Thinking allowed

Ascension Day: 29 May 2025

on Friday, 30 May 2025 at 11.14 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Acts 1.1–11; Daniel 7.9–14; Psalm 47; Eph­esians 1.15–23; Luke 24.44–53

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Did you ever watch I, Claudi­us?
Or per­haps you’ve read the books?
I sup­pose I was about 15 when I first read them,
shortly before the BBC made that won­der­ful adaptation.
Remem­ber – Derek Jac­obi in the title role,
and a host of oth­er stars?
I well recall our Lat­in teach­er back then
telling us that the books were so good
that occa­sion­ally he would forget
wheth­er some incid­ent was actu­ally historical
or had instead been inven­ted by the author, Robert Graves.
And cer­tainly Graves did include
a host of real his­tor­ic­al inform­a­tion in the books.

For example, Graves relates
that a few weeks after the emper­or Augus­tus died in AD 14,
the Roman Sen­ate declared him to be divine.
They built an offi­cial state temple,
and spe­cial coins were minted
show­ing the emper­or being car­ried up to heaven,
per­haps in a chariot,
accom­pan­ied by wing’d figures.

So you see there’s some history
of great rulers being declared gods
when they died
or even whilst still alive.

And a few years after Augustus,
around AD 40,
the emper­or Caligula declared him­self a god.
Claudi­us was next,
declared divine imme­di­ately he died in 54.
Even his neph­ew, the infam­ous Nero
who ruled until 68,
was wor­shipped as part of the divine imper­i­al family.

I’ve men­tioned these dates,
not to try and give a his­tory lesson
– there’s no exam later –
but because they remind us
that this is exactly the time
when the events of the New Test­a­ment took place
and when much of it was written.
This is the context
in which Jesus was first pro­claimed by Christians
as the Son of God,
and described as being taken up into heaven.
We might well won­der what the rela­tion­ship is
between the descrip­tions of Jesus’s ascension
and the tra­di­tion of emper­ors and others
taken up to a pagan heaven.

Let’s think about what we heard earli­er in our readings.

The Old Test­a­ment les­son from Daniel draws on traditions
sev­er­al hun­dred years before those Roman emperors,
Claudi­us and Co.
It’s a vis­ion of a human figure
“com­ing with the clouds of heaven”,
com­ing to the throne of God and receiv­ing etern­al kingship.
Clearly Jesus’s ascen­sion sits in this tradition.

And we also had two accounts of that Ascen­sion of Jesus.
Our ser­vice began with the open­ing words of the Acts of the Apostles.
It’s rather the defin­it­ive account,
the one we think of when the Ascen­sion is mentioned.

And our gos­pel read­ing had the ascen­sion story again,
this time from the very end of Luke.
Did you notice any dif­fer­ences between these two –
one from Acts and one from the gos­pel accord­ing to Luke?

Did you?
Because they aren’t quite the same.

In the gospel
the Ascen­sion hap­pens at the end of East­er Day itself,
but in Acts it’s forty days later,
just as today is forty days after East­er Day –
remem­ber I said it’s the Acts account we gen­er­ally recall?
And it’s only in Acts that
“two men in white robes” appear
and explain to the dis­ciples what’s happened,
telling them Jesus will return in the same way.

Now don’t for­get Claudi­us and those oth­er emperors.
I’ve sug­ges­ted that the New Test­a­ment descrip­tions of Jesus’s ascension
have a parallel
in the con­tem­por­ary Roman emper­ors being declared divine.
But at the time, of course,
the stor­ies of emper­ors were much bet­ter known
than the story of Jesus.

Whatever it was that the dis­ciples witnessed,
what they are doing is assert­ing a cult
that is a rival to the offi­cial cult of the Roman state.
A cult, a reli­gion, in which their leader
mys­tic­ally ascends into the heav­ens in recog­ni­tion that he is divine.
And of course the dis­ciples, the early Christians,
assert that it is their story which is true,
and that the divin­ity of the emper­ors is bogus.
They use the well-known stor­ies about emperors
to pro­claim the truth about Jesus.

So what is it that they are try­ing to say?

Let’s con­sider two import­ant things.

First
these early Chris­ti­ans were abso­lutely con­vinced that Jesus was divine.
They hadn’t yet worked out the theo­lo­gic­al details,
but there’s no doubt that they had become con­vinced it was true.
They want the world to hear about Jesus;
and
they want the world to hear
that Jesus is divine.

And secondly:
what do the pas­sages say?
“you will be my wit­nesses in Jer­u­s­alem …  to the ends of the earth”
(that’s Jesus in Acts)
and “repent­ance and for­give­ness of sins is to be proclaimed …
to all nations, begin­ning from Jerusalem”
(that’s from Luke).
And this is surely the key les­son for us.
You’ve heard me say it before
and I make no apo­logy for say­ing it again.
The task that Jesus gives his disciples
is to tell every­one the good news about the king­dom of God.
We are to tell people about our hope:
hope in the recon­cili­ation that is God’s love –
hope in recon­cili­ation with God the creator
and
recon­cili­ation with God’s cre­ation, with all our fel­low creatures.

Recon­cili­ation with God the creator
and recon­cili­ation with our fel­low creatures.

What does that mean in prac­tice? What can we each do?

It means liv­ing at love and peace
with our fam­ily and our neighbours,
not get­ting into dis­putes, not bear­ing grudges
– “for­give us our sins as we for­give those who sin against us” –
and this applies to every aspect of our lives:

to per­son­al conflict,
to loc­al and region­al conflict,
to inter­na­tion­al conflict.
And it applies to issues of social justice as well:
to equit­ably shar­ing the bounty of this world –
food, hous­ing, healthcare,
fair employ­ment and fair wages,
end­ing unjust discrimination.
And to our stew­ard­ship of the world that we are called to live in.
It isn’t always easy, is it?
But all this flows directly
from Jesus’s mes­sage of love and reconciliation.

This is Jesus’s mani­festo of com­pas­sion­ate love.

What any one of us can do
may be quite limited,
but it isn’t zero.
In our per­son­al lives,
in our sup­port for char­it­ies, for campaigns,
in how we shop,
how we vote or sup­port polit­ic­al parties,
in how we speak and how we act,
we each of us make
a small but sig­ni­fic­ant impact.

And one final thought.
We’re not alone.
Church is the com­munity of people com­mit­ted to doing this together.
Here should be the primary community
where we care for each other,
and where we are strengthened for that ser­vice in the world,
strengthened by each other
and strengthened by our belief
in the God who loves and reconciles.
Col­lect­ively we help advance the king­dom of God,
where God’s love and com­pas­sion are shared with all,
and peace and justice flow like a river.

Amen.

4 before Lent: 9 February 2025

on Monday, 10 February 2025 at 11.07 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Isai­ah 6.1–8 [9–13]; Psalm 138; 1 Cor­inthi­ans 15.1–11; Luke 5.1–11

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Over the last few weeks,
since the start of January,
we’ve been listen­ing each Sunday
to stor­ies about the begin­ning of Jesus’s ministry.
How Jesus was bap­tized by John the Baptist;
and about the wed­ding at Cana,
where ordin­ary water was turned into abund­ance –
an abund­ance of the best pos­sible wine.
We heard how Jesus came to Nazareth
and him­self read the passage
where Isai­ah foresees
good news for the poor and the oppressed,
for the blind and the captive.

And today we have Jesus
gath­er­ing his first disciples.

In Luke’s account,
which is what we are mostly read­ing this year,
this is the first time Andrew, James and John have appeared,
though Simon Peter gets
a teensy men­tion in the pre­vi­ous chapter.
And yet they do exactly what Jesus says.

What’s going on?

Luke does­n’t really tell us,
but we can get a hint from John’s gospel.
You see, John tells us
that Andrew was a dis­ciple of John the Baptist;
that when Jesus was baptized
John the Baptist poin­ted him out to Andrew,
and Andrew then went and fetched his broth­er Simon Peter
and intro­duced him to Jesus.
Anoth­er dis­ciple with Andrew is not named,
but it is tra­di­tion­ally thought to have been John –
that’s the same John who was one of the fishermen
in today’s story,
the broth­er of James.

So it seems Jesus already knew these four fishermen,
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
But they had not yet begun to travel around with Jesus.
What changed?

Well,
what changed
was that John the Baptist had been arres­ted by Herod
and was now a cap­tive in Herod’s dungeons,
where he would soon be executed.
Can you ima­gine what it must have been like
for those who had flocked to hear him preach
and become his disciples?
It must have been a dark and dif­fi­cult time, mustn’t it?
Well, the gos­pels don’t tell us anything
about what happened to John the Baptist’s followers
when he was arrested –
but it’s easy to ima­gine, I think, that they all ran away,
away from the danger that they too
might be iden­ti­fied with his movement
and his cri­ti­cism of Herod.
Away from the danger
that they too might be arres­ted and per­haps put to death.
That they ran away
back to the anonym­ity of their homes
and their fam­il­ies and their every­day jobs.

And that’s where we find
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John –
back in their fam­ily busi­nesses of catch­ing fish
and no doubt try­ing to keep a low profile.

And then – Jesus comes back too.

Per­haps he’s real­ized that his time has arrived:
that with John the Baptist silenced
it is his turn to pro­claim the word of God,
to pro­claim the good news about the king­dom of God.
And already people are listen­ing to him:
Luke, in our read­ing today,
says “the crowd was press­ing in on him”.
Why?
Luke tells us they wanted “to hear the word of God” –
Jesus preach­ing about the king­dom of God.

And in this mêlée,
there right in front of Jesus
are some people he knows:
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
Was he look­ing for them?
Or did he just come across them?
What he saw though was an opportunity
to stop the crowd press­ing in on him
and to con­tin­ue to teach from the safety of a boat,
pre­sum­ably just out in the shallows.

And then
they put down their nets
and catch fish –
fish in great abund­ance,
fish almost bey­ond their capa­city to bring to shore.

And this mira­cu­lous catch of fish
provided the per­fect opportunity
for Jesus … to tell a joke.
To me that’s one of the things
that comes across so strongly
in the gos­pel stor­ies about Jesus.
He was just the most won­der­ful speaker –
a really skilled orator.
Jesus knows when to tell a story and when to argue;
he knows when to cross-ques­tion and when to debate;
and he knows how to use
exag­ger­a­tion and sar­casm and humor­ous one-liners
to great effect.

And that’s what he does here, isn’t it?
“Yes, you can carry on catch­ing dead fish,” he says,
“or you can come with me and we’ll fish for liv­ing people.”

Of course it’s not just a one-liner –
the punch­line to the teach­ing about the king­dom of God
they have just heard him deliver,
or the punch­line to the great catch of fish
they have some­how just man­aged to land.
No, it’s not just a one-liner,
it’s also a proph­ecy, isn’t it?
Because we know that’s exactly what these fishermen,
these ordin­ary people,
will become.

They start right here
becom­ing Jesus’s first disciples.
They will fin­ish,
bey­ond the end of Luke’s book,
bring­ing in a mira­cu­lous catch of people,
fol­low­ers of Jesus in great abund­ance.
They were frightened fishermen
who had run away
when John the Baptist had been arrested,
and they would do so again when Jesus is arrested.
And yet
Jesus inspired them and nur­tured them
and gave them what it takes
to be catch­ers of people,
mira­cu­lously so,
fear­lessly pro­claim­ing the king­dom of God’s abund­ant love.

Here we see the very first steps of that journey,
Jesus gath­er­ing together
this group of John the Baptist’s disciples,
who become the core of Jesus’s own disciples.
And it’s a jour­ney that has continued
down the ages and across the world,
right down to us,
to you and to me,
here today in this place
far from the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Because it is our respons­ib­il­ity now.
We are the dis­ciples sit­ting on
– if you like –
the beach.
We are the disciples
who have heard Jesus’s mes­sage about the king­dom of God –
where the hungry are fed and the home­less housed,
the sick nursed and the stranger cared for,
the oppressed and the per­se­cuted set free,
and where peace and reconciliation
replace bit­ter­ness and war.

And our job,
our job is to share this good news,
to live as people who believe this good news
and to invite our friends and our neighbours
to come and live it
and to share in its great abund­ance.

Thanks be to God.

Counting Sixes in Steadman

on Tuesday, 24 December 2024 at 9.46 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as bellringing

Stead­man Triples has long been one of my favour­ite meth­ods to ring. I have pre­vi­ously looked at how the meth­od is con­struc­ted of sets of six blows, and how to keep track of “quick” and “slow” sixes. I’ve also learnt to call simple touches of Triples, with calls labelled “Q” and “S”. But more com­plic­ated touches use a dif­fer­ent nota­tion: the blocks of six blows that make up the meth­od are con­sec­ut­ively numbered, and the sixes in which bobs and singles are called are noted. Altern­at­ively the count is of pos­sible call­ing pos­i­tions, since a bob or single may poten­tially be called at the fifth blow of any six, and the caller needs to know which of these pos­i­tions to actu­ally call.

The chal­lenge then becomes one of count­ing sixes – with 100% accur­acy. Whilst sim­ul­tan­eously count­ing your place and keep­ing track of quick and slow sixes. For me this is brain over­load, and I can­not accur­ately keep all this inform­a­tion in my head. The main prob­lem is that I am try­ing to keep track of two num­bers: my place, and the num­ber of the six. And in the first sev­en sixes these num­bers will be in the same range of 1 to 7, so there is an extra risk of con­fus­ing which is which, or incre­ment­ing the wrong one, and so on.

What then to do? The first thing is – for the moment – to let oth­er people call touches, while I get my head around the count­ing. And the break­through in being able to count sixes has been the real­iz­a­tion that I don’t actu­ally need to count my place: I can pretty much ring Stead­man by rhythm and by know­ing its structure.

First, then, the rhythm. Dee-dah, dee-dah, dee-dah. That’s the six blows that make up the Stead­man unit: hand­stroke, back­stroke, hand­stroke, back­stroke, hand­stroke, back­stroke. Dee-dah, dee-dah, dee-dah. So, if you are double-dodging 4–5 up, that would be (4th, 5th), (4th, 5th), (4th, 5th). If you have just gone down to the front three as a slow bell then it’s (3rd, 3rd), (2nd, lead), (lead, 2nd). In each case I have brack­et­ted the hand­stroke-back­stroke pairs, each of which is a dee-dah.

And then the struc­ture. Stead­man work is divided inro two parts. Above third place you double dodge out to the back and then back down again, and into the front three. Each double dodge is one six. If you are on the front then you plain hunt for six blows, then change dir­ec­tion and hunt for the next six blows and so on. If you are in 3rd place at the end of a six then you go out to 4th place and start double-dodging. And you have to know wheth­er to start the front work by plain hunt­ing right (a quick six) or wrong (a slow six) – I’ll come to that in a moment. In the back of my mnd while ringing on the front is the super­im­posed struc­ture of the slow work – the whole turns and half turns – and these rein­force what I am ringing, but at any giv­en point it’s just plain hunt­ing on three, chan­ging dir­ec­tion after six blows. And the six blows felt rather than coun­ted. Plain hunt­ing on three is suf­fi­ciently simple that it can be done without count­ing my place.

On top of this ringing I am try­ing to count the sixes. At each hand­stroke, more or less, I think “this is num­ber n”, or just “this is n”, delib­er­ately say­ing it to myself in a way that I am less likely to con­fuse with my place. Stead­man begins part way through a six, so the first two blows, right at the start, hand­stroke and back­stroke, are the last two blows of the first six, and sixes con­tin­ue after that. A plain course of Stead­man Triples will come round four blows into the 15th six, while a touch with two Q and two S bobs is twice as long, com­ing round at the fourth blow of the 29th six.

As for keep­ing track of quick and slow sixes, that is impli­cit in the count. A six with an odd num­ber (1, 3, 5, 7 …) is quick, and a six with an even num­ber (2, 4, 6, 8 …) is slow. It just needs a tiny bit of extra brain­power to work this out on the fly.

Harvest Thanksgiving: 6 October 2024

on Sunday, 6 October 2024 at 3.55 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Joel 2.21–27; Psalm 126; 1 Timothy 6.6–10; Mat­thew 6.25–33

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Har­vest Festival.
Do you remem­ber cel­eb­rat­ing Har­vest Fest­iv­al as a child?

I can recall as a young school­boy what a big occa­sion it was.
We’d line up in class,
and then our cro­codiles would march down to the vil­lage church,
half a mile away,
each clutch­ing a bag of apples or tin of baked beans
or some­thing else that our moth­ers had giv­en us to take.
We’d sing one or two har­vest hymns
and depos­it our produce.
The rect­or would say a few words and some prayers,
and then we’d traipse back to school.

It’s a memory of quite a long time ago,
over half a cen­tury for me,
and obvi­ously made a bit of an impres­sion on the young Simon.
But what I can say is that
I didn’t really make much of a con­nec­tion with real life.

I mean, “Fair waved the golden corn”
didn’t seem to have very much to do
with buy­ing food from the butcher
or the green­gro­cer or fishmonger –
let alone from the supermarkets
that were just begin­ning to appear in our town.

Not until I was a good deal older did I begin to understand.

And there’s a clue to help us understand
on the front of today’s ser­vice booklet.

You see, the Church actu­ally calls this
not “Har­vest Fest­iv­al” but “Har­vest Thanks­giv­ing”.

Not “Har­vest Fest­iv­al” but “Har­vest Thanks­giv­ing”.

What’s in a word, you might ask?
Well, quite a lot perhaps.

You see, rather than celebrating
our own clev­erness and skill
and the things that we’ve made at a fest­iv­al,
what we are doing is giv­ing thanks:
giv­ing thanks for the good things that enable us to have …
(well) life.

At har­vest that’s par­tic­u­larly thanks that we have food –
enough food for the com­ing year so we will not starve.
And thanks that for us
that’s actu­ally a pretty remote possibility
– at least I hope it’s pretty remote –
but coupled with concern
that for many around the world
(and indeed in our own country)
not-enough-food is a very real prospect.

And that’s where I think our read­ings this morn­ing are tak­ing us.
In the Old Test­a­ment, Joel reminds his hearers
that God provided for the anim­als of the field
and for the trees bear­ing fruit.
And sim­il­arly for his people God will provide plenty.
And Jesus in the gos­pel reading
makes a sim­il­ar point, does­n’t he?
That God provides for the birds of the air
and for the flowers of the field.
And, Jesus says, in God’s king­dom we too will be provided for.

Jesus tells his hearers
‘Do not worry, say­ing, “What will we eat?”
or “What will we drink?”
or “What will we wear?” ’
Instead, Jesus’s instruc­tion, as we heard this morn­ing. is this:
‘Strive first for the king­dom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be giv­en to you as well.’

How does that work, do you think?
How will we be provided for?

I think it comes back to thankfulness
and to remem­ber­ing how the king­dom of God works.

So here’s a little exer­cise for us all …
You’ll remem­ber that in the gospels
Jesus tells us that the king­dom of God is near, it’s at hand.
I want us to think a little about that.
When, I won­der, do you think
we come closest to liv­ing in God’s kingdom?

Do you ever think about that?
Let’s just take a few moments to con­sider it now:
When do you think we come closest to liv­ing in God’s kingdom?

You might want to think about this on your own,
or you might want to turn to the per­son next to you
and share ideas.

When do you think we come closest
to liv­ing in the king­dom of God?

… [[pause for a few brief moments, per­haps 10 seconds;
if people start talk­ing to each oth­er give them a bit longer]]

Okay, how did you do?
Now you can find out
wheth­er your thoughts are any­thing like mine!
Because I reck­on there’s actu­ally quite a simple answer –
though I’m not say­ing it’s neces­sar­ily easy to put into practice!

In the gos­pels Jesus tells us
that we approach being in God’s kingdom …
whenev­er we do God’s will –
when we do God’s will here on earth as it is done in heaven

And that means shar­ing the things that God has giv­en us:
shar­ing our food,
shar­ing our wealth,
shar­ing our skills and our knowledge,
shar­ing our time and our energy.
And shar­ing God’s peace.

Of the good things that God has giv­en us
we give back the first fruits.
As God is gen­er­ous to us,
so we have the opportunity
to be gen­er­ous with all that we have.

In God’s king­dom, you see,
every­one bene­fits from generosity –
from God’s gen­er­os­ity to all creation …
and from our gen­er­os­ity to one another.

Jesus calls us to con­sider what we can give –
what we can give back to God,
and what we can give to one another.

So, as we give thanks today at harvest,
we do well to remember
that God calls us to share
the good­ness, the bounty,
that we have been given.

That’s not just good food,
but also things like peace and security,
hous­ing and per­son­al dignity.

This year in St Ives,
Fath­er Mark and Cal­lum have been helping
some of our loc­al schools and oth­er organizations
give thanks at harvest
and to bring gifts that will go to the St Ives foodbank.
For their gen­er­os­ity we can be very grateful.

And we too:
as we bring our gifts
and lay them before God at the altar,
as we give our time and our tal­ents and our wealth,
we are shar­ing God’s love
with some of those in our community
who des­per­ately need it.
And as we love our neigh­bours who are in need,
as we are gen­er­ous to them,
so too we are lov­ing Jesus.

Because – make no mistake –
It is when we serve the least of these
our broth­ers and sisters …
it is then that we serve Jesus.

It is then that we come near to the king­dom of God.

Thanks be to God.

Church Clocks

on Saturday, 21 September 2024 at 5.01 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as bellringing, clock and chimes

Trinity 7: 14 July 2024

on Wednesday, 17 July 2024 at 8.46 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: 2 Samuel 6.1–5, 12b-19; Psalm 24; Eph­esians 1.3–14; Mark 6.14–29

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

When I came to pre­pare this ser­mon, two themes stood out.

First, John the Baptist and my “rela­tion­ship” with him.
I’ll come back to that in a moment.

The oth­er theme from our read­ings is …

Well … it’s dancing!

Dav­id dan­cing before the Ark;
Salome dan­cing before Herod.

Now it’s a bit of a co-incidence
that they are paired here together:
we’ve been hear­ing the story of David
over the last few weeks,
and we just hap­pen to arrive at this episode
as the gos­pel gets to this inter­lude in Jesus’s ministry.

But I expect lots of you watch tv pro­grammes about dancing –
Strictly Come Dan­cing anyone?
So per­haps you’re ima­gin­ing Dav­id and Salome
as celebrity con­test­ants in Strictly.
There’s Dav­id, king of Israel,
stripped down to a “lin­en ephod”
whatever that is,
but it def­in­itely sounds a bit scanty doesn’t it?
Dan­cing, ooh, the quick­step, perhaps.

And the prin­cess from Galilee, Salome,
(though she is called Hero­di­as
in our bible trans­la­tion this morning) –
young and attractive,
dan­cing some­thing a bit raunchy, a tango, maybe.
In pop­u­lar mod­ern culture
it’s the dance of the sev­en veils,
though that was only inven­ted by the writer Oscar Wilde –
the bib­lic­al text lacks the eroticism
which we might ima­gine into the story.

As for David,
the eph­od that he wore was a priestly garment –
knee-length, open at the sides, belted at the waist –
per­haps a bit like the vestment
that a dea­con some­times wears, a dalmatic.

But back to John the Baptist.
I have, as I men­tioned, a bit of a his­tory with John.
It’s get­ting on for 40 years since Kar­en and I moved here –
and when not serving, I’ve usu­ally sat some­where over there:
right by Comper’s statue of John the Baptist.
But long before that,
from when I was born,
I went to a church ded­ic­ated to John the Baptist:
I was a choir­boy and then a server,
and I was formed as a young Christian.

Now that church was a great Vic­tori­an barn of a place,
big­ger than here.
And one fea­ture I remem­ber vividly
was a set of three big win­dows at the east end,
behind and above the altar.

In the lower part of each window
there’s a scene from the story of John the Baptist,
and above each of them a par­al­lel scene
from the story of Jesus.
So the left win­dow depicts the Nativ­ity of Jesus,
a manger with a shep­herd and wor­ship­ping angels,
while below are scenes from Luke’s account of John’s birth.

And the bot­tom of the centre window
shows the story we have heard today.
There is Salome dancing –
fully and demurely robed I hasten to add.
There is John
kneel­ing before the exe­cu­tion­er wield­ing his sword.
There is a man open­ing a door,
pre­sum­ably bring­ing in the head of John,
though that hor­ror isn’t shown.

So, why do the win­dows pair these scenes?

Well John was an import­ant fig­ure to the gos­pel writers,
and all four of them include him in their stories.
He’d been the major fig­ure in what we might call
a reli­gious revival,
and crowds had flocked to see him,
a bit like some Billy Gra­ham rally perhaps.
Among them came Jesus.
Are the gos­pel writers a little embar­rassed about this?
About Jesus being bap­tized by John?
About Jesus per­haps play­ing second fiddle to John?
They want us to understand
that from their point of view,
from our point of view,
John was pre­par­ing the way for Jesus.

The first read­ers and hear­ers of Mark’s account
must have included people
who had been fol­low­ers of John,
who per­haps had come out to the Jordan and been baptized,
but maybe had had little involve­ment with Jesus.
The gos­pel writer wants these people to see
that Jesus is con­tinu­ing John’s proclamation:
repent­ance and new life.

But Jesus brings a new twist to the proclamation.
John had preached repentance
as pre­par­a­tion for the arrival of God’s kingdom.
But Jesus pro­claims that God’s king­dom has arrived already,
here, now:
Jesus’s fol­low­ers – you and me –
can repent
and move from the ways of this world
and live instead in the king­dom of God,
where the hungry and poor,
the troubled and the dispossessed
are lif­ted up
and people are reconciled
with each oth­er and with God.

And there’s a second mes­sage from today’s gospel.

Fol­low­ing Jesus isn’t always easy.

It can be hard to lift up the lowly
and be recon­ciled with others,
and some­times oth­ers don’t want to be reconciled,
some­times people don’t want the lowly lif­ted up,
per­haps because they like to have people to lord it over
or to exploit.
Some­times there are hard consequences.

Cer­tainly there are hard con­sequences for John –
that’s the story we have heard today:
John is con­demned and executed by Herod.
And soon Jesus in his turn
will be con­demned and executed
on the orders of Pon­ti­us Pilate
and with the con­niv­ance of this same Herod –
and of oth­ers who are challenged
by the idea of God’s rule, God’s kingdom.
In death, as in life,
John is the fore­run­ner of Jesus.

And this is what can be seen
in the middle win­dow at my old church:
above the pan­el with the behead­ing of John,
we see the Crucifixion.
Jesus pays the ulti­mate price of love and reconciliation,
put to death by the Roman governor
on charges brought by the Temple leadership,
a con­spir­acy between the rulers of this world
to attempt to defeat … love.

And there’s one more win­dow to look at.
The third win­dow at my child­hood church
reminds us of one more thing.
It shows, in the bot­tom, the end of today’s story:
John’s dis­ciples come and carry away his body
and place it in a tomb.
It is the end for John.

But the upper sec­tion of the window
shows a very dif­fer­ent scene.
The fol­low-up to the death of Jesus
is the empty tomb,
the burst­ing from the grave,
the defeat of death.
The tri­umph of hope.
That is to go bey­ond the story we have heard today, with the mes­sage of Jesus:
Love con­quers all.

You see,
John had proclaimed
that the end of the world was coming,
and people needed to repent.
And John had been killed and buried.

Jesus, though, pro­claims some­thing new:
not the end of the world,
but the end of the age,
and a new age
where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
And Jesus too is killed and bur­ied … and …
rises to new life.

And that’s what we see in the last of the windows,
that sim­il­ar­ity-and-dif­fer­ence between John and Jesus.
John bur­ied; Jesus resurrected –
resur­rec­ted to new life,
life in the new age where God’s will is done.

As we heard Paul remind us in his let­ter to the Ephesians –
Jesus’s death on the Cross
recon­ciles us to God and also to one another.
And Jesus’s resur­rec­tion brings us
to share in life in God’s kingdom.
Right here and now.

So,
unlike John, we are Jesus’s fol­low­ers.
But, like John,
our role does include pre­par­ing the way for Jesus:
pre­par­ing the way for Jesus
in the hearts and lives of those around us.
John’s life – and John’s death –
remind us that this might not be easy
but the example he sets
is one of bold­ness in telling the truth
and in pro­claim­ing the gospel,
the good news that, in Jesus,
the king­dom of God is among us.

Let us each con­sider this week
how we might begin
to pre­pare the way to Jesus
for just one person.

Amen.

Easter 2: 7 April 2024

on Sunday, 7 April 2024 at 4.04 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Acts 4.32–35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1.1 – 2.2; John 20.19–31

Alle­lu­ia! Christ is risen!

Foot­ball – are you a foot­ball fan?
I know some of you are, even if you do sup­port odd teams.
And per­haps, like me,
you sit and watch Match of the Day every Sat­urday night.
There was a game on the pro­gramme a week ago,
and the high­lights of the first half were very brief –
almost noth­ing to show.
But the second half was very different:
full of action as the two teams
(Shef­field United and Fulham)
shared six goals in a thrill­ing 3‑all draw.
It had been, the com­ment­at­ors and pun­dits noted,
a real game of two halves.

“A game of two halves” is some­thing of a foot­ball cliché –
and it’s also a good sum­mary of our gos­pel read­ing this morning.

We heard how, in the first half,
Jesus appeared to the disciples,
on the even­ing of the first East­er Day.
But Thomas wasn’t there,
and he didn’t believe the oth­ers when they told him;
no, he wanted to see for himself.

And Thomas wasn’t afraid of express­ing his doubts.
Their teach­er dead and bur­ied – and now alive again?
“Well, I’ll believe that when I see it!”
And you know what?
I reck­on that’d be the reac­tion of most of us.

And a week later we get the second half:
Jesus appears again and says,
“Here I am; you didn’t believe it was me;
well look, here are my wounds;
go on, touch them.”

And you may have noticed that the gos­pel doesn’t say
that Thomas did touch Jesus
or put his hand in the spear-wound on Jesus’s side.
No!
When he sees that Jesus is present
Thomas’s doubt is overcome
and he imme­di­ately exclaims
“My Lord – my God!”

Alle­lu­ia! Christ is risen!

Here are our two halves:
in the first half Thomas doubts Jesus;
and in the second half Thomas recog­nizes Jesus.

So, first, Thomas doubts Jesus.

I don’t know about you,
but I find that believ­ing in Jesus still leaves room for doubt.
Hav­ing doubts doesn’t mean that faith is lacking.
Doubt is a nat­ur­al aspect of our faith.
It is nat­ur­al to question,
to think,
to wrestle with uncertainties,
and to seek understanding.
Doubt can deep­en our faith rather than weak­en it.

That’s because doubt isn’t the oppos­ite of faith:
doubt is the com­pan­ion of faith,
the oth­er side of the same coin.
My faith in Jesus isn’t about certainty;
it’s about trust.

Faith in Jesus,
belief in Jesus,
means that we place our trust in him.
That’s the prom­ise that was made at our baptism –
“do you believe and trust in God,
Fath­er, Son and Holy Spirit?”

And trust is about hav­ing con­fid­ence in someone,
pla­cing our reli­ance on them,
know­ing that they will always be there,
there to help us.
Ulti­mately, Thomas did place his trust in Jesus.
And when we believe and trust in Jesus
we too know we can rely on him,
even when we doubt.
And we can know that what Jesus says is trustworthy.

Alle­lu­ia! Christ is risen!

And after the doubt, what does Thomas do?
He recog­nizes Jesus.

Recog­niz­ing people is one of the fun­da­ment­al things
that we do as human beings.
Thomas recog­nized Jesus,
and we too have the oppor­tun­ity to recog­nize Jesus,
to recog­nize the pres­ence of Jesus.

And although there are a num­ber of such occasions,
I want to sug­gest just a couple of times and places
when we can par­tic­u­larly recog­nize that Jesus is with us.

So one place we might find Jesus
is when we read the bible,
and espe­cially when we read the four gos­pels that tell Jesus’s story.

When we tell the story of Jesus,
when we tell the stor­ies about Jesus,
when we tell the stor­ies that Jesus told –
then some­how Jesus is present with us in the telling.

And fore­most among those occasions
is when we gath­er on a Sunday morning
and hear some of that story read,
some of that story proclaimed.

It’s a bit of the ser­vice we mark with spe­cial solemnity:
we stand (if we are able),
we sing “Alle­lu­ia” as an acclamation,
we carry the gos­pel book in procession
and turn to face the reader,
we burn incense and sol­emnly cense the book,
and we make a sign of the cross.
The book is lif­ted high for every­one to see.

All these little signs point to the import­ance of this moment –
that as we hear the story of Jesus,
the story Jesus told,
then still Jesus is alive here among us,
as he was when his first hearers,
people like Thomas,
gathered around him on the hillside,
or beside the lake,
in the mar­ket place,
or at dinner,
and he spoke to them.

Alle­lu­ia! Christ is risen!

And anoth­er oppor­tun­ity for us to recog­nize the pres­ence of Jesus
is also here in this service.
We recog­nize the pres­ence of Jesus
as we break bread together.

Now “break­ing bread” is a turn of phrase,
an idiom.
It’s not just about lit­er­ally break­ing bread,
it’s the whole action of shar­ing a meal together.
And that’s what we are doing here.
Yes, okay, it’s become a sym­bol­ic meal –
a small piece of bread and a sip of wine –
but it is a meal that we share together,
a meal that we share because Jesus him­self told us to.
And told us to remem­ber him as we share it.

And as we share that meal,
as we break bread together
and remem­ber that Jesus died for us,
then we recog­nize that Jesus is here among us –
just as he was with Thomas and the oth­er disciples
when he broke bread and shared sup­per with them.

Alle­lu­ia! Christ is risen!

And Jesus tells us
that when we min­is­ter to those in need,
we are min­is­ter­ing to him:

• The home­less, the hungry, the destitute
• The refugee, the for­eign­er in our midst
• The abused or oppressed
• The sick, the lonely, the depressed,
  those suf­fer­ing from men­tal illness
• People we don’t like, people we’re sus­pi­cious of
• And … I’m sure you can think of oth­ers to add to this list.

And, you know, Jesus didn’t worry
wheth­er someone had paid their Temple taxes or not;
he didn’t worry wheth­er they were a woman or a man;
a slave or a slave-owner;
a faith­ful Jew or a Samaritan,
or even a cen­tur­i­on in the occupy­ing army.

Jesus bluntly tells us
that when we share God’s love
by min­is­ter­ing to someone in need
then we are min­is­ter­ing to him.
Here too we will find Jesus.

So I want to leave you with this thought for the week:

who will you recog­nize Jesus in?
Who will you min­is­ter to?
And who will you allow to min­is­ter to you?

Like Thomas,
may our encoun­ters with the ris­en Christ
trans­form us,
trans­form those around us,
and trans­form the world.

Alle­lu­ia! Christ is risen!

MA in Worship and Liturgical Studies at Mirfield

on Tuesday, 2 January 2024 at 10.02 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as Uncategorised

The Mir­field Litur­gic­al Inti­tute has recently announced a PGDip / MA in Wor­ship and Litur­gic­al tud­ies. The qual­i­fic­a­tion is val­id­ated by the Uni­ver­sity of Durham, and can be stud­ied part-time online. The pub­li­city says:

Would you like to

• Deep­en your under­stand­ing of how and why Chris­ti­ans wor­ship God?
• Gain a post­gradu­ate qual­i­fic­a­tion that will sup­port you in your min­istry in the church, lay or ordained?
• Refresh your approach to worship?
• Equip your­self to teach oth­ers about liturgy and worship?

To find out more, con­tact the course dir­ect­or, the Revd Dr Jo Ker­shaw jkershaw@mirfield.org.uk or at https://college.mirfield.org.uk/academic-formation/the-mirfield-liturgical-institute/

Dis­claim­er: I should point out that Jo Ker­shaw and I are not related at all, and our fam­il­ies even come from oppos­ite sides of the Pen­nines (though Mir­field is on the right side).

The Transfiguration: 6 August 2023

on Monday, 7 August 2023 at 12.00 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Daniel 7.9,10,13,14; Psalm 97; 2 Peter 1.16–19; Luke 9.28–36

I don’t know about you, but I’m not much of a film-buff and I don’t often go to the cinema,
per­haps only once, maybe twice, a year, if that.

But I went to the cinema last weekend.

So, there are two big films on right now,
one that I’ll just gloss over as mostly pink
and anoth­er that I can say is some­what grey.

Now I expect my three-year old granddaughter
would love to watch the pink one,
but it was the some­what-grey film that Kar­en and I went to see.

It’s a story – a true story – set dur­ing the Second World War,
with a bunch of sci­ent­ists racing to work out how to build a new weapon.
And not just any new weapon, but a new kind of weapon,
a weapon that will unleash untold power.

And just as they’re about to explode the very first test at Los Alamos
– a moment of high drama –
the hero, Robert Oppen­heimer, remem­bers an earli­er conversation
(in the film it’s) with a chap called Albert Einstein,
a con­ver­sa­tion about an import­ant question –
what’s the worst that might hap­pen in the test?

Well, comes the reply, it could set off a chain reaction,
a chain reac­tion that might ignite the whole atmosphere,
a chain reac­tion that might con­sume and des­troy all the earth.

They don’t think that’s very likely, but it is possible.

(And I think you’ll agree that is rather a big down­side to any decision.)

So of course they pro­ceed with the test.

There’s a small start­ing explosion,
and then a great shin­ing, blind­ing, white light
and then a massive fireball
as the chain reac­tion in a small lump of urani­um causes an explo­sion of unpar­alleled ferocity
and then
a great boom­ing sound, the shock­wave of the explosion.

The test is a suc­cess. Oh, and the earth isn’t des­troyed either.

And so – a few weeks later – on the 6th of August, 1945,
their new bomb is dropped on the Japan­ese city of Hiro-shima.
And just a few days later anoth­er atom­ic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki.

As many as 200,000 people –
men, women, children,
mostly civilians –
were killed,
and many more suffered lifelong injury from radi­ation sickness.
Japan sur­rendered, bring­ing the Second World War to an end.

Light and sound – sig­ni­fy­ing death and destruc­tion and con­flict on an unpre­ced­en­ted scale.

It’s a true story, and today, today is the 6th of August,
today is the 78th anniversary of that first atom­ic bomb at Hiro-shima.
It’s a day when the world remem­bers those killed,
those injured,
[[those whose lives were affected,
the destruc­tion wrought ]]
by those two life-des­troy­ing atom­ic bombs.

And
when we all hope and pray that it won’t hap­pen again.

But the 6th of August is also a day that the Church has cel­eb­rated as a holy day
for hun­dreds and hun­dreds of years.

We heard the story in our gos­pel read­ing from Luke this morning.

Jesus and some of his dis­ciples climb up a hill,
and there the dis­ciples see Jesus trans­figured –
shin­ing white with bril­liant dazzling light,
and they hear a great boom­ing voice.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

Now, I’m not going to try and explain what happened,
or try to second-guess what the dis­ciples “really” saw and heard.
But the effects of this light and this sound
are very dif­fer­ent from the destruc­tion caused by the light and sound at Hiro-shima.

This light and this sound have a mean­ing totally dif­fer­ent from that of the atom­ic bomb.

And as a res­ult, the dis­ciples under­stand that Jesus’s mes­sage comes from God.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

Rather than death and destruc­tion and conflict,
this bright light signifies
life and heal­ing and peace.

That’s the life-giv­ing mes­sage that Jesus brings,
the life-giv­ing mes­sage that Jesus brings from God.

That God wants us to have life in all its fulness,
to live in love, and to care for one another
in the good times, yes –
and, even more so, when the going gets tough.

God wants us
– as Jesus says else­where in the gospels –
to feed the hungry,
to shel­ter the home­less and the refugee,
to care for the sick and the needy,
to lift up the oppressed,
to for­give and be recon­ciled with those who have wronged us.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

It’s the mes­sage that God, in Jesus,
saves us from the chain reaction
of hate and wrong-doing and death,
the chain reac­tion that leads to ever more hate and wrong-doing and death.
God in Jesus offers us an alternative,
an altern­at­ive chain reac­tion of hope and caring and forgiveness.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

It’s not an easy way out, though.

Caring and recon­cili­ation can be costly too,
as we see up there, above me,
with Jesus put to death on the Cross.

Because not every­one appre­ci­ates caring,
not every­one appre­ci­ates it when people stand up for others,
not every­one appre­ci­ates it when people look for reconciliation.

But Jesus’s mes­sage is that this way is God’s way.

And in the Trans­fig­ur­a­tion, in Luke’s story that we heard earlier,
[[and also Peter in his let­ter that we heard too,]]
the dis­ciples real­ize that Jesus’s mes­sage is God’s message.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

And they do their best,
after Jesus’s death and resurrection,
to pass his story on to their successors,
and – and here’s the import­ant bit –
not just to tell the story,
but to live as the com­munity of people
who try to do those things.

And it’s into this com­munity that we have come today
to see C_ baptized.
This is the com­munity of people – here in this church in St Ives –
who are the fol­low­ers of Jesus,
the successors,
(many hun­dreds of years later, with oth­ers here and around the world)
the suc­cessors of Jesus’s own disciples –
a life-giv­ing, life-enhan­cing chain reaction.

Now, of course, we’re human, and we get things wrong.
We aren’t perfect
and we don’t always agree
and we don’t always look after one anoth­er as we should.

But we are that community,
that is what the Church is,
that is what the Church tries to be;
and we are com­mit­ted to jour­ney­ing together
and try­ing to under­stand and to live as that community,
the com­munity of Jesus’s followers.

And so – today – we wel­come C_ into this community.

Now, it’s a two-way thing, C_.

For your part,
you will affirm the import­ance to you of Jesus and his message,
and the import­ance in your life of the divine, of God,
and the import­ance in your life of this com­munity of faith and pray­er and worship.

And we, the mem­bers of that community,
we will affirm our sup­port for you as you make this step.
We will jour­ney together:
we will learn from you
as you learn from us.
We will do things together
to share the good news that Jesus shared with his disciples,
and to care for those among us and around us who are in need.

And we will do it all with God’s help.

We’ll have fun together
and sad times together.
If we are hon­est, we know that some­times we might even get cross with each other.
But we know that that’s because we each care,
and that, in Jesus, through Jesus,
there is always for­give­ness and reconciliation.

And if that sounds a bit like a family,
well, that’s because the Chris­ti­an com­munity, the Chris­ti­an Church,
is like a family.

It doesn’t replace the fam­ily that we live with.
But it is a new fam­ily, God’s family,
that we each become part of at our baptism.

And it is into God’s fam­ily, C_, God’s life-enhan­cing family,
that we are now going to wel­come you.

Amen.

Coronation Liturgy Talk

on Wednesday, 22 March 2023 at 12.30 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, liturgy

Last week I par­ti­cip­ated in a “col­loqui­um” organ­ized by Prax­is on the sub­ject of the Coron­a­tion, giv­ing an intro­duct­ory talk on the ele­ments of the ser­vice or liturgy at pre­vi­ous coron­a­tions. (We don’t yet have details of the 2023 ser­vice.) The oth­er major presenter was the Very Revd Dr Dav­id Hoyle, the Dean of West­min­ster, who is closely involved in the plan­ning and will be a major par­ti­cipant at the service.

The slides I used at that talk can be found here, in two ver­sions – a large illus­trated ver­sion and a small ver­sion with no illustrations.

• illus­trated Power­Point (126MB); PDF (1.2MB); PDF with notes (588kB)
• text only Power­Point (100kB)

Both ver­sions con­tain some notes, and they can also be read in con­junc­tion with my earli­er post on the Coron­a­tion liturgy.

Addi­tion­ally a record­ing of the col­loqui­um is avail­able on You­Tube. My sec­tion starts at about 7 minutes in – do watch all the record­ing if you have time.

• record­ing