by church news | Oct 8, 2016 | Sermons
By Revd Adam Rylett, Associate Vicar of Holy Trinity Barnes.
What is your favourite story? My daughter and I have just finished reading a story together, it’s called ‘Gansta Granny’, and is about a boy who is bored of having to stay at his Grans house and eat cabbage until one day he discovers a mysterious hoard of jewels in her house.
We all love stories, whether they are in books, films or television, we even love to tell one another stories of what is happening in our lives. Because each of our lives has a story, maybe not as exciting as some of the things we watch or read about, but we still have our own stories.
Each of us has a story to tell which is unique to us, but also our stories have things in common. We might live in a similar area, we share the story of our community and our nation. Story is really important as it helps us to understand who we are, what our identity is, and harvest is an important part of our story.
You might be thinking that I’ve lost the plot at this point, some of you might have an allotment, or you might grow vegetables in your gardens, but I doubt many, if any, of you are involved in farming. But I suspect that all of you eat at some point during the week, eating is one of those basic human needs that connects us all, everyone across the planet.
The story of harvest, where our food comes from, the people who produce it and the God who gave it to us are important parts of our stories that we do well to remember. Knowing this part of our story connects us with others and enables us to understand one another and to empathise, and it connects us to God and enables us to be thankful.
Our first reading from the Bible was the description of a harvest festival in ancient Israel, and one of the things that struck me about this as I read it was that when the people brought their gifts for the harvest festival they didn’t just give thanks they remembered the story of their people, the story that they shared, the story that made them who they were: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…’
Story is important, it helps us to know who we are and Christians are people who share a story, belong to a story. It’s the story that is found in the Bible, the story of God and his love for all people; the story that begins with the creation of the world, tells us how suffering and sadness entered God’s creation and how God will rid the world of death and mourning and crying and pain.
And at the centre of the Christian story is Jesus, who said ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’. Jesus who plays the decisive role in history, showing us God and making it possible for us to know him. Jesus who defeated death and gives us a glimpse of how the story is going to end as he rose from the dead.
The people who were listening to Jesus tell the amazing story of God, wanted to know how they might become part of this great story, how they too might know God and life in all its fullness. Jesus’ response to them was that they only needed to believe in him, to make his story their own. Jesus’ story is amazing and it has connected with people for thousands of years and still connects with people today as they read it and hear about it, and we too can become part of his story when we believe in him.
by church news | Jul 17, 2016 | Sermons
A certain Chas Grace esquire, known to this congregation and parish, hit the nail on the head at Tuesday’s study session on these passages. “Those four final words are the nub of it”, he said, “Go and do likewise.” And he was, of course, correct. But his insight set me thinking for the rest of the week, and I have ended up in a very different place from the one in which I expected to be.
Firstly, the lawyer – interpreter of the Law of Moses, not a solicitor or barrister – asks who his neighbour is, and Jesus tells a story in which an unexpected person does something.
Secondly, the rabbinic practice of answering a question with a question merely elicits from the lawyer a parroted response, as automatic a set of words as Pavlov’s dogs trained response to certain stimuli. The lawyer had not only given the answer to his own question, but he had given the only possible and permitted answer to his question – and Jesus knew that, and the lawyer knew that, and both knew that it was unsatisfactory. If the lawyer had left at that point in the conversation, then a shared truth would have been acknowledged and nothing more. So the lawyer needs to go further, and Jesus knows that he needs to go further, and so has the story ready.
The story has no answer to the “who is my neighbour?” question, because deep down, both men know that that is not his real search. The answer to “who is my neighbour?” is, of course, every human being who walks this earth, who has walked this earth and who will walk this earth. The lawyer wants to know if there can be circumstances in which someone might not be a neighbour. Jesus suggests two – busy, Temple-bound priests – but the lawyer knows already that this does not hold true, as the preservation of God-given life always trumps the holiness and purity laws – so maybe he was expecting the third protagonist to be a right-acting Pharisee – but to be presented with a right-acting Samaritan came as a bolt out of the blue.
Jesus says to this self-righteously hole-digging man, “A Samaritan knows better than you who his neighbour is and what he has to do for them.”
Many attempts have been made to render this parable relevant to the age. The Christian drama company Riding Lights produced a version called “The Good Punk Rocker” back in 1977, and both fascists and communists have found themselves inserted at various points in history. But at root, Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 30 at the lawyer – “the word is very near to you: it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” To shock the man into realising his untenable position, Jesus says that the last person the lawyer would have imagined to recognise his neighbour and act upon that proximity is the one who knows the law of God, and puts it into practice.
This is fundamentally different from loving your enemy: this has nothing to do with seeing God in Michael Gove or Boris Johnson or whoever has wrecked their own political life or others in the last 24 hours. It is about our instincts, our assumptions, about how deeply ingrained in our consciousness is an appreciation of our God-given duty to care for absolutely anybody, if they are in need. All are our neighbours, all are worthy of our support. “Go, and do likewise.”
Now the next question is, “Do what?” There was no victim of mugging on the way here today, no starving child or penniless beggar. There wasn’t even a refugee or asylum seeker. If we passed anyone on our way here this morning, they were just ordinary local folk, normal, going about their business quietly and privately. So what are we supposed to do, if this neighbourliness is all to do with doing, with action?
There are a lot of people out there and in here who are hurting, who are angry, who are confused and fearful. This country has just thrown all the pieces on the board up in the air, and we still do not know how they have all fallen back down, what shape and future that represents and what it will mean on the national as well as the local scale. People who voted both ways in the referendum are feeling vulnerable and want to scream and shout about it. We cannot walk by on the other side. Let them rant, let them vent their spleen, at us – both sides, because neither is satisfied, neither has actually got what they want. For the good of our souls, of our psyches, of our spirits, we must let people open up to us, and we to them. Being a good neighbour, in Jesus’s description, is to clean up wounds and bind them up, then take the victim to a safer place for long term recovery. Ranting and listening to rants is part of that process.
There are a lot of people out there and in here who are hearing things that they never expected to hear in this country. The council officer who supports the borough’s InterFaith Forum, who is Sri Lankan in origin but was born here, has had words said to her in the last three weeks that she hadn’t heard in 30 years. Racist abuse and hate crime is to be reported – it is being a good neighbour to do so. This borough is restarting its Hate Crime Forum, at which our Safer Neighbourhood committee will be represented, so you do not even have to talk to the Police to report such abuse – tell Judi Braddock and she will pass it on to those collating the incidents. Or, you can ring 101 and report it to the borough Police.
Another way of demonstrating our neighbourliness is on Monday 18th July outside Bentalls in Kingston, where the local InterFaith Forum will be holding a “We Stand Together” event at 11am – an opportunity to celebrate our differences to build a stronger and safer country. Just turn up.
There are a lot of people out there and in here who are living with great uncertainty. Kew, Mortlake and Sheen have the highest percentage of mixed nationality marriages in the borough, and for those who will remain EU citizens after we finally get round to leaving, no one has yet provided any reassurance of their future position in this country. The good neighbour sits alongside, talks, encourages, loves and supports these individuals, these families, in our community and in the workplace.
This next one is hard, but here it comes. There are some people out there, but I trust not in here, who feel freed up to say things that previously they knew they never should. The good neighbour helps them to find again the value of welcome, of inclusivity, of our common humanity.
Amidst all the uncertainty, all the polemic and guesswork that will persist for months to come, we, the people of God, must be the very best of neighbours: doing the neighbour thing, not just thinking it, acting on neighbourliness, not just skirting round the issues. May we all, with the help of prayer and God’s indwelling Holy Spirit, be those very best of neighbours and so reflect our very best neighbour, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
by church news | Jun 27, 2016 | Sermons
As we have guest speakers this morning, I wasn’t going to give a sermon, but I have wrestled with the national
and international issues of the last few days and how, as Christians, we should respond to this unprecedented
situation. So I have come up with something brief.
I am not a politician and have no aspiration to be one, but what is done is done and whichever side we find
ourselves on we need to reflect on what has happened, what led up to it, and how we can contribute to
whatever outcome emerges.
I am a French graduate, son of two French graduates and have lived in France for two years – you don’t have
to be Sherlock Holmes to speculate where my cross went on Thursday. But regardless of how we voted, our
job now is to ensure that the hateful and febrile atmosphere in which the campaign was conducted is buried
and not carried forward into the lengthy negotiations and constitutional crisis into which we have been
plunged.
It is our Christian duty to pray and to work for peace and reconciliation, to support the fearful and to promote
harmony and compromise, to reassure the large number of younger voters who have been disappointed by
this outcome and to encourage those who did not participate this time to exercise this hard won right and to
engage fully in their social obligations.
However we voted, whether we acknowledge it publicly or keep the secret of the ballot box, we need to face
up to the fact that this campaign has centred on the divisive issue of immigration. It is Christ’s injunction to all
his followers that the welcome of strangers, feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless is the work of his
kingdom. In this time of frantic negotiation and ambiguity, this is not negotiable. Much has been said in
recent years of a kinder sort of politics, but the last few months have been anything but kind.
Above all, we need to be vigilant. We must not allow our country to descend into the sort of hatred,
xenophobia and outright hostility that scarred the previous century. In the words of my 91 year old mother-
in-law, “There have been two European wars, I lived through one of them and I don’t want there to be
another one.”
Our public by-line about ourselves, on our pewsheets and websites is, “where all God’s children are
welcome”. The outcome of the referendum reinforces the need for us to make that real in practical and
loving ways, to demonstrate that love triumphs over hatred, and community over division. As our
archbishops have stated, we must be builders of bridges, not barriers.
by church news | Jun 18, 2016 | Sermons
First there is shock, and then there is anger. These are deep-seated emotions, an ancient part of human reaction, but they are as real to us today as they were to those pig farmers on the steep slopes of Gerasa, in the foothills of the Golan Heights. We are shocked and angry at the senseless murder of Jo Cox, a politician who said it as it is, and whose heart was given over to the poor and the needy. They were shocked and angry that in the healing of the crazy man of their region, their livelihood had been lost.
We really need to get to grips with this. We have seen political debate descend into the worst forms of shouting and divisiveness that I have known in years, unleashed by a referendum that did not need to take place. Now we have murder as part of that scenario, and I hope that those who have called for this referendum are deeply examining their consciences. Legion, this poor psychotic figure, was everything that his fellow countrymen did not want, could not control. But, when he is cured, restored, returned to them sane and reasonable, they become unreasonable, and seek to cast out the one who had cast out the demons. Truly there is a perversity within the human spirit which is hard to fathom.
Another fact, or probability. Legion was probably not Jewish, but a Gentile settler, in one of the many Roman new towns that had sprung up on the eastern side of Lake Galilee. That, at least, would explain the presence of the pigs. Oh, this gets ever more relevant as we go along. I could make parallels with claims about EU migrants and the health service, but I will desist. Legion is also an outcast, cut off from hearth and home by his illness, by his otherness – we could call him a refugee, if we wanted, so that throws another group of people into this morning’s mix.
And at that point we stop and look at Jesus. What is he doing? He is on holiday, trying to find some rest and relaxation with his disciples after the ardours of teaching and feeding the five thousand. They think that they have found a nice secluded beach, with a good ice cream shop and some buckets and spades, when they are confronted with a screaming, desperately ill man. What does Jesus do? His immediate response is to remove the source of madness, to calm the wild spirit of this wretched man, to restore him to wholeness, to sit him down and get him some clothes. It is a love response, the response of the creator of the universe, who loves this man in the same way that he loves each one of us here today, and wants peace and serenity for him, as he does for us. And that is wonderful.
And here is where it gets even harder. We, as disciples of Christ, children of the living God, are called to do the same. We, the redeemed, the baptised, are called to bring God’s wholeness and peace to the chaos around us. And that includes those who are creating the chaos, the pain, the heartache, the division at the centre of the referendum debate.
Our Bishop has sent out a letter which I will read at the end of today’s service. It will also be posted on the noticeboard and on the website. It is partly about the murder of Jo Cox, and partly about the referendum campaign and the need for us to vote. One sentence stands out, so I will quote it now: “My prayer is that we would strive to speak well of one another, both during the campaign and after.” That is a hard prayer for us to answer, sometimes, when some views are expressed that we find particularly insulting, petty or just downright wrong. But we, the people of God, are called to be peacemakers and unifiers within our nation, for if we cannot do that, then nobody else will.
The radical reading of today’s Gospel is to say that the modern day Legion is the person in the referendum debate we most despise, the one we would like to cast out forcibly, and it is to that person or to that group of people that we are called to take the love of Christ, the healing love of God, the peace and unity of the Godhead. That is massively difficult, and I have great fears for the future of our country as this process grinds on – fears for the Union, fears for the future of Europe as a peacebroker if we come out, fears for violent dissent if we stay in – and we must be at the heart of every healing process, for that is where Christ positioned himself.
However, a cheering story to finish.
The other day, I was in Kings Street Hammersmith, walking along behind some young roofers, name of their company emblazoned on their tee shirts, a swagger in their step. It was the end of the working day, they needed food, and one shouted, “Oi Steve, we gonna eat Macdonalds?” To which Steve replied, “Nah mate, we’re gonna have sushi”. If such attitudinal and cultural shifts can happen in white, working class twentysomethings in West London, then I think we will be all right.
by church news | Jun 8, 2016 | Sermons
There is a programme on Radio 4 called “Heresy”, in which people pronounce potentially heretical views on such subjects as whether Jerry Hall & Rupert Murdoch married for love and other major news items. I know it is supposed to be comedy, to fill that half hour between the incessant news programmes of tea time before the Archers, but somehow all its attempts to be “heretical” are fairly lightweight, and are never going to stir the Spanish Inquisition from its slumbers.
That having been said, heresy is, of course, a constant worry of the Church, and some parts of it still have guardian committees who oversee statements regarding the faith, to check them for orthodoxy and the possibility of someone actually saying something interesting. This goes on in more subtle ways, and this morning’s readings are an example of just this. So, look again at the readings from 1 Kings – Elijah raises the widow’s son – Galatians – Paul in full self-justification mode – and Luke – Jesus raises a widow’s son – and spot the heresy that the compilers of the lectionary are trying to guard us against.
Now there are two basic Christian heresies, and both relate to Jesus. One says that he was God, but not fully human, and the other states that he was totally human, but not divine. From the look of today’s Gospel, Jesus appears to be fully human, with the compassionate reaction and willingness to intervene, but also fully divine, as he brings the man back to life. So where’s the problem? There isn’t one, but if we compare the actions of Elijah in raising the young boy, and Jesus raising the man, the difference is in the process. Elijah has to call on God to raise the child: Jesus simply speaks the word, and the man lives.
This story is in our Gospels for a particular purpose: to demonstrate that Jesus is far superior to Elijah and all of the other Old Testament prophets. They had access to God, they could talk to him and receive instruction directly from him, but ultimately they were simply human beings that God could and did use for extraordinary things. Jesus, by contrast, has the word of life within him, the word of creation, God’s power and that will always set him apart.
So, having learnt that lesson, and bulwarked ourselves against that particular heresy, what have we got to take with us through this coming week? I think it has something to do with prayer. Prayer of an Elijah, prayer of Christ, prayer of the people of God.
What moves Elijah to seek the child’s restoration? The realisation that he is his mother’s only hope in the world, and that without him, she is lost. Likewise Jesus, faced with the same hopelessness, intervenes decisively to transform emptiness into wholeness.
This, for us, is achieved through practical prayer – prayer that does not simply say, “I will pray for you” but actually goes round and seeks to transform a situation. Thus, if someone is ill, spending time with them answers our prayers. If someone is hungry, taking them food answers our prayers. If someone is isolated, then accompaniment answers the prayer. So far, so straightforward.
But what about other, bigger things? How do we offer practical prayer for peace in Syria? We cannot go there and try to broker peace – how can we properly intercede for that nation? How do we pray about the referendum? I am fairly sure that there will be faithful people of God, people of prayer, who will be on both sides of the argument – does prayer have anything to do with it at all?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a strong advocate of intercessory prayer for situations that appear hopeless. He once talked of the ring of prayer for him and for the end of apartheid that went round the world every day. He spoke of an American nun who got up at 3am every day to pray for him – and with a wide grin he laughed, “What chance have the apartheid authorities?!” Faithful, committed prayer for intractable situations does work – but it is prayer for the long term, not just for today.
As for prayer surrounding the referendum, what there? Do we pray for a specific outcome, or in more general terms? Can we pray for honesty and clear thinking? Can we pray for a proper engagement with the subject, rather than simplistic, reach-me-down arguments? Can we pray for a desire to be part of the process, to feel that voices are heard, regardless of the outcome? Of course we can, and we must, and the practical prayer is one which makes sure that people will get out and use their democratic right, that they will have a series debate about the issues, that this is treated as a serious, social, life-affecting issue in which God is involved. We have been placed in a democracy, where our voice can be heard and should be heard – God wants us to use it.
The practical prayers of Elijah & Jesus transformed hopeless situations, restored life and recreated community. May our practical prayers this week be equally restorative, equally re-creative, and may the power of the Holy Spirit flow through our prayers to transform our lives, our community’s life and the life of the worl
by church news | May 10, 2016 | Sermons
Two blokes, battered and bruised, are singing their hearts out in the inner sanctum of a jail. Arrested, falsely accused, flogged and in the stocks, they spend their evening singing the praises of God, not mouldering in self-pity.
A man in lonely exile on a craggy rock off the coast of Turkey hears the voice of Christ, calling him to share in the water of life and the worship of heaven.
A man in an upper room, with a group of friends, after a meal, prays for love-based unity amongst his followers.
This is the stuff of the Sunday after the Ascension, a day of waiting, of expectation, of promise. Waiting for the Spirit, expecting God to act, looking for the promised comforter and permanent presence of Almighty God, God as close to them as Jesus ever was. We know that the Holy Spirit is given – but we will wait until next Sunday to celebrate that. We know that visions of Heaven were written to a persecuted Church in Asia Minor, to give them encouragement and hope as their persecutors circled. Who knows whether Jesus actually prayed this prayer – it would take some writing down at the time – but if he didn’t, or hadn’t prayed something like it during his time here on earth, then we would be much the poorer for it.
What keeps Paul & Silas singing? The love of God. What keeps the pressurized Church around Ephesus holding on to their faith in the risen Christ, despite the threat of torture and death? The love of God. What leads Jesus to pray as he does, after the Passover meal and before the desolation of Gethsemane? The love of God.
All is there, all is encompassed in that one phrase. The love of God in human hearts, the love of God expressed in eternity, the love of God worked out eternally between the Father and the Son.
But what sort of love is this? It is sacrificial, it is self-giving, it is taking on the role of a slave for the benefit of the beloved. Moments before starting this prayer, Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet, and commanded them to do the same, to love each other as he had loved them. The eternal love of the Father for the Son is interrupted in the Son’s obedience to the Father in taking human form and living amongst God’s creation as one of the created. The eternal love of the Son for the Father is expressed in healing and miracle, teaching and confrontation, prayer and self sacrifice on the cross. The eternal love of the Father for the Son is expressed in resurrection, conquering death, laying waste the scourge of fear, removing the scandal of corruption, and the eternal love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father is expressed in a desire for unity and the gift of the Holy Spirit, the fullness of God in all his children.
So what do we do with this?
We welcome, we baptise, we teach our children, we share together in bread and wine, we live out the life of Christ in practical ways, endeavouring to feed the hungry, house the homeless, minister to the sick, comfort the dying. We engage with the world, especially this coming Christian Aid Week, welcoming everyone because they complete us in our union with God.
We baptise, because Christ commanded us to just before his ascension, and because it is a sign of our unity – we are all one in Christ, as we are all baptised into him. How can we not be united if we have all been baptised into him? It must be said that the Church has managed to ruin this unity very well for very many years, but at heart, our baptism is our unity and needs to be acknowledged. When we baptise this child today, she joins the family of God – one family, not a divided family, but one family unit, united in Christ, united in its loving heavenly Father. This child’s baptism is as valid as ours, wherever we were baptised, as valid as her sister’s – who was baptised in Brussels, as valid as any baptism carried out anywhere in the world today. We are the ones who break the unity, we are the ones who have created the schisms, the differences, the power plays and the vested interests. God does not see any of them: rather, he waits patiently for us to come round to his point of view, to acknowledge his unity, his uniting love, for all time and for all people.
And everything we talked about last week, about welcome, warmth, the right fit, is relevant to our unity. Warmth of God’s love, the genuine welcome of a united body, feeling part of the whole – that is the lived and experienced expression of our unity in Christ – into which we welcome the baptised, the stranger, the newcomer, the enquirer, the returner, the lost.
And the purpose of all this? That God will be worshipped, that lives will be changed into the way God wants them to be, that the Church will be an effective witness and signpost to Christ. That is the purpose of our unity, that is where our unity takes us, and in living it out, it all makes sense.
It was noteworthy that Sadiq Khan made his public declarations as the new Mayor of London at Southwark Cathedral, in the presence of both Anglican & Roman Catholic bishops of Southwark, an Imam, a rabbi and many other faith representatives. That unity of purpose, that unity for the city of London, is an expression of the unity of God, that can be lived out in our common life too.
As we wait for Pentecost to arrive, let us love as Christ loved us, let us be united, as Christ is united with the Father, and may we give ourselves in acts of service and support, so that the world may believe.
