Christmas Day Sermon

preached by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew's Dawson Street, Crook - 25-December-2013

 

Every year in Advent the good folk of Barnard Castle United Reformed Church decorate their church with an advent theme; this year the church was decorated with a fresco of stars. The stars of the night sky reminded me of a Christmas card the Bishop of London sent to his clergy and a colleague of mine in the London Diocese a couple of years ago. At first sight the Christmas card looked like one of those wonderful and spectacular star pictures from the Hubble Telescope, but on closer inspection the Christmas card picture turned out to be of light, not from some far-distant supernova exploded star, but the lights of London seen from the International Space Station. Such breathtaking space pictures of the Earth have taken Twitter by storm during the last couple of months; they were posted by the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield aboard the International Space Station. His astonishing pictures taken from 250 miles above the earth’s surface included pictures of Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle. If we had a giant magnifying glass to look as these astounding light pictures I am sure somewhere in that luminous central spot in the North East we would find Crook.

The journey of Christmas began 4 weeks ago here in chapel with Dorothy’s granddad, alias David Dixon, feverishly looking into the night sky, waiting, longing, looking for a sign – had he not taken his tablets we thought, had he not been to spec-savers. Grandad Dixon had been like the watching and waiting sentinels, the sentry guards on lookout high up on Jerusalem’s city walls taken from Isaiah’s reading this morning, straining to see and hear, preparing to receive the good news of this light coming into the world. We too have been on the look-out for God again this year as we shared our Advent journey in Crook Churches Together, wisely led by Robert (Revd Robert Fisher).

And our Advent journey has brought us to today, to this morning’s worship, the birth of Christ who is the luminous centre of Christmas; his light shining like a supernova star in our darkness. We hear the familiar story again that seems to come to us like the light of that star, from far away. Mary and Joseph travelling, a census, a birth in an out-of- the way place, angels bringing good news, rough irreligious shepherds brought in from the pitch darkness of the fields to see and hear things that bring them light and a new vision; wonder and joy and peace for all the world. We see, hear and feel the light of this familiar story but we wonder where the source is. Is it close by or is it far away? Is it light coming at us from a stable 2000 plus years ago or a light of new life that burns intensely among us here and now on this Christmas morning; wonder and joy perhaps emanating in this small town of Crook, wonder and joy in our lives perhaps as we contemplate the great mystery of the Incarnation, for it is indeed a mystery?

Today we in Crook and other small congregations are illuminated by that light of the Christ child born among us 2000 years ago, revealing God to us, in his vulnerability, in his openness, his humility and weakness – just where we are – perhaps to uncertain futures and jobs, to vulnerable and fragile communities around our chapel, to hopes of stable families and circumstances perhaps not yet fulfilled but longed for. The good news of the gospel is that he is with us here in Crook to bring light and love and healing, where love and freedom and healing, reconciliation and peace are needed.

And because of this wonderful story which we celebrate this morning, we have good news to tell and share with the good folk of Crook. Good news in action which has brightened up our community and the world outside Crook. Good news of light shining like the stars because we are bringing in his kingdom...................... 

·         In the innumerable acts of kindness and concern shared together in and amongst our congregation and friends

·         in the sheer goodness of people from Crook Churches Together who have given over 6 tons of foodstuffs to the poor, vulnerable and hungry of our community.  

·         by church members in their passion for justice and a voice for those who are affected by government cuts, with the poorest and most vulnerable most at risk.  

·         in the love at a beautiful wedding here in chapel in May this year, the new Mr and Mrs Dixon 

·         in the hundreds of pounds raised for local and national charities during our August coffee mornings, our fund raising efforts, and the start of the refurbishment of the URC Ministers Training College at Westminster, Cambridge  

·         in our world after a year when a number of natural disasters have swept people off their feet, in the Philippines, and continuing war in Syria and now in the Southern Sudan and other places that we know.  

·         In our pain and suffering, in the darkness and mystery of life, for we know even in the darkness his light is not extinguished 

We each have had lovely experiences this last year where we have seen and known and heard God’s love. The good news we receive today, of Christ come among us, touches our deepest yearnings for light in darkness, for fulfilment of our hopes, for a different kind of world. It is light that is real and alive. 

Like the luminous centre of the earth’s cities lights taken from the international space station the luminous heart of the good news is our relationship with God who comes to be born in us, to bring light to the centre of our lives. Like the shepherds he calls us from inside, from the cold to the warmth of a real relationship with him. His love comes to birth in that stable place of our lives. 

Like Mary we treasure the experiences of light and goodness we see reflected in the lives of those around us as we ponder this beautiful awareness of Christ who comes to be born in us again this Christmas-tide. Like the Shepherds who returned glorifying God for all that they had heard and seen we cannot help becoming ourselves those messengers of light sharing what we see and hear. For the town of Crook is never in darkness because Christ has come to be born in us and it is his light which is the light source at the centre of our lives, the centre of our town, the centre of our world.

And that is:- 

Good news of great joy for all the people

 

Readings: Isaiah 52.7-10; Luke 2.1-20

“Be strong, do not fear. Here is your God”

Sermon preached at St Andrew's Dawson Street, Crook by Ray Anglesea -
3rd Sunday in Advent, 15-Dec-2013

Isaiah: 52: 7-10; Hebrews 1: 1-4; John 1: 1-14

 

After the certainty, the bravado, the swagger we read in the gospel this morning that John the Baptist has a wobble. Last week, we heard about his ministry in the desert, his fiery, hissing angry voice, his name calling and his serpent like rhetoric. We heard his clear, prophetic voice crying out, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ This week, we hear a very different voice, a quivering questioning voice. John has been imprisoned. Calling the religious leaders of his day a brood of vipers may not won him any favours. Doubt had begun to creep in. John baptized Jesus because he recognized in him God’s Messiah, his messenger; now John shackled in a prison cell has begun to wonder was it all a big mistake. Was he having second thoughts, new doubts, mixed feelings, that feeling we sometimes have that nothing feels right anymore, something has gone dreadfully wrong?

The way Matthew tells the story raises several puzzling questions. Here’s the first. We are told, ‘When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” It’s not clear whether this use of the word ‘Messiah’ – ‘what the Messiah was doing’ - is John the Baptist’s way of speaking about Jesus or Matthew, the Gospel writer’s way of reminding us, despite John’s doubts, that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. If it’s John’s way of speaking, is John now saying that, so far as he is concerned, Jesus is the wrong sort of Messiah? John had warned the people that God’s messenger would bring God’s wrath and he would be separating out the good from the bad. But Jesus seems to have reserved his wrath for the religious leaders of the temple, and he deliberately sought out bad company to share his good news with. So here’s John’s dilemma. John has been left wondering whether he got the wrong message and or the wrong man.

Jesus’s reply to John is clear: He tells John’s disciples - ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone – including John – who takes no offence at me.’

Both Jesus and John would have known the passage from Isaiah which Caroline read as our first reading; ‘Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear. Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you”. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.’ Isaiah was talking about the wonderful day when God would set his people free from exile, when ‘the ransomed of the Lord [would] return, and come to Zion with singing’ – but he was also talking about more than a return from Babylon. He was talking about a great deal that hadn’t yet happened. Jesus says it is happening now, and so he sends a coded message to John. ‘Do not fear. Here is your God.’ There will be judgment, there will be recompense, but not without healing and joy.

This raises another intriguing question. If the blind are receiving their sight, and if the lame are walking and if the dead are being raised’, surely it wouldn’t have been difficult for Jesus to have paid Herod back for imprisoning John and to have set John free. We know what happened later: when John denounced Herod for marrying his brother’s wife, the wife told her daughter to ask for John the Baptist’s head on a dish. John was left in prison to face a lonely and painful death. Sometimes the ways of God are very hard to understand.

In our Gospel reading Jesus goes on to speak to the crowds who went out to see John in the desert. Jesus tells them straight that John was the last and greatest of the prophets, the one Micah wrote about when he said, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ Then Jesus says something really surprising, ‘Truly I tell you among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.’ Is he saying that John is not in the kingdom of heaven? Apparently so. Jesus seems to be saying that the Kingdom of heaven begins with the Messiah. The signs of the Kingdom are that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them. John never claimed to be bringing in this kingdom, but Jesus did. And this is what Christians believe: ‘When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death thou didst open the kingdom to all believers’ including, no doubt, John the Baptist.

One question in all this that intrigues me comes from Jesus’ words ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see.’ The Gospels bear witness that during Jesus’ ministry the blind received their sight, the lame walked, and many wonderful things took place. There are so many stories in the Gospels about miracles like this that if we are to take the New Testament seriously we have to accept their testimony. Jesus was more than a holy man and if God was uniquely at work in him it is not surprising that extraordinary things happened. Jesus said, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see.’ We live in a different age and we see different things. Or do we? What I hear and see of the wonders of God could always, it seems to me, be spoken of in a purely natural way: this wonderful event that could so easily be a coincidence; that brilliant recovery, which amazes the doctors, could be attributed to outstanding medical care. And yet when you or I have prayed, hoping against hope, in a seemingly impossible situation, and the impossible has happened – when someone you love has made a fantastic recovery; when a life has been spared; a disaster has been averted; a new way forward has opened out – what can we do but say that these are indeed for us with eyes of faith, the wonderful works of God? Often, we say little about these experiences because they are personal and very precious. This is holy ground. Yet, there may be times, as in this story of John the Baptist, when something should be said, when we should tell what we hear and see of God at work in his world.

At Durham Cathedral where I work I hear many stories from customers. I think, for example, of the chaplain who met someone who had once prayed in the cathedral for the gift of a baby, when, apparently, conception was not possible. The family was in the cathedral to celebrate that prayed-for child's graduation from the university. Their comment? "We are here to say thank you to God." Or the lady who bought a rosary for her father suffering from severe dementia, but with a rosary in his hands he remembers his family and his prayers, or the undergraduates who fell in love at the university now back in Durham with their family to celebrate their golden wedding, the priest from Malawi who came to Durham St John’s to say thank you to the college for sending a missionary priest to his country to preach the gospel, the soldier from who had served in Afghanistan for eight years now training for the ministry.   

So often our deepest experiences of God’s working leave intellectual questions. Why in this situation was there something like a miracle and why in that situation was there not? Only this week I have heard of two friends who have heard they have inoperable cancer and only months to live and the tragic news of Matthew my son’s best man – his wife lost her baby 36 weeks “in utero” last Wednesday. Heartbreaking news. There is nothing one can say. Searching for intellectual answers is beyond us in such situations. And yes faith can be badly eroded by life tragedies. God seems to go silent; the lines are down, he maintains radio silence.  Hope has gone. The night and day are black. Today’s Sunday’s poem Dover Beach written by Matthew Arnold remains one of the most powerful expressions of the intensity of a loss of faith.

There are no explanations or are there? - perhaps, because the Kingdom of God is not an explanation. The Kingdom of God, as John had to learn, is life and health and peace and it is for those who desire above everything else God’s life and health and peace. Those who enter it are the shaken, the destitute, the doubtful and the lost. When John allowed Jesus to see how lost he had become in his prison cell he was perhaps closer to the kingdom than he had ever been before. When Jesus sent him the coded message, ‘Be strong, do not fear. Here is your God’ perhaps his eyes were opened to see as he never saw before, his ears to hear as he never heard before, the good news of the Kingdom. Once he got the message, I hope that in his prison cell John could at last say, like Simeon, that other early witness to God’s glory, ‘Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’

So what then is the key phrase in this week's readings? "Strengthen" must be a strong contender. It is hard, but possible, to piece together the bigger picture when our own circumstances seem to challenge the faithfulness of God. Then we can strengthen ourselves and one another. Be strong, do not fear. Here is your God’ Advent is about learning to wait strongly.

 

Advent Signs

Read John 1 GNB (paraphrase)

 

‘Before the world was created LOVE already existed.

LOVE was with God and LOVE was God.

From the very beginning LOVE was with God.

Through LOVE God made all things; 

not one thing in all creation was made without LOVE.

LOVE was the source of life and this life brought light to humankind.

The light of LOVE shines in the darkness

and the darkness has never put it out……..

LOVE become a human being and,

full of grace and truth, lives among us.’

 

Sing: ‘God so loved the world’ by John Horman* (John 3 v 16)  [*Music Bank]

 

Reflection:  Word made flesh

How do you

     flesh out
          a word,
              God;

 Cover letters

     in sinew,
          skin?

Is it possible

     to produce
          pigment
              on paper;

Or life-lines

     and laughter lines
          in script,

So that the impact

     resonates throughout
          the mists of
              time?

 

In a word,

     Yes.

          L O V E!

                                       © Carol Dixon 

 

Sing:    Love came down at Christmas (R&S 614)

 

Meditation:   Give us a sign

          ‘Give us a sign’ they said.

          ‘Some token to show
          you haven’t abandoned us, God.’
          And God did.
          He sent a baby,
          born to ordinary parents,
          in ordinary circumstances;
          a child, who grew up
          in a small town,
          in a small country;
          a man, who lived and healed
          and loved people,
          who died on a Cross
          as a sign of God’s
          immense, eternal love.

          ‘That’s not a sign,’ they said.

          That’s just a human being,
          pretending to be God.’
          So God raised him from death
          and he returned to his home in glory.
          Later his followers were filled
          with his Spirit and witnessed
          to God’s Word in the world.
          ‘That’s not a sign,’ they said.
          ‘That’s fantasy – unbelievable.
          Give us a sign, God,
          a sign we can believe in.’
          And God said, ’My Word!
          It’s just as well I believe
          in You!’

                             © Carol Dixon 

 

Sing:     I am for you (R&S 180)

 

The Coming of the Kingdom of God

An illustrated sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at Crook LEP, Sunday 17^th November 2013

"The days will come when not one stone will be left
upon another; all will be thrown down." Luke 21 v6

Heading south to see my new granddaughter on the East coast mainline to Kings Cross I swiftly pass some of England’s great churches. These spectacular historic buildings look like haunting and majestic apparitions as their towers and spires emerge out of the thick mist on dark November mornings. York Minster with its Saxon foundations and Benedictine community now a 15^th century architectural masterpiece;  St George’s, Doncaster rebuilt by George Gilbert Scott in the 19^th century; the parish church of St Mary Magdalene at Newark which has one of the tallest spires in England; the large medieval 13^th century parish church of St Wulfram, Grantham, built of Lincolnshire limestone and finally to Peterborough Cathedral, another Benedictine Abbey dedicated to St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew celebrating its 900^th anniversary. These historic and architectural significant buildings with vast spaces, filled with music reveal the human imagination at work on glass, stone, and other fabrics. The buildings are perfect stages for the contemplation of the ordered universe and the transcendent beauty of traditional holiness.

The best church I kept till last. Durham Cathedral, where I work and much admired by passengers – views from Durham railway viaduct reveal one of the photographic icons of north-east England. “Grey towers of Durham, how well I love thy mixed and massive piles, half church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot, to quote Sir Walter Scott.” But of course, the view is not just admired by train passengers with Cannon cameras, it is well-liked by people across the world, many of whom see it as the greatest Romanesque building in Europe. The celebrated vista of Cathedral and Castle set on the acropolis of their wooded peninsular is unforgettable, as is the interior of this wonderful church. For this reason the UNESCO World Heritage Site, of which the cathedral and its environs are a major part, was one of the first to be inscribed. Epithets like “Britain’s best loved building” try to capture what it is that gives the Cathedral its unique place in the affections of so many and particularly in this year when the Lindisfarne Gospels made a 3 month return to Durham. Its beautiful setting and its architectural purity, the spirituality imparted by the long history of prayer and worship certainly play a part.

These mainline churches were built as if to last for ever. They remind me of Ken Follett’s popular novel The Pillars of the Earth, set in the middle of the 12^th century. The novel traces the development of Gothic design out of the preceding Romanesque architecture and tells the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory, Priory Philip and his master builder, Tom.  But do these buildings last forever? King Henry VIII set in hand the administrative and legal processes in the sixteenth century by which he disbanded England’s monasteries, priories, convents and friaries – only the local ruins of Fountains Abbey, Finchale and Tynemouth Priories now remain. In our own tradition many of our nonconformist chapels have been demolished or converted to furniture warehouses, carpet shops, antique sale rooms and restaurants. And if they haven’t been demolished or converted to other uses they may well have been robbed of their lead - payouts from metal theft from places of worship have increased by 70% nationally and are expected to reach £5.5 million by the end of the year. One of the Durham cathedral community members, the widow of the late Bishop of Peterborough, was in Christ Church Cathedral New Zealand in February three years ago when the earthquake destroyed the spire and part of the tower – and severely damaged the structure of the remaining building. She was shaken by the event but mercifully not hurt. The Cathedral in New Zealand was deconsecrated in an emotional ceremony as it was returned to secular use. This new cardboard Cathedral has been built as a temporary replacement whilst long term options are considered.

Listen again to the opening words of today’s gospel from Luke. The disciples are admiring the splendour of Herod’s temple: ‘Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ And Jesus says to them: ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another: all will be thrown down’.

It’s as a consequence of this alarming prediction that they question him further: ‘Lord, when will these things be, and what will be the signs of the end?’ The warning of this ‘little apocalypse’ is clear: be ready, for you do not know the day or the hour’. Taken at face value, these Scriptural images make little sense to the 21st century mind. They are profoundly disturbing ones - signs in the sun and the moon; stars falling from the sky; the powers of heaven shaken and the Son of Man coming on clouds with power and glory. For most modern day Christians they bring us face to face with uncomfortable questions. How do we live with all this talk of judgement;  How can we relate to the call of the prophets that God might tear open the heavens and come down and cause the nations to tremble at God’s presence?

As we look back over the last Christian year no-one could accuse 2012/2013 of being a slow news year. In the last couple of years heads of great democracies have fallen. In France, Britain, Spain, Italy and many more countries, governments have felt the electorates disapproval of their failed attempts to shelter their citizens from economic chills. Jobs have been lost in their millions, incomes have stagnated, services have been curtailed, optimism has drained away and politics has become shrill and discontented. Some of a more radical disposition who read this morning’s gospel with end-time thoughts in mind might say it has been a decade of disaster, catastrophe, a day of reckoning, judgement day. We have had protests and regime change in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya - not to mention political demonstrations in Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, and Palestine, and the savage chemical and military slaughter of the innocents in Syria. And this week one of the most powerful storms in living memory struck the coastal town of the Philippine Islands of Leyte and Samar on Friday. It was one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall with devastating consequences.

Here in Britain over the last year barley a week passes without a street demonstration by those claiming that their faith has been insulted, or calls for new laws to curb those abusing religion as an instrument of incitement. Debate in Britain has seemed to leap back at least two centuries to an age when religion lay not only at the heart of politics but was central to the clash of cultures, ideas and the struggle for liberty and was the cause of bitter divisions. Too add to these national difficulties the Vatican issued a statement in May that credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that every year an estimate of 100,000 Christians are killed every year because of some relation to their faith.

But whatever we think of recent global events and the fear and uncertainty that they provide,  this dark and difficult passage is, let me remind you, about a building. Even the temple, says Jesus, will not last forever. When you visit Jerusalem, as I have done, and place your hands in the crevices of the western wall which is all that is left of Solomon’s magnificent and beautiful temple, and pray, you cannot help being reminded that man’s grandest designs are subject to the same law as everything else: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

To take our Gospel reading literally this morning would imply that one day, inevitably, but hopefully not soon, not one stone of our great buildings will be left standing upon another? I think that the monks who put up Durham Cathedral 900 years ago knew that while they built as if forever, it was not forever. They built for God and his kingdom; they knew from the rule they followed that his kingdom was not of this world. In this, it stood in sharp contrast to the earthly kingdom to whose ruthless power this cathedral was also a monument: the Norman conquerors. Like Herod’s temple, even the buildings that stand most powerfully for spiritual aspiration can also represent ambition, power and hubris.

I think this ambivalence is good for us. Listen to the voice of the New Testament. ‘The things that are seen are transient; the things that are unseen are eternal.’ ‘We have here no abiding city, but we seek that which is to come.’ In today’s passage from St Luke, we are faced with the stark realisation of how provisional everything is: our possessions, our relationships, our institutions, our achievements, our lives. All this, says the apocalyptic Jesus, will be swept away at the coming of God that will wind up history and bring in the reign of his kingdom. And even if we step back from the imagery and ascribe it, as we must, to the feverish, end-of-the-world milieu in which 1st century Christians believed they were living in, we can’t escape the vividness of Jesus’ teaching, its urgent summons to look afresh at things and consider what we rate as truly important in this life.

Whilst places like Durham Cathedral and our own chapels in the District and Synod look to fresh challenges and opportunities of engaging with a secular society, of how to use their buildings for community purposes and in the public interest of religion, it is good and sobering for people like me, a former URC synod Listed Buildings Advisory officer as well as Methodist property stewards and custodians of magnificent church buildings to be reminded every so often that there will come a time when not one stone will be left standing upon another. I pray that you and I never see it. And yet, doesn’t that prayer betray the possibility that I might love these stones too much, the symbol rather than what it points to, the creature rather than the creator?

The coming of God’s kingdom exposes to his just yet loving scrutiny of all our fears and longings. This means willing the one thing necessary for our happiness, for the salvation of our race, for the healing of our world. That one thing is God’s kingdom. It is the only hope we have. If we are true to the One who is not only in all things but above and beyond all things, then we shall have understood our great building aright, and shall cherish our stones all the more because of him for whose glory and kingdom they, and we, exist. And if one day tower and temple fall to dust, it is to make way for something greater, when death and hell have fled before the presence of Light and Love, and the holy city, the new Jerusalem has come, of which it is foretold: ‘I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light.’

Luke 21 v5-19

Combatants and Civilians - Armistice Day 2013

A Reflection shared by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew's Dawson Street LEP, Crook

 

 

The first official Armistice Day was held in the Grounds of Buckingham Palace on the morning of November 11th 1919. That day was to set the trend for a day of Remembrance for decades to come. Today, for many of us, the world will briefly stand still. At the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month, as for generations past, we will celebrate the armistice, when the most terrible war yet seen by history finally drew to a close. We will remember quietly and with reverence the British men and women who fought and died in that war and in other more recent conflicts. In those moments of silence as we remember our war dead we may wish to reflect on how fortunate we are to live in a country that is relatively prosperous and at peace – and how unlikely it is that we, our children or our children’s children shall ever be asked to make a similar sacrifice. And in the silence as flags are lowered, bugles play and autumn leaves swirl around town and village cenotaphs there may be a moment too to remember the civilian war dead of recent decades.

Remembrance Day is a profoundly British occasion, steeped not in jingoism but in solemn patriotism, when a nation given to pageantry and tradition honours its military dead. More subtly, it is tinged with nostalgia. The last living veteran of the Great War was Florence Green who died last year on the4 February 2012, aged 110; the last veteran who served in the trenches was Harry Patch who died on 25 July 2009, aged 111. These veterans together with their comrades of Flanders and the Somme have now gone to their eternal rest, their bravery, patriotism and that nostalgia of a sepia age have survived. Britain will still celebrate Remembrance Day. We will remember them.

War has however changed. Men still fight each other. Indeed, by the calculation of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, more than 100,000 people have died in armed conflicts over the last 12 months. But while the Great War may have been the first of World Wars it was also in a sense the last of the wars – the last major conflict in which the overwhelming majority of casualties were the soldiers who fought it (approximately 9.8 million military deaths). The balance had already tilted by the time of the Second World War. Today the ratios have been reversed.

A report by the non-profit group Action of Armed Violence, March 2012, suggested that in modern conflicts, 80 per cent of casualties are likely to be unarmed civilians. Casualties recorded in their recent report were caused by conventional military explosive weapons such as mortars, rockets, artillery and such improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as car and suicide bombs. Alas, most of the civilian dead perished not in wars between nations, but in dirty and brutal civil wars that are barely comprehensible to themselves, let alone outsiders. Today’s professional soldiers are more likely to be peacekeepers than warriors, so highly trained in computerised warfare that – unlike the cannon fodder of the trenches – they cannot afford to be lost. In modern warfare, the wrath of science has been turned on civilians, in the shape cluster bombs and landmines, drones, chemical and ultimately nuclear weapons, all designed not so much to destroy armies as to terrorise and, if need be, annihilate the civilian population that supports them.

None of this is to belittle the hi-tech soldier of today, still less those who went before him. As every year, we bow our heads to those who gave their lives for their country. But is does not dishonour their memory to argue that, in a global age, we should also remember refugees and the civilian dead of wars around the world, who died without medals, without cause and without honour. In that way we remember how dreadful war truly is.

 

Joseph – A tale for our day

A reflection shared by Ray Anglesea with the congregation at St Andrew's Dawson Street, Crook - October 27th 2013

 

 

Joseph is one of my favourite characters from the Old Testament.  His story is so graphic and attractive that Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber set the tale of Joseph to music in their now famous musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, first performed in 1968, West End, London in 1973 and later on Broadway in 1982.

The family-friendly storyline, universal themes and catchy music have resulted in numerous productions of Joseph ever since. By 2008 it was estimated that more than 20,000 schools and amateur theatre groups had successfully put on productions. And still the musical is entertaining thousands as it today tours the UK. But amongst the well- known tunes and the famous celebrities who have played Joseph, the biblical story of Joseph has an important message for our times.

Joseph was lucky not to have been killed. Envied and hated by his brothers, a favourite son of Jacob, lost to his helpless father through betrayal, the self important young dreamer, stripped of his legendary coat with its long sleeves (or many colours), was sold after a meal into slavery to the Ishmaelites.  Despite his brothers’ treachery and duplicity, Joseph rose to power in Egypt, growing in wisdom, humility and humaneness, later becoming viceroy of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. The brothers, arriving in Egypt to buy food during a famine, do not realise that the man in royal robes is their brother. After putting them through a series of trials to show that they had repented of what they did, Joseph revealed his identity and forgave them – the first act of forgiveness in literature? At the end of the book of Genesis, a set of sibling rivalry, ends on this sublime note of reconciliation.

How was Joseph able to forgive? The bible tells us. He says to his bothers: “Do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.......So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.” This proves to be the story's vital hinge.  Without it the Hebrews would not have been delivered from famine and kept safe in Egypt.  In conspiracy and catastrophe, everything has worked together for good. 

This is one of the most transformative and changing passages in the Bible. It explains how Joseph was able to free himself from the hurt he surely felt at being betrayed by his own family. Nowadays this is called cognitive behavioural therapy. Joseph changed the way he felt by changing the way he thought.

Evidently he had asked himself: “Why has God put me through this suffering?” But there are two ways of asking it, and it makes all the difference which way we do. One is orientated in the past: “What did I do to deserve this?” For what sin am I being punished?” The other is directed to the future: “What is it that God wants me to do, that I can only do here, now and in these circumstances?”

Joseph must have asked this second question often during the long years he spent, first as a slave, then as a prisoner. The answer eventually came. The moment he was taken to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams – seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine – he realised that all the seeming random events of his life were a preparation for this moment  when he was able to devise a plan that would save a whole region from starvation. As soon as he had these thoughts, he was able to forgive his brothers. His fate, he now knew, was not about them at all. “It was not you who sent me here but God.” That one thought has the power to cure resentment and banish pain.

Whenever we come close to despair, the strongest lifeline is to think like Joseph.  People who have suffered tragedy have often found meaning by alleviating the suffering of others. The grief may not disappear but it is redeemed.

Seen through the eyes of faith life is not what Joseph Heller called it; “a trash bag of random coincidences blown open in a wind.” Each of us is here for a reason, to do something only we can do. Pain and heartbreak are bearable if we can discern God’s purpose or hear, however muffled, His call.

In crisis, the wrong question to ask is “What have I done to deserve this?” The right one is, “What am I now being summoned to do?” Each of us has a task. Every life has a purpose.  We can bear the pain of the past when we discover the future we are called to make.

 

 

Ray Anglesea is a self-supporting minister working in Durham Cathedral bookshop, Crook Local Ecumenical Partnership and in the West Durham Methodist Circuit

 

Meat the Future

Sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at Frosterley Methodist Chapel, Weardale -

 

22-September 2103

 

Frosterley Harvest Festival 2013

Harvest is one of the most wonderful times of celebration in the church’s year and particularly here in this beautiful and picturesque Dale. There is just unbridled joy at the beauty of the dale in field and orchard and on the heather moors. At harvest time we thank God for all the gifts which have been given to us, those mentioned in our psalm and opening prayers this evening and more; we thank God for all the opportunities made available to us from the world and its resources. Well almost that is!

I say almost because harvest-time presents us with salutary questions about how we provide for and share those resources given to us by God, about how we care for the world and its peoples. Tonight I want to suggest some innovative and perhaps revolutionary ways in which hungry people might be fed in the future. I often feel embarrassed when shopping in our High Street supermarkets by how much foodstuff choices we have on our shelves; I think back to the time I worked in Kenya where many of my staff and in the church I attended lacked even the most basic food products. It’s not easy either having a son who is a Michelin star chef who can command a three figure sum for a taster menu/evening dinner in one of his restaurants - beautiful food of course but uncomfortable prices. And another son who owns a very successful coffee house in Durham. No wonder I need to spend time in the gym!

The workhouse waif Oliver Twist’s comment – “Please sir, I want some more,” penned by Dickens in 1838 echoes down the years and is a strap-line/advertising slogan for many relief agencies - Christian Aid, Tear Fund, Oxfam – how to feed the world’s poor who want more. The Bible Society’s summer magazine entitled “Food Matters” suggest that the world’s population is projected to peak in 2050 at between 8 -10.5 billion; the present world population is 6.8 billion so that means that over the next 40 years world agriculture will have to produce food for an extra 4.5 billion people. Of that 6.8 billion, a sixth, nearly one billion, already go hungry. Every night more than 870 million people go to bed hungry. That number is equivalent to every person in America, Canada, Australia and Europe. And as we know for those living with hunger not just in the developing nations of the world but here at home through our Food Bank Appeals, every aspect of their daily life can be affected if he or she is hungry.  Sadly, the uncomfortable truth is that we’re not able to cope with the current demand for food let alone being able to meet the needs of an increasing global population. But there are some positive and hopeful signs of progress being made in our livestock and food industries that may go some way to help feed future generations – some, it may be said, by unusual and unconventional methods – so here are two examples from our arable and livestock industries you may wish to consider tonight.

I was fascinated, encouraged even hopeful by BBC 2’s Celebration of the British Harvest shown on television over 3 nights last week. The new series followed the stories of 3 farmers over a period of 12 months - from a broccoli field farmer in Lincolnshire, a wheat farmer from Essex to a cherry farmer in Hertfordshire. The science and technology now available to these farmers to provide food straight from the field to our High Street supermarket and onto our plate was truly amazing – awesome in fact – the immense scale of harvesting 24 hours around the clock of potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, and wheat was simply astounding, even breathtaking. Harvesting on a mega scale appeared like a high-tech revolution – the cherry farmer alone had 30 miles of poly-tunnels covering his trees, he employed hundreds of migrant workers mostly from Eastern Europe and imported millions of bees from Slovakia to fertilize his cherry blossom. Futuristic farming indeed for a supermarket age! What I picked up from this new television programme was that farmers can benefit immensely from a science that is pioneering new techniques of crop/fruit production with new technological aids in the form of agricultural machinery worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.  Farming efficiency it appears is all important if the nation’s population is to be fed. Of course this creates great challenges to farmers who act as suppliers to the food chain. Add to that the competition for land and water, climate change, maintaining biodiversity and a host of other environmental issues, it becomes clear that science and technology, is the key to increasing our food production.

But if science and technology is helping to improve grain and fruit production in 30 miles of poly-tunnels and glass houses the size of 30 football pitches what about the farmers counterparts in the livestock industry? Well I said there were unconventional methods of food production and here it is. Feeding the world’s growing population is a big challenge which has led scientist in the Netherlands to create the first laboratory cultivated beef burger. The burger was reared in a Dutch lab in trays of temperature controlled pink fluid. It was given texture by tiny hooks to which each strand of artificial muscle attached itself and was dyed blood-red with beetroot juice. A lover of roast beef, steaks and BBQ’s chicken I can’t say that something made from muscle tissue from a cow’s stem cells sounds awfully appetizing, but last month that burger was brought to London, cooked and eaten at a news conference. Even the scientists said it didn’t taste all that good; not surprising since the burger has never seen a cow.  With the first bite £40,000 and a fortnight’s work disappeared into the taster’s mouth. Could there be a future time when stem cells taken from Weardale Cattle located in this beautiful North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty find their way into a British laboratory?

One of the reasons for this innovative research is a growing human demand for meat; the potential environmental damage caused by large increases in livestock production is another. Some people argue we have too many people in our world as my statistics have revealed and that’s the problem; but our world is also a world where huge amounts of food is wasted or thrown away while, as I have pointed out earlier, nearly a billion people are undernourished and go to bed hungry. Vegetarians are quick to point out that the hungry could be fed without the need for meat at all – it is estimated that factory farms kill an astonishing 1,600 animals world wide a second, often reared in conditions that are deeply troubling.  But it is true that the systems of supply and affordability of food will remain crucial whatever the new food technology.

Could it then be possible in future years that we and our children could be eating laboratory cultivated meat, a burger or lamb steak perhaps wedged in a bap made from the super wheat fields from Essex with a side dish of Lincolnshire broccoli, and that this meal could be multiplied world-wide to help feed the hungry in a campaign of food justice? –  all very well for a future dream to feed the world’s hungry but what are the implications for our Christian faith of all this possible futuristic food?

It may be an odd thing to think about at a harvest festival but food and faith are often connected. What you eat and don’t eat varies according to your religion. Dietary rules are commonplace for Jews, Muslims and Hindus – listen to comments and concerns already coming from English Football supporters about what they would eat and drink at the Football World Cup in Qatar 2020, one of the richest Muslim countries in the world.  Alcohol is often forbidden outside the Judean Christian tradition and as we all know cannot be consumed on Methodist premises. I remember Rabbi Lionel Blue once saying that in Western religions God comes to them through their thoughts and feelings whereas in many other regions he come to them through their taste buds.

Think of the Passover meal when the bitter herbs remind Jews of their ancestor’s captivity and suffering while the salt water is a reminder of their tears. We are, so they say, what we eat. Walter de la Mere turned this thought into a little ditty – “It is a very odd thing, as odd as can be that whatever Miss T eats turns into Miss Tea.” All of which makes it the most surprising that of the entire world’s faiths Christianity is so indiscriminate about food – there are no clean and unclean foods. Christianity is astonishingly easy going what its followers can eat, yet its main ritual is a simple meal of bread and wine, the one means by which the followers of Jesus were to remember him. Sharing that meal is for most Christians the way of deepening their relationship with God and with each other and an impetus for service too.

So I am not inclined to reject the scientific work undertaken from the farmers of Lincolnshire, Essex and Hertfordshire or of those Dutch scientists as unnatural or unwanted. This research may yet have a part in feeding the hungry. Public acceptance will of course be gradual but sooner or later it will come. Meat cultured from cows’ stem cells, fruit, vegetable and crops from high-tech futuristic farming methods may take decades to reach the check out but such methods are a compelling answer to a problem that world population growth poses on a similar timescale. At the end of the century there will be close to 10 billion mouths to feed!

 

Amen

An Unknown Journey

Talk given by Ray Anglesea to the West Durham Methodist Circuit Pilgrimage -

 

21 September 2013

 

In a couple of weeks time my wife and I will be taking our long-awaited holiday to North America; we are heading out to the Florida peninsular, later to the Grand Canyon, Nevada and Las Vegas for a birthday party ending in Ontario, Canada at my sister-in-law’s home at Niagara-on-the Lake. Yet we know very little about the details of the break; all we know is that we have to be at certain airports at a certain time on a certain day for flight connections. It is rather like a mystery holiday; it will be left to Ki and I how we spend the days. Although I suspect there may be a programme of sorts it will be left to us to make our own choices of what to do during the day; we will be left to make our own decisions.

Our journey through the Christian life is often likened to a pilgrimage. Setting off on a pilgrimage may be compared to our journey to America. There are often no clear detailed signs, we have to infill the details of daily life trusting that we make the right decisions, the right major choices. The various models of a pilgrimage/journey are of course endless – one can keep journeying in circles around many roundabouts; we can park ourselves in a quiet lay-by for many years: we can be on an amber hold, don’t want to journey forward, yet don’t want to stop. As I said in a sermon at my niece’s recent wedding “marriage is a joining of two people to the unknown; you do not know the road, but you have committed your life to a way, with each other and with God.” In the English playwright Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More says: "God made . . . man . . . to serve him wittily, in the tangle of his mind." We are not called to robotic compliance, but to intelligent, lively discipleship, and the Bible paints a sometimes messy picture of the outcome. This type of faithful journeying is dynamic, it involves a constantly evolving relationship with God. There is no travel plan, no detailed itinerary.

How then do we find guidance for our Christian journey? I like the story of a young missionary who was always looking for clear divine guidance. He said he had gone to work in South America because when he was seeking guidance he had suddenly seen a bar of chocolate with Brazil nuts in it. He was, therefore, clear that God was guiding him to Brazil. His sceptical friend asked “What would he have done if it had been a Mars bar?” Or the synod moderator who wrote to a minister to offer him a new post. The minister replied that he must go away and pray about it. The minister’s wife went upstairs to pack. The way that some Christians look for God’s guidance suggests that you might need to have a kind of code-breaker mentality, as if God loves setting cosmic codes or a series of puzzles for us to solve as we journey from A to B. Prayer is an essential part of finding our way ahead of course, but God isn’t hiding some vital clue until we crack the code. I like to think that guidance can be explained in this way -  God, I believe,  opens up possibilities on our journey; he is with us at every juncture of our pilgrimage journey helping us to make our decisions and then working with us to make the most of the choices we have made. Perhaps then it is worth thinking that God has a vision for us, more than a plan. Plans expect no real variation while vision allow many routes to their fulfilment.

But we do travel from A to B in faith. Like Abram we walk by faith, not by sight. Faith is a relationship, not an abstract construct. We strengthen our faith as we set our lives in the context of the Bible's overarching story."Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith Abram . . . set out, not knowing where he was going." He had no sat-nav, no daily schedule, no travel programme, no plan. Having left a settled city life, at God's call, to become a nomad, childless Abram believed God's promise that his own son would be his heir. Despite many further childless years, he kept going, his vision before him, sometimes having vigorous words with God about his doubts. This was faith. It was not merely the spiritual equivalent of following a plan, no robotic formulas, no codes, no maps.

Faith is a response to an invitation to adventure. It is not mind-over-matter blind faith, or (to quote the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass) believing "six impossible things before breakfast". Neither does living by faith involve sitting around waiting for a vision or step-by-step instructions to emerge from heaven. It is our active, informed, and loyal response to the bigger story of God's ways with the world. We nurture it each time we recognise signs of God's activity, the signs confirming that we are on the right path; and we express it, by being dressed for action, waiting to respond and do our duty even at inconvenient times.

If we are to nurture our faith, it is good to have an ample supply of faith-engendering memories.  I always find it helps my journey of faith to hear these memories, often from older people up and down the circuit, who I find have remarkable faith in God, because they have more history to draw on to remind them of God's past faithfulness. It is never too soon, or too late, to start laying down memories of God's power, shown in God's mercy and pity towards us.

This approach to our faith journey applies whether we face life in general, specific decisions, or entrenched difficulties such as ill-health, family problems, unemployment, or bereavement. Living faithfully requires tenacity, and sometimes is as unglamorous as doing whatever the next thing in front of us is, keeping on keeping on, doing the best we can in the circumstances.

We all have to start somewhere; even Abraham, the man held up to us as a model of faith, had to set out afresh each morning. So I pray that God may accompany you today on your circuit pilgrimage.