The Raynville Rambler – Page 2 – normal life in Leeds

Will you come and follow me?

Sermon for St Peter’s Bramley, 17 September 2023.
Preceded by the sketch ‘The Call’ from John Bell’s ‘Jesus and Peter’.
Bible reading: Matthew 4:18-22

So there they were, Peter and his brother Andrew, just standing in their fishing boats a little way out in the lake, casting a net to catch fish. All in a day’s work. And along comes Jesus and tells them to follow him, which they do. So do James and John, another fishing crew, a few minutes later. Can it really be that simple?

It seems more likely from the other versions of this story in the Bible that these fishermen had been among the crowds who heard John the Baptist and Jesus himself teaching, before this encounter. That might be you – you’ve heard about Jesus, but never really stopped to think how he might be speaking to you personally. The sketch we’ve just seen explores the sort of conversation that may have occurred on the day, when Jesus challenged them what their response would be to what they had heard.

I want to explore briefly three of the questions that Peter asks, because they’re the sort of questions that lots of people ask when they’ve heard something about Jesus but don’t really know how to respond, whether to follow him or not.

Q1 – with map and GPS unit

Firstly he asks “Where are you going?” Well, how do you find out where you’re going, or more often, how to get where you know you ought to be going? I’m of the older generation and I still like to use a paper map – this one helps me find my way around the Leeds area. But I also have a GPS unit for my bike, that tells me exactly where I am and which direction to head next. If you have a new car you may have a Satnav system built in that does the same job. But you need to know your destination first. Jesus couldn’t just give Peter a postcode, because for the next three years they were going to be wandering round what we now call Israel and Syria all the time, going wherever God called them and the need was greatest.

When Jesus said to Peter in the sketch that he wasn’t giving an answer because “you might not like it”, he meant that it wouldn’t always be easy. Being a Christian does have its challenges and God often calls people to move to a new place, perhaps more than once, to serve him. It’s a life-changing call, but those who accept it find that actually, we do like it very much!

Q2 – with Bible

The second question is “Just tell me what I need”. Jesus’ answer is quite clear – “just bring yourself”. Of course Peter’s friends came with him, but the point is he needed no special preparation. Not everyone who starts on the Christian life needs to literally leave behind their only means of making a living as Peter did, but what Jesus does ask us all is to bring the gifts and skills he has already given us. Jesus may have seen in Peter and his colleagues a group of young men who were hard-working and courageous, but also patient and prepared to take advice and take risks (as Mark’s version of this story shows us). Those were the qualities, the ‘transferable skills’ to use a modern phrase, that they would need as they went around with Jesus. You might well ask yourself, what skills has God already given me that I could use for him? The other point to make is that in starting afresh following Jesus, we can also leave behind the things that trouble us – you may have heard the phrase ‘born again’, but that basically means putting behind you all the things you are guilty or troubled about in your past life, and starting over with a clean slate. The only other thing you will need, of course, is the Bible – used wisely, it’s still the best guide to how to put those skills to good use.

Q3 – with mirror

At the end of the sketch, Peter asks “Do you want me to end up like you?” it sounds critical, and maybe it is. Let’s be honest, the Church often doesn’t have a good reputation. People have an image of boring old people singing ancient hymns and talking fancy language. Or of someone with a collection plate asking for money as soon as they go in the door. They think they will be judged by their appearance or accent if they go to church. Mostly of course that’s very far from the truth. I hope you got a good welcome today and you’re finding this service easy to follow, and dare I say it, even fun.

But beneath a question like this is a deeper one, that really means “I hope I won’t have to change”. And the answer to that is in fact, “yes, you will” – but “you will change for the better”. (mirror) I’m looking now at someone who has changed a lot since he first heard about Jesus forty years ago, but who knows he still has a long way to go to become like Jesus. The journey of following Jesus will change us into better people, if we really let him into our lives. Can you see a better person in here?

These questions, then: “Where are you going?” “Just tell me what I need” “Do you want me to end up like you?”– they are real questions that real people ask. To rephrase them slightly, they are the anxieties we all have to address whenever we face a new step in life: “What’s the goal?” “What do I need to achieve it”? and “How will it change me?”

Maybe Grace’s parents have been asking themselves those questions since her birth. They are honest questions, that deserve honest answers, and sometimes the answers aren’t simple, quick or easy. We may not understand the whole of the answers, or even the questions, until we’ve been on the road with Jesus for a long time. But they are important questions to ask at the start, if we are to understand what it is that Jesus calls us to. Also, someone who asks questions is ready to learn, and those are the followers Jesus wants.

One question that Peter didn’t ask is “Where do I start from?” The answer was obvious: from this beach, today. Jesus doesn’t answer Peter’s question about becoming like him, instead he just asks for the last time, “are you coming with me?” Because that’s the only way we can change. Life with Jesus can start for you, here and now, as you are.

Well, it’s time for me to go now….. Are you coming?

The Perfect Parent

Sermon for Sunday, 18 June 2023, St Peter’s Bramley. Romans 5:1-8

Earlier this week, I was scrolling through social media – and yes, it can be a waste of time, but it also brings up some unexpected gems. I came across this story, which seems appropriate in this week of the Special Olympics, when we celebrate the sporting achievements of people with disabilities.

It concerned a parent. Her daughter enjoyed basketball and wanted to excel at it. There were just two small problems, if you’ll pardon the pun: the girl was very short, and also partially blind. Now as we all know, basketball players tend to be tall, because it’s easier to get the ball in the basket. They also need great eyesight for the hand-eye co-ordination to judge the throw just right. So that was a challenge. But her mother did everything she could to get her daughter onto a basketball team.

You can imagine the pride in the mother’s heart when she stood on the sidelines watching her daughter play a competitive match with her team for the first time. But then she heard the comments that other parents were making: ‘Who let that girl on the pitch?’ ‘She’ll be no good, she’s too small’. ‘She keeps missing the net!’ Despite this, the mother refused to answer the critics and continued to cheer her daughter on.

On this Father’s Day, let’s think about the relationship between ourselves and God with the imagery of the parent-child relationship that the Bible often uses. Jesus constantly referred to God the creator as ‘my father’ and told us to pray to ‘our father in heaven’. Today’s passage from Romans tells us three ways in which God, as our heavenly Father, relates to us in the same way as the best human parents relate to their children – only more so.

Firstly, God is a proud parent. Unless there’s something seriously wrong in the family relationship, all parents express pride in their children from the very start, and in a way that doesn’t depend on the children’s successes and failures. My own father died relatively young, and had been unwell for some time following a stroke that left him with very little speech. But after his death, my mother told me that one of the last things he said to her was, “I’m so proud of all our children”.

We can also see that in the story I quoted. The mother was proud of the fact that her daughter had made it onto the basketball team. It didn’t matter at that moment that she wasn’t scoring points, what mattered was it was her daughter out theredoing what she loved. Parents who are proud of their kids will boast about the fact to other people. And because of that pride, they do want the best for their children, whatever the cost. In the same way, we mean so much to our heavenly Father, whatever our shortcomings, that he is proud of each of us, and wants each and very one of us to be the best people that we can. In fact he boasts of us.

‘Boasting’ is a word that Paul uses several times in the letter to the Romans. He uses it to make a distinction between the good sort of boasting – that celebrates goodness in other people – and the bad sort that’s all about seeking glory for ourselves. He uses it twice in this short passage, firstly to say that because we stand in the grace of God, we can boast about sharing in the glory of God. What can give me the confidence to say that I stand in the grace of God and boast about sharing his glory? Nothing that I’ve done, only this: that I know God is proud of me as he is of all his sons and daughters, each of us differently unique as we are.

Secondly, God is a patient parent. That girl who made it onto the basketball team – she clearly wan’t going to be a star overnight. Her height and disability meant it would take extra effort and time to become good at her sport. But her mum was behind her all the way, and the coach obviously believed in her potential as well, to have let her on to the team.

The second time Paul uses the word ‘boast’ here, always strikes me as strange: he says we can ‘boast in our sufferings’ (or our ‘troubles’ or ‘tribulations’ depending which Bible translation you have). The patience of God means that he will work with us, whatever sufferings we experience. That may include physical limitations and mental health, our difficult backgrounds and failed relationships.

‘While we were weak’, Paul writes, (some translations say ‘helpless’), ‘Christ died for us’. Or as it says in our gospel reading today, ‘When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’. Whatever may make you feel weak, harassed and helpless, for that very reason Christ died for you.

But boasting in weakness and suffering? It doesn’t make sense until you read the rest of the sentence: ‘for suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope’. Like the parent who was willing to support her daughter in battling against the odds to become a good basketball player, God longs to work in and through us, to bring about virtues of endurance, strong character and hopefulness.

That’s what we can boast in – not the fact that we suffer, but that our patient Father is with us for the long haul to help us overcome our sufferings and reach the position where we can confidently hope in the glory of God. There will be setbacks – times when the ball misses the net, times when we experience injury or criticism – but none of that stops God’s patience from working itself out in our lives.

If you heard Jon Swales preach last week, you may remember he talked about fast miracles and slow miracles: people who come to faith instantly, and others whose faith grows slowly over many years. It’s the same principle: ‘Christ died for the ungodly’ refers to what happened on one day when he was crucified; but the progression that enables us to grow from our weak, helpless and troubled state to full maturity of faith in Christ may take many years. As one commentary puts it, ‘salvation is a healing process’.

Thirdly, God is a provident parent. Verse 5: ‘Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.’ That basketball mother provided for her child: she obviously provided the sports kit, but more importantly she came along to watch, to cheer her on despite the unfair criticism of other parents, to provide the encouragement that we all need when we engage in a difficult task. A proud and patient parent will provide everything their child needs to become a success, whatever the cost to themselves.

What God provides for us is the Holy Spirit, God himself poured out into our hearts. That phrase ‘poured out’ implies something extravagant and overly generous, like the woman who poured all her perfume over Jesus’ feet without counting the cost. Elsewhere in Paul’s letters he lists nine fruits of the Spirit, ways that all of us can expect to be changed as he is poured out into us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Just the sort of qualities any parent might wish their child to display, but our provident Father offers all of them to each one of us.

So we have seen in these few verses the different ways that God shows himself to be the perfect parent to all of us – the proud parent, the patient parent and the provident parent. May all of us experience this grace of God in our own lives today. And to those of you who are parents, grandparents, carers or who have the chance to be an influence in anyone else’s life, may God by his Spirit pour these qualities into your life as well. Amen.

What a Wildly Wonderful World

All-age talk for Creation Sunday, 4 June 2023, St Peter’s Bramley

(based on Psalm 104 , outline by Julia Wilkins & Tearfund resources)

We live in an amazing world! Psalm 24 tells us that ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’ Throughout scripture, we see God’s great love for this world he has created. The Psalm we just said calls it a ‘wildly wonderful world’. Full of the most extraordinary and weird creatures. All the time we’re finding ones that we didn’t know existed! But God knew all along – he knows every single species on this earth, and he made each of them different and special. Everything, from the simplest microbes to the size of the blue whale and the complexity of the human brain, he caused to evolve over millions of years to be just as he wanted. And creation still continues. All the time, plants and animals continue to adapt to their environment. An environment in which every creature, great or small, plays its part.

Once upon a time, everyone lived in villages or small towns. Most people either worked on farms, or at least spent time in the countryside every day, walking from village to village or to their parish church on Sunday – which might have meant walking many miles, even over a hill! In their work and leisure, they would get to watch the seasons change, know when each flower would bloom, each type of tree come into leaf, each type of animal give birth. They could see and feel the weather changing around them, would know which mushrooms and berries were edible and which poisonous. Farmers would fertilise their fields with the dung of their own animals, and the bees that pollinated their crops would produce honey for them to eat. Humans, animals and plants in total harmony, the whole earth one living organism, or as we call it now, the ecosystem.

But as people multiplied, cities grew. More than half the people in the world now live in big cities (and on a world scale, Leeds is not a big city). By 2050 that will be two-thirds. Farming has became a big industry (unless you buy organic food it will have been grown with artificial fertiliser) and many people rarely if ever get the chance to see their food growing or to see animals in their natural environment. Perhaps that’s just inevitable – it’s not realistic for everyone in a city to grow their own food. But it has disconnected us from nature. We can be tempted to think that women, men and children are not part of the ecosystem, somehow above the natural world of plants and animals rather than part of it. How wrong we are!

Beyond simply farming on a large scale to feed more people, the way that modern people live – and that includes us – is harming this ecosystem and putting it under more and more strain. Plants and animals are forced to adapt to changes that are not good for them, or if they can’t adapt they die out. Like Humpty Dumpty, the world is broken and all the King’s horses and all the King’s men cannot put it back together again.

Theologians – that’s people who write about God and the Bible – are increasingly understanding that what the Bible says about Jesus coming to save the world is far more than just forgiving our sins and promising people eternal life. He came to make all of creation whole again, to put this broken world back together. As Jesus was involved in creation from the beginning, only he can heal it.

But he needs us, as his brothers and sisters, to play our part. We have to think hard about how we live and how it damages creation. Tomorrow is World Environment Day. This year the theme is #BeatPlasticPollution. While plastic has many valuable uses, it is mostly made from oil, which is not a renewable resource and contributes to climate change. Our consumer society relies on single-use plastic products, which has consequences not only for the environment but for social and economic structures and people’s health.

For example, can you picture one million plastic bottles? Roughly speaking, that would fill this worship space to head height. That’s how many are purchased every minute around the world. While I’ve been talking, the church would have filled up with just the plastic bottles being used. In five days, they would fill Wembley Stadium.

Each year five trillion plastic bags are used – that’s five million million, nearly a thousand for every person on earth. Yet although most of it could be recycled, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used just once and thrown away. Very little actually gets recycled, even in richer countries like ours. A quarter of the people in the world don’t even have their rubbish collected. Over half of it ends up in landfill, the rest being burnt (which again contributes to climate change), or clogging up the world’s oceans and beaches. Many animals are harmed by our waste, and two people die every minute as a result of human waste, whether that’s toxic fumes from burning plastic or water polluted by chemicals.

Plastic is just one of the many environmental issues that need tackling. But the situation is not hopeless. You may be aware that last week, representatives from 170 countries gathered in Paris and negotiated a first draft of a global treaty to reduce plastic pollution. But it will take years to put into practice, and like all such treaties, will be impossible to enforce. It’s more important that all of us as individuals do what we can to reduce plastic use, and recycle what we can. Here are just a few things you could do:

Shop at Bramley Wholefoods (Ecotopia) and refill your bottles and jars instead of buying new ones.
Take cotton or jute bags every time you go shopping, instead of getting plastic ones each time.
Buy loose vegetables instead of pre-packed ones
Sign Tearfund’s online petition https://tearfund.org/rubbishpetition

Our reading ended with the words: “The glory of God – let it last forever! Let God enjoy his creation!” Is the way you live allowing God to enjoy his creation, or are you breaking his heart by spoiling it? What changes can you think of that you can make to help restore this wonderfully wild world? What could we do as a church to care more for our local area so that God can enjoy his creation, and how? At St Peter’s we’re planning to form a task force, an action group – whatever you want to call it – to take action together to improve our local environment in any way we can. If you think you could be part of that, please have a word with Julia. In a moment, we’re going to take a few minutes while the worship groups sings, for you to write any pledges on the cards you’ve been given and bring them to the front. But first, let’s pray:

Father, thank you for the opportunity we’ve had today to see our world through your eyes. We pray that as you invite us to change our current ways of living, our identities will be firmly rooted in you and our hearts will be open to consider the ways that we can bring your justice through the way we live. We pray for Christians who are campaigning across the world on plastics, waste and the environment. We pray that decision makers will see the urgency of the issues, that they will be turned towards compassion, and that they will be willing to commit and be held accountable for transforming our society. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

David Attenborough video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYXBJmrsxZU

Tearfund video: https://vimeo.com/791870984

Closing prayer and other ideas from https://www.tearfund.org/-/media/tearfund/files/campaigns/rubbish-campaign/rubbish-campaign_churchtalk_aw.pdf

Reconnecting people

A sermon for Bramley St Peter, 26 March 2023

Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-11 / John 11:17-44

Ezekiel was a weird guy. Really weird. He was master of the ‘acted parable’, what we might now call ‘public protest’. Think of Brian Haw who protested in a tent outside Parliament for nearly ten years, or Extinction Rebellion activists gluing themselves to motorways. But that’s nothing to Ezekiel’s protests. For four years he said nothing but acted out the prophesises God gave him as a mime artist would. He lay, bound in ropes, on his left side for over a year to represent 390 years of rebellion against God. During this time (in which he baked bread over cow dung) he had to act out the siege of Jerusalem using a model of the city so as to attract the attention of passers-by. On another occasion he packed his bags and made as if to leave the city through a hole in the wall, as a sign that the walls of Jerusalem were about to be broken down. Such people disturb the complacency with which most of us meekly accept the injustices that we see around us, even when we know that people will suffer if they are not challenged.

This vision of the dry bones was different. It was for Ezekiel’s benefit alone. Now if you think of skeletons as like the plastic ones you might see in a medical student’s room – all connected together, nice and clean and in an obvious human shape, that isn’t usually the case.

As a student I was once on an archaeological dig, finding nothing more interesting than bits of pottery, when one of my friends found a complete skeleton. And here it is – the remains of a young woman from the iron age. Hard even to make out the individual bones after so long, and not even a human shape. Can these bones live? You’re joking!

The vivid image that God showed to Ezekiel was to demonstrate that the people of Israel and Judah who had been exiled to Babylon were so disconnected, from each other and from their cultural roots and traditions, that they were like a pile of bones that couldn’t even be counted as distinct skeletons. As it says in the last verse: dried up, hope lost, completely cut off. Only the breath of God could reverse what had happened.

And it did. Bone came to bone, sinews and flesh and skin reappeared, and life was breathed back into them. Later in the same book we get the interpretation, as we read the prophecy that all the twelve tribes of Israel would be restored to the Holy Land, on a basis of equality under God once more.

In a word, God had shown Ezekiel that he, and he alone, can reconnect disconnected people to each other, to their land and to himself. And that’s my theme: disconnectedness, something which permeates our society today. Another word for it, used by sociologists, is ‘desocialisation’. It includes the widespread problem of loneliness. I’ve used this quote before, but it’s worth repeating:

“When Andrew Smith died, nobody noticed. His flat, number 171, was at the end of the row on the second floor. His body was discovered when a neighbour, someone he had never talked to, smelt something bad and phoned the police. Andrew Smith had been dead for two months. There were no details of his next of kin, no photos of his family, nothing in his flat to suggest he had any friends. He had nobody, and died lonely.”[1]

But there’s more to disconnectedness than the lonely individual.

Just this week we have heard the damning report of the institutional failings of the Police in London. The charge sheet of sins directed by Ezekiel against God’s people, includes many failings of our own society. It does not take much paraphrasing of the text of chapter 22 to read these charges as: dysfunctional families, injustice for immigrants, insufficient support for the poorest in society, sexual violence, a financial system that leads people into debt, and dishonesty in business. Those charges can certainly be laid against Britain today.

But the charges also include a loss of a sense of what is holy, a failing that is not mentioned in the secular media and yet is at the root of our problems. There is undoubtedly a connection between society becoming more secular and the breakdown of communities. The word ‘religion’ ultimately means ‘connection’ – connection between people as well as between us and God. In the Going Deeper group this week Julia asked us what are the signs of disconnectedness in Bramley today. Some of the answers revolved around a lack of a sense of connection between one small neighbourhood and another, members of the same family not speaking to each other for years on end, and a sense of the injustice of mass movement of people by the council when estates were redeveloped fifty years ago – in the time of the grandparents of the people living there now. Here’s a quotation that isn’t about Bramley but could have been-
“I was in my home town walking down the main street looking in the shops – nobody knows anyone here. Then I remembered how this street used to be with family businesses and names on the shop fronts that never changed, where people spoke to each other … Always somebody spoke to me, knew my name”.[2]

Even within the church I see this problem of disconnectedness. In my job, I often talk to the Churchwarden of some small congregation that is really struggling to keep going, either financially or spiritually. They are so absorbed in their own local troubles that they cannot see the big picture, cannot relate even to the other churches in their own area, let alone the whole Diocese, Church of England or the universal church of billions of believers in Jesus.

And so it was, leaping forward several hundred years, that Jesus came to Bethany, to a community mourning one of its leading men. I just want you to pause for a minute and think where you are in this story of the raising of Lazarus. So often we imagine ourselves in the Gospel stories as in the position of a film crew, next to or in front of Jesus and watching his every move, or as his disciples stood behind him. But it’s unlikely we can identify as Jesus, the one fully in control of the situation. Maybe you’re more like Martha – ever the organised one, coping with grief by being active, going out looking for Jesus as soon as word arrives that he’s on his way, and begging him to act. Or perhaps you’re more like Mary, spiritually aware and seeing the need for healing all around, but confused and inconsolable, desperate to be reconnected to the brother she loved. Or maybe even like Lazarus. Remember – he was the other side of this solid tombstone, bound in strips of cloth, perhaps already awake, but wondering where he was, unable to move or communicate with those outside. Totally lacking in power and control. Like many people today. Do you identify with Lazarus?

As a church we have adopted the mission statement of ‘revealing God’s love in Bramley’. We chose that because we are the fortunate ones, who know that God is here, and that he does love us. We as Christians know we are connected to each other and to God by meeting regularly together, reading the same Bible, saying the same prayers, breaking the communion bread and declaring ourselves to be parts of one body. But few people outside the church community feel that way any more, which is why we are compelled by the love of God to reveal this marvellous truth to those around us.

Through Ezekiel, God reconnected the bones as a symbol of the scattered people of Israel being reconnected to each other and to the promised land. Jesus in Bethany reconnected Lazarus to his sisters as a symbol of us all being reconnected to God, both before and after death. We live in a time when many people feel disconnected from society in the many ways I have described, and God calls us to share in his work of reconnecting people with each other and with him.

So, if you feel like a disconnected bone, ask Jesus to breath his Holy Spirit into you, to reconnect you with the body and bring you back to fullness of life. If you are confused like Mary about all that’s going on and weeping inside for whoever or whatever is missing from your life, ask Jesus the consoler to reconnect you with his love, and share it with others. If you are like activists Martha and Ezekiel, ask God to give you the gifts to bring about his Kingdom and reconnect people through your activities. And if you, like Lazarus, feel there is no way out of whatever entombs you, remember – Lazarus’s tombstone was rolled away, as was the stone that held Jesus in his tomb at Easter. God’s power is sufficient to roll yours way too. Can these bones live? Yes they can! Amen!

[roll away stone!]

[1] A. Leve, Sunday Times, 2/9/2007, quoted by M. Fforde in “Desocialisation”, 2009.

[2] R Weatherill, “Cultural collapse”, 1994, quoted by Fforde p.166.

Old Money

(the banker’s lament)

I really am not very old,
Can still hold down a job.
But oh, it seems so long ago
Ten pence was called two bob.

I can’t remember how I learned
But always glad I did:
Six ha’pence to a thruppenny bit
And twenty bob a quid.

The ‘rithmetic is all still there,
I’ve got the knack, the tricks
To even up the balance sheet:
Half-crown? That’s two and six!

The youngsters think it all quite strange
Although they do seem willing
To learn that twelve old pence it took
To make a single shilling.

To speak to them in LSD
Is talking something foreign.
They scratch their heads to understand
Thrice eightpence makes a florin.

The value of a farthing now
Is quite infinitesimal.
No wonder that we had to change
To counting up in decimal.

As long as we can pay in cash
I’m happy with one thing.
The head of Charles is on our coins.
Fid. Def. God save the King!

Who will you listen to?

A sermon for the first Sunday of Lent, 26 February 2023
St Peter’s Church, Bramley – Holy Communion with Baptism
Reading: Matthew 3:13-4:11, the Baptism and Temptations of Christ

The theme for our morning services between now and Easter is ‘Honest questions for deeper faith’. We’ll be looking at the sort of questions that don’t have simple answers, but which might prompt us to take a step further in our walk with God or reach a deeper understanding of how we relate to him. So you might hear more questions than answers in the talks, but hopefully you might find some answers as you consider those questions through the week. This first Sunday of Lent, the question is ‘Who will you listen to’?

In today’s reading, Jesus has two very different experiences of listening. First, he is baptised and hears God himself speaking very clearly, that Jesus is, in a unique way, his Son. What an amazing experience, one that no-one else had ever had before or since! But he then goes off on a long retreat in the desert, which in Hebrew tradition was a place beyond God’s reach, the dwelling of evil spirits, and hears the voice of what the Bible calls either the Devil or the Tempter.

Why did he do that – why did the very son of God choose to go where he knew he would hear God’s enemy? One answer is that this mirrors the scene on the cross at the end of his life where Jesus cries, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” If he was to meet our human needs, the one who until then had only ever listened to God needed to hear those same tempting and opposing voices that we all hear ourselves. He had to know what it was like to be an ordinary human being trying to make our way in a world of many competing voices.

My next question is, who then is the tempter and what was he trying to achieve? You may know C S Lewis’s book ‘the Screwtape Letters’, written during the Second World War, in which he imagines one devil training another – actually they are rather comic characters, but the point is serious. He explains why the Devil and other evil spirits don’t usually appear or speak directly to people, but use more subtle ways to achieve their desire, which is to draw us away from God using the world around us.

What forms do temptations take? They don’t have to be the obvious sins of anger, greed and desire. It can be the temptation to misuse our money and influence, to believe people who are actually lying to us, or even just doing the ordinary harmless things of life when we could be doing something more spiritual. In Lewis’s day he said people could be distracted by unsuitable friends, leisure activities, newspapers and the radio. Since then we have TV, Netflix, online gambling and social media to distract and tempt us even more. The world is full of voices, and it’s increasingly hard to know which we should listen to.

One very simple example: last Sunday morning I turned on the radio to listen to the morning act of worship from the BBC. But the last radio station I had on was a commercial one, so the first thing I heard was not a prayer or a hymn, but a voice saying ‘You can save two hundred pounds NOW by…’ It was a split-second decision – do I stay on this channel to find out how I could save £200, or press another button to hear the morning service? Those sorts of little decisions are with us all the time, aren’t they? Do I listen to the voice that promises me money, happiness, a good time, success? Or do I listen to the voice that points me towards God and along the way that he wants me to walk?

Jesus was tempted by three things in the desert. One was to perform miracles for his own benefit; another was to abuse God’s promise of protection; and the last was to worship the Devil instead of God, in return for earthly fame and power. He famously responded to these temptations by quoting the Jewish Bible each time. In particular he said that we grow by feeding on “every word that comes from the mouth of God”. What did that mean?

Jesus himself had been brought up in the Jewish faith. He read the scriptures, he belonged to a synagogue in Nazareth, he debated with rabbis in the Temple. But he also, often, went up a hill or into the olive grove to pray alone and hear his Father’s voice. As Christians the Word comes to us in other ways: the written words of Jesus in the Bible, the writings and talks of Christian leaders who interpret it for us, the wisdom of mature Christians, the traditions of the Church and prophecies by the Holy Spirit,. It can also be through art and music, especially but not only on a religious theme, and the way we may sometimes hear God speaking in response to our prayers.

We know that parents often bring their children for baptism because they want their child to grow up hearing the right voices. Who knows what distractions and temptations Sienna might face in her lifetime? But if she grows up knowing the Bible, and belonging to a church where she can share her problems with people of faith to guide her, she will be stronger to face them.

And if we do listen to God, rather than all those other distracting voices, what will we hear? Jesus himself had the clearest message at his baptism when he heard the voice of God the Father speaking directly in a way that he and other people could hear, saying “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased”.

We don’t expect that sort of direct message from God when we baptise Sienna today, but what we do know is that God calls all of us who believe in Jesus his daughters and sons too. We know he loves you and me just as much as he loves his own son Jesus. If we are open to hear the voice of God in all those different ways that I mentioned, we too can hear that word of love. And if there is one thing the Devil fears most, it is the love of God and those who share his love with others.

I have raised many questions today. Why did Jesus go into the desert? Who is the tempter and what is he trying to achieve? What forms do temptations take? What is the ‘Word that comes from the mouth of God’? And what do I expect to hear from God? But most importantly, Who will I listen to? You may want to pick one of those questions and consider it this week.

The Gifts and the Giver

A sermon for Epiphany, 8 January 2022 at St Peter’s, Bramley

Text: Matthew 2:1-12 (The gifts of the magi)

What did you get for Christmas? People often ask us that at this time of year. The gifts that our family and friends give us vary so much, don’t they? Let’s see what I was given this year:

Penguin cycling shirt railway book dates

Starting with the trivial – this little penguin Christmas tree decoration. Scott, I’ve called him: Scott of the Antarctic. Then there are the useful presents: a thick, close-fitting cycling top for the cold weather. The specialist hobby things: a book with the technical details of all the trains in Britain. And the tasty treats: for the last few years one of my sisters has given us a home-made hamper of gluten-free goodies to share.

Does your family have a tradition of how and when gifts are given, perhaps in what order? When my sisters and I were children, the rule was that the youngest started giving their presents out first, followed by the next youngest, and parents or grandparents last of all. That was a useful life lesson: the emphasis was on giving rather than receiving: as Jesus said, “it is more blessed to give than to receive”. We can’t expect to receive gifts unless we are also prepared to give them. I’ll come back to that idea later.

One of the origins of this tradition of giving Christmas gifts is the Epiphany story of the magi from the east and their gifts. What were the three things they gave? (call out!) I don’t think I would have known about frankincense or myrrh without this story, would you? Let’s look at what their gifts to Jesus might say about what we can give to him now.

Gold has the same meaning now as always: something valuable, something worth keeping, something special. If someone is ‘worth their weight in gold’ it means their friendship is too valuable to measure. But in the days before banks, it was also a practical way of keeping your treasure with you when you travelled. The magi gave away something very costly, and Mary and Joseph may well have needed to spend the gold during their years of exile in Egypt.

So, if you or I have possessions, can we offer them to Jesus? I’m not just talking about giving money to the church: it might be supporting a Christian charity, opening our homes for church meetings, using a car to offer a lift, lending tools to a neighbour, and so on. That is your gift to the Church’s resources.

The second gift was incense. It had a very practical use as an early form of air freshener – can you imagine how smelly life was in those days, when taking a bath was rare, deodorants and toilets unknown and houses were shared with animals? But incense was also used in the Temple, as it still is in some churches today. The smoke from the incense symbolises prayer rising to God. More than that, the gift of incense to Jesus was a symbol of him becoming our high priest, praying to God the Father for us in heaven.

So, I suggest that we might think of it representing our ministry in the church. That might be helping to lead worship, but there is so much more to Christian service than that. It might equally well be helping with our church’s activity groups, being on the tea rota, doing odd jobs to help the Churchwardens look after the building, offering fundraising skills, or helping with any work we do in the community. It might be praying – for some people, praying for the Church’s work is their unseen but important gift to the Church’s ministry.

And then there was myrrh, the oddest gift of all. It was a spice used in embalming a body after death. Given by the Magi it was a symbol in particular of Jesus’ death on the cross in which he sacrificed his own life to reconcile us to God. His sacrifice was unrepeatable, but the myrrh reminds us that Jesus calls us all to live a selfless life.

We might therefore see it as the gift of ourselves in putting others’ needs before our own. Again, there are many ways of doing that. It might be a pastoral ministry within the church, volunteering with one of the local community groups, welcoming a refugee, or helping with the care of children or elderly people within your own extended family.

It may be that you think you haven’t got money to spare, or a particular talent to use within the church, or spare time to offer as a volunteer. If so, just remember that the Shepherds had already come to Jesus with nothing at all to give him. What mattered most was that they, and the magi after them, came to kneel at the manger and worship Jesus.

I’ll come back to that point I made earlier about it being more blessed to give than to receive. There’s one exception to that: when God is the giver and we are the recipients. God, let us not forget, is the greatest giver. It’s in God’s very nature to give. He is the giver of life itself. The giver of his living word made flesh to reconcile us to himself, and the giver of the Holy Spirit, who himself gives us the gifts that we need to serve him in the world. A verse from the Old Testament often used in church worship is this: “all things come from you [O Lord], and of your own have we given you.”

So, at the start of this new year when we are still thankful for the Christmas presents we received, we can think about what we bring as a gift to Jesus. Starting with our worship, for when we come to worship, we open ourselves to the greatest gift of all. As Jesus also said, “give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Then we will be able to ask what we can give to Jesus in return for all that he has given us. What can I spare of my money for the work of the church? How can I use the things that I have for the benefit of others? What talents and skills do I have that will be of use in the ministry of the Church? And how can I best give my time to help others?

I will finish with that lovely verse of a well known carol: ‘What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part, yet what I can I give him – give my heart’.

wooden heart

Another of the gifts that I got at Christmas, a ‘little something extra’ from Linda. It’s this heart, hand carved from olive wood grown in Bethlehem. It now sits on the windowsill of my study as a symbol of her love for me, but also a symbol of the love that Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem, has for all of us. May his love, and his gifts, be with you always. Amen.

Joy cannot wait

A sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, St Peter’s Bramley.

The last two Sundays we have looked at hope and peace. This third Sunday of Advent we’re looking at the idea of Joy, and why that cannot wait. But in other Christian traditions, this is the week that the Church thinks about Mary the mother of Jesus, which is why our Gospel reading is part of her story. The two – the theme of joy and the story of Mary – are closely woven together.

One thing that strikes me is that whenever we meet Mary in the Bible she seems to be moving from one place to another. Her life, like that of Jesus himself, was one of constant movement. Or perhaps we should say of constant pilgrimage. And that’s a big difference.

You may think of pilgrimage as a group journeying to a holy place, such as Jerusalem, Rome, Compostela or Lindisfarne. But pilgrimage can also be a way of understanding our own walk with God through life, wherever he takes us. Let’s look at Mary’s pilgrimage, where she encountered difficulties, and also where she encountered joy.

*The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner.*

We first come across the young Mary in her home town of Nazareth when the angel tells her she will become pregnant with Jesus. At first she is puzzled, but quickly accepts it – “let it be to me according to your word”.

Immediately we come to Mary’s first journey. There’s no mention of her even telling Joseph of the pregnancy, instead we see her hurrying to visit her relative Elisabeth who is also expecting a miraculous baby. The word ‘joy’ may not be there in the text, but the idea is. C S Lewis, who called his autobiography ‘Surprised by Joy’, defines joy as a state in which “to have is to want, and to want is to have”. Expecting a son becomes, with joy, the reality of having him.

We can imagine, then, that Mary was bursting with joy and had to tell someone, someone who would perhaps understand her better than her fiancé would. ‘She went in haste’, it says – this joy, and this news, certainly could not wait!

When she reaches Elisabeth’s house, there isn’t even time to put the kettle on. “As soon as I heard the sound of your greeting”, says Elisabeth, “the baby in my womb leapt for joy”. Note that – even the unborn boy knew what was happening, and leapt for joy. Elisabeth herself cannot contain her joy – she was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed loudly “Blessed is she who believed that the promise made to her by the Lord would be fulfilled!”

Mary’s own song in return is full of confidence and joy. “My spirit has rejoiced in God my saviour … from now all generations will call me blessed”, as indeed we do, these words still said or sung at evening prayer every day.

*Zechariah and Elisabeth (anonymous artist)*

Shortly before Elisabeth’s baby is born, Mary goes home. We’ll come back to her in a minute. But what about Elisabeth’s husband Zechariah? He could tell his own story of an encounter with an angel who announces that their first son will be a great prophet called John. But he is struck with dumbness until the day of the child’s naming ceremony. Unlike Mary, he does have to wait to tell his story! His own joy is in tension with the inability to express it. Yet when his silence is ended, it says, his mouth is opened, his tongue freed and he began to praise God. Thus fulfilling that promise of Isaiah we heard from centuries earlier – “the tongue of the speechless shall sing for joy!” When a baby is born, joy cannot wait.

*Journey to Bethlehem (anonymous artist)*

Back to Mary. We all know the story of the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And this is where it gets hard. Unfortunately, one thing that could not wait was the census, and another was the imminent birth. It cannot have been an easy journey, several days by donkey in the winter or maybe early spring, with all the discomfort of late pregnancy. Is she feeling pleasure during the journey? Probably not.

Could she be feeling joyful, though? As we have seen, that is a different question. The anticipation of bringing the promised Messiah into the world may well have been more than enough to leave her with just the sort of inner peace and joy that allows someone to cope with life’s difficulties. In the words of the prophet Nehemiah, ‘the joy of the Lord is your strength’. And keeping her going too were Elisabeth’s words – “Blessed are you among women”.

And so to Bethlehem. For Mary, the discomfort of the stable and the pain of childbirth. And also the joy that all new parents feel when it’s over and the baby gives his first cry. But there is more to come…

After Mary’s unwanted pilgrimage to Jerusalem, it’s time for her to receive pilgrims from elsewhere. First the Shepherds. They have encountered the angel of the Lord out in the fields, who tells them of the new birth – “news of great joy for all people”. Watching the sheep could wait, this night, but going to see the Saviour could not. And after they have seen him, they again return into normal life ‘glorifying and praising God’. Their pilgrimage was short, but life-changing.

The visit of the Magi. Detail of stained glass window in All Saints, Langton Green (Kent)
cc-by-sa/2.0 – © John Salmon

Next come the magi, wise men, kings, whatever you call them. Their pilgrimage has been an even longer one across desert lands, with only a vague idea that they would find a new king in Judea. But this is enough to keep them going, until, when they reached the house, and – mark this – even before they entered it – they were ‘overwhelmed with joy’. This spiritual joy is the anticipation of meeting Jesus, even before they see him.

Then, finally for now, there is the dedication of Jesus in the Temple, when the old prophets Simeon and Anna are both filled with joy as their own long-held expectations are fulfilled in seeing the Christ-child.

Flight into Egypt. Clay sculpture in the Cappelle del Sacro Monte di Varallo (artist not named).
Photo by Mattana cc-by-sa 3.0

So Mary has travelled far in her own land, known both pain and joy, and Jesus is still a young child. But her pilgrimage is not over. There is the hurried escape to Egypt to flee persecution, and some years later an even longer journey back north to Nazareth. What keeps her going during those difficult years? Surely this: ‘Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart’. It is the love of the Word of God, the memory of those times when we have encountered him, treasured in our hearts, that through our pilgrimage of life keeps us going with a quieter inner joy that is still strong enough to cope wherever our pilgrimage takes us. Joy, like gentleness and patience and other qualities, is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, something not restricted to the chosen few but a state of mind that we can all expect to grow out of our walk with God.

Let’s leave Mary with one more joyful scene, not found in the Bible but one we can deduce from experience: One of my friends, whose son had been something of a black sheep in his youth, and she hadn’t seen him for years, was startled one day to find him knocking on her door to present a grandson she hadn’t even known about. What joy there was then, and what joy there must have been in Mary’s old home when she and Joseph finally get back to Nazareth with Jesus, by then perhaps two or three years old. What would her own mother’s reaction be at seeing her daughter for the first time in years, safely returned home with her young grandson?

So the journey has come full circle: back to the family home, after a lengthy and eventful pilgrimage. Often God does that: he takes us away from the familiar, one way or another, in order to test us, gift us, bring us closer to him, and then bring us back as changed people, ready to serve him with joy.

And so, as you approach the mystery of the birth of Christ this year, whatever the difficulties you face on your pilgrimage at present, may you come into his presence with the spontaneous joy of Elisabeth, the awe-struck joy of the shepherds, the overwhelming joy of the magi, and the deep joy of Mary his mother. This is the joy that cannot wait. Amen.

Hope cannot wait

An Advent sermon for St Peter’s Bramley, Sunday 27 November 2022

Text: Isaiah 2:1-5

I was given the title for this sermon by our new Rector. For more details of the Tearfund project referred to here, see https://www.tearfund.org/stories/2022/06/turning-guns-into-garden-tools-in-the-drc or the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xCD6z3bAas

Advent is often presented as a time of waiting. But over the next four Sundays leading up to Christmas we’re looking at four of the great themes of Christianity as found in the book of Isaiah: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love – and why actually they cannot wait. We start today with the idea of ‘Hope’.

Hope can mean different things to different people. Some of you will know Sue Davey, a member of our congregation who can’t get to church these days. She recently put it like this:

“Without hope life really is hopeLESS. We need to have hope that things will work out in the end, that things will get better. That will be different for every one of us. Hope makes life worth living.”

The prophet Isaiah lived in troubled times like ours. Fewer people were worshiping God and doing what God wanted them to do. There was an increase in crime, leaders had become corrupt, the rich were getting richer and no-one was looking after the poor. In countries all around there was war, and sooner or later war would come even to his city of Jerusalem. The situation may well have seemed hopeless.

But through this book of Isaiah with all these troubles, there runs a thread of hope like a rainbow appearing out of a dark cloud. Isaiah had a vision from God. A vision of what God would do to bring hope out of despair. A vision, as we see in today’s reading, of God breaking into human life to end war and bring peace. This striking image of swords being beaten into ploughshares, that is, weapons becoming farming tools, is a picture of what can happen when we let God make that vision a reality. But what if someone decided to take it literally?

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the hardest places to live on Earth. Decades of war and violence have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of people from their homes. Tens of thousands of children have been recruited by armed gangs to fight.

The Christian development agency Tearfund has a partner organisation that seeks to take positive steps to work for peace and save these children from the physical and emotional harm of war. Last year, more than 3,300 children were rescued from armed groups.

As part of this project, the guns that came with them have been melted down and turned into gardening tools, to put Isaiah’s vision into practice. The outcome is a community that is less in fear of war, and that can better feed themselves. What can we learn from their example?

First of all, it was an ecumenical project. Not one, but many churches of different traditions got involved. Practical forms of mission like this bring Christians together on common ground to work for the good of the community.

But it was hard work. Rescuing children from armed gangs is highly risky. Melting down steel is very hot work; beating it into shape on an anvil as this pastor is doing is hard physical work. Using the tools, whether to dig an allotment or plough with oxen, is equally hard. When we work with God to bring a vision of hope into reality, it will mean hard work in one form or another.

What made it worth the hard work? It was the vision of peace and hope, the vision found throughout the Bible that God wants to redeem people from war, poverty and slavery and give them a hope that will last. it was an idea rooted in the love of Jesus and the hope that he brings. In the words of a Tearfund spokesperson:

“We cannot do what we do without the hope of Jesus.

We cannot do what we do without the power of Jesus.

We cannot do what we do without the love of Jesus.”

Those Congolese Christians realised that the vision of hope couldn’t wait for the fighting to end. They had to act even as war raged around them. As in Isaiah’s day, they heard the call to strive for justice and peace even in the face of the troubles around them.

It’s good to see what’s happening around the world. But Isaiah’s prophecy, although part of God’s plan for the world, was also for the people of his own city, Jerusalem. What might it mean for us, here and now, in Leeds?

Today’s reading also speaks of the ‘mountain of the Lord’s house’. Isaiah’s vision includes many people saying ‘come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob’. This is a theme that appears throughout Isaiah and represents Jerusalem, a symbol of the whole Jewish people, but also the coming Kingdom of God. The people who worshipped God in the Temple had a calling to reach out to the surrounding nations and participate in bringing God’s peace and justice to those around them.

A few years ago I spoke in a sermon about the problem of loneliness in our society, which is one of the particular concerns of our own MP, Rachel Reeves. I quoted from another part of Isaiah’s vision, which also draws on that symbolism of the mountain of God. In chapter 25 it says “On this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines”. That prophecy may point to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and the communion service in which we remember that. The broken bread is the life of Christ, broken in order to be shared with everyone who needs it.

Just like turning arms into tools, the sharing of bread as a symbol of the sharing of the life of Christ, and the vision of a feast of rich food in God’s holy place, is one that can be acted out in the reality of people’s daily lives.

Along with other churches and charities in Bramley, we aim to bring some hope this Christmas to families who are struggling to afford food, by giving them a full Christmas dinner. In line with Isaiah’s vision of God’s feast – one of rich food and well-aged wine – we offer not just meat and veg, but all the trimmings, the crackers and the sweets to make the day enjoyable.

In sharing with our neighbours in this way, we want not only to feed them, but also bring the hope that comes from feeling part of a wider community and of participating in the joy of Christmas. If this is what hope looks like for the people of Bramley this Christmas time, hope cannot wait.

Amen.

Building deep friendships

Sermon for St Peter’s Bramley, 2 October 2022

Readings: 2 Timothy 1:1-14 and Luke 17: 3-10

It was the first week of a new school term, and the teacher had realised during the holidays that not many of her class seemed to be friends with each other. So she set them a challenge: not to make the most friends themselves, but to see how many other students they could get to form friendships among themselves, by the end of term.

Paul and Tim were friends already, and competitive about everything, from who could run fastest to who could eat the most pizza without being sick. They enjoyed the challenge, but went about it in different ways.

Paul was the technology wizard of his class. Within days he had set up a new Whatsapp group, ClassFriends, and used every means he could to advertise it. Through texts, tweets, posts and e-mails he tried persuade everyone to join ClassFriends.

Tim was no good with phones and computers. He was also very quiet. But for the next two weeks, at lunchtime and in the playground, whenever he found a classmate on their own he stopped to talk to them for a few minutes. After a couple of weeks he started introducing those boys and girls to each other. And in the last week of term when it was Tim’s birthday, his mum let him invite them all to his party. They ate plenty of pizza, and they played the sort of game where players answer trivial questions about themselves.

On the last day of term the teacher asked how everyone had got on. Only Paul and Tim had anything to report. Paul proudly announced that eight people had joined ClassFriends and were now messaging each other. Tim asked how many others in the class could say what someone else’s pet was called and the name of their favourite pop star. Sixteen hands went up. The teacher awarded Tim the prize – as much pizza as he could eat without being sick.

* * *

Churches, of course, are not quite the same as schools. Our purpose is different, but there are some similarities. Just as passing exams is not the only point of being at school, so learning the Bible is not the only point of coming to church. The friends we do or don’t make at school will shape our experience there for better or worse, and may last for life. Just so, the friendships we make at church will do the same. Paul Bayes, the former Bishop of Liverpool, wrote this:

“[Since the 1990s], community, one of honest and supportive friendship, has emerged as more and more important. … Evangelism can only be built on a commitment to friendship.”

At this time when we start to see two groups coming together – the existing congregation from St Peter’s and the grafting team from St George’s, it will be important for all of us to make the effort to extend our existing friendships, to include new people into the networks we already have, and to find new ways of building friendships. As our story showed, one-to-one conversations are a more effective and lasting way of doing that than some hi-tech solution that only creates online connections.

In his book, Paul Bayes goes on to explore the different types of friendship we find in the church: the friendship offered to newcomers that goes beyond merely welcoming them at the door; the friendships built outside the walls of the church by people inviting others into their homes for coffee or food; and the sense of shared community grown through small groups.

Deep friendships, because in reality they will need to survive and thrive in the ups and downs of church life. In the first verse of our Gospel reading, when the disciples say to Jesus “increase our faith!”, that is their response to his instruction to forgive a friend who sins against them seven times a day and each time asks for forgiveness. If his own disciples often annoyed each other, it’s no surprise if it happens here, and our friendship needs to be deep enough to accept that.

There is a wider purpose of such deep friendships, beyond the value they have of themselves. They are the foundation for what we are trying to build together as a church. As friends, we can have a more effective mission to our community, reaching out together to draw more into our circle of friendship. What sort of people do we need to be to enable that to happen?

* * *

The Church of England, it must be said, loves nothing more than a new slogan. The book I quoted from was called ‘Mission-shaped Parish’ which was a slogan of the Noughties, but much of the thinking then is still valid. More recently, the church nationally has adopted a new slogan, a new strategy: ‘Simpler, Humbler, Bolder’. In the words of the present Archbishop of York, “These three words are not strategic aims, they are virtues that we believe God is calling from us at this particular point in our history. They run through our vision and shape all we do and all that we are.”

We can see these three virtues of simplicity, humility and boldness throughout the Bible, including in today’s readings. When Paul writes to Timothy of the ‘sincere faith that lived in your grandmother and your mother and now lives in you’, he is praising the sort of simple but deeply-rooted faith in Jesus that is passed down from one generation to another, the kind of sincere faith that many people recently have commended in our late Queen. When the disciples ask Jesus to ‘increase their faith’, they are asking for that same simplicity of deeply held trust in him that enables them to live in deep friendship with others.

When Jesus tells those same disciples to fulfil their duty in the spirit of ‘unworthy servants’, he is commending a particular form of humility, one that recognises God’s presence in even trivial or unwelcome tasks. Martin Luther once called humility “the greatest of Christian virtues”. This isn’t the humility of Uriah Heap, it’s the humility of the monastery, where tilling the fields and chanting the psalms are equally holy activities. As the poet George Herbert put it, ‘who sweeps a room as for thy laws, makes that and the action fine’. But it’s also the humility of Moses, who we are told was the humblest man on earth, despite having led a whole nation out of slavery and met God face to face.

But simplicity and humility, although essential values for the Christian life, will not enable us to fulfil God’s call to mission without the balancing value of boldness. In the story of the two schoolboys, it was shy and humble Tim who had the boldness to reach out and start to bring strangers together as friends. In our Bible reading, when Paul writes to Timothy of God giving us a spirit of power, love and self-discipline, perhaps that combines all three: the simplicity of love, the humility of self-discipline and the boldness that comes from the power of the Holy Spirit.

Paul also urges his friend Timothy to ‘fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of hands’. Most of us in this room will at some point in our lives have had our faith confirmed by a Bishop, with the laying on of hands. While Bishop Arun won’t be laying hands on each of us physically this Thursday evening when he comes to induct Julia into her post as Rector, it will be a suitable occasion for each of us to renew the vows we made at baptism or confirmation: to come to Christ, to turn to Christ, and to trust in Christ.

We might also wish to recommit ourselves to building deep friendships within the congregation. And to consider what gifts God might have given each one of us for his service, that he now wishes to fan into flame as we enter into a new phase in God’s mission to Bramley though us, his Church. We can ask the Holy Spirit to come and make us simpler, humbler and bolder, or in the words of our closing hymn today, ‘kindle the flame of sacred love, on the mean altar of my heart’.

Amen.