Rowan Williams on Prayer

Rowan Williams writing in Tokens of Trust

‘It has been said that prayer is not primarily a matter of getting ourselves where we can see God so much as getting ourselves where God can see us - that is getting ourselves into the light of his presence, putting aside our defences and disguises, coming into silence and stillness so that what stands before God is not the performer, the mask, the habits of self-promotion and self-protection but the naked me. But that’s why the path of contemplation has always been seen as one of darkness as well as light. When we undertake to let go of most of what usually makes us feel safe or good.’

Advent 3 2019 Harpur Hill

15/12/19                    St.James Harpur Hill                            Advent 3 

Isaiah 35:1-10               James 5:7-10                              Matt. 11:2-11

Third candle in our Advent Wreath represents John the Baptist so think about him this am.

When we first meet John in Matthew 3 he’s a very definite person - a prophet of the loud denouncing, sackcloth and ashes encouraging, locusts and wild honey eating school - you knew where you were with John - you were in need of repentance.

Jesus said, ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.’

When we hear the name John the Baptist, this is who we think of, and this John is quite sure about Jesus - 

Even in the womb From Luke  And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?  For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.

and certainly by the time he and Jesus meet at the Jordan

 ‘I baptise you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” He knows who Jesus is, he is the one whom God has sent, Messiah, confident about what that means, confident too about what God’s kingdom will look like and how Jesus will bring it about. He doesn’t expect him to take any prisoners,

That John isn’t the figure we see in our reading today. This John is  much more hesitant - he sounds as if he’s having second thoughts.

He’d expected to see God’s Messiah shaking the foundations - fighting fire with fire,  after all look at the world and how much is wrong with it - it can’t be a world God is happy with - but… the Romans are still in charge, more to the point Herod is still in charge and John is in his prison with a bleak outlook, and Jesus doesn’t seem to be changing anything  - how is God at work here?

We understand how John feels - we look at the world - it’s violence - look at  Civil War in Syria, it’s despair  What can be done about the damage we are doing to the climate? it’s injustice  the forced exodus of the Rohingya from Myanmar - and always those who have the least end up picking up the bill, Where is God at work?

This is why John asks, Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Have I got it wrong?

And what answer does Jesus give?  ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’ Remember Isaiah.

What is Jesus doing? Caring for the vulnerable, standing by the needy, the good news starting with those at the bottom of the heap. John was right about who Jesus is but will need to rethink his expectations of what the Kingdom of God looks like. Not the response John expected from Jesus, this not quite how he had seen  God. Perhaps not what we expect either. This is not the God who fights fire with fire. 

This is a God whose kingdom has no truck with that approach.

We have the advantage over John here - we’ve had 2000 years more experience of seeing what paying people back in their own coin does - again Syria, but throughout history often the revolutions that were going to settle injustice once and for all end up replicating the same old problems,

W.H.Auden put it like this, 

‘I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn.

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.’

The good news made flesh in Jesus is that a different way of life is possible, hearts can change and we’ve had 2000 years more experience of taking Jesus approach more seriously - the recognition that all lives are equally valuable showed itself in active mercy Kinder transport, the charities which go beyond the hand out and enable people to look after themselves, then the times where forgiveness and reconciliation have been seen where you would only expect bitterness - so three years ago after a terrorist attack at the Bataclan nightclub in Paris a husband whose wife had been  killed there refused to hate her killers because that would give them the victory and that is not the atmosphere in which he wants their child to grow up.

We heard the same thing from the father of Jack Merritt who died at the end of November in the stabbings near London Bridge ‘He lived and breathed fire in his pursuit of a better world for all humanity, particularly those most in need. He would be seething if his death, and his life, was used to perpetuate an agenda of hate that he gave his everything fighting against.

Violence not being allowed to kill hope.

We have 2000 years more experience than John of seeing how the way of Christ can shed light where there seems only darkness.

‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

God’s good news changes lives in a way force never can.

Advent 4/ Annunciation - St John's

20/12/15                                   St. John’s, Buxton                                Advent 4

Micah 5: 2-5a                           Hebrew 10: 5-10                           Luke 1:26-38

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, 

almost always a lectern, a book; always

the tall lily.

       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,

the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,

whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions

courage.

       The engendering Spirit

did not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was free

to accept or to refuse, choice

integral to humanness.

That’s the opening of Denise Levertov’s wonderfully illuminating poem ‘Annunciation’ where she turns our usual ideas on their head. Traditionally God uses Gabriel to tell Mary what she should do but the poet unpicks the last verse of the reading and sees the Annunciation as being as much about what Mary says to God as the other way around. It’s about the compact the two  make together, it’s about what can be opened up when there is trust.

In these first verses she sets the scene and brings out the familiar elements - lectern, lily, angel. Then she introduces us to the characters  She says a little of what Mary is like - and the characteristic the poet begins to bring out, and that she will come back to is a very particular courteous courage. 

She speaks of God too. This is a gracious God. A God who takes Mary’s integrity with absolute seriousness. He will not go beyond Mary’s consent. He is content to wait for her. He will not override her humanity and part of that humanity is her right to choose rather than be forced. As the poem goes on Levertov talks of how Mary unknowingly  prepared for this moment and will expand/dwell in the verses. But first she draws us into the poem. 

Mary and her experience are unique and though we have been reminded of a scene familiar from many pictures she doesn’t want us there simply as observers as though Mary were a person detached from the rest of us, and so she asks,

Aren’t there annunciations

of one sort or another

in most lives?

         Some unwillingly

undertake great destinies,

enact them in sullen pride,

uncomprehending.

More often

those moments

      when roads of light and storm

      open from darkness in a man or woman,

are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair

and with relief.

Ordinary lives continue.

                                 God does not smite them.

But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

Here is the recognition that most of us - on a very different scale - will have possibilities presented to us - opportunities will be offered, choices will have to be made. Sometimes we’ll miss them, sometimes we’ll take them but not with Mary’s wholeheartedness, and sometimes we will make the choice in a way that still feels solid and good when we look back on it.  God is the same for us as for Mary - patient, waiting, not smiting but taking our integrity, our choosing seriously. Taking us seriously enough to hear us if we say no to him. 

Often we do and so opportunities are missed, gates do close, pathways do vanish. But, we might say, if annunciation had come in the form of an angel then, of course I’d have got the message. But I’d bet it wasn’t as obvious as that for Mary either - how did she recognise Gabriel as God’s messenger?

She had been a child who played, ate, slept

like any other child–but unlike others,

wept only for pity, laughed

in joy not triumph.

Compassion and intelligence

fused in her, indivisible.

How does this help her recognise Gabriel as God’s messenger? She wouldn’t have seen it as preparation for anything - but moment by moment she lived Godwards. The way she lived, the way she thought, the way she made all the small trivial decisions - they all built to this. The courage Mary shows at the Annunciation is the courage of trust - not abstract trust, but trust in the God who has been her life long companion. She has spent her childhood, knowingly and unknowingly looking Godward, learning to know Him, to trust herself to Him so when Gabriel appears what he says rings true to her. As she grew, as she weighed things up she was developing what Austin Farrer called a ‘truth seeking intelligence’

‘After all the detection of shams, the clarification of argument, and the sifting of evidence - after all criticism, all analysis - we must make up our minds what there is most worthy of love, and most binding on conduct, in the world of real existence. It is this decision, or this discovery, that is the supreme exercise of a truth-seeking intelligence.’ (Keble and his College, Austin Farrer) 

Farrer’s starting point as he looked Godward was academic but with very practical intent. The end to which Mary bent her compassion and intelligence was to know what/who was trustworthy and true so she could then give herself to what she found.  

How can we be ready to hear God’s voice to us? The same way as Mary - live Godwards. 

Her whole way of life prepared her to make the choice presented to her - her experience of God was that, though standing before Gabriel she could not yet have all the resources she was going to need, she could not know what she was going to need, yet her experience of God persuaded her that as would be her need so would be His provision.  

But the decision hasn’t quite been made yet.

Called to a destiny more momentous

than any in all of Time,

she did not quail,

only asked

a simple, ‘How can this be?’

and gravely, courteously,

took to heart the angel’s reply,

the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb

Infinite weight and lightness; to carry

in hidden, finite inwardness,

nine months of Eternity; to contain

in slender vase of being,

the sum of power–

in narrow flesh,

the sum of light.

                    Then bring to birth,

push out into air, a Man-child

needing, like any other,

milk and love–

but who was God.

The time of realisation, of knowing choice - as much one can ever fully know - and then Mary’s courage and  dignity and grace in the saying of yes to God. This is Mary answering God accepting the cost, knowing that any cost asked of her will not be artificial, it’s not a test, God doesn’t need Mary to prove her love to Him. The cost Mary will pay is real, but she is only asked to pay it because there is no alternative if ‘God with us’ is to happen. They are co workers, this work they do together. She accepts it and we see her raised to her full stature. Our annunciations will be small beer compared to this. 

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                           waiting.

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,               courage unparalleled,   opened her utterly. 

The moment when Mary said ‘Yes’ ; the moment the world changed; the moment Emmanuel ‘God with us’ began.

What do learn about her? Great courage, great trust on her part, but not blind faith. She trusted that the God she was saying yes to is good, which was a discovery she had made as she grew up, in the ordinary. She had lived looking Godward and knew who was asking her to bear this impossibly large burden. Impossibly large but Mary said ‘Yes’ and gave herself whole heartedly to what God asked of her.

What do we learn of God? He waited on Mary to make her choice. Was this not an impossibly high stakes gamble on His part? If Mary had said ‘No’ He could not have compelled her without denying Himself. 

What we see here is trust that goes two ways. Mary trusted God and God trusted Mary, even though she was no more God than we are. She had her frailties, her misunderstandings, her sins, but God trusted Himself to her - His plan and His person. What does this say to us? It is not an aloof, cold God we worship , but one who has in the most whole hearted, full blooded, all or nothing way said His ‘Yes’ to us.  A God whose intention is not to dominate us but to bring us into a willing  co-operation with Him. Co workers in God’s kingdom.

Soda Bread Recipe

Soda Bread (essentially Paul Hollywood’s recipe)

500g plain white flour

1 tsp Bicarb of Soda

1tsp of salt 

zest from a lemon

100g of mixed fruit

400 mls of buttermilk (juice of a lemon made up to 400mls with whole milk)

Oven to 200 C, baking parchment on tray, lightly flour it

Mix all the dry ingredients together, pour in the buttermilk, stir till forms a sticky dough, scrape it onto the parchment and make as much of a ball shape as you can,

cut a deep cross into the dough

Bake for 30 min

10th July 2016 - King Sterndale

9:30am                    King Sterndale           10th July 2016   Trinity 7 

Col 1:1-14                                                                            Luke 10:25-37

Colossians reading - just to note how encouraging Paul is here. Sometimes think of him as the kind of school teacher/ authority figure who is never satisfied  - whatever you do it’s not quite good enough - not at all the picture here - taking real pleasure in them - their Christian life is bearing fruit - they are getting to know God better - they are open to God helping them to live the quality of life he wants to see from his people.

Well, we think they must have been a pretty saintly lot ….perhaps but only in the sense that being saintly is within our grasp too.

Let’s go to Luke - ‘what must I so to inherit eternal life’, what does God want of me? - we might expect Jesus’ answer to be tough, designed to weed out as many people as possible. 

But what does Jesus say? I want you to be a good neighbour  - is that it? does he set the bar no higher than that? We all want to be good neighbours. We know what neighbourliness is - to find it is the heart of what loving our neighbours as ourselves means should be a refreshment - not an impossible barrier - not designed to weed people out but to draw people in.

Is there a stumbling block? - doesn’t need to be - depends on us. But there is something to stretch us. Jesus wants to expand our understanding of who are neighbour is - and that isn’t as easy as it sounds and never has been.

When reading the Gospels you sometimes get the impression that if anywhere in ancient Galilee you heard a loud noise and a lot of laughter and talking and singing, you could be reasonably sure that Jesus of Nazareth was around somewhere nearby. Jesus created fellowship wherever he was. And it is one of the things in the Gospels that is remembered as most distinctive about him, because even then some of his friends were embarrassed by it. The indiscriminate generosity and the willingness to mix with unsuitable people were already, in the first Christian generation, just difficult enough for the Gospel writers to scratch their heads and cough just a little bit about it. But they could not deny it or suppress it. It was too vividly remembered. Jesus sought out company and the effect of his presence was to create a celebration, to bind people together.  

We can’t choose our neighbours. Jesus wants us to be a good neighbour to the people we are uncomfortable with, the people we don’t really like or approve of, the people we don’t normally notice - his only qualification for who our neighbour is  - are they in need? if someone needs help and we can give it they are our neighbour. What that help may be will vary - go back to the parable - if the next person  along - not strong, no transport, no resources but they had stayed with the man and flagged down the next passing donkey - they are being the best neighbour they can be. 

Being a good neighbour won’t always mean being able to solve somebody’s problem - some problems aren’t like that  anyway - sometimes companionship is the best that we can offer, sometimes it can be more.

Neighbourliness, hospitality don’t sound very much like saintliness, but they are part of the kingdom of God, often they are the first visible sign of the Kingdom of God on earth and they are part of the fruit that Paul saw growing in the Church at Colossae. We can bear that fruit too.

Agatha Christie

Article for Happy at Home

Agatha Christie always gives me a feeling of holiday - summer on the beach, Christmas in an armchair with tea and cake - I suppose it’s because that’s where and when I first came across her. My family read a lot, and indiscriminately, so there were always piles of books lying around for me to try out and there were always Agatha Christies I hadn’t read. I now know you can read them anywhere, but those are the place she takes me back to.

No author of detective stories has been so successful as Agatha Christie. Her name has become a byword for a particular approach to crime writing - a closed setting, any sex and violence take place out of the reader’s sight, the unexpected detective - pompous ridiculous Poirot, the underestimated and overlooked Miss Marple, - the denouement in the library with all the suspects gathered round bemused until the sleuth tugs away at one unremarkable thread until the smoke screens and false trails unravel and the truth of what happened is plain to see.

It all began with a challenge from Agatha’s sister Madge - could she write a ‘fair’ detective story which kept the reader guessing even though they were given just as much information as the detective. Agatha won the bet and so have countless readers since then.

There has been no more successful  crime writer than Agatha Christie; there has been no one better at doing what she did. She marries plot and pace, human understanding and quirky characterisation, fairness to her readers with sleight of hand uniquely well. 

How did she do it? She drew on her experience - born into a well off middle class family in Torquay, but never so well off that they were without financial anxiety. Two marriages, one unhappy though it gave her a child  and one long and happy. A well publicised disappearance, amnesia - a break down she didn’t talk about. She drew from all that had happened to her, that made her who she was.   

But beyond that there is an indefinable something more that draws you in and keeps you turning the pages. If you haven’t read one of her stories why not begin where she did with ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’.  You’ll be introduced to Hercule Poirot and get your first chance to match your wits against his.  It will seem incredible - she is very readable - but ‘Styles’ was published a hundred years ago; to read it is to open a time capsule. Set towards the end of the first world war this is a world where houses were commonly lit by gaslight and candles, where the house is having to make do with three gardeners rather than the five they had before the war and where Belgian refugees (one of them Poirot) from the fighting have made their way over the Channel. She writes about the world she lives in not a historic past and so she bears witness to what it felt like to live in this era.  

This time between the wars is often called the ‘Golden Age of Crime Writing’ and Christie was soon recognised as one of its four Queens along with Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham. Sayers stopped writing detective fiction before the second war but the others continued though Christie was certainly the most prolific and successful of them. 

Golden age is an artificial term used to describe a particular kind of detective story set in a world disturbed by violence that is brought back into balance when the murderer is discovered and faces justice. Sometimes caricatured as cosy they provided comfort and security to people who having lived through one great upheaval were already seeing the tensions that would lead to the next. ‘Cosy’ is certainly an unfair description of Christie. She is ruthless with her characters - not only might the killer be the last person you expected they might also turn out to be the last person you wanted to be guilty. Her various sleuths Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence were able to see all too clearly the workings of the heart that would lead to someone to kill.  

And she has certainly been an influence on future generations of writer who would be dissatisfied with soft soap - Val McDermid wrote ‘Christie is the gateway drug to crime fiction both for readers and writers…..just one book is never enough.’

So if you did start with ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ what could you go on to?

She said herself that her favourite of her books tended to shift but ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, ‘A Murder is Announced’, ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and ‘The Moving Finger’ were all books she enjoyed re reading and she thought ‘The Thirteen Problems’ was a good set of stories.  

And if you enjoy her why not try some of her competitors - as well as Sayers, Marsh and Allingham (who was Christie’s own favourite writer) there are people like Josephine Tey, Edmund Crispin, Michael Innes and John Dickson Carr. When I read them I’ll be lying on a beach in Cornwall, but you can choose where they take you back to.

She wrote 66 detective novels, 14 short story collections, the Mousetrap (the world’s longest running play) as well as half a dozen novels as Mary Westmacott. She sold over a billion books in English and another billion in translation.

Which is not to mention countless tv series, film adaptations and radio plays…  

Rock Bun Recipe

Rock Buns

Oven should be at gas 5, 190° (fan 170°?)

175g Wholemeal Flour

175g  Plain White Flour

1/4 teaspoon (tsp) Salt

2 level tsp Baking Powder

1/4 tsp Nutmeg*

1/4 tsp Mixed Spice*

175g Butter

175g Soft Brown Sugar

75g Currants/Sultanas/ or mixed fruit*

25g mixed peel*

an egg

a little milk 

Mix the flours, salt, baking powder, sugar and spices, then rub in the butter reasonably thoroughly. 

add the fruit, mix in egg so that a stiff dough is formed. This is the point where you might need to add a little milk - only enough so that it all holds together.

This will make about 12 - 16 buns - use  about a dessert spoonful of mixture to make ranks of them on a baking tray then stick in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes 

*The above is the Delia Smith quantity. I always add at least 25%.

Easter 4

This sermon was written in the run up to the General Election called by Theresa May and is very much in note/script form.  I'm putting this up in the Coronavirus lockdown; so the quotation at the end  by Rowan Williams seems even more a vision of hope than normal.

07/05/17                            King Sterndale                               Easter 4

Acts 2:42-end                1 Peter 2:19-end                        John 10:1-10

Though I'm an election Junky - listen obsessively to the news - I'm rather less so than I used to be - because increasingly politicians sound like a caricature of v. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.  vote for our opponents and they’ll lay waste to the country -vote for me and abundant life will be yours - it seems like overkill for a general election and as time goes on the balance of the talking has shifted (it seems to me) so there is a greater concentration on the opponent’s potential disasters than what actual good the speaker will do - we’re encouraged to act out of protectiveness than to consider the common good.

I want us to look at this verse not because it’s a neat summing up of electoral rhetoric but because it shows up the difference between how we see things and how God does. How differently he views the abundant life.

election promises focus on our health wealth and happiness - low taxes, high pensions better health care - may well be good things but a very different view of abundance from Jesus’s - he doesn’t offer ease of life, length of life,  success in life - that’s not his view of abundance - indeed if I had to choose one place in the gospel where Jesus recognises it, it’s in the story of the  widow with her two mites…

if he doesn’t mean accumulation by abundance what does he mean by having life, and having it abundantly.?

First it’s about out knowing God - Jesus came so that in him we would be children of God - and that is our central identity - everything else is secondary - this matters very much and we - the church - often get it wrong - when church arguments obscure the fact that every other christian is our brother and sister and should be treated as such something has gone wrong - once we accept it and deal well with those we disagree with, we begin to share in that abundant life.

Then as children of God we have a purpose in life - we are part of our Father’s kingdom and we are called to be salt and light in His creation - to preserve it and to bear witness to his welcome to us all. 

A purpose we’ll never grow out of, or retire from and from which we’ll never be laid off,  which makes sense of everything we do, which weaves every act of kindness, every word of reconciliation into God’s abundant life.

And knowing God gives us perspective - what matters in life - not what advertisements tell us but what has always mattered - family, friends, hospitality, generosity and the recognition of someone bigger and better and more than we are that is the wellspring of our worship - these all work with the grain of God’s kingdom and are part of the abundant life Jesus offers us

Does he deliver on the promise?

 Yes he does - Peter thought so So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’ 

With all the antagonism that he would face as a follower of Jesus Simon knew there was nowhere else he could go.

The saints bear witness to the joys they have received through Jesus’s gift of life. We know it too - even when we don’t always call it by name  - when we get something right in the way we live even if it’s cost us something - then we know it too.  

Knowing God, sharing his purpose, beginning to see just how much he has given us to enjoy …. 

When reading the Gospels you sometimes get the impression that if anywhere in ancient Galilee you heard a loud noise and a lot of laughter and talking and singing, you could be reasonably sure that Jesus of Nazareth was around somewhere nearby. Jesus created fellowship wherever he was. And it is one of the things in the Gospels that is remembered as most distinctive about him, because even then some of his friends were embarrassed by it. The indiscriminate generosity and the willingness to mix with unsuitable people were already, in the first Christian generation, just difficult enough for the Gospel writers to scratch their heads and cough just a little bit about it. But they could not deny it or suppress it. It was too vividly remembered. Jesus sought out company and the effect of his presence was to create a celebration, to bind people together. 

This is abundant life.

Primary Wonder - Levertov

Primary Wonder - Denise Levertov

Days pass when I forget the mystery.

Problems insoluble and problems offering

their own ignored solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber

along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their colored clothes; caps and bells.

And then

once more the quiet mystery

is present to me, the throng’s clamor

recedes:  the mystery

that there is anything, anything at all,

let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,

rather than void: and that, O Lord,

Creator, Hallowed one, You still,

hour by hour sustain it.