Communion

As a child, I grew up in a large Vicarage with a huge garden. My favourite place in the garden was the mulberry tree, which long before had fallen over, but was still alive and still produced many leaves, as well as delicious Mulberries. Now there is a certain caterpillar which lives off mulberry leaves, known as Bombyx Mori. They are very uninteresting and, later on, they give rise to the most boring of moths. What marks them out as special is the chrysalis they make on their journey from caterpillar to moth. The chrysalis is made out of silk and indeed the common name of the caterpillars is Silk Worm. Having a mulberry tree, my parents got us some silk worms, which we cared for and fed year by year, as we observed their annual lifecycle and collected in the brilliant yellow silk-made chrysalises.

In commercial silk-farms, they keep the silk by boiling the chrysalises. Doing that kills the developing moth and preserves the silk of the chrysalis. The chrysalis becomes the creature’s tomb. It must not be allowed out, for in escaping it destroys the chrysalis. By contrast a chrysalis that is broken open is a sign of life. It is no longer a tomb, but the starting point for new life. You either preserve the chrysalis, and kill the life within, or you release that life, and allow the Chrysalis to be destroyed.

The final sacrament of the seven is Holy Communion. We take bread and wine, we give thanks over them, we break the bread and we share the bread and wine. We do so because Jesus tells us we must do so – in remembrance of him. In taking the bread and the wine we discover a sacramental moment, because we are brought face to face with a real death, a real body broken and real blood outpoured. In Holy Communion, we find ourselves at one with the crucified Lord Jesus.

But I suggest that just taking the bread and the wine is not enough. Did Jesus really just want us to sit in churches and hold services of Holy Communion? Might it not be that he wanted us to live like bread, broken for the world, and wine shed for the world? Perhaps, when we try to preserve the life of the Church, we are acting like the silk-farmers, who in preserving the chrysalises end up killing the life within. The alternative, this day, is for us to live like broken chrysalises, that is as people who are broken open in self-giving for every neighbour we meet. To live like that is to set the Spirit free.

Marriage

In 2005 Jane and I went to Auschwitz, that terrible concentration camp in Poland where more than a million people lost their lives in the Second World War, 90% of them being put to death for being Jews. While we were there we visited the cell in which the Franciscan Friar Maximillian Kolbe was starved to death. An attempt had been made to escape from the camp and the authorities had responded by picking a group of prisoners for execution. They were to be shut in a cell and starved to death. One man, who was picked, cried out “my poor wife and children!” Kolbe, who as a friar was unmarried, stepped forward and said: ‘this man needs life more than me, let me take his place’. The astonished guards agreed and Kolbe was led off with the group to die. The story goes that they went to their deaths singing hymns. Although they died, in a sense they had won. In that dark place which was designed to remove all traces of humanity from the prisoners, Kolbe had shown all the prisoners that they were of such value that he was prepared to give his life for one of them. Nothing the Nazis could do could invalidate that.

Of course Kolbe acted as he did because he believed that his Christian Faith demanded it. His inspiration was Jesus, who gave his life for his friends, even though most of them had totally let him down. The heart of the Christian Faith is this self-giving death on a cross and the victory of love over death that is represented by the Resurrection.

Nothing we, the human race, did to Jesus could defeat the transforming love of God. That is why the Christian Gospel is such Good News.

Marriage is seen as a sacrament, because it provides the possibility of such transforming and self-giving love to be lived out in the deep commitment between two people who give themselves to each other in total commitment. As the rings are exchanged, each says to the other, not only ‘all that I have I share with you’ but also ‘all that I am I give to you’.

Marriage therefore becomes an arena in which we work out in practical ways the kind of love that God has for his world. As we go about this day, we should remember that each of us is so precious that Jesus was prepared to give his life for us. To be held in such love transforms all human living.

Orders

I am often asked why I went into the church. I have to reply that I really do not know. I was only 50 days old at the time and I was not consulted over the fact of my baptism into Christ. I later experienced moving into an adult expression of faith. I was in my late teens, searching for meaning in the landscape of a faith that had been instilled in me from childhood and I came to a moment when I was filled with God’s Spirit and I found my life set on fire with the love of God. It profoundly changed me. It took me into a place in which my relationship with God was intensely and deeply personal. I never say that I became a Christian at that moment, because I refuse to write off my childhood experience of following Christ. Yet becoming an adult Christian in a so profoundly life-changing way set me on a course which led to my ordination as a priest.

Ordination is seen as one of the sacraments. It can also be called Holy Orders, which gives an insight to what ordination is about. It creates the framework by which the Church can grow and thrive. It is a ministry that provides the scaffolding by which the Church can be the Church. Yet it become something corrupting if the ordained ministry is seen as BEING The Church.

I sometimes struggle when faced with people who think that helping me, The Vicar, is a good thing to do. I try to turn it the other way round and say that my role is to help them be a Christian.

It is true that, for me, being ordained brings a sense of joy in that I feel I am fulfilling God’s purpose for my life. This is often called having a vocation. The point is that every Christian has a vocation to follow and a ministry to exercise. I am not a professional Christian, but simply someone whose particular ministry is to help other Christians live out their calling. Each of us should reflect daily on that calling. Where is God leading us today? It seems to me that to live this day in tune with what God wants for you is to fulfil your calling to live as a child of God – and to live in that way is not only to be blessed, but to live a life which becomes a blessing for others

Anointing

I was once fortunate to go away on a parish weekend. It was before I had started training for the ministry and I went with a group from the church I attended in London. That retreat was a life-changing experience. I had never heard of the African priest who led it, but it appeared he was working in England as a member of the Staff of the World Council of Churches. He was brilliant and, after the retreat was over, I looked him up on the internet. Desmond Tutu was his name. In one of the sessions he talked about his enemies. It was only later, when I discovered who he was, that I realised that he had real enemies who actually would love to have killed him. For every person he met, he told us, including his enemies, in his mind he made a sign of the cross over their heads to remind him that this person, he was talking to, was a child of God for whom Christ had died.

One of the sacraments is called Unction. It means anointing with oil and, once upon a time, it was associated with the ‘last rites’ or the ministry a priest gave to someone who was dying. Today we use oil much more often as a special way of praying with a person. We might well include making the sign of the cross of the forehead as we pray for them. It can be a powerful experience to receive such a ministry.

I like to think of it as the ministry of touch. There are many people in our world who are never touched by others and some can feel isolated and lonely. Sadly there are many others who have been touched in inappropriate ways. I don’t just mean the many victims of abuse, but also the countless people who are being beaten, tortured or killed in some of the dreadful situations of conflict in our world today.

Perhaps each of us might consider how we touch others and whether we do so for their benefit and wellbeing. It may not be appropriate to go and hug every person you meet today, but why not try doing what Desmond Tutu does and in your mind just making the sign of the cross over their heads in blessing. Try it especially with those you do not get on with and see what a difference God can make.

Confession

In some times people have the fortune to live at a moment of significant change. For whatever reason, history is being made. I suspect that the arrival of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Rome is one such moment. He is Pope Francis and his ministry is touching many lives in a most profound way. He is a man who knows his own sinfulness and what it means to live in the loving forgiveness of God. He once said that the slate of the past is never wiped clean, but we bless the past by facing it with contrition, forgiveness and atonement. That means being sorry for what is past; learning to forgive what others have done to us, and also learning to forgive ourselves; and atonement is about making amends for what is past and learning to live at-one with yourself.

Confession is one of the sacraments of the church. Going to a priest and confessing your sins is very much part of the rhythm of life for many Christians, whilst others finding it a strange practice. Does it mean ‘do what you want’ and then God forgives you? Well not really. I think what Pope Francis meant is that you cannot just sweep the past under the carpet as if it no longer matters. Instead, we need to face our past and learn to bless it – that is to find healing from that past. We need to face up to the people we are, which is only possible because God already sees us as we are and loves us, despite what we are. It is then that we find healing, new life and release from what is broken in our lives.

As we go about our lives today, it is worth at least pausing to reflect on what shapes our lives and makes us the people we are. If what shapes our life today is a weight of pain from the past, then letting God in to deal with that pain is a step towards finding the liberation and freedom to live the lives that God always wanted for us. To let God bless what is past is to allow God in to heal that past, which in turn will transform our today , but also make us far more compassionate towards every wounded person we meet this day.

Baptism

In the early Church the sacraments we now call Baptism and Confirmation were one and the same thing. At a moment in which a person found a whole new world opening up to them, as they accepted Jesus as Lord of their life, they would be taken down to the river and plunged in. As they began to drown, their previous life would flash before them and they would rise up out of the water with that previous life washed away and a new life open before them.

There are few churches which will allow a repeat of baptism. If you have given your life to Christ, you do not have to keep making that decision. In traditions, such as my own, we baptise children, because they too are welcome and included in God’s saving love, but we do so on the basis that they will be encouraged, one day, to come back and confirm those baptismal promises for themselves. The point is that, included in God’s embrace, they still need to make their own decision to give their lives to Christ.

Yet there is a connection between what once happened to us, our baptism, and how we live this day. It is similar to a marriage. Those of us who are fortunate to have had long and happy marriages, will remember the day on which we got married. We cannot keep repeating that day. And yet a marriage is something that has to be built, day-by-day and year-by-year, if it is to have any meaning.

It has to be a dynamic and living relationship, if it is to remain a relationship at all. And if we are fortunate, it will be a relationship which grows and deepens and matures over the years. In a sense, it is a journey of discovery – a shared adventure.

I suggest that baptism is the same. Once we were baptised, but each day we need to live out what it means to give ourselves to Christ. In all the busyness of the present moment, in what ways will we live for Christ and so grow in his love?

Embracing the Sacramental

There have been many special moments in my life, when somehow the lid of ordinariness has been lifted and I have discovered something that is both deep and full of wonder. I remember, as a young teenager, being taken by my father to the Royal Festival Hall to a concert. The experience was one of being taken into a world beyond everyday living and to a place which somehow touched the depths of my soul. The music was Elgar’s Cello Concerto and the soloist was Jaqueline du Pre, one of the greatest ever cellists. It was a moment I will never forget.

The church provides such deep moments of meaning. It calls them ‘The sacraments’, but all too often such sacraments are just churchy rituals, rather than windows into deeper living. As a priest in the Church of England, I am involved in administering the sacraments, but I have a great deal of sympathy with the Quakers, who do not recognise any such sacraments, for to them all life is a sacrament.

I think what they mean by that is that we can choose. Either we just go through life without ever finding deeper meaning in anything, or we so live our lives that everything we do is open to the possibility of wonder and deep joy. Perhaps it is through music, or through the drama or sport, or through watching a beautiful sunset, or resting in the arms of someone we love.

There are many ways in which the lid or ordinariness can be lifted and something deeper is found. That ‘something deeper’, is what I call God. Sacramental moments are God-filled moments and that encounter with God is something He invites us to share. 

Jesus had a certain amount to say about people with eyes, who cannot see, and with ears, who cannot hear. What he meant was that many people go through life entirely unaware of the presence of the Divine in their lives. Jesus challenges us to be open to that Divine presence. As he put it, ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand’. Look for it, like someone who gives everything to find a hidden treasure, and you will find it.

I wonder – at what point today each of us might lay aside the ordinary and dare to open our hearts to God? For if we let him, he will surprise us.

Reverence for Life

The latest bill to go before Parliament seeks once again to introduce the possibility of assisted dying. Eventually one such bill will surely succeed and the dam will be broken. Change will follow. The current proposal is to allow physician-assisted dying in cases in which a six-month terminal prognosis has already been given. It seems not unreasonable, but the inevitable cry is that this is the thin end of the wedge. Indeed it is. If assisted dying is permissible in the case of someone who has been given less than six months to live, the principle of allowing assisted dying has been conceded. It will then be a short step to say that someone who is not going to die, but is in a long-term degenerative state, will also be allowed to have their life ended. We risk entering a culture in which the disposal of people is seen as being normal and a reverence for life will be lost. The weak and the vulnerable will be at risk. I believe that, if the culture of our society changed in this way and if I faced such a degenerative illness, I might well accept a way out. I might choose death, both to spare my children the pain of seeing me in such a degenerative state and to protect my estate so as to allow it to be passed on to my children. Something has shifted here, for however valued I might be made to feel by my family and friends, I would have to live with the option of exiting life. Is this what we want to impose on those who are old, sick or vulnerable?

Yet I am haunted by the words of Desmond Tutu who says that he has changed his mind in this matter because of what they did to his friend Nelson Mandela. They kept him alive with drugs and machines while world leaders were photographed with him. But, says Tutu, his friend was no longer there. He should have been allowed to die. For me, part of the problem lies in the attitude that life is a disposable commodity and that end of life issues are a matter of personal choice. I disagree. These are matters which should concern society and which should be a matter of corporate debate and decision making. What value to we place on life and what sort of society do we wish to live in? Do we not have a duty to protect the vulnerable who might be under attack to do the decent thing and end it all? Yet there also needs to be a degree of compassion for those who can no longer face life and seek to die. If there is to be a public debate it needs to move away from the area of personal choice to an acceptance of death as a natural thing towards each of us must move. I was horrified by the story of an elderly person who was saved by medical science and then had to endure some years of suffering. Why was she saved? Why was she not allowed to die? Why could not nature have taken its course? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that we cling to life at all costs, until it no longer becomes bearable, and then each of us wants a way out, if we should need it. The prolonging of life to every increasing ages opens the way to an increase in the illnesses of old age and so sharpens the challenges of suffering in that old age. Life is extended and so the challenges of how life should end is sharpened. The Church can no longer just hold a line against assisted dying. There is an issue to debate and real questions to answer as to how we value life, protect the vulnerable and yet also exhibit real compassion to those who suffer. I was once opposed to assisted dying, but now I think there is a real issue that needs to be addressed.