Sunday Homily from St. Cuthbert's & St. John's

 Trinity 18 (Proper 24) – Eucharist – 16.x.2022

(Genesis 32.22-31; 2 Timothy 3.14-4.5; Luke 18.1-8)

I know I’ve said before that I once met a priest at a meeting where we had to introduce ourselves  - and he started off by telling us his name and parish… before adding “and I took the Archbishop of Canterbury to court 28 times.” Actually it might not have been exactly 28 times - it might have been more and might have been less. But it was a lot of times. The issue was this priest’s opposition to the ordination of women. He felt so strongly over the matter that he kept taking out lawsuits to try to halt the Church as it made its way rather slowly to ordain the first women priests in the 1990s. He had qualified as a lawyer himself so perhaps this kept his court costs down. It must have cost the Church of England hundreds of thousands of pounds to defend its side. In the end the judges got fed up with him and he was ruled a “vexatious litigant,” so that he could no longer bring legal actions - at least of that nature. Nevertheless, since then his parish has gone to court with an extremely tenuous case in an attempt to lay claim to some land outside its boundaries. I wasn’t surprised to find he was still Vicar - nor that the case was thrown out. And still more recently he’s been to court to argue against having to retire from his parish at the mandatory age of 70 - just last month the judges have ruled that he has no case to argue. He’s now 72. He has no job. He says he has no money. But I wonder if he’ll ever give up?

Was the widow who kept nagging at the judge in Jesus’ parable vexatious? She kept going back to court until finally she got her way. What is she doing? - and I wonder how she managed to do it. These days civil courts of law seem to be there largely for people who can afford to use them. If you’re a millionaire you can go to court and keep appealing regardless of the justice of your case, because you’ll probably find a legal argument or loophole somewhere along the line. Look at those high-profile divorce cases where millions of pounds are at stake - or other instances where powerful people bring cases to court because they don’t like what their critics say about them. Keep going back and you might just wear down your opponents - or at least they might run out of money to pay their lawyers before you’ve run out of different levels of the court system to appeal your case. People who take out libel actions in the courts are almost always rich people who have the resources to do it. People who take out injunctions to stop people hearing details of their lives or doubtful actions are the people who have the cash to go to a lawyer in the first place. That’s how it is now. I imagine it was much the same in the time of Jesus.

So there’s a serious point to the parable we hear in today’s Gospel reading. The widow in the story is a poor woman. We have to assume that she has right on her side. The problem for her is how she might get justice. She keeps going back to the judge… not because she is a pain in the neck, not because she is argumentative, not because she wants to make money at someone else’s expense, but because she wants what is right. She knows that the odds are stacked against her. The judge himself doesn’t seem to care for what is right or wrong. We’re told that he “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” But she keeps going back to him until in the end she wears him down. And the outcome is not that he gives in and makes a ruling like those who simply have money and influence might want… He gives in and grants her justice. The poor woman with right on her side makes the rich judge - who couldn’t care less - see what justice demands.

We need to remember that parables are not there merely to be explained. They’re there for the impact they make on those who hear them. This one begs the question, where is justice to be found? What is the integrity of those who administer the Law? Are the odds stacked against the poor? Does the legal system favour those who have the money to keep going back with more and more specious arguments? How remote is the whole system from ordinary people? I wonder how the widow in the story even gets near to the judge to plead with him. She can gain access to him for the sake of telling the story - but could she do so in real life? - or would she be more like that character in another parable, the poor man, Lazarus, lying with festering wounds at the rich man’s gate and never even noticed by him?

This is not just about the legal system either. It’s about the sort of society we want to live in. Is there justice in terms of access to health and social care? - or is it a lottery depending on where you live, on being able to argue for your rights, or in having the money to buy your way in? Are our children equitably served by our schools and the wider education system? - are young people from poorer families put off from trying to get into Higher Education by the fees and other costs they will face? And how do we treat those who are unemployed or suffering from disabilities when they find themselves sanctioned or deprived of benefits through delays in Universal Credit, or told they should be able to work by people who are quite unqualified to assess their true health? How can politicians argue that poor people should have to take their share of the pain in government cuts when already they can barely make ends meet? - how much can the less well-off be expected to give up?

This is not the time for politicking - but I think we have to see that the Gospel has political implications. The quest of the widow for justice in today’s parable isn’t just a fiction that doesn’t touch us. It begs the question what does justice require now? Only if we ask that question can we be serious about seeking justice from God - about expecting that he will hear our prayers… because what are we going to pray for?

If the parable has a single point it’s simply to say that Jesus is making a comparison between an unjust judge who finally gets worn down to do what is right, and a righteous God who is always on our side. If the poor widow finally gets her way by her pleading, then we should be ready to call on God - and keep asking because he hears our prayers. It may not always seem that way. But that is the message we can take away from the story.

That’s the message in our first reading from the Book of Genesis too. Jacob is on a journey back to his homeland. He’s fallen out with his father-in-law. He’s cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright. He can’t know what reception he’ll get when he gets back home. And suddenly he finds himself on his own. Then a stranger appears during the night - and without any explanation, without any apparent conversation, they get into a fight. And they wrestle all night until daybreak. The stranger strikes Jacob with a disabling blow, but still Jacob won’t let go. Only if the stranger blesses Jacob will he release his grip on him, he says. The stranger gives the blessing - and part of the blessing is to give Jacob a new name: he calls him “Israel,” literally, “He has struggled with God.” We never discover the stranger’s name - but then we realise how Moses hears from the Burning Bush a voice which gives no name for God except “I am who I am.” Jacob had had a vision of a ladder between earth and heaven on which the angels had ascended and descended. Now he recognises how God has come face to face with him. And Jacob has held on. There’s no clear way forward for Jacob, except we’re told that he can now continue on his way limping because of the blow to his hip. It’s a reminder to us that we can hold on in all our struggles and find it’s God we are wrestling with, discover that it’s God who is holding us - and though we might limp on feebly, we find that life is changed because God travels on with us.

Back to the Gospel reading for today…

“There was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for his people.” This is the worst sort of person there could be in Jesus’ book. Because when Jesus sums up the Law he says,

The first commandment is this:

‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. 

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your mind,

and with all your strength.’ 

 

The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ 

There is no other commandment greater than these.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

So fear that God who is to be loved - hold on to him, as already he holds us. Show that you love your neighbours by seeking justice for them. That’s the Law - and it’s free for all.

Eucharist with a commemoration of St. Edward the Confessor

Live-streamed Eucharist on a midweek morning with a commemoration of St. Edward the Confessor, and with particular prayers for his successor, our new King Charles, and those who make decisions of government - the Revd. Martin Jackson presides in St. Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge.

Rich Man, Poor Man

 

Trinity 15 (Proper 21) Year C  25.ix.2022 Eucharist

Amos 6.1a,4-7; 1 Timothy 6.6-19; Luke 16.19-31.

There’s no doubt that the Church - and the Church of England in particular - has gained a lot of attention during the last couple of weeks, and we should acknowledge the privilege it has been for us to do so much in leading the Nation in its mourning for her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Our bishops have themselves written to thank clergy and people of the churches in our diocese for all that we’ve been able to do with special services and prayers, with acts of commemoration and with Books of Condolence.

But now with the pageantry and ceremonial done - and let’s acknowledge just how much that was the meticulous work of royal households and the armed services - we continue to face the question, what do Christians have that they can say about things that are really important? What is really important - in the sense of important not simply on special occasions such as the death of a Sovereign after 70 years of devoted service, but important every day? What is at the heart of what we can all be doing every day which is at the heart of our Christian calling, and which makes a real difference to people where they are?

And before I get on to saying what today’s Gospel reading tells us about this, I think I want to say that at the heart of our calling as a Church is simply to be here for people in their need. To be ready to respond to people in sorrow: both our churches know real grief at this time through the loss of members and our feeling for their loved ones. And response doesn’t require that we are ordained or wear special clothes or have special permission to take particular services. It’s simply about being with people, knowing their need, being the people we are for them.

It's not first of all about being religious - though I think it is about our Christian response. Notice that in today’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking yet again to the Pharisees - the people who in first century Palestine did so much to generate the religious heat, who wanted to set the agenda, and basically to have things their way. To them Jesus says, “You’re missing the point.” And not just that but “You’re missing the person.” His parable is about two men, one rich and one poor, and you might ask, “What’s that got to do with me?” Ask most people whether they’re rich or poor, and I guess they’d say, “I’m comfortably off” - at least until recently, when nearly all of us started to feel the impact of rising energy prices and the cost of food in the shops. You might moan about the mortgage, you might worry about the state of your savings, but you knew you weren’t poor. At the same time few of us could call ourselves rich. So we’re neither rich nor poor.

But we shouldn’t avoid the message of the parable of the rich man and the poor man. Jesus tells parables to put the people who hear them on the spot. The parables are in the Gospels because they should put us on the spot. The question is, do we recognise ourselves somewhere in the story?

This parable has come to be called the story of Dives and Lazarus. In fact only the poor man, Lazarus, is given a name in the Gospel. The rich man became known later as Dives, but that is simply the Latin word for “rich.” He doesn’t get a name in the telling of the story. And this might seem surprising. Because if you look in the newspapers or magazines, it’s the rich celebrities whose names we know, while the poor are largely anonymous - the victims of floods, refugees, people in some developing country or another, unknown millions whose lives are torn by war and injustice, faces we glimpse fleetingly on a television screen, but whose names we don’t get or forget.

Some time ago in a piece of writing I’ve kept, John Pridmore, made the point that we should know the poor - and probably do. The rich man might think he doesn’t know any poor people - and simply fails to see Lazarus. But, writes this retired parish priest of no particular prosperity,

I knew Lazarus. He slept on our doorstep when we lived on the corner of Trafalgar Square. Our doorstep was narrow and steep, and he had to curl up awkwardly. He looked like a sack. I could have done more for him. I could have given him a blanket, or directed him to a night-shelter. Better still, I could have invited him in for a bath and a meal. But usually I just stepped over him.

Lazarus always had a dog with him, perhaps to lick his sores. When I had a great deal of shopping, I would ask him to move. Generally he did - though I recollect his once saying: “Why should I, you public-school dick-head [I’d probably better not say what he called him!]?” Lazarus certainly looked as if he could have done with a few of the crumbs which fell from the table at which I feasted sumptuously every day.

We need to ask ourselves, where do we know Lazarus? Is it that woman who still sells “The Big Issue” in Middle Street after all those years? - the one we hurry past? There’s plenty more people like that in Newcastle. Last week I walked past a man who was groaning on the ground outside a bank in Durham - and offered a prayer of thanks that someone else was crouched down to help him. And in two weeks’ time we’ll be asking you to bring harvest offerings to feed some of our many homeless people through the work of the People’s Kitchen. I’ve been struck by seeing some of the poor people who live on the streets of cities where I’ve stayed like Rome. There in the centre of the city - as we went back to our en suite accommodation near the Piazza Navona - we’d see in mid-evening homeless people who’d bundled themselves up with their possessions into the doorways of the narrow streets. And first thing each morning, the crippled man on his trolley setting up his begging pitch outside the Pantheon.  Opulence and poverty side by side, tourist and refugee, well-robed clerics and ragged vagrants.

 

In this morning’s parable it’s the poor man who has the name, Lazarus. That’s the sign of his real dignity. He’s known to God - as we are - as we recognise when we give someone a Christian name at Baptism. Although Lazarus gets ignored all his life, remains unseen and anonymous to the rich man at whose door he sits, it’s him who is taken after his death to sit at the side of Abraham. Now it’s the rich man who finds himself unknown - divided from being immersed in the love of God by “a great chasm.” That rich man - who has treated the poor as being anonymous, who simply hasn’t seen them in their need - (he) now finds out what it means to be “unknown.”

 

That rich man could be you - it could be me. Where do you put yourself in the picture? - where are you in this story of the response Jesus wants to be given to the needy?

 

On Tuesday of this week the Church commemorates St. Vincent de Paul, a French priest, who was active throughout the first half of the 17^th Century. He was an able intelligent man, ordained at the early age of 20, and he could have lived comfortably tickling the fancies of the faithful rich. But instead he came to recognise the needs of the poor and the underdog. He found himself working with prisoners who were going to be sent to the galleys where they would be chained to oars - to do hard labour by rowing the ships of the French Navy. And he recognised them as individuals. He founded a Congregation of priests who would join him in working with and for the poor, and they came to be known as Lazarists - specifically they went out to respond to the needs of “Lazarus” in the people amongst whom they lived. St. Vincent’s work flourished. He founded a religious order for women, the Sisters of Charity, the first religious sisters to be allowed out of the cloister, so that they could work with the poor. And millions of lay people have been inspired by his work. Today the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is, I think, the largest lay Roman Catholic organisation, and its members seek to put into practical effect the message St. Vincent preached - the message he found in today’s parable.

 

St. Vincent de Paul wrote these words,

 

We should not judge the poor by their clothes and their outward appearance nor by their mental capacity, since they are often ignorant and uncouth. On the contrary, if you consider the poor in the light of faith, then you will see that they take the place of God the Son, who chose to be poor. Indeed, in his passion, having lost even the appearance of man, foolishness to the Gentiles, and a scandal to the Jews, he showed he was to preach the Gospel to the poor in these words: ‘He has sent me to preach good news to the poor.’ Therefore we should be of the same mind and should imitate what Christ did, caring for the poor, consoling them, helping them and guiding them.

 

And we can start wherever there is need. The parable is about a rich man and a poor man - and we may think we’re neither. But the point is that to many  other people we are rich; when it comes to helping a needy person we can take the place of the rich man. And the poor are not only those who are materially destitute - it’s anyone whose need is there to be addressed. As for those who really are rich, do they really need tax cuts and the lifting of the cap on bankers’ bonuses? Perhaps members of our new Government could read this Gospel parable and think again?

 

Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote once of a big conference on poverty which she’d attended, and how the people who talked so much about food and hunger would leave the conference venue in Bombay and ignore the beggars. Right outside the door she found a man who was dying, and took him to one of the homes she had set up - and where he died, while others talked:

 

I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. I picked up one person. Maybe if I hadn’t picked up that one person I wouldn’t have picked up 42,000. The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn’t put that drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you. Same thing in your family.

 

Requiem Eucharist for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Requiem Eucharist for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with prayers for our new King - the Revd. Martin Jackson presides in St. Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge.

Kingship and Shepherding

 Trinity 13 - Year C – Eucharist – 11.ix.2022 

Following the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II 

(Exodus 32.7-14; 1 Timothy 1.12-17; Luke 15.1-10)

Each of the two churches in which I serve has two windows depicting the same subjects – windows which I love and which we should all take note of. One is a window depicting Christ enthroned in majesty – it’s Christ the King, the central window behind the altar in St. John’s Church and high up surmounting all the other windows in the west wall of St. Cuthbert’s Church. The other window is of Christ the Good Shepherd. It’s the window nearest to the pulpit in St. John’s Church. In St. Cuthbert’s it’s the central panel of our great east window behind the High Altar. I could simply ask you to look at these windows, ask why they are there and why they are placed where they are. What do they say to us? What do they say to you?

We’re in the midst of a period of national mourning following the death of Her Majesty the Queen. It’s a time of sorrow, but also yesterday we had the solemn celebration of the Proclamation of our new monarch, His Majesty King Charles III. Sorrow goes together with new hopes and expectation. We have a new Government as well, a new Prime Minister entering into office only two days before the reign of our new King began. Politicians get a bad press, often deservedly, and whatever they do people will argue over. That’s why it’s good that we have a Head of State – the King, and before him, the Queen – who can lead the nation in a way that is beyond political wrangling and controversy. Monarch and Prime Minister, Head of State and Head of Government, both need our prayers. But it’s the Crown – King or Queen – who can unite the people of our nation.

That’s why it’s good that each of our churches has its window of Christ the King – what does it mean to call him that? And good that each points us to Christ the Good Shepherd also – the one who cares for the flock, who calls us his people.

So much of the news coverage following the Queen’s death has been about the encounters which individual people have had with the Queen. I said at the time of her Platinum Jubilee that 45 years after it happened I still find myself most moved by the occasion I saw her in my home town of Hartlepool – not in the distance with the dignitaries and crowds as she opened the Civic Centre; but as she drove out through one of the poorest and most deprived estates, and stopped her car to open her window and take from a little girl a ragged posy of flowers that she’d picked. We’re touched most profoundly when someone reaches out to us. And this was the nation’s monarch reaching out to a little child who was sobbing because her parents had told her not to be so stupid as to think she could give those flowers to the Queen. She’d noticed this small child and she stopped her limousine and slowed the royal progress.

Yesterday’s Proclamation of the new King was very much about ceremony and protocol. They’re important because they make things happen – and we see that they have happened. So it can be all the more telling when something disrupts the protocol. I still remember hearing the surgeon, David Nott, speak of a meeting he had with the Queen. He’s a senior vascular surgeon, but for years he has given his time to work as a doctor in the most war-torn and needy countries. He’d been working in Aleppo in the midst of all the violence inflicted upon the residents of that city by the Syrian regime. It left him traumatised and his mental health had suffered. When he came home he received a letter inviting him to meet the Queen for lunch at Buckingham Palace. In his words:

So I did, and of course it was only a week after I'd come back from this carnage, and the contrast between the carnage and the beauty of Buckingham Palace was just a bit too much for me to cope with.

And then not only that, sitting next to the Queen was something I couldn't cope with, I really couldn't.

I suddenly was unable to speak, I didn't know what to say to her, it was very difficult. I felt I just wanted to get out. I wanted to run.

And she was very nice and she understood this.

She looked at me quizzically and touched my hand. She then had a quiet word with one of the courtiers, who pointed to a silver box in front of her. I watched as she opened the box, which was full of biscuits. ‘These are for the dogs,’ she said, breaking one of the biscuits in two and giving me half. We fed the biscuits to the corgis under the table, and for the rest of lunch she took the lead and chatted about her dogs, how many she had, what their names were, how old they were. All the while we were stroking and petting them, and my anxiety and distress drained away.

‘There,’ the Queen said. ‘That’s so much better than talking, isn’t it?’

It was quite remarkable. I felt like she was like my mother and of course she's the mother of the nation and she looked on me as someone who needed help immediately.

With the image of Christ the King we need that reminder that he is also the Good Shepherd, the one who is prepared to leave the flock to seek out the single lost sheep. 99 sheep would be enough, but he goes out of his way to find the one which has gone astray. Jesus is the one who can sit at fine meals with the lawyers and religious leaders, but who also has a place for the tax-collectors: ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ This Jesus has a place for us.

What more can we say? St. Paul, in his first letter to Timothy calls Jesus, “the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, to whom all honour and glory are due for ever and ever.” But he knows, as well, that this is a King who reaches out to us, who wants us to find our place among his people: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the foremost.”

That, says Jesus, is because “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” And if we haven’t had an invitation to lunch at Buckingham Palace, then remember that in this Eucharist Jesus invites us to eat and drink with him at his table. The bread and wine we take to the altar are given back to us as his Body and his Blood. They’re given to us by the one who reaches out to the lost sheep, who welcomes sinners and eats with them.

Eucharist for the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary - 8 September

The Revd Martin Jackson presides at this Eucharist from St. Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge.

Parish Eucharists on Sunday 11 September are at 10.30am in St. Cuthbert's Church and at 4pm in St. John's Church, Castleside.

Eucharist from St Cuthbert's Church - Feast of the Curé d'Ars

Eucharist from St Cuthbert’s Church - the Revd Martin Jackson presides at a live-streamed celebration of the Feast of St. John Vianney, the Curé d'Ars.

And we warmly welcome you to Eucharists on Sunday 7th August at 9am in St. John's Church, Castleside and at 10.30am in St. Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge.