I’m sure that, at one time or another, most of us will have heard someone say that they wouldn’t mind being a teacher, and the reason they’ve given for saying that is that teachers get so many holidays. Perhaps we’ve even said it ourselves!  But do teachers really get so many holidays? I’m sure that anyone who is or has been a teacher will know that they don’t. They know that just because the children are on holiday and the schools are closed, that doesn’t mean that teachers are on holiday, it doesn’t mean that teachers aren’t still working.

Another profession, if we can call it that, that’s similarly thought of in terms of holidays is the ordained ministry. Wherever I’ve been, both before and since my own ordination, whenever a priest has mentioned taking a holiday, someone has had a sarcastic or even derogatory comment to make about the priest taking time off. For example, when I took my post Easter break this year, on the Sunday I went to Mass at a church in Accrington. When the churchwarden there, whom I’ve known for many years, saw me he was obviously surprised but said it was good to see me. But, when I explained that I was on my post-Easter break, he replied, immediately,

“Another holiday! You lot get more time off than teachers!”

That Sunday 9^th May, was in fact, the first Sunday I’d had off for 6 months, since 6^th December, and between then and my post Easter break, I’d taken the grand total of 3 days annual leave.

I’m sure that this kind of comment and attitude is caused because a lot of what teachers, and especially the clergy, actually do is done behind the scenes. People know teachers are working when the schools are open and, in the same way, they know the clergy are working when they’re in church taking a service. But when they’re not doing something that’s in the public domain, so to speak, people don’t know what they’re doing and so, some people at least, seem think they’re not doing anything at all.

Of course, teaching and the ordained ministry aren’t jobs as such. Many teachers I know see teaching as a vocation and the ordained ministry most certainly is a vocation. That means that these are things that people feel called to do and, although some misguided clergy do see the ordained ministry as a job (and I did come across priest who said that he only ‘did’ 39 hours a week, for example), most do see being a member of the clergy as the vocation it undoubtedly is. Nevertheless, even if we are doing something that we feel called to do, we still need to take the time to stop doing and to simply be.

If some people think that doesn’t apply to the clergy, I would direct their attention to the Gospel we read this morning at St Mark’s and last Sunday at St Gabriel’s. We read there that Jesus sent the twelve disciples out, in pairs, to proclaim the Gospel and heal the sick. Later, after St Mark tells the story of the beheading of John the Baptist, we’re told that the disciples returned to Jesus and told him what they’d done and taught. But what was Jesus doing whilst the disciples were out and about preaching and healing the sick? He clearly wasn’t with them. The answer is, we don’t know. But does that mean he wasn’t doing anything? Perhaps he was doing other things that the disciples knew nothing about. Or perhaps he took the time to stop doing and to simply be. What we do know is that when the disciples returned to Jesus, he told them to,

“Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” 

And he said that because,

‘… many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.’  

And so,

‘… they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.’

We notice that Jesus told the disciples to ‘come away’ not ‘go away’. So it was an invitation to go with him. So what was Jesus doing while the disciples were out working? Perhaps he was taking some time to be alone in a desolate place where no one could find him? No doubt he spent time in prayer and some time to stop doing and to simply be. But perhaps he did that too by taking some leisure time? Perhaps Jesus was taking a holiday?

We read in the Gospels that there were a number of occasions when Jesus went off alone. We’re told that he did that at times to pray. But at other times, such as the one I’ve just spoken about, we don’t know what Jesus was doing while he was away from the disciples and the crowds, when he was away from the public eye. We know he must have met up with people in relation to his ministry, to arrange for the use of the room where he ate the Last Supper, for example. We know he spent time with friends, such as Martha, Mary and Lazarus. In other words, just because Jesus wasn’t doing something in public, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t still working. But he wasn’t always working. Jesus needed time to stop doing and to simply be, and so do we. Jesus needed a break, leisure time, a holiday, from time to time, and so do we. And by ‘we’ I mean all of us not just the clergy.

So why I have I chosen this as the theme for my sermon? No doubt some of you will have seen the recent news about the Church’s initiative to create 10,000 new churches, or worshipping communities, over the next 10 years. There does seem to be some confusion about what is actually being proposed in these plans. The Archbishop of York has spoken about creating 10,000 new worshipping communities by 2030 and, at the same time, an unofficial initiative called ‘Myriad’ is speaking about creating 10,000 lay led churches over the same time period. These are apparently, two different ideas about how to reverse the decline in Church attendance over the next decade. But whichever way you look at it, these plans must involve a lot more work for both the clergy, at a time when the Church is cutting the number of clergy, and for the laity, at a time when, and with no disrespect intended to anyone, the vast majority of the Church’s lay membership is made up of people who are of an age when they ought to be enjoying more leisure time rather than having more work and responsibility loaded on to them.

Of course, it’s envisaged that much of this will be led by the younger members of the laity. But the Church readily admits that Church attendance is falling faster in younger age groups than in any other. I think the first question must be then, where are churches with very few young people in their congregations going to find these leaders? Also, will these plans actually mean that parishes, already bereft of young people, will lose even more young people to these new communities and churches? It’s all very well for the Church to say that these new communities and churches will come from and run alongside the existing parishes, but people only have a finite amount of time to offer, and they can’t be in two places at the same time, so when are these new communities and churches going to meet for worship? And, if they’re intended to be lay led but under the oversight of the clergy, and as they are intended to be sacramental communities and churches they must be under the oversight of the clergy, how much more load will that place on the shoulders of the clergy whom, by the Church’s own admission, already have enough, and more than enough, to do?

In recent times the Church has become very concerned with clergy wellbeing. In line with that has been, if not an actual insistence, then at least a very strong recommendation that the clergy do take their full entitlement of annual leave. I do wonder though, just how the Church expects the clergy to do that whilst at the same time they’re cutting the number of clergy and asking more and more of those who are left. It seems that one way they’re looking to do this is to pass some of the load, at least, on to the laity. I wonder what they will do if and when the laity reminds the Church that they are, on the whole, volunteers who are either working and have more than enough to do already, or who have already worked a lifetime and are now retired, and they say enough is enough?

It must be said that these plans have caused a storm of criticism from both the clergy and the laity. Questions are also starting to be raised about the Church’s penny-pinching ways and about how it uses its vast fortune. Because, yet again, as is so often the case when the Church comes up with a new initiative these days, it all seems to be about money.

In the Vision and Strategy paper which is being presented to the General Synod when these proposals are debated, it’s stated that none of this will happen unless the Church finds a way of becoming financially sustainable. It also states that the financial savings these plans will create will enable more money to go to what the paper calls ‘frontline ministry’. All of which seems to contradict the Church’s insistence that these plans are not about cost-cutting.

The paper says that the vision behind these proposals is of a Church which is ‘Simpler, Humbler and Bolder’. Well, I think it’s about time the Church stopped doing business and took some time out to simply be. To take some time out so that it can remember what its vocation is. And I think the time for plain speaking has come too. And what I say to the Church’s latest proposals is, in the words of one of my favourite fictional characters, ‘Bah, humbug!’ If the Church wants to be simple, humble and bold, why doesn’t it do something really simple, humble and bold, and much more in keeping with the Gospel too? Instead of acting like Ebenezer Scrooge, instead being miserly and working its clergy and laity to death, why doesn’t it get its ample posterior off its multi billion pounds fortune and try to address its problems by spending some of that on frontline ministry?

Amen. 

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The Propers for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 6) can be viewed here.

Last Tuesday, 29^th June, was the feast day of St Peter and St Paul. Because of the date of that feast of the Church, this time of year is often referred to as Petertide, and it’s the time of the Church’s year in which ordinations to the sacred ministry usually take place. Ordinations do take place at other times too, at Michaelmas which is in late September and gets its name from the feast day of St Michael and All Angels on 29^th of that month, but most ordinations will have taken place over the past week during Petertide.

Part of the service of ordination involves those being ordained taking sacred vows and one of the things the clergy are asked to do during Holy Week, is to attend a Chrism Mass where they renew their ordination vows on an annual basis. But in addition to that, the anniversary of their ordination is a time when the clergy often like to think about their ordination vows and to perhaps reflect on how well they have, and are, keeping them.

That’s certainly something I’ve done this week and having done that, when I read this morning’s readings in preparation for this morning’s services, it brought the difficulty of keeping one ordination vow in particular, very much into focus. It’s the vow, or declaration as they’re now called, in which those being ordained are asked by the bishop, “Will you endeavour to fashion your own life and that of your household according to the way of Christ, that you may be a pattern and example to Christ’s people?” To which they answer, “By the help of God, I will.” The greatest difficulty with this vow is that, in addition to the help of God and our own endeavour, keeping it also requires the understanding and cooperation of our household and, as I’m sure we all know, our families can very often be the hardest of all people to proclaim the Gospel to because they know only too well how often we fail to fashion our own lives on the way of Christ.

The way of Christ, of course, is the way of God, and so to call people to fashion their lives on the way of Christ is a prophetic call. When we speak about prophecy today, we usually mean some kind of fortune telling or prediction of the future. But whilst the biblical prophets did make that kind of prophecy, their main role was to call a people who’d gone astray and who were neglecting God and his ways, to turn from their sins and live as God intended them to live. But, when we try to fulfil that prophetic call by urging people to turn to Christ, and it’s a calling that all Christians share, not just the ordained, we’re quite likely to be met with the response that the prophet Ezekiel was warned to expect, by God, in this morning’s first reading: it’s very likely that we won’t be listened to.

There’s no sense in Ezekiel that he wasn’t listened to because of his own previous life or behaviour. Ezekiel was a priest, albeit a priest in exile in Babylon, but a priest nonetheless and so he was probably a respected member of the Jewish community and faith. It seems that the people’s unwillingness to listen to him was rather a matter of hard-heartedness, stubbornness on their part, and a refusal to listen because they preferred their own ways to God’s ways. But if we ask members of our own family to change their ways, it’s quite likely that one of the main reasons they won’t listen to us, is because they know all about our own un-Godly ways. I certainly remember an occasion, not too long after I’d returned to Church in my late teens, when I was witness to a few members of the parish congregation taking part in some really quite nasty name calling and gossiping about other members of the congregation. When I pointed out that this wasn’t the way Christians should be carrying on, I was told very bluntly, by a member of my own family, to shut up. I was reminded that I’d only been going to Church for ‘5 minutes’ whereas they’d been going for years and so I was told that I had no right to tell them what to do. And that was followed by a litany of un-Christian things I’d done during my teenaged years when I wasn’t going to Church!

If we’re honest, we all know about the un-Christian things we’ve done in the past, and we’re all aware of the un-Christian things we incline towards in the present. Like St Paul, we might call our un-Christian inclinations our ‘thorns in the flesh’. We all have them. No doubt we all wish we didn’t because we’d be able to fashion our lives more closely on Christ if we didn’t. We might think that, if we could get rid of our thorns in the flesh and be better Christians ourselves, perhaps then people might be more inclined to listen to us when we ask them to fashion their lives more closely on Christ. But would they really? God’s warning to Ezekiel that people might not listen to him tells us that there’s no guarantee that people will listen to us, no matter how closely we fashion our lives on Christ. And the Lord’s answer to St Paul, suggests that it’s for our own good that we’re not perfect ourselves.

For one thing, it stops us from being too proud of ourselves and it also allows those who want to listen and see, to understand that the Gospel life we proclaim is from God, not from us. Our faults and failings, our thorns in the flesh, allow those who want to see and hear to understand that the Gospel life we proclaim isn’t about urging them to follow our example, but about urging them to follow the example of Christ.

And urging members of our own household to fashion their lives on Christ, in spite of any difficulty or opposition we may face from them, is in itself fashioning our lives on Christ because it’s something Jesus himself did. We read about it in this morning’s Gospel when Jesus tried to teach the people of his hometown. Rather than listening to what he had to say and taking it to heart, the people there, the people who thought they knew him so well, responded by saying what amounted to ‘Who does he think he is? He’s just a carpenter! We know him.’ In a way, that’s a similar response to the one I received when I questioned those people from my own parish and family about their name-calling and gossiping but it also reminds me of a story I was once told by a now retired priest. A good number of years ago, he’d been asked to consider becoming the vicar of the parish in which he’d grown up but, after he went to have a look round the parish, as you do when you’re asked to consider taking a parish on, he decided against it. And the reason he gave was that he didn’t think he would be able to command enough respect to be the vicar in a parish where so many people knew and remembered him but, where so many people had reminded him during his visit, they only knew and remembered him as a ‘cheeky young lad’. 

The Christian calling to proclaim the Gospel is the call to a prophetic ministry. But, as Jesus said in this morning’s Gospel,

“A prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” 

And so the most difficult people to proclaim the Gospel to, are the members of our own family, not least because they know us so well and know all about the times and the ways that we have and do fail to fashion our lives on Christ. But, whilst they may not want to listen to us, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still try to proclaim the Gospel to them. As God told Ezekiel, whether people want to listen or not, they still need to know that there are prophets amongst them. And so we need to be those prophets and proclaim the Gospel to them. Our families might well know all about our ‘thorns in the flesh’, and we might well wish they didn’t. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still try to proclaim the Gospel to them. As St Paul found, the fact that we’re not perfect ourselves can actually help us to proclaim the Gospel because our own faults and failings give us humility and allow us to point people away from our own example and towards Christ and his example. And, as it is Christ’s example we’re called to follow and on him we’re called to fashion our lives, regardless of who we are, our background and what people know about us, or think they know about us, regardless of the lack of faith we might find amongst our own household and family, we should still proclaim the Gospel to them because that is Christ’s example.

The question, ’Will you endeavour to fashion your own life and that of your household according to the way of Christ, that you may be a pattern and example to Christ’s people?’, is one that those who are about to be ordained to the sacred ministry of the Church are asked to answer in public, and in a formal way. But it’s a question which all Christians should ask, at least of themselves, because it’s something that all Christians are called to do. And it’s a question that all Christians, both ordained and lay, should answer in the same way. Regardless of the attitude of our household, our family, towards our endeavours to do it, the answer is, and always should be, “By the help of God, I will.”

Amen.

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The Propers for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

In my sermon last Sunday, I spoke about the prevailing attitudes in the Church of England and questioned whether the current secular business model, woke agenda driven road the Church seems intent of following at the present time was the road the Church ought to be on. I asked whether this road would actually solve any of the Church’s current difficulties and suggested that the Church would do far better if, instead, it had the faith to turn, or return, to Christ and the Gospel for answers to its problems. Today’s readings give further evidence, if indeed any was needed, that this is indeed exactly what the Church ought to be doing.

Our first reading is from the book of Wisdom. As I’m sure you know, in scriptural terms, wisdom has very little to do with secular knowledge and the amount of information we have, but is about knowing the right thing to do, in God’s eyes, in any situation. And what wisdom tells us, or reminds us, in our first reading this morning is that God created us in his own image, and he created us to live in health and happiness. And wisdom tells us that it’s only through the devil and his followers that death and destruction have entered the world. So, the wise person knows that they’re made in the image of God and knows that, to live that good, happy, healthy, and ultimately eternal life God intended us for, we need to live in God’s likeness. The wise person knows that, to follow the devil leads to unhappiness and death. For us, as Christians then, the path to health happiness and life lies in following Christ and not in following the world and its ways.

Another book of the Bible that’s regarded as wisdom literature is the Book of Psalms and the wisdom this morning’s Psalm gives us is that it is the Lord our God who rescues us from our enemies and raises us up. It tells us that, if we call on the Lord, he will hear us and come to our help. It also reminds us that it is to God that we should give thanks for our salvation. So, what this morning’s Psalm tells us, is that the wise person knows that, when they’re faced with problems and difficulties, they should turn to God, in faith, for answers and solutions, confident that the Lord will hear and answer them. And it tells us too, that the wise person then thanks and praises God for his grace and goodness. It tells us too, that the wise realise that they do need God’s help and that they can’t solve every problem and overcome every difficulty without it. And they are thankful, not proud and self-congratulatory.

Usually when we think about wisdom literature, we tend to think of the books of the Old Testament, but I think we’re quite justified in thinking about the New Testament as wisdom literature too. If wisdom is about knowing the right and Godly thing to do in a situation, what is Jesus’ teaching other than wisdom? And if large parts of the Gospel are concerned with wisdom, aren’t the large parts of the rest of the New Testament that urge and encourage people to follow Jesus’ teaching and example concerned with wisdom too?

And so we can see this morning’s reading from 2 Corinthians as imparting wisdom because, in encouraging the Church in Corinth to be generous, St Paul reminds them that this is only following Jesus’ own example. We know that the cause St Paul was asking the Corinthians to be generous in supporting was a collection to help the Church in Jerusalem and Judea. And St Paul explicitly identifies the generosity of Christians in this cause as a manifestation of the grace of God in their lives. The message, I think, is clear. The wise do not hoard up treasure for themselves whilst others are in need. The wise do not hoard up treasure for themselves and then pat themselves on the back for how worldly wise they are in accumulating their vast riches. And most especially, the wise do not do these things while their brothers and sisters in Christ are in desperate need of help. Rather, the wise show the grace of God in their lives by following the example of Christ and letting their own example of generosity be like his. And the wise don’t share their riches and good fortune grudgingly, but willingly, and they give thanks to God that they’ve been so blessed that they can be generous in helping those in need. 

And we see these all things come together in this morning’s Gospel. The leader of the synagogue, Jairus, turning to Jesus, in faith, to heal his dangerously ill daughter. The woman who’d suffered for so many years, a woman with so much faith that she believed the mere touch of Jesus’ clothes would be enough to cure her of an ailment that no amount of human assistance had been able to cure. And Jesus who, despite the crowds that were pressing in on him, knew that someone had touched him. Not the touch of the pressing crowds but the touch of someone who’d come to him in faith, to be healed.

I think we have to consider here the situation Jesus found himself in. Jesus was every bit as human as you or I. How easy it would have been for him to be so taken in by the attention and perhaps adulation of the crowd, that he would have become more concerned with his own importance than with the needs of a few individuals. But rather than the selfish pride that might be expected in that situation, we see the completely selfless generosity of Jesus who was more concerned with the problems of two individuals in need than with the attention he was receiving from the crowd.

What we also see contrasted in this morning’s Gospel, are the differing rewards for those who have faith, and those who don’t. The woman who came to Jesus in faith, and who fought her way through the crowds to reach him, was healed. But when Jesus arrived at Jairus’ house and told those who were there that the little girl was not dead but sleeping, he was greeted with scepticism and laughter. No doubt that scepticism and laughter would have come from people who were worldly wise enough to know a dead person when they saw one. Their reward, the reward for their worldly wisdom and lack of faith was to be turned out of the house by Jesus. But the reward for those who did have faith, and who came to Jesus in faith, was to have their prayers answered and to witness the great miracle of the little girl being raised from the dead.

In his Letter to the Romans, St Paul asks,

‘If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?’

This morning’s readings should leave us in no doubt that God is for us. We know that God sent his own Son to teach us his ways and gave him up to death for our salvation. But if we want to have everything else, all that God offers us, we have to have faith, and turn to him, in faith. And if we have that faith, the only people who can be against us are those who put more store in human wisdom than in heavenly wisdom and who have more faith in themselves and the ways of the world than in God and his ways. In particular, those who are against us are those who, as Jesus put it, say ‘Lord, Lord’ but who do not do the will of the Father. And those who are most against us are those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ and say that they act in God’s name and to his glory whilst they do the will of the world and encourage others to do the same.

This morning’s Gospel tells us though, that the reward for those who are worldly wise but have no faith and for those who laugh and scoff at the faith of others, is to be turned out of the house by Jesus himself. So with that in mind, let’s be the wise people we’re called to be and remain faithful to God and to Jesus. If we can do that, then we can rest assured that the opposition of those who are against us, is only temporary, it is for this life only. And so, as difficult as those who oppose us can make this life, let’s never forget that, as long as we are wise and have faith, God is for us, and with us, and always will be. If we can do that then we can have faith too that, when the time comes for us to enter God’s house, Jesus will not turn us out, but take us by that hand and invite us to rise up and eat with him in his heavenly home.

Amen. 

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The Propers for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.