Location, location, location

 8th December, Advent 2: Malachi 3:1-4, Phhilippians 1:3-11 and Luke 3:1-6

‘Location, Location, Location’. 

Kirsty Allsopp and Phil Spencer are casting for the 25th anniversary series of Channel 4’s primetime property show. 

You know the format: a couple wants to move to a particular area - with a list of requirements (sometimes quite niche) plus a budget (often unrealistic). It’s usually a circle that’s impossible to square without some compromise. 

Image Channel 4

Location matters to human beings: proximity to friends, family or work; the places we come from or those where we make our home; the kind of lives we live or dreams we have; needs versus ideals, and compromises along the way. 

Location also carries with it ideas of convenience or value; qualities or status; the postcodes regarded as premium and those which raise an eyebrow. 

Today’s readings are all about location, location, location. 

Luke’s words convey a very specific sense of place: in a few lines he gives us a sense of the geopolitical and religious landscape of his day; he locates power in people, roles and places, 

Emperors, governors, rulers and high-priests are all named. But the word of God isn’t being heard in those places of status, influence, wealth or control. 

The hearing of God’s word is located elsewhere: in the remoteness of wilderness, on the margins rather than at the centre. 

It’s quite the juxtaposition: as if Phil and Kirsty had offered the woman looking for a modern city centre flat a remote ancient cottage. 

Wildernesses can be risky places - no safety nets or creature comforts. It’s a place where illusions are shattered, vulnerabilities exposed and priorities re-ordered. 

Perhaps the wilderness also brings a level of release or relief: away from competing demands we can perceive things more clearly; we retreat from pressures in order to return refreshed, renewed. 

In today’s passage, it's in the wilderness that the word of God comes. In the messy and sometimes harsh realities of the world as it is, a message of hope and healing is heard. 

The wilderness is a place of watching and waiting upon God, yes. It is also a place where God calls us to a new place, to be relocated. 

It’s John’s role to locate us. To draw us into an inward movement. His words about repentance - metanoia, turning around. He brings us to the heart of things - and to find there forgiveness, grace and mercy.

He helps us to see the whole landscape: of ourselves and our world. He helps us to see the points of disconnection or estrangement, of selfishness or carelessness. The fractiousness of what we call in shorthand ‘sin’ which undoes creativity and goodness.

John, like the other prophets before him, speaks in such a way that lives can be turned around - realigned with God’s purposes. 

Luke locates him alongside Tiberius, Pilate, Herod - and his voice from the edge contrasts with their dominance and greed. He calls for resources to be diverted - for justice to be enacted. 

Quoting Isaiah, he gives us visual images for what that looks like: valleys, filled; mountains, lowered; crooked, straightened; rough, smoothed. It is a re-imagined world where inequality and oppression are levelled out. 

In this wild place, where John speaks, we can reimagine the landscape; a landscape where all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Advent is in many ways a spiritual ‘location’ where we can hear the word of God in new ways - when we are redirected towards God; where we might be discomforted in order to find comfort. 

The contrasting allegiances Luke sets up invites us to consider what norms we might need to let go of or turn away from: in our lives, in community and online, we encounter persistent cries to consume and accumulate; culture wars which lead to judgmentalism and division; dehumanising indifference towards others or a selfishness that cuts us off from them.

If we’re honest in our self-reflection, we might find some of those cultural or ethical norms creeping into our own hearts too. It might be that instinctive reaction to or avoidance of people not like us; the irritations or misunderstandings that niggle away at us. 

But thankfully that is not the end point of our human condition. We have the opportunity, moment by moment, week by week, to redirect our hearts and minds towards God. To find there the promise of renewal and refreshment - a grace that strengthens us, a mercy that is balm to our wounds and the forgiveness of what is past. 

As we turn, as our lives are recalibrated, we find our hearts opening up to the one who is the source of life and love, the one who makes us whole. We celebrate this hope in baptism - dying and rising with Christ.

The words of the prophet Malachi point us towards God’s love: the imagery he uses of a refiner’s fire or fuller’s soap suggests that renewal comes through testing and cleansing, bringing to light what is precious, what was always there.  

He reminds us that the coming of Jesus, the prince of peace, is good and joyful news. He also reminds us that his coming in love does not leave us unchanged. We are renewed and restored - moving us towards joyful praise and also a faithful obedience as we walk in God’s ways of love. 

Paul gets all this. As he writes out of his own challenging circumstances, his feelings are intense; his gratitude towards others great. 

In his prayer, he piles on adjectives to speak of a love that abounds, overflows, increases more and more. This abundance of love is God’s work brought to completion in human lives. It is a love that holds others in their heart - that seeks after knowledge and understanding, that is courageous and wise. 

It is a love that enables glimpses of Christ-like-ness in us. A love that is located in us. A love that we need to tend and nurture. Here as we break bread, as we are assured of being forgiven, renewed, recalled and blessed, may we share Paul’s joyful and thankful prayer - for each other and for those saints unknown to us. 

© Julie Gittoes 2024

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

Freedom, Life and Love

A sermon preached in one way at the baptism of Michael, Ariana and Benaiah at St Mary's; preached as invitation to consider what it is to be baptised at Christ Church. 

In part inspired by Esi Edugyan's magnificent novel Washington Black: lyrical and compelling exploration of the nature of freedom in the face of brutality and beauty; meditating on the capacity of the human heart, to harm and to heal. 

The readings were: Isaiah 58.9b-end; Psalm 103.1-8; Hebrews 12.18-end; Luke 13.10-17

Today we welcome three new members of the church, the body of Christ.

We welcome them with joy and thanksgiving.

We welcome them into freedom; into life; into relationship.

Today is the beginning of a journey and an opportunity for us to ponder our baptism - not as past event but as present identity and future hope.

The story of our lives is woven into God’s story.

As human beings we’re hardwired to respond to stories.

It’s why we get addicted to soaps or spend hours with our head in a good book.

From the most popular west-end show to the latest Hollywood blockbuster; from the bedtime stories we tell our children to the lyrics of our favourite album we love to get lost in a good story.

Sorry telling isn’t the preserve of the professionals: we do it every day. 

When we meet up with friends of colleagues; when we gather to celebrate or grieve; when we logon to Facebook or tell a joke; and over refreshments after this service, we tell stories. 

Words and expressions hold our interest; connections are made between; and we look forward to a satisfying ending!

One story which has captivated and challenge me recently is the novel Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. She’s a masterful storyteller - full of strength, beauty, courage and creativity.

She takes us from the heat of the  sugar cane plantations to the dazzling frozen wastelands of the Arctic; through the muddy streets of London to the Moroccan desert. Inspired by a true story, this tale of liberation rests on taking a risk. 

The risk of stepping into the new-fangled cloud-cutter: what we’d recognise as a hot air balloon.

This story of freedom, identity, empowerment and being fully human is also a quest to make the world more whole.

Early on young Washington, or Wash as he’s known, asks: ‘What does it feel like, Kit? Free?’

She gathers him close, her hot breath at his ear, saying: ‘Oh, child, it like nothing in this world. When you free, you can do anything.’

By the end, Wash is a scientific explorer and an artist; no longer slave or assistant but accomplished in his own right. The urge to draw gave him a sense of peace and calm. He says, ‘At the easel I was a man in full, his hours his own, his preoccupations his own’.

Freedom.

Peace.

Fullness of life.

These are the things of God’s story.

These things are good news.

The life stories of those baptised today will unfold as they discover their gifts and skills; they will forge deep connections with family and the friends they’ve yet to meet.

Today we commit ourselves to pray for them and to encourage them; to show by our example how to live fully as members of one body; to seek, with them, the things that make for peace.

We began with Isaiah reminding the people of God of the purpose of the Sabbath.

Living in Hendon, we glimpse something of the gift and command of Shabbat as our Jewish bothers and sisters cease from their routine pattern of work and actives when control or pressurise us.

The pace of life visibly changes; life in all its fullness is rediscovered.

For Isaiah, the discipline and rhythm of Sabbath also teaches us that our neighbour is not a burden.  Our neighbours are our community. There is freedom in the gift of Sabbath; their is life in its command.

Remove the yoke, the burden.

Stop pointing the figure; speaking of evil.

Offer food. Satisfy the needs of the hungry and afflicted.

This is Sabbath. Here is light shining in the darkness.

Sabbath invites us to set aside our own interests.

Rest, renew your strength; be refreshed by God’s word.

With the Lord as our guide, God’s people rebuild, repair and restore.

The setting aside of a holy day is to be a delight.

But.

As with good gifts, there is always a temptation to subvert it or to turn away. We risk burdening others rather than releasing them from the yoke of oppression. The weakest and powerless suffer most from our collective failures of self-interest.

But.

God keeps calling us back to the heart of God’s own story: of life, of freedom and love.

This is freedom from all that hurts, wounds and burdens us, what in short hand we call sin.

The freedom of this new life has God's love at its heart. It means we can do anything: anything that echoes that love in what we say and think and do.

God speaks of life and freedom and love by the prophets; and God’s word becomes flesh in Jesus.

In our Gospel reading, Luke tells a story of how Jesus revealed the power of God to heal and set free.

Think about the woman at the heart of this story. We don’t know her name; but Jesus sees her. 

Imagine the world lived from her perspective: not being able to make eye contact; the narrowness of sight-lines; the frustration and vulnerability; the impact on her social life and household.

She was welcome in the synagogue; she was there to embrace the gift of Shabbat.

Shabbat was the day was a day for healing: for life, liberation and community. 

Synagogue was a place for praise: the right place for her burden to be lifted.

Woman, says Jesus, you are set free.

Set free to participate in the community she’s already part of; to embrace fullness of life.

In the face of indignation, Jesus invites his critics to grasp afresh the meaning of the Sabbath: a time to restore human dignity and bring release.

In the face of freedom, the crowd rejoiced at all the wonderful things Jesus did.

Baptism draws us into this story of life and liberation.

Anointed with oil, we tell the story of God’s blessing as they discover their own gifts.

Water is poured out, we tell the story of God’s love from slavery to freedom, from death to life.

Receiving a candle, we tell the story of God’s calling to be light in our world.

As they grow up, these three human beings need the love and support of their parents, godparents and extended family; they need the prayers and encouragement of all of us, Christ’s body in this place; they will need the wisdom of teachers, friends and mentors who they’ve yet to meet.

At every Eucharist, we tell the story of God’s love poured out in creation and the human struggle to set aside self-interest; we tell the story of the prophets crying out for justice and the cries of the vulnerable. 

Each week, we tell the story of God’s own Son abiding in flesh of our flesh; teaching, healing and telling stories; giving his life blood that we might live; giving us bread that we might be one body.

At every Eucharist, the cross with which we are marked in baptism, calls us to worship with joy and thanksgiving; and we are sent to continue that story of life and freedom by the power of the Spirit at work in us. In our words and actions.

Welcome.

Here you find freedom, peace and fullness of life.

Make this story your story. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2019

Grit, determination and passion

This list the text of a sermon preached at the Cathedral Eucharist on 13 January 2019. Opening the Saturday papers, there was a lot of comment on Andy Murray - his career, physical pain, achievements, character as he contemplated giving up competitive tennis.  

It sparked reflections about the weight of expectation he faced and how we sit lightly to 'success'. How this related to Jesus' Baptism was in part about the divine embrace of human flesh, but also the power of the Spirit. Given the Cathedral's dedication to the Holy Spirit, it resonated too with T. S. Elliot's Four Quartets - the ground of our beseeching.  

However, as well as remembering Murray win his first Wimbledon title, I was calling to mind the moment I heard about the Dunblane massacre - an attack on a school where Andy and his brother were pupils. There is underpinning this sermon something about trauma, resilience and redemption. The texts were Isaiah 43:1-7, Acts 8:14-17 and Luke 3:15-7, 21-22

In the summer of 2013, 17.3 million viewers watched tuned in to the Wimbledon final.

Many more, like me, listened on Radio 5 Live.

The duration of the Men’s Singles Final outlasted the journey time from Guildford down the A281 to Alford Church. Sitting in the car park, Evensong drew closer; waiting with baited breath for those three words: game, set and match.  Followed by the name: Andy Murray. 

And he cried - having squeezed out every last drop of talent in pursuit of victory.

And six years later,  he cried - the excruciating pain of his body is telling him to stop.

Journalists reach for cliches - speaking of blood, sweat and tears. They remind us of the gangly kid who became a sporting icon; the fierce competitor who would sulk and swear; the shy man with a dry wit and the conviction to challenge misogyny in tennis.

Like Jeremy Bates, Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski before him, Murray carried a weight of expectation: every time he stepped on to court, the people questioned in their hearts whether he might be the one; whether he might be the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry.

His role of honour is quantified in singles titles, Olympic medals, weeks at number one and being named as Sports personality of the Year. His greatness, if you like, is in the headline: the grit, determination and passion at the limit of endurance.

In the realm of sport, that weight of expectation never ends. Rankings are determined match by match. Greatness is a glittering prize; elusive and subject to judgement.

The words of Andy Bull’s tribute point to a different metric of greatness; to Murray’s character. Of the man who sold the red Ferrari and kept his VW Polo, he writes: It is rare enough for a sportsman to be so successful, much rarer still for one to be so unaffected by his success. 

Perhaps being unaffected by success will enable expectations to morph into legacy, mentoring and a new pattern of life.

Today we John the Baptist had found himself in the spot light; he carries a weight of expectation that he will be the one. The one who brings freedom; who’ll triumph in the name of God.  

He remains unaffected by the crowds, taking no claim of greatness for himself. 

Instead he continually points beyond himself; to the one who is to come.

By baptising with water, he has set the scene and prepared the way. 

His words sting with the rebuke to those who abuse power; and captivate those longing for new life. He invites all who hear him to turn back to God: to open their hearts, to change their lives, to expect something - or rather someone - more.  

That expectation is met in the one who comes and stands alongside us - embodying the fullness of God’s love in the frailty of our our flesh.

In the moment of his own baptism, Jesus is revealed as God’s Son; revealed in the physicality of the moment. In this moment of prayer. 

Baptism of Jesus - Daniel Bonnell

In baptism, the divine embrace of human flesh is declared. 

The voice of his heavenly Father declares Jesus’ identity and authority as Son; the power of the Spirit though which the work of our rebirth is completed is revealed. 

Jesus is the one who restores dignity to our humanity by being with us: his baptism is a sign of the way in which the world is reclaimed, healed, transformed and blessed by the Word of God made flesh. 

In him, our expectations are subverted and fulfilled. Greatness and success are re-defined. In him, we see God’s ways at work - persistently, gently, fiercely turning us away from death and toward life.

With a passion as strong as fire, Jesus calls us back from all those things which serve as substitutes for life lived with God: the desire for control over others or the desire to be at the centre of the crowd; the reliance on what we have to define who we are; the way we might chase multiple glittering prizes which leave us empty or unfulfilled.

With a fire of unquenchable love, Jesus restores to us the dignity and calls us into a community which reflects life lived with God: where we are loved; where we are supported; where we find wisdom and joy; where we can be vulnerable; where hospitality bubbles up.

And some days, it feels as if we are still waiting for that to be made real; still waiting to be noticed or heard; still waiting for expectations to be met; still waiting for our purpose to become clear; still waiting for radical love to extend its reach.

And the gift we are waiting for is nearer to us than we know; it is for us, our name and our charism. At a Cathedral Church dedicated to the Holy Spirit, dare we pray and call upon power from on high?

We are to pray as the apostles did in Acts: that the Spirt might descend to renew in our flesh, the reality of that divine embrace; to see that love stretching forth over one another. 

In our waiting and praying,  our bodies yield to this gift of love divine.

As one theologian [Willie Jennings: Acts] puts it: God will draw near and give lavishly in an intimate space created by bodies and created for bodies. 

To pray in this way expresses our longings; our desire to liberated from fear or failure; our need for love to be move loving.

As T. S Elliot puts it:

And all shall be well and 

All manner of thing shall be well

By the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseeching. 

Our beseeching is met in the promise of being beloved. 

The intimacy of this echoes the words of Isaiah fulfilled in Christ: in him, we are called by name and redeemed; in the Spirit we are created and recreated; formed and reformed.  

In the assurance of such love, our motives and actions are purified; the chaff burnt away. In the assurance of such love, we are called to bring healing and hope to others.

Fire and Rose

It is through the intimacy of created bodies that God’s love is made known in the world: in Christ, God’s very self is given for us, defeating death and turning us towards life.

That life and light and love, is breathed through the world by the Spirit blowing where it wills: provoking, creating, protesting, healing, crying out. 

That Spirit is poured out on us today: on broken bread and outpoured wine becoming for us Christ’s body; on hearts and minds receptive to challenge and desiring blessing; on our bodies however energetic, frail, bruised or beautiful. We who are many become one body - living, breathing and moving in the world. 

May we live with grit and determination, passion and endurance - listening to what the Spirt might be saying to us in the words and music of our worship; in the papers we read and the people we meet. What might the Sprit be saying?

In the words of Elliot (text):

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
     Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

© Julie Gittoes 2019