Unlock: An Easter Call to the Church

First preached as a sermon on the Second Sunday of Easter at Croydon Minster, also the Sunday of the Annual Parochial Church Meeting. Text: John 20.19-31.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

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Over the last few months the nation has become wearily familiar with the Speaker of the House of Commons, after another vote in the House, bellowing, (and I won’t do an impersonation!) ‘unlock!’

Well, this morning’s Gospel reading is saying the same thing: it’s time to unlock!

Unlock your hearts. Unlock your minds. Unlock your bodies. Open up. Then step out into the world in faith, hope and love.

As we gather for this Eucharist, today the Second Sunday of Eastertide, the day of our Annual Parochial Church Meeting, the Gospel tells us that doors that were locked can be flung open; there is nothing to fear in being witnesses to the love of God in Christ Jesus.

The disciples locked themselves away ‘out of fear’. The keys to the Kingdom that Peter had been given by Christ had locked the door; when really they are for unlocking.

So Jesus Christ unlocks the doors of that room, where the disciples were fearfully huddled, in a threefold way: through peace, forgiveness and faith.

Peace. First, he extends his hands: ‘Peace be with you’ he says. Shortly we will share the Sign of Peace, and in Eastertide the introduction to the Peace draws directly on this morning’s gospel scene: ‘then were they glad when they saw the Lord’.

The exchange of the Sign of Peace is not to prompt backslapping bonhomie, or to catch up on old titbits of news, or even enquire after someone’s wellbeing: that is the behaviour of the locked away, the introspective and the clubbish.

The exchange of the Sign of Peace acknowledges the Peace that Christ brings dispels fearfulness such that we disarm ourselves and look out beyond ourselves.

The gift of peace to the disciples also turns them into being apostles, for they are sent in peace, to bring peace, to be peace-full. An apostle is one who is sent: ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you’ (John 20.21).

That’s what the final commission of the Eucharist is about: ‘Go in peace’! Flow out from here like life giving water - unlocked - bearing peace on your way.

And that’s the second gift there is: forgiveness. Christ the Unlocker breathes the Holy Spirit upon the apostles with the breath of forgiveness. The apostles are to be a forgiven and forgiving community.

There is immense power in this. Jesus is not giving them a power to withhold forgiveness, or not, as if it were their own to bestow. Rather, the power to forgive sins goes with the power of being forgiven by Jesus. Without forgiving others you will never know yourself to be forgiven; without knowing yourself to be forgiven, you will never forgive others.

Forgiveness in the Name of Jesus unlocks: it unlocks intractable situations (reconciliation - personal, corporate, international - flows from forgiveness). Forgiveness unlocks tangled up lives that have turned in on themselves; forgiveness unlocks and releases.

Confession of our sins, not the retention of other peoples’ sins, unlocks and unblocks our relationship with God and other people.

Peace. Forgiveness. Faith.

Faith unlocks. Faith, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, is ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11.1). It is faith that gives hope for the future, for the future is filled with things not seen.

What can give us assurance is what was tangible for Thomas. In the wounds of Christ we see, feel and touch the passionate love of God for us and the world. In his resurrection, the wounds of crucifixion don’t go away but are transformed into glorious signs of Christ’s commitment to us.

Faith, then, unlocks our imaginations and opens us up to the capacity that God has for renewal and transformation: the renewal and transformation of our personal lives, our relationships, our church, our world.

Peace. Forgiveness. Faith. Three signs of the presence of Christ, the One Who Unlocks.

So what locks you in? For many people what locks them in is fear: fear of failure, fear of being exposed for being some sort of fraud; fear that being true to one’s own convictions will expose one to ridicule, embarrassment or shame.

If you’re locked in, someone else is locked out. Being locked in creates divisions. You can see that in individual lives, amongst self-identifying groups and communities and between nations.

All this can be true of a church community too. Churches can go into spiritual, and physical, lock down. (After all, that’s what the embryonic church, the band of Christ’s disciples, did). We can look in on ourselves. We can keep things ticking over. We can take comfort in the familiar and what we can control. We can ‘batten down the hatches’. We lock ourselves in and lock others, including Jesus Christ, out.

In that situation Christ calls: ‘Unlock! Receive my peace; be forgiving and forgiven. Have faith’.

I know that is our heart’s desire here at this Minster Church: to unlock and open up.

That is about our spiritual disposition, what you could call our culture, and it’s about physical posture, in other words, our practice, what we do.

I detect a great yearning for this church to establish itself afresh as the ancient and enduring spiritual heart of this community of Croydon, not in splendid isolation but working with all who seek the Common Good, to be a symbol of God’s faithfulness over the centuries, God’s commitment to the present, and hope and faith for the future.

There is a desire to unlock, roll up our collective sleeves and serve our locality because “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” (Gaudium et Spes, 1)

I hope that our annual report is a reflection of all the wonderful things that happen here and an indication of all that can be unlocked here.

In the coming weeks we will have a chance to do some self-reflection, through the short questionnaire that you’re encouraged to complete, through praying for our church and gathering on 15^th June for a time when we can map out our vision as a church community.

That is not us being introspective or locked in, but being renewed to step out afresh, going in peace to love and serve the Lord.

In the coming months, leading to the autumn, the Church Council and I will be working on a new Mission Action Plan. That plan will have been deeply informed by our vision day in June. It will help us identify what you can call our ‘greater “yes”’, as we look towards God’s future with hope.

That Mission Action Plan will be our tool to unlock and open up our renewed vision, mission and purpose. There is so much we would love to do. Yet under God, a plan will identify the things that we say ‘yes’ to and embrace, and the things that, at this time, we need to say ‘no’ to. And it will ask us to identify the resources we need to realise it.

Knowing our ‘greater “yes”’ is what will unlock our energies and passions not for ourselves but for the sake of the Kingdom.

Unlocked living is about living life in all its abundance (cf John 10.10).

May that life, received in Word and sacrament, be an enduring feature of this church and all who pass through her doors, unlocked, for the sake of all people and the Kingdom, such that we go from here in peace, forgiven and forgiving, filled with faith to love and serve the Lord.

'Bearers of Christ the Living Bread to a hungry world' A homily for Corpus Christi

A homily preached at Guildford Cathedral on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 31st May 2018.

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is one of those propitious days when two great celebrations of the Church Year converge. Today is the feast of Corpus Christi, the Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion, which always falls on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

Today is also the 31 May, on which falls the celebration of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth. The actual celebration of that feast will come tomorrow, it having been bumped a day by Corpus Christi.

So how might the two connect, and each give an insight into the other?

I invite you to picture two images.

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at Croydon Minster

The first image for your mind is of the monstrance in which the Consecrated Host is placed for the Eucharistic procession and benediction. It is simply a receptacle – albeit a rather splendid one - that enables us to see and focus upon the intensity of the Lord’s presence in the Eucharist.

The second image is the one printed on the front of your order of service. It is the ancient image known as the Virgin of the Sign. It shows the Blessed Virgin Mary displaying Christ just like a medallion; you could almost say that in that icon Mary is a monstrance, displaying Christ so that people may see and believe.

'Virgin of the Sign' or 'Virgin Orans'

But Mary was more than a receptacle to carry or to display something. As St John’s gospel tells us ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’. God’s full presence dwelt in Mary’s womb, such that from her he receives the very humanity that each one of us shares.

The Word made Flesh dwelt in Mary’s womb: gestating; growing; and being nourished by her body.

Christ, the Living Bread, first knew nourishment from the body of his Mother, receiving her lifeblood through the umbilical cord; now he nourishes his Church through his body and blood, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So for nine months Christ was carried; Christ was hidden.

Whilst hidden in Mary’s womb Christ was nevertheless present. The account of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth makes this clear. Elizabeth greets Mary saying, ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb’. And John the Baptist - himself still hidden in his mother’s womb – dances for joy before Christ’s presence.

John’s leaping echoes the way in which King David danced and leapt before the Ark of the Covenant, which bore the presence of Yahweh, the LORD, which had preceded the Israelites on the sojourn of the exodus from Egypt. The ark was being brought into Jerusalem and ‘David danced before the LORD with all his might’ (1 Samuel 6.14).

In visiting Elizabeth Mary had out with haste to a Judean town in the hill country bearing Christ up hill and down dale to her cousin’s home (Luke 1.39). Christ in her had been recognised, honoured and adored.

Mary journeyed and tonight we process, as many will around the world, with Christ in our midst and visible in the Blessed Sacrament. The monstrance will be our ark.

Christ, in the Eucharist, will be carried through marble floored churches, across fields, around churchyards, down footpaths beside busy dual carriageways, as one church I know in Leeds will be doing tonight.

In some parts of the world that procession will be accompanied by dancing, some by formal processions, some by rose petals strewn along the way.

God moves and travels with his people, sometimes hidden, and sometimes made manifest and visible.

The challenge of all this is to see how we bear Christ in our lives in a world that oftentimes does not wish to see Christ, cannot see Christ or looks away at Christ’s presence: the world avoids Christ’s gaze.

The challenge of this is for us to see Christ both visible and hidden in the lives of other people.

The challenge for us in this is to be more than walking monstrances - simply receptacles - however splendid or beautiful we are, and to be more after the example of Mary: those who accept Christ into our lives, growing and taking form within us; to be like Mary of the icon, people from whom Christ shines out, with her, our hands lifted in prayer and praise of God. Therein lies human dignity and beauty.

‘Give us this day our daily bread’. Tonight we stretch out our hands to receive afresh the bread of life, the Body of Christ. The presence of the bread of life, hidden and made manifest in our lives, will transform us, help us to grow, open us to God and open to all people.

And then we move: bearers of Christ the Living Bread to a hungry world.