Thinking allowed

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.

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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!

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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).

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Advent 4: 24 December 2023

on Sunday, 24 December 2023 at 12.10 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: 2 Samuel 7.1–11, 16; Canticle: Mag­ni­ficat (Luke 1.46–55); Romans 16.25–27; Luke 1.26–38

“The angel Gab­ri­el was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth.”

In the name of …

Pre­quels.
Do you enjoy prequels?
Did you watch Endeav­our as a pre­quel to Morse?
Or per­haps The Phantom Men­ace and oth­ers as pre­quels to Star Wars?
And what about books?
As a teenager
I worked my way avidly through CS Forester’s Horn­blower novels,
read­ing them in story order,
and find­ing that all the earli­er books were writ­ten after the later ones.
The con­clu­sion of the story was already pre-determined –
Hornblower’s fail­ure to achieve this or that;
the death of … spoil­ers.
Much of this was fixed by throw-away lines in the later books that were already in print.

And today’s gos­pel read­ing is a sort of pre­quel as well.

What’s it a pre­quel to?
Well, we heard a couple of weeks ago
the start of the gos­pel accord­ing to Mark.
(Mark the evan­gel­ist, that is, not Mark the vicar.)
Mark’s account is very widely regarded as the first gos­pel to have been written,
and so there was a time,
a short time perhaps,
when it was the only gos­pel in existence.
Per­haps you can remem­ber from two weeks ago how it starts:

The begin­ning of the gos­pel [or: good news] of Jesus Christ, the Son of God[1]

and then it describes that beginning:
the preach­ing of John the Baptist,
and how Jesus arrives on the banks of the Jordan and is bap­tized by John.

So,
what was Jesus doing before the start of Mark’s account?
I think that’s a nat­ur­al ques­tion to ask.
And in the cul­ture of that time
it might not have been obvious
that he had been born,
or that he had grown from a baby to an adult man.

That’s a some­what bizarre thing to say, isn’t it? What do I mean?

Well,
ancient myth­o­logy is full of stor­ies that skip all that stuff.
Just one example
from the Roman poet Ovid,
who lived just a year or two ahead of Jesus and Luke.
His long verse col­lec­tion Meta­morph­oses includes such a tale –
how the immor­tal gods
Jupiter and Mercury
decided one day to pay a vis­it in dis­guise to the mor­tal world.
They are spurned by everyone
until they meet an impov­er­ished eld­erly couple,
Philem­on and Baucis,
who invite them in and cook them supper
from their own mea­gre resources,
and gradu­ally realize,
when the gob­lets of wine nev­er empty,
that their guests are divine.[2]

Now if you think this is far-fetched,
then have a look at the Acts of the Apostles, at chapter 14,
where in an echo of Ovid’s tale, Luke tells us that
Paul and Barn­a­bas are them­selves mis­taken for exactly the same two gods.[3]

So you can see perhaps
how the sud­den appear­ance of Jesus in the earli­est gos­pel account
as an adult acclaimed as God,
might also be open to misinterpretation.
That Jesus wasn’t really human,
but was a god in disguise.

Per­haps Luke was aware of speculation
about the ori­gin of Jesus and his early life,
but whatever the reason,
he gives us two whole chapters about Jesus
before get­ting to John bap­tiz­ing in the River Jordan
(where Mark had begun, remember?).

And here we are:
in the story it’s nine months before the birth of Jesus,
and Luke intro­duces us to Mary.
We don’t learn much about her though:
that she lives in Nazareth,
and is engaged to be married;
and via the angel that she is favoured by God,
and is related to Elizabeth,
who is her­self expect­ing a child –
that’s the boy who in adult­hood will become John the Baptist.
That’s pretty much all the story says about her.

And that’s because the story isn’t really about Mary.
It’s about Jesus.

The things that Mary says and does point us to Jesus.

The angel tells Mary she will have a son,
and that the Holy Spir­it will over­shad­ow her,
so that the child will be holy
and called “Son of God”.

Mary, then, will be the bear­er of God the Son,
and we can see our Old Test­a­ment read­ing as a par­al­lel to this.
King Dav­id wants to build a per­man­ent home for the ark of the Covenant,
the holi­est pos­ses­sion of the ancient Israel­ite people,
and regarded by them as the place where God dwelled.
But the proph­et Nath­an tells David
that it is not for him to build such a place,
that will come later;
but God will instead estab­lish David’s line for ever.
Two proph­ecies for the price of one!
First, because Luke traces Jesus’s own ances­try back to King David –
see­ing Jesus as ful­filling Nathan’s statement
that David’s line will reign for ever.
And secondly because
we have just heard how Mary will be the bear­er of God –
it is her womb that will house God: God the Son.

So what does Mary do?
In the verses imme­di­ately after our gos­pel reading
she legs it,
and seeks out her rel­at­ive Elizabeth.
And it is while she is with Elizabeth
that, Luke tells us, she praises God.
And earli­er in our ser­vice today,
we sang a ver­sion of the words Luke records:
“With Mary let my soul rejoice”.
(You might like to have the words in front of you now.)

This song, the Mag­ni­ficat, is not just a song of praise.
It’s also
a trail­er or teas­er for the story of Jesus,
for the story of Jesus’s mis­sion and teaching,
the story of Jesus’s pro­clam­a­tion of God’s kingdom,
God’s rule.

Because in the Mag­ni­ficat we can see par­al­lels with Jesus’s later teaching:

• In the syn­agogue at Naz­areth, for example, Jesus iden­ti­fies himself:
  “The Spir­it of the Lord is upon me;
  he has anoin­ted me to bring good news to the poor,
  release to the captives,
  recov­ery of sight to the blind,
  to let the oppressed go free.”[4]
• And in anoth­er place he teaches:
  “Blessed are you who are poor, [or] hungry, [or] who weep.
  But woe to you who are rich, you who are full,
  for you will be hungry.”[5]

These are the themes we have seen and sung in Mary’s Song,
and they are the themes that con­tin­ue through­out Jesus’s ministry:
lift­ing up the hungry and poor,
exalt­ing the humble and meek –
send­ing the rich away empty.
And in today’s gos­pel reading
we see them announced at the very start,
at the very moment that Jesus’s con­cep­tion is first revealed.
Even as Jesus is conceived
Luke tells us that this mes­sage is proclaimed.

So is Luke’s account a good prequel?
Well, it’s the pre­quel that
to much of society
is almost the only bit of the story they remember.
In that sense, yes, it’s a really good prequel.

And yet …

The world around us
is draw­ing to the end
of its annu­al orgy of extra­vag­ant spend­ing and extra­vag­ant consumption,
whilst all about we see:
poverty,
misery,
hatred,
war.
And though we shouldn’t begrudge people a bit of light and fun
and – above all – hope
in the midst of such difficulty,
nonetheless
our job,
our mission,
yours and mine,
is to make sure
that the rest of Jesus’s story is remembered too –
the pro­clam­a­tion of the good news that is the King­dom of God,
where the poor and the hungry,
the home­less and the refugee,
the war-ravaged –
all who suf­fer, the down­trod­den of society –
are raised up and satisfied,
and enemies are recon­ciled to each other.
And – our response should be to make that happen,
now, at Christ­mas time, yes – and also all year round.

Because all that is foreshadowed
in the news that we like Mary, heard today.

The good news
that the baby whose birth we are about to celebrate
saves us
and teaches us how to move
from lives gov­erned by the prince of this world
to lives gov­erned by the prince of peace.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

 

[1] Mk 1.1 (NRSVAE)

[2] Ovid, Meta­morph­oses, Book VIII

[3] Acts 14.11, 12

[4] Lk 4.18,19 (NRSVAE)

[5] Lk 6.20–25 (NRSVAE), abbreviated

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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.

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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

 

 

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The Coronation Oil

on Monday, 6 March 2023 at 2.51 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, liturgical news, liturgy

The oil that will be used to anoint the king and queen at their coron­a­tion on 6 May has been con­sec­rated in Jer­u­s­alem by the Ortho­dox Pat­ri­arch of Jer­u­s­alem and the Anglic­an Arch­bish­op. The Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury’s web­site reports the details here, and that art­icle is archived below.

(more…)

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The Coronation Liturgy

on Thursday, 2 March 2023 at 9.11 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, liturgy

This is a longer ver­sion of an art­icle pub­lished in Prax­is News of Wor­ship, March 2023.

In 973 at Bath Abbey, Edgar was crowned King of Eng­land by Dun­stan, Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury. The Coron­a­tion ser­vice in use derives dir­ectly from that com­piled by Dun­stan over a thou­sand years ago. It has gone through sev­er­al revi­sions or “recen­sions”, with the third being used through the later Middle Ages and (in trans­la­tion) for the first four Stu­arts. The last major revi­sion was made in 1689 by Wil­li­am Compton, Bish­op of Lon­don, for Wil­li­am III and Mary II, but it has been tweaked for each sub­sequent occa­sion, with new mon­archs usu­ally want­ing a short­er cere­mony than their predecessor’s, and new anthems or set­tings being com­mis­sioned. It remains to be seen how much will change in 2023, but the prin­cip­al ele­ments are clear.

The coron­a­tion is set with­in the Euchar­ist, as it has been since 973, and since 1689 most of the cere­mo­ni­al has taken place after the ser­mon and Creed (though there has been no ser­mon since 1911). There are five main elements:

1. The Recog­ni­tion
2. The Oath
3. The Anoint­ing
4. The Invest­it­ure, cul­min­at­ing in the Crowning
5. The Enthrone­ment and Homage.

The coron­a­tion of a Queen Con­sort follows.

The ser­vice begins with the entrance pro­ces­sion. Since 1626, verses from Psalm 122 (“I was glad”) have been sung, and in 1902 Sir Hubert Parry incor­por­ated into his set­ting the acclam­a­tion (“Vivat”) by the schol­ars of West­min­ster School. This set­ting is now an estab­lished tradition.

Next the Sov­er­eign is intro­duced as the right­ful mon­arch and acclaimed by the con­greg­a­tion, a vestige of the ancient elec­tion of the mon­arch. In 1953 the Oath was moved to fol­low this, hav­ing pre­vi­ously been at a later point. The mon­arch prom­ises to pre­serve and pro­tect the Church and to obey the laws of the land. In 1953 the Present­a­tion of the Bible to the mon­arch was moved to this point hav­ing since its intro­duc­tion in 1689 been imme­di­ately after the Crown­ing. Only when the Oath has been sworn and the Euchar­ist begun does the ser­vice move on to the Anoint­ing. “Zadok the Priest” has been sung as an anthem here since 973, and Han­del’s set­ting has been used since 1727. The sov­er­eign moves to King Edward’s Chair (which holds the Stone of Scone) placed in the Cross­ing of the Abbey before the Altar, and is stripped. Under a can­opy to pro­tect their mod­esty, they are anoin­ted in the form of a cross on the head, breast, and palms (in the reverse order in 1937 and 1953). After­wards a white lin­en under­gar­ment is put on, the Colobi­um Sin­donis, and a golden robe, the Super­tu­nica, and then the Invest­it­ure begins.

The regalia now used were largely made in 1660 for Charles II, the earli­er items hav­ing been wan­tonly des­troyed by the repub­lic­an gov­ern­ment of the Com­mon­wealth. The ancient regalia, crowns, sceptres, rods and vest­ments, are thought to have been taken from the tomb of St Edward the Con­fess­or when he was trans­lated to a new shrine in 1269, and were used at every sub­sequent coron­a­tion at West­min­ster down to Charles I in 1626. These sac­red items nev­er left the Abbey, being depos­ited by the mon­arch at the end of the ser­vice, and a vestige of that tra­di­tion remains.

The Spurs are brought and touched to the monarch’s heels (in 1953 to the Queen’s hands), and then the king is girded with the Sword (in 1953 it was put in the Queen’s hands). He straight­away ungirds it and places it on the Altar as a gift to the Abbey. It is redeemed for 100 shil­lings and car­ried by one of the Peers.

Next come the Armil­ls (brace­lets) and Stole Roy­al. These were made in 1953 and their form and role has been unclear since the ori­gin­als were lost in 1649. The sov­er­eign is next ves­ted with the Robe Roy­al, a great cloak of cloth of gold embroidered with roses, thistles, and sham­rocks – and imper­i­al Roman eagles, a remind­er that from 973 the Eng­lish were copy­ing the sym­bol­ism of the Byz­antine emperor.

Each stage of the invest­it­ure is accom­pan­ied by pray­ers. Since 1689 these pray­ers have care­ful to bless the per­son receiv­ing each item, the mon­arch, rather than bless­ing the item itself.

The Orb – sym­bol­iz­ing the globe sur­moun­ted by the cross – is placed in the monarch’s hand, and imme­di­ately giv­en back and replaced on the Altar. The ring, sap­phire with a ruby cross, is put on the fourth (ring) fin­ger of the mon­arch’s right hand. His­tor­ic­ally the next item was the Crown, but since 1689 this has been the final item to be presen­ted. Next comes the Sceptre, topped with a cross, and the Rod, with a dove stand­ing on the cross at the top.

Finally, the cul­min­a­tion of the invest­it­ure, the mon­arch is crowned with St Edward’s Crown, made in 1660 to replace the lost crown taken from the saint’s tomb. The con­greg­a­tion acclaim the mon­arch “God save the King”, trum­pets sound, and a gun salute is fired from the Tower of London.

After the Crown­ing the mon­arch is sol­emnly blessed by the Arch­bish­op, and up to 1902 the Te Deum was sung at this point.

The sov­er­eign now moves from King Edward’s Chair to the Throne to be enthroned there. The Arch­bish­op and oth­er bish­ops do their Fealty togeth­er, prom­ising to be “faith­ful and true” and the Arch­bish­op kisses the king’s left cheek. Then the roy­al dukes and the oth­er peers pay their Homage and the lead­ing peers kiss his cheek. His­tor­ic­ally this has been a lengthy part of the ser­vice even when sig­ni­fic­antly shortened so that each degree (dukes, mar­quesses, earls, vis­counts and bar­ons) pays homage togeth­er, and might be fur­ther shortened in 2023.

The Queen’s Coron­a­tion fol­lows, almost unchanged since that of Mary of Mod­ena in 1685. She is anoin­ted – in recent times only on the head, but up to 1761 on the head and breast, her appar­el being opened for that pur­pose – inves­ted with a ring, and then in a sur­viv­al of the earli­er order, crowned. Finally, she receives a sceptre and a rod, and is enthroned next to the king.

The Coron­a­tion itself is now com­plete and the Euchar­ist resumes at the offer­tory, includ­ing in 1953 a con­greg­a­tion­al hymn (Old 100th, “All people that on earth do dwell”), instead of an anthem. Tra­di­tion­ally the mon­arch makes an offer­ing of the bread and wine, an altar-cloth and a pound-weight of gold, and a queen con­sort anoth­er altar-cloth and a “mark-weight” of gold.

The ser­vice fol­lows the 1662 order, as it will in 2023, with the pray­er for the Church mil­it­ant, the Gen­er­al Con­fes­sion and the Com­fort­able Words. The Sur­sum Corda is fol­lowed by a prop­er pre­face, Sanc­tus (sung to the melody of Mer­be­cke in 1911 and 1937), Pray­er of Humble Access, and Con­sec­ra­tion. The Arch­bish­op and assist­ing clergy receive Com­mu­nion fol­lowed by the King and Queen. There is no gen­er­al com­mu­nion. The ser­vice con­tin­ues with the Lord’s Pray­er, post-com­mu­nion (‘O Lord and heav­enly Fath­er’) and the Glor­ia. The mon­arch then moves into St Edward’s Chapel, where they are dis­robed of their golden vest­ments – his­tor­ic­ally St Edward’s vest­ments and crown were not removed from the Abbey. Since 1911 the choir sings the Te Deum at this point. Finally, the mon­arch and con­sort pro­cess out through the Abbey to the west door, in vel­vet robes and the mon­arch wear­ing the Imper­i­al State Crown.

For the text of the Coron­a­tion ser­vice, as used at each coron­a­tion from 1689 to 1953 see oremus.org/coronation

 

 

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Common Worship Almanac for 2022-23

on Tuesday, 18 October 2022 at 12.04 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgical news, liturgical texts, liturgy, software

My Alman­ac for the litur­gic­al year 2022–23, the year begin­ning Advent Sunday 2022 is now avail­able. The Alman­ac is a com­plete and cus­tom­iz­able down­load that can be added to the cal­en­dar on a desktop/laptop, a tab­let or a smart­phone provid­ing a fully-worked out cal­en­dar and lec­tion­ary accord­ing to the rules of the Church of Eng­land. Sev­er­al down­load formats are provided, giv­ing access to most cal­en­dar soft­ware on most devices.

As before, down­load is free, and dona­tions are invited.

 

What's new?

The Alman­ac is also avail­able as a web page that can be installed as a web app on smart­phones and tab­lets for easy access to all the data. New fea­tures include

• In the View tab you can toggle the dis­play of verse num­bers in the read­ings, mak­ing it sim­pler to copy and paste pas­sages to oth­er doc­u­ments in the desired format.
• Fol­low­ing the new Roy­al War­rant, updated BCP and CW pray­ers for the King and Roy­al Fam­ily are linked in the Resources tab; Acces­sion Day is now on 8 Septem­ber, rather than 6 February.
• Although not strictly a CW or BCP obser­va­tion, an entry is included this year for Coron­a­tion Day on 6 May 2023; it is expec­ted that resources for pub­lic observ­ance of the coron­a­tion will be pro­duced, and this mater­i­al will be added when it is available.
• Astro­nom­ic­al data (sun­rise, sun­set, moon rise and set and phase, sol­stices and equi­noxes) is now fully work­ing again, as is the sep­ar­ate Cross­cal cal­en­dar down­load at crosscal.oremus.org.

Donations

This Alman­ac is offered free of charge, and without war­ranty, but as you might ima­gine it takes some effort to com­pile. If you would like to make a con­tri­bu­tion to my costs then dona­tions may be made via PayP­al at paypal.me/simonkershaw. Altern­at­ively, Amazon gift vouch­ers can be pur­chased online at Amazon (amazon.co.uk) for deliv­ery by email to simon@kershaw.org.uk .

The Alman­ac has been freely avail­able for over 20 years. There is not and has nev­er been any charge for down­load­ing and using the Alman­ac — this is just an oppor­tun­ity to make a dona­tion, if you so wish. Many thanks to those of you who have donated in the past or will do so this year, par­tic­u­larly those who reg­u­larly make a dona­tion: your gen­er­os­ity is appre­ci­ated and makes the Alman­ac possible.

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The Coronation of English and British Kings and Queens

on Saturday, 8 October 2022 at 2.13 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, history, liturgical texts, liturgy

Begin­ning with the coron­a­tion of James I in 1603 there have been six­teen Eng­lish-lan­guage coron­a­tions of Eng­lish, or from 1714 Brit­ish, mon­archs. Before that, upto and includ­ing the coron­a­tion of Eliza­beth I, the ser­vice had been con­duc­ted in Lat­in. The sev­en­teenth, for King Charles III, is sched­uled to take place on Sat­urday 6 May 2023.

As a small boy, over half a cen­tury ago, I was cap­tiv­ated by a souven­ir of the 1937 coron­a­tion of King George VI and Queen Eliza­beth which belonged to my grand­par­ents, and which con­tained the text of the ser­vice along with copi­ous illus­tra­tions and some his­tor­ic­al notes. From 1994 I have col­lec­ted cop­ies of the order of ser­vice of every coron­a­tion back to that of George IV in 1821, along with repro­duc­tions and edi­tions of the earli­er ser­vices back to 1603, as well as the music edi­tions that have been pub­lished since 1902.

For some time I have thought of pro­du­cing an his­tor­ic­al edi­tion of the coron­a­tion ser­vice with the dif­fer­ent texts in par­al­lel columns, mak­ing it easy to see the changes that have been made over the cen­tur­ies. This is a bit com­plex to pro­duce as a book (and per­haps not com­mer­cially viable) but a web page is easi­er to cre­ate, and can have oth­er help­ful fea­tures such as hid­ing or show­ing dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the page. So now there is a new page at oremus.org/coronation that con­tains the text of all the coron­a­tion ser­vices from 1953 back (cur­rently) to that of George II in 1727. Work on adding earli­er texts continues.

In each column the texts are aligned so that cor­res­pond­ing rub­rics and spoken words match across the page. Indi­vidu­al columns can be hid­den, mak­ing it easy to com­pare dif­fer­ent years. Hid­ing rows, or sec­tions of the text across all columns, is a fea­ture that will be added soon.

The coron­a­tion of King Edward VII and Queen Alex­an­dra sched­uled for June 1902 was post­poned because of the king’s ill­ness. When it did take place in August, a num­ber of modi­fic­a­tions were made to place less stress on the con­vales­cent king. Both the June and August texts are included in par­al­lel columns.

With the Coron­a­tion of King Charles and Queen Cam­illa sched­uled for next year, I hope this will be a use­ful his­tor­ic­al archive.

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