3D Pentecost: Distilling, Disturbing, Directing

It’s exam time, so here’s a comprehension test.  You’ve heard the readings this morning, you’ve got them printed out so you can look back, when was the Holy Spirit given to the disciples?  Surely that’s easy, it’s today because today is Pentecost and that’s 50 days after Easter.  That’s a quick A* if ever there was one.  Ah, but all is not so simple.  Yes, the Book of Acts, our first reading, does indeed give that timeline (Acts 2:1-11), but the gospel from John, does not.  In John the Holy Spirit is given in the evening on that first Easter Day (John 20:19-23).  The two stories do not seem to tie up.  And John is awkward like that, he doesn’t put everything in the same order, he doesn’t even get the names of the disciples the same, but then he’s not fussed about there being 12.  That said, the Acts reading doesn’t say it was the first time the Holy Spirit came on them, it’s just we’ve tended to assume that.  The Holy Spirit has already inspired their choice of Matthias to replace Judas.  Beware editorial headings in bibles.  So Pentecost is a day that is not as straightforward as we might like it to be and that is because it is a day that disturbs and so it should.

I want to offer this morning three ways that we see the Holy Spirit and they come from our readings.  The first I’ve just hinted at, disturbing.  The second is that it directs and the third is that it distills.  But I will begin with distilling.

If we take the timeline in Acts, the gift of the Holy Spirit comes at the end of a long period of head scratching, fifty days.  The resurrection and what it means is not obvious to the disciples.  It’s not obvious in John either.  The disciples need to work out this crazy experience.  They meet to pray, to tell the stories of what Jesus had done, and to break bread.  This is a process of distillation as it all gets mulled over and sinks in and this process is itself a major way that we open ourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to work in and on us.  Distillation is a process of the Holy Spirit.

Then on the day of the agricultural festival when the first wheat of the crop is offered, what we used to celebrate later in the year at Lammastide, what they called Pentecost, they are hit with the full force of the Holy Spirit.  And this explodes with a newfound linguistic fluency.  They don’t speak in a spiritual language.  This is not heavenly tongues.  They speak in an array of ordinary languages, a veritable collection of Google translate breaks out and is catalogued in every lesson reader’s worst nightmare with that list of places and peoples.  People hear them in their first language.  Not in a holy, special language, but God in the normal.  This prefigures the breaking of dietary laws later on.  The gospel is for all people and all cultures.  That is still radical today because we have tended to make it Western and middle class, even middle aged and older.  The gift of the Holy Spirit is a reminder that we must not restrict the gospel to one culture or set of assumptions.  It refuses to be bound by whatever boxes we create for it and will break free.  This is every control freak’s worst nightmare.

So the distillation of what it means quickly moves into disturbing us when it has sunk in and done its work.  We are creatures of habit and like to know what to expect.  But when that happens we can very quickly start to become blind to the bits which the cosy status quo has filtered out.  The Magnificat, the song of Mary, which we sing in beautiful polyphony every day here, is still one of the most radical pieces of poetry in the Bible.  The humble are exalted, the rich are thrown out and put to the back to the queue, and a young girl is allowed to sing the song.  Social conventions disturbed and turned on their head.

That disturbing is part of the wind that blows through history and through the church.  Change and advancement is often brought through conflict and challenge.  Without it we don’t move.  Things which today seem self evident, like the ending of slavery, were hard won.  Well, I say self evident, but the Queen’s Speech this week included provisions against modern forms of slavery and exploitation.  And there is an active slave market in Africa, which we have seen with the 200 school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram.  The battles of equality have to be renewed for each generation and fans of hip-hop, rap and pop music will know that there are attitudes which are as sexist as any previous generation has been.  So we still need disturbing and the Spirit still has work to do.  The church is no exception in any of this.  Power always needs confronting with justice and the view from the side aisles, which are often the much richer places to view from.  The angles are more interesting and we see things very differently.

Distilled and disturbed, we look for direction.  And it is John who gives it to us.  The point of receiving the Holy Spirit is to be sent.  As the Father has sent the Son, so the Son sends the disciples, and that is us, dear reader.  The Son was sent to proclaim the good news of God’s grace and a new start.  We are sent with the same message to reconcile and unite.  It is in John that the Son comes that we may have life in abundance, to love and be loved, to serve, to be set free and to join in a banquet of grace and truth.  The purpose of God comes among us and calls us to follow him.

It has become popular to refer to Pentecost as the church’s birthday.  I’m not so convinced by this, because the disciples were clearly shaping and gathering themselves before hand – they were distilling so that they were ready to be disturbed.  The church was born with the resurrection at Easter and it was Spirit-fuelled too.  But on the Day of Pentecost, to jump back to Acts, the disciples find courage; they are directed.  Shattered, frightened men and women found the strength and boldness they needed to witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ risen and glorified, even to risk and face death for this otherwise crazy faith.  The Spirit gives direction to faith, to being living witnesses; it gives us a mission which is derived from the purpose of God.

Distilled, disturbed and directed, the Holy Spirit which we celebrate today is the lifeblood of everything we do and aim to be.

Come wind and fire,

breathe in us;

kindle a flame to ignite us to action

that we may be filled

with your life and love

and direct us in your service. Amen.

Pentecost sermon preached in Peterborough Cathedral, Sunday 8th June 2014

The new normality - 20 years of women and men priests together

It will probably surprise those who know me well but I represent the new normality.  I am part of the first batch of clergy who were ordained a few months after the first women’s ordinations in 1994, in the natural course of things.  I trained alongside women and so it was to be expected that we would be ordained alongside one another too, well after the vote had gone through.  I would have regarded it as being odd if this had not been the case and a number of us were not sure what we would have done if the vote had not gone through back then.  The previous ‘catch up’ ordinations were a one-off and over time normality settled in so that now 30% of the clergy in this diocese are women, it is 32% nationally.  We all know it is still a ‘work in progress’ but I feel honoured to have been part of the first group of the new normality.

Over the last twenty years I have found myself closely involved in establishing this new normality and moving it forward.  My first incumbency followed a priest who had been deeply opposed to this development and left the Church of England over it.  I worked to move the church from no women ministering to a place where two of my successors have been women.  Key to this move was an excellent curate in a neighbouring parish.  The quality of her ministry impressed people.  I heard a number say ‘I don’t agree with women priests, but Amanda is alright’.  Gradually it dawned them that Amanda was a woman priest and so perhaps they were alright after all.  As is so often the case experience changes us.

As a training officer and a training incumbent I have worked with many women curates and colleagues.  I have seen firsthand just how important it is to have men and women clergy working together.  It opens conversations and enables ministry which would otherwise be closed.  I now find all male groups strange and impoverished.  When I go to clergy meetings I expect to find men and women together.  And we should model that and see it modeled.

It was inevitable that the Church would have to make women bishops too.  The House of Bishops is impoverished without them.  We now have legislation which is clear, decisive and offers a place for dissent, which is generous, even if there is still some pain.  I am hopeful that General Synod will approve this at its July meeting; it has certainly been given a strong steer with all of the dioceses voting in favour.

There have been some hard won battles in our society over equality and each generation needs to be vigilant.  There are attitudes in Hip hop, rap and pop music, board rooms, advertising hoardings and comedy which still betray sexist assumptions.  I see little evidence that girls are finding it any easier than when I was growing up.  Trafficking and exploitation are very much a current vice.  It is therefore very important that the church is able to talk with integrity into these debates and live the equality in Christ we proclaim.

Reflection as part of Peterborough Diocesan Celebration of Ministry, marking 20 years of women's ordination as priests, Peterborough Cathedral Saturday 7th June 2014

More than spiritual clubbing

What draws you to come to church?  It’s not a trick question or one designed to trip you up, questioning motives, but each of us have lots of different reasons for coming.  And whenever this question is asked of a group there will be a number of answers which are likely to appear: to get a spiritual fix, to meet with friends, the music, the atmosphere, to find a bit of peace, it’s good for children, I’ve always done it and life would feel odd without doing so.  None of these are wrong in themselves and they hint at the kinds of things that help us get out of bed on a Sunday morning, particularly on those dark winter mornings, and make the journey.  From time to time I am deeply humbled and impressed by the incredible effort some have to put in to make the journey overcoming various difficulties: personal physical, emotional and public transport timetables.

Our readings this morning in their various ways touch on what is going on when we make the effort to worship.  We live in a time of human history when corporate worship is not part of the popular culture, well not in Western Europe.  It is in the rest of the world, USA, Eastern Europe, Africa and the East.  We are not the norm here, but John’s words in his gospel this morning ‘the world cannot receive him because it neither sees him nor knows him’ (John 14:17) take on a new dimension for us.  The idea of corporate worship is not obvious or assumed as something that is missing from life.  And if we reduce worship to some kind of spiritual fix then we reduce what is happening here to a form of ‘spiritual clubbing’ and that means that we are competing with all sorts of other events, interests and activities.  Getting the spiritual fix is important, but it is not the most important reason for coming to worship.

The reason we do this was spelt out more clearly in our first reading (Acts 17:22-31).  Paul is walking through the city centre in Athens.  He finds that they are a very religious people because there is a veritable supermarket of statues and faith traditions on offer.  It must confuse the life out of people.  The competing claims are deafening.  It’s like walking through Cathedral Square with people shouting that we are all sinners in one corner, offering free copies of the Qur’an from one of the Muslim traditions in another, with city centre chaplains offering free hugs and cake in another and quietly standing as the backdrop in one direction is this church and in the other, peeping over the archway is the Cathedral.  The spiritual marketplace is not very different from one bank offering 5% on a current account balance up to £2,500 and another offering a fixed rate bond for 3 years.  The city centre becomes a place where just shouting and being there does not mean that we are heard.  Something else has to go on that makes someone interested.

Paul looked at what was going on in Athens and decided there was a searching for answers.  He started to offer a way through the supermarket approach of this fix is better than that one or this claim trumps that assertion.  He takes it back to the core.  He starts with the purpose and point behind creation.  We are made, we have a source and we therefore have a goal.  God is God.  We serve the divine; the divine does not serve us.   And the fundamental shift that is required in mindset for Western people comes in verse 24, ‘he who is Lord of heaven and earth’.  To our more democratically shaped minds this might sound archaic and out of touch, but God is not someone we vote for.  God is God and beyond that.  We need a major shift of mentality when we come to worship because we have to bend our will to the will of God and reorientate our focus from self to God.  That doesn’t mean that our interests are not central, they are because Christ came to give life in abundance, but we are mortal, fragile and mess it up at times.  A humble and contrite heart is a pre-requisite for worship and being able to understand what it means to be a disciple.

The challenge is then to find a tradition that starts to make sense and it is clear that not everyone offering their wares in the squares outside is telling the same message.  What we offer here is the classic Anglican tradition of scripture, tradition and reason.  We take the bible seriously because it has truths to teach us and wisdom to impart.  It tells stories of a faith journey through time and how a people have understood the nature of God.  It tells us about Jesus and in him we see all that we can see of God in human life and the hope of resurrection to come.  The journey of faith continues to today and over the centuries there is a tradition of each generation making sense of God in their own age.  Tradition is not static; it is a journey of thought and insight.  And we have our own generation’s understandings, the incredible discoveries of science and travel.  This ‘reason’ means that faith matches life as it is experienced.  This is the lens though which we approach the great supermarket of faiths and competing claims.  They are assessed and weighed using these tools.

If our only reason for coming is to get a fix of some kind, then we are engaged in what I call ‘spiritual clubbing’.  This is one way we could spend Sunday morning among many others and the only way we will convince others is if we can make it sound more attractive than golf, swimming, football, a walk in the park or listening to Desert Island Discs on the radio.  It may fare well; it may struggle depending on mood.  However Paul did not stand up in the market place and proclaim a different leisure activity.  He stood up to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to affirm God as God and that our life is incomplete without the commitment and challenge of being a servant of God in Christ.  We come because our hearts have been converted from the Western obsession with ourselves and the next high or happy experience, to follow God.  We come because this is where we proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord.  We need to say that out loud because it is not assumed by those around us.  Saying it changes us and how we live, how we approach life.

Sermon preached at Peterborough Parish Church, Sunday 25th May 2014

Story telling

There was a very interesting talk on Radio 4 last week as part of their ‘Four Thought’ series.  Philippa Perry, a psychotherapist and columnist, was talking about the importance of story telling.  The stories that we tell and hear shape our minds.   And what is more the more we hear certain sorts of story the more we come to interpret the world through that narrative.  The flip side of this is if we don’t hear certain types of story we become unable to hear them.  So, at an extreme level, someone who has only heard and experienced stories that don’t have positive endings or ways of behaving won’t be able to hear stories that do.  They won’t have the neural pathways to assimilate them.  This affects how we approach life, how we hear what others are saying and how we make sense of the world around us.  It also affects how others hear what we are saying.

There are lots of stories around.  We hear them through the news and sometimes at home we play ‘death and destruction bingo’ to see how many of the headlines are gloom and doom laden.  We read stories in newspapers and some newspapers are really bad for your mental health because of how they tell the stories with excessive negativity, paranoia that everyone is out to get us and attitudes that don’t lead to wholesome living.  We hear stories from our politicians as they create narratives of strivers and skivers, deserving and undeserving, false dichotomies between employers and employees – actually their interests are aligned and without that both suffer.  At the cinema the other week we were subjected to a tidal wave of apocalyptic film trailers before watching the film ‘Noah’, which was pretty apocalyptic itself, especially the way it was told.  The point of the story of Noah is that it doesn’t work; the rainbow is the key. God decides that a different tack is needed and so patriarchs and prophets come on the scene to remind them of their covenant relationship, the way they are to live.  These are presented through stories to help us see and understand the point.

What kind of stories do you hear and where do they come from?  What is the story that you tell yourself?  We all have such a story or narrative and at its most simplistic are we a glass half-empty or a glass half-full person?  Is life filled with purpose and hope or pointless and ultimately despairing?  How is your sense of awe and wonder focused and shaped?  How does the story of faith affect what you see and how you see it?  Philippa Perry outlined how stories are presented, the key elements: there is the content, the scene setting of names and places; and then there is the structure, how it goes, the roles that are taken, what usually happens.  It is understanding the structure, how it goes, that tells us what kind of story we are hearing, what kind of story is being told, how our outlook is being shaped, reinforced or challenged.

Worship, coming to church, is extremely important in shaping the story that we tell ourselves and therefore the one that we live.  Worship is rooted in praise and thanksgiving because God is to be praised and being thankful makes us generous in response to the generosity of God.  It is a faith that is open and realizes that common purpose is better than selfishness and standing alone.  In this season of Easter, we fill our worship with ‘alleluias’.  Last Saturday I went to St Paul’s Cathedral for the National service celebrating the 20^th anniversary of women being ordained as priests alongside men.  The response, the acclamation ‘He is risen indeed, Alleluia’, the ‘alleluia’ at the end, resounded round the dome and hung in the air as if to reinforce its importance.  And so it should, because we are a people who tell the story of alleluia, we sing the praise of God and are thankful.

Our first reading (Acts 2:42-47) gave some subtle clues to the type of story that we tell, to ourselves and through the way we live tell to others too.  Those who were baptized devoted themselves to the apostles teaching.  They wanted to learn and grow in faith.  They took scripture seriously, they took who they were seriously and needed to be rooted and grounded in the story of salvation through Jesus Christ. They came together regularly for fellowship, to break bread (which is a reference to sharing Communion).  And they prayed.  They held things in common, looking not to their own interests only but the common good.  With an election looming, this ‘goods held in common’ asks what we think profit is for?  The old lines of left verses right, which have their origins in parties for workers and parties for bosses produce a false split.  When someone is paid this week $40m in shares as an incentive to join the global computer company Apple, you have to ask just how much money is needed to incentivize.  How can anyone spend that; it is on a scale that is beyond incentive.  It shows that these large pay packets are actually not really needed because with a fortune of that size she doesn’t need to work again, so that she does means money is clearly not the main driver.  A former investment bank CEO wrote in the Financial Times last week that the idea that top executives need this money otherwise they will go elsewhere is nonsense because they won’t.  And if they do, none of them are that special that they can’t be replaced.  What is the story we tell about the use of money?  And today is the beginning of Christian Aid week which brings other stories into focus.

The common approach was taken further in distributing aid and helping the needy.  Above all they ate their food with gladness and generous hearts.  I didn’t realize until this week that New Zealand lamb is slaughtered according to Halal practice because most of it is exported to Muslim customers.  We tend to eat British lamb, because we like to support British farmers and apply the principle of sourcing locally as far as we can.  But the Halal slaughter, with stunning, means that a lot of lamb eaten has been slaughtered with a prayer of thanksgiving, albeit to Allah, and a spirit of generosity.  While I would prefer my food to be blessed with thanksgiving to God through Christ, and there is a narrative behind Halal which is different, it does have a common ground of acknowledging God.  And there is only one God. Allah is the Arabic name for God and God is God.  That said its use comes with a story, a narrative which rejects Christ and so is not one I would choose to buy into which is where St Paul’s comments (1 Corinthians 8) become relevant about abstaining from food dedicated through another religious tradition so as not to cause confusion and to be clear.  The words used are “In the name of God, God is the Greatest”.  There is nothing inherently offensive there for people of faith.   And what is really more offensive, the prayer said at slaughter or the intensive and cruel conditions much livestock endure before?  Halal will not harm us but it carries a different narrative, one which I don’t wish to proclaim, in fact which denies Christ because it sees him as a superseded prophet, which is a stance we clearly don’t agree with.

So stories are all around us and we are constantly encountering them.  They shape us and challenge us.  As with the first disciples we are reminded this morning to refresh and school ourselves in the story of our faith: salvation through Jesus Christ, the importance of prayer and sacrament, the common good and being thankful.  The story we tell is a major part of our mission.  It is the good news we proclaim and through telling it is a major way we seek to be agents of God’s transforming presence in the world.  It may be that we have to keep telling, because it is a story that is difficult for others to hear, but tell it we must.

Sermon preached at Peterborough Parish Church, Sunday 11th May 2014