The Benefice of Blenheim

Midnight Mass 2012
Adrian Daffern

We are very blessed at the Rectory in that we get lots and lots of Christmas cards, and I have a small obsession, which drives my wife potty, of counting them, partly for fun, and partly to check that I am still loved. We have hundreds to date, and thank you if you were a sender.

It is always interesting to see what cards people choose. Most of them these days are some sort of charity card, and that’s always seemed a good thing to me. Very posh people send me cards which have pictures of themselves and their families on the front, and I like those ones tool, because it’s nice to have pictures of friends around the room at Christmas. Some people seem to think I have a sense of humour, and so there are quite often a few funny cards – this year I have particularly enjoyed the one with the angel on the hillside, who just starts to say ‘I bring glad tid . . .) only to be interrupted by a Shepherd who replies (you’re too late mate, it’s all over Twitter!

But because I’m ordained most people send me cards of religious nature, so I don’t tend to get many of the jolly Santa sort. Mine tend to have renaissance nativity scenes; quite a number depict choirboys (never choirgirls for some reason) carrying lamps in a snowy procession to a medieval church - these come in two varieties, with glitter, and without glitter. I get a fair few angelic hosts, and a fair few Magi (Wise Men) bearing oddly shaped and gaudily wrapped geometric shapes which represent those weird and difficult gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh – not exactly top of your Amazon wish lists I’m sure.

Most of my cards this year seem to depict Bethlehem. I’m glad about this because in February I went there. Obviously they depict Bethlehem as it was 2000 years ago, not as it is now. And if they are right, that means that Bethlehem 2000 years ago looked rather like a set of timeshare apartments in Ibiza, all white blocks with flat roofs and tiny doors and windows, alternating squares and rectangles.
True, there isn’t usually a pool (though there are quite a few palm trees) and my cards often have a prominent star on them as well. And very pretty they are too.

But they no more tell the reality of what Bethlehem was like 2000 years ago than they tell the reality of what Bethlehem is like now. We can only make educated guesses about Bethlehem 2000 years ago. It wasn’t very big, much smaller than Woodstock, perhaps more the size of Bladon. It was compact and hectic, as close to Jerusalem as we are to Oxford.

It is still compact, though the population now numbers around 25, 000. And it is still hectic, but for all the wrong reasons. How still we see thee lie? Don’t you believe it. It has, in fact, been caught up in one conflict or another for much of its turbulent history. Since December 1995, the city came under the complete administration and military control of the Palestinian National Authority, but during the Second Palestinian Intifada, in 2000-2005, Bethlehem's infrastructure was severely damaged. In 2002, it was a primary combat zone in Operation Defensive Shield, a major military offensive by the Israeli Defence Forces They besieged the Church of the Nativity, where about 200 Palestinian militants sought refuge in the Church. The siege lasted for 39 days and ten people were killed – inside the church.

It was this same ancient Church of the Nativity that I and 40 other clergy headed to at 6am on a cold February morning this year. We had to wait for early worship to finish in the grotto beneath the church, and then, once the caretaker had swept the steps, we were allowed into the space where, the tradition holds, Jesus was born. Was this the place? Who can say? It’s the tradition, certainly, and has been for the most of the last 2000 years. And it was with a strange mixture of excitement, and not a touch of sceptic, that I waited my turn. For what? Well, to one side, at a jaunty angle, there is a tiny alcove, with seven hanging lamps over a silver star. And the silver star marks the spot.
You have to get down on your hands and knees to get there, and, once you are there, well, there isn’t much else you can do except touch the centre of the star with your head. So I did.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to happen, but something did. Something extraordinary. I didn’t feel an electric shock, or a great spiritual awakening; there was no voice, no angelic song of glory and peace. What there was was weeping. My eyes filled with tears – and whether that was the spot, or not, all I can say is that I felt a deep sense of having found, like T S Eliot’s Kings, that it was satisfactory, and more so. A deep sense of the truth being understood for the first time welled up inside of me. Emotion? Oh yes, of course. But very, very real.

To journey to Bethlehem is difficult these days. There are checkpoints, walls, barbed wire and armed soldiers. There were versions of all of these things, of course, one night when, about 2000 years ago, in occupied territory, in what amounted to an underground cave, a child was born who would change the world, by what he said, by what he did, but above all, by what he was.

The Church of England has recently behaved, at a national level, in an appalling way. The generous, inclusive, radical, loving Gospel of Jesus Christ has been made to look like a bizarre, out-of-touch sect, with little room for compassion and hopefulness, especially if you’re a woman, and particularly if you’re gay.

But despite the best of efforts of the Church to mess up the message, I urge you, this Christmas, to let a little bit of Bethlehem into your life. For what Christians celebrate – what this church celebrates – is a miracle which is true. It is this: that what took place in Bethlehem 2000 years ago can take place in your heart right now. It’s just like the carol says: where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.

I know it seems weird. I know it seems impossible.
I know that every human fibre wants to resist it, can’t quite deal with it, finds it hard to grasp – but I, and millions and millions like me, believe it to be so. The world is a different place is you let Christ be born anew in you. And you do it by making a choice: choose to be kind, choose to be generous, choose to be tender-hearted, choose to be forgiving – you’ll be well on your way.

But there is one further choice which is yours to make, and it lies before you tonight – to choose to believe in a God who is revealed, as one of my friends has written this week,

not . . . in the stars but in the crib. Here the hope of humanity is continually renewed. God is not an old man with a beard. God is not some great cosmic power that believers can borrow for their own limited, and often bigoted, schemes . . .God is to be discovered in the vulnerability of a child, in the excessive openness and dependence upon something outside one's own power or ability to explain.

This is the God I believe in, the God we believe in – the Christmas God, dependent, vulnerable, simple, adorable. Don’t be fooled by any other message you hear this Christmas. Make your choice – and let the words of the great carol be your prayer; more than that, your heart’s desire:

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin, and enter in
be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell:
O come to us, abide with us,
our Lord Emmanuel.

Remembrance Sunday 2012

A Sermon for the Benefice of Blenheim 11th November 2012
Adrian Daffern

I want to paint a perfect picture
A world of make-believe
No more hunger, war, or suffering
The world I’d like to see.

The chorus of a children’s song, often sung around this time of year. I want to paint a perfect picture: no more hunger, war, or suffering. Well, it’s a nice idea isn’t it – a world of make-believe indeed. Such a vision is far far away, and on this Sunday of all Sundays we know just how far. We have just remembered the sixty Woodstock men who gave their lives in the two Great wars. And it goes on. 437 United Kingdom personnel have died in Afghanistan since 2001.

But it’s not only our boys and girls. It’s real boys and girls from other places. According to UNICEF, more than 2 million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict and more than 3 times that number have been permanently disabled or seriously injured. The same report estimates that 20 million children have been forced to flee their homes, and more than 1 million have been orphaned or separated from their families, and that 3 hundred thousand child soldiers (boys and girls) under the age of 18 involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide.

I want to paint a perfect picture. A world of make-believe. No – it’s hopeless isn’t it? A goal too far. The world is too big for us to do anything about.

And that’s probably true. But we are a part of the world. Woodstock is our little world. So why not at least set about painting the perfect picture here – would that be a world of make-believe?
How does that song go again – no more hunger, war, or suffering? Well, come on! Where’s the hunger, war and suffering around here?

I’ll tell you. It’s everywhere. You don’t have to look for it. You just have to open your eyes.

Let’s start with hunger: you walked past two big plastic boxes at the back of church when you came in. They are for donations to the North Oxfordshire Foodbank, which currently is making a real difference to the lives of over 70 adults and 60 children – not by giving them extras, but by giving them basics. Real hunger, here, under our noses.

But there are other kinds of hunger too. I think it was on a visit to this country that Mother Teresa felt moved to comment on the poverty she encountered. When she was challenged by her surprised host, she replied We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. There is that kind of poverty in our own communities – and we should do something about it. On Remembrance Sunday, we remember that 60 men of Woodstock made the ultimate sacrifice so that our world would be different – no more hunger, war or suffering. We will honour their memory when we eliminate the physical, spiritual and emotional hunger in our communities.

No more hunger. No more war. We know about war in our world: it’s everywhere, our TV screens and newspapers are full of it. Afghanistan. North and South Sudan. Iraq. Zimbabwe. Israel and the Palestinian peoples. But there’s war here too. I encounter it nearly every day? Where? In conversations. In encounters. In the street. In the pubs. In church. War which involves the all too conventional weapons of our language and our mindset. There are families at war, resentments that have lasted for generations.
There are individuals at war, differences festering and unresolved. There is gossip, muttering, and prejudice. It is wrong. And it should stop.

On Remembrance Sunday, we remember that 60 men of Woodstock made the ultimate sacrifice so that our world would be different – no more hunger, war or suffering. We will honour their memory when we eliminate the verbal, manipulative and corrosive war of words that infect our communities.

No more hunger. No more war. No more suffering. We know about suffering in our world: of the displaced and the refugee, the homeless, the oppressed. Children, men and women who are abused as a result of cruelty, policy or neglect.

And there is suffering here too. It’s often the stuff of life of which we can do nothing about. We get hurt. Relationships shatter. We become ill. Loved ones die. But there are other kinds of suffering too – people who find themselves isolated, and alone. Individuals who often find it harder to belong than we might imagine. People who we find it easier to ignore, than to engage with. In these circumstances we can all make a difference.

On Remembrance Sunday, we remember that 60 men of Woodstock made the ultimate sacrifice so that our world would be different – no more hunger, war or suffering. We will honour their memory when we do all we can to bring healing, peace and hope to those who are suffering in our communities.

I want to paint a perfect picture
A world of make-believe
No more hunger, war, or suffering
The world I’d like to see.

We come here, rightly, year after year, to remember, and to pray. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we say, we will remember them. But our remembering is lacking unless our fine words lead to even better deeds.

Think about the word ‘remember’. Re-member. It is all about bringing back together things which have been wrenched apart. Disparate members are made whole again. To remember is to put things right. And you and I have the power to do just that. No, of course we can’t wave a magic wand and make heaven on earth tomorrow. But we can have a good go at making heaven on earth here in Woodstock. And we can start today. We are all sinners. We all need to change. And with God’s help we can. Not for our sakes – but for the sake of one another. For the sake of this community. For the sake of the world.

When you go home, tell them of us, and say
For your tomorrow, we gave our today.

We remember our fallen heroes of the past, and of the present. And to remember them properly, we need to do more than repeat much loved prayers and phrases. We need to build the kind of world that they hoped might one day be real. No more hunger, war, or suffering. That’s the world – or should I say, the Woodstock – that those whom we remember today would surely like to see.

It is the Woodstock that God would like to see.

Jubilee Sermon 2012
Adrian Daffern

Trinity Sunday, 3rd June 2012 :
The Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen

It is a season for statistics. 1,500 miles of bunting. 200,000 bottles of champagne (and that’s just the ones sold at Tesco’s, apparently). 2.8 million Victoria sponges. 2 million punnets of strawberries. And this afternoon, a seven-mile, 1000 boat flotilla, and at its heart, a 60-metre, twelve tonne floating belfry, with eight bells, all moving at an appropriately stately 4mph. All of which is part of the reign of one monarch for 60 years.

And those sixty years produce another set of statistics. Since 1952 there have been 5 Rectors (!), 6 Popes, 8 Secretaries-General of the UN, 12 Presidents of the US, 13 Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom – and just one Queen. It is extraordinary.

But what is truly extraordinary is not the quantity but the quality. Yes, 60 years is an astonishing and wonderful achievement, and it gives us a marvellous opportunity for a celebration. The Gospel is, after all, at its heart, about parties as much as prayers. But what is best, it seems to me, about these celebrations, is the opportunity it gives us to reflect on the kind of monarch who can, over 6 decades, inspire such loyalty, affection, respect, and love.

And the answer is simple. The kind of monarch who inspires such loyalty, affection, respect, and love, is a monarch who understands – and I might say, understands with Christian understanding - her vocation as one who serves.

‘I declare before you that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service’ said The Queen in her first public broadcast some years before her accession.

It’s a theme Andrew Marr recognizes in his recent biography of The Queen – some of you will have seen the TV programme – when he states ‘it was as if she was offering herself as some kind of living human sacrifice’.

The love that asks no questions, the love that stands the test, that lays upon the altar the dearest, and the best.

This theme, of sacrificial service, so recognizable in the life of The Queen, is what today’s Gospel reading is all about.

The disciples are, on the face of it, a pretty woeful bunch. They included a thief, a terrorist, several neurotics and a man with a split personality known as ‘The Twin’. They seemed to have entirely misunderstood what the kind of kingdom that Jesus had mind was all about – which led them to their favourite discussion: which one of us is best. Jesus makes it clear that discipleship is nothing to do with self-preferment. What it is about is self-sacrifice. It is all about service.

The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. 27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

‘I declare before you that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service’.

We have a monarch who serves, and, does so not because it is a nice idea, but because her firm and devoted Christian faith leads her to do so. And as we celebrate her service to this nation, the Commonwealth, and the wider world, we would do well to reflect on how we might emulate what she has done, and goes on doing. The Queen has rightly been cautious about saying much about her personal life in public. But what she has never shied away from has been her readiness to talk about her faith. She has said

‘for me the teaching of Christ and my personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to live my life’.

More than that, she has used her Christmas broadcasts to likewise share her deep understanding and the call for forgiveness and reconciliation that is at the heart of what we believe:

Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed. God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.

Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God's love.

That’s great preaching. Not because it’s well put – though it is – but because we know, from 60 years of service, that she believes it, that she means it, and that she lives it. There have been very tough times for the Queen as a human being, the now infamous ‘annus horribilis’ of 1992, and the events five years later surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, placing her under a public pressure such as few of us could even begin to imagine. Her selfless devotion to her family, to her people, and , I believe, her God, enabled her to offer to us all a model of how real humility can bring about profound change, and real dignity can reveal true majesty.

I believe that Her Majesty, were she to have the misfortune to have to sit listening to me preach, would be mortified to be forced to listen to such an encomium. I suspect, from what I have read, and what I have seen, that she would seek us, not to imitate her, but, rather, to imitate the One whom she has sought, all her life, to worship, honour, and praise. This One teaches us to serve. He teaches us to love. He teaches us to forgive. He teaches us to put ourselves and our own needs last, and other people and their needs first. He teaches us that his Kingdom – a Kingdom not of this world – is our project and our goal.

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen. As we celebrate these 60 years, this lifetime of service, let us likewise pray that we, by the grace of God, may fulfil our own callings, and devote our lives to the service of others, and to the service of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

To Him be the Glory.

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

Easter Day 2012
A Sermon for the Benefice of Blenheim
Adrian Daffern

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

I hope you were given a little Easter present from me as you came into church this morning. The picture is "The Resurrection, Cookham" and was painted in the mid-1920's by Stanley Spencer.

Have a look at it. It portrays the resurrection in an extraordinarily imaginative way. The scene is set, not in a garden tomb in Jerusalem, but in the graveyard of Cookham Parish Church. The risen Christ is portrayed in a maternal way, cuddling two babies. The souls of the wicked, depicted in one or two graves, are getting tickings-off rather than being cast into hell-fire. The souls of the righteous are not soaring around singing alleluias to the accompaniment of snazzily dressed renaissance angels, but simply look contented and relaxed, extremely happy as they clamber out of their tombs.

Boundaries are deliberately confused in the picture. The Risen Christ is sitting comfortably with his little friends in the church porch. Some people are naked, some are dressed. A sense of overwhelming delight is conveyed with great charm: we see a woman, reconciled with her husband, carefully dusting down his jacket, another woman beaming as she smells a spring flower. The artist himself is seen reclining in his open tomb in the foreground of the painting, enjoying a moment of tranquillity and joy. Heaven and earth, rather than being distinct entities, are completely mixed up together.

Spencer was a Christian. He believed in the Resurrection, both in terms of our rising with Christ to eternal life, but also in terms of the continuing resurrection experiences of peace and love which come to Christians through prayer, worship and reflection. The painting depicts a resurrection which, on the face of it, is far from biblical, and yet, with imagination and thought, is full of gospel truth.

So what is the gospel truth of the Resurrection? St Mark, whose version of the first Easter we have just heard, leaves us decidedly in the dark. There is no actual appearance of the Risen Lord. No encounter with Mary Magdalene, no Emmaus Road, no Doubting Thomas experience, no breakfasts by the side of the lake, no Ascension. Just FEAR.
The last verse of Mark reads thus:

So the women went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The early church had a problem with this extraordinarily down-beat close to the gospel, and added some verses on to give the story a bit of what we call spin. But the original ending is there, just as we heard it read earlier. They had good reason to run - they were scared to death. They were afraid.

I find this enormously comforting. Think again about the story. Mary Magadalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome come to anoint Jesus' body. They were doing the right thing according to their custom, a beautiful, devout thing, an act of love. They've been through a ghastly experience, seeing their hopes crushed as Jesus' body, physically crushed, gasped for breath, hanging on a cross, that stormy, terrifying afternoon. Now it's early Sunday morning, and the sun is shining. They arrive at the tomb having been anxious now they would move the stone, and find it rolled back. Imagine their first reaction - what would it have been? Anger that someone had got there first? Fear that his body had been desecrated? Weariness at the prospect of yet more anxiety?

And then they go inside. A young man in white is sitting there, and says words which, I imagine, would have had about as little effect on those women as they would have on you or me: "Do not be afraid". This phrase is found more than any other throughout the whole of scripture, but I doubt that that was what went through the minds of those women. The young man continues

You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.

They came for the specific reason of seeing the body, of anointing the body, of touching the body, caressing the body, caring for the body. But the body is gone, and they, far from being in alleluia-mode, are gutted. Never mind don't be afraid. Of course they're afraid. They've come to honour the body, and the body is not there. And it gets worse. A vital task is assigned to them:

But go! Tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.

And then we get verse 8, telling us that they've run for their lives. And who can blame them? Certainly not us, who, far from being obedient to the command to tell others of the resurrection, also run away from the truth. We have the best story ever told, we believe it to be true, we hope it's going to be real for us one day too. And what do we do with this precious, priceless information? We run away from it. Worse still, some of us try to roll the stone back into place, and walk away if nothing as happened.

But truth doesn't allow us to get away with that. Remember Jonah? You can't seriously imagine you can run away from God, unto whom all hearts are open and all desires known? But we try. And that's why we are like those women, terrified, even in the face of the greatest news that has ever been told.

So what are we to do about it? Well, listen to the angel again. Do not be afraid. Those are his first words. And Jesus used them all the time. Do not be afraid. If we believe - and I mean really believe - the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, our lives are changed. The resurrection takes away not just our fear of physical death, but fear of all the little deaths that we deal with daily, the death of hope, ambition, and ego; the little deaths which happen when relationships are struggling, life is hard, money is scarce, love seems hard to find. The resurrection is not a "Jesus-comes-back-to-life" story, it is a "Jesus-is-alive" story, not some divine kiss-of-life, but a complete, total, utter transformation into something new, glorious and real. Grasping hold of the truth of this changes everything. And if you grasp hold of the truth of it, it will change you.

We've still got the problem of Mark's ending. It's such a cliff-hanger, such an anti-climax, those women running away, consumed with so much fear, so much emotional baggage, so much bewilderment and confusion. What are we do to with all of that?

Well, perhaps we should do what Stanley Spencer did with his painting. We work out the meaning of resurrection for our own lives, our own contexts, and we create it, colourfully, imaginatively. We could even begin to realise that it can be fun. Just because Mark's gospel leaves us standing in ruins shouldn't prevent us from imagining that that's the whole story. If you go to a ruined abbey or castle, you know that the whole story is much bigger. You use your imagination to re-create the sounds, structures and reality of what those ruins mean.

Mark's gospel lacks the soaring transepts, turrets and archways of Matthew, Luke and John. But it still tells the truth. And didn't someone once say that he had come in order that the truth might set us free?

Easter is truth. But it is also challenge. We who are happy to sing Alleluia in church need to learn to sing it outside church as well. If Easter is true, we can't run away from it. But we mustn't only preach it. No - we must live it. St Francis of Assisi gave this instruction to his followers: Preach the gospel by all means possible. If necessary, you could even use words.

There was once a famous ballerina. After one of her greatest performances, someone told her "you were wonderful! But can I ask - what did the dance actually mean? Her reply was simple, and devastating: "If I could have said it" she said "I wouldn't have needed to dance it, would I?".

Don't be afraid. Don't run away. Go and tell the others that Easter is real. But don't just tell them he's alive. Show them. For:

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

10th anniversary of 9/11 2011
Canon Adrian Daffern

Auden’s poem, 1st September 1939, is being quoted all over the place on this solemn weekend - with its peculiar, semi-prophetic sense of what was to come on the 11th September 2001. The poem speaks eloquently of the transitory nature of human enterprise, and the all-too-obvious truth of our fallenness, of our weakness, of our sin. As we shall sing in our offertory hymn: pride of man and earthly glory, sword and crown betray his trust; all that human toil can fashion – and these words will send a chill down our spines today, I’m sure – tower and temple fall to dust.

It is a fine coincidence – if we believe in coincidence – that the readings on this day when we cannot but think of the events of 9/11 are about judgement and forgiveness. But in fact any Sunday is a good day for us to be thinking about judgement and forgiveness.

For as Jesus pointed out, it’s no good peering at the speck in the eyes of others when we ignore the whopping great log in our own. What I mean is that we are prejudiced people. We judge. You've been judging since I started speaking, just as I am judging now, judging whose listening to me and who isn't, who I'm annoying and who I'm pleasing.

Don't worry - we can't help it. We all make judgements all of the time. And the judgements we like to make best are those we make, not about ourselves, but about other people. We find it all too easily to pass judgement on others, while we're not too keen on being judged ourselves. The reason why is obvious - when we are judged, we are immediately threatened. When others judge us, they are bound to land on our very weakest points, deficiencies in our personalities, skeletons which we thought we had locked away in the cupboard for good can so easily be brought out, with devastating consequences.

And if all we ever do is judge, then we are trapped. St Paul, in the letter to the Romans, is clear that we should be ultra-cautious about judging others. It is God who is judge, not us. Elsewhere the Apostle writes (using the words of the Authorised Version) "Judge Not; lest ye yourselves be judged". That is a pretty clear message.

Over the last ten years we have been exposed often to a media and political elite who have sought to make judgements about what happened on 9/11, and why. Who knew what, when.

This is sometimes referred to as a blame culture, and that’s a phrase that I understand well. I have worked in contexts where a blame culture has existed – when things have gone wrong, or haven’t happened, people have been quick to point the finger, wanted quickly to know whose fault something is, know – and I guess this is the main motivation – that they are in the clear.

Probably because it makes us feel better; we're not so bad after all. But didn't Jesus have something to say about the speck in the eye of others, and the plank in our own? If we start passing judgement on those around us, or those we consider to be beneath us, we may find ourselves in a heap of difficulties.

Sitting on the bench, we place ourselves above others, when our rightful place is more likely to be in the dock. We are no longer free people. Our attitudes trap us, and there is no room left for manoeuvre. Rather than listen and reflect, we lash out, and conflict ensues.

Jesus was in the business of freeing people. Freeing people from illness and pain, but perhaps more importantly, freeing people whose attitudes had imprisoned them. Jesus came to set people free from the prisons that life had created around them. We do well to remember that Jesus' very name means Saviour, and the work of saving, releasing, redeeming, healing, is what he is all about.

Healing is freedom, and Jesus came to bring both.

Now, you might want to say that there's nothing you need freeing from, thank you very much. But is that really true? How ready are you to listen to other people's views before you chime in with your own? How careful are you about leading a caring and generous life, before you criticise and judge others? How many of your attitudes and opinions are, in fact, imprisoning you, and need transforming and releasing?

All of us are in the position of needing the freedom that comes from knowing and loving God in Jesus Christ - all of us. And the time to start sorting ourselves out is now.


And perhaps we can have a go at that. If we are to love our neighbour as our self, then loving our self – not judging our self, forgiving our self – is the place to start. But what of others? How can we pray for forgiveness for those who hijacked planes and flew them into the World Trade Centre, and the Pentagon? How can we forgive those who hate our very way of being, and long to destroy it, and us?

Jesus answered: I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. It is so hard for us to get our heads round this. So counter to our natural instincts. But there it is, and not only here in the Gospel, but throughout the Gospel, even at the heart of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray: Forgive us our trespasses, as forgive those who trespass against us. It’s not either or. It’s both and. It’s not an optional extra. It is the will of God. For in the heart of God there is unlimited forgiveness, amazing grace, and it is indeed a sweet sweet sound.

The Anglican liturgy is big on repentance. Indeed, when I give the absolution after a prayer of confession, I often use an official form of words which says that God forgives all those who truly repent – as if repentance is a necessary pre-condition of the forgiving grace of God. But that’s not what scripture teaches. The forgiveness which Jesus preaches recognizes that repentance, however desirable, is not required where love abounds. And this is tough. I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say that there have been things that people have said about me, and things that people have done to me, which have been so horrid that I am not sure that I have really forgiven them the hurt that they have caused. But I know I have to try. And I know I have to keep on trying, if I myself am ever to be truly forgiven.

Not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Unlimited forgiveness, which God bestows on us, and invites us to bestow on each other. We are sinners. But we are forgiven. So there is hope, beyond the judgement, and grace unending beyond all our pain.

I hope you will forgive me reference to Coventry Cathedral – but I cannot preach about these things, or reflect adequately on the commemorations of this day, without recalling the message of peace and reconciliation which Coventry has come to represent to the world.

400 bombers attacked Coventry for nearly 12 hours. 600 were killed. Over 1000 injured. 46 000 homes wrecked. The city centre turned to rubble.

Provost Richard Howard, who risked his life in his attempt to save the old cathedral, reflected later that:

What we want to tell the world is this: that we are trying, hard as it may be, to banish all thoughts of revenge from our hearts and minds. We are going to try to make a kinder, simpler, a more Christ-Child-like sort of world in the days beyond this strife.
And we, even we in this little church, in this little town, have this calling: through our attempts to hold fast to the Gospel, to say our prayers, to read our Bibles, to worship week in week out, we can build that kinder, more Christ-like sort of world, which is what the heart of God longs for, what the Son of God died for.

But it cannot happen by itself. Only the way of the cross is given to us to walk. And those of us who dare to walk it must shun the temptation to judge, and to learn to forgive.