Coronavirus Pastoral letter 13 17 May 2020

14^th May 2020

Sixth Sunday of Easter (Rogation Sunday)

Pastoral Letter No. 13

Fr Andrew writes:

Pastoral Letter 13

ROGATIONTIDE: DIVINE PRESENCE IN THE ‘HIGHWAYS AND HEDGEROWS’

The Sunday and weekdays before Ascension Day are traditionally known as ‘Rogationtide’.

This name seems rather antiquated and from another era. Its origins are rural and agricultural as the in the past the community would process out from the church and walk the boundaries of the parish and ask for God’s blessings on the newly sown crops.

The word ‘rogation’ comes from the Latin rogare meaning, ‘to ask’.

Rogation is the necessary prerequisite of giving thanks for the harvest. Rogation is when we say ‘please’; harvest is when we say ‘thank you’.

The Rogation traditions still continue in some places (although not this year because it involves gatherings of people). In the city rogation can be reinvented as more of a parish prayer walk, praying for the residents, schools, places of worship and business, cultural and administrative centres. This has happened from the Minster in the recent past.

Rogation processions, like all public church processions - Palm Sunday, Corpus Christi and the Eucharist each Sunday - are about hallowing public places. Reclaiming, though not in an aggressive way, the streets and ‘public square’ as a places where God’s grace can operate through his people.

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One of the sad aspects of how the House of Bishops of the Church of England responded to the lockdown was to mark a retreat from the public space into the private and domestic.

It’s worth saying that the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 were clear: ‘Places of worship are required to close except to broadcast services (my italics)’: the Church of England, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, chose to disregard the exception; services were not even permitted to be broadcast from the church.

That has meant that the widespread perception has been that the Church of England signalled a retreat from the public realm, represented in the church building, to the domestic and private realm, represented in the sitting rooms of Vicarages and through Zoom and Microsoft Teams (thus further excluding those who don’t have broadband).  

The Church of England was perceived to be absent and not present, despite many good Anglicans being on the frontline in health and social care amongst other roles in which they have been, and remain, at some risk.

We will have to work hard to reposition our churches at the hearts of their communities. This was always a big task in a secularising, pluralistic society, but becomes all the more urgent now. It might just be the challenge we should set for ourselves in 2021, when we mark 10 years of being a Minster Church: how we become again a church confidently at the heart of our community and civic life.

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This week, from Ascension Day (Thursday 21 May), Fr Joe and I will be live-streaming worship from the Minster on Sundays and Holy Days. In this small way we are reclaiming the church, a public place of worship for centuries, for all the people of our parish. We will also pray, most earnestly, for the hastening of the day when everyone, clergy and laity, can gather again.

After this crisis we need to claim afresh the presence of God in our streets now more than ever. We need to reclaim the streets as hallowed places where people can walk in safety, free from fear of knife crime, free from assault, harassment or fear.

As a church that rightly aspires to be open in spirit and in practice - open to God in word and sacrament and open to all in hospitality – we want our doors to be open to show that Christian faith occupies a public space and people can step in. But the next step for us as a community is to step out so that the divine presence is heralded beyond the Temple too (like our patron saint John the Baptist did) on the highways and byways of our parish.

Christianity has never been private; though at times it has been hidden away through persecution. The last thing Church and society need today is for the witnesses of the Divine to retreat from the public space, for if that continues we will be rightly judged as failing to be witnesses to the reconciling love of God in Christ.

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(You may also want to watch for encouragement and, perhaps, challenge in equal measure: ‘God in the streets of New York City’: the clip lasts just under three minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bxQ9MVTkuQ )

Standing up straight & praising God

Preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on Sunday 25 August, Tenth Sunday after Trinity.

‘When Jesus laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God’ (Luke 13.12)

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This morning’s gospel reading tells us about an encounter that is both beautiful and disturbing at the same time.

Beautiful: because in it a woman who has been bowed down for eighteen years regains her stature and dignity of herself in in the sight of others.

Disturbing: because the reaction to this act of restoration and healing sparks indignation from those who should be most joyful that another human being has her dignity restored.

The woman typifies those who are bent over and weighed down, physically yes, but psychologically or spiritually too. This isn’t just physical: how often are the physically afflicted spiritually upright?!

This crippling aliment, described as a ‘spirit’ by St Luke, but not defined by him, has oppressed her for eighteen years.

The period of eighteen years will have had interesting connotations for the people gathered in that synagogue on that Sabbath Day.

In the book of Judges it was for eighteen years that the Israelites had to serve the foreign king Eglon of Moab (Judges 3.14) and for eighteen years the foreign Ammonite kingdom ‘crushed and oppressed’ the Israelites (Judges 10.8). The number eighteen is associated with oppression and being crushed down.

Intriguingly also, according to the Jewish numerological tradition, the number eighteen also signifies ‘life’, ‘alive’ or ‘living creature’.

So a woman oppressed for eighteen years, becomes a newly ‘living creature’ who can stand up straight and praise God.

Beautiful.

The fact this took place on the Sabbath Day is also deeply resonant and filled with meaning.

Observing the Sabbath is a good thing. A day of rest, a day when the pace of life changes, a day to know the gift of life; a day to honour God our Creator: it is telling that our society in all its turmoil and dis-ease neglects Sabbath.

But we miss the point of Sabbath if, like the synagogue leader, we cannot show mercy and loving kindness on that day. If we cannot show it on that day can we ever show it on the other six?

The Creation begins on the first day as God says ‘let there be light’ (Genesis 1.3) and unfolds over six days. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week when God rested, seeing that all was good.

Yet the creation is marred and disfigured. People are oppressed, bowed down externally and internally, physically and mentally, and in the words of the hymn ‘Just as I am, without one plea’, we come to Jesus, the Lamb of God,

…tossed about

with many a conflict, many a doubt,

fightings within, and fears without’

We, like the woman, come to him now. And he beholds her; he beholds you; he beholds me.

To Jesus Christ we are not problems to be manged we are living creatures, who are loved, to be restored to life, to be released from all that bows us down.

So this act of restoration on the Sabbath Day anticipates the eighth day of creation, the first day of the new week, the Day of Resurrection, the Day of Life, the day of the New Creation, a day that has dawned today.

In the act of restoring that woman to dignity the crowds came to see that God’s priority is the lifting up of people from the dust, the gutter and into life.

The action of baptism is the Church’s sacramental sign that raises up men, women and children sharing in the raising up of Christ through his Resurrection.

‘If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God’ (Colossians 3.1)

Being baptised is an act of restoration and with this gospel reading we learn how we might approach God and our neighbour.

As Christians we should not be able see another person without beholding them as Christ does. In a brief walk outside this church we will see many people bowed down in spirit: Christ raises them up when they are freed from addiction, poverty, pain and we respond to them with kindness, hospitality and love. That is a sign of the Kingdom of God.

And what of our approach to God? This question comes not least in relation to the first reading today concerning the awe and majesty of God which perhaps prompts us to fall to our knees in reverence and humble devotion. Kneeling is a right and proper posture in God’s presence: just as how we bow reverently before the cross; bend our knee in genuflection at Christ’s presence in the sacrament; or kneel to receive Christ in Holy Communion.

But that is not the only posture of a Christian. Christ says, ‘stand up’ to the woman, ‘reclaim your dignity as a daughter, a child, of the Most High. Our Eucharistic Prayer says, ‘We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you’ (Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England, Prayer B). Standing as a posture of prayer bespeaks dignity, presence and attention.

In church standing when a priest enters is not about doing the priest honour but rather saying that together with the priest we are the church, ‘a royal priesthood, a holy people’. Worshippers are not spectators but participants.

We are citizens of the Kingdom not consumers of it. As Jesus says, ‘Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21.28).

Of course kneeling or standing is not easy for everyone, or not for prolonged periods of time. But even in sitting we can sit in an anticipating way, a receptive, attentive way, with open hands and relaxed shoulders; or we can choose to button up, with our arms folded, and sit as if at a show.

Liturgy is not a performance; we are all ministers of it. Never allow your posture to turn you into a spectator whatever is going on in front of you, because in worship we are in the presence of the Living God, just as the letter to the Hebrews describes:

…since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12.29)

It is for this that we are made, to praise and glorify God in the gift of life given to us by birth and renewed in baptism: ‘When Jesus laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God’ (Luke 13.12)

Ascension: chronos and kairos kiss each other

One of the great insights of the early twentieth century was the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and their deep explorations into human personality and the world of what they named as the ‘psyche’. Their voluminous work is not something many of us have waded into, me least of all, so, like many people, I know their work in that sort of ‘pop psychology’ way.

One of the insights derived particularly from Jung was about human personality and the different types of person: this is used in the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator: so we may tend to be either more introvert or extrovert, sensing or intuitive, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving. For some people this is a deeply helpful tool of understanding for others, and for other people it is absolute rubbish!

 

Freud gives another polarity: retentive or expulsive personalities. Being Freud it relates to nappies and basic human actions, and there I will leave that aspect. Essentially a retentive personality is someone who is insistent upon the smallest detail of something, one who feels a need to be in control of all aspects of his or her surroundings, controlling, ordered. So what sort of personality wrote this phrase?

‘I decided after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you…’ (Luke 1.1)

It sounds a rather ordered personality, precise and careful. The author is, I’m sure you guessed, St Luke. Luke gives us a most orderly account and plenty of detail. It is Luke who gives us the celebration of the Ascension tonight, forty days after the Resurrection of Jesus; he’s that precise and, just to keep it all tidy, the Day of Pentecost falls a nice round fifty days after Easter. Luke inspires the putting of the Annunciation a neat nine months before the birth of Jesus at Christmas.

Our liturgical practice mirrors Luke’s neat and tidy scheme. Indeed priestly literature in the Bible demonstrates this tendency: the orderly seven days of creation forming the seven day week; the rubrics and liturgies of the Pentateuch. Priests, and Luke, enjoy chronos the ordering of time, from which we take the word chronological, measured time.

We have something of a contrast in the Biblical tradition of the prophets: they  tend to let it all hang out, talking in big brush strokes, setting hares running and not thinking through the consequences.

St John’s gospel curiously echoes aspects of that. Very untidily – but I would say that wouldn’t I, I’m a priest – there is no moment when Jesus’ risen body disappears from our sight, although he does tell Mary Magdalene, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”’. (John 20.17). But if that’s the Ascension he comes back, whereas for Luke the Ascension is the tidying up of the earthly body of Jesus.

If we took the liturgical year from John it would look all very different. We might call it expulsive, but a better word would be kairos another Greek word that is about time, but more about time as a fulfilled moment. Time, as we will all have experienced, is something of quality of experience as much as measurement. How long has this sermon gone on? Dangerous question! If it’s boring you silly you might say 20 minutes at least, but if you’re interested and engaged you might say 2 minutes. Time flies by: well, chronos doesn’t; kairos does.

So what do all these threads say about the Ascension of Jesus? It is a fundamental and often overlooked festival, not just because it always falls on a Thursday, and not a Sunday, but because it is a major collision point where the retentive and expulsive tendencies of scripture and human preference run into one another, and where time and space is unbounded, and a new cosmology is shaped. The Ascension and its difficulties take us literally into places where our language and speaking cannot go, caught between the poles of Him being here or not.

In Luke’s account of the Ascension the disciples are busily asking Jesus the tidying up question, ‘’Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ But that’s the last we hear of them: Jesus’ answer, and what they see, renders them silent, gawping up into the skies. From that moment Luke’s passion for things chronological fades and whilst the Day of Pentecost falls on the fiftieth day what it unleashes is a swirling maelstrom of confused language, visions, dreams and wonders, people are taken to places, figuratively and literally, where they never expected to go. The Risen and Ascended Jesus appears to Saul and dazzles him.

Jesus ascended into the heavens and inaugurates the age in which his Body, the Church, becomes the vessel which, at the very least, will bear his life and grace to the world, spilling out expulsively from Judea to the ends of the earth.

The Ascension of Jesus undoes our efforts at retention and the compulsion to tidy up and hold onto God; it also tells us that just as the climbing plant cannot climb without a trellis to support it: the risen life is to be lived in the real and actual world and it is not a pie in the sky. It is into the space that a new creative space is created and engaged with in the Eucharist, where we meet the Christ who commissions us. The Eucharist is the trellis that means earth meets heaven and heaven touches earth.

In the psalms we read,

Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Truth shall flourish out of the earth: and righteousness hath looked down from heaven. (Psalm 85: 10-11)

In the Ascension retention and expulsion are met together: chronos and kairos have kissed each other. And in the inadequate language given to us, God’s truth shall flourish out of the earth, and righteousness hath looked down from heaven.