Serving in the courts of the Lord

Preached at Choral Evensong as the Minster gave thanks for Denise Mead, Verger and Administrator, who retires at Christmas.

‘My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord : my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.’

Psalm 84.2

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Those words are from psalm 84.

It is a psalm that rejoices in the praise of God in his holy sanctuary.

When that psalm was composed the holy dwelling place of God was understood to be the temple in Jerusalem: the place of encounter between heaven and earth, God and humanity.

That temple was an echo of the first ‘temple’, as we might call it, the Garden of Eden, the place of right worship and life with God, which humanity vacated after the disobedience there.

The earthly temple, whose dimensions were given by God, was a vital sign of how things are meant to be between God and humanity (Exodus 40), and this is what that temple in Jerusalem came to be.

But the mission of Jesus expands the vision of the temple dramatically.

The temple is now not the huge stone edifice in Jerusalem, decorated with gold and cedar wood and rich fabrics; it is not solely for the worship of the people of Israel but for all nations, for the temple is Jesus Christ himself.

Remember after he cleansed the earthly temple in Jerusalem at the beginning of his ministry in St John’s Gospel?

Jesus declared:

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2.19)

Those locked into the ways of the earthly temple replied:

“It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” (v20)

‘But’, St John reminds us, ‘Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (vv.21-22)

So, the temple is reimagined, expanded, and is Jesus’ body so that all people can, like the sparrow in the psalm find a house, and like the swallow, nestle and nurture.

And each church building, the sanctuary of God, is an expression in stone of the hospitality of Jesus and the worship of the people of God.

And what a privilege, a ‘duty and a joy’, it is to spend time in God’s house.

The psalm captures it: ‘my soul hath a desire and longing to enter the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God’.

This psalm should be a beloved one to all Christians, expressing the desire and longing we have to dwell in the beauty of the presence of Jesus Christ.

Yet I can’t help but feel that this is a psalm that is especially dear to Vergers.

‘Verger’ is not a word that many people outside the church know.

And it needs to be better known in the church too.

To be a verger is to work day by day in the dwelling of the Lord of hosts, in the courts of the Lord.

Vergers are custodians, with incumbents and churchwardens, of the building set apart for the holy worship of God.

To be a verger is to help order and smooth the way for the worship of the church and her liturgies.

You’re cut out to be a verger if you can say:

For one day in thy courts : is better than a thousand.

I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God : than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness.

Now, a paraphrase of the Bible called ‘The Message’ puts those verses like this:

One day spent in your house, this beautiful place of worship,
    beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches.
I’d rather scrub floors in the house of my God
    than be honored as a guest in the palace of sin.

It’s not a translation, but it captures the sense of things.

Now this isn’t a speech, it’s a sermon, but it is true to say that Denise has exemplified this spirit.

Denise is not to be found on Greek islands in preference to this place – in fact getting her to have a holiday at all is quite a task!

And you can see what this place has over a foreign holiday.

This glorious Minster church: with its still beauty, early in the morning; its intense darkness when locking up after midnight Mass or the Easter Vigil, with only the flicker of the sacrament lamp giving light; with its soaring beauty, filled with music, incense and praise; with its light streaming across from the high south windows during the Sunday Eucharist, baptisms, weddings and funerals; with its simple presence as the doors are opened for the people of the parish to come in and pray during the week.

Here the verger is to be found, nesting in a church, like the swallows of the psalm.

Of course, swallows are migrating birds; they are here for a season and then fly to warmer climes, but whilst they are here it is home, their lodging place.

Soon Denise will fly away from this sanctuary, but will find another: the Lord opens his house to her, as to all people.

The true measure of a verger, as of any Christian, is to cherish the Lord’s house, but to desire and long for something even more precious, and that is life in Jesus Christ.

That is why for Denise, as for vergers through the generations, being a verger is a vocation, a calling from God, a way of loving service in God’s house, with, and for, God’s people and all to his greater glory.

So, the earthly sanctuary points to the heavenly one.

The temple we ultimately dwell in is the life of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church.

That is the meeting point of heaven and earth, God and humanity, and where truth, beauty and goodness is to be found.

Of life in Christ we can surely say:

My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord : my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.

 

 

Dare to Hope, dare to Endure

Malachi 4:1-2a ‘For you the sun of righteousness shall rise.’

2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 ‘If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.’

Luke 21:5-19 ‘By your endurance you will gain your lives.’

‘Teacher, when will these things be,

and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?’

(Luke 21.7)

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What a scene of turmoil, destruction, darkness and upheaval we have just had described in the Gospel reading: wars, rumours of wars, natural disaster and earthquake.

In the face of that, plenty of people might dare to answer the disciples’ question: ‘Teacher, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?’ by saying that, ‘it’s now, obviously.’

Glance at the news for a couple of minutes and it’s all there.

That’s how the modern secular mind reads the world today: destruction; disaster; wipeout; annihilation.

We all have a teleology – that’s an understanding of your ultimate object or aim in life.

And your teleology, understanding of the ultimate, determines how you live your life.

A teleology of destruction, disaster, wipeout and annihilation will shape your life in a similar way.

If the news and norms of today are all there is, then no wonder you’d be hopeless and left asking, ‘what’s the point of it all?’

There is a very different teleology for believers.

If you believe that there is a Creator – God – who has purpose and a mission for the world, who wills and desires the world to flourish and be at harmony, then you can’t see the world as others do.

The vital ingredients are that there is purpose and meaning in God’s world, all brought together in the virtue of ‘hope’, which abides and endures with faith and love (1 Corinthians 13.13).

Hope is very different from the general and vague spirit of an optimist.

The optimist will be terrified in the face of the news today, the arc of history does not seem to be bending towards a good outcome, let alone justice.

But hope is rooted in the expectation of God’s past, present and enduring action in the world.

Hope knows the end of the story.

The world is patterned in hope, even as tribulation, wars, rumours of wars, natural disaster and earthquakes unfold.

It is through the lens of hope that the believer sees the world, and his or her own life.

God’s purpose in the world is the restoration of all things in Christ.

It’s described in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21.1-4)

It's there in the Gospel reading today: Jesus looks to the time when we come through the tribulation and he says, ‘not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.’ (Luke 21.19)

That’s why St Paul can say:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8.18)

Indeed, he also says:

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5.3-5)

The Gospel reading began with people staring at the Temple, a massive stone edifice ‘adorned with stones and offerings’ (Luke 21.5) and Jesus says it will all crumble.

The overarching narrative of the Bible is that the earthly Temple makes way for the gift of the heavenly, the Temple of Christ’s mystical body.

The first temple, as it were, was the Garden of Eden.

In that “temple” God placed the man and the woman to be at one with him in abundance and worship.

Their disobedience saw humanity expelled from the Garden Temple of paradise, and the consequence of that is the darkness in the world of deceit, corruption, violence and pain.

Many have tried building paradise on earth and failed: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their ilk, and look at how that went.

If you want to see the worst of  violence, destruction and human degradation just look at the atheistic regimes of the 20^th century.

And the will to create paradise on earth, on human terms, has not gone away.

To the believer God’s paradise, heaven, is His gift and will come in His time, not ours; is His vision, not ours; on His terms, not ours.

The Gospel calls us to place ourselves in God’s purposes and mission for the world, to see in the tumult a call to be steadfast, hope-filled, loving, faithful and to endure.

In all this, Jesus says, we have the opportunity to bear witness (Luke 21.13): witness to what? Surely to faith, and hope, and love: the three things that endure the tumult of the world.

In this new week, pray for hope, pray for endurance, pattern your life in the hope and expectation of the coming of the One who restores all things: hold on to faith, to hope and to love.

Amen.

 

Don’t be afraid to be saints!

Revelation 7.2-4, 9-14 ‘Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.’

1 John 3.1-3 ‘We shall see God as he is.’

Matthew 5.1-12a ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’

 

Let us all rejoice in the Lord,

as we celebrate the feast day in honour of all the Saints,

at whose festival the Angels rejoice and praise the Son of God.

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The entrance antiphon for today, just quoted, captures what All Saints’ Day is all about: rejoicing in the Lord and celebrating a feast day in honour of all the Saints, which prompts angelic rejoicing and praise of Jesus Christ.

"Do not be afraid to be saints. Follow Jesus Christ who is the source of freedom and light. Be open to the Lord so that He may lighten all your ways"

Those stirring words of St John Paul II point to what we need to be saints.

Don’t be afraid to be saints!

Christ will lighten the way to that, as St John writes:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. (1 John 3.1)

Yes, by virtue of our baptism we are part of the plebs Sancta Dei, the ‘holy common people of God’, also known as the Church, the fellowship of saints.

We are saints, with a little ‘s,’ being formed as Saints with a big ‘S’.

As saints we have all it takes to become Saints: when the clutter of our own egos, misplaced desires and sin is cleared away; which it can be when we allow God’s grace in Jesus Christ to do that.

As the First Letter of John put it:

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3.2)

And this journey takes us deep into the heart of Jesus’ teaching, which is so beautifully distilled in the Beatitudes, those phrases of blessing, ‘blessed are…’, ‘blessed are…’

Again, St John says:

And everyone who thus hopes in [Jesus Christ] purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 3.3)

That echoes Jesus own words:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5.8)

Being and becoming a Saint is to be formed more and more in the image and likeness of God as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.

And just as each person is formed uniquely, and yet still bears God’s image, so it is with Saints.

All Saints look like Christ, but there is a multiplicity of what Saints look like.

In other words, you can only be the Saint God makes you to be, and being a saint makes you more and more truly yourself, not a pale shadow or distortion of who you are, or imitation of anyone else, other than Christ.

But this isn’t just about personal improvement or a self-help programme.

Saints can’t make it without God’s grace; and they, we, can’t do it in splendid isolation.

The ravishing vision of the Book of Revelation conveys this so wonderfully.

St John the Divine, who was entrusted with this revelation to see and write down, describes the scene:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands (Revelation 7.9)

That is heaven.

And heaven is tasted on earth.

The vision of Revelation is a vision of the Church at worship in heaven: and the saints on earth anticipate the worship of heaven.

This is what the poet George Herbert describes in his poem ‘Prayer’:

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,

Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,

Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest, (Prayer [1I])

In the Church’s banquet, the banquet of saints, we feast on ‘exalted Manna’ the supernatural bread and taste ‘heaven in ordinarie.’

Sunday by Sunday at the Eucharist – receiving ‘exalted manna’ - in this church, I see a vision of saints ‘from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb’ (Revelation 7.9.)

That is, to me, a vision of ‘heaven in ordinarie.’

I see the holy people of God, around the altar, being formed more deeply by the Holy Spirit to become the holy people of God, individually and corporately.

And that happens because we gather around the throne of the Lamb who was slain, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God and when share his life with the palm branches of martyrdom.

And the angels, who the scriptures show adoring God’s holy presence night and day, join this praise and connect us to the worship of heaven.

So let us ever join in the angelic song, with all the Saints:

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7.12)