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Sermon for the 9.30am Parish Eucharist at the Barn Church Kew on the feast of Pentecost 23 May 2021 preached by the Revd Sister Margaret Anne ASSP
Today the Church keeps the great feast of Pentecost. The name Pentecost was first given in the Old Testament to the Jewish Feast of Weeks, which fell on the 50th day after the Passover. On this day of Pentecost the first fruits of the corn harvest were presented, and in later times the giving of the Law of Moses was commemorated. The New Testament had its parallel timings between great events that came to be celebrated as feasts. It was 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus that the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles, as described in the second chapter of Acts that we have had for our second reading today. So the name Pentecost was applied by the early Church to the feast celebrating this remarkable event, marking the birth of the Christian Church. In the Greek Pentecost simply means fiftieth. In the Old Testament the Feast of Pentecost or Weeks had marked the end of the celebration of the spring harvest. In the New Testament, Pentecost marks a harvesting of souls, the birthing of the new Christian community.
Although the feast we celebrate today may not nowadays be so firmly fixed in the popular mind as Christmas and Easter, yet it ranks with them both as part of that central triad of great high feasts upon which the Christian faith hinges. In the canons of the Church of England it states:
“It is the duty of all who have been confirmed to receive Holy Communion regularly, and especially at the festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun or Pentecost”.
In the Old Testament book of the prophet Joel the second chapter focuses on a promise made by God; that at some no doubt distant point in the future God will pour out the Spirit on “all flesh”. When that happens the signs of the event will be that people will prophesy, dream dreams and see visions. This prophecy is fulfilled in our reading today from the second chapter of Acts. It is the day of the Jewish feast of Pentecost, and the disciples are gathered together in Jerusalem in one place to pray. Suddenly a sound like a rushing wind fills the house and flames as of fire rest on each of them; they are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in foreign languages, much to the amazement of the gathering crowds who hear them. The Jews who have returned to Jerusalem for the feast from many scattered and foreign places are astounded to hear these simple Galileans speaking in foreign languages. It is a highly significant moment. The tower of Babel of Genesis is reversed. Formerly at Babel communication had broken down in the diversifying of languages. Here – at Pentecost – the opposite happens. Those who before could not understand each other are now suddenly united in joyous mutual understanding. Former barriers to communication have fallen down. Harmony is restored. A palpable manifestation of the Spirit is at work. The event is startling, and it is Peter who realises what is happening. Peter claims that the prophecy of Joel has now been fulfilled. God at Pentecost has now begun the task of pouring out the Spirit on all flesh. Peter himself may have thought that it was literally the last days. Things always seem clearer with hindsight. The last times may well have been inaugurated, but from inauguration to completion is an ongoing process that takes time; from a human point of view, a very, very long time to unfold.
From a Christian perspective the Holy Spirit has manifold roles and activities. The very opening verses of the Bible, in the first chapter of Genesis, testify that the Spirit was at work at the beginning of creation – a “wind” from God – or the Spirit of God – “swept over the face of the waters”. In our reading today from the second chapter of Acts at Pentecost the Spirit breaks down barriers and unifies, bringing about new understanding between people. Above all, the gospels ( and indeed other parts of the Bible) teach us that as human beings we inhabit two worlds simultaneously: the ordinary every-day world of our human existence, and the Spirit-filled world of divine reality that is God. This divine reality can break into our every-day, time-bound consciousness at any moment, as it did for the disciples at Pentecost. Suddenly – in a moment – and through God’s activity at work within us and around us, all is changed. Just as the life of the imagination can be a bridge between our waking and our dreaming existence, between our conscious and our unconscious minds, so the Spirit also can act as a hinge for us between the material and non-material world. The Spirit can act upon us and open us to the divine reality, both when we are awake and when we are asleep. Often the Spirit uses a physical medium to open us up to the divine. This is of course how the sacraments work for us. The Spirit enlivens bread and wine, oil and water – in the eucharist, in anointing, in baptism.
It is the life and energy of the Spirit to transform us. From our reading of the New Testament we will be familiar with the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, and St Paul in his letters has lists of both. In his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, he lists many spiritual gifts, such as wisdom, faith and healing. In his letter to the Galatians, chapter 5, he lists the fruits of the Spirit as “love, joy, peace” and so on. The gifts of the Spirit equip us for our Christian life and ministry; the fruits of the Spirit are those recognisable qualities that we grow into as we endeavour to lead more and more Christ-centred lives.
Christian art can help us in trying to understand the nature of the Spirit. Many of us will be familiar with artistic depictions of the Spirit as a dove. In paintings such as those of the Italian artist Fra Angelico the Spirit is painted as a dove appearing to Mary at the Annunciation of the conception of Jesus whom she will bear in her womb. She will give birth, the angel tells her, to the Son of God. There is a ceiling boss in stone in my Community’s chapel in Oxford of which I am particularly fond. It depicts the Trinity – God the Father holds the cross upon which Jesus hangs and a dove, representing the Spirit, rests on the cross-bar.
In our reading today from John’s gospel, the night before Jesus dies by crucifixion on Good Friday, Jesus in his Farewell Discourse to his disciples speaks many reassuring words of comfort to his followers, who will soon be bereft. He describes the Spirit as an “Advocate”, who will come to them and strengthen them. Another word for Advocate is Paraclete – literally meaning the one called alongside. It is a legal term. Jesus is saying that the Spirit is like a defence barrister, who speaks up on behalf of his client in a court of law, in order to defend the client from accusation, and to secure a verdict of innocence rather than guilt in the minds of the jury. The Spirit is totally there for us.
There are many ways in which we can use our imaginations to help us focus on what – or rather who – the Spirit is. Today’s great feast of Pentecost is especially a time when in our prayers we can ask the Spirit to fill us anew with the gifts and the fruits of the Spirit that St Paul so eloquently describes in his letters. The Creator, Jesus, the Spirit – these are the three faces of the one true God. Today let us particularly focus our hearts and minds on the outpouring of the Spirit in our lives – not just for our own sakes, but in order that others may also be drawn to this God of love who inspires our devotions and who calls us to ever deeper fellowship and communion. Let us be open to the enlivening power of the Spirit to transform us and enable us to be Christ-centred and expectant and ever alert to the needs of those around us, that God may be glorified.
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Sermon for 9.30am Parish Eucharist at the Barn Church Kew on Sixth Sunday of Easter 9 May 2021 preached by the Revd Sister Margaret Anne ASSP
Today my sermon will be shorter than usual, as this service will be followed by the APCM. Yesterday was the feast day of Julian of Norwich. In was on that day, 8th May 1373, when a young priest went to visit Julian, who was gravely ill and thought to be dying. The priest held a crucifix before her face. Then Julian, aged 30, received a series of sixteen visions, which revealed to her in most vivid form the sufferings of Christ crucified and the love of God. Julian recovered from her illness, and spent the next 20 years of her life as an anchoress reflecting on the spiritual and theological meaning of her visions. She recorded her reflections in her book The Revelations of Divine Love, or Showings. This was to be the first book written by a woman in English. Julian was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote the Canterbury Tales. As an anchoress, Julian was attached to the Church of St Julian in Norwich, where she lived in seclusion in her cell, though people did seek her out for counsel, such as Margery Kempe. Julian died around the year 1417.
One of the most famous passages from her book is that of a description of a hazel nut lying in the palm of her hand. In this small hazel nut she sees in her imagination the love of God. Julian writes:
“In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God preserves it. But what did I see in it? It is that God is the Creator and the protector and the lover”.
God was able to teach Julian spiritual lessons through nature, and God can do the same with us. As with Julian, God can communicate some spiritual nugget to us through the wonders of nature, when we are simply walking in a green space. And south-west London is greatly blessed with such spaces, such as Richmond Park and Kew Gardens, to name just two of them.
It is a church tradition to have readings in our Sunday services from the Acts of the Apostles in Eastertide. And no wonder, for Luke’s account of the Acts of the Apostles is full of stories of amazing events and healing miracles and stories of new life bursting forth in people’s lives; there is a lot of energy and joy as the new-born Church starts to flex its muscles and grow. Acts is full of an upbeat enthusiasm and energy that we associate with the meaning of Easter. In today’s reading from Acts we have the end of the account in chapter 10 of Peter’s visit to the household of Cornelius, who is a Gentile centurion in Caesarea. As Peter preaches to Cornelius and those standing around, the Holy Spirit, we are told, “fell upon all who heard the word”. This is a very significant moment in Acts, for it is the moment when Peter realises that even the Gentiles can be accepted by God and baptised as followers of Christ.
Our gospel reading today from John continues on from last Sunday, taken from Jesus’ Farewell Discourse to his disciples, before his arrest, trial and crucifixion. Jesus comforts his disciples by declaring his love for them, and asks them to abide in his love. They are to love one another as he has loved them. He declares that his followers are his friends. The greatest love that a friend can show, is to lay down one’s life for a friend. And this is precisely what Jesus himself will do, in his death on the cross. Jesus appoints his friends, his followers, to bear lasting fruit in his name. And that is our call: to bear fruit in lives of loving service and obedience. This will bring both joy and suffering. Following Jesus is costly, but he has promised us abundance of life in him.
As Eastertide continues and we approach Ascensiontide, may we reflect on all that Christ has accomplished for us in completing his work on earth and raising our humanity heavenwards, and making possible for us continual communion with God. And despite our own personal challenges, particularly in this time of global pandemic, and also the conflicts of the wider world, let us remember the prophetic words of Julian of Norwich:
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.
Sermon at Barn church Kew 10am Patronal Parish Eucharist ( joint service with St Luke’s) on Fifth Sunday after Easter 2nd May 2021 by the Revd Sister Margaret Anne McAlister ASSP
It is a joy to be with you all today to celebrate the Patronal Festival of the Barn Church Kew, dedicated to St Philip and All Saints, together with our brothers and sisters from St Luke’s in this joint Parish Eucharist. Yesterday, 1st May, was the feast day of St Philip and St James. They are both listed in the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke as among the disciples called by Jesus to become his inner circle of the twelve apostles. In John’s gospel there are more details about Philip. Having been called by Jesus, Philip then persuades Nathanael to come to Jesus. He is present at the feeding of the 5,000, when he questions if there will be enough food for everyone, and later in John’s gospel he is recorded as asking Jesus to “show us the Father”. This leads to Jesus’ Farewell Discourse to his disciples on the night before he died. Little else is known about Philip apart from the New Testament evidence. The story from Acts which we have had as our first reading today tells of another Philip, the Evangelist. Here Philip, while on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, joins an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Ethiopian Queen, and after explaining some scriptures to him that foretell Jesus’ sufferings, Philip converts the Ethiopian to the Christian faith and baptizes him. It is a wonderful example of being alongside someone and encouraging them in a spiritual journey from doubt or uncertainty to faith in Jesus. According to ancient tradition all of the faithful twelve apostles apart from John, who lived to a ripe old age, were martyred. Tradition says that Philip, like his master, was crucified.
St James who is always celebrated on the same feast day as Philip is often referred to as “James the Less” to distinguish him from the other apostle bearing his name, “James the Great”, who was the brother of John. James the Less has sometimes been identified with James “the brother of the Lord” and as the first bishop of Jerusalem. According to tradition he was sentenced to stoning and clubbed to death. Philip and James are always celebrated together on the same day because the church in Rome where their relics were preserved was dedicated on 1st May in the year 560AD.
Our gospel reading today from John is a well-known passage in which Jesus says to his disciples:
“I am the true vine”.
This is the last of the seven great “I am” sayings of Jesus in John’s gospel. The image is a telling one. Jesus compares himself to a vine, and he says that we his followers are the branches. The only way such a branch can live is by drawing its strength from the vine. Jesus goes on to say it is the same for us in relation to himself – in relation to God. Without Christ – without God – we are cut off from our spiritual source. Jesus says we need to abide in him, as he abides in us. He continues with some stark words:
“apart from me you can do nothing”.
The problem with familiar passages of scripture is that we can become too familiar with them and almost take them for granted. Do we really believe what they say? When life is going well I suspect that many of us may find it hard to believe – really believe – the truth of Jesus’ words: “apart from me you can do nothing”. One of the spiritual problems that faces all of us when things are going well is that we can end up believing we can do things in our own strength. So much so that we do not even realise we are thinking in this way. But then when things do not go so well – in fact when things go really badly – a necessary shift occurs: when we face a serious illness, when we suffer a major bereavement, when something central to our way of life falls apart, when we suffer any major loss of any kind, that is when we might begin to realise the truth of Jesus’ words: “apart from me you can do nothing”. We might even come to realise that every cell of our body depends utterly on the life of God flowing through it to sustain it, to keep us alive. This time of global pandemic has been difficult for all, heart-rending for the many who have lost loved ones. The last year has been a time of huge change and loss of one kind of another for everyone, with so many restrictions having been imposed upon our lives. But good things have come out of this global tragedy, and many have re-evaluated their lives, considering at a deeper level than before what is really important, what really matters. We have all learned anew the importance of making connections, whether with others or with God.
The feast of St Philip and St James on 1st May marks the beginning of a new month, and since the Middle Ages this month of May has been strongly associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus, that Queen of Saints. This has taken the form of special devotions to Mary in the month of May. The English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, who lived from 1844 to 1889, one of the greatest poets of the Victorian period, wrote a poem entitled The May Magnificat. The poem is a reflection on the close religious association between Mary and this month. In one of the verses he writes:
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
A deeper appreciation of the beauty of nature is something that has also emerged from the pandemic. It was fun when I was walking in Kew Gardens on Friday to see a young couple standing in front of a beautiful cherry tree in full blossom: the man was proposing marriage to the woman, while from a distance a camera man zoomed in on them, coming closer and closer to the loving couple.
As today we celebrate this Patronal Festival dedicated to St Philip and All Saints, and not forgetting among them St Luke, as we give thanks to God for the inspiration of the saints and their devotion to Christ, we also give thanks for the many blessings of life: for love and joy and friendship and above all for the love of God that sustains us daily, whatever challenges and difficulties we may face. I close with another poem of Hopkins, entitled Spring:
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s egg look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worth the winning.