Friday 30 December 2016

Richard's Sermon at Midnight Mass 2016 in St Mary's

Midnight Mass 2016: St Mary’s

I’ve always had a fondness for the Just William stories of Richmal Compton, particularly when narrated by Martin Jarvis. They will often provide the accompaniment for long car journeys. A favourite is ‘William’s Truthful Christmas‘ which  begins appropriately enough with William in church, listening, or rather not listening to the sermon. As we hear, ‘William, however, had no use for the sermon.  He considered it a waste of time’.  On this particular Sunday he was getting through the sermon by playing with his pet stag-beetle but he was drawn by the vicar’s frequent use of the word ‘Christmas’.   The vicar was calling on his flock to have a truthful Christmas, ‘to cast aside all deceit and hypocrisy and speak the truth one with another’. 
So William is brought under conviction and decides that this Christmas will be dominated by the practice of truth. 

On Christmas morning William receives a book of Church History from Aunt Emma and a box containing compasses, a protractor and a set square from Uncle Frederick.   When Aunt Emma asks if he liked the presents he says, ‘No.  I’m not int’rested in Church History an I’ve got something like those at school.  Not that I’d want ‘em if I hadn’t em.’  

This is just the beginning of William’s practice of truth which increasingly offends and infuriates those around him.  The climax comes when Lady Atkinson sweeps into the house.  A large, over-dressed, domineering woman she has come to bestow on Aunt Emma and Uncle Frederick her Christmas gift: a signed photograph of herself.  She says: ‘It’s very good, isn’t it?’  But then she makes the mistake of asking Williams opinion.  Committed to truth William responds:
‘It’s not as fat as you are.’  Was William’s final offering on the altar of truth. Undeterred by the howls of horror around him he goes on:

‘It isn’t’s fat as what she is an it’s not got as many little lines on its face as what she has an’ it’s different altogether.  It looks pretty an’ she doesn’t - ‘

The story ends with William totally disillusioned with the truth.  The vicar had said that this could make this Christmas the happiest ever but instead it had made it the worst.  ‘Everyone mad at me all the time.’  Thus his bold declaration with regard to truth: ‘I’ve done with it.  I’m goin’ back to deceit an’ - an ‘ what’s a word beginning with hyp -?’  


Being truthful can get you into trouble. Perhaps it’s best not to worry too much and instead try and shape things as we think they ought to be and tell others simply what they ought to hear.

I’m sure you all know what the Oxford English Dictonary word of the year for 2016 is…’post-truth’.
It simply means ‘Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief:’ It’s a term that is most often used with regard to politics. After all it has been an eventful year in politics, and not just in this country. Appeals to emotion have abounded; experts have been mistrusted; those who purport to speak the truth have often been ignored. Populist politicians often tell people what they want to hear.
An example might be Donald Trump’s dismissal of the CIA telling him that they have evidence that the Russian government deliberately leaked private Democrat e-mails in a bid to bolster the Trump campaign. He offers no reason for disbelieving the CIA beyond that what they say doesn’t fit in with how he wants to see the world.

Perhaps the dominance of ‘post-truth’ is just an inevitable extension of post modernism. It says that My experience is at the centre of how I interpret the world and truths that might inconvenience that narrative can be legitimately dismissed. Or as Mark Twain might say ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’

Yet we who live in a post-truth society have just heard and proclaimed and affirmed a gospel that tells us that ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.’ Full of grace and truth. The one whom we gather here tonight to worship, wonder at, welcome is ‘full of truth.’ As St Paul wrote to the Colossians ‘In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.’ One of the reasons that I am a Christian, one of the reasons I have pledged my life to his service and do what I do is because I have always been captivated by the one who is ‘full of truth’ and who provides a marker by which I can measure and judge my own story. Though I often fail, I try and listen to what Jesus says rather than what I want to hear. Christmas assures that we can continue to speak of ‘truth’, that we can see it in Jesus, God’s truthful word, made truthful flesh. In a post-truth world that is surely grounds for hope.

In becoming flesh, in becoming one of us in Jesus God unveils his face and the light of his presence shows us the truth of ourselves, strips away our deceptions and illusions. God shows us his true face and risks rejection because we can’t always stand the offer of unconditional love. There is pain here for God. And there is pain for us in recognising ourselves as afraid or divided or trapped as we stand or kneel before the one who is full of truth and who knows the truth about us and yet who continues to love us because he is also full of grace.
The ‘glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ is bearable because that glory is shown in the face of a perfect love, a perfect acceptance, a faithfulness which violence and death cannot destroy.


Like the vicar in the Just William story, I too wish you a truthful Christmas, but unlike William I wish you a Christmas that is full of truth because it is full of the one who is full of truth, Jesus, the Word made Flesh, Emmanuel.

Thursday 1 December 2016

Richard's Sermon from Advent Sunday Morning, 27th November 2016

Advent Sunday 2016: Allerton and St Mary’s
Isaiah 2.1-5; Romans 13.11-14; Matthew 24.36-44

And so we come to the beginning again and at the beginning we face the end, the end of all things and our own end. In a sense it is appropriate that the ancient cycle which is the church’s calendar, that framework to hear again the stories about Jesus, his coming to us, his incarnation, his passion, death and resurrection, hear again about the coming of the spirit, hear again of the outworking of the spirit, until we end, as we did last week, with that great assertion of Christ’s kingship; it is appropriate that our calendar should begin by focussing on the end. It is a bit like reading the end of a great novel and only then starting at page 1. Because of what we know about the end, how are we going to be best placed to make the most of that knowledge? Knowing what we do about Judgement, the King and the Kingdom, how are we going to respond to the story of Jesus that is to be unfolded once more?

All of our bible readings today focus on the end but what a spectrum we have? The Roman God Janus was the god of transitions, beginnings, gateways and is usually shown with two faces, one to look forwards and one to look back. The first month of our calendar year is named after him but it is kind of appropriate that at on the first day of our church year, we should be given some Janus like readings. Isaiah and Matthew, in particular have us looking two ways.
Isaiah points to the future  to a joyful event, when peace shall reign and when all will look to the dwelling place of God. It’s an ‘everything is going to be all right’ prophecy. But in Matthew, Jesus’ words have us looking fearfully over our shoulders. The end will creep up like a ‘thief in the night.’
Two visions of the future – one full of joyful expectation of longing and looking forward. One marked by fear of an event over which we have no control
One with universal implications and one which is very personal.
So which vision can I sell you this morning – the promise or the warning? The ‘everything is going to be all right,’ or the ‘be prepared’? Which will be your Advent mood? Perhaps the call of this season is to try and hold the two in tension. Hopefulness and preparedness. Optimism when it comes to the future because that is in God’s hands but self awareness when it comes to our future because we don’t know when our own ends will be. Advent calls us to look in so we can look ou, to be careful of our own present so we can best grasp God’s future.

In every generation the Father finds his children asleep. Some have given up; some have never even known him. And even those who do claim to belong to God are very easily distracted by the cares of this world. Advent is another opportunity to change; but we will fail to grasp it if we start thinking that Advent comes around every year. This may be our last Advent. It will certainly be for millions. It will probably be for some of us who are gathered here.
Yesterday it was church cleaning day in St Mary’s. The day before Advent Sunday was a particularly appropriate day to clear the dust from the church and polish the woodwork and tackle those high level cobwebs that were probably spun when Victoria was on the throne. But Advent also calls us to have clean lives to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.
While many of us were beavering away inside, Mike Gelder was having fun clearing gutters. The only problem was that he forgot to turn the roof alarm off which he has just upgraded to one that is monitored. Thus it was that when I returned home Melissa told me that there had been literally loads of calls while you were out. All six were from the monitoring system. Of course, we need the alarm to protect the lead on the church roof from theft, sad but if we knew when the thieves were going to come we would have Mike Gelder up there in readiness. However Advent calls us to ensure that we have nothing to steal, to live life so that our accounts are cleared, so that nothing spiritually can be snatched away, so that there is no anger or guilt or jealousy or petty feuds hanging over us. For is we possess these then there is plenty for the thief to take away.

Goodness knows Death has stalked through this community rather too frequently of late. Unexpected deaths, even of those who have passed there four score years, hit us all hard. So amid all this concentration on death and the negative side of being ready for a fearful event, let’s hear something positive…
(story of tourist visiting garden on Lake Como in Windows on Luke by Ronald W Dale – ‘Today, sir! May it be today!’)




Richard's Sermon on Remembrance Sunday 2016

Remembrance Sunday 2016

England Scotland Football game; Fifa and armbands; say no more about the game.

Fifa would not sanction the poppy armbands to be worn because they considered the poppy to be a political symbol; and as far as their reason goes, I think FIFA got it absolutely right.

That they got it right is shown by the fact that the Prime Minister and other politicians felt they needed to weigh in to the debate. I think they got it right first of all because any large scale Act of Remembrance such as this is a political act because it is to do with identity and particularly national identity. Surely part of the reason that we are who we are as a nation is due to those great struggles of the twentieth century, the freedom they bought and the cost they carried. Over the last few years Remembrance Sunday and, in particular the wearing of a poppy has become ever more important. Woe betide any tv presenters who are seen without a poppy in the two weeks leading up to today. We kind of think they are letting the side down. The silence kept in city centres on Armistice Day makes headline news. It is only recently that we have re-introduced a ceremony here on Armistice Day here in wedmore. More people turn up each year. And the sombre and moving ceremony today at the cenotaph continues to be an important national occasion. Perhaps the place of Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday as events that shape our national identity have become more important as we search for identity in an increasingly bewildering and fractious world. What will our exit from the EU mean for a national identity? The election of Donald Trump suggests that we aren’t the only country searching afresh for identity. The great migration crisis of the twenty first century will continue to impact on national identity perhaps for decades or even centuries to come. So days when we come together to remember the fallen of those conflicts and the impact those conflicts continue to hold can help us reflect on who we are.

And yet we do a great injustice if we allow the focus to be on the big events, on the ceremony in London or at the National Arboretum or if we attend too much to issues of national identity, or even if we make it about remembering the war. For the real heart of this day lies not in national commemorations at the cenotaph and the Royals and the political leaders laying their wreaths and the marching of many people. The real heart lies in services and events like this at the local level in towns and villages across the land. We do an injustice if we make the day about what we remember for it is rather about who we remember, the names that were once flesh, the stories that shaped this village, the relatives whose lives were changed completely by loss and who poured that sense of loss into the fabric of our community.


William Mapstone and Elizabeth
William Bown and Jessie
Victor Bracey and mother
Smiths

I also think that the wearing of a poppy is a political act because politics is about shaping society, working to change things for the better; and surely there must be something of that in what we do today. We can make our remembrance, listen to the trumpeter, fall silent, lay our wreaths and then go to our dinners with talk of what a nice service it has been and how good it is to see so many people here and children in particular. Or we can go from here to do all those things and yet also be inspired by our remembering and by those we remember to make a difference, committed to change things for the better.

As a Christian priest one of the most important act I carry out week in week out is to preside at our communion services, the act of remembering, re-membering, making real in the present what happened in an upper room in a house in Jerusalem some 2000 years ago – “Do this in remembrance of me”, the disciples were told by Jesus as they celebrated The Last Supper, ‘to remind yourselves of the sacrifice God made on behalf of humanity and the hope that emerged from this sacrifice in the resurrection’. We remember God’s great love for us in Jesus, we are nourished by it and then we are sent out to make it real in the world.
‘Almighty God,’ we say ‘we thank you for feeding us…’
That act of remembering in communion is a political act because we commit ourselves to that kingdom we heard about in the reading, where God will be with us and we will be with God , where there is no death or mourning, no sadness or tears; we commit ourselves to shaping for good the world around us for Jesus’ sake

I pray that this act of remembering today may be a political in a similar way

I was reminded earlier this week of a passage in the children’s story ‘The Little Prince’ – ‘If you wish to build a ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.’


As we name the dead today, as we fall silent, as we make our political act of remembrance, I hope also that we may be moved to yearn for that vast and endless sea that is the kingdom spoken about by St John for the sake of those whose names we will hear shortly; for the sake of God.