speaker-1: The bush was blazing yet not consumed. That is how God relates to us. On fire but does not consume us. And then God knows our name. God the blazing fire loves every one of us, but loves each one of us as if we're the only one.

speaker-0: Hello and welcome back to How Then Shall We Preach from St. Martin in the Fields with me, Jolly Gosnald. Very good to be with

speaker-1: and me, Sam Wells.

speaker-0: you again, Sam. We're actually going to start this week, because we're looking at the 30th of August for the 13th Sunday after Trinity. We're going to start with a listener question. Absolutely. So

speaker-1: Listen to the question.

speaker-0: Anne has been in touch, Anne is an ordinant, and she will be preaching on the 30th of August. And they have transported the feast day of Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne. which was on the following day to the Sunday. And she wondered whether you had any advice for how to approach preaching on the Northern Saints, and perhaps particularly Saint Aidan, if you have any thoughts or ideas about that.

speaker-1: Well, I think the contrast of the Northern Saints is between the simplicity, that's one of the compelling elements of Cuthbert and Aidan and so on, and the extraordinary courage and eccentricity, on the other hand. your characteristic approach to preaching on saints is imitation. They got it more or less right, we should follow in their footsteps. That's what, for all the saints says, the hymns all basically say we should follow them. Are we really seriously talking about spending a year and a half as a hermit on the Fire Islands? I mean, don't know, you obviously were both quite different people.

speaker-0: huh.

speaker-1: I don't think that's the kind of role model that I'm looking for at this stage in my life. And as Mountbatten famously said of Gandhi, a few people understand how many people it takes to keep that man in poverty. It requires a whole support structure around a saint of that kind. Who's going to bring the food? example. But when I lived in the northeast and preached there for four and a half years, it was a frequent motif of my preaching and was picked up on by members of the congregation quite often in an affirming way that I made an analogy between the northeast of England and the northeast of the Holy Land, i.e. Galilee, and that sense that people in the Northeast, and this is very fashionable with Andy Burnham now being Prime Minister, I know he's not from the Northeast, but he sort of has this thing called the North. When I've lived in the North, as I have for number of years, I never thought it was the North. Exactly, no,

speaker-0: No, and nor does anyone in Scotland for the

speaker-1: no, no, And when I lived in Liverpool, I didn't think it was the North, but I did pick up some of this kind of London ego, it gets the better of it, very much so in the Thatcher era. Of course, that's all different now. So I think that sense of the outsider and the place, as we would say, on the edge here at St. Martin's part of our sort of... identity, that sense of the church being renewed from the outside. And it's very familiar in the history of the church to talk about the dark ages, know, that in a sense that rather like the seed that has to die before giving life in John 12, I think. We have this same idea that in the dark, I tend to use the phrase dark ages anymore, but in the period between 450, shall we say, and about the millennium, 1000 or 1066, whenever we think the dark ages came to an end, that the monks kind of kept the flame alive. You could say the same about the period, between the end of the sort of Roman element of Christianity, which we have even here at St. Martin-the-Fields across the road, evidence of a Christian burial that was turfed up 20 years ago in the renewal project in maybe the 300s or something like that. So there was Christianity around. And yet, when Gregory the Great sent St. Augustine in 599, there was the sense that the... the English, the Angles, didn't have Christianity, but it was introduced from the Celtic fringe by people like Aidan and Cuthbert. So I think that sense to say that number one, Jesus came from Nazareth, i.e. not Jerusalem. Number two, that the renewal of the... of the faith of Israel came from Babylon, came from exile, came from the excluded. And number three, the, in a sense, true heart of British or British Isles Christianity comes from, Iona comes from Lindisfarne. And then fourthly, and more pastorally, on two levels, that the faith of a community is often best represented by the people on its fringe, and then the same of ourselves, that it's the... parts of our lives and personalities, you and you particularly find this in people exploring neurodiversity today. You know, it's the rejected parts of ourselves, it's the fringe parts of ourselves, the parts we've never known what to do with, this funny ability we have to sort of... lift one lip and lift the other lip and we never thought that was a useful thing to be able to do and then suddenly it becomes the kind of transformative gift in a crisis. know, that sense that that's the way the Holy Spirit works is to renew from the fringe and not always from the centre. So that's where I'd go with it.

speaker-0: really helpful and thank you Anne for your question and anyone else who may be preaching about Saint Aidan now or at another point hopefully that was helpful for you too. shall we get into the readings? Let's do that. And we should start with Exodus chapter three and we're with Moses and the burning bush. lots going on here probably plenty you could say what's grabbing your attention at this time?

speaker-1: Yeah, I mean this is one of my all-time favourite passages to preach on. I would say, I think there's so much in it. We start with the sense of fire. know, God is close but is not dominating. You know, God warms, but fundamentally God isn't on fire. with love for you. That's the central message, it seems to me. The central metaphor and analogy. The bush was blazing yet not consumed. That is how God relates to us. On fire but does not consume us. And then God knows our name. Moses. Moses. God the blazing fire loves every one of us, but loves each one of us as if we're the only one. That's the sort of feeling we get. And then we get into the really subtle things going on in this. Moses is downfallen, he's fallen from grace, killed a man. The Hebrews are downtrodden there in slavery. And those are the two kinds of setback, ones we brought on ourselves, ones that have been brought on us by others. And then we get these key verbs, God sees, God hears, God knows. This is seriously paying close attention. This isn't us crying out to God who was too busy, the conventional notion of intercession. Too busy or not interested, God is way ahead of us, sees, hears, knows. And then we get these two extraordinary statements which are for Christians transformative about this passage. I have come down. I will raise up. I mean, how about that? The incarnation and the resurrection. Right there. You know, right there in the third chapter of the second book of the Bible. Yeah. It's there from the very beginning. I mean, that is just so extraordinary. And then we get these two phrases, I am what I am. God's identity. I am with you, God's action. Now it turns out they are actually the same word in Hebrew. So for someone like me, and I make no apology for being a completely broken record on this, when you put I am what I am with I am with you, you're basically saying that being with and God. synonyms. QED. I mean, that's the whole deal about God is in this passage. So we get incarnation, we get resurrection, and we get being with God, God all being the same things. God's identity is being with us. So yeah, you can see why I never get tired of talking about this passage. It's kind of all there really.

speaker-0: Absolutely.

speaker-1: And it is, if you like, it's the second Genesis. Genesis has its own story that comes out of creation story and then the calling of Abraham and his descendants and then we get a kind of second beginning here in Exodus. Genesis begins from nothing and Exodus begins from adversity and in a sense you could say that's two different routes to faith. So you know you can go on about this but that should give people enough to be going along with.

speaker-0: Very good. Okay, well let's continue onwards then and we've got the other Old Testament reading which is Jeremiah. I imagine, you know, if you've got that Exodus reading, you're probably going to want to use that one. But if you are using these related readings, persecution and suffering and it's

speaker-1: Well, so I mean, we're going to jump ahead to Matthew 16 in a few moments, which is obviously about the kind of the flip side of the gospel, the difficult part. And if you think about the difficult part, you think of Jeremiah. So he starts with looking for God to bring down retribution for me on my persecutors, conventional sort of instrumentalization of God to send the boys around. you know, clearly he's making a journey within this to find meaning in hardship, in adversity, and that's basically the story of the whole Bible. So. Yeah, I mean, obviously, we've talked about this many times, and it's quite a dull subject, really. You know, how did those compilers of the common lectionary find their matched readings? Well, I wasn't in the conversation. don't always, I'm fairly honest about the fact that I don't always get it, but I'm glad I didn't have their job. But I'd be very surprised if anyone majored on this passage.

speaker-0: Yeah. I guess the only line which I thought might or or could stand out in terms of similar to what we were just saying before, the Exodus is it's in part of verse twenty, where it says, For I am with you to save you and deliver you.

speaker-1: Yeah, mean, so the with, you for me, traditionally, yeah, people would stress the save and deliver. I would stress the with, But I, you know, I will take you back in verse 19. You know, that is very unfashionable right now. I mean, I guess what's most in the public eye is... Andy Burnham has formed his new cabinet. I mean, we're going back a few weeks, but I've been on holiday. And, you he's brought back in one or two people who had to resign. I will take you back. You know, I came across a story recently. I'm not going to use all the language that was in the story about a man who... married for 10 years, found somebody else. She left him for a third person and then prevailed upon by his kids and things after quite some time. Eventually after two years went back to his original wife and said would you could we start again please and they were married for another 30 years. And the person who told me the story asked him the question what would you say about all of that? And he said, do not let your male member rule your life. So I'm not suggesting that for a sermon, but then you could use other language if you want to. But there's an interesting thing about taking back. And what does our culture feel about that story? It seems to me we're so much in a place where we're saying you should not tolerate or you shouldn't put up with or no one should expect themselves to whatever, which of course is counterbalancing some other tendencies which I'm not commending, but it leaves us all alone. There are definitely some themes you can pick up there if you want to, but I'd be surprised if that's where you're going to... If you want that story, can direct you to the person that told me that story. And they use more vivid language than I do. Because that was in the original. I

speaker-0: Great.

speaker-1: appreciate the gendered elements, but they are hard to overcome.

speaker-0: Okay, well let's move on then to Romans and I the thing that struck me, sort of I guess literary thing in this is that sort of every sentence, every verse sort of begins with a a command, an imperative, so how to behave, what to do. So it feels like very much like a sort of ethics sermon potentially here would was my instinct.

speaker-1: Yes, yes definitely. And as you know and some regular visitors to this discussion, no I'm not really big on those sermons. I think what I would say, two things I'd say about this. First of all, this is the one Corinthians 13 we don't read as often. Yeah. Like the first draft. Yeah. I feel like this is about love. it's all about love. actually there's a lot of realism in 1 Corinthians 13. keeps no score of wrongs, I think. But this really is about love in difficult circumstances. You could easily read this at a wedding, for example. It may seem a bit bleak and that's why people probably don't. And I understand that. There's no real reason to be bleak at a wedding. But I think when it comes to things like wedding preparation or something like that or a wider discussion about relationships, not just romantic or marital relationships, there's an awful lot in here. And I think the... The point here is not to, you know, for the preacher to dispense advice as if the preacher is the great expert on human relationships, but to keep it theological. basically what you're saying is, to quote one of the great theologians of the 20th century, I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden. It is saying that life, and that includes life in the church and life in close relationships, isn't a picnic. And what do you do? I don't want to go for the extreme kind of violence in the home kind of situation, but to go for a less extreme situation, you've got what's now called a toxic workplace environment, which people talk about all the time. And partially, I often talk to people about how do I handle the fact that people are doing this, or my boss is doing that, or everyone's claiming the other. This comes up in a lot of people's lives, most people's lives at some stage. There's an awful lot here to reflect on. So in that sense, in some ways, it's a more suitable passage for a home group I will study than it is for a sermon, or at least this kind of sermon that I tend to preach. But I think if I was preaching on this, I would probably want to pick out three or four key themes and then end very much with, mean, this is slightly alarming. Verse 20, heat burning coals on your head. I

speaker-0: Fine.

speaker-1: think that's from Proverbs, if I'm right. I know there's a quotation. It's not directly. But what it's all building up to is verse 21. course, Michelle Obama, they go low, we go high. I mean, it's coming from here. And it's coming from the basic. insight and all sorts of theologians and know, paro freri type social activists have pointed this out. Nelson Mandela, know, almost certainly, I'm sure he said more or less, you know, if you want them to win, you become like them. And so, you know, that's where I think I would focus is the question of how do you become the kind of community that can stand up to this nonsense. And I was asked to speak in Virginia last November on the subject of how do Americans get along with each other in the current circumstances. Some people criticised what I said because it was along these lines. I didn't preach or speak from this text, and they were talking about ice type environments where people are actually losing their lives or being deported to Eswatini or something and having no recourse to any legal thinking, they might spend the rest of their lives there, having not been prosecuted for anything. These kind of scenarios. And my response was, I know those things are terrible things and I feel the same way about them as you do. How are they going to change? They're to change by breaking down the polarization and allowing the large majority of the American population to see each other, I would like to say once again, but I'll be cautious about that, but to see each other as human beings and to see they have more in common than what separates them and so on. And that can only happen through 12 verse 21. And you know, I'm not going to be able to solve the guy in Eswatini's problem straight away. It has to happen by a whole change of mindset in society that makes a person who thinks a Democrat is evil by being a Democrat. an outlier rather than quite normal. so, you know, I think there is a, there's a micro way of treating this, which is what do you do in the workplace? What do you do in your church community when it all disintegrates? And then there's obviously a macro, what do you do politically in a society where people have stopped trusting or even hearing or understanding each other? But I suppose the other thing to say, and I think we'll come to this perhaps next week when we talk about Matthew 18, is that these are all the things that Jesus did. I think you want to sort of point out that if you go through every single one of these instructions, if you rightly point out, they're all imperative verbs. you could do a very interesting Christo-centric sermon by pointing out all the ways in which Jesus did all of these things. And that's how I'd overcome the moralistic tone, which people then point out the fact that you yourself don't actually embody all of these things and you say, that's something you can speak to my PR company.

speaker-0: Yeah, no, that's a really interesting way to go with it. Great. Thank you, Sam. Okay, we're on to the gospel then, and we are in Matthew sixteen. And we have yeah, as you said earlier, the sort of the other side of the gospel, the suffering, the persecution, the the l letting denying yourselves, taking up your cross.

speaker-1: So, in my Christology, and I suppose I can use a grand phrase like that, because I did publish last year a book of Christology, so I tend to not to highlight the distinction between who Jesus is and what he does, what's usually called Christology and soteriology. However, Matthew 16, which I understand from commentators is the most discussed part of the whole gospel of does invite that distinction. And what I mean by that is that the part that was read last week, mean, because of course the whole world is divided by the weeks we choose to take in this little conversation that we have. In other words, who do people say that I am? You are the Messiah, Son of the Living God. That part of Matthew 16 is the Christology. This is who Jesus is. And this is clearly what Jesus does. He is going to go up to Jerusalem. He is going to suffer. He is going to be killed. And that is... indigestible to Peter. I mean, I suppose the reason for saying all of that is it's kind of tricky to preach on either passage in isolation. You kind of almost want to say, we won't have the gospel next week, we're to do it all last week. see what I mean? Or you end up doing that difficult thing, which works in some congregations that don't tend to follow the text and not so much in congregations like the text in front of them, which is, I'm going to preach on a lot of stuff that isn't in front of you. that we didn't read today. But trust me, it's in the Bible. So it's a bit tricky, but it is a bit strange to preach on who do people say that I am and then you are the Messiah without this. Now, of course, you can make a virtue of that. mean, one thing I really don't like, as, again, people in this conversation will know, is criticizing the election rate. It's so boring. Yeah, it's just a terribly intra-churchy, pre-treaty conversation. However, without criticizing the election rate, making that point that you can't have one without the other, I think is important. Because however much we preach that we see the face of Christ in suffering and hardship and when did you see me hungry and so on, the latent assumption in our culture, not just in the church, but at least as much in our culture as in the church, is that the point of God is to make everything better.

speaker-0: Mm-hmm.

speaker-1: The biggest reason people give for not believing in God is not that they think the whole thing's made up or that they think the Big Bang or evolution provides an insuperable argument against theological insight. you know, I prayed to end the lottery and I didn't, so there isn't a God is there? So, you know, this is going right to the heart of that. And fascinatingly, We have, you Jesus has just declared that Peter is the rock. On this rock I will build my church. got a huge discussion and Protestant Catholic dialogue for 500 years about on this rock and all its successors or just on this rock, know, leave that to one side. Then he gets it completely wrong straight away, very much as he does after the Last Supper with denying Jesus three times, but he doesn't have the role taken away from him. So, you know, if you're preaching on the feast of St Peter in June or the feast of Peter and Paul in January, those are the kind of themes you'd like to dwell on, which is the rock that the church is founded on gets things wrong almost as often as it gets things right. But God doesn't stop treating it as the rock. So you can go down that route. But the basic insight is that the Christian faith is revealed. invariably through adversity. And that's a bit orc, sorry about this. That's been there since the very beginning. That's a kind of thread right through the Bible. And then we get these kind of circular things about saving your life, losing it. And for all these shortcomings, and danger of superficiality and cliche, which is quite a long introduction to a sentence that is supposed to end positively, narrative is really the best way to address this, I think. You really want to an example of somebody who lost their life to save it, and please don't let it be Henry Nowan.

speaker-0: Had enough of those.

speaker-1: Somebody else please. yeah, I mean there are plenty of examples you can find of people. I Augustine is an archetypal person, know, who had a very celebrated life, became a Christian and then let go of his concubine. So those of you with concubines over there, pay attention. It's not too difficult to find stories like that. And I think if you want to go down that route, but if you do, promise me, you will point out that God in Christ lost God's life. There has to be a theological dimension to that. It just be a moralistic story. Promise me.

speaker-0: And would you avoid in that setting, because I imagine not all but most preachers are probably ordained ministers. We I know we ha we'll definitely have lay ministers on here too. but would you avoid the kind of I used to be a you know, I used to be a theatre director and I let go of all that to be a and now I found by calling?

speaker-1: I never do that. And one reason I never do that is that I, at the age of 23 when I went to seminary or whatever you call the age at which that threshold arises, know, decided I wasn't going to be a journalist, I wasn't going to be an academic, I wasn't going to go into business and I wasn't going to take a management role in charity and I've ended up doing all of those things. So I'm not a very good example of the whole renounce thing. And so I know, appreciate I've had opportunities, not everybody's had, but I think the point is not I gave up my Premier League striker status and was on the verge of breaking Alan Shearer's record in the Premier League. It's not that, it's I gave up my... or the fantasy of my agency in determining my own destiny and handed that over and ended up going to America and all this sort of thing. But the truth is that's a fantasy anyway. So the whole idea of the giving up, and another reason I really don't like the giving up stuff, particularly when applied to oneself, is it ends up... giving up people. You know, I was going out with this wonderful person and I walked, gosh, did they hear this ghastly thing? my goodness. I mean, it's just horrible. So just don't go there, don't do that. So yeah, just don't centre yourself as the example of the gospel. I just don't do it. It's just a complete no-no. So it is quite circular, although I talk about this passage in the Being With Yourself chapter of Incarnational Ministry that I published about 10 years ago, because I do think there is something about finding who you really are by letting go of who you actually aren't. And I think there is pastoral, certainly in a spiritual direction type situation, I think these couple of verses 24 and 25 have got an awful lot of, they're one of those passages, Parable of the Talents, can't avoid keeping returning to in a spiritual direction type context. And I think they make some sense in a vocation sermon, asking people to reflect. But again, I... I think that sort of sets ordination up as if it's this thing that I think that's quite an old fashioned understanding of taking up the cloth. So I'm a bit nervous about it as you can tell.

speaker-0: Well, I think that's all we have time for. but folks, thank you so much for joining us as always and being with us at How Then Shall We Preach. thank you to Anne again for your question. And if you're listening and thinking, I've got a burning question, because I'm preaching in a couple of weeks' time, do send them in. you can go to smitf.org forward slash preach. And that is where you'll find my contact details. And you can ask your questions there. I think that's it though. Thank you very much Sam and we will be with you again next week.