Palm Sunday: Protest and Extremism

From a sermon by Ray Anglesea delivered to a joint service of West End, Robert Stewart Memorial and Jesmond United Reformed Churches



It wasn’t Hosanna the jeering, hostile crowds were chanting but “Farewell Mohamed, we will avenge you.” Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street trader, didn’t mean to start a revolution. On the 17th December, a week before Christmas, this 26 year old Tunisian university graduate and street trader wheeled his barrow into the market square of Sidi Bouzid, a dusty town in central Tunisia. He set up his stall at the street corner and began calling out his wares. Within minutes he was interrupted by a municipal inspector who started to confiscate his merchandise; the inspector alleged he did not have a trading permit. Grabbing his fruit and vegetables back the local inspector slapped him in the face.


Perhaps that was the turning point that burst into a revolution. For an Arab man to be slapped by a woman in public was the height of humiliation. Bouazizi, embarrassed and enraged, stormed over to the municipal office demanding the return of his stock. There he was beaten again. Now angry and enraged he went to the main regional government office. He was turned away. “If you don’t see me, I’ll burn myself,” he shouted. At 11:30am, less than an hour after the 1st altercation, Bouazizi was back in front of the gates of the governor’s building. He sat down and poured two bottles of paint-thinner over himself and demanded once more to see an official. Then he lit his cigarette lighter and by the time the flames were extinguished he had suffered third degree burns over 90% of his body.


He was taken by ambulance to a hospital 70 miles away then later to a special burns unit in Tunis. On 4th January 18 days after setting fire to himself Bouazizi died. By then the protests had already started. Dissent and remonstrations began to spread like grassfire throughout the capital and regional towns powered by Facebook and Twitter. Police fired on the crowds in several towns. The death toll mounted. On the day of Bouazizi’s death the Jasmine Revolution erupted into full force. Within a week President Ben Ali of Tunisia had fled the country. A 23 year old dictatorship collapsed in a matter of days. Weeks later the 30 year old rule of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt (who had amassed a family fortune of £40.5 billion), was at an end. Bouazizi had become a martyr. The very ordinariness of his life has given his story the power to overthrow dictators. The rage, frustration and poverty that first erupted on an ordinary Friday morning in a nondescript Tunisian backwater has now spread to Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Syria.


Does Bouazizi’s story ring any bells? A death on a Friday, a poverty stricken nobody from a backwater nothing town, the martyr a symbol of rebellion, beaten, spat on, abused, humiliated, mocked, abandoned. On this Palm Sunday of all days we remember the early morning madness, the protest, the repression, complaints and objection; an excited demonstration in the dense architecture of Jerusalem, a young servant king on a donkey fulfilling Zechariah’s messianic prophecy, who was to turn expectations of political deliverance on its head. Amongst waving palm branches the smell of defiance was in the air, a possible subversive peasant uprising, threats of arrest, and criticism by those who thought Jesus and his group were going too far, too fast. “This is the controversial field preacher and healer,” they shouted. “This is the son of a virgin who went to parties and turned water into wine.” Danger! Controversy! Fear! In the backwater of a destitute and penurious provincial town amid the Judaean hills there were too many authoritarian, conflicting and violent ideologies. And one of those unjust and immoral ideologies was religious extremism. Religious groups and individuals had become radicalised; a pathological illness which feeds on the destruction of life. In Jerusalem nothing has changed.


Perhaps the greatest Scottish poet of the 20th century, Hugh MacDiarmid, a passionate nationalist and convinced Marxist described his time as an age “whaur extremes meet.” Hugh MacDiarmid was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve who was no stranger to extremism; indeed the extreme political beliefs that bewitched many during MacDiarmid’s time in the 1930’s possessed something of the quality of religious faith. The result of the extremes of global recession in the 1930’s caused many Jarrow miners and ship builders from this region to walk over 300 miles, with their MP Ellen Wilkinson, to London, demanding employment and an end to abject poverty.


Hand in hand with extreme political views is the extremes of religious intolerance and fanaticism that sometimes goes with it; recent decades have been characterised by worldwide suffering of many as a result of the actions of radicalised religious groups. Complex religious views still prevail - the murder of a Catholic police officer Constable Ronan Kerr, 25, killed after a booby-trap device exploded under his car, in Omagh, County Tyrone: the attack on a United Nation base in the city of Mazar-e Sharif which killed 14 people, seven of them UN staff, as a result of an American pastor who burnt the Koran. "The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran,” said Mr Obama “is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry; to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity.” Yet don’t let’s deceive ourselves – it was the Christian evangelical fundamentalism and neo-conservative ideology that underpinned the Bush administration that took the American nation to war in Iraq, aided and abetted by the British Government; “a war widely perceived without any basis in international law and a war that could not be described as just or moral,” stated Prof. Michael Northcott, Professor of Christian Ethics, Edinburgh University in his book An angel directs the storm. Perhaps the engineer’s song’s from the musical Miss Saigon “The American Dream” has faded, to many minds the extravagant new life of the American dream has now become the American apocalypse.


But that was last week’s breaking news. Senior church leaders have brought to the forefront of all our concerns at the start of this Holy Week the situation of Christians who are living with the daily threat of violent persecution often in unstable environments. Our thoughts this Holy Week are with the leaders and people of Jerusalem, the Middle East and the African Ivory Coast faced with massive instability and uncertainty, and with many disturbing signs of what may come. We also think with anguish of the sufferings and anxieties of the Church in Pakistan, in the context of the brutal killings that have occurred in recent months and weeks; the murder early in March of Shahbaz Bhatti the minister for religious minorities in Pakistan, a Christian and a critic of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, who was shot dead by gunmen on his way to a cabinet meeting in Islamabad. The continuing attacks on Christian communities in parts of Nigeria and Gays in Uganda are a matter of deep concern, and in Zimbabwe Christians are still subject to constant attack because of their brave stand for justice. In Southern Sudan, after a referendum more peaceful than most people dared to hope, the Church faces the huge challenge of helping to shape a new nation; the same challenge of witnessing to a unity beyond political boundaries inspires the continuing courageous ministry of the Church in Korea.
At the beginning of Holy Week, we stand with Jesus before the gates of the city of Jerusalem, the Holy City in a world dominated by news of religious fanaticism and extremism. Simon Montefiore in his new book Jerusalem: The Biography describes the city as “the global focus of the struggle between the Abrahamic religions; the shrine for increasingly popular Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism. Jerusalem is the house of one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions. She is the only city to exist twice, in heaven and earth. The city which is the cosmopolitan home of many sects, a hybrid metropolis of a hybrid people with many interlinked and overlapping cultures and layered loyalties, each of which believes the city belongs to them alone.” It is a city of religious extremism indeed; an illuminated stage for the cameras of the world in the age of 24 hour news.


As believers and as human beings, we stand today at the gates of the city at the start of Holy week – a 'city of wrong' as one great Muslim writer, Kamel Hussein, called it in the title of his fictional meditations, City of Wrong: A Friday in Jerusalem as he meditates on the last week of Jesus’ life; a city where so many sufferers are silenced and where so many innocent on both sides of the terrible conflict are killed and their deaths hidden under a cloak of angry, selfish, posturing words, whatever language they are spoken in. “We know in our hearts,” stated the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently “that so much of what fuels the violence of religious extremism is in ourselves too: the passionate longing for power and control, the impotent near-mindless fury that bursts out in literally suicidal ways in cities around the world, and brings destruction to so many. We know the urge to defend what can't be defended because we can't lose face.” We search for any drop of the elixir of tolerance, sharing and generosity to act as the antidote to the arsenic of prejudice, exclusivity and possessiveness. “We too are citizens of this city of wrong.”And as Ian Cowie reminded us in his poem Welcome to the City – “ don’t interfere with politics or economics – if you get it wrong for our city, who knows? We, too, might have to liquidate you.”


And in this city of protest, of religious extremism, in this city of wrong, we stand at its gates to remember the extremes of a different kind, the extremes to which one man was driven because of faith, and draw a very different message. The Easter narrative helps us to understand that what the world needs is not a retreat from faith, and religion’s moral codes, but an approach towards the mystery of creation marked by the humility of Jesus and infused by the sympathy that He showed to all mankind. The extremes to which Jesus was driven were the furthest reaches of human suffering. Scourged, beaten, tortured and crucified, His body was robbed of all dignity, like the Tunisian street trader, his existence extinguished in excruciating pain. Jesus’ journey on the Via Dolorosa was a consequence of others’ actions, specifically the rejection of His message, and the promise of redemption through faith which He offered. He was betrayed by the religious leaders of His time, who put a rigid adherence to rules, hierarchy and status before the message of love. He was condemned by the secular powers of the Roman occupation, who chose expediency rather than principle. He was, ultimately, denied by His own disciple, Peter, who sought the good opinion of others before the truths of his own heart. In each case, suffering came because men lacked zeal and passion, would not stand up for what was right and preferred a course the world seemed to deem prudent rather than the path they feared would render them exposed. Those in the Easter narrative who betrayed Jesus did so because they acted in a manner which was political, calculating and worldly.


The journey to Calvary that Jesus made was, however, for them as much as anyone. He confronted the ultimate extreme — a painful death and the cries of the world jeering in His ears — to prove that compassion can triumph over calculation, and that sacrifice can redeem sin. He required a faith that might be considered so strong as to be extreme. But His quiet adherence to the principle of love, and the willingness to sacrifice His interests for others, and then His Resurrection, completed a symbolic but real journey, and began a new phase of human spirituality.
The extremists who challenge our peace this Easter in Ireland, in the Middle East, in fragile African states come not as Jesus did, to redeem, but as His tormentors did, to uphold an arid purity and proclaim a vengeful power. Their faith is a political religion, like MacDiarmid’s Marxism, their vision is exclusive and self-indulgent, and their hands are clenched round a gun. The faith of Jesus was of a very different kind: His outstretched hands on the Cross were there to embrace all mankind. If the world is to overcome the dark passion of those whose hate drives them to violent extremes, it can only be helped by contemplating the message of compassion from the One who went to the ultimate extreme for love.


Five months ago Bouazizi was a frustrated, poverty stricken nobody in a nothing city. And that, I suspect, explains his astonishing posthumous power as a symbol of rebellion, anger and political upheaval; peaceful protestors demanding basic human rights: the humble fruit-seller who had a bad day, and couldn’t take it anymore. In the ongoing aftermath of the North African and Middle East revolution that fills our newspapers and television screens, Tarak Ben Ammar, formerly a manager of Michael Jackson’s world tour is planning to make a film about Bouazizi’s life and death. A Kuwaiti businessman has offered $10,000 to buy his cart. A square in Paris is to be named after him. Two thousand years later the ongoing Jesus revolution too is still turning the world upside down. Jesus turned out to be the only beloved son of God, who died that our sins may be forgiven, and that those who believe in him might have eternal life. And for that assurance and promise of that priceless gift we can say with the cheering Palm Sunday Jerusalem crowds. Alleluia!
Amen


Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnerships.

A Saving Face

From a sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at Roker United Reformed Church, Sunderland 20th March 2011

An Oscar is a little golden god. Colin Firth’s acclaimed role as George VI in the film The Kings Speech won him that little god. In his acceptance speech his face was golden with happiness, shining as the statuette he was proudly yet nervously clutching. Win a Golden Globe – a planet – and you could believe yourself to be a golden god, adored by the whole world. Win yourself a Bafta, as Colin Firth did for his role in the same film, and you get a golden mask.

Golden gods, golden masks, shining faces. What produces a shining face? A golden Oscar perhaps; 15 smiling Welshmen victorious over a Scottish rugby team; Liam Jones from Durham, 2010 BBC boy chorister of the year; Kate Middleton as she approaches her wedding day or Steve Whiteley a heating engineer from North Tawton who hit the jackpot at a meeting at the Exeter racecourse. He won £1.45m on an accumulator, after placing an original bet of just £2. Perhaps we might see shining faces on the peoples of Tunisia and Egypt as they hopefully look forward to a world of security and just relationships. Much better to have a shining face than an Annie Walker glare or a Bet Lynch put down. As my choir musical director says – we sing with sparkling eyes, high cheekbones and smiling faces.

Some people with shining faces exude a presence when they walk into a room. I know the Queen would if she was invited to Roker URC; the Dean of Durham cathedral too has a presence when he comes into the bookshop, his face shines. Ron Dale, a retired preacher tells the tale of a day he attended a lecture given by Professor Joachim Jeremias, a leading world NT scholar renowned for his work on the parables. Ron Dale recounts that 30 years later he had forgotten everything from the Birmingham lecture except for one small detail. Coming from the lecture he held the swing doors for the person he had sensed behind him. To Ron’s astonishment it was Prof Jeremias. As he walked past something happened. Ron Dale looked into his face and as he did so, for the first time in his life, he looked at the sheer burning holiness in the life of another person. So great was the sense of holiness of God in the face and body of Prof. Jeremias he could actually feel heat and light radiating from him. Ron Dale writes that he was struck by his radiance. It was a face almost transparent with love, goodness and grace. It was the face of a man who had spent long hours communing with God, and it showed in his face. It was transfigured with an unearthly radiance. Even now, wrote Dale years later, he could in his mind’s eye still see that face and feel that radiant warmth of love.

In our gospel this morning Matthew tells us that from start to finish the keynote of this Transfiguration story is glory. Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his garments glistened and gleamed like light The Jews well knew the promise of God to the victorious righteous “Their face shall shine as the sun.” No Jew could ever have seen the luminous cloud without thinking of the shechinah, the glory of God resting upon his people. No fewer than three times in eight brief verses there occurs the little interjection: “Behold! Look you!” It is as if Matthew could not even tell the story without a catch of the breath at the sheer staggering wonder of it. But amongst the spectacle of the event the story holds an aspect we mustn't miss. The transfiguration of Jesus is framed in St Matthew by predictions of how he must suffer and die. The Christ whom Peter has recognised will not go up to glory before he suffers pain; or to put it another way, the glory of the transfiguration will turn out to be the glory of his self emptying for us in his death on the cross. A sombre Lenten thought we need to keep in mind as we journey towards in the events in Holy Week.

The story of the Transfiguration is pivotal in St Matthew's Gospel. It's a point of climax when Jesus is revealed for who he is, the one St Matthew wants his readers to know and follow. For a moment, the mists dissolve, and the secret is laid bare: he is disclosed as the anointed one who has come in fulfilment of all that the law and the prophets longed for. In his flesh and blood and in his shining face we see nothing less than Israel's God who had once disclosed himself in another transfiguration at a burning bush and spoken his sacred name. From now on, Matthew’s narrative darkens as it descends towards the passion - but we know what we didn't know before, which is that the man destined to die is none other than the Son of God.

Did you notice that throughout the Christmas and Epiphany season that little word glory appeared again and again? “Glory to God in the highest!” sang the angels, the Gentile kings worshipped and glorified Jesus, Jesus at his baptism was told by his father, “this is my son who I love” - the same message which was spelt out again on Mt Tabor. At the Wedding of Cana, the gospel writer bible tells us - “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” And now the band of three sees Jesus’ face, radiant, shining, shimmering with the light of the glory of God.

St Paul tells us that ‘We see the Glory of God in the face of Jesus” “God who made his light shine in our hearts has brought us the knowledge of glory in the face of Christ.” All three synoptic gospel writers have the story of the Transfiguration recounted in their gospels, with different emphasis. But when we study the Gospel of John we find no story, no record of the transfiguration. Why is that? Because for John Jesus is glorified on the Cross. It is on the Cross that the power and the radiance of God shine forth. And so when St Paul speaks of the glory of God ‘in the face of Jesus’, he is speaking of the glory of God as Jesus dies on the wood of the cross. It is on the Cross we see God’s love powerful and alive, even in the very darkest place, even in the horrifying events that are unfolding in Japan, in North Africa and have occurred in Christ Church, New Zealand.

The First World War chaplain Geoffrey Studdart-Kennedy recalled the occasion, when on the 7 June 1917, he stumbled over a young soldier with a wound in his stomach and a hole in his head. It seemed to him that the boy had disappeared and there in his place lay the Christ on the Cross who cried “inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my little ones, you have done it to me.” “From that moment on,” he records, “I never saw a battlefield as anything but a crucifix. From that moment on, I have never seen the world as anything but a crucifix. To see the world as a crucifix means that we understand Christ not merely suffered once, but still suffers amongst people afflicted with natural disasters and wars. Christ is with us, suffering with us now, enduring with us our present sufferings and facing tragedy and death with the same trepidation, regret and fear as we do. His glory is the freedom to love, even when we are buried in the darkness of suffering, God is free to love us. That is why we see glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

Last Monday I conducted a funeral service in Durham for a 96 year old lady, Joyce Hart, she was a member and was married at the former Sorely Street Congregational Church. During the service I reminded the mourners of this very same verse - that it was “only in Jesus Christ that we saw the glory and goodness of God fully shining in a human face.” I gently reminded the mourners that it is also true that in the goodness of every human being we can see the face of Jesus Christ, Admittedly faces incomplete, flawed, but nevertheless a mirror of his love. How can we see Jesus in each other’s face – well as I understand it - it is because those who live with Jesus, who are his disciples, their lives begin to echo the life of Christ as Joachim Jeremais did. But also here is church – look around - we grow in wisdom, we reach out like him in healing to the wounded of the world, we love children, we have compassion on the weak and suffering, we make our hearts known to our friends, we take up our crosses, we forgive others and ask to be forgiven. We glimpse all these facets in the faces of those we rub shoulders with day by day, in our places of work, in our families, in our churches, in our communities. When in our lives, in our words and actions, we point to the freedom to love, then we show God’s glory.

When we gather as a congregation this morning, we should see in one another the glory of God. When you look at the person next to you, the glory of God is there! By looking in love at the world and working with one another, we somehow allow glory to come to light - so that for people outside or on the edge of faith they may find their own awareness of the world mysteriously changed by the way we as Christians look at it. God calls us to be at every level agents of transformation - in a ruined and exploited natural environment, in a world of deep divisions and much poverty, and in a Church whose communion can be undermined by fear or suspicion. It is for us to show the love of God to one another by showing that light in our faces. Alas and sadly, those who are still in darkness are those who have not seen love in the face of another person. The deepest darkness, the worst darkness, is to feel that you are not loved. So as we try to show one another the love of God, then we make a light in the darkness; we begin to make it possible for those who live in darkness or despair to see glory. Wherever we are; whatever the difficulty, whatever the challenge before us we are still able to make that light shine. It was Bishop Tom Wright who said “Let’s be like him so that we can speak of him.”

I can't pretend it is easy. Loving and trying to transform the world! Like Peter, I blunder about in the presence of glory: I miss the point by trying to capture it instead of paying attention to what God is doing. The voice from the cloud tells us what we must do. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved: listen to him!'. If we can discern his voice amid the clamour and chatter that bid for our attention; if we will listen and obey and follow, then we can know transfiguration, glimpse glory in our ordinary days. It's no good going in quest for it as if it were the Holy Grail or the Golden Fleece: it must find us. But it will, for his pledge to us is: ‘where I am, there you will be also'. And maybe, just maybe, this service could be that mountain top, that burning bush, that place where we see the glory of the crucified and risen Lord, and know and love him once again.

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across church partnerships in the synod

Valentine

A sermon preached by Revd Ray Anglesea at Cromer Avenue United Reformed Church, Gateshead on Sunday 13th February 2011

Matthew 5.21-37; 1 Corinthians 13.1-13

St Valentine's Day tomorrow: and a gift to the preacher, for our thoughts turn to love: The Beatles sang about it, Barbara Cartland, the pink chiffon queen of Romance wrote about it, Sinatra crooned about it, Elvis the King rocked about it, Shakespeare wrote sonnets and Schubert composed Lieder songs about it; servicemen and women laid down their lives because of it and the Chaucer’s Prioress in his Canterbury Tales had her broach inscribed with it. What are we talking about - Love! At my son’s wedding I presumed to offer him some fatherly advice as he looked at his beautiful bride...........from Ronan Keating.........

“The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me wherever I fall
You say it best, when you say nothing at all!”

And for the those Valentines in serious long term marriages it was Goethe who said that “the human condition is compounded of so much joy and so much sorrow that it is impossible to reckon how much a husband owes a wife or a wife a husband. It is an infinite debt; it can only be paid in eternity.”

Love directs and advises all our relationships, as the Dean of Durham recently explained – “love given, love received, love longed for and love unrequited, love disappointed and love fulfilled; the memory of love and the hope of love; love's endeavour, love's expense, immortal love for ever full, the love that moves the sun and the other stars, God's love.” And as I speak like this I ask myself as a semi retired super-sixty baby boomer whether I want to add to the millions of words spoken about love down the centuries, whether I can add anything?

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Nothing in this world
Could keep me from you!

Roses Are Red
Violets Are Blue
God made Me Pretty
What happened To you?

Well, perhaps I should try. Here’s a start.

The message on St. Valentine's Day which we celebrate tomorrow is simply this – love each other. Love each other - not with the love that depends on chemistry, mood, and feelings – roses, cards and a romantic M&S dinners for two, nor even with the love that depends on the behaviour of others, but love each other with the kind of love that Christ refers to in the reading from the Sermon on the Mount, our gospel lesson from Matthew a couple of weeks ago.

For some the beatitudes are a gospel in a nutshell. Who went up the mountain to bring down the laws of God........? The Ten Commandments....... who later sat down to teach? – Moses. In Matthew’s eyes Jesus is the new Moses – Jesus went up a mountain to sit down to teach the beatitudes. Clifford Longley on a recent BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day programme quoted President Obama who recently described modern Egyptians as "heirs to an ancient and great civilization." He might well have added "as are we all." And of Friday night fireworks lit the skies of Cairo as protesters in that ancient and great civilization shed tears of joy as they celebrated the end of President Hosni Mubarak's 30 years of power. That same Moses who wrote the Commandments was himself a highly educated Egyptian, raised by a pharaoh's daughter. He would have known about the great experiment with monotheism. He would have known that to get into the Egyptian afterlife the deceased would have to pass a series of tests, which included: "I have done no murder. I have not stolen. I have not set my lips against anyone. I have not lusted after someone else's wife or husband. I have not coveted that which belonged to another." Ring any bells?

Love, murder and revenge are disturbing headlines used to advertise Graham Greene’s new film Brighton Rock, now on general release in local cinemas. Murder, anger, adultery revenge are every day stories on the soaps... look at Tracy Barlow and John Snape from Coronation Street - heaven help us when the new Dallas soap kicks off later this year. Murder, anger, adultery are heavy topics which occupy Matthew’s thoughts and instruction. Matthew that most Jewish of all the gospel writers tells the story of Jesus rooted in the culture and heritage of Israel in organised and orderly ways that he hoped would help Christians to keep the faith and share it; very relevant for us in today’s church that appears to have a menagerie of different opinions. He cared deeply about the mission of the church, was concerned for community, practical matters and was a clear and caring pastor. And here in this section of Matthew’s teaching are some of the most important sections in the whole of the New Testament. No fewer than 5 times does Jesus quote the law in this passage, the Law of Moses, the laws from the Ten Commandments, only to contradict it and to substitute a teaching of his own. In other words Jesus fulfils and goes beyond the Ten Commandments, the Law of Moses, and the sacred texts of the Israelites. The former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, writing in his commentary on this passage suggests that Jesus is not so much saying don’t commit murder, adultery and the rest – Jesus is saying that your heart has to be right also, for this is the way to safety and security. It not just what we do it’s what we think we might like to do which is just as important.

In Edinburgh last weekend my wife and I went to see the 2010 psychological thriller film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman. The plot revolves around a production of Swan Lake by a prestigious New York City ballet company. As is usual with all productions of the ballet, the production requires a ballerina to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. One dancer, Nina (Portman), is a perfect fit for the White Swan, while Lily (Kunis) has a personality that matches the Black Swan. When the two compete for the parts, Nina finds a dark side to herself. It is not a film I enjoyed.

Like the character of Nina who wanted to be both the White and Black Swan to some extent we all have some sort of split personality; there is part of us which is attracted to good, and part of us that is attracted to evil. One voice incites us to take the forbidden thing; the other voice is forbidding us to take it. Plato likened the soul to a charioteer whose task it was to drive two horses. The one horse was gentle and biddable to the reigns, the other wild, untamed and rebellious. The name of one horse was reason; the other horse was named passion. Life is always a conflict between the demands of the passions and the control of reason. The reason is the leash which keeps the passions in check. But a leash may snap at any time.

Part of growing up as Christians is to realise that tough choices are being asked of us; the choices are real, reflected in our reading this morning. Jesus after all didn’t say “If anyone would come after me they should go with the flow and do what comes naturally.” To love - to change your heart - can often be one of those hard choices – this is not a wishy - washy sentimental love. It is the love that goes beyond what seems right according to the letter of the law, and enters into the Spirit of what God wants for us, the love that enters into feeding others, into healing others, into showing grace to others, into giving peace to others, the love that values others, regardless of who they are or what they have or have not done. Love is total - it is unconditional - or it is not love at all. Think of the words of Jesus we heard read a few minutes ago. They were words addressed to a people used to compromising, going with the flow, to altering love's demands as they are found in the law of God so that those demands would be easier to fulfil.

To be sure there are no loopholes to be found in Jesus' words. No compromises, no deals, no escape hatches. What Jesus does is crystallize the issues involved in loving God and our neighbours so that we can know - without doubt – just where we stand, and exactly what we need to aim for. There is a story about an old pilgrim making his way to the Himalayan Mountains in the bitter cold of winter when it began to rain. An inn keeper said to him, "How will you ever get there in this kind of weather my good man?" The old man answered cheerfully - "My heart got there first, so it's easy for the rest of me to follow." The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that we can meet all the demands of love that are expressed in the law in one way – and only in one way - we can do so if with our hearts we go there first.

If Paul’s words from his letter to the Corinthian churches are to mean anything, it should surely be that our love for God is re-awakened - or rather and put in a different way - our awareness of how God so loves us. Our lives are journeys in love, a new discovery of it each day as we walk towards heaven. Our journey is a daily transfiguration, a life-changing encounter with the beloved Son whose voice we have heard and whom we love because he first loved us. Without love we are nothing says St Paul. But once touched by it we glimpse glory, we see into the face of the divine. Life is not the same after that. What we once thought it was worth burning out for we are learning to see in a different way. Like the journey of the magi and their return home, we read about at the beginning of this Epiphany season, we are no longer at ease with these old gods. The epiphany we have glimpsed has lit up something within us, made us see the world in a new way. We feel and know that we want to turn away from dead things to seek after the living God. It is disquieting and disturbing; but it is transfiguring too as our gospel reading later in Lent will tell us.

And finally, the prayer I used before the sermon “Come Holy Spirit of God, pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,” is from an old and beautiful prayer in the church’s liturgy. The reading is Paul's great hymn to love in the 13th chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love'. The ancient prays: ‘send thy Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the very bond of peace and of all virtues without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee'. ‘Love', caritas, the love that never fails because it is divine.

Tomorrow - Valentine's Day – the martyred saint - I urge you - let your hearts go - love God and love each other as deeply as you can. When you do - you will find, no matter how many mistakes you may make on the way, that goodness and blessedness will blossom along your path, and all that God has planned will come to pass. Amen.

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnerships

40 days of Christmas

From a sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at West End United Reformed Church, Newcastle upon Tyne

Sunday 30^th January 2011

Today is the 38^th day of Christmas! In Sir Michael Caine’s immortalised words “Not a lot of people know that.” For in the church’s liturgical calendar the 40-day season of Christmas does not end until the feast of Candlemas on February 2^nd, this coming Wednesday. In possibly the greatest of all European cathedrals, Durham, where I now work, the day will be commemorated with an evening communion service; hundreds of small candles will be lit throughout the nave and quire, giving the Romanesque building a beautiful golden candlelit glow. It is a service not to be missed.

The event of Candlemas or the “Presentation of the Lord in the Temple,” is described in the Gospel of Luke. According to the gospel, Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem forty days after his birth to complete Mary's ritual purification after childbirth, and to perform the redemption of the first born in obedience to the law of Moses. Luke explicitly says that Joseph and Mary take the option provided for poor people (those who could not afford a lamb) in Leviticus 12.8 sacrificing "a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons."

In the temple, they encountered Simeon the Righteous, an elderly devout and orthodox Jew, a man of prayer, of simple devotions. The Gospel records that Simeon had been promised that "he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ." Simeon prayed the prayer that would become known as the Nunc Dimittis the Canticle of Simeon, which prophesied the redemption of the world by Jesus.

We can read this well-loved story at many levels. Simeon, prayerful, elderly is a lesson to us all in faithfulness and hope, but that is not what I would like to look at this morning. Rather, the two turtle doves that Mary and Joseph brought to the temple, symbols of their poverty, an offering requirement of the law.

The Bible contains approximately three hundred references to birds, scattered from Genesis to Revelation, ravens, eagles, sparrows, hawk, pelican, cock, dove, swallow. But I wonder whether you noticed the two turtledoves in today's gospel reading when it was first read out? Probably not. Birds for sacrifice are the small change of our religious life; very much at the ‘taken for granted', ‘cheap as chips' end of the spectrum. ‘Spiritually negligible', we might think , compared to say the faithful prayerfulness of Simeon, and his prayer that is recited daily in churches throughout Christendom, 2000 years after the event.

Turtle doves immediately remind me of the carol, the “12 days of Christmas.” Imagine if there were 40 verses in the carol, one for each of the 40 days of Christmas! Twelve are quite enough! I wonder if you have ever noticed that the first four gifts mentioned in the carol are all birds: one partridge, two turtledoves, three French hens, four calling birds. That's ten birds in all. A hint of modern folklore suggest that the verses from the carol were a 16^th century Catholic code for a catechism song sang in a period of religious persecution – five golden rings refer to the 1^st five books of the OT, The Torah, four calling birds, the four gospels, three French hens - faith hope and love, two turtle dove the OT + NT and a partridge, Jesus. Alas the story is sheer speculation and not true. Sorry to disappoint.
I would like to suggest that the pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons are significant birds to think about in this extended Christmas 40 day season.

Today is Big Garden Birdwatch Day. If like me, you love birds and want to help them, then the Big Garden Birdwatch is your chance to do something that really counts. The RSPB suggests we spend an hour watching the birds in your garden or park either yesterday or today and let the RSPB know your findings. The survey now in its third decade is important. I am sure that many of the synod’s “Faith and Feathers Group” will be out with their binoculars this weekend recording their many sightings of birds.

In last Saturday’s Times it was reported that our wild bird numbers have fallen despite millions being spent on their protection. Farmland bird numbers have fallen to a record low; the number of birds that rely on farmland for food or breeding has more than halved in England since 1970. The numbers of grey partridges, and our own turtle doves mentioned in our gospel this morning, starlings, tree sparrows and corn buntings have all fallen by more than 70% since the wild bird index began in 1970. Well let’s hope the Government’s environment white paper due in the Spring will give stronger measures to protect farmland birds. But did you see the spectacular display of Starlings last Sunday night on BBC1 Countryfile: it was estimated that 1.5 - 3million starlings took part in an air ballet, a gyroscope of movement, one of the most dazzling displays in the natural world, as the flock changes shape, one minute like a colossal wisp of smoke, the next a tornado, the next a thundercloud blocking the light. The huge gatherings, biggest in winter, are boosted by thousands of birds that come to Britain's milder Atlantic climate to escape the harsh cold of the European continent, especially in Scandinavia.

And as I mentioned to the children we can help nature out by feeding the wild birds that might come to our windowsill or garden. Not only does this help them get through the cold weather. It also brings them close to us so we can admire their unmanufactured, feathery adornment. I understand that feeding the birds is not only a good thing to do in the winter. They need a lot more food to get through the breeding season too. So if you have been helping God and nature out this is probably not a good time to stop.

The second thing I would like to mention this morning is the nature of poverty. When Mary went to the Temple she was going to make a sacrifice. Luke tells us that she sacrificed according to the law, ‘two turtledoves or two young pigeons' (Luke 2.24). Luke probably had it in mind that when we read this we would appreciate first that Mary and Joseph were being obedient and devout Jews and second that we would notice that they really were poor people. Those with any cash to spare would sacrifice a lamb on this occasion; which is interesting, as when we tell the Christmas story we think of a lamb as the gift of the poor. The reality is that Mary brought Jesus into a much lower socioeconomic stream than we like to think. Luke wants us to know that Jesus was from a very poor family. Luke's gospel is good news for the poor partly because the Saviour knows that condition.

With that in mind today is also Poverty Sunday, the start of Poverty and Homeless Action week – 30^th January – 6^th February 2011.The Church’s Action on Poverty in this year’s publicity draws our attention to our duty to speak up on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable, especially at a time of economic crisis and public spending cuts. Although Britain is one of the fifth richest nations on the planet it is increasingly characterised by inequality between the rich and poor. Several national churches and other Christian organisations have joined Church Action on Poverty in warning the Government’s welfare proposals are based on a lack of understanding of the poor. The Big Society, mentioned by the Prime Minister in his conference speech last October, was supposed to be the Government’s defining idea, it embodies a lot of good sense about public policy, but it is clear that nobody has the first idea what it means, and the concept seems to be disappearing in the argument about cuts to public spending. And it is clear that the voluntary sector and its groups, many of which support poor people, the platoons of which underpin the Big Society concept and who are heavily reliant on taxpayer funding, will either have their funding reduced or at worst, cut back all together. Such groups will not survive. The big society cannot be built without parts of civil society now under threat.

Perhaps one of the most over-used words in last year's general election campaign was surely the word 'fair'. Each party claimed it for their own policies. Each party realised how toxic it would be to have the label 'unfair' hung round their neck. But fairness can be understood in two very different ways. The first suggests that it's about being even-handed, not seeking to favour or show bias towards any particular group or individuals. There should be no favouring of the south over the north, town over country. But there is another sort of fairness which says that sometimes even-handedness has to be set aside because without bias, what seems to be fair can turn out to be unfair. How can it be fair if sharing out the pain means we make life a little less comfortable for some but quite unbearable for others? And it is this idea of fairness that Christians see practised in the gospels. Jesus seeks out those who find themselves on the edge of a decent way of life. They're forgotten, overlooked, ignored or shunned because they are inconveniently sick or mentally ill, out of work or disabled, and as a consequence, poor. The poor have a special claim on us, our compassion, our time, our resources. Some Christians speak of this as God's bias to the poor, a bias that informs Christian ethics as a consequence. Far from all of us being in this together, it's open to question whether some, like the poor should be in this at all.

And here I am sure you would want to join me in offering our congratulations to Lindsay Cross who has been appointed MBE in the New Year Honours List for services to the West End Refugee Service, for her work amongst the poor and homeless. Lindsay serves on our synod Church & Society Group. She has been untiring in her work for refugees and asylum seekers, the homeless, and has kept the work of WERS and the needs of its clients in the forefront of people's awareness in many of our synod churches.

And finally back to the birds again, our feathered friends. As well as our “Faith and Feathers” synod group I suspect the great northern saints were probably all bird watchers, too, St Cuthbert foremost among them. As we are made more aware of our natural world, particularly its birdlife, through superb wild-life television programmes, we are beginning to discover the interconnectedness of all things. As we watch such programmes we fear where the future will take us and wonder whether civilisation and our environment will last. Might I suggest that meditating on the birds can help us into all these things. And I wonder... I wonder this: might it be that in some day in the deep, dark future, the memory of Cuthbert is held by the humble eider duck, which people will still call a Cuddy, as its lives out its life in the seashore detritus of a western civilisation which collapsed because it fostered ways if life where consumption replaced contemplation, and greed replaced grace to such an extent that, to reverse that strange story of St Francis, it was the birds who came to preach to us.

Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnership

Recalling all Baby Boomers - John 1 v 29-42

From a sermon preached at Roker United Reformed Church, Sunderland,16^thJanuary 2011 by Revd Ray Anglesea

George was a baby boomer. Born in Manchester in 1946, George will collect his state pension later this year. As he does so he may ignore the biblical calculus that a man's span is three score years and ten and think about the possibility that he, like 10 million other Britons alive today, may become centenarians in 35 years time, according to a recent Government report. George, as he says so himself, was one of the lucky ones. George will have enjoyed a life of free love, free school meals, free universities, defined benefit pensions, mainly full employment and a 40-year-long housing boom, and George - like many others - will bequeath to their children sky-high house prices, debts and shrivelled pensions. George is a very privileged, fortunate and blessed human being – an object of resentment as much as admiration – for in this harsh cold winter season at the start of a desolate New Year - austerity and spending cuts will dominate the national conversation.

George is also a Christian; I came across a similar character in Roger Walton’s beautiful new book “The Reflective Disciple.” According to Roger, “George had been a Christian for over 50 years and even before he committed himself to the faith he belonged to a Christian family and went first to Sunday school and then to church with his parents. He had lived and worked in Salford for the whole of his life and during this time he moved churches three times, on each occasion because the congregation had grown too small to be viable and so he joined with another church of the same denomination. He used to be active in several of the church’s activities: Bible study, men’s fellowship and prayer breakfast. He was also involved in his trade union activity and saw this activity as part of his Christian duty. He no longer speaks about God much. At best he can talk about the church what it was like and what it ought to be like. He does not engage much with the bible, apart from hearing it read in church and he is no longer involved in the weekly meetings at church. He wonders sometimes now if he has been faithful and whether the decline in the church life, is, in part, his fault. He attends Sunday worship regularly, gives his money and tries to show kindness and friendship to the church members. There is much talk about from the minister at church about new ways of being church, but Fresh Expressions sounds more like a lavatory cleaner and it is hard for George to imagine what these expressions might be – it sounds very different and unfamiliar. He wonders what God wants him to do now.”

As St Paul said, “Salvation has crept up on us and we are disturbed.” Creeping disturbing words also came from the crazed figure of John the Baptist whom we met in this morning’s illustrated gospel reading with his tattered clothing and disgusting diet who baptised all-comers in the muddy waters of the Jordan. Two of John’s disciples defect to the young pale Galilean John had pointed to on the river bank and invites them, in not so many words, to transfer their loyalty to this new Mediterranean peasant teacher and healer. We heard in our King James Version of the bible that one of the two disciples, the attractive Andrew, intrigued by Jesus’ teaching leaves to find his brother Simon, later to be called Peter, the Rock. Both brothers are called by Jesus. They are called to follow. They are called to repentance and change, a spiritual process that would continue for the rest of their lives, as they continually repent, continually change, and continually see the world anew.

As we discovered in our two reflective readings this morning the idea of following Jesus for Hannah, Michael and now George is not easy and straightforward in today’s culture, as we follow Jesus “in a strange land.” But was discipleship ever easy? I suspect not. The fact is borne out by evidence found throughout the New Testament. We find discipleship means different things for different groups of followers of Jesus. But whatever tensions and difficulties there are - one thing is straightforward. Whether you were a disciple in the 1^st or are a disciple in the 21^st century - it is the person of Jesus who is the centre and focus of discipleship. It won’t be a Coronation Street train crash or an Archer anniversary episode in which lives will be changed forever. Jesus’ call - and his continuing call - on our lives will change us forever. In the beautiful four-part drama “Nativity” written by the former Easter Ender script writer, Tony Jordan, shown on prime time televisions on BBC1 before Christmas there is a lovely one-liner from Thomas the troubled young shepherd as he leaves the table: “He has come for people like me!”

With your permission I would like to address this morning the re-calling of the Georges/Georgianas of this world, the retired or retiring baby boomers whose life of faith might have begun in the optimistic brash, fashionable, modern bewitching world of the swinging sixties, and who are now making sense of a different age, a different culture in austerity bonus squeezing Britain. For today we live in confusing days of theological, ethical and moral uncertainty where many of the old answers don’t fit; we have less confidence in them because they were fashioned for a different world. We find the church – its power and influence diminished – we as church people and baby boomers find ourselves on the margins of mainstream society. We are dismayed to hear of the slaughter of Catholic Christians in Baghdad before Christmas, the bomb attack on an Egypt Coptic church on New Year’s Eve and now the arrest this week of Iranian Christians in a new wave of persecution.

Roderick Strange writing in The Time’s “Credo” column in Advent last year suggests that Faith is a gift that comes as invitation. We are invited to believe. We are invited to follow Jesus Christ. Over the years of sitting in pews, working in the world and church communities I have discovered that one of the most exciting things that has been so startling about that invitation to follow Jesus is that he has shown me the old world and the old theology in a new light. In one way nothing is different. In another way everything is different. Why? Because as a result of following Jesus Christ, this pale Galilean and son-of-a-virgin, the young Prince of the House of Israel, we begin to see the world in a different way. We may call it call it revelation. We may call it spiritual vision. If God, as we say, is in all things then the logic follows that he can reveal his character through all things. As Geoff Astley mentions in his book Christ of the Everyday “The knack is to see it.” Of course this is just bread and wine, of course he is just the carpenter’s son, of course this congregation is a bunch of miserable sinners. But we are also the body of Christ, full of grace and truth. And he is the Lord, the Saviour. This is my body given for you. It’s the way we see things.

As spiritual people we are nothing particularly special, except that we have learnt to follow this field preacher, this Jewish rabbi, and tried to understand and follow his teaching. As our discipleship has grown and developed over the years we see the remarkable in the mundane - we see nature, friendship, joy and struggle as “holy things” – things that express God’s rule, his hand and intention in our private, church and world affairs. We have learned to spot the Kingdom, the realm of God as it grows secretly like a mustard seed. We may have few other advantages, few worldly gifts and little status, but we rejoice as “senior” disciples of many years standing because we are spiritually blessed – for to be able to see the signs of the kingdom is to be a sign of the Kingdom oneself. And that is what we baby boomers have been given in our discipleship, in our walk with him, our journey of faith – we can see. We can spiritually see.

I started my journey with Jesus Christ after a conversion experience at university. Fresh exciting heady days they were too, full of youthful idealism and hope. But on my birthday last week when I looked back on my birthdays of the past and marvelled at the grace of which they are milestones I would want to say now that to be converted is, in the end, not so much a matter of seeing different things, as of seeing the same things differently. It involves seeing and living in a confusing world of intense hope and joy and vulnerable sensitivity to pain, rejection and despair. It involves seeing this child, woman or man, this country – or this slice of the natural world or sliver of historical time - as holy, as sacred as God’s. Hence my call to self supporting ministry. Worshipping and finding God in my workplace. God has given me and you the eyes of faith to work out that calling and that discipleship. How well I remember that phrase from the concluding sermon of my selection conference. “Having the eyes of faith.” To have the eyes of faith is the most important component of being a person of faith, a disciple of Jesus Christ. To see things differently. And to see things differently we have to change our hearts and minds. A point President Obama touched upon at last Wednesday’s memorial service in Tucson, Arizona as he honoured the victims - he called, not for the first time, for change – “a change in the way that people speak of what matters to them.”

As disciples of Jesus Christ we pray for a pure and open heart that is open to the world, to other people and ultimately to God. As Karl Barth said “the church is only holy “in its openness.” Christianity involves change and learning. All learning is change and Christian learning is the change in attitudes, beliefs and dispositions wrought through the process of becoming a disciple and continuing to be a disciple. Following the master is a wide ranging form of learning, or as we would say today a life-long learning process, a life-long learning experience.

One of the funniest adverts of the television at the moment is the one “You should have gone to spec savers!” We baby boomers on the threshold of retirement may need to adjust our spiritual vision, perhaps a different focus, through new lenses adjusted to the possibility of a new and fresh call – “to see thee more clearly” as the old prayer goes. A call not as it was. But newly minted according to this time, our age, our situation, in the light of our experience, for better and for worse. So we wait to be called again, a new call perhaps in this coming New Year of hard times, as David Cameron said in his New Year message, a year “of heavy lifting,” which Nick Clegg in his recent “walked through the fire” speech makes clear – the hard times will only intensify. But with our learning, spiritual wisdom and insight we baby boomers are well prepared to look to the future as so many of our friends and family face hardship in the wake of the financial crisis and public spending cuts, as the government proposes to shift the burden of responsibility for the poor to underfunded voluntary groups, as there are hints of industrial unrest in the Spring.

We are able. We are strong. We have the eyes of faith. We have adjusted our spiritual vision. We see things differently. We can change. We look to the future for new and even richer exciting adventures of discipleship.

May God refocus our vision and help us in our re-calling to follow the master, Jesus Christ.

Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in local church partnerships across the Northern Synod

Taking the Christ out of Christmas?

Is that how you find it? I've been getting a bit impatient with the complaining emails that have been coming my way the past few weeks, and yesterday seemed to be the last straw.

It began then with Harry Foster and Stewart Blake from Wideopen sharing this poem with me and an awful lot of people in their address books.

Twas the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
See the PC Police had taken away
The reason for Christmas - no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say
December 25th is just a ' Holiday '.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-Pod
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton !
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS ,
not Happy Holiday !
Please, all Christians join together and
wish everyone you meet
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Christ is The Reason' for the Christ-mas Season!

If you agree please forward, if not, simply delete

Sorry - I should have just followed the instructions of the last line. Instead, I rashly pressed "Reply to all" and sent the following message: -

The line "At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears gives the game away really doesn’t it?"

We are being bombarded with emails about a perceived problem the other side of the Atlantic – probably from a rather insecure wing of the Church.

I’ve not met anyone who’s wished me a happy holiday rather than merry Christmas!My grandson seems to have been having a busy time with the (state) school nativity play.When my church made an effort recently to get local schools in to share the Christmas story with them (in an imaginative way – see http://christmasjourney.org.uk/ ) they nearly all responded positively.

I’m afraid the people who succumb to these email viruses (and it’s not the first I’ve received: hence my growing impatience) are living in a different world from mine.I am not perceiving the injustices and marginalisation that they appear to be suffering - or is it even enjoying?

Is it too harsh to suggest that they get a life?

John

PS Apologies too for hitting Reply All. Following email etiquette and using bcc really would be better

.

My colleague Philip Gray from Wideopen and Ponteland didn't quite agree, and sent the following thoughts earlier this morning: -

Hi John

Having just enjoyed the winter festival play at the local school, that I can publicly abuse the name of God but not allah, that a bible can be torn up in the name of art, but not a koran. Hmmm I might at least have an idea where our cousins are coming from.

There again I might forget that because of our national foolishness the red cross ban christmas displays so as not to upset anyone, and councils are banning overtly Christmas light displays.

Perhaps we could start a discussion of how people feel about this issue?

Philip

So there we are. The discussion is started. What do you think??

"Los 33"

From an illustrated sermon preached on Advent Sunday 2010 by Ray Anglesea at Denewell Avenue United Reformed Church, Gateshead.

It is probably the most famous sentence in the world this year. Six words and one number have been replicated on T-shirts, flags and mugs, texted and e-mailed around the world. It has been presented to presidents, prime ministers and even the Queen. It was the sentence written on a scrap of paper, put in a plastic bag and attached to a drill that – 17 days after they went missing –– reached the miners trapped half a mile beneath northern Chile’s Atacama desert. “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33” it read. We are well in the refuge – the 33.” So wrote Jose Ricardo Ojeda Vidal, the miner who scribbled the message in big red letters, the tidings that brought great joy to Chile. One Chilean television commentator compared the message to the first words in the Bible – “it is a beautiful, perfect sentence,” he said.

The rescue of the 33 Chilean miners is an irresistible subject for an Advent preacher. Being drawn up steadily through a long tube from the depths of the earth....... from the dark and the heat, the hunger and isolation....... into the light...... the freedom and the relief...... and the embraces of loving families and friends...... and the frenzy of excited news teams.......... are a simple illustration of what we mean by salvation. The Chilean miners were carried from what looked like hell to a condition as near to heaven as can be seen on earth. They were saved by the exercise of wisdom, that is, the skill of the technicians, the patience of the drillers and compassion of the medical workers. They were saved by grace alone. They were hardly able to do anything for themselves except endure long enough for the rescuing probe to break through to them. They were sustained in their entombment by faith and hope, by the practice of their religion, by their reciting of morning and evening prayer with the 33 bibles that would later reach them in their chamber-like dungeons, and the unbroken resilience of their own souls. Whether they will have stories to tell that are of interest, we shall no doubt see as their memories of the ordeal are pumped by the press. The first of several books – Under the Earth: The 33 Miners that Moved the World – is about to be published. The first television re-enactment will be broadcast in December. It was recently revealed that Brad Pitt’s Hollywood company is currently in talks to buy the film rights to the story. The smooth transition from miner to global superstar may soon be realised.

(Talking about smooth transitions and miners, superstars ands as an aside, it was surprising to discover that the future Queen of England, Prince William’s fiancé, Katherine’s great grandfather was a Geordie miner working in the pits in Hetton le Hole, mines owned by the Queen Mother’s family. From Pit to Palace: what an astonishing journey for the Middleton family!)

The end of the Chilean news-story is palatable and neat, yet the near tragedy in Chile and the tragic loss of New Zealand miners is food for more sober Advent thoughts. Like the Chilean miners we wait in silence in the subterranean vaults and entombment of our lives for the liberating light of Christ to bring us salvation, to bring us hope, to bring us truth, to bring us joy in believing, to make us human. The Christian story of Christ’s freeing and emancipating activity is foretold, I would like to think, in big red letters by our ancestral fathers and mothers of the faith, the advent prophets, the patriarchs and matriarchs and those elusive and enigmatic angels. The long expected Christ child will bring hope, justice and peace – our first Advent candle was blessed this morning as a symbol of hope. What that hope must feel like is something akin to what the Burmese people must be feeling and experiencing right now with the release of the heroic Nobel Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, surely a beacon of hope, a source of inspiration, a liberating saviour?

The 1st Sunday in Advent is the beginning of the church year, the coming liturgical journey that explores through Matthew’s gospel the surprising ancient story and meaning of salvation. Advent has the longest night of the year and the darkest days: Advent with its traditional heavy, sombre themes of death, judgement, heaven and hell is about the coming of that light, the coming of the Lord to his people, the coming of a loved one with all the joy and excitement that that coming brings. But while we wait for that light in the middle of the darkest night of the year we wait in stillness; a time to discover God’s presence in darkness. As my favourite Welsh poet, the priest R S Thomas said in one of his poems entitled “Kneeling” I read earlier this morning – “the meaning is in the waiting.” To wait patiently and positively like some of the Biblical characters who had to wait upon God is something alien to our culture of immediacy. But waiting is an essential part of our journey with God. Waiting is often vital for the proper unfolding of God’s plan for our lives. Advent is that time of the year when we can wait, often in darkness. It is a time of quiet reflection, a time of stillness, a time to stay awake, to watch and wait for that free gift, for a new experience of God’s grace, for that light of Christ.

There is a story told of a man who bought a special gift for his wife. It was a musical box that played a tune when you opened it, but it was different because it also glowed in the dark. It was meant to be seen when the days were dark and dull. As it was a present, he kept it the box hidden away and wrapped up. At last he produced it one dark evening and his wife unwrapped it with great excitement. They turned the light off, but then it could not be seen. It did not glow in the dark, and they were disappointed. Perhaps it was broken. They put the lights back on and discovered a label inside the box that said, “If you want me to shine all night, keep me in the sun all day.” There was nothing wrong with the box, and once they had left it in the sunlight, it glowed in the dark. In the same way if we are to be the lights in the world, we must spend each day absorbing the light of Christ.

So as we wait in the darkness of the season for that light to come, we notice the darkness of the world, the darkness of the church, as we open our hearts to that darkness. We remember in prayer the families of the Catholic victims indiscriminately slaughtered in the Church in Baghdad on All Saints Day, we remember the loss of military and civilian life in Afghanistan, the flood victims in Pakistan, the unemployed in our region. In the early morning darkness I light cathedral candles to remember those who are sick and who need God’s loving healing touch. As a Christian I feel more and more a stranger in my own land, in a dark and turbulent culture. Once it was considered that some of the greatest achievements and ambitions of human social history, such as the abolition of slavery and the provision of universal education or free health care had their origins in a religious Christian impulse. Ian Hislop salutes the visionary heroes of those who fixed broken Victorian Britain in a new BBC part television programme entitled “The age of the Do-Gooders.” Yet sadly this is not the image of “do-good” religion that many recognise in this past century or even this past decade. As Lord Blair of Boughton, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police stated in the 2010 Theos annual lecture in central London last week, “Many secular voices now argue and think that all religions are a force of evil in today’s world.” We are, it would seem, part of a relentless undertow of what poet Matthew Arnold famously called the sea of faith’s “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” We in the church this Advent Sunday are strangers to our contemporaries, who neither understand nor care what Christian faith has to say to the world. We are indeed people in a strange land. We are exiles.

As well as the darkness in our world and in the church we notice the darkness in our own lives and personal struggles and wait as that Old Testament Hebrew prophet Malachi put it for “The son of man to come with healing in its wings,” I saw that quote in a beautiful stained glass window in St Oswin’s Church, Wylam last week when my colleague and I took a frosty river footpath walk up the Tyne valley. Yet we know that in the darkness, in all those places of darkness, God is still present, already present. From our stories, from tradition, from liturgy – that, as the psalmist says, “Even the darkness is not dark to you, for the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Even at a close friend’s father’s humanist funeral last week which I attended I can’t believe the deceased was lovingly released into a darkness and nothingness, a place without God. And so in the darkness we wait for the coming of the Light of the world to again accompany us on our journey. He will bring his strength to our weakness, he will dispel our fears with his presence, he will open our closed-circuit mind, we will rest in his presence. God is ever with us.

In his diary for 1922 Shackleton writes of his Antarctic expedition: “When I look back on those days, with all their anxiety and peril, I cannot doubt that our party was divinely guided both over snowfield and across storm-swept sea......I know that during that long racking march of thirty-six hours over unnamed mountains and glaciers of Southern Georgia it seemed to me we were not three but four. I said nothing to my companions on the point but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a curious feeling in the march that there was another person with us.”

But there are wider implications of this heart-warming story of the Chilean miners. All this happened to poor people, in a horrible industry, typical of the labourers in so many parts of the globe who carry out in awful conditions the gigantic pillage and often waste of the earth’s resources, century by century, enabling the wealthy, sophisticated and elaborate world in which we, who are probably more fortunate, to live. But theirs is a dangerous career as we remember this week those miners who have lost their lives in New Zealand. They illustrate for us that the world we are caught up in from childhood to grave is sustained by great suffering, is often cruel and heartless, and is usually far less merciful to the afflicted than it was to those Chilean miners we have watched these last months. We like stories with such neat happy endings, because we want to believe the world is not as cruel and indifferent as we fear. The decision not to give in to despair at the cruelty of the world is a serious one. Too often it is a sentimental decision, a preference to pretend that things are not as bad as they look, or an escapist fantasy about all things being for the best. Our Christian response to the real pain and frustration of the world is that the world is as we find it – for whatever reason you may wish to put forward. But it is not a world without God, even if at times it may seem we live as exiles, like the exodus people “in a strange land”. The Lord is here, down the mine with us, already near to us: “in him we live and move and have our being”. In whatever hole we are in, even at the verge of death – even in death itself – he is there. Nothing can separate us from him except our own blindness and hardness.

And later next month we shall discover that into one of the poorest occupied communities of 1st century Palestine, a child is born, to an unlikely young virgin and a faithful loving forgotten hero-of-a-husband, in the town of their great King, in a borrowed shed, where the child is laid in fresh straw amongst the poverty of the dirt and mess of a cowshed- cum- cave, a draughty stable with an open door. The world for that couple was as they found it, hard, difficult, occupied..... they were later to become migrants in another country..... their family story did not have, at least in human terms, a happy ending. But nestling in Mary’s arms was a baby that was destined to transform the world.

The Good news we preach this Advent-tide is that because of this birth we are right not to yield to the darkness, the despair and the cruelty of the world, to the economic and political injustices, to ceaseless news of war and bloodshed. We are right to hope and trust, as the miners hoped and trusted in that dark underground tomb that they would be delivered somehow. But we dare to go further. With the tragic deaths of the 29 New Zealand miners fresh in our minds this week we would also want to say that even if the Chilean miners had not been saved; even if they had died far underground, either through the indifference of the authorities, or the failure of the project, they would have been right to hope and trust. But where, as so often happens, humanity fails, God is present. And God hears and is faithful, even where according to human reasoning, there is no salvation.

Into the darkness of our world, our church and our lives this Advent-tide we invite Jesus Christ, the Light of the world. We ask him to renew our faith, to be present in our darkness, in our waiting, as we prepare our hearts again to celebrate the good news of his coming amongst us.

Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in local church partnerships across the Northern Synod