Terrifying. Exciting. Bewildering: A Pentecost Sermon

Preached as a sermon at the Parish Eucharist for Pentecost, Sunday 9th June, 2019 at Croydon Minster. Saturday 15th June is the Minster's Vision Day

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people, and kindle in us the fire of God’s love.

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How terrifying. How exciting. How bewildering.

The first Day of Pentecost was all those things and more.

The disciples and crowds were terrified that day, they were excited and they were bewildered.

The rush of a violent wind; tongues of fire licking amongst them and resting on them: something remarkable and dramatic was going on here.

The tongues of fire gave way to the different tongues, tongues of speech, languages from near and far, incomprehensibly comprehensible, all speaking of ‘God’s deeds of power’ (Acts 2.11).

The response of the crowds, both the locals and devout pilgrims to Jerusalem, was one of amazement, perplexity and scepticism.

It fell to Peter, the rock on which Christ builds his church (Matthew 16.18), to interpret what is going on.

This isn’t the ecstatic outburst of a drunken rabble, he says, this is the Holy Spirit testifying to the majesty of God, to God’s mighty deeds and to the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Peter’s interpretation roots what is happening in what has gone before, so he quotes the prophet Joel:

In the last days, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’ (Acts 2.17)

Peter looks back in order to look forward.

Dreams and visions of young and old. Sounds familiar? Yes, on Saturday we have the chance to share our dreams and vision for what we discern for this Church in the coming years, what its particular gifts have been, what they are today and what they might be in the future.

The ‘dreams and visions’ that Peter quotes in Acts are not utopian fantasies; they are rooted in the purposes of God.

Likewise the inspirational Jean Vanier who died recently spoke powerfully about vision and planning which could apply to us. He writes:

Too much detailed intellectual planning … can, in fact, stifle the Spirit, just as a desire to remain open to anything and  everything and a refusal to clarify goals, can also prevent growth… God gives us hearts so that we may be inspired by his Love and his Spirit, but he also gives us minds, so that we may understand, clarify, discern and read what he is saying and giving in and through life.[1]

On that Day of Pentecost the crowds asked ‘what does this mean?’ We ask: ‘what does this means for us today?’

The account of the Day of Pentecost remains at the same time terrifying, exciting and bewildering.

And in the terror, excitement and bewilderment of the Spirit is life: abundant life. As Jesus says in St John’s gospel, ‘It is the spirit that gives life…The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life’ (John 6.63).

At the speaking of God’s word the Holy Spirit moved over the waters at the beginning of creation bringing light and life; the Holy Spirit who was breathed into Adam’s nostrils brings life to humanity; the Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary that she might become the Mother of the God incarnate, Jesus Christ, the New Adam.

It was the Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus, not in violent winds or in fire, but in the gentle form of a dove when baptised by John in the River Jordan.

The Holy Spirit is poured out on you and me in our baptism and confirmation as Christians, birthing us to new life in Christ.

The Holy Spirit is called down upon bread and wine making Jesus Christ present in his life-giving Body and Blood.

It is the Holy Spirit who kindles in us the fire of God’s love in order that we may be a blessing to the world and recognise Christ in all people.

In the Spirit, we prepare for our church vision day this coming Saturday.

Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost sounds uncannily like Croydon town centre on a typical Saturday, crowds of people speaking a multiplicity or languages, some ready to hear, some ready to reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Spirit breathes into a world of anxiety, pain and death. As Peters in our own day our task is to interpret the signs of God to our generation and to declare that the doors of life are open to all who would walk into God’s kingdom.

What will that mean for this church?

In February Bishop Christopher shared his vision for us, speaking of the Minster as a holy place within the hustle and bustle of an ever-changing, swirling, colourful Croydon.

Three weeks ago Bishop Jonathan shared with us his vision of the Minster as a hub of mission and service to the wider community of Croydon.

Already people have shared with me some of their vision, hopes and aspirations for this place as we look to the future.

I have a deepening sense of the character of this church as being open to God and open to all people.

So we come together and, as the Prophet Joel said, ‘your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’.

As Peter reminded the crowds this is not fantasy land, but an earnest seeking after God’s ways and purposes for us, here, now, in our day.

It will then be my task, and the task of our Parochial Church Council, to discern and interpret what the Spirit is saying to this church (cf Revelation 2.7 passim) as we look towards ‘the future with hope’ (Jeremiah 29.11).

The life-giving Spirit of Pentecost blows and burns in the life of this church today. It may be terrifying, exciting and bewildering.

Terrifying: so that we dare to speak of the mighty acts of God ourselves and testify to his mercies.

Exciting: so that our horizons are expanded, our vision enlarged and expectations raised.

Bewildering: so that we come to understand that our plans are empty until fulfilled with the presence of the Holy One.

Today, and on Saturday pray that, equipped by the Spirit, we as a church young and old, women and men may embrace God’s future for us with hope, serve our parish and sing God’s praise now and to all eternity.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people, and kindle in us the fire of God’s love.

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[1] Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (2^nd edition) DLT: 2007, p. 111

Mission un-boundaried - A Rogation sermon

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I want to begin, not with a Biblical text, but some words of the poet TS Eliot, ‘Take no thought of the harvest, but only of the proper sowing’. In other words, don’t be anxious about the results, but give your care and attention to the preparation.

This wisdom has a bearing on many aspects of life.

It has a bearing on those sitting public exams at the moment. The results will be what they will be, the real work is now, and what has been done before now, to prepare.

Likewise the farmer who only agonises about the amount of harvest in a few months’ time may neglect to prepare the land for the seed, forget to water it and to feed it. 

Today, the Sixth Sunday of Eastertide, is also known as Rogation Sunday. The word ‘rogation’ comes from the Latin, rogare, meaning ‘to ask’.

It is a time when we take care ‘of the proper sowing’

It is a time when we reflect upon what it is we ask of the Lord in our lives, for ourselves and our relationships, for our world and its peace and wellbeing.

Rogation is, as it were, the counterpart to the harvest. And so much more effort tends to go into the harvest thanksgiving than the asking for blessing and fruitfulness. It’s not that thankfulness is bad, quite the contrary, but Rogationtide reminds us also to make our requests and petitions known to God: ask and you shall receive.

There is an especially environmental dimension to Rogationtide too. It is when God’s blessing is invoked upon the crops and plants that are growing, asking that they may be fruitful. Rogationtide reminds us to tend and care for the earth not just extract as much out of it as we can and almost literally bleed it dry.

As a Minster church we need a posture of rogation as we consider what God is calling us to in this season of the life of our church. This will really be initiated in our church Vision Day on 15^th June, and please do make it a priority to be part of that day, from 1000-1400. And if you can be there, or if you cannot, please pray and ask that it may be fruitful, that our life may be fruitful.

It’s a pernicious tendency in the church to count numbers of attendees and measure the worth of life by attendance numbers. Perhaps we are too much of a harvest church and not enough of a rogation church.

If we actually asked God to bless us in the sowing and propagation of the word of God, we might find our harvest even more richly blessed. There is something organic about mission; it is not mechanistic.

This morning Bishop Jonathan set out his vision for the role of the Minster in the coming years. He was affirming of what we do now and challenged us to deepen our roots so that we may grow.

He gave us a potted history of what Minsters were in ages past and what this one might be today, noting how the parish system and boundaries had been fluid up until Elizabethan times. Curiously, even predating the Elizabethans, it was a Rogationtide custom for processions to go out and ask God’s blessing on the crops but it became the marking out of territory and boundaries, even prompting fisticuffs on the boundaries from time to time.

Mission today will not be served by territorialism. Bishop Jonathan recalled us to a bigger vision than that, and his words are worth looking up and will be made available this week.

As we approach Ascension Day on Thursday we are reminded that the life of God in Christ is not boundaried.

Christ’s resurrection was literally earth shaking event: the powers of the death and the tomb could not hold the Crucified and Risen One.

Our Incarnate Lord, who was restricted to physical location, be it in Galilee or Jerusalem - as we are, in Croydon or wherever - ascended into the heavens such that he is no longer held in by boundaries.

He makes his connection with us in the power of the Holy Spirit, for whose outpouring we await with eager longing at Pentecost, as did the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary, in nine days of deep prayer (cf Acts of the Apostles 1.14). The Spirit makes Christ present at all times and in all places when we call upon him, most especially in intensity of the presence of the Sacraments.

So let us ask God that we may be open to his purposes for us, and that we may be fruitful in all that we think and speak and do, doing all in his name and to his glory.

Love-shaped Church

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the Fifth Sunday of Eastertide. The readings were Acts of the Apostles 11.1-18; John 13.31-35

‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another’ John 13.34

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Love beyond distinction; love beyond discrimination: boundless love.

What is the Gospel, what is the church, when everything is stripped away? Surely it is love beyond distinction; love beyond discrimination: boundless love. St Paul says ‘faith, hope and love endure, these three; and the greatest of these is love’ (1 Corinthians 13.13).

This is expressed in the new commandment that Jesus gives to his disciples and, by extension, to us. This new commandment is called in Latin, the Mandatum Novum, which is where we get the word ‘Maundy’ from, as in Maundy Thursday.

This new commandment lies at the heart of the Maundy Thursday liturgy. Flowing from that commandment and the Last Supper is Christ’s action of loving service, washing his disciples’ feet, demonstrating that it is in acts of loving service that we see the deepest revelation of love.

The remarkable Jean Vanier, who has very recently died – and may God grant him eternal rest – embodied this loving service. He founded the L’Arche communities in which people with disabilities of body and mind live, with those we call able, in communities of mutual support. Out of his obedience to the new commandment, and his deep love for the church and scriptures, he exemplified the Gospel imperative to love. Today L’Arche communities around the world live out the command to love one another.

Reflecting on our gospel passage, in his remarkable book Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John, Vanier writes:

Peter, Judas and the ‘beloved disciple’: three men who react in different ways to Jesus’ love.

Judas rejects and fears love. He pushes Jesus away.

Peter cannot understand Jesus. He loves Jesus but wants to do things his own way.

The beloved disciple surrenders to Jesus’ love and becomes his intimate friend.

These three attitudes are in each one of us at different moments of our lives.[1]

What an accurate summary of how Judas, Peter and John respond - or not - to love. And how searing and honest to observe that we are each prone to all three in our lives: rejection and fear of love, lack of comprehension of love and the embracing of giving and receiving love.

Understanding what love is all about is Peter’s challenge, and is it something picked up on in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

This is Peter’s ‘now I get it’ moment. In that slightly bizarre and unsettling vision Peter comes to a ‘penny drop’ moment: he fully understands now that ‘God shows no partiality’ (Acts 10.34).

God’s love is love beyond distinction, love beyond discrimination; boundless love.

And Peter asks, ‘who was I that I could hinder God’?

The task of the Church is to work with the movements of the Spirit, and not to go against.

Peter, representative of authority in the church, understands that any that varieties of service, structures and tradition, what has been handed on to us, is the scaffold that supports our proclamation of the message of God’s love.

The washing of feet by Jesus embodies the command to love: what of the feet to be washed around us? What does it mean to be the parish church of this local community and a Minster at the ancient heart of Croydon?

In a parish that has a local government ward with the highest percentage of young adults in any ward of London, that has the third highest incidence of mental health issues, that has areas in the bottom 5% of deprivation index, that is ethnically and religiously very mixed, that has high levels of loneliness and isolation, that has many complex lives: what does loving service look like?

In the light of all that is on our doorstep how do we respond without partiality and with the loving service of Christ?

From these two readings this morning we can see that the church is to be characterised by love: love of God and love for one another, and that loving service flows from that love.

Love is a resource we will never run out of and the more we give it away the more we receive it. That is true in our personal lives and true for the church. Be lavish in sharing love, and be ready to receive much.

All this helps inform our coming Vision Day as we reflect on who we are as a church so that we may 1) proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom, 2) teach, baptise and nurture new believers, 3) respond to human need by loving service, 4) seek to transform the unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation and 5) to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

Three figures personify the characteristics of the church for us to keep in mind: Mary, Peter and John.

Mary is radically obedient to God: saying ‘yes’ to God’s will; giving her humanity to the service of the Kingdom; pointing constantly to Christ; patiently standing at the foot of the cross; anticipating the coming Holy Spirit. May we be a Marian church.

Peter, the Rock, is entrusted with authority in the church: given of the keys of the kingdom; forgiving and releasing; shepherding and, with Christ, laying down his life for the sheep; connecting the apostolic church in her mission of love into the whole world. May we be a Petrine church.

John, the Beloved Disciple, is the Apostle of the Love of God: nestling in the love of Jesus; telling us that ‘those who live in love live in God and God lives in them’; passing on to us Jesus’ new commandment that we love one another as Christ has loved us. May we be a Johannine church.

In that way we become a Christ-shaped church, attentive to God, connected in mission and filled with love.

Almighty God,

throughout the ages

you have blessed our church

with your presence and love:

Help us to cherish

all that you are doing in our midst,

that as young and old, women and men,

we may embrace your future with hope,

serve our parish

and sing your praises

now, and to all eternity.

Through Jesus Christ,

our risen and ascended Lord.

Amen.

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[1] Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John (DLT: 2004) p. 240.

Lent Address 1: Jonah - call and commission

Given as an address before Compline at Croydon Minster: Week One of Lent

The Church, in her great wisdom, commends that we undertake a Holy Lent through ‘self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word’ (Common Worship: Times and Seasons, The Liturgy of Ash Wednesday).

I hope that two elements of that intention will be met through the singing of Compline, with its penitential element of self-examination and repentance and psalmody, and through the address that will precede it each Thursday through Lent: we will be reading and meditating upon God’s holy word. As for prayer, fasting and self-denial: over to you!

Chapter One

1Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ 3But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

Paul Murray, whose book on Jonah I thoroughly recommend, notes that Hermann Melville’s novel Moby Dick is a brilliant response to the Book of Jonah, in particular the famous sermon delivered by Father Mapple, the sailors’ chaplain: “‘Shipmates’ the priest explains, ‘this book [the Book of Jonah] … is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah’s deep sea-line sound! What a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet’”.[1]

Tonight I want to consider ‘Call and commission’ through the lens of the book of Jonah. Before getting underway, I should note that this is a Hebrew text, it is in the Old Testament, but I will flit between it and its Christian understanding and usage. After all, Christ himself speaks of the ‘sign of Jonah’.

Jonah is an archetypal human being who is respectful of God, but struggles with the implications of what life following God might mean.

Jonah’s name means ‘dove’, which naturally has all sorts of biblical connotations: the Holy Spirit; the offering made when Christ is presented in the Temple; the bird that found the sign of life, an olive branch, when sent out from the ark Noah had built.

Jonah is someone, like each of us, into whom the spirit of God has been breathed.

Jonah is son of Amittai. The name Amittai means ‘truth’. Jonah is a son of truth.

All this connects with Jesus’ words that the Spirit of Truth will guide us into all the truth (John 16.13).

Jonah is a deeply human character, and the book of Jonah is a short and whimsical read of his ups and downs. It invites us to read it not in a pedantic literalism, but, in fact, to allow it to read us.

It’s more like a mirror that reflects back than a pane of glass that we look through. After all, we might recognise elements of ourselves in Jonah. Jonah is called by, but runs away from, God. In that flight Jonah is caught up in the storms of life. Jonah knows what life is like at rock bottom; but Jonah knows redemption, scooped up by the great fish, in whose belly he was for three days. Even after that miracle, he experiences bewilderment and anger when his own expectations and machinations of missionary zeal go awry. In the end he finds shelter from God, a bush, which then withers away and Jonah is again angry, resentful and grumpy with God. There is no neat resolution to Jonah’s story, and neither is there to ours. His life was a mess, and from time to time, or perhaps a lot, so can ours be.

That’s the case for looking at Jonah in Lent from the point of view of our inner journey. And there’s one more reason too - the ‘Sign of Jonah’: ‘For just as Jonah was for three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.’ (Matthew 12.40)

This takes us to the heart of our Lenten destination which is Easter. The allusions to baptism are clear: Jonah was called by God and fled; Jonah cried out to God, and acknowledged his need of God, when plunged in the waters; and after three days the great fish spat him out – spewed him out as the AV has it – onto the beach.

It was from the beach that Jonah had to recalibrate, work out what his life was about as he breathed the fresh air of the world into which he had been delivered, as if born again.

Day by day, Christians try to work out what it means to live the life of the new air of being born again in Christ.

Last night at the Ash Wednesday Liturgy I suggested that the sign of Jonah points us to a challenge. The challenge is this: not to go through Lent, and then end it, in dust and ashes, like Jonah, grumpy and resentful; but prepared, expectant and alert to the purposes of God in our lives and in our world.

But let’s now go back to those opening verses of the book -you might want to have them in front of you - they’re beautifully concise and punchy.

v.1 ‘Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah’. St John tells us that ‘in the beginning was the Word’ (John 1.1), and it was God’s almighty Word that spoke over the chaos and darkness of the raging waters at the creation which brought light and life (Genesis 1.3). Of course later Jonah would plunge into the swirling waters, but more of that next week, but here the divine initiative of God’s word and call has come to Jonah.

v.2 ‘Get up at once’, or as other translations say ‘Arise, go…’ This is what we might know as an apostolic command, someone sent. The commission at the end of the Eucharist is ‘arise, go…’, or you could say when you go in peace to love and serve the Lord, have some ‘get up and go’ in you!

v.2 The ‘City of Nineveh’ had a reputation as a place of violence, that is their wickedness. (Here in Croydon we know what it means for a city to have a 'reputation': deserved or undeserved). Jonah’s cry against it is a cry for the nameless victims of that violence. Jonah himself as we will see, next week on the boat is an innocent who succumbs to violence (Jonah 1.14) as the perpetrators ask not to have the violence held against them. There is something Christ-like here, the innocent victim of the violence of others.

v.3 Jonah did what he was told, he arose, he got up, but promptly headed off in the opposite direction. He ‘set out to flee from the presence of the Lord’. That sounds like a pretty futile endeavour if God is omniscient and omnipresent. We know, as the psalm puts it,

‘Where can I go then from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?’

If I climb up to heaven, you are there;

if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.

If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea…’ (Psalm 139.6-8)

Jonah looked to flee through the ‘uttermost parts of the sea’. It sounds ludicrous, yet we can distance ourselves from God too, and we do, through hardness of heart, indeed through all things we confess to in the Eucharist: ‘through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault’. (Common Worship)

No doubt Jonah had reason for heading off in the opposite direction: fear, self-preservation. For an Israelite sent to tell Nineveh its fortune would be a forlorn task, likely to fail, and more likely to result in a gruesome death for Jonah.

No doubt we justify our times of fleeing from God through ‘negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault’; and yet… we associate ourselves with Jesus Christ, the One who turns to face into and face down the violence, injustice and pain of the world through walking the way of the cross.

Our call and commission is, like Jonah’s, to proclaim God’s peace in a violent world, God’s healing in a wounded world and the sovereignty of God in a disbelieving world. Jonah had the opportunity to proclaim the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel, to a world in need of God, and he chose to flee. It is only in Christ that humanity becomes equipped, through the apostolic faith, to hear the call, to heed the commission and to go and live ‘good news to the ends of the earth’.

With wonders you will answer us in your righteousness,

O God of our salvation,

O hope of all the ends of the earth

and of the farthest seas. (Psalm 65.4)

Tonight may you ponder God call and claim on your life – terrifying, unsettling, daunting, as that might be – and ask yourself three questions:

1.     What is it that God calls me to in my life and in his service?

2.     Do I run from this call or into this call?

3.     How can I take hold of the call God places upon me: who might I need to speak to?

So now let us keep silence before Compline begins.

© Andrew Bishop, 2019

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[1] Paul Murray, A Journey with Jonah: The Spirituality of Bewilderment. Dublin: Columba Press, 2002. p. 13.

Dramatic, demanding disturbing & fulfilling: The Baptism of Christ

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The feast of the Baptism of Christ is one that is rich beyond measure: it’s filled with images and signs, pointers to who Jesus Christ is and who you and I are called to be become.

It is a truly mystical and beautiful scene.

The feast of the Baptism of Christ gives us a great opportunity to reflect on John the Baptist, the patron saint of this church, and what that patronage might mean for us.

It gives us the opportunity to reflect on who Jesus Christ is, in his divinity and humanity.

It gives us the opportunity to reflect on our own baptism, the sacrament that brings us into the life of the Church, the Body of Christ, and that can, and should, shape our identity as Christians not just on a Sunday morning, but a Monday morning and day by day.

And today we have a chance to reflect on these things through the readings we hear and also in our liturgy as, after this sermon, we will turn, literally, to the font, at which we will give thanks for Holy Baptism, as we recall God’s movement in, over and through water. We will pray that God might wash us and cleanse in us in those life-giving waters. And then we will get wet! Water will be sprinkled as a refresher of baptism, as a beautiful verse reflecting on the water of life is sung.

But first the gospel reading tells us about John the Baptist, our patron saint in this church. As always John comes across as a dramatic, demanding and disturbing figure: we hear again his call to repentance.

The challenge, and question, for us is how do we hear such a message? Do we write it off through familiarity or fear, or are we like the people who went out to hear John, ‘filled with expectation’?

Dramatic, demanding, disturbing. It’s a fiery message! Does that make you expectant… or nervous?! Some people hear John as off-putting, certainly to modern ears. It sounds unwelcoming: you might ask, ‘can we be a welcoming church to all if we have that sort of patron saint’?

Sometimes churches mistake being welcoming for giving newcomers, and those searching, precious little to engage with: we lower the bar so people can come in, but fail to raise the bar in saying that something wonderful, beautiful, demanding, and yet, fulfilling is to be found here.

John the Baptist makes straight paths; he opens doors: ‘let the King of glory come in’ (Psalm 24). His figure is carved above the North Door of this church and carved into the very wood of the West Doors. The power of his message is that all are welcome, but that a living relationship with God is wonderful, beautiful, demanding yet fulfilling.

Indeed John the Baptist is profoundly inclusive in the sense that his message is that everyone in all humanity is in need of restoration, in our relationships with one another and our relationship with God: as St Paul later articulated it, ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’.

In that sense John’s message is a profound relief to us all: because I am a broken person, prone to slip, slide and fall, - a sinner - my life is also an arena for God’s grace and forgiveness to abound.

John speaks of fire and water. Raw power. Flames represent the burning intensity of the power of the Holy Spirit. Like water fire can be destructive and also regenerative. Fire burns away the dross to reveal that which is most precious, like in the refining of gold and silver. The fire of the Holy Spirit incinerates sin.

Similarly water can destroy, wash away and also cleanse and bring life. It was over water that the breath of God, the Holy Spirit, moved in the beginning of creation, through water that the people of Israel passed from slavery to freedom and water flowed out of the Temple in Ezekiel’s vision bringing new life to everything it touched, even the Dead Sea.

All life begins with, and is sustained by, water: we’re each over 50% water! That’s one reason why the delivery of clean water to thirsty people and creatures is so important.

In each of our mother’s wombs we were held and sustained by the water of life, and at the breaking of those waters we came to be born.

No wonder then that the early Christian writers speak of the font as the ‘womb of the church’. The font, like the related word ‘fountain’, is a spring of water that bubbles up to eternal life. In the font a new Christian is born; waters are poured out and the newborn, the neophyte, emerges. In that way, plunged into the waters, like Christ descending into death, we are raised with the power of his new life.

Fire and water are symbols that speak of the life, vitality and growth that emanates from God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; God who is revealed at the Baptism of Christ: the Father speaks from the heavens over the Son in the waters, upon whom rests the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove. The Baptism reveals the Holy Trinity.

The Baptism also inaugurates the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry with which we are so familiar, his ministry of healing, restoration, reconciliation, teaching, telling parables, his betrayal, death and resurrection.

When we share in baptism we become part of the life of Christ: we become God’s precious children; the wrench like grip of sin is loosened; God calls us by name to live in full human dignity; and we are inspired, literally ‘spirit-filled’ to live in restored relationship to God, to other people and to ourselves.

It is in that context that we hear Isaiah’s words from our first reading – words worth pondering throughout this week – ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.’ (Isaiah 43.1-3)

There is something wonderful, beautiful, demanding, powerful and yet fulfilling here.

So now as the procession moves to the font please turn and face it. There we will, in the spirit of John the Baptist, make confession of our sins and shortcomings and then be renewed by the water from the font.

See there the fiery flame of the Paschal Candle of Easter burning representing the purging power of the Holy Spirit and the victory of Christ in resurrection life and then feel the waters coming upon you afresh bringing you God’s life, restoration and peace.

'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.