The long and winding road

 Monken Hadley: Acts 8:26-end, 1 John 4:7-end, John 15:1-8

In 1970, The Beatles released “The Long and Winding Road”. Written by Paul MacCartney, and inspired by the sight of a road stretching up into remote highlands of Scotland, it’s a sad song: wind and tears, waiting and loneliness. Decades later, he told his biographer that it was ‘all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach ... the road that you never get to the end of’.

Album cover from The Beatles Bible website

Roads occupy a kind of in-between space in our lives - literally and metaphorically. Children straining to see the first glimpse of the sea; the rocky roads of adolescence and ageing; the familiar tedium of a commute; the seasons of joy, celebration, waiting or grief. The roads that lead to doors and threshold moments - the many times we’ve cried and the many ways we’ve tried, as the song puts it.  

In his commentary on Acts, the black American theologian Willie Jennings describes a ‘road-embedded life born of old and fresh memories of migration, mobility, transition, upheaval and hope’.  Naming the particularity of the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, he talks of a road where we are searching for what he calls  ‘life possibilities or at least running away from the forces of death’.

For the peoples of Israel and Palestine, those roads continue to hold the fear and horror of the forces of death - the stories shared across the faith networks and fora across this borough; the stories of hostages, destruction and starvation. Yet somehow, stories of life possibilities are still being told - life free from prejudice and complicity - stories told at community Iftas and around seder plates, at vigils and also at every Eucharist we share.

Today we hear that God is found on this road between Jerusalem and Gaza: found there to transform lives with an expansive love, which embraces every soul, every identity and border. 

Philip is sent on that road to find the Ethiopian eunuch - to join him, to respond to the invitation to be his guide, as reading the next becomes a communal activity.  On that long and winding road, there’s an echo of MacCartney: 

Why leave me standing here?

Let me know the way

They begin reading and interpreting a text from isaiah: about a person in pain, a body suffering and humiliated; a body subject to the forces of death.  It is this body, explains Philip, that God’s love has been revealed among us.

The Son sent into the world because God’s response to all that wounds and separates us -  what we call sin - is to love us.  The Son sent into the world to lay down life that we might live; laying life down in order to take it up again; dying to rise and bear fruit. This is the sacrifice that makes one all that was torn and divided.

There is no greater love than this - says Jesus elsewhere in John - than to lay down life for friends. God’s love made flesh calls us friends, calls us beloved; love that invites us to love. 

As a result of this intimate, one-to-one sermon, the winding road becomes a borderland, a door to life. The Ethiopian eunuch is brought close to the joy of this extraordinary divine love. He matters in his difference and complexity, his ethnicity and sexual ambiguity. The one whose body is enslaved and put to use, who has responsibility but little power, finds a new future of light and life. 

The Ethiopian wants God as much as God wants him: what is there to prevent his baptism, this joining of water and spirit? 

Baptism makes visible the depth of God’s love and its redemptive power. By the power of the Spirit, his life is redirected to this love - like us, he is found in the body of Jesus, wounded, risen and glorified. He is in Christ and Christ is in him. He abides in love. 

It is this relationship of love and mutual indwelling that Jesus is drawing us into in John’s Gospel. Horticultural imagery is stretched to expand upon the joy and risk, demands and potential of this life.

Abiding is such a rich word: speaking not of the winding road, but the door we open, the threshold we cross and the place we call home. The place where we can dwell long term: it speaks of the relational indwelling of the Spirit and it expresses our life together as friends seeking to be true to Jesus.

And bearing fruit is what we are called to do.John speaks of this with vibrancy and abundance throughout the Gospel - of doing greater works and washing feet, of bread that feeds a multitude, and water turned to wine when our own resources run out. 

In all these images, John gives us a way of understanding how we are to live out a pattern of life shaped by the Eucharist. He teaches us about the bread of life - and how we improvise on the command to ‘do this in remembrance’ by our own embodied acts of service.

Today he gives us the image of vine and vineyard - and image of how we abide together. It is an image of stability and trust, of faithfulness and utter commitment to God and others. It is an image that reminds us not only of the last supper, but of the blood shed for us on the cross and the promise of the new wine of the kingdom.

As David Ford writes in his commentary: ‘together the image of abiding, offers readers a way of understanding, deepening and living both eucharist and covenant, centred on who Jesus is, and the call to abide in him.’  It is a call to be faithful in prayer, to face the truth of who we are - and when and where we need to be pruned to be fruitful. 

Here as we celebrate this Eucharist, we are pilgrims on the long and winding road of our earthly life: we find abundance in the fragility of a wafer of bread  and the richness of wine, bread broken and blood shed so that we might live. 

Here the possibilities of life are named - a renewed vision of justice and peace and of love for each other even in, especially in, our difference. Here we name the ultimate victory of love over the forces of death - we are reminded that love casts out fear. Here we are restored and recalled - invited to love the brothers and sister, the strangers and friends we do see. 

We love because love is from God and because God loved us first. 

Therefore, like Philip we should be confident in speaking and living the gospel of Jesus. Therefore, as John reminds us, we should be compassionate in serving communities with the love of God the Father.Therefore, we should be creative in reaching people with the gospel - walking that long and winding road with them - in the power of the Spirit.

If all that sounds a bit familiar, it is because it is your own hope and commitment set out in your mission action plan. There will be others, who we are drawn to as Philip was called to the Ethiopian. We might not know them yet; they might be close neighbours already: the ones who say to us - don’t leave me standing here, let me know the way. 

God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Bear fruit that will last. Abide. Love one another. 

© Julie Gittoes 2024

I can't breathe - we can't breathe

Two reflections from a service for Pentecost: reflections written in the context of a high number of deaths within the BAME community due to Covid-19, and the impact on the elderly; and the injustice of the treatment of George Floyd. The theme of breath - and whether or not we can breathe - is refracted afresh on the day of Pentecost. Willie Jennings' commentary on Acts has been transformative and challenging - the Spirit leads to revolution of the intimate; it is the sound of the intimate. Reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is also striking - can we too be more aware of the stuff going on beneath the surface; plotting the strife but also the power of reconciliation. 

Reflection One

Gilead: During lock down, I’ve picked up Gilead by the American writer Marilynne Robinson. In a slightly contrary way, I’m reading first novel of the trilogy last, after Home and Lilia.  I’m taken back to 1965 as the Rev’d John Ames writing to his young son.

Like all of Robinson’s novels, Gilead is full of an awareness of the stuff going on beneath the surface of life: the joy, guilt, dread and tenderness. She plots the causes of strife in families, communities and the world; she also plots the patterns of forgiveness, the universal healing power of reconciliation and love.

There is, perhaps, as the old song goes, a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole.

For her, the human creature is sacred; and the world deserves our attention. Sometimes, writes Ames, I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. 

(Upper Room - Colin Wilbourn): It’s that silent and invisible life that breaks in afresh today: the power of the Spirit which brooded over creation; which overshadowed Mary; which is breathed out in peace; which kindles flames of justice; and which stirs up the revolution of the intimate.

We left the disciples devoting themselves to prayer; sheltering in an upper room; waiting behind closed doors. 

We’ve shared with them in that pulse of prayer - of longing and lament, or resistance and survival. Words woven in our hearts; breathed out on our lips.

And we too wait for the  silent and invisible life of the Spirit to renew, refresh and rekindle. 

(Pixabay/Gerd Altmann): For there is balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole.

And even when we’re discouraged; when we think our work’s in vain. 

There is balm in Gilead as the Holy Spirit revives our souls again. 

The is balm as Jesus speaks to our fears: peace be with you.

In world where we hear the cry, I can’t breathe; Jesus breathes on us, changes us.

He is called Winston to protect his anonymity.  He’s 89 and wearing a mask; but his breathing is distressing. The palliative care doctor seconded to that ward provides medication to help him relax; his sons in PPE can hold his hand. He’s not a statistic. He’s their best friend, loved and cherished. But his death wasn’t inevitable; his time hadn’t come. Dr Clarke says ‘our society may be endemically unequal, but no-one in Britain is expendable’.

In world where we hear the cry, I can’t breathe; Jesus breathes on us, changes us.

He is called George, George Floyd and the world knows his name. He’s 46; a black man who died beneath a white police officer’s knee.  He was an athlete; a gentle giant; a father; a bouncer who lost his job at a restaurant because of the ‘stay-at-home order’.  His life long friend said ‘he was looking to start over fresh, a new beginning… he was happy with the change he was making. His friend Harris says ‘it’s hard to put faith in this system, a system that you know his not designed for you’.

In world where we hear the cry, I can’t breathe; Jesus breathes on us, changes us.

(Descending dove - Jyoti Sahi): Can we be balm in Gilead?  As Jesus breathes on his disciples; as he sends his Spirit on them, on us, we are sent to be witnesses. 

Jesus breathes out: life and joy; the disciples see and believe. 

We are to hear the anguished cries; see the wounded bodies.

For if I can’t breathe, we can’t breathe: Yet as Jesus breathes, our lung capacity increases.

He breathes and the Holy Spirit abides: kindling in their hearts, our hearts, a fire of love; a fire of change. 

Every breath we take, the Spirit sighs within: this is the offer of life; of forgiveness; as we become wounded healers. 

We point to the crucified and risen Lord: the one who offers the world his death, that the world might know his life.  Some will embrace this forgiveness and know the liberation it brings; others will turn away, binding to a past that imprisons.

(Pentecost - He Qi): But we are to recognise this life; turning to it; embracing it; abiding in it. This Holy Spirit comes as comforter, yes; as peace in a hostile world, yes; as balm in Gilead, yes.

It comes not for our own benefit, but to teach us to witness  to the truth of God.

The Spirit speaks of energy and movement; imaginative creativity and prophetic challenge: wind, flame and breath.

The Advocate speaks of peace, comfort and courage; of a presence that guards against loneliness; of the pursuit of wisdom in uncertainty; calling for justice when life is not equal.

(Fire dove clip art): The language of God's love, forgiveness and mercy, is expressed in Jesus physical death and risen life in the body. 

The promised Spirit, the Advocate, continues to guide and inspire us; drawing us more deeply into truth; enabling us to love. It's a risky  and costly pattern of life: speaking with hope rather than colluding with fear; offering compassion not resentment.

Today we celebrate that that is how God communicates with us still: holding, loving, guiding and inspiring with every breath.

This is love: restoring, forgiving, compassionate and transformative.

Reflection Two

(Pentecost - El Greco):   In world where we hear the cry, I can’t breathe; Jesus breathes on us, changes us.

Today we are caught up in the transmission of a story which is both intensely personal and also cosmic in scope. It's a story which stretches language to the limits of imagination, passion and extravagance: rushing wind, tongues of flame, exuberant speech.

This story reveals the intimacy and power with which God communicates his love for us.  Tongues of flame is a revolution of the intimate (to quote Jennings); the movement of the wind is the sound of intimacy. Our anthem captures the beauty, disruption, bewilderment and hope of this revolution. 

One of the many striking things about this story is that amidst the amazement and questioning, there is a radical home coming; things are joined together; miraculous speech and miraculous hearing. People hear in their native tongue; in the the language of their heart.

(Peter - Michael Buesking): As Peter speaks, a community is broken open and recreated in the Spirit; it is a moment of grace as the Spirit overshadows, broods and inspires. 

Willie Jennings coined the phrase revolution of the intimate; and he describes Pentecost as: This is God touching, taking hold of tongue and voice, mind, heart and body.  Here is untamed grace - subverting our own fantasies of power and vengeance, and kindling something else. 

As Peter speaks, this revolution of the intimate is unleashed by the Spirit. Our ears, mouths and bodies are filled with with this language which frees us from oppression and kindles a shared commitment to hope. 

To speak this spirit-led heart language means learning to submit to the slow process of increasing our vocabulary, committing to practices, understanding the values and gifts of God’s Kingdom. And the more we learn, the more we fall in love with it.

And as we fall in love, we are called to walk a new road as wounded healers: advocates, comforters, prophets and creatives. 

(I will pour out my Spirit on all people - Marianne Gonzales Sims): As Jennings says: speak a language, speak a people. God speaks people fluently. And God wants us to speak people fluently too. 

In world where we hear the cry, I can’t breathe; Jesus breathes on us, changes us. And we speak.

We speak not only in words, but in our body language. As Jennings puts it: this will require bodies that reach across massive and real boundaries, cultural, religious and ethnic.  It is a body language that says: love your neighbour. 

This is, in the words of the prophet Joel that Peter quotes, a new world order. Energised by the spirit, young and old, male and female, slave and free become prophets, dreamers and activities for this new world. 

We pray that the Spirit will ignite in us a holy fire, strengthening us with the gift of faith.

(The day of Pentecost - Ain Vares): We are strengthened because in Jesus, in going to the depths of human despair and alienation, to those places even when we lose ourselves, there is no longer anywhere where God's love is not. Christ's risen life, calls us to new life. In the power of the Spirit, he calls and calls and recalls each of us by name. That Spirit revives us with the breath of love.

This is the promise of abundant life - not just for a few, but for the whole world.  We pray, renew the earth. 

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole: when we ask not just who has died or who killed them, but what killed them. We hear the protest, seek repentance and hope for a better society. 

When there are disproportionate rates of death in one community - because of age or race - we have to attend to those wounds. And just may be, the spirit will turn them into sites for hope.

There is balm in Gildead to heal the sin-sick soul. 

Jana Skarecky): Today we are presented with a vision for how human beings become channels of such love - to be transmitters or translators; to be embodiments of God's story.

In world where we hear the cry, I can’t breathe; Jesus breathes on us, changes us. And we speak. We act.

Like Marilynne Robinson, we’re to notice the stuff going on beneath the surface of life: the joy, guilt, dread and tenderness; and in our lives plot the patterns of forgiveness, the universal healing power of reconciliation and love.

When we feel discouraged, the Spirit revives our souls. We can be balm in Gilead, as the song puts it: 

If you cannot preach like Peter,

If you cannot pray like Paul,

You can tell the love of Jesus,

And say He died for all.

I can’t breath; we can’t breath.

Jesus breathes; we breathe.

Tell this love.

© Julie Gittoes 2020

Silk Roads

This is the text of a sermon preached at Evensong on Sunday 3rd September. The texts were: 2 Kings 6:24-33, 7:3-end; Acts 18:1-16. The former was particularly challenging - with its talk of sieges/starvation. As one who doesn't dodge tricky or random texts, setting Kings alongside Acts drew me back to one of the books I read over the summer: The Silk Roads. I had the pleasure of hearing Peter Frankopan speak at an event at Westminster Central Hall - on the implications of Brexit. It's humbling to think that a vibrant and cosmopolitan city like Corinth fell into decline; we so readily assume the narrative of relentless progress but Frankopan's book reminds us that that history is more complex than that. So this is beginning to reflect on where we hear the voice of God in the midst of transition and uncertainty. 

As far as holiday reading goes, the historian Peter Frankopan’s bestseller The Silk Roads is an epic; its subtitle declares it to be a ‘new history of the world’. The endorsements do nothing to lower our expectations of the content: it’s described as ‘brilliant and fearless’; a ‘swashbuckling history’. It’s compelling, accessible and entertaining; ambitious in scope and detail. 

For Frankopan, it all began with a large map of the world: as a child he memorised names, capitals cities, rivers, deserts, oceans. As a teenager, he questioned the narrow geographical and historical focus of his lessons. As an academic, he seeks to embolden others to study people and places long ignored by scholars. 

Forces of trade, culture, religion, ideas and politics which have shaped our world. We watch Empires rise and fall as power flows from the Indus valley to the Oxus river; from Nineveh to Nagasaki; Lhasa to Pisa. It’s a humbling corrective to our Eurocentrism.

Frankopan identifies the halfway point between east and west as running from the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea to the Himalayas: counties such as Azerbaijan, Syria, Uzbekistan and Russia. Places we associate with human rights violations, unstable regimes, violence and concern about cyber security. And yet…

… This fertile area between the Tigris and Euphrates is the birth place of civilisation; the biblical Garden of Eden. The rulers, traders, farmers, intellectuals and lawyers of competing kingdoms make there way into our scriptures: Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Assyrians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Cretans and so on. That context might help us when we are confronted with the impact of the Arameans and Corinthians.

The history of the people of Israel is told through the narratives we find in 1 and 2 Kings. Those books take us from the end of David’s reign and into the golden age of his son Solomon; we read of the architectural splendour of a new Temple and the rift between tribes resulting in two separate kingdoms, Israel and Judah. A stable society collapses; a people are exiled. 

The drama of this story is Frankopan-esque given the interplay of trade, law, religion and power. The moral is this: when a nation and its leaders obey the commandment to love God and neighbour, there is peace and prosperity. When God’s people rejects these commands, social fragmentation, exploitation, economic disaster and occupation follow.

Prophets like Elijah and Elisha emerge to call God’s people back to ways of holiness and justice.  Last week we heard how Elisha was able to secure a peace deal. Having placed his trust in God’s protection he thwarts the Aramean attack; exercising spiritual diplomacy perhaps. He even persuades his King to offer hospitality and mercy rather than exacting vengeance. But…

… Benhadad of Aram returns.  He lays siege to Samaria. The people are facing starvation. The famine was so severe that unclean food was fetching a premium price. The King of Israel blames Elisha; Elisha continues to speak of God’s deliverance. The truth emerges not from the wisdom of the powerful but from the desperation of those who’re most vulnerable. 

The lepers lived in limbo on the margins: as unclean they were cut off from all forms of religious and social association; yet they depended on the gifts of food left for them. If a city is starving, there is nothing left for them. They have nothing to lose; if they’re facing death anyway, why not take a risk on the Arameans. Perhaps they’ll show mercy. 

They find a deserted camp: food, drink, clothes and great riches. Elisha’s prediction is true - the word of the Lord spoke of barley and meal. The attackers flee as soon as they hear the sound of what they take to be an even greater army. The lepers recognise that they are breaking the laws about right conduct in battle; their integrity enables the whole city to benefit from this windfall. All that is, apart from the captain who’d not believed Elisha; he’s crushed in the surge of people seeking food. 

Kings gives us one nation’s self-understanding and history - of war, famine, negotiation, social life, rivalries, trade and economics; it is infused with a sense of God’s call. The purposes of God echo through these pages through the words of prophets who continually remind us of the limitations of human power. They speak to us of love, mercy, righteousness and peace. 

It was into such a world as this - a world shaped by international affairs - that God sent his Son. At the crucible of civilisation, he lived, died and rose again to draw all people into a kingdom of God’s new creation. In him, the prophets’ hope for redemption was fulfilled. 

Frankopan charts the flow of goods and ideas along the trade routes from the Pacific, Central Asia, India, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. As he says, ‘among the most powerful ideas were those that concerned the divine’ [The Faith Roads]. Christianity had begun to spread eastwards as well as westwards. Paul enters into this complex world of competing philosophies and local cults. He spoke to the Athenians about what they worshipped as unknown; proclaiming Christ Jesus.

Now he settles in Corinth. It is a Roman colony and commercial centre, with command over shipping routes Once more we get a glimpse of the movement of people through arteries of trade and in the face of persecution. He shares home and work with Aquila and Priscilla; Timothy joins him fresh from his own travels. Having a place within the city marketplace offers new opportunities for witness and debate within and beyond the synagogue. 

Paul proclaims the message of the ‘life-changing and world-changing Messiah’ [Loveday Alexander on Acts] to the Jews first; when he fails to persuade the whole community, he moves on to the home of Titius Justus. His actions and words draw a line, if you like; hearers are responsible for accepting or rejecting the message he’s shared. 

God is active in this cosmopolitan and vibrant city: not only in Paul’s words but also through the power of the Spirit blowing where it wills. The assurance Paul receives in this new place echoes his own words to the Athenians: we search after God though he is not far from us. 

Even though the weight of imperial strength is encroaching, Paul’s example continues to inspire us. He reveals the importance of dialogue and building relationships; of participating in the life of our towns and cities as part of our witness. In the words of the psalmist, ensuring that our ‘talking’ might tell of God’s ‘wonderful works’ (Ps 105:2).

The Silk Roads is the sort of history which re-shapes our present perspectives. Frankopan writes that ‘the age of the west is at a crossroads, if not an end’… ‘networks and connections are quietly being knitted together across the spine of Asia; or rather they are being restored’ [Conclusion].  

Where do we find ourselves in the midst of this?

Uncertainty around Brexit and the Korean peninsula loom large; an age of transition is marked by concern around population growth, climate change, trade agreements, resource scarcity, cyber security.  The worlds of Elisha and Paul are not as remote as we think: our scriptures resource us to attend to the ways in which God’s word has echoed in the face of transition. 

We will find ourselves on our own marketplaces day by day, debating, building relationships and witnessing to Christ in the power of the Spirit. We might pray and support those called to the work of commerce, diplomacy and international affairs; and for those for whom it’s part of their discipleship. 

We are also called to pray for the work of our ecumenical partnerships and inter-faith work; that new silk roads might be shaped by a deeper religious understanding and vision of God’s Kingdom.

© Julie Gittoes 2017