"If these walls could speak..."

Here's my sermon for Broughton's Civic Service this year:

I think that I can say without fear of contradiction that this year has been a very interesting one politically! Whatever your opinion might be of the referendum, the party political leadership elections, the US Presidential race; whatever your opinion might be of these, they've certainly got people thinking and talking about politics in a way we haven't for many years. And this is no bad thing. But one of the consequences of this is that it has caused, or at least highlighted many divisions in our society and even between family and friends. So we gather today aware of our differences and perhaps wondering whether we do share much in common with our neighbour at all.

But what better place to gather at this turbulent time than here in St Mary's?  This year, as many of you are aware, we are celebrating our 950th Anniversary, although as Dr Kevin Leahy reminded us in his lecture here last night the church is certainly older than that.  Just think about the history that this church has been around for, as the old saying goes “If these walls could speak...”

The Norman Conquest, the Magna Carta, the Reformation, the Civil War, the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, one world cup... the list goes on.  Loads of times of turbulence, loads of eras of uncertainty, loads of periods where communities and families were divided.  Yet this place has been a constant.

It's been a constant reminder that there is something bigger than us, something more stable and reliable.  Sometimes when the school children come in to look around this church we think about how big it is and how much bigger it would have seemed when it was first built and people lived in small single storey houses, perhaps made of wood.  We think about how extravagant and unnecessarily high it is and we think about two reasons for that. Firstly it was big enough to hold everyone in the village, everyone could find a place here.  But secondly, and most importantly, it reminds us of how big, strong and secure God is.

This year we've been able to help people rediscover their place here.  Last academic year the school children  and some of the staff each made a square or a leaf that have been put together to form the two banners either side of me.  They now have a very visible place within the fabric of the church, that will hopefully be there for many generations to come.  This weekend we had the parish registers out so people could find themselves and their family in the history books – part of the life of this church.  This is their church, this is our church and we all have a place in it.

When the children are thinking of words to describe this building they say things like 'welcoming', 'like home','peaceful', like another world', 'safe'.  This is partly because for almost a thousand years people have been worshipping and praying here and the presence of God can be felt here.  God, who is the true firm foundation for our lives; God, who loves us even if we think we're unlovable; God, who believes in us even if we don't believe in him.

In these uncertain times, we need places like St Mary's to remind us that although there have always been difficult times, both in our national and international life and in our community and families, even though there have been difficult times, these times pass.  We need places like St Mary's to remind us that despite our differences we can come together as a community because we are all welcome here.

But also it reminds us that especially in our darkest times we need Jesus the light of the world; in a time of confusion in leadership we need Jesus who is the truly wise King of kings; in our broken world we need Jesus who reconciles us to each other and to God; in our divided world we Jesus who is the only Prince of Peace and ultimately the only answer to humanity's problems.

Dabble, dabble, game or trouble?

Here's my article for the October parish magazine:

There's a fine line between vigilance and paranoia and between caution and hysteria and it's a line that I'm going to attempt to tread in this article.

This summer's gaming sensation has been Pokemon Go – a smartphone game where imaginary creatures and accessories are looked for and captured in real life locations.  Some have praised it for getting coach-potato gamers out of their houses and walking around, whilst others have pointed out the dangers of people walking onto roads or into streams; causing accidents or making themselves vulnerable to crime by playing the game.  A few people are warning of the spiritual damage that Pokemon can do.

This latter group look at the 'worldview' of the game. Pokemon is short for 'pocket monsters' and the Pokemon have different abilities, for example reading of minds, use of poison, mimicry, taunting, teleportation and hypnosis. The concept of the original game of Pokemon is that you capture these Pokemon, 'train' them and then 'summon' them to fight against other people's Pokemon.  This, they say, is very similar to the practices of summoning and trying to control spiritual beings and forces that are found in witchcraft, Wicca, shamanism and spiritism, all of which the Bible warns against.  They also point to the testimony of former witchdoctors such as Bautista who, with no prior knowledge of the game, identified some Pokemon with demons they had encountered.

However, whilst some of the underlying themes and concepts of Pokemon are based on unChristian and potentially dangerous worldviews, it is after all just a game.  The same can't be said, on the other hand for those who 'dabble' in witchcraft, Wicca, mediums, psychics, spiritism etc.  These are very real attempts to summon and control very real spiritual beings and forces.  The problem with these practices, apart from the dubious techniques used by some of the practitioners, is that although the spiritual forces are real, only demonic forces would use these means.  This is because God has forbidden these practices so no force for good would use them, despite them seeming to be harmless or even caring.  St Paul warns us the “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness.” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15).

There is no such thing as good magic, the dead cannot be communicated with and spiritual forces are beyond the command of humans.  What will respond if you call on these things are evil spirits that we are unable to control.  However, the Bible records loads of occasions where Jesus demonstrated his power over evil forces, and ultimately “God defeated the spiritual rulers and powers. With the cross God won the victory and defeated them. He showed the world that they were powerless” (Colossians 2:15). If you have opened the door of your life to evil influences, the good news is that through Jesus that door can be shut and you can be set free from every evil force that wants to control you.

Christianity Explored and the Olympics

Here's my magazine article for September:

“One Life. What's it all about?”

That's the strap line on the posters for the Christianity Explored course, which we'll be running again starting on Monday 5^th September. And it's a very important question - because how we answer that question has a huge bearing on how we live our lives.

I'm writing this at the middle of the Olympic Games and in interview after interview the medal winners talked about how their preparations for the last four years had been focussed on competing in these Games. Their whole lives; their daily routines, their food and drink, their social activities, their family lives had been dictated by the aim of doing the best that they could in their event. They had to ignore or avoid anything that would distract them from their goal and certainly not do anything that would make them unable to achieve their potential. And standing on the podium with an Olympic medal around their neck made all of those sacrifices worth it.

Olympic athletes are perhaps an extreme example but many people are similarly driven to achieve goals in their personal lives or careers and make similar sacrifices. On the other hand many people don't really have a clue where they're going or what they want to achieve and their lives are subsequently purposeless. So we need to ask ourselves the question of what our goals are and more importantly whether those goals are good ones.

Jesus said he came to bring us life in all its fullness, so when we're reassessing our own life goals one of the important factors to think about is if and where Jesus features in our lives. The Christianity Explored course gives the opportunity to discover who Jesus is, what he did and what that means for us by reading through and discussing Mark's gospel.

St Paul often uses the analogy of sport to describe what it's like to follow Jesus. He wrote “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last for ever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.” (1 Corinthians 9:24-26). Paul contrasts the fleeting and ephemeral nature of sporting prizes such as laurel leaves, titles, records etc. with the permanent prize of everlasting life promised to all who believe in Jesus and who live with him at the centre of their lives. And unlike Olympic gold, this everlasting prize is for all believers who run and complete the race, not just for those who come first.

Gardening and life

Here is my article from the August parish magazine:

If you've seen the garden at the Vicarage you'll know that I'm not a particularly good or industrious gardener. However, to misuse a quote from the Bible “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”! (The original quote is about falling into temptation, see Matthew 26:38). In my head, I have lots of ideas of things I'll do with the garden but a short supply of time and inclination means that that is as far as my ideas go! I can just about keep on top of the lawns and even occasionally attempt to plant something!

Having said that I do listen to Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4 whenever I can, even if I don't always understand what they're talking about! As well as answering questions from the audience and listeners, each week the gardening experts give their 'topical tips' on things keen and not-so-keen gardeners should be doing that week. These tips often include things like pruning and planting or even preparation for future work but one year, around this time I heard a different topical tip. The expert advised the listeners to get a chair and a drink, sit down in the garden and enjoy it! They were suggesting that it was too easy to be so engrossed in 'doing the gardening' that people forget why the garden is there in the first place- to enjoy!

Of course, this is true not just of gardening but of life in general. We can often be so busy running around doing all the things we do that we don't stop to question why we are doing them or indeed to enjoy the fruits of our labour. We find it hard to slow down, to reflect and to reconnect with the world and the people around us.

That's why rest, holidays and 'downtime' are so important, in fact they're so important that God made them part of his guidelines for life. One of the Ten Commandments instructs a Sabbath day of rest each week, and every seventh year was to be a Sabbath year where the Israelites were not to sow or prune (Leviticus 25:1-7) so presumably GQT was also off-air for a year! But God didn't just want people to rest from work, he wanted them to enjoy life. So in Deuteronomy 24:5 he says that “If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.” And in Psalm 128:2 those who love and obey God are promised that they will eat the fruit of their labour, and Jesus himself promises that those who are saved by him will have live, and have it to the full (John 10:10).

So my topical tip at this time is to look at the world and the people around you, thank God for them and make the time to enjoy them!!

Nongentiquinquagintal-istic celebration focus (even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious!)

Here's my July magazine article for Broughton:

We're now well into our celebrations for our 950^th Anniversary, although we haven't yet decided whether we should call it our Nonsemicentennial or Nongentiquinquagintal; perhaps we'll just stick with 950^th Anniversary! We started the year with our Anniversary Songs of Praise, our Sunday School wrote a special prayer for the year, we celebrated Broughton weddings, we had our friends from Regia Anglorum set up their Anglo-Saxon Living History camp around the church and Broughton Primary School have made two fantastic banners to commemorate the year. This month is our Anniversary weekend, with a Summer Fair on Saturday 16^th July and our Service of Thanksgiving on Sunday 17^th July, both of which you're all invited to join us at. And there'll be more events later in the year.

Broughton Primary School's production this year is Mary Poppins, the well known story of a Victorian nanny with magical powers and the adventures she has with the Banks family. One of the most moving themes of the story is Mr Banks gradually realising that there is more to life than work. The tuppence that he wanted his children to invest in the economy and industry in order to drive forward the technological revolution and create wealth, could also be spent on feeding the birds or on paper and string to make a kite. More importantly he realised that his obsession with work had meant that he'd neglected his family. His reconnection with his wife and his children seems to be the reason Mary Poppins comes.

When Regia came in May, as well as looking at the fantastic camp many people spent time wandering around inside the church. For some it was the first time they'd been in the church, others had been in occasionally for services but had never really looked around. One of the best things I heard during that weekend was the amount of people who felt reconnected to the church, they found a new sense of pride in the building and I think many of them began to see it for the first time as being 'their' church. This was a theme that Bishop David and I picked up on at the unveiling of the banners at school; the reason we asked the school to make the banners was because St Mary's as the parish church is their church and now, through the pieces that each of them contributed to the banners, they have become part of the church too. In the future people looking around the church will see the children and staff's handiwork.

But St Mary's exists in the first place to point to a greater reconnection. The Christian message that St Mary's was built to celebrate and proclaim is that even though our sin separates us from God, Jesus died so that those sins could be forgiven and we could reconnect with God. Our fathers, like Mr Banks, are not perfect, but our heavenly Father God loves us more than we can imagine and longs for us to reconnect with him. Maybe this is the year for you to do just that.

The EU and the CofE

Here's my magazine article for June:

On Thursday 23^rd June, voters will be able to have their say over the future of the UK's relationship with the EU. This will be, and indeed is already being, preceded by lots of comments from religious leaders about the issues, followed by lots of criticisms of religion 'meddling' in politics.

Those who don't approve of religious leaders speaking out on political issues (although they tend only to disapprove if the religious leader holds an opposite opinion!) often make two mistakes. Firstly they assume that faith and politics are separate; that one's faith is a private matter whereas politics is about public issues and never the twain should meet. This is a false division as any faith worth its salt has an outward dimension and has a view about how humans should interact. Indeed, Jesus taught us to ask our heavenly Father “thy kingdom come” and Jesus himself was executed because he represented a threat to the political and religious authorities of his day. The second mistake that is made is to think that a discussion about politics can be held in a neutral, value-free, completely 'rational' environment. We all have a world-view that shapes our thinking about society: for a lot of people that world-view is influenced by their religious beliefs for others it is influenced by their secular beliefs.

So I offer my ha'p'orth on the referendum, two reflections both based on the experience of the Church of England, but on different sides of the argument. Firstly, one of the founding principles of the Church of England was that it was not subject to Rome. Henry VIII reasoned that as he was appointed by God, he was answerable only to God, and therefore that he, not the Pope, was the head of the English church. As the Church of England spread around the world, this principle went with it, so that each national church had the authority to decide matters for themselves without looking to England. Therefore, all the churches of what is now the Anglican Communion have different liturgies and different views on certain issues. Thus the principle of each nation being in supreme control of its own area is central to the history of the Church of England.

On the other hand, the Church of England makes no grand claims for itself, it simply states that it is “part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” It doesn't claim to be the true Church, or the Church in its entirety but just a part of the Church. There's a recognition that it is part of a larger whole and so that it is dependant on, and in partnership with, the rest of the Church

These two reflections show that it is possible for a Christian to be on either side of the debate, and indeed www.reimaginingeurope.co.uk is “a space for Christian reflection and debate on Britain’s future relationship with Europe” with views on both sides. However you decide to vote, and whatever the result, the Christian prayer to God remains the same “thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”

Non angeli, sed sancti

Here's my article for the May magazines:

The first day of May is often said to be the first day of spring, where the blustery April showers are left behind in favour of fresh spring breezes. Spring, like Easter brings with it thoughts of new life. May is also the month when the church remembers St Augustine of Canterbury, a missionary who came to the British Isles in 569 AD to help spread the message about Jesus, and subsequently became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Both these events have been in my mind in the last couple of weeks and have linked together.

Although Christianity was practised in Britain before he came, Augustine brought a new vigour to the task of spreading the gospel. He was sent by Pope Gregory the Great, who according to Bede, saw some British slaves in a Roman market and on seeing their pale faces and blond hair asked who they were. He was told they were Angles, to which he responded “non Angli, sed angeli” - not Angles but angels! It was this that inspired him with a desire to send a mission to the Angles.

The new life of spring echoed a new chapter in my family's life as we anticipated the birth of twins in September. Unfortunately there was a complication with the pregnancy and, despite an operation, both twins died at 18 weeks gestation. But the expectation of new life was fulfilled in a more complete way than we imagined as James and Jacob, as we named them, entered the new life that is a central part of our Christian belief. “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him...And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonian 4:14, 17b).

We have received many messages of support and prayers, for which we are most grateful. However there's one message that we occasionally hear which strikes an odd chord, and that is words to the effect that James and Jacob died because God needs more angels. This springs from a folk belief that when people die, and especially babies, they become angels. My thought on hearing this said to me was a version of of Gregory's aphorism: “non angeli, sed sancti” - not angels but saints! James and Jacob, like all human beings, are made in the image and likeness of God. The angels are God's servants but through faith in Jesus humans can become his children and his children are saints.

The comments about our 'angel babies' are well-intentioned, and we are grateful for the love that inspires them, but there is surely a greater comfort in the truth that they are saints; they have the eternal life with God that we also can receive by faith in Jesus. Whereas it is almost impossible to know for certain whether or not someone who has died will have eternal life, babies who die will, in God's mercy, inherit eternal life. So if you have lost a baby in whatever way, either before or after birth, take comfort in the truth that they are not angels, but saints.

[see also my Advent blogposts on The Four Last Things: death, judgement, heaven and hell]