First Sunday of Lent 2018

This sermon comes in two versions: the one that I will preach; and the extended one made available [in footnotes] for those who want to go deeper over Lent.

Genesis 9:8-17 and 1 Peter 3:18-22 and Mark 1:9-15.

The common thread that holds together our readings this morning is the question, what does it mean to be the community of the baptised? For that is what we are: those who have been baptised into Christ, and those who are preparing to undergo such baptism. And today, and throughout the Season of Lent, we are invited to be formed as precisely that community, as we reflect on the experience of Jesus immediately following his baptism. Because the forty days he spent in the wilderness are the template for the practice of Lent. [a]

Firstly, the community of the baptised are those who are being trained to discover the whole world as sacred place. Sacred (or, connected to God) space is represented by the wilderness. The wilderness is not simply land that has not been turned to agricultural use or built on by urban planners; but the wild-and-free essential nature of place, its naked-and-unashamed self. The use of the land surrounding this Minster church has changed many times, streets of houses swept away in living memory. What remains constant is the possibility of encountering the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ out there—not just in here—because it is God’s steadfast love, and not global economics or regeneration funding cycles, that undergirds Sunderland. The community of the baptised are called to live as if this was true, as those who see Sunderland deeply, and so seeing, love this city deeply. That takes story-telling the past, present, and future; as in the enduring memorials and temporary exhibitions we host. It takes symbols of covenant commitment, and regular reminding one another. At times this building may feel more like an ark for the faithful few than a rainbow of hope; but, again and again, we are driven out by the Spirit to discover the world anew. [b]

Secondly, the community of the baptised are those who are being trained to discover every moment as sacred time. Sacred time is represented by the forty days—forty days, and sometimes forty years, being a recurring motif in the Bible. We have already noted the changes to Bishopwearmouth through time. Young boys who played ballgames in the street have become old men sitting on armchairs on the same spot but now surrounded by the shopping centre. They were baptised here; they return here for their funerals. These occasions are understood as holy moments: but what of all the time between? Time has become our collective obsession and enemy: fast food, faster transport, fastest broadband; “I’d come to church more often, but I never have the time.” There is no mercy in such unforgiving time; no grace in such demanding time. In contrast, Jesus declared, “the time is fulfilled”: that is, time finds its fulfilment in beholding the sacred—and this is what allows us to name the time: now. The funny thing is that it takes time—a deliberate slowing down—to see time as it really is (yes, God can stop us in our tracks in a split-second; but rarely seems to do so in the first few seconds). The community of the baptised are called to live as if this was true, as those who move together at walking pace, at praying pace, at the pace of the very young and the very old. The best advice I have ever been given by a member of any congregation I have served was this: “Slow down, young man!” [c]

Thirdly, the community of the baptised are those who are being trained to understand themselves—and, potentially, those around them—as wild beasts and angels. Following Jesus, we don’t come to know place and time as sacred on our own, but in community. Like Jesus, we will experience resistance, the temptation to confine our understanding of sacred place and time to the Minster on Sunday morning. But God’s vision is bigger than that! Now, if you’ve ever watched anything David Attenborough has narrated, you’ll know how precarious and miraculous life is for wild beasts. We accompany one another as wild beasts by encouraging one another in our dependency on God. And angels are messengers sent from God, in response to our need, to encourage and support. We join with St Michael & All Angels in participating in such interdependence. But this is not simply about looking after our own. Jesus was neither a beast nor an angel. We both give to and receive from ‘strangers’ beyond the congregation, as we participate in reimagining the world together. One example would be the redistribution of surplus food from local shops to those who experience the locality as rough sleepers. [d]

Fourthly, then, the community of the baptised are those who are being trained to extend this discovery to, and for, others. At the end of forty days in the wilderness, Jesus brings back with him to Galilee—to ‘everyday’ place and time—the possibility of a new awareness of sacred time and sacred place: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” It is good news to discover that every place and every time is sacred, or, connected to God; that a rainbow is more than the reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets; that there is an everlasting covenant between God and the earth. It is good news to step-into such a world, and to give shape to it, to make it concrete. But that proclamation flows out of our training (or, re-training). [e]

So, how might we live-into our identity as the community of the baptised this Lent? Let’s keep this really very simple. Each Sunday in Lent, after the second morning service, we will be sharing our soup, bread and fruit lunches. You are all invited to take part. And as we eat together, tell one another where you caught a glimpse of God’s presence in the past week.

And if you don’t think you have anything to bring to that conversation, you do. Even if you don’t have a story to share, you might have questions to ask—and being asked questions helps us tell our stories better. Listening to someone else, you might even get some pointers for yourself: it could be that you glimpse God while watching the waves crash on the beach at Roker; or in the face of the kindly assistant who served you in Boots the Chemists. And if you can’t answer the question, “where have you caught a glimpse of God’s presence in the past week?” today, then over the coming week, why not take five minutes during the day, each day, wherever you might be, to sit and be still and silent, and see what happens?

So, may I invite you into a communal Lenten discipline, of grounding ourselves in place, and stilling ourselves in time, and sharing what happens with one another?

Footnotes:

[a] Immediately following-on from his baptism, Jesus is driven into the wilderness for forty days by the Holy Spirit. In Lent, we, who have been baptised into Christ—or who are preparing to undergo such baptism—follow in his footsteps into both sacred place and sacred time. The prevailing culture seeks to conform us to the view that sacred place and sacred time are firmly bounded: no-one would object to your meeting God at Sunderland Minster between 9.45 and 11.00 a.m. on Sunday mornings. But the baptised are the community who, together, are being trained to discover and populate the whole world as sacred place and sacred time. That is the exhilarating invitation the Season of Lent holds out to us.

[b] In his book Parish: An Anglican theology of place, Andrew Rumsey writes about place formation. Firstly, he notes that, being grounded in God, place exists as a reality prior to our perception of it (Rumsey calls this, being). The Nicene Creed begins, ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.’ [emphasis mine] Secondly, he notes that we come to know place through revelation, not by deduction or by human decision. The wilderness is not simply land that has not been turned to agricultural use or built on by urban planners; but the wild-and-free essential nature of place, its naked-and-unashamed self. Thirdly, we take up our part in the formation of place through cultural interpretation, through tradition, through making the local place ‘storified.’ And fourthly, Rumsey speaks of vocation, or the performance of place, the way in which place calls us to respond.

Now, I appreciate that that is all quite technical, so let me offer an example. Before ever anyone gathered here, there was a small hill overlooking the river, not far from where it emptied into the sea. By the time of the conversion of the settlement to Christianity, we think there was already a temple here to the pagan gods: it was already understood to be a sacred place, but, with a fuller revelation, it was renamed in honour of St Michael, who leads the faithful angel host in triumphing for God over the rebellious angels, powers and authorities. In addition, the dedication to St Michael & All Angels emphasises that this was considered a ‘thin place’ between heaven and earth, somewhere where the unseen is visible in the corner of the eye. Since around 930AD that revealed insight has been ‘storified’ in wood and stone and stained-glass, in spoken and sung liturgy, in the written and oral history of this place and the congregation. And a millennium on, this remains a place of prayer for the people of Sunderland, doors open, visited daily for that purpose. In fact, more people who are not members of the congregation come here through the week to pray than do the congregation. Nonetheless, there remain others who do not see, and so the being-revelation-tradition-vocation cycle is repeated many times over.

[c] The ‘maker of heaven and earth’ is, of course, the maker of time as much as of place. God created and shaped time, and it was good. Moreover, God is present to us in time: but we are unaware, until, as with place, we experience revelation. Jesus declared, ‘the time is fulfilled’: that is, time finds its fulfilment in beholding the sacred—and this is what allows us to name the time: now. The funny thing is that it takes time—a deliberate slowing down—to see time as it really is. In the footsteps of those who prepared the way before him, it is over a period of forty days that Jesus comes to experience time in this way. But more than his simply experiencing this at the time, it is in the person of Jesus that place and time are now (revealed to be) anchored in the sacred, or, connected to God. For us who still follow him today, it is through the annual discipline of Lent (tradition) that we learn to play our part in the forming of kairos time from chronos time: ‘sacred’ or ‘things-unseen’ time from ‘measurable and passing-away’ time. [In chronos time we are moving into death with every passing second, while in kairos time we are entering more fully into life.] And the fitting response, our (vocation, or) performance of time, is to repent and believe: to see time from a new perspective—as sacred—and to act differently in the light of this reality.

[d] Following on from [c], how might we act differently? As well as sacred place and sacred time, our Gospel reading speaks of the role of others within a fuzzy-edged and outward-looking baptismal community. In the face of resistance—represented by the satan, or counsel for the prosecution—we are called to be as the wild beasts and angels to one another. Unlike domesticated animals, wild beasts are totally dependent on God, living a precarious but miraculous existence; while angels are messengers sent from God to bring support. As members of the baptismal community, we are to help one another grow in our dependence on God and interdependence one with another. Again, this takes place in the context of forty days in the wilderness, in experiencing sacred place in sacred time: it is a participation in divine gift, in God-initiated covenant. This should free us from fear, and for generosity; and be expressed in ways that shape the world around us, such as the redistribution of surplus food, connecting what would be thrown away by local shops to those who experience the locality as rough sleepers.

[e] To return to Rumsey, the proclamation of good news is our vocation (the ‘performance of place’—perceived locality calls for practical response) in response to being (‘All that is, seen an unseen’—the reality of locality prior to human perception), revelation (the subjective apprehension of place—local reality ‘meets’ human perception), and tradition (the cultural interpretation of place—locale is ‘storified’).

It is quite easy to see this building as a sacred place, but what about the place beyond our boundary wall? Can we see the city of Sunderland—its roads and shops and tower-blocks and docks and beaches; its regeneration—as sacred place? What existing or newly-needed traditions will help this formation? How might ‘sacred’ pilgrim trails connect with ‘secular’ heritage pilgrim trails, for example?

It is quite easy to see Sunday morning as sacred time, but what about Monday morning, or Thursday afternoon? How might we encourage one another to meet God where we spend most of the week? Again, what existing or newly-needed traditions will help this formation? Prayer during the day? Eating meals with others?

And how might this be held out as good news?

It may be that the enduring nature of the Minster (albeit that it was rebuilt in the 1930s) makes it a more accessible sacred place than much of what surrounds, and that this makes it a focal-point and a gift in that regard. The fact that people come here throughout the day, throughout the week, may also indicate that there is a general perception of any time being sacred time, at least within the circle of culturally-recognised sacred space. It may be that, alongside expanding our openness to the sacred, we should make even more than we do of curating the sacred experiences of the people of Sunderland within our building; and strengthening connections between this space and that place beyond our wall. The immediate surrounding area is currently being regenerated, under the banner ‘the Minster Quarter’: what distinctive appreciation of space, and time spent in those spaces, might we bring? While our church congregations might feel in the cultural wilderness, I have a growing sense that our church buildings (at least, the ancient ones) are the wilderness our society craves.