Bible Sunday: Finding Jesus between the Lines

(See the readings on which this sermon was based at the end of the sermon text below...)

There’s a lot at stake on this Bible Sunday.  Any of you who read social media, or keep abreast of the religious pages in the Times, will be aware that the Anglican Communion is tearing itself apart at the moment.  The issues are many – including the headship of women (following the nomination of the new Archbishop).  Another hot topic is the way that we should treat gay couples and other LGBTQ+ minorities.  There are other arguments to (such as the appropriateness of Synodical Government) but they all have their roots in the WAY that Christians read their Bibles.  Is the Bible the inerrant, infallible collection of writings that many claim.  Or is it something else?

The author Anne Lamott once said: “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.”  If Anne Lamott ever needed a sermon illustration to prove that point, she’d only have to look at how the Bible has been used through history.  Scripture — this extraordinary library of poetry, prophecy and parable — has been waved like a sword in the air more times than a medieval knight with ADHD.

Psalm 119, which we heard just now, is a love song to Scripture.  “Your decrees are wonderful,” the psalmist sings.  “Truly, I direct my footsteps by your word.”  The psalmist weeps — literally weeps — because people ignore God’s teaching.  And I get that.  I really do.  For Scripture contains the distilled wisdom of generations: their struggles to understand justice, holiness, and love.  When we ignore Scripture, we cut ourselves off from that wisdom.  We become like spiritual teenagers — insisting we know everything already while driving the family car into the hedge.

But if we truly love Scripture — as the psalmist does — we must recognise something essential.  Scripture is a signpost.  A pointer.  A witness.  But it is not God.  The Bible itself tells us that the Word of God — with a capital W — is not parchment or ink.  The Word of God is a person.  The Logos.  Jesus Christ.

We see this in our Gospel reading.  Jesus goes into the synagogue in Nazareth.  He takes a scroll — a Scripture text!  — and finds the passage from Isaiah.  And he reads: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to captives… recovery of sight to the blind.”  Then he rolls it up and sits down — congregations can only dream of such short sermons!  And he says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  In other words: “This — this hope, this liberation, this love — this is what the Word of God looks like.  And you’re looking at him.”

Scripture is not God — it points to God.  The Bible is not the destination — it’s the sat-nav.  And if you’ve ever used a sat-nav, you’ll know they sometimes shout confidently while leading you straight into somebody’s duck pond.  The Bible needs interpretation.  It needs wisdom.  It needs the Spirit.  It needs Jesus.

This is where St Paul helps us.  In Romans 15, he urges the church to be patient with those whose faith differs from ours.  “We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak,” he writes.  Isn’t that refreshing?  Instead of shouting “Repent, you heretics!” Paul says “Be patient.  Build each other up.”  And let’s be honest: every one of us has been weak at some point.  We’ve all misunderstood Scripture.  We’ve all clutched our favourite verses like a teddy we refuse to let go — even when it’s getting a bit threadbare and smells like old cheese.

Paul reminds us that Scripture was given “for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope”.  Hope — not fear.  Encouragement — not condemnation.  Scripture is meant to help us grow — not shrink.  It’s a lamp to our feet — not a weapon to bash our neighbour on the head. 

In Greek, Paul calls Scripture ‘theopneustos’ – a unique word in the Bible, which gets translated as either ‘God-breathed’ or ‘inspired by God’.  I love the first translation – ‘God-breathed’ - the idea, that the breath of God breathes through Scripture.  And much as our own breath cannot be caught and held onto…Scripture too is a living, literally breathing thing.  But the translation of ‘inspired by God’ is lovely too.  Scripture, in my mind, is inspired in much the same way as a landscape inspires a painter.  The painter’s image will never BE the landscape – but it will encourage others to visit it, walk in it, smell it and touch it.

But I know — and some of you know — that there are some Christians who cling to the Bible as if it dropped from heaven fully bound in leather, signed by God personally with a divine fountain pen.  There are even some who cling to the King James Translation, as ‘the original’ – even though modern scholars have uncovered all sorts of translation errors in it.  I wonder whether such people worry that if one verse turns out to be poetry and not physics, the whole thing will collapse like a soufflé in a thunderstorm.  We must be patient with such beloved siblings in the faith.  They’re holding tight to the Bible because they sincerely want to hold tight to God.  And the only way we will ever help them see Scripture as Jesus used Scripture is through compassion and gentleness.  We need to help them see Scripture as a springboard to love, not a cudgel with which to beat those with whom we disagree.

Our task, as a progressive community, is not to discard the Bible or treat it as optional.  Far from it!  We must read it more.  Delight in it more.  Argue with it more!  But always with our eyes fixed on Jesus — who is the fulfilment and focus of all Scripture.  If our interpretation makes us more loving, more liberating, more Christ-like — we’re probably on the right track.  If it makes us mean, small, frightened or angry at people who are not like us — then we’ve probably taken a wrong turn by the duck pond in the landscape painting.

The psalmist wept because people ignored God’s teaching.  Perhaps today the Spirit weeps because we sometimes weaponise that teaching.  I pray constantly that God’s Word — the written kind and the incarnate kind — may soften our hearts, sharpen our minds, and open our lives to love.

So today, on Bible Sunday, let us give thanks.  For scrolls and parchments.  For prophets and poets.  For the hope and encouragement Scripture still brings.  But above all, let us give thanks for the One to whom Scripture points.  The Word made flesh.  The scroll unrolled.  The love of God with hands and a heartbeat.  Jesus — our rabbi, our redeemer, our reason for reading.  Amen.

The Readings on which this sermon was based are:

Readings

Psalm 119.129–136

Your decrees are wonderful; therefore my soul keeps them.

The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.

With open mouth I pant, because I long for your commandments.

Turn to me and be gracious to me, as is your custom towards those who love your name.

Keep my steps steady according to your promise, and never let iniquity have dominion over me.

Redeem me from human oppression, that I may keep your precepts.

Make your face shine upon your servant, and teach me your statutes.

My eyes shed streams of tears because your law is not kept.

Romans 15.1–6

We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.

Each of us must please our neighbour for the good purpose of building up the neighbour.

For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Luke 4.16–24

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.

He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.

The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’

He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!”

And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.”’

And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town.’

Not peace, but fire

Readings:

Romans 6.19–23

I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.  For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed?  The end of those things is death.

But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification.  The end is eternal life.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Luke 12.49–53

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

I have a baptism with which to be baptised, and what stress I am under until it is completed!

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!

From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;

they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’

Sermon

There are moments in life when Jesus says things that make you wince.  “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!”  It’s not exactly the line you’d expect on a Christmas card, is it?  “Merry Christmas from all of us — may your family be divided against itself, one against the other!”  You can almost imagine the shepherds blinking and saying, “Er, come again, Lord?”

And yet, there it is.  Jesus did not come to pat us all on the head and tell us we’re lovely just as we are.  He came to light a fire.  “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.”  He came, in other words, to purify — to burn away pretence, hypocrisy, and cruelty — even when that process makes things rather uncomfortable for the rest of us.

Now, here we are again, in one of those uncomfortable seasons.  The world seems to have become addicted to shouting.  From the far right, we hear the word “woke” spat out like it’s an obscenity.  From the far left, we sometimes hear contempt for anyone who struggles to keep up with the vocabulary of inclusion.  And in the Church, alas, we’ve reached that familiar moment when bishops, in their wisdom, have decided that the best way to move forward… is not to move at all.

It feels, at times, like the liberal, progressive project — that brave attempt to make Christianity about love rather than control — is being buried under an avalanche of angry blogs and carefully worded episcopal statements.  The GAFCON press releases thunder against “heresy” as though the Spanish Inquisition had just been given a new set of robes and a Twitter account.  It’s all very dramatic.

But none of this should really surprise us.  History moves like a pendulum.  Every few decades, society takes a deep breath of freedom — then someone coughs and says, “Too much of that!”  The Reformation was followed by puritan crackdowns.  The Enlightenment was followed by empire.  Civil rights were followed by culture wars.  And so it goes on.  There’s always a backlash when compassion starts to look like it might actually change something.

That’s what Paul is getting at in his letter to the Romans.  “You were slaves to sin,” he says, “but now you’ve been set free — slaves instead to righteousness.”  In other words, freedom isn’t the absence of control; it’s choosing whose control we live under.  The freedom Christ offers isn’t a licence to be smug or cruel or careless.  It’s freedom for something — freedom to love, to serve, to seek justice, to bear with one another’s differences.

But that kind of freedom is threatening to anyone who profits from division.  The moment you start insisting that every person, regardless of gender, orientation, colour or creed, bears the image of God, someone will call you naïve.  The moment you suggest that refugees might actually be neighbours rather than problems, someone will call you woke.  And if you dare to say that God’s love might even include people the church has historically excluded — well, then you’ve gone too far, apparently.

It’s tempting, at such times, to pull the duvet over one’s head and wait for the storm to pass.  But Jesus never offered that option.  He called his disciples to stand in the heat of the fire — to let it purify us, even as we hope it purifies the world.  Bonhoeffer once said that “the church is only the church when it exists for others.”  He paid for that conviction with his life, hanged by those who preferred nationalism to grace.  And yet his faith in the costly freedom of the Gospel remains one of the bright lights of the twentieth century.

So what do we do now, when the air is thick with division?  I think the answer might be simpler than we imagine.  We keep being kind.  We keep showing up.  We keep blessing those who curse us on social media.  We keep offering cups of tea to those who think differently.  We keep telling the truth, gently but firmly, about a God whose love cannot be contained by any faction or frozen by any synod.

And maybe we even keep our sense of humour.  Because nothing deflates the self-righteous quite like laughter.  Jesus himself must have had a mischievous smile when he spoke of fire and division — not because he relished conflict, but because he knew that love, once set alight, can’t be controlled.  It burns through every wall we build, every label we cling to, every hierarchy we invent.

So perhaps the liberal project isn’t dying after all.  Perhaps it’s simply passing through its refining fire.  Perhaps what’s being burned away is our need to win, to persuade, to be right.  And what will remain, when the smoke clears, will be the stubborn, unkillable heart of the Gospel — the wild, tender, inconvenient love of God.

And when that love has done its work — when all our divisions have been named and faced and forgiven — then, and only then, will the world finally know peace.  Not the peace of avoidance or apathy, but the peace that comes when the fire has done its work.

Until then, we keep tending the flame.  With kindness.  With courage.  And yes — with a wink and a grin. Amen.

The Breath of God

Readings: 2 Timothy 3.14-4.5 and Luke 18.1-8.

In our reading from 2 Timothy 3, we heard that oft-quoted line: “All Scripture is inspired by God.”  Other translations render it “God-breathed”—a literal version of the Greek word theopneustos. 

I’ve always liked that phrase “God-breathed.”  It sounds wonderfully alive, doesn’t it?  It evokes something wild and holy—like the first breath that stirred Adam into life, or the gale that filled the upper room, or even that awkward moment when Jesus, after the Resurrection, breathed on his disciples.  (You can almost hear them thinking, “Steady on, Lord—what have you been eating?”)

Paul says that all Scripture is theopneustos—but how?  Does that mean every comma and clause was dictated by the Almighty?  Or is it more like a musician taking up a flute: the breath passes through a very human instrument, producing notes that may be sharp or flat, yet still carry the melody of the divine?

The word theopneustos appears nowhere else in the Bible.  It’s as if Paul coined it on the spot, to capture that mysterious intersection between heaven and human words.  It doesn’t say the text is God, but that it’s breathed through by God—animated, shaped, inspired.  And breath, as we know, is a slippery thing.  You can’t hold it.  You can only feel it move through you.

That’s why I sometimes compare the Bible not to a photograph of God, but to a painting inspired by God’s landscape.  A painting doesn’t contain the mountain or the sea; it points towards them.  It invites us to see what the artist saw—and perhaps even to walk in that same landscape ourselves.  The trouble comes when we start worshipping the painting instead of exploring the view.

Now, I say this knowing that some of you approach Scripture differently—and that’s fine.  Some of you hold to it, word for word, as the unerring revelation of God’s truth.  I respect that deeply.  You are people who love the Bible—who read it, study it, and pray over it.  In a world more likely to scroll through TikTok than Timothy, that’s no small gift to the Church.  You remind us that faith is built on story and conviction, not just sentiment.

But perhaps the breath of God moves in more than one way.  Sometimes it gusts and blows things over; sometimes it whispers.  Sometimes it moves through a prophet or a psalmist; sometimes through a scientist or an artist; sometimes even, heaven help us, through a sermon.

Which brings me to the Gospel reading—the persistent widow and the unjust judge.  The widow bangs on the judge’s door until he gives her justice.  And Jesus says, “If even an unjust judge will listen, how much more will God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry out day and night.”  It’s a rousing picture of perseverance in prayer.  Don’t give up!  Keep knocking!  Keep pounding on the gates of heaven! 

But notice how Jesus ends: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  Not results, but faith.  Not outcomes, but trust.  For me, that’s what prayer is about—not twisting God’s arm, but tuning our hearts.  It’s less like lobbying Parliament and more like sitting by a stream.  You listen to its flow.  You bring to mind the faces and stories of others, and you ask—not “Lord, fix them,” but “Lord, show me what part I might play in their healing.”

C. S. Lewis once said, “Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes me.”  When I pray for someone, I find myself more tender towards them.  When I pray for peace, I notice my own unpeacefulness.  When I pray for the hungry, I remember the tin of beans at the back of my cupboard.  Prayer re-aligns the compass of the soul.

Still, I admire those who storm heaven’s gates.  Their persistence is a holy thing.  Perhaps we need both kinds of prayer—the loud and the quiet, the pounding and the pondering, the petition and the patience.  Even Elijah, who once called down fire from heaven, later discovered that the Lord was not in the wind or the fire, but in the still small voice.

Prayer, then, is a kind of breathing.  Breathing in God’s Spirit, breathing out our worries.  Breathing in compassion, breathing out anger.  Prayer is the exchange of breath—the breath of the human with the breath of God.  No wonder both Paul and Luke speak of Scripture and prayer in terms of breath.  God’s word is breathed through us; our words are breathed back to God.

If we forget that, we risk becoming—well—tribal.  (You may like to check out Thursday’s sermon, The Trouble with Tribes.)  Tribes are marvellous when they give us belonging, but dangerous when they start building fences around God’s breath.  The Spirit, after all, blows where it wills.  It doesn’t carry a membership card for any particular wing of the Church.  Sometimes it lands on conservatives, sometimes on liberals, and sometimes—miracle of miracles—it unites them, usually over a plate of cake.

So perhaps that’s our task: to stay open to the breath.  To let Scripture breathe through us afresh—not as a dead letter, but as a living word.  To let prayer breathe through us too—not as a transaction, but as a transformation.  To hold fast to the faith that shaped us, yet keep the windows open for whatever fresh wind God might send.

For whether we are pounding on the door or listening at the keyhole, we are still, thank God, in the same house.  The same breath fills our lungs.  The same Spirit gives us life.  And that, dear friends, is inspiration indeed.  Amen.

Latimer and Ridley - The Trouble with Tribes

 Thursday 16 October

Commemoration of Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, Reformation Martyrs, 1555
Readings: Romans 3.21–30; Luke 11.47–end

Romans 3.21–30

Now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.  He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of boasting?  It is excluded.  By what law?  By that of works?  No, but by the law of faith.  For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.  Or is God the God of Jews only?  Is he not the God of Gentiles also?  Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

Luke 11.47–end

Woe to you!  For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed.  So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs.  Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute’, so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.  Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation.

Woe to you lawyers!  For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.  When he went outside, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile towards him and to cross-examine him about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say. 

Sermon

 It’s hard, sometimes, to make sense of the Reformation.  To the outsider, it can sound like a particularly messy parish meeting that got wildly out of hand.  Someone moved the candles, someone else objected to the vestments, and before you know it, bishops are being burned in Oxford.  There’s a moral somewhere in that, I think.

Today we remember Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester — two brave, exasperating, faithful men.  They were both brilliant scholars and passionate preachers.  And both were so absolutely certain that they were right, that they were willing to die for it.  Which they did, on a cold October morning in 1555, bound to a stake outside Balliol College.  “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley,” said Latimer, as the fire was lit, “for we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England as I trust shall never be put out.”  Stirring stuff.  And yet, a small part of me can’t help wondering whether God looked down from heaven that day and sighed: ‘Oh for goodness’ sake — not again.’

Because the thing is, our species has an almost bottomless appetite for tribal conflict, especially over ideas.  We form our tribes — theological, political, social — and we defend them as fiercely as any football hooligan.  The Reformation was, among other things, a clash of theological tribes.  On one side, Rome — with her centuries of accumulated tradition and authority.  On the other, Reformers who longed to strip faith back to the simplicity of Scripture and grace.  Both camps were full of conviction.  Both claimed the moral high ground.  And both, alas, were sometimes so busy defending their own purity that they forgot the point of the Gospel — which, as Paul reminds us today, is that ‘there is no distinction… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’

There’s the rub.  No distinction.  No special club.  No holy tribe that has the monopoly on God.  For Paul, writing to a church already divided between Jewish and Gentile factions, that was dynamite.  God’s grace, he insists, is poured out through Christ for all who believe.  No one can claim superiority.  No one can say, ‘My badge, my doctrine, my ritual makes me holier than you.’  The Reformation didn’t quite hear that bit.  Nor, I fear, do we.

Fast-forward five centuries, and the tribal drums are still beating.  In one corner, Christians, Jews, and Muslims — the monotheistic cousins, all convinced they worship the one true God, and yet somehow still managing to glare suspiciously at one another across the family table.  Each faith has its radicals and its reformers, its moderates and mystics.  And within each, there are internal squabbles that make the Reformation look almost polite.  Sunni and Shia.  Orthodox and Reform.  Evangelical and Catholic.  Human beings seem to have an infinite capacity for building fences inside the same field.

And then there’s the Anglican Communion — our own slightly eccentric extended family.  We’ve got provinces that bless same-sex couples and others that excommunicate them; dioceses that dance in the aisles and others that genuflect in Latin.  ‘Different integrities,’ we call them, which is a beautifully Anglican way of saying ‘we don’t agree, but we’d rather not fall out at the coffee morning.’  Yet underneath all that gentle language, there’s a real question about identity.  Which tribe do I belong to?  Evangelical?  Liberal?  Catholic?  Inclusive?  Conservative?  The labels multiply, and before long we’re back to shouting across the barricades.

The problem is that once we’ve found our tribe, it becomes part of who we are.  Our friends share our theology.  Our bookshelves reinforce our assumptions.  Our Twitter feeds are echo chambers of affirmation.  And to step outside that — to question our tribe, or worse, to move from one camp to another — feels like treason.  It’s not just a change of mind.  It’s a change of self.  And the cost can be enormous: ridicule, suspicion, even exile.  Few people have the courage for it.  Most of us prefer to stay safely where we are, grumbling about the other side.  It’s more comfortable that way.

Yet Christ, in today’s Gospel, has little patience for comfort.  He condemns those who build the tombs of the prophets — the grand memorials to those who challenged the status quo — while ignoring their message.  ‘You’re just like your ancestors,’ he says.  ‘They killed the prophets, and now you honour their graves.’  Latimer and Ridley were prophets of their age, challenging a church that had lost its way.  But let’s not fool ourselves.  If they turned up today, they’d probably annoy us just as much.  Prophets always do.  That’s their job.

And maybe that’s the heart of it.  True faith — whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Anglican — always involves the risk of stepping beyond the tribe.  It’s the courage to say, ‘Perhaps my people are wrong.’  Or, at least, ‘Perhaps there’s more truth to be found beyond my comfort zone.’  That’s terrifying, because it threatens our belonging.  But it’s also the only way grace ever gets a foothold.  Grace begins where the tribe ends — where we stop defending our purity and start admitting our humanity.

So perhaps that’s what Ridley and Latimer can still teach us.  Not to glorify their particular opinions, nor to romanticise their deaths, but to recognise their courage: the courage to think, to question, to act according to conscience, even when it cost them everything.  They weren’t perfect — no one is when the fire’s lit.  But they were brave enough to risk their place in the tribe for the sake of truth as they saw it.  And maybe that’s the candle Latimer spoke of — not the light of Protestantism over Popery, but the light of conscience over conformity, of grace over belonging, of truth over tribe.

In a world still fractured by creeds and causes, that candle needs trimming and lighting again.  And perhaps — just perhaps — the way we keep it burning is by daring to listen to one another, across our barricades and our doctrines, until we discover that the God we thought was ours alone has been quietly loving everyone all along.  Amen

The Foreigner who got it

 Readings:  2 Kings 5.1-3, 7-15c, Psalm 111, 2 Timothy 2.8-15, Luke 17.11-19

It’s a pleasure — and a bit of a privilege — to be here at the "Cathedral of Leigh Park" for the first time in a long time.  I’ve heard of your reputation for hospitality and energy, so I feel a bit like Naaman arriving at the prophet’s house: not quite sure what to expect, but hopeful that God’s going to do something good here.  Naaman, as we heard, was a mighty general — brave, rich, and admired.  But he had a problem: he was a foreigner with leprosy, and he needed help from the people he’d once dismissed as backward.  When the prophet Elisha told him to wash in the Jordan, Naaman was insulted — “What, in their river?  A muddy ditch?”  But in the end he swallowed his pride, took the plunge, and came out cleansed.  It’s a wonderful story about humility and healing — and about God’s habit of working through the very people we’re most tempted to look down on.

The Bible keeps doing that.  It upends our assumptions about who’s in and who’s out.  Today’s psalm, Psalm 111, is a hymn of pure gratitude — “Great are the works of the Lord; full of majesty and honour is his work.”  It’s the song of someone who knows they’ve received grace they didn’t earn.  And if you listen closely, that’s what Naaman learns, and what the healed leper in the Gospel learns too: the proper response to mercy is gratitude.  You can’t pay God back, but you can say thank you — with your voice, your life, your generosity.

Paul’s letter to Timothy carries the same tune.  “Remember Jesus Christ,” he says, “risen from the dead.”  He’s reminding a young leader that faith isn’t about guarding borders or drawing lines.  It’s about endurance, integrity, and grace.  “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved,” Paul says — not by heritage or nationality, but by truthfulness and good work.  Faith that is proud, tribal, or exclusionary isn’t faith at all; it’s fear in religious clothing.  Faith that is humble, curious, and grateful — that’s the faith that changes lives.

And then we come to the Gospel — the story of ten lepers crying out to Jesus.  They all receive healing, but only one comes back to give thanks.  And Luke adds the delicious twist: “And he was a Samaritan.”  In other words, a foreigner.  The locals go home cured but ungrateful; the outsider returns praising God.  It’s as though Jesus is saying, “You see?  It’s the stranger who understands what grace really is.”  Those who’ve been on the margins often see more clearly than those of us at the centre.  Maybe that’s because, when you’ve had to fight for a place at the table, you never take your seat for granted.

Which brings us rather close to home.  There’s a lot of talk these days about “foreigners,” about who belongs and who doesn’t.  Some politicians even say they want to send them all “home.”  But Naaman wasn’t sent home — he was welcomed and healed.  The Samaritan wasn’t turned away — he was praised as a model of faith.  Over and over, the Bible tells us that God’s love crosses borders long before we ever built them.  If we take Scripture seriously, we can’t use it to prop up our prejudices.  The God of Israel healed a Syrian soldier.  The Jewish Messiah blessed a Samaritan leper.  The first Christians included Greeks and Ethiopians and Romans and slaves.  It’s as if God’s saying: “Stop drawing lines on my map.”

And it’s not just about politics; it’s about the human heart.  When we divide the world into “us” and “them,” we make our souls smaller.  We become like Naaman before his dip — proud, anxious, and itching for control.  But when we open our hands in gratitude, like the Samaritan who turned back, healing begins.  Gratitude is the opposite of fear.  It’s what happens when we stop clutching our privileges and start noticing our blessings.  And when we do, something remarkable occurs: we start to see the divine image shining in the very people we once called outsiders.

I’ve only just arrived among you, but I can already tell that Leigh Park has its own strong sense of community.  People look out for one another here.  There’s a pride — a good, healthy pride — in the local spirit.  My prayer is that this church, this “cathedral,” will go on being a place where that spirit widens its arms.  A place where no-one is told to “go home,” because everyone is already home in the heart of God.  A place where gratitude is louder than grumbling, and generosity drowns out fear.  A place where Naaman, and the Samaritan, and every weary soul can find healing.

So let’s give thanks — with Psalm 111 — for the great works of the Lord.  Let’s remember, with Paul, that truth and grace can’t be chained.  Let’s learn from Naaman to humble ourselves, and from the Samaritan to say thank you.  And let’s pray that, when Jesus looks at the Cathedral of Leigh Park, he’ll smile and say, “There’s faith here — the kind that heals.”

What Will You Live For?

Readings: Ephesians 2.19-22 and John 2.13-22

What are you prepared to dedicate yourself to?  And for what, if it came to it, would you be prepared to die? 

Big questions for a Sunday morning, perhaps.  But they are the questions a Dedication Festival throws at us.  Because a church building is never just about stone and mortar.  It’s about dedication.  Someone—many someones, down the centuries—gave their lives, their money, their sweat, their prayers, their music, their craft, their sheer stubborn faith, to build this place, to keep it standing, to fill it with life.  They dedicated themselves.  And here we are. 

Today we remember that this church is dedicated to St Faith of Aquitaine.  Now, St Faith wasn’t an elderly bishop, or a great philosopher, or even a parish priest who slogged through decades of damp vestries and leaky gutters.  She was a child.  Tradition says she was about twelve years old when she was tortured and killed for refusing to renounce her faith in Christ.  Twelve years old!  That’s the same sort of age as our young singers, “Faith in Harmony”, who grace us today.  Imagine that.  Imagine one of them hauled before a judge, told to deny Christ or die.  It’s shocking.  And it’s real.  The church remembers her not because we relish gore, but because she stands as a sign of the astonishing seriousness with which Christians have held their faith.  A faith worth more than life itself. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus drives the money-changers out of the Temple.  “Destroy this temple,” he says, “and in three days I will raise it up.”  Everyone laughs—because they can only see the stones and mortar.  But Jesus is talking about his body, and about the living temple of God that will be raised up in his people.  Which is where St Paul comes in, writing to the Ephesians: “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” 

So here’s the connection: Jesus is the true temple.  We are the living stones.  St Faith, even in her young age, understood that her body—her very self—was already part of that living temple.  Her courage was not about defending a building.  It was about belonging to Christ.  And in that belonging, she found something worth dying for. 

But perhaps the challenge for us, in our more comfortable times, is not so much “What would you die for?” but “What will you live for?”  Because dedication doesn’t always come in a blaze of martyrdom.  Dedication is the daily choice to belong to Christ.  It’s the patience of the choir leader who teaches the harmonies week by week.  It’s the faithfulness of a PCC treasurer poring over accounts late at night.  It’s the kindness of the person who sets up chairs, or serves coffee, or welcomes the stranger at the door.  All of it is dedication.  All of it is laying one more stone in the living temple. 

And dedication is also about standing together.  That’s why it’s so good to welcome our friends from St Alban’s today.  St Alban, you’ll recall, was another martyr—a grown man who gave his life in place of a priest he sheltered.  St Faith and St Alban, child and adult, woman and man, both witnesses to the same truth: that God’s love in Christ is worth everything.  To celebrate a Dedication Festival is to place ourselves in that same story, shoulder to shoulder, parish to parish, voice to voice. 

So let’s go back to the question: What are you prepared to dedicate yourself to?  We dedicate churches not just to give them fancy titles, but to remind ourselves that we are meant to be people of dedication too.  What does dedication look like for you, here and now?  It might be as dramatic as standing up for justice at real cost.  Or it might be as quiet as singing faithfully in a choir, week by week, learning to offer your voice as part of the harmony.  For some it may be about giving time, money, energy, love, even when it hurts.  For others it may be about refusing to go along with lies and cruelty, even when silence would be easier. 

St Faith, aged twelve, shows us that Christian dedication is not reserved for the powerful, or the learned, or the old.  It belongs to all of us, young and old, weak and strong.  Together, built on Christ the cornerstone, we become a temple where God is at home. 

So may we, with St Faith, with St Alban, and with all the saints, dedicate ourselves afresh today.  May we be a people willing to live, and if it comes to it, even to die, for the love of Christ.  And may our voices, in harmony, become a song that fills this living temple with praise. 

Amen.

The Politics of the Bible

Readings...

Nehemiah 8.1–12

All the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” So the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.

Luke 10.1–12

The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.

Sermon: The Politics of the Bible

Picture the scene.  The leaders of Israel have just returned from exile in Babylon.  Seventy years away.  That’s three or four generations.  The ordinary people who stayed behind have got on with life as best they could.  They’ve picked up Babylonian ways, Babylonian laws, even Babylonian gods.  They’ve married into other tribes, settled into new customs, and the old Law of Moses has become a distant memory.  

But now the leaders are back.  Nehemiah the Governor.  Ezra the High Priest.  The Levites in their finest robes, standing tall on a great platform.  And they’ve brought with them the Torah—the five books of Moses.  Precious relics, polished and edited by scribes in exile, welded together into one seamless national story.  Stories of Abraham, Moses, Judah—the roots of a people.  Laws about land, justice, strangers, worship.  All the scaffolding of a nation under God.  

Ezra stands before the crowd.  This is his moment.  Like a Prime Minister at party conference, he knows this is the speech that will set the tone for years to come.  If he gets this right, faith will be rekindled, identity restored, and the old leaders will be firmly back in charge.  

How will the people react?  

We’re told they burst into tears.  But why?  Joy, perhaps, at rediscovering their story.  Or sorrow, for the ways they’d broken God’s laws.  Or maybe fear—that breaking them again might unleash God’s wrath.  

Because these weren’t just religious words.  The Law of Moses was political through and through.  It set out systems of justice, land distribution, protection for foreigners, ways of dealing with debt and conflict.  It was politics rooted in God’s vision of fairness.  

And when Jesus comes along, centuries later, he takes up the same tune.  He sends seventy disciples out, Luke tells us, to proclaim the Kingdom of God.  A Kingdom built on Moses’ foundations, but tuned towards love of neighbour, care for the poor, forgiveness, non-violence.  The Sermon on the Mount is a manifesto if ever there was one.  

But political messages always divide.  Ezra’s audience wept.  Jesus’ canvassers sometimes found a warm welcome—but other times they were hounded out of town, shaking dust off their sandals in frustration.  Politics always presses people’s nerves.  First we ask: what does this mean for me?  My wallet?  My freedom?  Then we think of our families: will Mum get care, will my kids get a fair chance?  Then we zoom out: the library, the river, the future of the planet.  Politics presses every button we have.  

And politicians know it.  Ezra stirs the crowd with history and identity.  Later he plays the purity card—demanding the people divorce their foreign wives.  It’s crude, it’s cruel, but it’s effective.  Politicians have always waved the flag, blamed the outsider, claimed to be defenders of tradition.  Even Jesus, in his way, drew on Israel’s past—but always to widen the story, never to narrow it.  

So what do we do in a season of political speeches, slogans and promises?  How do we separate wheat from chaff?  

For the Christian, there’s really only one yardstick: the political manifesto of Jesus.  Not slogans on a bus, not carefully-spun policy papers, but the Kingdom of God.  

Ask yourself: what would the world look like if the meek really did inherit the earth?  At the moment, 90% of Britain’s land is locked up by government, aristocracy, corporations, the church, the military, the parks.  Only about 10% is available for people like you and me to actually build on.  What would it look like if the mighty were cast down from their seats, yachts, castles, and private jets?  

What if we really took seriously God’s command to Adam and Eve to “tend the garden”?  Would we still be poisoning rivers, razing forests, watching species vanish daily?  

What if we believed Jesus when he said the poor are blessed, that peacemakers should be honoured, that wealth should be shared?  Would we still tolerate food banks in one of the richest nations on earth?  Would we still rank weapons as a higher spending priority than child poverty?  

Now, of course, some will say these are idealisms.  Dreams.  But that’s exactly what politics is: competing dreams.  Competing pictures of the future.  The trick is to test those dreams—not against our wallets alone, not against the flags behind the podium—but against the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed.  

Ezra’s people rediscovered wisdom when the Law was read aloud.  Our task is similar.  To listen again, carefully, to the Scriptures—not as dusty relics or party slogans, but as radical calls to justice and love.  And then to measure every manifesto, every promise, every soundbite against that standard.  

Because anyone who thinks Jesus didn’t have a political message has simply not read the same Bible I read.  As G.K. Chesterton quipped, the tragedy of Christianity is not that it’s been tried and found wanting, but that it’s never really been tried.  

So let’s try.  Let’s take Jesus’ manifesto seriously, not just in the ballot box, but in our daily choices, our wallets, our care for neighbour and creation.  Let’s hear again that call, ancient yet new: the Kingdom of God is at hand.  Amen.

Spaghetti Hoops and the Bread of Life

Texts: Deuteronomy 26.1-11 and John 6.25-35

It’s that time of year again—Harvest Festival.  The day when, across the land, vicars feel compelled to say something profound about tins of beans and packets of pasta.  I’ve even heard Harvest sermons that wax lyrical about spaghetti hoops, as though they were manna from heaven.  But perhaps that’s the point.  Perhaps the miracle is precisely that God can use something as humble as a tin of beans, or a loaf of bread, to open our eyes to the truth that all life, all sustenance, all hope comes from him.  

Our first reading from Deuteronomy reminds us how Israel were taught to bring their first fruits before the Lord.  They didn’t just stumble into worship with the leftovers of the weekly shop.  They offered the first and the best.  And then they told the story.  A wandering Aramean was my ancestor, says the text.  The point was never just the grain and the figs and the honey—it was the memory.  The reminder that this land was gift.  That freedom was gift.  That all good things are God’s doing.  

Fast forward to John’s Gospel, and the crowd chasing Jesus across the lake after the feeding of the five thousand.  They’ve seen a miracle, but they’ve misunderstood it.  They’re still fixated on bread to fill their stomachs, when Jesus is trying to point them to the bread that gives life itself.  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life,” he says.  And then he makes that bold, startling claim: “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  

So here we are, in Havant, with our tins, our apples, our loaves, trying to get our heads around what it means to bring first fruits, and what it means to seek the bread of life.  

Harvest is not about nostalgia for village greens and hay bales.  It’s about reality.  And the reality is this: we live in a world groaning under pressure.  Our farmers—like those Colin Headley works with every day—are under immense strain.  Supermarket price wars, climate instability, and government bureaucracy are squeezing them from every side.  It is no exaggeration to say that the future of British farming hangs in the balance.  If we don’t support our farmers, one day soon we may find we have no one left to bring in the harvest.  

And then there is the wider creation.  We’ve just been recognised as an Eco-Church, with a silver award—thanks to Sue Tinney and her Eco-Team.  That is no small achievement, and I want to pay tribute to them.  But silver is not gold.  And even gold is not enough.  For the task before us is nothing less than the safeguarding of the integrity of creation itself.  That’s the fifth Mark of Mission of the Church of England, and it will need to shape our five-year plan as a parish.  If we take Jesus seriously, if we pray “thy kingdom come” with integrity, then our worship must be joined to action that protects the soil, the rivers, the forests, the air that every child of God depends upon.  

And that action can be gloriously practical.  Like Kevin Edwards’ work to get solar panels onto the roofs of this church and the Pallant Centre.  Imagine the irony if the people of God, with a south-facing roof the size of a small football pitch, were still relying entirely on fossil fuels.  Imagine if, in fifty years’ time, our children looked back and said: “Why didn’t they act, when they had the chance?”  

Or take our Fairtrade commitment.  Every cup of coffee we serve, every biscuit we offer, carries a moral weight.  Because it says: “We care about the dignity of the farmer in Kenya or Colombia as much as the shopper in Havant.”  Harvest is global now.  The fruits of the earth come to us from every corner of the world, and every purchase we make is a spiritual act, a choice between justice and exploitation.  

Closer to home, we might also celebrate the work of our Churchyard Team—Colin, Mike and Jim—who labour quietly, week after week, to keep our churchyard both beautiful and biodiverse.  They remind us that creation care is not just about far-off rainforests, but about whether bees can find nectar in Havant, whether wildflowers can thrive among the gravestones, whether a child can come into this churchyard and discover that nature is not dead but alive, vibrant, buzzing.  

This is the stuff of Harvest.  Not just bringing tins to the altar, but asking the dangerous question: “What are we working for?”  Are we working for food that perishes, or for food that endures?  Are we satisfied with cheap bread that hides the cost to farmers, to soil, to rivers—or do we hunger for the bread of life, which is justice, peace, sustainability, and ultimately Christ himself?  

And maybe this is the challenge for us, right now, as we shape our parish’s five-year plan.  We could choose the easy route—balancing budgets, maintaining buildings, keeping the show on the road.  Or we could choose the harder, holier route—the route of the Five Marks of Mission.  Proclaiming the good news.  Teaching and nurturing disciples.  Loving service to our neighbours.  Transforming unjust structures.  And safeguarding creation.  These are not optional extras, like toppings on a pizza.  They are the bread of life.  They are what it means to be the people of God, in Havant, today.  

I sometimes think that Harvest is one of the most radical festivals of all.  Because it refuses to let us forget that everything is gift.  That we are dependent—on God, on the earth, on one another.  It punctures the myth of self-sufficiency that says we can survive without farmers, without ecosystems, without God.  It dares to tell us that gratitude is political, that thanksgiving is revolutionary.  

So today, let’s bring our tins and our loaves, our apples and our prayers.  Let’s give thanks for our Eco-Team, our farmers, our Fairtrade partners, our solar panel dreamers, our churchyard gardeners.  Let’s tell the story again: a wandering Aramean was my ancestor, and the Lord brought us out of slavery with a mighty hand.  And let’s hear again the promise of Christ: “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”  

And then, brothers and sisters, let’s work, together, not for food that perishes, but for the harvest that endures.  

Amen.

Flags, Fears and Forgiveness

Readings: 1 Timothy 4.12-end (advice to a young church leader) and Luke 7.36-end (a known sinful woman bathes Jesus' feet) 

____________________________________

It’s hard to know what to say about the world this week.  A young man, Charlie Kirk, gunned down in cold blood.  A sea of patriots, so-called, marching under banners of fear.  NATO rattling sabres at Russia, and Russia rattling them right back.  And over here, the President of the United States has popped in to remind us that truth, in the mouths of politicians, is always (what shall we say?) a negotiable commodity.

In the middle of all that, we get these two readings.  One from Paul—or at least from someone writing in Paul’s name—encouraging young Timothy not to be cowed by the sneers of the powerful, but to set an example “in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”  And one from Luke’s Gospel, where a woman’s tears of repentance are turned into a banquet for Jesus’ feet.  Two different texts, but both with the same quiet insistence: don’t just copy the noise of the world; show another way.

Simon the Pharisee sees a woman whose reputation is mud.  He sees her sins, but not her sorrow.  He sees the scandal, but not the love.  Jesus, on the other hand, receives her gifts without condition.  He allows her to touch him, even though she’s unclean by the law.  He accepts the strange, uncomfortable truth she brings: that forgiveness is real, and love is the right response.

Now, what would happen if we practised that same discernment in the world around us?  Because if I’m honest, it’s all too easy to look at a march of 150,000 flag-waving men and women and see only the ugliness—anger, nationalism, slogans painted in blood-red letters.  And speaking of flags—have you noticed the new campaign to hang them from every lamp-post in the country?  Apparently, that’s how you prove you love your nation.  Trouble is, after a week of rain, traffic fumes, and seagull droppings, they end up looking less like proud symbols of heritage and more like dogs marking their patch.  A little territorial, a little tatty, and mostly ignored by passers-by.  If that’s patriotism, I don't recognise it. 

But Jesus insists that beneath the surface there is always a story.  Beneath the roar of the crowd there is a fear.  Beneath the anger there is often grief.  Beneath the lies there is still a human being, aching for dignity and belonging.

We don’t excuse hatred.  We don’t baptise lies.  But we try to see the person behind the posture.  Because if God’s grace could reach into the life of a woman everyone else despised, then God’s grace can reach even into a shouting mob, even into a blustering president, even into a dangerous tyrant.  And yes—even into us.

That’s where Timothy comes in.  “Let no one despise your youth,” Paul writes.  In other words: don’t let the world set the terms of the debate.  Don’t be cowed by those who are louder, older, angrier.  Your task is not to match their volume but to model a different way.  Speech, conduct, love, faith, purity.  Not power, slogans, sabres, lies.

I think that’s where our hope lies.  We can’t silence the marchers, or rewrite the manifestos of world leaders.  We can’t end war with a snap of our fingers.  But we can choose how we live, how we speak, how we listen.  We can choose whether to sneer at our enemies or to try to understand them.  And understanding, in the Kingdom of God, is often the first step to love.

Because here’s the truth: every so-called patriot who marched through the streets carries fears they can barely name.  Every politician who blusters on the world stage has wounds and insecurities that drive them.  Every general who rattles a sabre is afraid of losing control.  And every one of us, too, is a bundle of half-formed knowledge, fake truths, and borrowed fears.  Yet Christ meets us in that mess.  He lets us weep on his feet.  He receives our shabby gifts.  And he calls us to receive others the same way.

So yes, it is a dangerous world this week.  But it is also God’s world.  And the Kingdom still creeps in wherever forgiveness is offered, wherever understanding is attempted, wherever enemies are listened to instead of shouted down.  That is our vocation.  To be a people who look beneath the surface.  To be a community where the broken can bring their gifts.  To be disciples who model a better way.

That, at least, is something Charlie Kirk will never again have the chance to do.  But we who remain—we can.  We can set an example.  In speech.  In conduct.  In love.  In faith.  In purity.  Not because it’s easy.  But because that’s what Jesus did when a sinner knelt at his feet, and what Jesus still does when sinners—like us—kneel before him.  Amen.

Saints, Sausage Rolls and the Spirit of Truth

On the Feast of St Birinus

First Reading: Ecclesiastes 2.12–25

So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly; for what can the one do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done.  Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.  The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness.  Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them.  Then I said to myself, ‘What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?’ And I said to myself that this also is vanity.  For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten.  How can the wise die just like fools? So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me – and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun.  This also is vanity.  So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labours under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it.  This also is vanity and a great evil.  What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.  This also is vanity.

There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil.  This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and heaping, only to give to one who pleases God.  This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.

Gospel Reading: John 16.1–15

I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling.  They will put you out of the synagogues.  Indeed, the hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.  And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.  But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.

I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you.  But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.  Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.  And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine.  For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Sermon

It’s odd, isn’t it, when you hear words of Scripture that don’t sound terribly religious at all.  Ecclesiastes says, “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation.”  That’s not the kind of verse you’ll find printed on a Christian fridge magnet.  It’s brutally honest.  Vanity of vanities, says the preacher.  The wise man dies just like the fool.  

And yet, Ecclesiastes smuggles in something important.  If all our striving comes to dust, then perhaps the best we can do is enjoy the gifts God gives in the moment.  Eat, drink, find joy in our work.  Because joy is a gift, not a possession.

Now, compare that with Jesus in John’s Gospel.  He doesn’t sugar-coat life either.  Jesus warns his followers; “They will put you out of the synagogues.  Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think they are offering service to God.”  This is not a recruiting slogan.  You can’t imagine it printed on a poster outside St Faith’s.  “Join the Church: guaranteed persecution and probable death.”  And yet, he says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”

So Ecclesiastes and John agree: life is tough, often unfair, sometimes lethal.  But alongside that grim honesty is something else.  God gives joy in the midst of futility.  God gives the Spirit in the midst of suffering.  And that brings us to Birinus.

Birinus was not a likely candidate to win fame.  He wasn’t born into a great dynasty.  He wasn’t a general or a politician.  He was a monk from Lombardy who decided, somewhat rashly, to set off for pagan England in the 630s.  His original plan was to head north, beyond the Saxons, to convert the barbarian tribes.  But he never made it.  He landed in the South—Oxford, Berkshire, Winchester—territory of the West Saxons.  Wessex.  He stayed, he preached, and astonishingly, the West Saxon king, Cynegils, was baptised, right there in the Thames at Dorchester.  Birinus, a foreigner, convinced a king.  That’s not bad for a wandering monk with a dodgy Latin accent.

But let’s not romanticise it.  Birinus didn’t arrive in a leafy Hampshire postcard.  He arrived in a violent, fractured society, riven by warlords and superstition.  He had to navigate the politics of powerful kings, and preach a Gospel that sounded ridiculous.  One God?  A crucified Saviour?  Eternal life?  It made no sense to the Saxon mind.

And yet he persisted.  Not by clever strategy alone, and not because he had all the answers, but because the Spirit of truth was at work.  The Spirit, as Jesus promised, takes what is Christ’s and declares it to us—again and again, across cultures and centuries.

Which makes Birinus a particularly good saint for us to remember, because he reminds us that holiness doesn’t always happen where you expect.  Sometimes God plonks you in Hampshire and says, “Yes, here will do nicely.”

Picture him, if you will, turning up in modern Hampshire.  A wiry Italian monk, stepping off the train at Havant.  He looks around for the pagan Saxons he’s meant to convert, and instead finds a Greggs, a kebab shop, a Poundland and a drunk man shouting after a bus.  Would he despair?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps he’d roll up his sleeves, grab a sausage roll, and start talking to whoever would listen.

Or imagine him on a Sunday morning in Havant High Street, trying to preach the Gospel between the perfume counters of Boots and the smell of Macdonald’s burgers.  “Repent and believe the good news,” he cries, while shoppers hurry off with discount trainers, and someone asks him if he bought his walking staff at TK Maxx.  He’d be baffled, of course, but then he was baffled back in Dorchester too.  The Gospel has never been an easy sell.

And yet—somehow, against all odds, Birinus converted a king.  He baptised Cynegils in the Thames at Dorchester in Oxfordshire.  That was the beginning of the Church in Wessex.  From that watery moment flowed Winchester Cathedral, Chichester, Portsmouth, Havant.  All of it traces back to an immigrant monk who thought he was in the wrong place but turned out to be exactly where God needed him.

So don’t despise the day of small beginnings.  Birinus didn’t set out to be “the Apostle to Wessex.”  He just did the next faithful thing.  Preached, taught, baptised, trusted the Spirit.  He died, like the wise man and the fool of Ecclesiastes.  But unlike the fool, he found joy in God’s gift.  And the Spirit of truth carried his work far beyond his own life.

Which leaves us with a question.  If Birinus could find God’s purpose in seventh-century Hampshire, can we find it today?  In our discount stores, supermarkets, harbours, housing estates?  Or do we convince ourselves that God is only really at work somewhere else, in somebody else’s story?

The Spirit of truth still moves through these streets.  This is sainted space, holy ground.  The joy of God is still offered, even in our sense of futility.  Birinus is proof that even in a land of pagans—or Greggs pasties—God can plant a seed that will change a kingdom.

So let’s not look down on our own patch of ground.  We live, after all, in the land of a saint.  Amen.