In that region there were shepherds living in the fields…

 I love the smells of Christmas - roast turkey; brandy blazing on a pudding; a pine tree in a warm front room; hot mince pieces; that gunpowder smell after crackers have been pulled –

 The TV suggest other things as Christmas smells – Givenchy, Davidoff, Armani, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, Clinique, Lancome, Ralph Lauren – or maybe you got the new kid on the perfumer’s block – David Beckham.

 "David Beckham's Instinct is a masculine, sexy, exceptional fragrance for the modern man, which reflects the personality of the celebrity himself. The distinctive scent is a blend of orange, mandarin and Italian Bergamot, with the middle notes of cardamom, pimento and star anise. Finishing off with vetiver, white amber and patchouli. Unique."

 The smells of Christmas.  Smell is perhaps the most primordial of our senses – something that is deeply rooted in our living as sensate beings, something that communicates with an immediacy and power we cannot control.  I was in a tiny one room bookshop in a small Welsh town.  Browsing the shelves was a farmer who had obviously brought a cart load of sheep to market – bits of them still hung from his very woolly and very large pullover – there was no escaping the smell of sheep.  The air of the shop was drenched in a dense odour of incredible potency – no escape.  I noticed other browsers cough and then leave.  I breathed shallowly and cowered behind a bookcase.  The only one who seemed not to notice was the farmer himself.

 The shepherds were living in the fields, Luke tells us.  Carrying sheep, untangling sheep, milking sheep, nursing sheep, birthing sheep, and sleeping amongst the droppings of sheep.  These good working folk stank of sheep – and probably goats too!  A deep and lasting stench that went with them everywhere.

 This is where the glory of the Lord shone – amidst the stink and labour of working folk whose lives are absolutely dependent on their closeness to their animals – in every sense.  To them the good news comes – this is very specific – to you is born this day a Saviour.  Not Givenchy but greasy wool and grime.  Not Estee Lauder but essence of muck and mess.

 And will the stable be any sweeter?  Of course not.  You mix together eau de cow, donkey, and horse – don’t forget the camels outside.  This is Cawblymie not Armani!  And in the middle of it all a baby in trough from which the animals fed.  A baby in a manger.  Do you get it?

 As a new father I used to get very worried about an elderly lady in one of my congregations who would pick up our first baby and say, “You’re lovely you are, you’re good enough to eat, good enough to eat.”  And that’s the point – the new born with their bright eyes, velvet skin, and miniature perfection, are so sublime they seem good enough to eat.  The purity, and promise, and perfection, and possibilities of this holy child will indeed be food to the lives of his people.  He will feed us all with the love of God – and that certainty is there right at the beginning, in the stable; the child but hours old.  Christ loved us, scripture says, and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering [Ephesians 5.2].

 And every new child reminds us of that promise, and every Eucharist shared fulfils it.  Even the cosmetic manufacturers get it – don’t they sell baby lotion for adults to use?  We’ll make you smell like a baby again; make your skin perfect and smooth and wrinkle free; you can start over – physically any way.  Except of course, in reality we can’t – not physically, emotionally, or mentally.  But spiritually, that’s different; here we can begin again.  The baby in a manger comes ever new to us.  The shepherds knew it – just as every lamb born makes real life new, and fresh, and hopeful.

 I bet you’ve seen her, or someone very like her.  Like the shepherd in the bookshop, a certain atmosphere surrounds her.  But unlike him it is not her work that creates the smell, but simply the decline of years and her inability to care for herself properly – her life too isolated for anyone to help her, and her senses too impaired for her to know herself what has happened to her.

 She in hunched over the supermarket trolley – it is holding her up as much as she is pushing it.  She moves slowly along the shelves, picking things up, examining them carefully and sometimes dropping the occasional item in the trolley.  Is she shopping, or is she just passing the time in place much warmer than her squalid home?  Other shoppers skirt around her – pretending not to notice the smell but moving rather more quickly than usual.  Some youngsters make faces and snigger, but she doesn’t seem to see them.  The staff are kindly enough, in a remote kind of way.  They neither really engage nor ignore her.  A studied kind of letting be, I suppose, born of the fact that on occasions she has taken them to task about an item not on the shelves, or something she has bought that turned out not to be to her liking.

 For Mrs Mander the whole of life is like that.  People turn away from her not just because of the smell, but also because she has about her an air of criticism and anger that people find hard to deal with.  Is it her way of coping with people’s reaction to the state she’s in, or are there deep wounds of long ago in her experience that weep within her soul as angrily as the ulcers on her legs weep?  Who knows?  Well no one actually, for no one ever gets that close to her.

 As you might imagine, Christmas goes largely unnoticed in Mrs Mander’s household.  Not so, of course, in the other houses in the neighbourhood.  In particular, one little girl is very excited.  Let’s call her Emma – I won’t use her real name to save her blushes, for this happened some years back and she’s a little girl no longer.

 Emma delights in everything about Christmas and can hardly wait for the day.  The tree is full of decorations she has made at playschool.  She wraps presents for her dolls, and sets the dolls around a small table for Christmas dinner.  She has made for herself a post round, each door in the house serving as the pretend front door of innumerable houses she as pretend postie delivers to.  Various cuddly toys have become Santa’s helpers, and she orders and re-orders a workshop of gifts and toys modelled out of old boxes, cast-off clothes, and shoes taken from the cupboard in the hall.

 Everything about Christmas is such fun – and one thing would make it perfect.  She’s seen in a local shop a small illuminated tree that plays a carol when you switch the battery on.  It’s just the size that would suit her dollies’ Christmas dinner, or her Santa’s workshop.  And it would be her very own tree.  She longs for it, and asks for it, and goes up to it every single time they pass the shop.  You’ve guessed it – eventually her mum and dad caved in and the tree was bought.  And it was every bit as special as Emma had thought it would be.

 Emma knows Mrs Mander as ‘the lady who smells’ although she has been told upteen times not to call her that.  Occasionally Mrs Mander has spoken to her on the street, but Emma has usually then hidden behind her mum.

 Emma loves light-spotting in the street – oh and ah’ing at the trees in different people’s front windows.  But the window of the house of the ‘lady who smells’ is bare and dark.

 On Christmas Eve despite her fury of excitement, Emma concentrated intently at the Crib Service.  And the bit that she hears is that this Jesus is for everyone – no one is left out of his love – and that’s when she completes the circle.  In her street is one house with no lights and no tree – and with that conviction and determination that only a young child can have she knows exactly what she must do – her beloved little tree finds it way from her dolls dinner and Santa’s workshop to Mrs Mander’s house.

 This isn’t a fairytale, so I can’t tell you Mrs Mander’s life changed forever from that moment – all I can say is that every Christmas after that until she died a little illuminated tree would appear in her front window at Christmas time.  And that two parents were immensely proud of a little girl who shared the scent of heaven because she understood Jesus is for everyone.

 I wonder what the name Manders means? Could it be related to Latin manducate, from which comes the French mangeoire, which in turn becomes manger?  The baby in the manger feeds us all with the love of God - a sweet smell, the smell of Christmas.

Christ the King

wrong rule Right?

is written in the style of a contemporary performance poem. It is based on two of the set readings for the Eucharist (Revelation 1.4b - 8 and John 18.33b - 37) on the Sunday called Christ the King. That Sunday's designation only dates from a declaration by Pope Pius XI in December 1925. Three years into Mussolini's regime in Italy and with fascism gaining popularity across Europe, the title was meant to assert Christ's ultimate authority in all things. wrong rule Right? poses the question whether such a human metaphor is adequate to describe Christ's saving power. In the gospels only those who are Christ's enemies, or those who have misunderstood him, describe him as a king. Both scripture readings suggest the rule of Christ is essentially different from the ways of exercising power usual in human social and personal relationships.

I don't need no King,
no la de da, bowing, scraping,
walking backwards,
humble pie, shifty eye,
'May it please your majesty'
posh melarky kind o' thing.

I don't need no King,
no do this, do that,
don't answer back,
divine right to rule,
we're just plebs,
know your place kind o' thing. 

I don't need no King,
no crown and tiara,
ermine trimmed velvet,
ride in a carriage,
designer gown destined for the V&A,
don't tread on the train kind o' thing.

 
I don't need no King,
no 'Let them eat cake,
their hunger's a fake'
indifferent, remote,
what life
beyond the palace gate? kind o' thing.

 I don't need no King,
no stern faced
'We are not amused'
superior, aloof,
'fraid to laugh
can't take a joke kind o' thing.

 
I don't need no King,
no subject's duty
to close the battle wall
with our dead,
cry 'God for Harry'
ordered fury, kind o' thing.

 I don't need no King,
no ruling fling
to tie me down
make me wear a frown
worry and fear:
'What's that to do with me?' kind o' thing.

 I don't need no King
you'd better know it,
it was a rumour,
spin-doctoring,
whip up the crowd,
malicious gossip kind o' thing.

 I don't need no King.
Them all say the same.
No soul-buddies they.
Talk 'im down.
Set 'im up.
Creep to the Guvn'r kind o' thing.

I don't need no King.
Let 'im rule from a gibbet.
Blood and pain
that ain't no gain.
'and 'im over,
don't want to know, kind o' thing.

"I don't need no King,
he makes me sick.
let his guts rip,
Yiddish git."
Hate full,
spit in yer face kind o' thing.

I don't need no King
hanging there.
Some throne?
Hell and back
you're not alone,
love ya through it all, kind o' thing.

I don't need no King,
no king he was,
no king he is.
Out of this world fella, yeah,
get spaced,
nothin' that fits the rules, kind o' thing.

I don't need no King,
no rule on high,
six foot above contradiction,
but lovin' truth
gutsy, listenin', sexy,
hairs standin' on the back of yer neck
kind o' thing.

I don't need no King.
Him rules, but not like that.
Funky, funny ways,
that loosens the stays
makes free,
a response-able kind o' thing.

I don't need no King.
No I need a look in the eye
straight on, I understand you.
Ya get me?
Nothin' held back,
I hear ya, I really hear ya, kind o' thing.

I don't need no King,
no power-bound thing
to stifle the mind
and harden the heart.
No clumsy sign
to limit and confine.

I need ima-gin-ation
for ju-bil-ation.

Listen, can't ya hear?
a roaring party,
it's not far,
the taxi's come
the driver's here
a Christ Knoc - king kind o' thing.

 © Christopher Burkett 2003

Proper 12B

Pray BIG

There's a shaggy dog story from where I was brought up about the Texan ranching cousins visiting their Wiltshire farming relations.  They were going to say a few days with them in their little farm cottage set amidst tiny hedged fields and home to their three dozen cattle.  On arrival, first things first, the Wiltshire farmer proudly took his cousins on a tour of his estate - at every point the Texan husband commented that what he saw was tiny in comparison with the Texan equivalent:  call that a field, we've got backyards bigger than that; call that a tractor, my kids got toys bigger than that; call that a heard of cows, we've got more pet pussy cats than that, etc.  This all got to the Wiltshire farmer somewhat, and at supper he left the room for a while.  The Texan guests were first to bed.  Soon there was a scream and a Texan appeared at the parlour door holding at arms length what he had found in his bed, the family tortoise.  Trembling, the Texan said, 'What do ya call this?'  The farmer replied, 'That be a Wiltshire flea, and I bet thee hasn't got bigger than that in Texas.'

I hope American visitors will forgive the stereotypical joke.  This sermon is a response to requests to talk about prayer and the notion of a flea the size of a tortoise is a pretty good image of prayer as thinking BIG.  In prayer we imagine BIG things because by the grace of God we can embody BIG things if we can be lift our sights and calm our fears.  It's all there in our first scripture reading today:  I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  We can think BIG because God's aim for us is BIG - Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more that all we ask or imagine.  Stop thinking small and living small.  Pray BIG because in God's world new possibilities are constantly emerging.

Idling through the job advertisements in a national newspaper this week my attention was caught by one that began:

Being barked at by a dog is communication.

Being bitten by a dog is experiential communication.

Bet you can't remember all the dogs that ever barked at you.

Jack Morton Worldwide, one of the world's leading experiential communications agencies is looking for a talented individual ….  We'll Jesus got to experiential communication a good deal earlier than Jack Morton Worldwide.  What prayer does is communicated to a crowd not by being told but by experiencing it.

The disciples think this is the end.  In the version in Matthew, Mark and Luke they urge Jesus to send the crowd away.  There is no way we can cope with this lot - 5000 men, does that mean there were even more when you count the women and children as well?  There were only a handful of towns that had populations as large as that in those days.  This is an awesome crowd in the disciple's terms.  This is the end, it's got to stop.  They want to close the experience down.  Make it manageable, make it small.

Too often our praying is like that.  Think of the way we use 'Amen'. As that brilliant storyteller Walter Wangerin reminds us we have turned 'Amen' into the closing of the door. In our praying 'Amen' has become the equivalent of the film credits; the assumed end that moves us hurriedly on to the next thing.  But in John's Gospel it's not like that; there the Amens come not at the end but at the beginning of Jesus' profound statements. The phrases we are familiar with as 'Truly, truly, I say to you...' are actually 'Amen, Amen, I say to you...' The way Jesus uses the word is as an emphasis of significance and importance. His 'Amen' doesn't close things down but rather asserts something's worth and urgency. It is literally being 'up-front' with matters that have to be considered.

            This is how the 'Amens' of our praying should be, for a beginning not an ending. Our reflection on human circumstances rouses from us an 'Amen' that requires more than a detached, remote view of the world outside our own experience. The word embraces our affirmation of God's purposes in what we are praying. This is our exclamation that we are not turning aside from praying, but rather striving to incorporate our prayers into our actions and our faith. It speaks of our certainty about God's love for this world.  The 'Amen' is not an end but a declaration of assent. Not a closing of our attention, but a determination to extend our prayerful involvement. What we learn in prayer, we work to live in our lives. The 'Amen' is the beginning, not the end. It's about thinking BIG.

            On that crowded hillside that night there was only one other person beside Jesus willing to think BIG, and that was a young lad - a vulnerable child is the only one who gets it, the only one willing to share all he had so that others might eat.  His head is where his heart is - but for everyone else only the experience will put their heads and hearts together.

            The lad has five loaves, reminiscent of the five loaves the shepherd boy David had when he half-starved and fleeing from Saul was fed by the priest of Nob from the 12 holy loaves in the temple.  Five is also the number of Israel - four stands for the whole world and One is the number of the Eternal One.  Israel's vocation is to bear witness to the One to all points of the compass.  4+1=5.  The grass bears a reference to David as well - the green pastures of David's psalm.  For the gospellers Jesus, the son of David, is the good shepherd who leads his sheep to green pastures.

And there are other echoes too - the widow of Zarephath shared her last loaf with the prophet Elijah, but the meal in her pot never ran out, nor did the oil in her jar; similarly the prophet Elisha commanded a great crowd to be given food from the few loaves of barley bread someone had given - he servant scoffed and said it would never be enough for such a great crowd, but Elisha insisted that the bread be shared and there was still something left over.  As we heard two weeks ago, Herod holds a banquet and blood flows; Jesus holds a feast and everyone is revived.

For the Christian part of praying has to include indwelling these ancient texts so that we pick up these echoes and let our hearts and minds be led by them.  Meet God who changes things - whether by some radical burst of energy that stretches our imagination or by simple sharing - it doesn't matter.  By whatever means the crowd is fed, and for a moment at least the disciples and the crowd experience what the trusting lad already knew, God is at work as he was in the days of Elijah and Elisha and David; expect great things, choose abundant life, seek the redeeming possibility, train your imagination and your will to seek God's presence - be rooted and grounded in God's love not the dire fatalism of earth bound humanity.  Pray BIG, God's possibilities are endless; all it needs is the imagination and trust to share a few loaves and two tiny fish, a sip of wine and a fragment of flat bread.

Her problem was that she felt guilty that she prayed too much. Each evening she carefully went through a mental list of her whole family, her friends and neighbours, her local church, and the things of the world's needs that had struck her that day. This often involved two hours of effort. Sometimes she fell asleep during her intercessions, necessitating a top up session the next day. This was prayer most definitely seen as work, but work that was much enjoyed. That is where the guilt came in; for she worried that she was indulging herself by praying so often and for so long.

One of the troubling things about faith or its lack, is that it is all too easy for those who have no need to feel weighed down by a sense of their own sin, often do so; whilst those who should feel some sense of their own inadequacies or failings too often do not feel them at all. To enjoy intercession as a fruitful work to be done is surely a great good, but it did not quite feel that way to the person involved. What was obvious to an observer was not as obvious to the one worrying about it.

The person praying was someone of great age with a lively and engaged intellect. I cannot help feeling that the two things were closely linked. Reading, conversation and thoughtful reflection on happenings near and far fuelled the desire to pray, whilst the praying stirred the concern to know and understand what was going on in other people's lives.  I cannot believe it was purely coincidental that many people confided in the lady concerned. She did not tell many people the extent of her intercessions, yet somehow it was apparent to lots of those who knew her that it was important to let her know what was going on in their lives.

Far from being an indulgence, her regular intercession was a powerhouse for other people's good. Indeed, at her funeral many people said that there was 'something' about visiting her and talking with her that was different and special, yet the conversation was usually warmly ordinary. All present knew that she had fulfilled a significant ministry in their lives, yet few would have used that kind of language.

Any of us thinking it through carefully is likely to worry about our prayers, though I cannot unfortunately admit to worrying about them being too long. Indeed at our most rational moments we may question the whole idea of what we are doing. When that thought comes to me, I think on the lady who worried that she prayed too much and I remember how her prayers touched all who knew her though we usually described it as nothing more than the ordinary concern of a warm-hearted person.

When I see in the chapel the candles lit by passers-by, or the notes asking prayer left on the noticeboard, I imagine that same trusting sharing being applied to the church as a whole. Despite the many knocks Christians receive from a preoccupied and secular world, people still regard us as warm-hearted enough to receive their deepest concerns and turn them into prayer. In an ordinary and everyday kind of way, it is simply a job worth doing. Pray BIG, not fleas the size of tortoises, but hopes the size of God.

And the people said, Amen.

Proper 6B

You must be joking!

There's no avoiding football, just as there's been no avoiding the Da Vinci Code.  A friend of mine eventually caved in and went to see the film.  He was a little late, so it took him a while in the gloom to realise that there was dog sitting on the seat next to the a man in the row in front.  The dog was sitting upright and seemed to be watching intently.  This was confirmed when the animal growled as the villain appear on the screen, and whined when the heroine got into trouble.  When the hero made good their escape, the dog barked encouraging approval.  My friend was transfixed - the dog was more interesting than the film!

Anyway at the end he just couldn't resist it.  He lent forward and tapped the man accompanying the dog on the shoulder, "Excuse me, but I have to say I'm amazed at the reaction of your dog."  "Yes," said the man, "so am I, 'cos he hated the book."

I wonder when you realised it was a joke?  Quite early on I suspect.  It has a certain 'shaggy dog' style to it that let's you know what's coming.  Of course it breaks a good rule of preaching - never tell jokes in sermons is the accepted wisdom.  My defence is a sentence from the great Danish Christian thinker Kierkegaard, who wrote somewhere:

Humour is also the joy which has overcome the world.

Contrast that with another great Christian thinker and preacher of 1400 years earlier, John Chrysostum, who insisted that Jesus never laughed.  And he is certainly correct in so far as there is no mention anywhere in the Gospels of Jesus laughing.  But I can't believe that someone so obviously full of life as Our Lord was could have lived out his thirty or so years on earth without a guffaw or even a giggle now and then.  Indeed today's gospel convinces me of that.  The man and the dog is easily recognised as a joke, but no one laughed at the mustard seed story and perhaps we should have done.  Certainly it's a far from straightforward illustrative story.

For a kick-off (sorry, football reference!) a mustard seed isn't the smallest of seeds.  Sure it is tiny in comparison to a broad bean, but have you ever sown onion seed?  And there is no way that a full grown mustard plant could be reckoned to be the greatest of shrubs.  Wouldn't a great shrub grow to 10 or 15 feet or more? (3 to 5 metres).  Mustard might grow a few feet if you left it, but that really is all.  And as to birds nesting in it and enjoying the shade? - No way.  What is going on in this story?  This is no mustard plant any of us have seen.  Was Jesus a failure at GCSE biology?  Had the sun addled his brain that day?  Of course not.

I think Jesus is being deliberately OTT.  This is the joker's exaggeration; the satirist's hyperbole, the teacher's amplification.  If he'd said, 'A mighty oak from a single acorns grows,' we'd all say, 'So what?'  Nests in oak trees are no surprise.  Who hasn't looked for a big leafy tree to shelter under on a scorching hot day?  And that's maybe the point.  We all know what big, strong trees can stand for.  Or we think we do.

Centuries before Ezekiel had used a tree to tell a parable.  He said, yes God could take a tiny cutting, a slip of a twig from the top of a cedar tree, plant it on Israel's mountain heights, and it would grow great boughs and become a mighty noble tree with all kinds of birds living in its shade and protection.  But, said the prophet, just as God makes a great thing grow from a tiny slip, so too he can dry up the life in the greatest of trees and make them topple.  What that seems to be about is little Israel making alliances with Egypt in order to get out from under the power of the Babylonian empire.  Hiding under the shade of one force, they hoped they'd see the end of their oppressor.  'Fools,' said Ezekiel, you've got no idea what's growing or what's dying- the cutting or the mighty tree.

Hear Jesus' parable in the light of Ezekiel's.  All too easy to shelter under the wrong thing - to rely on power, privilege, prestige, money or whatever.  Sit on the branch of someone else's authority and think yourself safe from the ravening wolves of personal responsibility and action.  But watch out the branch is about to crack and you don't know it!

Saint Paul tells us that the puny, little church is a new community whose people no longer live for themselves but for Christ, and that means for one another.  Christians no longer look at one another from a human point of view - no, they see each other as parts of Christ.  This is a new creation.  We're as puny as mustard seeds and as easily ground to dust, but we are a new creation.  Small and fragile we may be, but with God we cast a shadow and become home for God's creatures.  It's all a question of knowing on whom we should rely.  So it's trust, learning to trust God; but also patience as well.

That I think is where the first of the seed parables comes in.  The seed is scattered on the ground, and it grows and bears a harvest.  And it’s a mystery - remember this is about non-irrigated agriculture, as in so much of Africa today.  Those seeds find the moisture to grow where we can see none - a miracle indeed.  By the inscrutable processes of life a rich and nourishing harvest is made.

Be brave little church - God's rule grows in ways you cannot fathom.  Its fruit is rich blessing.  Others might think you a weed, like mustard amongst wheat, but you're not.  You are something that can bring God's shelter to others, as unlikely as it seems.  Be patient, trust God.

All those years ago Rambling Sid Rumpold used to say on the radio, "The answer lies in the soil."  And aren't we being encouraged by Christ to keep our feet firmly on the ground, on the soil.  Don't look to the grandiose, the worldly standards that fool so many, God wants to live with you right here in the ordinary.  The pupil said to the Rabbi, "In the olden days people use to talk and walk with God, why don't we any longer?"  The Rabbi answered, "Because nowadays no one can stoop that low."  Don't look at things from a human point of view; get low enough to see things from God's point of view.  They say that the grass is always greener on the other side, but that's only because they use more manure.  Keep yourself earthed.

This is the fool's reversal - mustard plants with nests in, crops from dry dirt - so odd it makes you laugh, but because it makes you laugh it lets things into your heart and mind.  Remember Tom Cooper, "Just like that," the magic trick failed but the laugh was always great.  God's reverses our expectations and our demands - but joy, lasting joy comes with it.  For the giggle or the belly-laugh lifts you out of yourself and changes what you see and how you feel.  You really are a new creation.  You better believe it - trees of hope can grow from the tiny mustard seeds of patience and trust.

'Because of' not 'In spite of'  (3ofEasterB)

The adventure starts.  Whistles, steam, livered engines, and sooty drivers.  Whether it's Ron, Hermione and Harry; or Peter, Susan Edmund and Lucy; or Roberta, Phyllis and Peter.  One way or another train journeys are intimately woven into the adventures of Harry Potter, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and, of course, the Railway Children.  I can't think of a story that gives the same prominence to the M6 or the Manchester motorway ring!  Railways somehow suit romantic tales and adventures.  But beware …

Flor McCarthy tells the story of one of those country railway lines of a bygone era.  Every day the little train trundled up and down the line, almost always driven by the same driver.  A little way from the line there was a cottage set by itself.  Its white walls shone in the sun, and the garden was a blaze of roses and cottage flowers.  It looked like a postcard.  The driver fell in love with it.

One day as the train passed, he saw a little girl playing in the garden.  She waved at the train; he blew the whistle in response.  The next afternoon, the same again.  And you've guessed it; it became a regular thing.  A lovely but distant friendship developed between the two.  Everyday she waved and everyday the little train responded.  Sometimes the girl was joined by her mother, and they both waved.  It made the old engine driver very happy, and the monotony of his journey seemed so much shorter when they were there.

Time passed.  In fact years.  The child grew up.  Only very occasionally was she there to wave.  Nevertheless the bond of all those sunny afternoons was intact.  Eventually the driver retired and went to live far away from the line he had travelled so often.  But he couldn't get the cottage and the two friends out of his mind.  He decided he would have to visit.

When he got there things were very different from what he had imagined.  The cottage wasn't anywhere near as white as he had thought, the garden was rather unkempt and not as colourful as it had seemed.  But the biggest disappointment of all came when he met the woman and her daughter.

They were polite enough.  They offered a cup of tea.  But the parlour was gloomy and the chat stilted.  He felt terribly out of place.  He left as soon as he could politely do so.  He felt empty.  His dream shattered.  The friendship that had meant so much to him evaporated.

The romance of trains.  We feel sorry for the train driver, his innocent pleasure actually a sham.  But it was his won fault.  He had been living in a dream world.  Framing his hopes and his delights in an illusion.  A romantic nonsense.

Resurrection living must never be that!  It is not what goes on in your head or heart, untested by the harsh realities of actually living.  Resurrection is something to live, not something to fantasize about. That's why these few verses from Luke that are today's Gospel are so important.  The two had returned from Emmaus full of excitement about recognizing Jesus in the apparent stranger who had shared bread with them.  Meanwhile the eleven were all abuzz because of Simon Peter's encounter with the risen Jesus.  No doubt voices were raised and the whole room awash with speculation about what was going on.  And there he is.  Friends are a gaggle, and he is with them.

The followers of Jesus are being recast, re-educated; formed as new people by the resurrection of Christ.  And all this happens in the circumstances of ordinary endeavour and experience.  In John's Gospel they even go back to the old things of fishing for a trade.  Here it is in the gaggle of friendship and mutual concern that the resurrection will remould them.  In enjoyment, in need, in worries shared, in the give and take of natter, the risen Christ is there.

Yes, the resurrection is a historical fact.  But then so is the Battle of Waterloo, and what difference does that make to you day by day?  Yes, the resurrection does bring assurance about death and what follows.  But we are not dead, and the concerns of now must occupy us if we are to follow the one who promised wholeness of life this side of death.  That's why the friends must be certain that this isn't just a ghost they are meeting.  This isn't an apparition of something beyond life; this is a person who can eat broiled fish in their very presence and who has the marks of torture on his body for all to see.  This isn't a staged or spectacular event.  It was that which was immediately to hand that made the point - a plate of boiled fish.  Just part of life.  Like a bread supper, like a walk in the country, like fishing together, like friends gathered in an excited gaggle.  That's where resurrection will change us, form us, recreate us.

Eugene Peterson puts it like this:

Every time we pick up a knife and fork, every time we say, "Pass the salt, please," every time we take second helping of cauliflower, we are in a setting congenial to spiritual formation.  [The resurrection stories of] Luke and John are telling us to take these meal times seriously.  Our Sunday worship is important.  The Bible studies we attend are important.  The retreats we make are important.  But over a lifetime, the unnoticed and unrecognized presence of the risen Christ at our meals may be more formative of the life of Christ in us.

Perhaps you're sceptical?  What has resurrection to do with grub?

Yes, the risen Jesus did meet them in ordinary things of their experience in those extraordinary forty days.  But the one who did the meeting was scarred and bruised by no ordinary death.  His sacrifice made the encounters extraordinary.  It's not that Easter happened in spite of the terrors of Good Friday.  Rather that Easter happened because of Good Friday.  The love that goes beyond the ordinary.  But I wonder?  Christ's dying can only be once for all, but aren't we meant somehow to reflect it in what we do and say - even as if in a rather dulled and misty mirror?

The six year old is fascinated by her new shoes and the way her feet are growing.  Her Dad, the Preacher, pinches her foot and says, There's a lot more foot stuff here, see? Where do you think all that stuff comes from? Where do you think your body gets all the stuff it needs to make your feet bigger?"

"I don't know," she said, looking right into his eyes. She was hooked, and he loved having her mind all to himself. His fourteen-year-old turned away from the computer to listen. She was hooked too, and it was like finding a second fish on the line.

"The stuff your feet are made of comes from food. We can't create or destroy matter. The only thing we can do is rearrange it. We have this handy little hole in front, see. You shove apples or bread or beans in there, and your body turns that food into feet."

"Even Skittles?" the little one asked.

He winced and stroked his chin. "Well . . . yeah, but better foods make for better feet."

The older daughter broke in, "Da-ad!" She made two syllables out of the word, changing pitch to show her skepticism.

His expression didn't change and she lost her confidence. "You swear?"

"I promise. Look, plants are machines that turn dirt into fruits and vegetables. We are machines that turn fruits and vegetables and other stuff into feet."

They were silent, both mouths hanging open. He let the pause hang in the air before his coup d'etat.

"So really, if you think about it, we're all made of dirt."

An idea snapped the older one out of her slouch. "Hey, that's what the Bible says. It says God made humans out of dirt."

The little one nodded enthusiastically. She'd been to Sunday School. She'd heard that story.

"That's right," he said. "For an old book, the Bible can be pretty insightful at times."

The little one was staring off into space. He could tell her mind was racing a hundred miles an hour.

Isn't the miracle of that conversion, creation in every single meal you ever eaten?  And isn't there always something of the experience of sacrifice in it?  One life given so that another may live?  It may be the life of a carrot or a cucumber or a fish or a chicken or a lamb or a heifer, but it's life, this is Eugene Peterson again.  Eating a meal involves us in a complex, sacrificial world of giving and receiving.  Life feeds life.  We are not self-sufficient.  We live by life, and life is given to us.

Every day.  Every time we pick up a knife and fork.  Every day a day to be reformed by the resurrection.  Not a fantasy of what may be.  Not only what once happened.  Not just a promise for the future.  No, an encounter that shapes the here and now - if only our minds are open to understand, and our insight clear enough to recognize who is meeting us.

In the words of Simon Peter, The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus … to this we are witnesses.

So let us celebrate the feast
with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Acknowledgements:

Flor McCarthy: New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies (Dominican Publications, 1999); Eugene Peterson: Living the Resurrection (Navpress, 2006); Gordon Atkinson: RealLivePreacher.com (Eerdmans, 2005)

M&S Food                                      Maundy Thursday

[A script employing the motif of the Marks and Spencer food TV commercial]

 The full colour close-up fills the screen. This isn't just ordinary bread; this is full grain, hand baked, hand shaped, blessed, life changing bread.  This isn't just food; this is M&S food.

 This isn't just ordinary bread … at first sight the thought seems to be exactly that of John's Gospel.  "I am the bread of life," he records Jesus as saying.  "The bread I will give is my flesh; whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; this is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate …" This isn't just ordinary bread.  But the supper of which we've just heard is an ordinary supper; "this was before the festival of the Passover," says John.  The bread that Jesus, Simon Peter, and Judas son of Simon Iscariot share is just food, not M&S food.  Yet somehow in the person of Jesus the ordinary bread and the M&S bread are related to each other.

 Through Moses and Aaron, God directs that the whole congregation of Israel is to make space in their lives for God to act.  They are to gather as families, to prepare a hasty meal of roasted lamb, unleavened bread and bitter herbs; and to eat the meal in a hurry - loins girded, feet sandaled, walking staffs to hand - all packed and ready to go.  Each family is to mark its doorway with the blood of the lamb, so that the spirit of God would pass over the house, sparing it from the plague intended for the Egyptians.  No ordinary meal this - clearly an M&S meal - for this is a meal in which they show themselves available to God, making room in their lives for God to act: Be ready to receive God's grace, be responsive to the immense generosity of God's love, and remember the cost of your freedom.  Don't the rabbis tell a story of God unable to respond to Miriam's victory song because of his tears for the Egyptian dead?  Be ready, make room for God to act, this is a matter of life and death.

 The same issue is there in our Gospel.  Be ready.  "I have set you an example," says Jesus, "do as I have done."  Too often I've heard this story of foot-washing cited as Jesus acting out a lesson in humility - but it is so much more than that.  This is an absolute subversion of good order.  Washing feet is a slave's task, a job for a lackey you think of as less than human - no wonder Simon Peter objects.  Don't bracket this with washing your child's hair, or manicuring an aged parent's nails - no, think of it as the most intimate, or embarrassing, or distasteful thing you could imagine having to undertake for another, or someone else having to undertake for you.  This is the overturning of the mannered roles of everyday - doing the personal thing you could never imagine yourself doing.

 If you want a scriptural commentary on what Jesus does here I think it would have to be Colossians 2.15:
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them.  Or that sentence could justifiably be rendered as He divested himself of the dignity and power of rulers and authorities.

He divested himself, took off his outer robe and tied a towel around himself.  This is no ordinary act of humility, this is our Lord and Teacher divesting himself.  This is no ordinary authority, this is the wisdom of God made real.  Jesus shows what making space for God to act looks like.  This is no ordinary action, this is dirty, humiliating action.  Jesus divests himself in the company of friends, not so many hours later others will divest him in naked torture.  The dirty work of the cross will cleanse sinners every bit as much as the slave's bowl of water cleanses disciples' feet.

 One winter's day Arthur went out to play football with friends.  Afterwards he felt absolutely fatigued and hardly able to move.  Within days he was in hospital.  Within another few weeks he was bed-bound.  I got to know him more than twenty years later.  Arthur had absolute Ankylosing Spondylitis, all his bones were fused together.  He was rigid, a human plank.  The only movement left just a little flexing of his swollen arthritic fingers - just enough to exert pressure on a specially adapted buzzer switch.  Arthur could do nothing for himself - not scratch an itch, nor blow his nose, nor take food or drink, nor indeed manage any of the things of excretion without the physical assistance of another person.  If that wasn’t enough to contend with, Arthur also had one of the associated diseases that sometimes come with Spondylitis, namely psoriasis. His skin was a mass of flaky, itchy scales, from head to toe.  A searing, all over itch that he could never scratch.  How it didn’t drive him completely insane I never knew.  Every treatment had been tried, but to no avail.

 Caring for Arthur wasn’t a popular duty on the hospital ward.  Not that he was difficult or complaining – far from it – but his needs were so immense and so relentlessly intimate that it was emotionally and physically hard to keep at it.  Too hard for everyone that is, except one male nurse called Enrique.  Time and time again he volunteered.  Hours and hours and hours at Arthur’s bed.  Not much spoken for Enrique didn’t bother with conversation in English, and Arthur had no Spanish.  Enrique it was who saved Arthur’s skin – literally – as I said all the drugs and creams had failed so Enrique, thinking of things learnt at his Grandma’s knee, tried olive oil.  Bit by painful bit he picked off the scales from Arthur’s reddened, inflamed skin and massaged it with olive oil.  It took six months of daily effort, but it worked.  The last time I saw Arthur his skin was pink and clear.  Enrique had saved his skin.  This was no ordinary caring …

 Enrique took the Jesus role – shunning the embarrassment of it, unflinching at the unpleasantness, the grinding emotional labour of it.  And isn’t Jesus nurse to us?  Divesting himself, taking the towel of loving care, and the sweaty agony of life spent for others?  Isn’t this company of disciples called church simply a hospital for sinners where the scaly itches of sin are cured, our skins are saved, and the catastrophic wounds of life apart from God salved and healed?  Our nurse Saviour walks through the wards of his world grieving at souls and bodies maimed, and he does more than any ordinary nurse could do, he takes the wounds upon himself.  This is no ordinary caring; this is God caring.

 But more of that later in John’s Gospel.  For now we’re still at an ordinary meal with an extraordinary act of washing.  As so often with Simon Peter, his initial unwillingness to have his feet washed soon becomes an over-the-top insistence on something like a full body wash.  Simon Peter just doesn’t get it.  The signs speak of worldly ways overturned, of washing signifying new clean life, of a Lord and Teacher willingly setting aside dignity, authority and power to heal and save by grace alone.  Simon Peter’s ideas just aren’t there.  The M&S quality of the action escapes him completely.  There is no M&S, no mission and sacrament in his thinking – it’s just water!  He has yet to understand that nothing can be added to what is to be done on the cross.  In John’s language the cross is a bathing in the love of God, no other washing is necessary, and all that is prefigured in the foot-washing if only Simon Peter could see it.  If only he could make room for God’s action, but he’s not there yet.

 Jesus, however, has already made the step of willing choice.  In this ordinary meal with friends he has willingly chosen the path of the cross signified in the bread shared with Judas.  A few verses on in the story (V.31) as Judas leaves to betray him Jesus says, “Now the Son of Man has been gloried, and God has been glorified in him.”  NOW, in that moment when he has made the choice not to back off, not to save himself, but to face it all – for us and for our salvation.  Here is the example, choose as Jesus chooses, serve as Jesus serves, divest yourself as he did, lay aside the clutter and debris of human power and hubris.  Choose, willingly choose, to make space for God's action.  We aren't all called to be Mother Teresas.  But we are all called to be Jesus.[1]  "God has chosen us all in Christ," wrote Karl Barth, "at the deepest level we are all called Jesus in the eyes of the Father."  "I have set you an example, do as I have done."

 This isn't just ordinary bread; this is full grain, hand baked, hand shaped, Saviour blessed, life changing bread.

This isn’t just ordinary water; this is sin healing, soul cleansing, spring of eternal life water.

This isn't just food; this is M&S food.  Mission and sacrament food that turns the mundane into the delights of heaven; the sin maimed into God’s new creation; and all too feckless worriers into true disciples.

 Jesus, Saviour, nurse our wounded souls, that we may do to others as you have done to us.

You are God's Temple                             Lent 3B

Do you blitz, tidy, or avoid? Tidying the house is the picture I want to begin with. Some people are fastidious about a tidy house and find it hard to live with anything out of place - they tidy relentlessly. Others go from blitz to blitz, letting things accumulate over months, and then having a grand sorting out - these are the ones who have to buy in extra black sacks.  Others still are content to live with a homely kind of chaos where tidiness is not a prime consideration in life - these are the folks who move the piles from place to place and simply walk around them. How people feel at home in the places that are their homes is almost infinitely variable. But however you feel about it, sometime or another there comes a crunch point.

The central heating system, the electrical wiring, the ceiling joists, or something else, finally gives up the ghost. Change is so radical - it affects every room - you've no choice but to think about the state of what is in this home. There is no way around the effort of organisation, reform, preparation. The anticipated outcome even if its a joy like a new baby, or work space for your new enterprise, or that conservatory you've longed for years, still means a lot of effort and change in the home. Things always take longer than you thought they would, and the anxiety and effort is always more than you anticipated. There's always a snag! And sometimes the prompting change is of quite a different order - illness, disability or loss - and that compounds the usual worries. Every home - in joy or in sorrow - comes to these crunch points.

"Do you not know," said St Paul, "that you are God's temple."

God's home on earth is in his people. The homely place of God is a person, it's you. That's not quite right however, for I'm certain he means that the homely place of God is persons in relationship, to one another and to him. We, the church, are God's temple on earth. That's why I take Paul's words as a commentary on the story of Jesus clearing the Temple precincts. We, the church, are the meeting place between God and humankind. We, the church are the altar where the sacrifice of Christ is made present, made apparent, right now. We, the church, are the visible structure that acts as a constant reminder to the world that God is real. That's us. We can only be this temple because of the offering of Christ and the power of his Spirit alive in us - those are the things that transform 'the poverty of our nature' as the collect puts it. But, recognizing our inadequacy, our failures, our sin, nonetheless we are the very temple of God.

That brings me back to tidying up and crunch points. This bit of the temple of God that is the Church of England has reached such a point. Two things have prompted it. Money and people.

The accumulated capital that has allowed the Church of England to operate a parish system with a building and a paid clergyperson in each locality has ended. Simply put, there is now no money from outside parish sources to continue what we have previously assumed to be the way the church functions. That whole way of the Church of England functioning is ending.

In a century we have lost three-fifths of our clergy - at the turn of the twentieth century there were over 25,000 clergymen 'working' in the CofE, in this new century there are a few more than 9,000. The ordination of women has not made a significant difference to this picture. Already there are something like 5,500 parishes without a resident minister (Michael Hinton: The Anglican Parochial Clergy).

A crunch point - but you are God's temple. Undoubtedly God is calling us on to a different way of being church and perhaps he's doing that because the Victorian way of being church will no longer do in our very changed world.

For a school project one of our daughter's was asked to fill in a questionnaire about homes and how they've changed. I had to admit on the questionnaire that in my first home the toilet was an earth closet at the bottom of the garden, mains water had only just arrived - to take a bath still meant a zinc tub in front  of the fire, and that light was provided by oil lamps. In my first home my Victorian great grandfather would have felt at home. What would he have made, not too many years later, of the highly sophisticated techno bubble many of us now live in? What would he have made of computerized zoned heating, the information revolution giving me access to unimaginable things at the touch of a button, a thousand and one electronic gadgets, and TV programmes beamed from satellites? I'm sure he would be lost in many of our home, but the organisation of the Church would I think be familiar to him!

Is there anything from our scriptures for today that might give us a clue to our vocation as God's temple in the 21st century?

Living as God's temple means not living as commodities.

Ours is a time when a price is being put on absolutely everything. You don't need me to rehearse the ramifications of this, we all know them. Costings, market forces, pricing - these are the instruments now used in all walks of life, in all types of organisations. Not that they weren't always there, but the other mechanisms that were formerly used alongside them have largely gone. The 'pop' expression of the equation is 1/2 x2x3=P, half as many people, paid twice as much, producing three times as much, equals Productivity and Profit, - it seems to me to produce a lot of stress and a lot of unemployment amongst other things, as well. I did sit down to work out the cost of this act of worship, when it became apparent to me that it would breach the £1000 barrier, I was too depressed to continue. But then it was a stupid idea anyway -the worship of God cannot be a commodity that can be priced, and neither are we such a commodity.

This is one of the key ideas in the cleansing of the Temple at Jerusalem in John's Gospel. Jesus says, "You must not turn my father's house into a market." His critics thought he was referring to the building, after the resurrection his disciples understand that the comment had a wider application; the temple he was speaking of was his body -US, and all those countless others who have gone before us. When we recognise ourselves for who we are our relationship to one another is changed forever - we each of us become a special, prized and unique gift. In this murderous modern era in which so many people have been and are being treated as less than worthless - our status as the temple of God points up the inestimable value of each person.

That's about us realizing the sanctity that is God's purpose. That sanctity is about life in the world; about the Kingdom, not about the survival of the church as an institution. "To be a loyal churchman is hobbyism or prejudice, unless it is the way to be a loyal Christian" That's Austin Fairer.

Never commodity, always commissioned to be yourself in the service of God's kingdom.

Living as God's temple means not observing from a distance.

Go to some high spot like Merseyview above Frodsham and its easy to feel yourself at a distance, observing these little vehicles dashing about on the motorway, so remote from yourself. One of the terrible things about TV is the way it lets us looking in on the terrors that face so many as if they were objects with no connection to us. Church can never be like that if its to be authentic - you are not the audience to me or others as the player, although I did once have a Churchwarden who persisted in calling parts of a service "the next number" like a variety show whenever he led worship.

When the Israelites received the covenant of the law, only Moses and Aaron could ascend Mount Sinai, the people were left to look on as best they could through the cloud and thunder. That distancing is done away with by Christ - no, we come to Mount Zion, the heavenly reality. We are caught up, incorporated, built into God's temple.

Never onlookers, always involved in that living to the depth that is the only real living.

Living as God's temple means never self-service.

The self-service store is the great icon of our age - anything you want yours for the taking, just grab it. It's a great way of marketing breakfast cereals but no way to come to holiness of life. God is not just what I want. Church is not all about tickling your fancy, mutual comfort, and feeling sociable and safe. I hope it is sometimes about all of those things, but our actual purpose is the worship of God because God is worth worshipping. Worship offers us the opportunity to be touched by the very source of all being - to be really alive - to let the riches of God's grace pour into us. "The heavens and their own heavens cannot contain God," says Solomon's prayer, yet we are God's temple.

Jesus is the foundation of this temple, and St Paul warns us that we have to take care how we build on that foundation for what we build will be tested and judged. Our own prejudices and fallibility mar our choices and our decisions. As Karl Popper once wrote, "We all differ in what we know, but in our infinite ignorance we are all equal." Thank God then that it is on him that we must rely not ourselves - for we all know how often we have failed as lovers, friends, colleagues, parents.

Never self-service, always seeking to serve God and his people.

Let us then look to the future, not fearful but leaning on the promises of God. As far as our Church of England is concerned we are in the process of massive changes, but in God's call to be his temple we may yet rediscover purpose and be renewed. We shall keep the rumour of God alive. Why? Because we know that self-offering is the only kind of offering worth anything. God places the future in our hands, for we are his temple -

- never a commodity, always commissioned to be ourselves for the kingdom.

- never onlookers, always joined with our fellows in living life to the depth.

- never self-service, always seeking to serve God and his people.

Let us then be grateful and offer to God a worship pleasing to him with reverence and awe (Hebs 12.28), our home a place of belonging for now and tomorrow. Strive to be holy - wholly alive - living stones in the temple of God.