March 14, 2021 | Gary Philbrick | Make A Comment | News, Sermons
(You can hear this sermon in its context on Facebook Here: https://fb.watch/4dJVOFVuzp/ )
Exodus 2:1-10, John 19:25-27
Lord, open your Word to our hearts and transform them, and our hearts to your Word to receive you. AMEN.
Mothering Sunday 2020 was the first Sunday that our Churches were closed for worship – so today is, in effect, the first anniversary of our on-line worship.
I remember on the Friday before going into St Mary’s in Fordingbridge to check that I could broadcast live to Facebook – something I’d never done before. And posting a photo on Facebook of the set-up on the Sunday morning – my mobile phone perched precariously on top of a large pile of hymn books and cardboard boxes.
Looking back at my notes for that Service, I remembered that we were able to announce two significant and rather bold decisions by that first Sunday – that we’d be on-line every day at 10.00, and we’d broadcast via Facebook, so that we were open to the world.
And we’ve managed to fulfil that promise – we’ve been on-line at 10.00 every day since then – approximately 365 videos, plus all the other Services, such as early Communions, Evensongs, and Feast Days of various sorts.
And that’s alongside all the material which has gone out on the Youth, Children’s and Families Facebook page – if you’ve not explored those yet, do have a look – assemblies, Bedtime Bible Stories, Open the Book and Messy Church.
And all of these have been led by our wonderful Staff Team, and then by an increasing number of wonderful people from our congregations, who’ve learnt how to record, how to transfer videos to us, in some cases learnt how to upload themselves, who’ve been prepared to be interviewed for the Saturday Conversations, and who’ve given so much of their time and creativity to this project. And then, behind the scenes there has been the team of editors – rather too small a team at the moment – we’re looking for more volunteers – training provided – the team of editors – Richard Farr, Jo Heath, Laura Cowdery and others have uploaded round about 750 videos in the past year.
So, as we reach this first anniversary, I want to thank all of them for all of the fantastic work they’ve done during this really difficult time. It’s been wonderful, and, quite often enjoyable – sometimes, absolutely maddening, when a video doesn’t work properly – but a great learning journey, and I’ve really felt that we’ve been in it altogether.
And thanks, also, to all of those who have joined in on Facebook, YouTube, Zoom, via the website, and have sent such lovely (and sometimes, just helpful) comments. Again, we’ve all been in it together.
Our Church buildings may have been closed for Worship, but the Church has certainly not been closed – in fact, we’ve been more open than ever!
And now, we’re looking to the future. We’ll continue on-line – that’s a permanent feature of who we are. We’ll review the appropriate level of our on-line presence in a month or so, but we are now a Hybrid Church – on-line and in Church.
The PCCs are actively considering when our Worship in Church will begin again. Currently, the proposal is to resume our Services on April 18th, once we enter the Government’s Step 2 on the 12th, but we’ll be reviewing that in the light of infection rates locally, and other factors. We can’t wait to get back into Church, and to begin to pick up the threads of a more normal Church Life. Keep an eye on Partners for more news as soon as a decision is made.
We began this Mothering Sunday Service with a lovely piece of music, sung by my Keble Choir, written by the Welsh composer, William Mathias, who died in 1992, and using the words of the late fourteenth-century hermitess, Julian of Norwich – she’s named after the Church of St Julian in Norwich, where she was immured, walled in, for many years.
She wrote in her book called ‘Revelations of Divine Love’, only rediscovered in the last century:
As truly as God is our Father, so just as truly is he our Mother. In our Father, God Almighty, we have our being; In our merciful Mother we are remade and restored. Our fragmented lives are knit together.
And by giving and yielding ourselves, through grace,
to the Holy Spirit we are made whole. It is I, the strength and goodness of Fatherhood. It is I, the wisdom of Motherhood. It is I, the light and grace of holy love. It is I, the Trinity.
And she ends with perhaps her most famous words:
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
You’ll have the opportunity to hear the piece again at the end of the Service – I’ll just warn you that it lasts about 6 minutes, so don’t feel obliged to stay for all of it if you’re desperate for your coffee by then!
‘As truly as God is our Father, so just as truly is he our Mother’. That seems like a very modern insight, but she is, in the 1380s, reflecting on the Fatherhood and Motherhood of God.
And so, our Mothering Sunday reflections should always begin with God. God, our Mother and Father. As we shall sing in our final hymn this morning, again, using words based on Mother Julian, ‘Mothering God… Mothering Christ… Mothering Spirit…’. God creates us, loves us, nurtures us, keeps us and redeems us – he Mothers us as well as Fathers us. Mothering Sunday begins with God.
We then reflect, as in our Gospel Reading a few moments ago, on Mary, the Mother of Jesus. A week on Wednesday we shall keep the Feast of the Annunciation, when Mary accepted God’s will that she should be the mother of his only son, Jesus. We’ve recently heard the Christmas story, and Mary’s part in all the complications of that, and then the Presentation in the Temple, when Mary was promised that a sword would pierce her own heart. We know the stories of Mary at Cana of Galilee, when she provoked Jesus into his first miracle. We see how the family were worried about him, really about his mental state, provoking his statement, sounding harsher than it was meant, I think, ‘Who is my Mother, my Father, my brothers and sisters? All those who do the will of God’.
And today, in our Gospel, she is at the foot of the Cross, receiving the Beloved Disciple, usually thought of as being St John, as her son, and his receiving her to be his mother. After the Gospels, we hear of Mary once more, as part of the Early Church, and then she disappears into history and the life of the Church.
Mary reminds us of the joys and sorrows, the love and the pain, of motherhood.
And we also reflect on the Mother Church, the way in which the Church should love us and nurture us for our daily living. We might want to give thanks for those people and those Churches who have nurtured us in our faith, who have been with us on the journey, who’ve helped us to become the people we are today.
And we might also want to pray for our Avon Valley Churches here, not just the buildings, but the people who make the buildings the Church – pray for us all as we move from on-line to in Church, for those making decisions about our physical safety and well-being, as well as our spiritual needs.
And, of course, Mothering Sunday is the day we remember and celebrate our own mothers. Mothering Sunday is for everyone who has a mother!
We give thanks for being brought into the world, for the nurture and guidance of our mothers, for all that they did in creating all that was and is good about our family life.
It’s interesting that the Gospel Reading we’re given for Mothering Sunday is not only about Jesus and his mother, but also about the new family Jesus created – Mary and John.
And so we remember that families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes – adopted parenting, same-sex couples parenting, fostering, grandparents acting as parents, and all the informal ways in which mothering goes on, and has always gone on, outside the traditional idea of family as mother, father and two children.
We give thanks for our own mothers, but also give thanks for all the ways in which motherly love is shown.
And we may need to offer to God the painful aspects of mothering – perhaps our own mothers were not naturally the parenting sort; perhaps we have regrets about the way we cared for our own children; perhaps we would have loved to be a mother, and it hasn’t happened.
Wherever you are on this spectrum, give thanks to God for his mothering of us; remember Mary, and her example of the joys and sorrows of mothering; give thanks for the Churches and faithful people who have nurtured you, and offer any painful memories to God; remember your own families, giving thanks for all that is good, offering to God all that is painful, or needs his healing; and, most of all, remember that God is our Mother, as well as our Father, and that God’s love for each one of us is the basis for all of our human love. ‘God is love, and those who live in love, live in God, and he in them’ [I Jn 4:16].
And, finally, remember the wonderful words of Mother Julian of Norwich, which we’ll hear in a very simple round I wrote a few years ago. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
January 27, 2020 | Gary Philbrick | Make A Comment | News, Sermons
A Sermon preached by Canon Gary Philbrick at Evensong at St Mary’s, Fordingbridge, on Epiphany 3, Sunday, Janaury 26th, 2020, the Eve of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Psalm 33:1-12, Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, I Peter 1:3-12.
We’ve
heard two very contrasting readings this evening – the first from Ecclesiastes
3, the famous passage, often used at funerals: ‘A time to be born and a time to
die’; and the second from the first Letter of Peter, chapter 1, written to
‘You…who are being protected by the power of God for a salvation ready to be
revealed in the last time’. So, I
thought that for a few moments I’d reflect on what these two readings have to
say about time and faith.
Time
is one of the concerns of the Teacher, Quoheleth, the, speaker in the Old
Testament Book, Ecclesiastes. We know
nothing about him, apart from what we read in the book, and scholars are very
hazy about when the book was written, where, why and so on. It was probably written between the 5th
and the 2nd centuries BC, probably nearer the 2nd than
the 5th, written in Hebrew, but with Aramaic influences – Aramaic
being the local variation of Hebrew spoken by the people of Israel before and around the time
of Jesus.
It’s
a complicated and confusing book – it may have been written that way, or it
might have been re-worked by later editors.
The Teacher’s first words in the book are, ‘Vanity of vanities, says the
Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is
vanity’ [Eccles 1:2]. Which opening lines rather set the tone for
the book! Everything is but a breath of
wind – the literal translation of the word he uses, everything is transient,
useless, deceptive.
Quoheleth’s view of the world is fatalistic. He sees ‘The world as changeless, with humans unable to comprehend its workings or to make any lasting impact upon it’ [Ox Bible Comm, p.423, q.v. for some of the background]. Humans can see all the injustice and pain in the world, but can’t do anything about it. Quoheleth sees this as the way God has planned the world, and wonders how we should make the best of this situation. ‘His answer, after reflection on his own experiences, is that humans should simply enjoy what they have: they are in no position to seek more, and greater comprehension is a source only of unhappiness’ [Ibid.].
Which
takes us back to chapter 3: ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for
every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die’, and so on.
These words are ‘Often taken as a celebration of this fact, with each and every action given its own appropriate hour, [but] the context suggests that, for Quoheleth, it is more a source of resignation’ [Ibid., p. 424].
God
has created and maintains a sealed system, in which nothing has a beginning or
an end, in which there is ‘Nothing new under the sun’ – another of Quoheleth’s
famous phrases [1:9], and in which humans can make no real
difference, but can only stand in awe of the God who created such a system, and
who keeps it in being.
Interestingly,
during the 18th century, a strand of philosophy and theology
flourished in England,
known as Deism, following famous writers such as Matthew Lock and David Hume. They had a very similar view of the world,
with God as the so-called ‘Blind Watchmaker’, who set the world in process, but
then has very little else to do with it, and just leaves it, like a clock that
has been wound, to its own devices.
And
there are still many people today who would take Quoheleth’s line. Everything is just as it is; we can’t make a
difference; ‘What will be will be’, and so on.
And
yet, contrast that with what was read from the first chapter of the First
Letter of Peter: ‘3 Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into
an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven
for you, 5 who are being protected by the power of God through
faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In
this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various
trials, 7 so that the genuineness of your faith—being more
precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to
result in praise and glory and honour when
Jesus Christ is revealed’ [I Pet 1:3-7].
This is not a passive, circular view of time. That everything that has
been will be again, that there is nothing new under the sun, that what will be
will be.
This is a directional view of time.
The birth, life, teaching, death and Resurrection of Jesus have made a
difference. God has intervened in his
world, and urges us to intervene as well.
Peter, in this Letter, is looking towards the end time, to which we are
all heading, in our living hope, suffering trials and tribulations, loving God
and loving our neighbour, and ‘receiving the outcome of [our] faith, the
salvation of [our] souls’ [v.9].
You probably know that the Greeks had two words for time: Cronoß (Chronos), and Kairoß (Kairos) [Apologies – the website can’t cope with the Greek!]. Cronoß is time as a measurable resource, time measured in minutes and seconds, time as we tend to live it day by day, getting on with what has to be done, plodding through our daily lives, going from one thing to the next. Cronoß is the sort of time that Quoheleth, the Teacher, is thinking about.
Kairoß, however, is time as the
decisive moment, the now, the time of decision, the time when we have to make a
choice, the time which is the right moment to act.
It’s not quite fair to say that Old Testament time was Cronoß time, and New Testament time is Kairoß time – but there is something in that.
Christ’s command to ‘Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself’ means
that Christians are expected to make a difference to the world they inhabit,
the world of which they are called to be good stewards.
And the New Testament’s insistence that we are in the last times, that the
end is near, whatever the different New Testament writers mean by that, also
gives a new urgency to the decisions we make in our lives.
We are not just caught in an eternal loop, where everything is the same,
and nothing changes.
We’re called to make a difference, to co-operate with God in the bringing
in of his Kingdom.
Today is the Eve of the Liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp,
discovered almost accidentally by the Red Army as it advanced across Poland
towards the end of the Second World War 75 years ago. The camp was run by Nazi Germany in occupied
Poland, and between 1940 and 1945, 1.3 million people, mostly Jews – children,
women and men – were deported there, 1.1 million of whom were murdered.
It was only as the camps were discovered and liberated that the full scale
of horrors perpetrated on the Jews and others were realized, something not
helped by widespread anti-Semitism outside the German territories. As the camps were liberated, efforts were
made to document what had happened there.
Battle-hardened soldiers who were used to death were shocked
by the Nazis’ treatment of prisoners. Red Army General, Vasilii Petrenko, commander of the 107th
Infantry Division, remarked, ‘I, who saw people dying every day, was shocked by
the Nazis’ indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living
skeletons. I read about the Nazis’
treatment of Jews in various leaflets, but there was nothing about the Nazis’
treatment of women, children, and old men.
It was in Auschwitz that I found out about the fate of the Jews’. The few articles about the liberation in
Soviet newspapers such as Pravda, in line with Soviet propaganda, failed to
mention that Jews were the ones being written about. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Auschwitz_concentration_camp]
In our prayers I’ll use a prayer written for Holocaust Memorial Day
written by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Justin Welby, the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, and the Senior Imam,
Qari Asim. It feels like a real Kairoß moment
that these three have come together to write a prayer which people of all three
of the Abrahamic Faiths can use with integrity.
The Germans were working in Cronoß time.
For them the Jews were an inconvenience which had methodically, and with
careful planning, to be eradicated – 6 million of them. The Red Army, whether they knew it or not,
were working in Kairoß time
– a significant moment, as Auschwitz was liberated, when some realized what had
been going on in Nazi Germany.
There is indeed ‘A time to be born and a time to die’. And there is a
‘Salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’, and we live between those
times – we live in the Cronoß, the
ever-flowing stream of time, the 14 or so billion years since our current universe
was created; but we also live in the Kairoß, the
moment in time when we have to choose, and where our decisions make a
difference.
I want to finish with a quote from Book one of Tolkien’s
‘The Lord of the Rings’:
‘I wish it need not have happened in my time’, said
Frodo. ‘So do I’, said Gandalf, ‘And so
do all who live to see such times. But
that is not for them to decide. All we
have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’ [JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring,
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/time].
Good advice!
The Prayer for Holocaust Memorial Day 2020
(The Archbishop of
Canterbury Justin Welby, the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis and Senior Imam, Qari
Asim, have united to write a new prayer for Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) 2020.)
Loving God, we come to you with heavy hearts, remembering the six
million Jewish souls murdered during the Holocaust.
In the horrors of that history, when so many groups were targeted
because of their identity, and in genocides which followed, we recognise
destructive prejudices that drive people apart.
Forgive us when we give space to fear, negativity and hatred of others,
simply because they are different from us.
In the light of God, we see everyone as equally precious manifestations
of the Divine, and can know the courage to face the darkness.
Through our prayers and actions, help us to stand together with those
who are suffering, so that light may banish all darkness, love will prevail
over hate and good will triumph over evil.
Amen.
January 19, 2020 | Gary Philbrick | Make A Comment | News, Sermons
A Sermon preached by Canon Gary Philbrick at Holy Ascension Hyde on Epiphany 2, January 19th, 2020
I Cor 1:1-9, John 1:29-42
I’ve
got a fairly simple plan this morning – I want to reflect briefly on today’s
readings, and then to discuss two or three particular issues for us as Churches
this year.
One
of the themes of this Epiphany Season is the calling of the first Disciples –
in each year of the three-year Lectionary we hear different accounts of the
start of Jesus’ ministry, and how he called his inner circle of Disciples to be
around him, to follow him, to learn from him what the Kingdom of God means, and
to continue his Kingdom work by spreading the message, and by calling others
into his service.
I
don’t know whether you noticed how the word ‘called’ sounded like a bell
through this morning’s readings. Four
times across the two readings, and four different callings.
Firstly, it’s used at the end of the Gospel Reading, as the climax of Jesus’
invitation to his first disciples. It’s
quite a strange conversation – you’ve got it in Partners if you want to have a
look. John says ‘Look, here is
the Lamb of God!’, and the two disciples follow, which is quite logical. Jesus turns and asks what they are looking
for, and they ask him where he is staying.
He says, ‘Come and see’, and they went and spent the rest of the day
with him – and all this happened, curiously, at about four o’clock in the
afternoon. Clearly, something very
significant is going on here.
One
of the two disciples was Andrew, and he went and fetched his brother, Simon,
whom Jesus immediately named as Peter, the rock. And they stayed with him for the rest of his
earthly ministry.
Jesus’
call to his first disciples in John’s Gospel is very invitational – ‘Come and
see’. ‘John has pointed to me; you’re
following me, so, come and see. Come and
see what I’m doing, who I am – and by doing that, you may want to follow me
always’.
But
then he says to Peter, ‘‘You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated
Peter)’ [Jn 1:42], which we
would translate as ‘Rock’. ‘You are to
be called Cephas’.
Immediately,
as Peter begins his journey with Jesus, he’s given a new name, a new identity. In Christ, we are called to a new place and
given a new name.
There’s
a fascinating, and not often quoted, verse in Revelation 2[:17]: ‘To
everyone who conquers… I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is
written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it’.
And names are an important part of the Baptism Service, when our given
names become our Christian names. Peter
is given a new name when he is called into Jesus’ service.
And turning to the passage from I Corinthians, we see that there are
three more callings here.
Firstly, Paul is ‘Called to be an Apostle’. Although not one of those who met Jesus, Paul
and Luke record several times his conversion on the road to Damascus, and his
calling as an Apostle, one who is sent with the message to others. Paul responded to that dramatic calling, and
has been a huge influence on the shape of the Church ever since.
And then Paul tells the Corinthians
that they are ‘Called to be saints’. The Greek word be uses for
saints, the word which is used throughout the New Testament, is ἅgioiς, the holy ones, and it refers to all of the
Christians in a particular place. So, we
are all called to be saints – ‘All are Called’, as a recent Church of England
report on lay ministry puts it.
And, lastly, he writes to the Corinthians, that they
are ‘called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord’ [I Cor
1:9]. We are all called to be part of the Body of
Christ, to be Christ’s eyes and mouths, hands and feet, in service to the
world. All are called.
Which
brings me on to the particular issues I’d like us to think about today,
The
first is Simplification – at present, the Avon Valley Churches comprises seven
Churches in four Parishes – and each of the four Parishes is a separate legal
entity. We had a Joint Open Meeting of
the four PCCs last November to think about whether we could simplify our
structures – essentially, to become one PCC, which could deal with budgets,
Safeguarding, policy issues, good governance, and so on, and freeing up local
Church Committees to look after the day-to-day running of the Churches and
their worship and mission. And on
Monday, we had the first meeting of the Simplification Group, comprising two representatives
from each Parish, some of the ministry team, one or two observers, and chaired
by an outside facilitator, Jon Whale, our Benefice of the Future man at the
Diocese.
When
I was ordained in 1986, each of our four Parishes had a priest to look after
one PCC – that is no longer the case, and the amount of regulation, much of it
good, which has been imposed on PCCs in the last few decades has increased
enormously. It no longer makes sense to
have all of this regulation repeated four times, and I’m hoping we’ll end up
with a much better structure in the coming year or so.
I
realise this is a particularly big ask for Hyde PCC, only recently part of the
Avon Valley Churches, and having had a lot of changes in the past few years,
but if we can get it right, I think it will be hugely beneficial for all of the
Churches. The first meeting was very
positive, and highlighted both the advantages and the challenges, and we’re
meeting again in March to look in more detail at some of the issues we’ve
identified. So keep all of the PCCs and
the simplification Group in your prayers – it will inevitably be quite a
challenging process.
The
second issue is the Benefice Worship Review.
The
Avon Valley Churches hasn’t reviewed our pattern of worship for some years, and
certainly not since the new Benefice, including Hyde, was formed just over two
years ago.
At
present, we are reasonably well-staffed – although 4 ¾ of the seven members of
the Staff Team are volunteers, and a sixth one, Mike the curate, is
time-limited. But while we are not in
crisis, now seemed to be the time to look at our pattern of Services across the
seven Churches of the AVC. Last
September, this was discussed at the Avon Valley Churches Coordinating Group,
the ACG, comprising Wardens and Officers from the four Parishes, and the ACG
tasked the Staff Team with carrying out the Review. We began by identifying some basic
principles, and they were that our Future Pattern of Worship should be:
- Sustainable – whether or not our Leadership Team changes.
- Allow room for growth – not so full a programme of catering for the needs of our current congregations that there is no room for anything new to grow.
- Appropriate – The right worship for each Church.
- And include Lay Leadership – Each Church should have (at least) one Lay Led Service each month, so that we are growing Lay Worship Leaders and sharing the gifts of the wider congregation.
In
October we shared these principles, and invited members of all of our
congregations to respond, and about 30 people did so. All of the very varied Responses we had can
be seen on our website.
In
November, the Staff Team met, reviewed all of the responses, and made some
proposals which have been shared with the four PCCs, and made available to
everyone else.
In
December, Hyde PCC discussed in detail the proposals made in the review,
broadly welcomed them, and agreed to discuss them with the congregation today –
so, as you know, there will be the opportunity over coffee, and before lunch,
to reflect on these in more detail.
For
Hyde Church, the main proposals are that:
- Quite a lot of things don’t change – 9.30s on 1st
and initially 4th Sundays, Youthspace, 4.00 Slot, all as at present.
- 2nd Sundays, 8.15 Holy Communion as at present (but
15 minutes earlier) – on the other Sundays the 8.15 would be at Fordingbridge
and Breamore, so there is a BCP Communion in the AVC each Sunday, but we avoid
duplicating exactly the same Service at the same time in different places – in
effect, Fordingbridge loses two of its BCP Communions.
- The main difference most people would notice would be initially
on 3rd Sundays, when there is a proposal for a new Morning Service,
without Communion, in a format to be explored – at some point in the future,
this Morning Service will move to a 4th Sunday, but for now, to
accommodate the Staff Team we currently have, the 3rd Sunday seemed
a more appropriate Sunday – I can say more about that over coffee.
As
we looked at the overall pattern, one of the things we were very aware of was
the number of Communion Services happening at overlapping times – as Services
of Holy Communion can only be led by priests.
Two of our Parishes, Breamore, and Hale & Woodgreen, already have a
mix of two Communions and two Morning Services each month, and the new pattern
proposes that for Hyde and Fordingbridge as well.
This
pattern can only work if we are able to identify and train more Lay Worship
Leaders and preachers across the four Parishes.
This is a really important part of the proposals, because if we don’t,
we’ll find that the number of Services were are able to sustain will decrease
over time.
We
have a good tradition of Lay Worship Leading here in Hyde, but we have come to
rely on the three Worship Leaders who were trained some years ago, and so now
we need to identify and train some more if we want our generous pattern of
worship to be sustainable in the longer term.
So,
as part of our Year of Pilgrimage, which I’ve written about in Partners over
the past couple of weeks – if you missed last two week’s Partners, you can find
them on the website – as part of our Year of Pilgrimage, could you think and
pray about whether you might be being called to be a Lay Worship Leader or
Preacher. We’ll be running training here
in the summer for the former, and the Diocese is running the one-year Bishop’s
Permission to Preach Course later in the year.
Or you might be think about whether you are being called to train as a
Licensed Lay Minister or for ordination.
If
you think you might be being called to any of these things, or just want to
know more, do have a word with any of the Ministry Team.
And
if you’re not yet ready for that, you might find the new Alpha Course, which
began on Thursday, and continues for the next five weeks, might be helpful on
your pilgrimage. It’s not too late to
join.
And
we’ll have time to discuss the Worship Review, Lay Worship Leading, the Year of
Pilgrimage, or anything else, over coffee after the Service.
As you think about these things, keep in mind my earlier
point: it’s clear from the New Testament that ‘All are Called’ – each of us is
called by name, and all are called to different ministries. This ‘Year of Pilgrimage’ could be a
wonderful time to reflect on our calling as Saints and Disciples here in Hyde
and in the wider Church, and, really interestingly, my colleagues and I have
already had three conversations in the past week with people who are feeling a
vocation, a calling, to lay or ordained ministries – it’s all very exciting.
I’ll end with the Collect for the 5th Sunday after
Trinity:
Almighty
and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed
and sanctified: hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people; that
in their vocation and ministry each may serve you in holiness and truth to the
glory of your name; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. AMEN.
January 12, 2020 | Gary Philbrick | Make A Comment | News, Sermons
A Sermon given by Canon Gary Philbrick at St Mary’s Church, Fordingbridge, on the Feast of the Baptism of Christm, Sunday, January 12th, 2020.
Acts 10:34-43, Matt 3:13-17
I’ve
got a fairly simple plan this morning – I want to reflect briefly on the
Baptism of Christ, to talk about two theological terms, and then to discuss two
or three particular issues for us as Churches this year. I shall be around at the end of the Service
if anyone has further comments to make.
The
Baptism of Christ – We’ve jumped very quickly from the visit of the Wise Men to
the Baby Jesus at Epiphany last Sunday to the beginning of Jesus’ public
ministry today – a leap of about 30 years.
And we’ll stay with the beginning of his ministry in the Gospel Readings
for the next couple of weeks, before returning to the baby Jesus in the Temple
for his Presentation, at what we now call Candlemas, on the first Sunday of
February.
But
there is a common theme through all of these readings in the Epiphany Season,
and that is Jesus being revealed to the world for who he is.
Last
Sunday, the revelation, the manifestation, the Epiphany, was to the Wise Men,
Gentiles, non-Jews. Today, in his
Baptism by John at the River Jordan, the revelation is to those around him,
those who ‘Saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove… and a voice from
heaven saying, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’’
[Matt 3:16f.]. From his Baptism Jesus is
propelled into the wilderness, where he has a period of reflection and
temptation, which we’ll commemorate in Lent, beginning at the end of next
month, and when he returns from the wilderness he calls his Disciples and
begins his public ministry.
This
period of Epiphany focuses on making Christ known to the world. That is our primary task as the Church; more
important than caring for Church buildings, as wonderful as a Church like this
is; more important than having fine liturgy, as beautiful and uplifting as I
hope our Services are; our primary task as the Church is to make Christ known
to the world. As we heard in our reading
from Acts, ‘He commanded us to preach to the people
and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and
the dead’ [Acts 10:42]. The Baptism of
Christ urges to look upwards to God, inwards to the Christ who has promised to
be with us; and outwards to the world around us, which needs to hear the Gospel
message – upwards, inwards and outwards.
And
that brings me on to my two theological terms.
Where do we think of God as being when we worship? Where do you imagine him, when you pray here
on a Sunday morning? Do you think of him
as being out there [point Eastwards],
high and lifted up, as distant from up as he can possibly be? Or do you think of him as here in the midst
of us [point to the space in the middle],
made real in the words of Scripture and in the sharing of bread and wine? Now, both of these are truths which have been
discovered through Scripture, and expressed in Christian history – God high and
lifted up, God distant from us; and God in the midst, God closer to us than our
own breathing.
And
the theological terms for these thoughts are transcendence and immanence;
transcendence and immanence.
Transcendence,
God above us, often expressed in the Old Testament as a God who is dangerous, a
God not to be messed with, God of awe and majesty. In the Holy of Holies in the Temple in
Jerusalem, the High Priest could enter only once a year into the nearer
presence of God, and it was a risky thing to do. When the Ark of God’s presence was being
carried to Jerusalem, the bier wobbled, someone put out his hand to stop it
falling, and was struck dead – he had touched the presence of the living
God. The Old Testament often expresses
God’s transcendence, his distance from us.
But
remember, at the Crucifixion, the veil of the Temple was torn in two [Matt
27:51].
The
New Testament often expresses God’s immanence, his presence in all things, his
closeness to us. Jesus said, ‘Where two
or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them’ [Matt
18:20]. And he promised to be with us
when we share bread and wine in his name.
Transcendence and immanence.
In
the Church of England, I think it is fair to say that our worship has
traditionally been more about transcendence in the past, but in the last half
century there has been something of a rediscovery of his immanence, which has
affected quite a lot of what we do in worship.
How
we think of God affects how we worship him, how we arrange our Churches, what
language we use, and what we do with our bodies in worship.
It
affects, for example, which way the priest faces when presiding at Holy
Communion. Does he or she face East,
with his or her back to the congregation, expressing God’s transcendence; or
does the priest face West, facing the congregation, expressing God’s immanence,
his presence with us in our celebration?
One of the biggest differences between the BCP Communion which we use at
8.00 on a Sunday, and the Common Worship one which we use at 9.30 is how we
acknowledge one another. At the 8.00, it
barely matters whether there is anyone else in the congregation – the worship
is almost exclusively between me and God.
At the 9.30, we share the Peace, we acknowledge one another to be
members of the Body of Christ, we sing together, we are gathered around a
table. It’s a very different theological
statement of what we are as a Church.
Do we
use traditional language, the language of ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, or perhaps even
Latin, expressing a very formal relationship with God, who is far away and far
above us; or do we use modern language, emphasising God’s closeness to us, a
more intimate relationship?
The Baptism of Christ urges to look upwards to God,
inwards to the Christ who has promised to be with us; and outwards to the world
around us, which needs to hear the Gospel message – upwards, inwards and
outwards. And the ways we experience God
are likely to be a mixture of transcendence and immanence.
Which
brings me on to the particular issues I’d like us to think about today,
The
first is Simplification – at present, the Avon Valley Churches comprises seven
Churches in four Parishes – and each of the four Parishes is a separate legal
entity. We had a Joint Open Meeting of
the four PCCs last November to think about whether we could simplify our
structures – essentially, to become one PCC, which could deal with budgets,
Safeguarding, policy issues, good governance, and so on, and with Local Church
Committees to look after the day-to-day running of the Churches and their
worship and mission. When I was ordained
in 1986, each of our four Parishes had a priest to look after one PCC – that is
no longer the case, and the amount of regulation, much of it good, which has
been imposed on PCCs in the last few decades has increased enormously. It no longer makes sense to have all of this
regulation repeated four times, and I’m hoping we’ll end up with a much better
structure in the coming year or so. The
first meeting is tomorrow evening, so keep us in our prayers – some of the
Parishes are more eager for this than others, so there will be a good deal of
delicate negotiations.
The
second issue is the Benefice Worship Review.
We
haven’t reviewed our pattern of worship for some years, and certainly not since
Hyde became part of the Avon Valley Churches just over two years ago.
At
present, we are reasonably well-staffed – although 4 ¾ of the seven members of
the Staff Team are volunteers, and a sixth one, Mike the curate, is
time-limited. But while we are not in
crisis, now seemed to be the time to look at our pattern of Services across the
seven Churches of the AVC. Last
September, this was discussed at the Avon Valley Churches Co-ordinating Group,
the ACG, comprising Wardens and Officers from the four Parishes, and the ACG
tasked the Staff Team with carrying out the Review. We began by identifying some basic
principles, and they were that Our Future Pattern of Worship should be:
- Sustainable – whether or not
our Leadership Team changes.
- Allow room for growth
– not so full a programme of catering for the needs of our current
congregations that there is no room for anything new to grow.
- Appropriate – The right
worship for each Church.
- And include Lay
Leadership – Each Church should have (at least) one Lay Led Service each
month, so that we are growing Lay Worship Leaders and sharing the gifts of the
wider congregation.
In
October we shared these principles, and invited members of all of our
congregations to respond, and about 30 people did so. All of the very varied Responses we had can
be seen on our website.
In
November, the Staff Team met, reviewed all of the responses, and made some
proposals which have been shared with the four PCCs, and made available to
everyone else.
Fordingbridge
PCC has agreed in principle to the proposals made in the review, and there are
one or two questions still to be decided – the Worship and Pastoral Care
Committee of the PCC is meeting early next month, when a decision will be made.
For
this Church, the main proposals are:
- Quite a lot of things don’t change – Allsorts at
10.30 on 1st Sundays – but with a review with the Allsorts Team of
the current format; 9.30s on 2nd and 4th Sundays; Sanctus
and Evensongs as at present (although there is the suggestion the Evensongs
might move to 6.00 – thoughts welcome).
- 1st and 3rd Sundays, 8.15 Holy
Communion as at present (but 15 minutes later) – on the other Sundays the 8.15
would be at Hyde and Breamore, avoiding duplicating the same Service at the
same time in different places.
- The main difference most people would notice would
be on 3rd Sundays, when there is a proposal for a new Morning
Service with Choir, but without Communion, in a format to be explored.
As we
looked at the overall pattern, one of the things we were very aware of was the
number of Communion Services happening at overlapping times – as Services of
Holy Communion can only be led by priests.
Two of our Parishes, Breamore, and Hale & Woodgreen, already have a
mix of two Communions and two Morning Services each month, and the new pattern
proposes that for Fordingbridge and Hyde as well.
This
pattern can only work if we are able to identify and train more Lay Worship
Leaders and preachers across the four Parishes.
This is a really important part of the proposals, because if we don’t,
we’ll find that the number of Services were are able to sustain will decrease
over time.
So,
as part of our Year of Pilgrimage, which I’ve written about in Partners last
week and this – if you missed last week’s Partners, you can find it on the
website – as part of our Year of Pilgrimage, could you think and pray about
whether you might be being called to be a Lay Worship Leader or Preacher. We’ll be running training here in the summer
for the former, and the Diocese is running the one-year Bishop’s Permission to
Preach Course later in the year.
If
you think you might be being called to this, or just want to know more, do have
a word with any of the Ministry Team.
And
if you’re not yet ready for that, you might find the new Alpha Course,
beginning on Thursday, might be helpful on your pilgrimage. Heidi will say a bit more about that later
on.
If
you’d like to discuss the Worship Review, Lay Worship Leading, or anything else
I’ve mentioned this morning, I’ll be around over coffee – we could gather with
our coffees at the front of the Church.
As you think about these things, keep in mind my
earlier point: our primary task as the Church is to make Christ known to the
world. It’s not about what we like, or
about what we’ve always done. It’s about
making Christ known to the world. That should be our guide in all that we do,
both in Church and in our daily lives.
December 25, 2019 | Gary Philbrick | Make A Comment | News, Sermons
A Sermon preached at the Midnight Service, December 24th-25th, 2019, at Holy Ascension Hyde, by Canon Gary Philbrick.
Tit 2:11-12, Lk 2:1-14
75 years ago
tonight, at Christmas 1944, the German Pastor and Theologian, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, was spending what turned out to be his last Christmas imprisoned in
a Gestapo Prison in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin. He was well-known in Germany, and in other
parts of Europe and America, had been a Pastor to the German Lutheran Church in
London, and was very involved in the Oecumenical Movement in Europe, at that
time in its infancy. A couple of months
earlier he had been moved from the Tegel Military Prison in Berlin to the much
harsher and more dangerous Gestapo Prison, from which, the following April, a
few days before the end of the Second World War, he was taken to the Buchenwald
Concentration Camp, and at the very end to Flossenbürg, where he was murdered
on the personal orders of Hitler after a very brief show trial.
I’m thinking
about him quite a lot at the moment, partly because it’s 75 years since all
these events happened, and his martyrdom shouldn’t be forgotten, and partly because
I foolishly agreed to deliver a paper on him to an academic theological society
in the Spring.
What was this
Pastor, Theologian, Oecumenist and Teacher, doing in prison? Since the rise of Hitler in 1933, Bonhoeffer
had been part of that section of the Lutheran Church in Germany, called ‘The
Confessing Church’, which had opposed Hitler and all that he stood for. The other group, the much larger one, called
the ‘German Christians’, also opposed some of what Hitler stood for, but felt
that the way to do that was by being part of the system, and hoping to change
it from inside. That’s not an
unreasonable strategy, but on this occasion it was horribly wrong.
Since 1933,
Bonhoeffer had quietly worked across Europe to let people know what was
happening in Germany, and that there were people who were resisting it. He was part of the Abwehr, in effect a
double-agent, pretending to be part of German Intelligence, but in effect
working for those who opposed Hitler. He
also, strikingly, and felt it was part of his Christian duty, was a peripheral
part of plots to kill Hitler – although this wasn’t discovered by Hitler until
April 1945, which was what sent him into an absolute rage, and led to his order
to kill Bonhoeffer about three weeks before he himself committed suicide.
75 years ago,
at Christmas 1944, Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to his fiancée, Maria von
Wedemeyer, the very last piece of writing of his which we have, and enclosed a
remarkable poem, which is now sung as a hymn in Germany, the first and last verses
of which read:
With every power of good to stay and guide me,
Comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I’ll live these days with you in thought beside me,
And pass, with you, into the coming year.
While all the powers of good aid and attend us,
Boldly we’ll face the future, come what may.
At even and at morn God will befriend us,
An oh, most surely on each new-born day.
[Bonhoeffer, Metaxas, p.497f.]
They’re so profound, and so full of faith and hope and love, I’ll read them again.
Now, as well
as wanting to remember Bonhoeffer, I’ve spent some time describing him and his
last poem because of the unshakeable sense of hope which is found in his
writings, a hope that is reflected in the Christmas story.
We
began this Service with some Responses: ‘Tonight we are
excited… Tonight we are expectant… Tonight we are on tiptoe…’ We began on a note of hope.
And
as the first four Advent Candles were lit, we said ‘Waiting for your promise, give light and hope’.
And
in the Gospel Reading we’ve just heard, we celebrate the birth of a child –
always a cause for hope – but this child was the one of whom the
angels said to the shepherds, ‘I am bringing you good news of great joy for all
the people’. This child is a sign of
hope for the world.
As
we can read in Richard Crashaw’s words on the front of our Order of Service:
Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter, Day in night,
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one whose all-embracing birth
Brings earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.
And our first Reading, from the little-known Letter of
Titus, says ‘We wait for the blessed hope and the
manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ’.
In these weeks after the General Election, in these
weeks leading to our formal departure from the European Union, in these
uncertain and changing times, we need to keep hold of a sense of hope – the
hope we see in the birth of Jesus, in the knowledge that Emmanuel, God is with
us; in the knowledge that no matter what difficulties we go through in our own
lives, God is still there, and cares sufficiently to send his own Son in to the
world to bring us hope.
We need to radiate hope in our own, lives, by the way
we live – not pretending there are no difficulties in life, but trying to
remember that those difficulties can be seen in the wider canvas of God’s plan
for us, for now and for eternity.
We, as
Christians, should stand for hope – because we know that Jesus, our Incarnate
God, Emmanuel, God with us, came into the world at Christmas, preached a
Kingdom of love and hope, died on a Cross on Good Friday and rose again on
Easter Day to bring hope to all the world.
We stand for hope, and we should be working for hope, in our worship, in
our communities, and in all that we do and are.
As Bonhoeffer
wrote in his last poem:
While all the powers of good aid and attend us,
Boldly we’ll face the future, come what may.
At even and at morn God will befriend us,
An oh, most surely on each new-born day.
