Tag Archives: sermons

What if you fly?

Genesis 17:1-7,15-16     Psalm 22:24-32    Romans 4:13-25  Mark 8:31-38

It’s rare to remember the full contents of a sermon, isn’t it?  I can probably remember around 4 great sermons in my life – the one that brought me back to faith in 2001, the time I heard this hot guy preach in 2005 – that was a real blinder – so much so, I went on to marry him! And there have been a couple of others, but they are few and far between. But it just so happens one of my all-time favourites was a sermon I heard on this morning’s gospel passage while I was sat in the Los Angeles sunshine, in an outdoor church, in a parking lot, that had been turned into a garden. A Garden Church. And it was 2017.  My dear friend Revd Asher only spoke for 5 minutes, and he blew this gospel apart.

Asher is transgender and was born in a female body. He spoke about his teenage self, walking into a doctor’s surgery during his transition journey. The doctor invited that teenager to bring a few items that characterised them. In that box were photos of Mary – the name Asher was given at birth – they recalled the time she was bridesmaid, there were notes and trinkets and other things she held dear. And the doctor asked Mary if she was prepared to close that box and die, in order that Asher might live.

And Asher had a really important decision to make; Asher said, ‘I had to decide, was I prepared to give up what I believed to be life and do something really bold in order to gain what truly is life’. Asher, or Mary, was being invited to die in order to truly experience what is life. And in this morning’s gospel passage we are invited to do just that too.

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

In this invitation, I picture Jesus standing on the edge of a huge mountain, gazing over the precipice.  So here we are, Jesus says: if you want to follow me, you need to let go of all this…let go of what you believe to be life, do something really bold, and then you will truly gain what is life.

Erin Hanson, a young Australian poet, captures something similar to this in her beautiful words where she writes, ‘There is freedom waiting for you, on the breezes of the sky. And you ask, “What if I fall?” Oh, but my darling, “What if you fly?’

Every single day, we get this invitation from Jesus Christ; there is freedom waiting, and it looks a bit different than you might expect because it involves being prepared to leave everything behind, even yourself, take up your cross and follow me, Jesus says. And yes, you might fall, but oh my darling, what if you fly – yes you will lose your life, but my darling, you will gain it. You will save it.

What an invitation – to give up the ordinary for something extraordinary. What an offer – and it’s definitely an offer, not a demand. If you want to become my followers. If you want to. You get to choose.  And you can choose to say no. God won’t love you any less but oh my darling, then you might never fly. You might never gain that extraordinary life.

And what a day to be reminded of this because today we are celebrating baby June’s baptism. I once read a fabulous book about baptism where it memorably said ‘baptism is the sacrament in which we die’. That’s not something we often say, because it’s not that palatable for the parents, or their friends and family. But symbolically, in the waters of baptism we say yes to that glorious invitation from Jesus and that means saying no to doing things are own way. We are saying we will take the hand of Christ, step off from this ordinary life and believe we will fly. We are committing, each of us who are baptised, and teeny baby June today – we are committing to live our life Christ’s way, not ours – or rather, to deny ourselves and follow him. And because June is only 4 months old, her parents and Godparents will say yes to that eternal invitation on her behalf, and we will promise to help them to fulfil it, until she is able to stand before God and a Bishop and make those promises for herself.

In our invitation from Jesus, there is always something we will need to leave behind.   Asher had to leave behind Mary. He had to do something bold to lose what he had believed to be life, in order to gain what truly has turned out to be life; a life laid down in worship and service of Christ’s church as the priest of God that Asher now is.

And just as Christ invited Asher to live his own extraordinary life, so Christ is inviting us, so Christ is inviting you.

What might you need to leave behind?

What do you need to let go of so you can take hold of new life with both hands?

Today Jesus is inviting baby June to the waters of baptism and every day he is inviting us to step out, leap off, from our ordinary existence into something completely extraordinary.

What if you fall? Oh my darling, but what if you fly. Amen.

Come and See

1 Sam 3:1-10           Psalm 139:1-5,12-18     1 Cor 6:12-20          John 1:43-51

Are you the sort of person who needs to see something in the flesh before you go ahead and invest… Despite my capacity to be click-happy with internet shopping, resulting in things arriving that look nothing like they did in the picture, really I am someone who needs to see it first before I know if it is for me.  When I had to choose a college to train for ordination I visited more than half of the institutions, until I just knew where I should go.

When I was offered my curacy parish, I didn’t say yes until I had been to the town and the churches and had literally touched the stones walls. I didn’t say yes until I had stood underneath the enormous statue of Christ on the reredos and whispered ‘I would like to serve you here’ and got the sense God agreed it could work out.

And then I moved to the other side of the world, and there was no chance to ‘come and see’ at all, because, well, covid. How was I supposed to know what this place felt like if I couldn’t come and see?  How did I know if I would sense the spirit about her business if I didn’t take my shoes off and connect with the ground?

Sometimes God is just incredibly faithful and makes everything work out, without us being able to see at all. We just hear the call and we go, like Philip.  Not because we are good, but because the God who calls us is. And sometimes we really do want to come and see. Sometimes we won’t commit to something without seeing and touching and tasting and engaging all our senses. Like Nathanael.

And then there are also times when the reputation of the place goes before it; Can anything good come out of Nazareth??

Now I am not saying our reputation here goes before us. I’m not saying people would say ‘can anything good come out of Beaconsfield?’ At all. But, when I first arrived and was new to the diocese I would meet my new colleagues across the diocese and even before I got to the end of my name they would say ‘oh you’re the one from St Paul’s Beaconsfield…… how is it???’ in that deeply inquisitive, kind of way.

And I would say, even back at the beginning, and more so now…it is great. It is a great place with amazing people. And I mean it. And oftentimes I also say ‘you should come and see!’ and I kept thinking about that this week when reading this dialogue between Philip and Nathanael.

And what it made me think is you have to be pretty careful making blanket invitations like that, because people might come. They might come and like it and stay and fit in and add to our growing tapestry of family life here. And they might come and not like it and they might say mean things about the stuff we hold dear. Or they might come and really like what they see and they might stay and they might not be like us. And they might sit in your seat and their children might make a mess and a noise – or they might. And they might move in with all their worldly possessions and set up home in our favourite bit of the grounds and they might be hideously inconvenient. We might invite people to come and see and they might have ideas for improving things – which means changing how things happen around here – and we said come and see but we didn’t mention change. And yet, we still keep extending our invitation, don’t we, because we want this to be a place where everyone is welcome.

Extending an invitation – meaning it – and going with the flow with whoever the spirit blows in – is risky. Don’t mistake me – there isn’t an alternative. Its what we must do, but we can also recognise the cost of this kind of radical hospitality.

But the other thing I have been thinking about this story is, it’s all well and good inviting people to come and see, but the more important consideration is what do we want people to see when they come.

And I can think of several things I want people to see; I want them to see a warm and friendly welcome, a happy and real bunch of people who like being community together. I want them to see a place that is simply stunning, well-loved and where love seeps out of the walls and up from the ground. Those things are important, but I guess the local AA meeting or the bowls team or book club might want those too.

Of course, the thing we want people to come and see isn’t a thing at all. We want people to come and see the Christ and meet the Divine and encounter that unending grace and mercy and that deep deep unquenchable unfailing love. And they might do that through our community and our grounds and our welcome, but it is so much more than that.

When we invite people to come and see, we invite them also to take and eat and take and drink. We invite people to leave behind the things, the resentments, the darkness they’ve been dragging around with them for decades and we invite them into the freedom of confession and forgiveness. We invite them to come and see the one who is higher than themselves, greater than their biggest fear, deeper than their deepest doubts, the one who formed their inward parts; and knit them together in their mother’s womb.

And we invite them to say yes.

Our invitation is not to a place or a service, it is to an encounter with life and love and truth and goodness. It is an invitation to belong, just as they are, and not to stay that way but to be changed and moulded and remade. And it is the same invitation for us.

We already came here. We have already seen.

And yet that unconditional welcome and invitation and call continues to be extended to us too.

Jesus still says follow me. Will you come and see? Amen.