Recent Sermons
Buildings are important to us
Standing here that seems like a bit of a non sentence. But it isn’t just buildings like this one.Next year Berinsfield church will celebrate 50 years and by an odd chance so will the church of St James Galeshewe in which I spent part of my sabbatical.
I visited quite a lot of church buildings on sabbatical not least because one of the interests I was following up was the way church congregations use their buildings. Whether we like it of not our buildings say a great deal about the people who inhabit them – how often for example do you look at people’s books, photographs or music collections? Are interested if they have chosen a picture by the same artist? Or are altering their house in same way that you have in the past or are thinking about in the future?
My house often shouts of someone who has had a busy week, who never quite finishes one thing before the next needs to be started. My mum once brought me one of those funny notices for my kitchen – it said ‘a tidy house is a sign of a wasted life’ another visiting relative took huge exception to it – they would have preferred a sign that said ‘cleanliness is next to Godliness’.
Almost all the churches in South Africa were designed and built by English or European architects and mostly commissioned and congregations ministered to by white missionaries. Many of those brought with them not only their styles of architecture but also those of decoration. One interesting feature of many of the churches were the devotional pictures, Jesus the Good Shepherd, stations of the cross – all of a Jesus who looked as if he had stepped straight out of the pages of my childhood bible story picture book. This bothered me … I would have like to have seen a black Jesus – or at the very least a Middle Eastern looking one – in a black church. When I spoke to Reggie about it he agreed – but he said the pictures had been a gift from England and the people who had founded the church – some of whom were still involved in it – were absolutely opposed to changing them! Some oft eh young people found them almost offensive.
So it was possible to worship in a church which was extraordinarily familiar even when you didn’t understand a word that was being said. And when the service was extraordinarily long and where it wasn’t at all strange to mix charismatic African choruses with the lord’s my shepherd and guide me o thou great redeemer. The pattern or shape of the liturgy was noticeably the same even when the execution and the context was greatly different.
But the church is not the building and the worship that goes on inside it – the church is the building we make with our hearts and lives – it is the people of God gathered in a particular place and then sent out to build the Kingdom for that place. That’s what St Peter is talking about when he writes of living stones building a spiritual temple. There‘s something really important in the language here – these living stones are chosen and precious and they allow themselves to be built.
Contrast this with something that we much more often feel about our discipleship and our membership of a church…
That we have chosen, though worthless, to become part of a Christian community and it is therefore our responsibility is to make sure that it runs well, doesn’t fall down and has decent attendance at services.
This fairly common picture couldn’t be further from what Peter is saying –
That God chooses precious individuals to be the church,
That if we will only allow it, God will build us into the church that God wants
That we are to be focussed on Christ because without Jesus the whole edifice will crumble
That we are called to be priests – ministers serving others in the likeness of Christ.
I wonder what we would have to do to make that picture come truer here.
In the gospel we hear those all too familiar words in my father’s house there are many dwelling places. If we take this to be speaking of the future Kingdom – the one that is to come it is comforting because it indicates that whoever we are there will be room for us – and I believe congenial room. So you will have heard me say – following great Christian writers that the kingdom of heaven could be just like the very best expression of what makes you feel most completely yourself – but most importantly it is where united with Christ we finally understand the creature that the creator intended us to be.
But our calling here is to build the Kingdom now – a present reality which may be a foretaste of the future. We are called to live the kingdom – to be committed to being built into one expression of God’s love for all humanity.
But how can we do this? I don’t really know what the kingdom is like? I have some words that are my favourites to express it – famous poets and theologians have found language better than mine to describe it. But like you I sometimes I have an inkling of what God may want for the world and this particular part of it – like the sound of a distant trumpet carried on the wind – or a haunting melody captured in a larger orchestral piece that almost, but doesn’t quite, drown it out; like the majesty of the wave that thunders on the sea shore or the light in a child’s eyes when they receive something that they never dared hope for.
And we sigh and think – or even say...
’Now if I could bottle that…’
And the truth is we can’t – well, not in our own strength or even within our own understanding.
And that is where we are most likely to go wrong. For what we do is not in our own strength. Indeed it may not always be what we want. For if we are living stones, called to be here and to allow ourselves to be built into God’s temple – and if, living in Christ and following him as St John promises we area also part of God and part of God’s understanding of the world. Then we can begin to build the kingdom – and in particular God’s expression of the kingdom meant for this place now.
How might we do it – well, by listening carefully to one another and to God. By dismissing our assumptions about what is best, about what we know the other person really wants, about our certainty that a Godly church is a church made in my image.
Sunday 6th March 2011, Revd Gordon Harris, retired minister of the United Reformed Church, "Sing with grace in your hearts"
Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
It is a great pleasure and a privilege for me to be invited to preach today on the theme of music in worship, particularly in Dorchester Abbey, whose walls and stones are, as it were, soaked and steeped in the praise of countless generations of worshippers in this noble building, and where I have also had the pleasure of singing both in recital and as a member of the Benson Choral Society in past years.
There is an old saying that used to be bandied about in churches which runs: “The devil always enters the church through the choir”. That of course is a gross calumny, for there are all sorts of ways of entering the church that the devil has apart from the choir, even if the statement were true in the first place. Personally I owe an enormous debt to my experience of having been brought up in the Church of England, and of having been a choirboy in a south London church from the age of seven. For that I was paid the princely sum of 1/6d a quarter, which very often got confiscated by my father for one misdemeanour or other. He himself was a devout Anglican churchman and sang for many years as a male alto, with a good falsetto voice, in another Anglican church.
As a choirboy I listened particularly carefully to the sermons of the parish curate, not so much to the content of the sermons but rather to the sound of his voice, on which I modelled my own voice in a determined attempt to get rid of my own south London accent! You may wonder why I defected from the Church of England in my teens, having already been confirmed, but that was again to do with a choir, the choir in which a then girl friend sang, but not in an Anglican but in a Presbyterian church. My allegiance to her was short-lived but my allegiance to that church, under the influence of the minister, grew until eventually I entered upon its ministry myself.
It took me a long time to get used to Presbyterian ways as distinct from Anglican ones, and I noticed that Presbyterianism was on the whole a fairly dour form of Christianity, as compared with the Anglicanism as I had known. And yet there was an incongruity so I discovered, between the Anglican and Presbyterian catechisms, which ran counter to the dour reputation of the Presbyterian Church. I am sure the wording of the Anglican catechism has changed since my youth, but then, in the form in which it was taught me for confirmation, the first question was: “What is your name?” and the reply to that question was “N. or M.” But the first question in the Presbyterian Shorter Catechism runs rather differently. The first question is “What is the chief end of man?” and the answer given is “Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever”. What a glorious statement that is and if ever anything was a call to to the worship and praise of God, it must surely be those words which are the answer to the first question of the Presbyterian Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of man? Answer: “Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever.” Not only is it a matter of praising or glorifying God, but of enjoying him him for ever. We need to enjoy the worship of God, and it's not a sin to enjoy the music and singing of the Church. Do you remember what General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army said? “Why should the devil have all the best tunes?”. But it's not only the tunes, it's the words as well. So another thing I discovered when I became a Presbyterian, was the slightly different version of the words that they had to the metrical version of the Psalm 100, known to us generally as The Old Hundredth. Generally speaking the first verse is sung as “All people that on earth do dwell / Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice” with those first two lines the same in most versions. But the 3rd line of that verse generally reads: “Him serve with fear his praise forth tell” whereas the Presbyterian version reads: “Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell, / Come ye before him and rejoice.”
Now I do not want to make too much of these differences, but they are nevertheless significant ones and deserve to be noted.And although the standard words have the line “Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice” I don't see how we can be that cheerful if immediately after that we have to sing:”Him serve with fear, his praise forth tell” whereas it is a different matter if we have to sing: “Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell / Come ye before him and rejoice.” “Mirth implies by definition singing with a cheerful voice.
Nevertheless, singing isn't just a question of doing what comes naturally. The way we sing and the thoughtfulness we bring to our singing are the prime elements in any worthwhile offering of praise to God, and I can do no better at this point than quote to you in full the magnificent “Directions for Singing” written by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, of whom it has been said that it was “born in song”. This is what John Wesley wrote in 1761:
Learn these tunes before you learn any others; afterwards learn as many as you please. Sing them exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all; and if you have learned to sing them otherwise, unlearn it as soon as you can.
Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.
Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.
Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.
Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.
Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.
So what has St Paul to say on the matter of singing praise to God? Clearly it was very important to him as he refers to it in more than one of his letters. In Colossians, as we heard earlier, he says:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
In his letter to the Ephesians he speaks in somewhat sterner terms:
Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus.
It seems that in Ephesus they were accustomed to using alcohol to rouse the fervour of the congregation, something that Paul deplores. It 's not that kind of spirit that he means when he writes “Be filled with the spirit”.Much more vital was their openness to the spirit of God moving within them and between them, and to that end he urges them to address one another in psalms, and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. When he writes of making melody in your heart he means: sing wholeheartedly and with sincerity, something that John Wesley has in mind when he says in his Directions for Singing:
... attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually.
In his letter to the Church at Colossae St Paul puts it slightly differently when he writes of singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. That means very much the same as giving thanks always for all things unto God. But it goes further than that as well. The very word grace implies a kind of beauty that must belong to the way we sing. John Wesley reminds us that such a goal is not easy to achieve and even when we achieve a true beauty of voice and tone in our singing it can be marred by becoming merely a source of narcissistic pleasure in the sound of our own voice!
But leaving that problem aside, we can certainly say that the human voice is very effective in getting through to our souls. I proved this to myself long ago when I was a chaplain to Fairmile Hospital, a psychiatric hospital now long closed. I used to sing hymns regularly with patients in the psycho-geriatric wards. And there I discovered that no matter how remote the patients were from ordinary reality they could be reached through the medium of the hymn book. In fact many of them did not even need a hymn book as they could sing them from memory perfectly. Even more remarkably, the hymns could also help them to feel the feelings associated with singing the old familiar hymns, for research into dementia has shown that the person who is in the state of dementia can also be still aware of feelings even though they may not remember what aroused the feelings in the first place. It was the hymns which triggered off the feelings and the fervour that once used to be part of their experience of worship.
We have met for the worship of God this morning, and at this point I am moved to ask what this service and all that goes on in this wonderful abbey is really about in the light of what I have been saying so far, and in the light of what the Presbyterian Shorter Catechism has to say about the chief end of man, or humankind, being to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
Surely there is only one word which sums up the meaning of all that, the word CELEBRATION. Surely our task and privilege and joy it is to celebrate the love and goodness of God even in the face of darkness and tragedy. Whatever the fallen state of the world and humankind we are still invited to serve him with mirth and his praise forth tell. So we read in the Book of Acts how Paul and Silas were thrown into jail for exorcising a slave-girl whose affliction had been a source of profit to her owners. What did Paul and Silas do in prison: they prayed and sang hymns to God and the prisoners listened to them. The consequence of their singing was seemingly out of all proportion to the effort involved: there was a violent earthquake which shook the prison to its foundations, and as a result the prisoners were free to escape, even though Paul urged them to stay put, which they did.
Here I am reminded of another prisoner who lived in recent times – I am referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theoologian who was imprisoned and eventually executed for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Out of his prison experience there came a book which still sells widely in our time. It is called “Letters and Papers from Prison” and has become a classic of religious publishing..In a letter dated 9th March 1944 he writes of the Latin word hilaritas, from which we get the English word hilarity. He says it is the mark of people who are truly great and defines hilaritas as 'confidence in their own work, boldness and defiance of the world and of popular opinion, a steadfast certainty that in their own work they are showing the world something good (even if the world does not like it) and a high-spirited self-confidence'..That surely is what we are called to manifest as we sing our praise in church, a 'high-spirited self-confidence'. In the account of our Lord's passion we read in St Mark's gospel that, after the Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn and afterwards they went out to the Mount of Olives, in other words to Gethsemane, and the ordeal of the final lonely vigil of prayer for Jesus before his trial and crucifixion. The high-spirited self-confidence that enabled them to sing that hymn was under sore stress at that time, for none more so than for Jesus. But he was able to pray to God, having asked for the chalice to be removed, “Nevertheless, not what I want, but what you want.”
That is the prayer that underlies all our singing, all our worship, as we tell forth our praise, and thus seek to harmonise with the will and purposes of God. Music is an essential and integral part of that praise. May the praise and worship of this house of God be ever strengthened and renewed through the offices of every member of this congregation, including its choir and organist and its clergy, and everyone who is drawn into this hallowed space, ready always to serve and sing to God and to one another with grace, with mirth and true hilaritas.
So may it be. Amen.
Sunday 2nd January 2011, Sheila Furlong from Archway Foundation, “Loneliness, the hidden need”
READINGS
1 Kings 19 verses 1 to 11
Luke 10. Verses 25 to 37
PRAYER
Lord God,
We thank you for the gift of your holy word
And that through it, our lives can be transformed and renewed.
Whatever we carry on our hearts and in our minds this morning
May your Holy Spirit release us to hear and receive from you
That we might faithfully serve you and bring glory to your name.
Amen
INTRODUCTION
Some years ago whilst on a walk with my 4-year God daughter she asked me, “Auntie Sheila, do you work in a Bank like my mummy does?” I told her that I worked to help people who are lonely. Her response was “What is lonely? ”
How wonderful to have no experience of feeling lonely.
At what age does loneliness touch our lives?
Is it something we only experience in old age? But then what is old age? My children think I am old and at the same time my 82 year old mother in law refers to the “old ladies” she transports to mid week communion.
ARCHWAY
I work with The Archway Foundation, a registered charity, founded in Oxford in 1982, based on Christian values and offering a service to anyone hurt by loneliness. To date, my experience tells me there is
NO AGE LIMIT TO LONELINESS.
In a previous job working with troubled children I met a 4 year old who had tried to cut her wrist with plastic scissors because she felt lonely in the difficult family situation she was living in. Through Archway I have met people of all ages hurting through loneliness.
People like
Chris, a 24-year-old man who is struggling with social phobia, feels desperately lonely and wants to meet other people but is terrified of doing so.
Angie, a 40 year old woman devastated by the breakdown of her marriage, the selling of the family home and the onset of severe depression describes the acute loneliness she feels at seeing all her friends enjoying the intimacy of relationship with their husbands, wives or partners.
Raymond, aged 67 is suffering the loneliness of bereavement following the death of his mother who relied on his care and devotion for many years. He had no time for maintaining a social network and has lost confidence in communicating with others.
Winifred, aged 90 had a good network of friends but the majority have died or moved to be closer to family and she feels very lonely, being housebound, almost blind and suffering from arthritis.
Loneliness can come in different guises, at all ages, stages and in a variety of circumstances.
ELIJAH: Loneliness of leadership
In the Old Testament reading read to us this morning we heard about Elijah’s particular set of difficult circumstances. Now I don’t know what age Elijah was when he took refuge under the broom tree but I would suggest that he may have been experiencing something of the loneliness of leadership, and the self doubt syndrome that can often be precipitated by emotional pressure and physical exhaustion. Elijah had been so courageous, putting his neck on the line, challenging the people who followed Baal and slaying the prophets. He then hears that Jezebel has issued a death warrant. Perhaps not surprisingly he goes into hiding and says he wants to die.
In our own lives we may or may not have reached the point of such desperation but we may know others who have. However, it is likely that we have experienced something of the loneliness of life events.
These are the times when there can be a feeling that we are the only ones going through a particular difficulty or situation.
Hopefully, the majority of us have close friends or family we can turn to when we need a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, someone to just come alongside us perhaps without any words being spoken, or someone to pray with us or for us. That is not the case for everyone.
I have known people who on being told they have to move from their home or that they have a life threatening illness have no one to turn to for support, help or advice.
Prior to being employed by Archway I was a volunteer for 15 years. One of the people I befriended said to me “You’re the only person who comes into the house who isn’t paid to do so.” A sobering thought.
When updating our records recently we included an optional question of giving us details of a next of kin to contact in case of an emergency. It was a stark reminder to me of just how many people have no one to turn to when I read a significant number had written Archway or their GP or had given my name as their next of kin contact. Such is the problem of loneliness on our doorstep.
ELIJAH
Elijah demonstrates the frailty and fragility of our human nature with its tendency towards self pity, self doubt and loss of confidence, especially when we are faced with physical and emotional pressure and are feeling vulnerable.
Elijah is spent of energy and he falls asleep. But look what happens next. An angel came and gave him food and drink and then he lay down again. It would be easy to assume that with such divine intervention the recovery would have been immediate, Elijah would have been restored and ready for action but we read that he lay down again.
TIMING
Sometimes we want an instant response to our needs and to our prayer requests for our own situations and for those we pray for but God’s timing may be different to ours. As someone once prayed “I know God that your timing is perfect but please hurry”
When we are offering help to others we like to see that our efforts are having a positive effect but there are many occasions when that doesn’t happen.
BEFRIENDING
As part of Archway’s service to those experiencing the pain of loneliness we have volunteers who befriend people on a one to one basis, usually visiting people in their homes on a fortnightly basis. At a recent support meeting for befrienders I heard one volunteer report her enjoyment of her link with the 80-year-old lady who is so appreciative of her visits. They have afternoon teas together and the time passes by very quickly. In the same meeting I heard from a volunteer who has been visiting someone for almost a year and of how she finds difficulty in assessing whether or not the visits are making any positive difference at all. She is reassured by the fact that I know and have told her that the fact her visits have been accepted is a significant step of progress for the person she is visiting but theory is one thing and practice is another. It’s easy for us to be a good neighbour when we are well received. Much harder to go on being there for someone when our efforts are not recognised or acknowledged. It’s a good thing that God doesn’t give up on us even if we don’t always give Him the feedback.
Going back to Elijah, we don’t know that he did anything other than take what was offered and then slumped back down again. But God sends the angel a second time and provision is made to strengthen him for the next stage of the journey.
JOURNEY
We heard about a journey in the New Testament Reading; the familiar story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus’ response to the question of “Who is my neighbour?” Thankfully, few of us will be called upon to minister to people on the roadside who have been robbed, beaten and wounded by robbers but in our society today there are many who have been
The parable of the Good Samaritan offers some good analogies for the work of Archway and the opportunities it presents for us to demonstrate our faith through practical action in showing love to our neighbour by offering a
LIFELINE TO THOSE HURT BY LONELINESS
The Samaritan, having seen the injured man did not worry about the colour of his skin, which side of town he came from, what religion he followed or what clothes he might have been wearing but came alongside him at his point of need. Within Archway we meet people at different stages in their life journey, but we seek to
In thinking about the Samaritan putting the injured man on his donkey I couldn’t help but relate this to Archway’s attempts to meet the needs as presented to us in this instance through the provision of subsidised transport. Not that we use donkeys of course. What we do have is a faithful team of volunteer drivers who use their own cars to transport people to and from our supported social group meetings in Oxford and Abingdon on Monday and Friday evenings respectively. There are many who have the capacity to relate to others but who are lonely through the lack of opportunity to get out and meet with others because of limited sight or mobility. We always need more drivers who are so appreciated by their passengers. Commitment can be fortnightly or monthly and mileage allowance is offered. Maybe you or someone you know may be interested in helping in this way.
Handing over the man to the care of the innkeeper provided shelter, food, drink and space to recover.
Now Archway doesn’t have residential establishments but food and drink do play an important role in helping us to provide a warm welcome for people, be it at Wednesday Welcome, our weekly call in café held on yes you’ve guessed it, Wednesdays in St Columba’s Church Hall in Oxford, at the social evenings I mentioned just now, or at our special events such as the Summer BBQ, Fish & Chip Evening, July Cream Tea Event, Christmas Dinner or New Year Social.
Space and time to recover is crucial and unlike many services Archway does not set time limits on offering support so people can move at their own pace to take the steps they need to move forward in their individual journey. Some need one to one support, others need to engage with others in a group setting, others need occasional contact through our special events or a combination of any or all of these.
Some statistics to answer the question of how many people do we see?
• 400 plus individuals currently on our database. Some need only occasional contact now they have progressed and moved on. Others need more frequent contact so we regularly see
• 60 people at our Monday Social in Oxford, with over twice that number accessing it at some point in the year. An average attendance of
• 30 at Wednesday Welcome keeps the call in café busy as over 60 individuals go through its doors at some point during the year.
• 12 to 20 come along to the Abingdon Social, running for 2 years now and an average of
• 15 frequent the Monday Alternative - the group for 20 to 40 year olds.
• Over 20 receive fortnightly visits through our befriending service and so the statistics go on.
Numbers do not reflect the extent of need as individuals circumstances vary and as we know from our own lives there are time when we need only a bit of support to see us through and at others we need a lot, be it practical help, time spent with us or prayer for our situation.
I can speak for hours about loneliness and Archway but I know my time is nearly up so let me just recap.
Elijah highlighted for us the
This may be through
Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to share something of Archway’s work with you today.
Prayer
Lord God. We thank you that although we are like Elijah in having our own frailties, vulnerabilities and moments of crisis, we can rely on your provision and divine help. May we be continually open to receiving from you and be willing to respond like the Good Samaritan in recognising the needs of our neighbours and taking the opportunity to show genuine care and compassion. Amen