A Watery Baptism

A Baptismal sermon preached by Ray Anglesea  at St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook, 10 June 2012

Neil and Zoe-Anne, your family and friends, I welcome you to church today for your darling infant daughter’s baptism. It is lovely to have you with us: I and the church here at Crook hope you have a happy and memorable day. The morning after the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee River Pageant, The Sun newspaper headlines read Drip Drip Hurrah! Long to reign (rain) over us took on a new meaning and Handel’s water music seemed very appropriate as orchestra’s played on barges gliding under Tower Bridge. The poet laureate, Carol Anne Duffy, entitled her Diamond Jubilee Poem, The Thames, London 2012 – “A Queen sails now into the sun, flotilla a thousand proud; my dazzled surface gargling the crown,” she forgot to mention the rain! Alas, too much rain, too much water! Like the Olympic gold medallists Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsett, water runs in our blood – it is after all water, wind and wet weather that make us British! The Thames hit the news earlier in the year, the interruption of the Boat Race on the River Thames at Easter weekend reminded us that water is deep, powerful, and holds things that stop even trained athletes in their tracks. Last year, global images and terrifying footage showed tsunami waves rolling inland in Japan, and this April, Fiji has suffered severe floods. Last night difficult and relentless flooding in West Wales. Ultimately, we are at the mercy of water, not in control of it. A baptismal service as we have seen involves water. During the Easter Sunday readings we heard of the Red Sea parting so that slaves can flee captivity; in our school days we heard of the story of Noah-the-good and his animals that went into a boat - yet another one - that held multiple pairs of all living creatures. Noah and the animals got into the ark just in time, before, touchingly, God shut the door on them so that they would be safe. Like the Royal Thames pageant it then rained. In the biblical and natural world, water is seen as destructive, harmful and devastating. But in the spiritual world water has a sacramental role. The story of Noah and his family were saved through water, foreshadowing later the Exodus deliverance, the day the captive Israelites with their leader Moses made it through the Red Sea. And Noah’s flood story ended with a promise: when they were back on terra firma, God’s generous love was extended to humans through a covenant, a promise. Never again would humankind be destroyed by water. Out of the destruction, the chaos and the harmful devastation of water came a new beginning, and a new promise to last for all time. It was to be a sign — a bow in the clouds — a rainbow.   God’s judgement on human kind was tempered with mercy. God’s purpose was to enable, not destroy with water, his relationship with humans. God’s purpose is to enable human beings to flourish. That same care that locked Noah into the ark in safety would later be made visible in Jesus Christ, who did not run away in the face of threat, but stayed put, and we say in religious language – to save his people from destruction. Jesus was raised from death by the same God who saved Noah from the chaos, disorder and turmoil of the madness of water. Jesus too, you may remember from this morning’s bible reading was submerged by John in water as a sign of his identification with sinners.  And we who, with water, are baptised into Jesus’ death have been raised from the death of sin to the life of goodness. Water, which can bring death, can also bring life. Like the once in a lifetime diamond drenching of water at a London River Pageant, baptism too is a once in a lifetime event, a drenching into the flourishing love and precious beyond price diamond promises of God. Today Zoe Anne through baptism, the sprinkling of water has been made a child of God’s grace, a member of the Church; Zoe Ann has been baptised as a Christian. This ceremony has obligations foremost of which is to live the Christian life. The sign at Jesus baptism in the River Jordan was a dove descending out of the sky and a voice from heaven which said: This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, listen to him. Zoe Anne and Neil, listen - your infant daughter’s baptism this morning is a sign of God’s promise to Brooke Lillie as a Christian that he will be with her forever. But more than that, like Noah’s rainbow, that promise, God will love Zoe Ann forever. Neil and Zoe Anne – God is committed to the flourishing, well being and happiness of your family, you have embarked on this great journey of love, not only of loving each other but of loving Brooke Lillie. As parents you are going to be a rainbow sign, to Brooke of what human love is like, you are going to be the role models of what God’s love is like. You are going to be signs of love for Brooke. Neil and Zoe, you are surrounded by loving families with offers of help and support. Use them. We as a church are here to help you too, our doors are open, you have our telephone numbers, we too can provide help and support, education and teenage training. Alas human beings live in a world of good and bad and that makes our lives and relationships painful and complicated but not so with God. God will never give up on you, even if you run away from him. Neil and Zoe never stop loving each other  - you are for Brooke what human love and family life is like and can be for the rest of his life – she will learn from you, you will be her example. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.  And so it is with our relationship with God. And in all this we, as we are able, together, will do everything possible to keep our promises to love, help and support you. In this Jubilee year we should remember today that we have cause for thanksgiving the Queen of course, but equally and more significantly – God has committed himself yet again to one more human family, the family here from Hazel Terrace, Crook. And in the lives of this lovely family with whom today we join in celebration, we see the sign of God’s embracing, renewing vision of God’s faithful love.   Neil and Zoe Anne - may God bless you on your journey, and may Jacob’s baptism be a sign to live the faith more fully. Amen

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit

A Jubilee Tribute

A sermon preached at St. Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook by Ray Anglesea on the occasion of HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

It was The Spectator train advert on the Southeastern rail network from Earlsfield to Vauxhall last Monday that caught my eye – “In 1952 a woman knew her place – in 2012 she’s still there.” It was the magazine’s way of honouring and paying tribute to the Queens achievements in this her Diamond Jubilee Year. Today in our service we too honour the Queen’s achievements, her dedication, duty and service to this country and the commonwealth.

Much has happened in 60 years. In 1952 Britain was still the hub of an empire so vast that its new monarch could circle the globe alighting only on lands she ruled. In today’s world we have bade farewell to Empire abroad, the Queen has presided over 60 recessional years of deimperialisation, deindustrialisation, and de-Victorianisation. But put more positively, this also means that during the past 60 years, and notwithstanding the current economic downturn, which the Bishop of Durham alluded to in his maiden speech in the House of Lords on the 16^th May 2012, and despite the current Chancellor’s fourth policy u-turn in two weeks, Britain has become a more open, a more diverse, a more liberal, a more mobile, a more tolerant and a more prosperous society. Although Queen Elizabeth herself may not have had all that much to do with these developments, this is surely cause for some form of thanksgiving in her Diamond Jubilee year.

When the English comedy actor, film director and star of the silent films Charlie Chaplin visited London from California 60 years ago in 1952 he was struck by its affluence. “I thought England was broke,” he said, “but the whole city is crawling with Rolls-Royces, Bentley’s, Daimlers and expensive blondes.” Britain was then burdened with the lingering costs of the Second World War and the new ones of the welfare state. Not so the west end of London; the West End was experiencing its golden prime, on a single night, May 18^th 1952 the following were performing in London’s theatres, Tony Hancock, Vera Lynn, Alec Guiness, Mary Martin (in South Pacific, the year’s runaway hit), Peggy Ashcroft, Michael Redgrave, Edith Evans, Sybil Thorndike, John Guilgud, Paul Scofield, Norman Wisdom, Arthur Askey, Joyce Grenfell, Peter Ustinov and Richard Attenborough. On the other hand television was barely functioning, reaching just 4% of the population, petrol cost “four and thruppence (that 21p, kids) a gallon, one home in three had no bath, one in twenty didn’t have piped water. That weekend the Liberal party held its conference “We are determined to maintain our independence,” said Clement Davies the Liberal leader!

One of the great strengths of our culture and way of life is our new multicultural identity. Britain has been transformed into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society; and no one does interfaith better that the Royal Family, starting wit the Queen herself.  This identity may not be so obvious in Crook, but riding on the top deck of the no 44 bus service along Garret Lane through Earlsfield, Wandsworth, Battersea en route to the Chelsea Flower Show last weekend one immediately became aware of how much Britain has embraced people from all over the world. London, our capital city, has become a magnet for foreign wealth, but also for strivers from every continent. However many medals Team GB wins at the Olympics, the host city will always be the first in which every language spoken by the competitors was already spoken by its residents. 60 years ago we lived in a deferential society, The Queen’s subjects were deferential, to her, to social rank generally, to the church and her government. Sir Edmund Hillary climbed high, Sir Roger Banister ran fast, Watson and Crick thought outside the box. But even they could have little inkling of the social revolution or the economic upheavals that the next half century had in store. Our Christian monarch too has watched over a changing church, sadly the erosion of traditional social bonds and the decline of religious observance. In an age of doubt and pluralism the church has had to accommodate different theological currents whilst the Reformed and Methodist traditions still maintain a repository of great historical legacies.

Fast forward to 2012 and the sixth series of Britain’s got talent  - a television phenomenon based on the joke that we have to remind ourselves of something we once took for granted and took seriously. The demise of the old world and the arrival of the new, has involved sometimes painful adjustments. In all this change and upheaval, the quiet dignity of the Queen has provided a focus for continuing national self respect and so has assisted the peaceful transformation of our national identity.

Our sovereign was called sixty years ago in tragic circumstances to very great responsibilities. Like King David in the Old Testament, she was the unlikely child who became a monarch. Until the abdication of her uncle, Elizabeth was not destined for monarchy and did not seek it. Yet for 60 years she has served the nation with a dedication and sense of duty that is unquestioned. One might argue that the monarch embodies a vocational approach to life, lived, not as a self promoter with personal gratification as the supreme good, but as a servant of God whose role is to strengthen the whole community. That community embraces our memories and the values for which previous generations have fought and died and these memories and values unite the living and the departed.

Monarchy has ancient roots and biblical reverberations ever since Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon King and all the people cried “God save the King”. But the jubilee also gives us pause for thought. The jubilee is an opportunity to revisit important questions: what do we expect of leadership? what do we want from monarchy? And how is the reign of God expressed in our national life? Ian Bradley, a Scottish theologian, argues in a book called God Save the Queen that monarchy provides a storehouse of symbols and rituals to feed the nation’s imagination and maintain its sense of the transcendent. He believes that our rich ceremonial tradition with its feel for the numinous and the spiritual gathers up and ritualises the ‘soul’ of our national identity. Christian constitutional monarchy makes visible, he says, God’s rule and claim upon us, even in a modern democratic state. The monarch then gathers up and symbolises what we are as a nation.

And perhaps this says something important about leadership and how, according to Christian insight, it should be exercised. At her coronation, the Queen was presented with the Orb of State and told: ‘Receive this Orb set under the Cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the power and empire of Christ our Redeemer.’ All institutions, however well they serve us, are provisional and made up of mortal beings. They are accountable to the rule of Christ the King; they are set under the cross for he is a king whose throne is Golgotha. One day they will be no more, for the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdom of God and of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever. So the monarchy is not only a symbol of a temporal society but can point beyond itself to the city whose builder and maker is God.

In the Old Testament reading, we heard about the part wisdom played in the creation of the world, and which our Durham boys, Will Young and Michael Hampbell had a hand in, presenting in a musical form to the Queen at her cathedral service on Tuesday. ‘When he established the heavens I was there, when he drew a circle upon the face of the deep, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master-worker, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.’ It may not have been clear to you that the speaker is a woman, Lady Wisdom. Not only is she God’s agent in fashioning the creation; she is also the inspiration and companion of all who want to live wisely and well, who intend through life to contribute to the fashioning of the world as a good and properly-ordered place.

We could make the obvious connection between wisdom personified as a woman and the fact that both our longest-serving monarchs have been women. We could also reflect that our church is wiser and better because of the tender and rich ministry of its women. All that is good, just, wholesome and right springs from divine wisdom. As we enacted in our service this morning, like the the coronation service, the sovereign is presented with a Bible and told ‘Here is wisdom, this is the royal law, these are the lively Oracles of God’. Lady Wisdom again: ‘by me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just’.

So the Monarch, the head of our state is not just a successful partisan who has emerged out of struggles about political issues and the exercise of raw power but a human being, a woman, mother, grandmother, great grandmother with the kind of relationships with which we can all identify. She embodies the themes in our common life together which are more fundamental than this or that new idea or policy taken from her annual Queens Speach at the state opening of parliament, seated on her throne in the House of Peers; I mean the themes of birth and death, love and loss. To place such a person, as we have done, the Queen, at the heart of our life as a nation is to honour humanity above all things and above all divisive theologies and ideologies. And here in the UK we honour humanity with some very definite characteristics of the kind which bind a community together.

For a Christian monarch, the whole community which includes our own community here in Crook includes people of different faiths and none. This is because a profound relationship with God can only be developed by those who have freely chosen to respond to his call. There can be no place for coercion and contempt. It is Christian to be tolerant not because we believe so little about God but because we believe so much in the importance of the free response to God’s call which the monarch exemplifies at the Coronation service.

The Queen embodies the truth at the heart of our life as a nation that the kingdom of God and a humane society is built not by raw political power and programmes alone but by the human touch, loving and unwearied service, attention to others. Christian monarchy today embodies not a programme but a life, a fully human life, lived in the presence and calling of God who dignifies all humanity. Such a life which is open to us all is the essential ingredient, the mustard seed from which the Kingdom, God’s plan for the human race, grows.

When we come to the overall theme of the gospel, however, it is clear that Jesus’ kingship is not demonstrated in palaces and panoply, but in love and self-abasement. His purple robe is died with blood and his throne is the cross. He calls us his subjects, and invites our allegiance and our love. It doesn’t look much of a kingdom, this clutch of nobodies - the peasants, fishermen, prostitutes and tax-gatherers Jesus gathers round him, some of the people we mentioned in our Wesley Day Circuit worship a week last Thursday night.  He does not promise that if we go with him, his way will be glorious, nor lead to wealth or success. On the contrary, he foretells afflictions, ridicule and trial. Yet he invites us to be faithful unto death and to seek rewards beyond this life. He is concerned not with outward appearances but the heart, and looks there for loyalty, truth and love. He calls all who lead to disdain privilege and the pursuit of honour. He summons the powerful of this world to lay aside the seductions of glory and wealth and wash the feet of the poor, which we did symbolically at the beginning of the service by bring a towel and jug of water to the communion table.  

In the Old Testament, ‘jubilee’ is the celebration of cancelled debt and freedom for slaves. It promises a world that is more just, more equal and more free. Institutions have awesome power to destroy, but at their best they can help shape the future for good, something never more needed than in today’s precarious world, we pray that as the church moves forward into the 21^st century it will do so in a spirit of love and justice.  No doubt the monarchy will have changed much before the next time we celebrate a diamond jubilee. It will need to travel more lightly, stand back from our obsession with celebrity and image, shed the culture of deference.

But as we give thanks today for the service of our Queen over 60 years, we can, I think, loyally pray that the monarchy and indeed all entrusted with public office will embody more deeply the royal way of wisdom, humility and self-emptying. This is how Christ’s strange work is achieved in the world. Jesus comes among us not to be served but to serve. He lays down his life for us, not only teaching the greater love but living it. And whether we are simple or wise, strong or weak, rich or poor, leader or led, he speaks to us these words and summons us to make them real in our time: ‘Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, for I am among you as one who serves’.

This anniversary then is a time to speak about those things which may once have seemed obvious but which if they are not affirmed will pass into oblivion. In the words of St Peter - Honour Humanity, Love the Community, Fear God and Honour the Sovereign.

Amen

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit

A Space in Aldersgate Street

An illustrated sermon preached by Ray Anglesea
at Sedgefield Methodist Church and St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook
Aldersgate Sunday 20^th May 2012

In a career spanning nearly 40 years, Antony Gormley has made sculptures that explore the relationship of the human body to space. His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but as a place; almost all his work takes the human body as its subject, with his own body used in many works as the basis for metal casts.  His large-scale installations are well know to us, the Angel of the North made from 200 tonnes of steel rises 20 meters from a former Gateshead colliery pithead baths, it dominates the skyline, dwarfing all those who come to see it. Another Place, consists of 100 cast-iron, life-size figures spread out along three kilometers of the foreshore at Crosby Beach, Liverpool, Tranport is another work of art  suspended above the site of the most venerated shrine in all Anglicanism, the first tomb of Archbishop Thomas Becket, murdered at Canterbury cathedral in 1170. It is made up of old iron nails taken from the repaired roof of the Kent Cathedral.

It was in 2009 that Gormley conceived another space for body sculptures. “One and Other” was the title for a design installation for the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days, different people would make the fourth plinth their own - what Gormely called a living, breathing art experience. Instead of the 4^th plinth being reserved for sculptures of generals and kings or contemporary works of art, people themselves would become the living image on the plinth........ the performer, the funny, the sad, the mad and simply bemused, bored or bizarre,… and true to form a retired girl guide leader and friend of the family, Gwyneth, had her turn. 3am on a very wet morning Gwyneth was hoisted up onto the plinth in her wheelchair and when secured, performed, with flags, semaphore signs;  a semaphore being a nineteenth century system for conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags. As I said Gwyneth, 83 from Oxford and a retired school teacher, a guiding colleague of my twin sister is a one -off, lovable but quite bizarre, eccentric and well – whacky, not quite as whacky as my loveable twin sister who is to pay me and St Andrew’s a visit 1^st weekend in June!  As well as Gwyneth some 2,400 people took part in this living art experience, they were witnesses to who and what they are in that space, they celebrated their uniqueness as well as exposing their vulnerability. As Gormely said, they collectively were a ‘portrait’ of Britain.

Over the course of time, Methodists, which number some 75 million worldwide, have erected in their own countries statues of their founder, John Wesley, often on plinths, or on horseback, or a museum like that of High House, the Weardale Museum. Statues erected in thankfulness for his ministry. His ministry was to transform the lives of millions of people. Wesley remained orthodox in his theology*, but during the political turmoil and changes of the 18^th century his life had been changed by knowing the reality of the living God in his life, his love and grace, his forgiveness and peace. And because of his experience Wesley was determined to bring the gospel to the unchurched and the poor.  Wesley in all his weakness and vulnerability was to be a semaphore, a sign, a witness to the love and grace of God, a living image of Christ.

As we come to the last few days of the Easter season we find ourselves with the disciples as they prepare to stand as witnesses, living signs – in those pregnant days following the Ascension – waiting to be equipped by God’s Spirit and called forward into that place that Jesus has created - in all their vulnerability - to speak and act and live in their own unique way – the message of the Gospel – witnessing to the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. They were in Gormley’s words to become the living portrait not of themselves but of Jesus Christ. Through the specific calling of Matthias that we hear of today, we hear again the call upon each individual to be a witness to his resurrection in our own way. Familiar words form John Wesley’s hymn which we sang earlier in our service

Jesus, confirm my heart's desire,

To work, and speak, and think for thee

Still let me guard the holy fire,

And still stir up thy gift in me –

To work and speak and live for thee in my own space whether that be my home, my place of work, the factory floor, the council chamber, nursing home, my community, in my own space, whatever plinth space we find ourselves on.

It is rather appropriate that our readings today contain references to some of John Wesley’s biblical principles, namely the life of holiness and unity of the spirit.   In Psalm 1 the righteous person is praised and revealed to be one who bears fruit and who is truly blessed. In John’s letter, the holy person is shown to be one who receives God’s testimony about Jesus and who receives life from Jesus. In Jesus’ prayer in John’s gospel, Jesus asks that God would keep his disciples safe and would make them holy through God’s truth in God’s word. The second major theme of John Wesley’s life, that of unity with God and with one another, flows out of the call to love which we have read in our lectionary readings at the end of these last couple of Sundays of Easter. In Acts, the unity of the apostles is extended to include the new appointment of Matthias. In Psalm 1, the righteous person is one who rejects the company of the wicked but who, unlike the wicked, finds a place among the company of the righteous. In Jesus’ prayer in John 17, Jesus prays for the unity of the disciples with one another even as he is one with God. In the end, these two themes merge and become one, because it is in our union with God and one another that true holiness is expressed and lived. Holiness, which John Wesley defined as perfect love, unites and joins and creates community.

The English poet, Roman Catholic convert and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins poem As Kingfishers catch fire, reminds us of the full potential of each person, uniquely called, as we come to know ourselves through our lifetime as loved by God; each…

“Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—

Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father, through the features of men’s faces.”

 That full potential in each person is what St Paul refers to when he says “It is not I but Christ who lives in me,” Christ reflected in each flawed human being, the Christ who is reflected and “plays in ten thousand places, through the features of men’s faces,” and which John Wesley saw in the poor and destitute of the 18^th century, the living portraits of the men and women who stood and occupied a space on an empty plinth perhaps? Timothy Radcliffe writing in The Times Credo column last week tells the story of a young Aids sufferer he met during a mass and who came to him for the kiss of peace. “When I hugged him,” writes Father Timothy, “I thought this is the body of Christ. And Christ in him hugged me. In Christ God came and touched us.” One of the things that constantly overwhelms me and is so easy to forget in the sea of faces I see daily whether working in the bookshop, the former planning office, Market day in Crook, the folk I visit in West Lodge, the mourners by a graveside is the love of Christ reflected in these people, some of whom are the most unlikely of people, like those on the plinth, the bored, the bemused and the bizarre.

 But what is this place that we are called to inhabit? The Welsh priest poet R S Thomas sums up the present state of his own church which was often "full only of the silent congregation of shadows" and that "the bell fetches no people to the brittle miracle of bread."To be more upbeat I have just finished reading a book entitled Praying for England, which tries to re-imagine the place of the Church, our church, in today’s ‘secularized’ and global culture, and what a church’s presence in that place, that culture might mean.

We have discussed some of these issues at our Church council meetings, how we welcome and cope with baptismal families, the stranger, children and their parents who come to mum’s and toddler groups, those who are not like us, not one of us, and how the church might offer support and help to families in places of economic hardship. Messy Church and Fresh Expressions (of worship) are just some of the initiatives we have taken on board, as well as regular all age worship services which are programmed to start in the Autumn. We are trying in our own way to seek to inhabit and hold open to others the place where Jesus is.

John Wesley travelled far and wide to bear witness to God’s forgiving presence. He ignored distance, tiredness and frustration because he rejected any thought that human institutions could domesticate the love of God. John Wesley met the needs of his generation with compassion and courtesy and personal concern which stemmed from his deep awareness of God’s gracious presence with him, with all people and with all creation. Pray God that we to may emulate our founder to welcome people into that place where Jesus is, remembering that we are there at God’s initiative and invitation. Occupying that place, witnessing to the truth of Jesus Christ, exposes us and makes us vulnerable. It means witnessing to Christ’s truth in difficult places and ordinary life and so finding them holy.

Ten years ago Mark Wallinger's Ecce Homo:Behold the Man, was the first sculpture to occupy the Fourth Plinth. It portrayed Christ at the moment he was handed over to the crowds by Pontius Pilate. Vulnerable, truthful… because he came and stood in that place. We too are called there; vulnerable and exposed but at the same time (like the disciples) surrounded by the love and protection of God.

As the Easter season draws to a close, it may well be time for us to reconsider the space we occupy as we try to engage with issues of ministry and evangelism in these challenging times, so that following Jesus Christ as John Wesley did, we may bring healing and hope, God’s’ amazing love to the vulnerable, exposed, waiting and wounded in our community and the world at large.

*Methodist Theology; Kenneth Wilson, Continuum Press 2011

Acts 1.15-17; 21-end; John 17.6-19

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit

JC: LOL

A sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook and Byers Green Methodist Chapels, 13^th May 2012

My attic is full of stuff; I venture up there two or three times a year to have a clear out. Sixth form essays, sport science text books, Christmas decorations, two tents and a camping stove, sleeping bags, bags of teenage clothes, football boots, African masks and wooden giraffes as well as my late parents china tea sets and dinner services, photographs, brassware. My attic is full of stuff; there are too many boxes of memories and accumulated stuff. But what do you do with it all? What do you do for example with boxes of letters from friends and family? I had intended clearing them out but very soon I found myself reading them: rediscovering stages and experiences I had almost forgotten and bringing them alive again. And then, as I was doing this rewinding, I suddenly saw the handwriting of one of my best friends from the days I worked in Kenya as a planning officer, he was an architect working with me for Mombasa Municipal Council, and my heart leapt. At the time it had seemed like a normal letter, telling news, expressing friendship and the hope we would meet together again, but now as I re-read this letter I hung on every word. For my friend had since died, I did the eulogy for his funeral, age 51. He seemed to be speaking beyond a time and particular context. I was filling those words with the knowledge of his death and his words had a new significance and meaning. They seemed precious – words from beyond death, as if from eternity. They filled me not with grief but with a sense of hope and courage that somehow our friendship continued beyond death and I wanted to read his words again each time discovering something new. Gosh! did we really dream we really were going to build a new world; new buildings and towns in those idealistic, swinging days at the beginning of our profession. The hopes we had were much too high; way out of reach, but we have to try. The game will never be over; because we're keeping the dream alive. The game will never be over, because we're keeping the dream alive, so sang Freiheit, a German rock band in 1988.


Our Gospel for this week is like that letter but even more so. It is Jesus’ farewell words to his disciples before his crucifixion and death, when the atmosphere was threatening, time was short and every word counted. For almost four chapters from John 14-17 he speaks to them, he chose his words carefully, what to say and what to leave unsaid; Jesus’ words spiral round and round, returning again and again to themes of love and parting - his relationship with God, his relationship with these his friends and disciples and through them us. Eternal words. His longings for them, his hopes, fears and the desire that those he most loved will not be lost. Those words of love that would later hold and sustain the disciples through the tumultuous life of the early church, as they were appointed and bore fruit that has lasted through the centuries.

As is my habit I read Christ’s words through from today’s gospel several weeks ago with that initial panic of not knowing what I would speak about. But as often happens with scripture, if you give it space, if you give it time, it’s not really about what you will say but about what it says to you and how these words speak across 2000 years, speak across a terrible death upon a cross and through the knowledge of resurrection. For Christ’s words are waiting for each one of us to complete them in our own lives and the more we think about them, the more they open up for us.

And the words which kept returning to me again and again throughout the last few weeks of this most joyous Easter season were these: As the Father has loved me so I have loved you. Abide in my love. And I found myself holding on to those words “abide in my love,” as I stepped out of the car to do some visits at West Lodge, as I prepared Pentecost material for the C club/Messy Church, as I looked forward and planned surprises for my wife’s birthday - live in that love, stay with that love, hold onto it, don’t abandon it, it is why you are here.


Abide is such an old fashioned word. I can’t remember the last time I heard it used outside church circles and crossword puzzles. My grandmother used to occasionally say that she “couldn’t abide” something but she’s been gone a very long time now and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else use it in conversation.


It’s a complex word—abide. What does it mean to abide in Jesus’ love? To me, to abide in Jesus’ love is to live in it; to surround ourselves with it; to bask and revel in it; to have the opportunity to be both gently wrapped in it and to dance in it with rejoicing. To abide in Jesus’ love is to let it be our armour and our security blanket. To abide in Jesus’ love is to let it be where we seek rest and peace as well as refreshment and renewal. To abide in Jesus’ love is to know it as the solid and unchanging base of our lives in a very transitory and changing world.


To abide in Jesus’ love is to live mindfully, always aware that we are loved by Jesus’ as much as he is loved by God the Father. Think how loved that is. God could not love Jesus anymore than he does—and Jesus loves us just as much. To abide in Jesus’ love is to remind ourselves over and over and over again, as many times a day as necessary, that Jesus loves us—always and forever. I think that old children’s song Jesus loves me gets it right: Jesus loves me when I’m good, when I do the things I should; Jesus loves me when I’m bad, though it makes him very sad. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes Jesus loves me. Yes Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so. Yes, Jesus loves us. To abide in his love is to know that love, always. Dr. Karl Barth, Swiss theologian and one of the most brilliant and complex intellectuals of the twentieth century wrote volume after massive volume on the meaning of life and faith. A reporter once asked Dr. Barth if he could summarize what he had said in all those volumes. Dr. Barth thought for a moment and then said: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible  tells me so." 


To abide really means staying with, it implies notions of reassurance, permanence, stability. But our lives are often anything but stable, permanent, things in my/your life change - like moving, like changing jobs, like learning a new set of skills, like leaving behind people you care about, like leaving a church you have worshipped in, people you have loved and enjoyed, like a parting, a death: humbling experiences, that remind us of our vulnerability and the impermanence of our lives, yes experiences all of us at times will face - and yet beneath that changing surface, beneath the confusions and the anxieties, the unease and disquiet, Christ’s words to his disciples are “Abide in my love.” It is like a call to deeper level of belonging, to be in the right place, a deeper connectedness. Of course all that is around us seems to demand our attention and our time, and often seems to consume us.


Now that my neighbouring university students are back for the summer term, one thing which has struck me is how busy Durham is! Longer than normal queues at Tesco’s, in banks, coffee shops, bars and restaurants. One night last week I lay awake listening to shouts and voices, partying students, drunks and sirens, and later street cleaning lorries, dustbins and reversing delivery trucks. But of course it is not just Durham which is busy it is our lives too: lives more driven than ever before as we rush to fit in everything that is expected of us. Instant communication requires instant answers with no space for a turn around; then rushing to get the children to school; to fit in the planned activities, to arrange the logistics of the day, evening and weekends; to answer the e-mails and facebook messages, the answer phone and the mobile text messages; to down-load more information, more films, more music, more channels, more news on the hour than ever before; the workouts, the weight training, the twenty four hour supermarkets and consumer parks replacing a simple walk in the park. And amongst all this frenetic activity Jesus says “Abide in my love.” Stay with me.

Christ is calling us not to abandon the world but to find at the very centre of our lives his presence and his love. And this requires a conscious decision on our part during each day to make a place and a space for Christ. W B Yeats writes that “When the falcon cannot hear the falconer things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.”


Our lives need that centre, that still point where we are grounded, where we can listen for and discern truth. The late Brother Roger of the Taize Community in France, over and over again uses the image that our faith in Christ is like “a wellspring in the desert” and that it is from this well spring of Christ’s presence that we receive the water that will give life and meaning to everything we do. And this spring is pure gift.

Most morning at the cathedral I join in Morning Prayer. It’s a special time … quiet … a sacred time. The light floods through the east window above the altar and a simple prayer is offered. Abbot Jamison, (who is the abbot of Worth Abbey who some of you may remember from the television programme The Monastery a couple of years ago) calls this space for God “sanctuary” derived from the word sanctus meaning holy, holy space, sacred time. Sanctuary also means a place of refuge, a place of safe-keeping. That refuge is not an escape from the world but Christ’s gift to us at the very heart of the world. Jesus says: If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love… This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.” The love of Christ for us is the source of our love for the world. God’s salvation through his Spirit is for all the world – not just for our own corner of it. Love involves reaching out to people we don’t know and will never meet, and working for the good of the whole world. We shall demonstrate this love and commandment in our collections and activities this week in our support for Christian Aid.


When we hear the word commandment we tend to think about rules and burdens; about demands and requirements but this commandment of Jesus is not a burdensome one, but is rather a joyous opportunity. Love demanded or required is not true love; only love that is generously shared is real love, the love that Jesus gives and asks for.


And that is how we abide in his love, by joyously sharing the love that he has already given us with our neighbours and friends. It’s not drudgery—it is a privilege. And just as Jesus loves us all the time, so we love one another all the time. It’s a process, a way of life, not a quantifiable result. As we abide in Jesus’ love by wrapping ourselves in it, we also share it with others, and that’s how we manage to live in our sometimes painful and often difficult world. Christ’s love, received and shared, is what gets us through; it is what makes sense of most things and lets us live with what doesn’t make sense. The love of Christ, received and shared, makes life not just bearable but joyful; not just manageable but exhilarating, not just alright, but extraordinary.


In the middle of our busy lives, in thanksgiving, in humility and in awe we seek again the sanctuary of Christ and abide in his love. Pope Benedict XVl took love as the theme of his first encyclical letter. He ends that letter with this prayer: “Show us Jesus. Lead us to him. Teach us to know and love him, So that we too can become capable of true love. And be the fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world.”


Have no doubt that Jesus’ loves you. As he said to his first disciples, so he says to us: You did not choose me but I chose you. We are his chosen—we’re the ones he picked; we’re the ones he wants, whether we choose him back or not. Jesus chose us to love and to share that love with others. He chose us to abide in his love, with all that that means. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you,” he says. “Abide in my love.”


Amen


1 John 5 v1-6; John 15. 9-17


Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit

A Maundy Crucifix

An illustrated sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at St Catherine’s Parish Church, Crook, Maundy Thursday, 5^th April 2012.

Since spreading its wings in February 1998 Antony Gormley's The Angel of the North has become one of the most talked about and controversial pieces of public art ever produced. Rising 20 meters from a former Gateshead colliery pithead baths, the Angel, made from 200 tonnes of steel, dominates the skyline, dwarfing all those who come to see it. Most surprising of all was that the design model for Gormley’s Angel became the first £1m object to be valued on BBC One's Antiques Road show in 2008. 

But like most of Gormley’s work the Angel at the time of its construction aroused quite a bit of controversy including a "Gateshead stop the statue" campaign. His work is still controversial. Here is a piece, called Transport, it is suspended above the site of the most venerated shrine in all Anglicanism, the first tomb of Archbishop Thomas Becket, murdered at Canterbury cathedral in 1170. It is made up of old iron nails taken from the repaired roof of the Kent Cathedral.  

Another controversial sculpture which excited the religious press last year was this.  The Scottish artist David Mach made this 9-foot sculpture of the crucified Christ out of 3,000 coat hangers, in part, to honour the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.  The "Coat Hanger Christ," as it is being called, was on display outside St. Giles' Cathedral on Edinburgh's Royal Mile.  This year it is in Southwark Cathedral, London. My Methodist churches in Spennymoor, Sedgefield, Ferryhill and Crook Churches Together have already viewed it during my Lent services – their comments reflect that of my wife – they don’t like it!

Perhaps one of the most controversial pieces of twentieth century art is a piece entitled Victim no resurrection, a uncompromising and controversial crucifix painted some 27 years by Terry Duffy in the aftermath of the 1981 Toxteth riots (it seems astonishing that last month in Liverpool the Labour Council made a Tory grandee Freeman of the City, Michael Heseltine. He was overheard to say that walking the streets of Toxteth after the riots was one of the most influential experiences of his political life). Over the years the painting which originally sought to bring attention to the plight of the poor and black of Liverpool, now inspires a more contemporary context to Christ’s passion focusing upon issues of global importance, the victims of genocide, holocaust, slavery, torture, terrorism, tyranny, bigotry and hatred. From Liverpool the crucifix has been installed in a variety of locations around the world, Dresden, South Africa, Belfast, New York, Auschwitz, Sudan, Bosnia, China, South America, Palestine and finally Jerusalem paradoxically at Easter 2014 for the 'Resurrection'.

I caught up with the cross a couple of years ago at St Ethelburga’s, Bishop’s Gate near Liverpool Street Station, London. It seemed to me when I was looking at it that this cross is like a window into human suffering. What this cross articulated was not salvation, but a very raw scream – a scream welling up from the guts of pain and suffering. The head of the figure shakes in chaos. The left hand is flayed open as though fanning the panic, the right hand frail as though starved of nourishment. In the midst of the image, a knot of agony: dark, bruised, cut, defaced, bleeding, a vulnerable body – exposed, defaced, tangled, running.

Looking into this controversial cross I am reminded of the victims of torture, today; the victims of natural disaster, the refugee, the asylum seeker – struggling, alienated, confronting; homeless people longing for change. I am reminded of the lonely, the broken, the struggling, the elderly fighting old age, my friend dying with cancer. I was reminded of my own deepest fears. When the crucifix was hung last year in St Martin’s in the Field, London, the vicar wanted to put a question mark at the end of the title Victim – no resurrection? To seek to imply that yes, in faith we believe that all suffering is redemptive.

But as I looked at the crucifix I began to think there is something profoundly disturbing about a victim without hope. Who wants to acknowledge that? It is ugly. It is frightening. We turn away. “No Lord, I will never betray you – even if others forget you and fall away, I will never betray you.” “No, this cannot happen to you.” “What are you talking about?” the disciples ask Jesus. So what do we do? We try to make the narrative safe – to turn the horror of this death into an episode on the way to happy ever after, where Good Friday will soon lead us into Easter eggs and new life, fresh flowers in an Easter garden. Of course it struck me that Jesus did not know this narrative and neither did his disciples. Certainly he may have glimpsed a beyond – but not for sure. Tonight begins a journey into darkness – a journey made more fearful because, if we open our eyes, we realise this journey into darkness is the experience of many and can be our own journey too. It is the journey of faith, where the future is not known.As I look at Duffy’s controversial cross and that knot of agony I think of my mother-in-law soon to be 103 and the weariness of old age. I think of my terminally ill friend facing only further illness. I think of the anger of a homeless unemployed person telling me of the injustice he is facing, and what am I going to do about it? I think of the lives lost 100 year ago this month from that great ship Titanic which we remembered in our choir concert last Saturday night at The Sage.

Here is the Irish sculpture’s Rowan Gillespie’s new statue Titanica, crucifix in shape, unveiled last week in front of the new Belfast Titanic Museum. I think  of  the service men who lost their lives 30 years ago in the Falkland conflict, the plight of today’s people in Syria, Christians in Zimbabwe and Pakistan – an unexpected and sudden death on a Spring morning, a death that left the family confused, bewildered, even angry. The sudden mystery of death can seem cruel, sudden and like all deaths final, irrevocable, absurd, often savage. The world can be a contradictory place. There is so much wonder in it, so much splendour, like David Attenborough’s recent acclaimed Frozen Planet. So much enjoyment and pleasure like a good novel, the love of grandchildren, the music of Beethoven, the Beatles and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. On the one hand one is bedevilled by the sight of so much poverty which destroys human life; diseases which frustrate the happiness of thousands; hunger and want which afflicts multitudes; the threat of war and disaster and constant violence turns a garden of paradise into a valley of death. How can all this suffering, all this agony, all this darkness be reconciled with the God who claims he is a God of love, of mercy and friendship?   

And I know...... know deeply that all of us at some stage in our lives we like that bereaved family must make that journey into darkness, that journey into the unknown. Christ is in that very position on the night he is betrayed, on this Holy night. And tonight we have come once more to look to him. He is about to make that journey we most fear, to ‘the root of the scream’ on the Duffy crucifix. What does he show to us? What does he leave with us which can help us? Why have we chosen to remember this? 

Take heart! Jesus is not simply going to leave us with platitudes, and words. He is going to leave us actions – sacraments, visible signs, to help us in the darkness.

The first thing we are told is that he had always loved his disciples in this world, and he loved them until the end. The reason we have gathered tonight is that this is not past tense; this is now. We too have gathered here as Christ’s disciples and we are told, he loves us until the end. To show that love Jesus performs an action. It was awkward and controversial then for the disciples; it is awkward now. It disorientates us, makes us uncomfortable, feel embarrassed and unworthy. “Not my feet. Choose someone else’s.” Our leader, the one we respect, admire, love, look to, give authority – strips off his outer garments and wants to wash our feet. There is an impulse to resist this. “I don’t want my feet washed. I don’t want this reversal of roles.

I want my God to control things, not to serve me, not to depend on me.” “I have given you an example,” he says, “and you must also do what I have done to you.” In the face of his own death, Jesus’ action is not one of obvious defiance but profound humility. Quite the opposite of self defence, he responds to his impending betrayal and attack with an action of complete self-giving – an action so contrary to self-preservation that it disturbs us, disorientates us, perhaps makes us cry out with Peter, “Are you going to wash my feet too?” He even responds to his betrayer with love.

The next controversial action that we will remember tonight is also startling, disorientating, hard to explain. Jesus will take bread in his hands and say to us: “This is my body, given to you,” take wine and say “this is my blood, shed for a new relationship between humanity and God – my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins.”

In a very direct and radical way Jesus is giving himself to you, body and spirit, as we enter the darkness. I cannot say these words at a communion table without sensing that they reach to the deepest part of all of me and all of us. I cannot explain these actions, I don’t think any sacramental theology ever really can explain and define them or make them safe. And yet these actions do speak to us. Speak to us at the deepest level of our personhood. We must dare to live them. This is God’s love given to you. This is God’s life given into your life. This is the visible sign of the truth that will lead you through the darkness.

Perhaps at moments, we, like those first disciples, will lose sight of all of this. We will be swept up into doubt and confusion, but return again and again to these signs – even with trembling. This is the height, the depth, the breadth of God’s love. Nothing will separate you from that love. On the one hand, this seems to be the most vulnerable thing, the most exposed thing to be offered, and yet it is also the most precious gift in all the world and the one we are called to share.

This is where resurrection begins. Begins in darkness. Begins in fear. Begins in doubt. Begins in the offering of a love seemingly so powerless.

Amen

 Exodus 12.1-4, 11-14;

John 13.1-17, 31b-35

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit