Sermon for Midnight Mass 2010

Sermon Preached by The Team Rector, Fr Gary Waddington

Mirror, Mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all?

A Mirror, if pantomimes are to be believed, is a very dangerous thing. Most of us, I'd guess, have a love hate relationship with them: there are days when our reflection looks good but there are those days when what we see doesn't always meet with our approval. A few more wrinkles or spots, that appearance of grey hair, that droopy bit that happens underneath the chin. But enough of what I discovered this morning!

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Some might prefer not to look into a mirror, contenting themselves with their own imagining of how they are, of how they might like to be, of how they hope they are perceived. Yes, mirrors are dangerous things, for as the wicked queen in Snow White found, they can tell us, without fear of favour, the reality of how and who we are.

That reality of how we are is reflected not only in the mirrors that hang on our walls, but also in the mirrors that are our friends, families and relationships, the mirrors of our encounters with others, and in the mirror of our culture. Each of these shows us something of who we are if, and it's a big if, we are prepared to look at the reality of them without the distortion, the spin, these imperfect mirrors bring. Are we prepared to look and ask what is true in what we find reflected back at us?

Mirror, Mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all?

The most dangerous of these mirrors that we can encounter is Christ. The one who shows us who it is that God has called us each to be. The one who shows us who God is. For Jesus Christ in his appearance in the flesh reveals to us with utter clarity the reality of God and human life. He reveals to us the life to which God has called us: as it is, not simply how we might like it or want it to be. He reveals to us our vocation as human beings. He shows us the way to his Father, he shows us the life of and with the Father, as he is, not how we might want God to be, but as God is. He is the one who reflects his light into the darkest of places, all too often of our making.

In a celebrity obsessed world, where fake facades and altered airbrushed images seem more appealing, alluring and attractive than the reality of life, Christ comes to rouse us out of sleep: to face us with the consequence of human life in a manger and on the cross. Yet all too often we pull away from that mirror of reality, preferring only to see a saccharine stable or a Cruelty-free cross. All too often we prefer that false world where we become obsessed with our own imperfections, and fail to see the intrinsic goodness of who we are as those whom God has created and loved.

In doing so, we run the risk that we become saddened and wall ourselves away. We fail to love and be loved and live instead only with our own pain and sadness. Yet the Christ child calls us out and onwards. He reminds us how much we are loved and see that reflected in the network of family, friends and all whom we love, who extend that love and friendship without reserve or limit to us. He asks us, how will we respond?

Mirror, Mirror on the wall I see a baby in the stall.

We are called to be those who live out lives that Christ has shown us. Are we prepared to look into that mirror which is the Christ child and see the salvation which is real and reject the slavery of superficial relativism that the world serves up? Do we have the courage to raise our sights beyond the mediocre and mundane, to search for another country yet to come? Can we reject the sins of colluding with the cursory and shallow and embrace a Christ whose life is profoundly counter-cultural, radically different, based in love and truth?

Here in this holy place, God calls us who are all unworthy in our sins and prejudices to approach the very gate of heaven to the Saviour who is the very medicine of heaven for our souls. This is an extraordinary, overwhelming encounter with the reality that we are called to: we come as sinners to receive our Saviour. This is a radical invitation from a loving God who shares his life with robbers and racists, with prostitutes, and adulterers, with all who see their lives as broken, and most amazingly of all with you and with me.

In him we find something of who we really are, with all our frailties and failings. In him we find that we are loved, that we are not alone, that we need not be afraid, if we are brave enough to open ourselves up to accept the invitation he gives us in himself and through those he gives us. For here, on this night, we are called to see ourselves not as actors in a pantomime, but as the real, vibrant and joyful human beings God has created us to be.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, I saw the baby in the stall
I see one called 'God made Man', May he show me who 'I am'.
Amen.

ADVENT SUNDAY 2010

Sermon Preached by The Team Rector, Fr Gary Waddington

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It would have been very tempting, in this weather, to have stayed at home. When the alarm clock went of this morning, I, like some of you ventured a foot out of bed into (despite central heating) frigid neo-arctic air and quickly shot my foot back under the duvet. It was warm, and comfortable, it seemed so much nicer. That place, that feeling somewhere between the realms of sleep and wakefulness is always, at least for me, a tremendously happy place. Distant dreams wash around, and the harsher realities of life's existence haven't yet impinged fully upon ones consciousness.

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With the advent of the walkabout phone, the mobile, and wifi, there are times I have planned in my head, how to run the parish from my bed. I could accomplish much from there (just as Churchill ran half of World War two from his bed, whilst, unlike me, sipping champagne of a morning). Now there are problems with this personal idyll. Firstly, I realise that for anyone who rings early, or receives and email, this will now cause a mental image which, might be a little unsettling. Secondly, Mass would be difficult. Though in our more flippant moments, the clergy have all mused over whether we could just do one job lot of the Blessed Sacrament, and leave you the key....

All of us understand that transitional moment, when we must rouse ourselves out of sleep. St Paul reminds us of this in the second reading today. Now is the time to wake from sleep, we must put on the Lord Jesus and make no provision for the flesh (which is just as well).

Of course, whilst all the readings today make allusion to this sense of movement, they are not necessarily literal commands to get up. This is not the voice of God, yelling up the stairs, that its time to get up.

Rather, there is a much subtler sense being used: we must be ready for Christ at whatever hour he comes. We must rouse ourselves from that state in which too often we exist. We must extricate ourselves from the cosiness of the world and life we find comfortable and consoling and step out. We need, in every sense, to be alert, prepared, ready for action.

The Advent call, the clarion call to be ready for the coming of the Lord, that we celebrate today, and throughout the next 23 days, is, a challenging, and sometimes disturbing call. It asks us if we are ready for the coming of the Lord. Are we ready, in every way?

That means, and here is where the challenge and disturbance lies, that the Advent call to repentance and self denial inexorably calls us to self examination. Who am I in the face of God? Who am I as the person God has created? Am I becoming what God calls me to be, or am I only half awake, not fully alive to all that God asks of me?

Now this is more than some self-doubting exercise or methodology for existential angst. Advent asks us if we have fully engaged heart and mind in our watching and waiting for Jesus. For God doesn't just want out hearts he wants our minds as well.

For, after all, God has, in a fundamental sense, created us all as sentient, intelligent beings. In our life of faith, we cannot simply try to live comfortable cosy faith, a sort of comatose Christianity. God has called us to reflect deeply on the faith that has come to us from the Apostles, Patriarchs and Prophets. We cannot simply switch our brains off when we come to church, and hope to cocoon ourselves under the duvet of a docile, 'dumbed-down' doctrine.

It is one of the joys of this place. St Wilfrid's has a reputation as a place where the quality of what we do in our worship causes people to think. It is a place of challenge as well as prayerful support. Engagement with critical thinking about our faith has been one of the hallmarks of Anglicanism and the life of the Church of England. That sense of intellectual rigour and scholarship is important. This is especially true, I would suggest in a world in which all too often we seek easy answers to complicated questions.

Now, I am fully aware of the pitfalls that come with this. We live in an age in which we talk of inclusion and accessibility. These are important concepts, not to be easily derided. Yet too often they become excuses for an unthinking, uncritical, unintelligent Christianity for those who might prefer a passive passenger pilgrimage. (And if you think that there aren't today many places where all one gets is that sort of presentation of the faith, then with the greatest of respect, you need to get out more). That call to be ready, to think, to engage, to be roused, to reflect is not exclusive, elitist or erroneous. If God does want our hearts and minds, if he calls us out of a slumbering spirituality then we need to hear that call, that alarm bell of the Gospel and get out of the bed of banal belief.

Intelligent Christianity, for intelligent people. Isn't the reality that this is what God does asks of all of us? We each have intelligence (God created us with a capacity for thought and understanding) and he calls us to an intelligent engagement with the faith (that he shows us time and again in the Gospels). Though I'll happily admit that perhaps, like all sound-bite slogans, it is a bit vacuous, and clearly open to all sorts of interpretations and sometimes all sorts of self-conscious projections about who we think we are....

Yet, isn't it funny, that of all the things in the world to cause a reaction, well, many many reactions from many many people that I've heard of, a simple slogan seems to have got people debating, questioning, arguing, thinking.

Whatever we might think (and I'm reminded of another slogan, 'are you thinking what I'm thinking and who knows if your are!), but whatever we might think of that tag line, God calls us to rouse from sleep and engage our brains and use that intelligence he has given us to grapple intelligently with the faith and so with the world. May this place indeed be where that is positively encouraged. May we continually re-ignite our process of growth, of watchfulness, of faith. For however intelligent we think we may, or may not be, God wants us to think and it seems at the moment, at least in some part, that we're actually doing what God asks of us. Now, aren't you glad you got out of bed this Advent Sunday? Happy new year. Amen.

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

All Souls Day

Sermon Preached by the Team Rector, Fr Gary Waddington

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Reading obituaries and funeral notices can be a sobering pastime. From the long winded descriptions of someone's life and work, to the quirky or pithy, they can often tell us more about our reactions to death, than they tell us about the one who has died.

How do we perceived the lives of those we have known and loved? In death, have we dealt with the honest reality of who they were, or have we sought to paint them as perfect people in a way which ultimately denies who they were, even if we believe that somehow brings us comfort?

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To read some of those notices, one is often struck how there is often a visceral shift from the reality of life and death to a sometimes sentimental, superficial or squishy view. She's gone to be an angel in heaven. Which is a pity. Angels aren't human. So has she stopped being human? Was she not really human in the first place?

The yearning of human beings facing the reality of the death of a loved one is to seek the assurance that they are safe. In the innermost depth of our being, there is a real, if often unarticulated sense that death is not the end. Yet in an age, which many commentators would like to suggest to us, is 'post-Christian' what is that which lies beyond this transitory life?

So a Christian apologetic for death is today all too often replaced by a pan-theistic neo-pagan origenistic universalism. Good or bad, we're all going to heaven so that's ok then. Yet that ends up rendering the life of the deceased as pointless and it certainly fails to deal with so much unfinished business for the grieving. The things we wished we'd said or done, the things we wished we hadn't said or done.

To read those notices, to visit the memorials, graveside shrines, or even today online living memorials, one is left with the uneasy feeling that confidence and security in leaving the departed in the hands of God is as difficult today as ever it might have been. Indeed in some ways, perhaps that 'letting go' is now harder, more complicated and more confused than ever before in an age in which we have sanitised death as a unfortunate and horrid, painful intrusion in lives where security and comfort are often in short supply.

We reach for easy answers, and simple signs to assuage our own doubts and insecurities. For what does Jesus discourse mean that we heard with his disciples in tonight's gospel, if we have no grasp on the depth of the promise that he makes? If his words are true, then are we not reminded that faith, the living of the Christian life here (as preparation for the life in heaven) and our own life of prayer, worship, study, sacrifice and service do matter? Do they not remind us that following Jesus in a real, deep, and convincing fashion is important: too important to leave to the last minute "He didn't go to church, but we wanted a Vicar to do the funeral..." as what? A religious insurance policy, just in case?

My own father, when he knew he was dying, sat with me and my siblings to plan his funeral and all the hoopla that goes with such an event. There was the inevitable question about what to put in the paper. There ensued a conversation which, at least to me, bordered on the surreal. However, my father's dry full on Yorkshire no nonsense approach finally emerged when he declared: 'I don't know what all the bloody fuss is about. After all, I won't be reading it. I'll be dead.'

Well, there's a bold truth. Yes my father had located rightly the absolute disruption and dislocation of death. That is what we find hard. The other cannot see, speak to, touch or hold us. We find that our relationship is not just disrupted, we feel that the other has been torn, ripped from us. it's so unfair we often cry. Death is indeed hard. No wonder we have so many euphemisms. I've always, when visiting the bereaved made the point that we lost granny does rather sound like she got left in the bread aisle of the supermarket, and with a bit of luck, if we look hard enough, we'll be able to find her again (after all, she's probably going to come through the door at any moment and ask us if we want a cup of tea...).

In death, the Christian faith proclaims that we, the soul, begins a journey to be, as I described on Sunday, a saint. We travel into the nearer presence of God to be made perfect. For again, we must each be clear that none of us is perfect in this life. You and I are each sinners who need to seek the forgiveness of God, so that we might enter into the fullness of his presence in heaven and take the place at the table he has prepared for us since the moment of our baptism.

In that journey, we who are left, pray for those who have died. In doing so, we do the last thing that we can for those we have loved. For that prayer is more active with God than any newspaper notice, or funeral wreath, or teddy sat by a gravestone. To pray for those who have died is to ask God in his infinite mercy to bring those who have died to be forgiven, to bring them to heaven.

Now, periods of the life of the Church have often caused great difficulty for understanding this journey. For some particularly in the middle ages there seemed to be a dichotomy in death: we either vaulted straight to heaven (because that was predestined) or languished in the circles of hell (because we were such miserable sinners). I'm not sure that either view is quite right (and here I do need to say that there are still two possible destinations we all might go to when we die.). So how should we view today, and that which we do tonight?

Whenever I travel on holiday there is always something forgotten. So either I must go back and put it right, or do something different at my destination in order to put it right. I think all of us have that experience, at least at some point. So our reaching the state we seek (of rest) takes a little time to achieve. It isn't instantaneous. So it is, the Church proclaims for the journey of those for whom we pray tonight. We cannot be catapulted straight to heaven (save if we are innocent in this life a category saved only for younger children who die). We have to wait for our state of rest. We have to contemplate our life. We need to get our story straight, to match that which God knows (for he knows the innermost secrets of our hearts).

To use another example, the state of being dead first involves us in something that resembles a trip to the doctors. We hope that we might get in. There is a period of waiting which often is longer than we might hope, while we reflect on our state and purpose and marshal what we want to say... even if more pressing or deserving cases seem to leap ahead of us, until the door opens and our name is called.

Our task of prayer tonight is, then, to pray for those who wait to be called. We do so not to primarily help ourselves (though in many cases our prayer does help us). We do so to bring comfort and strength to those who though they cannot hear our prayers, wait to meet the one who does hear or prayers. We pray not to change the mind of God about the ultimate destiny of those who have died, but to ask his gentle mercy on their souls.

For we here write not a squishy obituary of those who have died. We pray for them honestly as the people we knew, that they may be perfected in heaven. We write not a sentimental soliloquy for the departed, but ask for grace to confront the reality of death, and so see who we are, at this point in time, no matter how difficult that might be. We come not to simply mourn the dead, rather we come in joyful expectation of the resurrection to eternal life.

For Jesus is the way the truth and the life. He has shown us the way to the Father. May we tread that path with courage and hope. May we show others that way by our lives, our prayers, and our example. May we, with those for whom we pray tonight, in the words of John Donne, come 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 God's glory and dominion, world without end. Amen.

All Saints Sunday

Sermon Preached by the Team Rector, Fr Gary Waddington

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Reading job descriptions is often huge fun. Some are straightforward. Others are written in a sort of modern psychobabble management speak which makes it far from clear what on earth the post holder is actually going to be required to do. Clergy job descriptions fall into these same categories. (and before the churchwardens worry, I haven't been reading any lately...).

What though would we write, if we were putting together the job description for Christians? What would we want to say? What would be the key features?

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I want to suggest to you this morning that there really needs be very little to it, at least at face value: "You are called to be saints"

Now of course, we all know that such a brief description wouldn't really do. It would prompt the supplementary question, 'what is a saint, and what do they do?' But again, the response to that is relatively simple too. A saint is nothing more than a human being who has been made perfect in the presence of God in heaven. That's all that a saint is. One who, in the presence of God in heaven has been made perfect.

Yet that perhaps should make us stop and think.

It would be very easy for us to fall into a trap of thinking that we are called therefore to heroic lives, to be martyrs, to perform extraordinary feats or miracles. We might easily begin to think of the lives of great saints, and end up feeling that our halo is a little more than tarnished.

Yet this Solemnity of All Saints should give us hope. For today, the Church celebrates not those famous saints accorded a day in the Church's calendar. Rather this feast is about all the other saints. The minor ones, the forgotten ones, the ones who never feature in the ladybird book of saints, with its myopic rosy view of sanctity.

The reality of many of these not lesser saints, but perhaps, simply less well known saints, is that their lives were often much less interesting and ordinary. Some were just downright strange. Some history would never have recorded except for one singular act or event. Most are forgotten, except on this day when the Church gathers them together to remember them in one go.

Of all those whom the Church has canonised throughout the ages, we remember day by day a tiny fraction. This day is about the others. The majority: a rag tag collection of the ordinary, the mad, the bad and the sometimes sad.

Take for example my favourite, St Christian the astonishing who lived in Belgium in the 12th Century. When she was 21 (22 according to some sources), she is said to have suffered a massive seizure. According to the story, her condition was so severe that witnesses assumed she had died. A funeral was held, but during the service, she "arose full of vigor, stupefying with amazement the whole city of St Trond, which had witnessed this wonder." She levitated up to the rafters, later explaining that she could not bear the smell of the sinful people there.

Well. Now that probably doesn't fit the pattern of what we think saints are like. She lived a fairly weird life (with a particular penchant for throwing herself on fires) until she died of natural causes aged 74.

Even those others, the great saints we remember, were not perfect in this life... S Augustine led his mother Monica a merry dance for the first 36 years of his life (even once locking her into the attic for a week). So the list goes on...

Yet we are called to be saints. Not stiff set plaster saints. We are called to be living saints, at times all too well aware of our own limitations and imperfections, until that time when we are made perfect in the sight of God.

For whilst we could decide to wait and hope God will perfect us in death, he has written a job description for us, revealed in the person of his Son. This vocation, is revealed to us in our baptism.

We are to be Prayerful (worship, prayer, study). We are to be formed into the likeness of Christ by meeting him in the sacraments and our private prayer, and we deepen our relationship with God in and through our study.

We are to be Sacrificial (giving, time, talents) So that we imitate Christ's sacrifice, give in such a way that allows ourselves and others to grow in faith and ultimately, so that we look beyond ourselves. We are to be Joyful (radiant as Christ's own, sharing the God news, living outwardly seeking the good in others even in those times when we find the other irritating, or when they trample on what we night see as good or proper.)

That job description, that pattern of vocation is what we have heard in today's Gospel. In the beatitudes we hear what we are called to be.

We are called to be saints. Not plaster saints, but living saints. God has written the description not of a job, but of our lives. May we be faithful in walking that path which he has set before us, so that we might be prepared here to be made perfect in his sight in heaven.

Stewardship Campaign Launch, Sunday 3rd October 2010

Sermon Preached by the Team Rector, Fr Gary Waddington

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I wanted to talk to you this morning about sex. Well, actually I don't. But if there is one subject to talk about in Church that seems to cause even more gratuitous shuffling, discomfort and horror, its money. And that is what I'm going to talk about. Over the years, I've had people tell me this is all the Church talks about. I've heard people say the Church of England is rich and shouldn't need to ask for money. I've had people tell me that 'we should never talk about money in Church, it's distasteful' or that 'talking about money isn't Christian.' So I need to say very clearly this morning that I believe that all of those statements are absolutely, utterly and profoundly misguided and wrong.

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Jesus himself talks about money, quite a bit. In fact, he talks about money far more than sex (though in today's Church, you'd never have guessed). He tells us that money, how we use the resources God has given us is important. And, let's be clear, before we go any further. Money is not the root of all evil. If I had a penny for every time I heard that misquote! What Paul tells us 1 Timothy 6:10 is that the love of money is the root of all evil. It is not using what we have been given for good, hoarding up treasure for ourselves on earth, which is a sure way of ensuring our corruption. Money in and of itself is not evil. It's all about what we do with it. That is both a theological and a moral argument.

You are going to hear at the end of mass a presentation on exactly where the parish finances are at the moment. The headline I can tell you is that this year we are projected to spend more than we get in. Far more. I can tell you today that this year that's £70,000 more going out than we are getting in. You're going to be asked to consider this, where our money comes from and goes, and then you'll be asked to respond. Therefore I don't want to say now everything you'll hear later.

What I do want to say though is that no one is going to be asked to give more than they can. So please, no one needs to go away and say to himself or herself "I just can't, there isn't anything I can give up, there isn't anything left in the pot." We are always grateful for what people do give. But, the key question is "are we giving all that we can? Are we enabling the work of God to be done in this place to the very best of our ability?" are we giving and raising all we could?

In many Christian denominations, giving is not as much of an embarrassment as it is in the Church of England. Perhaps that's because we have so many old buildings, they've always been there, so we get ourselves into thinking that they will always be there. Yet that simply isn't true. The number of places of worship declared redundant is rising. Some of these buildings, homes of the people of God, stand empty or are walked away from simply because people no longer provide for them. Often that comes about because a point in time where a difference could have been made was lost. People became afraid. People wanted to pretend that there was either no problem, or that somehow, someone else would sort it out. We cannot afford to do either of those things. Our moment in time has come. Again, forgive me for being blunt. I am after all a Yorkshire man.

This stewardship appeal is about money. But that means that its also about mission. This is about saying we need money to maintain, to keep what we have, but more importantly, we need to do more, to grow. For the easiest way to increase our income is to increase the size of the congregation. You're going to hear much much more about that, about a vision for the future, next week. But, and it's a big but, if we don't deal with giving now, and secure our finances, now, then none of that vision will come to fruition. We stand at a moment in time where I fully believe we must realize an opportunity God presents us with to build and grow. It's that or, as Fr Geoffrey said last week, we will wither and perish.

The Capital development appeal needs a solid foundation to build on. Yes, we must turn to the wider parish, town and county to help with that. But grant funders will not help us, for example, to put in a state of the art heating system to keep us warm, if we cannot afford to turn the system on. We cannot hope to grow, if we cannot pay for the essential support that we need for that process. Our day to day budget relies on you. You have the power and wherewithal to help this place to flourish. And giving is a crucial part of this.

It would be much easier for me to sugar coat this, to minimise, to pretend it isn't as potentially difficult as it is. We could all say, but there are the mystical reserves. And yes, provided we don't fix the roof, the hall heating, the organ, and all those other things we do want to do, then the reserves would keep us going at this rate, for another 5 years. However, we need to fix the roof, and all those other things we've already planned to do. Which means that we don't have five years to wait with nothing to show for that. We have, I believe, no more than three at the outside.

The capacity to turn this around, does, I fully believe, lie with you. I know, even in the ten weeks I've been here that this is possible. I've read every conceivable report on finance that's been written, with every option. It's time to stop writing, and it's time to start doing.

With God, nothing is impossible. I know that you have the ability to rise to this challenge. To realise that fundamental call to real, sacrificial, generosity which lies at the heart of the Gospel.

I appeal to you. Do not panic. Do not be afraid. Trust that God will help us to respond. Listen carefully to the presentation, and reflect over the next few days and weeks before All Saints how you can best exercise the responsibility that is yours. Pray. Worship. Whatever we can do is a great work in the sight of God. Let us therefore honestly, calmly and with confidence face our challenges and seek with uplifted hearts to do all that God asks of us. Amen.

Fr Gary Waddington

Stewardship campaign launch

St Wilfrid's Harrogate

Sunday 3rd October 2010