From source to sea: finding our way.

Below is the text of the homily given at St Peter’s, South Barrow, on Sunday 30th August. An unexpected opportunity had arisen to take part in another long walk, this time a river-pilgrimage along the River Brue, and that provided the context of my address. I began however by quoting from one of the readings set for the day in Romans 12: Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Dear Friends, another Sunday, another homily – and another traveller’s tale. Last week I told you about the wild-camping hike my daughter and I undertook across the narrower part of the south-west peninsular. This week’s excursion came unexpectedly following an email late on Thursday evening advising that a group of river-pilgrims tracing the Brue from source to sea were due to conclude their first day at Alford. The ‘Brue Crew’ as they are called is a diverse group that seeks to monitor the ecological health and to promote the appreciation of the river that passes through our Benefice. Why not join them, I thought. Thanks to Helen’s connections with the group’s coordinator I was thus able to walk the first day of four, beginning by the river’s source deep amid the woods beneath King Alfred’s Tower. Walking footpaths descending the valley to Bruton, we were made wet at times by the showers but our spirits were undampened – and then lifted greatly by the sound of St Mary’s bells tolling a welcome to us.

By the time we reached our dear church of All Saints’, Alford, at 6pm, we were mightily glad of the tea and cakes that awaited. Meanwhile the trickle of water that had marked the beginning of the walk was by now become a river. My fellow pilgrims nobly continued the journey to Glastonbury in yesterday’s rain and are continuing on across the Levels today. I will be camping with them this evening and will walk with them the concluding stage to where the oringinal river, before it was straightened, enters the Bristol Channel at Brean.

Thus, last week it was Channel to Channel, this week from Source to Sea. It seems that the notion of being on a journey resonates deeply with all of us, not least among those who are most happily and productively settled into a stable family and community life. To live is to change, and to live fully is to change repeatedly, Henry Newman is reputed to have said. Both of today’s readings reflect such a theme. Paul urges his hearers and readers and us to Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Jesus prepares his friends, and each of us, for the uncomfortable truth that the fulfilment of our lives may feel and seem like their dissolution: those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Following the course of a river has an added spiritual dimension. I composed a broad-based blessing at the day’s start: Whatever our spiritual affiliation or viewpoint, this is a place, and a moment, that speak to the soul for – no matter how complicated, or dislocated, our modern way of life – water remains a life-source and life-sustainer, and this small stream and the river it becomes is a vein of life and a connecting thread for our communities. In the name of life itself, and in the name of the God of life, may this spring and this river be blessed and its living waters healed and our relationship with it and our environment be restored. Amen.

So many Church buildings have origins in springs and holy wells, or are placed near to streams, and in every Church the font is a prominent feature reminding us that we have been bathed and restored through the sacred waters of baptism. At Lovington there is, now restored to use, a Holy Water ‘stoop’ so that visitors can be reminded of their baptism when they enter by dipping a finger to make the sign of the cross. Today I will leave a bowl of Holy Water which anyone returning from Communion may use if they wish, but with no pressure – it is but an outward symbol that may help some but be of little point for some others. But its presence may kindle within each of us the thought: I have been baptised and by that simple, easily dismissed, sacramental sign God promised never to forsake or abandon me, declared me his child, for whom Jesus Christ was content to die upon the cross.

If I may refer to and adapt my conclusion of last week: My dear friends, we are pilgrims together, a raggle-taggle company of Christ’s companions, and our way leads not from Watchet to Beer, nor from the Brue’s source to the Bristol Channel – but from shadows to light, from solitude to communion, from shame to grace, and we have bathed in the promise of love that is baptism. Our journey’s end is not yet, so meanwhile let us make our way, onward, ever onward, encouraged by one another and undeterred. The sea that is God’s love and presence in entirety await and beckon and we see its shining splendour, afar off and yet ever nearer.

Finding our way: a raggle-taggle pilgrimage.

The following is the text of a homily I gave on Sunday 23rd August 2026 at St Thomas a’Becket, Lovington. The sermon was largely shaped by a cross-country walk undertaken with my daughter, a unique route we are naming the ‘Mairat Way’, but the opening quotation, from St Matthew’s Gospel, was: Jesus asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’

I sought once to commission a piece of sculpture for the Church of which I was Vicar, to be of Jesus portrayed with a humanity that attracts and intrigues but in whom neither the suffering of the Cross nor the glory of Resurrection are yet pre-eminent. The base of the piece was to be, perhaps still might one day be, inscribed with the question: ‘But who do you say that I am?’ My impulse derived partly from coming to know an artist*whom I felt would be able to effect such such a commission, and partly through a sense that many who visit our Churches – and indeed many who attend its worship – do not hold clear or confident beliefs about God but are, to a surprising degree, touched or troubled by just such a question. Indeed I will venture to say that not a bad way of denoting the Church in these days when Christian faith is pushed to the margins, like a sun setting – or perhaps a sun preparing to rise – is to describe it as the community of those who have felt, in some way and by some means, that question addressed to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’

(* the artist is a Mallorcan sculptor, Catalina Sureda, the latest in a long line of artists within her family.)

My friends, we are pilgrims seeking to respond to that question and discover a world transfigured by the love and light it releases. Pilgrims are generally a raggle-taggle company, whose grace consists principally in coming to recognise how profound is their need of help. Last Sunday Buff, with two old friends here, told us of their adventures in travel, now refined to coincide with the opening hours of some chosen Dorset pubs. Meanwhile, my daughter and I ventured across the familiar yet sometimes hidden countryside of Somerset and Devon, plying our way from Watchet on the Bristol Channel to Beer on the English Channel. Following no existing Long Distance Path but tracing our own route and camping wherever we might, as a friend of mine would ask, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ Plenty, as it turned out…

First, after the longest dry spell in recorded UK history we functioned as rain-gods, heralding downpours before even the Met Office could detect them. Secondly, we discovered that rights of way marked on maps do not always translate into accessible paths across farmland, and in addition the unhelpful red notice declaring a footpath closed (with no alternative suggested) became familiar. Other problems were self-made, perhaps most spectacularly my forgetting to take a tent. Having swum our farewell to the sea in Watchet harbour we were, however, committed and headed south. A rainy morning gave way to the long, low light of evening on the Quantocks.

Next morning brought thick mist and heavy rain as we hunkered uncomfortably amid all our kit in one small tent. Our wavering faith in this project was further challenged by fields sprayed with repellent manure and a then a ‘Taunton torture’ route of paths obliterated by building schemes and roadworks. But angels appeared: two random walkers who gave directions, and a town pub, rough as they come, provided refuge while I caught the train back to collect my tent left in my car parked at Castle Cary Vicarage. That night on the edge of the Blackdown Hills we cooked tea and drank whisky, watching the deer and amused by the repeated circuits of a nearby rustling rodent for whom we were a discounted unfamiliar presence.

The third day’s walking was beautiful but challenging. It seems that a minority of farmers, amid all the challenges of their work, do not mark or clear overgrown paths, and seeking to follow them calls for courage, ingenuity and sometimes a bit of bloody-mindedness.

Yet, again, angels appeared along the way: the lady from whom we asked the use of her garden tap to fill our bottles who then re-emerged to give us a packet of lemon biscuits. The rather fine-dining pub whose staff delicately provided a secluded area of their restaurant where our large bags could not knock over the table settings and where we could recharge our phones and arrange clothes to dry. And late in the day the lady walking her dogs past where we had emerged from a river-swim and who invited us to camp on their gorgeous and secluded garden.

Our final day of walking led us along a path that depended upon crossing quite a deep river ahead of which a ‘path closed’ sign declared the bridge to be out of action and no alternative available. We proceeded anyway and amended the sign at the far end to explain to walkers coming the other way that the bridge was in fact perfectly passable. We came to the fine Church in Colyton where a team were helping the Vicar prepare for a massive fund-raising book-sale. I introduced myself to the Vicar and Fr Stephen made us so welcome. Meeting him and his parishioners, including two ordinands, was extraordinarily encouraging. But we became perhaps the only long-distance walkers to add five or six hardback books to their rucksacks’ weight. Arriving at the sea, and plunging in, never felt so refreshing and welcome as that evening, and nor did fish and chips ever taste so good as those we ate on our way to the relative luxury of the Youth Hostel in Beer.

Life lessons were learnt, or refreshed, along the way: resilience, patience, humour – these all pay good dividends in the long run; don’t be afraid to ask for help; expect the unexpected and relish every opportunity for interaction with others (the good people who replenished our water, the cleaner who greeted us, the kind couple who welcomed us into their beautiful garden. The Vicar who made us so welcome); and allow the familiar to be re-enchanted with mystery just as for us the nearby countryside has been charged anew with wonder and surprise. Oh, and be sure to remember your tent.

Jesus in today’s Gospel reading invests great trust and potential in Peter – Peter who is by turns absurd, repellent, engaging, slow, inane, generous, hesitant, impulsive, the very last person upon whom should rest the responsibility for a new and growing enterprise. To Peter Jesus entrusts its leadership and even places in his – and therefore by implication in your and my hands – the power to exercise and extend Christ’s own forgiveness.

‘We are’, Joni Mitchell once wrote, ‘stardust, billion year old carbon, we are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.’ My dear friends, we are pilgrims together, a raggle-taggle company of Christ’s companions, and our way leads not from Watchet to Beer but from shadows to light, from solitude to communion, from shame to grace, and we have bathed in the promise of love that is baptism. Our journey’s end is not yet, so meanwhile let us make our way, onward, ever onward, encouraged by one another and undeterred. The sea that is God’s love and presence in entirety awaits and beckons and we see its shining splendour, afar off and yet ever nearer.

Keeping it simple…

Below is the text of my homily during the Six Pilgrims Eucharist at All Saints’ Church, Alford, on Sunday 9th August 2026. It was a beautiful morning and I cycled the five or so miles there. The St George’s flag fluttered gently as we gathered in this delightful, and holy, place. For an opening text I referenced an Old Testament sentiment that Paul quotes in the first reading, from Romans 10: ‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart’

St Paul gets a bad press at times from many who are not followers of Christ and even among some who are. One can see why. His conversion to belief in Jesus, yes, turned his life around and all for the better – but conversion doesn’t replace your character. Paul could still be stubborn, and rather dogmatic about issues which many consider now in a different light. Thus he was very outspoken in his disapproval of men with long hair, and he was adamant that women should not speak publicly in Church services. In addition, those who still think homosexuality is intrinsically sinful are unable to quote Jesus because he said no such thing, but they can and do quote Paul to seem to support them. Nonetheless, for all his fighting talk Paul was wise and in one place he makes it clear that his hearers should not quote his words as if hey were, so to speak, ‘Gospel.’ Anyone who quotes Scripture to advance an argument must also do the hard work of thinking and praying and discussing – and being prepared to change one’s mind…

In today’s first reading, however, we see Paul in typically agile, creative and generous form. First, he warns against Biblical literalism, that is, taking verses from the Bible and supposing they have just one, simple and literal application. Do not be waylaid, he says, with speculating who is to be saved and who will be lost, who will ascend into heaven and who descend into the abyss. The challenge instead is to attend to Jesus and become a little more formed by and in and with him. There is, he says, no real distinction between Jew and Gentile, a surprising and striking statement which we could translate into tooday’s even more diverse circumstances: there is no real difference between Muslim and Christian, or black and white, or right and left, or ‘woke’ and its opposite is called: ‘the same Lord,’ he reminds us, ‘is Lord of all and is generous to all who call upon him…’

Paul quotes the line: ‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart’. a phrase that echoes the teaching of Moses as recounted in Deuteronomy chapter 30. How to summarise the thrust of Deuteronomy…. Perhaps if Genesis be thought of as ‘Stories from the Beginning that will Change your Life’, and if Exodus be described as SBCL – the Sequel, then Deuteronomy is like a bonus DVD giving you all the back story, Director’s notes, some extra footage – and an exclusive long interview with the main actor. It is the sleeve notes to to the concert. In Chapter 30, Moses has gone into some detail about the blessings and the curses. It might be a great opportunity for people then, and now, to don their anorak and begin to declaim who is in and who is out. But Moses responds by keeping it simple (as of course Jesus does all the time): Surely (Moses says) this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.

Fast forward several thousand years and what do we find? We still tend to complicate matters. Facebook or YouTube will invite you to explore any number of different avenues to improve and make your life better, most of them based on what an AI makes of your purchasing and searching online. In my case it seems that according to their algorithms my pathway to blessedness entails tai chi, revisiting disused railway lines and watching re-runs of Test Matches from the 1980s. But I think part of the function of the Church is to help us all keep it simple: in the words that emerged unplanned in my last two sermons, keep on praying, keep the faith, and keep coming back.

As so often, when we move on to consider the Gospel reading we find exactly that: a simple, engaging account. It says in a story what others among might spend hours saying less clearly in theory. Jesus and his companions (here I remind you of last Sunday’s Gospel reading in which Jesus and the disciples miraculously fed five thousand. That takes some processing. Jesus does so by going off alone to meditate. The disciples he directs to go on ahead by boat. The wind gets up, the sea gets rough, and Jesus appears across the water. Peter, ever the touchstone for our enthusiasm and our fear, our integrity and our duplicity, is the first to respond: if you call me, Lord, I will trust and come to you. Jesus warmly invites him: Come! But his trust wavers and from feeling on top of the world (and on top of the water) suddenly he is overcome with a quite literal sinking feeling. We know the feeling. And the end of it is that Peter learns a quick, short, key lesson in how to pray for real, when he cries out ‘Kýrie, sôson me’. In English, ‘Lord, save me.’ To which Jesus responds by reaching out and lifting Peter up and back into the boat.

Perhaps it really is that simple. Paul knew it –his conversion on the road to Damascus was sudden and dramatic but only took deepened root when, in his blindless, he was obliged to go humbly to seek the help of aged Ananias, with its reminder that none of us is so special or important as we like to think. We must continually re-learn it this wisdom: if you really want to survive, and come through life’s storms without sinking, and find a way to be good and kind, to love and to be loved, and – dare I say it? – be happy: then let us take to ourselves and make our frequent prayer those words of Peter, ‘Lord, save me!‘ May we also have grace to hear as spoken with authority and power to each of ourselves those words of Jesus in today’s readings: ‘Take heart, it is I: do not be afraid.’ Or, to repeat the simple vision statement of the past several weeks, keep on praying, keep the faith, and keep coming back!

‘The kingdom of Heaven is like…’

Below is the text of my homily during the Six Pilgrims Eucharist celebrated at Babcary on Sunday 26th July, 2026. My opening text was the concluding verses of the New Testament reading, from Romans, chapter 8: I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The illustrations here, art works by Kurt Jackson, are referred to in my address.

It might seem strange that, after hearing St Paul’s profound reflections on God’s presence with us – a passage that concludes with words that are so reassuring they are often read at the solemn beginning of funerals – we then hear from our Lord a far less systematic series of short parables, a medley of mixed metaphors! The Kingdom of God is like a tiny seed…or like yeast…or else it is like treasure hidden in a field…or like a valuable pearl that only shows up once in a rare while…or it is like a net cast into the sea that draws in a diverse harvest... Jesus asks his hearers if they understand all this and they answer ‘Yes!’ But you know, I’m not sure if they did really – or if I do for that matter…

So why does Jesus so often speak to them, and us, in parables, micro-stories, metaphors? Is he a religious teacher? Or a performance poet? Perhaps he is both. The parables work, and only work, when they are not only heard, but when they speak within us. His parables take their content from people’s day-to-day experience and despite the distance in time they still speak to us in today’s changed world. The parables are sacramental: they are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, and they invite and prompt us to look around and see within our own circumstances and daily experience those things that point us towards God’s Kingdom.

There are those who can help us in this challenge. A few days ago I visited a gallery in Cornwall that is free to visit, the gift to the public of a successful contemporary artist called Kurt Jackson, whose home and studio are near the small town of St Just. His talent is extraordinary and varied, and his output prodigious. The natural world is his main inspiration but he habitually finds new angles from which to explore and celebrate its beauty. 2025 was his year of the foxglove. His fascination with this common wild flower throughout last spring, summer and autumn gave rise to a series of paintings, drawings and sculptures whose effect is not only to awaken us to the foxglove’s extraordinary colour, boldness and presence. For by doing that his art prompts us to notice the other diverse and easily-overlooked beauty that accompanies the foxgloves in their so varied terrain. Oh, that we might each of us be prompted to notice a little more how extraordinary is our ordinary world around us!

Some of Jackson’s other projects help to reinforce the point. On one occasion he spent the day on a busy and unscenic commuter station. The resulting work comprises a central black and white picture of the tracks and platform edge that will have dominated his day’s contemplation, but around it there is a series of used tickets, on each of which he has painted an item of the wildlife spotted there: a red admiral butterfly, a magpie, buddleia, herb robert, ragwort…

On another occasion he visited a London street deemed the most polluted and ugly in the country. A sketch outlines the variety of people – and dogs! – encountered there, and, this time, around it are scraps of litter or pieces of tin can, each forming a canvass for a small, vibrant, colourful sketch of the beauty found there.

The effect is to awaken in us a sense of the mystery, and sanctity, that is found everywhere, and in every one, but which we so often overlook or are blind to, most usually because of the cataracts of ego and self-absorption that obscure our vision.

Jesus, through his parables, opens our eyes to a bigger world that he calls the Kingdom of Heaven. By his life he draws us into the fellowship and friendship that belong to all those who discover that money cannot buy entrance to that beautiful place but that love may open its doors. And by his death, and resurrection, he ensures that that love can never cease and will always await us, even when we by our sinfulness and shame may seem to shun and dispel it.

What Kurt Jackson can do for Weybridge Station and Vauxhall Bridge Road, the Church and even our modest Six Pilgrims worship can do for us all: our sacrament of Holy Communion may remind and reveal to us that ‘There lives the dearest freshness deep down things’ in and amid our ordinary and sometimes almost orphaned lives (cut off from our heavenly Father, from each other, and from ourselves…) But our world can be re-sanctified and re-sacralised because our eyes and our vision can be re-opened and refreshed. This, and each of our Church buildings, is a sacrament – but so too, even more, is this and each fellowship of faith. Few of us are artists and yet, just by showing up and taking part, Sunday by Sunday, each one of us can be the means by which God refreshes and recreatres this wonderful world. Keep on praying, keep the faith, and keep coming back: here, and in each one of you, is that small seed, that yeast, that treasure, that pearl. And thus, as Paul writes, ‘in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us...’

Letting go of the millstone…

Below is the text of my homily given during the Six Pilgrims Eucharist at All Saints’, Alford, on Sunday 5th July. The opening text formed part of the Gospel reading appointed for the day (from Matthew Chapter 11): ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’

I have opened with a wonderful, surely a perennial favourite, Bible quotation: ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ On Friday, I paused by an old farmhouse. Its front garden was decorated by now redundant millstones: one the enormous ‘bed stone’ and the other the smaller but still immensely heavy ‘runner stone.’ ‘It’s as if’, we might say of someone carrying an acute anxiety, ‘they have a millstone around their neck.’ With such a weight pulling you down all you can do is look at the path immediately in front, and every step forward is a joyless, weary effort.

Why life can at times feel a bit that way is perhaps illumined by our first reading, from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. I do not understand my own actions…I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Paul describes very well here our human dilemma. Many people will recognise the relevance of what he writes here. I find it helpful to refer to the experience of addiction as a kind of template for the human condition. No addict wants to be subject to the crushing burden of their affliction, at any rate not during their sober and saner moments. At the same time every addict, whether to a substance or some kind of compulsive but negative behaviour, eventually comes to realise their own powerlessness to overcome their affliction. Trying harder, again, and again, does not work. All depends upon a higher power able to break through the cycle of despair. Many of us will know the truth of this as we think of addicts we have known, some of us will reluctantly acknowledge that the label attaches to us even if in ways that are relatively hidden or concealable. But perhaps all of us, even those to whom addiction is entirely foreign and alien, will grant that our own lives in some way reflect Paul’s sober analysis: in traditional Christian terms it is usually called ‘sin’ and it goes deep and it profoundly marks each and every one if us.

Sin, it should be said, does not just describe overtly bad behaviour. And nor should it be confused with outright evil, which is sufficiently unusual as to be best left in a separate category. Sin is our apparent default setting, like ‘delayed’ is to trains from Castle Cary, or ‘polluted’ is to rivers under the care of our water companies: it’s not the way it’s meant to be, it’s not the way it ought to be, and it’s not the way, God willing, it will be – but it is the way it is…

As with addiction, trying harder does not avail, not for very long. All is reliant on the strength of a Higher Power whose assistance we must seek humbly, even humiliatingly, to receive the benefit of that help, day by day. Thus, all is grace and yet at the same time it requires hard work for us to receive that grace, by walking and working the steps, the slow, small, incremental steps towards recovery: prayer, the Bible, forgiveness and saying sorry, noticing the blessings that come our way, encouraging others and being encouraged in return.

For most of us too there is no quick fix. Miracles do happen, but for most of us the biggest miracles consist of our appreciating the gift that is each and every day, each and every moment. The best miracle is each moment that we notice our blessings.

I saw those millstones (that I would otherwise have passed without noticing) because they were pointed out as part of a day’s pilgrimage that began and finished at the only Church in England to retain the relics of its saint from ancient days. We met at Whitchurch Canonicorum near Charmouth and walked to various sites around that stunning countryside and coastline associated with St Wite (pronounced ‘Weet-a’) the Saxon holy woman and healer whose violent death in the early 800s did not terminate but instead magnified her ministry of prayer and care for others then and now. It was a beautiful 7 mile walk punctuated by moments of reflection, memory, prayer and blessing. It was a truly beautiful day. But as with every pilgrimage, its conclusion (returning to the Church around 5pm) is but the beginning: each day is a further step on our pilgrim journey. Today’s text was engraved in the porch of one of our pausing places, St Gabriel’s Church in Morecombelake: Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give rest unto your soul. So I say to anyone here who feels they are carrying heavy burdens – even, or especially, if those burdens seem self-inflicted – you are not weird or wrong, you are not bad, and you are certainly not hopeless. You are human and you are beautiful in God’s eyes, and you are welcome with all the rest of us, sinners and fellow pilgrims stumbling on this narrow, precipitous but wonderful way that leads to life.

‘…ye are of more value than many sparrows.’

Below is the text of my homily at the Six Pilgrims Eucharist on Sunday 21st June, 2026, celebrated at St Nicholas’, North Barrow, as part of their modestly titled but wonderful festival of ‘Flowers in a Country Church.’ The accompanying drawings were by my daughter, Mary, who was visiting me. The Gospel reading (for Trinity 3) included the line: ‘Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.’

I like sparrows! They are plucky, social creatures, unassuming, and rather bonny in an understated way. They are adaptable, and resourceful: birds of the hedgerow, the country garden, and equally of the industrial factory and urban back yard. So I quite like the way Jesus compares us to them. Sparrows are like us in other ways too. Their twig-like legs are a feature I claim affinity with since the days I used to play football after school in a cul-de-sac adjacent to the house where I gre up in the north-east of England. I would be wearing junior school-regulation short trousers, and the old men looking on would wryly refer to me as that little ‘spuggy shanks’ which is Teesside dialect for ‘legs like a sparrow.’ Sparrows, though bold, are small, and vulnerable. The sparrowhawk will chase down all kinds of small birds but in the days when both species were more numerous it was of course the sparrow that was the hawks go-to, bread-and-butter prey. Sparrows, accordiing to Jesus remarks, were perhaps literally 10 a penny (the old Bible says two were sold for a farthing but perhaps if you thus bought 8 for a penny they threw in an extra two as a bonus.) But ‘do not be afraid, you are worth more than many sparrows.’

‘Do not fear…’ is said by Jesus many times. He knows us well. True, our lives have a more comfortable cushion around them than in any past century, yet fear dominates much of many people’s lives. Only you may be aware what forms that fear, or anxiety, takes in your case. I will share with you a foolish recent example in my own case. During a warm spell of weather last weekend I went to get something from the freezer and noticed it was already well on its way to being thawed. As the day wore on I heard its motor kick in, and out again, several times, but gradually it was all thawing. Ok, so no really big deal to attend to: I put out a message asking advice about repairs, and wondering if others could lend me space in their freezers. They could. The repairers couldn’t come out, or else were proposing to charge huge amounts, but a shop in Castle Cary gave good advice for free. I switched it off for 12 hours and scooped out all the water I could – and then it started again and is now working tickety-boo. But… when it happened I didn’t just think, ‘darn it, that’s a nuisance.’ No, I folded and I crumpled. Somehow, my freezer breaking and – more particularly – my not knowing what to do about it, made me feel useless and pathetic. The broken fridge quickly confirmed that my whole life is a failure! I exaggerate, slightly… but in all kinds of areas of our lives we easily fear and fold in. Probably it isn’t a dodgy freezer in most cases. It may be retirement, or a time of illness, the breakdown of a relationship, or a terrible time at work. It may be stress, or it may be an argument, it may be any of a hundred different things but the end result is we feel prone and fearful, and then perhaps in order to deflect the pain we become resentful and angry – it must be their fault. We project our fear onto others in the form of resentment. Others do the same to us, and heigh ho…

How do we step into, or put upon us like a garment, Jesus’ oft-repeated bidding to us not to fear? We should remind ourselves of what Jesus tells us: God who knows your worst self (such that others, if they knew, would you fear shun you) yet loves you, and likes you, through and through. He has your number. He even knows the number of hairs on your head, says Jesus (useless knowledge though that be…) Remember your baptism or at any rate remember that you are baptised, when God declared that you would be his son, his daughter, for ever. Paul, in today’s first reading, connects our baptism to Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are as if grafted on to that mystery, and our baptism accomplishes, or at any rate, powerfully symbolises that. The Church is a deceptively powerful sacrament of our all belonging to God and therefore belonging to one another in our weakness and in our strength. Someone remarked to me this weekend, someone who had contributed a flower arrangement, something they had never previously thought themselves able to do. The process, they said, helped them feel part of the village community. The diversity among these contributions, and their unity within this building, is itself a parable of God’s kingdom in which we all come to share our experience, our struggles and our hope. Let us enjoy this beauty today, but remember also that there is within this building a beauty which eclipses even these gorgeous arrangements: you, each of you, warts and all, faults and all, failings and all. You, Jesus says, are worth more than many sparrows, you…are more lovely, more precious, more unique, more special than any flower arrangement here, for all their extraordinary beauty: ‘Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.’

Seeing people from a Salisbury cafe.

Below is the text of my homily for Sunday 14th June, 2026. The opening line is from the day’s Gospel reading from John chapters 9 and 10: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

How do we see people? Not just register their presence, but really see them. How do we see others whom we know, others who are strangers – how do we see ourselves? This past week I attended a two-day module of a course whose purpose is very positive, to equip those taking part to be good spiritual directors able to listen to, and help, others in their spiritual journeys. All courses however have their dull or frustrating moments. Twice I escaped to a nearby cafe situated next to a busy crossing place. An extraordinary succession and variety of people would pass, pause for a moment, awaiting a pedestrian light or a gap in the traffic, before crossing the road – and I began to sketch. With an available pose of just a few seconds, there was every excuse to draw badly, and I did – but I drew people, and it touched me, so that when I left and joined the passing, heterogenous parade, I wondered how I myself might appear, just as odd and singular, to anyone with coffee and pencil to hand. It was a humbling, yet inspiring thought: for those few moments of attentive respect I had sensed the unique singularity of each of those persons, strangers to me and yet intimately known to God. Each quick outline was like a prayer, through which people assume a new depth and reality in our estimation.

Jesus models for us a kind of seeing in depth that we typically are blind to. At the onset of his public ministry he sees the young men following him and asks them, what do you want..? Even from among cheering crowds he sees Zaccheus, solitary, aloft in the tree, and speaks to him. He even ‘sees the unseen’ as when he senses the presence of the woman who reaches out among the pressing crowd to touch his cloak: ‘who touched me..?’ And in today’s Gospel reading Jesus when he saw the crowds…had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Before ever we can help people we need to properly see them. Drawing helped remind me of that. Artists help open our eyes to see the world anew and to see people with compassion and wonderment (May David Hockney rest in peace, and rise in glory.) Praying for people opens our interior eyes. So let us go on praying for people: people you know and love, but also for for people whom you don’t know well or don’t even like or who it seems don’t like you – pray for them even more. And when you can, talk to them. As a young curate I got off on the wrong foot once with a parishioner who was just then entering a difficult, and terminal, period of illness. Something in my clumsy and inexperienced ways had offended her. It was in the days before emails and I called around with a card and a bunch of flowers and I then discovered her smile, a smile that remained beneath the struggles while I read her Psalms the night she died 18 months later – a smile which I can still see after forty years. What happens when we fail to really see people? Well, every eruption of racial abuse, ethnic cleansing or mob violence is characterised by a refusal to really see the people one is pointing to or abusing. Jesus demonstrates to us and enables us to properly see anew – with love and compassion and humility.

Arising from this compassionate perception in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus summons his followers: As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. The Kingdom of Heaven is not just something that happens after we die. It is the irruption, or infiltration, NOW of God’s purposes into the life of this world. What Jesus said to his followers he says to us, and if we think we do not qualify then that was exactly what Peter and they all thought as well. Jesus’ proposal that we should Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons naturally makes us baulk. But as I took notice of that small segment of the world’s population passing my view from a Salisbury cafe I would wager all my savings, and even my Mercian bike, that many among them were inhibited by ill health – physical, or psychological, or spiritual (cure the sick…) Some of them perhaps felt that life had passed them by (raise the dead…) Some perhaps were feeling ostracised, or rejected, or unworthy (cleanse the lepers…) Some too might have felt their lives were under the control of maleficent powers greater than themselves: envy, resentment, anger, regret, addiction… (cast out demons…) To cure the sick, to raise the dead, to cleanse lepers and to cast out demons is work that is required of us daily: the problems are surely all around us – and within us.

Let our response begin with prayer, and continue with more prayer. Remember people by name. Let us say the Lord’s Prayer, daily, preferably aloud, with as much attention and love as we can manage. Today we will sing the Lord’s Prayer. Some will prefer it sung, others will not. But at least it will make us notice something that should not be overlooked or taken for granted: that God is our heavenly Father, who will give us the daily bread that we most need, and will forgive us our sins as we also learn to notice, to properly see – and therefore to forgive – others.

Stepping out from our Groundhog Days.

The Six Pilgrims Eucharist on Sunday 7th June took place at St Peter’s, South Barrow. The readings were from Romans chapter 4, and Matthew’s Gospel chapter 9. I opened my address with this reference to the first of those readings: No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 

It’s 2^nd February, it’s 6am, and I got you, Babe is playing on the radio… some of you will know straightaway that therefore this is Groundhog Day. The film of that name shows us the cynical local TV reporter Phil Connors and his efforts to escape and then exploit an unceasing 24-hour time loop which is only resolved when eventually he learns to live this one day positively and gratefully.

Any reliable spiritual path teaches us to accept and learn from and thus move on from our own Groundhog Days. Our human nature has within it the negative capacity to repeat negative cycles over and over again. To use the Christian shorthand, we are sinners. Ego tends easily and too often to predominate. We seek our own ends and project our fears and failings onto others. Others do something similar. Conflicts between people and within people follow, prompting us to behave anxiously and fearfully and resentfully towards others. Thus the process repeats… St Paul writes that the things I want to do I fail to do, and those I don’t wish to do, I do. And, as Paul elsewhere writes and as the General Confession in the old Prayer Book puts it, ‘there is no good in us’!

Negative cycles on repeat. We can see them in politics and in every major conflict. We can see them in the Criminal Justice System and in family life.

The Bible is realistic and illustrates this human tendency plentifully, but the Bible and our faith have another dimension: you could almost describe it as the essential addition that faith offers. In addition to the three physical dimensions and the fourth of time, we live within a fifth dimension, because all our lives are lived within a bigger dimension that is a Higher Power of Love that we shorten to the simple word, God.

Once he becomes aware of that fifth dimension, perhaps at the mountain-top when about to kill his own son Isaac, Abram, now Abraham, lives by a faith that is always able to interrupt our doom-cycles, whatever form they take. Our future can be different. Your future can be different. The past can be accepted and learned from, but it does not have to be repeated. ‘No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.’ And in today’s Gospel reading Jesus, as so often, illustrates profound teaching by ‘walking the walk’: the self-righteous have their reward already, but those who know they are sinners can discover they are forgiven and beloved. The person whose life has been on hold through a repetitive cycle of ill health and impediment touches Jesus’ cloak and is released. Even death itself cannot prevent the emergence of healing and hope, like the frail flower that eventually protrudes through layers of concrete.

I am currently undertaking a course in Spiritual Direction. That is the practice of meeting and accompanying others to help and support them in their spiritual life. I was prompted to do so partly because I have always been helped by consulting a mentor regularly, sharing in confidence any issues to do with ministry or my own life, making my Confession, and receiving their thoughts and encouragement. I now want to offer similar support to others and especially to younger colleagues in ministry or those exploring a vocation to ordained ministry. Spiritual Direction does not seek to replicate professional counselling or therapy. I am always at pains to explain that I am only a priest yet able, I hope, to listen well with complete confidentiality, to ask some helpful questions, and offer some resources the chief of which are prayer, scripture and the insights of the Christian spiritual tradition. I will be therefore in Sarum College, Salisbury, again this week for a further two-day module.

Whenever we celebrate the Eucharist, however, our Groundhog Days are interrupted. Here, time is overcome by the timeless sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Here, our weary lives are traversed by hope. Here, our future becomes something pure, marked out for God’s possibilities in us and not just marred by our own repeated failings. Today, at the close of our service, I will bless this Church’s newly-restored aumbry, the place where some of the consecrated bread is reserved for distributing to the sick who cannot attend Church but also as an abiding reminder to us as we enter this sacred space that all our lives and the life of this community and this world are lived within a fifth dimension, that of our God’s creating and recreative love. Remember too that each time you say the Lord’s Prayer (something I recommend we each do, aloud, every day) we also tune into that dimension: ‘Give us, this day, our daily bread…’

Thus we are invited to break loose from our repeating negative cycles, our Groundhog Days, and step forward into a future that can and will be released from the burdens of our past or present.

Learning to live

This is the text of my homily at the Six Pilgrims Eucharist for Trinity Sunday, at Lovington on 31st May. The portrait is of John Charles Thring. I quote at the conclusion part of the poem ‘Church Going’ by Philip Larkin and a link to a video dating from perhaps around 1960 in which John Betjeman and he introduce and read the entire poem.

Most knowledge is acquired kinaesthetically, not intellectually… People played football for centuries before a young man living in Alford House invented the offside rule. Eventually it led to ranks of TV screens and anxious officials hunkered in the VAR control centre in Stockley Park, but remember it all began with John Charles Thring and his brothers kicking a ball about on Helen and Buff’s lawn. I am currently learning to ring bells. I do so not by reading up on the intricacies of Steadman Triples. Instead, I take part and do my best, with other members of the team to encourage and rib me, and sometimes rescue me. Generally, we learn best by doing – after which theory may describe, deepen and extend what we have learned by practising.

Gathered here in Church I sense you are interested in learning how to live spiritually. By that I do not mean, learning how to recite prayers or carry out rituals; rather, learning to live spiritually means learning how to live in ways that help us be more aware, more alive, more honest, more realistic, more hopeful, more present. To do that we must keep fellowship with others on a similar broad path, and reflect, as we go, on all our encounters and challenges and blessings. On such a path we will – such is the Christian testimony – learn more and more that God is at the same time above and beyond all; yet, close and intimately present in all things; and uniquely, shockingly present in the vulnerable and persecuted figure of Jesus. Thus we learn – through experience rather than through doctrine – what those first Christians soon discovered, that God is Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.

Last Sunday my homily arose from the reference to Jesus breathing upon his followers, and I referred to the second verse of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 1. I suggested that all being is constantly ‘breathed’ by God: into existence, and life, and love. Today’s festival of the Holy Trinity prompts the further thought that, through prayer, we breathe with his breath and that at every moment we are in a living dialogue with a love that always draws us into fellowship, solidarity – the theological term in Greek is ‘koinonia’, a kind of active, symbiotic, give-and-take ‘communion’ – with a God who is essentially and necessarily a fellowship, a Trinity, of love that longs to include us. Again, I said last week that our every breath from first to last expresses the mysterious non-name of God, ‘Yah-weh’, and today we might remember that whenever we pray we do not need to fill the time with words or holy thoughts or lists of names (though they all have their important place). We might instead simply breathe in, and breathe out, knowing that every breath speaks his name and in every breath God speaks our best and truest name, in love.

Outward expressions of our faith are not strictly necessary, especially if one’s faith is strong, but permissible for all and recommendable for those like me whose faith is often weak. For me making the sign of the cross is one such symbol. Anything that can help my dull soul awaken to a God whose love covers me above and beneath and to either side (+) and whose presence embraces my head and heart and all my doings (+) , and whose communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (+) I am invited to share, I will take. If it’s good enough for footballers coming onto the pitch or when scoring a goal, then it won’t do me any harm as I enter Church or receive a blessing! At the conclusion of today’s Eucharist I will prepare Holy Water. It is used in several lovely ways, for instance as a reminder of baptism when commending a deceased soul to God at a funeral, or when blessing a home. This Church has a Holy Water stoop to the right of the entrance door and so a bowl of Holy Water there will now again enable anyone entering to dip their finger and make the sign of the cross as one enters this place of prayer, Since…, as Philip Larkin write in ‘Church Going’:
…someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie around.

My dear friends, let us continue along this path, this Pilgrimage, together learning what each must discover sooner or later, that we are called to grow wise and love more, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Breathing in God

This is the text of my homily on Pentecost Sunday, 24th May, when the Six Pilgrims’ Eucharist was at North Barrow. My talk refers to anointing. On such a beautiful, warm morning, this was administered outside with the Blessing, and offered to all but with no pressure or obligation) as part of the Blessing. A good many of the congregation came forward to receive it. I began the address by quoting these lines from the Gospel reading: Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them…

In today’s Gospel reading we discover that the followers of Jesus are not in a good place. It is night time. The doors are locked for fear. They miss Jesus who is no longer among them in his familiar role. They turn inwards, and cling to each other, with no ability or confidence to take the message or the life of Jesus onto the streets and into communities. Like so many of us at times in our own lives the disciples are stuck, they are anxious, they fear others, they have locked the doors, they cling to the well-known and familiar, they can’t go back although they would like to, and they can’t go forward. They are amid a dark night.

What does Jesus do? First, he ignores locked doors: ‘watertight’ barriers are porous to him. And when he encounters his friends, then what? He does not deliver a motivational speech. He does not confer on them remarkable powers or abilities. He does not bless, or preach to, them. Instead, Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ He simply breathes on them, but God’s breathing has considerable significance in the Bible. Both the Old Testament Hebrew word for ‘spirit’, Ruach, and its New Testament Greek equivalent, Pneuma, also mean ‘breath’ or ‘wind’. In the second verse of the Bible, in Genesis, we read that ‘the ‘ruach’ (spirit, or wind, or breath) of God moved upon he waters…’ So creation itself is a kind of exhalation of God: God constantly breathes all things into existence. There is also a to me convincing theory around the ‘non-name’ used to refer to God in ancient times:… yah-weh. The Bible points out that to give God a name might falsely suggest we have control or ‘oversight’ over One whose holiness transcends all our capacity to define him. When young I was rather impatient with this reasoning: surely ‘Yahweh’ IS a ‘name’ applied to God? But, so the experts tell us, the Hebrew characters signifying Yah-weh denote not a name, or even a word at all. It is more a guttural sound reminiscent of breathing: in (Yah) and out (weh). So by this light the very first word uttered by a new born baby taking its life-preserving first breath is: Yah-weh, God… and the very last word each of us will utter as we take our dying breath will be: Yah-weh, God…

To breathe is to live. If you encounter a seemingly inert body, and you see it is breathing then there is life and there is hope. Jesus breathes on them, and upon us, to inspire life, to endow us with life in its fullness. Sometimes our lives can take on the characteristics of those disciples, locking themselves into a closed small room. Sometimes too the Church can become a small closed room. Even a big and – according to its members – ‘important’ Church can become a closed room, fearful and fear-mongering, keener to maintain boundaries than risk mixing with the impure, content for true fellowship and communion to be replaced by ‘friendliness’ among ‘people like us…’ That is not the life that Jesus breathes. ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ In other words, we, and a Church that seeks to follow Jesus, are inspired to care in his name for the outsider, for the sinner, for the sick and for the failure. So, yes, the Church is for ‘people like us’ after all – provided we remember what we are: sinners who are loved and saved through grace.

The signature note of such a Church, our Pentecost Gospel suggests, is forgiveness: ‘When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’’ This is not, I think, a protocol for priests hearing confessions. I’ve nothing against hearing and making confessions – or the Ministry of Reconciliation, as it is more correctly titled. I am humbled but also encouraged when I make my confession to another priest every few months, and I am also humbled and encouraged when I hear others’ confessions. That ministry is available and valuable. But I think Jesus is here pointing to a bigger and deeper truth about the Church: ours is to be a fellowship marked by honesty and by love, and where honesty and love combine, there is forgiveness. When we forgive, Jesus reminds us, we forgive in his name (so why ever would we not?) and when we refuse to forgive someone, we do so in Jesus’ name, and that must give us pause…

On Friday, Buff and I called at every home in North Barrow parish, delivering a letter that invites renewed support for this Church. I have been the priest here for less than a year yet within that time I have known people for whom this Church has been a life-saving refuge in time of trouble, and a source of light in a dark night. The same can be said of each of our Six Pilgrims parishes. Today’s Gospel reading reminds us that the Church is for all and speaks a language that all may receive, and offer: forgiveness. Today’s Gospel reminds us too that Jesus entrusts this gift into the hands of his first fearful followers – and into and my hands today. At he close of this service I will offer anointing to any who wish to receive it, a sign of God’s breathing of forgiveness and healing, for you or it may be for someone else whose burden you are sharing.

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them…