Christ Church - Words and Thoughts

On this page, and sub-pages we present the sermons delivered at Christ Church, as well as the thoughtful and thought provoking homilies Virginia Smith provided us with nearly every week since August 2020.  These homilies from August 2020 to May 2002 are still available by clicking here Virginia Smith’s Homilies May 2022 - April 2021 or Virginia Smith’s Homilies March 2021 - August 2020.

2026

Sunday 10 May, Fifth Sunday after Easter
Texts: Acts 17: 22-31, John 14: 15-21

Had I been born in, say, Saudi Arabia or Iran I would almost certainly be a Moslem.  Had I been born in India it is quite likely I would have been raised in the Hindu faith and, no matter where I was born, if my mother had been a Jew then so would I. As it is, I was born here in England and brought up in a delightfully middle of the road form of Anglicanism. Thus, I would suggest that for the majority of the world’s population their religion is dictated by where they were born or by the faith of their parents. People all around God’s world seeking, in their different ways, to find the God who, I believe unequivocally, is Father to all of us, no matter who we are, we are a child of God and each of us is loved equally. Seeking understanding and knowledge of Paul’s ‘unknown god’.

But in a world which seems ever more driven apart by wars and seemingly insoluble disputes between nations and ideologies, it occurred to me to look at what might be a common factor, central to all the world’s great faiths. And, to begin with our own Christianity, surely what lies at the heart of our faith and. indeed the Jewish faith, is the concept of love as expressed in those two commandments to love God and to love our neighbour. Reading today’s gospel we read ‘they who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them,’  

For Jew, the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself places concrete obligations on them to visit the sick, comfort mourners, give honest counsel, judge favourably and lend money to the needy interest free. Added to this the Torah commands love of the stranger thirty-six times which is more times than any other commandment. 

When I looked at the Moslem faith, I learned that the Quran describes love as a gift from Allah and has this injunction: ‘It is righteousness to believe in Allah… to spend of your substance out of love for him for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask , and for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer and to practice regular charity,'. Thus the  Quran teaches the importance of sharing love for only by so doing can one truly understand how important it is.  It teaches, too, that love motivates kindness, compassion and generosity and can provide strength and resilience in difficult times.

Turning now to Hinduism, love is seen as both the expression of divine truth and the ultimate goal of human existence. Love is considered a sacrament and a way of living, integral to human life and a key to a healthy and harmonious society. Tagore who was a renowned poet and much influenced spiritually by Hinduism wrote: ‘From love the world is born; by love it is sustained; towards love it moves and into love it enters’.

Thus, in all these religions is the amazing promise that by our acts of love we will, indeed, come to know God who is perfect love. Acts of love to bring consolation, comfort, support, hope and even joy but, above all else, acts of love to bring the reciprocal love of both God and neighbour. 

These examples are just a snapshot view of how other faiths regard the blessing of love which, surely, God has given us through the sacrificial love of His own Son. Every one of the three I’ve mentioned emphasise love as being of supreme importance and yet, tragically, in today’s world, and indeed over the centuries, greed, power seeking, intolerance and prejudice have led to war and division between people of different faiths and, of course, of the same faith. And such greed, power seeking, intolerance and prejudice have led to fractured, divided communities and even many examples of the violence that we have seen meted out recently in this country against those of the Jewish faith. When all these religions I have talked about teach the supremacy of love then conflict between them is surely a travesty making a mockery of love.  How God must despair of us and yet somehow, he goes on loving us.

I know that I have spoken of this before, namely that one of the greatest privileges I have is being a hospital chaplain and, thus, being alongside people from all around God’s world and of different faiths. Alongside both medical staff, as they work to bring healing to their patients, and the patients themselves .I know many of them are of a different faith, just as they know I do not share their faith but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because what we can share is a form of compassionate regard, compassionate caring love. Isn’t this what our Moslem, Hindu and Jewish brothers and sisters are also called to do? Isn’t this what God most desires of all of us. Isn’t this sharing of love not with a Moslem, a Jew, or a Hindu but simply with another beloved child of God, the only way to prevent the toxicity of hate and rejection that seems to be becoming  more and more apparent in today’s world? 

We are in this church this morning because, I imagine, most of us have never known any way of worshipping other than in an Anglican church but, around God’s world, others of our brothers and sisters are worshipping in mosques, temples and synagogues. All seeking, as surely each one of us here is doing, a greater understanding and knowledge of the almost unknowable God, the God who truly loves us. In that seeking, can we discover the truth of these words of Brother Roger of Taizé wrote. ‘There are only beautiful faces, be they sad or radiant. My life is discerning in others what is ravishing them, what rejoices them; it lies in communication with the suffering and joy of people. Ever since I was a youth, my desire has been never to condemn. For me the essential, in the presence of some other person, has always been to understand him fully. When I manage to understand somebody that is already a festival.’ Surely if we can follow his example we will also know the ultimate joy of having Christ himself revealed to us as he promised would happen if we learned to love both God and our neighbour. A joy that I pray will also be known by Moslems, Hindus, Jews and all people of faith and good will as they seek in God’s name to love and care for their neighbours whomsoever, they may be.

I would like to end with this adapted act of commitment and prayer which originated in Wales to be said before this week’s local elections.  We commit ourselves to working for a nation built on the ideals of peaceful co-existence, neighbourliness, and freedom of worship. We pray and long for a nation where all may flourish and none need fear. We hear the cries of the poor and marginalised and reject all calls to hatred and dehumanisation. 

Virginia Smith

Sunday 3 May, Fourth Sunday after Easter
Texts: Acts 7:55-end,  John 14:1-14

How brave are you?  What brave thing or things have you done? Asking myself the same questions, the answer to the first is that I am quite definitely not very brave, and you would never find me parachuting out of an aeroplane, embarking on a balloon ride or, heaven forbid, go on one of those death-defying theme park rides, Yes, I am decidedly a wimp! And  as for the second question  the best I could come up with was the time when living in Mexico and on one occasion, when taking my two young children to the dentist, I think they were five and three at the time, there was a power cut as we ascended to his surgery. A power cut that ensured we came to an abrupt stop and were plunged into total blackness, a blackness which was almost tangible and to be honest very scary. But I knew that I could not let the children know for a moment that I was frightened as they would pick up the vibes immediately, so I told them we would be absolutely fine and, while we waited to be rescued, we would sing nursery rhymes very, very very loudly. And, tightly holding each other’s hands, that is what we did in that all encompassing, blinding blackness.  I can’t now remember just how many times we sang Humpty Dumpty or Sing a Song of Sixpence but, thankfully, the noise level we managed to achieve drew someone to our rescue and the emergency power was switched on to enable our escape. And here, I should point out that nothing in Mexico happens very quickly, so I think, for once, we were fortunate that our ordeal did not last too long. I can’t now remember what happened when we did see the dentist, but I am sure it could not compare with being stuck in that lift and experiencing that unforgettable absence of all light.

Whether or not you are a lot braver than I am, would any of us be as brave as Stephen as he stood up in front of a hostile crowd and proclaimed his belief in the risen Christ and how his life and death did fulfil all the prophecies about a coming Messiah? Again, I’ve never been in a hostile crowd but from pictures I’ve seen it is, again, definitely not somewhere I would want to be and I couldn’t imagine myself doing what Stephen did that day. Not only instructing the crowd, but also defiantly telling those who refused to hear the truth of his words   that they were a ‘stiff necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears’ and ‘for ever opposing the Holy Spirit as your ancestors used to do.’  Hardly words to soften their hearts in any way, but I think you can hear the frustration behind them as he longed for them to know the truth of Jesus’ words to Philip: ’do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.’ Words that confirmed that Jesus was, indeed, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Saviour for whom the people of Israel had waited for so long. Words that would gain even more credence when, after his appalling death, the risen Christ appeared to the first disciples both men and women. 

Simon’s is the first example of the supreme courage of those first disciples who, in a sense, mocked death in their sheer Spirit filled determination to tell as many people as they possibly could about the reality of the risen Christ and how it confirmed all his teaching before that death.  Teaching that mocked death because they knew that, like Stephen, they, too, might be given a vision of the glory of God and Jesus standing at his right hand as they passed from this life to life eternal.

And of course, ever since men and women have been prepared to risk their lives, determined to share their resolute faith, their absolute unshakeable trust in the risen Christ who gave his life for us, God’s children.  Risk their lives and often be martyred in the most gruesome way because nothing but nothing was more important to them than sharing the good news. The news that Jesus Christ, the true Messiah, the true Saviour, had risen from the dead to cleanse us from our sins and restore us to new life in Him.  And it was their witness in the face of persecution and martyrdom that had the effect of converting others. As an example, there is the story of a Roman soldier who sent to guard a group of Christians condemned to die was so impressed by the fact that they were not weeping, not begging for mercy, not raging and cursing against him and his men but praying. Praying not just for themselves but for him too, asking God to forgive him and open his heart. Hearing these words he was inspired to respond: ‘If this is their faith, I want it too’. A response which led to his own martyrdom alongside his erstwhile prisoners.

And, to this present day, we continue to hear of Christians prepared to die for their faith; prepared to be persecuted, harassed and marginalised. Just last week in the Church Times there were reports from both Belarus and Nicaragua of such treatment, with Christian communities facing real hardship together with the prospect of arrest and restrictions on worship. And these are just two countries where Christians are daily threatened for their faith and, in some countries, may well face the prospect of death. What courage it takes for such people to continue to witness to their faith. What courage it has taken over the centuries to ensure that the good news is kept alive and taught to others as Stephen did, as those condemned prisoners did.

Here, in this quiet and peaceful village of Coldharbour, we are not threatened or harassed for our faith. No one is going to close our church doors and bar our entry. No one is going to take away our livelihoods and leave us destitute. No one will come to arrest us and throw us into prison. And, as result is it possible that we become too complacent, too unaware of the enormous cost that others have paid to ensure that we are here this morning? The incomparable cost paid by God’s own Son as he sacrificed his life for us, followed by the selfless courageous sacrifice of the lives of men and women down two thousand years.  So, what if anything are we called to do to if nothing else ensure that the Christian faith is alive and active in Coldharbour? And, for me and I hope maybe for you too, this morning I found the answer to this question in these adapted words of Brother Roger of Taizé. Today, more than ever before, a call is arising to open paths of trust in humanity’s darkest hours. Can we hear that call? Can others recognise our trust in God when we express it by the simple giving of ourselves for others.

'Faith becomes credible and is passed on above all when it is lived out.’

Stephen knew without a doubt that Christ was, indeed, the way and the truth and the life and, strengthened by that faith, lived out his life for others and, in so doing, sacrificed his own life. We may not be called upon to sacrifice our lives, but we are surely called upon to share that same faith unreservedly and to follow in the way of Christ, the way of Stephen and all have the courage, the determination to fulfil the words of Brother Roger, of  St James to be ‘doers of the word’  and like  St Augustine ‘Love and say it with your life.’

Virginia Smith

Sunday 26 April, Third Sunday after Easter
“Jesus used this figure of speech with them but they did not understand what he was saying to them” (John 10:6)

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever listened to the gospel reading and then said to yourself, “What is he talking about?” Have you ever read a piece of scripture and wondered, “What does this mean? And how does it apply to my life?” I have and I still do. Almost every week that’s my starting place with the upcoming Sunday gospel.

This week was no different. Sheep and shepherd, gate and gatekeeper, thief and bandit, voices, abundant life. What’s all that mean? How does it apply to our lives? I can’t put it all together in a neat package that makes sense. There are too many contradictions and mixed metaphors. 

At the beginning of today’s gospel it sounds like Jesus is suggesting that he is the shepherd who enters the gate, unlike the thieves and bandits who hop the fence. The sheep, he says, listen to and follow the voice of the shepherd but run from the voice of strangers. But then, later in today’s gospel, Jesus says that he is the gate. So he is the shepherd who enters the gate and he is also the gate the shepherd enters? And then he says that we can enter him as a gate to abundant life?

It reminds me of when a fellow parent and I were talking about funny phrases our children said. Her son knew the sayings, “How about them apples?” and “Try that on for size.” But that’s not what he would say. He would say, “Try them apples on for size.” She told him that doesn’t make sense. It’s either one or the other but not both at the same time. 

I want to tell Jesus the same thing. I imagine, though, that he would respond pretty much like her son would. He would just laugh and then say again, “Try them apples on for size.” That’s what I want us to do today with this gospel. I want us to “try them apples on for size.” I really believe that is what Jesus is asking us to do.

I say that because St. John, today’s gospel writer, clearly states that Jesus was using a “figure of speech.” That’s why this text, like so many of Jesus’ sayings and teachings, is difficult to understand, and that’s also the key to dealing with this text. This text cannot be taken literally. It makes no sense. The rational, logical, intellectual mind cannot understand a figure of speech. The figure of speech points beyond itself, in this case to abundant life. A figure of speech asks us to think, see, and listen differently. So let’s take today’s gospel and play with the images, dance with the ideas, ponder and muse over this figure of speech, and see what it brings up in us and where it takes us.

Let’s start with abundant life. That, Jesus says, is why he came; that we might “have life, and have it abundantly.” What does that mean for you? Where is your life abundant? And in what ways is it less than abundant? Keep in mind, however, that abundance is not something we get. It’s a way of living and being.

The abundant life is not about quantity, wealth, success, approval, popularity, security, being number one, or any of the other things we often think it is. How many times have you got what you wanted, been what others said you should be, or done what was encouraged and rewarded by society only to discover your own emptiness and poverty? You had it all but you were not abundant. No, the abundant life is touching and living the divine life. 

It’s a quality not a quantity. It’s about meaning, integrity, purpose, creativity, relationship, and wholeness. The abundant life adds to the life of others and the world. It’s life that leads to life, love that leads to love, joy that leads to joy, hope that leads to hope, kindness that leads to kindness, generosity that leads to generosity, beauty that leads to beauty, and gratitude that leads to gratitude. It does not add to the pain of the world but adds to and enhances life, our own as well as others’.

Isn’t that what we really want? Isn’t that what we want for ourselves and for each other? I do? Don’t you? I want us to follow the shepherd into the pasture of abundance.

Who is the shepherd? The obvious answer is Jesus. That’s certainly not a wrong answer. Later in John’s account of the gospel Jesus will say, “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11). But is that the only answer? Could there be other shepherds? And if so, who might that be? What about Psalm 23 that says that the Lord, God, is our shepherd? He revives, he leads, he protects, he feeds, he waters, he pastures.

 What about you and me? Could we do those things? Could we be the shepherd? Who are the people that have shepherded, guided, nurtured, and protected your life? When have you shepherded the life of another? Maybe the shepherd here is anyone or anything that nourishes, fosters, empowers, and guards life. It could be God, Jesus, you, or me. Shepherding is not only an action but also a relationship.

What about those thieves and bandits? Jesus is not warning us about having our things stolen but about having our life stolen and our abundance depleted.

Thieves are stealthy. We often don’t know they’ve been here until later. They come in the night when we are asleep and unaware. Then one day we wake up and wonder what happened to our life. How did we get to this point? Our life is a mess and we don’t know when or how it happened. Where did our life go? Maybe time caught up with us, maybe we took a relationship for granted, maybe we procrastinated, maybe we were too comfortable, maybe we became complacent, maybe we were too busy or preoccupied, maybe we weren’t paying attention, maybe we just gave up, maybe we opened our heart to the wrong person or thing.

Thieves are sneaky and they often wear the disguise of acceptance: work, money, productivity, knowledge, a relationship, meeting other’s needs and expectations, saying yes and being available, striving for quality in what we do. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things until they begin to steal our life. And sometimes they do.

Bandits, on the other hand, are overpowering. They come in the daylight. They don’t even try to hide. We know when they are here and when we are being robbed. It’s those times when we know our life is less than we want it to be, we recognize the patterns and behaviours that are destructive, we know there is a better and different choice to be made, but we continue down the same path. It’s recognizing our brokenness and refusing to ask for help. It’s choosing our resentments and anger over forgiveness. It’s feeling the pain but refusing the treatment. It’s knowing what will give life but giving in to fear.

In what ways has your life been stolen? Who or what are the thieves and bandits in your life? What will you do now? What have you learned? How will you guard your heart against the thieves and bandits of an abundant life? The abundant life is always a matter of the heart.

We are the gatekeepers of our lives. We are the keeper and guardian of our heart. Guarding our heart means staying awake, being watchful, and remaining diligent. Awareness of and reflection on what is happening within and outside us are the gatekeeper’s key. Depending on who or what it is we either open our heart or keep it closed. Sometimes we need to open the gate and sometimes we need to keep the gate of our life closed. Look back on your life and you can see that.

To whom or what have you opened your heart in the past? Where did it take you? Did it lead to the pastures of abundance or was it a dead end, or maybe a detour? When have you opened your heart and been surprised by possibilities and a fullness of life you could never have imagined?

Who or what stands at your gates today? Who or what are the people, opportunities, possibilities, and choices that seek entry into your life? The gates in our life are threshold places, times of discernment, moments of transition, and decisions to be made. To whom or what do you need to open and to whom or what do you need to close? How might your life change if you open? What might you miss if you close? 

To what voices are we listening? The voices to which we listen form and shape our lives throughout our lifetime. And there are a myriad of voices in our world. What voices are rattling around in you? Vying for your attention? For better or for worse we eventually begin to speak with the voice that has formed and shaped our lives.

Who do you sound like when you speak? It could be your mother or your father, your spouse, your boss, your fear or anger, your wounds, the church, politicians, television, the internet, friends, money, success, popularity, expectations, failures, self-criticism or self-hatred. Is it the voice of thieves and bandits? Or is it the voice of wisdom, life, love, compassion, beauty, generosity, hope, joy? To which voices do you need to close the gate of your heart and to which ones do you need to open?

There are no easy, simple, one size fits all, responses to any of the questions I have asked you today. There just aren’t. Instead, there are sheep and shepherds, gates and gatekeepers, thieves and bandits, voices, and abundant life. 

So, may we be guided by the voice of love and open the gate to abundant life, because, after all, that is what we are promised.

Rev'd Kia

Sunday 19 April, Second Sunday after Easter
Being a third Sunday, we have two services - 9.00am Holy Communion and 6.00pm Evensong - with two sermons, both of which are published here. 
They each address the appearance of Jesus after his resurrection. If you are planning to read the two, it might be good to start with that for 6.00pm Evensong, by Virginia Smith, which considers five appearances, before moving on to that for 9.00am Holy Communion, by Rev'd Kia, which considers his appearance on the road to Emmaus.                  

9.00 Holy Communion
The road to Emmaus

One of the more memorable assignments I had in Vicar school came to mind as I pondered today’s gospel reading. The task was to choose a story from scripture that could serve as a model for how I would approach ministry. The lecturer shared his story with us first. His model was based on the story of Moses and the burning bush. When my lecturer would spend time with someone, especially someone going through a challenging time, he would think about it through this lens. 

He would see their challenging time as a burning bush, invite them to turn aside, take off their shoes, recognize it as holy ground, and listen for what God might be saying to them. 

I like that one. It is a good model for ministry. But I chose today’s gospel reading – the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus - as my personal model for ministry. And with that in mind, I thought I would walk us through this gospel reading today and share with you what I think this story can teach us about ministry and the Christian life.

The story begins with two disciples on their way back home to Emmaus. They have just left Jerusalem and are walking back home. They are sad and confused. Sad because their hope died on a cross and was buried in a tomb. Confused, though, because they have heard reports that the tomb was found empty by the women who went there, and that there were angels telling them that Jesus was alive. Although no one had yet seen him. So, you can imagine their conversation as they walked back home that day.

And while they were talking about all these things, Jesus himself joined them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And what did Jesus do when he joined them on their journey? First, he listened to them.

He asked them a simple, open-ended question, and then he listened to their answer. “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” He asked. And of course, Jesus knew what they were discussing. But he still wanted to listen to them. Jesus wants to know what is happening with all of us. In our own words. And so, in this story, Cleopas and his friend share what is on their hearts. Standing still, looking sad, they share their story. 

And doesn’t this teach us a lot about ministry and the Christian life? It reminds us, first of all, that the risen Jesus is walking with us through this life, even when we don’t recognize him. But it also teaches us about how to share our faith with others. Because we can learn from Jesus. What better teacher? 

Jesus teaches us that it all starts simply by joining someone on their journey. Walking with them. Talking to them. Listening to them. It starts there. This might mean opening ourselves to someone else’s pain. That’s part of being with another person and caring for them in the way Jesus teaches. Sometimes we want to skip this step. But Jesus shows us in this story how important this step is. To listen to someone share their pain and their grief. To be present with them. This is the first step to ministering to another person. Before we ever share our faith, we listen. As Jesus did. 

Listening is such an underrated skill. Can you think of a time where you felt completely listened to? Where you felt you were the most important person in the world to that person – at that moment? It’s a special feeling. Conversely there is nothing quite so demoralising as having a conversation with someone who is constantly looking over your shoulder for someone more interesting to talk to!

After Jesus listened to Cleopas and his friend, he then opened his Bible. Not literally, but he began to interpret what the Bible had to say about his death and resurrection. He opened scripture to them, and their hearts burned. Their hearts burned with a fierce joy as Jesus did this. Why? Because he helped them to see their story wrapped up in God’s story. And he helped them to understand that the cross was necessary. That everything Jesus did in his life and in his suffering was done out of love for us. And that it was all necessary to bring forgiveness, healing and hope to our sad, broken and sin-filled world. 

And isn’t part of our vocation as Christians to do the same? To help others to see their story wrapped up in God’s story? Whether it is literally using scripture or not, we can help others to see their life through the lens of God’s grace and mercy. People, especially the young, are crying out for an identity, an identity that is rooted in something bigger than themselves – a sense of belonging to a bigger picture other than what our transient culture can offer.

Now, it is also important to notice that Jesus does not just offer those two disciples a pat on the back and a gesture of love. He also rebukes them for their lack of faith. “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe,” he says to them. Sometimes, in other words, when we look at our life through the lens of eternity, we don’t like what we see. We have wandered off the path. Or a friend has wandered off the path. Sometimes we need to hear, from our Lord or from a friend, a word of gentle rebuke. Reminding us how foolish we are, and how slow of heart we can be to believe. 

OK. So, looking at what this story teaches us about ministry and the Christian life, we have seen how Jesus joins us on our journey, and invites us to open our hearts to him. We have seen how this can open us to sadness, but that sadness in God’s presence is always mingled with joy. We have seen how God’s word can help us to better understand how God is at work in our life. Sometimes it will comfort us, and sometimes it will challenge us. 

So, what is next? Well, Cleopas and his friend are nearing their home in Emmaus. Jesus walked ahead, as if he were going on. They still don’t know it is Jesus, but they urge him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” 

So, think about that: Jesus doesn’t invite himself into their home. He waits for an invitation. He teaches us to do that. And he does that for us. Jesus joins us on the journey without our asking, that’s true. But at some point, and maybe at a lot of points, he waits to be invited in. “Listen, I stand at the door, knocking,” Jesus says in Revelation. “If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” Jesus comes to the doors of our hearts knocking, but he waits to be let in. He never forces his way in. And this, too, is a powerful image for the Christian life. And a reminder to us of how we should approach walking with others. Not pushing our faith on anyone but always being ready when the invitation presents itself. 

Now, once the disciples in Emmaus do invite Jesus in, they break bread together. And this simple meal becomes holy. Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. And then, their eyes are opened, and they recognize him. In the breaking of the bread. Worship, and particularly the Service of Holy Communion, has been described as the summit of the Christian life. It is arguably the most important that we as Christians do. We worship the living God. 

It is amazing, when you read the Old Testament, to see how much of it is dedicated to proper worship, and to the building of the Temple, or the restoring of the Temple. In the New Testament, we learn that Jesus is the Temple; and that proper worship is all about gathering in Jesus’ name to do what we are doing today: To confess our sins, hear God’s Word, pray for our world, and then to bless and break the bread, and share the body of Christ in remembrance of him. And there really is nothing more important that we do than this. It may not always feel that way. But we trust that it is true. And we can pray that our eyes will be opened when we worship Jesus; and that we, like those disciples in Emmaus, will have Jesus made known to us in the breaking of the bread. 

But the story doesn’t quite end there. When their eyes are opened, and they recognize Jesus, he immediately vanishes from their sight. So what does this teach us about ministry and the Christian life? It teaches us about the importance of what we do after we worship Jesus. After we pray, and hear God’s word, and share the Lord’s Supper; we go to serve our Lord; we go to love, serve and proclaim God’s grace to all.

As soon as those disciples realized that they had been with Jesus, they got up and rushed back to Jerusalem to share the news. Think about that: A seven-mile journey, in the evening, with the day almost over. But they went, eagerly, to share their joy. And so should we.

Transformed, forgiven people can’t but help impart their joy to those around them - to share our faith, and to love our neighbour, and to do everything that Jesus has commanded us to do. 

May our eyes be opened, so that we can recognize Jesus in our midst. May our hearts burn with joy as we see our story wrapped up in his. And may we always be eager to share the joy of his resurrection and presence among us. Amen.

Rev'd Kia

6.00pm Evensong
Texts; Isaiah 40:1-11, Luke 24: 13-35

I think I would be correct in assuming that everyone here is very familiar with the Biblical accounts of the post resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ, having heard them at Eastertide for goodness knows how many years past. Accounts which, maybe because of that familiarity, have become simply part of what one might call one’s Christian DNA and we don’t really look for new insights, new revelations of just what these meetings between the risen Christ might contain. 

And thinking about this and reflecting on today’s gospel passage along with the other resurrection accounts in the gospels, it seems to me that there are two quite distinct ways in which the risen Christ made himself known. The first is to individuals or a small group of people in, as it were, the outside who did not, at the beginning of their encounter, recognise his presence with them. Think of the weeping, distraught Mary who initially thought the person in front of her was the gardener and it was only when he spoke her name that she recognised the truth. Secondly, we have today’s gospel account when we have two sad, demoralised travellers on the Emmaus Road who are joined by a fellow traveller, an apparent stranger, and it was only when that ‘stranger’ joined them for a meal and broke bread that they, too, recognised the reality of the Lord sitting beside them. And the third example comes when seven of Jesus’ disciples, uncertain of the future, still possibly bemused by their previous encounters in that locked room with Christ, decide to return, as it were, to their old life and go fishing. Here, after a fruitless night with empty nets, they return to shore and spot a lone figure on the beach. A figure again unrecognised until suddenly John is filled with the intuition that here again is the Lord and hearing his cry of ‘It is the Lord!’  dear, impetuous, Peter leaps from the boat to join him. Three examples of a delayed recognition of Christ and in all three instances to sad, uncertain and hope stripped people.

The second way that the risen Christ made himself known were his two appearances in that locked room where the disciples, scared of both the Roman and Jewish authorities and frightened for the future had gathered. Here the Lord simply appears in their midst and although, quite naturally, their immediate thought on the first occasion this happened was that it must be his ghost, there is no doubt in any of their minds when he spoke and showed them his terrible wounds as to the incontestable evidence of his presence with them . As they said to Thomas after the first such encounter, ‘We have seen the Lord.’  Words which echo those of Jeremiah: ‘Thou O Lord art in the midst of us.’ In these accounts the Lord makes himself known straight away, unlike the other three accounts I have listed.

So, what does all this mean for us this evening? To me it seems that, for us too, there are two distinct ways in which we can encounter the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives. We can encounter him as an individual unexpectedly in our daily lives and not always recognise, at first, the reality of that presence, And, secondly, we can encounter him when we gather in a church service as we have this evening and as a united body worship him and acknowledge his presence with us.  Had this been a Common Worship eucharistic service we would even have begun the serviced with the ringing acclamations ‘the Lord is here’ with the response; ‘his Spirit is with us.  And, it is always my prayer that at least at some point within any service everyone will have a sense of the divine and with that sense be enabled to truly join in praise and thanks with the angels and archangels. And when people kindly tell me that ‘it was a lovely service’ I hope that is their way of saying they did, indeed, recognise the risen Christ had made himself known to us, as he did to those disciples gathered in that locked room. Recognised in some way which none of us could easily articulate that we had experienced a conjunction of earth and heaven.

So back to that first way I spoke of which compares with the experiences of the distraught Mary Magdalene, of those two disheartened and troubled travellers on the Emmaus Road and of those weary unsuccessful fishermen. The experience of a meeting with the Lord when it takes us a while to realise just who he is. A meeting with the risen Lord whom we are told quite clearly in John’s First Letter lives in each one of us. So, too, Julian of Norwich wrote of God revealing himself in human face and form and as a corollary to that assertion the question we are surely asked is ‘How did you catch a sense of God today in the people you met?' Maybe this is a question you have never thought to ask yourself, but I think it is one that all of us should seriously consider seeking an answer to and in that seeking will indeed be surprised and uplifted by the wonder and the joy of  having Christ’s presence revealed to us. Found, as one writer put, it among the pots and pans, the hoes and the threshing forks; in other words, the discovery will be made in the ordinary day to day things of life as well as in our churches. Found in someone’s words of kindness and love, words of solace or reassurance, words of thanks or appreciation. Found in a hand laid gently upon us or even a much needed hug. Found in the quiet listening to our troubles and worries and found too in our sharing of joys and delights. Found too in just a shared smile as the Lord within each of us meets with the Lord within a friend or indeed a stranger. The opportunities for such a meeting are genuinely boundless.   And it may well be that it is only after an encounter that we come to recognise that truly the risen Lord was indeed with us.

I would like to end with these words which I copied down but in so doing I apologise that I failed to attribute the author. Words which to me confirm my faith that any of us can, indeed, meet with the risen Christ both in a church service but, perhaps more personally, in our day to day lives when we can discover that the Lord is truly with us and the thereness of the sacred is never far away. 

‘Easter is the feast of God’s thereness. As we gradually wake up to the enormity of Easter, let’s pray that God would open the eyes of our hearts to see the risen Christ’s thereness in the midst of the daily round and common tasks of this week. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed Alleluia! '.

Virginia Smith

Sunday 12 April, First Sunday after Easter
On this, the first Sunday after Easter, we have just one service in the Benefice. This year it is at St Marys Holmbury.

I wonder what word you might use if I asked you what the opposite of doubt was?

Faith, Belief, Trust, Confidence, Certainty…..

Doubt is such a natural and human emotion. 

We often doubt because we are afraid, it can be a lingering survival instinct designed to keep us safe and prevent us from repeating past mistakes.  We doubt because we lack confidence in ourselves or our abilities.  We can doubt because we are worried about failing or not meeting the expectations of others.

I freely admit, I often have one foot firmly in the doubting camp, particularly the self- doubting camp!

Today we hear of the second and third post resurrection appearances of Jesus.  These encounters are deeply relational and intimate; Jesus meets the disciples where they are.  

Jesus accepts their doubt; he appreciates their fear and that they have locked themselves in to try to keep themselves safe.

He understands that they are anxious and doubt their ability to profess their faith and carry on his ministry alone. 

Jesus does not hold the disciples to account; there is no judgement or suggestion they have failed.  It is almost as if Jesus opens his arms to them in welcome – embracing their doubt.

Eleven of the disciples had been together one week before when Jesus had returned to them.  John’s Gospel tells us that ‘the doors of the house were locked for fear of the Jews’.  It reminds us that even today Christians still live in fear for their lives and are not free to worship.  Just two weeks ago, on Palm Sunday, for the first time in centuries, the Cardinal of Jerusalem was barred from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 

Jesus speaks through the fear of the disciples: ‘Peace be with you’.  Jesus first blesses them and then reassures them of his true identity by showing them his hands and his side.   He does not rebuke the disciple’s unbelief.  During Holy week, we have been reminded of Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denial.  And yet, here just a few short days afterwe see Jesus’s compassion and his love for each of the disciples.

John’s gospel places emphasis on the importance of the Holy Spirit for the disciples mission.  Jesus had promised the disciples that he would:  ‘ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth' (14:16-17).  

The Spirit is seen as an encourager, helper and comforter who will teach the disciples all that they will need to know.  In today’s gospel passage, the risen Jesus ‘breathed on’ the disciples and tells them to ‘receive the Holy Spirit’ (20:22).   There are echoes of the Genesis story and parallels can be drawn between the Father sending his Son and Jesus sending out the disciples.  The scholar David Ford, considers that the disciples ‘receive the Spirit of the crucified and risen Jesus, infusing them with the reality of his life, death, and resurrection, inspiring them to be sent as he was sent’.  

Thomas was not present at Jesus’s second appearance, he does not believe the testimony of the other disciples.  I have always really empathised with Thomas, his name has become synonymous with the word doubt.   In fact, Thomas was never called ‘doubting’ in scripture, he has been labelled as doubting because he asked Jesus for proof of who he was.  

Thomas initially says, ‘unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe’.

Thomas shares what is troubling him, he asks the questions he needs to understand.  Thomas’s last encounter with Jesus was seeing the immensity of his friend suffering, his broken body hanging on the cross and then being laid in a tomb.   

The word for ‘believe’ in Greek means to trust, so in fact Thomas is asking for a reason to trust again, he has been deeply wounded by all he has encountered.

Jesus does not lose faith in Thomas or question his search for evidence to help him believe.  Instead, he offers Thomas the opportunity to touch his wounds.  He gives Thomas the concrete evidence that he needs.  The powerful simplicity of Thomas’s response: ‘my Lord and my God’ affirms just how quickly he has moved to a position of complete trust and belief.  Thomas is the first to actually recognise the revelation of Jesus in union with his Father.  He moves from a position of doubt to one of far deeper understanding.

I’d like to suggest that instead of the label ‘doubting’ we consider the honesty of Thomas, he knew what he needed to believe.  When it was offered, he did not hesitate to believe and put his trust in Jesus. 

Thomas reminds me of some of the young people I work with.  They question why endlessly.  Often their questions are profound and challenging but most frequently they come from a place of wanting to understand.  And when I take the time to explain, to show them models, consider the anatomy and share the research they often come to a place of trust.

Thomas and Jesus’s other disciples were witnesses of Jesus’s Galilean ministry.  They heard him preach and teach, they saw him heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, feed the 5000 and yet they doubted.  Today’s reading from Acts reminds us that the disciples did overcome their doubt, they embraced the power given to them by the Holy Spirit and went out to confidently share the good news of the risen Christ.  Thomas went on to spread the gospel message as far as India. 

We are, of course, among those who ‘have not seen and yet have believed’.  We have come to faith as a result of the support and testimony of others.  I expect that most of us like Thomas, will have experienced times of doubt and lack of confidence to share our faith.  Jesus will not condemn or give up on us; we cannot lock Jesus out.  Perhaps, we need to be honest about our doubts and like Thomas share them with Jesus, maybe that is the place that we will find our deepest encounter with God. 

Jesus’s final words ‘that by believing you might have life in his name’ remind us that God wants us to believe in order to live life in all its fullness.  He desires nothing greater than for us to cry out like Thomas – ‘My Lord and My God!’.  Jesus calls lay down our doubt and place our trust in him.

Amber Wood

Sunday 5 April, Easter Day

I wonder if you can recall a memorable encounter you have had in your life? It might be the day you met someone famous and you will never forget what they said or what you felt. It could be the occasion you met your partner for the first time, or sat while someone you loved breathed their last. Perhaps it was surprising or expected, but it was certainly memorable.

One of the features of John’s gospel is that it narrates individual encounters that Jesus had throughout his ministry. For all the cosmic scope of John’s gospel (‘in the beginning was the word’ etc) it also touches on the deeply personal as Jesus’ meetings with Nicodemus, the woman at the well, Lazarus, Mary and Martha are described.

Small wonder, therefore, that as John seeks to open up to his readers the world of the resurrection, he does so through the medium of an encounter, one with Mary Magdalene which speaks to the ages and to us.

It starts so bleakly, so darkly, with Mary on her way to the tomb of Jesus. The horrors of Friday were still fresh in her mind, and her world was in pieces. The man she had followed all the way from Galilee was dead and cold. Even the empty tomb does not raise her spirits. Why would it? She naturally assumes that the body has been taken. She wants to have it back, not because it will bring Jesus back, but it is all she has got.

And then, from nowhere, the encounter with Christ: personal, living and open.

A personal encounter, for it starts with a name – ‘Mary’. She cannot recognise him through her tears, but his calling of her name cuts through her sobs. She is known. She is close. She is loved. The risen Christ meets her where she is and as she is.

A living encounter, for it is not just for now. Mary seems to want to hold on to Jesus but he says she does not need to. This encounter is not just for now because Jesus is risen. He will not slip back into death but rather will ascend and reign forever. This is not a one-day encounter but one that will share the eternal life of the risen Christ.

An open encounter, for this is not just for Mary. Mary is chosen to be the first to hear her name called by the risen Jesus, but she is also commissioned to bring the news to the disciples and, through them, to the world. The encounter she has had will be one that is open to others.

On Easter Day we can be concerned with the evidence for the resurrection; how can we be sure it is true? Or, we can ask ourselves about the cosmic impact of the resurrection; what difference does it make to the world? Both are good questions, but John’s gospel invites us simply to see what Easter Day makes possible for us all, which is an encounter with the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

It is an encounter which is personal. Put simply, he calls us by name too. Anthony, Kerry ……... He knows our tears. He hears our questions. He sees our hearts. We are not numbers. We are known to the risen Christ by name.

It is an encounter which is living. I once met  Harold Pinter but I didn’t have a living connection with him. But the risen Jesus isn’t just for Easter, but for every day of our lives. There is a not a day when we cannot talk to, cry with, walk alongside the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it is an encounter which is open. The risen Christ was not simply for Mary and her generation. St John tells us her story not because it was something interesting that happened on Easter Day but because, precisely, this sort of encounter is open to all. The theologian David Ford says of John’s gospel that it is an invitation ‘to read ourselves into the presence of Jesus’ and nowhere is that more true than in this passage. We cannot see Jesus as Mary did. We cannot touch Jesus as Mary did. But we can know him and be in the presence of him just as she was.

When people ask me why I believe the resurrection is true, I say it is because I have a living experience of a relationship with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. I can’t but tell what I have known of his love, of his patience, of his kindness, of his life and light.

In our churches and in our communities we pray that everyone has the opportunity to encounter God and know God’s love in Jesus Christ. There can be no better time than Easter Day to hear Jesus call us by name and walk afresh with him.

As we reaffirm our baptismal promises I pray that we will know the risen Christ calling us by name. And as we gather around the Lord’s table I pray that we will know the risen Christ meeting us in bread and wine and feeding us with his body and blood. Because he is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.

Rev'd Kia

Friday 3 April, Good Friday

Whenever I give a small wooden cross to one of the families in NICU, I always explain that the upright reminds us that earth is always in touch with heaven and vice versa or, in other words, we can always be in touch with God and He with us. And then I indicate the cross bar and ask them to see in it the outstretched arms of Christ holding us always within his love revealed in his death upon a cross on that bleak spot outside Jerusalem. And, in the same way, when I offer a prayer for healing, I often say words to the effect ‘may the wounded hands of Christ bring you healing and peace.’

The Passion story is full of arms and hands, beginning with the Last Supper when Jesus knelt to wash the disciples’ feet with his hands and then to break bread for them to share. Two such intimate actions, the sort we do every day, probably without even thinking. But I’m sure that night Jesus was all too aware of what his hands were doing and what the message he was giving to not just those few disciples but to all God’s children was.

Next, we have Judas embracing Jesus with that kiss of betrayal; that moment of infamy, representative of all the times we have betrayed God by choosing the ways and ambitions of the worldly rather than choosing the divine way shown to us by Christ. Did Jesus flinch from that embrace or did he accept it as he did so much else that night? Accept that betrayal was yet one more item on the list of sins that he had come to forgive and redeem through his sacrifice? 

And then, throughout the next hours of brutality and mindless violence, we have the striking arms and fists of the soldiers, the guards, as they manhandled and abused Jesus mercilessly. This man, who had used his hands to heal, to bless, to comfort now receives the blows of injury of hate and wanton cruelty. Hands that hit, and punched, that pushed and shoved, roughly dressed him in a parody of kingship and thrust a penetrating crown of thorns on his unprotected head.

Hands that can do so many wonderful things, creating works of art and beauty, green fingered hands that can grow some of the wonders of plant life,  supple hands that can play the most beautiful music  to entrance the ear, practical, loving hands that can mend, sew and bake; soothing hands that can embrace and gently wipe tears away, hands that can ‘blow kisses’, embrace  and wave farewell.  But that night, the hands that struck Jesus bore witness only to the savagery and physical abuse that truth be told we can all be capable of enacting.

And we must not forget the pointing and accusing hands that accompanied the shouts of the crowd as they demanded the death of Jesus and then stood around the cross mocking and jeering. We too must remember how often we too have pointed the finger and falsely accused or made fun of someone’s perceived weakness. 

Lastly in this story of hands we are forced to look up at the hands of Jesus pierced by cruel nails. Nails driven right through those hands and into the wood on that cross bar. It is impossible to imagine the agony, the unimaginable excruciating pain that Jesus bore for us that day as his arms were stretched out and his hands pinioned in the greatest token of love the world has ever seen.

Today we remember all those hands and we have to acknowledge our own part In Christ’s crucifixion in using our hands for cruel and base purposes, but it is those wounded hands that we must never forget and recognize in them the testimony they bear to the love that passes all understanding. The love that became incarnate that through our lord Jesus Christ all the world might be saved.

As we leave here today let us pray that we may use our hands to the glory of God and in imitation of Christ’s hands to heal, to comfort and to bless. 

The Broken Vase by Nick Fawcett:
'It was broken, shattered beyond repair, no way anyone could put it together again, however hard they might try. The damage was too great, and the pieces too small, the vase broken beyond redemption.

We forget, Lord, too easily, that your Son was broken; that what he went through was no play-acting or sleight of hand but suffering as real and terrible as I can imagine, endured until life was blotted out, seemingly ended for good. Teach us to remember the truth, but also to remember that brokenness was not the end, for from death came life, from despair, hope and from sorrow, joy--- your love bringing new beginnings. And remind us above all, that this same love is still at work, able to take broken people, broken lives, and make them whole again. Amen'

Prayers Lord who accepted all the suffering of the cross for our sakes that we might know something of your incomparable love for us we pray for all who suffer today.

Lord, we offer you our prayers for all those victims on the crosses of, poverty, homelessness and destitution while the well fed, well housed, complacently satisfied and self-satisfied wealthy stand by and watch .

Lord we offer you our prayers for all those victims on the crosses of persecution, oppression and tyranny while the forces of corrupt power, intolerance and violence stand by and watch.

Lord, we offer you our prayers for all the victims of the destructive and brutal powers of war often driven from their homes and their homeland, bereft and stripped of hope while the perpetrators of war stand by and watch only  only what the power of their weapons can further  achieve in seeking victory.

Lord, we offer you our prayers for those who have suffered and are suffering because of famine and lack of food; those who do not have enough to feed their children, those who have to suffer the indignity of begging and food banks while the rich filling  their supermarket trolleys with an overabundance of rich  food stand by and watch

Lord, we offer you our prayers for all those who suffer on the crosses of sickness and ill health and those without the resources of medical help, without the necessary funds to pay for medicines and treatment while the healthy, the fit, the and those with free health care stand by and watch.

Lord, we offer you our prayers for those on the crosses of loneliness, friendlessness, rejection and isolation while those with the companionship of family, friends and community stand by and watch.

Lord, we offer you our prayers for those on the crosses of grief and sorrow while those who are contentedly carefree and blinkered to such pain   stand by and watch.

Lord, we offer you our prayers for ourselves that the eyes of our hearts may always be open to the needs of others and  in that seeing not simply stand by ana watch but reach out in your name to bring comfort and consolation. All this we humbly ask in the name of Jesus Christ who knew all the mental anguish of being watched as he gave up his life for us.

Collect Good Friday: Almighty Father, look with mercy on your family for which our Lord was content to be betrayed and given into the hands of sinners and to suffer death upon the cross; who is alive and glorified with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Jesus, our true and only Saviour, you died like a criminal upon the cross; but you are God, the one who forgives. You were broken, helpless and in pain; but you are God, in whom there is hope. You have shown us a love beyond words: give us your forgiveness, hope and love. This we ask in the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ our Lord. Blessing: May the cross of our Lord protect you, and strengthen your hearts in faith to Christ, in hardship and in  ease, in life and in death, now and for ever.

Virginia Smith

Sunday 20 March, Palm Sunday
Being Palm Sunday, there is no sermon as we read the Passion

Sunday 22 March, Passion Sunday
Texts :Psalm 130, John 11: 1-45

The Bible passage in St John’s gospel relating the story of the raising of Lazarus is so rich in detail that it could, I am certain, produce an absolute wealth of sermons. But as I reflected as to what I should write, it struck me that there were three ‘Ps’ that are central to the account, namely Patience, Passion and Promise.

To begin with patience, we hear of Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, sending a message to Jesus that he is very ill and obviously anticipating that Jesus, whom we are told loved Lazarus, would respond immediately and come post haste to their house. But no, he did nothing of the sort and stayed two days longer in the same place. One can just imagine the impatience, the frustration, the questioning of the sisters as Jesus failed to appear. Why didn’t he come? What reason for the delay? And this is where we have to learn and appreciate, as Mary and Martha, did that God’s time is not our time and that whenever we, ourselves, need God’s help we must be patient and allow for him to work within the mystery that is the divine time frame. When Moses encountered God in that burning bush, he asked by which name he should be known and the response was ‘I am who I am’. In other words, God is ever present; there is no past or future with God but only an eternal present. In the same way we have all the so called 'I am’ sayings of Jesus such as 'I am the Good Shepherd; I am the bread of life.’  Time will not change these divine attributes; God will not, and cannot, be changed by time, unlike us mortals. Thus, knowing this we have to accept the need for patience in our dealings with God. Like Mary and Martha, there will be times in our lives when we seek God’s help right this very minute but, at the same time, accept that God’s time is not ours and we must recognise and acknowledge the need for patient trust that he has everything under control and we must gracefully accept his timings, which may be quite different from the ones we would like and think should  happen. Psalm one hundred and thirty expresses this need for patience in our relationship with God;:‘I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope'. Perhaps this is a sentence we should learn by heart to prepare us for all those times in life when patience is needed and trust in God’s good purposes for us is essential.

Next, we have Passion which we see most strikingly of all in the words ‘Jesus began to weep’ or as it is written in some Biblical texts ‘Jesus wept. To me, the image of those falling tears is confirmation of the mortality of Jesus, confirmation of the incarnate Christ who, like us, can display passionate overwhelming grief. Passion, which comes from the Latin word ‘passionem’ , meaning suffering or enduring, is  described as a strong and barely controlled emotion but, today, is more likely to be used in the sense of having passionate feelings about someone or have a passion for a certain hobby or interest. Today marks the beginning of Passiontide in the Church’s year when we are called to walk with Jesus to Calvary and to recognise the unimaginable suffering and steadfast endurance which he bore for us. Some might consider it morbid to dwell on such suffering, such extraordinary endurance,  but I think if we are to understand just what God has done for us, to prove his love for us, we, too, have to walk that last journey thatJesus took to that cross of shame and, in so doing, recognise just why we call these two weeks beginning today Passiontide. To understand and sincerely acknowledge the truth of the words of our next hymn: ‘When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died my richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride’. To sing with passion the words of the chorus of our last hymn today ‘Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, should die for me?' I think, if we can really sing those words with passion, we might, too, feel tempted to weep at our part in bringing Jesus to that instrument of torture there to give up his life for our sakes alone.

And so onto our third ‘P’ namely Promise and the words of Jesus spoken to Martha and so often said at a funeral: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live'. Those eighteen words lie at the very heart of our Christian faith proclaiming, with absolute certainty, absolute conviction, that this mortal life is not, and cannot be, all that there is. This is the promise that I have tried to make central to every funeral service I have taken. This is the promise I held onto when I visited my husband’s grave this week. This is the promise that confirms to me that nothing, but nothing not even death, can separate us from God’s love for us, his children. This is the promise to hold onto when we look in disbelief at what is happening in our secular and deeply troubled world  and we need more than ever the security and  the assurance of this promise that in life and in death God will be with us.

Patience, passion, promise and, of course, there is one more ‘P’ that links all these and that is Prayer itself. Prayer for the gift of patience when life is turned upside down and we long for a quick fix, an immediate solution, forgetting that we must always be subject to God’s limitless time and not by our restricted time. Prayer for a more passionate approach to life which involves both steadfast endurance and a true passion filled and fully committed response to those two great commandments to love God and to love our neighbour. And, finally, prayer that we will never waiver in our belief or lose confidence in the promise of Jesus that, through his death and glorious resurrection, he has bought for us the gift of eternal life. Pray we share the belief, the passionate belief of Charles Wesley when he wrote ‘No condemnation now I dread: Jesus, and all in him, is mine! Alive in him, my living Head and clothed in righteousness divine, bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ my own’.

Virginia Smith

Sunday 15 March, Mothering Sunday
Being a third Sunday, we have two services, with two sermons. The first is our special Mothering Sunday service at 10.00am. The second is our 6.00pm Evensong.

Mothering Sunday
We’ve come here this morning to say thank you.

Thank you to our mothers for all that they are and all that they do for us. 

And for some of us we have come here to remember. To remember our mothers who are no longer here to say thank you to – but we remember their words, their actions and the way in which they loved us.

As I was remembering my mother this week, who died nearly 9 years ago, I was trying to recall any pearls of wisdom, any words of advice that she left me with. But actually what I remember most was the way she made me feel.

Loved, secure, safe and valued. Which made me feel brave and indestructible in the world.

Unconditional love can make you feel that way. Unconditional love is the greatest gift we can give to each other and the greatest gift that God gives each one of us.

And loving never stops.

A 102 year old lady was asked if she had any worries.

Her reply, 'No not now I have got my youngest son in an old people's home'.

I guess parents never stop worrying about their children.

However, sometimes it's the children that worry about their parents and the things they do.

As a 10 year old once said: 'When your mum is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair!'

And a 13 year old also learnt one of life's lessons: 'When you get bad marks at school, show it to your Mum when she's on the phone'

Today is 'Mothering Sunday' and our traditional festival dates back to the 16th century, when there were very few holidays, and children as young as 10 were at work away from home.

They would be given the day off on this mid-Lent Sunday to visit their mothers and family.

Girls who were 'in Service’ would bake a cake to show their mothers their new skills - a 'Simnel Cake'.

What's more, as they walked home across the country, they would gather violets and other wild flowers to give to their mums as a gift, and also to take to church. Later in our service we too will come and gather these beautiful posies to give to our mothers.

Today has become a day to give thanks for the care of the Church, and to reflect on God's loving nature.

It is also a time to express thanks to our mothers, and celebrate motherhood.

It's natural for us to remember the happy times of childhood and those happy memories of our parents.

For those of us who are parents, I wonder if we can remember wondering, what our child would grow up to be and do. That little bundle of potential lying in our arms. Would those temper tantrums serve little Johnny well in the board room? Does the fact he spends hours taking apart, and sometimes putting back together, his toy car mean he’s going to be an engineer? When our middle child tries to appease the ferocious arguments between her siblings mean she’s going to get a job in the United Nations? Who knows what the future holds?!

As time goes by we discover that being a parent is a mixture of highs and lows, joys and sorrows.

Surely whenever anyone truly loves, they experience moments of pure joy, and times of pain and heartache.

Human relationships are never easy and being a mother, or father, is never simple. To love is hard work.

It means making ourselves vulnerable in self-giving - emotionally sharing in the lives of others but it also the most rewarding thing we do.

I wonder if God feels this too?

He loves us as a Father and a Mother – hiding us under his wing, protecting us, sheltering us – loving us through thick and thin.

So as we come together to give thanks for Mothers and those that have nurtured as, let us also give thanks to God – for his unconditional love and faithfulness to us all.

Amen.

Rev'd Kia

6.00pm Congregational Evensong
Text: John 9:1-41.

My mother told me on more than one occasion about an event that really influenced her.  When she was at University she studied law alongside a young man who was completely blind.  She remembers one night going round to his flat to find him sitting in total darkness.  The experience moved her profoundly and it took her several minutes to ask if he minded if she turned on a light.  In those minutes, she stepped briefly into his shoes and begun to appreciate the differences between her own and her friend's University experience and, indeed, the differences in their lives.  My mother recalls how deeply shocked she was seeing her friend sitting in isolation in his world of darkness.  It is a world that thankfully few of us know or can comprehend.

Today’s gospel passage recounts Jesus’s encounter with a man who had been born blind.  The disciples ask Jesus, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind’.

The idea that the man was blind because of someone’s sin seems utterly at odds with today’s society.  And, even more frighteningly, there are still parts of the world today where such beliefs persist.  However, at the time blindness and disability were believed to be as a result of divine judgement, the disciple’s question was a genuine one, they wanted to understand whose sin led to the man’s blindness.  And its such a natural and human response, we often question and want to understand why something has happened.  The disciples do not inhabit a 21st century world of answers at the tap of the google task bar.  Jesus’s response makes it abundantly clear that it was neither the sin of the man or the sin of his parents that led him to be born blind.  Jesus explains to the disciples that, ‘this happened to him so that the works of God might be displayed in him.  As long as it is day we must do the works of him who sent me.  Night is coming when no-one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’

Jesus goes on to heal the man, covering his eyes with mud mixed with saliva and instructing him to go and wash in the pool.  Jesus uses clay, scholars feel that this action has echoes of Genesis 2 where God formed humanity from the dust from the earth.  Jesus’s actions are almost those of a creator, reshaping what was incomplete and restoring the blind man’s sight.  

John describes the miracle, the moment when the blind man sees for the first time almost in passing and yet it will change his life forever.  The water cleanses him, perhaps recalling baptism or reflecting similar miracles such as the healing of Naaman.  The man is able to see clearly and yet those around him struggle to recognise the change in his appearance.  Perhaps, it is the fear of those who hear of the man’s healing that lead them to bring him in front of the Pharisees.  This was undoubtedly a terrifying moment for the blind man but he shares his account truthfully concluding that the man who healed him was a prophet.  The man’s parents quake in the face of their own interrogation but their fear empowers their son.  The blind man is granted the courage to stand firm in the face of the Pharisee’s onslaught and confidently replies, ‘Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind’'.

This man, who has been cast out by society to beg in order to survive, begins to be given his own voice.  He boldly challenges the Pharisees, ‘I have told you already and you would not listen, why do you want to hear it again.  Do you also want to become one of his disciples?'

The Pharisees retort that they are true disciples of Moses, whom God has spoken to.  They would not associate with ‘this man’, they do not know where he is from and they stand firm in their belief that God does not listen to sinners.  It reveals just how spiritually blind the Pharisees are.  They are unable to comprehend what is being revealed to them

The blind man has been brought out of his darkness and he is questioning where the light that has illuminated his very eyes and brought him to speak so eloquently has come from.  The Pharisees lash out reminding him that he was born entirely in sin and they drive him out, afraid of the power of his testimony.  Perhaps anxious at the potential challenge to their authority  .

And it is there that Jesus finds him, like the shepherd going to gather his one lost sheep.  Jesus meets him with love and reveals himself to him.  As I re-read this passage I was drawn to the intimacy of the scene.  The blind man says the simple but amazingly powerful words, ‘Lord I believe'.

The blind man who has spent his entire life living on the margins of society was painfully cast out once again by the Pharisees.  It is in this moment as he meets with Jesus that he is transformed.  He experiences love and acceptance, perhaps for the first time in his life.  Jesus too spent his life living as a refugee and was rejected when he returned to Nazareth.  Jesus went on to devote his ministry to the poor, the oppressed and the marginalised. In the words of Luke’s gospel, the son of Man truly did come to seek and save the lost.

As we move closer to Easter we are reminded that Jesus too will be rejected, by one of his very own disciples.  

Above all John’s account of the healing of the man born blind reminds us that there is a way out of darkness, a way forward and the possibility of walking in the light of Jesus, of experiencing his unending love.  The blind man does not question or waver, with his words ‘Lord I believe’ he commits himself to trust Jesus.  

God knows that our lives will lead us through times of light and of darkness but his promise is to abide with us, to remain with us always.  

I wonder if at those moments when we feel overwhelmed or blinded by all that is going on in our daily lives what would happen if we paused and considered where God has been trying to break through?

What would happen if this Lent, like the blind man, we relinquished control and truly turned to God, trusting in his plan for us? 

I wonder what it is that God needs us to see?

Amber Wood

Sunday 8 March, Third in Lent
John 4: 5-26
The Woman at the Well

This is such a well known passage that we may think that we know the lessons we can learn from it – but I came across a different interpretation this week from a theologian called Simon Cross that I’d like to share with you – it certainly gave me pause to re-think it.

One of the things that goes overlooked, in the Bible, is the way different writers employ humour. The writer of John was certainly not scared of including laugh out loud passages, even if they haven’t necessarily travelled all that clearly through time. Perhaps some of them were ‘you had to be there’ type situations - but even now, the confusion of Nicodemus the Pharisee over being born again, or the man born blind trolling the Pharisees in John 9 come across well.

Like the best writers, John uses humour to expose power and elevate marginal characters, the various episodes of ‘confusion’ in his gospel are really literary devices to open up greater explanations. The writer is clever and subversive in his wit.

In this story he repurposes a classic Biblical story motif - the betrothal scene. In the stories of Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel and Moses and Zipporah, and we get the same sort of scene played out - a man travels to a foreign place, meets a woman at a well, the conversation that follows leads to hospitality and ultimately marriage follows. John’s readers were well versed in this pattern - they could see what the story was setting up.

But, of course, John subverts the archetype, he stops short of water being drawn. The union here is one of peoples, not of individuals, but still … funny no? Especially when John chucks in some charged language which is pretty obviously sexual. To drink from a cistern or well is used as a euphemism in Proverbs 5 as a warning against promiscuity where the reader is urged to remain faithful to his wife. The ‘springs’, ‘well’ and/or ‘fountains’ in question all reasonably easy to decipher euphemisms. 

The phrase ‘living water’ also has sexual connotations, both Jeremiah and The Song of Songs (aka Canticles, aka The Song of Solomon) use it, referring, basically to female fertility. It’s charged language.

The whole scene taken together reads like a kind of ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ set up, drawing the readers in, only to dash their expectations as John refuses the logical, romantic, outcome of his set up. Instead, in a classic case of misdirection, the punchline of the story is a revelation of Jesus’ identity as the awaited Messiah; the empowerment of a marginalised woman; and a dramatic opportunity for the reconciliation of divided peoples.

This clever piece of writing is also building on a set up from the previous chapter where Nicodemus visits Jesus in the dark, here John offers a opposite/mirror story of an unnamed character who comes to Jesus in the daylight. While the first character doesn’t ‘get it’ - here the woman ‘gets it’ straight away, she immediately goes into action as a theologian, evangelist, or community organiser - depending on your perspective. It would be reasonable to say she’s all of the above, of course.

She represents the beginning of an upside down approach to community - an approach that defies the usual boundaries, that includes the excluded, and makes them the leaders.

The vulnerability of the woman herself is at the heart of the story. Too often she is mischaracterised in contemporary exegesis, as someone who is simply ‘immoral’. Her multiple marriages are given as a sign of her promiscuity, which is wrong on a number of levels, and indicative of a misogynist approach to the text.

In the ancient near east women did not initiate divorce. That was forced upon them by either a disgruntled husband, or a dead husband. Why would a husband be dissatisfied? Most likely because she was infertile. It was legitimate for a man to divorce his wife if she couldn’t produce an heir - marriage, after all, was a primarily (entirely) economic arrangement. So called ‘love marriages’, where romantic attraction is the primary basis for choosing a spouse, are largely a modern Western invention - common only since the industrial revolution.

Interestingly, psychologists use the term WEIRD as a shorthand for populations that are Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, & Democratic. We need to remember not to use normative approaches to these texts, because our approaches are deeply WEIRD.

The likely scenario here is that the woman had either been dumped by men dissatisfied with her ability, or inability, to produce children (flashback to previous gags about fertility) - or perhaps she had been widowed, and married to brothers to fulfil legal obligations. In any case, her marital difficulties are not to be taken as a sign of personal immorality, but instead seen as an indicator of her personal vulnerabilities. She is at the mercy of a patriarchal system, the telling phrase: ‘the one you have now is not your husband', indicates she’s under the protection of a male relative, or that marriage is no longer available to her for some reason. In any case, she’s economically dependent on the men of her world.

It’s a fascinating, and multi layered story this one. Deeply literary, cleverly constructed, and thoroughly indicative of a theology of Jesus as the life giving, empowering presence, who empowers a marginalised woman to become the first herald of a boundary breaking, inclusive community.

So a different take on perhaps how we understood this passage before? It is still a wonderful story of a glimpse into God’s upside down kingdom and the surprising ways in which he works and, maybe, it invites us to pause and reflect on how we first come to understand, not only this story, but the first impressions of other things in our lives that may not always be what they first seem. God works in surprising and alternative ways – are we always prepared to re-adjust our thinking and open our hearts – or do we prefer the status quo and the comfort of things as we they have always been?

Amen.

Rev'd Kia

Sunday 1 March, Second in Lent

This morning I want us to think a little bit about faith. Now I know we are in church so this may not seem like such a bold suggestion. But I want us to think about the concept of faith, because I think faith can cause a great deal of consternation and confusion for us.

Faith is a concept so fundamental and basic to our religion and our spirituality that you may be surprised to hear me say that it could be a matter of confusion or difficulty. We are, after all, a “people of faith.” We often refer to our religion as “the Christian faith.” So what’s the problem?

I want to suggest to you this morning that what we mean by faith is often confused by how we use this word and the words we use to explain and demonstrate it.

Over half a century ago, the influential Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber wrote a marvellous book that was translated into English as Two Types of Faith. In this book, Buber proposes that there are two—and he thinks only two—types of faith: one that is based on trust and one that is based on belief. The former is more relational; the latter is more dogmatic. The one is grounded in relationships and community; the other is more individual and rooted in the acceptance of propositions as truth. So you have a definition of faith that is about trust and relationship and a definition of faith that is grounded in what you believe- reciting the creeds and signing up to all the doctrine.

Buber argues that, in its most essential expressions, Judaism is the type of faith based on trust, whereas Christianity more often than not leans towards the type of faith based on belief, especially belief in the divinity and resurrection of Jesus. Buber considers Jesus more at home in the trust faith of Judaism and less concerned with the belief faith that would characterize later developments within Christianity. 

It seems to me that trusting in someone or something is fundamentally different than believing a proposition. Trusting a person seems like a deeper experience to me than believing what that person says. I may, in fact, believe someone’s words because I trust the person, but the two experiences aren’t exactly the same.

In both the Old and New Testaments, the Bible speaks of people trusting in God. This is something that we might call “faithfulness” rather than simply “faith”, implying that we are talking about a way of being, not just a set of beliefs or practices. But, at the same time, both Testaments also speak of people believing certain principles about God or believing that God has or will do something that God has promised to do. You can imagine, as well, that in some places these two types of faith overlap and are less easy to distinguish. The shared vocabulary of faith and the difficulty of translating concepts from ancient to modern languages will sometimes leave us struggling to figure out what was meant and what it means for us today.

Our scripture lessons this morning provide good examples of the difficulty of understanding what various biblical writers mean by faith.

In our gospel reading, Jesus’ exchange with Nicodemus culminates in what is, without a doubt, the most famous and oft-quoted verse of the entire Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Central to this statement is the concept of belief. Belief in Jesus leads to salvation.

Now the Greek word translated as “believes” is derived from the basic root for “faith”, so it could just as easily be translated as “trust”. Does this sound different to you? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but may have eternal life”. I think it does. 

Trusting in Jesus is not exactly the same as believing in Jesus, if believing in Jesus means that we have to accept all the things that the church happens to teach about Jesus. But trusting in the living Christ is something different altogether. It’s not about reciting a creed or going through a checklist of doctrines. It’s about being in a relationship.

So which did John mean? Belief or trust? Reading the entire Gospel of John leads me to think that it is belief. More so than the other Gospels, John seems especially concerned with belief and correct belief. This word for faith occurs eighty-five times in John, compared to just thirty-two times in the other three Gospels combined. In John, the work of God is defined as believing “in him whom [God] has sent” (6:29). Jesus repeatedly teaches that belief in him is the requirement for eternal life (5:24; 6:40, 47; 11:26). The famous story of “doubting” Thomas not believing in the resurrection until he sees Jesus, a story unique to the Gospel of John, is teaching the reader how to respond to the gospel. Jesus says, “have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (20:29). And finally, John concludes by offering this reason for writing down the Gospel in the first place: “these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:31).

What about our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans? In this passage, Paul is making an argument that it is faith that justifies us before God; it is faith that brings us into a right relationship with God and reconciles us to God. To prove his point, Paul draws our attention to a paradigm of faith from the Old Testament, Abraham. Paul quotes the story of Abraham from the book of Genesis, which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”. Here again, the word translated as “believed” is the basic “faith” word in both the Hebrew original and the Greek translation that Paul quotes. But this time, I think it might be more appropriate to translate it as “trust” instead of “believe".

In the story Paul is quoting, Abraham is not being asked to believe a particular doctrine about God. He is not being tested on systematic theology. He has just been told that even in his and his wife’s old age they will be given a son. Even more, God has promised him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in heaven. In response to this, it is said that Abraham “believed” God. This type of belief, this type of faith, is more about trust than anything else. Abraham was faithful and trusted that God would be faithful too. “Abraham trusted God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”.

In these two stories, the story of Jesus and Nicodemus and the story of God and Abraham, I think we can find the two types of faith suggested by Buber. I think we can see the difficulty of translating these ancient texts.

But why does it matter? Why does it matter which of these understandings of faith we find in a particular story? Why does it matter which type of faith we most identify with in our own life?

It matters, I think, because the second type of faith, the belief type of faith, is often a stumbling block for those of us earnestly seeking to follow God through the way of Jesus. Some people wonder if they believe enough. When Christianity is reduced to a set of doctrines or a collection of creeds, it not only loses some of its life and vitality, it can easily become a litmus test for who is in and who is out. “Believe this and you can be a part of our community; if not, you don’t belong here.”

I, for one, struggle to find that message in the life of Jesus and in the community he tried to nurture. I think that Jesus was less concerned with what people believed and more concerned with trusting God and faithfully following where God leads.

I love Barbara Brown Taylor’s wonderful memoir, Leaving Church. Among the many treasures I discovered in this book, she sees this very same distinction between belief and trust. She writes this after she left parish ministry - “I had arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so. While this understanding had the welcome effect of changing faith from a noun to a verb for me, it was an understanding that told me how far I had strayed from the center of my old spiritual map” (p. 170.)

As your Rector, still engaged in parish ministry, it is my hope that we can conceive of church in such a way that you don’t have to stray too far to experience this type of faith. Like Barbara Brown Taylor, I, too, tend to find God more present in the experience of life than in my meagre attempts to define who and what God is. And I think that this is the kind of faith that God invites us to follow.

Listen for God. Trust God and the rest will follow.
Amen.

Rev'd Kia

Sunday 22 February, First in Lent
Texts: Romans 10: 8b -13, Luke 4: 1-13

Temptation! We would not be human if we did not, at various times, experience some sort of temptation, be it to ignore that much needed clearing out of the shed or tackle the mountainous pile of ironing and play computer games or watch the box instead, to having another glass of wine, another piece of cake or to stay in bed and skip church just for once. Just this week I have been horribly tempted to buy a new summer dress shown in a catalogue which came through my letter box. It is so pretty and fresh and appeared even more so on a damp miserable day. I don’t need another summer dress but oh the temptation, if you see me in a terribly fetching pastel striped dress this summer, you’ll know I succumbed!

The whole structure of the advertising business is built on temptation, be it to have the perfect body, the perfect teeth, the perfect skin, to create the most modern, all singing, all dancing high tech kitchen, to go on that dream holiday or treat oneself to some sort of supposedly luxury food. Think about it, all advertisements are designed to somehow appeal to our innate wish to better ourselves in some way, to indulge ourselves in that exclusive offer, rather than learn to be quite simply satisfied with what we have. What we have being far far in excess compared to that possessed by millions upon millions of other people around God’s world.

Our gospel reading today will, I am sure, be familiar to all of you here as it tells of the forty days Jesus spent out in the Jordanian wilderness during which time he too was tempted to achieve worldly fame and success by means which were completely contrary to the will of His Father. The sort of means which some of our world’s leaders are more than happy to adopt as they seek to increase their own unchallenged power, their own wealth, regardless of the horrific impact some of their chosen and often highly questionable methods of self-aggrandisement have on others. In direct contrast  Jesus went into the wilderness to think, reflect and pray as to exactly what God's purposes were for Him and how he might achieve them. What was it He was being called to do in order to bring the knowledge of the reality of the Kingdom of God to the world? The three temptations he faced were to obtain the rule of the world by power and domination instead of by God’s rule of love and care for all. Turning stones to bread is great when you have thousands upon thousands of desperate refugees seeking sanctuary from their homeland reliant upon the charity of others to sustain them, but in the end what they truly need is not reliance on other people’s charity and their ability to turn donations into food, medical supplies and shelter just to keep them alive. What they most need is to be given the hope that there is a future for them; a future in which they can rebuild their lives, make their own bread,  and  in which they can know once more the love of homeland, the love of neighbour, the love of family, the love of peace and most of all to know at the heart of all those the love of God.

The second of Jesus’s temptations was, in obedience to the devil’s ultimate authority, to rule over all the kingdoms of the world; to exert the sort of autocratic power which is corrupted by evil such as  that now wielded by some of our world leaders. Jesus  was being called upon to worship the worldly ambitions that people of power so often portray, the worldly ambitions that are centred entirely on self and not on the wellbeing and happiness of those under their power. This is the power that quickly becomes authoritarian, oppressive and ultimately terrifying as it seeks to rid itself of all opposition, all criticism in an increasingly paranoid abuse of that power they have assumed. Compare that to God’s power which is never oppressive, never forced upon us, because it is the power of love which is gentle, patient and forbearing. Jesus was being called upon to reveal God’s kingdom where there is justice and mercy for all, not just the powerful few; God’s kingdom which embraces all God’s children and does not discriminate on the grounds of race or colour or indeed any of those prejudices which are endemic in so many of our world’s kingdoms; God’s kingdom, which will be seen in all its glory when all the kingdoms of the world have passed away.

And Jesus’s last temptation was to be part of some sort of grand breath-taking spectacle which relied upon God to counteract the natural law which would have led to Jesus’s untimely demise. Jesus knew that putting God to the test is not a sign of faith; it is a call for ‘my  will’ not God’s will to be done. Of course, miracles can happen as Jesus proved during His lifetime, but we all know that however hard we may pray for a specific miracle, God may answer our prayers in a completely different way. Politicians promise miracles but rarely, if ever, achieve them as indeed do so many products on the market. God only promises one thing and that is, come what may, we will always be held within the love of His covenantal care and that is, if you like, the miracle that is God. No earthly power can do the same and nor does it wish to do so. Divide and rule together with fear inducing tactics is all too often how men of power keep their authority, keep their ever-tightening grip on the people they command. 

Jesus’ time of temptation taught Him that His purpose as God’s Son was simply to reveal the power of God’s love and to show people what that love looks like. A love that is humble, never afraid to lose face by washing people’s feet; a love which is gentle, reaching out to those who have sinned and those who are outcast. Above all, a love which is sacrificial and leads, not to some spectacular angelic saving from death, but a death which, in all its horror, shows how God understands the suffering and the pain that the world and its people of power can so easily inflict upon His children.

In the light of all this, what is it we want to achieve this Lent? Is it simply to boast that we can resist the temptation of chocolate or alcohol for some forty days or is that, in itself, a temptation? Or is there far more to what could constitute our Lenten observance? Jesus went into the wilderness to spend time alone with God His Father to discern His purposes for His earthly life and of how they differed from the purposes of earthly rulers. Should we, this Lent, be using that period to spend more time with God in prayer, in meditation, in silence and most importantly of all in hope. Hope that helps us trust that we learn, as Jesus did, how we, too, can do so much more to serve God’s purposes and help reveal the reality of His Kingdom which is both here on earth and in heaven? In the present state of this fallen world it may be the only thing that could make a difference and contribute to the peace of God which passes all understanding for all God’s children.

So here’s the deal and this is what you get;
The penthouse suite with world commanding views,
The banker’s bonus and the private jet,
Control and ownership of all the news,
An ‘in’ to that exclusive one per cent,
Who knows the score, who really run the show,
With interest on every penny lent
And sweeteners for cronies in the know.
A straight arrangement between me and you,
No hell below or heaven high above,
You just admit it, and give me my due,
And wake up from this foolish dream of love….
But Jesus laughed, ‘You are not what you seem.
Love is the waking life, you are the dream.’                       
Malcolm Guite

Virginia Smith

Sunday 15 February, Last before Lent

Being a third Sunday, we have two services - 9.00am Holy Communion and 6.00pm Evensong - with two sermons, both of which are published here.                         

9.00 Holy Communion
Text: Matthew 17:1-9

Transfiguration

I remember the first time I drove up the Hill to get to Christ Church. I was in my second year of vicar school and we had to do what was scarily called ‘a foreign pulpit’! Hilary went to Wonersh and I came here to preach at this service. I remember vividly driving up here. It was a cold crisp morning and the views took my breath away. I think I fell in love with Coldharbour that morning – little did I know the plans God had for me – to bless my wildest desire and to call me to serve here! My mountain top experience!

The mountains of the Holy Land are, I’m sure, not nearly as spectacular as Leith Hill, yet at the top of them events occurred events which changed people. 

The first involved Moses, who was summoned by God to the summit of Mt. Sinai. The second, nearly 1,500 years later, was when Jesus led three of His disciples to the top of Mt. Hermon. Both mountain top experiences record intimate moments in the presence of God;  although the two are vastly different in both content and meaning.

Moses was summoned to the mountain top in order to receive instructions from God that would shape the life of the People of Israel, teaching them how to live godly lives. We know those instructions today as the 10 commandments.

But when Jesus climbed to top of Mt. Hermon, it wasn’t to receive instructions from God, but rather to demonstrate to His disciples, that He had received God’s stamp of approval; that Jesus truly was the Son of God.

Both experiences however, were transforming. In Moses’ case, the Bible tells us that: “the skin on his face shone, because he had been talking with God.”  (Exodus 24:29) In other words, His face shone, not because of who he was; but because of who he was with. His face reflected the glory of God.  However, when Jesus was transformed on Mt. Hermon, “His face shone like the sun,” (Matt. 17:2) because of who He was, not who He was with! The difference between these two events is enormous.

The Transfiguration is one of the very few incidents within the life and ministry of Jesus, that is tied chronologically to another event.    The Gospel writers are very precise about this. They tells us that the Transfiguration occurred 6 days after Peter had answered Jesus’ question, – “Who do you say that I am?”

You’ll remember that Jesus had begun that conversation with His disciples, by asking: - “Who do people say that I am?”  To which several disciples replied: – well, “some say You are John the Baptist; but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets". But then Jesus asked a more pointed question:  But “who do you say that I am?”

Jesus knew what lay in the future for Him. He was well aware of the forces of evil that were mounting against Him, and that they eventually would arrest, torture and kill Him. And so He knew that the faith of His disciples was going to be severely challenged; challenged like never before.  Jesus wanted to do everything He could to prepare His disciples for that crisis.

It had been Peter who demonstrated the strongest faith that day; for he replied (without hesitation) – “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus blessed him for this strong support, saying that upon him, – Peter, ‘the rock’, He was going to build His church.

However, it’s one thing to verbally pledge allegiance, and quite another to follow that pledge with action.  And unfortunately, human beings are often weak when it comes to putting faith into action. Jesus knew that the strong commitment which Peter had voiced, wasn’t going to be enough to get him through the events of the coming days.

But what Peter thought the role of the Messiah should be, was diametrically opposed to Christ’s mission. In fact, none of the disciples were prepared to accept that their Master, their Lord & Saviour, who would one day be martyred.   It was contrary to everything their Jewish traditions had taught them.

This clash between what the disciples expected, and what was actually going to happen, marked a pivotal turning point in Jesus’ ministry.  And for that reason, six days later, Jesus led His three closest disciples (Peter, James & John) up into that mountain.

And so, it was on Mt. Hermon, during a time of  prayer, that Jesus’ appearance was dramatically altered.  The Gospels tell us that His face began to shine like the sun, and His clothes became dazzling white, and then the disciples became aware that Jesus was talking with two distinguished personalities whom they identified as, Moses and Elijah.  

But whatever it was that the disciples saw and heard that day, Peter’s response was a typically human one; He wanted to freeze the moment in time; because it was so momentous.

Perhaps you’ve had an experience like that. A moment so special you wanted to pause time – log it in the memory banks.

Well, that’s how Peter felt. That’s why he wanted to build three tabernacles or sanctuaries, in order to contain that holy experience.

However, he had no sooner made this request, than they heard the voice of God, saying: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.”   Then just as quickly as it had begun, the vision ended, and they were once again alone with Jesus. But the disciples were so overcome by fear and awe, that they fell to the ground.

And then Jesus said:-  “tell no one about this vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Tell no one!!  How could that be? Why wouldn’t Jesus want everyone to know it?

There’s no question but that Jesus Himself received strength and reassurance from this experience. But that’s not why He exposed His disciples to it. The primary reason He brought His three closest disciples up to see this wondrous event, was to strengthen their faith.

You see, if the disciples weren’t absolutely sure who Jesus was before they had to face the dark days that lay ahead, they’d never be able to cope with it. So it was crucial that His strongest disciples should know, that beyond the darkness and tragedy of Jesus’ suffering and death, there was going to be a bright outcome. They needed to understand that Jesus was fully supported and guided by God; and that He was doing God’s will. 

But the transfiguration experience was for them; and them alone. Yes, there would come a day when they could share what they’d seen and heard with other believers – but not now. 

For now it was time to return to reality; to go down off the mountain, and get back to their daily routines, and carry on with their mission.

So, what does this transfiguration experience have to do with us today?

Well, we can be raised within a Christian family; be baptized, attend Sunday School all during our younger years, and attend worship services as adults. We can know the theological language of our faith; and even go through the motions of committing our lives to Christ. But until we actually encounter the living Christ, in a moment of revelation, until we let God build our faith, where we truly sense His nearness and His touch upon our life; and come to realize beyond a shadow of doubt – He is alive and with us today; – until such a day, our faith is purely academic; – mere words.

This doesn’t have to be a road to Damascus experience – a falling to the ground, shining light type of thing. In my experience the realisation that God is real is a gentle revealing. Yes, there are moments along the way that become pivotal, such as a sense of God’s presence, perhaps when you are in church, or walking in nature; or maybe when you have been up against it and you sense a moment of peace that you cannot explain. 

These are moments to treasure, to recognise and be aware of. Small, seemingly insignificant moments where God is trying to get our attention. And these moments build into a picture and a relationship.
Sometimes it involves a lifetime of practicing our faith, until one day it happens; that eye opening experience when we know that Jesus is with us.
There are numerous ways to cultivate our faith – through prayer apps, reading the bible, talking about God with others, praying and mediation. God is always seeking us, he wants a relationship with us – our role is to open ourselves up to him, let him in and receive his love. A love that is unconditional, forgiving, gentle and accepting of where we are. May we find this love today and everyday.

Amen.

Rev'd Kia

6.00pm Congregational Evensong
Text: Matthew 17:1-9

Just two more days after this one and we embark upon the forty days of Lent: a time traditionally given to fasting and penitence. You may well have already determined just what you might give up for Lent as your token fasting, your Lenten discipline, be it chocolate, alcohol, or maybe even your favourite television watching. Before now I have given up cheese and on a couple of occasions the reading of novels but in recent Lents rather than give up I have tried as it were to take on new disciplines such as more prayer and reflection time, more serious Lent themed reading. And generally, I think quite a lot of people are taking what might be called a positive approach to Lent rather than a more negative one. 

And as I reflected on what I should write for this sermon and the relevance of the gospel account of the Transfiguration it struck me forcefully that Lent is in a strange way a journey of light carrying us through the ‘tunnel’ that is those forty days. On that mountain the disciples were witness to the dazzling white of Jesus’ clothes and the shining of his face. Light which must have truly opened their eyes to and given them a far greater insight and understanding as to who precisely this man they had been called to follow really was.  He was not just an itinerant preacher, storyteller and teacher. Not just  a healer, a prophet even as they must surely have thought at times but here on this mountain as they were dazzled by all that light came those words of confirmation as to his true nature, his incarnate nature: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.’

Listen to him! And this is just what they did and in so doing came to grasp more completely the reality that Jesus was indeed nothing less than the Son of God. Read any of the gospels but particularly John’s gospel and have proof of their obedience to that command ‘Listen to him.’ And then of course came as it were the climax of Jesus’s divine mission as on Easter Day the tomb was found to be empty and the utter darkness of Good Friday was superseded by all the glory and wonder of the light of Easter Day, the day of the risen Christ. And here it is interesting to read Matthew’s account of that day which mirrors in some way the Transfiguration and tells of Mary Magadalene and the other Mary seeing the angel whose appearance was ’like lightning, and his clothing white as snow.’ The end of my metaphorical tunnel is reached with a light that eclipses all other light; the light of the risen Christ who now lights all our journeys. The risen Christ who after his resurrection declared; ‘And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

And in the light of the disciples’ journey from that never to be forgotten day of the Transfiguration to the unbelievable joy and mystery of Easter Day can we find inspiration for the Lenten journey we are about to undertake? I am sure we can and here I am inspired by the words of Maggi Dawn who urges us to use these forty days as a means to come to understand more about who exactly Jesus was, what he has done for us, what he can teach us  and in such study, such contemplation have our eyes opened more and more to the very light that is Christ.  The Light that we are told is both without us and within us. That is what the disciples were commanded to do as they witnessed the Transfiguration; commanded to listen to him and thus learn and expand their understanding about the divine nature of Jesus the Christ.

As Maggie Dawn writes this ‘fasting’ is in fact an opportunity to give up, not chocolate or alcohol, but  some of our old and immature understanding of just who God is and in so doing see, in the light of Christ, the reality of God more clearly. To replace preconceived and even prejudiced ideas and entrenched beliefs and images as to the nature of God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and see him more clearly as the disciples did on that mountain. In this renouncing and relooking Dawn writes that we will almost certainly be surprised, regularly and often at what we discover just as the disciples of Jesus were. Discover not some old man with a long white beard looking sternly down at us but instead see Jesus reflecting at least some of the infinite guises of the immortal God who is a loving Father to us all. Jesus the Good Shepherd, the true Vine, the Bread from Heaven and so much more. Jesus the healer, the comforter, the washer of feet, the feeder and above all the sacrifice given for our redemption, for the forgiveness of all our sins.  Jesus didn’t just wash feet but at an unimaginable cost washed us clean of our sins, our wrongdoing.  Jesus is not just the ‘hero’ in our gospels but someone we are called to come to know, to listen to, not as a casual acquaintance but intimately. Come to know and recognise him as our guide, our protector, our teacher, our healer and above all our light on our life’s journey. This Lent gives us a very real and potentially fruitful opportunity through planned and careful reading of maybe one of the gospels or a Lent book and through sustained  prayer and quiet contemplation to follow that light and in so doing have our eyes opened more and more to the true wonder and mystery that is the  living Christ and not merely someone we meet almost casually, unthinkingly even in our weekly Sunday worship. To follow that light until we come out of that Lenten tunnel to be dazzled and overwhelmed with awe and wonder at the reality of the risen Christ, the true Light of the world in our midst both without us and within us. 

I would like to end with these words of Maggie Dawn re this Lenten journey:
‘So, as we travel together, let us pray for the grace to be flexible enough in our thinking to allow God to reveal himself to us, using the prayer of St Richard of Chichester as our daily prayer.  
Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits thou hast won for me, for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly and follow thee more nearly day by day.

Virginia Smith

Sunday 8 February, The Second Sunday before Lent
Text: Matthew 6:25-34

I suffer from anxiety. I worry that I’m not good enough, I don’t do enough, that I am, well, not enough. I can get very focussed on the immediateness of my life and forget to take a step back, look up and see the bigger picture. It is a daily choice I face and a question I have to ask myself – am I in control or do I let God in and do life with him? Perhaps you can identify a little with this? 

Jesus said, ‘do not worry about your life.’ It’s very easy for Jesus, we might think. He didn’t have a mortgage to pay, or a stressful job to do, or office hours to keep, or meals to cook, or children or elderly parents to look after. He didn’t seem to have been required to keep to any kind of schedule or to earn a living, or to be beset by the million and one stresses of modern-day life.

I suspect that my story of my own little struggle with anxiety is not unique. The age we live in has been described as the age of anxiety. Our world is changing around us very quickly, and our worldview seems to be redefined every few months. Our age of ‘post-truth’ means that we no longer know where our foundations are. And that’s without the unrelenting barrage of information overload that we receive from social media.

But I believe, as well, that anxiety isn’t always about what’s going on outside. When we feel anxious, there will always be something to worry about. Anxiety can be a spiritual state.

There’s an aphorism that I have myself sometimes quoted that the opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty. And that may be true to a point. But spiritual writer Richard Rohr would suggest that the opposite of faith is not doubt, because faith is not localised primarily in the mind. The opposite of faith, according to this passage, and to a number of Jesus’ other statements, is anxiety. Faith is being able to trust that God is there, God is good, God is on your side.

So much of Jesus’ teaching is about freeing ourselves from the things that bind us, and helping people to be freed from the social prejudices and attitudes that kept them bound. And I think anxiety is a very real contender in what limits and binds us. I know it is for me.

If you are anxious, you’re trying to do it all yourself. For those of us who are sometimes anxious, we need to control, and that may be a good test of the quality of our faith. People of faith don’t have to control everything, nor do they have to change things or people. In the words of the serenity prayer: 'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference'. It’s a big ask. Perhaps none of us will get there in this lifetime.

‘Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God’s saving justice, and all these other things will be given to you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow can take care of itself.’ One of the most frequent commands in the Bible is ‘Do not be afraid’, in fact it is written 150 times.

I believe that one of the things that a Christian life can help us to do is to hold the realities of the world, with all the anxieties these bring us, with poise; to hold them calmly and without fear. 

The age that we live in is the first period of history in which a large number of people have been allowed to take their lives and identities seriously. It is a wonderful thing that we have equal rights for education, for health, for possibility; that people are encouraged to broaden their horizons of who and what they can become. And I say this cautiously, because I don’t want it to be misinterpreted, but I wonder if this comes at a cost. Because if my small story - my immediate life, my possessions, my career, my relationships, my not-very-interesting hopes and dreams and longings and desires - if this is all there is, I am bound to be anxious, because I have to do all I can to protect that. But if we can move beyond our own small stories, we are saved from the smallness and the illusions of ourselves. 

The story of God that is opened up to us in Jesus saves us from ourselves that are always going to be insecure and anxious and scrabbling around for significance. If my story is all I have, I will need to hold it close and protect it at all costs. My little self is fragile and unprotected and constantly striving. I will inevitably be anxious.

To open ourselves up to this bigger story might mean letting go – perhaps letting go of some material stuff, but perhaps letting go of other stuff – the need to the right, to be liked, to be successful, to be good, to make our mark, to be in control.

When I feel anxious, I know that I have, in some way, misplaced the centre of my life. I have lost touch with the divine source of wellbeing and goodness that lies at the heart of my being and offers refreshment and life, no matter what the circumstances of my life may be. It is for me a great temptation. This is why silene and stillness are so important to me – I need to rest in God’s presence to remind me who I am – that my identity is found in being his beloved daughter.

The solution to anxiety is not getting the circumstances of my life under control, because, in my experience, when I lose sight of a bigger story than me, my life contracts rather than expands. Worrying about whether I’ve locked the front door may become as pressingly urgent as worrying about the urgent thing I haven’t done at work. 

I read an article recently about the art of looking up. It talked about how when we look up at the vast reach of the sky above, in all its different daily permutations, we are reminded that the world keeps on turning, and that no crisis, however difficult, is permanent. My anxieties are only the tiniest rusty cog in a much bigger, more beautiful machine.

And do you know what? It works. The answer to anxiety so often lies in focusing my attention on that which is greater than those things about which I feel anxious. Learning to rest and trust in the faithfulness of God, the anxious knots of our own lives begin to untangle and it begins to be possible to meet each day not with fear and uncertainty, but openness and grace.

Because there is nothing that can ever overwhelm the strong and abiding reality of God’s story. Life is abundant and the invitation is always one of strength, peace, goodness and mercy. I do not need to grasp and hold on to my pathetic ability to convince myself that I am able to control the circumstances of my life. I do not need to keep my barriers up in a futile attempt to protect my own little story because that is not the end of God’s story. ‘Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all things will be given to you as well.’

I’m finishing with a poem from Mary Oliver, who expresses some of this a lot more beautifully than I can. 
‘I worried’
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it? 
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better? 
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well, hopeless. 
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia? 
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning, and sang.
Rev'd Kia

Sunday 1 February, Fourth in Epiphany
Texts: Psalm 36: 5-1, John 2: 1-11

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light   Psalm 36

Reading the story of the wedding in Cana once more, my thoughts turned to the servants at that wedding and just what was expected of them. While the wine flowed and the food kept coming their job was simple, although at a guess mostly ignored and unappreciated. Just how many people bothered to genuinely thank them and recognise the hard work they were doing? Not many I suspect because it is sad to say, but I think true, that we can all too often ignore such people, just as we ignore the people on check outs in our haste to have everything pushed through the scanner and get home. But then the wine stopped flowing and it is not hard to imagine the change in atmosphere, the grumbles that grew in volume, becoming clearly voiced complaints to those poor servants as if, somehow, it was all their fault. What were they supposed to do? They weren’t miracle workers. 

And now, as the tension rose to be felt by both guests and servants, Jesus steps into the picture, as it were, and summons the servants into the kitchen where the stone water jars would have been kept. And then, to the mystification of those servants, he tells them to go down to the well, no piped water then, and fill those jars to the brim.  Can you not imagine their bewilderment at such an order and all the little mutterings that must have passed between them as they did as they were told as all good trustworthy servants do. Water! What on earth was the use of that when it was wine that had run out. This lot weren’t going to be happy being offered water in place of wine even if it might sober them up a bit. And who, exactly, was this man Jesus who seemed to have taken control of the situation however weird his order might seem?

And then, having struggled back with those overflowing jars, they are told to draw some out and take it to the chief steward. What! Take well water to the Chief Steward. No way! And, again, you can imagine the panic almost at what they were being asked to do. Was it some sort of bizarre joke which undoubtedly would backfire on them as the lowliest least important people present? Just put yourselves into their place for a moment and recognise their bewilderment, at what they were being asked to do, recognise their fear that somehow, they would be blamed for such a fiasco and lose their jobs, lose their wages for all the hard work they had already put in. But, in the midst of all such mixed-up emotions, they must  also have sensed the undoubted authority of this strange guest at the wedding and thus obedient to his wishes but, in considerable trepidation, approached the Chief Steward with that glass of well water and no doubt their hearts almost stood still as they watched him raise it to his lips ready to face the outrage, the invective that must surely come.  But no! To their utter amazement the Chief Steward himself was taken aback and for a moment I think, he too, must have wondered just what he had tasted. Tasted not some rough non-vintage wine suitable for the end of a wedding when people’s palates were blunted but, instead, the most superb premier cru wine ever to pass his lips.  As those servants watched in astonishment at the delight on the Chief Steward’s face and heard his words of ecstatic praise for this wine which surely only a few moments ago had quite definitely been water. I think they must have felt a sense of true awe at the mystery of what was quite surely a miracle. The first miracle that the man Jesus performed as he began his God given task to bring not just wine from water but the wine of his own blood; the supreme premier cru wine of new life for is God’s children.

But back to those astonished servants and the great surge of relief they must have felt that the party could start all over again, no blame would fall on them and, in fact, for once people would take notice of them demanding to hear their account of what had taken place. 

And, thinking about all this, what had taken place was, as I see it, servants obediently doing Jesus’ will however strange it seemed to them and Jesus then taking the ordinary from them and turning it into something extraordinary. Water from the well becomes the very finest wine and not just a small amount of wine but a remarkable abundance. Compare this miracle with a similar one when Jesus was offered just two small fish and five little loaves and they became a feast for thousands.  And both examples point to the fact that so often we are asked to serve Jesus in a variety of ways, some of which may seem, at times, very strange to us but in that obedient serving, that giving of our time and skills, he makes of  them again and again something far richer, far more valuable.  A visit or a phone call, a small gift of lowers or cake which to us seem the very least we can do for someone are transformed in memory by God’s grace to something far more love filled, far more caring, far more precious than we could ever imagine.

Two small examples of my own to illustrate both being the receiver of that premier cru wine and the giver of the water.  My first example happened just last week when I bumped into a woman in the hospital who said, ‘You won’t remember me, but I will never forget you as you were so good when you visited my sick daughter years ago and made such a difference.’ No, I didn’t remember and I would have seen it as simply doing my role to walk alongside sick children and their families. But surely on that occasion what to me was in a sense run of the mill, simply what I was called to do as a chaplain that the ordinary was transformed by Christ’s love into something special, something extraordinary.

The second is having spent an exhausting worry filled day beside the hospital bed of my very ill daughter I caught an evening rush hour tube to return home. Now we all know that people in tube trains barely look at one another, choosing to keep in a private world of their own, but on that train that day a young man who was sitting down was, as it wer,e shown my exhaustion, maybe even my fear and gave me his seat. Yes, it cost him the comfort of sitting down but, to me, he had placed me, not on a well-worn seat, but on a veritable throne transforming my tiredness, my fears for that brief ride. He won’t remember I’m sure, but I will never forget.

So, I firmly believe that all of us are called  to serve or give in God’s name in ways that are, seemingly, insignificant in the grand scheme of things but all of  which have the potential to see water turned  into wine, two small fish and five loaves into a feast for thousands We can all be bearers of that well water, those loaves and fish, and, in God’s name, give them to others, give them, as it were, to Jesus,  trusting in his divine ability to transform them. Transform them into something miraculous and change a dying party into one alive with joy and delight and, perhaps, most of all of a sense of awe and wonder at Christ’s  love and care for us  which  can again and again transform the  very ordinary into the quite extra-ordinary.   

Virginia Smith

Sunday 25 January, Third in Epiphany

We had an option today to have readings about the conversion of Paul – an amazing and worthwhile story to get our teeth into and to spend our morning looking at but instead we decided to stay in Epiphany. Although the link is there of course with Saul having an epiphany and becoming Paul - anyway – I digress!

For me Epiphany has often been a short season post-Christmas that I rushed past after the initial excitement of the three kings. But I think it has more relevance and a deeper, perhaps more challenging, message to us than is first apparent.

My thoughts have been inspired by a chap called Ian Mosby and some of these words are his.

Epiphany is not simply a season about light appearing in darkness, nor is it primarily about dramatic moments of divine power. At its heart, Epiphany is about revelation and encounter - the unveiling of who God is and, inseparably, who we are in relation to God. In Jesus, God does not merely show up; God shows us ourselves. The child adored by shepherds and the magi, the teacher who draws the wounded and the curious, the healer who restores before he instructs - this is not only God revealed, but critically about humanity being revealed as it was always intended to be. 

Epiphany asks us to look again, not just at Jesus, but at the assumptions we carry about human nature, selfishness and salvation. It invites a deeper, more contemplative approach to seeing.

For many Christians, the story we have inherited begins not with blessing but with failure. The first thing we are taught about ourselves is that something is fundamentally wrong. We, and the whole of humanity, are marked by original sin, defined by disobedience, and in need of rescue from divine judgment. Over time, this framing has become so normalised that it feels normal. Yet when we attend carefully and contemplatively - to the bible, the tradition of the early Church, and the lived experience of the spiritual life, a different starting point quietly emerges. 

What if the Christian story does not begin with the fall and sin at all? What if it begins with blessing and wounding?

The opening chapters of Genesis do not begin with condemnation but with delight. Again and again, creation is named as good. Humanity is described not as a problem to be solved but as a gift to the world, bearing the image and likeness of God. Before there is disobedience, there is intimacy. Before there is hiding, there is trust. Before there is separation, there is belonging. This original goodness is not erased by what follows; it is obscured, wounded, and forgotten, but never taken away. 

To speak of original blessing is not to deny the reality of sin or suffering, but to insist that they are not the deepest truth about who we are.

Elaine Heath has offered a crucial reframing of this story through what she calls “original wounding.” Rather than understanding the human condition primarily through the lens of inherited guilt, Heath invites us to see the first separation as a wound - a break in trust, a loss of relational safety, a fracture in communion. This is not a failure that demands punishment, but a relational trauma that calls for healing. Humanity’s fundamental problem is not that we are morally depraved, but that we are wounded at the level of our capacity to trust God, one another, and ourselves.

This reframing has huge implications to our understanding of our relationship with God. A wounded person does not see clearly, not because they are evil, but because pain and trauma distorts vision. 

If we read Genesis carefully, the first human response after eating the fruit is not guilt but fear. “I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” This is the language of vulnerability exposed and safety lost. It is the voice of someone who no longer knows whether they are held in love.

When theology begins with sin as a form of crime, God easily becomes a judge to be appeased. When theology begins with wounding, God is revealed as a healer who seeks, restores, and binds up. The difference between these two starting points is vast. One produces fear-based religion, moral performance, and deep reservoirs of shame. The other opens the way to compassion, patience, and the slow work of restoration. One leads us to hide from God. The other allows us to be found. 

This is the theology of Julian of Norwich, of Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross and so many of the incredible mystics who hold this more loving intention of God. 

Epiphany is the season in which this healing God is revealed. In the very real and human Jesus, God does not approach humanity from a distance, armed with accusation or threat. God comes close - closer than we expect, closer than is comfortable. God enters the wound itself. The Incarnation of God is not ultimately a strategy for fixing a broken system; it is the divine willingness to inhabit human vulnerability from the inside. In Jesus, God takes on flesh not as disguise, but as commitment. God does not save humanity from afar; God saves humanity by becoming human.

Epiphany, then, is not just the revelation of Jesus the very human Emmanuel to the world; it is the revelation of our true condition. We are not strangers to God who must earn our way home. We are beloved children who have lost our way and forgotten our belonging. 

Salvation is not a transaction that satisfies divine justice; it is a healing journey that restores relationship or communion. The language of restoration is key here. To restore is not to create something new, but to return something to its intended wholeness.

So what if we began with blessing? What if Epiphany were not simply a reminder that God once appeared, but an invitation to see differently now - to see ourselves, one another, and the world through the healing gaze of Christ? What if the light that shines in the darkness is not searching for guilt, but illuminating the path home?

To begin with blessing is to trust that beneath every wound there is still an image waiting to be restored. In Christ, that restoration has already begun.

Rev'd Kia

Sunday 18 January
Being a third Sunday, we have two services - 9.00am Holy Communion and 6.00pm Evensong - with two sermons, both of which are published here.                         

9.00 Holy Communion
Texts: Psalm 40: 1-11. John1: 29-42

If you were asked ‘Who are you?’ I imagine your reply would be of a biographical nature beginning with your name and the details of what you do or did do and then if pressed might add details of your family or where you lived or what your interests were or are. The sort of details that might well be included in an obituary or funeral tribute. Answering that question would undoubtedly remind you of past achievements and successes in your life along with the influence of family and friends who have in some way or other helped shape you to the person you now are Answering that question could I would suggest put some sort of label on you just as if I am asked that question and reply that I am an ordained priest or a chaplain I am immediately giving a label which will give the person asking  the question  a quite possibly preconceived  opinion, good or bad,  as to who I am. In the same way you might claim to be an accountant or a solicitor or a businessman or woman and immediately a sort of stereotype image would be formed of that sort of person. A stereotype which would be a mere outline to who your really are; what are your true defining characteristics that make you unique.

But in addition to all this detail which helps portrays a picture of us, I think maybe, that as professed Christians there is another important question we should be asking of ourselves this morning to add a really significant detail to that   picture and give a clearer definition of  who we are, who I am.   And that question is ‘Who am I in God’s eye? How does God see me?’ In our gospel reading John the Baptist knew exactly who he was: ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness “Make straight the way of the Lord.” That was his God given mission and that mission shaped all that he did. But he also declared: “among you stands one whom you do not know; I am not worthy to untie the thing of his sandal.” Not worthy to do the most menial task imposed upon the lowest of the low.

 And reflecting deeply  on that question ‘Who am I in God’s eye? and very aware of John’s words that he was not fit to untie the thongs of the Lord’s sandals  I felt the only true answer I could give is that I am an imperfect, flawed  sin besmirched and vulnerable child of God; a child of God who like the prodigal son can all too easily go astray despite the best of intentions not to do so. My wearing of a dog collar is absolutely no guarantee that I am a perfect angel.    But also, I am convinced that I am, despite all my imperfections, by God’s grace one of his  beloved children and most importantly that love is given equally and without prejudice  to  each and every one of us be we  a captain of industry earning millions or a zero hours employee existing on a basic and totally  insufficient wage. And it is in that belief, that knowledge that will I pray continue to shape me and I can in complete trust pray the words of Saint Anselm: “Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us; in your love and tenderness remake us. In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness; for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us,” 

Without wishing to presume  and conscious of John the Baptist’s own personal assessment that he was not fit to untie the thongs of Jesus’ sandals I think all of us would in one way or another give the same answer as I have as to who exactly we are in the sight of God if not in the sight of each other. But it is surely in that honesty, that frankness that like John we are shown what if is that we are called to do in God’s name. And here I think we find help in the words of today’s psalm. A psalm that begins by confirming that God is always there to pull us out of the desolate pit, the miry bog of our wrongdoings and our woes and the tragedies of this seemingly very broken world that can so easily pull us down and make us lose hope in ourselves and our world.  Pull us out and set us firmly and safely on a rock from where in joy at our rescue, joy at knowing ourselves to be forgiven and being safely held within God’s love once more we can sing a new song, a song of praise.  A new song that once again voices not just our praise but also our thanks for all that the Lord has done for us; for his compassion that brings us grace and forgiveness and for his boundless love preparing us for heaven. Malcolm Guite expresses it so beautifully in these words based on psalm forty ‘Your wondrous works all rise like wings in me and lift my heart to praise. I hear your call, the simple call of Love. And so I come to you and bring you all, all that I am and have been: joy and hurt, glory and shame. I bring you everything, that you might make me whole in every part. 

And it is in that remaking of who we are,  that making whole, that   the psalm goes on to remind us that like Jesus himself, like John the Baptist we are called to have a mission in life and that is to make in any way we can our belief and our trust in God, His Son and the Holy Spirit known to others. The words say it all: ‘I have not hidden your saving help within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation: I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.’ How we do that will be left to us as we use our various God given gifts in his service while always remembering that no task is too humble for us to undertake in his name. We are called as the collect for St Wulfstan  reminds us   to work diligently to  make God’s kingdom known  And  while we like John the Baptist can never be considered fit   to untie the thongs of Christ’s sandals we can still wash the  dirt, the grime  of this world  off the feet of  any of the tired, exhausted travellers we meet on our life pilgrimage and help  bring them like us out of the desolate pit, the  miry bog   to find the safety of that rock and  there know  God’s abiding, compassionate and forgiving   love. A love that can reshape them just as it can reshape us and together as God’s children we can stand before him and say ‘This is who I am.’

Virginia Smith

6.00 Congregational Evensong
Texts: Jeremiah 1:4-10 Mark 1:14-20

Have you ever found yourself thinking about your life, only to say suddenly, “How in the world did I end up here?” Many, maybe even all, of God’s people must have asked themselves this question. For God works in mysterious ways, we say, and we often see the evidence of that in our lives.

At an Indian mission in South Dakota, there are banners hanging up all over the place which say, “The sign of God’s presence with you is that your feet are where you did not expect them to be.” That sounds about right to me.

I remember when I first felt the nudge to be ordained. I was church warden at the time in Wonersh and my term was coming to an end. I felt a bit discombobulated and restless. I knew that there was something else but I couldn’t think what it was.

I explored the possibility of doing a straight theology degree as this would please my academic atheist father – well, possibly not the theology part!

I looked into pastural care as this spoke into my nursing background but this didn’t light my fire either.

It was my 41st Birthday and we were in Cote in Guildford with my mother in law and father-in-law – both heavy weight Christians! When, as usual, talk turned to God. My father-in-law made a flippant comment that went something like. ’Well Kia perhaps you should become a vicar’. Everyone laughed, none more so than me. But it struck something deep within my soul and the words reverberated around me all night.

When I got home I started researching it – how would I go about it, where would I have to go, what would this even look like? I cried most of the night, pleading with God, telling him he had got it wrong – surely he meant this for Guy who was much more confident and loved a microphone! I was petrified about the possibility and certain that I couldn’t do it.

But the deep sense of actually, however afraid I felt, however uncertain and inadequate I felt, that this was what God wanted me to do, wouldn’t go away. So I turned up on my vicars’ doorstep, on her day off, still in tears and told her how I felt. The rest is another story but suffice to say – here I am.

I still get overwhelmed and frightened by the enormity of this calling but I do it knowing that God wants me to do it and that he has got my back. It is his strength I rely on. As someone once told me, ‘God doesn’t choose the equipped, he equips the chosen’. 

In our readings today Jeremiah, the prophet, and Simon and Andrew, the fishermen, were chosen by God, by Jesus, to step out of their comfort zones and to follow, to do God’s will – not because they were perfect but because they were compelled to. 

Most, if not all people, in the bible were unwilling, reluctant or ran away when first approached by God. It’s a common trait.

All I think God is doing is trying to help us to be the best version of ourselves. There is always a choice, we can always say no and run away – I still feel like that sometimes!

We all need meaning in our lives, our own ‘Why’. And this is our vocation. Our vocation, our ‘ministry’ does not have to look like anyone else’s. We are not all called to be priests, bishops, lawyers or doctors. The best version of ourselves may be to work in finance, raise children or clean offices. But it is us fulfilling our God given vocation, it is us being the best version of ourselves. And it always involves community.

I’d like to finish with some words from Julia Mourant from a book I have just read,

‘After the practicalities of survival, meaning is a basic need. However, vocation is not a mystery if it is first approached as a way of being who we truly are, rather than trying to discover a future occupation. To be fully human means that we cultivate all that is best within us, all that we believe comes from God’.

Let us pray,
Father, you know us all and have called each one of us by name. Help us to lean into your love and acceptance in order that we might discover all you have for us. Help us to live into the best version of ourselves and have the courage to say yes to your will in our lives.
In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

Rev'd Kia

Sunday 11 January, the Baptism of Christ

Baptism by Ann Lewin: Birth by drowning, upheaval of a settled way of life. All birth is dying, a painful separation from the past. Our first birth called us from security, to face the lifelong struggle to survive. Our second, no less vigorously calls us to set out on our pilgrimage with Christ, finding in him. With all our fellow pilgrims, new insights into love, and truth and life. A pilgrimage that daunts us and excites us and will not let us rest till we arrive. Our only certainty God’s promise, “My love will hold you, do not be afraid.”

I don’t know about you but I always find this Sunday in the Church’s year a bit difficult to adjust to in the light of what precedes it.  We had the four weeks of Advent when we prepared for the arrival of the Christ Child, possibly, if we are honest with ourselves, with more practical activities than spiritual ones and then all the joy and delight of Christmas itself. Joy and delight as we, too, in our mind’s eye went with the shepherds to that stable in Bethlehem to see this thing that has come to pass. And following on from that, last week we had the visit of those mysterious strangers from the East who had journeyed so far to find the so-called King of the Jews and found him, a tiny helpless baby born not in wealth and prosperity but in poverty and humbleness. And, again, in hearing of that visit we found ourselves alongside those foreigners, those Gentiles, and recognised that, here in this helpless dependent child, was the light that would for ever shine within God’s world and upon all his children from wherever they may have come. 

And now, suddenly, this Sunday we are jerked off our knees from our baby worship and adoration  to discover that baby is now a mature young man of some thirty years of age. How did that happen? What occurred in those intervening years between a Bethlehem stable and the banks of the River Jordan?  The only snippet of information we have from that time is when Jesus, as a twelve-year-old, went with his parents to celebrate the Festival of the Passover in Jerusalem. And, instead of starting out with them on the journey home, stayed in the Temple and engaged in dialogue with the teachers there and amazed everyone who heard him with his erudition, his understanding of the scriptures.  And when, quite naturally, reproved by his parents by causing them so much worry as to his safety responded with the words; ‘Why were you searching for me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Must be in my Father’s house. Surely those words are an indication of what is to come later in this young boys’ life who has already shown he is blessed with prodigious knowledge and understanding of the scriptures.

And while I was pondering as to just what Jesus might have been doing in these ‘lost’ thirty years or so it occurred to me to check as to when our brains attain maximum maturity and lo and behold it is apparently when we reach the age of thirty and to quote from a medical website ‘The human brain continues to develop throughout life, but the most significant growth occurs during childhood and adolescence. Although the brain may approach its full size by age six, it will continue to mature and develop until around age 30, as the "wiring" and organization of nerve pathways continue to be refined.’ So now you know and perhaps this explains something of those ‘lost’ years as Jesus’ brain power reached that peak of maturity and he learned more and more about the Scriptures, about human nature, about the nature of work, the nature of relationships and so so much more. Knowledge he would use to the greatest effect in those three short years when he revealed God’s purposes for his Son  to bring the true Light which enlightens everyone into the world. 

It is assumed, but not proved, that Jesus followed in Joseph’s footsteps and became a carpenter and hence his understanding that for oxen to work well it is essential to have a properly fitting yoke. In the same way his understanding of human nature meant that if people were to respond to his call to serve him, they must also have a well-fitting yoke so that they can act comfortably in his name and not feel imposed upon or overburdened.  And, as he maybe worked at the plane and the lathe, he will have been all too aware of those who had no work; the people who went to the market place each day praying that someone might hire them but who, because of age or infirmity, were unlikely to be chosen.  He will have seen the desperation of such people as he will also have done of lepers and those classed as unclean who were ostracised and banished from society.  He will have observed the rapaciousness of tax collectors and those who greatly overcharged the pilgrims coming to the Temple. Turning it, in his words, into a ‘den of thieves.’ And he cannot have been unaware of the elite and privileged society of the Pharisees and the Scribes whose often assumed piety and overzealous nitpicking insistence on the minutiae of the Law took away the joy and the true reverence that people should feel in God’s presence. And, of course, he will have been all too aware of the distinction between Jew and Gentile, the Chosen and the unchosen. And in the same way he would have suffered in one way or another under the Roman regime that effectively ruled the country and been all too aware of the might of its Empire casting its oppressive shadow over so much of God’s world.

All this and so much more he will have assimilated and thought about so that when his explosive, world altering ministry began, he knew what it was that people so desperately needed if they were to discover and understand something of   the unfathomable depths of God’s love for them. The Love that became incarnate at his birth some thirty years earlier and which he was now prepared to reveal in all its glory in the next three tumultuous years of his life.  I think myself there must have been something of the proud Father in those words spoken after Jesus’ baptism ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’

So, what does this all mean for us this morning? I think the answer lies in those long years of study and preparation. All of us at our baptism have been called to ‘shine as a light in the darkness.’  How often do we ever think of those words, that command? Do we, like Jesus did, diligently and regularly study the scriptures to help us understand better how we can be effective lights bringing hope and comfort to the those in the dark places of life to which we are all subjected to at one time or another. Do we look with the eyes of Christ and respond with his heart of love whenever we see anyone in some sort of need? Is our life centred around the call to serve as Jesus served, helping to bring the light that is good news to the poor, release to the captives. recovery of sight to the blind and freedom to the oppressed. The poem I read speaks of being on a pilgrimage with Christ, finding in him new insights into love and truth and life.  Our brains may not be quite as good as they were when we were thirty but that does not mean that we cannot continue to study, to learn and, in so doing, find those new, sometimes revelational, insights into the nature of God and his purposes for us, so that we, too, might one day hear those words hear words similar in a way to those Jesus himself heard after his baptism ‘Well done,  good and faithful servant.’? I hope in whatever time we have left to us on our pilgrimage we will continue as Jesus did in those ‘lost’ thirty year use it to use it wisely  and be rewarded with those promised new insights into the nature of the love and truth which is God and in response live out those years in devotedly and selflessly  bringing light to others.

Virginia Smith

Sunday January 3, Epiphany
Texts; Isaiah 60: 1-6, Matthew 2: 1-12

All are called and welcomed and accepted    Evelyn Underhill

Today we come to what I see as the third chapter in the story of the Nativity. A story with which we are all so familiar and yet it never loses its power to overawe and humble us each and every Christmastide as we hear of God’s incredibly clever planning to ensure that the birth of His Son will always be full of divine meaning.  The first chapter, as it were, tells of the obedience of Mary and Joseph as they were both called by God to be His servants in the bringing to life of the Christ Child.  Two ordinary, unremarkable people with no status whatsoever.  Chosen to emphasise that, for God, it is not status or riches which impress him but only simple unquestioning obedience to his will, his commandments. An obedience we are called to imitate with grace and humility.

And then we have the second chapter of the birth itself in that lowly, unsanitary stable to remind us that God will always be found in the most impoverished, troubled and needy places of his world. And then we have those first visitors, the shepherds, summoned by angels to seek out the holy family. Shepherds who were regarded as outcasts from society because, by the nature of their job, they could not obey that commandment to keep the Sabbath holy and do no work that day. And here again we are called to recognise that, unlike the censorious Pharisees, God does not exclude, God does not label people as unclean or outcasts. Whoever we are we will always be a part of God’s family, his children even if we choose not to hear the songs of the angels and their summons to go to Bethlehem to find there the Saviour, the Messiah, God Incarnate.

And so on to that third chapter which we read today, namely the visit of those mysterious strangers from the East known variously as the three Wise men, the three Magi, or the three Kings. But those are names which mask the fact that whoever they were and from wherever they had travelled, they were, in Jewish eyes Gentiles, despised outsiders, the unchosen, the uncircumcised.  And here again in this amazing revelational story we find God expressing his wish that we understand that this priceless gift of His Son was and is for all people as expressed in that wonderful song of Simeon ‘for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples' All peoples! That baby lying in a manger in the small unremarkable town of Bethlehem was sent to be a light for all peoples of this amazing world that God has created for us. No one is to be excluded or deemed not fit, not worthy to receive such a gift. Whether we choose to refuse it is up to us but God will never deny the gift of His Son, the Word made flesh, love incarnate to anyone who looks for it. 

The story of those wise men is full of that desire to seek that gift, that king who had been born. As they set out on what must have been a long and hazardous journey following that mysterious star did they have the least idea what they would find at the end of it? I suspect not while at the same time being blessed with an innate wisdom, they must surely have had an intimation that this king they were seeking was no ordinary self- seeking king such as King Herod. And just what made these Gentiles, these shunned foreigners feel such a compulsion to see this so named King of the Jews? Again, I think it points to the fact that whoever we are in some way or other we all look albeit possibly  some only very rarely for that same King, the one who is beyond all else the King of Love. Surely it is that impulse, that longing even that brings so many to our churches at this time to kneel as the shepherds did, kneel as the wise men did and then join with the angels in the glorious music with which this time of Christmas and Epiphany is blessed.

And having found that King in the most unlikely of places, they were overwhelmed and overawed as they were inspired to recognise the wonder and the mystery that lay before them and, in true humility, knelt down and paid the King of the Jews their devout homage. This was their moment of Epiphany when they understood that here was the Light of the World, the true light, which enlightens everyone. And then, in recognition of the priceless gift that God had given to the world, they gave their own symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Gifts which symbolized kingship, divinity and death. And it is that last gift which means there are many more chapters of this story to come but for now we will stay with those wise men and what they represent and what they teach us. They represent the outsider, the despised  foreigner, the unfamiliar, those we might we could all too easily label ‘not one of us’ and here in what we are called to recognise as the rather exclusive and even somewhat cliquey world of the Surrey Hills it is all too easy to forget that reality. And, as a consequence, it can be a real challenge to us to accept in love as Christ would have us do the infinite variations of people, of common humanity whom we are called to see and recognise as our brothers, our sisters within the entirety that is God’s. family. To accept in love the outcast shepherds of our society and the seemingly alien and  foreign wise men  and in that acceptance fulfil these words of Evelyn Underhill that ‘Christ must be known through us.’ And with such knowledge and  through the power of the Holy Spirit they too may experience an Epiphany and discover the Light of Christ shining in their lives. That they and we like the shepherds, like the wise men, having knelt in awe, knelt in adoration, knelt in wonder beside the Christ child may travel home a different way; a way lit by that light which came into God’s world in a Bethlehem stable some two thousand years ago and shines now as constantly, as  brightly, into the dark places of this troubled world bringing new epiphanies, new hope for all God’s children.

I would like to end with this prayer of Evelyn Underhill’s ‘If indeed I am to radiate your light to the world, Lord Christ, then let that light burn within me to purge and purify until I know only you and seek only you, and finding you in everyone I meet enable them to find you even in me.’ 

Virginia Smith

Other Words and Thoughts are on separate pages for :
- 2025
- 2024
- 2023
- 2022
- Virginia Smith' Homilies May 2022-April 2021
- Virginia Smith' Homilies May 2021-August 2020