Martha and Mary

Sermon preached by Revd Ray Anglesea at Howden le Wear Methodist Chapel, 21^st July 2013

 On the wall above my dining room table is this copy of a painting painted by the Spanish artist Diego Velazquez in1618. It was painted when the painter was 19 years old. The painting is called “Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus.”  Here we see not simply a kitchen maid, but a young African woman who is in all probability a slave, in a kitchen - the kitchen of the inn where two disciples and Christ have stopped for their evening meal. The painting depicts a moment in the Emmaus house before the disciples have recognized Christ; the maid looks to be in a state of arrested attention, does she have any idea who the guest is?
       

What I didn’t know is that Velazquez painted, in the same year, another painting where a kitchen maid is the subject of his painting. This second painting is entitled Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, the subject of today’s gospel reading. Velazquez realistically depicts a 17th century Seville kitchen; the foreground is dominated by the face and demeanor of a woman who we take to be a cook; she is about her tasks, hands busy beating or whisking; sea bass lie on a plate, garlic on the table, eggs and red chilies, a flagon of water or wine on the table nearby; the foods are shown prepared in ways typical of Spanish cookery at the time.
 

In the background of the painting is a biblical scene, generally accepted to be the story of Martha and Mary. In it, as we discovered in our Gospel reading Christ goes to the house of a woman named Martha. Her sister, Mary, sat at his feet and listened to him speak. Martha, on the other hand, went to "make all the preparations that had to be made."Upset that Mary did not help her, she complained to Christ to which he responded: "Martha, Martha, ... you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.^” In the painting, Christ is shown as a bearded man in a blue tunic. He gesticulates at Martha, the woman standing behind Mary, rebuking her for her frustration.
 

The plight of Martha, worried and upset, clearly relates to that of the maid in the foreground. She has just prepared a large amount of food and, from the redness of her creased puffy cheeks, we can see that she is also upset. Emotion scuds across the woman’s face. Resentment, anger, tearfulness, so near to the surface that in the next moment we imagine she might throw to the ground the bowl she holds, turn to the old woman behind her and just let rip. To comfort her (or perhaps even to rebuke her), the elderly woman behind the maid seems to point out the scene in the background reminding the maid that she cannot expect to gain fulfillment from work alone. The maid, who cannot bring herself to look directly at the biblical scene and instead looks out of the painting towards us, meditates on the implications of the story.
 

Some scholars suggest that the whole painting is set in Christ’s time; the National Gallery say that following cleaning and restoration in 1964, it is now clear that the smaller biblical scene in the background is framed by a hatch or aperture through the wall, one looks into a dining room from the kitchen’s serving hatch. Some scholars suggest that the maid in the foreground is actually Martha herself and the lady standing in the background is just an incidental character.
 

But for me the moment captured in the painting is of the kitchen maid pondering on the words of Jesus to Martha that she has heard, reflecting on their implication in and for her own life. I have every sympathy for the Martha’s of this world – who like me, I suspect, have Type A  personalities –proactive people, always on the go, impatient, can multi-task, we push ourselves with deadlines, hate delays and ambivalence, we are organised and ambitious – compared to Type B personalities, rather like the Mary’s of this world  who generally live at a lower stress level and typically work steadily, who are in the main reflective and think about the outer and inner worlds, enjoy exploring ideas and concepts.
 

And so if like me you have a Type A personality what is it like to hear the words of Jesus when you are up to your eyes with work, e-mails to respond too, gardening to do, friends to visit, visits to the gym, soup to make, minutes to write, a rota to be filled and the many household tasks  that have to get done, when what is really needed if we are to understand the gospel story is stillness and focus and attention on Jesus? Being and doing, contemplation and action. It’s a very present tension in the lives of many people, both in the church and outside, whether we lived in17th century Seville, or 21st century Howden. The problem of where our focus lies  - the balance between actively doing and waiting and stillness doesn’t go away. We are distracted by our many tasks. No time to dwell on the word – the written word, and the word that God speaks to us in the life of his Son.
 

 

In the Gospel story that comes immediately before the story of Mary and Martha we heard how the lawyer was told by Jesus to model the actions of the Samaritan who helped his neighbour. ‘Go and do likewise’ he is told.  Almost in the next breath we hear Jesus telling Martha that Mary’s choice to ‘stay and be and listen’ is the best path. Jesus himself models this tension throughout his ministry. Times of activity and engagement with crowds, healing and teaching, are contrasted with time set aside alone or with his closest followers; to listen to his father, to contemplate and pray.
 

I think it is rather comforting to reflect that the early church struggled to find this balance too. In Acts we hear the disciples voice this dissonance, ‘It is not right that we should neglect the word of God to serve at tables’. As a solution they re-structured the community, choosing some to serve at tables, while we hear, they devoted themselves to prayer and serving the word. It is interesting that those chosen to serve were chosen because they were full of the spirit and wisdom and that the decision made to create this balance in the church pleased the whole community. They knew their need for both forms of ministry.
 

In his reply to Martha, is Jesus exalting contemplation over action, or saying that true disciples leave menial tasks to others? If Martha and Mary are both being hospitable in their own way it may be better to see different kinds of hospitality competing with each other for the limited resources. Jesus commends Mary for her desire to be hospitable to his teaching. By comparison, Martha’s anxious preparation of the meal is a distraction that falls short of what, in this instance, is her sister’s “better part.”
 

Earlier in the Gospel when Jesus sent off the seventy disciples he told them to receive the hospitality they are offered as they entered people’s homes; to eat and take what is given. He also tells the disciples to cure the sick and to say that the Kingdom of God has come near.  As he comes to this home of Mary and Martha, Jesus does the same. Jesus is a guest in their home, the Kingdom of God, in the form of Jesus is beside Mary and Martha, talking to them. But Martha is restless. Jesus repeats her name, as if to get her attention and steady her. We get the impression that she is working too hard, doing too much, so much so that her resentment, like the kitchen maid’s face in our painting is overflowing, consumed by what she is doing. There is no space around or within her; so that her activity is a barrier to the kingdom of God coming close, she cannot hear, she cannot respond, she sets us barriers to Christ’s love and to ways of receiving the kingdom at that moment – she thanks that these gifts will be given to her when everything else is done.
 

So what happens when we Martha’s of the world with our varied active personalities eventually stop and listen for God’s word? How can we achieve a balance of doing and being, of being active and submissive, still and attentive. How can we make space in our daily lives to be with God? Well, if you are like me, all sorts of distractions cross our minds and generally we would not wish to be in that place because we know we will be in unchartered waters and somewhat out of control and out of our comfort zone.
 

But to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind’ is not submissive or passive, it is an active process; listening and stilling oneself requires attention and focus and desire. If we are able to still our souls, centred and listening then out of that listening and stillness and being known before God for who we are and not for what we do, then out of that will flow the deep concern for the well-being of other people and for all that is around us. That place of listening then becomes the wellspring from which we find life, not the place where we hide from it, which is good news for the Martha’s of the world. That space may be the source of great activity. But whatever comes from it, if we live from that place, we won’t be skimming through life, living at the surface but engaging deeply, with what we are about, with what is around us, and with who is around us. What you notice if you look at the original of the Velazquez painting, which is in room 30 at the National Gallery is that it is the product of a deep contemplation on life. Fish, garlic, eggs, the reflection off the glaze on the jug, as well as emotions on a woman’s troubled face, are an engagement with what is real, in that moment. If we take time to sit before God, listen to his word and gaze upon him, in the person and actions of Christ, we will find that when we pick up the ordinary things with which we have to do, engage with the people whose faces we contemplate, the activities that are on our lists, it will be with a sense that Christ is there, at the heart of it all.

Vision 720?

Last Sunday I conducted the third of Jesmond URC's services based on their Northumbrian Saints Windows, on Aiden By way of introduction I offered this little reflection, raising the question of how far our mission-orientated agenda pursued through Vision 2020 would have been understood by the Church of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

John Durell

 

Stop at the crossroads, says the prophet, and look back at the ancient ways (Jeremiah 6). Which I take it is part of what is involved in this series of  services looking through these four windows at some of the individuals who have walked the Christian way long before us.
But as we stand at the crossroads we also need to discern where the path ahead may be leading, and how we are to prepare ourselves for the way that we shall be taking. Again, I know that you are doing plenty of that here at Jesmond – and on the wider scale, all of us in the United Reformed Church are of course being encouraged to mould our church programmes into the framework provided by Visision2020.

But I’ve been wondering if we were to go back to the Church of the Lindisfarne Gospels, how our ten framework subjects might fit in with Vision720 (or thereabouts)......

1. Our first subject is Spirituality and Prayer: the Church of Aidan, Oswald and their successors would I’m sure be happy to start there too.

2.  Identity. We’ve been hung up on this one for the 40 years since we came together from our different traditions. For them, the differences between Celtic Christianity from the north and Augustine’s mission from the south had had to be resolved – and of course there had to be a winner and a loser.

3. Christian ecumenical partnerships. What I’ve just said suggests this would have been meaningless.

4. Community partnerships. Yes – but at a different level: the whole business of conversion of the king leading to conversion of his subjects suggests an essential partnership between church and palace – and no doubt with some of the tensions experienced in our community partnerships today.

5.  Hospitality and diversity. The Celtic Church was great at hospitality, but I suspect our affirmation of the value of diversity would have made little sense to them.

6. Evangelism. Yes – but they never agonised as we do over how to set about it.

7.  Church growth. Yes – though I sense they were more bothered about individuals becoming believers than they were about filling buildings on Sunday.

8.  Global partnerships. Yes, our world is more extensive – but Bede tells us amazing stories of the gospel crossing rivers, forests, seas and mountains. And as we’ll hear this evening, one nation depended on the resources of another for the gospel to be proclaimed.

9.  Justice and peace: Vision 650 was equally concerned with the needs of the poor and the freeing of slaves, and all that Jesus’s Nazareth sermon continues to demand of his hearers.

10.  Finally, the integrity of creation: and the Church that produced Cuthbert and his concern for the cuddy ducks has plenty to teach us still today – and the ubiquitous cat on the Durham Park and Ride buses (and everywhere else) says it all really.

Miracles of Love

Baptismal sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew's Dawson Street, Crook - Sunday July 7th

 

Congratulations to Bryan and Stephanie on Joey’s baptism, and Robert and Charmaine on Damian’s baptism.  It is lovely to see you all in church together with your family and friends.

 

It was reported on the BBC and in the newspapers last week that Britain is poised to become the first country to allow babies to be born with three biological parents. The historic proposal would lift a ban on IVF treatments that can eliminate incurable genetic diseases. We thank God for such groundbreaking new procedures, pioneered in one of our own University’s - that of Newcastle.  Such cutting edge practices will give fresh hope to scores of mothers, many of whom live with extremely cruel, unpredictable and devastating medical conditions. Two friends of mine have recently undergone IVF treatment after many disappointments and setbacks. Mother 1 has passed through her 12 week barrier and is doing well, mother number 2 is not quite there yet, but there are optimistic signs that all will be well. We have come a long way since Louise Brown the first test tube baby was born in 1978 and for which her doctor, Dr Edwards, received the 2010 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Louise was later to conceive a son, Cameron, by natural methods. Miracle babies indeed. Praise God for the wonders of medical science and research!

 

But all babies, whether conceived naturally or by other means are born in love and for love – as my mother would say babies bring a lot of love with them - infant baptism expresses the ultimate primacy of God’s love. God say’s to Jeremiah “before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you.” The very existence of a baby, of Joey and Damian is a gift from God, a precious person, to be loved and cherished. And just as my two IVF mothers have said yes to this gift of cherishing the unborn baby in the womb and preparing for its birth so Joey and Damian’s parents have said yes to bringing their child for baptism for no other reason but for this child to be loved by God, to be called one of his own and that it might share in eternal life. And today that love has a human face in Joey and Jack. And to these very young lives we bring our own memories of those who have loved us into life, whose lives are interwoven with ours and made us who and what we are.

 

Bryan and Stephanie, Robert and Charmaine, take this promise home with you today - God unconditionally loves you – we do not have to thrash around like that great musician and song writer Freddie Mercury in his soul-searching piece - Somebody to love – please anybody find me somebody to love! God loves you. Faith is our response to the astonishing discovery that God loves us. God’s choice of us precedes our choice of God.

 

And here is the good news. God today has committed himself to Joey and Damian – for ever and for all time “and lo I am with you always to the end of time,” as St Matthew puts it at the end of his very Jewish gospel. That’s God’s part of the bargain, that’s what’s God has promised today as part of the deal. Bryan and Stephanie, Robert and Charmaine, in the months and years ahead you will be able to draw upon more than just your own strength, your own capacity to love each other, today you have opened yourselves up to a relationship of God's love, in the hope that when you face difficulties you will be able to offer one another more than simply your own individual words and feelings.

In this relationship as in every serious relationship there will be ups and downs, moments of tension, discord. In human terms there will be nights with a crying child, falling out, tears, naughty children may have to be disciplined and sat on  the naughty step - my grandson sometimes finds himself there. There will be frustration about the lack of employment opportunities, insufficient funds and days when we just feel down, tired and bored. And with all the pressures of family life it is often difficult to make headway. But Bryan and Stephanie, Robert and Charmaine, you are surrounded by loving families with offers of help and support, sleep-overs, shopping, grandparents love giving their grandchildren back to parents. Use them. We as a church are here to help you too, our doors are always 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. Bryan and Stephanie, Robert and Charmaine, never stop loving each other  - you will be Joey and Damian’s role models of what human love and family life is like and can be for the rest of their lives – they will learn from you, you will be there examples. And in all this we, as we are able, together, will do everything possible to keep our promises to love, help and support you.

So before we complain too loudly about a world of disposable relationships, Egyptian riots, violence and the brutal murders of April Jones and Drummer Lee Rigby, dodgy banking phone deals and the decline of political trust, we should remember today that we have cause for thanksgiving – God has committed himself yet again to two more human families, the Crossley and Carr families here in Crook, and in the lives of these lovely families with whom today we join in celebration, we see that embracing, renewing and hopeful vision of God’s faithful love, a God who will never let you go. 

May God bless you on your journey, and may your child’s baptism open your eyes to live the faith more fully. Amen

 

Colours of Pentecost

Ray Anglesea outlines the worship theme followed at Howden Methodist Chapel in Weardale on Pentecost Sunday May 19th

“Colours of Pentecost” was the theme of this year’s chapel celebration as friends and members gathered for their annual Pentecost Service which included a Service of Holy Communion.  During a colourful ceremony and power-point presentation candles were lit under the Pentecost Flame tree, the congregation wore Flame hats and waved fiery red Pentecost sticks to the sound effects of wind. The Lord’s Prayer was said in several different languages, the music of Thomas Tallis’s “If you love me; keep my commandments,” provided an introit and John Rutter “I will sing with the Spirit” the anthem.

White was the original colour of a Bank Holiday/ Whitsun weekend; often children in earlier days would wear white during their town’s Whit Walks - based on the practice at one time of newly baptised members being received into the church at Whitsun.  Today the colour has changed, Pentecost is now coloured red, red: red for fire, red for heat, red for the flames hanging over the apostles' heads that first Pentecost, red for the burning bush and pillar of flame, red for the fiery cloud at the giving of the law on the holy mountain and red  for passion and death.  

But there a gentler more cooler language to the Spirit too. St John speaks of the new birth in ‘water and spirit' and of how the Spirit is a spring of water that wells up to eternal life.  In John's account of how the Spirit is given to the disciples, it happens in the upper room where Jesus had washed their feet and taught them the meaning of love and service.  And that in turn recalls how the wind or spirit of God, ruah, hovered over the face of the deep at creation and gave it shape, order and consciousness.   This is the language perhaps of ‘blue' rather than red, Aquarian rather than Arian, watery rather than fiery.

Green too is a colour of Pentecost; 50 days after Passover it was a harvest festival.  In that harvest of the promised land, slaves, orphans, strangers and widows were expressly given a share. St Paul speaks about the fruit of the Spirit, growing in us the harvest of love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness - the qualities that alone can change the world.  Pentecost is nothing unless it is about a world being renewed.  We proclaim and live out the word and works of God in all the rainbow's colours.

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

Transfiguration: A Tale of Two Stories

A sermon preached by Ray Angelsea at St Andrew's Dawson Street LEP, Crook - 10-Feb-2013

It's only fairly recently that the church has begun to commemorate the transfiguration of Jesus on the Sunday just before Lent. We usually associate it in the calendar with the festival in August. But here we are, before Easter, celebrating, commemorating this story in Luke’s gospel, in a way which, at first, seems rather puzzling. But if you think of it, the effect of hearing and seeing the story of Jesus' transfiguration this morning - just before Lent - has the effect of framing the whole of Lent between two parallel stories, like 2 bookends holding Lent together. The first story is a story of Jesus going into a lonely mountainous place to pray; Luke always adds more detail than Matthew and Mark. He is attended by his three closest friends: Peter; James; and John. It is a story in which Jesus, as he prays in solitude, enters into a mystery so great that His friends shrink from it and have no words for it. So at the beginning of Lent we have Luke’s story of the transfiguration. At the end of Lent there is a second, similar story of Jesus going to pray alone in the garden of Gethsemane. The same story? Yes, but how very different. In both Jesus prays alone; in both there is a revelation of the Father; in both those three friends shrink in terror.

To frame the season of Lent in that way is to tell us that our Christian life, our journey is always, so to speak, lived between those two stories, between those two bookends, those two moments of revelation and prayer. In the first story, on the mountain of transfiguration, as the Gospel tells us, Peter, James and John see the veil lifted. They see, as it were, that behind and within the human flesh and blood of Jesus there is an unbearable light and glory: a radiance better than any light on earth. They see that in His flesh and blood nothing less than Israel's God who had once disclosed himself in another transfiguration moment at a burning bush and spoke his sacred name; they see, that Jesus’ flesh and blood – is soaked through with a glory and brightness which is the work of God. They see that His human nature is shot through with God's own freedom.

And then at the other end of Lent the second story - they see again that radiance, that glory that brightness and liberty, but not on a Mount Tabor where the transfiguration is alleged to have taken place but on another mountain, Golgotha, where this glory and radiance is shot through and made real as Jesus accepts the pain of the cross for the love of humankind. They see that the blinding power of God is exercised not in crushing and controlling, regulating and policing, but in the sacrifice of love. Perhaps it begins to make sense that we live between those two visions, these two stories, between prayer and revelation; it’s popularly called the circle of life if you like, that song from the Lion King says it all – “and it moves us all through despair and hope, through faith and love” – come and listen to my choir sing it at our Sage Spring Concert March 17^th!

We can't understand and make sense of that first story – that glorious brightness of God unless we see that God's power and splendour is entirely focused on that sacrifice of love on the cross on that first Good Friday – a death which sets us free and gives us life. And we can't understand the darkness and the terror at the end of the second story, at the end of Lent, unless we see that in the depths of all that pain and suffering is the glory of God, made visible in the resurrection of our Lord. And that, of course, is why St John, in his Gospel, where there is no story of the transfiguration, refers to the crucifixion as Jesus’ final act of glory –  Jesus’ glory is made visible on the cross – O with what rapture do we gaze  on those glorious wounds, we sing in Charles Wesley’s great hymn.  And therefore these two stories, the dazzling freedom of God, the total weakness of God, are bound together, woven together, in one vision, in one person, in Jesus Christ.

Living between the tensions of these two stories told before and at the end of Lent might teach us something of the vision that we need to have as Christians. Things in our world are dark, Golgotha events threaten us, they are painful. Tsunamis hit Southeast Asia, earthquakes in New Zealand, fire and floods in Australia, war in Syria and North West Africa, economic uncertainty here in this country, famine and disease in the horn of Africa,. And perhaps at a more personal level, a sudden death, a terminal illness, a pointless tragedy. What do we do, like good Christian human beings in these dark and difficult times? We panic. Or when things are going well, things are successful; a lottery win, a new grandchild, foreign exotic holidays, a promotion - what do we do, like good Christian human beings? We gloat. But if our lives are lived indeed between those two stories, then both panic and gloating should be impossible for us. Things are dark and difficult. Yes. The world is a terrible place, full of the threats of violence. Yes. But somehow living between these two stories, the story of glory and sacrifice we begin to look into the depths and see how the freedom of God is there even in failure, even in crisis, to bring life and love, to overcome evil with good. David Attenborough illustrated it beautifully in his recent Africa series on television when he describes the Resurrection plant. Scorched to death, blown around the Sahara for decades, the plant still carries seeds whose green blade rises again when rain returns. There is hope and possibility. Out of something dormant, parched and withered new life emerges. And like the resurrection plant we start to look for the vision of glory and sacrifice in one another, the quiet transforming revolution that is at the heart of the gospel, of people overcoming despair and sacrifice with positive optimism and good wishes, bringing new sustainable hope and life.

And this freedom to bring life and love into our daily lives is the quiet revolution of God’s grace and forgiveness in action. In this quiet revolution, against all the odds, light begins to shine, glory is revealed. In 1955 Mrs Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama decided she was tired of giving up her seat to a white person on a bus, but her small act of defiance became an important symbol of the civil rights movement. A few days later after her arrest a mostly unknown church minister, Dr Martin Luther King was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the rest is history. Desmond Tuto says that the biggest defining moment of his life came through an unbelievable simple act of courtesy he witnessed when he was a young boy of nine. “I saw this tall white priest in a black cassock doff his hat to my mother who was a domestic worker.” The priest of course was Trevor Huddleston, a dedicated anti apartheid activist. That pure act of kindness and respect help produce one of our world’s greatest Christian leaders.

More transforming light begins to shine. In May 2008 a sixteen year old school boy Jimmy Mitzen was murdered by another teenager in a bakery in South London. Speaking about the killer, his mother Margaret Mitzen refused to respond with hatred and anger. “I don’t feel anger because I know that it was anger that killed my Jimmy and I won’t let anger ruin my family.” Two years later the Mitzens in 2010 announced that they were buying the shop where his son died to open a Cafe of Good Hope. The cafe, “a community hub,” serves sandwiches and handmade chocolates made by Jimmy’s older brother, who is a trained patissier; two other brothers also run the cafe and the profits go towards charitable projects. In a similar vein, Susan Retik, who was expecting her third child when her husband David was killed in the 9/11 attacks, refused to be eaten up by grief and bitterness, and Susan with another 9/11 widow established a foundation dedicated to transforming the lives of thousands of Afghan widows who are some of the most poorest and destitute women in the world. “Beyond the 11^th” the two women say, is an initiative that transcends acts of hate with acts of humility, acts of despair with acts of ingenuity and acts of fear with acts of self-reliance

These are remarkable stories of love, peace, forgiveness. These stories tell us not only of how glory and sacrifice are blended together, woven together in Jesus. They tell us how to understand His church and His world, how in our discipleship we have to weave together the vision of glory and the call to sacrifice. Black armbands and champagne are equally only a part of the story. The full story is told in the mystery of Jesus Christ when that glory is fully opened up, its depths revealed and, in the very darkest moment of Jesus' self loss and self sacrifice, all of that infinite power which is God's is directed like a laser beam, to the welfare and the healing of you and me and the very weakest and most forgotten of God's children.

I love the specsavers television adverts, the Scottish farmer who shears his sheepdog instead of one of his sheep, the three astronauts who arrive at provincial airport to collect their luggage from the conveyor belt, the couple who arrive on the deck of an aircraft carrier looking for the duty free shop.  I think sometimes we Christians need spectacles to see the Christian life in new ways. And what we need to see, to observe however fleetingly is God's presence at the heart of all human life, enacted in and between these two stories. Christ playing in people like you and me, in ten thousand human faces, a world charged with the grandeur of God as the poet put it.

On Holy Island Lindisfarne which will be in the news later this year, they talk of ‘thin places' where the world is more transparent to the presence of God. This I think is how Luke wants us to read his transfiguration story: as inviting us to see creation as ‘thin', sacramental, alive with the divine, and in all circumstances a vision of beauty and grace open to us all. If you ask me what religion is, I say that it is a new way of seeing, a way of being aware that makes the ordinary extraordinary and the commonplace nothing less than a miracle. And as Luke points out, God knows and cares, because he has walked that way himself. And living between these two stories is a new way of seeing and interpreting suffering, entering into the world's pain as God himself does, entering that circle of life. To see and live and pray like this, that is transfiguration.

Amen 

 

Bumping into Glory

A sermon given by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook

Sunday 20^th January 2013: 3^rd Sunday of Epiphany

 

During the wedding rehearsal, the groom approached the circuit superintendent with an unusual offer: "Look, I'll give you £1000 if you'll change the wedding vows. When you get to the part where I'm supposed to promise to 'love, honour and obey' and 'be faithful to her forever,' I'd appreciate it if you'd just leave that out." He passed the circuit superintendent a £1000 cheque and walked away satisfied. On the day of the wedding, when it came time for the groom's vows, the circuit superintendent looked the young man in the eye and said: "Will you promise to prostrate yourself before her, obey her every command and wish, serve her breakfast in bed every morning of your life, and swear eternally before God and your lovely wife that you will not ever even look at another woman, as long as you both shall live?" The groom gulped and looked around, and said in a tiny voice, "Yes," then leaned toward the circuit superintendent and hissed: "I thought we had a deal." The circuit superintendent put a £1000 cheque into the groom's hand and whispered: "She made me a better offer!”

At a different time and in a different place we heard this morning of another wedding, the   Wedding at Cana, taken from the second chapter of John’s Gospel. It is an event which begins Jesus’ public ministry. There was music, there was dancing, there was food, there was wine. Everyone was with the bride and groom on their wedding day. It was such a happy celebration.

John who tells the story of the wedding feast at Cana is without doubt a brilliant literary craftsman. He uses a series of intimate dramatic encounters, mini dramas if you like, often called in church speak “signs,” to enable the listener to be drawn into a dramatic arena in which actions as well as words speak to us. In short, in this Gospel (which we read at the conclusion of our carol service) we hear those not-to-be-forgotten words “the Word became flesh.” John in his gospel will speak to us through the flesh, flesh to flesh, through all the five senses. This is the Gospel in which we will see Jesus hungry and thirsty, weeping, touching the eyes of the blind man with the spit of his mouth and the soil of the ground; confronting the crowd who want to stone the woman taken in adultery. He will kneel down and write with his finger in the dust. His feet will be anointed with costly fragrant oil and Mary will dry them with her hair. Jesus himself will wash his disciples’ feet. We will see a sword piercing his body and blood and water flowing from his side, and later Thomas will be asked to place his hands in those wounds. This is a Gospel which invites us to see, touch and taste the presence of God in the midst of the suffering of our world. The divine will be made present down here in the sweat and dust of real lives.  

So John starts the public ministry of Jesus in a backwater, nondescript village wedding.  He is present in a wedding feast, in the ordinary happiness of a family event, in the music, the laughter, the turning of Palestinian plonk into a beautiful rich mellow sauvignon red. This, according to the events of the day, is when Jesus reveals his glory, his first sign. Sadly, as it turned out, very few people noticed what happened, let alone saw any glory. The servants knew where the wine came from; the steward knew it tasted good, but not its origin; and the bridegroom seemed blissfully ignorant of everything. Mary and the disciples knew, and believed in Jesus, but that was it.

Of course we can read this wedding story at various levels, it is the set epiphany-tide gospel reading, we hear it every year, the third day points to the resurrection of Jesus;  the wine represents the abundant generosity of God; Jesus attending a mega party with “the wrong sort” of people upsets his opponents and give his critics ammunition;  instead of sin and rule breaking, over-eating, over-spending and over drinking Jesus saw possibilities and abundance. And the Cana wedding also points to the time in heaven when all will sit with Jesus at the “eternal banquet prepared for all those who love me,” as I reminded the mourners at my mother-in-law’s funeral last Friday.

This gospel story is well known to us. But what I would like to talk about primarily this morning in this little word “glory,” because here at this wedding breakfast Jesus’ glory is revealed. The word glory was frequently used last year when the London 2012 Olympics brought stories of sporting triumph, often against all the odds, of gracious athletes such as Sir Bradley Wiggins, Sir Chris Hoy, Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah performing in spectacular settings. Glory was reflected in 29 Gold medals. In the bible on the other hand  the psalmist sang of "The heavens telling the glory of God" (Psalm 19.1); "the whole earth is full of [God's] glory" said the seraphs whom Isaiah saw (Isaiah 6.3). “Glory to God in the highest,” sang the angels to the shepherds. In a theological prologue, John summarises his whole Gospel: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth" (John 1.14).

Isaiah tells of God's irresistible urge to scoop his people into this extravagant revelation of divine glory. Writing when political upheavals foreshadowed freedom from the Babylonian exile, his excitement was barely contained: kings would see the glory, as God vindicated this tiny, exiled nation; worn-down exiles would be a crown of beauty in God's hand, a royal diadem; their ravaged homeland would be called "Married", "My Delight is in Her". The details are historical; the enduring message, the continuing story is that God's glory is revealed when God acts among his people.

Paul's echoed Isaiah's message when trying to order worship in an immature and irrepressible church: God pours out his blessing with abandon, and reveals his glory among his people, who are open to the Holy Spirit working among them. The initiative is entirely God's, and even the exasperating Corinthians see, and themselves reveal, God's glory in Jesus Christ, the head of the Church.

But I can’t help thinking that it was in a backwater village that’s God glory was revealed, where the "wonder of his saving presence,” was made manifest, was made known - as our opening prayer puts it. And yes John picks up Isaiah's imagery of marriage's heralding the dawning of the messianic age that comes in Jesus Christ, but the context was not Isaiah's international stage, but this village called Cana situated 7 kilometres north east of Nazareth. It is in the lowly small details of human life that God’s glory is revealed. And this perhaps might allow us to rethink our concepts of what it means for heavenly glory to be revealed. Jesus' glory revealed on earth was modest and unassertive. It was a costly glory; Michael Ramsey identified it with Jesus' utter self-giving to the Father, which breaks the power of human, sinful glory. And here’s what we have to remember, to take on board from this story. The crucial thing at Cana was not that everyone was wowed by something spectacular, but that the disciples believed in Jesus. The seven signs that John recorded teased and disturbed people enough to raise questions, but, for glory to be revealed, they needed to be met by faith. Thus, near the end of his life, Jesus said to Martha: "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

And yes we can glimpse, bump into glory in our day-to-day lives if only we would open our eyes. I opened my sermon with a joke, the same joke I used for my eldest son’s wedding two years ago. Amongst the lace and roses, the extravagant hats, Elgar and champagne, speeches and dancing, the dreams and tears of two people hopelessly in love I saw something of the glory of God, a epiphany moment if you like, a glimpse of God, a bumping into God. Something of God’s glory was revealed that day in that stone flint church and the opulent trappings of a garden marquee. And yes we do not have to be in church to bump into God, to glimpse God, we can do so sharing a meal with friends, watching a film (I can recommend the wonderfully film Quartet starring Maggie Smith, Bill Connolly and Tom Courtney, directed by Dustin Hoffman), just right for you seniors!

We can somehow get a peak of a greater love and reality all around us when we see something beyond the material world, you may call these moments “sacred” joyful, sad, inspirational, melancholic, awesome.... like...................receiving an undeserved smile from a child, weeping over a broken relationship, gazing at the stars on a dark night, sipping a cold beer on a summer day with nothing to do, listening to a Mozart opera or Barbara Streisand, singing at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, that final Sunderland goal feeling inspired by a new product, holding the hand of a dying loved one, standing at an open grave. Life is packed with moments of God-ness, epiphany moments. And because the world is an ambiguous place we so sometimes miss these God experiences because we are so aware of the darkness and evil that we see or that we hear about on the media.

St Augustine sums it up: "The presence of his glory walks among us, if love finds room." For those at Cana with eyes to see and hearts open to love, the revelation of Jesus glory was life-changing. It can be the same for us when God's glory is disclosed in the everydayness of life - and suddenly our world “is charged with the grandeur of God” as the poet Manley Hopkins has it. We are in the Epiphany season of glory revealed in Jesus Christ. Rarely is this glory revealed blindingly, as at the transfiguration which we shall celebrate in a couple of weeks; but it is there for the seeing, when suddenly we glimpse, as though through a crack in the ordinary into heaven, a miraculous foretaste of the fuller revelation of glory to come (John 17.24).

Then our world is charged with glory, and Cana's simple marriage-feast takes on a messianic meaning, as God rejoices over us as a bridegroom with a bride. Dare we believe that we will see the glory of God where we live and work? Can love find room? Perhaps I should leave it to the closing scene from the widely acclaimed film Les Miserables where in the convent the spirit of Fantine leads Valjean peacefully in to heaven with these words “Take my hand and lead me to salvation; take my love for love is everlasting, and remember the truth that once was spoken - to love another person is to see the face of God.” Amen

1 Corinthians 12.1-11; John 2.1-11

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

 

Memory’s Treasure *

November is a remembering month. We remember our war dead; it is a particular sad occasion for my family; my sister’s nephew Peter, 21, was killed in Basra in 2011 and buried with full military honours in his local cemetery in North Wales. I together with my wife (a day-carer at St. Cuthbert’s Hospice, Durham) will attend the Cathedral’s annual November hospice remembrance service for those who had died during the year and previous years. The cathedral is generally full.

I struggle most of the time to come to terms with the death of my parents who died some years ago, and close friends who have died during the years. Our remembering embraces all people, those with faith and those who had great faith, those we call ‘the faithful departed' or, in the words of that clever theological catch-all, ‘those whose faith is known to God alone'.  And it is about me too, because death, far from dissolving the relationships that have formed me in this life, exposes, sometimes with merciless clarity, their true nature and meaning.  

In the church’s diary at the beginning of November, the Feast of All Saints (November 1^st) and the lesser know next day the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (2^nd November)  - commonly known as All Souls – remind us that the church here on earth is not the whole picture of the Christian family.  What we live in and with here, and sometimes have to endure here, is but the tip of a vast iceberg. Our small Methodist and URC chapels are but just tiny outposts of the one great communion of saints. We need this sense of proportion, the recognition that we pray and struggle in the context of that “huge number impossible to count of people from every nation, race and tribe and language” not only of every place but of every age, a family of the living and the dead. So in this month of remembering, remebering the war dead, the death of friends and family, how do we remember them accurately without the distortions sentimentality brings to memory by idealising the dead and romanticising our relations with them?  How do we love them in the truth of what they were and what we are?  And how does this affect the way we go on living with our memories, our grief, our aching and our hope? 

Prayer I find is important and helpful.  This is not because we believe that God's mercy can only be triggered by our intercession, but because it is our life task to hold in our mind and heart those who are given to us through kindred and affinity, and as friends, colleagues and neighbours.  This task transcends the boundaries of life and death.  It matters to us that we should know that we shall not be forgotten, that we leave behind some trace of ourselves in the memories and experiences of those with whom we have shared our lives.  So it matters that we do remember in prayer those we no longer see, the dead whom we remember in love and truth.  It matters to the dead. It matters to the living. 

Love and truth belong together in our knowing of one  another, and both belong to the way God knows us. St John says in his first letter: ‘beloved, let us love not in word only, but in deed and truth'.  This, he tells us, is how God loves us in Jesus Christ, in whom ‘deed and truth' meant self-emptying, his life poured out for us on the cross.  For the resurrection of Jesus is to raise and transfigure our entire human history - not just that part of the story that belongs in this world, but all that follows it, unimagined and unknown as it is.  That is to say, our dying is as much a part of this as our living, and the dead whom we remember this month are as known to God and precious to him as we are.  To love in truth is always to try to love from God's eternal perspective.  So to remember the dead truly is to see them enfolded in God's everlasting love, to know that in him all the fragments of human life are gathered up: nothing is lost and all in the end is harvest.

This November weather, the shedding of leaves and the dying of the light are their own autumnal commentary on the transience of things.  Mortality is in our thoughts: this annual shedding of leaves reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  This recall is necessary for our souls' health.  Yet for all its impassioned cries for mercy and help, we would still want to give thanks, to give thanks for Christs’s resurrection.  To fix our hearts and hopes on the risen Christ is to place life and death in their proper perspective.  It's to awaken to the tasks of living and dying in as authentically human and Christian a way as is possible to us. To look death in the face, is both to find comfort in our grieving, and renewal for ourselves to go on living and blessing God for the gift of being alive.  

Perhaps we shouldn't ask how others may remember us when we are gone, with what thoughts they will light candles and pray for us. I am sure it should not be that we achieved some idealised, heroic, goodness: we know our own brokenness and failure too well.  But we can dare to hope that it may be with thankfulness that in our faltering way we were faithful unto death, that we touched the lives of a few others, that we were blessed to know love and to give it; and that our goodbyes were bathed in the light of Easter faith, as we are welcomed to our eternal home. 

November then, the month of Remembering, challenges us to take our faith seriously, and to ask what human life is about and what are the true gleams of glory to be celebrated in human lives; it is a time too to remember our own mortality, our frailty and failure. Death tears at the net of human belonging, of loving relationships, of heartbreak and heart ache. But to believe and trust in “the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection to everlasting life” is to trust in a life, a grace and a communion, born of a victory over sin, evil and death itself. And when we remember that creedal statement the light of Easter breaks open the dark November days.

 

 * From Love’s Endeavour, W.H.Vanstone (1923-1999)

 

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