Posts

Steven Croft

A message for Lent

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.

/by
Steven Croft

A world-shaking event

Bishop Steven’s address to Diocesan Synod in March 2022, focusing on the atrocities in Ukraine and our call to be a more Christ-like Church.

Read more
/by
Steven Croft

Navigating well

A compass is held up in front of mountains

“O be joyful in the Lord, all the earth;
serve the Lord with gladness
and come before his presence with a song.”
(Psalm 100)

The words of Psalm 100 are familiar to all of us and set for Morning Prayer in Epiphany. I guess I’m not the only person who has found them more difficult to say than usual this year. They are words which are challenging and stretching me as I journey through this season – and I’m thankful for them. The call to joy is not always easy, for many different reasons.

Many thousands of families across the diocese have been affected by Covid in the last two years and particularly the last six weeks, my own among them. I had a positive test on 11 December. The following weekend my condition worsened. The NHS sent an ambulance and paramedics on the Saturday, and I spent the Sunday in hospital for observations and tests and then the following week being looked after by the home care team.

All in all it’s been a difficult experience but nowhere near as hard as many have found this journey. I’ve been taking things steadily since. So far there’s been a steady, uneven improvement in strength. I still have some way to go.

Where to start

So the call to joy has been more demanding than usual and is a daily challenge. My starting point is giving thanks for the good things: first and foremost for the care and skill of the NHS staff and my local surgery, for vaccines and boosters (mine was delayed but received this week), for the kindness of friends and colleagues and strangers.

Next, thankfulness for my family: for the miracle of being together with our children and grandchildren on Christmas day, for the fun of building Lego with my grandsons, for the immense joy in the wedding of our eldest son last Saturday.

The example and wisdom of others has become a second stepping-stone. Along with the whole world, I mourn the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu for many reasons: not least his concern for justice. Tutu seemed to radiate joy in the midst of conflict and struggle, a divine joy which was so clearly a source of his own strength and overflowed to give strength and a vital sense of proportion to others. None of us is the centre of the universe.

I’ve discovered a new podcast: Desperately Seeking Wisdom by Craig Oliver – a series of conversations with those who have learned hard lessons. Oliver quotes Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, and Frankl’s resolution in the midst of the concentration camp, in the most difficult circumstances, to choose life and joy each day:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

This is the summons for joy I’ve begun to hear in the words of the Jubilate: as we say the words we say them to ourselves, we encourage one another but most of all we speak to the world.

Our calling as a Church remains to call the world to joy and love and hope and peace even in the midst of sorrow, sickness and suffering. We are all of us tired now; some of us more weary and stretched than we have ever felt in our lives. For some of us our faith, the centre of our vocation, is attenuated and thin: many of the things which sustain us have been stripped away. The outward demands continue, and it’s harder to find the inner resources to rebuild and grow stronger.

We will all navigate this journey in different ways. For me, in this part of the journey, reflecting on this summons to joy is life-giving and sets my compass for the year. For any Christian, this search for joy in the midst of suffering leads to Jesus Christ and to Christ’s passion and resurrection, to the new wine of the kingdom. In this season of Epiphany we celebrate Christ’s first miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee: the changing of water into wine. Never have we needed its message more.

Navigating well

All of us will need to find fresh sources of life in the Spirit in this season. As the demands continue, it is also helpful to hold onto strong disciplines of self-care, of gentleness and love in dealing with others and with ourselves, of wise pacing, of conserving energy for the unexpected, of leaning more readily on others. I can’t say often enough how different and distinctive the experience of every individual parish seems to be and therefore how different the experience of clergy is.

As a diocese we are concerned to support parishes, schools and chaplaincies as well as we can through this transition. We haven’t (and won’t) get everything right. That support is built on careful listening. The area teams are seeking to listen continually to what is happening. I greatly appreciated four deanery days in November and December. We’ve had to postpone two (so far) because of my illness but I hope to pick up the series in February.

We hope to gather, if we may, in person for the renewal of ordination vows on Maundy Thursday in Christ Church, and details will be circulated in the coming weeks

We are also looking forward to gathering for our clergy conference from 7-9 June, which will be structured as a conversation together around what we have experienced and how, together, we rebuild from here. (ed: the online booking form has been emailed to clergy)

As a diocese we will continue to offer pointers and resources to take forward our agreed priorities, which have become even more important during the pandemic. Not everything will be possible in every place. Please see these resources as help and support offered and make your own decisions about when is the right time to engage, otherwise what is offered as a support can quickly become a burden.

Come and See

One of these resources is Come and See, offered again in Lent this year as a part of this great call to joy. The aim is to help and support those who may be enquiring about faith, returning to faith after many years or moving to a new place in their faith after the disorientation of the pandemic.

Our theme this year is the Lord’s Prayer: the words Jesus gives us to help us find our place in the universe each day and to choose this path of joy. If you’ve not done so already, you can sign up to offer Come and See in your church. Leader’s packs will be sent out by email early next week.

Christ Church

The whole diocese will be aware of the need to pray regularly for Christ Church, our Cathedral, in this season and all those affected by the difficulties there. If you have questions or concerns about material you have seen, please do speak with one of the area bishops or archdeacons: not every perspective is accurately represented in the press.

And finally….

At the centre of our Christian faith is the call to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbour as ourselves. In this love is our fulfilment and our joy as human persons in community, to be caught up into the very life of God. And so I end where I began;

“O be joyful in the Lord, all the earth;
serve the Lord with gladness
and come before his presence with a song.”

In Christ our Lord,

 

The Rt Revd Dr Steven Croft,
Bishop of Oxford

/by
Steven Croft

The stilling of the storm

The stilling of the storm
Seven days ago, Pope Francis began his address to the city of Rome and the world with these words:

“Like the disciples in the Gospel we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm. We have realised that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat… are all of us. Just like those disciples, who spoke anxiously with one voice, saying “We are perishing” (v. 38), so we too have realized that we cannot go on thinking of ourselves, but only together can we do this”.*

We have absorbed the first shock of the pandemic. We are learning to work in new ways and to work together across Church and society. We gather ourselves for the next wave. We hold together and support each other in the grace of Jesus Christ.

Thank you again for all you are being and doing. It is deeply appreciated in both church and wider community. The creativity, love and compassion evident in the Diocese are like shafts of light piercing the darkness.

Holy Week and Easter

Holy Week and Easter this year will be like no other we have experienced. Many local churches are offering prayers and meditations. Thank you. Many others can’t do this or prefer to focus their energies elsewhere and to join in the streamed worship offered by the Diocese. Don’t subject yourself to unnecessary guilt.

We are now making plans to offer live streamed worship for the Diocese on Sundays and Holy Days in the coming months to complement what is offered locally. We want this Diocesan prayer and worship to be sustainable over the long haul, collaborative, creative, accessible to all traditions, reliable and prioritising not competing with the local.

Our principal Diocesan services will be at 10 am each Sunday as last week. Wherever possible this will be live with some pre-recorded elements. The full list of services and times for Holy Week and Easter is as follows:

Palm Sunday 10 am  A Diocesan Eucharist with Bishop Olivia presiding
This will introduce Holy Week and point forward to a nationally provided and recorded dramatised Passion reading.

Maundy Thursday 11 am
The Renewal of Vows for Licensed and Ordained Ministry
Please would all licensed and ordained ministers gather for this Service of the Word with the traditional renewal of vows. Please retain your oils from last year as it will not be possible to bless or distribute new ones. I hope that Deanery Chapters or smaller groups might gather virtually before or after the service to give something of a sense of the fellowship we enjoy together.

Maundy Thursday 8.15 pm
A Diocesan Eucharist with Bishop Colin presiding

For Good Friday we will offer a series of six short addresses from myself, each with hymns and prayers as podcasts. These will be available from noon on Maundy Thursday to listen to on the website or download as a podcast. You may want to listen to them and keep the traditional three hours; or space them out across a whole day set aside for prayer; or use from Maundy Thursday to Holy Saturday; or just use the final two as you keep watch at the cross.

Easter Day at 10 am
A Diocesan Eucharist and I will preside and reflect.

These services are all advertised in this flyer (colour version or mono low ink version. Please do make them known to as many people as possible if you are not promoting your own services.

Again and again I have brought to mind in recent weeks the verse from the temptation stories: we do not live by bread alone. At this time more than at any time we need to offer spiritual resources for the challenges we face.

I am very grateful to the team of liturgists and communications staff who are working hard to make all this possible. There may well be hitches and glitches. Bear with us.

The Church of England app (currently #LiveLent) will carry my own reflections on the Lord’s Prayer with new introductions in this time of pandemic for the forty days of Easter beginning on Easter Day.

Funeral Services

I am very concerned to hear that some of you are being placed in an unacceptable situation at a crematorium or graveside funeral, with scores of mourners arriving and fully expecting to attend the service. At this time of crisis we, more than ever, wish to offer the ministry of the church to those that we have been called to serve but this must be done safely.

The present Government guidance says that numbers at funerals should be restricted and a safe distance preserved.

The Church of England guidance is aligned to that of the Government and unpacks the meaning of ‘close family’,
Because of the present public health regulations, the only available options for Church of England funerals are the following:
• a short service at the crematorium, with or without a very small congregation, which may only include spouse/partner, parents, and children of the deceased;
• a short service at the graveside, under the same conditions.

This guidance is clearly not being enforced by many of the crematoria or cemeteries in this Diocese and we have heard similar accounts from across the country. We have been in touch with the national church about this and they have petitioned the Government. We have also drawn it to the attention of the statutory authorities across the Thames Valley.

There is no easy solution to the problem of too many people turning up at a funeral. I hope that a stronger lead will come from Government soon. In the meantime, I offer this best practice guidance:

  • explain clearly to family in advance the rules about numbers and state that they must be strictly kept to; ask them to name for you the people who will be attending; ask them to explain to wider family and friends that they cannot unfortunately attend; explain option of a memorial service later in the year when this is over
  • speak in advance with the funeral director and the crem/council staff to check that they are committed with you to following the Government guidance; have a shared plan for how to respond if larger than expected numbers arrive.
  • If at the service larger numbers arrive, explain to everyone that only immediate family (spouse/partner, parents, and children of the deceased) can remain and look to the undertakers and crematorium staff to support you in this. Please do not place yourself unduly at risk.

I will also be writing a letter to all funeral directors, crematoria and council cemeteries seeking their support in this.

It is likely that, tragically, the number of deaths will continue to rise over the next few weeks and so, therefore, will the number of funerals in the remainder of April and May.

Please pace yourself through this period as best you can. Funeral ministry is demanding, particularly in a time of national tragedy. Take regular days off. Take time to de-stress after a funeral. Talk to colleagues and to friends. Don’t feel you have to accept every request beyond what is sustainable.

We are working at the moment to provide some central administrative support for clergy and undertakers to support what may be a surge in this ministry and will write with more information when that is in place. In common with the majority of dioceses, we will not be charging funeral fees for services at crematoria during this period starting immediately.

The Church of England has recently published a useful checklist on mental health for clergy and lay ministers.

Visiting the sick

One of the hardest features of the pandemic will be that we cannot and must not visit those who are sick in person. Our visits will have to be remote, but all of us can express warmth and companionship and pray for healing through phone and text and by other digital means. Those who are passing through the valley of the shadow of death need to know that God is with them and that we are continually praying for them and walking with them, albeit from a necessary distance.

Finance

Finance will not, I hope, be uppermost in our minds in the coming days. However, there is considerable anxiety already among PCC and Deanery Treasurers about the effect of the epidemic on fees, cash giving, lettings income and fundraising, and you will be aware of this.

Our Diocesan finance teams are working hard on this and we will communicate more in the weeks after Easter.

“He made the storm be still”

In Psalm 107 we read:

“He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were calmed”

There are storms around us and there will be storms within us, of grief and fear, of questions. Christ is with us in the boat as it rises and falls with the waves. Christ is able to speak peace to the storm within and without.

It may well be that the initial shock and working together and community we see at present will fracture as the pandemic advances. We will need all of our patience and hope and resilience if that is so as we have to deal with anger and hurt and fear of all kinds.

Please watch over yourself in this and draw on the deep wells of the faith. Neither the Archbishops nor your own Bishops will get everything right through this crisis. Nor will any of us. We offer what we can, consecrating ourselves to God each day, in humility and in love and seeking to serve and give glory to God and to others.

In all of these ways, we are called to walk the way of the cross and to discover that it will also become the way of resurrection and of Easter hope.

Dear friends keep well; watch and pray and love. I look forward to our being together, if only virtually, on Maundy Thursday.

With our love and prayers,

+Steven, 3 April 2020
on behalf of the Area Bishops and Dean

/by
Steven Croft

Come to the waters: preaching between Epiphany and Lent

Happy New Year!

There are eight Sundays this year between Epiphany and Lent. As we continue our journey of renewing catechesis across the Diocese, may I offer you some suggestions for your preaching and notices and pastoral conversations?

It was good to share five study days in November with over 450 clergy and LLM’s across the Diocese on renewing catechesis. My opening address from those five days will be published on this blog next week. One of my tasks for January is to edit the five excellent guest lectures (and one other) into a new book to be published in September with the title Rooted and Grounded: Faith formation and the Christian tradition. More details later.

As a Diocese, we are trying to recover a simple and life giving way of using the Christian year to help form new Christians in the faith.

The overall scheme looks like this:

Autumn: sow the good seed of the gospel
Epiphany: invite people to baptism
Lent: prepare people for baptism
Easter season: Baptism and confirmation services and ongoing formation

Through harvest and remembrance, Advent and Christmas, there has been a lot of sowing. As I wrote in December, more than 260,000 people attended services in Advent alone: around five times our normal worshipping community.

Many, many people will have begun to sense God at work in their lives in new ways, and some are ready to take the next step on the journey. Epiphany is a season to dare to invite some of those people who have heard the good news to consider baptism or confirmation or a public renewal of their baptismal promises. There are many different ways to do that through preaching or notices or pastoral conversations.

Offering an invitation to baptism in this season is a very ancient tradition in the church attested in both the Church of the East in the Cappadocian Fathers and the Church in the West through Ambrose and Augustine .

On some Sundays, special sermons were preached directed at those who were enquirers warmly inviting people to consider baptism. On other Sundays the preacher would turn aside and take time to address enquirers as part of the main sermon.

You may find that certain things need to be put in place as you begin to make these invitations over the next few weeks. You may want to identify a Sunday for adult baptisms in the Easter season and for renewal of baptismal promises. You may want to identify a suitable confirmation service in the deanery for the candidates who come forward. It’s not too late to arrange either of these things.

And, of course, as you plan Lent you will need to plan ways of helping enquirers explore and learn about the very beginnings of faith. There is lots of good material available for small groups (including Pilgrim and the Alpha course).

In Lent last year I gathered 120 people across the Oxford Area to explore renewing catechesis at the very beginning of the project. One of the things we realised through those conversations was that clergy and LLMs are doing more work with people one to one and rather less in groups. For various reasons, people are less willing to sign up for longer “courses” but still want to explore faith.

Partly in response to those insights, I’ve been involved in creating a new resource for Lent and Easter this year. I’ve written 40 days of very short reflections on the Beatitudes for Lent and 40 days of Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer for Easter. Both will be published as short booklets by the end of January. They will also be available through the Church of England’s App, currently carrying the “Follow the Star” material (iOS | Google Play), and delivered through smart speakers and in a range of other ways.

https://www.churchofengland.org/lent

Both booklets are for anyone who wants to go deeper. Their main aim is to introduce Jesus and what it means to follow Jesus through these two profound texts to an interested enquirer through short, simple daily readings and prayers. My hope is that many churches will use them to support candidates for baptism and confirmation and as a foundation for one to one conversations and small group work.

I hope this new season of invitation will be part of what it means for us to be a more Christ-like Church. It arises directly from contemplation: trying to catch a fresh vision of Christ and of what it means to be human. It is motivated by compassion: love for people and a longing for them to know the riches of God’s love and purpose for their lives. It will also take courage to offer a new invitation in preaching and notices and pastoral conversations – especially if you’ve not done it for a while.

Pray with me that this year and every year God will be drawing people to Christian faith ones and twos and small groups all across the Diocese.

God of our pilgrimage
Renew your church in this place
In the ministries of befriending and listening;
teaching and learning faith.
Help us to welcome new believers to baptism and confirmation
And restore in your love those who are lost
May Christ be formed afresh in us
As we help to form new disciples in your mission to the world
Through Jesus Christ our Lord
In the power of the Holy Spirit
And to the glory of the Father
Amen.

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

Getting ready for Lent

Copyright © 2018 Tom Bower, www.tombower.co.uk

Lent begins this year on Ash Wednesday, 14th February, and lasts for 40 days until Easter.

Lent began in the early church as 40 days of preparation time for new Christians to prepare for baptism at Easter.  Read more

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

An Easter Jubliate

Matins on Easter day is a song of joy.  Heart deep, world wide, heaven high, life long.

For forty days the Church has fasted.  We have denied ourselves the Alleluia and the Gloria.

We have walked the way of the cross.  We have journeyed through Holy Week.  We shared the foot washing and the agony in the garden.  We witnessed the trial, waited by the cross and watched the body of Jesus laid in the tomb.

And now it is Easter Day.  The stone has been rolled away.  The grave clothes are folded and no longer needed. Christ is risen.  He has appeared to Mary.  A new gardener in Eden.  He is walking the Emmaus Road as a shepherd, bringing home the lost. He will break bread and cook fish on charcoal in the early morning, spreading a table for his friends.  He will enter rooms full of fear and breathe new life and power.  He will gently test those who doubt him.  He will restore those who denied him.  He will interpret Scripture for his friends. He will commission them to go and make disciples.  After nights of desolation, he will give them such abundance that their nets can scarcely hold the catch.  He will forge frightened Galileeans into true fishers of people who will turn the world upside down.  He will ascend into the heights of heaven.  He will send the Comforter as he has promised.  He will never leave us.  He is here.

The Lord is risen.  The heart of the Church is breaking open with joy.   The pent up Alleluia’s overflow.  The glorias abound.  Jubilate everybody.  The whole earth is alive with song today: cathedral choirs, organ fanfares, string quartets, drums and castanets, calypso guitars, brass and woodwind.  Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

All of our hymns and songs and anthems are pure joy.  On this day we need the Easter Anthems, the Te Deum and Benedictus and then we’ve only just begun.  Even our bible readings today are songs of joy.

Miriam sings at the crossing of the Red Sea:

“I will sing to the LORD for he has triumphed gloriously”

The saints in heaven praise God for the story of salvation:

“Great and amazing are your works, Lord God the Almighty”.

We sing the Easter Anthems this day and for the fifty days of Easter:

“Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast”.

We are called this day above all days to Easter joy.  Let that joy rise within you.  Let nothing in all creation quench it or overcome it.  For the Lord is risen.  He is risen indeed.  Alleluia.

Christians are not always famous for their joy.  Pope Francis goes so far as to say this: “There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter”[i].  It’s a striking phrase.  We project to the world and to one another a sense that we are burdened and worn down, serious and dull, too earthly minded to be any heavenly use.  Our church needs to rediscover joy.

We are too easily overwhelmed by the sorrows and troubles of the world.  There are sorrows and troubles enough this day, to be sure, as there will be tomorrow and every day of the coming year and of every year after that.  But Christian joy does not depend on everything being right with the world.

We are too easily overwhelmed by the sorrows in our own life.  There will be sorrows enough for most of us.  Sometimes they will be almost overwhelming but not quite.  Joy is not expressed in the same way at all times in life, especially in times of great difficulty.  But Christian joy does not depend on everything being perfect in our lives.

We are too easily overwhelmed by the imperfections in the Church and they are many.  But if you wait for the life of the Church of England to be completely sorted and set right you will never know a single day of joy.  For we will always be a flawed and imperfect Church like every other this side of eternity.

There is a simple lesson about joy which we are called to learn and relearn.  Christians are not called to rejoice for all circumstances.  We are called to rejoice in all circumstances.  There is a world of difference.

To rejoice for all circumstances is deeply misguided.  It leads to a forced, false joy which tries to pretend that sickness or injustice or even death are really blessings in disguise.  There are terrible things in the world and terrible things in our own lives.  We need to name them and grieve them and be angry about them.

But to rejoice in all circumstances is a very different calling.  To rejoice in all circumstances is to understand that underneath all that is difficult, all that is written in a minor key, all the sorrow and pain and grief, a stronger, major key of joy emerges and prevails.  Even in the midst of the darkest valleys we draw our strength from God in hope and joy that one day all will be well and all manner of things shall be well.  And even today, and especially today, there is a well of hope which feeds the roots of our soul and rises up to joy.

For Jesus whom we love is risen.
He offered his life for our sins
He has conquered death, never to die again
He is the new Adam.  He offers now abundant and eternal life.
He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
He was killed with nails and wood and spear.
But death could not hold him.
Death has been conquered and Satan thrown down.
There is a river of life flowing from the cross which will fill the world and fills it still.

So sing you heavens and rejoice now all the earth.  Let the Church echo alleluias for all of this beautiful day and the fifty days which follow.

Alleluia Christ is risen. Everything has changed.  Alleluia.  Gloria.  Jubilate.  Amen.

A Sermon in Christ Church

Matins on Easter Day, 2017

[i] The Joy of the Gospel, 6

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

Mercy and Judgement

A reflection for Ash Wednesday

“Blessed are the merciful”, says Jesus, “for they shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5.7).

“Mercy is the very foundation of the church’s life” writes Pope Francis (Amoris Laetitia, 310)

I want to encourage you to journey through Lent with today’s gospel reading from John 8.  It’s almost always described as the story of the woman caught in adultery.  But it should also be described as the story of the scribes caught in harsh judgement. Best of all, it is the story of the Saviour who is shaped by mercy.  The tensions in the story lead us through Lent to the drama of the passion and the meaning of Christ’s death.

So keep the story in mind as you travel through the next forty days.  Read it often and find yourself, as it were, in the three different characters and discover the three different characters in you.

The context is important.  Jesus is sitting and teaching in the temple.  He is in the place of judgement, a priest and a king.  The king is to be both judge and saviour. What kind of wisdom does he have when faced with an impossible dilemma?  Will he be like Solomon, able to offer a way forward in this terrible impasse?  Or will he fail the test?

Reflect first on the scribes and the Pharisees.  They are at their most unattractive here.  Cruel, harsh, judgemental, lacking in that foundational quality of mercy.  They publicly shame a woman in public, display her as an object for spectacle and scrutiny to make a broader, wider point.  Their aim is to test, to divide.  In the name of purity and holiness and rules, they have forgotten how to love.  Their zeal leads them to demand blood and death.  They want to test Jesus, the Son of God, and therefore to test God himself against his own laws.

We are meant to recognise ourselves in the scribes, I think, here and elsewhere in the gospels.  Our worst selves, of course.  The part of us which enjoys nothing more than to judge others and especially other Christians.  The part of us which continually strives to divide Christ’s body.  The part of us which listens to rumour and gossip.  The part of us which constantly seeks the high ground, the superior place, from which to rain down rocks on others.

If you cannot see your inner Pharisee when you look into the mirror then you are blind and you have not yet looked hard enough.  Take time in Lent for self-examination, for confession, for reflection, on your desire to feel and to be superior, to others, to judge, to displace God from the mercy seat.  Take time to realise the consequence of your unchecked zeal in the lives of others.  Put down the rocks you are so ready to throw and slip quietly away and seek the mercy you so desperately need.

For most of us, that will take at least a couple of weeks of Lent, perhaps longer.  When we can see ourselves more clearly and accurately in the mirror, when we see the hatred in our faces and hear the harshness in our voice and the rocks in our hands, then we are are ready to reflect on the woman who is brought before Jesus.  Taken in sin, as we are.  Deeply uncomfortable in the light of day, as we are.  Ashamed as we are.  Seeing all too clearly the wrong turnings.  Expecting nothing but condemnation, injury and death.  We are ready to stand far off and scarcely raise our eyes to heaven and say: God be merciful to me, a sinner.

We find ourselves in the woman and this woman in us.  The woman’s journey in the story is to move from the shame she feels in her actions to new beginnings, from the harsh gaze of the Pharisees to the gentle gaze of Jesus; to move from the condemnation of the scribes to the silence and stillness of the Saviour; to move from death and judgement to new life and new beginnings.

The central task of Lent is to recover mercy rather than judgement as the heart of our understanding of God.  It is all too easy to live with an image of God who is like the Pharisees: who is far more ready to condemn than to forgive.  To live in this story for a while is to see those harsh images of God dissolve and give way to Jesus, crouching in the dust, silent.  To hear him dismiss our accusers and hear them turn away one by one, dropping the stones they have brought in to throw at us.  To be left face to face with Christ.

To hear his words to us:  Neither do I condemn you.  Neither do I condemn you.  Go on your way and from now on do not sin again.

The story of the woman might bring us through Lent to Passiontide.  But the gospel passage has still more truth to teach us.  For we are left with a tension, a dilemma, in which mercy has prevailed over judgement in this scene.  Mercy has prevailed in a way which we recognise as deeply authentic.  This is the God we recognise through our tears, as it were, God for the weak and despised, God who subverts.  But how is it possible for God to raise us up, to set us free, to pronounce us forgiven and called to holiness and to share this work of mercy?

The gospel reveals to us that this reconciliation, this work of grace, is not possible without the cross.  We are continually tempted to write the cross out of our understanding of faith: to recude the gospel to something we do or learn or teach.  This tension between judgement and mercy leads in the gospel inexorably to the passion.  These hands which let go of their stones will pick them up again not to kill this woman but to kill the one who sets her free.

The one who kneels and draws in the dust and speaks words of mercy will give his life for this woman and for us all.  His life is offered, yes, as a demonstration of God’s love but far more than that.  Our words and our understanding struggle to grasp and comprehend the meaning of the cross.  He gave there by his one oblation of himself, once offered, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.

Jesus makes his journey to the cross to complete a task, to accomplish the salvation of the world, to offer through his death freedom and a new beginning.  His words to this woman and to the scribes anticipate his death.  They are a profound reworking of religion and power and life.  They flow from the meaning of his death which gives life to the whole world.

This is the gospel we are offered and which we bear.  We are released from our compulsive need to condemn and judge others and set free to love.  We are released from our shame and guilt and set free to live.  We are called to service in the pattern of Jesus.  Mercy is the very foundation of the Church’s life.

Blessed are the merciful for they will obtain mercy.

A sermon at Ripon College Cuddesdon

Ash Wednesday, 2017

John 8.1-11

/0 Comments/by