Passiontide

Today is Passion Sunday and as you look around Church you will see that many of our decorations are now covered. For in these last two weeks of Lent we enter a deeper stage of our pilgrimage, traditionally known as Passiontide.

Passion as a deep, driving and unsettling expression of love is an evocative word which we can find in the tabloid press as often as in a Church news sheet. Sometimes it is hard to connect these two uses and in many ways it seems safer to keep ‘unruly passions’ a long way from the ‘Passion of our Lord’. As we approach Easter, however, and the supreme example of God’s love, such neat distinctions can be hard to maintain. Indeed some of our most profound Christian mystics and poets, such as John Donne, see no distinction at all.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Avatar

The other week I went with the youth club to see the film ‘Avatar’ which looks set to strike gold at the Oscars this year. At a rumoured cost of $500m it is a spectacular 3D exploration of our relationship to nature.

Set in the future, an inter-galactic mining company is digging up a planet to get at it’s mineral deposits. Whilst the company claims to want the best for the local population, it’s private army and armour plated excavators tell a different story.

The film introduces us to a paradise world in which the local population communicate with their ancestors through the trees and with animals by linking their minds and uniting their wills. This includes the ability to fly through floating mountains on the backs of pterodactyls and in 3D that is quite a ride!

Meanwhile, the private army cannot breath the same air and seem able to bond only with machines and terrifying robot soldiers. It all comes to a head when the richest mineral deposit is found underneath a gigantic tree where one of the tribes has it’s ancestral home.

Now I won’t tell you any more because you should really go and see it for yourself. If, however, your recollection of 3D films is of those funny green and red glasses that didn’t really work, then think again. I found myself gripping the seat to stop myself falling and batting away floating objects that seem to have drifted out of the film and into the cinema. All in all, this is a film which offers a stimulating perspective and I’m not just talking about the special effects.

Matters ecumenical

This Sunday falls in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity; an event which Fr. Ted might have described as, “an ecumenical matter”- a box into which tricky issues could be placed- rather than explained.

The word ecumenical has a Greek root meaning ‘the whole world’ and it has been used to describe the movement which seeks the unity of all Christians. The idea being that the unity of the Church should act as a signpost for the wider reconciliation of the whole of humanity.

Now you may feel that the multiplicity of Churches mean that we are not doing a very good job, however, unity and uniformity are not the same thing. When I attend other churches I am often struck by the particular gift of differing traditions and that is something which might be lost if we all tried to be the same. Instead we need to realise that when it comes to faith, we only ever possess part of the picture. Indeed, through learning and sharing with other Christians we often gain a deeper and richer vision of the glory of God.

These ecumenical practices do, I believe, have something to offer to the wider world. A world in which we need to do more to celebrate our global diversity, exercise humility and be better at giving and receiving from one another. Indeed, as we are beginning to see in Haiti, these are far from abstract ideas but are in fact powerful forces which can save lives.

When did we see you hungry?

The other week, on my way to morning prayer, I passed a young man sleeping rough in the woods.

I went back after prayers with a couple of mugs of tea and we had a chat. He explained that things hadn’t worked out where he was living in Crystal Palace, that he had been homeless for four months and that he wasn’t sure where he would be sleeping that night.

Last week, at the Churches Together in Dulwich (CTiD) Advent service, we heard about a project which works to help people like the young man that I met. It is called the Robes Project and is a network of seven Churches who each commit to providing a night shelter, for one night of the week, during the coldest months of the year.
It is one of several local projects supported by the CTiD homelessness appeal, (details of which can be found in the enclosed leaflet). St. Stephen’s is part of this appeal and will be having a special collection in aid of it at our Festival of Lessons and Carols on 20th. December. That doesn’t of course stop you from making other donations of money, time or any of particular items which they list!

This morning we enter the season of Advent when the Church begins to look towards Christmas. Advent is traditionally a time of prayer and reflection as we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ; a child who was born in a stable and grew-up to be an adult who had nowhere to lay his head.

As we prepare for his coming, I would commend this appeal to you.

Trick or treat?

I have vivid memories of one Halloween party which I attended as a child. This involved hearing a scary story interspersed with opportunities to reach into bags and boxes containing jelly, cabbages and the like which were tactile props for an unsettling tale. It’s probably done me no lasting damage but it has certainly stayed with me for many years.

Last night, together with the Kingswood Estate Tenants Association, myself and members of the youth club ran an alternative Halloween party at Langbourne school. This tried to offer a different take on All Hallows Eve with a fancy dress competition themed around saints, angels and superheroes. As well as saving the estate from marauding bands of ‘trick or treaters’, it also tried to offer a more positive way of celebrating this ancient autumn festival.

Its roots can be found in the pagan rite of ‘Samhein’ in which Farmers sought to placate evil spirits so that their crops could be safely gathered in for the winter ahead. In a shrewd piece of missionary one-upmanship, the Church took over this date for the celebration of All Saints and the commemoration of All Souls. These offer us important opportunities to remember the faithful departed and to gain a deeper understanding of the heavenly glory to which we are called.

Indeed, the truth that underlies both of these services is that death is not the end because ours is a resurrection faith in which our Heavenly Father is both our beginning and our end.

Some things bright and beautiful

This week the season of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ finally seems to have arrived. Whilst walking in the woods, Oscar and I have noted the changing colours, acorns constantly dropping around us and a particularly good harvest of chestnuts.

The chestnuts have also caught the attention of our growing Parakeet population and one evening last week I witnessed a flock of fifty fly over our house. These bright green arrivals with their vivid red bills and high pitched call do tend to divide public opinion. Indeed last week I read that, whilst currently protected, in future people will be able to apply for a licence to shoot ‘problem parakeets’; so much for all things bright and beautiful!

The poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins had a few things to say about such colourful wildlife. I am guessing that he probably never saw a Himalayan Parakeet but I can’t help wondering whether he might have welcomed their arrival? Whilst we may not want to thank God for this particular species, autumn nevertheless remains a vivid season to praise God for pied beauty…

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Pied Beauty
Gaerard Manley Hopkins

Business as usual?

In our service this morning we will hear the story of the prodigal son. He famously demands half of his father’s wealth and leaves for the big city and a life of wild parties. Soon however he runs out of money, his friends desert him and he is left feeding pigs- just to survive.

One year on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this cautionary tale of living beyond one’s means sounds familiar. As commentators have reminded us this week, a decade of cheap credit led governments, banks and individuals to all borrow far too much. And so, like the hard times faced by the prodigal son, we are now experiencing the biggest economic crisis for 100 years.

This week the debate has been whether we have learnt the lessons of our, ‘irrational exuberance’ or whether we are still pretending that it is business as usual? Are each of us saving more, have the banks changed their ways, might capitalism be renewed? Joining the debate, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that there remains a lack of closure and a need for repentance.

Indeed, repentance is what the story of the prodigal son is really about. As it continues we see the son, coming to his senses, returning to his father and asking forgiveness. Seeing his son in the distance, the father runs to embrace him and welcomes him home.

Realising our mistakes, saying that we are sorry and mending our ways may not sound like much of a macro-economic strategy but, as this gospel story reminds us, repentance does have the power to liberate us from self pity, to enable us to take responsibility and to help us to move on.

The Plight of the bumblebee

I’m sure that along with many in the congregation, I have been worried by the recent serious decline in the country’s bee population. Some estimates suggest that we have lost a third of that population over the last three years.

In recent months, as I have walked through the woods to Morning Prayer, I have come across a number of bumblebees in difficulty and on more than one occasion have gently moved them off pathways with an encouraging word, usually along the lines of, “Go bumblebee, go!”

Now you may fear that your Curate is losing his marbles but a world without bees would be a very different place. Indeed, as they pollinate 70% of the food we eat, some suggest that humanity could only outlive bees by four years.

If you are interested to know more, I can recommend the ‘Save the honeybee’ campaign by the Soil Association (www.soilassociation.org) which is collecting signatures to ban a particularly strong pesticide- neonicotinoids. Whilst this pesticide has been banned in France, Germany and Italy our own government is yet to act.

Whatever the causes of this decline, it is impossible to deny our connection with our natural world. This connection was famously highlighted by St. Francis of Assisi who spoke of ‘Brother Son’ and ‘Sister Moon’. For Francis the world around us is something to which we are spiritually related and which God wishes to redeem as much as he does humanity.

Such a medieval insight may yet save not only the bumblebee but also ourselves.

My first wedding...

Yesterday I conducted my first two weddings, not that I told them that until it was all over!

As I prepared for these last week I was struck by the privilege of being able to preside at such joyous occasions, the beauty of the language and how marriage stands as an enduring sign of faith, hope and love.

In stark contrast none of us could open our newspapers this week without having been struck by the grief of families affected by war, the spread of swine ‘flu and the latest figures on the state of our public finances.

It’s hard to know where these two realities meet and one wonders whether they can both be true at the same time? In my wedding preparations, however, I found a prayer that seemed to address this very question and which offers marriage as a sign to the world;

Almighty God, in whom we live and move and have our being,
look graciously upon the world which you have made
and for which your Son gave his life,
and especially on all whom you make to be one flesh in holy marriage.
May their lives together be a sign of your love to this broken world,
so that unity may overcome estrangement,
forgiveness heal guilt,
and joy overcome despair;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Corpus Christi

This last week the Church celebrated ‘Corpus Christi’, a day of thanksgiving for Holy Communion. As I approach presiding at my own first Mass, it is a sacrament that I have been reflecting on much recently.

Down the centuries, the Church of England has not wanted to restrict believers to one interpretation. Indeed, our differing words for the sacrament witnesses to its richness of meaning. For some it is the ‘Lord’s Supper’- a memorial of Jesus’ Last Supper with the disciples, for others it is ‘Holy Communion’- a place where we meet God in a very special way, others use the term ‘Eucharist’- a word that comes from the Greek for thanksgiving and still others use the Word ‘Mass’- from the Latin words at the end of the service which sends us out into the world.

In a typically diplomatic observation Elizabeth I famously said, “His was the word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it; and what His word doth make it, that I do believe and take it.” In many ways each of these understandings have something to offer us as we hear of Christ’s actions of taking bread, blessing it, breaking it and giving it to his disciples.

Like me, you too may have had moments at the altar rail that have been particularly powerful yet which you struggle to define. And so, as we mark Corpus Christi, I would not worry too much about exact definitions but would commend to you the advice of Cyril of Jerusalem (c.350AD) who encouraged communicants to, “Make your left hand as a throne for your right hand, as you prepare to receive a King.”