Today’s reading tells the wonderful story of two people, at an age when you might have expected them to have long retired from public life, but they are still active in the worship of the Temple and eagerly alert to the leading of God’s Spirit. All their longing is directed at awaiting the arrival of God’s Saviour and, unexpectedly they see God’s hand in the tiny child brought to them the future Saviour of the World.It is a remarkable story in that it takes place in a place we would not associate with new beginnings. It reminds me of the words of the poet Kahil Gilbran:‘The difference between my youth which was my spring, and these forty years, and they are my autumn, is the very difference that exists between flower and fruit.A flower is forever swayed with the wind and knows not why and wherefore.But the fruit overladen with the honey of summer knows that it is one of life’s home-comings, as a poet when his song is sung knows sweet content,’This poem hints at a free spirit resisting the constraints of convention and social expectation. At the end of the poem Kahil Gibran suggests that we should, maybe, nurture this freedom earlier in life, indeed somehow balance the responsibilities of adulthood with the free spirit of a child.That same balance of youth and age, experience and innocence, love and tenderness is caught in the beautiful portrait of ‘A Grandson with his Grandfather’ by Domenico Ghirlandaio 1494. The gnarled face of the grandfather speaks of a life lived suffering but still fresh with love for the young boy who looks so tenderly at the old man’s face.Simeon and AnnaIn the life of the two elderly people at the centre of this story, we find a harmonious balance between Spirit and Law, freedom and ritual, and establishment and dissent.The Temple was at the heart of Israel’s national life, a bastion of the establishment, a place of tradition and law, but it here that a child, the son of a carpenter is first publically proclaimed as the Saviour of the World.It is a remarkable story because it foretells the destiny of this child, how though rejected, he fulfills the demands of the Mosaic laws and is the means through which God’s grace is extended to the Nations.It is remarkable too because it speaks to us today of the same God of surprises who reveals Himself through unexpected people in unexpected places and in unexpected ways.Unexpected people: Consider what it meant for Simeon and Anna.Luke gives us a portrait of both:Simeon: ‘It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” Luke 2:26Simeon is a man led by the Spirit, and it is to the Temple that the Spirit of God leads him. Just as the Magi had been surprised to be led to a stable, I expect Simeon was surprised to be led to the Temple which the prophets said God had abandoned.Anna: ‘She did not depart from the Temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day’ Luke 2: 37Anna passed her whole life in the confines of the Temple, caught up in the rituals and routines of daily worship but she too was open to God’s leading.They were both old and had waited many years but had refused to give up on the promise of God made to them that they would not die before they had seen the Messiah. As Paul says: ‘Love always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres’ 1 Cor. 13: 7.Love is the secret of staying open and alert to God into old age. Love enables us to see beyond the disappointment and pain that life brings to the promise of God.Unexpected places: Consider for a moment how unexpected it was that this fateful meeting of Mary and Joseph should coincide with the service rota of these two faithful servants of God in the Temple. Clearly, God’s hand was at work!Mary and Joseph had come to present their child to God. This followed an ancient ritual in which the firstborn male child was to be offered to God, just as Samuel had been given to God by Hannah. However, the law of Moses dictated that the child could be ‘Redeemed’ or bought back from God with an offering, in the case of the poor: ‘A pair of turtle doves or two pigeons’ Luke 24.This ancient ritual becomes the means by which God's plan of Salvation is foretold, for Jesus is himself offered to God as the sacrifice and becomes the means of Redemption not for himself but for the world.The voices of the prophets had long ago been silenced and the Glory of God had departed, but Simeon and Anna waited and watched and discovered in the ancient rituals of the Temple God’s plan of Salvation. In so doing Simeon prophetically proclaims the death and resurrection of the Christ.Today God still promises to meet with us amongst His people, the Church, for though we fail and forsake Him, though the Church often falls short of its calling, He remains faithful to His promises.Unexpected means: Consider for a moment how God chooses to reveal Himself to Anna and Simeon, through a baby child. Here is the secret of God’s love for He does not impose or seek to dominate us, but appears amongst us as a frail human being seeking our love.In Jesus Christ, we see God’s love for us shining out through his life, death, and resurrection.His ‘love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs’ 1Cor 13: 4.Unexpected people, unexpected places, and in unexpected ways, we can so easily miss the love of God. We can miss it because we allow pain or disappointment to dull our faith. We can miss it because we allow anger, bitterness, or resentment to cloud our light. Or we can miss it because we fail to see God’s love revealed in the ordinary and everyday routines of life. The Spirit of God is at work in humble ways and with humble people but only to those who allow God’s love to keep them young.Anna and Simeon may have been old but they had been practicing the art of staying young throughout their lives, young in spirit and open to the new and unexpected just like a child.
At the start of any new century, it is natural to look forward and imagine a world shaped by new possibilities. The start of the 21st century began with the dream of a world no longer divided by ideological wars, instead, with the World Wide Web, and global markets opening up, we would live peaceful and prosperous lives. Inevitably the dream was shattered by the events of 9/11.At the start of the 20th century artists and poets dreamt of a world shaped by the new industrial forces that allowed humanity to reach out beyond the limitations of our bodies. To fly, to travel at speed, to conquer space and time. It was the age of the ‘Uber menschen’,Or ‘Superman’.The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti captured this spirit in what he called a ‘Futurist manifesto’(1909). In it, he rails against the past and condemns the conservative forces that have held Italy back from the industrial revolution. He glorifies speed, and aggression, praising war for its purifying, ‘hygenic properties’.Here is a taste of the manifesto.“ We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world- militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for women.’ Article 9“We want to demolish museums and libraries fight morality, feminism, and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.’ Article 10 The manifesto is horrifyingly prophetic of the age that witnessed the destruction of the First World War and the rise of Fascism, but it is also a testament to a spiritual malaise that has condemned humanity to war, oppression, and injustice down the ages. Jesus’ manifestoIt is this destructive, anarchic, malign spirit in humanity that Jesus confronted in what is sometimes called Jesus’ manifesto.In the Gospel passage in Luke 4: 14-21‘The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ The ‘Jesus manifesto’ sets out his programme for the Kingdom that he had come to establish. However, this vision of a universal, inclusive family was received with violence by the crowds who heard, as this passage makes clear. The townsfolk of Nazareth were not interested in a universal family they wanted a kingdom for themselves.Vision or Mission?In setting out his manifesto Jesus rejects the options that lie behind most manifestos: Popularity, power, and prosperity. These were the options that Satan had offered to him in the wilderness.Populists offer vision, but often it is driven not by a sense of mission but by the seductive lure of power and domination. Jesus rejected these options as a possible route to success. He knows they could only lead to oppression and injustice, instead as his manifesto makes clear, Jesus has three fixed points on which he anchors his mission: The power of the Spirit, the proclamation of the Word, and the appointment, or as Luke calls it the ‘The anointment of God’.The power of the Spirit: ‘Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit’ Luke 4:14. The power that Jesus exercised came from God not from the crowds that followed him. It was a power that was able to transform the crowds into disciples and equip them for ministry.The proclamation of the Word: ‘He has appointed me to preach good news to the poor’. The message Jesus proclaimed was good news for everyone, but it was not a populist message. It called for a reordering of priorities and placed a value on the lives of the most despised in society.The anointing of God: ‘Isn’t this Joseph's son they asked’. Jesus was a local boy but his mission from God was to the whole world. Jesus had come not just for his own, but for those who were outside the community of friends and family.As a Church seeking to fulfill the Jesus mission, we too are to reject the tools employed by populist leaders relying not on human strength, but empowered by the Spirit of God, committed to the Word of God and compelled by God’s calling on us.Manifest or Mission?Though this passage can be understood as a manifesto, looking to a future world order, I believe, it is better understood as the fulfillment of the mission of a loving God who has from the beginning of time set his heart on restoring his creation, defaced by errant humanity, through His anointed Servant.Jesus manifesto echoes words written by Isaiah 500 years before:Isaiah 61: 1 – 4“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”This ‘Manifesto’ might, in fact, be described in another sense of that word:Manifestation or demonstration is sometimes known by the theological term Epiphany. It is the unveiling of the anointed Servant foreseen by Isaiah. In this sense, Jesus is identifying himself as the Servant, coming to fulfill his God-given mission.Not Revolution but ‘Re-Creation’!Jesus’ mission is much more than a revolution, it is the ‘Re-Creation’ or rebirth of God’s creation through the death and resurrection of our Saviour Jesus Christ. His death, far from being the end of his career, was the fulfillment of it, the culmination of long years of prophetic words, now fulfilled in Jesus Christ.Luke gives us a sense of Jesus' ultimate victory over violence and death in the picture he paints of Jesus as he walks calmly through the crowds, intent on killing him.Luke 4: 29/30“And they rose up and drove him out of town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.”Jesus, the victorious Saviour, just passes through this mob of violent humanity on his way to glory! Humanity has continued along the ruinous path of destruction for centuries, but Jesus, the Prince of Peace has given us another path that we are called to follow, empowered by His Spirit and guided by His Word. The peaceful Messiah has given us a vision of a world without war, without injustice, without oppression, in which the ultimate enemy, death itself is defeated and humanity restored to life in all its fullness.Rev. Simon BrignallO God of peace, you have established Jerusalem as the Lord’s house and place of peace, and have called on all who live there to love you and prosper. Instill in all – Jews Christians, and Muslims – a hunger for justice and dignity and a resolve to end the distrust that culminates in violence.Please hold in your prayers the grieving families of our parish, especially we pray for the Abel Smith family and the Douglas-Home family.
Outside the Co-op in Zermatt, I spotted a large poster with the words ‘Look around you and you will see the glory of God’. It is an awe-inspiring experience to look up at the Matterhorn shining in the sun or wreathed in clouds, such beauty you say to yourself cannot be an accident.This kind of glory shouts at you and indeed overwhelms you. You have to stop and fall on your knees, which I did quite a lot while skiing! But there is another kind of glory, the glory of small unnoticed things, the flower, the butterfly’s wings, or maybe just the lichen on the warm Cotswold drywall. It is a beauty that does not advertise itself but requires a moment of silence and a desire to look and listen.The Welsh poet RS Thomas reflects on this hidden glory in a few short lines that capture a moment of ‘Eternity’, as he puts it. ‘I have seen the sun break throughTo illuminate a small fieldFor a while, and gone my wayAnd forgotten it. But that was thePearl of great price, the one field that hadTreasure in it. I realise nowThat I must give all that I haveTo possess it. Life is not hurryingOn to a receding future, nor hankering afterAn imagined past. It is the turningAside like Moses to the miracleOf the lit bush, to a brightnessThat seemed as transitory as your youthOnce, but is the eternity that awaits you. RS Thomas Van Gogh follows a long tradition of Dutch artists who see the eternal in the ordinary and every day. He captures an eternal moment in a workaday scene of harvesters on a still summer evening as the sun goes down, and turns what to many would have been an unremarkable sight into ‘The miracle of the lit bush’. To see this hidden glory’ like Moses we need to turn aside,That is, to pay attention to the moment, ‘living not for a receding future or an imagined past’ but to the eternal in all things. The Wedding at CanaToday's gospel speaks about this glory, hidden to all but those who look and listen. Not a God who is revealed in glory but a God hidden in the ordinary and every day. The story is a familiar one and has even become a byword for turning 'the ordinary', water, into something special, wine, but there is a disturbing episode in the story that never fails to make me stop and try to imagine what is going on. Whatever may have been the cause of the shortage of wine, Mary the mother of Jesus feels responsible and goes to Jesus with a plea for help. This gives rise to a strange exchange between them. Jesus answers her with a rebuke. “Woman, why do you involve me?”... “My time has not yet come” John 1:4 However, we try to soften this rejection the mystery remains. Why should Jesus respond in this way? As I understand it, Jesus, who Mary knows can help, wants to remain in the shadows rather than perform a miracle that would draw attention to himself. “ This is not the time,” he says to reveal who he is. That time will come, a day when the world will see what the glory of God looks like but it is not now. Silence: When God hides and we confront this silence we must first remember that Jesus himself came up against the silence of God, his Father. In the garden of Gethsemane, he prayed: “If it is Thy will let this cup pass from me”. Luke 22: 42. At the centre of our Christian lives, we will discover the silence of God, but the silence is not a rebuke but an answer. The response of Jesus in the Garden was: “Not my will, but yours be done” Luke 22: 42. Prayer:This was also the response of Mary. Mary gives us the perfect model for our prayers. In response to the apparent refusal of Jesus, she teaches us what it means to trust in God ‘His mother said to the servants “Do whatever he tells you” John 2: 5. There will be many times in our lives when we are asked to trust God without understanding what God is doing. Glory:So what was God doing on this occasion? The answer comes right at the end of the story. ‘This was the first of his miraculous signs ... He thus revealed his glory.’ John 2: 11. The moment when all seemed lost, as at the Wedding in Cana is in fact the moment when God reveals His Glory. The first of Jesus' miracles points to the Cross, the ultimate disaster when all did seem lost. The Cross experience lies at the centre of our Christian experience. It is usually in times and places like loss or disaster that we often find God opening our eyes.It is often in the humble and ordinary that God’s glory is revealed. The Best:Mary’s prayer is answered, but not in the way she expected. That is usually true of every experience of God, revealed in the unexpected places and people we meet each day. The silence of God takes us to that place where we like Mary and the disciples learn to wait on Jesus to see what he will do.
The Sansham Memorial Chapel was built to honour the 'forgotten dead' of the First World War. The series of paintings inside the Chapel were inspired by Spencer's own experience as a medical orderly in the Macedonia campaign.Remembering. John 12: 1 -8Remembrance SundayTo remember is to RE- Member, to RE–Call, that is to bring that person back into our lives as if they were still with us. This morning we have added a new name to the list of those who we remember, Marjorie Viscountess Queninton, and we must tell her story if we are to truly remember her.Marjorie was 33 when she set out to join her husband Michael in Egypt where he was serving with his regiment, the 1st Royal Gloucestershire Hussars. They planned to be together for the Christmas of 1915, but German submarine activity in the Mediterranean and the sinking of the P&O liner the ‘Persia’ where 343 passengers and crew tragically lost their lives, prevented her from leaving until 1916. She was accompanied by Victoria, Michael’s sister, and together they organised the Nurses Empire club in Alexandria. Tragically she contracted typhoid and died on 4th March 1916. Just a month later Michael was killed at the battle of Katia in what is known as the first Gaza war. They left behind them their baby son, again called Michael three and a half years old, the father of Micky St Aldwyn and David Hicks Beech.Their stories and tragically short lives remind us of the many young lives lost not just in battle, but by the diseases that swept through military bases. Particularly disastrous was the so-called ‘Spanish flu’ that struck just as the war was coming to an end. I recently visited the British and French war graves cemetery on a trip to North Macedonia. Looking along the serried ranks of headstones I noticed a curious detail, many of the graves reported a date after the war’s end. These young men, many just in their twenties had not died of war wounds but of the ‘Spanish flu’, in fact, out of a total of twenty thousand casualties, ten thousand died of the flu. Among those who were the nurses who cared for them, like Majorie.Marjorie Viscountess Queninton’s story finds an echo in the ministry of Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus who pours out a costly perfume over Jesus’ feet and then wipes them with her hair. The perfume we learn from Judas was worth around 300 denarii, about a year’s wages. Mary had likely been keeping this secret treasure for a special moment, maybe her wedding or for a funeral.Mary is pouring out this perfume on someone who will soon be dead, it looks like a waste when it could be used for so many useful things to help the living but it is an act of worship that comes from a heart that is full of love. Love that leaves a fragrance and lingers in the air such that Jesus tells us that Mary has done something beautiful for God, a story we are to remember: “Wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” Mark 14:9MemoriesThose words “In memory of her” are significant. Think back to your earliest memories I expect there will be a smell associated with them. I remember the smell of carbolic soap at school and am taken right back to those days when I smell it!When Jesus lifted the bread and the wine at the Last Supper just a few days after this act of love he said to his disciples.“Do this in remembrance of me” Luke 22:19When in John’s account of the last Supper Jesus washes the feet of the disciples he says: “I have given you an example that you also should do as I have done to you” John 13: 15Mary’s love and Marjorie’s models how we are to love and serve each other in response to the total love that Jesus has for us. That is why her name and that of the many who gave their lives are remembered whenever the gospel is preached. It is the gospel itself!The heart of the Christian faithJesus points to Mary as an example to us all of the true springs of service to others. It goes beyond actions to motives, true service is always the outpouring of love, a love that has a fragrance that tells us it is genuine.We remember today the women who offered themselves in the service of others as nurses because it speaks to us of the dignity that Jesus gives to suffering and death. As we remember them today we see reflected in them our humanity which God loves and through Jesus pours himself out for:The next time the disciples met for supper with Jesus he offered them bread and wine with the words:“This is my body... this is my blood, given for you. Do this in memory of me” Matthew 26:26The fragrance of that love is still with us today as we renew that love and gratitude through our acts of Remembrance and our service to others as we go out into the world.
