St Cecilia's Day, St Paul's Cathedral

“What can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

2 Cor 4.18

We don’t know a lot about St Cecilia. She was probably martyred in the second or third century. It was said that ‘she sang’ as she was dying a cruel death and so she became the patron saint of music.

Much poetry and music has been composed in her honour, as was the anthem by Marenzio which the choir sang before the prayers: ‘While playing the organ, the virgin Cecilia sang in her heart’.

Benjamin Britten was born on St Cecilia’s day 99 years ago and composed his Hymn to St Cecilia with words by WH Auden.

Many of you will remember the former Dean of Westminster, Michael Mayne, who in his book, Learning to Dance, (DLT, 2001) suggests three abilities of the artist or musician:

• they can show us what the world discloses when we learn to give it our full attention
•  they can remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent
•  and they can enable us, in WH Auden’s phrase, ‘to break bread with the dead’.

In other words, artists and musicians use: the natural world; the spiritual realm; and our collective memory - to give us a deeper understanding and a different perspective on the here and now.

How often I’ve come here to Evensong with many things weighing on my mind, and after sitting quietly before God, listening to Scripture and bathed in the music of the centuries, I regain my spiritual balance and can again take the long view of life, the universe and everything.

God and music are very much tied up together in my own life and vocation, which is probably true for many Christians, and indeed people of many faiths.

So St Cecilia became a catalyst for reflecting on how the gift of music nurtures our faith and helps to bring integrity and wholeness to our lives.

Let’s go back to those three suggestions of Michael Mayne and apply them to the role of music in Christian life.

Music can show us what the world discloses when we learn to give it our full attention.

Much poetry and music contemplates the wonders of creation – think of Haydn “the heavens are telling the glory of God”.

And this contemplation of nature and the beauty of human ingenuity – such as music and poetry -  can point to their divine Initiator if we will listen to our hearts.

CS Lewis died on St Cecilia’s Day 49 years ago, the same day the President Kennedy was assassinated.

He takes up this point and echoes the warning of St Paul not to worship the creature rather than the creator:

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing... They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (The Weight of Glory, SPCK, 1954, p8)

Music can also “remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent” – to use Michael Mayne’s second phrase.

Music has a remarkable ability to transport us beyond ourselves, whether it is Faure’s Requiem or dancing to industrial techno. It gives us glimpses of what could be, hints of the divine, immortal longings.

Soon it will be advent and Christmas and the song of the Church will be the coming of Jesus Christ.

It will wonder that the fabric of the temporal world has been ripped apart by the birth of a baby. The virgin conceives; the supernatural invades the natural; the dawn from on high breaks among us and John preaches that Jesus will baptise, not with natural water, but with the transcendent fire of the Spirit.

Finally, in Michael Mayne’s third point, music allows us to ‘break bread with the dead’ as Auden puts it.

In the Roman Catholic canon of the mass, there is Saint Cecilia, mentioned by name for over a thousand years and still today.

I can never forget the first time I presided at a Solemn Requiem for a dear friend: the coffin in the middle of the church, the unbleached candles, and the Duruflé Requiem with choir and orchestra. The veil between heaven and earth was very thin.

Here, at this Table, we break bread with the dead day by day: with the innumerable company of the saints all gathered around the altar. We take the bread and the wine and remember Jesus, the centre of all history and the focal point of the human race.

And not only the poetry of the liturgy, but the power of the music draws us deeper into the unseen world of the love of God shown to us in our Lord Jesus Christ.

“What can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” 2 Cor 4.18

Bread from Heaven (Trinity 10)

 “Sir, give us this bread always.” (John 6.34)

When I first went as a curate to St Mary’s Bourne St, it was a church filled with both liturgical exotica and elephant traps for the unwary priest.

So I learned very early on to be careful with my intake of alcohol on a Sunday. There were drinks after church, then discussion of the sermon in the Fox and Hounds, then a lengthy lunch in the Poule au Pot where the house wine comes in magnums.

By Solemn Evensong and Benediction, you were often very grateful for a deacon and subdeacon on each elbow to hold you up. And the rythms of the Latin became so familiar that they carried you through the elaborate liturgy, and became etched in your mind.

V. Panem de caelo praestitisti eis.

R. Omne delectamentum in se habentem.

Which being interpreted leads us into the subject of Jesus’ discourse in the Gospel today.

V. Thou hast given us bread from Heaven.

R. Filled with all sweetness and delight.

The Feeding of the 5,000 is the story which we read last week and is the essential background of today’s Gospel.

It is set in the relative wilderness to the east of the sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights, and is the only story, apart from our Lord’s Passion, that is recounted in all four Gospels.

The disciples had just returned from a successful preaching tour - thousands won to the Catholic faith - and were in need of a rest. So Jesus takes them away to a quiet place.

But as usual, the grapevine soon spreads the news to the local populace and this crowd of 5,000 men, not to mention women and children, gather expectantly.

It is late in the day. And then the young boy’s picnic lunch (a typical eye-witness account mentioned only in John’s Gospel) – the 5 loaves and 2 small fishes become the stuff of history.

The thoughtful Mother who wrapped them up and thrust them into her son’s hands, no doubt with the instruction that he was to wear a vest as it got chilly on the Golan Heights, could never have imagined that 2000 years later billions of people would be spiritually fed by her simple act of motherly love.

But why did Jesus perform this miracle? The people were not about to die. They would make it to their homes.

The Jesus of the four Gospels does not do tricks to try and persuade the crowd that he is the Messiah.

Indeed, at the end of the story when the crowd want to hail him as the new Prophet, he flees into hiding.

In most miracles, Jesus responds to need, and occasionally, as in the water into wine, this story and the following sign of ‘walking on the water’, he shows his mastery over nature and also provides teaching through such an ‘enacted parable’.

In other words, the primary function of the miracle is to illustrate a concept he is trying to teach, usually to his immediate disciples.

And so it is here, that our Lord is making a simple point and, in today’s Gospel reading, another much more complex point.

The simple point may be expressed in this way: Jesus is not nearly as discouraged as we are, by the little we have to offer. In fact, one of the prerequisites of true worship is the recognition of our inadequacy.

“What can I bring him, poor as I am.”

For Philip it was hopeless - ‘how can we feed them?’ For Andrew it was a little better - he found the little that there was - and this was enough for the Lord.

We are to bring what we have in the recognition that only the Lord can multiply it to meet the needs that are there.

So in our worship: we bring our music, our liturgy, our preaching, our vestments, our art and culture; with the recognition that it is inadequate, but it is the best we can offer. Only Christ can transform it to worship in Spirit and in Truth which is acceptable to the Father and which truly prepares us for heaven.

And in our daily lives, our prayer must always be that God will take what we offer, the little we are able to do, and by his power give our acts of service significance and influence far beyond their meagreness.

But John’s Gospel also points to deeper truths in his account of this incident.

There is a little phrase back in v.4: “and the Passover was nigh”.

The Passover. Here is John’s axis of interpretation.

There is a clear movement from miracle to theological discourse, from Moses to Jesus, from bread to flesh.

Our Lord is preparing to show them that hard teaching that will make many leave him: he is the Bread come down from heaven; Panem de caelo praestitisti eis; and this bread is filled with all sweetness and delight.

Soon the Passover lamb must be slain and eaten, as a reminder that the Angel of death ‘passed over’ the Israelites as they were being released from slavery in Egypt.

And soon the Lamb of God must be slain and give his flesh and blood for the salvation of the world.

This story is not just about feeding hungry people. It is about a Saviour who alone can satisfy the spiritual hunger that is everywhere evident in the world.

And there is yet deeper truth here. For even when we have received, as we will in a moment, the Bread of Life, we are still not satisfied and as part of our human condition we will long for more.

Listen to CS Lewis:

“All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasizes our pilgrim status, always reminds, beckons, awakens desires. Our best havings are wantings.” (Letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, 5 November 1954.)

Our best havings are wantings.

When we have had a satisfying meal, when we linger over the port, is it not then that we most clearly realise that there is more to life than good food and drink?

And when we have truly enjoyed a spiritual meal at mass in the bread and wine, or in some private moment of spiritual revelation, do we not then most clearly realise that we are spiritual pilgrims who have as yet only just set off along the path together.

Remember the meaning of the word ‘companions’ - com (with) panis (bread) – it is those with whom we eat bread.

The 5000 were made companions by the presence of Jesus, who gave them the bread.

And so too, week by week and day by day, we are made companions by the presence of Jesus who gives us the transforming bread from heaven, filled with all sweetness and delight, which always beckons us on to know God more deeply.

So today, in the presence of the risen Christ, we understand more now than those 5000 then, when we pray to Jesus with them:

“Sir, give us this bread always.” (John 6.34)

Greater Love has no man... Easter 6

Gospel Reading, Easter 6, John 15.9-17

“There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John  15.13

I hope you enjoyed the great British Bank Holiday last Monday. If you were in London you will remember that it was cold, wet and dark.

Unfortunately I was entertaining a guest from out of town. So instead of staying indoors with books, films, fortifying spirits and unhealthy food, I found myself battling through the rain and heading for the Museum of London in the Barbican.

The Barbican is seen at its best I feel in driving rain under leaden skies.

So ever the cheery host and like thousands of families out on the streets with girning children, I put on a brave face and tried to take the scenic route to the Barbican from the Tower where I now live.

And that’s how I found myself in that little-known patch of grass called Postman’s Park, the old churchyard of St Botolph Aldersgate. It was next to the General Post Office and many postmen took their breaks in the park.

The park came into being when, to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, the aspirational Victorian painter GF Watts decided to build a Memorial of Heroic Self Sacrifice commemorating ordinary people who died while trying to save others.

There are 53 ceramic tiles, decorated and bearing a simple and often poignant sentence. Although nothing much was added after 1931, the Diocese of London gave permission for another tablet to be added in 2009.

That memorials reads: ‘Leigh Pitt, Reprographic operator, Aged 30, saved a drowning boy from the canal at Thamesmead, but sadly was unable to save himself. June 7 2007’

Some of the early memorials sound rather quaint to our ears – locally, across the roadhere, ‘William Drake lost his life in averting a Serious Accident to a Lady in Hyde Park whose horses were unmanageable through the breaking of the carriage pole. 2 Apr 1869’

Jesus says to his disciples in a phrase that has entered into our cultural consciousness, “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Now many of the incidents recorded in the tablets on the Memorial wall tell of men and women who laid down their lives for strangers, not friends.

And of course most of these heroic deeds were not premeditated. They were spur-of-the-moment decisions to take bold action without thinking too much about the consequences.

You stand and read the wall and can’t help but think: “What would I have done?” And of course you don’t know.

Maybe we would be heroic and act instantly. But maybe we might hesitate long enough to consider the possible outcome of any action and simply wring our hands.

Most of us recognise and admire those who take such actions. And of course the children and men and women who were saved will always carry a burden of gratitude to their saviours.

But what was Jesus talking about in today’s Gospel? He was certainly talking about the heroism that Watts sought to encourage by his memorial.

And he was certainly talking about his own impending death, which was to be a means of ‘saving’ his friends and indeed the whole world.

Yet the death of Jesus was different. It was not like these people listed on the tablets.

It was not like brave St Alban, the first English martyr, feigning to be the Christian priest he was protecting and executed by the Romans in the priest’s place.

No one was about to be killed when Jesus was crucified.

Yet still Jesus taught, and Christian theology has insisted, that it was necessary for him to die.

There’s a Jesuit theologian, Jack Mahoney who has recently attempted to look more deeply into the issue of Christ’s death and how it is traditionally interpreted.

Especially to look again at that idea of an angry God who will not forgive us unless blood is shed to appease him. It somehow doesn’t ring true to the God we see in Jesus.

This is a particular aspect of a doctrine known as penal substitution. Philip Bliss’s hymn, written at about the same time that Watts was planning his wall, has these lines: “In my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood.” (Man of Sorrows)

The theology of the redemption of you and me through Christ’s sacrificial death is at the heart of Christianity and of this mass.

And as we ponder it there are always more layers of understanding to uncover.

So Fr Jack Mahoney in his book Christianity in Evolution: an Exploration (Nov 2011) develops what he calls "a Christian theology of altruism".

He emphasises that Christ’s death was not so much to deal with ‘original sin’ but that it was to teach us how to imitate Trinitarian altruism – giving ourselves for others.

We are "prone to self-concern and even self-obsession", he writes, but this is not attributable to "some primordial moral disaster" in a garden of Eden.

Christ by example shows us how to overcome these natural evolutionary characteristics so that his death and resurrection – and here I quote Mahoney -  "can be seen as a major evolutionary step in the moral advancement of humanity, and an indication that universal altruism is the moral invitation and evolutionary destiny of the human species." (The Tablet Blog.)

Well it’s an interesting book, but you’ll be relieved to hear that there are limits to what you can do in ten minutes on a Sunday morning.

Sufficient to say that Mahoney is encouraging a fresh understanding of living for others.

Not in that joyless way that CS Lewis describes: “She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression!” (Screwtape Letters)

A moment before Jesus spoke of laying down one’s life for friends he had said: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15.11)

This talk with his disciples is all about joy and loving one another – giving ourselves to one another – laying down our lives for our friends.

It was the outspoken journalist and literatus Malcolm Muggeridge who said in a moment of candour:

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness; or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus. 

 “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John  15.13 

Transcendence & Transfiguration (Sunday before Lent)

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

It’s been quite a good week in the press for Christians with home goals by Richard Dawkins’s Foundation for Science and Reason; and the National Secular Society. Somewhat unusually it’s Christians 2; Lions nil.

As we look out at all the terrible abuses of human rights around the world, it seems absurd that the National Secular Society would claim that their human rights were being infringed by prayers at the beginning of a Bideford Council meeting. Goodness! The millions of us who had our human rights infringed by countless school assemblies!

Fortunately, the Government thought this was absurd as well.

Richard Dawkins would do well to take heed to the words of Elizabeth I who famously said when asked to go down the continental, Reformation route of closely defining what makes a Christian: “I have no desire to make windows into men's souls.”

It is not for the Monarch, nor the Archbishop nor Richard Dawkins to proclaim who is and isn’t a Christian.

And our beloved Queen Elizabeth II had generally good press coverage for her appearance before a multi-faith audience at Lambeth Palace last week.

She suggested that “the concept of our established Church is occasionally misunderstood and, I believe, commonly under-appreciated.”

She reminded us that the Church is “woven into the fabric of this country” and has helped to build a better society; and added that it has a duty to protect the freedom of those of all faiths and none in the country.

It seems that the National Secular Society and Richard Dawkins and his new rationalists are treading the well-worn path of ‘nothing buttery'.

The cosmos and you and I are ‘nothing but’ what can be measured, quantified, rationalised and explained.

It is this ultimately simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ - human life is ‘nothing but’ this or that - which says, that because there is no scientific evidence for much of what we believe as Christians, then it’s all make-believe.

There is in all of this militant atheism (and most atheists are not militant) an implicit denial of the ‘mystery of being’ and the longing for some greater purpose which is obstinately present in the vast majority of humans who have inhabited this planet.

And there are Sacred Spaces, of which this church is one, where, these general feelings of awe and transcendence, of longing and loving, and occasionally what Rudolph Otto called the ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinans’ - the fearful and fascinating mystery at the centre of life and existence -

– there are places and occasions where these feelings find particular focus in the life, death and, we believe, resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel account of the Transfiguration of Jesus in the presence of his disciples is such an occasion of deep mystery and transcendence. It’s recorded in the three synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke.

(And just take note that Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, in case you meet any of Richard Dawkins’s pollsters on your way home – because apparently you’re not a Christian if you don’t know that.)

It’s hard to know exactly what happened on this mountain. It was a liminal, mystical experience which left the disciples almost dazed.

And as they reflected on it after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, they realised what they had seen.

• They saw Moses the lawgiver and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law.
• They saw Elijah the chief of prophets and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed.
• They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.
• And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.

This is what St Paul was hinting at in today’s epistle when he writes that God “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor 4.6)

Luke’s account puts in a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun. Blink and you miss it.

I’ve preached before on the Hebrew word for ‘glory’, ‘kabod’. It’s the word for weight, heaviness, gravitas.

Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory. That joke is never going to make its way into a Christmas Cracker is it?

This also gave rise to another Hebrew word that has come into the English language: ichabod - the glory has departed.

There is something of ichabod about our current western society.

There’s much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight.
Believe but don’t belong. (70% of people claim to be Church of England – they believe something, but they don’t belong to our congregations in any meaningful sense.)

This was actually the point that Richard Dawkins was trying to make – our faith can sometimes be quite shallow and ill-informed.

But that is because we are all deficient disciples and often not very spiritually perceptive. However, that is quite different from saying we are actually ‘closet atheists’ who won’t own up to it.

Let’s go back to our Gospel – the transfiguration of Jesus.

As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory – a theme of John’s Gospel. That’s why we read this Gospel passage always on the last Sunday before Lent.

We celebrate this Mass to the glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.

And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope which is ours.

The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

Or in the words of St Irenaeus: “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

Secular drowsiness, the stupor and busyness of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation. Like Elijah’s warning to Elisha in the Old Testament lesson, if we do not see the glory and mystery of God, in that case in Elijah’s translation to heaven, then we will miss God’s blessing. Our lives will be diminished.

Part of the reason for the disciplines of Lent is to keep ourselves spiritually awake and alert – clear-sighted.

And here at the mass, as Christ is present in another Transfiguration, not with Moses and Elijah, but with bread and wine; here is weight and depth in our so light and shallow culture. Let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God and see him who loved us and gave himself for us.

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

The Priesthood of All Believers (RIP John Stott)

“You have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God.” (Rev 5.10)

1 Samuel 3.1-10; Revelation 5.1-10; John 1.43-end

I was in a packed St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday morning - they were queuing before 8am – for the memorial service for John Stott, the long time Rector and Rector Emeritus of All Souls Langham Place. Both English Archbishops and our own Bishop were there as well as a host of other Archbishops and Bishops from around the world.

John was a remarkable, humble and faithful pastor, Bible scholar, mentor and friend. His simple life of study and prayer, preaching, writing and discipling, helped shape the face of 20th century evangelicalism in Britain and around the world.

It was a long service and as I sat watching the congregation and various participants, it was fascinating to see that while most of the overseas Anglicans wore clerical collars, most of the English Evangelical Anglicans did not.

And I reflected on the differing understandings of priesthood that have ebbed and flowed during the 60 years of John Stott’s ministry.

In the 70s and 80s, many churches used to have those big sign boards outside with a text or a little thought for the week painted on in dayglow colours.

“Don't let worry drive you to despair - let the church help.”

Some of them were quite witty, but all of them were subject to additions by anyone with a spray can.

So “The meek shall inherit the earth” had added underneath - “if that’s alright by you?”

And someone had supplemented the rather hopeful: “Are you tired of sin? Then come inside.” with “If not, phone Bayswater 7328!”

But I remember it was an Anglican Church in the vanguard of the charismatic movement which had the usual more discreet sign outside, which said: Vicar: The Revd So-and-so; Ministers: the whole congregation.

So what is the distinction between laity and priests, and why does our text from Revelation tell us that all believers are priests to our God?

I first began reading John Stott in the 1960s - a time when all distinctions of persons were being swept away and so it is hardly surprising that Vatican II addressed what was seen as the problem of clericalism - nothing could happen without a priest. Priests were to become just ordinary chaps! Nuns would knit their own cardies and wear sensible shoes.

I think it was that great 60s theologian Spike Milligan who said: “never trust a priest who wears a rollneck sweater and says ‘call me Ken’”.

The Vatican II document Ulterior temporibus in 1967, while recognising the increasing role of the laity still maintained that priestly ministry is ‘distinct from the common priesthood of all the faithful... in essence and not merely in degree.’

Many of my low church Anglican colleagues would disagree with this Vatican II distinction between ministry and priesthood.

They might rather agree with the famous Church of England evangelical WH Griffiths Thomas, who was very influential at the beginning of the 20th Century and sometime Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

He said: “Christianity is a religion that is a priesthood and not one that has a priesthood.” This was seen as a strong part of Prayer Book, Reformation faith for many evangelicals.

John Stott was always more measured and biblical. Here he is in his commentary on the Ephesians:

“The New Testament concept of the pastor is not of a person who jealously guards all ministry in his own hands, and successfully squashes all lay initiatives, but of one who helps and encourages all God’s people to discover, develop and exercise their gifts. His teaching and training are directed to this end, to enable the people of God to be a servant people, ministering actively but humbly according to their gifts in a world of alienation and pain. Thus, instead of monopolizing all ministry himself, he actually multiplies ministries.”

There is still a fierce debate that divides the Christian church: is priesthood a matter of ontology (essence); or function? Does ordination change the very being of a priest, or does it just set a person apart for a particular ministry within the church order?

Well, however we view priesthood, clergy both model and mirror the priesthood of all believers or the priesthood of all the baptized as it is often stated.

We are all disciples, and we are all called like Samuel to listen to the call of God, and like Philip and Nathanael, to follow Jesus as loving disciples.

John Stott was once in a debate about the media with Malcolm Muggeridge. These were Muggeridge’s days of fervent faith when he had no time for the media and declared it rotten to the core.

John Stott rounded on him and said you don’t blame the meat when it goes rotten, you blame the salt for not doing its job.

Stott was convinced that unless Christians took their faith and discipleship into their spheres of work, then they were failing in their Gospel calling as salt of the earth.

And he didn’t mean setting up prayer meetings or Bible studies at work – not that I’m against those. He meant that Christians should think hard and biblically about the decisions they make at work and in whatever area of life God has called us to be salt and light.

And so the task of the priest and preacher is to help the faithful to reflect on their manner of living and working. And to live out their calling – for as Christians we all have a calling – to live that out with integrity and in such as way as is honouring to Christ.

Religious faith became very internalised in the last half of the twentieth century – it was all a matter of private belief. Many of my generation and older find it very strange when Christians assert that what they believe is a public truth. That the transcendent God has revealed himself to us in Christ, and that we are all called to respond.

Of course many will choose not to believe or respond and that is their absolute right. But any religion worth its salt must proclaim what it believes publicly and bring its contribution to all debates in the public square.

It was this sense of public ministry that fired the new democracies that sprang out of the Reformation in Europe. People realised that it was not just for clerics and the aristocracy to be civic leaders, but all Christians were called to serve their society - for the common good and not just for their own good.

Last Sunday I was worshipping in Miami Cathedral, and at the end of a very challenging sermon the preacher turned to the organist and said ‘thank you Matthew’ and launched into a song.

It was a moment of deep culture shock for me!

Well I will not be launching into a reworking of

I am the very model of a modern Vicar General
I’ve information biblical, synodical and clerical…

But without a song and dance, and in that very understated English way that was the manner of John Stott,

I urge you to take your Christian faith seriously in every aspect of your life and public service,

So that the prayer of the Elders might be true of all of us…

“You have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God.” (Rev 5.10)