Dorothy L Sayers - women first at the Cradle and last at the Cross

 

“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature.”

The quotation is from ‘Are Women Human?’ by DLS

Christmas 2 2022. All Saints Southport

   02/01/22       All Saints Southport        Christmas 2  

Ephesians 1:3-14                                                  John 1:10-18

If there’s one thing that living in a pandemic has made pretty clear it’s that all our plans are provisional. For example, in February we hope to go down to Surrey to look after two of our grandchildren allowing our son and daughter in law to have a week end away. Will it happen - we hope so and think so but have learned to keep a little way this side of complete confidence. 

The reason I mention this is that in this sermon I am going to make a very modest proposal which should see us through this year and beyond - I have every hope it’s Covid proof and government proof, but I can offer you no guarantees.

Further, my proposal is manageable whatever our starting point and will improve the quality of our life whether we are great saints, great sinners or somewhere in-between. At this point you’re probably wondering when will I bring out the bottles of snake oil and what the catch is, but in fact we are going to look at the passages. 

Our readings are very different from each other - Paul is exuberant, he is overwhelmed by what God has done for us and can scarcely pause for breath, the gospel is comparatively dour it has a greater sense of buckling down to a difficult but necessary task - nevertheless they have at least two things in common. 

The first is that neither is satisfied to simply say that Jesus came that we might be forgiven in the sense of having been given a get out of jail free card, an ‘off you go and don’t do it again’ approach they go further, we are not just forgiven we are reconciled to the Father ‘God and sinners reconciled’ - the relationship has been healed, made good, Jesus came so we might be welcomed into the family of God ‘Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die, born to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth.’  - if I’d been thinking we could have sung Hark the Herald Angels. Forgiveness is only the starting point of what God has done for us, what he wants, intends, looks forward to - is our adoption into his family.

Now before telling you the second thing they have in common I’ll give you my modest proposal.

I am going to introduce it with a paragraph by Rowan Williams which I very often use during a eucharist. 

 For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests - that they have been welcomed, and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the most simple thing we can say about Holy Communion, yet it is still supremely worth saying. In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ tells us that He wants our company.

My proposal is simply that we should take this last phrase seriously - ‘Jesus Christ wants our company’ and so over this next year we should aim to keep him company, walk where he is walking, enjoy being with him..

If this is the proposal what is the catch?

One reason is that often - and I speak personally - we’d rather have a get out of jail free card than family membership. We suspect - often rightly  that if we stick too close to Jesus we may be taken ever so slightly outside our comfort zone.

However there is another reason - we find it hard to believe that God might enjoy time with us ‘Jesus Christ wants our company? That must be nonsense.’

Writing about Christmas Rowan Williams puts it rather more elegantly , ‘We are dealing…with a God who doesn’t have to be persuaded to be interested in us….what relics are there in our mind and hearts of an approach to God which still believes that God is essentially rather bored with us, rather removed from us and always in need of being kept sweet.

However long you’ve been a Christian, or however long you’ve been looking wistfully at Christianity from outside, that’s something that obstinately keeps coming back. That something is deeply etched in our mind, the mythology of a God who somehow has to be persuaded to be on our side.’ 

We expect that God is bored with us or that we’re just not his kind of people. Rowan Williams gives this idea short shrift

 ‘Persuade God to be on our side? You might as well try and persuade a waterfall to be wet.’

We can have a blind spot about God’s love for us - the idea is so odd we can distance ourselves from it. Yet he could hardly have done more to try and get us to take it seriously. And this is the second thing that our epistle and gospel have in common. Listen to what Paul wrote Read extracts from Ephesians to emphasise God's agency , God sent his son so that we would be brought into his family Similarly read from the gospel. Preparing this sermon reminded me that the incarnation wasn’t inevitable; it happened because of God’s active choice, it is his idea, our relationship with him is not one of the byproducts  of his Creation, the word being made flesh is not an afterthought, it’s the focal point of his intentions. Adopting us as his children/ giving us the power to become the children God wasn’t a business decision - ‘how can I make the very most of this universe’, or a reluctant rescue ‘they’ve made a complete pig’s ear of things, I’d better hit the plan B button’ - he did it because us in his family is what he had wanted all along. 

My proposal is about accepting we don’t need to be defensive with God - he enjoys our company - but it will change us, if we have his ear he has ours - and he is different from us, our understanding will not be perfect.

We will have questions about faith, the world, the way people are  for which we have no answer   Life comes to us, not always straight forwardly or comfortably and we have to find our way through it - part of our keeping company with Jesus will involve asking the awkward questions - we may not get a full answer but we can still be left with hope.

C. S. Lewis’s friend  Austin Farrer wrote this

we do not comprehend the world, and we are not going to. It is, and it remains for us, a confused mystery of bright and dark. God does not give us explanations; He gives us a Son. Such is the spirit of the angel’s message to the shepherds: ‘Peace upon earth, goodwill to all..... You shall find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.’

The Saviour the angels sing of is not an abstract idea, He has been born to us

... flesh and blood, fully human - and he is going to live in the world we live in and provide God’s response to our questions in that flesh and blood.

‘A Son is better than an explanation.

From the gospel ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.’ Sometimes alived example or an image is worth a thousand words 

Desmond Tutu’s funeral was yesterday so one example and one image from him. The example wasn’t his but touched him The first time he met Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican missionary he doffed his hat to Tutu's mother, a gesture almost unheard of in apartheid South Africa. When Tutu spent 18 months in hospital with TB  Huddleston regularly visited him and later supported him as went forward to ordination. Huddleston knew all people have the dignity of being made in the image of God so he did the simple things that changed a life and eventually a nation.

An image Desmond Tutu at a sitting of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, his head is bowed While listening to the testimony of victims, Tutu was sometimes overwhelmed by emotion and cried during the hearings. Firmly believing that that the conclusion of forgiveness is reconciliation meant he didn’t try to armour himself against the pain of those who had suffered, but this was a very hard road to walk. 

Trevor Huddleston and Desmond Tutu - immensely different characters - both Godly people who gave time to keeping God company - following Jesus led them along difficult paths but they were more fully themselves as his companions than ever could have been otherwise.

A modest proposal for the new year  ‘For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests - that they have been welcomed, and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the most simple thing we can say about Holy Communion, yet it is still supremely worth saying. In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ tells us that He wants our company.’

Day by day, spend a little more time with him in the give and take of companionship and it will change your life.

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.