Rector's Report 2021: St Andrew's Church, Newlands

 Rector’s Report 2021

St Andrew’s Church, Newlands

 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 (Philippians 4:4-7; NRSV)

Introduction

Wow – what a year 2020 has been! When we met for our Annual Vestry a year ago none of us would have predicted the challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic would thrust upon us just a couple of weeks later. Looking back, the timing was a gift, giving many of us our first authentic tase of what that first Holy Week, Easter, and journey to Pentecost may have been like for the early disciples. Personally, Holy Scripture was a wonderful and life-giving gift in those first five weeks of National Lockdown, and I am thankful that many of you shared the journey with me through my daily “Thought for the Day”. Additionally, the passage above from Philippians has been one that I return to on many occasions, especially when anxiety and fear threaten to overwhelm me.

I am particularly thankful for all of you! I am thankful for a willingness to embrace radical new ways of being Church, and your agility in embracing the virtual environment within which much of our worship and ministry life has had to relocate. I am thankful, too, that we are a resourced community with access to data and computers and a willingness to embrace this technology. I am thankful that we have had the resources to continue to reach beyond ourselves and make a difference to the lives of people within and beyond our Parish in need of food and other help as our economy and lives have been battered by the necessary National and global responses to the pandemic. I am thankful that we are a community of Faith and that our lives are centred on God.

The past year has been a full one, despite – perhaps because of – the pandemic. The various other reports give focus to a variety of aspects of parish life, and so it is not my intention to repeat what is available to you in them. Please read them as they contain a great deal of encouragement to continue to be faithful to God’s call on us at St Andrew’s.

Looking Forward

Our Lived Context

2021 will in many aspects mirror much of what we experienced in 2020, as was illustrated by the need to return to Alert Level 3 just before New Year. Another Covid-19 wave is expected somewhere between April and June, but I take courage from the fact that we have the experience of the last year to draw on, and that while 2021 will not be easy on many levels, we are becoming adept in responding to the changes in regulations. While we may not like what Covid-19 has done to our sense of normality, we do at least now have some understanding of how to cope with its vagaries. Our broader social, economic, and political context remains challenging, and we need to continue to ask what it means to be witnesses to the transforming love of God in the world in which we live.

Annual Vestry and Election of Office Bearers

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) Covid-19 Guidelines issued on 3 February 2021 allow the requirement for an annual Vestry to be suspended, which our Cape Town Diocesan Chapter has formally adopted. Reports are still required to be made available to the Parish, but no formal Vestry meeting is required. All Office Bearers elected in 2020 continue en bloc for the 2021 year with the Parish Executive empowered to co-opt individuals to fill any vacancies that may arise. I am thankful that our present Churchwardens and Parish Councillors have all agreed to continue in their positions, as have our Honorary Treasurer and Honorary Auditor.

In-Person and Virtual

Zoom has proved a wonderful tool to enable us to gather together, but apart. A return to limited in-person worship has been a gift. 2021 will require we continue to use both the physical and virtual environments for our mission and ministry, and that we explore together what this means for us as a faith community. Any input in this regard is welcome!

Reflecting on 2020

Bishop of Table Bay

Excitingly, we at last have a Bishop of Table Bay, and new neighbours! My thanks to our Churchwardens for organising a small welcome dinner towards the end of last year for Bishop Joshua and his wife, Joan, with the Parish Executive. I am enjoying working with Bishop Joshua in my capacity as Archdeacon at Diocesan Chapter level and am thankful for the gifts and focus he brings to the position.

125 Anniversary

My huge thanks to Mags Wingfield and the Flower Guild for an outstanding Festival of Flowers arranged for our 125^th Celebration. Despite the limitations of lockdown it was wonderful to experience such beauty, which helped lift our spirits.

Treasury

2020 has been a remarkable year, which has been strengthened by a stable financial team. The financial report and Annual Financial Statements will give greater detail, but despite an expected shortfall in physical collections (balanced with a number of budgetary savings) our income is much as expected. Thank you to you all for your diligence in meeting your Dedicated Giving commitments, and the amazing additional giving that came in specifically to boost our Ministry to The Needy (MTN) funds.

Fund Raising

The focus of our fundraising is always the annual Morning Market. The pandemic put paid to having an in-person event, and I am utterly amazed at what we were able to do in other ways towards a virtual Market. Our coordinators, Jim te Water Naude and Wendy Bell, are to be commended on facilitating such an incredible response under really difficult circumstances; and thank you all for the creativity, sweat, and agility that went into the various activities and sales!

Children’s Church

Penny Middelkoop adapted amazingly to the challenges of Lockdown, and with Stephen and Amy’s help, must be commended for producing the most amazingly creative and professional videos for our children week by week (which a number of adult parishioners have admitted to enjoying as well)! I know Penny has enjoyed the return to in-person Children’s Church, and my thanks to the families that have supported and contributed so willingly to the Children’s Church journey this past year. Our children have proved amazingly resilient.

Clergy and Layministers

I am hugely thankful for Bishop Geoff Quinlan, Stephen Middelkoop, and Elizabeth Cherry, for the amazing encouragement and support they have given the Parish this year. As we went into Lockdown last March it was Bishop Geoff who pushed the boundaries in encouraging us to explore an online “Eucharist-by-Intention”, and moved the Bible Studies he runs onto Zoom; Stephen, who alongside doing pre-recorded sermons and services for St Martin’s, Bergvliet, during their interregnum also took on the challenge of video production for the Children’s Church and an in-person and virtual presence in the Parish; and Elizabeth managed to do almost a full year of Confirmation preparation via WhatsApp!

Our Layministers have been stars, and supplemented by a number of Parishioners who have taken to the new, virtual liturgical role of “Responder”, have served with courage. Sadly though, a number of our Layministers have stepped down, and we need to acknowledge their huge contribution to the worship and pastoral life of the Parish over many, many years: Denise Ackermann, due to the increasing struggle with her eye-sight, has withdrawn from the deeply impactful preaching and teaching ministry she has exercised in the Parish; Edgar Ruiters and Ivor Jardine, both having served for many years have withdrawn, citing the need to make way for younger Parishioners to come forward while affirming our newer Layministers who have come on board in the last while; Jenny Barron, together with her husband, Mark, have retired to Barrydale. Each one has contributed in meaningful and creative ways over the years, and leave individual legacies that have helped make our community what it is today.

Church Council

Our Churchwardens, Debbie Coombe and Janine Tough, along with our Parish Secretary, Bev Shaw, have been absolute stars! The three of them have developed a wonderful working relationship and have become a formidable team that has given me the space to fulfil my wider Provincial and Diocesan responsibilities alongside my role as Rector of the Parish, knowing the administration of the Parish is in good hands. Their willingness to work with the ever-changing Covid-19 Government Regulations and accompanying ACSA Guidelines and ensure that these are in place for all our in-person gatherings, along with the example they have set, has been inspiring.

Parish Council has been hugely supportive, although often frustrated by not being able to get on with practical plans due to lockdown. I appreciated their willingness, along with the Layministers, to keep in phone contact with the Parish during the initial lockdown, and beyond. I am thankful for their wisdom and patience.

Thank You

In closing, a special thank you to our Parish Secretary, Bev Shaw, who has managed to successfully run the Office from her home, has been flexible in her availability to myself and the Parish, and has maintained amazingly good humour despite the challenges! Bev consistently goes beyond the call of duty (and her job description) in her service to the Parish.

And to Dawn, who too often sees me at my worst levels of anxiety and wonderfully talks me back into reality, and is the bed-rock and anchor of my life: thank you!

And to you all: thank you for being a part of this amazing year in which we have all been thrust far beyond our comfort zones, learnt to cope with a pandemic and all the transitions it has demanded, grown in ways we would never have imagined; and amid it all have proved resilient.

My thanks to God, Source of all Being, Eternal Son, and Holy Spirit.

MARK R D LONG

Rector

22 February 2021

Sermon: First Sunday in Lent

 Sermon: 1^st Sunday in Lent

21 February 2021 – Archdeacon Mark Long

Genesis 9-8-17; Psalm 25:1-10; and Mark 1:9-15; NRSV

Welcome to this first Sunday in Lent! While Sundays are not traditionally part of the Lenten journey,[1] they do act as touchstones on our pilgrimage from Ash Wednesday through to Easter. Today’s touchstone are the words from Mark’s Gospel, “… repent, and believe in the good news.”[2] You will doubtless recognise these words from the Ash Wednesday service, intoned as a cross of ashes is imposed on our foreheads. They give intention to the Lenten journey, a broad focus to our pilgrimage. Most of us will have taken this Lenten journey many times over the course of our lives, and it may be tempting to think that we have done the work. However, while the victory over death and sin may have been won through the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, we know that embracing the reality of this gift is a daily endeavour. The touchstone of repentance and belief requires that we engage afresh with the challenges of our times and the vagaries of our lives.

In my sermon last week I suggested our image of Jesus – his life, purpose, calling, and ministry – needs to be transfigured for our times in order that our lives and our world may be truly and substantively transformed and renewed, thus enabling us to wholly embrace the fullness of life Jesus came to awaken us to. It is within this context that we need to reflect on the call to “… repent, and believe in the good news … ,”[3] a call that is preceded by Jesus affirmation that the “[t]he time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near … .”[4] It is for God’s people in every age to make this good news a reality, and no less our responsibility in 2021.

Our 2021 Lenten journey began on Wednesday with Jesus injunction in Matthew’s Gospel that in order to give life to this good news the ongoing commitment of people of faith to alms giving, prayer, and fasting are to be practised in apparent secret. A public show of religiousity will not bring about the transformation our world so desperately needs, but the deepening spirituality developed within a more personal space of God-focused relationship has every opportunity of success. Religiosity too often is motivated by our desire for public affirmation, and while claiming to be for God’s glory it rarely is. On Ash Wednesday we were called to a fresh commitment to God-focused lives where God’s awareness of our devotion to giving, prayer, and fasting is sufficient affirmation.

Today’s touchstone moves us out of the personal focus of Ash Wednesday into the collective action of Lent. The words repent and believe are plural verbs in this passage,[5] and therefore indicate a community, rather than individual, response. Our image of community also needs transfiguration: today’s reading from Genesis is very clear in stating the community God is in relationship with is “… me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations … .”[6] Too often we limit community to our faith community, our Christian denomination[7], or to Christianity itself; if we’re brave we may include other religions. Here in Genesis God is clear: it’s is every living creature; it is all future generations. God is in relationship with Creation as a whole, not just humanity, and not just one grouping of humanity, but all human beings. In this very broad context what does it mean to repent and believe?

It may be helpful here to consider why Jesus joined the throngs being baptised by John? Osvaldo Vena[8] shares the helpful insight that “… people coming to be baptized were simply expressing their readiness for the promised kingdom of God. Their repentance and confession pertain to social sins, not innate, personal ones, for which they had a recourse through the Temple rites. [Their baptism] was an admission that they had somehow participated in a system of oppression and that now they were ready to change in preparation for God’s reign.”[9] The baptism John offered “… was a visible sign of that attitude [and thus] … it was natural for Jesus to identify with this popular movement and do the same.”[10]

This insight into the early verses of Mark 1, which we’ve already visited twice before this year,[11] is perhaps a disquieting one as it asks us to reflect on the oppressive systems of our time, and acknowledge our participation in those systems, and further act to redress the destructive nature and deep pain these systems have placed on ourselves and others. It asks us to take collective responsibility for the problematic spiritual, social, ecological, economic, and political problems of our time, and make a personal commitment to participating collectively in bringing the good news that, “[t]he time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near … ”[12] in practical and purposeful action. We are all more than aware of the social fault lines that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted, both in our own Nation and globally: do we as people of faith have the courage to act, to renew our commitment to becoming every more fully God’s transformative agents in this Creation that God so loves?

Let us pray,

Jesus,

When you had nothing else to give

you gave yourself.

And as your friends shared and ate,

they were confused and complicit,

just like all of us.

May we give – our lives and confusions;

our hollowness and our hearts –

because when we give like this,

we are like you,

who became like us.

Amen[13]

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[1] Sunday’s in Lent are feast days where we continue to celebrate the resurrection. This helps explain why Lent is 40 days (mirroring Jesus’ 40 days of testing in the desert following his Baptism by John), yet there are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

[2] Mark 1:14; NRSV

[3] Ibid

[4] Mark 1:15; NRSV

[5] In the original Greek

[6] Genesis 9:12; NRSV

[7] Anglicanism

[8] Osvaldo Vena, Professor Emeritus of New Testament Interpretation / Profesor de Nuevo Testamento, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Ill., USA

[9] Oswaldo Vena Commentary on Mark 1:9-11   https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-mark-19-15-5

[10] Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), page 44.

[11] Mark 1:4-11 on Sunday 10 January 2021; Mark 1:14-20 on 7 February 2021

[12] Mark 1:15; NRSV

[13] Pádraig Ó Tuama, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community

Sermon: Transfiguration Sunday

 Sermon: Transfiguration Sunday

14 February 2021 – Archdeacon Mark Long

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; and Mark 9:2-9; NRSV 

A very happy Valentine’s Day to you all! The pandemic has changed the way we see a lot of things, and hopefully it has undermined the commercial nature of these celebrations. Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate the gift of relationship in our lives, and I hope that in some way during this weekend we will have found time to celebrate friendship, especially the deep and life-sustaining relationships we share with a special other, or with a group of good friends.

Today is also the celebration of Jesus’ Transfiguration in which Peter, James and John are able to share in the special encounter Jesus has with Moses and Elijah, an intimate and awe-filled experience in which God’s voice is clearly heard by these disciples. Interestingly, it is an experience they are asked by Jesus to keep confidential until such time as it will make sense for them to speak of it. The story is not new to us, so we largely remember the details without needing to hear or read the passage again. Yet as we’ve heard it read again, the question is, “What have we heard, what has been the whisper between the words we know so well; and what do we hear in that whisper?” There are a couple of questions that arise for me: why was it important for Peter, James and John specifically to be witnesses to this moment, and not others of the group around Jesus? What future leadership role will be required of them that they needed to be assured that Jesus’ ministry was so deeply enmeshed with the Law and the Prophets, and Jesus a voice of significant authority in such company?

In today’s collect we prayed: “… transform our lives in [Jesus’] image, … .”[1] This raises an interesting question: what is the link between transfiguration and transformation? In my mind I know there must be a difference, but it is difficult to describe exactly what I think it may be. In the Gospel narrative it clearly refers to the fact that Jesus suddenly looked different (and other images come to mind, in this instance of Moses’ face being transfigured during his time on the mountain carving out the tablets of the Law to the point where his face shone so brightly he needed to cover it when in the presence of the Israelite community). Transformation generally speaks to a process of inner change,[2] such that we move from one form to another, we become intrinsically different to what we were.

Transfiguration suggests not a change in form, but a change in perception.[3] Jesus transfiguration doesn’t in essence change who Jesus is; it changes how Peter, James and John see Jesus. Since responding to Jesus’ call to discipleship alongside the Sea of Galilee the three had assumed he was a Rabbi, special in their eyes in that his particular brand of morality and ethics had caught their attention and spoke to the values and desires and dreams that they held for a better future. Now, however, they see him as one who stands alongside key actors in the story of faith. Where Moses’ face was transfigured, Jesus’ whole body is transfigured: Jesus supersedes both the Law and the Prophets, and yet holds both in tension. Jesus transfiguration does not transform Jesus; it transforms the three disciples. Their perception of who Jesus is is fundamentally shifted, and as they climb down the mountain with Jesus they have been inwardly transformed by this encounter. I suspect that a part of Jesus reason in forbidding them to speak of the experience is that it would take time for them to comprehend the nature of the change this experience was bringing about in them; and it will only be Jesus’resurrection that will awaken the other disciples sufficiently to grapple with the implications of Jesus being so much more than just a Rabbi, more even than a prophet in the lineage of Moses and Elijah, in reality the Messiah and more: the one who will become the Christ of faith. When they do awaken, of course, not only are they transformed, but they become a transforming force in their own context, the impact of which has reverberated through history and carries echos in our own time and context.

In terms of today’s collect, it is not our lives that need to be transformed into Jesus image, but our image of Jesus that needs to be transfigured so that our lives can be transformed. I hope this makes some sense? I am suggesting that we too, like Peter, James and John, need to have our image of Jesus transfigured if our lives are to be truly transformed. I have no desire to have my life become a mirror image of Jesus, but I do have a desire to have my humanity transformed, changed into the fullness of life that Jesus proclaimed he’d come to awaken us to. This transformation can only happen if my limited image of Jesus is transfigured, and I begin to see Jesus – his life, purpose, calling, ministry – as one that enables this to happen. The three disciples were limited by their tangible experience of Jesus from seeing who he was as the one sent into their midst by God until the transfiguration opened their eyes. We have the benefit of knowing Jesus as the Christ of Faith, but I suspect we all carry limiting images of what this may mean in today’s world. These images we each carry need to be transfigured if we are to be transformed and if we are to become a transforming presence in our time and context.

We lament the ineffectiveness of the Church in our own time. Just last week Bishop Geoff was asking what has happened to the multitudes of people he has confirmed during the course of his ministry as a Bishop, and lamenting that the majority of those confirmed are not active in the life of the Church. In essence it may not be that their lives were not transformed, but that the Church they have been confirmed into needs transformation. I suspect many who have been confirmed experienced a moral and ethical transformation that they have not seen mirrored in the Church that brought them to faith. As I encounter people who have walked or drifted away from the Church, these are not people who lack faith, who have no spirituality, but they are deeply suspicious of the institutionalised Church, often hurt by it and certainly not inspired by it. You and I are this Church, we are here either because we love this Church, or perhaps out of some sense of duty, but whatever motivates our involvement there can be no doubt that we need a transfiguration experience that will enable the wider institutionalised Church to be transformed afresh into the living people of God. We need to rediscover the fullness of life Jesus preached and lived, and which drew those early disciples along the Galilean shoreline.

In today’s collect we went on – helpfully, I think – to pray, “… write your law of love on our hearts, and make us prophets of your shining splendour … .”[4] The essence of renewal resides in these words.

Let us pray,

We bear witness to our faith,

knowing that we are called

to live lives of courage,

love and reconciliation

…

We bear witness … to our failures

and our complicity in the fractures of our world.

 

May we be courageous today.

May we learn today.

May we love today.

Amen[5]

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[1] The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Lectionary: Advent 2020 – December 2021 Year B, page 22

[2] Melinda Quivik, Commentary on Mark 9:2-9, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/transfiguration-of-our-lord-2/commentary-on-mark-92-9-5

[3] Ibid

[4] The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Lectionary: Advent 2020 – December 2021 Year B, page 22

[5] Pádraig Ó Tuama, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community

Sermon: 4th Sunday after Epiphany

 Sermon: 4^th Sunday after Epiphany

31 January 2021 – Archdeacon Mark Long

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; and Mark 1:21-28; NRSV 

“O God of new beginnings: give us courage … .” These were the opening words of last week’s Collect,[1] a prayer that went on to speak of following God “… into new adventures of faithful service … .”

There was something quite poignant about these words marking as they did my first day back from leave in a year already enveloped in its youth by heart-ache and a very real sense of déjà vu. We have been here before, and recently. The birth of a New Year always highlights our hope that life will be different, better, more hopeful; instead we now know people who have died of COVID-19, or are struggling for their lives in hospital, and it’s no longer at a distance: people we know – family, friends, colleagues. In the light of the devastating impact of the virus on our world the return to Alert Level 3 has been difficult to resist, and our resilience is under severe pressure as we face the added economic and social impact of these restrictions. We are becoming more fully conscious of the loneliness lockdown engenders in our lives as the ease of social engagement remains beyond our present reach. Life is tough, and for many increasingly traumatic. “O God of new beginnings: give us courage … .”[2]

Ultimately each day, even each moment, is an opportunity for new beginnings; and it is in the crucible of life’s challenges that our faith intersects and draws us forward. Like childbirth, new beginnings are birthed with pain, but the joy of new life transforms us in the moment and creates an environment for hope. I was wished a hopeful New Year the other day, a thought I warmed to.

As I’ve indicated before Scripture is a profound source for hope, especially in the context of struggle and suffering. Last Sunday’s Gospel saw Jesus’ ministry being birthed from the pain of John’s arrest, and – apologies for the mixed metaphor – Jesus receiving the batton from John, marked by those powerful words, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[3] Interestingly the NRSV heads last week’s Gospel as the beginning of the Galilean Ministry, not Jesus’ ministry; and Jesus quickly draws others in, calling Simon and Andrew, James and John to join him.[4] Mark keeps the story moving quickly, and in today’s Gopel we find the five of them in Capernaum’s Synagogue on the Sabbath, their first public act one of deliverance as Jesus exorcises an unclean spirit from one of the men present. It is compelling that Mark chooses an act of healing to brand the beginning of the Galilean ministry, and specifically one that addresses evil. It is clear that a realignment has begun, that the control that evil has sought to exercise not just over this one man but also over the community he is part of and the world he belongs to, is being challenged and diminished. Jesus, the one who belongs to God, is exercising an authority rooted in holiness and in direct contrast to that of the teachers of the day, the Scribes, whose authority is tainted, unclean, in opposition to God’s purposes. We will see this as an ongoing theme in Mark’s narrative, and one that ultimately is truly hopeful. The source of Jesus authority is that he offers a different interpretive framework that has direct relevance to the struggle and suffering of people’s lives: he doesn’t offer new teachings; he does offer a relevant, life-giving and life-restoring perspective.[5]

Our present reality is that the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the fractures in our social, economic, and political structures globally; and the ongoing revelations of political and economic misconduct in our South African governmental and private sector’s by the Zondo Commission can all be quite overwhelming: the unclean spirits are visible. Today’s Gospel speaks into this context, reminding us that aligning ourselves anew with the purposes of God offers the new beginnings we long for. However, it is not a gift on a plate: we are required – as last week’s Collect reminds us – to make ourselves available for service that will not be without adventure, and for which we will need divinely inspired courage. The testimony of Scripture and the history of God-fearing people throughout the ages is that when people of faith make this choice the world is transformed. You and I are again invited to choose. May our collective prayer be, “Give us courage!”

Today’s Collect reminds us that God is both our source and resource for this adventurous journey, and we prayed, “… your word brings healing and life.”[6] However, again a response is required of us: we also need to repent and to embrace this good news. We need to be open to the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, that any unclean spirit in our midst may be driven out. As these spirits are diminished so we will know a quiet mind, and our lives – like Jesus, Simon and Andrew, James and John – will become prophetic in our own time. What does it mean, though, to be prophetic? We largely understand Jesus’ role as teacher for most of us have enjoyed the privilege of education, but prophesy is a different matter. Our experience in today’s world is the often misuse of the prophetic word as a means of manipulation and even entertainment within the wing of Christianity that seems more intent on personal wealth creation than on spiritual growth, making us leery of this role.

Today’s reading from Deuteronomy[7] roots us in the Scriptural understanding of this vital ministry. The writer reminds us of God’s word to Moses, “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.”[8] As such the prophet is an early Israelite institution designed to counter-balance the other institutions of priest, elder, and king by being the sole legitimate source of communication from God.[9] The authenticity of this communication is to be tested in that what is spoken of must take place or prove true, and if not it is presumptuous and not to be feared. In the broader context of this passage from Deuteronomy,which is preceded by an admonition to avoid child-sacrifice, divination, and magic, the role of the prophet is to “… switch the prerogative from revealing what humans wanted to know, to disclosing what God wanted to reveal. The prophet … [is] the mouthpiece of the Divine.”[10] The temptation is to want the prophet to provide answers to the pressing issues of our times, whereas prophetic purpose is to communicate what God needs us to discern, which may or may not align with what we or the world around us wants to hear. To be prophetic in our own time is to embrace this understanding of prophesy. It is also about the people of God – communities of Faith – as a collective becoming and being prophetic.

As we continue to journey with the virus, and as this journey recasts our understanding of life in these extraordinary times, what is it that God needs us to discern? There can be no doubt that the pandemic has ended a way of life and demands we live differently: this is a new beginning. These past months mark it, and call us into new adventures of faithful service.

O God of new beginnings: give us courage!

Let us pray,

May we find the wisdom we need,

God be with us.

May we hear the needs of those we meet,

God be with us.

May we love the life that we are given,

God be with us.

Amen[11]

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[1] The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Lectionary: Advent 2020 – December 2021 Year B; page 19

[2] Ibid

[3] Matthew 3:1; Mark 1:15; NRSV

[4] Mark 1:14-20; NRSV

[5] Osvaldo Vena, Commentary on Mark 1:21-28 https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-mark-121-28-5  

[6] The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Lectionary: Advent 2020 – December 2021 Year B; page 20

[7] Deuteronomy 18:15-20; NRSV

[8] Deuteronomy 18:18; NRSV

[9] Dr Jeffrey H Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy; page 172.

[10] Cory Driver, Commentary on Deuteronomy 18:15-20, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-deuteronomy-1815-20-5

[11] Pádraig Ó Tuama, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community

Sermon: Christmas Day

 Sermon: Christmas Day

25 December 2020 – Archdeacon Mark Long

Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98; and Luke 2:1-20; NRSV

As I said in my sermon at Midnight Mass last night, 2020 has been an amazing year, full of the unbelievable becoming normal. When we met for Christmas a year ago none of us would possibly have imagined the way that a virus would turn our lives upside-down over the next twelve months, yet here we are meeting virtually after a year in which we have been confined to our homes for substantial periods, our economy closed down and restarted, our livelihoods threatened (and for many lost), and life as we knew it so different to our experience today. And this experience has not been localised; it continues to be a global one.

As we meet on today I am very aware that this Christmas marks a new surge of the Covid-19 virus in our communities, and that my level of anxiety in this regard is high. It is helpful to hear the angels’ words to the shepherds in this morning’s Gospel reading, “Do not be afraid; …”[1] and in hearing those words to find an element of calm. These are words that Jesus will repeat to his disciples after his resurrection, and words that remind us that when we face the unknown – whatever it’s nature – anxiety and fear are normal human responses. The shepherds response to this unnerving experience of being addressed by angels is instructive: they say to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”[2] They step forward into their fear, and seek to discover the truth of the message. Too often in my experience anxiety and fear are debilitating, a hinderence to living life to the full. The shepherds’ courage in seeking out the child, and then sharing the knowledge they have been given, becomes a meaningful source of hope  to others, and we read that, “… all who heard … were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”[3] Admittedly a part of people’s amazement at their message was that these were shepherds, uneducated outcasts of their day. The shepherds themselves, though, having taken note of the angels message that even to them must have sounded somewhat unbelievable, move from fear to rejoicing, and we find them returning to their duties “… glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”[4]

The shepherds’ visit causes Mary to treasure all these words and ponder them in her heart.[5] This was not idle reflection. The underlying Greek phrasing suggests a process of sense-making, of building meaning, and in light of her own encounter with an angel we can imagine Mary piecing it all together, experiencing the Shepherds’ visit and message as additional confirmation of events that had so upended her and Joseph’s lives, of which the birth of this baby was a culmination, yet also the beginning of something different, something new, something beyond the normal.

I find myself needing to ponder, needing to make sense of the causes of my own anxiety and fear, needing to continually evaluate new information, and find meaning for my own journey, and for the people I serve. For all of us our faith journey calls us, like Mary, to a constant process of pondering, of sense-making, of finding meaning at the intersection of all that impacts on our lives, our community, our world. Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks of the need to follow “… that small whisper, even when we barely hear it, even when we barely believe it, even when it hurts.”[6]

What is the nature of that small whisper as we gather today? What are we hearing? What is it asking of us?

I am learning to distinguish between that barely audible whisper that grows unaccountably into loud shouting as the voice of my fear, and that beyond it lies the small whisper that is God. Too often I allow my anxiety to drown out that small whisper, but when I can recognise my fear for what it is, and become available to the small whisper that is God, I discover that deep peace that Scripture speaks of, that passes all understanding. I am also learning that the small whisper most likely isn’t words, it is something far deeper than words or emotion or feeling: it is God tangibly there, real, accessible. I think this is what Mary discovered, too. I suspect this is the gift of Jesus birth.

Jesus birth is of course more than just dealing with our fear. His birth calls us to realign our lives, and to recognise in Jesus the realignment of earthly power and authority, a message emphasised by our Isaiah reading this morning. In this reading a victory is being announced, a messenger is arriving with news of peace, and while this passage obviously has an historical context, it affirms a more cosmic reality: this is not any victory; it is God’s victory. While the passage foresees the return of God’s people from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem, it’s cosmic nature points to God’s deliverance of the earth, the entire world, all people.[7] The inclusion of this reading in today’s lection draws the focus of this liberation onto the birth of the Christ-child, and in the context of Luke’s Gospel contextualises this in the experience of the outcast, the disenfranchised, the Shepherd. While we deal with the everydayness of life, Christmas challenges us to see a bigger picture, and calls us to play a role in establishing God’s kingdom in our own time and generation, to reach beyond the comfort of our lives, to make the justice and love of God a real experience for others in our world, even when it hurts.

My prayer for us this particular Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of the Christ-child in whom God became human, is that we may find it increasingly within our capacity to accept the possibility of the unbelievable in the new context that this past year has thrust on us; and that in this we may discover the purposes of God and the meaning of life and faith anew and afresh.

Let us pray,

God of Endings

What we thought would not end

has ended.

And we find ourselves here

wondering where we are

and how we got here

and where to go

from here.

Be with us, here, …

Help us place our feet on this ground

help us lick our wounds,

help us look up and around.

Help us believe

the story

of today.

…

Amen[8]

---

[1] Luke 2:10a; NRSV

[2] Luke 2:15b; NRSV

[3] Luke 2:18; NRSV

[4] Luke 2:20: NRSV

[5] Luke 2:19; NRSV

[6] Pádraig Ó Tuama Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community

[7] Dirk G Lange https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/christmas-day-nativity-of-our-lord-iii/commentary-on-isaiah-527-10-7

[8] Pádraig Ó Tuama Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community

Sermon: Christmas Eve

 Sermon: Christmas Eve

24 December 2020 – Archdeacon Mark Long

Titus 3:4-7; Psalm 97; and John 1:1-14; NRSV

2020 has been an amazing year, full of the unbelievable becoming normal. When we met for Christmas a year ago none of us would possibly have imagined the way that a virus would turn our lives upside-down over the next twelve months, yet here we are meeting virtually after a year in which we have been confined to our homes for substantial periods, our economy closed down and restarted, our livelihoods threatened (and for many lost), and life as we knew it so different to our experience tonight. And this experience has not been localised; it continues to be a global one.

Christmas is a good time to reflect on what it is to embrace the unbelievable; after all the Church has been doing this for 2000 years. Each Christmas we embrace the unbelievable notion that God became human, that the Divine has been birthed as flesh and blood[1] as John’s Gospel reminds us this evening: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”[2] Our experience of Covid-19 is an important reminder that the unbelievable is not impossible, and our experience of the pandemic offers us an opportunity to hold the paradoxes of our faith with renewed insight.

John’s Gospel begins with the seeming unbelievable, and recognising this brings onboard the witness, John (whom we know from the other Gospels as the Baptist). John here is the Witness, the one who testifies to the truth of what has taken place and continues to take place. This testimony is given in the context of unity and disunity: the unity of God in Jesus in the world, and the world in Jesus in God; and the disunity of light and darkness that like water and oil never really mix. John’s Gospel seeks to give us images that may help us make sense of what God is up to in our world, and help us come to understand more fully the purposes of God and our role in those purposes. During this past year we have all experience the chaos and darkness that the Pandemic has thrust upon our world, but we have also experienced the gift of light that our relationship with God – our embrace of faith – brings us.

John’s Gospel invites us to see beyond the physical birth of the Christ-child, and to ask some searching questions about the nature of God’s involvement in our world, and the nature of life itself. The Pandemic has forced us to live differently, and it has been a year of recognising that everything we took as self-evident in our pre-Covid lives can no longer be taken for granted. Some of us have found this journey a little easier or a little harder than others, and we have all experienced loss in some form, or at least had the meaning we had attached to our lives challenged. This requires us to do some reconfiguring, an adjusting of our story, a reassigning of meaning as we become more adept at navigating the new global context demanded of us by Covid-19; and our faith is an important resource for this journey.

While John’s Gospel invites us to explore meaning, our reading tonight from the book of Titus[3] focuses us on purpose, and on God’s gift of salvation,[4] a concept and word we throw around all to easily as Christians. Salvation is about a journey into ever-growing wholeness, and offers space for new beginnings particularly in the area of relationship. Salvation is the gift that enables us to live increasingly as healthy social human beings. One thing that the pandemic has done is to throw into stark relief the brokenness of our external relationships, the darkness of our social environment where gender-based violence and systemic racism mark deep chasms in our social fabric. In the self-isolation of lockdown we have all been exposed to our own internal relationships with our own selves, with God, and with life; and we’ve needed to explore our mental health, and take remedial action towards greater self and community health.

Titus reminds us that from a faith perspective the gift of salvation is experienced through rebirth and renewal, marked in our Church rites by baptism and confirmation, but experienced fully in relationship with self, with others, with God; a journey into ever increasing relational health. While we most often attach salvation to Christ’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection, the inclusion of the Titus reading in tonight’s lection reminds us that salvation is a primarily a gift of incarnation, of this unbelievable notion that God became human, and that we ourselves have direct access to the Divine. We’re reminded in Titus that this gift of salvation is already fully ours, and yet we still hope for its fullness. It is this already-not-yet nature of salvation that keeps our commitment to acts of service and love focused and grounded. It is a wonderful reminder that “… [o]ur lives with God have a present and a future.”[5]

In the midst of the present Covid-19 surge – not to mention the effect of the virus on our lives these past nine months – it is good to be reminded that life goes on despite our increased awareness of its tenuous nature. It is the paradoxical character of our faith that our physical existence is the theatre of God’s activity, yet our confidence is in the less tangible nature of our spirituality that takes our awareness beyond the known and the observable.[6]

My prayer for us this particular Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of the Christ-child in whom God became human, is that we may find it increasingly within our capacity to accept the possibility of the unbelievable in the new context that this past year has thrust on us; and that in this we may discover the purposes of God and the meaning of life and faith anew and afresh.

Let us pray,

God of Endings

What we thought would not end

has ended.

And we find ourselves here

wondering where we are

and how we got here

and where to go

from here.

Be with us, here, …

Help us place our feet on this ground

help us lick our wounds,

help us look up and around.

Help us believe

the story

of today.

…

Amen[7]

---

[1] Melinda Quivik; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/christmas-day-nativity-of-our-lord-iii/commentary-on-john-11-14-8

[2] John 1:14 NRSV

[3] Titus 3:4-7

[4] Jennifer V Pietz; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/christmas-day-nativity-of-our-lord-ii/commentary-on-titus-34-7-8

[5] Ibid.

[6] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality

[7] Pádraig Ó Tuama Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community