Pentecost 2013

19 May 2013

The Reverend David Moore

Acts 2.1-21 and John 14.8-17

Prayer for the Week:

God of fire

you flow through our history

leaping from one generation to another;

releasing captives, affirming the poor,

welcoming outcasts,

inspiring visionaries.

You speak with the accents of all people.

We acknowledge our selective hearing.

As a child I grew up with a mild form of epilepsy and a significant speech disorder. I stuttered and stammered and, as a consequence, spoke extremely rapidly in an attempt not to stutter. This was self-defeating in that I then added spluttering to my stuttering! You might say ‘a vicious circle’.

At that time forming relationships with girls was more than a bit tricky! Fortunately somebody had spotted me long before I noticed her! When in due course I ‘got the message’ the welcome mat was already in place! When I first walked Dorothy home and met her mother .... well ... as soon as I had left, her mother would say to Dorothy “what did he say?”

But there is more ... once a year the young people from the Church Youth Club which I attended would conduct an evening service for a congregation of up to 250 people. The Minister would plan the service and Club members would share in the announcing, praying and the preaching. The sermon was made up of three five-minute slots. The Youth Leader and Minister sorted out who did what.

I was 17 and I knew that I wanted to take part. I attended the planning meeting. The Youth Club leader began by saying “Well David, it is no good asking you to say anything, nobody will understand you, you can help with the collection.” It was like a knife through my heart! All the jobs were allocated and we left. Do you know the cartoon character who has a permanent cloud over his head? Well that was me!

Fortunately not all history is in continuous, non-reversible straight lines! On this occasion the person chosen to do the final part of the sermon was taken ill a few days before the event and I immediately volunteered to deputise. There were no other volunteers - I saw to that - so the job was mine.

So, it was with fear and trembling I climbed the pulpit steps. Sixty years on I can recall the emotion, the steps beneath my feet, the feel of the white painted handrail. I took a deep breath - bit hard on the end of my tongue to moisturise my mouth and did it - without one verbal glitch. My mother’s eyes were almost popping out of her head with pride. I was completely exhausted! And so it was that I started preaching. In the pulpit I was fine, out of the pulpit I was still rubbish!

At first I imagined the ‘freedom of the pulpit’ was the result of some sort of direct line from God, a divine version of a fairy’s wand, which somehow supported and enabled me to preach without stammering .... BUT much, much later I learned something even more wonderful - that standing up before people and preaching involves a different area of brain activity to that of everyday conversation. So what might that mean for my religious view of God?

Looking back to that first pulpit ‘event’ I do not think in terms of God’s ‘finger‘ directly energising me, but rather I considerate it in terms of recognising the ‘Ancient of Days’ - that which breathed shape into all life, including human DNA.

Suddenly I am engaged, not with a capricious God who may or may not choose to act/help but rather I am tied into all human history .... so that now wherever you or I may come from, at the most profound level - at the level of deepest personal identity - we are all one. ‘One’ not as sinners but as human beings - marked with genetic code.

And this, to my mind, may be what occurred on the Day of Pentecost - disparate people finding a common identity, an identity way beyond any of their wildest imaginings or hoping. When strangers meet and converse - whatever their native tongue - there is always the potential for a ‘homecoming’, for discovery, for recognition, for mutuality, for new forms of collective wonder, a new spin on human history - the future can be opened up. So, my desire to remain in the European Union is total and is theological - I seek to affirm the deepest aspect of who we all are.

The Pentecost power I speak of is not the power that makes war and spills blood - just the opposite - it is the power to find common cause with strangers and enemies; the forming of unfamiliar friendships, discovering the new harmonic of ecumenism and internationalism.

Some of you will have heard me speak before about the remarkable man Archbishop Helder Camara - his Diocese was in the poor City of Recife in Northern Brazil. Camara was a constant thorn in the flesh of the Pope, the Cardinals, but mostly to the Brazilian Generals who ran the Junta for 23 years.

Last week a friend, Roger Williamson, wrote me a note about the day he met Dom Helder Camara .... it was a note scribbled while curating an exhibition in Brighton. (Any passing visitor to that exhibition would have no idea of the profundity being penned in public).

Roger, now retired, spent all his working life with International Peace and World Development agencies. This is what he wrote in his note to me:

“I met him (Helder Camara) in 1986 and particularly wanted to talk to him about the death of his assistant, who had been killed, not least as a warning to Camara. I said that the story of the young man’s funeral was very moving. In the middle of the service Dom Helder went across and embraced the man’s mother - he said “It was a perfectly natural thing to do.” Yes, perfectly natural, but not very Bishop-y”

I asked him if he felt guilty because of the young assistant’s death. He said “No, he made his choice, he knew what he was doing, “I said “Yes, but he was killed partly to warn you.” His reply was ”He committed his life to the poor and there is no better way to die than in the service of the poor.”

I am sure that you, like Roger, will find these words incredibly moving - might they not offer us a real, honest, way into the Pentecost narrative? How different nationalities, different cultures, different interests, can find common cause, form new common identity. But to form a common identity means we must all also let go of something, misconceptions, false assumptions, self-interest?

The faith stories, as handed down to us, come as jewels, puzzles, conundrums, invitations - as life stories. The trouble with using stories like that of Helder Camara is that, for me, it inevitably puts me on a collision course with the dominant motifs of our contemporary political life - values which do not encourage me to embrace and cherish the poor, or to dream of building a common wealth, of discovering ways of holding our greatest ‘treasures’ in common.

If nothing else, the multinationalism of the Day of Pentecost raises questions as to how we treat the ‘outsiders’ in our midst. There are members of this congregation who had no option but to flee their homelands; this congregation has members from diverse Christian traditions and ambitions. But we are all here together - either we engage or we bypass each other. If we fail to grasp the fundamental undercurrents of our life together, I fear we will have lost or squandered the pearl of great price - that which should be cherished above all else.

Pentecost 2013 - the scribbled note from Roger reminded me afresh that choosing to prioritise the poor is not a priority for the majority of our parliamentarians. Do we raise our voice or do we remain silent?

Maybe it was the fact of being ‘beyond the pale’, of not being the ‘main act in town’ in terms of the political establishment, that was the very thing that gave Pentecost such a memorable OUTCOME.

Some time later today find ten minutes to get out your Bible and read the concluding four verses of Acts Chapter 2 - the emergence of Fresh Expressions - not only prayers and songs - but practical sharing. The Pentecostal imperative, it would appear, requires economic change - a strategy of sharing. Now there’s a thing!

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.

Lent 1: Temptation in the Wilderness

Luke 4.1-13

Sermon by the Reverend John Bradley

17th February 2013

Jesus' temptation in the wilderness follows immediately after his baptism. The wilderness is a place of purification where nothing can live for long. Jesus ate nothing for forty days and at the end of that time he was literally beginning to starve to death. If most of us ate nothing for forty hours we would say we were starving but after forty days without food, all the body's reserves of fat have been burnt up and the body starts digesting its own organs. That is a medical definition of starvation. So Jesus was in an extremely vulnerable state.

Why did Jesus teach us to pray that our Heavenly Father would not lead us into temptation? What loving parent would deliberately put temptation in the way of their child like a bowl of sweets on the coffee table with a sign saying 'don't touch!'? But suppose you had designed a toy that was meant to be indestructible; you might well give a prototype to some boys and say "see what you can do with that!" That's the difference between temptation and testing. Part of the expectation of Jesus' hearers was that just before the glorious Day of the Lord came there would be the fiercest time of testing, the darkest hour before the new dawn. For Jesus this darkest hour came when he was at his physical weakest. In the dry, lifeless wilderness he encountered the Devil.

My headmaster, J W Harmer, was an authority on religious education. He wasn't good at remembering our names but when he taught RE he had the habit of firing questions at anyone he thought wasn't paying attention. "Who is the devil?" he once asked, "The boy behind Jones". "No, sir," said the boy, flustered, "it's not me!" The Old Testament has three elements which become one in the New Testament. The subtle snake, the twister who deceived Eve in Eden is the first to challenge what God has said. 'Did God say...?' The right answer was "God said it, I believe it; that settles it!" but Eve used her own intuition instead. The second element is the Accuser, the Satan, a title more than a name. He appears in the book of Job where he is given divine permission to put Job through his darkest hour. The Satan is not wicked, just the Chief Prosecutor in the Court of Heaven. The third element comes from the superpowers which bring about the eventual destruction of Israel, especially Babylon. The overwhelming characteristic is pride and the demonic power is called the Beast. Later, especially in the book of Revelation, it is applied to the Roman Empire. The one who Jesus encounters in the wilderness has all of these three elements. 'We wrestle,' wrote St Paul, 'not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, spiritual forces of evil.' It is with this timeless enemy of the People of God that Jesus struggled in the wilderness and we struggle now.

At his baptism, Jesus had heard the heavenly voice saying "This is my Son; with him I am well pleased". But what does it mean to be the Son of God? The three temptations can be seen as three alternative ways of being God's son. In his starving state, the flat round stones in the wilderness began to look like fresh warm loaves of bread. If he was the Son of God through whom the world had been made, surely it would be easy to turn a stone into bread and satisfy his craving? Should he meet people's physical and material needs? He did it when he fed the 5,000 and when his disciples got an amazing unexpected catch of fish. He could go around the world meeting people's needs and be the most popular provider ever. But people would keep coming back for more. After he fed the 5000 some started following him just in the hope of more bread and fish. If he had just healed the sick and fed the hungry why would the rich and powerful have crucified him? They would have been pleased that he was keeping the peasants happy. But then he told the crowds to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. He announced the arrival of God's new kingdom where the world would be turned upside down, putting down the mighty from their seat and exalting the humble and meek. The mighty didn't like that and so conspired to do away with him. He set his course for Jerusalem, the city of peace which had become the maelstrom of oppression, knowing all that must happen there but the first temptation was to be Christ without a Cross.

Then came the temptation of seeking political power. Many people have set out on the road to political office with the aim of making a better world but have been corrupted by the power they acquired. That doesn't mean that no Christian should go into politics but it does mean that political power alone cannot make the world what God intends it to be. When people began to acclaim Jesus as the Messiah, they expected him to take political power, today Israel and tomorrow the world. But when Jesus was on trial before Pilate, the representative of political power, he said "my kingdom is not of this world; if it was, my followers would fight."

Finally came the temptation of dramatic acts which nobody could explain or reproduce. Sometimes unbelieving Jewish leaders would ask him for a sign, a miracle to convince the sceptics that he really was who he claimed to be. Jesus always refused. His mightiest act of all, his resurrection, happened without human witnesses and the first to see him were not Pilate and Herod but women whose testimony in that culture was generally disregarded.

How do these temptations affect us today? We might think that all we have to do to fulfil the commission of Christ is to feed the world, educate the world or even heal the world. But the task is not complete until we have made Christ's disciples. It is not that the Church is a membership club whose main purpose is to make more members but that trusting in Christ is the way to life in all its fullness.

We may not hanker after world domination (!) but it's easy to daydream about suddenly acquiring unexpected power or wealth. If you do the Lottery, what if the deep voice from the cloud said "it's you!"? (but it's not you or you or you!)? Some Lottery winners would say that their sudden wealth has brought them more problems than solutions. When I was a boy, my parents gave me a Premium Bond. It's never come up in 50 years but it could make me an instant millionaire. Such daydreams are a subtle temptation; giving attention to what most probably won't and would bring their own problems if they did! 'Solid joys and lasting treasure none but Zion's children know'! What Jesus heard at his baptism was a declaration of his Father’s love, a love bond which sustained him every moment of his life. A love bond cannot be proved by empirical experiment; to try to do so is to distrust the relationship. There are two love bonds which are fundamental to my life and neither can be proved or disproved by double-blind placebo trials. Both are sources of constant amazement to me. For each there was an event which changed my life. I asked for something I didn't deserve and received far more than I could ever imagine.

In Torquay, South Devon, alone in my room, in April 1966 I prayed that Jesus Christ would become Lord of my life and direct my way in his way. I thought of my life as a car and I asked Jesus Christ to take the steering wheel and direct me in the way he wanted me to go. I had been trying so hard to live a life that was good enough to please God and finally realised I couldn't.  I didn't feel any different but from that time onwards I was overwhelmed by a love which transformed my life.  I didn't deserve it, there is nothing I could ever have done to win it or earn it.  It was pure grace: undeserved favour.

In January 1979 I was near Hamnavoe in Shetland with a beautiful girl with whom I had fallen in love. I asked her to marry me and she said yes! Amazing! A few days later I woke up and thought "What did she say?" And I remembered clearly that she said yes.  I wasn't the only one to be surprised. When I introduced my fiancée to some of my college friends they were surprised that I had found anyone willing to marry me and amazed that I had found such a cracker!  But the sceptics would say in both cases "Prove it then!"  Some people can become sceptical about everything and everyone. When scepticism takes you over like that you can develop scepticaemia - a soul-destroying condition! What kind of husband would I be if I was always trying to prove that her love was real? It is the same with questioning the reality of the amazing grace of my Saviour.

We have a Saviour who knows what it is to be tempted but who showed that it is possible to resist and overcome the attractive but wrong choices and take the costly path of God's way instead. 1 Cor 10.13 This Lent we won't spend forty days and night without food and if you have decided to give up something you enjoy, that isn't the main point. It's all about learning how to be the people who God is calling us to be so that we can be part of God's plan to make the world what God intends it to be. Resist the temptations to take the easy roads; let's follow Jesus on the road of costly discipleship.


Prayer for the Week

Lord Jesus Christ, beloved Son of God, who resisted the subtle easier options and set your face firmly towards the Cross, help us in our weakness to follow close behind you whatever the cost. Amen

To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

What does the Lord require of you?
To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6.8 

A Sermon by The Revd. David Moore
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 20 January 2013

If you search the internet for films about Border towns you may be surprised how many there are. You will all have seen such films - often sinister, always a danger of the bad guys arriving; often with a no nonsense sheriff and of course Mexican dozing under big hats! Border towns are often places for people fleeing violence, poverty, cruelty - all looking for safe lodgings or safety or revenge.

Micah lived in a Border town at a time when human settlements were more or less associated with tribes. The implication from his words is that he lived in a violent place, where killing strangers appears to have been a godly thing to do. Probably surrounded by tribal communities - small nation states in the making - knocking ten bells out of each other much of the time.

This was the world of the Prophet Micah who called his fellow citizens to adopt a very different approach to life! He called them to act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly before God. Micah appears to carry a message similar to that of Isaiah’s, namely to: beat your swords into ploughshares. At a time when other small nation states were slaying each other in the name of God there were a few Jewish ‘dreamers’ with a very different approach to international relations.

We might conclude that many of these films about border towns were revisiting stories as old as the Bible - and this has been the perpetual struggle of those who would provide leadership on the world stage ever since - how to make peace in the midst of diversity, misunderstanding and cultural difference, and competing territorial claims (cf Falklands!).

The recent Cornerstone discussion document on Diversity disappointed me in that it explores diversity solely within our own religious community. My sense is that the burning issue for the Church in Britain is to understand and express the diversity of the world in which we find ourselves and for us that is the experience of Milton Keynes. The word ecumenical refers to the ‘whole inhabited world’ - ecumenism is a quest, a calling, a burden, as well as the holding of everything together in the name of Christ.

Listen to this short letter from a newspaper and as I read it, I invite you to switch your imagination to ‘high definition’ and your memory to that of being a teenager again. This letter comes is by Dinah Hall and was in the Guardian letters page a few weeks ago.

There is nothing like a teenage diary for putting momentous historical events into perspective. “This is my diary entry for 20 July 1969. ‘I went to the arts centre (by myself) in yellow cords and blouse. Ian was there but he did not speak to me. Got a rhyme put in my handbag by somebody who’s apparently got a crush on me. It’s Nicholas I think. UGH. Man landed on moon.’”

Four words about humankind’s most momentous adventure ever and 66 words about teenage hormones!

This story makes clear the power of our personal agenda to override the most spectacular world-changing events. How is it that our interests, fears, passions have the power to override or hide what is happening outside of us?

And that is also the tragic story of the church: we produce some of the most beautiful music, literature and art the world has ever known, but are beaten down again and again by the bigotry of our own ignorance. And we are not free of it here at Christ the Cornerstone, far from it.

There are very few people remaining who were here at Cornerstone when the decisions were made to build this church. Clearly, a project as ambitious as this does not ‘just happen’. Meeting after meeting after meeting. People like you engaged in discussion after discussion; having major disagreements and eventually finding sufficient agreement to move forward.

It was, by all accounts, an invigorating and taxing time - a time when church members and bishops lost a great deal of sleep! When countless critical decisions had to be made almost on a daily basis, members of the church HAD to find ways of trusting each other! There are now few of those left who carried the full weight of that cost.

As the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins, what might the ecumenical vision now mean for us today 21 years on from the opening.

What is clear is that there is hardly any first-hand memory, that we have difficulty in recalling or imagining the exact emotions and order of events. If memory and interpretation is that hard to grasp, how much harder will it be to envisage the Bible stories - and therein lays a problem. We today are perhaps not unlike the girl in yellow jeans - our emotions colour all our horizons. Putting our personal agendas to the fore can be a way of missing what God’s word for us today might be.

What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Micah 6.8

This week I invite you to reflect/muse upon faith as ‘radical trust'; love as course of action, rather than a cluster of beliefs about which we endlessly argue or worry. 

The Border town prophet spelt out a radical belief:

Act justly - this is first and foremost about putting others first - not allowing the ‘yellow jean syndrome’ to flood our horizon with our ‘hormones’ or cultural myopia. (Myopia = nearsightedness, lack of imagination, foresight or intellectual insight.) Act justly.

Love mercy - think of ‘love’ as a verb ... a doing word; love as action rather than sentiment or sentimentality; putting first that which puts the other person first. (The trouble is we think we know what is best for others!)

I cannot pass the word ‘sentimentality’ without comment - the sentimentality we go in for at difficult times - eg death - is so damaging, so deadly!! How dare we voice that American drivel about not being dead but just in another room. When we die we are gone for ever - the crematorium sees to that. Justice is also about the persistence of truth.

Walk humbly - to take this lifestyle as no big deal - this, quite simply, is the reason why it can be a very disturbing way - the radical nature of ordinariness when lived with purpose.

When I came to work here I was more than a little bruised by my previous experience of being sacked ... I came into a team of remarkably gifted human beings ALL of whom treated me as if I had more to offer that I could imagine. I remember all their names and the tone of their voices.

One of the things I personally find most difficult as a Christian is the way other people assume to know what, for me, being a Christian means .... the assumption is that it’s about believing in impossible things, like God, the Trinity, being good!

For me being a Christian is first and foremost NOT these things but about becoming a pilgrim, having a clear purpose you can articulate.

What I have in mind is ‘love’ as a verb and not just or even a feeling.  I am drawn by the disturbance Jesus caused to the establishment because of his capacity to focus on the most important things, and my quest is to redefine what that means for us today.

I cannot affirm with any sense of purpose or excitement the historic creeds - I do not want to get rid of them - they are marker posts in the ever-changing sands of Christian history. However, I do invite you to make time this week to muse upon my minimalist affirmation: faith as a journey away from certainty, rather than a primary source of certainty. I understand faith as a call to action, rather than a cluster of beliefs which we argue about or feel forced to conform to.

The disturbance Jesus brought to the establishment of his day, because of his capacity to focus upon the most important things and to redefine and refine what that was, is my primary interest.

The very thing that ‘captured’ me when I arrived at Cornerstone was that people were living by faith - not in pious ways but practical, intelligent, adult ways. That is the reason I am still here. I do, however, fear now that the Diversity discussion, as wonderful as it is, lacks the political clout required to face up to the long-term disasters being heaped upon future generations by the present Government.

I do not believe that Jesus would settle for the present level of silence between believers and the world.

Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God. These characteristics do not immediately spring to mind in either the political or religious world of today.

We all adore Desmond Tutu. I wrote to Tutu many years ago when I was organising an ecumenical confirmation service, asking him to send a letter of greeting to those who were being confirmed. He obliged, sending me a letter, whereupon I, with skilful 1990 photocopying and careful use of pen AND ink, rewrote the individual names plus Desmond’s signatures. I photocopied the letter with handwritten names and signatures. Fifteen or so people between 12 and 80 left clutching their letter as if holding hands with God!

My small brush with fraud is nothing compared with the courage and clear-headedness of Desmond Tutu but we appear to have no such prophet in the land! We applaud the example but few even attempt to follow his example - we all have a long, long journey ahead. How will we rise to the challenge?

Peter Sharrocks, a retired Methodist minister living in Milton Keynes, has written songs for most of his life and he completed this one just yesterday. In conclusion I offer Peter’s vision of the ecumenical quest, in the hope that we here at Cornerstone may continue with a vision which is greater than self-interest:

TRANSCENDENT LOVE

Transcendent Love, lift us above
the petty squabbles that divide –
the spats of jealousy and griefs
that split a family apart;
with mercy, grace and deeper love
help us to heal and reconcile.

Transcendent Love, lift us beyond
the need to dominate and rule –
above the fears that come between
the nations and religious creeds;
let mercy, grace and justice be
the means by which we build our peace.

Transcendent Love, lift us above
beliefs that differ and divide;
compassion calls, and God’s served best
when neighbours needs are recognised;
humbly we walk, with hearts aflame
for justice in a world of pain.

Rejoice in God who raises up
the Way of Christ, the Best of Love;
there is no way than this to peace,
no meaner path than sacrifice;
the prophet’s call rings out today,
let faith be trust in Jesus’ Way.

©2013 Peter Sharrocks