Advent Sunday - my first sermon in ten weeks!

How’s it all going to end? Are we people who are desperate to know how a story ends? 

We’ve been on Holy Island this last week and they’ve been filming a Christmas episode of Vera. You couldn’t get near the filming but I did spot her in her green coat and hat and her Range Rover from a distance. A couple we know on the island let ITV use their house for some scenes – the husband who owned the house got to play the dead body! We watch things like Vera and try and work out the ending – who did it. We invest our time in a tv series and want a good ending, and if the ending is bad or if we miss the ending we feel cheated. I sleep through a lot of television. 

 

Thank God for I player so you can run things back. Remember when you used to video programmes and set a timer and it would stop recording cutting the ending off? So annoying.

 

It seems to me as we enter Advent in 2022, we live at a time what we people are stuck, and deeply worried about how things will turn out. Many can’t see an end to their suffering. 

War once again casts its shadow over Europe in Ukraine, with many more conflicts around the globe; fuel prices are extortionate, the cost of living is rising at an alarming pace, many are struggling to choose between eating and heating; the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made it clear that there is no easy way out for this country; COP 27 has reminded us of the pressing climate crisis; migrants arrive on our shores to face an uncertain future -  and even sport  – which has the capacity to unite and develop friendships – cannot escape political challenges as we debate the wisdom of allowing Qatar to host the football World Cup. 

Life for so many is like a perpetual waiting in a busy A and E department where you are desperate to be seen and given help but no help is coming. On one of my several lovely visits to A and E, I wasn’t seen for so long I got dehydrated. By the time I got to a ward and a bed I was more ill then when I arrived in the hospital! I loved reading of someone whose father was taken into A and E this week. She wrote: “While I sat with my dad in A&E waiting room with my dad about 7 hours in he asked "do you think Rishi Sunak has done this wait" everyone in the waiting room around us laughed.” 

 

We start another Advent journey this morning. Our churches are already decorated for Christmas, and yes, Advent is a time we use to prepare for Christmas and we remember now Jesus came into a world as messy as ours over 2000 years ago. To know again God is with us in whatever we face is a comfort in our hard times. To know again the peace and joy of incarnation is good news in the middle of our rubbish. But… Advent is also about looking forward. A rather large theological tome reminds us that it is not only about the coming of God into the world in Jesus but the approaching return of the risen Lord in all his heavenly splendour. It should not just be seen as an introduction to incarnation but rather the completion of our redemption. The spirit of the season is best expressed in the cry of a sometimes desperate people: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” 

How is it going to end? Well, just as God chose to enter the world in human form long ago in the form of Jesus Christ, he will come again in Jesus Christ who Christian faith believes will be back! We don’t say the creed very much in our worship but about Jesus it says this: “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” And in the letter to the Hebrews I think we have the way to do and live Advent expectantly. “For yet a little while, and he who is coming will come and will not tarry.” But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.”

 

In these next few weeks, people will be rushing about preparing for the best Christmas possible. This year is odd for me. Coming back to work this weekend I have very little in my diary ahead.  (Unless others know different!) Which means I can concentrate on helping us focus on encountering Christ come and soon to come again, rather than a lot of meetings. We need to be ready and willing to embrace the new possibilities and encounters with a different way God has up his divine sleeve. How will it end? It will end well but we have to be ready and prepared to receive what God might be up to. 

 

Once John Wesley was asked what he would do if he knew this was his last day on earth. He replied, “At 4 o’clockI would have some tea. At 6 I would visit Mrs. Brown in the hospital. Then at 7:30 I would conduct a mid-week prayer service. At 10 I would go to bed and would wake up in glory.” Maybe we aren’t as devout or prepared as our founder! 

In the Gospel reading for Advent Sunday, Jesus says that the coming of the Son of Man will be unexpected and sudden, so we should be prepared. The passage is set in the wider context of Jesus speaking about ‘the end of the age', and the signs that the kingdom is coming once again.

The invitation is once again to live differently in light of the coming kingdom. We are called to ‘keep awake', to stay alert to the world around us as we live. The scenes Jesus paints are very domestic – everyday life continues, and yet in the midst of them the kingdom is to arrive. This suggests that it is amongst the everyday of our lives that we might catch glimpses of the kingdom to come. In communion, we sometimes talk about a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all people. We are meant to expect that God might be beginning a new story, to look for the signs and when something new is offered to us, to go for it. 

But so often we want to stick to the comfortable because we have lost confidence or we really don’t think what’s coming will happen. I promise not to tell you too many hospital stories, but on both Littondale ward where I was on stay number one, and Bolton ward where I was on stay number two, twenty one days in total — I saw all of the diversity of humanity! 

 

Nigel was opposite me on Bolton ward. Nigel had been there a long time. They asked him to assess his memory to count down from twenty to one then they asked him who the Prime Minister is. I thought this was really unfair as I think Liz Truss was still Prime Minister when he was admitted. 

Nigel was told he was nearly ready to go home. But Nigel preferred his bed. They’d get him into his chair in the morning but when they’d gone he’d get back into bed. And every morning when they tried to wash him, he would lose it and shout! I can’t share what he said! They’d come and change the bed and take the sheets off, and Nigel would get back on the bed on just a mattress. His wife would visit and they’d fight because she wanted him up. He had physio and was helped to get to the loo on a zimmer. They told him he could go home if he did that unaided. But Nigel preferred his bed and sleep. In the end they asked me to spy on him. If he went to the loo on his own there was no reason he couldn’t go home. He did it but he told them he wasn’t going anywhere. He couldn’t embrace the future ahead of him because I guess he was scared.

Maybe we are like that this Advent Sunday. Remember the way God chose to come into the world in Bethlehem long ago was surprising and radical. It took some shepherds and some foreign dignitaries to get what was happening. Most people didn’t see it. And today we are invited to see the end – as the Bible ends – in the vision of John - He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.

 

I rather like the college of preachers sermon for this Advent Sunday:

“To imagine that the kingdom is already here would be delusional. There is much around us about which to be anxious and fearful. The world is not yet as God wants it to be.

But because Jesus came and will come again, we do not give way to fear. Rather, we live in hope. Our faith does not permit us to ignore the pains of the present, nor is it overwhelmed by them. This world may be in thrall to sin and death, but it is still God’s world, loved by God. Our task as children of God is to be prophets of hope and agents of love.”

When we celebrate the liturgy of Advent we make present the ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Saviour’s first coming, we renew our ardent desire for his second coming. I therefore, not even thinking about Christmas, wish us a holy and helpful Advent. The Lord will come. That’s how it will end. We need to be ready.

A Holy Island pre Advent retreat

I am writing this blog on Holy Island. We love it here and come as often as we can. For many years now, I’ve been coming here for a pre Advent retreat time. I picked my hymns for my two Advent Sunday services this morning! 

We need time to be before busy times in life. Advent is a time to think deeply about how God is, to prepare ourselves for divine intervention, the dawn from on high breaking in on us. It is a time to remember that God promises to come, not maybe, but definitely. Next Sunday’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah chapter 2 doesn’t say “the days might be coming when I…” they are “surely coming.”

At a time of uncertainty, we need to be sure of something else all is lost. We are living at a time of deep despair: people taking hard decisions whether to eat or have heat; we all having to face paying more tax and have our energy bills rise and items in the shops becoming more expensive, the rich getting richer and the poor poorer.

 We are living at a time of war and disharmony with the situation in Ukraine not getting any easier, an uprising of ordinary people in Iran which may be quashed, a return of Netanyahu in Israel, new stirrings from Trump in America, a corrupt and anti human rights country hosting the World Cup, and people voting to keep Matt Hancock in the jungle when he shouldn’t be deemed a celebrity anyway. And tonight we’ve learnt who has bought the cottage next door to where we are!!!

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/dominic-cummings-buys-rare-holy-25389551?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target

We need a different way. It’s so easy to despair. The good news is where we are isn’t where God wants us to be. He will intervene. He can’t stop Dominic Cummings buying the house next door or people voting for Hancock or give us a general election today but he can work in us to get us to see what is right and what is not. And at the right time things will change. He is a God of justice and levelling up. In his Kingdom, there are no rich and poor, haves and have nots, those who do wrong will be accountable and those who feel no good news around them will be enfolded by the good news of a Saviour. For in Jesus God becomes one of us.

After a long journey of pain and more pain I today have texted my Superintendent to say I can return to work next Sunday. I can see now my eye has healed and I have new lenses in my glasses, my haemoglobin levels have returned to normal after my internal bleeding from ulcers and the costachondritis pain is less severe although I still can’t lift heavy cases or go round a roundabout without wincing but it’s an improvement! I’m grateful to those who have walked the last two months and a bit with me. On the bed in hospital I felt helpless and directionless. My two stays in Harrogate over 21 days weren’t easy. I’m also aware I will return next week not knowing what’s been happening in my churches - if you are reading this and are a member of one of my eight churches can I ask you to be patient with me? 

At evening prayer in St Mary’s tonight, I was struck by two phrases in the Magnificat. The mighty will be “toppled from their thrones” and God has “filled the hungry with good things.” People are in need of help - now. I know in my absence three of my churches have opened warm spaces for people to come to. This is one way we can help. But there is also spiritual need: everyone needs health and healing and peace and saving from themselves. Everyone needs that Saviour who came to the mess of the world and will come afresh into the mess of this one if we open our eyes and hearts to receive him. 

We love this place because no matter how many times we come, there is always something new and refreshing to experience. The view across to the mainland changes every day and gladdens the heart. My wife told me just a few hours after arriving here she’d noticed my spirits had lifted. That’s good. And tomorrow there’s more to discover here: they are filming Vera here so I’ll be out Vera searching… you can’t miss her hat, can you? 

Sam, the curate here shared a blog post by Jan Richardson at evening prayer tonight to remind us with God we are always on the edge of something amazing happening. I came back to our cottage and looked up some of her poems. I like this one. God works with us from where we are and beckons us to a different future. Maybe my time out of work, even being in hospital, was given me for me to lean on God a bit more… though I could have done without excruciating pain and scary bleeding ulcers, thank you God!

Go slow

if you can.
Slower.
More slowly still.
Friendly dark
or fearsome,
this is no place
to break your neck
by rushing,
by running,
by crashing into
what you cannot see.

Then again,
it is true:
different darks
have different tasks,
and if you
have arrived here unawares,
if you have come
in peril
or in pain,
this might be no place
you should dawdle.

I do not know
what these shadows
ask of you,
what they might hold
that means you good
or ill.
It is not for me
to reckon
whether you should linger
or you should leave.

But this is what
I can ask for you:

That in the darkness
there be a blessing.
That in the shadows
there be a welcome.
That in the night
you be encompassed
by the Love that knows
your name.

from Jan Richardson's blog, The Advent Door

© Jan Richardson, janrichardson.com

Remembering but not resolving…

This morning, the 11th November, at 11am, I should have been leading the village remembrance at the war memorial in Bishop Monkton. On the 11th November, at 11am, we stop to remember the armistice: the end of the war to end all wars, they thought at the time.  On Remembrance Sunday this year I was really looking forward to being in Boroughbridge, largely because it would have been my first Remembrance Sunday with serving military personnel. The base at Dishforth joins in with the service. Due to flipping costochondritis, and recovering from bleeding ulcers and a corneal abrasion both are not to be. 

I have used the story many times of the little girl who wrote in her history schoolbook “Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, and since then we have had two minutes of peace every year.” 

I think it’s in Nehemiah in the Old Testament there is a cry we can all cry: “they cry “peace peace, where there is no peace.” We remember the fallen of two horrific world wars this weekend, but we also remember that war and disharmony are contemporary problems.

This Remembrance weekend we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War. I was born in 1967 and was 15 when Margaret Thatcher sent the task force to the Falkland Islands as Argentina suddenly claimed sovereignty over them. For the first time in my life, war was real and it was scary. We remember this year how many casualties of that war there were on both sides. 

War heightens emotions. Remember the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, who in a service after the war and after Thatcher had been jingoistic, dared to pray for the Argentinian fallen, getting into all sorts of trouble: War isn’t easy.

In a social media age, war can be in our faces. The Ukraine and Russia conflict has been going on since last March. Maybe we have stopped reacting to it. We used to hang Ukrainian flags on our churches and hold prayer meetings. Many Ukrainian families are still in this country, refugees from war. We have some in Boroughbridge who use our food larder at church each week. Will they ever be able to return home? 

What do we pray today and on Sunday? We cannot solve Ukraine and the other places in the world where there is conflict, but we can do our best to work for reconciliation where we are not at peace with others around us. It seems to me military contexts aside, we just aren’t at peace…

Take government for example… Sir (really?) Gavin Williamson resigning before he is pushed  because of vile bullying. Then a Home Secretary overseeing chaos with refugees fleeing terror arriving on the shores of this country by boat forced to live in inhumane conditions only known about when a child throws a bottle over a fence to let us know what is happening, and she calls frightened people an invasion.

Then there’s Matt Hancock. Matt Hancock, the former Secretary of State for health who did the majority of the 5pm bulletins at the height of the Covid pandemic who made some devastatingly wrong decisions, and now he’s there on ITV’s most successful programme, and it just isn’t right. 

How come we are so disunited? Not just war and peace, but a lack of respect for those different to us who we find a threat. I hope Hancock gets to do some horrible trials and eat kangaroo penis, but really, he is a symbol of what is wrong with us at the moment. 

Think about:

The mess in Northern Ireland and the DUP blocking elections for a new executive.

 A Rishi Sunak government which he says will be full of integrity and compassion, yet hasn’t shown much of either yet. Can’t we have Liz back!?

A world worried about climate change as COP 27 meets in Egypt.

A church which cannot stop upsetting people became it cannot stop discriminating against those who are different, or finding out a piece of gossip and spreading it. 

What do we pray for as we gather at war memorials this weekend?

May I suggest not just Ukraine or our troops, like Dishforth near us, but for us to better at relationships where we are. We cannot solve all the world’s problems but we can make a difference where we are.

The Archbishop of York has shared these words this Remembrance season:

“ On the cross Jesus confronts the hate and anger, disease and divisions of the world. And he does it with love. He receives the worst the world can give. And he goes on loving.  He lays down his life for his friends. He asks us to do the same. The God of Jesus Christ is a barrier breaker, tombstone roller, barricade buster God. Sins forgiven. Those who are separated are brought together. Enemies even become friends.”

I reckon that’s my prayer this Remembrance tide… 

Can we just treat people as human beings again?

Some regular readers may have wondered why I’ve been missing from Facebook and there have been no blog posts or sermons on line for the last few weeks. 

I left hospital in Harrogate on 28 September after 9 days following ulcers and internal bleeding caused by me being given medication my body couldn’t take for the costochondritis diagnosed earlier that month. That morning I woke up with a red and sore eye which they thought might have been caused by me hitting myself in my sleep in the night. 

I came home and took a funeral the next day. My eye was still red and even sorer than the day before. At the graveside, I realised I couldn’t read my service book clearly. It’s a good job I know the committal liturgy by heart! At the thanksgiving in the church as I preached, I had to move my i pad to the left of me as the sight out of my right eye was very blurry. I knew taking that funeral and being back amongst people would wear me out. But I wasn’t expecting what came next! 

The next day my eye wouldn’t open. I went to the GP and she referred me that afternoon to the eye clinic back at Harrogate hospital. They told me I had a corneal abrasion in my eye and told me not to read or write or watch television - hence why I haven’t been on social media. That weekend my eye hurt like crazy I was sent by 111 to the emergency eye doctor in York who cleaned it. Three appointments later in Harrogate, my eye has now healed, the cornea though has changed shape so I won’t see properly to read or drive safely until I get new glasses which will take time. 

The other problem I discovered the weekend after I left hospital was I was more weak than just being exhausted from leading a large funeral. Back to the GP we went to be told I was extremely anaemic and why did the hospital not put me on iron tablets? The doctor declared me unfit for work… my haemoglobin levels had dropped in hospital losing a lot of blood but not enough blood to be given any in there. 

The levels went back to where they should be and things were beginning to improve until on Sunday 23 October I was overwhelmed with pain in my abdomen and stabbing pain in my ribs. Reluctantly we called 111 and I ended up in another ambulance and back into hospital for another 12 long days… 

Over the last 12 days they’ve given me various drugs to try and get to the pain. We discovered the root of it was at the bottom of my right rib which when prodded really hurt. The pain spread from there. Every day the doctors came and asked me if their latest drug or gel had worked. The answer was always no. 

This morning, being woken at 6am, the nurse on duty told me it was discharge day. I told him whilst the stabbings round my body had gone, the pain I came in with was no better. The team swept in at 9 and despite me telling them the same, they told me they were sorry, it was “tricky” and to “put a water bottle on it.” A few minutes later, the sister came in and told me I was to go to the discharge centre now. A few minutes later I was put in a chair and dumped with others who had also been told to go home with speed! So here I sit, still in agony, glad to go home, but incredulous that I haven’t been heard and that I’ve spent 12 long, boring, unnecessary days to be told “put a hot water bottle on it!” (Readers - I put a hot water bottle on it last night and it did nothing…) 

I’ve only ever been in hospital overnight for minor 

things before so 21 days of this over two stays has been an education! I think I sit here watching wheelchair rugby league with a diverse mixture of dumped humanity reflecting on dignity… 

First dignity of those who care for others. I have nothing but respect for those who work as nurses and carers on wards like I’ve been on. They work extremely long hours and clearly despite many issues still see their work as a vocation. I sat this morning thinking how these people do this day after day, with some patients being nice but others being horrible. 

My ward this second time was short staffed, especially at the weekend. But I will remember lots of kindnesses: Grace, a student nurse from Leeds learning on the job; Louise, a care worker who took time every day to listen to me; Charlie, a newly qualified nurse who had just moved to Harrogate who treated us all as people with a story and took time to sort my medication out. It took five days for all my pills to be put on the system, and I was told I needed an ultrasound, which took someone four days to sort. The man opposite me kept badgering them “when’s my scan, when’s my scan?” and they mostly kept patient! Then I would mention Darren, the lead chaplain at the hospital who gave me communion last Sunday on a day I really struggled not being at work as my chapel at Kirkby Malzeard was closing. The chaplaincy team as in every hospital, do an amazing job. 

We need to remember at the moment all those working in the NHS. It’s easy to criticise. I might be critical of the doctor’s care I’ve received (“put a hot water bottle on it”) but not at all about those on the ground. We clapped the NHS during the pandemic at its beginning. Now we need to push our government to properly fund it. I fear in the coming recession there may be cuts to the health budget which would be criminal. 

Then I think I reflect on a lack of dignity and respect for people generally. I will get over being discharged without solution to my pain and the speed of getting out of here, but there are people today we fail to treat as humans. While I’ve been in hospital, we’ve seen the situation with migrants fleeing danger arriving on the south coast and despicable scenes of overcrowding in a detention centre at Manston in Kent and messages in a bottle thrown over a fence to alert the wider world what is happening. 

We’ve heard stories of people dumped in London on the streets, and I’ve just read of Ukrainians and homeless people being housed in a hotel in Northallerton being told they must go so migrants can be put up in it to ease the chaos in Kent. We have a Home Secretary who calls it an “invasion” despite a new Prime Minister who promised compassion in this administration.

 Mind you, there are those who agree with Ms Braverman. I found some clips on the right wing GB News of last night’s Nigel Farage programme which came from Stoke on Trent opposite a hotel like the one in Northallerton alleged to be housing migrants. Some of the views made me shudder! Even a government minister this morning said migrants have a cheek moaning about conditions in the detention centre. Sometimes I despair about this country. 

Then there’s America! The mid term elections are a real worry. If the far right bit of the Republican Party do well, it’s clear we will be heading for a second Trump go at the Presidency. 

Then there’s Russia. How do you stop a man like Putin? 

And then there’s Israel? The rise again of Benjamin Netanyahu and and a coalition with the religious Zionists is deeply worrying…

Why can’t we treat people as humans? Why don’t we listen to stories honestly told? Why can’t we show some care when that care is desperately needed? There are people today, like I am up a dead end medically, who feel helpless and lost and at the hands of others who make them feel even more helpless and lost, even if that wasn’t their intention. I’m sure the doctor this morning who said sorry to me is very nice, but I needed her to listen but she had run out of ideas. 

I think it was Tutu in South Africa who used the word “ubuntu” - a Zulu word meaning a common bond between humanity - literally, “I am because you are.” We need each other, one person’s actions affect everyone else. I’ve seen a huge turnaround in people in the beds around me over the last twelve days. Mostly we have formed community, chatted and laughed but you know one man’s snoring and grunting in the night makes every man not sleep! 

Likewise, government policy affects everyone for good or ill, and labelling people as invaders or unwanted or getting rid of them from our space makes us lesser as a community. How many people do we want to send to Rwanda if we are truthful? We aren’t good at genuine dignity and community that listens to everyone and gives them room to be as they were created to be. We are all made in the image of God. None of us are worth less than our neighbour. 

I’m feeling exhausted and cross as I leave this hospital because I’m still in pain. I need someone to hear me. I just feel at the moment people are okay with others not being heard or treated properly. Remember those words of Paul to the fractured church in Corinth: “when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer.” 

Embracing Father,

You grace each of us with equal measure in your love.
Let us learn to love our neighbours more deeply,
so that we can create peaceful and just communities.
Inspire us to use our creative energies to build the structures we need to overcome the obstacles
of intolerance and indifference.
May Jesus provide us the example needed
and send the Spirit to warm our hearts for the journey. Amen.

(Prayer from the Roman Catholic Church in the USA)

A sermon: “Questions and Answers”

Steve Turner was a Christian poet popular in the 1980’s. In one of his books he has this poem:

“Do you need to go to the toilet when you are dead? Does God grow old? Life is full of unanswered questions when you are five years old and late for school.”

 

Life is full of unanswered questions, and difficult ones we want an answer to. I’ve been bombarded with questions while I’ve been in hospital…

Can I take your blood pressure?

What is your name and date of birth? (Asked before any pill is given you.)

Have you had your bowels open? 

And my favourite – would you like a bottle for the night? 

 

They were asking the man opposite me  some questions the other day to test his memory. The questions were:

Do you know where you are?

Where do you live?

Can you count backwards from twenty to one?

Who is the Prime Minister?

I thought asking him that was a bit unfair as there was a different Prime Minister from when he came into hospital! 

 

The Episcopal Church in America has this sentence as part of its raison d’être: “We don’t have all the answers and we welcome others who love the questions.” There are hard questions and then there are questioners who just want to trip you up. 

When I was minister in West Sussex, I did a lot of Bible studies and discussion groups and I had a man called John who didn’t believe Jesus was anything other than a good man. He would come to every gathering to try and tie me up in knots. He saw it as sport and fun! His wife would shout at him “oh John, stop it!” After five years of this when I was about to leave that church, I told him he wanted to believe more and he was searching really otherwise he wouldn’t have kept coming. Ministers after me told me he did the same to them! 

Luke Chapter 20 opens with Jesus in the Temple. It is the start of the final week of his earthly life and takes place after his ‘cleansing’ of the Temple from the misuse it had fallen into. 

Loved by his crowd of listeners, Jesus has also made many enemies amongst the various religious leaders, and in this chapter, each group attempts to question his authority, to catch him out or trick him into a falsehood or blasphemy which will give them the opportunity to arrest him. Jesus answers them all faithfully.

 

When the Sadducees, a sect that didn’t believe in resurrection, made their challenge, it was in the form of a hypothetical situation fantastical, almost ridiculous. Yet Jesus doesn’t dismiss them, and listens to their question with patience, without laughing, and answers seriously. Evidence of the truth of resurrection will not be found in a reproduction of the structures and confines of earthly society, but in the Sadducees’ own Jewish history, where God is the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are alive with Him as demonstrated to Moses in the burning bush. 

To question this would be to deny their own beliefs; the Sadducees are silenced, and even the scribes admit “Teacher you have answered well.”

 

To hear that marriage as we understand it is not recognised in heaven, where each individual is a child of God and like the angels, may be a disappointment to many people, whether Christian or not, who fondly imagine loved ones reunited after death. 

After the death of our late Queen, there were some lovely cartoons of her and Prince Philip together; in one cartoon Her Majesty is walking hand in hand with Paddington Bear, and the speech bubble says “Paddington, I have worked hard and I’m very tired, please let me go to be with my husband.” It is a consoling picture, and let us hope that they are reunited, even if not in marriage, nor as monarch and consort, but as angels and children of our heavenly Father.

 

Let us hope that all people who have died in faith have risen again in that place where “there is one equal light, one equal music” as John Donne wrote in his prayer:

 

“Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity: in the habitations of thy majesty and glory, world without end. Amen.”

 

There is a lot we don’t know, but as Christians there are things that we do know. How confident would you be if you had a John or a Sadducee challenge you? Would you be able to give an answer or would you freeze? We know despite much uncertainty, of new life, a heaven, victory over death, that how it is today is not how it will always be. We need some hope. 

Collins Dictionary this week shared it’s new words of the year. One was “permacrisis” – did you know we are living in a state of permacrisis? Permacrisis: a term that describes ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’.

 

We don’t have all the answers about what is to come,but we know it is true. Job even knew it in the midst of undeserved and unbelievable suffering: “For I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.”

While Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees’ question silenced his critics, it still leaves all of us mystified as to what form that kingdom of God will take. Will it be the ‘heavenly city’ of the Book of Revelation, or will we be made to ‘lie down in green pastures’ as in Psalm 23? Will there indeed be a heavenly banquet? Or are all these things just an extension of what we have wished for in our earthly lives, and the reality something yet more wonderful? I remember a vicar coming to our youth group to talk on “what is heaven like?” He stood up and said “I don’t know, I’ve not got there yet.” 

 

Life is full of unanswered questions. That’s okay. 

But we do need to be more certain in what we do know in our hearts, as it said on the front wall of the chapel at Kirkby Malzeard, “great is our God, Jesus Christ is Lord.”

 

Part of my trouble in recent weeks has been a corneal abrasion on my right eye, got in my first stay of my two in hospital.  

That has meant I haven’t been able to read very clearly. While off sick, I’ve attended some Evensongs in the cathedral. I have found I know the words of the creed by heart. These words are, in the midst of all the questioners and doubts we face, what we treasure and what we proclaim as the Church:

 

“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. 
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. 
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. 
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. 
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.”

That’s the right answer!