Month: December 2021

Loving One’s Enemies: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 26th December 2021 (St Stephen’s Day)

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Readings – Acts 7: 51–60 , Matthew 10: 17–22

Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’

Some of you will have heard the news that Archbishop Desmond Tutu died earlier this morning at the age of 90. Most of us would agree that Desmond was the greatest saint produced by Anglicanism in our lifetimes. It is appropriate that he died on the feast of Stephen, because both declared Christ’s teachings of non-retaliation most powerfully in their lives.

Non-retaliation isn’t the passive acceptance of being persecuted or discriminated against. Instead that it accepts that injustice can never be undone on its own terms. We know that there is both darkness and light in each of us. We know that once we say that the end justifies any means, then the line between victim and victimiser starts to become dangerously blurred.

But both Saint Stephen and Desmond Tutu went beyond merely refusing to be silenced in the face of oppression, and in doing so, lived out one of the most challenging and most rewarding of Christ’s teachings. Let me explain. Many of Christ’s moral teachings were the same as those of other great teachers and philosophers of the ancient world. Some form of the golden rule, to do to others as you would have them do unto you, is seen in the teachings of Buddha, and Zoroaster, and Greek philosophy.

An image of the painting entitled The Stoning of Stephen (ca. 1603-4) by Adam Elsheimer. Now in the Scottish National Gallery.
The Stoning of Stephen (ca. 1603-4) by Adam Elsheimer. Now in the Scottish National Gallery.

There is one teaching of Christ that was absolutely unique, however. It is the most revolutionary of Christ’s teachings and the one which is hardest to follow; I certainly don’t manage to put it into practice very often. That is his command to love our enemies. Remember, that the command is not, absolutely not, as the lives of both Stephen and Desmond show us, to acquiesce in the evil that our enemies do to us – but to love them, to love them enough to recognise their humanity. To love them enough to recognise that we may be the only agents God has to rescue them from the darkness that consumes them. To love our enemies is to understand that our response to their persecution may be what brings out the image of God that is stamped in each of them and enables them to turn from evil.

It is a wonderful teaching. Let me reiterate, I’m not pretending it’s easy to live out in practice. But Desmond Tutu’s life and Stephen’s show us that in the saints of the church, we have examples to follow of how to respond to persecution not in its own terms, but in refusing the twin dangers of both acquiescence and of hate.

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Angels: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Saturday 25th December 2021 (Christmas Morning)

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And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God

Most of us probably know all the people who were mentioned in the Gospel reading a moment ago, when the Rector stood in front of the altar and read from the big blue book. There are the angels; and there are the shepherds; and there is the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus. Let me say a little bit about each of them to help you think about what Christmas means and how you can ask God for help in your life.

An image of The Mystical Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli (1500-1), which now hangs in The National Gallery, London.
The Mystical Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli (1500-1). Now hangs in The National Gallery, London.

Let’s start with the angels. Some people laugh at the idea there are angels. But there is more going on in the world than is obvious from our senses, and many people who aren’t even sure if they believe in God do believe in angels. This is a bit odd, as angels are God’s messengers. If you believe in angels, you should believe in God. Trust your guardian angel to look after you; they will be with you to protect you for your whole life. Just try your best to stay out of trouble and not give the angel too much work!

If you find it hard to pray to God, you can ask your Guardian Angel to pray for you, and to teach you how to pray for yourself.

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Celebrating Our Bodies: Sermon Preached at Holy Cross, Seend, Friday 24th December 2021 (Midnight Mass)

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Readings – Hebrews 4: 1–4 , John 1: 1–14

The word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

The word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

For some of you here tonight, that will be a familiar expression heard in Church a hundred times and regularly read in your Bibles. For others, it will undoubtedly a very weird collection of words that makes no sense whatsoever. Yet this phrase sets out the most important thing about the Christmas story; it’s why Christmas became the biggest holiday of our calendar, and why it remained so over many centuries. So let me unpack it a little.

After celebrating my first Midnight Mass as a priest at Holy Cross, Seend, 25 December 2021

The Word is God – God who made the universe, God who was there in the very beginning, God who existed when the Big Bang went bang, God who made the Big Bang go bang. Our Gospel reading a moment ago said many strange things, and another of them was this: “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So we have two beings in the beginning, who make the Big Bang go bang – God and the Word; but the Word is also God. It’s very odd, isn’t it?

Now this “Word”, as St John’s Gospel calls it, became flesh and dwelt among us. In the form of a tiny baby in the womb. Not the son of a King, but the son of a carpenter, who married his mother when she was already pregnant, dragged far from home by the cold bureaucratic order of a distant ruler occupying their country. That the maker of the universe should become one of us is odd enough; stranger still that He should do it as an ordinary man, in a backwater town, without even a proper roof over His head.

We human beings are made in the image of God, not only in our souls, but in our bodies, because Jesus Christ is God, the Word who was already there when the Big Bang went bang. Our bodies are beautiful gifts of God. Our bodies are both unique to ourselves and something we share with everyone else who has ever lived and will ever live. Our bodies have limitations – we are not supermen – but those limitations are not flaws, but design features.

Yet we live at a time when many of us seem to be profoundly alienated from our bodies. We see this most clearly in the epidemics of eating disorders and self-cutting which have become so widespread, especially among adolescent girls and young women.

Technology is part of the explanation for this, although only part of it. Instagram and Facebook hit us with page after page of beautiful people living perfect lives, with all their teeth perfect and not a hair out of place. It’s almost always fake – a pose held for a few seconds, assisted by plastic surgery and a digital photo filter – but it makes us think we are inadequate. Yet you are made to be the way you are, to have the body and face you were given by God.

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Embracing Our Humanity: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 19th December 2021 (The Fourth Sunday of Advent)

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Readings – Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

“…as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy.” 

If you’re interested in some intelligent listening, may I commend this year’s Reith Lectures on Radio 4? They are being given by Professor Stuart Russell, a British academic who works on Artificial Intelligence at the University of California. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a computer whizz to understand them – Professor Russell is very good at explaining his subject in terms understandable to an intelligent non-specialist audience.

A copy of the painting of The Visitation by James Tissot
The Visitation (1886-94) by James Tissot; now hangs in the Brooklyn Museum.

We have now lived through half a century where ever increasing computer power has radically transformed the way in which we live. The growing power of computers and the consequent disruption to established patterns of living will continue well into the future. Professor Russell, like most experts, thinks many of the jobs made unnecessary by new technology will be ones requiring high levels of education and specialist knowledge. For example, many fewer lawyers and doctors will be needed given the way the expertise of the best can be packaged and made available worldwide. Why do we need the average hospital consultant or barrister when a computer programme will make the knowledge of the very best available to all for a tiny marginal cost? Similarly, who will need the average teacher or university lecturer when the best in the world can be streamed via the Internet to every tablet from Devizes to Dubai.

The experts, however, all seem to agree we will still need just as many people who earn their living by taking care of others and their personal needs – from hairdressers to care home assistants. I hope that means there will continue to be a robust demand for priests.

Please note: when our expertise becomes redundant, there is still a value – including an economic value – on our humanity.

Let us keep this in mind as we reflect on our Gospel reading, and Mary’s visit to Elizabeth to celebrate their pregnancies, for it is all about the value of humanity and of human life.

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Proclaiming Forgiveness: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 5th December 2021 (The Second Sunday of Advent)

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Readings – Luke 3:1-6; Malachi 3:1-4

“He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” 

May I speak in the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

It seems that in this pandemic, we’re always waiting. This time last year, we were waiting for the vaccines to arrive, having just heard news that seemed too good to be true about their effectiveness. This year, we’re waiting to see if they’ll still work as well against the Omicron variant. Waiting can sometimes be a nerve-grinding, exhausting, process, most of all when we wait poised between utter despair and relief. Let us be honest – the Second Sunday of Advent in 2021 involves just this kind of joy-sapping, emotionally fraught, waiting.

A painting by Domenico Veneziano of St John the Baptist surrounded by bare mountains and scattered woodland. He is naked.
St John the Baptist in the Wilderness by Domenico Veneziano (1445). Now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Waiting is, however, part of the human condition. It is also a major theme of the season of Advent, where we wait for Christ to come into the world at Christmas. Even Jesus had to wait for the appropriate time to start his public ministry, which meant waiting for John the Baptist; and John himself presumably had to wait for the right moment to begin preaching, in a time and a place that was full of shifting political and religious tensions.

It is of note that Luke locates John the Baptist at a definite historical moment. His preaching didn’t happen at a random moment in history, but at a particular time and a particular place, and I quote from this morning’s Gospel:

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.”

From the time when he is writing, Luke is probably looking back around sixty years to the ministry of John the Baptist. That is a long time, but well within the living memory of older people; prominent public figures of the time will still mean something to most people. John the Baptist’s ministry is presented as a historical reality, in the not too distant past. It is as if a modern writer were writing about, say the Cuban Missile Crisis or miniskirts, by saying:

“In the eighth year of the reign of Elizabeth the Second, when Macmillan was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Kennedy President of the United States, and Khrushchev and Mao Chairmen of the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and China, during the archiepiscopates of Geoffrey Fisher and Michael Ramsey.”

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