Trinity - Dancing with Angels

Trinity - Dancing with Angels

Preached at Hertford College Oxford

“This grace of the Holy Spirit enables them... to dance with the angels.” St Basil the Great On the Holy Spirit (Divine Office Bk II p.670)

I went to the sort of old fashioned boys grammar school that taught ballroom dancing to the Upper Sixth. It was the nearest we got in the 1960s to sex education.

We hated it. Yet there was, and is, something immensely enjoyable in the social patterns of dancing: the partnerships, the community, the shared knowledge, the complementarity of the steps, the public intimacy.

What else could explain the resurgence of that absurdity known as Line Dancing? Or the fact that almost as many people voted in Graham Norton’s Strictly Dance Fever as in the General Election!

Some have argued that contemporary, club-scene dancing is yet another sign of postmodernity: individualism and self-expression; no rules and no partners; the breakdown of social coherence and mutual responsibility.

They see the difference between modernity and postmodernity as the difference between Foxtrot and Industrial Techno; The Little House on the Prairie and Sex in the City; or, if you’re into it, the difference between the original Star Trek & Deep Space Nine.

But clubbing is supremely a social pursuit with codified rules of conduct and dress, not obvious to the outsider - but that is why they are an ‘outsider’. It serves the age-old purposes of waltzes and Morris dancing; of Stripping the Willow and Charleston; of ballet and ballroom.

Wherever we turn in the world, in whatever age, there is an instinct both to worship and to dance. Perhaps with the exception of the Southern Baptists. The old Texan joke: “Why are Southern Baptists against sex standing up? Because it may lead to dancing!”

So what of St Basil’s contention that “This grace of the Holy Spirit enables us... to dance with the angels”.

In the early discussions of the church fathers, one of the words used to describe the interrelatedness of the Trinity was ‘perichoresis’: the inter-animation of the persons of the Trinity.

The late Professor Colin Gunton at King’s London took up the word again more recently. In “The One, The Three and The Many” he writes that the word ‘perichoresis’ is “heavy with spatial and temporal conceptuality, involving movement, recurrence… and a dynamic, mutual reciprocity.”

We might put it more simply than the good Professor - dancing. The ‘choresis’ of perichoresis, comes from a similar root to choreography - the mapping of dances.

The dynamic of the Christian God, whom we honour today as Blessed Trinity, is the loving dance of eternity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit caught up in the wordless communication which we mimic in all our human dances.

You find it in mediaeval poetry. In the Christmas Carol, Tomorrow shall be my Dancing Day, as Christ talks about his incarnation:

Then was I born of a virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance;
Thus was I knit to man’s nature,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing, O my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

Or here is Evelyn Underhill writing in the middle of the First World War in Theophanies:

Heaven’s not a place…
No! ’tis a dance
Where love perpetual,
Rhythmical,
Musical,
Maketh advance
Loved one to lover.

Then of course there is that old Shaker favourite, Lord of the Dance:

Dance then wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance says he…

And as we are drawn into the sacred choreography, so we take on the characteristics of the other dancers in the Trinity. Dancing is a great act of solidarity, of togetherness. That’s part of the buzz of clubbing, of dancing, of being part of the throng of people.

And in that solidarity with the Holy Trinity, the fruit of the Spirit produces in us the traits of the Father and the Son: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Then the charismata, the gifts of the Spirit, reproduce in us the works of the Father and the Son.

So together as the people of God we bring healing and wholeness, wisdom and truth, freedom and justice to a world that remembers how to dance, but has forgotten why it dances.

I had a message on Facebook yesterday from one my old students. His fellow students all called him affectionately Gammy Gav because he had a wonky leg. He never wanted to come dancing with us. (I taught a course on theology and culture and it was de rigeur to go clubbing on Friday night.)

We finally persuaded him, but he stood at the edge, watching. Then a gaggle of girls pulled him into the dance - and he danced!

And he realized that we all look a bit gammy when we’re dancing. And he didn’t look too gammy at all! It worked wonders for his self-esteem.

The God we worship, the Holy Trinity, is a loving fellowship of three in one.
He is not remote and alone, but an intimate community. They are so wrapped up in each other, that they are indistinguishable. One in three and three in one.

But not so wrapped up that they have no time for us. Easter was when Jesus the Son, came to call us into the dance of the Trinity.

And although we feel all unworthy, and spiritually akimbo, gammy, in comparison, yet God the Father’s love draws us into the fellowship, into the dance.

And as we are caught up in the joy of the Blessed Trinity, we are transformed into the likeness of God: we become noble humankind and not brutish animals. Or as St Basil puts it, with great theological daring:

"So is their joy unending… so do they acquire likeness to God, so - most sublime of all - do they themselves become divine."

Ezra Pound once remarked: “Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance.”

Christianity begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the unpredictable dynamic of the Holy Trinity.

So, don’t sit around the edges of the dance: the cynical onlookers of church life. We have enough of those. You’ll atrophy! You have been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

“And this grace of the Holy Spirit enables you... to dance with the angels.”

Living in Between - Sunday after Ascension

LIVING IN BETWEEN

"the end of all things is near..." 1 Peter 4.7

There was an architect, a surgeon, an anaesthetist and a politician, arguing about the nature of God.

“He was clearly a surgeon” said the surgeon. “His first act was removing Adam’s rib to create a woman.”

“Ahhh” said the anaesthetist, “but first he caused a deep sleep to come upon the man. He was an anaesthetist!”

“But that’s Genesis chapter two,” said the architect, “in Genesis chapter one, he first designed and built the universe. He created it out of chaos.”

“And there you have it,” said the politician, “who created that chaos?!”

Well, the waiting of the last few months has ended at last. Boris is our new Mayor. (And that has nothing to do with the choice of my text…)

Of course the speculation has now begun as to who will win the General Election in two years’ time. No sooner one arrival than another destination.

Christians are arguably always caught up in the 'in-between times'. They never arrive. It is in the nature of our faith. And although we would sometimes like to know our future, it is better that we should not know. The Bible tells us all we need to know about the future and about living 'in between'.

First there was the time between the Garden of Eden and the giving of the Law to Moses.

Then between the giving of the Law and the coming of the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Law.

And for the early disciples there was the wait between the events of Holy Week, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

And some years after Pentecost Peter is able to announce that the Church was still 'in between', but that the end was nigh. The apparent delay of the Lord's Second Coming was always a problem for the early church which Peter and Paul sought to address.

So here we are on an 'in-between' Sunday - with Ascension last Thursday and Pentecost still a week away. In the drama of the liturgical year we are to wait until the Spirit comes.

When I was but a young man in Sussex I went with my Pentecostal friends to 'tarrying meetings' - from the words of our Lord to his disciples in Luke's Gospel: "but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." (Lk 24.49) - we were to pray, and wait for the Spirit to fall - or for 9pm - whichever came earliest.

I remember inviting the local Pentecostal pastor to preach at my church in Camberwell and explaining that the service had to finish by noon. He looked at me as if I were mad and exclaimed: "But sometimes the Holy Ghost don't get here till 12.30!"

So was the Holy Spirit inactive until the day of Pentecost? Or to speak of another member of the Trinity, did God the Son do nothing until he was born in Bethlehem?

The revelation of God in Trinity has had particular foci - historical events - over the past five thousand years. But the work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been evident, retroactively if you like, throughout all of history.

So before the Law was itemised on Mt Sinai, men and women still had consciences, and societies drew up their own laws. St Paul talks about this in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans.

And before the saving work of Christ's passion, men and women were still saved through faith in a merciful God. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear.

And before the day of Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit was at work through prophets and kings, through harlots and pagan dictators. Scripture bears witness to it.

Now on this Sunday in the year of our Lord, 2008, we are in between that first Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, and the end of the world, or our own death, whichever comes sooner.

Does that mean that we will see nothing of the kingdom of heaven until 'the end of all things', the consummation of the age, the dissolution of the cosmos?

No! Before that time, retroactively, the kingdom of God is the ideal towards which we must struggle. As we will say in a moment: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."

This was the objective of Adam and Eve as they were cursed and expelled from the garden. They would not re-enter the kingdom of heaven through the garden gate, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword.

They would only move towards paradise regained through the passion of Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit.

It's not as if God was holding out on everyone until the day of Pentecost. As if he commanded them to love God with heart and soul and mind, and neighbour as self, way back in Deuteronomy; but had no intention of giving them the means to do so for a thousand years!

The in-between times have always been as potent as the special events. Becoming is every bit as important as arriving. All of our life, as human beings, is caught up with 'in between', which is one reason that we are so preoccupied with the passing of time. When we are young we cannot wait till the next event. When we are old we wait with some apprehension for the one and only event left for us.

Peter puts it in these practical words of wisdom: "The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4.7,8)

A consistent theme through Scripture is to live as if life matters; to make our life count for God and for others. In the words of our Lord: "I have come that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly."

Peter's little summary here may be paraphrased that we are to live thoughtfully, prayerfully and lovingly. This will cover a multitude of sins. Sin is that destructive agent at work in our life and in our world. It is trapped in the 'in between' time with us.

But Christ has dealt with sin, and if we will live by the Spirit, then sin will not have dominion over us.

A policeman stops a man driving the wrong way up a one way street. "Didn't you see the arrows?" he asks. The driver replies "I didn't even see the Indians!"

What is important about living in the ‘in between’ time, is seeing the arrows. It is knowing where we have come from and where we are heading. Of course we don't always get it right, which is why we need the constant reminders of which way the arrows are pointing.

The whole of this mass is a restatement of the saving acts of God which punctuate our history and motivate our day by day living 'in between'. And the mass points us to the future - Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

It is the future, whose power is present now, that draws us on, to the time when there will be no more 'in between'; to the eternity of God.

Meanwhile, we are the 'becoming' ones, always growing and moving on. I'm reminded of that now rather quaint description of this process as it is described in the 1920s children's story The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams:

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse.
"You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Margery Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit, Heinemann 1989 (1922)

In the 'in between' we are becoming - drawing closer to Christ personally, and trying to shape our society on the coming kingdom principles of justice and mercy.

Christian hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.

Faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.

"The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4.7,8)

Trinity Sunday 2006

Trinity - Dancing with Angels

“This grace of the Holy Spirit enables them... to dance with the angels.” St Basil the Great On the Holy Spirit (Divine Office Bk II p.670)

This reading in the Divine Office comes up each year as we move from rejoicing in the Resurrection to welcoming the Spirit at Pentecost and then on into the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Each year it strikes me afresh.

I went to the sort of old fashioned grammar school that taught ballroom dancing to the Upper Sixth. We used to get together with Worthing High School for Girls. The Amanda Foxtrot was the nearest we ever got in those days to sex education. We tried to be bolshy and to dislike it, but it was quite fun.

There is something immensely enjoyable in the social patterns of dancing: the partnerships, the community, the shared knowledge, the complementarity of the steps, the public intimacy.

Wherever we turn in the world, in whatever age, there is an instinct to worship and to dance. With the exception of the Southern Baptists. The old Episcopalian joke puts it well: “Why are Southern Baptists against sex standing up? Because it may lead to dancing!”

So St Basil’s contends that “This grace of the Holy Spirit enables us... to dance with the angels”.

In the early discussions of the church fathers, one of the words used to describe the interrelatedness of the Trinity was ‘perichoresis’: the inter-animation of the persons of the Trinity.

The ‘choresis’ of perichoresis, comes from a similar root to choreography - the mapping of dances.

The dynamic of the Christian God, whom we honour today as Blessed Trinity, is the loving dance of eternity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit caught up in the powerful, yet wordless communication which we mimic in all our human dances.

It is no wonder that over the centuries the divine Liturgy has become a stylised dance. The synchronisation of movements, the courtesies, the communication beyond words, which even the congregation is drawn into through music and symbolic gestures; through the spiritual vibrancy of knowing they are playing their part.

You find it in mediaeval poetry. In the Christmas Carol, Tomorrow shall be my Dancing Day, have you ever noticed the words of the second verse as Christ talks about his incarnation?

Then was I born of a virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance;
Thus was I knit to man’s nature,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing, O my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

Or here is Evelyn Underhill writing in the middle of the First World War in Theophanies:

Heaven’s not a place…
No! ’tis a dance
Where love perpetual,
Rhythmical,
Musical,
Maketh advance
Loved one to lover.

Then of course there is that old Shaker favourite, Lord of the Dance… "Dance then wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the dance says he…"

And as we are drawn into the sacred choreography, so we take on the characteristics of the other dancers in the Trinity. Dancing is a great act of solidarity. (It’s part of the buzz of clubbing.)

The fruit of the Spirit produces the traits of the Father and the Son: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The charismata, the gifts of the Spirit, reproduce the works of the Father and the Son. So together as the people of God we bring healing and wholeness, wisdom and truth, freedom and justice to a world that remembers how to dance, but has forgotten why it dances.

I had lunch with some of my old students the other day.
One of them was Gammy Gordon - the affectionate name the other students gave him because he had a wonky leg. He never wanted to come dancing with us.

We finally persuaded him, but he stood at the edge, watching. Then a gaggle of the girls pulled him into the dance - and he danced!

And he realized that we all look a bit gammy when we’re dancing. And he didn’t look too gammy at all! It worked wonders for his self-esteem.

The God we worship, the Holy Trinity, is a loving fellowship of three in one. He is not remote and alone, but an intimate community. They are so wrapped up in each other, that they are indistinguishable. One in three and three in one.

But not so wrapped up that they have no time for us. Easter was when Jesus the Son, came to call us into the dance of the Trinity.

And although we feel all unworthy, and spiritually akimbo, gammy, in comparison, yet God the Father’s love draws us into the fellowship.

By the indwelling Spirit we take on the Divine. St Basil goes on with great theological daring, dancing on the edge of heresy, to describe the work of the Spirit in Christians who venture to dance with the angels:

“So is their joy unending… so do they acquire likeness to God, so - most sublime of all - do they themselves become divine.”

Don’t sit around the edges of the dance floor, or locked, like the disciples, in an upper room, waiting and watching. You have been baptized! Christ has given you his Holy Spirit! The Father has invited you to the dinner-dance at his Table!

You are called to partake of the Godhead in bread and wine and so to enter into life in all its fullness.

This is the mystery of our participation in the Blessed and Most Holy Trinity.

Or as St Basil put it:

“This grace of the Holy Spirit enables you... to dance with the angels.”

Consciousness, prayer & the Holy Spirit

Consciousness, prayer and the Holy Spirit

Let me read you a part of a letter:

“I venture to put before the conference the following practical recommendations: (1) Education of Ordinands--- That the bishops shall emphasize the need and importance of a far more thorough, varied, interesting and expert devotional training in our theological colleges which, with a few striking exceptions, seem to me to give insufficient attention to this vital part of their work. (2) The Clergy--- That they should call upon every ordained clergyman, as an essential part of his pastoral duty and not merely for his own sake: (a) To adopt a rule of life which shall include a fixed daily period of prayer and reading of a type that feeds, pacifies and expands his soul, and deepens his communion with God; b) To make an annual retreat; (c) To use every endeavour to make his church into a real home of prayer and teach his people, both by exhortation and example so to use it.”

A letter from Evelyn Underhill to Archbishop Lang of Canterbury for the 1930 Lambeth Conference.

I used to tell my students that Christians were permanently guilty about two things: prayer and sex. Too much of one and not enough of the other. And which way round that is depends on whether you are an evangelical or a catholic!

This evening I want to ease our guilt about prayerlessness - a little.
I want to agree with what Evelyn Underhill expresses as her hopes for ordinands and clergy, but to widen it a little. To remind ourselves, in Michelle Quoist’s phrase, that all of life becomes a prayer. To reflect on human consciousness, as Underhill does in some of her own mystical writings.

“The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.” (Romans 8.16)

Hyenas don’t really laugh. Rather, like the chimpanzees in the tea adverts, we are anthropomorphizing animals and giving them what are uniquely human characteristics. Dogs, if they look as though they are giving you a toothy grin, are usually about to bite you.

Human beings alone (as far as we know) in the universe, laugh. Only humans can blush or be embarrassed. Only humans need to feel embarrassed.

All this is part of our self-consciousness. The fact, that unlike any other creatures, to our present knowledge, we can reflect on what we are. This is the joy and pain of being a human animal: homo sapiens.

Julian Jaynes puts it this way in the opening of his fascinating book with the snappy title, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Penguin 1990): (cf Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash)

“O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! … A secret theatre of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries… A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do… This consciousness…”

But where did self-awareness come from in our evolutionary history?

Well, we don’t really know. About 3 million years ago - a mere nothing in comparison to the age of the earth. (If the 4 billion years of the earth’s existence are represented by a clock, then we are looking at just over half a minute ago.) About 3 million years ago, Neanderthal humans appeared with brains the size of the planet; brains bigger than any other animal on earth. And they used only a tiny proportion of that massive brain.

It’s like the computers some of us have at home or in our office. They are capable of rocket science, and all we use them for is as a glorified typewriter & late night solitaire.

So late Neanderthals or maybe Cro-Magnon man began to use this spare brain capacity for inventing language and tools and weapons; and then art and music; religion and laws; and eventually political parties and Brylcreem…

At some point, and the experts differ as to when, these humans started to reflect upon themselves. They realised they would die, like the animals which they killed to eat.

They realised they were conscious - they were self-conscious. Julian Jaynes reckons that self-consciousness as we know it appeared less than 4 thousand years ago. Most scientists think it was much earlier.

Well what has all this got to do with our text?

Human beings are the only animals that consciously worship. Our God-consciousness emerged as part of our self-consciousness.

Non-realist theologians like Don Cuppit and the Sea of Faith group, and many philosophers of other faiths and none, assert that God-consciousness is only an extension of our inward monologue.

In other words, it cannot be an awareness of a Mind that is ‘other’ and somehow separate from our own minds. It is a defence mechanism that religion provides to make sense of our existence. It is talking to ourselves.

This argument runs, that the elaborate development of religions is an internal trick that has served human evolution quite well.

It has socialised us and, for quite long periods, stopped us living like the beasts we are, red in tooth and claw.

Rather like the self-deception which equates joining a gym with actually going to the gym…

But there is another explanation which our Christian faith provides and which many of us prefer to believe.

The Garden of Eden describes humanity coming to self-consciousness; and asserts that, that self-consciousness is a reflection of God’s self-consciousness. We are indeed made in imago Dei, in the image of God, knowing, and self-knowing. And so part of the human condition is bound up with knowledge of God: who is self-conscious within the Holy Trinity.

Adam is separate from the other animals, and to show his self-consciousness, he names them: they are tiger and horse; they are other; they are not flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.

Unlike the other creatures, Adam and Eve know good from evil, and know that they are capable of choosing evil. The tiger and the horse can know no shame, but Adam and Eve hide from God, full of remorse and embarrassment.

Cain slays Abel, not for food nor for evolutionary superiority; but because of jealousy and on account of religious convictions.

Self-consciousness leads to self-doubt and to strong convictions. I remember hearing Peter Ustinov remind us again on the radio just before his death that “It is our doubts that unite us. Our convictions divide us.”

Indeed. But we can have no doubts without convictions and it is those convictions which determine what we do with our convictions; and how we handle our doubt.

The Christian story unfolds through the centuries until the second Adam comes: Christ, who as he matures as a man and grows into self-consciousness; grows also into that unique and aweful destiny that is his alone - that unspeakable agony of inner thought - God-consciousness: the horror of realisation that he is God.

For us, the realisation is that we are loved and that we will never be alone. In St Paul’s words: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.”

But for Christ, the Spirit testified to his spirit that he was the only-begotten of the Father.

One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to direct our inner consciousness – to work alongside it, if you will. And he does this whether we are hectically busy, or whether we are in retreat: the Holy Ghost working alongside the ‘ghost in the machine’.

Maybe the human soul is a virtual reality created by the world’s most complex computer, the human brain. But that does not invalidate the belief that there is a Divine Consciousness, before all things, incarnate in Christ, and interacting with us by way of the Holy Spirit.

We believe that there is an internal dialogue - not monologue. We believe that our Divine Lover is literally, always in our thoughts.

Put another way, this is the testimony of the saints and the men and women of God down through the centuries: that they have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. The Spirit has enabled them, sometimes with faltering conviction, to cry ‘Abba’, Father.”

This understanding of human self-consciousness, certainly encourages us to make time each day when with conscious effort we open ourselves to the Divine Consciousness. It encourages us to make space in our lives in retreat to let our Older Brother heal and remould us in his image.

But it also encourages us to believe even through the guilt of prayerlessness and overbusyness, that even then God’s Spirit is at work in us: we are still useful servants.

We must not be robbed of that joyful conviction that

“The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.” (Romans 8.16)

Holy Spirit - Comforter - First Mass

The Holy Spirit

“The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything.” (Jn 14.16)

It’s a great pleasure to be here among friends tonight at St Matthew’s for Ian’s first mass. We’ve known each other for some years now and have both been on a long and unexpected journey.

I was very nervous before presiding at my first mass. I was 15, and it wasn’t so much a mass, as holy communion in a tiny Baptist tin tabernacle nestling in the South Downs. I remember it, because as I gave out the little tray of wine glasses to the ageing Baptist deacon to distribute to the half a dozen old ladies and a sheep dog that were present – he looked very puzzled.

It was only after we had drunk the wine and I was thinking ‘what comes next’, (no liturgy to follow) that I spotted the loaf of bread on the table. I had forgotten the bread! We had it after the wine, and people were too polite to mention anything. They usually are Ian!

Ten years after that, I was Commodore of the Fleet. It was a very small fleet. In fact it was the Lancing College Sailing Club - but the Master in Charge of our battered fibre glass dinghies was known as the Commodore.

Those were happy afternoons on the River Adur; or occasionally, if I misjudged the tides very badly, in the English Channel.

You learned early on in small boats that the wind is both exhilarating and exasperating. It is unpredictable, and so you are constantly on your toes, changing the position of the boat; the position of yourself and the crew; adjusting the sails.

On the one hand you might capsize; and on the other you might hit a lull and become becalmed and directionless. You can only steer a boat when it is in motion.

In Holy Scripture, the Spirit is often referred to as the wind or breath of God. Those are both possible translations of the Hebrew and Greek words.

For the Jewish people, living by lakes and the sea, the wind was full of wonder. It was intangible yet powerful. The very air we breath; invisible yet giving life.

This is why Jesus likens the Spirit to the wind, blowing where it listeth. (Jn 3.8) And in this respect the Spirit is like the Father and the Son.

The incarnate Jesus was unpredictable with a mind of his own. As our first lesson from the book of Wisdom reminds us: “Who can learn the counsel of God? Or who can discern what the Lord wills?” (Wisdom 9.13)

Well of course, some of our fellow Christians will tell us very clearly what the Lord wills! But most of us know that discerning his will is a hard task.

This is why Jesus says earlier in this passage (v 16) “I will send you another comforter” - another, because it will, as it were, replace him. It is (in Luther’s word’s) an alter Christus - another Christ. Our Lord enfleshed could only be in one place at one time, with one group of people. The Holy Spirit would be poured out on all people. He was to be the paraclete (called alongside), the counsellor who leads us into the Truth that is Jesus.

The theme of this mass is the Holy Spirit, because any new priest or deacon, must always recognise that they are utterly dependent on God’s Holy Spirit, and that God’s Holy Spirit is unpredictable.

He is given so many roles in Scripture that we cannot possibly list them all.

We’ll consider just this one word: comforter, or counsellor as it is usually translated.

John emphasises a typically Trinitarian construction in the words of our Lord: “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter.” The Son prays to the Father and the Spirit proceeds. Or in our text: the Father sends the Spirit in the name of the Son.

The Comforter (counsellor, advocate) - he mysteriously works within us saying things will be alright. And all priests need to sense somewhere deep in their spirits, that things will be alright. As Jesus promises, the Spirit will give that peace which the world cannot give. As Paul puts it – the Spirit enables us to cry ‘Abba’, Father – and to know that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Or as Lady Julian of Norwich put it:

“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”

It is hardly surprising that the last half Century has often been called the age of the Spirit.

Not just because of the rise of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement - certainly the fastest growing section of the church today.

But because in an age of uncertainty and doubt, when propositional truth becomes more slippery by the moment, then we all need the wise counsel of the Spirit to our inner beings,
that all will be well.

That the absurd paradoxes which as Christians we say make sense of life, are true.
That God did become Man in Christ, died for us and rose again. This is the mystery of our faith.

It is only the transcendent Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son who can provide this inner calling and witness to our faith.

But there is another aspect of the ministry of the Comforter. He is not just the encourager who leads us into all truth.

In the Bayeux Tapestry, that 230’ picture which tells of everything leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – there’s a section with the caption “Harold comforteth his troops” - the picture shows him jabbing a spear into a soldier’s backside.

The Spirit doesn’t just comfort us with an inner witness of well-being. He disturbs us. He encourages us to get on with the work of the kingdom. At Pentecost he not only came alongside the Apostles, he forced them out like drunken men and women into the Jerusalem crowds, and to every nation on earth.

It’s part of that disturbing work of the Spirit that led to the formation of Epicentre, and then to Moot, here at St Matthew’s. It’s that ‘spear up the backside’ that can sometimes lead us to uncomfortable places. In the memorable words of Dad’s Army – “they don’t like it up em!” As an Anglican communion, we’re in an uncomfortable place at present, a place we’d rather not be. But that is a sure sign of the working of God’s Spirit.

Let me go back to sailing boats. A friend of mine had a good boat - but I never went sailing with him. I often went out in the boat, but never sailed. He only ever rowed it, you see. He found sails and rigging, cleats and halyards all a bit of a nuisance. If the wind became gusty, you got water in the boat and it was all a bit messy and strenuous.

For each of us both the encouraging and disturbing work of the Comforter will take different forms. And this is true at a corporate level as well. The Spirit will lead Holy Trinity Brompton in another way than that of St Matthew’s Westminster. He has led the Orthodox along a different path from the Catholics.

This diversity, says Paul in our epistle this evening, makes up the whole Body of Christ. We need each other, even if we think we are the only real bits of the body.

There will always be the temptation to avoid anything too strenuous or messy - to quench the spirit. But that path leads to boredom and death. We should be excited by the variety and tensions within the church. It shows we are on the move, and like a sailing boat, we can only be steered when we are moving.

The Holy Spirit, whom we celebrate in our Eucharist this evening, is to encourage Ian in his ministry; to encourage all of us to dare to believe; and to provoke us to be more adventurous in our life of faith.

“The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything.” (Jn 14.16)

Dancing with Angels - Pentecost 2005

Pentecost - Dancing with Angels

“This grace of the Holy Spirit enables them... to dance with the angels.”
St Basil the Great On the Holy Spirit (Divine Office Bk II p.670)

I went to the sort of old fashioned grammar school that taught ballroom dancing to the Upper Sixth. It was the nearest we got in the 60s to sex education.

Although learning the Amanda Foxtrot with a hundred other boys, dancing, in Joyce Grenfell’s memorable phrase, ‘bosom to bosom’, was hardly calculated to turn us into ‘Come Dancing’ aficionados.

Yet there is something immensely enjoyable in the social patterns of dancing: the partnerships, the community, the shared knowledge, the complementarity of the steps, the public intimacy.

What else could explain the resurgence of that absurdity known as Line Dancing? Or the fact that almost as many people vote in Graham Norton’s Strictly Dance Fever as in the General Election!

Some have argued that contemporary club-scene dancing is yet another sign of postmodernity: individualism and self-expression; no rules and no partners; the breakdown of social coherence and mutual responsibility. The difference between The Little House on the Prairie and Friends.

But clubbing is supremely a social pursuit with codified rules of conduct and dress, not obvious to the outsider - but that is why they are an ‘outsider’. It serves the age-old purposes of waltzes and Morris dancing; of Stripping the Willow and Charleston; of ballet and ballroom.

Wherever we turn in the world, in whatever age, there is an instinct to worship and to dance. Perhaps with the exception of the Southern Baptists. The old Texan joke: “Why are Southern Baptists against sex before marriage? Because it may lead to dancing.”

We are familiar perhaps with the theology of worship; which reminds us that there is an image-of-Godness at the heart of our being, urging us to acknowledge the worth, to give worth-ship to, the invisible God who lies behind the glory and splendour of this world; who loves and beckons through the pain and burden of this world.

We are less familiar with St Basil’s contention that “This grace of the Holy Spirit enables us... to dance with the angels”.

Today is Pentecost - the fiftieth day (the origin of the word in Gk) after Passover when the pilgrim Jews celebrated the wheat harvest; 50 days after the Resurrection when the Ascended Lord was to send the Spirit; what became popularly known in the Christian Church as White or Whit Sunday, when the newly baptised wore white; the day when traditionally the collections were given to the Curate.

The Holy Spirit has always been the hardest member of the Trinity to understand. Fathers we know about. Some of our friends are Sons. Yet the Holy Spirit - he or she or it - there are good linguistic reasons for using any of these pronouns - he is the shadowy one of the three: the dove, the water, the oil, the fire, the wind, the breath - Scripture struggles with a surfeit of metaphors.

In the early discussions of the church fathers, one of the words used to describe the interrelatedness of the Trinity was ‘perichoresis’: the inter-animation of the persons of the Trinity. The late Professor Colin Gunton at King’s took up the word again more recently. In “The One, The Three and The Many” he writes that the word is “heavy with spatial and temporal conceptuality, involving movement, recurrence… and a dynamic, mutual reciprocity.”

We might put it more simply - dancing! The ‘choresis’ of perichoresis, comes from a similar root to choreography - the mapping of dances.

The dynamic of the Christian God, whom we honour next Sunday as Blessed Trinity, is the loving dance of eternity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit caught up in the wordless communication which we mimic in all our human dances.

It is no wonder that over the centuries the divine Liturgy has become a stylised dance. The synchronisation of movements, the courtesies, the communication beyond words, which even the congregation is drawn into through music and symbolic gestures; our acolytes the Fred Astaires of the sacristy.

The Holy Spirit draws us into the dance of the Godhead. The Apostles on that day of Pentecost were caught up like drunken revellers into the intoxication of the love of God. Heaven was opened and they were dancing with the angels.

You find it in mediaeval poetry. In the Christmas Carol, Tomorrow shall be my Dancing Day, have you ever noticed the words of the second verse as Christ talks about his incarnation?

Then was I born of a virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance;
Thus was I knit to man’s nature,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing, O my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

Or here is Evelyn Underhill writing in the middle of the First World War in Theophanies:

Heaven’s not a place…
No! ’tis a dance
Where love perpetual,
Rhythmical,
Musical,
Maketh advance
Loved one to lover.

And as we are drawn into the sacred choreography, so we take on the characteristics of the other dancers in the Trinity. The fruit of the Spirit produces the traits of the Father and the Son: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The charismata, the gifts of the Spirit, reproduce the works of the Father and the Son. So together as the people of God we bring healing and wholeness, wisdom and truth, freedom and justice to a world that remembers how to dance, but has forgotten why it dances.

By the indwelling Spirit we take on the Divine. St Basil goes on with great theological daring, dancing on the edge of heresy, to describe the work of the Spirit in we Christians who dance with the angels:

“So is their joy unending… so do they acquire likeness to God, so - most sublime of all - do they themselves become divine.”

Ezra Pound once remarked: “Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance.”

We might extend that metaphor and say that Christianity begins to atrophy when it gets too far from the Holy Spirit.

In honouring the past, we must always be prepared to let the Spirit blow where he wills.

So, don’t sit around the edges of the dance like wallflowers, waiting for an invitation. You have been baptized. Christ has given you his Holy Spirit.

“And this grace of the Holy Spirit enables you... to dance with the angels.”

Freedom in the Spirit

Gal 5:16 “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”

I remember listening to endless ‘testimonies’ when I was a teenager - people telling us how they had been ‘saved’. Many of them very moving and some quite remarkable. (Peter in front of TV in Australia - Neil in Fudpuckers) But there was a genre, usually recounted by burnt out looking thirty-somethings (I see a number of you here this evening), which ran along the lines: “There was no sin and debauchery to which I had not sunk (sometimes they went on to “and then at the age of five...”). But others would give you a tantalising glimpse of the sins and broad hints of the debauchery of their mis-spent youth. And I would sit and complain to God that I had become a Christian far to early to get a good crack at debauchery.

This passage from Paul’s difficult letter to the Galatians, contains this list, which even as a child you would mentally tick off as we ran the gamut of the sins of the flesh. [I was never sure what ‘lasciviousness’ was, but by the very sound of it, I’d committed it...]

The Scriptures, and Paul himself, use the word ‘flesh’ to convey a variety of meanings.

Fallen and perverse human nature - “the lust of the flesh”. Or if you don’t like the biblical imagery of the fall in the garden of Eden, then you can follow Richard Dawkins and his ‘Selfish Gene’ - we’re born that way - we’re part of nature, red in tooth and claw; or if you look into your own soul, you know that it is easier to be selfish and self-centred than to be generous and altruistic - that takes effort. This is what Paul has in mind in this passage, and he amplifies it.

His hit list covers three dominant areas of our lives: sexuality, spirituality and society.

Sexuality- fornication, impurity, licentiousness
- the pursuit of sex as an end in itself, regardless of the feelings, responsibilities and respect we owe to each other - and to society. That’s a more difficult point in our divided society where there are very varied sexual mores. And of course some would argue that what we do in the bedroom is nothing to do with wider society. This was Abp Runcie’s view expressed in his candid biography.

Spirituality - idolatry & sorcery - the need for human kind to worship
- the danger of worshipping of ‘other gods’ of our own making - eg
- the cult of self - the body beautiful and self-gratification - fuelled by the
- the cult of money - the love of which is the root of all evil -
consumerism - shopping mall temples - Tesco ergo sum - retail therapy
- the cult of ‘my church’ - pride, intolerance and lack of Xn charity
- the cult of others - worshipping the lover, the spouse, the children

Society - enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing
- the ills which fragment community life and lead to distrust, social isolation, pain and anguish

So what is the Apostle’s solution to this civil war within us - the backcloth of so much human history, literature and art; the backcloth of this war-riven century; the backcloth of our own experience of the messiness of life.

It is to walk in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit; to be what you are in Christ. It is to have that attitude which was in Christ Jesus.

Paul lists the fruit of this Spirit of Christ in relation to God, Others and Self
God - love, joy, peace - these should be our characteristics
Others - patience, kindness, generosity (To dwell above...)
Self - faithfulness, gentleness, self-control

We crucify the flesh: we make those moment by moment decisions to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit rather than to follow our demanding animal self - the lust of the flesh - the selfish gene. And we need not only the help of God’s Spirit, but of his Word and Sacraments, and of his people, and of the best of his world.

Then Paul talks of walking in the Spirit - ‘keeping in step’ with the Spirit.
Sailing - finding the wind - and the exhilaration of running before it. These are what the spiritual disciplines are for - church, devotions, confession, spiritual reading, retreat, pilgrimage (Walsingham)....

As we are led by the Spirit and walk in the Spirit so we will know the fullness of joy in the Spirit and the abundance of life in the Spirit.


Gal 5:16 “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”

Living in Between

Living in Between

"the end of all things is near..." 1 Peter 4.7

A church member who was a devout golfer, getting ready for retirement, came to talk to his priest one day. "Tell me, Father," he demanded, "are there going to be golf courses in heaven? I have to know."

"Well," said his priest, "I'm not really sure, but tonight I'll say a special prayer and see if God will tell me the answer."

The next Sunday, when the service ended and the congregation was shaking hands with the priest on the way out, the golfer cornered him again. "Did you get the answer, Father? Are there going to be golf courses in heaven?"

Well, George," the priest replied, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

"Tell me the good news first," George said.

"The good news is that, yes, there are golf courses in heaven. Beautiful courses, where the sun is always shining, the rough is not too deep, there are no sand traps, and you never have to wait to tee off."
"Hey, that's great!" exclaimed the golfer excitedly. "But what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is that St Peter has you down to tee off this coming Tuesday morning at 8."

Christians are arguably always caught up in the 'in-between times'. They never arrive. It is in the nature of our faith. And although we would sometimes like to know our future, it is better that we should not know. The Bible tells us all we need to know about the future and about living 'in between'.

First there was the time between the Garden of Eden and the giving of the Law to Moses.

Then between the giving of the Law and the coming of the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Law.

And for the early disciples there was the wait between the events of Holy Week, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

And some years after Pentecost Peter is able to announce that the Church was still 'in between', but that the end was nigh. The apparent delay of the Lord's Second Coming was always a problem for the early church which Peter and Paul sought to address.

So here we are on an 'in-between' Sunday - with Ascension last Thursday and Pentecost still a week away. In the drama of the liturgical year we are to wait until the Spirit comes.

When I was but a young man in Sussex I went with my Pentecostal friends to 'tarrying meetings' - from the words of our Lord to his disciples in Luke's Gospel: "but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." (Lk 24.49)

- we were to pray and wait for the Spirit to fall - or for 9pm - whichever came earliest.

I remember inviting the local Pentecostal pastor to preach at my church in Camberwell and explaining that the service had to finish by noon. He looked at me as if I were mad and exclaimed: "But sometimes the Holy Ghost don't get here till 12.30!"

So was the Holy Spirit inactive until the day of Pentecost? Or to put it another way, did God the Son do nothing until he was born in Bethlehem?

The revelation of God in Trinity has had particular foci - historical events - over the past five thousand years. But the work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been evident, retroactively if you like, throughout all of history.

So before the Law was itemised on Mt Sinai, men and women still had consciences, and societies drew up their own laws. St Paul talks about this in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans.

And before the saving work of Christ's passion, men and women were still saved through faith in a merciful God. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear.

And before the day of Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit was at work through prophets and kings, through harlots and pagan dictators. Scripture bears witness to it.

Now on this Sunday in the year of our Lord, 2004, we are in between that first Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, and the end of the world, or our own death, whichever comes sooner.

Does that mean that we will see nothing of the kingdom of heaven until 'the end of all things', the consummation of the age, the dissolution of the cosmos?

No! Before that time, retroactively, the kingdom of God is the ideal towards which we must struggle. As we will say in a moment: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."

This was the objective of Adam and Eve as they were cursed and expelled from the garden. They would not re-enter the kingdom of heaven through the garden gate, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword.

They would only move towards paradise regained through the passion of Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit.

It's not as if God was holding out on everyone until the day of Pentecost. As if he commanded them to love God with heart and soul and mind, and neighbour as self, way back in Deuteronomy; but had no intention of giving them the means to do so for a thousand years!

The in-between times have always been as potent as the special events. Becoming is every bit as important as arriving. All of our life, as human beings, is caught up with 'in between', which is one reason that we are so preoccupied with the passing of time. When we are young we cannot wait till the next event. When we are old we wait with some apprehension for the one and only event left for us.

Peter puts it in these practical words of wisdom: "The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4.7,8)

A consistent theme through Scripture is to live as if life matters; to make our life count for God and for others. In the words of our Lord: "I have come that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly."

Peter's little summary here may be paraphrased that we are to live thoughtfully, prayerfully and lovingly. This will cover a multitude of sins. Sin is that destructive agent at work in our life and in our world. It is trapped in the 'in between' time with us.

But Christ has dealt with sin, and if we will live by the Spirit, then sin will not have dominion over us.

So Peter calls for 'fervent charity'. This is Paul's song as well - without charity, Christian love, all is a waste of time. If we are thoughtful, and spiritual, then we should judge our words and actions by love. To neglect this divine injunction is to live in a way that leads to destruction - both personal and social.

A policeman stops a man driving the wrong way up a one way street. "Didn't you see the arrows?" he asks. The driver replies "I didn't even see the Indians!"

What is important about living in between time, is seeing the arrows. It is knowing where we have come from and where we are heading. Of course we don't always get it right, which is why we need the constant reminders of which way the arrows are pointing.
The whole of this mass is a restatement of the saving acts of God which punctuate our history and motivate our day by day living 'in between'. And the mass points us to the future - Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

It is the future, whose power is present now, that draws us on, to the time when there will be no more 'in between'; to the eternity of God.

Meanwhile, we are the 'becoming' ones, always growing and moving on. I'm reminded of that now rather quaint desription of this process as it is described in the 1920s children's story The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams:

"The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Margery Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit, Heinemann 1989 (1922)

In the 'in between' we are becoming - drawing closer to Christ personally, and trying to shape our society on the coming kingdom principles of justice and mercy.

Christian hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.
Faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.

In the power of the risen Lord Jesus, may we live wisely in these 'in between' times.

Baptism of Christ

Baptism of Christ

“And there came a voice from heaven” Mark 1.11

Lots of people claim to have heard the voice of God. Most times they mean by this, a strong inner conviction that this is what God wants them to do.

I have had two proposals of marriage made to me on this basis. On each occasion it would not only have taken an audible voice from heaven, but a considerable band of angels to get me to the altar.

People who hear the audible voice of God from heaven are in a whole different category. Usually they have simply forgotten to take their medication.

But there is a significant, albeit small number, in Scripture and down through the centuries who claim to have heard, as it were, the external voice of God. I have met one remarkable woman, crippled with cerebral palsy, who I think genuinely heard the voice of God. I’ll tell you her story one day, but she heard God speak her name, ‘Mary’, and it changed her life.

Still it appears that there needs to be a degree of discernment in the listener. When Jesus hears the voice of God in John’s Gospel (12.29) the crowd think it is thunder. Although the more discerning think it is an angel speaking to him.

It would be nice if we could rely on the voice of God booming out clear instructions at all the difficult turns in our life: a word of encouragement here; a word of warning there.

But that is not the way of faith. Even for Our Lord there are only two occasions recorded where an audible voice is heard. And one of those, Jesus declares, was for the benefit of the listeners, not himself. (John 12.30)

However, at his Baptism, the voice is for the encouragement of both Jesus and John.

The New Testament imagery of Baptism is primarily that of dying and rising in Christ; of being buried with him in death and reborn to a new life in his resurrection.

It was natural for the early church to interpret the words and commands of our Lord in that way.

But John the Baptist’s baptism, was one of repentance, and this posed something of a problem for the first and second century theologians. Why should the sinless Jesus submit himself to a baptism which was for the washing away of sin?

Even John himself is perplexed by Jesus’ actions, as Matthew records: “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’” (3.14)

Here it is more bluntly in the mid-second century apocryphal Gospel of the Nazaraeans, where Jesus says: “Wherein have I sinned that I should go and be baptized by him?”

It is interesting that today’s Gospel reading from John, perhaps the most ‘theological’ of the four, only implies the baptism of Christ, but never describes it.

In my younger years I was among those interpreters who understood the Baptism of Jesus in terms of identifying with sinners: he who knew no sin became sin for us; he identifies with us in sin and vicariously repents for us in his baptism.

But I have come to see that this is an unnecessary interpretation which goes beyond the text.

Professor Morna Hooker, in her commentary on Mark, I think rightly gets to the heart of the matter.

John’s baptism was not just about forgiveness of sins, it was about the coming of the New Age, the Kingdom Age, the Messianic Age, when forgiven men and women would gladly submit to the gentle rule of God, and would live out Kingdom values in their daily lives.

It was about extravagant love for God and consequent love of neighbour. It was about hating hypocrisy and deadening religious practice.

In this light, it would be natural for Jesus, in his full humanity, to identify with the baptized of this new movement.

John’s hesitation was probably not so much to do with Christ’s sinlessness, as with a realisation that Christ was vastly superior to him, in ways that John could hardly imagine possible. He was not worthy so much as to loosen his sandal.

With naive and unembarrassed simplicity, Mark (possibly the earliest Gospel) faithfully records the incident at the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry.

We are sometimes in danger of making baptism and confirmation the very thing that John the Baptist railed against: an empty ritual embedded in cultic Christianity. A British folk-religion placebo. Or even worse, an inoculation against the ‘real’ thing in later life! Sadly, many of our contemporaries have experienced just enough of the church to reject it’s message.

The Baptism of Jesus, which we celebrate today, reviving the ancient practice of the church at epiphanytide, reminds us of the authentic roots of our own baptism. It calls us to follow Christ’s example and command.

For our Lord there was no turning from sin and no repentance for a sinful past; but there was a turning to the daunting task before him; a setting of his face toward Jerusalem where in three years he would taste death in all its bitterness and be baptized in blood as he carries the sins of the world.

And to test his resolve, the Spirit drives him from the Jordan to the wilderness for 40 days of temptation, fasting and prayer. (Mark 1.12)

So for us, the remembrance of our baptism should spur us to turn from sin and selfishness; to live as heralds of the New Age, to wear the mark of Christ in self-giving and love.

Every time we are sprinkled with holy water; every time we cross ourselves with holy water as we enter or leave church; we are reminded of God’s love, grace and forgiveness; but we are also reminded of our baptismal resolve: to turn from evil and to follow Christ; to love one another as he has loved us, and thus show to all that we are his disciples.

For Christ at this turning point in his young life, there is a great affirmation from his Father. Mark records it thus: “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’" (1.10f)

These phrases find resonances in our OT lesson today (Isaiah 42) as well as in Psalm 2 (v7) and the whole scene would speak to first century Jews of God’s breaking of the 400 year silence since the last prophet - the rending of the heavens to come down and fulfil his promises made to the prophets.

For us, there is nothing so dramatic at our baptism or confirmation. No assuring voice rending the heavens to affirm our decision. Not even paternal congratulations for joining the Church of England. Only the great British understatement, a cup of tea and a piece of cake.

The ‘voice from heaven’ that Mark describes is probably his translation of a Hebrew idiom: the bat qol - the daughter of a voice.

Since the last prophet, God seemed silent, and the best the devout could hope for was some echo of the Divine - the daughter of a voice. In Jewish literature it was often compared to the cry of a bird, the murmuring of a dove.

John the baptizer was a voice crying in the wilderness.

But as men and women came to him and turned to God, they heard not only a voice in the wilderness, but a distant voice from heaven; an echo of the Divine.

The Holy Spirit’s subtle work within them gave them hope and strength to live for God. To work for a better society, based on the Kingdom values of love and mercy.

The faith of our Baptism sometimes seems very shaky and precarious. And the most we seem to hear is not even a daughter, but a distant cousin of the voice of God.

But we do not lose heart.

The murmuring of God’s voice, often in unexpected places and at unexpected times, is enough to bring comfort and fresh resolve.

As we struggle to fulfil our baptismal vows in a difficult world, and a very imperfect church, we look to Christ for example and for inner strength, and hope that, however distant it may sound, we too may hear

“... a voice from heaven” Mark 1.11

Flesh & Spirit

Flesh & Spirit

“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Gal 5:16

A prominent element of the religious culture in which I grew up in the 60s and 70s was the ‘testimony’: people telling us how they had been ‘saved’; how they had come to faith.

They were amazingly varied and many of them very moving, and some quite remarkable: Peter in front of his TV in Australia; Mary in her wheelchair in the orphanage chapel; Kevin in a memorable restaurant called Fudpuckers.

But there was a genre, usually recounted by burnt out looking thirty-somethings (I see a number of you here this morning), which ran along the lines: “There was no sin and debauchery to which I had not sunk (sometimes they went on to add “and then at the age of five...”).

Yet others would give you a tantalising glimpse of the sins and broad hints of the debauchery of their misspent youth. And I would often sit and complain to God that I’d become a Christian far to early to get a good crack at debauchery.

Today’s epistle from Paul’s difficult letter to the Galatians, contains this list, which even as a child you would mentally tick off as we ran the gamut of the sins of the flesh. [I was never sure what ‘lasciviousness’ was, but by the very sound of it, I’d committed it...]

Paul’s teaching on ‘the flesh’, or rather a misinterpretation of it, gave rise to a number of heresies in the early church.

These heresies were both to do with the person of Christ, and also to do with our attitude to the human body and to sex in particular: docetism, modal monarchianism, ascetic gnosticism, antinomianism - the names remain in the minds of all theological students long after the contents of the heresies have been forgotten.

The Scriptures, and Paul himself, use the word ‘flesh’ to convey a variety of meanings. Here’s half a dozen of them:

1 - Meat - Ps 78:27 “He rained flesh also upon them as dust...”
2 -The Body - the usually meaning of the Greek word ‘sarx’ (sarcasm - the rending of the flesh) - and of the equivalent Hebrew word for flesh.
3 - A Person - Gen 2:24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
4 - People - human race - Isa 40:5 “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together...”
5 - Frail human nature contrasted with God’s power - Mark 14:38 “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (You remember how the Russian translator struggled with this idiom and translated “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” by “The vodka is OK but the meat is terrible.”)
6 - Fallen and perverse human nature - “the lust of the flesh”.

Or if you don’t like the biblical imagery of the fall in the garden of Eden, then you can follow Richard Dawkins and his ‘Selfish Gene’: we’re born that way - we’re part of nature, red in tooth and claw.

Or indeed if you look into your own soul, you know that it is easier to be selfish and self-centred than to be generous and altruistic - that takes effort.

This 6th meaning is what Paul has in mind in here in Galatians and he goes on to amplify it.

His hit list of fallen human nature covers three dominant areas of our lives: sexuality, spirituality and society.

1 Sexuality - fornication, impurity, licentiousness
- the pursuit of sex as an end in itself, regardless of the feelings, responsibilities and respect we owe to each other - and to society. And to society - Christianity is essentially a communal faith where individual freedoms are moderated by social responsibility.

This is very difficult to work out in our divided society where there are very varied sexual mores. And of course some would argue that what we do in the bedroom is nothing to do with wider society. This was the late Abp Runcie’s view expressed in his candid biography.

In our understanding of human relationships, intimacy and sexuality, we must certainly hear scripture; and we must certainly pay heed to the tradition of the Church; but we must also listen to wider human society - and I don’t just mean its liberalising clamour, nor its sometimes reactionary response to embarrassed confusion.

We have to recognise that in the last four thousand years, guided by God, much has changed in this area, and much, inevitably, has yet to change. It is only the underlying principles of Christian behaviour which remain constant.

2 Spirituality - on Paul’s list, idolatry & sorcery
- the need for human kind to worship and the danger of worshipping ‘other gods’ of our own making. For example:

- the cult of self - the body beautiful and self-gratification - fuelled by the
- the cult of money - the love of which is the root of all evil
- consumerism - shopping mall temples - Tesco ergo sum - retail therapy
- the cult of ‘my church’ - pride, intolerance and lack of Christian charity
- the cult of others - worshipping the lover, the spouse, the children

Each of us has our own personal idols which claim our devotion, may sap our energy and ultimately lead to disintegration and enslavement.

3 Society - enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing
- the ills which fragment community life and lead to distrust, social isolation, pain and anguish.

So Paul’s ‘lust of the flesh’ is not to be confused simply with desire and the enjoyment of our bodily appetites. It is not primarily to do with what the President of the US did with a young assistant; or with what King David did with a beautiful married woman.

It is about why they did it; whether they abused their charisma to achieve it; and what they did subsequently - privately and publicly. These are the lusts of the flesh.

So what is the Apostle’s solution to this civil war within us - the backcloth of so much human history, literature and art; the backcloth of our war-riven century; the backcloth of our own experience of the messiness of life.

It is to walk in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit; to be what you are in Christ.

It is to have that attitude which was in Christ Jesus. Paul lists the fruit of this Spirit of Christ in relation to God, Others and Self.

God - love, joy, peace - these should be our characteristics.
Others - patience, kindness, generosity. I come across too many people in our churches who think a balanced personality means you have a chip on both shoulders.
Self - faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

We crucify the flesh: we make those moment by moment decisions to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit rather than to follow our demanding animal self - the lust of the flesh - the selfish gene. And we need not only the help of God’s Spirit, but of his Word and Sacraments, and of his people, and of the best of his world.

At it’s very simplest level, it is like the young boy standing by the apple barrel outside the grocer’s: “Are you trying to steal one of my apples?” “No sir, I’m trying not to.”

Paul uses two verbs in this passage to describe the process: being led by the Spirit and walking in the Spirit. The one is primarily passive. The other is active.

To be led by the Spirit is to follow our inner desire for holiness: to pursue the good and the beautiful.

St Mary’s is rightly known for the beauty of its music and liturgy. But this is can become idolatrous unless it is also known as a place of worship and prayer. The Spirit leads us to God.

Then Paul talks of actively walking in the Spirit - ‘keeping in step’ with the Spirit - running with the Spirit.

Two men are running away from a grizzly bear that is gaining on them. One man stops and starts putting on running shoes. The other one says “it’s no use, we’ll never outrun the bear.” “As he finishes tying the laces he says “I know. But I’ve only got to outrun you...”

Paul uses the competitive metaphor of the runner to talk of the disciplines of the spiritual life. These have been the mainstay of authentic Christianity down through the centuries, and they have nurtured the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - in the lives those who like us, try to follow Christ.

So we must put ourselves in places where we can be led by the Spirit, and not by our selfish desires. And as we do that we will continue to train ourselves through the spiritual disciplines so that we can walk in the Spirit. Then we will know increasing growth in holiness and re-orietning of our desires and attitudes.

“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Gal 5:16

Living in Between

Living in Between

"the end of all things is near..." 1 Peter 4.7

A church member who was a devout golfer, getting ready for retirement, came to talk to his priest one day. "Tell me, Father," he demanded, "are there going to be golf courses in heaven? I have to know."
"Well," said his priest, "I'm not really sure, but tonight I'll say a special prayer and see if God will tell me the answer."
The next Sunday, when the service ended and the congregation was shaking hands with the priest on the way out, the golfer cornered him again. "Did you get the answer, Father? Are there going to be golf courses in heaven?"
Well, George," the priest replied, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
"Tell me the good news first," George said.
"The good news is that, yes, there are golf courses in heaven. Beautiful courses, where the sun is always shining, the rough is not too deep, there are no sand traps, and you never have to wait to tee off."
"Hey, that's great!" exclaimed the golfer excitedly. "But what's the bad news?"
"Well, the bad news is that St Peter has you down to tee off this coming Tuesday morning at 8."

Christians are arguably always caught up in the 'in-between times'. They never arrive. It is in the nature of our faith. And although we would sometimes like to know our future, it is better that we should not know. The Bible tells us all we need to know about the future and about living 'in between'.

First there was the time between the Garden of Eden and the giving of the Law to Moses.

Then between the giving of the Law and the coming of the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Law.

And for the early disciples there was the wait between the events of Holy Week, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

And some years after Pentecost Peter is able to announce that the Church was still 'in between', but that the end was nigh. The apparent delay of the Lord's Second Coming was always a problem for the early church which Peter and Paul sought to address.

So here we are on an 'in-between' Sunday - with Ascension last Thursday and Pentecost still a week away. In the drama of the liturgical year we are to wait until the Spirit comes.

When I was but a young man in Sussex I went with my Pentecostal friends to 'tarrying meetings' - from the words of our Lord to his disciples in Luke's Gospel: "but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." (Lk 24.49)

- we were to pray and wait for the Spirit to fall - or for 9pm - whichever came earliest.

I remember inviting the local Pentecostal pastor to preach at my church in Camberwell and explaining that the service had to finish by noon. He looked at me as if I were mad and exclaimed: "But sometimes the Holy Ghost don't get here till 12.30!"

So was the Holy Spirit inactive until the day of Pentecost? Or to put it another way, did God the Son do nothing until he was born in Bethlehem?

The revelation of God in Trinity has had particular foci - historical events - over the past five thousand years. But the work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been evident, retroactively if you like, throughout all of history.

So before the Law was itemised on Mt Sinai, men and women still had consciences, and societies drew up their own laws. St Paul talks about this in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans.

And before the saving work of Christ's passion, men and women were still saved through faith in a merciful God. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear.

And before the day of Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit was at work through prophets and kings, through harlots and pagan dictators. Scripture bears witness to it.

Now on this Sunday in the year of our Lord, 2004, we are in between that first Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, and the end of the world, or our own death, whichever comes sooner.

Does that mean that we will see nothing of the kingdom of heaven until 'the end of all things', the consummation of the age, the dissolution of the cosmos?

No! Before that time, retroactively, the kingdom of God is the ideal towards which we must struggle. As we will say in a moment: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."

This was the objective of Adam and Eve as they were cursed and expelled from the garden. They would not re-enter the kingdom of heaven through the garden gate, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword.

They would only move towards paradise regained through the passion of Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit.

It's not as if God was holding out on everyone until the day of Pentecost. As if he commanded them to love God with heart and soul and mind, and neighbour as self, way back in Deuteronomy; but had no intention of giving them the means to do so for a thousand years!

The in-between times have always been as potent as the special events. Becoming is every bit as important as arriving. All of our life, as human beings, is caught up with 'in between', which is one reason that we are so preoccupied with the passing of time. When we are young we cannot wait till the next event. When we are old we wait with some apprehension for the one and only event left for us.

Peter puts it in these practical words of wisdom: "The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4.7,8)

A consistent theme through Scripture is to live as if life matters; to make our life count for God and for others. In the words of our Lord: "I have come that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly."

Peter's little summary here may be paraphrased that we are to live thoughtfully, prayerfully and lovingly. This will cover a multitude of sins. Sin is that destructive agent at work in our life and in our world. It is trapped in the 'in between' time with us.

But Christ has dealt with sin, and if we will live by the Spirit, then sin will not have dominion over us.

So Peter calls for 'fervent charity'. This is Paul's song as well - without charity, Christian love, all is a waste of time. If we are thoughtful, and spiritual, then we should judge our words and actions by love. To neglect this divine injunction is to live in a way that leads to destruction - both personal and social.

A policeman stops a man driving the wrong way up a one way street. "Didn't you see the arrows?" he asks. The driver replies "I didn't even see the Indians!"

What is important about living in between time, is seeing the arrows. It is knowing where we have come from and where we are heading. Of course we don't always get it right, which is why we need the constant reminders of which way the arrows are pointing.

The whole of this mass is a restatement of the saving acts of God which punctuate our history and motivate our day by day living 'in between'. And the mass points us to the future - Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

It is the future, whose power is present now, that draws us on, to the time when there will be no more 'in between'; to the eternity of God.

Meanwhile, we are the 'becoming' ones, always growing and moving on. I'm reminded of that now rather quaint desription of this process as it is described in the 1920s children's story The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams:

"The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit, Heinemann 1989 (1922)

In the 'in between' we are becoming - drawing closer to Christ personally, and trying to shape our society on the coming kingdom principles of justice and mercy.

Christian hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.
Faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.

In the power of the risen Lord Jesus, may we live wisely in these 'in between' times.

Ascension 2002

Ascension Day

“until the day in which he was taken up, he spoke of the things, pertaining to the kingdom…” Acts 1.3

Sometimes, when I’m surfing the net, which being interpreted for the Luddites means, spending two hours on the computer gathering fascinating information from around the world while in fact trying to find the time of the train from Waterloo to Esher...

...when I’m surfing the net, I think, all this is done with the two numbers 0 & 1; or more simply, with ‘off’ and ‘on’. There is an electric current, or there is not. The computer knows nothing of nuances; there are no middle positions; there is no New Labour.

The scourge of good theology has often been this cybernetic polarity; the simple either/or which is rarely illuminating, but can at least serve to point us towards the both/and; the media via for which Anglicanism is both famous and famously mocked.

At the Ascension of our Lord, the disciples fell into two opposing errors:

1 The Political Error
“Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (v.6)

Calvin comments scathingly on this enquiry from the disciples: “there are as many errors in this question as words.”

The disciples still thought, after these three years and all the events of Easter, and Christ’s teaching during the past 40 days about the kingdom, that he was to establish an earthly Utopia, with himself as King.
But as long as human nature is flawed - that is until the end of the cosmos - there will be the need for democracy.

Democracy is the political way in which we recognise the limits and weaknesses of all human institutions, whether in society or in the church. There can be no Theocracy. The Pope is but a man.

Frustrating and imperfect as they are, synods and councils are the safest way forward, for since Christ has ascended, there can be no heaven on earth. Humanity is not perfectible. Nature will always be ‘red in tooth and claw’.

2 The Pietist Error
“why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” (v.11)

There are those who are so disillusioned with the Big Bad World, and so daunted by its challenges, that they would rather stand gazing into heaven, hoping for a glimpse of the heavenly Jesus, hoping he will come back to establish an earthly kingdom.

They call people to devotion at the expense of action. They look to the ‘then’, and endure the ‘now’.

Or in our own tradition, sometimes like the early Gnostics, they make heaven so spiritual and earth so carnal, that it ceases to matter how they live here on earth - for only the spiritual counts.

Whichever way - excessive piety or careless indulgence - it is not the way of Christ. Since he has ascended, there is a better way.

It is the way of the Spirit. The way of the kingdom.

The disciples were sent to wait for the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost he is to give them heavenly power for earthly responsibility.

I was reading that little booklet today by Canon Donald Gray about Percy Dearmer (The British Museum Religion) - you can tell I have 101 unpalatable tasks to do when I’m reduced to reading tracts about Percy Dearmer.

And I was struck by the sentence about Dearmer: “At Oxford the art master’s son began to realise that there were social, political and religious implications behind his natural instinct to celebrate beauty.” (p.4) Dearmer struggled to follow the media via between these two errors over the following years.

He pursued God through the beauty of Anglo-Catholic liturgy, and at the same time he worked for social justice and to establish the kingdom of God on earth.

Christ, our warrior-king, the priest-victim, returns into his own kingdom. He ascends triumphant, leading captivity captive, commanding us to wait with bated breath for the gift of the Spirit, who will save us from error, lead us into all truth and enable us to live on earth as citizens of the eternal kingdom.

“until the day in which he was taken up, he spoke of the things, pertaining to the kingdom…” Acts 1.3

War on Terror

The War against Terror

“But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"” Genesis 3.9

Here’s a strange picture! The almighty, the omnipotent, the omniscient Creator of all things, playing hide-and-seek in the Garden.

“Where are you Adam?”

“Coming ready or not!”

And Adam is not ready. He is naked, and ashamed, and confused, and angry with Eve and with himself. And he has become afraid of the God who is Love.

“Where are you Adam?” This is not a question about location. It is a metaphysical question.

Adam is lost. And so the war against terror begins.

“Where are you Adam?”

I am plotting mayhem and revenge; the slaying of Abel; the atrocities of humanity before the flood; the wickedness of the cities before the scattering from Babel;

I am plotting nationalism and weapons of destruction; infanticide and torture; oppression and racism; inquisitions and discrimination; religious hatred and world wars; holocausts and ethnic cleansing; acts of terror and global injustice.

This third chapter of Genesis is an ancient aetiology of human evil. An attempt to explain why the world is as it is. Since the dawn of civilisation, humans have wrestled with the terror that is within.

They have experienced great goodness - the simple pleasures of walking with the Lord God in the garden in the cool of the day.

And they have witnessed great evil - the exercise of godlike powers to humiliate and destroy those who are ‘other’.

This war against terrorism which we are currently waging is sometimes in danger of assuming that ‘the other’ against whom we fight, is somehow inherently different from us.

But we are all earthlings and tainted with Adam’s sin. We are all children of Eve and under our mother’s curse.

Solzhenitsyn, who certainly suffered at the hands of evil men and women, was wise enough to write:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Quoted in Mayne, Learning to Dance, DLT 2001, p166)

War can only ever be enjoined with a sense of humility and with a recognition that those whom we attack are not all evil and we are not all good.

The little boy is standing up in the back seat of the car and his father keeps telling him to sit down. At last the father stops the car and forcibly sits the boy down. As they continue the journey, the sulking boy in the back shouts: “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside!”

From childhood we experience the division within the self that in this story of Adam and Eve is the result of their disobedience.

In the NT Paul is absorbed with this duality within and uses the word ‘flesh’ to denote the fallen and perverse side of our human nature - “the lust of the flesh” to describe the constant pull of the unrestrained ego.

This is what Paul has in mind in those lists in Galatians where he characterizes the two different sides to our nature.

For Adam and Eve in the garden, the duality within immediately skewed three dominant areas of their life: sexuality, spirituality and society. They were ashamed of their nakedness and sexual companionship becomes an arena for struggle and not just for pleasure; they become afraid of God; and they turn on each other in blame and recrimination.

Paul deals with these same three areas.

Sexuality - in Paul’s lists: fornication, impurity, licentiousness - the pursuit of sex as an end in itself, regardless of the feelings, responsibilities and respect we owe to each other - and to society. And to society? That’s a more difficult point in our divided society where there are very varied sexual mores.

And of course some would argue that what we do in the bedroom is nothing to do with wider society. This was Abp Runcie’s view expressed in his candid biography. Genesis acknowledges that there is an inner tension with regard to our sexuality, and that this must always be taken into account.

Spirituality - the need for human kind to worship and the danger of idolatry - of worshipping ‘other gods’ of our own making - eg

- the cult of self - the body beautiful and self gratification - fuelled by the

- the cult of money - the love of which is the root of all evil - consumerism - shopping mall temples - Tesco ergo sum - retail therapy

- the cult of ‘my church’ - pride, intolerance and lack of Xn charity

- the cult of others - worshipping the lover, the spouse, the children

Society - in Paul’s lists: enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing
- the ills which fragment community life and lead to distrust, social isolation, pain and anguish

Genesis only hints at an answer to this war within. From Eve there is to come one who will crush the serpent’s head. The NT interprets the work of Christ as the unifying factor that may not end the war here and now, but that may give us a victory over the dark side.

And what is the Apostle’s solution to this civil war within us - the backcloth of so much human history, literature and art; the backcloth of this war-riven century; the backcloth of our own experience of the messiness of life.

It is to walk in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit; to be what you are in Christ. It is to have that attitude which was in Christ Jesus.

Paul lists the fruit of this Spirit of Christ, the other side of this inner duality, in relation to God, Others and Self

God - love, joy, peace - these should be the characteristics of our Christian life

Others - patience, kindness, generosity (To dwell above...) These are to be the marks of our Christian society.

Self - faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is the way to tame the self.

So with vivid imagery Paul says we are to crucify the flesh: to make those moment by moment decisions to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit rather than to follow our demanding animal self - the lust of the flesh - the selfish gene.

And for this we need not only the help of God’s Spirit, but of his Word and Sacraments, and of his people, and of the best of his world.

Paul uses two verbs to describe the process: being led by the Spirit and walking in the Spirit. The one passive. The other active.

To be led by the Spirit is to follow our desire for holiness: to pursue the good and the beautiful. Now here is the paradox. For we spoke earlier of the cult of the body beautiful, of aesthetics and the glory of the world. The difference is in our motivation for the pursuit of beauty. Is it to worship the creature - or to worship the creator?

Then Paul talks of walking in the Spirit - ‘keeping in step’ with the Spirit. Or to switch the metaphor, it is like sailing - finding the wind - and the exhilaration of running before it. As we approach lent, the spiritual disciplines are there to help us develop our openness to the Spirit.

God’s challenge to us is as it always has been: to live with him, following Christ and the way to life;

or to hide with Adam and rebel and follow the destructive inner path to death.

“But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"” Genesis 3.9