Revd Evill and his successors.

So, Pilgrim's Cairn 2010 ended with a sermon and I'm going to do the same with Pilgrim's Cairn 2020 - my leaving sermon for All Saints, Edmonton.

(If there's a Pilgrim's Cairn 2030, here's hoping I get out of the house a bit more...)

Sunday by Sunday over the past twelve years, I’ve walked past a memorial to one of my predecessors, Revd Reginald Evill; many Sundays I’ve wondered about his life and felt a bit sorry for him. You see, Revd Evill’s time here was framed by crises; he became Vicar of All Saints in 1918, the year that the Great War ended, and he left in 1939, the year the Second World War began. In the intervening years he served this parish through the austerity of the Great Depression, and the rise of political extremism, including the rise of Nazism in Germany.

            I wonder if any of my successors will feel a similar spasm of pity for me! A few weeks after I came here in the summer of 2008, there was the global financial collapse which ushered in a decade of austerity; and I’d imagine that 2020 will be a year which sticks in our collective memory for generations to come, this year of separation, hardship and disease. It’s also the case that across those twelve years, just as in Revd Evill’s time, there’s been a resurgence in political extremism, especially on the far Right.

            We’re living through turbulent times, and we’ve been doing so for over a decade now.  What does the future hold? What’s going to happen next? There’s a great deal of uncertainty and fear even. We’re deeply aware of how unpredictable the future can be.

            And in our own little community of faith here at All Saints we face an unpredictable and uncertain future: I’ve heard the Vicar’s leaving, what next?

            From the moment that the Archangel Gabriel announces to Mary that she’s going to be a mother, through to the Resurrection itself, the message of the Gospel is consistent and clear, ‘Fear not’, ‘Do not be afraid.’ And in times of uncertainty, it’s especially important to hold that good news close to our hearts, and to proclaim it in our words and in our actions; that we stand against those who seek to spread fear, division, and the hatred that all too easily follows.

            And this morning’s Gospel gives us a reason to take heart, to be of good courage, to fear not. One of the things I love about the parable of the sower, is the wild generosity with which the sower sows. This is no normal farmer, who carefully prepares the soil and then just as carefully sows the seed; this sower just chucks the seeds out everywhere, on the shallow soil and the rocky places, on the good soil and amongst the weeds.

In this parable we find the promise that God’s love is not shed only on the people and places and times when it looks like it has a good chance of taking root and growing, This is the promise that God’s love goes out to every place, goes out to every person, goes out to every moment in history. There is no calculation in the outpouring of God’s love, only generosity and amazing grace.

            And you know, sometimes even the hard places can be fruitful. In one corner of the Vicarage garden there’s a lovely big fern; and I first found that beautiful fern growing in a bit of wall on the roof of the church. Who knows what gust had blown that tiny seed up there, or indeed what bird had dropped the seed, carefully packaged, down there – but that seed took root in hard stone, in a hard place, and it grew, and it grows still.

            What happens next? What does the future hold? I don’t know. But I know that because of the parable of the sower, and what that parable tells us about the outrageous generosity of God, we need not be afraid, we can step forwards in hope. Our calling as Christians is not so much to be sowers of the seed – God is doing that, God is always doing that. Our calling is to see where those seeds of God’s hope, joy and love fall, and where we see those signs of God’s presence, wherever we see those signs of God’s presence, to celebrate them, to nurture them and to help them to grow.

            I’ve seen those signs of hope and love many times over in Edmonton and I see them still; I pray that All Saints continues to be a place which helps those seeds to grow, and helps this community to flourish.

The Space to Grow.

            Having resumed public worship in All Saints with a baptism on Sunday, on Tuesday we had a socially distanced wedding.

            The gist of my homily was something like this:

            Today we celebrate two people coming together in marriage – a reminder that one of love’s powers is the power to draw people together. Through love we come close to one another; love is about intimacy.

            In these past few strange months we’ve been reminded of another side to love. All around the world, people have been separating themselves from one another, people have been staying apart, we observe a careful two metre distancing when we’re in the supermarket, the park, in church here just now; and we have been putting space between us out of love, to keep one another safe.

            Love’s power is the power to draw people close to one another, it finds expression in emotional and physical intimacy, but love can also find expression through separation and giving people space.

            And this isn’t a new discovery, but a reminder of a basic truth about love. There are all sorts of situations in which the loving thing to do is keep a little distance, give a little space.

            As we draw close to one another in love, our hearts and minds are fed, but without space, we cannot grow.

            So may the God of all love bless you in this coming together, this day of intimacy and closeness. And may the same God of love bless you with the confidence to give one another the space you will sometimes need. Let love feed you, nourish you, and give you the space to grow.

I didn't know where to look.

            I’ve not found it easy, becoming an overnight YouTube sensation. Who would have thought, four dizzying months ago, that our parish YouTube channel would have no fewer than EIGHTY subscribers. I’m virtually a Televangelist.

            One of things I’ve struggled with, when we’ve been recording our services on a Friday, is knowing where to look…

            When we set up All Saints’ beautiful Lady Chapel to make our recording, the camera stands proud and central on its tripod, and the boys sit off to one side. When we were first recording services together, the natural place for me to look to was towards the boys, the people in the room there with me. Unfortunately, when I watched the videos back I looked weird, even weirder than I’d expected to look. There was this man on my laptop screen, looking off in an odd direction, towards an audience I couldn’t see, and ignoring the audience that was me.

            And so it was that I learned one of the more elementary lessons of broadcasting – look at the camera.

            Except, that didn’t get rid of the weirdness, it just transferred it. Instead of finding watching the recording peculiar, now it was the making of the recording that was peculiar. As the two boys sat there with immense patience, listening to me waffling on, I was ignoring them completely and giving my all to a dark circle of glass which just gazed, and didn’t laugh at any of my jokes, or respond to anything in any way at all. I didn’t know where to look.

            Even when we weren’t filming, I began to feel a similar discombobulation. On Sunday mornings, Susie and I celebrate Mass together. There’s no camera, there’s no other point of focus, there’s a congregation of one. And that’s what makes it hard to look at her; it’s Sunday morning at All Saints, Edmonton, and there’s a congregation of only one. To look into the middle distance, is to entertain the possibility that all those people I dearly love and dearly miss, are still there; somehow still there. To look at the one person who is there, is to face the truth of all the people who aren’t.