OK, so where would you like to start?

It was a simple line that I happened to overhear. We were in the room with a coach who was speaking to one of their people on the phone. “OK, so where would you like to start?”

It’s a great opening line and invites the other person to be comfortable and divulge heaps so that the exchange may be as fruitful as possible.

It also highlights a certain selflessness. It’s not about the coach or the boss or whoever is the overseer. The focus is on ‘the other’ and how they may be best helped.

The place or the issue they start with is the most pertinent and burning issue to them and there is nothing worse than trying to quash this while there are trivialities that are being discussed. Do the big stuff, the hard stuff, the painful stuff first. Then everything else seems trivial.

It may be that the place you want to start and the issue you need to deal with first does not have easy or quick answers, but at the very least you feel as though you are being listened to and understood. This is important to me!

I wonder if this opening line would help all kinds of relationships and not just in the workforce or the sporting fields. What if the not-so-happy married couple began with “OK so where would you like to start?” Or what if our communities, our nation and inter nations might adopt this line, or at least, the good sense behind it?

The other line at the end of the meeting/chat is “OK, so what am I missing?” It might be painful, it might be contentious, but long-term fruit, fruit that will last, will have the best possible chance of flourishing.

Mums Move Us On.

Go into any ward at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne and the ache of a mother's love for her child is almost tangible. It wraps itself tightly around you from the moment you walk through the door. The sense of fear, desperation, hope, grief and protection never leaves you. So ferocious is that sense of love that it becomes a deep part of you. It becomes part of your DNA. As you leave the hospital you have been revamped and restyled. You just don’t know it yet. But you will and you are all the better for it. You are transformed, made more compassionate, made more understanding. You say less, you listen more, you weep louder. You are nudged forward into being someone else.

Every colour, every moment, every experience is heightened, pierces you and enriches you. The world is a more vivid, vibrant place. Life becomes passionate and urgent. And this is because of those Mums who are at the bedside.

Today’s first story of healing is all about such a Mum.

Much is made about this woman being an outsider. Much might be made of her nimble mind and her retorts but perhaps the most potent, important and lovely thing about this woman is the simple fact that she is Mum. A desperate, relentless, loving Mum and just as Our Lord’s divinity is on full display in the feeding of the 5000, his baptism and the transfiguration, so too in this story, Jesus’ full humanity is on display.

In both healing stories in the gospel, The Master restores humanity to the fullness of life and communion with the creator who loves them and wants them to be restored. But in the first story, the Mother nudges The Master along. This Mum caused Jesus to reconsider what his ministry is all about and who it is all about.

Notice that though she is insistent, she is nonetheless humble.  She does not dispute Jesus’ “preferential option for the Jews.”  She does not arrogantly demand to be served first.  She’ll settle for leftovers. So in her debate, she teaches us much about humility.

She also has something to teach us about who is included and what might be achieved if we were jolted out of our complacency and had the tenacity to go on asking, to go on searching.

That’s the great thing about Mums. Being responsible for another human being takes you out of yourself. Motherhood makes you think about someone other than yourself. Mums get it. They know the pain when their child is hurting and they know the joy of every triumph. They know the intimacy for 9 months longer than any man ever will. What great gifts they bring to our faith community, to one another and to the world.

On a deeper level, this woman has helped Jesus break new boundaries in his proclamation and ministry. Perhaps she will help us to open new boundaries in our proclamation and ministry.

And just as the Syrophoenician woman moved Jesus on, so did another woman at a wedding at Cana when the guests had run out of wine.

Our Lord’s first response to His Mother appeared to be a no, but Our Lady’s determined perseverance turned it into the ‘Yes’ that launched his public ministry. When you read that charming story in John 2, it’s almost as if Mother Mary is saying. “Well son, today is not about you, it’s about the happy couple. Think of someone else for a change.”

With both of these women, their faith ignored the obstacles and just kept on going.

The Syrophoenician woman entrusts the destiny of her daughter to the man who stands before her.  To believe in someone is to trust them, to entrust something of value to them, and even to entrust one’s very self to them is sublime. Her desire for her daughter’s salvation and her trust propels her to pursue The Master, to seek him tirelessly until she obtains what she believes he can provide.

Every mother who at this moment is in a ward at the Royal Children's Hospital is entrusting the most precious thing they have to the staff. They hand over the future of their child. In doing so they are moved on, transformed and even though it does feel like it, they are transfigured and become even more beautiful.

You and I need such people to help move us on, to help us pause and consider. And sometime this week you might like to reflect on those who have moved you on. Nudged you forward, and challenged you to look, think, reflect and act differently.

Sure, like the woman in the gospel, they can be downright annoying, not just because they challenge us, nag us and confront us, but because at the deepest level, we know they’re right and they leave us no option but to stir us out of our complacency and sloth, to break new territory in the places and actions where we know we must be and the people we must love.

When we can do this, when we can step out of ourselves in courage and faith, when we are open to going even further, demons are banished and good-quality wine flows. And that’s when the party begins.

From the V Sign to the Clenched Fist

There is a photo from the 1970s that shows two high school students sitting around doing what high school students tried to do in those days. To act cool and fail dismally in the process.

If you could see the photo and use your imagination, you may actually be able to work out who the gentleman on the right is. His hair is quite a different colour these days and there is much less of it.

The ‘V’ sign he is showing was all the rage in the late 1970’s. I think that it was supposed to stand for Victory but the significance has been lost to me over the years and no one seems to do ‘V’s anymore. Nor do we enjoy the peace that it signified or we hoped for. Over the decades we have learnt the hard, brutal, exhausting way that the victory of peace and stability are elusive commodities. Some would say they are unachievable.

Today, instead of showing a V sign or saying ‘Peace’, multiple groups punch the air with a clenched fist and chant ‘Fight’. It can’t be good for you, for the community or the world.

The old version of the guy in the photograph looks back on the fresh-faced version and whines that life seemed less contentious then. How swiftly do we seem to have gone from flower power to nuclear warheads, from a V sign to a fist?

We were probably naive, but that doesn’t mean we were wrong to aspire to a different world where dorky teenagers and even older grey-haired folk could just hang out, make peace signs, fail to be cool, but nevertheless be comfy in their school uniform. We must continue to choose the V sign over the clenched fist.

Why I Do the Dishes.

“And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus addresses three different audiences: a group of Pharisees and scribes.  The crowd that is perpetually present who I have come to think of as his groupies. They don’t actually seem to say a lot but they are always there. And finally, the disciples who, true to form in Mark’s Gospel, just don’t get it. Ah, now here is a group of people that I can strongly identify with. How many times has the lightbulb dimly flickered months, if not years later?

The message is delivered differently to each of these groups, but the gist of the message is the same for all of them. The same message is said slightly differently three times, so that by the end of the third telling we might just realise that this message is personally for each and every one of us.

And the message is this. Our very selves are defiled, made unholy, not by what we take in, the outside things, but by the corrosion of the human heart. Jesus’ three different versions of this message build on one another, thus enabling a fuller understanding of what is at stake: we must prepare our hearts, and thereby our selves, for the kingdom of God. This requires not worrying over what we “eat,” but how.

For most of the gospel, Jesus is arguing the toss with the Pharisees and scribes “who had come from Jerusalem”. St. Mark often slips us small details almost nonchalantly, seemingly on the way to a larger point. But these small details are there for a reason. The fact that these Pharisees and scribes are from Jerusalem actually matters a great deal. For Mark, Jerusalem’s greatest significance is that this is the city where Jesus will die. Mark’s story is breathlessly hurtling toward Jerusalem, and to the death and resurrection of Jesus that will set in motion the fulfilment of the kingdom of God. By surreptitiously letting us know that these Pharisees and scribes have hiked it all the way from Jerusalem, Mark is linking not only them, but today’s argy bargy, to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

To further make the point that it is Jesus himself that is under attack have a look at the question the Pharisees ask Jesus.

“Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

The question is not about the disciples. The question is really a flimsily veiled swipe at The Master. Almost as if to say “If you were a good rabbi you would keep your motley crew under control and they would always keep the tradition of washing before meal times.”

The Master’s response, a hefty quote from Isaiah shifts the argument to a deeper level. It’s what is within that really matters.

“‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

So you can wash your hands all you like before meals but unless you understand the symbolism of the action you might as well not bother.

And it works the same way with washing up. Look for and understand the why… the inward.

The same thing applies at the other end of the meal with the washing up.

Understand the why… and the inward.

Many of you will know that at parish functions it is my special joy to don my rubber gloves, toss a Mothers' Union apron over my head, fill up the sink with hot soapy water and get stuck in. Why?

Lots of reasons

Because it needs doing. How often did my mother say, ‘Well the dishes aren’t just going to jump into the sink by themselves now are they?’

Secondly, each dish reminds me of what is supposed to be going on inside me. “For it is from within, from the heart, that evil intentions come” (Mark 7:21a). Our heart is the centre of our will, thinking and desire. It is the place from which all our intentions arise.  Its part of the human condition that we gradually grubby up over a period of time and we need to be scrubbed and rinsed on a regular basis. One of the first things we do when we gather as a community for the eucharist, is we fess up to the times we have mucked up. While I am the sink it’s not just the cleaning of the dishes that I am thinking about.

Some of you have picked up on the third reason already. When you're at the sink it is almost inevitable that chatter happens, and relationships are enhanced and strengthened. Tell me the story of how you came to be here; tell me the story of where you are going; tell me where you stand, here and now. Make a bad joke, sing a song, hum, whistle; debate politics, novels, Harry Potter movies. Tell me your most embarrassing story. Complain about the weather; if it is winter, it’s too cold, if it’s summer, it’s too hot. Change out that dirty water. Smile.. sigh. The common goal of getting everything washed, wiped and tidied away, together with the physical proximity are the perfect combination for that  special something that is unseen and invisible, to be made stronger and more enjoyable. That’s why I do the dishes and long may it be so.

God’s Wardrobe.

There is a collection of Paul's letters commonly referred to as his ‘Prison Epistles’.

These prison epistles are ‘Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon.’ They are called the prison epistles because, in all of them, Paul mentions that he is in prison. The exact date is tricky but we think that is somewhere between 60 and 62 AD.

Paul has a Roman soldier to guard him but other than that he is free to receive visitors and to spread the gospel to anyone who will listen.

Today’s second lesson is from one of those ‘prison epistles’. His letter to the Ephesians. It is quite a well-known piece where St. Paul is trying to teach his Ephesian friends about putting on the whole armour of God.

I speculate that Paul found himself looking at his Roman guard, in the soldier’s attire and his equipment.  And maybe his thought processes went something like this.

Why is all this battle gear? Why is there a necessity for the breastplate and shield? And where did this angst, and argy bargy come from?

Paul realises that the problem of enmity one with another, does not come from the Roman soldier per se. The germ of antagonism is unseen and not discernible to the naked eye. The problem lies much deeper than under the soldier's breastplate. The necessity for this clobber comes from something deep within. So St. Paul put it this way.

 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

To use a slightly more modern parable the uniformed soldiers of the Second World War were not the reason for the war. The reasons for war were formed deeper in people’s hearts and minds, not in the clothes and medals that the combatants wore.

If we are honest all of us have sensed something of that struggle-some warfare deep within us. We know what the right thing is and it's going to be difficult and have consequences. Wouldn’t it be easier if I just surreptitiously…. surely no one would ever know and what harm would it do?

And even things that in and of themselves are good can gradually take up more space, time, and energy than they should. They infringe on and take over more important things. There are the days and nights when we are keenly aware of this struggle and there are times when we win and there are times when we confess that we are fallible and have given way.

St. Paul is honest about his own struggles. In his letter to those pesky Ephesians he uses the parable of his guards outward, visible clobber and equipment to talk about the things we need for our ongoing, invisible, indiscernible and continuous battles. To explain further I’ll use some words which someone else wrote. I draw your attention to the way they begin each section with the words ‘I choose…’ We must continuously choose to put on this inner wardrobe of God.

“I choose to put on the belt of truth. I choose to live today by what is true; not by what I feel. My emotions are fickle but the truth never changes. And the truth is that I am chosen, loved, and forgiven, even if it doesn’t always feel like it. The truth is that I have a purpose and a calling. The truth is there’s someone for me to love and encourage today.

I choose to put on the breastplate of righteousness. My righteousness does not come from me; it comes from you. I choose to live how you see me as a child who is infinitely precious.

I choose to put on the sandals of the gospel of peace. You desire for me to live in peace as I walk in my calling. My schedule is now in your hands, and I will not be hurried or rushed today, regardless of what happens. I will try to be a calming, stable, and steady presence everywhere I go.

I choose to put on the helmet of salvation. I know that my thoughts can be distracting and unhelpful. They are wayward and not organised. Help me to harness and focus them. Help me to bring them back and align them with your will for me and your world.

I choose to pick up the shield of faith, ready to take ground for the Kingdom. Temptations, criticism and storms are on the horizon, but with this shield I claim victory out loud and ahead of time, knowing you are going before me. I know that faith pleases you, and heaven and earth are full of your glory. And so today, I believe there’s nothing you can’t do in my life and through my life. I choose to take up the sword of the Spirit.  Your Word is a double-edged sword that will teach me, guide me, discipline me and comfort me. As I go now about my day, help to realise that you are walking alongside me.  I choose your wardrobe God… not mine. Today, I’ll be ready.”

The first time I did any hefty study I was at Theological College. I had never written more than 500 words before and all of sudden I was confronted with the task of writing 3000 words together with a thing called a ‘bibliography.’ I was daunted and I struggled.

About 10 days out from the due date I would present a piece of work to the lecturer. He would calmly sit me down and go through a little ritual.

“Well, Oulton. This bit here is rubbish and so is this bit. This bit is OK but it belongs toward the beginning of the essay and by the way … you have mentioned anything about A, B, C and Q.1. Now you hand me another piece of work before the due date and I will take the best of the two.” So I would go away and do just that. You would have thought that I would get great marks with a second chance, but it was not so. Each assignment was barely a pass, but we got there.

Literally, 20 years later I did some online study and this time I got much better marks. Not dazzling mind you, just noticeably better.

Why? The second time around I was more mature and much less distracted. I also understood the ‘essay process’ better and spent more time thinking about what the question was really asking.

But most importantly, I actually wanted to do this study. It wasn’t just a requirement of a theological college, a process to be completed.

My deepest admiration to those patient priests who quietly persevered with my ‘academia’ or lack of it. My friend Leonardo Da Vinci was right.

Study without desire spoils the memory and it retains nothing that it takes in

When I was about eight years old, my paternal grandfather teased me playfully with a question: Did Adam have a belly button? He—Val, my grandfather—was neither a philosopher nor theologian, but his question travelled with me for years. I long ago gave up the quest for the Adamic Umbilicus, but I took up the invitation to go on the occasional flight of fancy, to speculate a little when it came to matters of life and faith and belief.

We all do this, I imagine: wonder about what was, or what will be. Not that it proves anything, but top-of-the-line in the speculation stakes (based only on my unscientific research) is the question of what it’s like to die. It’s unanswerable, of course, because near enough is not good enough: being under anaesthetic for hours or being successfully resuscitated don’t count because the situation was reversible. For some people, this is where speculation and wondering end. If God is eliminated from the equation, and all that is, is now, then that’s the end of the enquiry. Anything further is a waste of time. Adam’s navel is neither here nor there. It simply doesn’t matter.

However: I maintain that our wondering, and our speculation are authorised, even encouraged by the scriptures that we hold dear, without which there is nothing to say. Even stronger, that our pondering and imagining are required, because we have been invited into the open mystery that is the Gospel, not to solve it or tame it, but to experience its power.

St John’s Easter narrative is spare, a bit light on detail, yet profound nonetheless. The cast of characters is limited: Mary Magdalene, the enigmatic and often misrepresented figure who steps in and out of various stories in all four Gospels; Peter and the ‘Beloved Disciple’, the latter the faster runner of the two, the former, more impetuous; two-bit players, ‘angels in white’ (not seen by Peter and the BD); and The Gardener. The very setting—‘a garden in the place where he was crucified…[where] there was a new tomb’—is deeply symbolic when the detail is examined. This wondering, this exploration, is after all, an invitation found at the start of this Gospel: ‘Come and see’ (two key verbs in John’s Gospel) is Jesus’ invitation in chapter 1 to Andrew and Simon Peter, an invitation soon repeated by Philip to Nathanael. It seems to me that we’re meant to speculate, informed and guided by the scriptures and traditions held dear by the Church. If we don’t test the waters using the measures we have been given, then other voices will prevail.

Sometimes the speculation can be very basic, almost banal: did Mary think Jesus was ‘the gardener’ (the perfectly ordinary ancient and modern Greek word for the same, κηπουρός) because of the way he was dressed (straw hat and all)? Because of the garden setting? Or because her vision was blurred? All of the above? Or was there more to it, a genuine confusion, a collapse of confidence and a lack of recognition? What turned the situation around?

Whatever ‘heaven’ may—once we have jettisoned all of the clutter and rubbish that have distorted our understanding and even made the idea repellent to some—at its most fundamental it must be where/with the living person of Jesus Christ. (The ‘where’ question remains a difficulty for many, no doubt.) While the destination may be uncertain and lacking in detail (‘place’ is so important to us as embodied creatures), the company we shall keep is not in doubt: ‘In my Father’s house’, said Jesus, ‘there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?’ The proposition goes on: ‘And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.’

But if there is room for all, how will I fare in the company of so many, the vast, unnumbered redeemed? Will I, in this myriad of people, all of whom have been welcomed by the risen Christ, recognise him, or will I mistake him for some other worthy? After all, I have only a lifetime’s worth of collected mental images of the Jesus of history (as some scholars like to style him), ranging from the Nordic Jesus (blond, blue-eyed) through to squat, unprepossessing figures generated by computer algorithms. Will I be lost in the crowd? And how will I recognise those whom I love and for whom I hope to seek; what will they—and I—look like? These are all real questions that I have heard (and there will be others), but ultimately, they are misconceived because they rely on what I think I know and the ways in which I have shaped both reality and expectation.

But let’s return to Mary: what enabled the moment of recognition and in an instant upended her world, and the world itself? It was not sight—she thought him the gardener, quite reasonably, after all. It was the calling of her name that shifted the ground. The moment is recorded by John with great economy: ‘Jesus said to her, “Mariam”.’ We’re free to try to speak her name in a variety of ways—there is no need to be bound by the editors’ decision to end the sentence with an exclamation mark, which could suggest that it was spoken with a degree of abruptness, like a slap to a hysterical person. (There is no such punctuation mark in the ancient texts.) My speculation, however, is that it was an almost-whispered, tender shaping of her name, nobody else’s.  Mary—Mariam—responded to the risen Jesus’s speaking her name, to his knowing who she was; not the other way around. Only then did the mistaken identity fall away and the cry of recognition followed: Rabbouni! (which does, perhaps, warrant an exclamation mark).

The risen Jesus, whom John carefully describes as raised from the dead, embodied, the same yet different, but still bearing the marks of his passion (proudly, I conclude), is no mere metaphor, no ‘spiritual’ or ‘psychic’ or ‘symbolic’ experience, but the one returned from amongst the dead, having shared completely our condition in order to take us to his Father’s house. How, then, will it go when the time comes? My poor speculation is that I and you, and all for whom we long to be reunited in Christ—will, like Mariam, be ‘called by name’ and we will ‘know his voice’, just as he promised when describing himself as the Good Shepherd. We, the sheep of his pasture, will follow him ‘because they—we—know his voice’. The Magdalene was misled by her ability to see, but by means of the calling of her name attained to recognition. In the end, I speculate that Christ’s knowing of us is far more important than our as-yet imperfect knowledge of him.

Martin Luther, when contemplating his death, made a confident and compelling (if speculative) statement: ‘On the Last Day’, he said, ‘Christ shall knock upon my headstone and say, “Awake, brother Martin—be up and doing!”’.

Adam’s navel aside, I speculate that, when the moment comes, Christ will speak to each of us by name, with joyous, loving and unquestionable recognition to follow.

When disaster strikes…

It’s another line I shamelessly stole from a podcast I was listening to. The person who was being interviewed was a disaster planner. Ie. When a major disaster happens they are one of the people who strategically think through what needs to happen, medicine, fresh water, evacuation, the delicate task of passing on gut-wrenching news and controlling a yapping media that bray for blood and gore.

It’s not an easy task but this person thrives on it because each disaster, whilst terrible, gives her an opportunity to learn how to do things better and help people begin the journey through the ‘valley of the shadow of death’.

On her first day she was with her new colleague/boss and the phone went. It was a shocker of a disaster and the first thing her colleague said after they hung up the phone was ‘I’ll put the kettle on’. Which, when you think about it, is pretty sage advice.

The calamity has happened and you can’t ‘undo it’. A calm head is called for so that the next steps can be thought through calmly and thus effectively. Mistakes will be made if we rush into a situation letting our emotions dictate the order of the day.

A wise old bishop once said that ‘The Church of God floats on an ocean of tea’. Against the backdrop of some smaller episodes of sadness, some of my sager conversations have been over a simple cuppa at the kitchen table. Large dollops of silence reflection and sometimes a bit of scribbling on some paper have made the time productive and fruitful … in the long term. Short term its hard to see through the tears and make sense of the blithering confusion racing around in our head.

So “When disaster strikes … put the kettle on.”

11 August 1024

The bread of humanity, the stuff of God.

The creators of the lectionary had me stumped this week. In the first lesson, we have the heart-wrenching story of King David learning that his son Absalom has died a grizzly death. The details are all printed in the pew sheet in graphic detail. It would be the sort of macabre demise that would delight the most voracious journalist and feed the daily news cycle for a good couple of days, pushing aside anything else that was purporting to be news in the local area.

The Cushite who brings this news to King David has no idea that Absalom is David’s son and actually thinks that Absalom is the king’s enemy. So it is with fierce glee that the Cushite reports.

“May the enemies of my lord the king and all who rise up to harm you, be like that young man.”

King David of course is crushed. ‘He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!’

You can almost hear the King’s sobs and words.  It rings disquietly and grimly authentic. Maybe you have heard something similar. Maybe you have said something similar.

Then in the gospel reading for today, we get a hefty wedge of John’s bread of life discourse with more to follow next week. The Jews are grumbling because The Master is saying some complex things. Jesus is misunderstood and all he really wants to do is feed his people with the gift of Himself.

So what common theme might these two readings have? Fr. David will have to try to connect the two together on the flimsiest of pretexts.

The death of Absalom has a few faint,… OK very faint, echoes of another death. Absalom dies upon a tree. He dies pierced and he dies at the hands of others. Sound familiar? Absalom, the departed is also the son of a King although this is not widely known at the time. It will be much later when this truth emerges.

But there is also another connection. The brokenness of Absalom and the brokenness of King David are part of the brokenness of the Eucharistic bread that John is referring to in his gospel where Jesus is playing a tough gig to a grumpy crowd.

Or let me try and put it another way. The only thing that begins to make sense of the shattering of Abaslom and David, and the times we are crushed, is the bread that is in pieces on the altar. It is there on the altar, on the paten and in the ciborium, that we glimpse the reality that His brokenness, is our brokenness, is His brokenness.

This does not take away King David’s pain, nor does it stop our tears, but the beginning of our healing is to realise that he is not a God who holds himself aloof when we need him most. He does not hold us at arm's distance but rather wraps his arms around us as we weep together. For as long as it takes, for as often it takes.

Perhaps the wounded and pierced Messiah is the one who can turn the grieving King David’s words “If only I had died instead of you” into victory, for the Master did die for us.

The bread which is Him on the altar does not somehow fix things and make it all better. The bread is still broken and once its broken you can’t somehow put it all back together again and magically make it as it was before.

King David's life cannot be as it was before he learned of his son's death.

At the altar, we understand again that our afflictions no matter our small or bewildering, are in fact sanctified. They are made holy, they are taken into that other dimension, His dimension. Our humanity is taken into his divinity and we are transformed, morphed and we can never be the same again.

One of the options when we bless holy water is to add salt as part of the ritual. Not just to remind us that salt is a cleansing agent, but also as a symbol of salty tears which are the most authentic form of prayer we can offer.

For the 30 years before today’s misunderstanding between the Jews and Jesus, the Master partook of the bread of humanity. In his daily meals, in the worship at the synagogue, in the meals of mourning, banquets of feasting and wedding receptions. In the hurdy gurdy dancing and in the laughter, in hidden weeping and the tedious grist of daily humdrum life. For 30 years he consumed our daily bread.

It is understandable to come to Him, wanting Him to turn back the clock and make things as they were. We come embarrassed by our scars and emptiness.

He comes to us, to show us that our scars are actually beautiful. Our tears are exquisite, and we have all we need and more. In Him we see what we are now and what we can be into the future.

The bread of Humanity / the stuff of God. The bread of God / the stuff of Humanity.

Mary Sumner

“It can’t have been easy”

Today I want to start with Mary Sumner's own Mum Mrs. Heywood. It is the culture and atmosphere of the home that we grow up in, that we silently absorb on a daily basis, which helps to form us as we mature. We don’t do this consciously or with deliberate acts. Rather we soak up more than we ever know from our family home. Sometimes we sense this only much later in life, especially when we find ourselves saying things just like our parents. Eerily it’s frequently word for word and in a tone that sounds just like Mum and Dad.

Mary Sumner was born Mary Heywood. Her Mother also had the name Mary. We are told that

“Mary Heywood was a woman of personal piety who held mothers’ meetings in her home in Herefordshire, England. She was a woman of great faith and quite wealthy” So you would have thought that it was all very grand and easy. But… there is a sad little footnote when we read that she suffered the loss of a six week old son.

It can’t have been easy.

Mary grew up a talented, educated lass learning 3 languages and travelling to Rome to complete her musical education. There she met her future husband George Sumner. So she began Rectory life with all its joys and privileges, together with its bumps and intrusions.

It can’t have been easy.

When Mary gave birth to her first born, a daughter, she wrote

” I shall never forget the awed sense of responsibility as I took her in my arms. It struck me how much I needed special training for so great a work and how little I knew. I felt that mothers had one of the greatest and most important professions in the world and yet there was none had so poor a training for its supreme duties.”

Being a parent and being in a family…

It can’t have been easy

The Mothers’ Union was still far off and yet it all stemmed from this time in Mary’s life.

So daunted and yet so enthralled Mary Sumner

was passionate about transforming the home–lives of Parish families, by helping the women to support one another in raising their children. Her husband was very supportive: ‘just share your heart – God will do the rest’. She was so nervous at the first meeting of the parish women, that she refused to speak, and asked George to take her place. It was very unusual for a woman to be a public speaker.

However, George encouraged her to speak from the heart and it went so well that she found the courage to speak at future meetings. Hoorah! Her talks were inspired by her faith – it was practical and down to earth – ‘Remember, Ladies, to be yourselves what you would have your children be’. After groups with women became well established, she was asked to speak to the men of the Parish. Now that can’t have been easy!

She was apprehensive, but agreed, and helped them to be more aware of what their wives did for them, to show more respect and love. The meetings grew, and included women – old and young, rich and poor. Others heard about her work, and started groups in their own areas.

In 1885, at a time when it was still unheard of for women to speak to large audiences, Mary Sumner was invited by the Presiding Bishop to speak to a packed church congress session for women in Portsmouth.

Now the whole “it can’t have been easy” thing has just been ratcheted up to its highest gear.

From 1900 onwards, she and the members started to advocate on issues of key importance to families and children – she campaigned to stop children collecting alcohol from public houses for their families, and for the age of marriage for girls to be raised from 12 to 16. She was not afraid to speak up on difficult issues, despite resistance from members of the establishment. When she died in August 1921, 4,000 women attended her funeral. She could not have conceived how the seeds which she planted would grow into a movement 4 million strong today, of members in 83 countries putting their faith into action to nurture healthy relationships in families and communities and to fight for social justice.

She was also not afraid to act outside the social norms, to do what she believed to be right. At a time when unmarried girls with children were condemned and cast out, she cared for and protected her niece and her illegitimate son.

Hey, hang on a minute. This would have been really quite something. An unwed Mum in the 19th century would have been looked down upon and besmirched. Thankfully to the likes of Mary Sumner instead of broadcasting  disparaging remarks to anyone who will listen today we say
‘Welcome. You are a part of our family. How can we best support and encourage you? Our next MU meeting is…’

And there is a little backstory here that we can only guess at. What happened to the niece’s parents? Where were they? How come it was left to Aunty Mary Sumner to protect and look after this young lass and her child?

It can’t have been easy…and when things are not easy then prayer is the only place to start. So the prayer that Mary Sumner herself wrote will be a good place to end … err begin…as we continue Mary Sumner’s work.

“All this day, O Lord, Let me touch as many lives as possible for thee; and every life I touch, Do thou by thy spirit quicken, whether through the words I speak, the prayer I breathe, or the life I live. Amen”