Today we celebrate the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. For me, this day carries a personal resonance, it marks the 29th anniversary of my ordination to the diaconate. I was just 27, kneeling in Blackburn Cathedral as Bishop Alan Chesters laid his hands on my head. I remember the moment vividly, the solemnity, the ancient words, and above all the nerves. It was the beginning of a journey I could never have mapped out. I didn’t know then that I would serve as a hospital chaplain, a ministry often exercised amid difficult circumstance... It’s taught me that grace and the presence of Christ repeatedly shows up in the unexpected, in silence, amid suffering, and alongside those in need. Isn’t that true of the Christian life? If we ask ourselves whether we are where we thought we’d be 20 or 30 years ago, most of us would say no. Life unfolds with twists and turns we never planned. And yet, in hindsight, we often see the Spirit at work, quietly guiding, forming, and calling us in ways we never imagined. Peter and Paul are examples of this truth. Neither had a straightforward path. Peter was impulsive, often stumbling. Paul began as a persecutor. But both were called, forgiven, and transformed. God used their weaknesses, not just their strengths. In the Gospel today, Jesus asks a question that lies at the heart of the Christian journey: “Who do you say that I am?” It’s not simply a test of theology. It’s a question of relationship. Not what others say, but what we say, from the depths of our being. Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It’s a moment of revelation. Jesus says, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” This is the beginning of Peter’s transformation, from fisherman to rock. And yet, Peter’s story isn’t neat and tidy. He will deny Christ, be broken, and then be restored. He becomes a leader not through strength, but through mercy received. I think that’s one of the reasons this Gospel has always spoken to Christian men and women. It doesn’t give us heroes on pedestals, it gives us real people, redeemed by grace. It reminds me of the popular TV programme Who Do You Think You Are? where celebrities trace their family history and discover something of themselves in those who came before. They often complete the programme changed people not just by new facts, but with insight. Their identity is deepened, reframed. In the same way, faith invites us into a larger story. We’re not Christians in isolation. We stand in continuity with those who came before, apostles, saints, generations of believers. We’re shaped not only by our individual path, but by the story of the Church. Peter, who fell and was forgiven. Paul, who was blinded yet he could see. Their lives echo in the everyday experience of our own. Through baptism, we are grafted into that apostolic life. At confirmation, the same Spirit that came upon the apostles is sealed in us. These sacraments aren’t rituals from the past they are living connections to the grace Christ entrusted to His Church. Rowan Williams said, “Faith is not about knowing everything, but about being known, and trusting the One who knows us fully.” That trust is the heart of vocation. Whether priest or parent, carer or friend, all of us are called to answer Christ’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” Often, that answer emerges in hardship, in illness, disappointment, grief, or love. The same Spirit that opened Peter’s lips is present in us too, prompting our own leap of faith. So how do we live this apostolic faith today? Not usually in grand gestures, but in quiet faithfulness. In prayer even when it’s dry. In keeping promises. In loving when it’s hard. In forgiving when it’s costly. These are the building blocks of faith amid everyday life. The Church’s continuity is not merely institutional, it is sacramental. The laying on of hands at ordination, the anointing at confirmation, all trace their lineage to those moments when Christ entrusted the keys of the kingdom to his apostle Peter. As a student in my early 20’s I got to visit the destine Chapel, it was an emotional and moving experience. On one of the walls within this famous Chapel there is a painting of Saint Peter depicted receiving the keys to the kingdom, the artwork is titled, Delivery of the Keys, Peter looks overwhelmed. The keys are oversized, symbolic of the weight of the task. And yet he receives them, not by his own strength. We too are entrusted with something holy, and like Peter and Paul, we don’t always feel ready. But we discover God makes us ready along the way. Pope Leo the Great once said… in the one Peter, we are all given the name of rock. Today’s feast doesn’t only honour two towering saints. It celebrates the Church, it celebrates our faith, it calls us again, to hear that question: “Who do you say that I am?” So today, whether we feel strong or fragile, whether we’ve walked a straight path or wandered through unexpected turns, let us just be still before Christ. Let us hear his voice. And let us answer with all the faith we have, however small, however faltering: “You are the Christ. The Son of the living God.” And let that response become the rock upon which our lives are built.
I found, as I sat down to write this sermon, that the pervasive use of Artificial Intelligence, AI, had also penetrated Microsoft Word. You may have seen that under almost everything you read online now there are a number of boxes to click asking strangely uninteresting questions of the article you have just seen, which lead you further and further away from any kind of educated insight and more and more into the realms of artificially generated word salads, which moderate themselves depending on who is bankrolling that particular rabbit hole of darkness. Nothing new there, the back pages of magazines used to have Small Ads where you could write off for pamphlets for all kinds of causes and events which would make you feel valued and part of something which exists purely for the benefit of others, much like the last two governments we have lived under.Anyway, Microsoft Word AI invited me to type in whatever I was looking for and so I typed in ‘Trinity Sunday Sermon’ and it generated, very quickly, a well constructed, simple, short sermon on the Trinity which was accessible, sensible and almost completely heretical, but it was not obviously so – and therefore I predict that in about ten years it will be much more difficult to hear truth grounded in scripture, tradition, the church fathers and scholarship than it is now and the pervasive mindset that ‘it doesn’t really matter’ will be much more insistent and the faith will continue to erode as everything else has. What then do we do about it? Study, read, ask questions, learn more about our faith so that we know when we are being led astray. The wolves in sheep’s clothing we hear about in scripture are closer to the sheepfold than we thought.And it’s easy on a day like this, when I have to explain to you in about ten minutes the ineffable, unapproachable mystery of the processional relationship of God to Himself to look for an easy solution, because on the whole, we have got used to not really listening, not really studying, not really talking about the faith and not really knowing what to do when it all crumbles away. But today is an important day, it’s the Sunday after Pentecost when, having witnessed the descent of the Holy Spirit and the beautiful sight of the Apostles going out like a flood to the whole world bringing the Good News of Salvation, we ask ourselves ‘what, now do we do about it?’ The answer if given to us fully next Sunday, - we celebrate the Sacraments and receive the Body and Blood of Christ, the Corpus Christi, to give us strength and courage to bear witness, but today tells us what we bear witness to. And it’s love.God is a love which is completely one. Right from the earliest times, the disciples had a glimpse of the mystery of this Triune love which they encountered in Jesus, as we do as well in our encounter with Him. This is not the belief in some strange divine messy relationship on a remote planet. It is the love which transfigures our own loving. All our everyday ordinary loving is marked with this mystery, that we may love so fully that we become a relationship of love. It is a love which lifts us into equality, as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equal. Its grace frees us from domination and manipulation. It is a fertile love, overflowing beyond itself and drawing in not just others, but the whole of creation. It draws us into unity with each other and with God, overthrowing divisions between nations, saints and sinners, the living and the dead. Overthrowing our own personal likes and dislikes and making fools of those who hate. Our love is pregnant with the prayer of Jesus, addressed to his Father and ours, ‘that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.’ It is a Trinity of love which is so utterly one that it embraces everything into itself, into the relentless vortex of creation, life, death and hope and despair and makes it all into love.Humans run from the God of Love by turning the world or nature or history itself into their god, seeing in him only the reflection of their gradual decay. But there is no world spirit, no ‘Gaia’ god, no great architect, no god you can invoke the name of with others and hope for the best, no impersonal spiritual realm that can save us. There is only the Holy Spirit, the one who is the personal searching, healing and transforming one, who even searches the depths of God and gives life and hope to the world and brings to us the love of God. It may be uncomfortable to us to assert the faith received and believed by the church and given by Christ, and it is uncomfortable because it is the most radical challenge ever issued to humanity and it cannot be blurred around the edges or seen through a different lens, because it is itself the only source of truth and life and if we perceive it through our own chosen lens, I is not visible at all, no matter how much we convince ourselves otherwise.If God really is this love who is involved with our world and who has embraced us, then we have a choice: we must either in turn love this God and embrace all that he embraces — and then of course, we shall be crucified as the distance we have put between ourselves and God dies away in love — or we must be content to watch the world around us from a distance, imitating the god who does not and can never exist. St Augustine once observed that through the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost we form a temple of the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t so much, he thought, that we each became a temple, but that by virtue of the Spirit, we together form a single living temple of the Holy Spirit. As that temple, as a Church and as a communion of local churches, let us offer true worship to God our Father in His Son Jesus Christ. It is in our being together that we model the Trinity and in our community that we are saved.
Thursday 21 May 2020. I’m walking along the prom, quite early, and it’s rather cloudy but pleasant. (Certainly not like Thursday just gone) I see over the sea a striking column of light from the sky to the horizon, sort of slicing the clouds in two. Pretty special, more so given that it was Ascension Day 2020 and we were well into lockdown during the pandemic. So, I told myself that I had seen a meteorological manifestation of the ascension, and I was very happy about that. Especially given the times we were living in, during most of 2020. It was actually just a shaft of light between the clouds, but I didn’t care. I was determined that it was that manifestation.We are coming to the end of the liturgical season of Easter, the Easter story. The time had come for Jesus to bring full knowledge of God to the world and in doing so to bring eternal life. This He has done by His death and resurrection. And His subsequent ascension. But what about His disciples? They have put all their trust in Him over the past three years, but they will be left behind in the world after He has been taken from it. They will need God’s protection after Jesus leaves this world, even more so in all that lies ahead for them. And they will indeed meet some turbulent times ahead.After His resurrection, Jesus spent forty days appearing to His disciples, teaching them about the Kingdom of God, and offering them reassurance in their faith. But on the fortieth day, something extraordinary occurred. Jesus was taken up into heaven, not in secrecy or solitude, but before the very eyes of His disciples.So today we are celebrating Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, the actual feast day having been Thursday just gone. But just what is the Ascension and why do we celebrate it? It happened 40 days after Jesus’ resurrection and at first glance, it may seem like a departure—a goodbye. But in truth, it is a turning point, a commissioning, and a promise all in one. Luke tells us that Jesus was “taken up before their very eyes” (Acts 1:9). This is not just an exit—it is an exaltation. Jesus does not fade away; He is lifted up. This lifting up is not simply physical—it’s spiritual, symbolic, and royal. The Ascension marks the enthronement of Jesus. The Lamb who was slain is now the reigning King. The Ascension does not mark the end of Jesus’ work—it marks the continuation of it through us. So rather than it being the end, it is pretty much the beginning. The real work starts now, once He has Ascended.Perhaps, as the disciples stood on that Mount of Olives, a mix of emotions swirled within them. Wonder at the sight of their beloved teacher being lifted into the clouds, yes, but also perhaps a sense of loss, of being left behind. They had walked with Him, learned from Him, their lives irreversibly changed by His presence. And now, He was going. They thought they had lost Him at the crucifixion; then they found Him again at the resurrection. Now they appear to be losing Him again, or at least, that must have been how it initially seemed. But the Ascension is not an ending; it is a beginning, a transformation. It marks the completion of Jesus' earthly mission and the inauguration of his universal reign, where He sits at the right hand of God the Father, and from where He intercedes for us to the Father.But He didn’t leave the disciples, or us, powerless. He promised the Holy Spirit, and ten days later at Pentecost, that promise came true. The Spirit is the power and presence of Jesus still among us. So while He ascended in body, He remains with us in Spirit. The Ascension marks the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells his disciples that it is to their advantage that he goes away, "for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you" (John 16:7). The Holy Spirit, the very presence of God dwelling within us, equips us, guides us, and empowers us to continue the work that Jesus began. We are not alone; we are not abandoned. We have the divine Advocate alongside us, among us, working within us and through us. We are not passive recipients of grace—we are active bearers of it. Christ’s mission to redeem and restore is now our mission too. It is once we leave these church walls that we enter the mission field, not while we are within them. Out there…….that is where the real work of mission takes place.As the disciples are standing there gazing into the sky, two angels say, “This same Jesus… will come back in the same way you have seen Him go” (Acts 1:11). The Ascension is not just about where Jesus went—it’s about where history is headed. It’s about where we are going, where He is taking us.He will come again. Not in weakness, but in glory. Not to be crucified, but to reign forever. Every injustice, every sorrow, every broken heart will be met with His returning presence. And every tear will be wiped from every eye…..The time between Ascension and Pentecost is a time when prayer is really important. Prayer is important all the time, it’s our means of closely communing with our God, but as the disciples awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit prayer was perhaps their greatest comfort. We can emulate them as we pray for more people to say ‘Yes’ to Jesus, for more people to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. And when we find it hard to pray, or what to pray for, we must remember that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans, as St Paul assures us in Romans.Let us be empowered by the Holy Spirit to be his hands and feet in the world. And let us live with our hearts and minds fixed on the heavenly realm, eagerly awaiting his promised return. The Ascension reminds us that Jesus' work is not finished; it continues through us, his body, the Church. As he ascended, he commissioned his disciples, saying, "You will bemy witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8). This same commission rests upon us today.So to re-emphasise, as Jesus was lifted up, as He ascended, He did not leave us behind. He sent His Spirit, at Pentecost, which we will celebrate next week, and He will come again. Until then, we worship, we witness, and we wait. This is the blessed hope that sustains us as we journey through life, facing trials and uncertainties.Therefore, let us go forth, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to be witnesses to the love and grace of our ascended Lord. Let our lives reflect the hope that is within us, the hope of sharing in his eternal glory.
It can be harder to get a new message through to those who are comfortable with how things are than to those who suffer at the hands of a currently unjust situation. Many of the poor in the old DDR of Eastern Germany were very keen to see reform, but the more equal members of the party were not so keen, and you only have to speak to a Romanian over the age of about fifty five to hear the same thing about that nation, and thank God they rejected the chaotic nationalism offered to them at the most recent election. A Muscovite influencer may also extol the current regime, whereas a different story is heard in Tiksi, where Moscow is but a distant rumour. We find the same here as well, as the recent council elections have shown, to the feigned shock of our own elite. This all has as much to do with deeply felt political beliefs as it has to do with how hungry people are and on occasion, how much people who have disenfranchised themselves feel that they have been disenfranchised by others. But the hungrier you are, the keener on change you will be. It is a commonplace that most of those who were first attracted to Christianity were from the hungrier parts of their society. ‘Consider your own call’, St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, ‘not many of you were wise, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is weak, what is low and despised in the world’.Most of those who wrote the books of the New Testament, however, were a little better fed, for they had obviously had enough of an education to enable them to write in more or less correct Greek. The exception to this is the Book of Revelation, from which today’s second reading is taken. In the third century, a learned Egyptian bishop knew that some people in the church rejected this book, considering it to be unintelligible and illogical. It was not a revelation, that is to say, an unveiling, at all, they said. Rather it was itself veiled by a great thick curtain of unintelligibility and even now, it divides people, particularly along the line of biblical inerrancy, which is a foolish title for those who believe that everything in the bible happened exactly as it is written and will occur exactly as it is predicted, even when the entire book begins with two contradictory creation narratives and ends with a cast of thousands of monsters and seas of blood. Nothing is impossible for God of course, not even that He might often speak in allegory or, indeed, parable.Denis of Alexandria was clear that the book was inspired by God, even if he hedged his bets about it being one long vision given to John on Patmos, although he did strongly suggest that its author could not also have written the Gospel or the letters of John, which themselves seem to form one canon of literature quite separate from the Revelation. One of his rationales is that whereas they are written in Greek that is eloquent and certainly learned, the language of Revelation is vulgar and often utilises poor grammar. Yet, if the author of Revelation cannot write without showing himself to be reasonably uneducated, he also shows himself by the standards of that time to be financially poorly off as well, however and this is a big and important however, in what he wrote we are able to glimpse how the Gospel of Jesus Christ transformed his life and outlook. That is, the Revelation is written by someone who knows the Gospels well and has a strong faith, which is worth more than education and wealth.This same Gospel informs the authors strong belief that life is simply not just to be lived as a rite of passage to Heaven, where divine opiates wipe away all pain. The acceptance of the Gospel opens his eyes to the wickedness and injustice and oppression of the world he lives in, as it should do to ours as well. While this fills him with anger, it also fills him with hope, with the confidence that human society, not beyond the grave, but in the here and now, can be and will be transformed into the just society God intends it to be.In the Holy city, come down out of heaven, to the earth, there will be no avarice, no oppression of the poor, for the baubles and the precious metals that the rich like to grasp to themselves will be as common as dirt in the street. And there will be no need for a Temple in this city, for the city itself will be the dwelling of God with human beings and the Temple in Jerusalem, home of avarice and theft, can assume the insignificance that it its due – earthly things may pass away, but the new Jerusalem, the heaven come to earth, is eternal.In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that the time will come when God’s true worshippers will worship him neither on the mountain of the Samaritans, nor in the temple in Jerusalem, but will worship him in spirit and in truth. The John of Revelation longed for the coming of that moment, when God will dwell with human beings, not in a temple, but in love and truth, two virtues so deeply lacking in he world. He has seen what will come to be if human beings will allow that divine Love to come into their hearts and change them. He has seen the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down, out of heaven, to the earth, and he is telling us, urgently, to get ready for it.
