“You are a city built on a hill that cannot be hidden”

Sermon for the Feast of St David

St Mary on Paddington Green, 25 February 2018

Isaiah 61:1–3, 10–11, Philippians 3:8–14; St Matthew 5:13–19

+In nomine…

Jesus said, “You are a city built on a hill that cannot be hidden.”

I found myself thinking the other day: What will we do with all our time once we finally leave the European Union? What will we talk about, with what shall we entertain our dinner party guests, once Brexit has finally happened, and there will be no more talk of single market, and customs union, and away days at Chequers, and poor Mrs May’s negotiating tactics.

The news that ITV is about to broadcast the twentieth series of Midsomer Murders gave me my answer. We will be able to fill our post-EU days watching the entire back catalogue. Because Midsomer Murders seems to me to be the perfect Brexit-y kind of programme. For those of you who’ve managed to miss all nineteen series so far, it’s a contemporary crime drama set in the imaginary West Country county of Midsomer — the kind of county that would be represented in Parliament by Jacob Rees Mogg, and the kind of place where the loudest thing that happens is the buttering of a scone, until, that is, the neighbours fall out over some begonia cuttings, to which the natural reaction seems to be murder. The overall tone is nostalgic. At a time when American cop shows were CSI and all technical, and when the Swedes were pioneering Scandi noir, we produced something comfortingly English, a sort of updated Agatha Christie, save with fewer Belgians, and not quite as taxing on the little grey cells. Perfect for post-EU Britain.

One of the charming features of the series is the way in which its authors have to continue to create new villages to cope with all the murders. They’re all called Midsomer Something, and Wikipedia lists all 33 of them, from Midsomer Abbas, Midsomer Barton and Midsomer Chettham, through Midsomer-in-the-Marsh and Midsomer Parva to Midsomer Wellow, Worthy and Wyvern. And in none of them is a retired colonel safe from a blow with a candlestick in the drawing room.

I was brought up on Anglesey, an island off the West Wales coast, and somewhere where we’re a bit more imaginative with our village names. Almost without fail, Anglesey’s villages are named after a local saint, and that name will be unique, that saint unique to that place. And in the village will be a church, dedicated to St Cadwaladr, or Iestyn, or Ceinwen, or Eleth — a church that will mark the place where that saint, where that holy man or woman, back in the seventh or eighth centuries, had their cell, their small community. And so to worship in a small church on Anglesey is to worship in the place where, fifteen centuries ago, there was a glade or a cave or a grove or a well, where a holy man or woman made their home and told stories of Jesus, and sought to heal in his name, and to call others to follow in his way. And we know that these earliest Christians often chose those places because they were already in some way holy. Stones that were once sacred to the ceremonies of pagan worship are carved with a cross; wells of water, once sanctified by heathen blessings, are made holy by Christian benediction; in clearings in the woods where Druids had gathered, bread was now broken and wine outpoured. And continues to be so to this day.

And it is impossible to stand in one of those simple stone churches without having that sense of the depth of our tradition, some closeness to the Ancient of Days. To that spirit of continuity, more recent generations have added their own layers. Those buried in the churchyard or commemorated in war memorials on the walls are often the forebears of those who sit in the pews today. This small church has been a place where families have gathered to celebrate and to mourn. This has been the place that has held the memory of what is sacred, and passed it from one generation to the next. This place, in Larkin’s words, “In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, / Are recognised, and robed as destinies.” Here, in this place, in this company, human needs, human frailties, human weaknesses, have, over the centuries, encountered something Other, the infinite depth of all being, and have been hallowed by time, and clothed with wisdom, with dignity, with importance.

During these days of Lent, we’re invited to take a look at our lives — at our spiritual lives, our lives of faith, at our relationship with God — and to ask how healthy they are. As you do that this Lent, let me ask you to reflect on how like one of those small, ancient churches your spiritual life is. Amid the busy-ness and anxiety of everyday living, how in touch are you with God, the source of the infinite depth of all being. How much time do you spend in the deep, silent, inexhaustible company of God? How, in the depths of silence, or imagination, or scripture, or sacrament, or creation do you nurture that relationship with God who alone clothes your life with wisdom, with dignity, with importance? Where is your deep place of encounter with God, and how much time will you spend there this Lent?

Jesus said, “You are a city built on a hill that cannot be hidden.”

We’re celebrating this Eucharist in a church that’s quite modern by Anglesey standards; indeed, a church that has been rebuilt three times to cope with the changing demands of a changing city. We’re celebrating St David at this Eucharist today in part to commemorate St David’s Church, built at the end of the nineteenth century and now closed, where Welsh-language worship was once offered in this parish. The rhythm of church life in London, where I’ve now lived for many years, seems quite different from the deep, ageless rhythm of those simple countryside churches in Wales. Church buildings are here more modern, more active; and church communities are more transient. Most of us here are incomers of some sort — they are often not our forefathers listed on the war memorials, not our ancestors commemorated in the stained glass windows or buried in the churchyard. We often travel to church, more attracted by what’s on offer here than what’s offered by the church down the road or closer to home. Yes, there’s an agelessness to what happens here — to the taking of bread and the pouring of wine — but it’s shaped and offered in a busy, relevant, changing context. The challenge here is not so much to be set apart in profound stillness but to connect, to engage, to relate, to adapt, and, as with St David’s Church, sometimes to accept that to everything there is a season, and that it is often necessary to move on from one community, from one place, from one expression of Church to the next good thing, confident that God travels with us, revealing new insight, new understanding and new hope.

There’s an example of that new insight that comes of God in today’s Gospel reading. “Your light must shine in the sight of others,” says Jesus, “so that they may give the praise to your Father in heaven.” “Father” — that the first time in St Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus calls God “Father”. The Jewish tradition in which Jesus has been brought up has hardly dared to name the awe-ful, all-powerful Lord God Almighty. And here is Jesus calling him “Father”, radically replacing those established connotations of a mighty, dominant, distant Lord with a vision of a God who is as close to us, as interested in us, as loving towards us as a mother or a father might be. Jesus’s faith, and our faith, is ancient but it’s not still; it is of the depths, but needs to speak to today’s world, to today’s people, to today’s anxieties and hopes and needs.

During these days of Lent, as we take a look at our spiritual lives, our lives of faith, at our relationship with God — let me invite you to reflect on how relevant, engaging and nimble your faith is. Do you make connections between your faith, between this Sunday experience, and the lived reality of things? Do you allow God to speak to you in the experiences of everyday life and through our encounters with one another? Do you have ways — through study and conversation and reflection — of keeping your faith up-to-date, refreshed, alive? Where do your new insights about God come from that keep your faith growing. Where will they come from this Lent?

Jesus said, “You are a city built on a hill that cannot be hidden.”

Throughout the New Testament, the Christian community is often compared to a building, a temple, and individual Christians (you and me) to the living stones that make up its walls. We are to be built up together, to be edified, to create that real church, which is not a building of stone and glass, but living people, lives lived under grace, souls shining forth with the light of Christ. Jesus says “You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world; you are a city built on a hill that cannot be hidden.” That is no small, mean task, but a bold obligation and duty placed on our shoulders to witness to God who is the infinite depth of all being, and the life-changing power of all of our lives. Let us take some time this Lent to know that infinite depth and to experience that life-changing power, and so to be built up for all the world to see.

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world; you are a city built on a hill that cannot be hidden.”