other places continue to experience a living hell. How is God calling us to respond, to be his hands, his feet, his eyes, ears and heart in his world now? While not denying the need for action, one of the things we can all do in this and every Eucharist is to bring all the suffering and all those in need into God’s loving embrace, asking him to give us the grace to be his people and to reach out and serve him in all the situations of our life. We pray that God will enable us to do this.

Anita CSC

All Saints

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 19:21:30 +0000

St Andrew’s Evensong

May the words of my lips and the thoughts of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.

As a former curate of this parish asked the congregation as he came into Birmingham Cathedral before taking a Service. “How are the Saints today”?

How are the Saints this evening? There is a sense when we are called Saints that we feel uncomfortable and most of us would reply that we are anything but Saints. We are more comfortable with the phrase and idea that we are all called to be saints and that we are on the journey.

Those like St. Andrew and the other Apostles, martyrs and named Saints down the ages seem to us very holy and perfect people. We can think of them as being ordinary and like us in the early part of their life but at some point they became this perfect person so different from us. People who, because of their holiness, didn’t have the same everyday struggles that we have.

In the early days of the Church, persecution and martyrdom were commonplace and as the Christians met together for worship in places like the catacombs they celebrated the Eucharist on the tombs of those who had been martyred. As the church became a group that was accepted within the culture and society martyrdom became rarer. There were many whose lives were an example of what it meant to live out the Christian faith.

The Church has widely kept this feast of All Saints since about the year 600. It was originally kept on May 13th but was moved to November 1st around 735 and has stayed there ever since.

I have used some of the research done by Bishop Keith Whitmore, one of the American Bishops. He, as a boy, went to what over here would be called a Church Primary school and it must have been in the more Catholic tradition because he talks of the boys trading holy cards of the Saints and that being more popular than trading cards of the baseball players. He said that at school he learnt that the Saints could show us the way to lead a holy life by their example. He thought if he could adopt a pious demeanour he too could become saintly. He added that it didn’t work.

It is interesting that the word “holy” has a similar feel to saint. God we regard as holy, and there are people we meet, whom we regard as holy such as Bishop Neil Russell of Zanzibar, whom Jeanne Griffin - Smith wrote about in this month’s magazine. But many of us would not feel comfortable about being called holy while we are living. Somehow the word currently has a “pious”, “not living in the real world” ring about it.

I think what the call to holiness means for us today is the call to be as real as we can be. To be genuine, to be honest with ourselves and in our in living, in order to work with God’s grace towards becoming the unique person God calls each one of us to be. Aiming to be by God’s grace a transformed person.Trying to be genuine and honest can reveal at least to ourselves in moments of quiet reflection that we are far from being the
follower of Christ, the full human being that we want to be. Feeling that we are not getting very far and being discouraged is not the problem, the only failure is giving up and throwing in the towel so to speak.

God has a unique purpose for each one of us. He wants us to become fully the person he would have us be. It isn’t a question of “if only I could be more like Mother Teresa”etc. It is God’s call to each one of us to work towards becoming our best selves. God doesn’t call us to be Mother Teresa, but to be ourselves. What that means is being fully present to all the situations in our life. To be fully present to the person we are with, to the task we are engaged in. It means to be fully present to God in our prayer and worship, a difficult task, which is the work of a life time. It is particularly difficult for us today as we live in an “instant age” so not achieving our goals quickly is counter cultural. From time to time we do meet people who are further along the way, than we are, people, who we are aware when we are with them that they are giving us their full attention.

Our task in becoming who we fully are, is in order to show, to reveal something of God that no one else can. We believe that each person is made in the image of God and that includes us. The Saints I believe were not perfect human beings but they were those, who revealed a unique aspect of God in their lives. They have been further along the path of living out the Gospel. We can’t do this growing in our own strength, but only with God’s grace. As Christians, who are baptised we have been given grace for the journey and of course we need to go on asking God for the grace we need. As we bring to our prayer the
situations and the people that concern us we pray for the grace we need for engaging in the events of our day. We pray for the grace particularly for those situations and people we find taxing and difficult.

We are a work in progress. Bishop Whitmore talked about being presented with one of those buttons that read. “Be patient, God is not finished with me yet”. Our church here, locally at Diocesan, National and Communion level is not perfect. The collective body of Saints is a work in progress. Our task is not about perfection but transformation.

In the New Testament there are 32 references to Saints. St. Paul uses the term 44 times to refer to the church on earth. The writer of the Book of Revelation says, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them”. God the holy one lives among us.

Sometimes we get glimpses of God in other people and not just church people or Christians. The Holy Spirit inspires and enables us as Christ’s followers as she has done down the ages, to bring the good news of the Gospel to our time, to bring aid to the needy, justice to the oppressed, hope to the sorrowful and forgiveness and restoration to those who have lost their way.

This festival of All Saints reminds and connects us to all those who have gone before us, Saints on earth and Saints in heaven. Those we know and see no more for the time being. There is a song whose words are: “We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who have gone before us”, and finish with “and my shoulders will be there for the ones who follow me”. We are standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us in the faith, in our own personal journeys and those here in this community of St. Andrew’s. We give thanks for them and pray that we will be transformed into the people the Saints and community that God would have us be.

Today also marks a significant day in the life of our Community here as Sue Waddell begins her ministry as a fully authorised and licensed Reader in our midst. Sue has been growing into this role through her training and has been exercising it along with her many other ministries here at St. Andrew’s. We thank God for her and pray that she and we will be transformed by her ministry among us.

Anita CSC