‘Master, do you not care…?’

This is the text of my sermon at St Aldhelm’s  for the second Sunday before Lent, 24th February, 2019. I don’t think it was an especially insightful address but it received several positive comments afterwards. Perhaps its attempt to locate ourselves on that boat with Jesus struck a chord for some people.

The readings were Revelation 4 and Luke 8, 22-25

 

I intend to reflect on both of the readings we have heard today. The link between them may not be obvious but as the pastor in The Simpsons says to an unusually penitent, and bewildered, Bart when he asks which parts of the Bible might help him in his urgent and untypical spiritual anxiety, ‘well, it’s all good…’

Angels, one of them rather chivalric in appearance, stand guard over the west end of St Aldhelm’s Church.

 

The Book of Revelation is a conundrum for many Christians. In adult discussion groups I am often asked what it is about. Its references to 7 cities that were important then but are now much diminished (in one case) or non-existent (in the case of the other 6) might give us pause for thought when we assume the permanency of all that seems important in our current news or in our own circumstances. The book’s apocalyptic visions, that seem profound and pregnant in meaning to some, appear inscrutable and obscure – or perhaps even ‘under the influence’ – to others. What is undoubted is that it was written during a time of oppression, persecution and political and economic meltdown.

 

The observation that I offer when seeking to help others approach this last book of the Bible is that to those who feel they live in an ordered and dependable world and whose personal lives are also ordered and reliable will more likely feel the book of Revelation is a foreign and alien language, but that to those whose world – be it political, economic or personal – is falling apart, the book of Revelation will seem much more plausible and relevant. Read as part of a Bible study over coffee with friends is a very different experience to reading it, say, as a terrified survivor fleeing from war and huddled with survivors in a refugee camp. Thus, the book of Revelation forms just one of the multitudinous strands in scripture, helping ensure that the Bible can speak to everyone, and to each one of us through all the changing circumstances of our lives: a part of the Bible that will be key for you in your youth may be replaced by another part entirely as being most significant when you are older.

 

Today’s passage is the entire fourth chapter of Revelation. Its strange, dream-like impressions of heaven do not describe any known or experienced world. Instead they seem to suggest a deeper dimension that underlies our world. ‘Look deeper’, it seems to suggest. ‘There lives the dearest freshness deep down things’, as the Christian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (himself no stranger to obscure and allusive language)  wrote. Did you notice the song that today’s passage ascribes to the angels? They are words the author sources from the Old Testament and which we will sing later in this service: ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory, hosanna in the highest…’ I emphasise those words, ‘and earth’ : God knows, and we all know, the world’s a mess. And we each know, if we are honest, that each one of us is a mess. But we believe, and we say so at every Mass, that ‘heaven and earth are full of thy glory…’

 

And that perhaps is a segue to our Gospel reading which in its own way reassures us that God is with us through thick and thin. Today’s extract from Luke, of the storm on the lake, recounts not simply an occurrence of long ago involving Jesus and the disciples. It is a story that invites, even demands, our participation. A fortnight ago when I last preached, Luke told us about Jesus on the shore, overwhelmed by an over-eager crowd. He turned to the young fishermen as they washed and mended their nets and asked their help so that he could address the crowd from a boat stationed a few yards from the sea’s edge. The young men thus involved perhaps began to listen and to be changed. Jesus’ impact on them took on critical, life-changing character when, having bid them set out deeper and try for a catch, their nets fairly broke as they hauled them in.

Today we are invited to accompany Jesus in one of those same boats as they set out peacefully across the vast lake known as the Sea of Galilee. That boat is you. That journey is your life’s journey. At times gentle, calm, with a following breeze to ease your progress. The storm that arises so suddenly is every unpredictable crisis that threatens your life and your happiness: every setback and pitfall, every regret and grief, every shame and shuddering guilt, every illness and anxiety and bereavement and hurt that assails and threatens to shipwreck your hopes. ‘Master, do you not care that we perish?’ And our Lord who seemed – and often seems to us – so absent in the thick of things awakes from his calm and assured slumber to quieten the wind and the waves: ‘peace, be still…do not fear, but believe…’

 

Some of us will have come here today in unconscious peace and security, or consciously assured of God’s presence with us. In which case, let us give thanks to God through this Eucharist whose name means ‘thanksgiving.’ Others of us will be struggling with tempests and storms, whether tangible and obvious or interior and invisible.  If that be the case, let us cling on to this larger boat that is our church, our community, our support, and offer ourselves with all our bewildered struggles through this Eucharist, and let us be reminded that Jesus has authority over all the waves that threaten to overwhelm us.

May each and every one of us, then, hear with renewed encouragement, deepened humility, and strengthened faith – and join in singing with the angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven – ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory…’

Casting nets into the deep

The text of my sermon at St Aldhelm’s on Sunday 10th February 2019. Following its composition I felt it was too long and failed to link the three readings.  Preaching it, however, I sensed a positive response. 

Readings for this fourth Sunday before Lent were Isaiah 6, 1-8,   1 Corinthians 15, 1-11  and   Luke 5, 1-11.

‘He shall feed me in a green pasture : and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.’ That line did not form part of our readings today. You may recognise it as a verse from the 23^rd Psalm. According to ancient Christian tradition, the ‘green pasture’ in which we feed is the Bible. If so, then our worship this morning, as always, invites us to delight in this pasture, to be nourished by the Word of Christ as we hear and explore a selection of sacred scriptures.

 

The Old Testament reading took us into the Temple, and relayed Isaiah’s encounter with God. It was an experience so awesome that he was driven to confess his unworthiness – and yet when it is clear that God’s holiness must find expression through human lips, he, with fear and trembling, has no choice but to respond, ‘Here am I; send me…’

 

Note, both, his acknowledgement of unworthiness and his willingness, all be it with dread, to speak for God. I guess every priest, and every preacher, will identify with Isaiah’s feeling of worthless inadequacy – and also with Isaiah’s feeling impelled to step forward. At the bedside of one who is close to death, or sitting on a bench beside a struggling alcoholic, or approaching the flat of a young family requesting a baptism, or stepping up into this pulpit, the feeling is similar: ‘Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips’….and yet, because the Lord has at times to scrape the barrel and there’s no one else available right here, right now…’Here am I; send me’…

 

Moving to our second reading: you may have noticed that the New Testament readings have formed a sequence lately from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. If so, you will have picked up the vibe. The church there is divided. Its members are arguing and falling out. They form separate factions, each preferring a different minister: some were keen on Cephas, some on Apollos, some on Paul, and others, rather piously, said they were focusing on Christ. Perhaps as in many such arguments this was all a cover for preferring their own sweet voice. No such arguments can be imagined among Christians today, of course. But, if ever we were inclined to complain about each other, Paul reminds the Corinthians, and us, that it really is all about Jesus, not the personalities who make up the church, its members and its clergy. All each of us can do ultimately is to pass on what we in turn have received, that Christ died for our sins, he was buried, he was raised on the third day, and by his grace (not that of any individual) ‘so you have come to believe.’

I can’t help feeling that today’s Gospel reading is all about us, it’s all about the church, and about this church as much as any other.

 

Jesus commandeers the fishing boats of Simon, James and John, in order to speak to the crowd on the shore. I see these boats as a symbol of the church and those fishermen as us. Here at first, the church is being portrayed as the means by which Jesus is able to be both, set apart and yet close to the people, just as this building and this holy fellowship are both, set apart, and yet close, so that our community may encounter the teaching and the person of Jesus.

 

Jesus then directs his bemused associates to ‘Put out into the deep…’ They are convinced, with reason, of the futility of such an undertaking. We in our day can be equally pessimistic, or realistic, about the prospects for this boat, our church. In the shallows, it has its tried and trusted role. Venturing into deeper water we are quite sure would be foolish, pointless and risky.

 

He then directs them to cast their nets, exactly as they had done so uselessly before, and now the fish are so numerous that their boat-church can barely cope. Indeed they are only able to manage by assisting one another.

 

But now Peter doesn’t do as we might (that is, thank God loudly for the success of our catch or outreach or Alpha or Confirmation Course or the popularity of our Spring Fair – all in hopes that the Bishop and Archdeacon will be listening.) Instead, Peter falls down at Jesus’ knees, saying, This is out of my league, this is scary. I am nobody. I’m not up to seeing this through…’Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.’ Peter here speaks for us all. You may have heard me say before and you will hear me say again that there is only one attribute that is essential in anyone wishing to attend this church. Amid our diversity – and we are, let’s face it, quite a diverse assortment here – there is only one characteristic we all must exhibit in order to attend this church, and that is to acknowledge that we are each of us a sinner. So if anyone here isn’t a sinner I must insist you leave now… In this case, however, an admission of guilt is good news for us. Such that we may hear those words of Jesus, addressed to us as to Peter: ‘Do not fear, do not be afraid, from here on you will be drawing in people, not fish…’ And so they left everything and followed Jesus.

 

 

Shortly before Christmas we had something of an inundation. One Saturday of the Christmas Tree Festival the rain came down and quite a lot of it was pouring through the Choir Vestry ceiling. The guttering along the church roof empties into a hopper which was blocked by twigs and leaves. Therefore the rain was overflowing and cascading down the wall and a fair amount was running behind the aluminium roof covering and then through the ceiling. The first dry day following, Richard and I climbed up onto the vestry roof. From there it is still a long way to extend a ladder to the hopper above. A bigger problem was the sloping roof. So while I perched near its top, and reached up into the hopper to pull out the debris of a few autumns, one leg of the ladder rested on the roof far below while the other was supported by a block of wood, against which (I trusted) Richard was keeping his foot firmly planted. My carefulness extended to wearing a bicycle helmet, just in case. It was scary at the time, and more scary thinking about it now. And I mention it because although being a Christian doesn’t have to be quite so precarious, or scary, it is always likely to lead us a little more towards a life that is based on trust and faith, a life that is adventurous (though not necessarily in the usual, spectacular way) and a life that is generous and wonderful but not always predictable and risk-free. And we will need to trust one another just as Richard and I had to that day. Oh, and I am glad to say that there have been no further leaks through the vestry roof. Several through the roof at the back of church – but that’s another story, another blocked hopper, another ladder (and, I hope, another person to scale it…) for another day.

So, our church-boat may spring the occasional leak. Each of our crew and complement may be a sinner. Yet, this our church-boat has set sail and carried Christ Jesus and his message of love and forgiveness through many a year and many a storm. We, though unworthily, will continue to set our bearings according to Jesus’ directing – and we will dare to put out betimes into the deep, and cast our nets.

 

My friends, we have explored just a small portion of that green pasture that is God’s scriptures. But so nourished and fed, let us allow him to ‘lead us forth beside the waters of comfort…Yea, though we walk in the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil – for thy rod and thy staff comfort me against them that trouble me – thou hast anointed my head with oil and my cup shall be full. But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life – and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’ Amen.

The Parable of the Lost Phone

Below is my ‘Vicar’s Letter’ for February’s St Aldhelm’s Parish Magazine. At the time, this episode felt like a darned nuisance but the outcome was cheering – and the story made for an enjoyable assembly at Bp Aldhelm’s School, for which I took my bike into the school hall and called my phone which I had concealed beneath a heap of leaves. 

Dear Friends,

 

I went, one Saturday, to a study day at St Clement’s Church in Boscombe. By the time I left to cycle home it was getting dark and I put on a high-vis yellow sash. This rubbed uncomfortably against the phone in my top pocket – so I pulled over and dropped the phone into my front ‘camera-bag’ type of holder.

 

I arrived home, tired, cold, hungry – and found there was no phone in the bag…

 

First I drove back to where I remembered transferring it from my pocket. Perhaps I had inexplicably missed and the phone had fallen to the ground! But there was no sign.

 

I returned home and wondered what to do. I couldn’t see any alternative but to set out again, on the bike this time, and retrace my ride, past Coy Pond, along the Bourne Gardens cycle route, through the busy town centre to the pier, up the steep Bath Road, right along Gervis Road, past St Swithun’s Church and on to Boscombe Gardens where I had last seen the phone – but still there was no hint of it. I turned around and slowly walked or cycled towards home in the dark still hoping to see it.

 

Using my work phone I had been calling it from time to time, hoping that if picked up by an honest passer-by they might answer. Now, as a desperate last throw, I called repeatedly, waited for the answer phone, then called it again. And again…

 

I was most of the way back, along an especially dark section of the Upper Gardens cycle route, when I thought I could make out, distantly, my ring tone. I rang again and there it was: lying half-hidden among the leaves and undergrowth where it must have fallen after being bumped and jostled out of my cycle bag.

I had saved a flask of coffee and went to sit in the very cold Coy Pond gardens to make a celebratory phone call.

 

And I reflected – that my painstaking, frustrating, tiring, cold search for my phone was as nothing compared to God’s searching for me my whole life through. He keeps calling me. Will I answer?

 

With love,

Fr Pip