2024 is the year of the wedding in the Rushton household – my beautiful son Adam is marrying the utterly lovely Lucy in June.  They are busy planning venues, and menus and wedding clothes and guest lists, cars and flowers.  the senior ladies of the party – Lucy’s mum and I – have already got together and agreed that hats are an unnecessary part of any wedding as we both look ridiculous in them – on such wise and sensible choices we are building a solid relationship for the future!

I remember at my own wedding reception, sitting on the top table, looking out over assembled guests and thinking – all the people I care about are gathered in this room and they have come together to be with us – Peter and I – it was an utterly joyful moment.  and now as I look back I realise what a weird and wonderful mixture of people were there – my family, Peter’s family, his friends, my friends, our friends.  Here was a roomful of different groups of people who had almost nothing in common, from different geographical, social, educational backgrounds, different world views, different hopes, dreams, troubles, sorrows.  And here they were gathered for just one day with the only thing that they had in common the joining of two people in marriage, the celebration of one covenanted relationship, holding them together.

We could pick out a number of different things to talk about from our Gospel story this Sunday, a wedding in Cana, the first sign of Jesus’ messiahship, the turning of water into wine, a story of how Jesus gets catapulted into action by his mother’s insistence that people should listen to him.  But in this week of prayer for Christian Unity I want to talk about family and relationships and weddings. 

Now more than ever we need to talk about the importance of being the family which is the body of Christ.  My family of origin, like lots of people’s families, is complicated – people fall out with one another, hurt one another, disagree with one another.  Sometimes we simply don’t understand one another.  But still we are family and being family, I’ve come to see, is more important than pretty much everything which threatens to divide us.  Now that doesn’t mean we should stay in relationships which are abusive or which undermine our basic wellbeing – far from it.   But outside of those really difficult situations, the thing I’ve learnt most from being family is the importance of love in making it possible to remain in relationship – the apostle Peter puts it like this in his first letter to the church:   Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 

Just as we don’t get to choose our birth family, we don’t get to choose who our brothers and sisters in Christ are.  Later in John’s gospel, Jesus will use the imagery of the vine to talk about the importance of belonging together, rooted in Christ.  I don’t get to choose who is in the vine with me, the only choice I get is to stay rooted in the vine or to cut myself off from it.  And if I cut myself off from the vine, I cut myself off from its root, from Christ.   

Love, belonging, family, commitment, covenant – weddings are a microcosm of all the complexities and frustrations and joys of being in community, joined together if only for one day, with the bride and her bridegroom at the centre, their covenant relationship holding it all together, the reason we come together at all, the reason we try to make it work.  

I’m just glad that for Adam and Lucy’s wedding we are agreed on the no-hat thing.  But I would wear the silliest hat in the world if I needed to in order to be there, joining my blessings with people i know and people I may never meet again for a beautiful bride and her bridegroom.   

Genesis 2

Around 3,500 years ago, at the time that this bit of the Bible first began to be told, Creation stories were very common – pretty much every civilisation had their own idea about how the world began.  They based their stories on the events they saw around them – how people behaved to one another, how bad things and good things shaped their lives, natural disasters and beautiful sunsets, the birth of a child, the death of a beloved friend.  As mankind began to think and ask questions and to wonder ‘why?’, every tribe and people group tried to make sense of the world in which they lived. 

Most creation stories were pretty brutal:  mankind often the byproduct of some kind of divine war between rival Gods, born out of bloodshed and pain.  But the Israelite people, this wandering tribe somewhere in the Middle East – they saw something different in the world.  Their story of Creation is a love story,  a story of beauty and wonder and joy.   God needs someone to work with him to make the world beautiful.  So he takes the mud from the ground – in Hebrew the word is Adamah – and he fashions it into the shape of a human being.  And then lovingly, he breathes his own divine breath into the human and sets him in a garden to tend it and to make it beautiful.  And the Bible tells us that the human is called Adam, literally one made of earth. 

But soon he realises that Adam is lonely – ‘it is not good for the Adam to be alone’ – and decides to make a companion.  And God could have done the same thing again, made a human from the mud, breathed life into it, but instead he chooses to take the Adam he has made and breaks it into 2 – two halves of a whole, both created from the mud of the earth and the breath of God.  Flesh of one flesh, bone of one bone, earth animated and made human by the breath or the spirit of God.  And he sets the couple back in the garden to tend it and to make it beautiful and fruitful. 

Those of you who know the rest of the story know that it all goes a bit pear-shaped after this.  Adam and Eve eat the apple they are forbidden to eat and get chucked out of the garden and the whole of the rest of the Bible, the rest of the history of mankind really, is the story of how we are still seeking to get back to the garden of Eden and our perfect relationship with the earth, with one another and with God. 

And this is why today is so special.  At the heart of our human story is the desire for connection:  connection with the earth, with God, and with the other half of our being which makes us whole.  Today we celebrate the fact that Adam and Lucy are made one, two halves of a whole human being.  When my grandad died, my Nan used to say that it was as though half of her had died – today we are witnesses to the moment when two halves fit back together because it is not good for the Adam to be alone. 

It’ll be obvious why I chose this reading for Adam and Lucy.  Names are important and Adam from before he was born was always Adam – I don’t think we ever had any doubt about his name.  And Lucy of course means light.   In the beginning God made mankind out of earth – Adamah – and breath.  But 1500 years later there was another creation story where Jesus, the light of the world, came to forge a path back to the garden for all of humankind.  So today we celebrate how earth and light are joined to create a new whole – rooted in earth, blessed by light.  Adam and Lucy, the Lord bless you and keep you in all that lies ahead and may you ever be a reminder to us of our shared humanity- made of earth, given life by the light and breath of God.   Amen 

There is a river in my back garden.
It wasn’t there yesterday.

Yesterday the river kept neatly to its course
Flowed in an orderly way from hill to sea.
Children played under the trees
Lining the banks, rooted in its life-giving water
Full in leaf and life, the healing of dappled shade.
Lovers strolled on paths along its route
Touching, sharing, murmuring
Sweet words of love and promises
Hopes for the future.
Old men sat and fished and remembered
The one that got away,
What could have been, long ago dreams.
And old women boiled water on an ancient Primus
Hiccupping flame, brewing memory in a cup,
Fragrant offering
A ritual as old as love itself.

But today the river is in my garden
Unbidden, uncheckable,
Full of mud and debris and awfulness and death.

I wish…

I wish I’d treasured the river when I had the chance.

One thing has struck me about the events of the last 18 months – in particular what has happened during the COVID pandemic, the increasing impact of global warming and the climate crisis,  but also the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and the re-emergence of the Taliban.  It is that the big questions of life and death and of sacrifice and purpose and of suffering have been at the heart of what we have lived through. 

Bad things happen to good people.  Innocent people suffer at the hands of greedy or misguided or just plain thoughtless people.  Everyone – good or bad, rich or poor – is at risk from major natural disasters like pandemics although, as always, the worst of the cost is borne by those who are most vulnerable. 

Where is God in this?  Does he care?  How can he allow such wanton destruction and the suffering of those least able to defend themselves?

These are not new questions.  Jesus, the Prince of Peace and the Redeemer of the world, warns his disciples that there will still be war, there will still be disasters, earthquakes, famines, even though he offers himself as the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the world. This is the beginning of the birth pangs he says, the end is still to come.

On my shelf in my office I have one of those cards with a helpful and encouraging message:  ‘Everything will be okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, it isn’t the end.’  In a nutshell, this card gathers up the whole message of the Bible, all 783,000 words, 31,000 verses, 1,189 chapters of it. 

Everything is not okay in this life, on this earth today.  People die, mourned by those who love them.  Many lives are cut short by violence, disease, or famine.  Wars are fought so that good will drive out evil and some battles are won but many are lost. 

And yet, in the end we know that good will triumph over evil.  We have the promise in Jesus Christ that ultimately love wins – love wins over hate, compassion trumps cruelty, peace reigns even in war,  joy dispels sadness.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will never, can never overcome it.

One day, the Bible promises there will be a new heaven and a new earth and Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace, will reign as Lord of Lords and King of Kings.  Then there will be no more crying, no more mourning and no more sadness.   All the old things will pass away and a new creation will be born.  Today we witness those birth pangs and we weep with Jesus over the destruction of his temple, our world. He weeps with us at the graveside, on the battlefield, by the hospital bed. We are not alone as we mourn, and the end is in sight.

I have one other cheery card on my shelf, this time a quote from Winston Churchill – ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going’.

So let us keep going, let us travel on together through the world’s pain, holding before us the light of Christ and the promise of good to come.  Let’s keep going, brothers and sisters together, looking for signs of the Kingdom of the Prince of Peace as we go, and doing all the good we can, where we can, as a sign of our commitment to the future and in love for our fellow travellers.  Amen

We believe that when Jesus sat down in Nazareth and said that he had come to bring good news to the poor and to set the oppressed free that he intended his church to do the same, not as an afterthought but at the heart of our being. The poor are to be blessed first.

We believe in Mary’s song – that God raises up the humble and scatters the proud. Jesus set a child as the example to his disciple. We need to be humble enough to listen to those whom the world discounts and not to be distracted by the voices loud with money or privilege.

We believe in Mustard Seeds – that God plants what he will where he will and that we have the task of seeing what he is doing and helping it to grow, especially in places of poverty. We are called to enable and encourage people in their local places to help shape places of hospitality to which all are welcome

We believe in Yeast that multiplies and grows from within, transforming the dough and bringing it to life. We want to be able to identify places where we can invest in starting a process of new growth where the expectation is that the yeast will bud and grow, bud and grow, creating new communities of faith over time.

We believe in Fig Trees – and faithful passionate gardeners! – who aren’t bearing fruit today but with care and patience could be fruitful tomorrow. We want to give a second chance to places which have been impoverished to see what God can do – but we are also ready to cut down the Fig Tree which is not fruitful.

We believe that Jesus chose all sorts of people for all sorts of tasks: Peter the headstrong, Thomas the seeker after truth, Andrew who brings his brother to see the Christ; Mary who sits and listens, Martha who serves through action; Zaccheus who invites Jesus to his home with joy and Simon the Pharisee who invites Jesus out of pride; and Judas who betrays Jesus and is forgiven. We see and wonder at the rich diversity of talents and gifts and want to be like Jesus, shaping this glorious mess of humanity into a people who follow and serve – those given titles like ‘Disciple’ and ‘Apostle’ (or Vicar), and those he simply calls ‘friend’.

We believe that Jesus ‘sent home’ as many people as he drew into the community set apart to walk with him. The early church grew because local people took responsibility or growing their own churches in their place, with only a few sent out to take the Gospel to new places. We want to see more local churches grow up, led by local people for local communities.

We believe that Jesus loved and grieved over the Temple building, drawn to the sacred space and yet frustrated, even angered, by its inadequacy.

We believe that place matters, that Jesus sought out quiet spaces to pray, that he enjoyed the hospitality of homes, and saw and appreciated the beauty of the world around him. We want to create safe spaces where people can come together as community, can be still and find peace, and can enjoy the beauty of the built and the natural environment.

We believe that where our treasure is, there our heart will be too. We are called to use our money and other resources sensibly and well for the sake of the Kingdom and we understand that people will be able to see where our heart really is by how we spend the money and other resources we have.

We believe that God will provide that which we need for his mission in this place and that, like the lilies of the field, we should not be anxious about money. We know we have to balance our income and outgoings as a diocese but we don’t want to act so quickly, out of anxiety, that we do harm to people or communities.

We believe that we cannot serve God and wealth. We will not protect our wealth at the expense of the growth of God’s kingdom

We believe that the created world is the Father’s gift to the Son and we are to treat it as a sacred gift. As the Church, we are called to lead the way in combating climate change in this country and as an example to the global church – this is a Gospel imperative, striving for justice for those most at risk in the face of increasing global temperatures. By living simply and humbly, we believe we can make a difference in the climate emergency.

She sat down beside me as I wept in the now emptied church.

And she said ‘may I tell you about my God?’

Wrapt in misery, I could only nod.

Her eyes looked out toward far horizons, toward distant hills

“My God” she said.  “My God

Is called Jesus.

He has other names but that is his name.

In the beginning – well, in a beginning – he became almost nothing for me

One tiny cell, buried in the deep dark of a womb.

Held, nurtured, protected, carried.

Vulnerable, loved.

Growing surrounded – engulfed – by the quiet steady heartbeat of love.

Until at his birth, the heavens rang with angel song

and shepherds came in from the cold

and Wise Men knelt before him.

Up from the water and out of the wilderness, he came again, different this time,

Wind swept, fired up, full of passion and grace.

My God turns water into wine and saves the day,

banishes those things which make men mad,

heals the sick and the ashamed,

lifts up those bent double by affliction so they can see the world again

forgives the unforgiveable, embraces the unembraceable,
invites the uninvited

receives the benediction of tears, mingled with the perfume of the grave.

One day, to be with his friends in their fear, my God walked on water.

And brave, bold, reckless Peter jumped out of the boat and walked on water too!

And when the beating waves drew him down – as inevitably they would –

My God reached out his hand and said ‘Come’

And walked with Peter back to the boat

Eventually, they came for him, my God,

in the dark, with swords.

He received their blows, their scorn, their contempt.

They spat on him and whipped him and they nailed him to a cross.

And in the end – well, at an end – he was held again

This time no spark of hope, no heartbeat of love.

Simply the mourning of women and the silence of a tomb.

But this was not the end

And one day I will see my God, my Jesus, face-to-face again

Throned in splendour, glorious in light.

And I will stand shoulder to shoulder with all the souls that have been, and are, and ever will be

On the plain, before the Lamb

And we will sing out hallelujahs and our praise will resound

Throughout the world.”

She looked at me and held out her hand

and she said “will you come now?”

and I said “yes”

and we walked, hand in hand, back out into the light. 

A quote from Terry Pratchett (Witches Abroad):

‘Stories are important.  People think that stories are shaped by people .  In fact, it’s the other way around. 

Stories exist independently of their players.  If you know that, knowledge is power.

Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time.  And they have evolved.  The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling…. Stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness.

And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history.  Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down the mountainside.  And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs deeper.’                                        

Arguably the Gospel is the one true story, the Living Word is the story of who we are and who God is, retelling itself  in each generation. And if that is so, do we, as the Church, need a different strategy in this turbulent time of crisis or should we simply be looking for a new way to tell the same old story?

For a while, I was lucky enough to work next to a large window which looked out over an attractive plaza toward the Bristol floating harbour.  In the middle of the large area of paving was a tree.   I watched that tree, day by day, for 2 or 3 years. 

In the winter it looked dead, grey-brown twigs on a grey-brown trunk, barely moving as it had so little resistance to wind or rain or snow, absorbing even the brightest sunshine in its dull brown bark. 

But in the spring a miracle happened, every year, as regular as clockwork.  Buds appeared on the brown twigs and then slowly but surely bright green leaves would begin to erupt, pushing their way out of the seemingly dead twigs to coat the tree with vibrant colour.  Now the tree had a life of its own, swaying in the breeze, pattering with rain, green leaves unfurling and shining in the sun.

As the summer went on, the leaves matured and gained more weight, more gravitas.  During dry times they gathered the dust kicked up by passing feet and blown on fitful breezes.  They began to look dull and lost their colour.  But when it rained they were washed clean again, sparkling summer raindrops glistening and shining in the sun.            

And autumn came and the leaves turned towards death but not without one last hurrah, one final shout of triumph in reds and oranges and yellows before finally succumbing to the storm, whirling away on the wind to who knows where. 

And then it was winter again, and seeming death. 

But not death, simply waiting.  Waiting for the miracle of spring, for new life, for a new story to begin.  

That tree kept me grounded all year.  My job was busy, frequently exasperating, occasionally too hard for me to know what I ought to do next.  But that tree always reminded me that this too shall pass, that the world keeps going even if today seems tough.  And just around the corner there is the hopeful vivacity of spring; the maturing beauty of summer;  the wild last fling of autumn; and perhaps most importantly the rest and peace of winter.  This season too shall pass. 

In his book, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams sets before us a vision of the future where all those tasks which we find irritating or time-consuming are undertaken by robots. And that includes that most difficult of tasks – belief.  The Electric Monk is a robot whose main selling point is that it can believe six impossible things before breakfast, thereby saving you, the dear owner, the arduous business of doing all that believing in stuff yourself.

Sadly we don’t have electric monks yet so we still have to engage in that most complex of tasks of believing not 6 but at least 2 things which, at first sight, seem entirely contradictory.

The first is that each of us, personally, is infinitely and perfectly loved by God, that God could not love us any more than he does and could not love us any less.  Jesus, God’s only son, was sent to redeem each one of us, to save us, to bring each of us to eternal life.  Each one of us, personally, is called and chosen to be a beloved disciple of Christ because we are each of us, personally, the object of God’s infinite love and grace and mercy.

The second is this – the vast majority of us who live in the privileged west are not the primary focus of Jesus’ saving and redeeming mission in the world. 

Jesus could not be more clear in his opening statement of his mission in the world in Luke 4:  “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, or the year of jubilee.”

Jesus came to proclaim good news to those in abject poverty – the Greek word that Luke uses for the poor here is ‘ptochos’ which means one who is destitute, has absolutely nothing, literally one who crouches or grovels, a beggar.  There is another Greek word ‘penes’ for someone who has the basic necessities – no luxuries but enough to live on – but Luke doesn’t use that word.  He uses ptochos – Jesus has come to proclaim good news to those who have nothing. As I look around the place that I serve, the vast majority of people in this part of the world have a roof over their heads, adequate clothes to wear – and lots more in our wardrobes upstairs I suspect – and 99% of us are not worrying that we have nothing in the cupboard to eat.  The overwhelming majority of us here – and particularly those in Anglican churches – are not ptochos. 

The theme continues.  Jesus has come to free those who are imprisoned, those who lack basic freedoms.  That imprisonment may be literal – those behind bars – or it may be metaphorical, meaning all those whose life circumstances result in a lack of freedom – freedom to make their own life choices, freedom to walk the streets safely, freedom to speak without fear. 

The Black Lives Matter campaign has made us all deeply conscious of how our attitudes and our world view can limit the ability of others to enjoy the basic human freedoms that we enjoy.  I read the story of a well-educated, successful black lawyer in the States who told how his mother had sat him down when he was 16 and had ‘the talk’ – what to do and how to behave when he was stopped by white policemen. 

He couldn’t believe that would ever happen to him until it did and he narrowly escaped being arrested for simply being black and in the wrong place at the wrong time.   The vast majority of us in this part of the world – and certainly of those who attend Anglican churches here – can know nothing of how that feels, to be in the prison created by the conscious and unconscious racism of the society in which we live. 

Jesus comes to bring recovery of sight to the blind.  Again this may be both literally and figuratively blind – he may be referring equally to those who live in the darkness of ignorance.  We have a tendency in the western church to see this as purely spiritual blindness but it is far more likely that Jesus was talking about physical sight and the ignorance that kills the body as well as the soul.  Ignorance can be fatal and certainly life-limiting – the thing that holds most people back from a fruitful life with enough to  eat, clean water to drink and a roof over their heads is the lack of access to basic education.  Across the world, more than 72 million children of primary education age are not in school and 759 million adults are illiterate and do not have the awareness necessary to improve both their living conditions and those of their children.

And finally Jesus comes to set the oppressed free and to say this is the year of Jubilee.  In mosaic law this meant that every 49 years, all the injustices and unfairness of the previous 49 years is to be made right – wealth is equalised, land is re-shared and slaves set free.  Once every 49 years the reset button is pressed and the institutional sin which infects all societies is wiped out. 

All this brings us to our original dilemma.  If I am not the primary focus of Jesus’ mission and ministry, why have I been saved?  Why have I been called?  Why have I been chosen to hear and to know the saving presence of Jesus in my life?  I am not ptochos, I am not imprisoned, I am not blinded by ignorance, I am not a slave – why did Jesus choose me?

There are a few answers to that.  The first and biggest truth is that, in Christ, there is enough love, mercy and grace for everyone.  We don’t have to earn it, we don’t have to hope that by the time he gets to us there’s still enough to go round.  The toilet roll aisle of grace will never be empty and the pasta shelves of love constantly refill.

But the second truth is that we are called to stand with Jesus and for Jesus in his mission to those in the world who are still poor, still imprisoned, still ignorant, still enslaved and oppressed.  Some modern theological commentators talk about the ‘so what’ of the gospel of hope – perhaps we should also be emphasising the ‘so that’ of the gospel of hope. 

I have been called so that through my having been blessed with more money than I need to live, I can be a blessing to others who have nothing through my giving.  I have been called so that I who am free to speak out, free to protest am able to stand up for those who cannot speak.  I have been called so that, through my education, I can bring light to those who sit in darkness, I can be an advocate and an educator and an example to others.  I have been called so that I who know what it is to be loved and cared for and protected can stand up for those who are enslaved by a world and an economic system which oppresses people and treats human beings as though they were things. 

I have been shown what hope is so that I can bring hope to a world in great need.

And I have been called so that I can do my part in raising up others who have been blessed by God’s great goodness, who have health and wealth and opportunity, to be the mightiest army this world has ever been in the cause of justice and righteousness.  On my own I can do very little but together we are unstoppable if we each take seriously our call to be ‘so that’ people. 

So what can I do this week to be part of that great army against poverty, injustice, ignorance and oppression?  What can I give out of my riches of money, freedom, education and human dignity to lift up those who have nothing?  And how can I spread that great story of hope in Jesus Christ so that others come to join with us in his mission of hope to the world? 

As the days of Lent draw to a close, the walk through the wilderness which is our ongoing experience of the Coronavirus pandemic continues.  What should be the climax of this period of self-reflection and penitence – our retelling in community of the sacrificial giving of the Son of God on the cross, dying for the sins of the world – will be another day in lockdown.  The hope of resurrection, of a new life of freedom, will be as distant on this Friday as it was last Friday and the Friday before.   Easter morning will be just another Sunday at home.

Wilderness is a continual theme in the Bible.  Whether as a community – like the people of Israel fleeing their Egyptian slavery – or as individuals, many in the Bible find themselves in those places where all that they had relied upon or taken for granted is stripped away and they are left alone to fend for themselves in a difficult, dangerous and empty place.  And in those places of deep alone-ness, they find God, the God who went before them into that dark and empty space and inhabited it with Himself. 

We are not alone.  This is the great triumphant shout of our Christian hope.  We are not alone.  Our God goes with us.  The Son of Man came to share our sorrows, our joys our burdens.  The Holy Spirit binds us together in love.  We are not alone and we do not need to be afraid.

The period of wilderness is like a little death, a stripping away of physical reality so that all that is left is just me and what I carry with me.  It is a place where I come face to face with who I am when all the ‘stuff’ that I thought was important no longer is.  When I look back to the world I left behind and realise most of it was easier to let go of than I thought, and when the few things which really were important stand out in stark contrast.  I look back and mourn the missed opportunities, the wasted time, the people I could have spent more time with.  And I hope and I pray for the time yet to come, when the journey through the wilderness is over.  Psalm 23 points to the joy of emerging from a dark valley to find a table overflowing with good things – we get a sense of the joy of homecoming and welcome and abundant goodness at the end of a difficult journey.

But if the Gospels teach us anything, it is that the resurrection body is not the same as the body that died.  New life is not the same as the old life with a second wind.  What will the Church’s resurrection story be?  Will the journey we have been on be forgotten as soon as we are ‘back to normal’ or will we allow ourselves to remember how we were changed by the journey?  What will the new ‘normal’ be? 

My prayer for the Church in the coming weeks and months is that it will allow itself to be changed by its prolonged journey through the wilderness this year.  And when the true Easter finally comes, may we rejoice with the saints that once again, good has triumphed over evil, light over darkness, life over death.    Alleluia!