Sentipeopletality 1

I have just watched last week's episode of the Durrells. It is a programme that I have come to really enjoy. Part of the story line was the youngest son's crush on a local girl and the complicated emotions involved with that, especially when he sees her talking to another boy.

Sometimes I have moments of sentimentality and nostalgia. I was talking to somebody yesterday about the idea that we would not want to go back to being teenagers again.

Actually, as I was watching the Durrells, I started thinking that I would love to go back to those early teenage years, as feelings of attraction started to awaken (or perhaps a few years earlier), when a rejection, or simply being ignored, or not having the guts to do anything about it all was the end of the world. Conversely, any sign of mutual interest was like all your birthdays coming at once.

I wasn't a very confident teenager. I was very gifted, especially in languages and music, and I suppose I largely hid away in those things, and interacted with the world through those things. I spent most of my time living in a bubble. I had friends but I always somehow had the feeling that most of my life, and my true self, was hidden inside. I suppose that those sorts of feelings are pretty common for anybody at that age but I often admired, and envied people who seemed to be able to burst out of the bubble and jump into the world.

I remembered those feelings when I had crushes on people and I had quite a few of them. I will confess to having one particular crush through most of my teenage years but there were others too. I wish I could go back to those feelings sometimes. I wish I could relive those feelings of butterflies when a certain girl walked into the room. I wish I could remember the complete and utter fear that accompanied any idea of reaching out, or saying anything to any of my crushes. I generally didn't.

I wish I could go back and do things again. If I had a time machine, I would go back to those years and have a word with my younger self and tell myself that more people liked me than I thought, that I should have more courage, more (inter-personal) self-confidence.

I'd like to go back to the first time I clumsily and rather awkwardly at first held hands with a girl. I wish I could go back to my first kiss and relive it. I wish I could go back to those days when it was all a mystery and something to be discovered.

I suppose I have reached a point where I am beginning to feel more clearly that my vocation is to a life of singleness, perhaps it always was really. At this point in my life, it feels like I am discovering a gift and am only now beginning to see that it is a gift. The problem was that for so long I wanted the other gift, and tried taking it. But I don't think it was a gift meant for me. This doesn't make me sad. In fact, quite the opposite: I am feeling quite a lot of joy.

I do wish I could go back to those years though and experience those crushes again.

Easter Vigil Sermon 2019

[Please note that this was not scripted and I have had to try my best to transcribe it.]

Well, I don’t know about you but I am very tired. It has been a very intense week, a very emotional week, and I know it has been for many of you because you have told me so, and made me even more emotional.

When we got home from the Good Friday liturgy yesterday, I put on a film and it was The Passion of the Christ, the Mel Gibson film. I am very fond of that film because I watched it in the cinema on the day that something profound happened. I am not going to tell you about it but it was something profound. It was just me and two nuns in the cinema watching the film that day. If you haven’t seen it, it is a very moving, powerful, but very graphic depiction of what happened to Our Lord on Good Friday. I won’t embarrass her too much but my mum was very upset by the film. (Had I known she would be, I wouldn’t have put it on.)

It’s an amazing film and there is a wonderful scene where Jesus is brought into Caiaphas’ place to be questioned. There’s the moment where Peter denied Jesus three times and then Jesus, who has been beaten and is knocked to the floor looks at Peter and Peter looks at him, and Peter weeps and runs away. In running away he comes across Our Lady, Mary, the mother of Our Lord, Mary Magdalene and John, the beloved disciple. He goes to his knees on the floor and cries because he has betrayed Jesus. Mary, the mother of Our Lord reaches out to him and he says ‘No, Mother, I am not worthy because I have betrayed him.’ We don’t really know what happens to him immediately after that. But what we do know, the only record we have is of three people, Mary, the mother of Our Lord, Mary Magdalene, and the beloved disciple. (Plus a couple of other women in some accounts.)

The question I have got is ‘where were the others’? What happened to them because all we know is that they were in the Upper Room, they were in the Garden of Gethsemane and when Jesus was arrested they fled. Did they go back to the Upper Room? Were they hiding there? Because that’s where Jesus found them after his resurrection. What were they doing? What were they saying? Because they all, like us, were in the same boat, because they, like us turned their backs on Jesus like we turned our back on Jesus on Maundy Thursday, abandoning him in the darkness.

We left the Church in darkness and then, on Good Friday, we faced the stark Church, bare of decoration. And I know that for many of you it was a very emotional experience to come and venerate the cross. But what were the disciples doing? That’s the question. I want to know and I know that I will never find out but I am curious because we, like them, turned our backs.

But what do we do next? We come together in the night. We gather in the night to welcome the new light of Christ. Even though we have turned our backs on him, he is risen from the dead and he will never turn his back on us.

For those of you for whom, like me, it has been a very emotional week, this is the joy that finishes it because without that pain and without that emotion, without that realisation of how Christ suffered and how he was betrayed, how he bled, naked and thirsty for us, without that realisation we cannot have that joy, without that realisation, we cannot have the joy—truly have the joy—of Easter because otherwise we simply go from welcoming him in on Palm Sunday with shouts of ‘Hosanna’ to celebrating that he is risen. But what happened in between?

We are here and we are here to celebrate that risen life. I don’t know about you but, as we were listening to those vigil readings, which are long, and it can be uncomfortable to sit through, but they remind us of this story of salvation that has been going since long before we were even here. We step into it. We step into the story of salvation and celebrate the risen Christ.

All that suffering, all that pain, is gone.

If Jesus had simply died on the cross, it would have been worth nothing. Hundreds of people were crucified. Hundreds. If Jesus had simply dies, he would have just been one of those hundreds but the fact that he is risen from the dead, the fact that he has defeated that which none of us can defeat, means that our hope is restored. Our faith is restored and, whatever we have been through, we can enter into that new life.

We are now going to reaffirm our baptismal promises. This is the moment in which we stand and we say ‘I want to enter into that new life’ and the holy water will be liberally sprinkled on each of you as you do so.

Let us stand and enter into that new life.

Sermon for Good Friday 2019

Sermon preached at Farington Moss St Paul

Isaiah 52.13-53.12; Hebrews 10.16-25; John 18.1-19.42

The Church is bare. It looks different. Everything is bare and there is no decoration. It is empty. It is as though all hope and joy is gone for ever.

The readings and liturgies of Holy Week bring the story alive for us. We ponder Mary pouring out her expensive perfume. Why? Because she wanted to give everything. We ponder the request to see Jesus, and examine our motives and the picture of Jesus that we hold. We ponder Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and Jesus’ inclusion of even him in those last words and events of Holy Week.

Last night, you watched as I watched the feet of twelve parishioners. We celebrated the Eucharist, trying to place ourselves in the Upper Room with Christ and his disciples. We then stripped the Church and kept a silent watch until midnight. Not everybody stayed of course but it was interesting to see people come and go during the watch. No words. No interaction apart from maybe a nod or a simple wave. No knowing why each of those people was there, except perhaps the call to be near Jesus. And then the moment when the candles surrounding Jesus were extinguished and we turned our backs and left the Church to go into the night. Deserting Jesus as his disciples deserted him.

Today we take our place with Christ on the Cross. It is not an easy place to stand. It is not comfortable. It is one of the most painful things that we can experience to watch a body, naked and bleeding, flesh ripped away by scourging, hands and feet nailed to a cross and hanging there, struggling to breathe for six hours.

It is horrible and our hearts cry out for justice, for some kind of sense to it all. But there is none. All we can do is stand and watch as Jesus bleeds and as Jesus dies. And yet what is his response to all this? How did he respond?

His words in St John’s Passion reading are words of love and care. ‘Woman, here is your son.’ ‘Here is your mother’. Words of tenderness and love and care. And then those words that speak of the very real and human experience that Christ went through: ‘I am thirsty.’ ‘It is finished.’ The terrible thirst of hanging on a cross in the heat of the midday sun.

In the other Gospels, Jesus goes even further and prays that God would forgive those who cause his very real and physical suffering, because they do not know what they are doing. Such tender love and forgiveness even to those who bring him such pain. Such love and forgiveness shown right up to the last moment.

Why didn’t he speak up? Why didn’t he defend himself? Why didn’t he display his power? Why didn’t he, who was the very word of creation not put a stop to all this suffering and pain?

Today, we have to be the ones who realise that we are the ones who have betrayed Christ. We are the ones who have driven the nails into his hands and feet. We are the ones who have cast lots for his clothing. We are the ones who have turned out backs. We are the ones who cannot help ourselves. And what is Christ’s reaction?

‘Father, forgive them, for they do not  know what they are doing?’ Every little sin that we have committed has hammered the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet. Every little white lie, every moment of gossip, every moment when we have preferred our own comfort to the life that God calls us to. We are the ones. ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing?’

So often we do not know what we are doing and we are in this position. We are all people slowly trying to figure out what it means to be God’s people. We are all trying to adjust our lives in order to live as God calls us to live. We do not know what we are doing, but in our ignorance and weakness Jesus says those same words ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’.

One of the people crucified with him mocked him; the other saw that Jesus was innocent of offence and asked to be remembered in his kingdom. Two people, both guilty, as we all are. What was the difference? The response to Jesus on the Cross. As we come to the Cross, we too ask to be remembered.

Today is the day that the Cross has to become real for us. We have to see Christ on the Cross and we have to allow this sight to touch and move our hearts. Will we mock? Will we tell ourselves that it was all a load of rubbish? Or will we see that Jesus died an innocent man and yet did so willingly to show us, in the fullest way possible, how to love? Will we too ask to be remembered in Jesus’ kingdom?

We watch, in our imaginations, as Jesus dies. We see his lifeless body hanging there and we begin to see the darkness that so often seems to overshadow our world. We see the darkness in our own lives, the darkness of our own sin. We see that death is the punishment for our sin and watch as an innocent man, the Word made flesh, submits to this experience of death. He is taken down and laid in the tomb.

The very source of life, which is the light of the world, that light which the darkness cannot overcome, willingly descends into the darkness of death. Satan trembles as Jesus releases God’s people from the grave. We tremble as we wait in the emptiness and darkness of these next two days. The whole earth trembles as we await the victory of Christ.

This death that we watch, with tears and broken hearts, is simply the beginning W    e know that our Redeemer lives, and that he will bring us to God’s kingdom and raise us up at the last.  We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, for by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday 2019

Sermon preached at Lostock Hall St James

Exodus 12.1-14; 1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 13.1-17, 31b-35

‘Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world’. What would you do if you knew that your hour had come to depart from this world.

It is very interesting to talk to people who are approaching death. Several times I have had conversations with people who say, “Father, I am ready”. In one sense, it is a very painful thing to hear but in another it is one of the most beautiful. Very often, it is a time of last words, where families can become reconciled. Sometimes mistakes are left in the past and people wait.

Jesus chose to love. Jesus chose to serve. Jesus chose to wash the feet of his disciples, even knowing that one of them would betray him. His love was so deep, so genuine, so real, that even the one who would betray him was included in his last words and actions.

Washing people’s feet was the job of the lowest servant: so menial and so dirty was it considered. Imagine the time and place: men walking around in sandals, feet covered in the dust of the ground. I remember how dirty my feet got, walking around in Africa.  We are not just talking about a little freshening up: we are talking about removing all the dirt and dust that would have accumulated. It was not a pleasant task.

We are very self-conscious about our feet. So many of us do not like our feet to be seen, to be smelt, to be touched, to be kissed. Only in the most intimate of relationships are our feet seen and touched, or by medical professionals, or perhaps by servants whose job it was to wash them.

Their feet would have been dirty. They may well have been smelly. There could be no more pretending. Nobody could pretend that their feet were not dirty and smelly. It would have been plain for all to see. There was no more hiding from the fact.

I wonder whether the disciples were thinking about who was going to wash their feet. We know that they spoke about who would be considered the greatest. There is, however, no record, that they had a conversation about who should be the one who would wash the feet of the others. Were they thinking about this?

Then Jesus removed his garments. (It is plural in the Greek, suggesting that Jesus did, in fact, remove his clothes.) Jesus then took water in a basin and washed the feet of his disciples. I wonder whether the disciples were embarrassed by this. I wonder whether the disciples were thinking that it should be they who was the feet of the others—not their teacher, their leader, their rabbi.

And so Jesus comes to Peter who objects. ‘Are you going to wash my feet?’ There is a sense in which this was wrong. It should have been the other way around.

‘You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ Peter’s objection was perhaps understandable and every year, when I ask twelve people to let me wash their feet, I get the same questions, the same objections, the same sense of embarrassment. ‘Father, are you going to wash my feet?’ Most of the responses I get, when people say ‘yes’, are a rather hesitant agreement.

For me, it is a moment when, in a very real and profound way, I remember who I am and what I am called to be as a priest. I am called to be an icon of Christ, to speak Christ’s words to his people, to serve them as Christ served his disciples. Of all the moments in the year, it is one of the most emotional and most moving.

Those who allow me to wash their feet actually teach me who I am and what I am called to be. They, actually, are the ones who help me to become what Christ has called me to be. Without them, my priesthood would be less real, less authentic, and so I thank them. I have asked twelve people to allow me to wash their feet, symbolic of the twelve disciples. Once I have washed their feet, if any others of you wish to have your foot washed, please do come forward when those twelve have left their seats and it will be my honour and privilege to wash your feet.

For the disciples, whose feet would most likely have been caked in dust and dirt, it was a lesson in humility and a lesson in grace. It was a lesson that taught them about God’s love and grace.

It was a lesson that taught them that Christ would be the one who would remove the stain from their lives. It was a lesson that taught them that they had to allow Christ the room in their lives to make them clean. They had to allow Christ in and put aside their pride, and even their sense of shame and embarrassment.

We cannot make ourselves clean. We too must allow Christ to touch our lives in the most secret and intimate places. We must be prepared to lay ourselves bare to Christ, that it is he who will cleanse us, that it is he who will raise us to be what God has created us to be.

Tonight is one of the most powerful and the most emotional experiences of the Church’s year when, if we allow it to, the truth of what Christ did for us can become very real to us. We find ourselves in the place of the disciples, having our feet washed, receiving Christ’s body and his blood, but then we will strip the Church and we desert Christ, as he was deserted by his disciples. A watch is kept until midnight. You can go home and come back later, as many times as you wish. You can stay for ten minutes or the whole three hours. It is our experience of sitting with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, fighting our need to sleep as we keep watch. We then leave, knowing that tomorrow we will take our place at the foot of the cross.

May these events become real to you this evening. May we all be brought close to Christ is his passion and death, that we may celebrate the great Paschal feast with renewed life and joy.

Wednesday of Holy Week 2019

Sermon preached at Farington Moss St Paul

Isaiah 50.4-9a; Hebrews 12.1-3; John 13.21-32

What would you do if God spoke to you and told you that you would have to suffer in order to do God’s will and lead people to God? Would you be willing to do it? Would you be willing to sacrifice yourself for everybody else?

The problem is that we are designed to protect ourselves at all times. The workings of our brains make us avoid danger. Faced with certain stimuli, certain dangers, our brains set off a whole process where adrenalin rushes through our bodies and we prepare ourselves either to fight or fly. This whole process happens in milliseconds. We come pre-wired, as it were, with all sorts of self-protection mechanisms.

Because this, of course, is how we survive. The world is actually a very dangerous place, full of dangers and threats to our well-being. We probably don’t realise it because so much of that which protects us and takes us away from danger happens without us necessarily being aware of it. We don’t go towards danger, towards suffering, we avoid it.

And if we know that somebody is a threat to our wellbeing, we tend to avoid them, to hide from them. If we know that going to a certain place, even if we always go there will put us in danger, we will often go somewhere else. We avoid danger.

Jesus came to supper with his disciples. The Scriptures tell us that he knew that one of the disciples would betray him and that he would be beaten and put to death. More than this, the Scriptures tell us that Jesus even knew who would betray him. What would you do? I think I would probably exclude that person. I would probably make sure that I was safe and protected. Most of us probably would because that is how we are wired—to protect ourselves.

John’s Gospel is the only one that tell the story in the way we have heard it tonight: that Jesus specifically gave a piece of bread to Judas and told him to go and do what he was going to do. The other Gospels simply tell the story of the Last Supper and that Jesus simply said that one of the disciples would betray him. However it actually happened, it is clear that the disciples didn’t know at the time that Judas was going in order to betray Jesus. Otherwise, they would probably have tried to stop him.

So what was going on when Jesus gave him the bread? Was this the same bread that Jesus broke and gave to his disciples saying ‘This is my body, which is given for you’? This was a holy event. This is the event that has led the Church to celebrate the Mass, the Eucharist, Holy Communion for two thousand years. We do this in remembrance of Christ and in remembrance of this event in the Gospels. It is a holy event that we should rightly take very seriously indeed. It is a holy event for which we should prepare ourselves and examine our conscience and make confession of our sins if that is what we need to do.

There are many things for which the Church, historically, has banned people from receiving the Sacrament of Holy Communion. I remember once going to a Church where a woman was not allowed to receive Holy Communion because she was living with her boyfriend. She was not counted worthy of receiving these most precious gifts of Christ’s body and his blood.

If anybody was not worthy of receiving these holy gifts, it was the person who would betray Jesus and hand him over to the people who would beat him and nail him to a cross to die, bleeding, naked, and alone. And yet, to read the other Gospels, it would seem that Jesus included even Judas in the sharing of his body and his blood. It would appear that Jesus washed even his feet. It would appear that Jesus still loved him to the end, even though he was going to do such a horrible thing.

Why did Jesus include him? Why did Jesus do this? Why did Jesus not do something to protect himself?

Isaiah 50:5 says that ‘the Lord God has opened my ear’. Christians have interpreted this part of Isaiah as being a prophecy about Jesus. The phrase ‘to open the ear’ suggests that it was closed. You don’t open something that is already open. It suggests that what was heard was not in the hearing of ordinary people: there had to be another, special opening. In other words, it could perhaps be translated as ‘God has enabled me to hear things that nobody else can hear’.

It was this hearing that came from God that enables the servant in the prophecy to give his back and his cheeks to those who would hurt him. This is not just a submitting because there was no escape: this is an active giving of his back and of his face because of this special hearing that God has granted to him, because of knowing that ‘the Lord God helps me…he who vindicates me is near’.

The truth must hit us that Jesus willingly and actively went to his suffering and death for us. It was so actively and freely done that even the one who would betray him was included in the last words and actions of Jesus. It was not a passive going to death: it was chosen. This is why even Judas could be included, because Jesus knew that this was God’s will. More than this, Jesus knew that this was the very reason he took flesh and became man.

As I look at some of the pain and suffering I have endured in my life, I can begin to see how it has all been part of God’s plan. God worked through Christ’s suffering. God can also work through ours. It is not, I believe, that God wants us to suffer or experience pain, but God can use every situation and use it for good—even when we suffer and die.

If even Judas was included in the Last Supper, there is hope for all of us. Whether we feel ourselves worthy or unworthy, there is a place for us at the Lord’s table. Let us not hesitate to come. Let us receive Christ’s body and blood, so freely given for us.

Tuesday of Holy Week 2019

Sermon preached at Lostock Hall St James

Isaiah 49.1-7; 1 Corinthians 1.18-31; John 12.20-36

The Lord called me before I was born,
while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.

When I was interviewed for this post, one of the questions I was asked was ‘why are you a Christian?’ At first I thought it was a daft question, the kind that makes me want to roll my eyes, but actually, the question and the answer I gave have stayed with me ever since and I have been thinking about it a lot.

I talked about the very first time I ever—to my knowledge—went to Church. My mother and I worked out that I must have been 9 or 10. It was a pretty ordinary Church of England parish in a predominantly working class area of Bristol. It was neither very high nor very low: what we might call ‘middle of the road’. I don’t remember the hymns that were sung. I don’t remember what the sermon was about. What I remember is that I had a deep sense inside of me  that I was supposed to be there.

When I was around the age of 14, I had joined the Church choir and had turned up early—as I usually do—for Choir practice. The back door to the Church was unlocked and so I went in but there was nobody there. I climbed into the pulpit while nobody was there and looked out over the Church, slightly afraid that I would be caught. I had that same feeling. I was supposed to be there.

When I was confirmed, I was given a Good News bible. At one point I read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel every single day. I remember thinking that that was how I wanted to live my life and that if we all did, then the world would be a better place.

A few years ago, after I was ordained, I met up with a friend of mine that I was at college with for lunch in Lancaster. We were talking quite personally about our faith. I said to him that where I wanted to be was in the place of the beloved disciple, reclining next to Jesus at the table, with my head on his breast. In my holier moments, I still feel that way now.

As I look back, and the more time goes on, it feels more and more that I was born for what I am doing now. That’s not to say that it is always easy. I have very human moments where I want to stray and do my own thing. I have very human moments. I like the verse in the hymn, O Jesus, I have promised that says:

Oh, let me feel Thee near me; The world is ever near; I see the sights that dazzle, The tempting sounds I hear; My foes are ever near me, Around me and within; But, Jesus, draw Thou nearer, And shield my soul from sin.

In many ways, I expect that I will always be tempted to go my own way but when I come back to myself, that same sense remains that I want to be near Christ.

When I read that the Greeks said to Philip that they wanted to see Jesus, I feel something of that sentiment in my heart. I too want to see Jesus and I want to be near him.

But if we want to see Jesus, what does it look like? What is it like to be in the presence of Christ? What is it like to recline with him at the table? What is it like to see his face?

Perhaps we all have very different images of Jesus. Do we see him as the Lord enthroned at the right hand of the father? Do we see him as the friend of sinners? Do we see him naked, exhausted, bleeding and suffocating on the cross? What does the Jesus you want to see look like?

Some people in the time of Jesus wanted the Messiah to look like a mighty warrior who would free the Jewish people from the Romans and restore God’s kingdom and rule over it. Some people wanted Jesus to be the person who would confirm and approve of all their rules and regulations. Still others wanted Jesus to be the person who would maintain the status quo and not disturb their lives too much.

The problem was that for many people, Jesus didn’t fit the picture that they had of the Messiah. Jesus spent time eating and drinking with sinners. He spent time speaking to those who would listen. He threatened their comfort when he called out the hypocrisy of the religious establishment of the day. He did miraculous deeds, even if it was on the Sabbath. His message threatened a lot of people.

Perhaps this is why so many people took exception to him. Perhaps this is why he was betrayed by one of his disciples. Perhaps this is why he ended up dying on the cross.

Perhaps it does all seem like foolishness. Perhaps the real message of who Jesus was—the one who gave his life for us on the cross, the one who chose self-emptying rather than self-exaltation—is not the message that we always want to hear. Because if that is the message, then it is also what we are called to in our own lives.

What we are called to is the same life shown to us by Jesus, where we stoop to wash each other’s feet, where we are prepared to spend time with the people who are less attractive, less successful, less wealthy. What we are called to is to empty ourselves as Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming obedient to death on the cross. What we are called to are lives of weakness, lives of sorrow where we walk where Jesus walked, where we speak as Jesus spoke, where we love and heal as Jesus loved and healed. It is not an attractive picture to many people but that is the picture of the Jesus we are called to follow.

The picture of Jesus we are called to have is the picture of him who said to his disciples, ‘This is my body, which is given for you’ and ‘This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins’. This Jesus is the Jesus who places himself in our hands, in our mouths.

This Holy Week is an amazing time in which we are invited not only to see but also to walk with the real Jesus. As we seek to do so, may the real Jesus take root in our hearts that we may live like him.

Sermon for Monday of Holy Week 2019

Sermon preached at Farington Moss St Paul

Isaiah 42.1-9; Hebrew 9.11-15; John 12.1-11

If I were to ask you why you came to Church, what would your answer be? I am not going to ask for your answers but I want you think about what you might say. I don’t want to know what you think the right answer ought to be—what you think might be the right reasons for coming to Church—but I want you to think about what your answer would be if you were being really honest.

Or perhaps if I were to ask you why you have come this evening, what would your honest answer be? Because the vicar said that you ought to come as much as you can during Holy Week? Because you like the time to think and reflect? Because you’re the verger and you see it as your job to set up for the service? Because there was nothing better to do? What would your answer be?

The truth is, of course, that we all come for different reasons, and sometimes different reasons at different times. Some of us might come out of some sense of duty. Some of us might come to see other human faces. Some of us might come because we are searching for order and meaning in our lives. Some of us might even come because we have had recent experiences of being touched by God’s grace and wish to respond to that, to learn more, to go further in our journeys of faith.

The reasons we come to Church are important because, to some extent, they determine how the experiences will be for us. Our response to the services, the sermons, and everything else that happens, is largely dependent on why we have come.

If we have come because we like to hear sermons, then we will either be pleased or disappointed with the sermon. Any preacher can have an off day or an off week but if that is the reason we have come, we will not enjoy the service so much.

Or perhaps we come because we like liturgy and ceremony. We will be pleased or disappointed according to how well the service was conducted. But if the person leading the service is having an off day, forgotten something that we think is important, or if the children are making too much noise, or if the person next to us cannot find their way around the service book and we have to help them, we can find ourselves distracted.

Or perhaps we have come because we have a role in the Church community and see it as our job to do certain things. Well, what then if somebody else hasn’t done their job, or something happens that mean we can’t do our job? Do we go home because we are no longer needed? Do we sulk? Do we feel disappointed, especially if we have done some preparation?

Perhaps we don’t even really know why we are here. Perhaps it almost feels as though we have just ended up here and we don’t know what to expect.

In today’s Gospel reading, we have two different people, with two very different attitudes, with two very different ways of behaving.

Judas is the parish treasurer if you like. He is the one, according to the reading, who keeps the purse. He is the one who knows how much money they have. He probably has very complicated spreadsheets to manage their accounts. He cares about how the money is used. Whether or not it was true that he stole from the purse—after all, this was written long after it became clear that Judas betrayed Jesus and so this could have been added in to further shame him—his focus was on their resources.

Because of this, his reaction to Mary’s extravagance was one of criticism. We don’t know how much money they had. Perhaps things were dangerously tight. Perhaps he genuinely thought that the perfume should be sold so that they would be much more comfortable. We don’t really know and we are unable to ask Judas. But his reason for being there affected how he responded to what he saw.

But what of Mary, who, after all, was the one whose actions made this story worth telling? She was the one who had sat at the feet of Jesus while her sister was rushing around. She was the one who was taking in Jesus’ every word. She was the one who was hungry for his words. Her brother had been raised from the dead. Her whole life had fallen apart with the death of her brother and yet Jesus had brought him back.

It was in response to this listening to Jesus, to seeing what Jesus had done for her, to seeing that Jesus had given her back her life and her security. After all, with the death of her brother, she would have had nobody to provide for her.

It is in that moment that we lay aside our tasks, our roles, our busyness, and simply come into the presence of Christ, that we too might begin to see what it is that Christ has done for us. It is seeing what Christ has done for us that our hearts too will be moved by Christ’s love and grace.

I don’t know why you come to Church, or why you have come this evening, but I hope and pray that it is because you want to come into the presence of Jesus. I hope and pray that it is because you want to walk the Way of the Cross with Jesus. I hope it is because you want to go deeper into the story of what Jesus has done for us. I hope and pray that the story of this Holy Week will become personal for you.

I hope and pray that you will be so moved by what Christ has done for you that your response will be to pour out the precious perfume. I hope and pray that your response will be not to care what other people think but to pour out your love to Christ, who poured out his love for you.

I hope that you will hear Christ’s voice saying to you, ‘This is for you.’ As we receive Holy Communion each day this Holy Week, I pray that you will hear his voice saying to you, ‘This is my body, given for you.’