Sermon St. Peter's Birkdale - 16/10/22

 16/10/22               St Peter’s, Birkdale.              Trinity 18                      

Jeremiah 31:27-34      Holy Communion           Luke 18:1-8         

There are three parts to this sermon.

The first is a reading from St. Augustine who is realistic about what our life is, hopeful about what it will be and reminds us of our calling as the people of God. The second part is two linked stories about Russian composers that I found in the programme notes of a concert Hilary and I went to in Buxton - it exemplifies the human problem and then eventually in the third part we’ll look at the passage from Jeremiah and tenuously connect it to the Augustine.

‘Let us sing alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety , so that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security... We shall have no enemies in heaven, we shall never lose a friend. 

God’s praises are sung both here and there, but here they are sung in anxiety there in security; here they are sung by those destined to die; there by those destined to live forever; here they are sung in hope , there in hope’s fulfilment; here, they are sung by wayfarers; there, by those living in their own country. 

So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’

This was part of a sermon by St Augustine and it has a lovely balance between the life we live now and our future hope.

He is realistic about our life  - we are anxious, there may be enemies, we lose friends, in this world we are wayfarers rather than permanent residents.

He is reassuringly plain speaking about our hope in God - our hope is in heaven where there is security, no-one is an enemy, we will never lose a friend - there is eternal life - we are no longer wayfarers but those living in their own country.

He ends with a reminder that for now we have a task So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’

Now the Russian composers.. The first is Borodin - who was a very gifted composer  but he was also a very gifted chemist and a doctor - and though now he is remembered for his music - what he was proudest of was establishing a school of medicine for women and this was the late 19th Century. Much to the irritation of his composer colleagues music was only part of his life. He began working on an opera Prince Igor - but the usual distractions meant progress was very slow.

Then catastrophe - eighteen years after he had started work on it  - Borodin died suddenly with Prince Igor nothing like finished. But his friends did not abandon him or his work and  Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, began the hugely unenviable task of sifting through his belongings and dealing with the score of Prince Igor. As Rimsky-Korsakov later wrote ‘Glazunov ... was to fill in all the gaps in Act III and write down from memory the Overture played so often by the composer, while I was to orchestrate, finish composing, and systematise all the rest that had been left …’ The work was finished and is still performed.

Glazunov - was the hero of the hour - painstakingly assembling the bits of manuscript, then finishing it as truly as possible to Borodin’s intentions. What real friendship and selflessness that took. What Glazunov gave to Borodin was the best of himself.

The second composer is Rachmaninov and his 1st symphony. It was written early in his career -  when he was known as pianist and conductor rather than a composer. Its premiere was a a total disaster. Rachmaninov was very unlucky in his conductor. It was a difficult work anyway but it had been under-rehearsed and for the performance itself reports suggest the strong likelihood that the conductor was drunk. Unsurprisingly it had a wretched reception and it put Rachmaninov off symphonies for almost ten years  Poor man - his career blighted by a conductor.

As I said these are linked stories and the link is that Rachmaninov’s  conductor was the same Glazunov who so helped Borodin -for one he was the hero but for the other he was the villain.What he gave Rachmaninov was a long way short of his best.

How can this be?  How can the same person be a hero and a villain, a success and a failure , a saint and a sinner?

The better we know ourselves the less surprised we will be - because this is us too. This is what we are like  - we see it dramatically here but we are made of the same ingredients.

The good - the glorious, the made in the image of God - that’s in us but so too is the bad, the bit which gets things wrong sometimes accidentally, but sometimes quite deliberately and knowingly, the bit that  is selfish, mean and uncaring.

All of us have both these sides tugging at us the whole time - sometimes we’re more aware of the one than the other but they’re both there.

It’s how we deal with this tussle that shapes how we live. How do we make sure that the good - the made in God’s image predominates, and the bad, the fallen is subdued.

Of course this is not a new concern - Glazunov’s behaviour would have been no surprise to Jeremiah

In the reading he knows the mess that God’s people have made - their behaviour has exiled them from the promised land and brought them to slavery in Babylon - but he knows God is not washing his hands of them  he writes in effect ‘You get things wrong, You have a bias that pulls you away from what is good and towards what is bad. How can you make a better fist of living? God says ‘I’m going to do something different, to make a new deal with you, I will put my law within you, I will write on your hearts and I will be your God - I will forgive your iniquity and remember your sin no more.’  Here is hope in Jeremiah for Judah and for us. Forgiveness - because however much we try we still get things wrong - and a new heart alert to the things of God.

What does it mean that God will write his law on our hearts?

It can’t be just a more sensitive conscience to heighten our sense of guilt and failure when we get things wrong - that very rarely improves us. 

What are the laws that he wants us to have on our hearts - very simply the two great laws “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And , love your neighbour as yourself

God wants a people  who don’t just know his laws, he wants people who know him.  A heart with a greater responsiveness to God, a heart which naturally warms to him and his ways.  

Easy to say God writes his laws on our heart - how do we learn to respond

Having touched on Russian composers, we are finishing with a Russian bishop. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom suggested this - when you read scripture look out for those passages that suddenly strike you and you say ‘ How beautiful, how true’ - it may be something vast, or it may be something very small - take that beauty that struck you - turn it around in your head, reflect on it, live with it 

‘That will allow us to start on our struggle for integrity and wholeness, not by any ineffectual effort to reject or to heal what is wrong in us, but by watching over with joy, with tenderness, with a sense of reverence, something which is of God in us: visible, a light that pierces the darkness, and which is God himself’ (Encounter p.285)

Dwell on those things of God that gives you joy - love, truth, a parable, a saying -whatever it is - let them grow and bit by bit they can provide a touchstone of what is good - and the more attentive you are to them, to that which bears the stamp of God, the more natural it will be to live out of that part of you - so that you will be able to give the best of yourself to the people around you.

Love God, love our neighbour. These are the laws of God’s Kingdom. Learning to live by them is the labour that builds the kingdom of God. These are the laws God writes on our heart. This is what Augustine is talking about when he says So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’

Sermon 18/9/22

 18/09/22                        1 Tim 2:1-7                                          Matthew 25:31-40

 I think we can be pretty certain that when Paul wrote to Timothy urging prayer for kings and all those in  authority he  was not thinking of the Queen marking her Platinum Jubilee by inviting Paddington Bear to tea. On the other hand it is just possible that the Queen was thinking of St Paul.

We will come back to this in a moment, but first a quick look at our readings.

It’s very easy to forget how unexpected the gospel was. We have so much history of faith around us, from much of which we have benefitted, that the Good News no longer startles us. We take for granted the change Jesus wrought in our standing before God, the way he transformed our relationship to each other.

But take what St Paul said ‘pray that kings and those in authority should behave so that ‘we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.’ What kind of sense would that have made to anyone?

The assumption for Rome dominant at the time, as it had been for the Greeks before them, and the Egyptians and whoever was before them was that might was right - if you were powerful you could do what you liked, you protected your own position and that of a favoured few - ruling for the benefit of the average citizen was simply not on the radar. Let alone the idea that leaders should be the servants of their people. Even now there are places where that is a subversive idea.  

Then take what Jesus says in the gospel ‘the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ The least that this means is that in God’s eyes every person is as valuable as every other person. Again this was not on the radar. 

And what did it mean to follow the risen Jesus when guided by his Spirit rather than his physical presence; and what did it mean when Gentiles began to follow him.    

It was all new and in his letters Paul is filling out the shape of our faith on the hoof - so they are a mixture of answers to queries, interventions in arguments, encouragement of the faithful and filling out the understanding of his readers about the shape of the Good News. 

Our passage from 1Timothy is no different. He roots the way of life of the church in its prayer and in what God has given us in Jesus. 

The queen will have known both of today’s passages well and we know that she took her faith very seriously. We know that she espoused the idea of servant leadership; we know that the Son of Man in our gospel reading was the King to whom our queen held herself accountable.

We are going to look at one thread from this new understanding of what it means to be human  - That each person is worth as much as any other person because all are made in the image of God - and using comments from three individuals try and shine a light on how the queen wove this thread into her life and how we can weave it into ours.

The first comment is from Paul Keating,  former Prime Minister of Australia, and a staunch republican

“In the 20th century, the self became privatised, while the public realm, the realm of the public good, was broadly neglected. Queen Elizabeth understood this and instinctively attached herself to the public good against what she recognised as a tidal wave of private interest and private reward. And she did this for a lifetime. Never deviating,” he said. 

What did he mean? Whenever she could the queen came down on the side of co-operation rather than competition, on the side of the common good rather than of self  or corporate interest. She was on the side of reconciliation and hope. In so far as it was in her power she worked to enable us, in St Paul’s words, to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness because this is good, and pleases God our Saviour.

How can we work for the common good? 

 The second person I’m going to quote is Frank Cottrell Boyce the writer who scripted both the Queen parachuting in to open the Olympics  and Paddington having tea with her at the Platinum Jubilee 

‘It used to be said that millions of people had dreams in which they had tea with the Queen. Now watching her have tea with Paddington will have to do instead. It’s easy to see why that was so powerful. In retrospect, it was valedictory. A woman waving a happy goodbye to her grandchildren and great grandchildren, an image of love and a happy death.

Apparently the idea for the Queen to meet up with Paddington during the Jubilee ceremony came from Buckingham Palace. “And what an astute idea it was to have her act with Paddington, because Paddington embodies so many of the values that she stood for. He is all about kindness, tolerance, being kind to strangers, politeness, these things that are about character.

Cottrell Boyce is a practising Catholic and he too is familiar with our gospel, and goes on to say ‘And Paddington is an evacuee, a refugee, one-time prisoner, pretty much every category of need that is mentioned in Matthew 25. Here, he is being welcomed with tea and good manners. This is a strong statement of a set of values that are not uncontested in the corridors of power. To have them exemplified so joyfully at such a moment meant something.’

 Every contact mattered to her, since she died probably what we have heard most frequently from those who met her was that she met them properly - person to person.  

Each person we meet is as valuable to God as we are - do we think of them like that, do we treat them like that, do we meet them with tea and good manners, are we hospitable?

The third quote is from the former MP and now newspaper columnist Matthew Parris

Speaking about the queen’s political influence, ‘Did she win an argument? I doubt it. Did she make monarchists out of republicans? A few, perhaps; not many. What she did was different. By winning personal respect, and by making monarchy work, she gently put the argument aside.’ 

This sounds a lesser comment than the other two but may be what we need to hear most.

How did the Queen win personal respect? She was steadfast in what she did -- she had influence rather than power, but she was steadfast in doing good.

Jesus never treated people casually; to treat others with a proper concern is one of the areas where we can bear witness to his presence with us.  

Three questions the passages ask of us:

How can we work for the common good?

Are we hospitable?

Are we steadfast in doing good?  

An Indian Christian Pandita Ramabai Saraswati wrote ‘People must not only hear about the kingdom of God, but must see it in actual operation, on a small scale perhaps and in imperfect form, but a real demonstration nevertheless.’ 

We won’t be perfect but working for the common good, hospitality and steadfastness of care will show the reality of the kingdom of God more than words alone ever will 

The queen knew herself accountable before God and like us she may not have found that a comfortable thought, bur she would also have known, ‘there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus’,

The trouble is that mediator can easily be impersonal theological  legal word not at first glance a comfort  so close with a passage by Donagh O’Shea an Irish catholic priest  which fleshes out what it means that Christ is our mediator.

'The passion and death of Christ belong to us as fully as if we had suffered them ourselves.' I must have read this in St. Thomas (Aquinas) years ago as I crammed for exams in theology, but it failed to strike root in the mind's weed patch. Having rediscovered it, I think of little else at Mass. Christ is our brother: the Father cannot see us apart from him. So we stand before our Father with pride and joy, not in tortured anxiety.’

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.