How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world

(William Shakespeare)

The chapel at Launde is a very special place early in the morning, especially on Sunday.  In some ways it is even more special in the winter as all is dark.

When I come in I light the Pascal candle and renew the water in the font in preparation for our very first service of the new week, The Blessing of the Water and Renewal of Baptismal Vows.  Then I wait in the darkness for any who might come.  That is a precious time of quietness, wrapped in soft, hazy darkness, listening only to the early morning call of the wood pigeons and the occasional gentle rap of a branch on the windows.

Once this short service is over, we take a light from the Pascal candle and light all the other candles in the chapel, the two on the altar and those beneath the beautiful Coptic style icons behind the altar.  Now the atmosphere changes.  There are pools of light but not enough to flood the place.  The chapel is full of warmth.  People sit quietly in the shadows and all look towards the candles, look towards the altar.  We wait in this almost breathless, time out of time space; we wait for the first Holy Communion of the new week to begin.

I try not to be sentimental about religious practice but I don’t think I am being when I express my huge thankfulness for this Sunday morning ritual.  It always calms me, always steadies me.  Today, for instance, I was feeling very ‘growly’, very fed up as I began my day.  My private time of prayer didn’t seem to shift my mood or to help much.  But as I lit the candles from the Pascal candle and as I sat at the back, robed, ready to begin when the time came, I gazed as I always do at the altar and at the icons.  The icons seemed to grow with the candles beneath them.  Each ancient and venerated saint seemed taller, his feet in light and his head in the shadows.  The quiet, the silence seeped into me and I was at peace.

Our chapel is actually never without candlelight.  We have them constantly lit in various places.  One burns before the reserved sacrament, reminding us of Christ’s constant presence.  One blue one is placed before the icon of the Virgin, reminding us of the incarnation and Mary’s “Yes” to God’s invitation.  There are two on the windowsills, one, surrounded by barbed wire, reminds us of the many prisoners of conscience there are around the world.  Another has been there for the last eighteen months as a prayer of solidarity for the people of Syria.  At times we will also introduce another candle for a while, when there is a disaster in the world or a particular individual we want to pray for.  There is one there now.

And of course, others come in all the time and light a candle for people they know who need prayer.  These burn on long after the people who lit them have left.

Sometimes the world seems so dark and all our prayers seem so pointless.  The candle reminds us of the light of Christ, the little beam that shines like a good deed in a naughty world.  It is the sign that we are not alone, that there is hope at the end of the tunnel.  It reminds us of good and brave deeds being done all the time which we do not hear about.  It calls us to stop being so self-centred and remember others.

Candlelight and quiet also have their own very particular gift.  They soften sharp edges, chase away shadows and bring peace.  They enable us to let go and enter another space, to be less ‘growly.’

If someone were to ask me what I did not on my holidays this year, I would say, I learnt a little bit more of what Sabbath actually means.

I have always been a bit snooty when it comes to what could be described as lounging by the swimming pool holidays.  I expect culture, history and authentic local colour from my holidays!

This year, however, though not initially planned that way, we spent a lot more time doing very little other than reading, swimming, walking, talking and simply being.  It gave me a lot to think about.  It was interesting, for example, to watch my emotional rhythm.  As usual there was the initial euphoria of the first couple of days of being on holiday.  Then, also as usual, about day three there was a sense of let-down, slight irritation and restlessness.  I have learnt over the years that day three is the one on which I am mostly likely to have a row.

But this year the holiday didn’t go in the usual way.  We did not go out and about that much.  We did not replace the usual diversions of work and home, with many holiday diversions.  For the most part we rested in the way I described above and did quite a lot of staring at the natural world around us and pondering.  And, surprisingly, at the end of the first week of our two week break I felt again the day three emotions – restlessness, anxiety, slight irritation and frustration.  I was uncomfortable in my own skin.  What was going on?

When we read the story of creation in Genesis, we hear that on the seventh day God rested and unlike all the other days, which he said were good, the Sabbath he made “holy”.  What does that mean?  Later in the bible we learn that human beings are commanded to rest one in seven days, too.  But the truth is that nowadays we don’t ever really rest.  We simply keep ourselves distracted by doing things which are more congenial during our times of leisure.  We keep ourselves busy so that we will not have to be alone with ourselves, because, to quote T S Eliot, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

I can remember Tony Hancock’s character in “Hancock’s Half Hour,” having to get through a Sunday afternoon once and going up the wall with boredom.  This was in the days when pretty well everything closed on a Sunday.  In those days many people considered Sundays the most boring day of the week.  For “holy” read “boring.”  Was that what God intended?  All this has changed, of course: there is plenty to entertain us nowadays on a Sunday, but if anything we are more bored as a society.  When I was a child and complained I was bored, my mother would say, “Only boring people are bored.”  Not perhaps a very provable statement but one that batted the ball back into my court.  Within half an hour I would be busily involved in some sort of play, all trace of boredom forgotten.

At the end of week one, I think I hit the boredom moment and realised what was going on.  We do not appreciate what a drug being distracted has become in our society and how most of us are distraction junkies.  But whilst we are being distracted we are not fully alive to what is in front of us.  The sense of discomfort in my own skin was caused by not being present to what was around me, by not living within the time and rhythm that was real and actual, but rather being pulled by something non-existent and illusory that promised to be better but never is.  St Irenaeus said that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  The boredom moment is the equivalent of cold turkey but if you stay with it you go through it – and on the other side is a place that is not boring at all, but is,as God said, holy.

Lately, I have rediscovered my nose and realised again the delight of walking as the fragrances waft by me.  Simply coming from my house to the Abbey this morning (of course, nature’s scents are always stronger in the morning or evening) I smelt first mown grass, then a fir tree / evergreen dark smell; then something cool and minty and then the wonderful warm sweet smell of Honeysuckle flowing abundantly by the pond.  Going on, I am now entranced, lifting my nose in much the same way as my dog does, to see what is in the wind.

I say I have “rediscovered” my nose because I cannot remember being so aware of smell in London.  I did not find the smells there unpleasant. Odd as it may seem, I like the scent of a dusty street on a hot day in London and I don’t mind, if it is not overwhelming, the smell of traffic.  Even in London I would have been stopped for Honeysuckle.  But just as one reason for the sparrows deserting London is because their mating call cannot be heard above the noise of the traffic, it is now so loud, so one reason I could not enjoy the scents that blossomed in the gardens there so much was because other smells were over-powering.

The human mind, body and emotions are a sensitive instrument; the senses, a most wonderful gift from God given for our joy and our pleasure.  But too often we are overwhelmed by one or two things which are so demanding of our attention in one way that we are ‘blinded’, ‘deafened’ or ‘numbed’ in ourselves as to the riches on offer.  This is true in all areas of our lives.  We get into habits of thinking and behaviour that demand so much of us that we begin not to see anymore what is important.  Worse still, we cease to feel what is important.  We cease to care.  To find ourselves again we have to stop and smell the flowers, as the saying goes.

This is the importance of the idea of Sabbath.  “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” said Jesus.  Stopping, getting in touch with ourselves; our minds, bodies, spirits, hearts – this wonderful experience of being human, is what Sabbath is all about.  The interesting thing about the “Sabbath” is that it is a commandment of God that we should all have a day off, a real day off, and yet it is the one thing that most of us feel we don’t need and those who make law certainly don’t think we need.  I have to tell clergy sometimes (and myself, for that matter) that keeping a Sabbath is one of God’s commandments.

Of course, human beings with their oft repeated ability to take a gift of God and make it into a burden for people, have in the past made the idea of the Sabbath rather unattractive and many people today will say that they do not like Sunday because “there is nothing to do,” meaning nothing to entertain themselves with.  There is everything; go, smell the flowers.  Rediscover the lost sight, the acute hearing, the sense of emotion.  Rediscover the sensitive instrument you are and enjoy it.  God gives this wonderful world for us to enjoy.  It is the inheritance of Everyman (and woman.)

The news is not good.  A week ago we were hearing the latest twist in the “Trojan Horse” saga, the ‘plot’ to infiltrate extreme Islamist views into Birmingham schools.  On the radio this morning the Middle East was described as imploding, with stories of Isis, a Jihadist group sweeping across Iraq from one direction while Kurdish separatists took another part.  There is the ongoing terrible situation in Syria.  Alongside this the Ukranian government accused Russia of sending tanks over Ukraine’s Eastern border;, South Sudanese people continue to starve as the civil war storms on, and another terrorist group, Boko Harem seem to have made certain parts of Nigeria into no-go areas.  No wonder we feel anxious and helpless, particularly when we hear of young men brought up in Britain going to join these extreme organisations which we tend to blanket describe as ‘terrorist.’

The response to the Trojan Horse situation from the government was that we must teach British values in our schools.  But hold on; what values are we talking about here?  What are the underlying messages of our society?  What do we applaud in our culture?  What are we inviting young people to reach for?  What sense of meaning or purpose do we give them for their lives?

Young people are hungry for meaning and purpose.  That is why the big political movements of the past were so often made up largely of the young.  Think of the Ban the Bomb marches, the anti-Vietnam War protests.  Jesus chose young men as his followers.  Perhaps one reason that so many Muslim men from this country are leaving to fight against Assad (and then finding themselves fighting other rebels instead) is because they have a desire to live for something bigger than themselves.  Because they are young and hungry for meaning they are vulnerable to manipulation but that doesn’t mean that the original longing in them was not for something good.

Britain does have strong values but they are largely hidden under the more obvious traits exposed in the media of greed and selfishness.  One of our values is unity.

Unity…is more than solidarity and more than uniformity.  Unity, ironically, is a commitment to becoming one people who speak in a thousand voices.  Rather than one message repeated by a thousand voices, unity is one message shaped by a thousand minds…The kind of unity that is born out of difference and becomes the glue of a group has four characteristics: it frees, it enables, it supports, and it listens.

(Joan Chissiter, “For all that has been, thanks.”)

We recognise that whatever we might once have been we are now a diverse nation, made up of many peoples with their cultures, religions and histories.  All our justice is undergirded by law based on the Christian faith.  Jesus by engaging with all sorts of people in his ministry paved the way for the early Church to include slaves, women, foreigners and the poorest of the poor.  He taught that everyone is valued and loved by God, so let us go on seeking unity in diversity.

We do not have to force people to become Christian in this country.  Let the faith speak for itself and let us honour other peoples’ religions and listen to them.  But it is about time we honoured our inheritance and stopped shrugging it off as being of no consequence.  Let us celebrate and teach what is good for all people.

I have a vivid memory of my mother grabbing my brother by his collar at a Billy Graham rally in the early 1960s to ‘save’ him from being ‘saved’ again.  It wasn’t that my mother was in anyway against any of her children finding faith.  It was she, after all, who instigated the visits to various cathedrals, chapels and Salvation Army halls and this rally.  It was that my brother, in his early teens, a warm and emotional person, always responded to the call to ‘come forward.’  He had been saved so many times that it was becoming farcical and the saving didn’t really appear to stick.   On top of that, I think my mother was afraid she would never find him again in the crowds of Wembley Stadium.

In the season of Pentecost we start to look at the saving mission of the Church.  On the Day of Pentecost we are always instructed that we must read Acts 2: 1 – 21.  It is a story we all know well if we are long term Christians: that of the Holy Spirit coming in power on the disciples; an experience so powerful that they were thrust out into the streets of Jerusalem where every passer by heard them speaking in their own language.  It is easy to hear the story and miss it because we think we know it so well.  But this year I was brought up short by verses 12 and 13, which describe the reactions of the onlookers.

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

I thought, a few years ago I would have been in the latter group, the ones who sneered.  My reaction to the revivalist meetings my mother took us to as children was always that of feeling like an outsider, like an observer looking on at something I didn’t feel part of and didn’t really understand.  As an adult I felt uncomfortable with ‘born again’ language even after I became a Christian.  I felt hostile because I didn’t understand.

Very often many of us in western Christianity have talked of the Holy Spirit either as a distant maiden aunt whom we don’t really know but who sends us a cheque each Christmas (and we respond with a formal thank you.)  Or we have thought that receiving the Holy Spirit had to be an experience almost as dramatic as  that of the first Pentecost.  This has meant that many British people have held the Holy Spirit at a safe arm’s length.

That is not the way I feel now.  I have never had flames on my head or been ‘slain in the Spirit’, but slowly, slowly I have become aware of the Holy Spirit working deeply and persistently in my life and, as I have observed it, in the lives of many other quite ordinary people.  The Acts reading goes on to say that many different nationalities, all in Jerusalem for the Jewish Festival of Booths (the original Pentecost), heard the disciples proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ in their own language.  If we look around the world today and see the many languages in which the same good news is being spoken we can see Pentecost as a prophetic moment, pointing forward to what the Spirit would do and the power with which he would do it.

But for me more poignant is the fact that the message of Jesus Christ is discovered by every human being who turns to him, spoken to them in their own unique language.  We all have an exclusive language which comes from our own unique histories, burdens, joys, longings and desires.  And Jesus Christ speaks uniquely to each of us as we need to hear.  Jesus gives us the freedom to be ourselves – this is the sign of genuine saving – and to know ourselves, with all our weaknesses to be very precious to the God who created us, irreplaceable in his sight.

Many moons ago, when I was still a relatively young Christian, I did not like the feast of the Ascension for the very simple reason that physically speaking Jesus was no longer on earth after the Ascension. This must sound very odd. The bodily Jesus isn’t on earth at all now. But somehow, I felt as if he was from the moment of his birth as we celebrated it at Christmas to the moment of his ascension, Every year I felt ‘Emmanuel, God with us.’ God was somehow closer and more approachable.

Perhaps it was also something to do with my ability to comprehend God as long as he was in human form but not to begin to fathom the transcendental God, a God so mysterious and so other. All I knew of that God was,

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways.” (Isaiah 55:8)

I had not yet grown into the understanding and, more importantly, the experience of the “otherness” of God as not being “an other,” in the usual sense of that word: alien to me, foreign to me, someone strange and outside me. No, God’s otherness is ‘an other kind of otherness.’ He is so different that he pays those who have worked for an hour as much as he pays those who have worked a day; that he runs out to meet the younger son who has half destroyed the family inheritance and celebrates as if it were the son’s birthday; that instead of condemning a women for her sexual infidelity he makes those who accuse her realise that they are little better, and thereby saves the woman from certain death. God is so ‘other’ that he hears those who cannot cry out loudly, touches those who others believe are full of infectious diseases, pays special care to those who because of their gender are not allowed education, enjoys the company of those considered beyond the pale, and dies a criminal death on a rubbish heap. God is totally other because his ideas so often oppose our meagre ideas of human justice and care and show us deeply wanting.

I stopped feeling an “orphan” at Ascension time, when I realised that Jesus’ leaving the earth was not the end but the beginning of the gospel, as someone said. It is as if the gospels are the first book of a trilogy and we are in the second. The second book begins with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and once we have had even the slightest taste of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are not only comforted (the Holy Spirit is sometimes called the Comforter) but we understand.

In the Acts of the Apostles, despite Christ’s departure, there is no need to speak of an “absentee Christology”. Though absent as a character from the narrative of Acts after chapter 1, the influence of Jesus throughout the rest of the narrative is profound. His name occurs no less than 69 times in Acts. He is at the centre of the church’s controversy with the Jews. He guides the church in its missionary efforts; he empowers the disciples to perform miracles. The ascended and exalted Christ, though absent as a character, is nonetheless a constant presence throughout the narrative. (Mikael C. Parsons)

And as we walk with God, we realise through his presence with us in the Holy Spirit that we have not been left alone to deal with life’s issues, either. God is always very much, Emmanuel, God with us, guiding us and holding us close.

Today we are beginning a labyrinth retreat at Launde Abbey. I am very excited about this as I think a labyrinth is a very useful tool for meditative prayer and contemplation; for review of our lives and our walk with God; for healing of memories and for discernment, and for peace and wholeness. It is also something that one can come to as a seeker or searcher.

But I have found that many people do not know what a labyrinth is. Too many people seem to think it is another name for a maze. Whatever the meaning in the past (and some authorities say it has changed) today the labyrinth is different from a maze.

If you have ever been to a maze you will know that it has high walls or hedges which you cannot see through or over. It is full of corridors that promise a passage to the centre but then, after having given you a very confusing journey, end in dead ends from which it is very often impossible to find your way back the way you came. You can get thoroughly lost in a maze and even a little frightened. It is not surprising that the fourth Harry Potter book, “The Goblet of Fire,” ends in a terrifying maze where the hedges take on a life of their own as they close in on the characters.

In a labyrinth today, certainly as used in Christian spiritual exercises, if the path is followed from the entrance, you will eventually get to the centre. In fact, you can see the centre at all times. It is just that the route to the centre winds around, so that at times you are closer to the centre and then further along the path you may see (and feel) that you are as far away almost as when you started. Are you getting anywhere?

The labyrinth is a good metaphor for the spiritual life. At times we feel very close to God; at other times we feel very far away. Sometimes we feel as if we are turning towards him; sometimes we turn our backs to him; sometimes we are in “consolation” – feeling open and in tune with the world and ourselves; sometimes we feel in “desolation” – distant from God, others and negative about ourselves. But the truth is we are always journeying towards God as long as we stay on the path.

Sometimes, however, our lives feel more like a maze. We cannot see where we are going. We don’t know what we are going towards. Things we hoped would open up for us come to a dead end. We feel as if we have no control, no power; the path we are on is not friendly.

Jesus in his teaching invited all of us to trust. The path he invites us to follow him on is a friendly path. His way (and in the first days of the Church, those who were Christians were said to follow “the Way”) is one that will take us eventually to the God who loves us. Each seeming dead end will open up and invite us into a new place; even dying will do this for us. His road is open and empowering; not enclosing and frightening. Truly, the metaphor for our walk through life is one of labyrinth, rather than maze.

There has been a lot of news and interviews around the theme of poverty in the last couple of weeks.  This is hardly surprising when you consider that it was Christian Aid Week and there was an excellent advertising campaign highlighting part of the work of Christian Aid on our televisions.  But it is, of course, about so much more than the call to look after those who are less fortunate than we out of some altruistic motive (although, understand me, I am not putting down altruism!).  Looking after those who are poor makes good sense in the end because it is self-serving in an entirely rational and wise way.  In an inaugural parliamentary lecture to launch Christian Aid Week, Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, highlighted the role that inequality plays in provoking violence.  Growing inequality threatens social cohesion, prosperity and democracy the world over.  The link between violence and historic poverty, terrorism and poverty and poverty and the breakdown of the rule of law in normally law abiding countries is well documented.

In our country we are told that there is a growing divide between the rich and the poor.  The harsh spending cuts are being felt in cities with the most children living in poverty.  A worrying 38% of kids in Manchester live below the breadline – 33% in Liverpool.  People can only take so much.  When they see so much wealth around them and know they have so little, their resentment and anger will grow.

“The Spirit Level” is a brilliant book which came out a few years ago with the subtitle, “Why equality is better for everyone.”  This book is full of the sort of statistics and graphs that usually turn me off, but the evidence it produces is challenging and overwhelming.  It asks similar sorts of questions to the ones Archbishop Rowen asked in his lecture.  Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Australians? The answer: inequality.  If we want health and contentment; if we want the joys of the kingdom of God – peace, justice, love and mercy.  If we want to live well with our neighbour and happily with ourselves, we have to share; we need to seek a more equal society.  Too much wealth in too few hands is bad for us, including being bad for the people who have it.

Christian Aid Week may be over for this year, but the message of Christ continues, love your neighbour as yourself (that you may live well in the land your God has given you.)

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

We are in the season of Easter still, the season of resurrection. But we sometimes forget that resurrection is not bringing back to the same old life but taking us on to new life. Jesus was different after the resurrection. We, too, are different when we have died and been raised with Christ in this life, let alone whatever comes next. This new life is experienced differently, lived differently, as if from a different angle. It is, at its best, life in all its fullness.

I was reminded of this last Saturday, the 3rd May, when I had the great privilege of being one of a thousand people, mainly women wearing dog collars, who marched from Westminster Abbey to St Paul’s Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving for twenty years of women’s priestly ministry. It was in 1994 that dioceses across the country first ordained women as priests and I was one of them, ordained at St Paul’s Cathedral on the 16th April of that year.

It was a particular pleasure and privilege to have presiding over our Eucharist at St Paul’s, the Canon Treasurer of the cathedral, Philippa Boardman. I first knew Philippa when she was a member of the youth group in the church I attended, where I taught Sunday School. We were both lay people, of course, and young! Assisting Philippa at the Eucharist as deacon was the Archbishop of Canterbury and this was a particularly moving and powerful statement of shared ministry but also a vivid reminder that we are called to be servants – all of us, lay and ordained.

Philippa was there fighting for the rights of women to be ordained priest right from the beginning. It was her photograph that was splashed all over the front page of many of the newspapers the morning after the vote to ordain women was passed in General Synod in November 1992 – a happy, laughing face of joy. But, lest you think that Philippa is simply a political woman, in the past twenty years she has worked as parish priest in some of the very poorest and toughest areas of London. New life – yes! Twenty years ago Philippa could not have imagined that one day she would celebrate the Eucharist with the Archbishop at her side on the twentieth anniversary of women’s ordination to the priesthood. I am sure the life God has given her to lead in between has been exhilarating and tough, joyful and dismaying, life enhancing and exhausting. I am pretty sure there have been times when she has wanted to give it all up. It goes with the territory. But it is all real life.

But, as the Archbishop reminded us in his very simple but very incisive message in the cathedral, in the end, we are called not simply to celebrate (although that day a party was in full swing – and quite right, too!) We are called, lay and ordained, to follow Christ and dare to minister wherever the need is. Women’s priesthood simply makes whole that offering of the fullness of the image of God spoken of in the Creation story. In 1994 that was recognised more fully and women were given authority to lead, but more importantly to serve because a priest never stops being a deacon, and deacon and priest together express the authority that has service as its core value; in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ who knelt to wash his disciples feet.

It has been an interesting few days.  Our last archbishop, a man for whom I have a very large amount of time, said that the UK is now a post-Christian country.  Our Prime Minister said that Christians should be more evangelical in their faith, and was roundly rebuked by some of our more vocal athiests.  Finally, the Vatican beatified two former popes, the radical and liberalising John 23^rd and the conservative John Paul 2^nd, as if to balance one against the other.  Against all this background, yesterday’s gospel blazed its own eternal message.

We had the story of “Doubting Thomas,” a wrong translation because nowhere in the original Greek is Thomas accused of doubting.  He is disbelieving or unbelieving – but of what?  Certainly not Jesus.  There can be no question of Thomas’ loyalty even to his dead friend.  No, Thomas disbelieves in the resurrection.  Why?  Because unlike Mary Magdalene, unlike the other ten disciples, he has not seen the risen Lord.  When we accuse Thomas of doubting we must remember that he is asking for no more than his friends have received, physical proof.  So, perturbed in spirit by their extraordinary claims, he says he will not believe unless he sees Jesus for himself and puts his fingers in the wounds made by the nails and his hand into the hole caused by the spear in Jesus’ side.

Jesus comes a week later and goes straight to Thomas, inviting him to see and touch.  Despite some rather gruesome pictures by painters like Caravaggio, which show Thomas tentatively putting his finger in Jesus’ side, there is no evidence in the gospel story that Thomas did that.  It was enough for Thomas to see the risen Jesus for him to fall on his knees, crying out, “My Lord and my God,” the most powerful resurrection confession of all of them because the first one that names Jesus as God.

What is so important about Thomas’s story is that we are reminded as fully as can be, that the raised body of Jesus carries the wounds of the crucified man.  Lest we forget or haven’t really grasped it, this story serves to remind us that it was God who suffered and died on the cross and that God forever bears the wounds of this suffering world “in his own body”, whether that is on view in Jesus or in the heart of God.

Jesus died an ignominious, cruel death, was buried in an anonymous tomb and the authorities hoped he would be forgotten.  But death could not defeat him and neither will our present times.  Like a phoenix from the ashes this story will rise again and again because who cannot respond passionately to a God who has “borne our sins and carried our diseases” and who continues to carry and to suffer for his suffering world.