The most precious thing

 Sunday, 6 April, Passiontide: Isaiah 43: 16-21, Philippians 3:4b-14 

and John 12:1-8

What is most precious is often most fragile.

Our world, our friendships, every human heart; like a jar of precious perfume. 

In his novel “Alabaster”, Chris Aslan reimagines the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He narrates their shame and sorrow, the freedom they long for and the stigma they face. They hear rumours about a new teacher; someone who might bring hope. 

The jar of pure nard is the most expensive thing they have, but it has not brought them good fortune. When the teacher comes to stay, Maryam smashes it open. 

Her words take us into the tender and provocative moment in today’s gospel:

At the upper room I hurry inside, dripping spikenard all over the carpets, to where the teacher is reclining. Then I take one of his feet and I pour… I’ve never smelled anything like it… It’s rich and warm and a little heady…

The scent fills the room, intoxicating everyone… Spikenard spills everywhere and I pull off my headscarf to use as a mop… my hair falls around me and catches in the liquid, so I use it to wipe his feet as well. 

Spikenard might’ve been a year’s wages; a dowry perhaps. 

No wonder the reaction - assuming scandalous waste rather than abundant generosity. 

Could it not have been sold? Would not the poor have benefitted?

The air fills with fragrance, hands and  feet are drenched in perfume, skin and hair are soaked with oil. 

And Aslan’s Maryam says to the teacher:  “It’s the most precious thing we have”... it’s not enough, I know, but I want to honour you and to prepare you for what’s to come.”

Mary, like our imagined Maryam, dares to love with abundance and holds nothing back - even her own future. 

She faces criticism, scorn and censure for this show of devotion, for the waste.

Yet this outpouring is meeting a different kind of need - it's a fragrance of love which encompasses death, an embodied worship which expresses hope; which gives an unspoken glimpse of resurrection before the pain.

As Maryam holds the teacher’s feet, she thinks ahead: This body will soon be broken and destroyed like this jar. He chooses to do this for us…I start to weep. I wipe and I weep, whispering my adoration. 

Her body is communicating her longing, her worship, her gratitude; her relief, her trust, her sorrow. She sees the brokenness and anticipates burial. 

His feet are washed with oil before he washes the feet of others with water.

A jar is broken in devotion, before his body breaks to heal and restore. 

This is a holy moment: intimate and tender as oil mingles with tears; blessing and sorrow; dignity and honour and grace. 

In describing this chapter in his commenary on, David Ford says the essentials are: being loved by Jesus, loving and trusting Jesus, recognizing who Jesus is, a heart open to the suffering of others, prayer, service, life-giving signs, extravagant attention and generosity. 

We are invited to play our part in this drama of friendship with Jesus. 

Such friendship is the most beautiful thing: it is to be held in the loving gaze of God. 

Our bodies are fully part of our life with God as we offer our whole selves without shame or fear; resisting some of the harsh judgements we make about them.

Embodiment goes to the heart of the incarnation: God’s word dwells with us as we break bread and share wine, weep and find consolation in our tears. 'God's presence and his very self, and essence all divine' as the hymn puts it.

Jesus names the goodness in this moment saying that it is worthy of being remembered - not for its waste but because Mary has dobne a beautiful thing. 

She antipates Jesus’ act of self-giving love by anointing his precious body with the most precious thing she has. She’s not  being cautious or holding back; she lives beyond the metrics of calculation; of growth or exchange. It is a pure gift in response to love.

As Isaiah has promised, God will do a new thing - it springs forth and we are invited to perceive it. He writes of a new way - of fresh waters; he writes of people being formed anew - declaring their praise and adoration. 

Mary’s gift of life and love fill our senses as an act of worship, drawing our attention to God’s love in Jesus: spilling over to forgive, breaking to make whole, lifted up do draw us to Godself. 

In the Eucharist, we are drawn into the abundance of  Jesus’ act of self-giving love. In fragments of bread, a cup of wine and words of blessing, we are made welcome, forgiven, restored and made new. Drawn into communion, our bodies in one body. 

Consider for a moment the things that have sustained us when life has been painful or we’ve found ourselves in turmoil - what comforts us?  Often, it's time with those who love us; the gestures of those who care; the body language that doesn’t count the cost. 

These aren’t merely pragmatic or calculated; not empty platitudes or politeness. They are acts of kindness or creativity that resist the pain of a fragile and finite world - which capture our senses like spring flowers. 

The body language between Mary and Jesus speaks of facing  suffering and death with generosity - sharing all that we have, breaking it open; somehow finding with it a gift of beauty with a fragrance that hangs in the air. 

It is an act of resistance against the grave - death does not win, instead the sacred notes of love rise above it. 

When challenged, Jesus is not suggesting that the needs of the poor do not matter - or that we accept society's inequalities as inevitable. It invites us to worship wiht our whole heart and to be open-hearted with what we have. 

Mary reminds us to love in the moment - aware of what lies ahead for Jesus, she offers comfort and tenderness. The breaking open the jar is a breaking open of her heart with deep gratitude and love. 

We too are to love Jesus without limit; that friendship is the source of goodness, reminding us that we are from love, of love and for love; that we are also to show the same open-heartedness to those who are in need. 

Paul writes of the vindication of unconditional love. He has desecribed the way in which Jesus does not cling to power but empties himself for us. In the light of that, Paul sees his gains as fleeting, counting them as rubbish (a polite translation of the Greek!). 

There is nothing that we can do to attain our own righteousness - it is a gift in Christ by faith. He shared our embodied experience, suffering and death that we might know his resurrection.

Mary responds to the need in front of her - the one who’ll die outside a city wall and be buried in a stranger’s tomb.  She loves what is before her eyes, in her dining room, amongst friends and those who’ll deny or betray love. 

Her body language shows that it is always Jesus we serve when we love those whose need confronts us. Judas faces rebuke rather than blessing for holding back; for thinking in the abstract. 

The perfume is an anticipation of resurrection - it is a glimpse of hope, it is a reminder of beauty and goodness, of extravagance and vulnerability. It is the fragrance of love, broken open and spilling out. 

As Passiontide begins, we are gifted an image of utter generosity; of being present; Jesus between us and judgment; holding nothing back. 

The cross awaits with all its pain and abandonment; but in this moment, one woman chooses to make a gesture that fills the room with the scent of what is possible. That there will be life again. That love will triumph. 

We press on in this way of love, as friends - recognising Jesus and being open-hearted to others; in prayer, service, attention and generosity, that our bodies too might be life-giving signs, broken open in love. The spiritual writer Ignatius says this, may it be our prayer:

Lord my God, when your love spilled over into creation You throught of me. I am from love, of love, for love. Let my heart, o God, always recognize, cherish, and enjoy your goodness in all of creation. Direct all that is in me toward your praise. Teach me reverence for every person, all things. Energize me in your service. Lord God may nother ever distract me from your love. Neither health nor sickness, wealth or poverty, nhonour or dishjonour, long life nor short. May I never seek nor choose to be other than You intend or wish. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2025

Divine possibility

 24 December, Advent 4: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, Romans 16:25-end and Luke 1: 26-38

Wham may have made it to Christmas number one (39 years after they debuted ‘Last Christmas’), but Mariah Carey has been repeatedly accorded the title “Queen of Christmas”. 

On the one hand she’s attempted to trademark the monika and been denied; on the other she’s said that she’s neither created nor wanted the title, that that was other people. She told Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2, that Mary is the “Queen of Christmas”.

Image here

For someone who started making music out of necessity - to survive and to express herself - Mariah Carey says that creativity not only gave her a sense of worth, but also taught her that ‘all things are possible with God.’

Divine possibility. 

That is where we find ourselves on this final day, in the final hours of Advent. 

There is the possibility of life where there was none.

In the ordinary, there is an unexpected greeting.

In the face of confusion, do not fear.

But it doesn’t begin there and it doesn’t end there either.

It begins with God’s love for the world: calling into life with creativity, freedom and possibility; choosing a people, inviting obedience, recalling to mercy.

David longed to build a house of cedar as a temple for the Lord. But a wandering people had trusted in a God who was with them, behind and before. 

So instead, he was to build up a people in his name, establishing a kingdom. 

Included in this household and lineage of rebellion and blessing, of exile and hope, was Joseph.

And into the life of his beloved Mary to whom he was betrothed, there comes a moment of divine possibility.  

The God who had dwelt and moved amongst a people now dwells with us, pitching a tent, tabernacling with us in our flesh.

We know the story so well that the remarkable risks sounding inevitable: the greeting, the doubt, the plan, the questions, the reassurance, the consent. 

Possibility hovers in the gaps in the story - humanity had waited in time for our Lord and Saviour; the eternal one waits for Mary’s “yes”.

We rush to crown her “Queen of Christmas” rather than letting the divine possibility unsettle us a little. 

First, Mary is greeted as “favoured one”.  She is perplexed; she turns the words over in her mind. 

She is told not to be afraid; that she has found favour with God. Why? Because she will conceive a son who fulfils the hopes of David’s line. 

And yet, for all the hope of an everlasting kingdom, for this young woman such favoured status meant risking everything: her marriage, her reputation, her community, her life. At the very least she would be shamed and shunned, accused and abandoned. 

There’s a carol, popular at school services, called “Mary did you know?” It asks if she knows that the child she will deliver, will soon deliver her.

To answer those questions with a “yes” holds together the angel’s words with an inner conviction, trust, imagination and vision: the stuff of her heart and the stuff of the divine possibility formed by scriptures, history, prayers and hopes. 

That “yes” was courageous: from first trimester to pangs of labour; from Jesus' first sign at a wedding in Cana to the scandal of the cross he carried; from his last breath and burial to his risen body breathing peace.

Second, Mary asks a question - how? How can this be? - before she gives her consent - letting it be, according to God’s word. 

Annunciation

In a moment depicted by artists whose paintings hang in galleries and are reproduced on Christmas cards, time stands still: weighty, spacious, the epitome of a pregnant pause, the possibility of life where there was none.

We too  imagine her body language: eyes down cast or turning towards the door or closing slightly; hands clasped or holding a book, beckoning or silencing; leaning into the doorframe or a chair taking her weight. Eternity in that moment crowns her queen; but painters give her time to think, refuse, reconsider just as the angel gives freedom to consent.

The Holy Spirit moves in those moments - overshadowing, conceiving the holy; the creator created within her womb. Did she know, the child would be the great I am? Yes, just as divine possibility had brought life out of Elizabeth’s barrenness.

Nothing is impossible. All things are possible. With God.

But then the angel departs as she utters her yes, here I am: servant, handmaid of the Lord; espoused, expectant mother.

This  is where we find ourselves on this final day, in the final hours of Advent. 

The possibility of life where there was none.

Did she know that her baby would save us? 

She certainly knew enough: enough to keep saying ‘yes’ to God; to sing her own song, to pray for a changed world; to labour to bring God’s speechless word to birth. 

The mystery has only just begun. 

Kept secret for long ages and now disclosed; told by the prophets and made known to us gentiles.

Mary, Queen of Christmas models obedience of faith.  Teaching us what we want for Christmas, the one thing we need - our great salvation in Jesus Christ.

She teaches us to say ‘yes’; to sing our songs of justice; to pray for a changed world; to labour in love for a lasting peace. In the power of the Spirit, to seek the everlasting kingdom of Christ. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2023

Breathing the words of Mary

 A sermon preached at our patronal with prayers for Her Late Majesty: Isaiah 61:1-11, Galatians 4:4-7 & Luke 1:46-55 

Standing in front of our Vicars’ board is a humbling and poignant thing: the dates  connect us to past generations, eras and circumstances. They mark out times of  conquest, plague and reformation; of settlements, civil war and restoration; of  empire, industrialisation and commonwealth; of the blitz and the welfare state, state  funerals and accession. 

Most of the names are unremembered apart from being said out loud by the  current incumbent wondering how they navigated change, how they, in the power  of the Spirit, shared God’s word and witnessed to Christ. 

They baptised at the font we use today; they, like us, took bread and wine saying  take and eat do this in remembrance of me; we are united with them in every ‘our  Father’. We laugh and weep like them; we comfort and seek consolation like them.  

We come as T. S. Eliot expresses it: ‘you are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or  inform curiosity or carry report. You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid’. 

Amidst the changes and chances of this fleeting world, we continue this rhythm of  worship and witness; dwelling in the eternal pulse of love, the fullness of God. Our  lives are but small things held within this overarching story of God’s love for the  world. 

Madonna of the Dispossessed by Mary C Farrenkopf

We trust in a God who works through small things: through one woman’s “yes”  God’s Son is made flesh; immensity cloister’d in [her] dear womb. It is through the  child-bearing of blessed Mary that we receive adoption as children of God, and if  children then also heirs.  

Heirs of a promise of a kingdom. Archbishop Fisher, who gave Her Late Majesty a  book of devotions as she prepared for her coronation, said: ‘The Christian lives in  two worlds at once; the world of Christ’s completed kingdom… and the world of  continued conflict against the powers of evil’.  

In some ways, Mary’s song - the familiar words of the Magnificat - is one which  shapes how we live between these two kingdoms.

Mary’s whole being is caught up in praise of God, the assurance of grace: she  embodies the words of Isaiah as mind, body, soul and Spirit are caught up in the  fullest expression rejoicing and exultation. She also calls us into service of God’s  kingdom on earth. 

On Friday, Bishop Sarah said: ‘A life lived in the service of others is a rare jewel. It is  a jewel that Her Late Majesty The Queen wore as a crown.’ Isaiah speaks of a rich  crown too - of jewel and garland, garnets and robes. These were no mere earthy  vesture but speak of God’s salvation and righteousness. 

Salvation being God’s power to heal, restore and make whole. Righteousness being  the quality of God’s faithfulness and loving mercy. Through Jesus, salvation is for  any and for all - the greatest and the least. Mary speaks of this promise, remembered  across all generations. 

In Jesus, the powers of evil are undone: though his presence in the world, through  his death and descent to the very depths of alienation and despair, though glorious  hope of resurrection. As Rowan Williams puts it: ‘he comes to his new and risen life,  his universal kingship by searching out all the forgotten and failed members of the  human family’.  

This is the stuff of the world of Christ’s completed kingdom. This is our hope. 

Mary names the conflict and struggle of this world. She gives thanks for what God  has done in faithfulness, blessing and generosity. She speaks of the consequences  for the world.  

The one whose name is holy will make known mercy from one generation to  another. And mercy is revealed in deliverance from poverty, exploitation and  domination.  

As this courageous, joyful, obedient and determined young woman makes the voice  of the prophets her own, God’s own Son is being knit together in her womb. Her  words look forward to the start of his public ministry: the poor lifted up, the rich  sent away; the hungry filled, the powerful challenged.  

She declares the work of salvation and righteousness in relational terms: human community  transformed, resources redeployed and imaginations enlarged. This is a song through which  we too are called to embody God’s compassion, love and mercy; through which we seek  all that makes for the flourishing of humanity and all creation. 

Today, we hold in mind the life and words of one who, as a young woman, made  vows and promises which she spent a lifetime inhabiting. Her Late Majesty was  greeted in an Abbey with great pomp and ceremony; but she also knelt, laying aside  regal robes and jewels, to be anointed.  

The Queen - photographed by Cecil Beaton to commemorate her coronation in 1953

In her book of devotions, Archbishop Fisher had invited her to ponder this moment  - anointed God’s servant until her dying day, drawing on resources of divine grace  with a heart, mind and hands to do his will. The words Fisher gave the young  queen were, ’in answer to God’s call and consecration, I dare to breathe the Virgin  Mary’s words: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy  word”.’ 

We too as adopted children and heirs are invited to breathe Mary’s words as we live  trusting in God’s Kingdom amidst the real conflicts and challenges of the earthly  realm.  

Suc works are often about small things. Like seeds planted in hope - germinating  unseen - brings forth shoots from the earth; small things out of which new life and  hope springs up.  Bringing the margins to the centre is not the preserve of the new Prince and Princess of Wales alone; it is the work of all of us, members of Christ’s body; people who breathe in Mary’s words. 

God’s righteousness and salvation is enfleshed in Mary’s womb; from this small  God’s power and love is made perfect in human weakness. This power breaks  through in us too - as we break bread in remembrance of our living Lord; as the  Spirit breathes through us, strengthen us for service. 

In a small thing - a fragile wafer - we are fed, restored, strengthened by Christ’s  body; we become his body, receiving dignity and purpose as adopted children  and heirs.  

We receive this gift not just for ourselves but for the world. Here, even in our grief  we sing songs of hope and praise, vision and protest. Here, we commit to the  pursuit of justice, compassion and peace; to courageous advocacy for the powerless  and marginalized. Here, we like Mary, and all who dare to breathe her words,  commit afresh to acts of service as a nation mourns Her Late Majesty who shares  with us the inheritance of God’s kingdom. 

We sing Mary’s song in places of vulnerability and fear; we breathe her words in  solidarity with suffering and anxious. As members of Christ’s body we do small  things which bring healing and hope; bringing the margins to the centre, seeking  justice and peace. 

The day before her coronation, an archbishop invited a young queen to ponder this  peace in these words: ’But above all God has taken me into his peace and I praise for  his being what he is, for his goodness, his enabling power, the certainty of his  unfailing love’.  

As she takes our rest, may we continue in our service: may God be in my head in  our thinking, speaking and at our departing. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2022

What's your song to be?

A sermon preached on the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Last Christmas: Wham!

These are the rules of Whamageddon: it runs from 1st December until midnight on 24th; you “win’ if you haven’t heard “Last Christmas”; you’re out if you accidentally or intentionally hear Wham’s pop classic.

Thanks to Jeremy Vine’s lunch time show on Radio 2, I was knocked out of Whamageddon early on. You may have heard it everywhere - car radio, supermarkets, pubs and cafes, but not at our Christmas Fair.

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart

But the very next day you gave it away

Some would say that this song, written by George Michael in the bedroom of his childhood home when visiting his parents, has a timeless appeal. 

This year to save me from tears, 

I’ll give it to someone special.

His fellow band member Andrew Ridgeley called this refrain ‘beguiling’ and ‘wistful’: somehow ‘distilling the essence of Christmas into music’. He continues, saying:  ‘Adding lytic which told the tale of betrayed love was a masterstroke and, as he did so often, he touched hearts’.

In a way, this Sunday of Advent is all about hearts and songs. The Gospel that we hear today is so familiar that we might be moved to call it ‘beguiling’ and ‘wistful’; a story that in some way distills the essence of Christmas.

Today we hear of two pregnant women in their first and second trimesters greeting each other: there is energy and exclamation in this encounter; movements of unbridled joy in hearts and wombs. 

For each of them, pregnancy brings not only physical sensations and changes, but also intrigue and speculation. Mary left Nazareth in haste, perhaps wondering what Joseph would do; Elizabeth was at home, wondering if her husband would speak again. 

Hearts had been given away not in romantic infatuation but in love so deep that it is both mysterious and scandalous.

Yet here, there is the call and response of hearts that have been touched by love. In the company of her pregnant cousin, Mary finds both sanctuary and delight in the face of uncertainty. 

These women embrace and so enfold each other’s stories. As John leaps in utero at the nearness of Jesus in Mary’s womb, this human loving shifts to be a moment of worship, a moment of blessing.

Here there is overflowing joy and renewed trust; here, hope bubbles up with awe and wonder. Hearts are opened and given away in a love which moves from fear to communion, from promise to fulfilment.

Elizabeth’s words of blessing are but the beginning: as she affirms Mary’s faith and trust, when labour is still many months off,  the good news of God’s Word of love made flesh is magnified in a song of praise.

On Mary’s lips, there is a new song. She finds her voice. A voice which picks up the cries of prophets throughout the centuries: she sings of God’s strength, generosity and mercy; she cries out for the poor and broken hearted.

This is a song of hope and change. It names the ways in which the human heart can be turned in on itself in pride and self-reliance; it names our misdirected desires for wealth, and the ways power can be misused.

This is a song of hope and change: it names the way God’s blessing and love reverses the status quo. She described the honour given to the humble and the raising up of the lowly. The world she describes will be marked by the justice and mercy brought by the child she carries in her womb.

Mary and Elizabeth

This determined and courageous young woman - makes her voice one with the prophets. She does so not as a future hope but with the confidence of present reality. The God of whom she speaks has acted to raise up and fill, to bring down and to send.

This is song of describes what healing and salvation look like: as relationships are transformed; as imaginations are enlarged; as resources are redistributed. God’s compassion is embodied in human flesh and in networks of community; all this for the sake of the flourishing of the whole of creation.

Human lives magnify and amplify the loving purposes of God.Hearts are given away, but not betrayed; when lives are freed from tears; when next year brings the unfolding mystery of God’s love. 

In her song Mary sees the world as God sees it: she amplifies God’s love and invites us to magnify it in our own hearts. 

What then will our song be?

We are to make Mary’s song our own - committing ourselves to feed the world and banish fear; embracing the lonely, vulnerable and fearful; challenging those gifted with economic and social capital. 

The prophet Micah denounced dishonesty in business and superficial religion; he challenged the abuse of power and the exploitation of the poor.  He looked forward to a time of peace - when we could set aside our reliance on military might and the false gods of wealth.

And foretold that this work of redemption would begin in a small place; in a city which was home to a small clan. In Bethlehem, this marginal place, blessed Mary will go into labour. In this city her firstborn child - God’s own beloved Son - is born. 

Peace breaks in in the cries of an infant; in a babe at his mother’s breast.

Blessing is found in the fruit of Mary’s womb.

We are blessed by God’s love dwelling with us in flesh of our flesh. 

We bless as we become receptive to that gift, and channel that love.

Our world cries out for that gift of peace and love: a world of universal credit and food banks; a world of environmental degradation and refugee crises; a world of homelessness and zero hours contracts.

We respond to cries: singing increases our capacity to act; the Spirit strengthens us to seek justice, compassion and peace. We commit to Mary’s manifesto of struggle and change with hope and courage. 

The body Mary carries in her body is God with us. That body will teach and heal, console and provoke. That body will be beaten, mocked and lifted up on a cross. That dying body destroys death and brings new life. In broken bread, we are fed, restored and strengthened by his body; we become his body, receiving dignity and purpose.

We sing out in places of vulnerability and fear; we stand in solidarity with suffering and anxious. As his body we cry out for those seeking healing and hope; we act of those seeking justice and peace. May our lives be blessings of love.

This Christmas will we give God our heart; will God work in us to open hearts to those around us.

© Julie Gittoes 2021