The Conversion of St Paul

St Mary’s, Barnes, 10 am

Acts 9.1-22; Matthew 19.27-end

If you were asked to say who were the three most influential people in shaping the mentality and values of Western Civilization, I wonder whom you would select? Leaving aside Our Lord, the three I would choose would be Aristotle, Augustine and Paul - Paul for a number of reasons. But a book that came out in 2014 by Larry Siedentop, called  Inventing the Individual, particularly stressed what that title suggests, the importance and value of each unique individual. He argued this is primarily due to St Paul. And think how we now take this for granted. We are all equal before the law. Every one has one vote, not more, not less. The State has to treat everyone equally, as do all those in the business of providing of public goods and services. This value is rooted in the great truth that we are all of equal value in the eyes of God. More recently Tom Holland in his book Dominion, has reinforced how much of what we value in Western Society is due to the Christian faith.

None of this would have happened without that dramatic happening on the road to Damascus which we heard read in today’s first reading. Paul, in his letters, describes how he practised as a very devout Jew, indeed so serious was he about his faith that he wanted to get rid of the new breakaway group of followers of Jesus. He was one of those who watched the stoning of Stephen to death and approved of it, and who was on the road to Damascus to round up other followers. On that road he saw a great light and heard a voice saying ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Paul asked who he was and heard the words ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting’. You may know the wonderful painting of this scene by Caravaggio with Paul lying on the ground and his white horse rearing up above him. This conversion  is described twice in the Acts of the Apostles. In his letter to the Corinthians Paul says about the Resurrection of Christ ‘Last of all he appeared to me too; it was like a sudden, abnormal birth. For I am the least of the apostles, indeed not fit to be called an apostle, because I had persecuted the church of God’( 1 Cor. 15.8/9) Then in his letter to the Galatians  he wrote that though he savagely persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it,  ‘God chose to reveal his Son in and through me’ (Galatians 1.15/16).

It is impossible to overestimate the importance and influence of what happened to St Paul on that road to Damascus.

Reading Paul’s letters you do not always feel he was an easy person to be with. After all, he started off as a religious fanatic. But in the end you come not just to admire but to love him because what comes across more than anything is the fact that he cared. He cared deeply about the small Christian communities he was planting round the Mediterranean. You feel his agonising for them as he yearns for them to grow in the life of Christ. He was temperamentally an extremist who came to be an extremist in his love for his Christian sisters and brothers. That is why he remains before us as someone in whom and through whom we see Christ; someone who can shows up our indifference, our lack of care, and who draws us to emulate him in the depth of our commitment.

But let us also reflect briefly this morning on the point with which I started, the influence of the Chrisian faith, and Paul in particular, on our society and culture, our laws, our institution, our values, our art and literature. This is, as we know, now a hot topic because it has been politicised. So let us try to think about it Christianly. First, it is good that we have been reminded that ours is indeed a nation and culture that has been decisively shaped by the Christian faith, in the way I have described. We are a Christian nation and culture in that sense, and this is expressed by daily prayers in Parliament, by the crowning of the monarch in Westminster Abbey, and by national services, like Remembrance taking a predominantly Christian form, as well as  the Christian faith being taught in schools, though that seems to be very thin at the moment. This is a glorious heritage, not to be arrogant or superior about, but to be grateful for -and also one to ask a question about to to our very secular contemporaries. If you cherish the institutions and values of our society, you might like to look at where it is all springs from and ask whether if  what you value can survive in the long run without its Christian underpinning.

Now in the past, and still in too many countries in the world today, a religious heritage has been understood in exclusive terms. We have only to think of our own history in the 16^th Century when Catholics were killed under Protestant rulers and Catholics killed under Protestant ones. It took a long struggle to allow first non-conformists, then Catholics to live on equal terms with Anglicans. Today, I am glad to say the Church of England sees its role in the country, not as excluding others, but making space for them. An important speech by the late Queen in 2012 put it well when she said that the Church of England

 certainly provides an identity and spiritual dimension for its own many adherents. But also, gently and assuredly, the Church of England has created an environment for other faith communities and indeed people of no faith to live freely. Woven into the fabric of this country, the Church has helped to build a better society – more and more in active co-operation for the common good with those of other faiths.

The practical success of this has been proved a number of times in recent years, when there has been communal strife in a particular city the fact that the local bishop had created good relations with other faith leaders enabled joint action to be taken to calm the situation.

What I have to say should not be taken to imply anything about our present immigration policy. Every country needs an immigration policy and Christians may have different views about it. What I am saying is that we should  affirm the Christian character of our nation but this  should not be politicised or used as a way to make immigrants or Muslims unwelcome. Affirming the Chrisian character of our country means among other things, following St Paul in never losing sight of the value of each unique individual.

The Holy Innocents

St Mary’s, Barnes, 8am

Matthew 2.13-18

When considering any account of the past, whether in the Bible or secular history, you can ask two questions. Did it happen as described? And, What was the writer trying to convey in his account of events? Let us consider the second question in relation to the story of the innocents, for Matthew is quite clear in what he is trying to say. In a dream Joseph is told to flee to Egypt. Egypt was first of all the place where another Joseph was miraculously protected by God and allowed to prosper in a way that saved the whole family. More especially Egypt was from where Moses delivered the people from the oppression of Pharoah and he himself had been saved as a young child when Pharoah ordered all the young male children to be killed. Matthew sees what happened to the child Jesus as a focus and summing up of the history of the people of Israel in their deliverance from Egypt, but this time not just for one people but for the whole world. So he quotes words from one of the prophets. ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son.’ The people of Israel as a whole were called to live in a filial relationship to God. That call is focussed and summed up now, in a single person, Jesus, that it may spread out from there to every person.

The deliverance from Egypt however was not the only time the people was Israel had to be rescued. In the 8^th century before Christ the people in the North of the Kingdom were taken into captivity by Assyria and in the 6^th century most of the people were taken into captivity and exile in Babylon. It is in relation to these times of suffering that Mattew quotes another prophet

In Ramah there was a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

Once again, with Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, mothers would not be comforted.

But Matthew tells this story not to highlight the cruelty of human rulers but to proclaim that in a cruel world where such things happen there is still a providence at work, first in revealing his purpose in a particular people, and then to bring that purpose to a head in a particular person, the long expected messiah, a universal saviour, God’s own eternally begotten son.

Sadly we still live in a world where innocence is violated, where daily  children are hurt and killed. In which Rachel is weeping for her children and will not be comforted because they are not.  And it is surely an obligation on all of us to do all we can to protect children from the multiple harms that assail them. At the same time we have faith that there is a providence at work, that the God who came amongst us in Jesus, still works his purpose out now through those who put their trust in him.  

Third Sunday of Advent

St Mary’s, Barnes, 10 am

Isaiah 35.1-10; Matthew 11.2-11

The world contains multiple religions, especially the great world religions, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism  and Sikhism. What, from a Christian point of view are we to make of them? Some say they are all equally valid ways to God. But this is to ignore the real differences between them. Buddhism, for example does not believe in a creator God, whilst Islam and Judaism both reject the central claim of Christianity. Honesty demands that we recognise and acknowledge those differences. Others argue that they are all equally false. But would a God of love, who loves every human being, leave most of the world without any awareness of his presence in however a limited form? When St Paul was in Athens surrounded by idols he could still appeal to their own culture when he told them  that:

They were to seek God in the hope that, groping after him, they might find him; though indeed he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being; as some of your own poets have said , “We are also his offspring”. (Acts 17.27/8)

The practical implication of this is that the only way to understand other religions  is to enter, trustingly,  into relationship and dialogue  with those of a different faith to our own, leaving aside stereotypes -   and see what emerges. My own experience is that this is mutually enriching.

Against that background the Christian claim is that God has entered into a special relationship with a particular people, the Jews, and that this has come to a focus in Jesus. All people have some capacity to know God in their hearts, but God has chosen to reveal himself definitively in a particular segment of human history. This does not mean he loves those within that tradition  more than others, but that it is the nature of revelation that it must be particular as well as general. We might think of someone will three children at the sea side. A large wave suddenly sweeps away one of them and the parent dives in and rescues them. This does not mean she loves that child more than the others, but in that act she reveals her love in a special way. What she does for one is revelatory of a love she has for all.

So God has chosen a particular people  and within it raised up particular individuals to recall them time and again to their special vocation. One of them was Isaiah whom we heard in the first lesson. He lived in the 8^th century before Christ at a time when Assyria was threatening the existence of Israel. He not only called the people to be faithful, he looked forward to a time when the world would be radically different-the wilderness would blossom, the sick would be healed, all would be at peace, sorrow and sighing would flee away, joy and gladness would abound and the glory of God would shine through all things.

It is this passage amongst others that Matthew has in mind in todays Gospel. John the Baptist in prison sends to ask if Jesus is the long expected one or was he to wait for another. Jesus sends his disciples back with the message that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the leper are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised and the poor have good news brought to them. He then tells the crowd that John is not just a prophet, but more than a prophet. ‘See I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you. If you go into an Orthodox Church at the centre of the Iconostasis there is a large Icon of Christ in the middle with on one side Mary holding out her hand and pointing to Christ, and on the other, John the Baptist doing the same. It symbolises that the long period of preparation has come to its focus and climax.

But the majority of Jews did not accept this, and Judaism continues today as a separate religion, vital and valid in its own right. Sadly this led the church into the most pernicious views about Jews, what has been called the teaching of contempt, which prepared the way for the 19^th century antisemitism culminating in the holocaust. Since then, thank God the churches have radically revised their teaching about Judaism. Instead of saying that God has discarded his ancient people and is punishing them,  the emphasis now is on the words of St Paul in his letter to the Romans  that God’s gifts and his calling to the Jewish people ‘are irrevocable’ (Romans 11.29). This pre-Christmas period  is also the Jewish feast of Chanukah, and it is sad to relate that antisemitism, always  a light sleeper, is still virulent, There were more than 2000 anti semitic incidents in 2024 and more than 1500 in the first half of 2025. For the avoidance of misunderstanding I should stress that criticism of the present policies of the Israeli government is not antisemitism. That said, Christians have a particular responsibility to oppose antisemitism wherever it lurks.

The continued existence of Judaism as a living religion poses a theological challenge to Christians, which has no easy answer. We can but trust that all is in the hands of God. But the readings for this Sunday take us into the heart of a faith which is shared by both Jews and Christians -  That there is a wise and loving power behind the universe who has a purpose for every person. And in order to make that purpose clear he has chosen a particular people and through the vicissitudes of their history disclosed his heart and mind.

As Christians we believe this has come to a climax and focus in Jesus crucified, risen and living in us through his Holy Spirit. When the sun shines through a magnifying glass it concentrates the sunlight to a focal point which can set alight any paper on which it falls. God’s light shines in every heart but in Christ it comes to a focal point. We are the paper, if you like, to be set alight There is a fine collect today which well fits our readings

O Lord Jesus Christ, who at your first coming sent your messenger to prepare your way before you: grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready your way.

 We are all ministers and stewards of the mysteries, like John the Baptist preparing the way for God’s spirit to touch the hearts of those with whom we have to do.

Third Sunday before Advent

St Mary’s, Barnes, 8 am

Luke 20.27-38

I love today’s gospel. I love I because it gets to the heart of the matter:  to a central belief  Jesus and therefore of our faith in God.

The Sadducees were the ruling elite at the time, controlling the temple and much of the finance. They took a very conservative view of scripture and because the Torah said little or nothing about life after death they rejected a belief in the resurrection of the dead. This belief had come into Judaism comparatively late, in the previous two centuries, and was held by the Pharisees and most of the population. The Sadducees, trying to show up the absurdity of the belief asked Jesus about the custom of levirate marriage, whereby if a man died childless his brother had to marry the widow to ensure there were legitimate offspring. So they posed the situation of a woman seven times widowed by different brothers. Whose wife would she be in the afterlife? Jesus simply rejects their crude literalism. The next world is of a totally different order. There they ‘neither marry, nor are given in marriage.’ They cannot die any more, and they are like the angels.

Then he directs them to the verses in the scriptures where God is addressed as ‘The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ He is a God who cared for them, guided them, and promised them a future and they continue to live in him and in relation to him ‘For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him’

So today we have no need of a crude literalism. When we say in the creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body we are not to think in terms of a Stanley Spencer painting with everyone climbing out of their graves, great those these paintings are. What this means is that in the next life we will be fully and truly ourselves. In the same way that the same tune can be played on different instruments,  on a piano or a violin, so the tune which is you and me, played here in flesh and blood will be played in the stuff of glory, in a form appropriate to an eternal  existence, which of course we cannot imagine now. The poet Emily Dickinson put it well when she wrote

 I believe we shall be in some manner cherished by our Maker-that the one who gave us this remarkable earth has the power still to further surprise that which he caused. Beyond that all is silence.

Then as the Gospel makes clear our belief in the eternal is utterly dependent on God. It is not that some whispy bit of us lives on, but that who were are, known to God and lodged by Christ in his loving heart, is given a future in his eternity. As this life is a gift, so is whatever likes beyond.

And of course on this Remembrance Sunday, we think especially of those who had their lives cut short in the service of their country. We trust that they know now another King, another country.

This belief in a glorious future is not meant to distract us from our daily tasks in this world. But it does underpin them and assure us that what we do now is worthwhile. As Paul put it, our labour in the Lord is not in vain. What we do out of love has a future, as do we in the love that holds us in being and directs our ways.

Christ the King

St Mary’s Barnes, 8 am

Luke 23.33-43; Colossians 1.11-20

The theme for this Sunday is Christ the King. Interestingly this is a modern innovation, and encouragingly, one which is shared by many mainline churches, including Roman Catholics.

Today’s Gospel pictures the image in a way which is at once provocative and ironic. Jesus is on the cross and above him are written the words ‘This is the King of the Jews’. What could be more absurd or provocative. This abject, condemned nobody a King? But what for an early believer could be more ironical? For Luke who wrote the Gospel and those who read it deeply believed what those words proclaimed, believed indeed that he was not just King of the Jews but King of the Cosmos. So it is that we have todays amazing wonderful passage from the letter to the Colossians. Amazing that within a few decades someone could write of this victim of Roman power that he was ‘the image of the invisible God’ and that ‘ all things were created by him, and for him…the first born from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence.’

Someone recently sent me a link to a lecture by Tom Holland on why he has become a Christian.[1] He said that when he was a child he loved dinosaurs because they were so large. And when he grew up he still loved large powerful things and was drawn to write his best selling books on Roman imperial power. Then he came up against this totally humiliated, excruciatingly tortured figure and how Paul was totally gripped by him and how it turned upside down all that we normally think of as great and powerful.

So it is that when we think of Christ as King we think of his just and gentle rule, his servant kingship, and of the ultimate triumph of suffering love over the forces of darkness and chaos.

When we look at the world today with its wars, crimes  and cruelties it is difficult to think that Christ is really King of all this turmoil. Clearly his Kingship is not yet fully manifest. So it is that daily we pray ‘Your kingdom Come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. But what we know as Christians is that we are already subjects of that kingdom. We already live in the divine milieu. As the epistle put it ‘God has brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son.’ So it is that we pray not just ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven but your will be done in me and through me, done in the spirit and after the pattern of Christ’s love for us.

15^th Sunday after Trinity

St Mary’s, Barnes, 10 am

From time to time in your life you will have heard good news-when you passed an exam, when a child was born or a grandchild got into university. At such times we are delighted, thrilled. From the first the Christian faith was announced as good news. St Mark’s Gospel begins with the words ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ The Greek word for good news, Euangelion, which could also be translated as evangel or Gospel, occurs many other places in the New Testament. So let us reflect for a few minutes this morning on how and why the Christian faith is good news.

First, it means that there is a meaning and purpose to life. We can all go through periods when life seems futile and meaningless.  As Shakespeare put it so memorably sometimes it feels nothing but

 …  a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

In contrast to that we affirm that at the heart of the universe there is a wise and loving purpose. We affirm that creation did not begin with the evolution of life on earth or the big bang some thirteen  and a half billion years ago but in the mind of God. There, before time, we had our origin. The prophet Jeremiah heard the words

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

And before you were born I consecrated you.

The author of Psalm 139 cries out

My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.

So there is a meaning and purpose for existence and to know this is good news indeed. A meaning and purpose for our personal being.

Dag Hammarskjold was an outstanding UN secretary General working 20 hours a day at the heart of a series of international crises at the height of the cold war. When he died his spiritual notebook was found in which he had written the words ‘

 at some moment  I  answered Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

 Our lives in self-surrender have a goal.

Secondly, this purpose, conceived before time, lodged in the mind, of God, is a purpose for us in and through Christ. The incarnation was not an emergency reaction to things on earth having gone wrong. It was God’s purpose to unite his divine life with humanity from the beginning and join our life with his. Our humanity is not just a result of evolution, though it is that, it is a humanity in Christ the second person of the Trinity. God is in solidarity with us from without beginning as Julian of Norwich liked to put it. As she wrote

For I saw that God never began to love mankind.. mankind has been known and loved in God’s foresight, from without beginning in his righteous intent. And by the endless assent of the whole Trinity in full accord, the Mid-Person would be the foundation and head of this human nature, he from whom we have all come, in whom we are all enclosed, into whom we shall all return; finding in him our full heaven in everlasting joy through the foreseeing purpose of the whole blessed Trinity from without beginning. (Chapter 53.p119)

Thirdly Christ came amongst us to search us out and draw us into himself and in so doing overcame all obstacles and blockages to our union with him. Suffering the consequences of a disordered and sinful world he lived a life of perfect union with the father, and now, risen, ascended, glorified and present with us through his Holy Spirit he unites our life with his. The good news is that nothing can separate us from that life. He holds onto us through thick and thin, through life and through death.

Then, fourthly, this life opens out to eternity. Christians seem to have become rather shy of mentioning what was once so central to Christian faith. But it is good news that God has something even better ahead; that in him there is a glorious future which we cannot now conceive. As Paul put it ‘For now we see dimly, as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been known fully. (1 Corinthians 13.12)

We are led to expect that the name of a new Archbishop of Canterbury will be announced soon. It is not easy to have confidence in the Church of England at the present time. The new Archbishop will take on the leadership of a church that has never been weaker in a society in which professed Christians are now in a minority, particularly amongst the young. But our confidence is not in the church as a human institution but in Christ and in the church as his mystical body against which, as Jesus told Peter, the gates of hell will not prevail. ((Matthew 16.18).

Nevertheless, we have to face the fact that for so many in our society now Christianity is a foreign language and what goes on in church is strange, if not alien. But let us face this. Christianity is strange as the great 17^th century mathematician, scientist and philosopher Pascal said. Far from throwing us this should help us see its truth, for the fact is that life itself is strange. It is extraordinary that anything should exist at all. The mind boggles that we exist. Anything that was less strange than life itself could hardly be true. And Christianity is very strange indeed, for it says that God himself came amongst us, was killed and rose again in order to unite out lives with him for ever. You couldn’t make it up. It is just not the story you would set out to tell about a god. Its strange because it goes against the grain of so many of the things we think important. But this strangeness is good news to those who are sensitive to both the horror and the glory of life.

So the Church may be in a weak position and the times unpropitious but our confidence is not in ourselves but in God and his good purpose. We are blessed to believe the good news, to know that our lives have a purpose and meaning, that we are united to Christ and that the future opens out into God our endless day, the end which is no end. May the Holy Spirit  so touch the hearts of all in Barnes that they too may come to hear and welcome the good news.

4^th Sunday after Trinity

St Mary’s Barnes, 8 am

Luke 10.25-37

If you had to sum up the essence of religion in two sentences, I wonder what you would say? We know what Jesus said: love God with all that you are and love your neighbour as yourself. Both these directives appear in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18) but separately. The New Testament is the earliest  evidence we have of them being linked. It may have been Jesus who first put the two together, or rabbis in his time, as reflected in today’s gospel, where Jesus affirms the answer of the religious teacher who was questioning him.

In any case there we have the essence of the matter, as we are reminded at the beginning of the 8 am service every Sunday. We are to love God with every fibre of our being, with heart and soul and strength and mind; and our neighbour as ourself.

Then the teacher asks: ‘ But who is my neighbour?’ and in reply Jesus  gives one of the most famous stories in history, the parable of the good Samaritan. The  crucial point to note is that Jesus does not answer the question. Instead  he asks a different question. The first question was the wrong one. It implied that that you could draw a line  and say this group of people, say, fellow Israelites were neighbours, and others, say gentiles were not. You had obligations to some but not others. So Jesus asked a different question: Who acted as a neighbour? Instead of being an interesting theoretical question it becomes an existential one, a summons to personal responsibility. Am I acting as a neighbour to those who have a claim on my attention?

We are to love that person as ourselves. If we were in that situation how would I want to be treated. We put ourselves in their shoes. So we have the golden rule, common to a number of religions and religious texts and also found in the teaching of Jesus: treat others as you would want them to treat you. (Mathew 7. 12 and Luke 6. 31)

The modern world likes to affirm the second directive about loving our neighbour   and set aside the first about loving God. And the New Testament is indeed clear that we cannot love God if we don’t love our neighbour. But the two are closely linked in a way the world does not like to recognise. First any attempt to love God with all that we are carries with it the need to love our neighbour as a daily bench mark. Secondly, it can bring home to us how we might be failing in this regard and thirdly it can motivate and strengthen us to do better. We often fail as Christians but we know we need to fail again and fail better, to echo Samuel Beckett. And in this process God is with us all the way.  

Sunday after Ascension

St Mary’s. 10 am

As you came to church this morning you probably heard our bells ringing. Bells have been rung in churches for some 1500 years and we are fortunate at St Mary’s in having a very fine set of  eight, one of them that dates from the time of Queen Elizabeth 1^st. Bells ring to summon people to church, to toll a death or funeral and to celebrate some great occasion. The most famous lines on bells come from Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam with its theme ‘Ring out the old, ring in the new’. Each verse begins with an old evil we want to get rid of and the new we want to ring in

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

‘Ring out the old, ring in the new’. The word ‘New’ resonates for Christians. We talk about a new covenant, a new binding agreement between God and humanity. We refer to the second part of the bible as the New Testament. In the Eucharist we will hear the words of Jesus at the Last Supper. ‘This is my blood of the New Covenant.’ All this is thought of as a new creation. So when the bells ring it is to celebrate this newness. Not just the spring time of the year but the spring time of the spirit. Bells call us to lift up our hearts in delight.

Today’s Gospel takes us to the heart of what is new and why we should delight in it. In the passage we heard Jesus is praying. What is interesting first of all is that he prays not just for his immediate followers but for us centuries later. As he says:

I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.

What a remarkable idea-the mutual indwelling of God and humanity. God living in us and we living in God. ‘As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may ‘When we look at the sky and reflect on the outer edges of space expanding faster than the speed of light the mind boggles to think of the creator of all this. The human mind cannot get round the immensity of it all. But God as Augustine said, is closer to us than our own heart beat, our own breathing. The universal intimacy of God, that is the new thing.

Fish dwell in the ocean, birds soar in the sky, we live  and breathe in air. So it is with us and God.  He is our spiritual environment, our   milieu, our natural medium. Not apart from the material, physical world for God meets us in and through all things. We dwell in God.

And God dwells in us. Deeper than our churning thoughts, deeper than our deepest desires and fears, there is a still pool, a pool of stillness. There God waits for us as we wait on him. As the psalmist says.  Truly my Soul waits still   on you O God.

Dwelling in the God who dwells in us. Why do we dare to make this astounding claim? Because this was the heart of Jesus’s life, one which we said he wanted to impart to us. He lived out his life as one in whom God his Father dwelt, and in whom he dwelt and he wanted to reproduce this in us. He said this would bring about a profound unity which the world would see. This unity is not first of all at the horizontal level, though it is reflected there. It is the unity we share as a result of God dwelling in us and we in him. As Jesus in the Gospel went on to say

The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³ I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 

This is the new thing: the intimate relationship of God and humanity in Christ, which we are invited to reproduce and replicate in ourselves. This how Julian of Norwich put it in the 14^th century

We ought to rejoice greatly that God dwells in our soul, and we ought to rejoice much more greatly that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is made to be God’s dwelling place, and the dwelling place of the soul is God, who is not made. And it is an exalted understanding to see and to know inwardly that God, who is our maker, dwells in our soul; and it is a more exalted understanding to see and to know that our soul, which is made, dwells in God’s substance; and through this substance-God-we are what we are. (Revelations of Divine Love, ch. 54; p.120)

So God is not just an incomprehensible  immensity but an intimacy. This is an intimacy, that encourages us to  bring before God what is on our heart and mind, what matters to us, what we might not share with anyone else. This is not an indulgence and is not for therapy, though there well may be a healing effect. It is simply being open to the ground of our being and the goal of our longing that his good purpose might be set free to work in us and through us.

So it is that at the Eucharist in what is traditionally called ‘The prayer of humble access’ before receiving Holy Communion we pray that we may so receive the body and blood of Christ ‘that we may ever dwell in him and he in us.’ What could be simpler and what more profound.

Church Service in connection with Barbara Pym

St Gabriel’s, Pimlico, Thursday 1^st May 2025

In Crampton Hodnet Miss Doggett and Miss Morrow are waiting to go out.

‘Have you got my smelling salts’ Miss Doggett asked. ‘Give them to me. I may need them.’

‘Here you are, said Miss Morrow’. ‘Would it perhaps be better if  I didn’t come?’

‘Of course you must come’, said Miss Doggett sharply. ‘Your being there will make no difference one way or the other.’

Miss Morrow walked meekly along by Miss Doggett’s side, a comforting neutral thing without form or sex. There was something so restful in being somebody whose presence made no different one way or the other.[1]

In this vignette we meet a familiar theme richly and various displayed in the novels. A women who allows herself to be pushed around, used by others, treated as a doormat. Sometimes they are indeed ‘Excellent Women’ but one of the reasons that they are so excellent is their willingness to do jobs men are reluctant to undertake themselves. The handsome Rocky Napier, for example, in Excellent Woman  takes it for granted that his neighbour  Mildred Lathbury will arrange for his furniture to be packed and moved to his new home. And she goes along with this and a great deal more besides.

The indignation that initial readers of her novels will have felt at this treatment, is even more marked in our time. We want people to believe in themselves and assert their personality. We regard low self esteem as unhealthy. We want the diffident to be more defiant, the self-effacing to be more assertive.

However, integrally linked to those women who allow themselves to be used, or treated as nothing, is their observant eye. They see what is going on. They notice the absurd struggles for position or status or superiority. They see it, expose it for what it is, and get us to laugh at it.

Hazel Holt wrote of Barbara Pym that

She had always had a strong personal faith and going to church had been a regular and natural part of her life at school and Oswestry..St Oswald’s in  Oswestry  had been fairly High Church  but St Gabriel’s was definitely ‘spikier’ and Barbara found increased pleasure  in the increased ritual and all that that implied..(it)..provided richness indeed  to someone with an observant ironical eye.’[2] 

So we can imagine her here in the late 1940’s looking around with that observant ironical eye and now, with eye purified and heart  enlarged  by the Eternal  Compassion perhaps enjoying this occasion with us even more.

Irony relies on a  contrast between how things seem and how they are in reality. Those who assume they are somehow superior to others because of class or education or some other reason are shown up in all their absurdity. True values are seen to lie elsewhere often present in thy shy, the unnoticed, those who don’t count.

Irony is fundamental to the Christian Gospel. Perhaps the most striking example is the mocking of Christ before his trial. He is dressed in a robe and mocked as a false king. But the story is written up by people who know he is King, not just of a country but the universe.

 Then classically we have the words of St Paul:

 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Paul then makes the same point in relation to the church at Corinth-no doubt a small world, much like the congregations  described in Barbara Pym’s novels:

 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

But if this alternative stance on the world, this ironical eye is not to be just another way of asserting superiority over others then the  eye must itself be without illusion. It must be self aware about the authorial voice and not set it on a commanding pedestal.  Paul had this  self  awareness. He wrote ‘I came to you without any pretension to eloquence or wisdom in declaring the truth about God…I came before you in weakness, in fear in great trepidation’. He also had a disability of some kind.

But this this recognition  of himself as how others saw him-someone who was no great shakes either in person or as an orator-  was liberating. It was liberating because it was a humility rooted in a deeper sense that he was valued, that he mattered. It reflected  a profound  confidence in his own being and his message .

‘There was something so restful in being somebody whose presence made no different one way or the other.’ Said Miss Morrow to herself

As my opening dialogue indicated there is an extraordinary liberation in Barbara Pym’s women when they accept that in the eyes of the world they are a nobody, a nothing. It frees them from the attempts they see all around them of people trying to dominate, control or put others down and it frees them to observe with ironic eyes those attempts to do just that. And if they don’t  quite have the confidence of St Paul they have their moments.

In Some Tame Gazelle there is a wedding at which  Belinda is offered champagne and when she says she is not really used to drinking it Agatha says in her usual crushing way ‘Aren’t you?’ and this made Belinda  contrast the confident Agatha with her own diffident self. She reflects to herself

Poised and well dressed, used to drinking champagne, the daughter of a bishop and the wife of an archdeacon-that was Agatha Hoccleve. It was Belinda Bede who was the pathetic one and it was so much easier to bear the burden of ones own pathos than that of somebody else. Indeed perhaps the very recognition of it in oneself  meant that it didn’t really exist.  Belinda took a rather large sip of champagne and looked round the hall with renewed courage’ [3]

‘The very recognition of it, herself as a pathetic one, in the eyes of others ‘meant that it didn’t really exist’. To live without pretensions and delusions of grandeur, in humility as oneself, she finds enormously liberating.

So today we give thanks for the novels of Barbara Pym, for her observant ironic eye showing up the absurdities of our lives, the foibles and incongruities; for revealing the  illusions and hinting at the reality We give thanks for the irony which reflects in its human way the Divine Irony whose foolishness if wiser than human cleverness and whose weakness is stronger human domination.

Richard Harries

[1] Barbara Pym, Crampton Hodnet, Grafton, 1986, p.159/60

[2] Hazel Holt, A Lot to Ask: a life of Barbara Pym, Sphere 1990, p.150/1

[3] Some Tame Gazelle, Granada, 1981,p.249

Fourth Sunday before Lent

St Mary’s, Barnes, 10 am

1 Corinthians 15.1-11: Luke 5.1-11

It is very understandable if you are  feeling somewhat disillusioned by the Church of England at the moment. The resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury and pressure on the Archbishop of York to do so, for safeguarding failures, plus the resignation of the Bishop of Liverpool has badly damaged us. So too has the continuing split in the church over gay relationships. So perhaps the first thing to be said is that from the first the church has been a flawed institution. You have only to read the letters in the New Testament to see that it too was a church which had its quarrels, wrong doers and failures. The point is that the church, made up of human beings, is flawed and our claim is not that we are perfect, or necessarily  better than others, but that despite our frailty and flaws we are held in the love of God. Whatever our faults Christ holds us to himself and will continue to do so, in this life and beyond. But as Paul says we have this treasure in earthen vessels.

Then there is an even more serious reason for concern than current failures in the leadership and that is the kind of society in which we are living. It is a society in which most people have no time for the church and in which the majority of young people say they have no religion. We are a minority in a society which is indifferent or hostile to the Christian faith. So where, as we prepare to receive a new Rector can we take some encouragement?

First, as some distinguished historians have pointed out in recent years, Larry Siedentop and Tom Holland for example, what we most cherish about Western civilisation is due to the Christian faith. At the heart of our society still is the principle that every individual matters and is of equal value and worth. That did not just come out of the blue. It is the historical legacy of the New Testament built into our laws and institutions. From the first this conviction was expressed in looking after the weak, sick and poor. When in the fourth century the pagan Julian became emperor and tried to turn the empire back to paganism he admitted he had nothing to offer that compared with the care which the church offered to widows, orphans and the sick. It is that concern for the vulnerable that lead Christians over the centuries to found hospitals and in recent years to pioneer good palliative care.

Our concern for the individual in our society is a result of the Christian witness that in the eyes of God we are all of equal value and worth. This poses a question to our society. If it abandons the foundation of our values, if we cut their roos,  what is it going to put in its place?

Secondly we can take heart from the heroic witness of Christians down the ages, and indeed in other parts of the church today. Almost every day in the church calendar we remember some saint or martyr. Last week for example we remember Anskar, the 9^th century missionary to Denmark and Sweden, Gilbert the founder of the only English religious order in the 12^th century and the martyrs of Japan in the 16^th. As a result of the mission of St Francis Xavier at that time there were several thousand baptised Christians but the political rulers turned against them and 26 men and women were mutilated then crucified near Nagasaki. It was this kind of heroism that enabled the Christian faith to capture the heart and mind of the Roman world in the first three centuries. Entirely peacefully, without any positions of power, despite successive fierce persecutions, the church made its way until in 312 the Emperor Constantine himself was converted. These are not just examples to us of those who lived and died for their faith, they live with us in the Communion of Saints, the mystical body of Christ that unites heaven and earth.

Thirdly and above all we can take strength and joy in our wonderful  Christian faith that we share. There was a time when people took it for granted, it was just part of the culture. Now this is no longer the case we can see more clearly what an amazing, glorious thing it is that we believe. When T. S. Eliot was converted to the Christianity in 1927  he welcomed the new hostile situation in which Christians now found themselves, for he thought  it released the Christian faith from what had burdened it since the 18^th century, namely being a badge of respectability for the English middle classes. We can now prize and exult in Christian truth  for its own glorious sake. We can stand and say the creed with all the exaltation of a national anthem before a rugby match.

This life is not a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing. There is a meaning and purpose behind it, which we can discover.  There is a wise and good purpose at the heart of the universe. This wise and good purpose has been made known to us in the people of the Hebrew scriptures culminating in the person of Jesus, crucified, risen, glorified and present through his Spirit in our hearts.

 Today’s first reading is one of the most important in the whole New Testament. In it Paul says ‘I passed on to you what was passed on to me’ These are technical words for passing on a tradition, and what this indicates is that we have here a message that goes back to the very first days of the church. As he wrote:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures ⁴ and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.^[b] 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. ⁹ For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.

Every day the news shock us with some terrible story, another knife killing, another massacre, another accident. It is into this world of strife and sorrow that God comes in the person of Jesus, and in him crucified, risen, glorified   the  back of evil has been  broken, the sting of death overcome  and life opened out to eternity.

The treasure we have is a staggering, mind blowing truth,  an amazing story to tell, one whose overriding importance can and ought to shock us into seeing everything differently. It is indeed good news in a suffering world. We have the treasure in earthen vessels, ourselves, but we have treasure.

At the moment wider society does not want listen. We are like Peter in today’s Gospel who when told to put out into the deep replied that they had been out fishing all night and caught nothing. But then he did do what Jesus asked and found his nets overflowing with a large catch. One of the reasons that the church remembered that story is that it is not just about fishing but about the mission of the church. We can feel we have got nowhere, made no impact. But still we are urged to put out into the deep again, into the deep of God. And who knows, God in his own good time or out of time may once again fill the church with his people. Our vocation is to remain faithful whether the times are propitious or unpropitious. Our time is a difficult one, the culture is unsympathetic but this should all the more should drive us back to cherish the amazing glorious truth that has touched us. At the heart of the universe is a wise and loving power who in Christ has come close to us and who now stirs in our hearts. His grace is daily available to help us grow in love for him and one another and in this way prepare us for the bliss of an eternal life that surpasses anything we can imagine.