Easter intercessions

Intercessions 14 April 2013

Led by the Reverend David Moore

On this second Sunday after Easter I remind you that women were prime candidates to be the first Apostles - they were first to see the Risen Christ - but the world at the time was not ready for them!

May I also remind you that our preacher today, Wendy Carey, was the first woman local to Milton Kerynes to be ordained in the Oxford Diocese.

Let us pray:

Mysterious God, hidden in creation and revealed in Jesus, we have waited patiently and earnestly for the Easter Season - the days when we approach again the open grave and discover for ourselves, not that it is empty, but that Christ is risen.

We believe. Glory, glory
Christ is Risen.
Glory, Glory, glory

Jesus the Christ, as we focus on Mary Magdalene the first person to know that you were alive, and even though the words ‘Christ is Risen’ is like honey upon our lips, we also carry with us the shame and regret that Mary herself become a byword for sentimentality and immorality and that her degrading continues to shadow our faith community.

We ask you, the Risen One, to burst open the graves within us this day, so that as women and men together, we may honor you by truly honoring each other.

Help each of us to grow, free us from all that holds us back, egg us on with renewed supplies of courage, humility, ingenuity and grace.

We believe. Glory, glory
Christ is Risen.
Glory, Glory, Glory

Risen Christ open the graves which exist within our own community at Cornerstone, free us from all that constricts, that the ecumenical flame may burn with renewed freedom, disposing of self interest - increasing diversity and delight. May this Church be a place of discovery, gladness and welcome for all people.

We believe. Glory, glory
Christ is Risen.
Glory, Glory, Glory

Open the graves which exist within our world, that we may harness and express the grandeur and intensity of your purpose for all people.

At this great Season of Liberation, it is in sadness and shame we whisper our prayers for Syria, for Palestine, the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, remembering also those in poverty, hunger, caught up in warfare, the shame of the arms-trade, debt, bankruptcy, repossession. We know deep in our heart that our levels of comfort and reward feed off the injustices which others suffer.

Risen Christ as you hear the echo of our voice in your empty tomb, remind us again that you are not there but alive and active in the world.

We believe. Glory, glory
Christ is Risen.
Glory, Glory, Glory

Most earnestly we pray you to fill in the graves we currently dig for future generations - through our senseless and willful misuse of the planet.

May the Christ, the one who rises, rise among us and within us, so that as individuals and as a community, we may discover both hope and actions to contribute to the future, that we will learn to live sustainable lives of imagination and joy.

We give thanks for the dogged persistence of Friends of the Earth, the Soil Association and the great tapestry of ‘green’ campaigners. Keep us faithful in small things but persistently hungry and willing to do more.

We believe. Glory, glory
Christ is Risen.
Glory, Glory, Glory

For the sick within our community at Cornerstone; for all of those whose life and well-being weighs heavy upon our hearts; we remember the trauma at the City Counseling Centre and the distress within the Bereavement Counseling Service.

Risen Christ you greeted the grief-stricken Mary and turned her life around; affirming her as the tower of strength she already was, be with all those in need a Tower of Strength at this time, especially we remember all those who will bury their dead this week.

We believe. Glory, glory
Christ is Risen.
Glory, Glory, Glory

Amen

Who are you, where do you come from, and what are you doing here?

14th April 2013 

Acts 9.1-20 and John 21.1-19

The Reverend Wendy Carey

'You must give us your testimony'. Those words were enough to strike fear into a rather retiring High Church Anglican like myself. The circumstances in which they were spoken intensified the anxiety.

It was 1992 and I was in the second year of part time theological training at Queens College, Birmingham. The topic for the residential study week end was Christianity in multi-ethnic Britain. We students were spending the week end staying with families who had come to Birmingham from overseas; and the programme for Sunday was to attend worship with our host family. My hosts were originally from Jamaica, had been in Birmingham for about 20 years, and were Methodists.

But this was the Sunday in the month when they accompanied their Minister to his other. pastorate - as one of the Chaplains of Winson Green Prison. And this Sunday the service was to be led by the Church of God of Prophesy. Before the service their pastor came over to welcome the seven or eight students, their host families and one of our tutors. 'Who are you, where do you come from, and what are you doing here?' He asked. 'We're theology students' we replied. 'Then one of you must give us your testimony.'

Why did all eyes turn to me? Possibly because I had already accepted the post of Assistant Chaplain at Woodhill Prison, although the prison had not yet opened. To confirm the expectation, the Tutor said - 'I need to hear a sermon from you Wendy, and it's a long way to Milton Keynes.' So for the first time in my life I stood up to give my testimony, with virtually no preparation, and for the first time spoke in the Chapel of a secure male prison.

I spoke about three verses from Exodus, concerning God's call to Moses:

But Moses said to the Lord, ‘O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.’

I linked Moses dramatic story with my own less dramatic one of events that had brought me to that Sunday morning in Winson Green Prison.

This morning we heard as our readings two dramatic stories of conversion, forgiveness and sending in mission. In order for them to reach the pages of the New Testament, each private individual's story, of Peter and Paul, those two great shapers of Christian faith and practice, they must have originally been given as testimony. In some of Paul's letters he tells some snippets of that testimony, and the way in which his experience of God had shaped his life since his conversion. Both men's stories continue in the pages of Acts.

Two stories, quite different in their geographical setting, their details and in the events which led up to them. And a third and different story, one which had already influenced the shape and culture of Peter's and Paul's lives - the story of Moses. Yet all these stories, different in their content and details, have essential elements in common. In each we find God, God encountered as Jehovah, or God encountered in Jesus Christ, meeting a person in the course of their daily life. And in that encounter, all that they have been, have said or have done up to that point is part of the meaning of the meeting. Each one, Moses, Peter, Paul had asked of God at some stage of their life 'Who are you?' Then, in those dramatic encounters, experienced, in the wilderness at mount Horeb, by the sea of Tiberias, or on the road to Damascus, God had in effect said to Moses, to Peter and to Paul, 'but who are you?'

Each encounter involved some kind of forgiveness or restoration. Because the question 'Who are you?' involves an examination of all the events that has brought the person to this moment. And for each of those men there was a stain on their past life; Moses had killed an Egyptian and hidden his body, Peter had denied three times that he knew Jesus while he was being tried - just as Jesus had predicted he would, Saul, who was to become Paul, had persecuted Christians - those who followed the Way. Underlying the encounters was the question 'Where have you come from?' What are the events and attitudes which have shaped your life up to this moment?

And then the encounter becomes both dramatic and amazing, for there is not just acceptance, forgiveness, conversion from God, but there is commissioning, sending, giving a task. 'What are you doing here?' And even more importantly, what will you do? Who will you become? How will the rest of your life which follows this significant encounter with God be different from the past which has brought you to this day, to this moment?

And the stories which must initially have been given as testimony - 'see what The Lord has done for me!' told to individuals or to small groups of people, were spread through the Jewish and Christian communities, and shaped our lives as Christians. The First Epistle of Peter tells us:

'Always be ready to make your defence when anyone challenges you to justify the hope which is in you. But do so with courtesy and respect. '

You must give us your testimony. Each one of us has a story to tell. It is unlikely that many of us will have stories to tell as dramatic as as those of Moses, Peter or Paul, but there may be some among us who do have dramatic and significant things to tell. And how we tell them may vary greatly. We may want to be thoughtful about who, we tell our Christian story, and how we tell it. Most of us try to tell our story through our lives, words and actions, and we often, like those very human and flawed men, Moses, Peter and Paul, fail to tell it, or tell a different story than the one we are hoping to set out as Christians.

But God does not let go of us, with him there is mercy, says the Psalmist. God knows who we are, and where we have come from, and God knows also what we are capable of achieving, and supports and trusts us to achieve it.

Who are you? Without self knowledge, a genuinely objective assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses, we can neither properly make our confession, nor achieve our full potential, as human beings or as Christians.

Where do you come from? Moses, Peter and Paul became the people they were, not despite their chequered history, but because of it. We too are made the people we are because of the whole of our personal histories - even the difficult bits. We need to learn the lessons of history, not only the lessons of our personal history, but of our time, our culture and of our faith story. As we recount the stories and sayings week by week in our Bible readings, we understand how we come to be here, in this time, in this place, and in this situation.

What are you doing here? In other words, what is your mission? What purpose has God for you? The stories of Moses, Peter and Paul have their meaning in the fulfilment of the individual tasks given to each of them by God. For some of us, the answer to the question 'What is God asking of me?' may seem very clear, to others the answer may be uncertain or difficult to define or act upon. But each of us is asked 'What are you doing here?'

In the Newsletter there is advance warning of this church's Annual Meeting next Sunday. It is not just individual Christians, but Christian communities that must answer those questions; Who are you, where have you come from, what are you doing here? It is for churches, and for the universal church to tell the world their answers to those questions. There is a lot of routine business to get through at an Annual Meeting, but it is also an opportunity to ask and to give some answers to those questions.

Who are you, where have you come from, what are you doing here?

You must give us your testimony.

Where’s Gamaliel?

Low Sunday 2013 

Acts 5:27–32 and John 20:19–29

The Reverend David Moore

When we were coming up to retirement, 12 years ago, Dorothy and I thought long and hard as to what sort of house we would require in order to live a fulfilling retirement. We decided the minimum requirement would include a house with an upstairs and a downstairs loo; a house which was walking distance from a local shop and a property in which either of us would be comfortable to live alone.

We found such a house and the Methodist Ministers Housing Society purchased it, with us contributing 13% of the cost. It has two bedrooms, the second one doubles as a study. It is a modest house and it suits us well. I built a studio in the garden and there is a garage into which no car has a chance of entering. It is also a good place to live, with neighbors we both like and trust.

However, if we were Housing Association or Local Authority tenants I may not be sleeping so comfortably in my bed at night. I speak of the second bedroom tax!

But this is nothing new - in 1993 the year before we came to Milton Keynes the same song was being sung by the John Major Government. Here is the opening paragraph of a letter I sent to a Government minister and all the MPs in Bradford, where I then worked.

I am outraged at our Government’s latest invective. Selecting lone parents - in reality single mothers - for the latest round of castigation is obscene. .... I am also outraged by the mediocrity of the response of opposition parties.

The bedroom tax is but a continuum of the scapegoating attitudes ever present in class-driven politics. Should you think I am straying too far from scripture I invite you to take a second look at the Bible Reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

You will recall the reading from the Acts ended at verse 32.

This touched them on the raw and they wanted to put him to death... 

the passage continues ...

...But a member of the Council rose to his feet, a Pharisee called Gameliel, a teacher of the law held in high regard by all the people. He said Men of Israel, be very careful what you do with these men. Now my advice to you is this: keep clear of these men, for if what is planned and done is human in origin, it will collapse, but if it is from God you will never stamp it out, and you risk finding yourself at war with God.‘ 

Today we might say that Gameliel was viewing the bigger picture.

During the last ‘World War’ when the bombing of Germany and England was at its height the Rt Revd. George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, spoke out against the British policy of the carpet bombing of German cities - bombing which was primarily aimed at industrial working class areas of Germany. Bell did not get an easy ride - either from his Archbishop or from Parliament - but Bell was made of tough stuff - he was seeing beyond the immediate - his eyes were upon what it means to be civilised at a time of war.

A part of our high calling is being civilised and equitable in times of constraint - we are called to witness to the generosity of God ... the one who is light years beyond any possibility of penny pinching.

If only there were such effective voices in our land today, voices to speak to a government which now appears to be totally out of touch with the lives of ordinary people but which seems hell bent, not only on asking the poorest to carry a disproportionate share of the cost of the present financial plight, but also implying they are part of the problem.

Back to My house. If I were forced to downsize to a one bedroomed house - I cannot begin to imagine the real cost - books, furniture, paintings, tools, sculptures, clothes, studio. Never again being able to invite a visitor to stay - be it our children, grandchildren or friends. Nowhere to make sculptures. Yes, I also speak about the meaning of being civilised!

So where is our Gamaliel today? Who is willing to speak to power about truth of modesty? Where is the champion? The Church of Scotland, the Baptist Church, the United Reformed Church and the Methodist all made a comment this week ... I applaud their effort but the trouble is it had no real teeth! No practical dissent, no action.

How many people do you think there are who are in real danger of being forcibly relocated and have no platform from which to be heard? Relocated ... now there is a familiar word ... remember it?

In 1970 the book The Discarded People depicting the relocation of black South Africans from valuable development areas to more remote areas.. A few years later the priest/author Cosmas Desmond, was forced into exile and was to become one of my closest friends in East London. I conducted his memorial service just a year ago! He was the author of The Discarded People.

The Bantu Homelands Citizens Act - one of a string of Acts by the legitimate South African Parliament, compelled all black people to become a citizen of the homeland that responded to their ethnic group, regardless of whether they'd ever lived there or not, a process which also removed their South African citizenship.

For Cos Desmond this was an issue of Human Rights, it was about building a Civilised Society, this is why George Bell raised his voice during a war for the enemy about carpet bombing.

Or again going back even further .... The British Government in 1960 adopted the Parker Morris Building Standards which legislated housing to be built upon standards compatible with ‘healthy living’. Air, light, space.

The Margaret Thatcher government removed those standards and today more and more of our fellow citizens live in less and less space. Builders with Rabbit Hutch mentalities! Not only that, but the pouring of much of our income into home ownership has been part and parcel of the financial crisis of recent times. Banking and House building are close cousins!

Is there no balm in Gilead? Can we choose other ways of living? Are we bound forever to a treadmill designed by bankers? Or, as Gameliel put it, ... be careful for what you wish for ... only that which belongs to God truly lasts.

My religious heritage is Methodist which came into being with John and Charles Wesley in the 18th century. No more than 20 years after his death the growing movement began to splinter into a range of denominations all claiming Wesley as their spiritual inspiration - each carrying, as it were, their own particular flag. When these denominations eventually reunited in 1932 a prayer by William Younger the President of the Primitive Methodist Church, concluded with these words:

the oneness of our irrevocable decision (is to) to labour together for the salvation of the world

To labour together for the salvation of the world! ....... Not the salvation of their souls, not an assurance of a place in heaven - the great endeavour was the salvation of the world - civilisation, mutuality, compassion, community, support, strong and weak finding common purpose, shared joy.

Listen to these notes from Wesley’s Journal:

Bath, Wednesday October 1st 1783 All my leisure hours this week I employed in visiting the poor and in begging for them. Having collected about fifty pounds more, I was able to relieve most of those in distress.

Letter to Ebenezar Blackwood:

To Lending Stock	2	0	0
Brooks, expecting daily to have goods taken for rent	1	0	0
To Eliz Room (a poor widow) for rent	0	5	0
Toward clothing for Mary Middleton and another poor woman almost naked	0	10	0
To John Weaver, a poor weaver, out of work	0	5	0
To Lucy Jones, a poor orphan	0	2	0
To a poor family for food and fuel	0	5	0
To Christopher Brown, out of business	0	2	6
To an ancient woman in great distress	0	2	6
Distributed among several sick families	0	10	0
	5	5	0

I am, dear Sir, your affectionate servant

Letter to Dorothy Furley. Sept. 21st 1757 

.... in most genteel religious people there is so strange a mixture that I seldom have confidence in them. I love the poor; in many of them I find pure, genuine grace unmixed with paint, folly and affectation.

So whether I like it or not, even in retirement, I consider myself as a manunder orders! The Methodist Movement flows from the same spirit that moved Bishop Bell to speak out against indiscriminate bombing at a time far more precarious than ours today and perhaps that is why I can never and will never be at rest.

Those of you who read the local newspapers may have seen the headlines about the City Counseling Centre based at this Church. To the undiscerning reader it may have given rise to believing that in some way we (this Church) gave the MK Bereavement Service its marching orders. We can of course simply say that it is nothing to do with us - but so are the poor of the world. Clearly something somewhere has gone off the rails and I hope some representative of ‘us’ might post a message on the notice sheet and or website, expressing at least concern for those who feel trampled upon by recent events.

My difficulty is that resurrection really means ALL of life - we can be polite, mind our own business or we can believe with Bishop Bell and John Wesley that life is far too precious for silence in such matters.

A friend from Stoke on Trent whom I have known for over 50 years, has lived most of her adult life with a severe mobility disorder. Now retired, she works as a volunteer at a local Advice Centre. Last Wednesday was her first day back at the Centre after the Easter and after April 1st - she says the Centre was totally overrun - 100s of emails; queues out the doors - people in panic and confusion, simply not knowing what to do.

Come unto me all you who labour and are laden and heavy laden. Are we meant to believe that ? Are we meant to act it out? Or again: ‘What you do to the least of these my brethren you do it to me?‘
 
What can we actually do about the the changes in benefits? I am sorry to say, very little. A majority of MPs at Westminster have voted for them and some came into effect on April Fools Day! One thing we can do is let our MPs know just how we feel as Christians.

It is not difficult to get email addresses for MPs through the internet - I am not going to spoon feed you!

Postscript

Since this sermon was delivered Margaret Thatcher has died. There is no doubt that she was a remarkable leader. As a politician, most people I knew and worked with, disliked or despised her.

Easter Day Meditation 2013

Acts 10:34-43 and Luke 24: 1-12

Fr Jonathan Ewer SSM

31st March 2013

But peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

In every Jewish home at the Passover meal, the youngest person present asks the question ‘Why are we doing this? What’s all this business about unleavened bread and bitter herbs?’ And the father of the family, presiding over the meal, gives the answer, ‘We do this because our ancestors were slaves in Egypt, but the Lord freed us from slavery…’ and so they go through the story in detail. And the detail is important, because their Passover meal is a re-living of the original Passover event. For they were there, in the loins of their ancestors, as they quaintly put it; they were there in the bodies of their ancestors; they were there as slaves in Egypt and they were there at the crossing of the red sea. They were there in the desert and at the foot of Mount Sinai. They were there as they trecked around the desert and eventually made it to the promised land. They were there, in the bodies of their ancestors. So every year they re-lived the Passover event. They didn’t just remember it, they re-lived it symbolically, in their homes at this meal with unleavened bread representing the manna in the wilderness, the bitter herbs representing the difficulties of the journey, and the wine poured out representing the blood of the covenant.

During this last week, the whole Christian community – well, apart from the Orthodox who have got the date wrong again – apart from them, the whole Christian community has been re-living its Passover. Last Sunday we re-lived the entry into Jerusalem with palm branches and crosses welcoming the Messiah into the place of Peace – which is ironically what Jerusalem is thought to have meant: the place of peace. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday we listened to the stories about Mary anointing Jesus feet with costly ointment as if for burial, about the Greeks from Galilee wanting to see Jesus, which prompts Jesus to say ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified’, and about the terrible moment at the supper when Jesus knew that someone there was going to betray him… All of these stories led us relentlessly towards the events of that Thursday evening, the last supper, the foot washing, the agony in the garden. ‘Not my will but thine be done.’ The tension mounts as we go through Thursday night, watching the encounters between Jesus and the Jewish and Roman authorities, and watching his disciples slinking away through fear and bewilderment.

Then the crucifixion itself. On Good Friday we heard the passion story from St John’s gospel, and then there was time to pray in front of the cross, until 3 o’clock when it was all over and there was an emptiness – like death. Yesterday, Holy Saturday, was a nothing day, an empty day, which we filled with doing things to prepare for Easter, busying ourselves the way that people do when they are in grief.

Then last night or early this morning, there was the lighting of the new fire, the blessing and lighting of the Easter candle, which we brought into church. “The Light of Christ: Thanks be to God”.

At Willen we sang the Exsultet, an ancient song which tells the Exodus story of the pillar of fire which led the Jews by night through the wilderness to freedom – eventually. Going the through the Red Sea is linked to baptism so we renewed our baptismal vows and celebrated our washing for freedom, our being brought into the Body of Christ.

All of these events this week have been for us a re-living of our Passover event – and it is a reliving, because in the nature of symbolism we have been baptized into Christ, made parts of his body so that what happened to that body happens to us: we share in his crucifixion, we share his death, his descent into hell, and we share his rising from the dead.

The Jews re-live the Passover, the escape from Egypt; we re-live our Passover, our escape from slavery – the slavery of sin. It isn’t simply remembering past events: we are re-living stuff that has happened to us, and keeps on happening to us, so that we are different people – and will keep on being made different people.

There is another point about this re-living business: the Jews looked backwards – to the Exodus, and beyond that to Abraham, to see the events which made them the people of God, the events which made them who they are. They march forward indeed, but whenever they get carried away and forget to look back to their formative events, they go off the rails and get into all sorts of trouble. A prophet has to be sent to get them back on track.

It is the same with us. We look back to the events of Holy Week, the events that made us the people we are. We march forward, of course, but we know perfectly well that whenever we forget our origins, whenever we get obsessed with moving towards the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, we get off course and a prophet arises to make us stop and re-think. That applies to us as a church, it applies to us as a nation, it applies to us as individuals.

In our own lives we can see the hand of God only when we look back. We can see where we have come from, we can see the important stepping stones, the decisions we made or which were made for us, we can see how we’ve been led. Faith is an assumption that God will keep on leading us, a belief that the direction will be more or less the same, a hope that he is drawing us nearer to himself. And it is faith, not knowledge. We don’t know where we’re heading, we don’t know where we’re being taken, but in faith we go on, tentatively, trying things out, but confident that we are being led – to the promised land, to the kingdom of God. The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty. People who say they know what God plans for them, people who say they know the will of God, frighten me a bit. Fundamentalists of any kind frighten me. They are absolutely they are right, and everyone else is wrong. It is a short step from that illusion to violence and oppression.

We are a people of faith, not knowledge, a people of hope, not certainty. Every little we are given to understand of the will of God is provisional, enough to work with for the time being, but not the whole truth. And every bit that we think might be the truth we test by checking it with what God has done in the past. We can see the pain – and can identify with the suffering of Jesus, we can see also the moments of wonder and amazement as the presence of God is revealed to us – and we can identify with the Resurrection.

If we can see where God has been leading us, if we can see the stepping stones, if it all makes sense – God’s sense, that is, not ours necessarily - then we have the courage to continue. That is being brave, that is being radical, going back to our roots in order to check out what we are about to do now.

Holy Week enables us to re-live the passion with Jesus. It takes us back to our roots, to the crucifixion in which we play a part, not simply as observers of an event 2000 years ago, but as participants in the mystical body of Christ. We are there in his body. Holy week takes us back to our roots so that we can see where we come from, and that tells us who we are, and where we might be going. And the Resurrection of our Lord seals the deal: slavery to sin is over, everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name, as St Peter said. The kingdom has come near, and we are given glimpses of the truth, the truth that shall set us free. Our response is not a triumphalist certainty, to lord it over others. No. Like Peter we are amazed at what has happened.

And whereas Moses commanded every Jewish family to re-live the Passover every year, Jesus, our new law-giver, commands us to re-live our Passover – every year in Holy Week, yes, but also every week, or even more often than that, every time we celebrate the Eucharist – which is what we are doing now.

So today especially, today of all days, as we come to share the Eucharist, let our eating the holy bread feed our awareness that we are one body with him, the body tortured, crucified, and resurrected. And let our drinking the holy wine slake our thirst for the things of the new covenant, for justice, for peace, in the new Jerusalem, the city of peace. And with Peter, let us go home, amazed at what has happened, amazed at what has happened to us, and amazed at the possibilities God is leading us into.