Bishop Steven celebrates newly ordained deacons

Bishop Steven gave the following sermon at the ordinations services at Christ Church Cathedral on Saturday 5 July 2025. You can watch those services online.


Pray therefore that your heart may daily be enlarged….

Let love be genuine

Romans 12.9

It’s a real privilege to share in this service of ordination. We gather to surround the candidates with our love and prayers. But I wonder how you are praying for them, and how they would want us to pray.

Nine years ago, I was called to move from Sheffield to become the Bishop of Oxford. A number of people were kind enough to ask how they could pray for me.

I gave different answers at first, depending on how I was feeling that day. It was a time of mixed emotions, as ordination day will be for our new deacons. I felt very inadequate, as they will. There were so many things to pray for. But my answer eventually settled down to a single request. Please pray that God will give me a bigger heart. A bigger heart to love this new diocese and its people.

Bearing the weight

The prayer is drawn from one of the lines in this ordination service. In these ordination services, Bishop Dave and Bishop Mary set out all that the church understands a deacon to be. Then our ordinands are asked a series of formal questions. And they will be reminded of the greatness of the trust in which they are now to share: the ministry of Christ himself.

Then come the words I struggle most to say in every ordination service I have led (and I will struggle to say them now):

You cannot bear the weight of this calling in your own strength but only by the grace and power of God. Pray therefore that your heart may daily be enlarged and your understanding of the Scriptures enlightened.

All those of us who are ordained are to ask God every day for bigger, wider, softer hearts to love God’s world and to love God’s people. This whole ordination service is a prayer for bigger hearts.

Open wide your hearts

The image of the big heart is taken from a text in 2 Corinthians. St Paul is wrestling to win the trust of a proud and difficult and divided community. He lays bare his own heart, his weaknesses, his affections, his calling. He holds nothing back. And he ends his profound reflections on ministry with this appeal:

We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There are no restrictions on our affections but only on yours. In return, I speak as to children, open wide your hearts also.

2 Corinthians 6.11-13

Love is absolutely the heart and centre of what it means to be a Christian and at the heart of what it means to be deacon, or a priest, or bishop. All too often we lose that focus on love in all the complexity of our task. As a church we need to see again more clearly that the primary calling of the ordained is love.

The service reminds us deacons are ordained as agents of God’s purposes of love. The candidates will be asked:

Will you strive to make the love of Christ known through word and example and have a particular care for those in need?

God has called these wonderful people into ministry because God’s world needs more love. More people with big hearts, to love this broken, hurting world in practical acts of care and kindness. God has called these candidates into ministry to show us all how to love in deed and in word. The Church and the world can be very, very hard to love. Each of us will need every day a bigger heart.

Bring your heart to God

How do we ensure that our hearts grow bigger every day across every year of ministry? There is only one way.

We have to bring our hearts daily to the God who made us, who loves us, who redeems us. We have to come each day ourselves to the love of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to join again the dance of love which is at the very heart of creation.

We need to hear God speak to us every day the word beloved; to know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ for the world. We need to lay our sins and shortcomings, the narrowness of our hearts, at the foot of the cross. We need the daily grace and gift of the Holy Spirit to make us new within and to kindle and rekindle holy fire.

We do not come to God by navigation but by love, according to Augustine – by the widening and renewal of our hearts, our whole selves.

After their ordination, the deacons are given a New Testament. It’s important to understand something else about the prayer for big hearts. When we pray that our hearts may daily be enlarged and our understanding of the Scriptures enlightened we are not praying for two different things but for one thing.

For we need big hearts, we need love, to understand the Scriptures. We are to work at our understanding of the Scriptures until every part of our understand builds love of God and love of neighbour. St Augustine again:

So anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbour has not yet succeeded in understanding them.

Love will endure

Love is the centre and the means of this ministry, and it is love which will endure as each of us is called deeper into the love of God which endures beyond and through death and for eternity.

So we pray for our deacons – that they will be women and men with big hearts and those hearts will grow bigger and wider every day.

And whoever we are, whatever our calling, this must be our prayer for ourselves as well. God needs more people with big hearts to love God’s world.

The bishop led us in prayer at the beginning of the ordination service, that each of us in our vocation and ministry would be an instrument of love.

You and I whatever our vocation and stage of life, whatever our gifts, are instruments of love. Every one of us needs to draw near. Each of us needs a bigger, wider, softer heart to understand that we are loved and to love God’s world.

Amen.

Bishop Steven delivers his sermon at the clergy conference 2025

Saul on the Damascus Road and Ananias the Presybter

We come this morning to the greatest of all of Luke’s stories of conversion in Acts, the story each of us will know well, the story Luke tells three times to underline its remarkable nature, the story which has its own feast day in the Anglican calendar: Saul on the road to Damascus. Saul’s story is also the story of Ananias who ministers to him in a remarkable way. Saul’s story is also the story of the risen Jesus active and meeting with those whom he chooses, calls and commissions as Christ is present with us today in word and sacrament and in one another.

We first met Saul at the opening of Acts 8 where he approves of the murder of Stephen. Acts tells us he was ravaging and hurting the Church, dragging off both men and women. The same phrase men and women is repeated here in Acts 9 and again in Acts 22. The phrase seems to me to be strong and tragic evidence that the leadership of the church comprised both women and men in these very early days of Christian faith.

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

We know from Acts 22 that this was not Saul’s first mission of this kind. His commission extends to other cities as well. He has already ravaged the church. But this journey will be different.

Here on the road to Damascus, without any human intervention or plan or strategy, Saul encounters the risen Lord:

Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

The double use of Saul’s name is meant to remind us of the great call stories of the Old Testament: of Moses and Samuel and Jacob – the flashes of light and the pulling back of the curtain remind us of Isaiah in the Temple.

We must not pass lightly over Jesus words here. Why do you persecute me. Saul thinks he is persecuting the Church, the Body of Christ as are many others across the world today. The risen Jesus says why are you persecuting me. This community we are called to nurture by word and sacrament is the very body of Christ.

He asked, Who are you Lord? The reply came: I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. The response to Saul’s question is deeply personal. This is the risen Christ, offering evidence of the resurrection in a deep and powerful way to Saul his persecutor. Remember the testimony of the Apostle Paul many years later in 1 Corinthians 15:

Last of all as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

We are witnessing now this untimely birth. But this risen Christ, offering evidence of the resurrection, introduces himself simply as Jesus. No titles, no aggrandisement, no statement of the resurrection. And a curious vulnerability. The risen Christ is also the suffering Christ, sharing in the suffering of the persecuted Church and even of the persecutor. Whatever we are experiencing as a Church whether shame or guilt or weakness Jesus shares that experience with us now.

The choosing and the calling pass very quickly to the commission. But get up and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do. The men who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no-one.

Saul is blinded by this heavenly vision of the crucified, risen Lord even as the eyes of his soul are opened. The Ethiopian encounters the life giving truth of the gospel in Scripture and the message of the cross, the redemptive suffering of the Servant of the Lord who will rise. Saul the persecutor encounters the gospel first through the power of the resurrection, but this is the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, the vulnerable Jesus who shares still in the suffering of the church. There are many starting places in our comprehension of Christ as our knowledge and understanding deepen year by year. Many points of connection with the joys and sorrows and questions of the world.

Saul got up from the ground and though his eyes were open he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days and nights he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.

Saul’s encounter with the risen Christ itself leads to an experience of death and resurrection in Saul himself, emphasised by the language Luke uses for his conversion.

The English phrase “get up and enter the city” is the word anastethi, which means also, be raised up. The phrase Saul got up from the ground is a similar allusion to being raised. Most telling of all is Luke’s observation that Saul was without sight and neither ate nor drank for three nights, like Jonah in the belly of the whale; like Jesus crucified and laid in the tomb. This is Saul’s own dying to self, this deep conversion, this complete reorientation to a new life. The encounter with the risen Christ is the work of a few moments but the implications will reshape Saul’s entire life. There is a need to pause for at least three days, to reflect, to reorientate to the world. The cross and resurrection are the pattern not only the substance of this conversion and the life which will follow. We are in this place for just three days. Saul’s story reminds us of just how much God is able to do in our lives in that span of time.

Notice at this point if you will that we are only halfway through this narrative. We might think the main event has happened: Saul has met the risen Jesus without strategy and contrary to expectation. But again there are lessons here about ministry as well as about mission. The missional lessons are clearly that the risen Christ is active through the Spirit, calling men and women to himself, often working in the most unpromising and painful circumstances, going ahead of us into all kinds of places.

But the lessons for ministry are equally important. How are we to work with this God of mission and extraordinary love for the whole world where God’s mission touches our ministry? This is why Luke continues the narrative and now changes the perspective and the viewpoint.

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias.

Ananias is not just any disciple. Paul will tell us in Acts 22 that Ananias was a devout man according the law and well-spoken of by all the Jews living there. Ananias is a person of prayer, a leader in the community. We don’t know exactly when the term presbyter begins to be used of someone exercising leadership in the early Church – but Ananias is certainly exercising representative ministry; offering the ministry of word and sacrament and authorised to admit people into the Christian community. If Philip is a paradigm for the deacon, the wandering evangelist and ambassador we are all ordained to be, Ananias is a paradigm for the priest- presbyter in these narratives – the authoritative leader of the community who is likewise chosen, called and commissioned for a most difficult task.

The same Jesus who speaks to Saul now comes to speak to Ananias and calls him by name:

The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias. He answered, Here I am.

Hear again the echoes of the call of Samuel and the call of Isaiah, the call each of us has heard. Ananias teaches us that the big picture of our vocation comes from the risen Christ but so often do the smaller details as we seek to live our life in the flow of the Holy Spirit’s work. Life in God’s service is more than: am I called to serve in this parish for these next years. It is also about where I go and visit and spend time tomorrow and the next day. Who I speak with over coffee. I wonder how many of us remember to pray: Here I am at the beginning of each day?

But then Jesus commissions Ananias to do a very hard thing.

The Lord said to him, Get up and go.

It’s tempting to make more of that phrase. Perhaps many of us feel the Church in our day has lost its get up and go. Lost our sense of confidence, of mission and commission. Perhaps you identify with that and need to catch the words of the risen Jesus afresh. Get up and go. Again there is that allusion to resurrection which runs through the passage: anastas… The two words have occurred together in Luke’s gospel in the words of the prodigal son: “I will get up and go to my Father”. They echo Jesus words to Saul exactly: get up and go into the city. They echo the angel’s words to Philip. Get up and go towards the south.

Get up and go to the Street called straight and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul.

These are very precise yet very symbolic instructions. The street is called Straight. The name of the owner of the house is Judas.

At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.

This symmetrical vision will recur in the story of Cornelius. But Jesus is asking his friend, commissioning his friend to do a hard and unnatural and radical thing – to risk his life for the sake of the gospel.

The commissions Jesus gives are not easy or straightforward. We should expect to find them hard – to demand our soul, our life, our all on occasion. What are your hard callings and how have you wrestled with them? How are you wrestling with them in this moment? We see some of Ananias wrestling here, like Jacob with the angel. My guess is that Luke simplifies and sanitises the conversation. Perhaps there would be a sleepless night and anxious conversations. Imagine Ananias conversation with his wife or his daughter. Jesus has asked you to do what? Where do these impossible commissions resonate with your experiences and mine? Ananias reminds us we are called to dream impossible dreams; to hope and dare and imagine extraordinary things for the kingdom of God.

But Ananias answered: Lord I have heard much from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who evoke your name. Brackets – by the way that includes me.

Jesus listens to our questions, our resistance, our anxiety, our refusal. And then Jesus repeats the commission:

But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

We need to pause for a moment on the word instrument which is a poor translation of the original Greek word and can imply an impersonal relationship between the minister and the Lord we serve. The Greek word means literally vessel. The same word recurs in 2 Corinthians 4 (“we have this treasure in clay jars”) and also in 2 Timothy. The term is expresses a much more dynamic, personal relationship than “instrument”.

Jesus calls individual people to particular tasks. Jesus choosing, call and commission is not a call to glory, or fame or status. Jesus choosing, call and commission to Saul is a call to suffering. When Christ calls someone, says Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred eighty years ago last week, when Christ calls someone he bids him come and die.

There follows one of the most courageous acts of ministry in the whole of the New Testament.

So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid hands on Saul and said, Brother Saul. Brother Saul. The most complete and shocking reconciliation and welcome and embrace. Enemies become sisters and brothers in the risen Christ. Persecutors are turned into witnesses. Grace abounds.

Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on your way here has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and his sight was restored.

There is a new Pentecost moment, a healing, an ability to see where he could not see before. And the culmination – like the Ethiopian:

Then he got up and was baptised and after taking his food, he regained his strength.

Just suppose for a moment that all of the signs and rumours we are hearing about young people seeking faith are true: that Aslan is on the move again; that we are on the verge of a spring time in the Church. Just suppose the culture is at last changing, that the tide is turning. My heart says it is.

What are we called then to be and to do? Those of us who have endured through the long winter of ministry and grown used to fishing all night and catching nothing. What are we to do.

How does it feel to hear those words of Jesus to Ananias: Get up and go…to that group you find so threatening and difficult; to those who have been so rude and worse; to those who have hated and despised you.

How does it feel to lean in to this movement of the Holy Spirit to teach and baptise new believers in the faith; to draw them into the Body of Christ; to call each one sister, brother.

We need to pay attention to what God is doing, what God is saying to us. We may need to relearn our habits, skills and practices of ministry lest our vision for the church is limited and constrained by our own blindness and conformed and shaped by the scripts of the past rather than the new chapter of the present.

Together we hold the story of the healing, crucified and risen Lord. We are chosen, called and commissioned to love this world God has created. This is a holy and demanding calling. We need the scales to fall from our eyes, to see afresh what God is doing; to listen to what Jesus is saying to us, to get up and to go.

Amen

Questions for reflection:

Where are you seeing God at work in your own context? What is encouraging you? What is surprising you?

What new lessons for ministry are you learning?

What do you draw from the stories of the Ethiopian and Philip and from Saul and Ananias?

What are you discovering as you engage with the call to rebuild ministry with children, young people and families?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bishop Steven standing beside a fire at Christ Church Cathedral on Easter Eve.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

Today the Church celebrates new life: the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. This is an event of global, of cosmic significance. Because Christ has been raised, those who belong to Christ will share his resurrection. Because Christ has been raised, life triumphs over death. Because Christ has been raised our lives are lived today in the horizon of eternity and love.

Amid all the turmoil in the world at in recent weeks, two news stories stand out as we proclaim this resurrection. The first story is about outer space. The second is about inner space.

The outer space story is not the one about Katy Perry and four other women who made an eleven-minute journey in the Blue Origin rocket to the very edge of space. It is the story of the discovery made by a team of scientists in another place about the possibility of some kind of life on Planet K218 1B.

K218 1B is 700 trillion miles from Earth, 124 light years away. Professor Madhusudhan and his team have analysed the light signature of the planet. They have detected signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms such as algae. This light signature has been detected by the James Webb Space Telescope, itself a miracle of engineering, sent a million miles out into space way beyond the moon.

There are many questions still about the results. But potentially they give the clearest answer yet as to whether life on earth is the only biological life in this vast, possibly infinite universe. All kinds of claims are being made about the implications for humanity and for faith.

But here’s the thing. The discovery is remarkable. But it reminds us this morning of how vanishingly, impossibly rare life is in the vastness of the universe. At the very most, it looks as though our nearest living neighbours may be 700 trillion miles from Earth and are likely to be at best, plankton. Far from the rich variety of alien life imagined by Star Trek, we inhabit a largely barren universe.

Only on Earth are the full wonders of life: skies full of insects and birds; oceans and rivers teeming with fish; forests with trees which live for hundreds of years; mangos and bananas; fruits of every kind. Farms and gardens bursting with life from the seas of Antarctica to the jungles of Borneo. The further we reach out into space, the more remarkable the Earth is revealed to be. Katy Perry chose her song well in space: I think to myself what a wonderful world.

In a few minutes time we will proclaim our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed, first crafted 1700 years ago. These same words will be said or sung all across our world on this Easter Day. We will dare to proclaim that we are not here by accident or chance. That Almighty God is maker of the heavens and the earth. That the Son of God took flesh and became a single human person. That he was crucified. That on the third day he rose again. That he will return to judge the living and the dead. That his kingdom will have no end. We will declare together our faith in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life and our hope of resurrection.

The life of our world is infinitely precious, held in love by Almighty God who fills all things with his grace and who sends his Son to this world full of life so that even death might be defeated and reversed and conquered.

According to the gospels, the resurrection of Jesus happens in a garden, a new Eden project. Mary Magdalene comes to grieve, bringing spices to anoint the body of Jesus. In the first light of dawn, she sees first the stone rolled away. She runs to tell Simon Peter. Simon Peter and the beloved disciple run to the tomb. They see the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth which covered Jesus headed rolled up in a place by itself. Signs of an orderly departure.

Simon Peter and the beloved disciple leave Mary alone in the garden. There is a gentleness then to the discovery which will transform Mary’s life. She looks first into the tomb and sees and hears two angels who ask here “Woman why are you weeping?” She turns and sees Jesus but her mind will not admit the truth that it can be him. “Woman why are you weeping?” Jesus the gardener asks, tenderly.

Mary’s love is evident in her answer. But then Jesus speaks her name: Mary. Life and light break through the grief and tears. She turned and said to him in Hebrew: Rabbouni, which means teacher. Jesus gives her a commission – to be the first apostle, to bear witness to the disciples: I have seen the Lord.

There is such a deep humanity in the story, such a complex understanding of grief and its reversal which enables Mary to speak to us directly and invite us into the same experience of faith and trust in which sorrow is turned to joy; despair to hope and life to death. In just this one encounter we witness the depth of what it means to be human.

The message of resurrection will go out from this garden through Mary’s witness and will transform the entire world, Easter by Easter, and today this message comes afresh to all of us.

In all of this vast and ancient and barren universe, or the fraction we can see, there is one planet where Almighty God has made a garden full of life for just a few thousand years of history, a moment in the long story of creation. In this garden of life, God has made humanity in God’s own image to wonder and to love and to know God’s grace. When we fall and wander from that grace, God sends his Son for the sake of the whole cosmos, to share this planet for a lifetime, to reveal the best of what humanity can be, to give his life for the sins of the whole world. In one moment in time, in one place, a garden within a garden, death has been conquered and new life is offered to the world, perhaps in time to all worlds.

And so we come finally to my second news story not about outer space but inner space. The healing and mending of human hearts. The research which was published just last week by the Bible Society which tells of the Quiet Revival. An unseen turning of the tide of faith in our land. The unexpected 50% increase over six years of those who claim to attend Christian worship at least one each month, an increase led by the young and most evident among younger men. A profound search for meaning in the growing outward and inner deserts of the world. Life in all its fulness.

Last night in this Cathedral we witnessed the confirmation of four young adults, signs of this new thirst for faith and meaning and this turning back to Christ.

Hear the testimony of the Church today in creeds and songs and lives transformed. Hear the gentle call of Jesus to come to him, the Way, the Truth and the Life and follow.

The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Shadow of palm leaves

All across the world on Palm Sunday, in every place, Christians re-enacted Jesus entry into Jerusalem with crosses, processions and donkeys. It was a joy to be with the congregation of St Giles’ and St. Margaret’s in central Oxford and to walk between the two churches with a full choir and many from the congregation. Hundreds of people saw this one public act of witness. There would be scores more across the Thames Valley.

Life overcoming death

Palm Sunday offers us a story of humility, of servant leadership, of the fulfilment of prophecy. All across the world this week, the gospel story will be read as we read it in our churches yesterday. The story of God’s great love for the world, of forgiveness from sin, of reconciliation, of new beginnings, of life overcoming death.

Christians are living this message in this Holy Week in the midst of the storm and turmoil of world events. We proclaim that Christ the Servant is the better king in the face of unstable and unpredictable rulers and dictators. We proclaim Jesus who brings peace and reconciliation to the world in the face of ongoing war and conflict including the terrible rocket attack on the Anglican hospital in Gaza on Palm Sunday morning. We speak the gospel of Jesus’ love and forgiveness despite the hate speech which swirls across social media and disturbs the minds of the young. We speak of Christ’s mission of healing to the world despite the fragmentation which is all too clear. Our procession today and our reading and our presence here are acts of resistance and defiance and hope.

A quiet revival

In all the storm of all this news you may have missed a significant story. The Bible Society published research last week on Church attendance under the title: The Quiet Revival. The headlines are striking.

The report finds that the number of people claiming to attend church at least once a month in England and Wales increased by 50% between 2018 and 2024. In 2018, just 8% of people made that claim in a YouGov survey. In 2024, that had risen to 12%. The research was carried out online, and the total weighted sample sizes were over 19,000 adults in 2018 and over 13,000 in 2024.

The most dramatic increase reported is in young adults, particularly young men. In 2018, just 4% of 18-24-year-olds said they attended church at least monthly. Today, that has risen 16%, with a larger increase among young men than young women.

Turning the tide

The reports authors claim something very significant is happening across our society. After decades of decline, the tide is beginning to turn, they argue, led by the young. The state of the world, the quest for meaning, the search for identity is leading people once again to ask deep questions and leading once again to faith. You can find the published research here. It’s well worth reading.

We are still evaluating the research and will publish in the next few weeks more positive news in growth and recovery in congregations across our own diocese in 2024. The Church of England published last week encouraging statistics on a very significant increase in the search for local churches through A Church Near You. Only a few weeks ago, another mission agency, SPCK, recorded a significant increase in the number of Bibles being bought in the UK by Generation Z.

The quest for meaning

We are seeing again a quest for meaning in the lives of men and women and young people especially. A desire to understand the world and our place within it. A desire for guidance in how to live, and for community. A longing for redemption and for forgiveness and for grace. A desire to set faith and hope and love at the centre of our lives. A dissatisfaction with the answers the world is offering of wealth and power and status.

The story of Holy Week is not a story of easy answers. The story of Holy Week is not the story of a God who stands back from suffering. The story of Holy Week is of Jesus’ presence in the place of suffering and questioning and pain. The farewells to his friends’ the agony in the garden’ the trial before Pilate’ the dialogue with the thieves on the cross’ his final, public moments; the giving of his life for the sins of the whole world.

We should be confident this week as we live and tell this story. It remains the most precious and life-giving story in the world. The witness we offer is profoundly relevant to a generation looking for hope and meaning, for community and love. We should be expecting signs of God’s work calling young people to faith and looking out for those who will come. We should be humbled again as we live and tell this story and come and kneel before the cross in thanksgiving and adoration for what we have received ourselves. We should be renewed in our walk with Jesus as we live and tell this story and prepare for Easter Day.

+Steven


Based on a sermon preached in St Margaret’s, Oxford, on Palm Sunday, 13 April 2025.

Bishop Steven at Christ Church Cathedral.

For they did not yet understand (20.9)

A very happy Easter to you and to your families. May you know the hope of the risen Christ in your homes and in your hearts.

I love the gospel stories of the resurrection. One of the things I love in Luke and John especially are the different characters in the stories. No two people respond in the same way to the good news of Easter Day.

In our gospel reading we see Peter and the disciple Jesus loved and Mary Magdalene. Mary comes to the tomb early. She finds the stone rolled away and runs to Simon Peter and the other disciple. They in turn run to the tomb. Remember they are in the first days of shock and grief.

The other disciple outruns Peter. He bends down and looks in but will not enter. Simon Peter arrives, breathless and goes in. They see linen wrappings, a cloth rolled up by itself. The other disciple now enters. He sees and believes: the first to do so.

Then the gospel tells us: for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. They did not understand.

Peter and the other disciple return home, still unsure of what to do. Mary stays weeping outside the tomb. It is Mary who has a vision first of angels and only then, when she has heard the angels, of Jesus himself. Even then Mary does not recognise him but mistakes him for the gardener.

Then Jesus speaks Mary’s name and finally she understands. Rabboni. Her longing is to embrace him but still there are things Mary does not understand but needs to do.

Peter, Mary and the beloved disciple each have their journey of understanding the immensity of resurrection. A whole world view is shifting here and it shifts at different rates for different disciples.

Mary arrives at the tomb with an unshakeable belief that Jesus has died and is gone for ever. She leaves the garden with an unshakeable belief that Christ is risen and death has been conquered. How does that transformation happen?

Mary begins to ask questions when she sees an empty tomb; the fear and excitement of Peter; the faith of the beloved disciple; the linen bandages and the folded cloth. Cracks appear in her understanding. Mary slowly begins to doubt her conviction that Jesus is gone for ever. The seed of a new faith begins to grow. Perhaps, perhaps.

That seed of faith enables Mary to see and hear the angels, apparently unseen by Peter and John a few moments ago. Faith grows as Mary sees and hears the angels. Mary turns and sees Jesus but also does not see him. Even now the paradigm holds strong. Those who have been cruelly crucified cannot be found walking in gardens on the morning of the third day.

But then Jesus speaks. His voice is unmistakeable. Mary looks up and opens her eyes. The strong fortress of her ideas on death, her entire view of the world, formed generation after generation crack from top to bottom then crumble and fall away. Mary believes: Rabboni? First questioning. Rabboni? Then full of joy.

The gospels tell us that when a disciple comes to believe the resurrection it is not a simple matter or the work of a moment. It is not simple for Mary here; or for Simon Peter or the beloved disciple. It will not be simple for Thomas in the upper room or Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus who walk for hours with him unrecognised. It is not simple for the disciples in the Upper Room. Luke captures their journey to faith as they met the risen Christ in this intriguing sentence: “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering….” (Luke 26.41). It will not be easy for Saul on the road to Damascus as the glory of the resurrection will for a time mean he can literally see nothing else.

This is no easy, instant faith or simple change to make. To believe the resurrection of Jesus is always an individual journey for every person. For the disciples it means spiritual encounter; it means searching the scriptures and understanding them in new ways; it means replaying their memories of journeys with Jesus and the difficult and unlikely things he said; it means wrestling with doubts; denying even the possibility, scarcely daring to believe it could be true; coming to terms with their own failure and blindness and betrayal; and realising what this will mean for the whole of their lives. The majority will give their lives in different ways to transmit this truth and understanding to the world.

In the end each of them will come to believe that they believe, not through their own cleverness or virtue or understanding. Each of them will come to believe that they believe through grace: because God in Christ reveals himself in a way that draws them deeper into faith and hope and love. That revelation comes through evidence and reason and conversation and encounter in unique ways for each disciple as the gifts and witness of each combine into the new community of faith.

It is no small thing therefore in 2024 even to be present in this Cathedral church on Easter Day. It is no small thing to declare together Alleluia Christ is Risen in the face of death. It is no small thing to gather around the table of the Lord and meet with the risen Christ in bread and wine, to seek forgiveness and renewal, to reassess our lives in the blinding light of resurrection.

If we are hesitant or uncertain in our responses, we are in good company. Simon Peter and Mary and Thomas have been there before us. If we need to lean back into the faith and worship of the church and lean on the faith of others, then that is understandable: these are such world shaking and life changing truths. As long as we then keep seeking.

We live now in a world which does not readily admit the miraculous or the transcendent; a world which limits itself to what can be seen and understood with the senses. We live in a world in which it is harder to believe and where the echoes of the song of faith grow more distant with every generation. We live in a time when the church is weaker in this land than any time we can remember but we know also that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. We live in an age where it seems that all the vast river of human suffering and evil flows past our eyes continually in an every present and distressing cycle of distress which weighs heavily on the souls of so many and saps our strength. This too is a barrier to faith the first disciples never had.

Each of us will find in different ways that the ways we believe must be revisited with each decade of our lives; that personal suffering and grief will change and challenge us; that our perspective and our doubts shift and change with experience and age.

But still, but still. We are drawn back to this living fire of faith even if it is only to creep in at the door and listen. We are disenchanted with a material and finite world. We long for some deeper truth; some greater mystery; some better, richer, story; some greater cause. And the still small voice within whispers still, come deeper; come and see.

The truth we are seeking, which changes everything is here: in discarded graveclothes and an empty tomb; in the struggles of the witnesses; in the great narrative and the detail of the scriptures; in the testimony of the church across the ages; in the changed lives of the saints; in the examples of Christian love we see around us; in the calls we hear within; in our resting and replenishing in Holy Communion; in faith enduring the face of suffering.

Today is a day to say yes; to declare our faith; to seek God’s renewing power. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed Alleluia.

Faith is rekindled. We make a fresh offering of our lives. We will follow with Simon Peter, with the beloved disciple, with Mary Magdalene. We will hear his call and follow.

Amen.

 

Come and see…

A sermon for the beginning of Lent, preached in St Mary’s Iffley and Keble College Chapel on 11 February. The readings for the day were 2 Kings 2.1-12; 2 Corinthians 4.3-6 and Mark 2.1-9.

On Monday I had an appointment in central Oxford arranged at short notice. The instructions on location in my diary are normally an address or a postcode. But these instructions read as follows: Big Green door left of Ravenscroft and Ede, High Street. This sounds more like an extract from a John Le Carre novel or maybe Harry Potter than a normal Bishop’s diary.

I walked down the High Street with moments to spare, only half remembering where Ravenscroft and Ede is and concerned that I might miss the big green door because I’m colourblind. Thankfully my host was there to meet me. We stepped inside between the shop fronts, through a door, an alleyway and a gate. Behind the shop front, as so often in Oxford, we entered another world: quadrangles and staircases; modern buildings; student rooms; a maze of corridors. I had walked down the High Street scores of time, never realising the hidden world beyond.

Oxford lends itself to hidden unseen worlds. All is not as it seems from Lewis Carol and C.S. Lewis to Colin Dexter and Philip Pullman. Whole departments for the arts and sciences are hidden inside the doors of terraced houses. Beautiful gardens are locked inside forbidding walls. The whole architecture of the city reminds me over and again that there is more to almost everything than meets the eye. That architecture and geography springs in turn from the deep Christian roots of the city. The geometry of our faith invites us to come deeper, to explore unseen worlds, to take the next step on the journey.

Our Old Testament reading uses geography to invite us to explore unseen worlds. Elisha follows Elijah through places which have deep meaning in Israel’s story: to Gilgal and Bethel and the Jordan back into the wilderness. Once there Elisha catches a vision of an unseen world beyond this world: a world of the spirit; a world of eternity. Elisha’s will go on to draw immense strength and power from this vision of eternity to bring change in his own generation.

Paul in 2 Corinthians tells us in many different ways that there is more to this faith of ours and to Jesus than we have yet seen and that the world has seen. The gospel is veiled, hidden away. It is possible to walk past it scores of times and never understand it. The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel. Even those who are Christians can lose sight of the wonder and the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

And that glory is revealed most clearly in our gospel reading, Mark’s account of the transfiguration. Jesus takes Peter, James and John apart. They have travelled with him, listened to his wisdom, seen the feeding of the five thousand and the stilling of the storm, witnessed countless acts of kindness yet still they have no idea of the person he is. Their minds cannot embrace the scale and depth and mystery and majesty: the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

And so for a moment they pass through the door. Their eyes are opened as they climb the high mountain. They see him through a different glass: neither microscope nor telescope but spectacles.

Some years ago, my son bought me a special pair of spectacles which aim to correct colour blindness, so I that I could tell the difference between red and green. I had visions of being able to see a glorious range of colours instead of the colours I can see. Sadly they don’t work that well for me.

But it was something like this effect multiplied a hundred fold for Peter, James and John. They see the glory of the Christ who is the image of God. He is transfigured. The Greek word is metamorphosised: the transition from a chrysalis to a glorious butterfly. His clothes became dazzling white. They see part of the company of heaven, represented by Moses and Elijah. They see there is one here who is greater than the law and the prophets. They hear a voice from heaven, echoing the voice at Jesus baptism which answers the deepest question in the gospel: who is this Jesus?

“This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!”

The curtain is drawn back. There is a glimpse of eternity. Only here on the mountain. But a glimpse which will shape their lives for ever; a vision which will give them the power to change the world for ever. The glory of Christ who is the image of God.

Too easily we lose this vision of deeper realities and other worlds as the disciples did when they came down the mountain. We need still times in our days when we pray and ponder God’s word. We need a set time each week when we come apart to be with Christ, to reflect on Scripture; to receive the sacrament; to be in Holy Communion. We need a time in the year when we travel up the mountain to with Jesus, seeking that clearer picture of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. That season each year is the season of Lent, which begins of course this coming Wednesday.

One of the most wonderful and profound invitations in the gospel recurs at the beginning of John. Two reticent disciples begin to follow behind Jesus. Jesus turns and sees them following and begins as Jesus often does with a question. What are you looking for?

They stammer out a reply: Rabbi where are you staying? They see him only as a teacher. Jesus gives this most beautiful invitation: Come and see. He opens a door to another world.

This Lent as every Lent we are echoing Jesus’ invitation to the whole Diocese within the Church and beyond it to Come and See. Use this season to come deeper into faith, to discover the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Use this season to explore faith perhaps for the first time. Register on our website and we will send you daily reflections by audio and email and short videos each Sunday. This year we are exploring the Way of Love: Jesus great summary of the law.

There is more behind the green door than we will ever see or understand. Whole worlds are waiting to be explored. The vision we see there will give power and strength and joy for this life and the next. The glory of Christ who is the image of God. Come and see.

Over 200 people came together in our cathedral church on Sunday 19 November to give thanks for the work of our Parish Safeguarding Officers and all those who serve with them, to pray for the safeguarding of children, young people and vulnerable adults across the churches and chaplaincies of our diocese and to commit ourselves afresh to this ministry which we share. This is the text of  the sermon given at the service.

Thank you for all of your work to ensure a safe environment in our churches. We do recognise the task is complex. But we recognise together that our task is immensely valuable and vital for God’s mission.

Our starting point must be the value of each person before God. That sense of value runs through Psalm 139. The words of the Psalm help us to realise each time we pray them how precious we are to God and how precious each person in creation is to God. To say these words is to open our hearts to understand the love of God and the value of every person.

O Lord you have searched me and known me
You know when I sit down and when I rise up
You discern my thoughts from far away.

And later

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb…. your eyes beheld my unformed substance; in your book were written all the days that were formed for me when none of them as yet existed.

It’s impossible to imagine a more intimate expression of God’s knowledge and understanding of each person – a knowledge which extends even before birth, a knowledge which extends through the whole of our lives. It’s impossible to imagine a safer image of intimacy than this resting in the love and knowledge of God. Every person in creation is made in the image of God, to be respected, cherished, loved.

But the psalm teaches us as well, as does the whole story of scripture, that human beings have a capacity for harm and hurt as well as a capacity for good. Abuse in all its various manifestations is a reality in the life of the world and in the life of the church. There are those who misuse power to pray on the vulnerable.

For that reason we have had to relearn as a church the need to be vigilant; the need to be watchful and alert; the need to offer protection as clergy and PSO’s to those who are part of our churches and who may be vulnerable within them. Parish safeguarding officers are at the front line of that watchful vigilance.

The work of a Parish Safeguarding Officer involves many different details: safer recruitment; developing good policies; improving the safeguarding culture; the handling of allegations; helping safe access for all to the vital ministries of the church.

But at the heart of that ministry is the fulfilling of the commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves: to treat anyone who is part of our churches as we would want to be treated ourselves; to offer love and respect as to our own children or grandchildren or sisters and brothers. Our safeguarding culture is founded on a tough but unconditional love.

And as in any demanding ministry, God’s grace will be there for us; God’s love and care will lead us. May God bless you this day and in the coming year in all that you seek to do.

Amen.

 

Peace is far more than a truce: an absence of conflict, violence and war. Peace is the presence of human flourishing, of well being, of harmony, of lives well lived from childhood to old age. Shalom describes the world we long for; the world we pray for Sunday by Sunday; the world each of us is trying to build.

The Bishop of Oxford gave the sermon at the Coronation Service of Celebration at Christ Church Cathedral on Friday 5 May 2023. 

In a few hours time, at the very beginning of the Coronation service, King Charles will come to his Chair of Estate on the pavement of Westminster Abbey. He will be surrounded by world leaders and dignitaries. The event will be watched live across the entire globe.

The opening words of the service will be spoken not by a Dean or Archbishop but by a child: Your majesty, as children of the Kingdom of God we welcome you in the name of the King of Kings.

The King will reply, quoting the very words of Jesus: In his name and after his example, I come not to be served but to serve. The whole Coronation and, we pray, the King’s life and reign will flow from that promise.

St Paul encourages us today to pay attention, to reflect, to think deeply in these moments in these words from our second reading: “Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things”

I wonder where your mind will be tomorrow as the nation pauses in this moment. There will be much in the Coronation which encourages us to look back, I am sure. The pageantry and processions, the costume, the Abbey itself. We will look back over a thousand years of our own history. We will look back further to the sacred kings of ancient Israel, celebrated in the Psalms, anointed with oil at the beginning of their reign: to Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet. The Coronation distils deep seams of divine and human wisdom on leadership in communities into simple acts of consent, disrobing, of anointing and prayer, of kneeling, of acclamation, of the acknowledging and the balancing of power. The words of the service reminds us of the blessings of stability and order and rule mediated through a person as well as an institution: a deep humanising of authority and justice.

There will be much which encourages us to reflect on the present. The service will be a testimony to a mature, multicultural, diverse United Kingdom: a unique moment in history. Different faith leaders and cultures will play their part as the monarch seeks to bind us together in humility and a generous inclusion. The different nations of these islands will each play their part, countering the forces of separation and division which have marked this last decade. The whole nation is invited to the party not only tomorrow but in the local celebrations which will follow in towns and villages celebrating volunteering for the common good, making memories and binding communities together.

There will be much, finally which helps us to reflect on the future. The words of the service paint a picture of a still better kingdom. A kingdom of healing and renewal in the natural world. The world faces environmental catastrophe in our own generation. Surely Charles is king for such a time as this. A kingdom of justice as inequalities grow wider. A kingdom of peace in a world at war, forging alliances across the world. A kingdom of welcome and a friend in need to the many who are in distress.

King Charles has prepared for all of his life for this moment. He is and will be a rich blessing to our nation and Commonwealth and the world. We know him better than any previous monarch because of the age in which we live. We know he will have a strong support and stay in Queen Camilla.

Whatever is good and honourable, think about these things says Paul. We will reflect on the past, the present and the future as the great liturgy enfolds us. We will reflect too, I hope on our own lives, on our own faith, on the part we have to play in building this nation and in building God’s kingdom.

In his name and after his example, let each of us come not to be served but to serve.

God Save the King.
Amen.