Avon Valley Partnership

St MARY MAGDALENE

July 22, 2018 | Gary Philbrick | Make A Comment | News, Sermons

A Sermon preached at Fordingbridge and Breamore Churches on the Feast of St Mary Magdalene, July 22nd, 2018, by Canon Gary Philbrick.

Ps. 42:1-7, II Corinthians 5:14-17, John 20: 1-2, 11-18

Lord God, take my words and speak through them,

take our minds and think through them,

take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.  AMEN.

St Mary Magdalene is a really significant figure in the New Testament.  At twelve mentions in the four Gospels, she occurs more often than most of the Disciples.

So, let’s start with what we do know about Mary Magdalene, before moving on to what we don’t know.

The most likely reason for her name, Mary Magdalene, which distinguishes her from the many other Marys in the Gospels, is that she came from the fishing town of Magdala on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, about three miles North of what was then the brand new City of Tiberias, founded by the Herod Antipas, who is mentioned in the Gospels, and named in honour of the Roman Emperor, Tiberias.  So Magdala was part of the very Romanised section of Israel, although that doesn’t mean that Mary herself was part of the Roman community.

Her first mention – and this is really important for the later part of our story – her first mention is at the beginning of Luke, chapter 8: ‘Soon afterwards [Jesus] went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources’ [Luke 8:1-3].

So, she was part of that group of at least reasonably wealthy women who travelled with Jesus and his Disciples, and who supported him in his ministry.  And, apparently, this group of women had been cured of various illnesses, both physical and mental.  In Mary’s case, we are told that ‘seven demons had gone out’ of her – a detail that is also mentioned in the so-called ‘Longer Ending’ of Mark, a later addition to the rather abrupt ending of Mark 16.

This introduction of Mary Magdalene in Luke 8 is quite early on in Jesus’ ministry, so it appears that Mary and the other women supported Jesus for quite a while.

And all four Gospels are agreed that Mary Magdalene was there at the time of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection, although the four Gospels have slightly different accounts of what happened. In Mark, the earliest of the Gospels, just after Jesus has breathed his last, and the centurion has said, ‘Truly, this man was God’s Son’, we are told, in similar words to those we’ve heard from Luke’s Gospel: ‘There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.  These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem’ [Mk 15:40-41].  Those verses give a fascinating insight into Jesus’ ministry to women, in contrast to much of what the Gospels say about his ministry to men.

Matthew, in chapter 27, repeats Mark’s words, although, apart from Mary Magdalene, he names the women slightly differently [Matt 27:55-6].

But, after Jesus has been buried in the tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea, Matthew adds, ‘Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb’ [V. 61].

Interestingly, Luke, who is very sympathetic to women, doesn’t mention Mary by name at the crucifixion, but simply refers twice to ‘the women who had followed him from Galilee’ [Lk 23:49, 55].  And John, like Mark and Matthew, names Mary Magdalene as one of those ‘standing near the cross of Jesus’ [Jn 19:25].  So we have good evidence that Mary was present for the Crucifixion, and probably the burial, of Jesus on the first Good Friday.

At the Resurrection, all four Gospels agree that Mary Magdalene was among those who came to the tomb early on the Sunday morning.  In the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, the women are sometimes described as bringing spices to anoint Jesus’ body, but in all of them it is the women who discover that the stone has been rolled away, and that the tomb is empty [Matt 28:1, Mk 16:1ff., Lk 24:1ff, esp. v. 10].  We’ve become so used to this, but the fact that it was women who were the first witnesses to the Resurrection, in a society where women’s testimony in courts of law was considered of very dubious reliability, is really significant.

But it is in John’s Gospel, in the passage set at the Gospel Reading for today, that the most significant encounter between Mary Magdalene and Jesus takes place [Jn 20:1-2, 11-18].  Mary finds the tomb empty, runs to fetch Peter and ‘the Disciple whom Jesus loved’, usually thought of as John, and then is in the Garden by the empty tomb, when she sees whom she thinks is the gardener, but we know is Jesus, and she discovers that fact when he addresses her by her name.  His words to her, ‘Do not hold on to me’ [V. 17], are often known by their Latin translation, ‘Noli me tangere’, and this scene has given rise to a whole series of paintings, both in the Western and Eastern traditions of art, such as the second of the icons on the hymn sheet you have.

St Mary Magdalene is clearly a really significant figure in the New Testament.

But I just want to pause for a moment to reflect on what the Gospel’s don’t say.

If you can remember as far back as the beginning of this sermon, we heard how Mary Magdalene was introduced in Luke, chapter 8, along with the other ‘some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities’ [Lk 8:1-3].  But at the end of Luke 7 [36-50] there is a really important story about Jesus being invited to a meal at the house of Simon the Pharisee, and a woman, known to be a sinner, comes in and washes Jesus’ feet with her hair – it’s worth reading, as it’s a very moving story.

But what the Luke doesn’t say is that this woman was Mary Magdalene.  And, as we’ve heard, he introduces her in chapter 8 in a very different way.

John’s Gospel has a similar story in chapter 12, where it is Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who anoints Jesus feet with expensive pure nard, leading to an interesting dispute with Judas about the poor.

And yet, by the 7^th century, Pope Gregory the Great, in a sermon on the story at the end of Luke 7, remarks, ‘This woman, whom Luke calls a sinner and John calls Mary, I think is the Mary from whom Mark reports that seven demons were cast out’ [Patrologia Latina 76:1239].  This comment has had a very unfortunate effect on Mary’s reputation, and she has been assumed to have been a prostitute, and portrayed as such in in lots of different ways – think of the song in ‘Jesus Christ, Superstar’, or Dan Brown’s book, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, with its supposition that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married, and had children – for which, although it’s a cracking good story, there is no historical evidence at all.  And just in the common imagination of who Mary Magdalene is.  He was a very naughty Pope to say such a thing about her!

There is a tradition, reflected in the icon of Mary you have on the sheet, where she is holding an egg, that she became a leader in the Early Church, and preached, amongst others, to the Emperor Nero.  She is said to been the first to have used an egg as a symbol of the Resurrection, as we still do at Easter today.  As with so many other women in Scriptures, we simply don’t have the evidence to know clearly – we know that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was around in the Early Church, but very little is said of her in the Acts of the Apostles or the other New Testament writings, and it’s the same with Mary Magdalene.

What we do have in the Gospels is a picture of Mary as a faithful disciple, a supporter of Jesus, both financially and by her presence in Galilee and Jerusalem, a part of a group of well-of women who had been attracted by Jesus’ message, and stayed with him through the trauma of the Crucifixion, and were witnesses to his Resurrection.

What might we learn from her story?

Faithfulness in discipleship; following Jesus through thin and thick – we often have to go through the ‘thin’ in life, before we get to the ‘thick’; the importance of financial support for the mission of the Church.

And, above all, as we reflect on the encounter between Mary and Jesus in today’s Gospel, the importance of looking for Jesus in the unexpected places – in the gardener, in the person we bump into in the street, in the member of our family whom we find most difficult.  If we are able to look and to listen through our tears and frustrations, we will hear Jesus calling our name, as he did in that one word he said in the garden on the first Easter Day – ‘Mary!’

Jesus calls each of us by name, and when he calls our name, it is with love, as it was with Mary.  So often, we are so preoccupied with our own lack of worth, and poor image of ourselves, that we miss the gentle, loving call of Jesus on our lives when we most need it.  As we hear in the Book of Isaiah, ‘I have called you by your name, you are mine’ [Is 43:1].

We’ll keep a few moments of quiet to reflect on what we have heard of Mary Magdalene’s story and significance, and, if you wish, to look at the two icons on the hymn sheet – in the silence we might reflect on how we are called by our names, and we are loved by Jesus.

And then, after a pause, I’ll read a poem by Ann Lewin, whom some of you have met, and who wrote the book we used for our lent Course this year.

Known by Name

Who were you, Mary

From whom devils were cast out?

Did you disturb respectability

By washing his feet with tears,

An uninvited guest;

Or in embarrassing extravagance

Pour precious ointment on his head?

Were you notorious in your day,

Or a woman in the crowd from Magdala,

Who found new purpose

Being set free to love,

And used your gifts

In faithful ministry?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Perhaps, like all of us,

You were a mixture:

Damaged and healed;

Longing to be loved,

And struggling to relate;

Passionate and reserved

By turns, working out

Costly discipleship.

The important moment

Was when you heard your name,

And answered and were sent,

No longer clinging to what kept you safe,

Strong in the power of the risen Lord,

To witness to new life.

[Ann Lewin, Watching for the Kingfisher, p.68]

St SWITHUN: GROWING IN FAITH, REACHING OUT TO ALL

July 22, 2018 | Gary Philbrick | Make A Comment | News, Sermons

A sermon preached at Godshill, Hale and Fordingbridge Churches on St Swithun’s Day, July 15th, 2018, by Canon Gary Philbrick

a.m.: Ps. 20

James 5:7-18

Matt 5:43-48

 Lord God, take my words and speak through them,

take our minds and think through them,

take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.  AMEN.

That’s a challenging Gospel Reading.

As part of the Sermon on the Mount, and following on from the Beatitudes, Jesus said to the crowds: ‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ [Matt 5:43-4, 48].

That really is a ‘counsel of perfection’!  Can Jesus really have thought that his fallible friends, the Disciples, could ever have been perfect, let alone the large crowds who have come out to him on the mountain?

Or, more likely, is he exaggerating to make a point?  Even bad people love those who love them back.  But, he says, I tell you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’.

And what sort of perfection does he mean?  What would it be like to be perfect, if we could follow his command?

I think that if we could grasp what Jesus is trying to tell us in these verses, then the Christian life would become a lot less complicated, and a lot more inclusive and appealing.  If we could really learn to love everyone, our enemies and our friends, those we like and those we can’t stand – if we could really learn to love everyone, then everything else would fall into place.  Love would be the benchmark for all of our actions.

I’ve had a week of really interesting conversations – with the 30 or so teenaged Air Training Cadets during the ‘Padre’s Hour’ on Tuesday, as we discussed forgiveness, suffering, hatred and cannabis!; with the little children, KS1, of Hyde School on Wednesday, as we talked about the story of the Little Red Hen [FB: It’s in the Children’s Corner here if you want to remind yourselves of the story] – and the two possible endings to the story; with the Year 6 children of Breamore School as we planned the End-of-Year Service for this week, and their contribution, reflecting on ‘Everyday Heroes’; and with some friends who kindly brought a take-away with them on Friday night, and wanted to talk about prayer.

And all of these conversations boil down to love – love of God, and love of our neighbour.  Love should be the benchmark for all of our actions.

Today is St Swithun’s Day.  No doubt the weather forecasts were broadcast from Winchester Cathedral this morning, where he is buried, as they usually are on his Feast Day, and you probably know the poem:

St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain

St Swithun’s day if thou be fair

For forty days ’twill rain nae mare

Or a Buckinghamshire variation has:

If on St Swithun’s day it really pours

You’re better off to stay indoors.

There is probably some truth to this saying – if it’s unsettled on July 15^th, it probably will be for the coming weeks, and vice versa if it’s fine – which it looks like it will be this year.

Swithun was Bishop of Winchester from 852 until his death in 862 or 863. Little is known of his life that can be traced with historical certainty.  Swithun was born of noble parents in Wessex, an area that was in the process of becoming the most influential of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and he was educated at Winchester Minster.  When he had passed boyhood, he received clerical orders from Helmstan, Bishop of Winchester, and was chosen to become Chaplain to Egbert, King of Wessex, and given the responsibility for the education of Egbert’s son Ethelwulf.

On the death of Helmstan, he was appointed as Bishop of Winchester by the now King Ethelwulf, with the consent of the clergy.  He was elected and consecrated on the 30^th October, 852, by Abp Ceolnoth.  During the period of his office the Kingdom of Wessex grew in reputation and influence throughout the land, despite Viking attacks. The post of Bishop of Winchester also grew in importance and influence during the time of Ethelwulf’s reign.

Later legends give Swithun a reputation for compassion and evangelism, but it is his intellectual ability and learning for which he was first remembered.

He is credited with having caused the Latin Annals of his See to be edited and so to have contributed to the later compilation of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, the most influential history of Anglo-Saxon times.

He was a builder and his works included a stone bridge across the Itchen at the eastern gate of Winchester. The statue of him in the Great Screen at Winchester Cathedral shows him holding a model of the bridge he built – there is a photograph in Partners this week.

His kindness is illustrated by a legend of his making whole a basket of eggs carried by a market-woman that was broken on his bridge.  When crossing the bridge, she was jostled and dropped her basket of eggs. The saint took pity on her – and made her broken eggs whole.

These sorts of legends are common about saints, especially famous ones, and, like all the legends surrounding St Nicholas, they often have a basis in a grain of historical truth.

As evidence of his humility it is told that when Swithun was about to dedicate a Church, he always went to it on foot however great the distance, going by night to escape observation.  I often wonder whether he came to any of our Churches in the mid-ninth century.

His humility caused him, when dying, to ask to be buried outside the main door of the Cathedral in a place where he would be trodden on by the feet of passers-by and receive raindrops from the eaves.  He died on 2^nd July 862 or 863 and was duly buried just outside the threshold.

However, some 90 years later, when the new Saxon Cathedral was being built, Ethelwold, the great Bishop of Winchester at that time, decided to move Swithun’s remains into a shrine in the Cathedral, despite dire warnings that to move the bones would bring about terrible storms.  Swithun was duly translated on July 15^th, 971 and, though many cures were claimed and other miracles observed, it apparently rained for forty days as forecast.

His commemoration in popular culture seems to date from this period rather than from his life.

In 1093, once the initial phase of the current Norman Cathedral next to the Old Minster had been completed, Swithun was again translated, apparently without incident, to the Retro-Quire, which was then enlarged around 1200 to cope with the flood of pilgrims coming to his shrine.  The Shrine lasted until the 1530s when it was destroyed under the reforms of Henry VIII, and very little of the original Shrine and of St Swithun remains.

However, you’ll be pleased to know that in the 12^th century, Bishop Reinhald, formerly a monk of Winchester, travelled to Norway, taking Swithun’s right arm with him, and it was placed in the newly-consecrated Cathedral in Stavanger, dedicated to Swithun, and there it remains to this day.  And we still maintain links with Stavanger Cathedral to this day.

One or two things we might want to note from the life of St Swithun.

He was a monk in the Benedictine Community of Winchester.  One of the great strengths of the Rule of St Benedict is the notion of hospitality, of welcoming the stranger in the name of Christ.

The second strand of the life of St Swithun is his concern for the poor, for the marginalised.  He noticed people around him in need – the old woman whose eggs got broken, for example, or the fact that the poor of Winchester needed a bridge across the river, so that they could trade more effectively.

And the third strand of Swithun’s life is his intellectual life.  He was a life-long learner – one of the great themes of education in our day.  How do we continue to be learners, in our Christian lives as well as in all other parts of our lives?  How do we stop ourselves getting stuck intellectually and on the journey of faith?

The four PCCs of the Partnership have been working on our values, what we really think we are about as the Churches and Parishes of the Benefice.  And the phrase we’ve come up with, after much prayer and discussion, is ‘Growing in Faith, Reaching Out to All’ [Repeat].  I hope it’s a phrase which will resonate with you, and be memorable enough to guide us in our praying and our decision-making: ‘Growing in Faith, Reaching Out to All’.

It will begin to appear on Partners, PCC Agendas, Parish Magazines, the website, and so on.

It’s a cross-shaped phrase [Explain].

St Swithun was a great Bishop of Winchester, by all accounts a genuine human being, and a great Patron Saint of the Diocese, and his ministry seems to embody the values we have discerned for ourselves: ‘Growing in Faith, Reaching Out to All’.

THE NHS AT 70

July 22, 2018 | Gary Philbrick | Make A Comment | News, Sermons

A Sermon preached at Fordingbridge and Sandleheath Churches on Trinity 6, July 8th, 2018, by Canon Gary Philbrick.

Ps. 48, II Cor 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13

Lord God, take my words and speak through them,

take our minds and think through them,

take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.  AMEN.

I, along with Nicky and Rachel, had the wonderful privilege of attending the Celebration Service for the 70^th Anniversary of the National Health Service in our Cathedral at Winchester on Thursday.  The Cathedral was almost full, the Service had been wonderfully crafted, and there was a number of highlights.

Before the Service, a Filipino Choir from Southampton General Hospital sang, and that was great.  Another choir, the Basingstoke Hospital Male Voice Choir sang an extremely moving version of the old revivalist hymn, ‘When the storms of life are raging, stand by me’.  And the Cathedral Choir sang wonderful anthems by Vaughan Williams and Elgar.

The preacher was the new Bishop of London, Sarah Mullaly, known to many locally from her time as Canon Treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral, before becoming one of the first women Bishops in the Church of England, as Bishop Suffragan of Crediton.  Before that, though, she was the Chief Nursing Officer for England, the most senior advisor on nursing matters to the Government – amazingly, it was during her time in this post that she trained part-time for ordination and served as a Self Supporting Minister.  Her sermon included praise for all those from overseas who have come here to work in the National Health Service.  And she reflected on compassion, which I’ll come back to later.

But the real highlights of the Service were the Testimonials given by two NHS workers.  One spoke of her mother, who completed her training in 1948 and started work for the new NHS, and how she, the daughter, had followed in her footsteps.  And the other, amazingly, had been working for the NHS for 55 years, always in what started out as Casualty, and is now A & E, and she’s still working at Southampton General – she didn’t look old enough to have been working for that long, but she did tell us that her mother is 104, and still fit as a fiddle.

These personal stories of those with long connections with the NHS made me reflect on a number of things, starting with the fact that I’d never really thought about the fact that I was born when the NHS was less than ten years old.  Nowadays, ten years goes by in a flash, but then, it seemed to me as a child, that the Health Service had just always been there.

Which made me wonder whether anyone has memories of what it was like before the Health Service was formed? [Any thoughts?]

It was just after the trauma of the Second World War that the Health Service was founded; there was still rationing, and bombed out houses, and people still suffering from the war.  And, of course, the National Health Service was founded against the wishes of a large majority of doctors throughout the country, who, for a variety of reasons, some good, some selfish, didn’t think it was a good idea.

It was an act of enormous political courage, to go against the wishes of such an influential group of people, and many who weren’t doctors, to stand up for the principal that, just as education should be open to all, regardless of wealth or social status – a battle that was won in the late nineteenth century – so should health care be available to all, based on need, and free at the point of contact.

Many of those who fought for a National Health Service did so out of their Christian convictions; alongside many who were not coming at the project from a faith perspective.  But, whatever the motivation, it was a deeply Christian concept, drawn from the historic traditions of the country, the traditions of health care provided by the Church over many centuries. And, of course, going back to Jesus’ own ministry, as we heard at the end of our Gospel Reading this morning, when he sends out the Twelve to cast out demons – what we might now call mental health – and anoint with oil and cure the sick.

It’s worth reflecting on the links between the words we use in this area: hospital and hospice, both linked with words such as hospitality and hotel, and all deriving from the Latin word, hospes, which means both host and guest.  Interestingly, host has developed to mean just the one providing hospitality, but the original Latin, hospes, meaning both host and guest, recognised that you can’t be a host without someone to host, and you can’t be a guest without a host – they are both relational terms.

The NHS Values are Christian values – and, of course, they are shared by much wider faith and non-faith communities.  We heard them in the Service on Thursday.

The NHS values are:

• Working together for patients.
• Respect and dignity.
• Commitment to quality of care.
• Compassion.
• Improving lives.
• Everyone counts.

They are a magnificent set of values, aspired to by the great majority of the 1½m employees of the Health Service.

Now, there are problems, of course.  As we all age and have greater health needs, we put the NHS under greater strain; more and more effective treatments are discovered, which inevitably cost more; many of us would have died of illnesses in the past which are curable now – and we have some of those in the congregation this morning.  There are the difficulties of recruiting and retaining enough staff, especially while a number of European nurses and others wonder about their status here after March next year.

And there are failures or care – such as those we have been reading about at Gosport Hospital recently.

But, as the Bishop of London said in her address on Thursday, ‘The National Health Service was born out of a vision of healthcare available to all, regardless of wealth or status.  Born out of a belief in something called the Common Good’.

She went on to reflect on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, with its question at the end, ‘Who is your neighbour?’  And she said, ‘Ask any nurse on any ward in this country this question and I am pretty sure of the answer you’d get: the patients they tend and care for.  The NHS embodies this Gospel vision of compassion for all, regardless of age or race or religion’.

And she ended by saying, ‘We are here today to give thanks to God for our NHS and to pledge ourselves anew to make it the best we can.  To ensure it serves all who need it with humanity and dignity and compassion.  In the coming months and years there will be more pressures upon it.  More change.  More difficult decisions.  We pray today for those making those decisions that they might be true to the vision of the Common Good which inspired the creation of the NHS seven decades ago’.

I thought we’d have a few moments for reflection on our own experience of the Health Service, both good and bad; to think of those who staff the NHS, and to pray for its future, and then I’ll read a poem.

These are the Hands

Poem

for the 60th anniversary of the NHS

These are the hands

That touch us first

Feel your head

Find the pulse

And make your bed.

These are the hands

That tap your back

Test the skin

Hold your arm

Wheel the bin

Change the bulb

Fix the drip

Pour the jug

Replace your hip.

These are the hands

That fill the bath

Mop the floor

Flick the switch

Soothe the sore

Burn the swabs

Give us a jab

Throw out sharps

Design the lab.

And these are the hands

That stop the leaks

Empty the pan

Wipe the pipes

Carry the can

Clamp the veins

Make the cast

Log the dose

And touch us last.

© Michael Rosen, reproduced by permission of United Agents (www.unitedagents.co.uk) on behalf of the author