Sunday 17 May 2026, The 7^th Sunday of Easter

Acts 1: 6–14

John 17: 1–11

God,

Jesus says that to know you is eternal life.  To know. You.

This requires a bit of thought.  It contradicts a few very well-embedded notions.

It means that eternal life is not a reward for behaving in a certain way.  The Ten Commandments forbid idolatry, adultery, murder, theft and dishonesty.  Avoiding most of those most of the time should not be beyond me.  But, according to Jesus, if I avoid them for the rest of my days but do not know you then eternal life will not be mine.

It also means that eternal life is not a reward for believing certain things.  The Nicene Creed speaks of one God; one Son of God; raised on the third day; ascended; one Holy Spirit; one baptism.  I give my assent to all of them.  But, according to Jesus, if I hold beliefs but do not know you then (again) eternal life will not be mine.

God, it would be so much easier if eternal life was a matter of behaving like this or believing that.  But it isn’t.  Eternal life is knowing you.  So: what does it mean to ‘know’ you?

Even in my most important relationships – with the people who have known me longest and the people who love me best – I am compelled to acknowledge that I am still discovering things for the first time.  Without exception.  It’s humbling: after decades I still don’t know those I love completely.  So what hope have I of knowing you, the immortal one, the invisible one, the creator of the stars of night?

Of course, there are Christians – dear friends of mine – who know just what it is to know you.  You advise them on everything, from their children’s names to the houses they buy.  They chat to you as I might chat to my friend Phil.  But I can’t.  I’m probably sounding self-righteous.  I don’t mean to.  It’s just that, if I’m to remain true to myself, I cannot slap you on the back and ask you whether I should order a cappuccino or a flat white.

No.  I ask again: what does it mean to ‘know’ you?

We are told that the eleven returned to the upper room together with the mother of Jesus and his brothers.  These were men and women who knew Jesus.  They had grown up with him, travelled with him, worked with him.  Now he had left them.  They must have been deeply distressed.  We are told that when they returned to the upper room, they devoted themselves to prayer.  I wonder what they prayed?  Surely that their knowing Jesus might continue despite his having left them, that their knowing Jesus might survive – perhaps through the Holy Spirit of whom he had spoken.  The Holy Spirit: still you, but now not speaking in the accent of a Galilean carpenter.  You as unseen energy poured out upon all the Earth.

Prayer.  Spirit.  Knowledge.  God, are these linked?

I pray, or I try to. I pore over the Scriptures.  I receive the Sacrament.  I participate in worship.  I read devotional texts.

Does all this mean that I know you?

Well, it’s true that when I do these things, I sometimes feel very close to you.  My heart lifts, my mind clears, new horizons open.  Very occasionally, I have experienced a profundity of peace which is utterly unearthly.  But, equally, when I do these things, I sometimes don’t feel very close to you.  At all.  I feel tired, bored, and lonely.  Or I feel nothing.  I’ve long since concluded that knowing you can’t ultimately be about what I feel.  Feelings come and go like the English summer.

So: what does it mean to know you?

God, in the same upper room to which his friends return, Jesus prays.  He says, ‘All mine are yours, and yours are mine’.  He believes that what he has, he has from you.  You are the source, continually, perpetually giving.  And Jesus himself is evidence of that – he is your gift of yourself, given to the world, a gift that the Ascension does not take away but that the Ascension changes.

Sometimes our prayers echo Jesus’s words: ‘All things come from you’.  Scripture, sacrament, prayer: these are means through which you pour yourself out upon me.  And because you are God you cannot be limited to these means.  Through the love of my family and the encouragement of my friends, you pour yourself out upon me.  Through a walk in the hills, a jazz quartet, a selfless act, you pour yourself out upon me.  Through time given to anything except self-pity, you pour yourself out upon me.  Jesus believes that you are the source, continually, perpetually giving.  The energy of your Spirit is poured out upon me through a thousand different streams.

Does it mean that I know you?

It must mean that I am known by you because you reach out to me unceasingly.  You dwell in the depths of my heart.  I am known by you.  And I know that I am known by you.  Perhaps that’s what it means to know you.  Perhaps that’s what eternal life means: to know that I am known.

Amen.

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Zechariah 8: 1–13
Revelation 21: 22—22: 5

Tonight’s readings are not so much a tale of two cities as two tales of a city…

The first is the prophet Zechariah’s account of God’s words to Jewish exiles returning to Judah from Babylon, to rebuild their Temple.  The second is the prophet John the Divine’s account of God’s words to believers beyond the bounds of Palestine, anticipating an era of severe persecution.

The accounts are written centuries apart and are addressed to different audiences in different contexts.  But both articulate a vision of a city – Jerusalem – a city which has borne and continues to bear a burden of significance, meaning, and interpretation which surely exceeds that of any other city in history.

The two tales have much in common.

In both, Jerusalem features as the locus of God’s ultimate reconciliation with humankind. ‘I will return to Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem’ God promises Zechariah.  ‘The city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light’ John promises his hearers.

In both, God’s reconciliation with humankind brings blessings for the city’s inhabitants.  In the first, the returning exiles sit in the city streets if they are old and play in them if they are young.  In the second, night never falls and the gates are never shut.  How often are portraits still painted of an era when doors were unlocked and children played in the streets!  Across the centuries it’s been a powerful image of perfect unruffled security.

And in both, the very soil of the earth responds to the presence of God.  In the first, vines yield their fruit and the ground gives produce.  In the second, the tree of life blooms and its leaves offer healing to the nations.

To the prophet Zechariah and to the prophet John Jerusalem means reconciliation; tranquillity; fruitfulness and healing.  The poets and visionaries who have followed them have not stopped imagining and re-imagining the city.  Many of these imaginings and re-imaginings are part and parcel of our worshipping life.  They tell tales of Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest; they recall that glorious things are spoken of the city of our God; they name it as light’s abode whence peace doth spring; they claim it as the city we will build in England’s green and pleasant land.

Jerusalem is so many things to so many peoples.  And to you and to me Jerusalem is…what?

It’s forty-eight square miles on a plateau of the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean and the Dead Seas.  It’s a human settlement known to Zechariah, to Jesus of Nazareth, and to the prophet Muhammad.  It’s a bitterly contested space at the epicentre of history’s most intractable conflict.  It’s a metaphor for the final realization of God’s presence in and rule over all things.

Ancient city; conflict zone; icon of God’s ultimate purpose – but what does Jerusalem mean?  What does it mean to us, this Easter?

Jerusalem is the place where God chooses to dwell.  Where God chooses to dwell there is life; there is no need for any other source of power.  Where God chooses to dwell there is peace and there is light; there is no fear and no darkness; children play in the streets and the aged sit with their staffs in their hands.  Where God chooses to dwell the earth around is abundant; there is new life springing up in abundance and for the enjoyment of all.

Sisters, brothers: you and I are the place where God chooses to dwell.  We are built to be Jerusalem – the place, the people from whom shines the light that lights up the earth; in whom there is peace; around whom there is abundance.  We are the new Jerusalem – we are those from whom the new Jerusalem will be built.  May it be so!

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Revd Kenneth Padley
Sunday 10 May 2026

John 14.15-21

Jesus enjoins his followers to ask, seek and knock. And any such act of asking looks to the future with hope and confidence.

In today’s gospel Jesus leads by example. He says that we are to love him and to keep his commandments [verse 15] – and that to help with this [verse 16] he will ask the Father for the support of the Holy Spirit. So, as Jesus prepares for his Ascension (which we celebrate on Thursday), his ask for the future is for flourishing of his followers on earth.

Today is a day for asking, and asking with a view to the future. That is because today is Rogation, the sixth Sunday of the Easter season, the traditional date of prayer for agricultural fruitfulness. Back in the Middle Ages, when the whole of society hung on the success or failure of the farming year, Rogation was far more important than Harvest Thanksgiving. Harvest Festival is a glance in the rear-view mirror of the agricultural year. Rogation by contrast is a steady focus through the windscreen, an ask for the future. Praying for agricultural productivity has renewed seriousness in 2026, given the pressures on farmers from increased costs of fuel and fertiliser.

The word Rogation comes from the Latin ‘to ask’. Ultimately of course this lends itself to themes much wider than agriculture. We should pray for safe, happy workplaces and a productive economy – not the chasing of cheap and unsustainable bucks but building skills and resources to support our communities and country for the long term.

And because flourishing communities in the broad sense is central to the ask of Rogation, the Cathedral is also using today for our annual giving campaign. We are updating our congregations on the mission that we share together, giving thanks for what has been achieved in the past year, and asking for your new or renewed financial support in the twelve months ahead.

Let’s start with the good news by reviewing 2025. Many of the indicators on our dashboard are flashing green.

Worship is at the heart of what we do, and we rejoice at having seen increases in regular Sunday and midweek attendance for each of the last five years. This has returned us not just to levels seen before the decimating coronavirus restrictions but to levels last seen before the Novichok attack of 2018. Festival attendance at Christmas and Easter is similarly buoyant and almost back to pre-Novichok levels.

Alongside worship, the hard work of our volunteers and staff are supporting a visitor base that has now exceeded pre-Novichok levels for three years in a row. Visitors are the largest income stream for the Cathedral so play a crucial role in underpinning our overall witness and ministry.

In 2025 we also enjoyed extraordinary creativity from across our teams with a wide range of musical concerts, topical films and book tours, artistic and archival exhibitions and theological talks. Last summer’s flower festival was an exceptional highlight.

Physically, your Cathedral is in the best condition it has been for seven hundred years. And considerable investment and conservation excellence continue to enhance the built environment of the Close, both individual properties and the shared space which we enjoy together. By this time next year there should be only one property in the Close awaiting significant restoration work.

If you have been part of this in 2025 through your gift of time as a volunteer and / or financial donations to the Cathedral (or linked charities such as the Friends and Girl Choristers’ Fund), thank you. The financial output of this shared task will be a deficit of around £100K in the financial year which ended last month.

Please do not be downhearted to hear a negative figure of this size: this result is ahead of budget and is a small proportion of our overall turnover. And there is no leakage: your Cathedral has excellent financial controls and monitoring. That said, deficits are a warning sign and the budget for 2026-27 indicates that things will get notably tighter in the short term. Robust measures are being put in place by the Cathedral’s Finance Committee to turn this curve over the next three years but we need everyone to play their part if Salisbury Cathedral is to continue to thrive as a beacon of liberty, creativity and eternity.

In the year ahead, in addition to the familiar cycle of inspirational worship and world class music, the Cathedral will be continuing projects to enhance the energy efficiency of this building, initiating a youth partnership to make a real difference to the lives of vulnerable young people in the area, undertaking preparatory work for conservation of the Jesse window (our oldest stained glass), and anticipating our involvement in the 800^th anniversary of Salisbury’s city charter next year.

To help us progress all of this, our ask for the future this Rogationtide is threefold.

• If you are a regular worshipper here, please join our regular giving scheme. This can be accessed through an online search for ‘PGS Salisbury Cathedral’. PGS stands for the ‘Parish Giving Scheme’. PGS is the Church of England’s Direct Debit platform. It reliably channels every penny given to a donor’s designated church or churches. If you are a regular worshipper here and already support us by standing order, card of cash, I encourage you to come over to PGS. PGS has particular benefits especially around Gift Aid that no other method provides. Most of those who once supported the Cathedral through standing order have now come over to PGS. Please join us.
• Secondly, there is no formula for how much anyone should give and individual giving will vary hugely. Each must determine what is right for their present circumstances and involvement. I am also mindful that many give to specific projects such as music and maintenance or have split commitments between the Cathedral and other places of worship. With these caveats, I would note that the average weekly donation excluding Gift Aid through PGS by worshippers in this diocese in 2025 was £18.02 – and in the country was £19.35. Regular unrestricted giving in the Cathedral per average adult Sunday worshipper remains considerably below this. In short, our pattern of giving does not yet reflect the same levels of financial support seen, on average among our brothers and sisters in other churches.
• Thirdly, as you reflect on regular support, I would also encourage you to think about legacies. Would you consider leaving a gift to the Cathedral in your will? Legacies and gifts in memoriam are a huge windfall blessing that enable us to do things which would otherwise be just aspiration. Of course, we rely on regular faithful giving day by day, but legacies are a further and unforeseen blessing, helping to provide security for the Cathedral’s future.

Full information about all of this is on a letter from the Dean which the stewards will give to every adult as you leave. This information will also be circulated electronically to our worshipping community roll in the days ahead. For those watching online, details about giving support can be found under the ‘More’ tab of the Cathedral website.

Finally, if you are a visitor here today, please forgive me for using this pulpit slot to discuss our internal life in this way. But your local church will have equivalent needs: please use this Rogationtide as a prompt for reflection on how you support the Church in your local setting. Whether here or elsewhere, thank you heartily for your regular faithful giving.

Back in the day, many villages marked Rogationtide by a ceremony known as ‘beating the bounds’. Parishioners would walk the edges of their parish, whacking it with willow boughs. Their intention was to mark community limits and pray for protection. We won’t be whipping our extremities today, but I encourage you to reflect on what this tradition symbolises: a concern of the community for its preservation and flourishing, and an ask for the future which is at the heart of today’s festival.

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Sunday 3 May 2026
A sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter by Kenneth Padley

Revelation 21.1-14

Martin’s Scorsese’s 2002 movie Gangs of New York depicts gratuitous blood-letting between Protestants and Catholics in the late nineteenth-century American metropolis. The message of the film is that violence begets violence – and that religion acts as an accelerant. The movie ends with a ray of hope as the graves of the chief protagonists decay away against a backdrop of New York appearing to ‘grow up’ through successive development of the city’s built environment. The implication is that things have moved on and that we are being offered a tale of two cities, a flawed religious past and a progressive secular present.

However, in a twist of irony, the very last shot of Gangs of New York portrays the World Trade Centre standing proud against the skyline. This film was recorded prior to 9/11 but released afterwards. If that final scene had been planned as an assertion of optimistic progress, the conscious decision to retain it in the public release of the film is proof of the opposite.

Given that humanity seems trapped in such a doom loop of renewal and failure, what are we to make of the perfect Jerusalem envisaged by Saint John in today’s reading from the Book Revelation? It is not as if Saint John was detached from reality. He was a member of a minority faith community subject to bouts of persecution by the authorities. Indeed, John wrote Revelation in cryptic code-language as a protest against the oppressive forces of Roman imperialism. Particularly informing the background of his thought was the catastrophe of 70AD when the Romans had razed Jerusalem to the ground after a massive siege. Having seen what he had seen, how could John possibly believe in that radiant vision of a city in which ‘death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more’?!

I’d like to suggest that John imagined the new Jerusalem because he was part of an Easter community, part of a Church which experienced radical otherness in the resurrection of Jesus. If God can raise one person from the dead, might he not also shatter the wheel of brokenness which characterises earthly existence?

I’d like also to suggest that John imagined something as amazing as the new Jerusalem because he was part of a Christmas community, part of a Church which celebrated the truth that God took flesh in Jesus. If matter matters to God not only to create it but also to become incarnated within it, might not material things also be part of his ultimate plan for the future?

When Saint John’s community celebrated the birth of Jesus they sang the words which we now know as the Christmas gospel, John 1.14, ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’. ‘Dwelling’ in this clause literally connotes living in tents. The original Greek of this verse uses a specific verb which recalls the experience of God’s people in the wilderness, when God’s presence was thought to inhabit their sacred tabernacle, the tent of meeting.

The author of Revelation uses that same, very specific word to describe the divine presence within the new Jerusalem. Revelation 21 verse 3,

          See the tabernacle of God is among mortals.

He will tent with them

They will be his peoples

And God himself will be with them.

Now the author of Revelation was not a slavish repeater of tradition. Through the Holy Spirit he had been gifted a visionary creative imagination. And so he did not speak of God’s inhabitation of the end times as localised, like in the earthly tabernacle. We know this because of the striking dimensions that he records of the holy city. Immediately after today’s text we are told that New Jerusalem will be as wide as it is long. Now a square makes good sense in terms of urban planning. But then John insists that city will be as high as it is wide – a cube. That is much more problematic. St John was not setting a challenge to civil engineers nor our imaginations. He was alluding to the Holy of Holies – the inner sanctum of the tent in the wilderness and the later Temple in Jerusalem which was shaped like a cube.

The Holy of Holies in the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. But because John knew the truth of Christmas, he was not downcast. He knew that if God could tent in the person of Jesus, then God could also build a perfect city where his presence is not locked in a secretive room in a building for the elite but would become a reality for everyone because it pervades the whole city.

Alas, such perfection seems a long way off. So what are we going to do here and now with the frustration of broken communities? To attempt an answer to that question we need to travel to one more city. Back in the year AD410, the imperial capital Rome was overrun by Goths – that is Germanic invaders, not grungy teenagers. The events of AD410 threw the foundation myth of this greatest conurbation on earth into a tailspin: the self-proclaimed ‘eternal’ city had fallen.

The defeat of Rome posed a particular propaganda problem for imperial Christians. Since the conversion to their faith of the Emperor Constantine a hundred years earlier, Christians had promoted the cosy assumption that a close union of Church and State would ensure mutual prosperity. However, in AD410, despite fervent prayers to the city’s patrons, saints Peter and Paul, Rome had been conquered. And not only were the invaders foreigners, worse still they were Arian, Christian heretics who didn’t believe that Jesus is God. Why on earth would the Almighty allow such a thing to happen?! Traditional aristocratic pagans suggested that the problem might in fact be Jesus and wouldn’t it be better if everyone got back to sacrificing to the city’s former deities? It was a challenge that invited – necessitated even – a robust Christian response.

Into this void of fear and doubt, the greatest writer of the early Church wrote the greatest apology of the age. It took 13 years to complete. The man was a Bishop from North Africa, Augustine of Hippo. And his book is called the City of God.

At its heart, Augustine’s City of God is an exploration of the problem of evil. It is an enquiry into why life on earth is characterised by cyclical patterns of rise and fall. Augustine’s response is to argue that evil is not an active force but a privation, an absence of goodness. And he concluded that this privation is found in every realm on earth. The world, Augustine insisted, is a mixed society of vice and virtue. This entanglement permeates even the Church: Augustine could not accept a naïve division between those who claimed allegiance to Jesus on the one hand versus everyone else on the other. Augustine understood all society to be characterised by a commingling of good and evil. And he likened this division to Babylon and Jerusalem, an earthly ‘city’ (inverted commas) which glories in itself and a heavenly ‘city’ which glories in the Lord.  These two cities live alongside one another until that day when God ushers in his new and perfect Jerusalem.

Augustine’s City of God is a healthy antidote to unrealistic optimism in the human capacity for progress. It turned the critique of the pagans because it explained why even an ostensibly Christian Rome might have fallen. And it asserts that we must still strive for the best on earth while simultaneously lifting our horizons through faith to that new and perfect city which is to come, Jerusalem the Golden, that end time realm where the God of Christmas and Easter will dwell fully with all his people.

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Sunday 3 May 2026

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27 April 2026
Evensong with Installation of The Revd Neil Traynor as Canon Treasurer

Deuteronomy 9: 1–21
Ephesians 4: 1–16

‘He gave gifts to his people’ Saint Paul reminds his audience in Ephesus but, sadly, he does not always give the gifts that today’s clergy would find most useful.  The gift of operating in at least two modes at once: offering pastoral care to the parish school; serving on its governing body; and parenting twins in Year 5 and their sibling in Reception.  The gift of doing at least two jobs at once: healthcare chaplain and rural dean and chair of the Deliverance Network and adviser on rural ministry and member of the Bishop’s Council.  The gift of being in at least two places at once: behind the altar and by the bedside; in the care home and in the playgroup; at the computer and at the Food Bank.

I’m guessing, Neil, that any combination of those three gifts would have served you well in Holland Park.  The bad news is that they are no more available to those who work in cathedrals than they are to our sisters and brothers in parochial and chaplaincy ministries.  If anything, their lack is even more evident, for tonight in liturgy and in legalese you have very explicitly been given two places to be in, two jobs to do, and two modes to operate in.

Bad luck.  Donning your new cassock (in its eye-catching Sarum Green) does not convey super-powers.  But if you allow it to, it will keep you alert to the double-edged nature of your priestly vocation, a double edge that our Church and its ministers are called to inhabit, and which has never been of greater importance for the world.  You are called to the local; you are called also to the global.  You are called to the particular; you are called also to the universal.

For you have been placed in the Treasurer’s stall, and you have been placed in the prebendal stall of Calne (don’t try to occupy them both at once: the medieval woodwork is very unforgiving).  You have been placed in two stalls because alongside the copes and the processions and the dignity of being a ‘principal person’ of Salisbury Cathedral you are also just one of fifty-plus members of its College of Canons, a body of colleagues lay and ordained from across the Diocese and beyond, called to support one another in doing God’s work here and (if not exclusively in Calne) beyond.  Your Thesaurarii stall (inaugurated more than 900 years ago) recalls you to the immediate task before you; your prebendal stall to our shared vocation.  Yours has brought you here and will ultimately send you from here.  Although not, we trust, for some little while.

You have been appointed Residentiary Canon and Treasurer.  The Treasurer, as the Statutes stipulate ‘…shall endeavour to promote the dignity and beauty of the Cathedral’, having oversight of the fabric and care of our sacred vessels, vestments, furniture and ornaments.  You will work with exceptional people like Jackie Molnar and Gary Price and will with them and others lead our ambitions to develop our whole estate and secure its zero-carbon future.  But you will also keep your days of residence, responding to the urgent pastoral need that presents itself within these walls every week, supporting our volunteers and, where necessary, representing the Cathedral to the community.  Again, your office as Treasurer requires you to care for stone, glass, timber and those who work them; your appointment as a Residentiary requires you to care for this Close, this city, this Diocese and all its people.

And you have (in the unpoetic language of the Cathedrals Measure 2021) become an Executive Member of the Chapter.  So around the Chapter table you will argue robustly for the Works Department, you will represent us to the Fabric Advisory Committee, and you will report to us on the business plan of Cathedral Enterprises.  But you will also, with all your Chapter colleagues, take ownership of our whole life, live out our shared values, and accept responsibility for our common decisions.  Your position as an Executive compels you to speak for your team; your position as a Trustee to have regard to the whole.

The scholarly polymath Iain McGilchrist has devoted his working life to the argument that in our generation our genius for analysis, appetite for data, and mania for process has displaced our facility for perspective, our capacity for reflection, and our instinct for wonder.  Consumed by the need to manage the immediate we are at risk of neglecting the cultivation of its broader hinterland.  A Church which – a priest who – ignores the immediate has no legitimacy in speaking of what lies beyond it.  Yet a Church which – a priest who – ignores what lies beyond it is fated to perpetual anxiety.  Local, global: each must inform the other, for the sake of the Church and for the sake of the world.  Work with us, Neil, and pray with us, that we might learn this afresh.  Amen.

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Acts 2: 42-end and John 10: 1-10

One of the things I’ve grown to love about this Cathedral, since starting to work here 7 years ago, is the walk through the Cloisters at the end of the afternoon before daily Evensong each evening.  Rushing over from our Cathedral offices, often with only a few minutes to spare, this regular walk through the Cloister and into the hushed Cathedral has often been one of the most magical parts of my day, giving a chance after all the stress and busyness and the day’s sometimes relentless demands to refocus and gain some perspective.  There’s something very impactful about this building that, unlike other impressive or beautiful places I’ve had the good fortune to work or study in, always – in my experience, at least – makes an impression and lifts your mood, however many times you encounter it, that you never come to take for granted.

But if you never came through the Cloister door, you would never see any of this.  The entrance to the Cloister is possibly the most humble of all the doors into the Cathedral, and – while it’s still quite good by general standards! – is not particularly prepossessing in comparison either to the other main doors or to what lies inside it, even though it’s now accompanied by the beautiful outside Easter Garden.

Doors are incredibly important.  It goes without saying that, while the building continues to make an impression, a pitfall of working in a place like this for a long time is that it’s easy to forget how it feels to someone experiencing it for the first time who may be afraid to come in.  And then there’s the opposite experience.  One of the questions I most frequently get asked by visitors at the end of Evensong is how to get out.  Such is the scale and awe-inspiring magnitude of this building that many people simply get lost inside.

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus says “I am the door”.  He then says “I am the Good Shepherd” in verse 11, immediately after today’s section, but first he says “I am the door”.  The modern, NRSV translation we just heard has “I am the gate” – which feels a more natural way to describe the opening in a stone enclosure for sheep.  But the same word – thyra in Greek – is used elsewhere for the door of a room – for example, when Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel: “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret”.

A door gives you a foretaste.  The doors of this or any church are like a chapter heading or front cover of a book, that’s waiting to be opened- they whet the appetite, preparing you for the story that is to unfold.  And yet doorways, like chapter headings, are sometimes the most easily ignored, mostly skipped over as we impatiently turn the page to find out what happens next.

Yet doorways are significant for our human journey.  They say to us that how we come into this building and how we leave it are significant matters.  It’s as though the entry and exit points say something about human life, and how we cross the thresholds of our human pilgrimage.  The cool, soaring elegance of the north porch speaks of space and sanctuary and hospitality away from the noisy bustle and pace of the city.  “Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” it seems to say, anticipating the words around the nave altar inside.  This is a door we surely can’t ignore.  It seems to offer access from one world into another.

And the great west doors, grand and awe inspiring though they are, are not simply for the grand and the good.  The exuberance of the arcading, the layer on layer of arches within arches – even while they say something about human cleverness and ingenuity and the skill of the masons who made them – also say something powerful about God – and her super-abundance and extravagance towards us.  The west front tells the story of redemption, of annunciation and birth, of death and resurrection, of ascension and divine sovereignty – a story in stone.  And emerging out of this, flanking it, interpreting it and fleshing it out are the lives of the saints, whose witness points to the truth of the central revelation of God’s love revealed in Christ.  These doors invite us not just to admire this story from afar, as though it was a remote, petrified fairy tale.  They invite us to enter in and be discovered by God, discovering for ourselves how the story of Jesus and his love for us is as relevant and resourceful and reassuring as it was for those saints who look down on us from their stone niches.

Wherever they are situated, the doors of the Cathedral point in one direction: towards Christ, and his story; to Christ, who is the door.  The doors invite us to a place of shelter, of security and safety: not just away from the relentless traffic of life but to a more profound and enduring peace.  But just as we can ignore the doors into the Cathedral as we pass on to its greater treasures, so we can ignore the idea of Jesus as the door.  As we read on in John’s Gospel, John piles image on image on top of another, stretching and challenging the imaginations of his readers as we try to imagine and define the life-changing reality of God in Jesus.  But while there are lots of artistic representations of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, there are very few of Jesus as a door.

But the door is important because it pinpoints the threshold, the moment of decision, of growing up, of making judgements, seizing the moment.  When we move from being a teenager to an adult, when we start a new job or are made redundant, when we fall in or out love, face illness, lose a loved one or face death, these are threshold moments, and entering a place like this should help us deal with these moments of grief and happiness, and achievement and failure, and hope and despair.  Jesus, who is the door, is not standing ajar and letting us merely pass through, to face it on our own.  The door is the moment of transition, the door is part of the pilgrimage, the door is the decision point, the growing into maturity.  And Jesus the door is saying, I am there in it: I am deciding with you, I am travelling with you on the journey, growing up with you, facing life and death with you; I am in your failure and limitations just as I am in your success and achievements.  I am the door because I am the way, and travel with you.

The Christian life is often described in terms of perfection, in terms of arrival or certainty.  We’ve seen in recent weeks a world leader who models himself on the good shepherd, yet- in the imagery of today’s reading- is more like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a self-proclaimed Saviour who promises security and freedom, but whose actions turn out to reveal a complete lack of compassion or kindness.  But Jesus the Good Shepherd represents an alternative way, the door through we embark on a journey that’s risky for sure, but full of abundant life, and where our needs are met abundantly.

We gather inside the doors, in the relative safety of this Cathedral, to hear the story of a God who in the death of his Son risked everything out of love of humankind.  We take the risk of sharing the bread that binds us into the story, and of sharing the cup of pain that is God’s gift to us.

And then we open again the same doors that have invited us to a place of safety and sanctuary, that launch us back into a place of danger and hostility as we leave through them.  But Jesus is still the door on the way out just as he was on the way in.  He is still travelling with us, crossing the threshold with us.  Wherever we go, whatever further doors we must enter, he is still encouraging us by his own example to see the Christian story as a risk to be lived with love.

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A fellow governor of the local junior school in Harnham, expressed his joy to me of having recently visited Paris and the newly restored Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Notre dame Cathedral in 2019, suffered a devastating fire, supposedly started by a cigarette or an electrical fault, which caused immense and costly damage.

President Emmanuel Macron declared a five-year restoration project and Notre-Dame Cathedral has now officially reopened, nearly 1,000 workers have restored the cathedral featuring an identical rebuilt spire, cleaned stonework, and restored timber roof frame. With over 340,000 donors from 150 countries contributed to the restoration costs.

For many, watching those flames consume the roof and spire felt like watching history itself collapse. There was grief, shock, and a profound sense of helplessness watching this piece of history burn. And yet, almost immediately, something remarkable happened. People across the world committed themselves to rebuilding.

This evening’s readings invite us to think about building. What it means to rebuild, to restore, and ultimately recognise where God dwells.

The reading we had this evening from the prophecy in Haggai, we find a people, standing before the ruins of what once was glorious.

The temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed, and now, as they begin to rebuild, there is a deep sense of call and encouragement from God to restore what had been lost.

God’s word, “Take courage… work, for I am with you.” With you in the pain staking process of rebuilding, restoring and ultimately creating all over again.

That promise of Gods Spirit with humanity in building, speaks to us today in this season of Eastertide,

And there is plenty of rebuilding that needs to take place in our world today….

This promise, speaks for those who have been displaced, had homes and towns decimated by war and for those victims of war, who are rebuilding homes, places of community, schools, hospitals and places of worship. It all feels like an unimaginable task.

For the third year in a row, Sudan tops the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Emergency Watchlist.

This Diocese having strong links with the Sudans’, have asked us all to pray this week as the crisis in Sudan has become the world’s largest displacement emergency. More than 12 million people have been forced from their homes, fleeing armed conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

This is rebuilding on a mass scale. Sudan as we know, is not the only place, there is the Gaza Strip, and wide parts of the Middle East, Ukraine, and parts of Africa and Asia. Where areas are reduced to rubble. I simply cannot imagine, as a mum of two small children, attempting to live amid or after ruin.

God’s word, “take courage…. Work, for I am with you” takes on a whole new perspective.

Easter is the proclamation that God brings life out of ruin and glory out of what seemed lost.

The resurrection of Christ is the ultimate “rebuilding” not of stones, but of life itself. What appeared broken beyond repair on Good Friday as those whom Jesus loved, looked on in utter devastation, suddenly is raised!

In the light of Easter, rebuilding takes on an even deeper meaning.

It becomes a sign, however small, of the truth at the heart of our faith. That destruction does not have the final word. Just as the tomb could not contain Christ, what appears beyond comprehension, renewal is possible. New life can emerge where all seemed lost. That may sound like I am being a clichéd Christian optimist in light, of a life of death situation for millions of people, and yet the reality for millions of people, is that hope must spring from somewhere.

I will read you a poem by a child called Mari’am khalid, that was published by a UNICEF initiative to showcase the voices of children living in conflict zones.

“Does peace really exist!? We were told it exists Not in our homeland though, our dreams will be inside us, Dreams of childhood,

My dreams will become a reality,

And I keep waiting for peace, and for us to smile happily, Life is about peace,
Life is about love, without them both, life is nothing.”

For people and children like Mari’am, to have hope in the mess is pure rebellion!

And indeed, in our world, as it stands and for those Sudanese refugees this night, to have hope in the mess, is to stand for a rebellion of love over evil and restoration over ruin. And if they themselves have lost hope for their families and for the children living in these impossible situations, it is the vital job of others to hold up the light of hope on their behalf, to keep praying.

St Paul takes us further, in our second lesson in the Epistle to the Corinthians. Paul speaks again of building, of foundations, of careful craftsmanship. But now the focus shifts dramatically. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”

Now God is making living temples out of humankind. For while stones can be restored and timbers replaced, the deeper work is the one God is doing within people. Which is profound when you think of those who cannot see their homes physically restored. The promise is not limited to ancient Jerusalem, nor just to a gloriously well supported and adored cathedral in Paris. It is spoken to all humankind, here and now, as Easter people.

We may look at our own lives and see what feels diminished, faith that has grown tired, hope that has been shaken or perhaps muted by the overwhelming sense of hopelessness as we sit in our pews.

But the message of both Haggai and Easter is the same: the God of All dwells in our midst.

Take courage… and work, for I am with you.

Jonathon Sacks wrote in his book ‘From Optimism to Hope’, “the future of our world won’t be decided by money, the media, or space probes to mars, but how much or how little we value our children”, so in the hope of a better world, and for the children of Sudan and nations ravaged by war, can we hold a candle for them.

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Acts 2: 14a, 36-41, Luke 24:13-35 

‘When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and they recognized him.’ 

I suspect many of us here have played the game of peek-a-boo with babies. I confess to sometimes playing it in the Cathedral when I’m not directly involved with one of our services and a fractious baby needs distracting. You know how it goes: you cover your face for a moment so that to the baby you appear to have completely disappeared. But then you suddenly you uncover your face, and there you are again! Smiles, or gurgles of delight as that momentary puzzle is solved. This ability to work out that someone is there, even though you can’t see them, happens within the first year of a baby’s life and is recognised as a vital marker in their development. It’s also hugely enjoyable, for both parties. 

The encounter between the unrecognised Jesus and his two sad disciples, as they walk away from Jerusalem towards Emmaus after the crucifixion, would wring anyone’s heart. They are full of information as to what has happened, and eager to share it. Jesus is gone. Their friend and teacher is gone. Now they are just trudging home the seven miles to Emmaus. 

Not just trudging, but profoundly puzzled. It is the third day since the crucifixion, but they simply don’t know what to make of it, or of the angels the women claim to have seen at the empty tomb. They have plenty of  information, but no understanding.  

Information but no understanding. For me that is the very essence of that period between the Resurrection and the Ascension, those 40 days we celebrate after  Easter. In this very short period of time Jesus has a huge job on his hands: he has to prepare his disciples for what they must do next – proclaim him to all nations and build up the body of Christian believers – before he finally disappears from their sight at the Ascension.  It is a period of teaching, of learning, and of coming to understanding, for these first disciples. So much to learn, such a short time.  

And during that time Jesus appears to the disciples frequently.  

In John we are told he appears to Mary Magadalene at the tomb on the morning of the Resurrection, and she mistakes him for the gardener.  

He appears to his inner group of disciples, the Apostles, but without Thomas. One week later he appears again to the Apostles, this time with Thomas , who had said he would not believe what his friends were saying about Christ having risen unless he himself had visual proof. He was given this. 

A week later, so John’s Gospel tells us, the disciples are fishing when they see Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, and later  breakfast with him on fried fish. It is as if Jesus has to convince them that yes, he is really, really alive. Seeing becomes believing. Just like small children, the disciples have to be convinced that even when they can’t see him, Jesus is still present. 

But also importantly  each of these appearances also becomes a point of teaching: Mary must learn not to touch the risen Lord as he is on his way to the Father, he is not yet ascended. She will have to continue in her faith even when she can no longer see him, let alone touch him. 

In his first appearance to the Apostles, Jesus, as we heard last week, breathes on them and gives them the power to forgive sins, or indeed retain them if they see fit. The disciples are beginning to learn what it is not only to know that Christ is with them even when they cannot see him, but that part of their future ministry will be in forgiving the sins of those who come to believe.   

The second appearance with Thomas amplifies the point: Jesus praises those who in the future will not see him, but still believe in him. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ I guess that’s you and me. 

And at the Sea of Tiberias Jesus and Peter are reconciled. In an encounter when three times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, Peter’s ‘you know that I love you’ erases the three times he had denied him on that fateful evening of his trial.  This rock on which Jesus would build his church is now given the job of leading his flock. Seeing, believing, reconciling, commissioning – these are the themes which run through these appearances.   

But the story of the meeting between the two disciples and the resurrected Christ on the road to Emmaus is, to my mind, in a rather different category. This is not primarily about seeing or believing or commissioning or reconciling, though that is surely part of it.  If we unpick the story, we find distinct echoes of what had happened in that upper room at the Last Supper, and what subsequently becomes for us the  Eucharist, that central act of worship which still today holds together the Christian community. 

Jesus did not meet the disciples on the road, or indeed in any of his resurrection appearances, as a mighty king but, as at his birth, in all humility: in a garden after the Resurrection, quietly in a room where the Apostles were together, eating simple fried fish on the shore, walking all day with two sad and bewildered men. In other words, Christ meets us where we are – today in the Cathedral, but also every time we pass a beggar in the street, when we smile at a stranger and they smile back, when we talk to the sometimes noisy youngsters who meet up in the Close, or ring up a friend we know is lonely. 

If we pick up the story after the two disciples’ description of the events of the past three days, we find Jesus’ gentle remonstrance and an appeal to Scripture: ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all the prophets have declared!’ His subsequent explanation of Jewish history, leading up to the coming of the Messiah, opens their hearts, which burn within them, as they begin to understand. This sets a pattern for us. A prerequisite of our encounter with God in the Eucharist must surely be an understanding, based in scripture, of who the Messiah is and why he has come into this world.  

These two men, Cleophas and an unnamed disciple, are not from the inner circle of the Apostles. They were not present at the Last Supper. But through the taking, the blessing, and the breaking of bread, when they finally recognise Jesus, they are inexorably drawn into that wider circle of recognition, love, and grace which spins out, and continues to spin out, to include us, two thousand years later.   

This bewildered collection of men and women disciples were for forty days before the Ascension being welded into a community of faith in order to proclaim the gospel, a community based on the sacramental and covenantal signs of water in baptism, to which Peter in our first reading points us, and of bread and wine in a Eucharistic meal. They were being prepared for the final gift  Jesus had promised them: the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which we celebrate 10 days after the Ascension.  

Today as we gather to share Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist we, like those two men on the road to Emmaus, recognise Christ in the breaking of bread. As we are offered the  bread and wine we first say ‘Amen’, or ‘may it be so’ in English, to each offering. This is both our assent and our recognition of what is about to happen. By our response we become fully invested in this act of reception. 

As ever, St Augustine nailed it when in his Confessions he has Christ say: ‘I am the food of the fully grown, grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change me into you, but you will be changed into me.’ 

Christ comes to us in  bread and wine in order to unite us to himself and therefore to God and to one another. We become, through the Eucharist, changed into the body of Christ, that body of believers in him whom we call the Church. We are indeed changed, forever, as were those two men on the road to Emmaus. 

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Daniel 6:1-23 and Mark 15:46- 16:8

“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised; he is not here”.

We are at the start of the Church’s season of Easter at the moment, a period of unparallelled joy and celebration in the Christian year which extends through 50 days until the day of Pentecost.  The drama of the Easter story, the women in the garden, the empty tomb, is meant to give us hope, a sense of life restored, the promise of things to come.  Rather than just one day or a week of celebration, Eastertide is one long sustained season of praise.  Our choices of hymns and music, the Easter acclamations that appear in our liturgy after the austere discipline of Lent, all ought to thrill and excite us, and to resound with this sense of real and lasting joy.

Yet rejoicing does not appear to match how many of us may be feeling in this season.  To switch on the TV to watch the news, or pick up the newspaper, is to be filled with a fresh sense of dread, as we start to imagine what new horror or act of violence with horrendous human consequences to vast to compute may have been unleashed.  And closer to home, joy also may not reflect how many of our young people are feeling, as they enter the most pressurised term of the school year.  For them, as the Church begins to celebrate, the hard work begins.  Just as we have thrown off our Lenten piety and let the festivities of Easter take hold, students and young people find themselves in an almost academic lent- one of preparation, of waiting, of being tested.  Whilst the pressures of exams and deadlines are around, many people find this time of year full, not of Easter joy, but of anxiety, and even fear.

In Mark’s telling of the Easter story, which we heard earlier, as our second reading, the dominant note is one of fear.  In this earliest gospel, even though his resurrection is announced by the angel, there are no reassuring appearances of the risen Jesus to the disciples, as in all the others.  At the very end of a book where everyone has struggled to understand what Jesus is about, let alone follow- where people just don’t get it- fear features several times.  The body of Jesus has been wrapped and laid in a tomb, and we read how early in the morning as the women come to embalm it, they are anxious.  “Who will roll away the stone?” they ask.  Then, when they find the tomb open, the body gone, a young man says to them: “He isn’t here: he’s going ahead of you to Galilee.  Tell the others”.  And they are alarmed – or “affrighted” as the Authorised Version has it, even more strongly.  The man says to them, “do not be alarmed”.  But they run from the tomb, for terror and amazement have seized them.  And Mark tells us: “They said nothing to anyone, for they were scared”.  And that’s it.  No rejoicing, no celebration.  Fear is the very last word of the Gospel, even in the original Greek text.

As already mentioned, we also, in the 21^st century, live in a time of anxiety.

In his novel about civil war in Sri Lanka Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje’s main character says: “I wanted to find one law to cover all of living.  I found fear…” (p.135).

In the West, at least, many – although not all – of us live in relative security; compared with previous generations, we are less vulnerable to illness, violence and poverty.  But there are still things that make us feel afraid, as politicians are keen to remind us.

Fear permeates our lives on many levels.  We may fear huge things, like ecological disaster, or the threat of terror or AI.  Or we may feel the weight of daily fears, such as accident or illness, fear of redundancy, or fear of failure at something we’re trying to do or achieve that really matters to us.

Perhaps we get anxious about smaller things, such as embarrassment over a word spoken out of turn, making a mistake, feeling we have to work when we desperately needed a day off, or not having enough money to support ourselves and our family.

The experience of fear can be overwhelming, physically and mentally.  Yet into the fears that threaten to engulf us, God says to us, as he says to the women on that first Easter morning: “Do not be afraid”.

Perhaps, we might think, this simple command, “Do not fear” doesn’t address the reality of fear; it fails to understand the hold anxiety can have on us.   But to be courageous involves accepting fear as an inevitable part of human experience.  When we find the courage to acknowledge our fears in faith, then we move a step closer to trusting in God in the midst of difficulty.

Having courage doesn’t mean having no fear; it means not being ruled by fear.  Of all the qualities we value, courage is one of the most attractive.  We can all think of people we look up to for speaking out against prejudice or injustice – not just the great figures of history – but, more often than not, ordinary people we know and admire for their brave ways of living.

But one of the marks of a truly courageous person is that they acknowledge their fears, that they face them, and still persist.  There’s a story that Oscar Romero, the Archbishop in El Salvador who was martyred for standing up for justice for the poor, was once sitting on a beach with a friend, and he asked his friend whether he was afraid to die.  The friend replied that he was not, and Romero said, “But I am.  I am afraid to die”, and yet he gave his life.

Fear was part of Jesus’ experience too, when he prayed in Gethsemane before his crucifixion, “remove this cup from me”.  Jesus was afraid, and that is incredibly reassuring for us.  Jesus knew fear, and yet he decided, not my will, but yours be done.  He chose to obey, making humanity at one with God: atonement.

The words “Do not be afraid” occur so frequently in the Bible that we might miss their impact.  But perhaps the reason they occur so often is that we need to hear them, to keep being reminded to trust God, to trust ourselves, and to have faith.

When the angel appeared to the women at the empty tomb, he told them not to be afraid.  But it was fear that silenced them, and prevented them from saying anything.  Fear isolates us from one another; courage breaks the silence and begins to bring people together.  As Catherine of Sienna said, “Only those are afraid who think that they are alone” (Timothy Radcliffe, What is the Point of Being a Christian?, Continuum, 2005, p.81).

We live in an anxious time for people of faith, particularly as the Church is and remains fiercely divided on issues of authority and issues of sexuality.  But we all have a responsibility to be involved, to work together to resolve the issues, and to maintain faith, often with people we disagree with.  All of these things take courage, just as they do on the world stage as well.

The message of Easter, especially as it is told to us by Mark, is that admitting to fear opens the way to courage, courage to break down the walls that divide us, courage to do the things that we thought would be impossible.  The women who discover the resurrection are fearful, but they show us the way.  Jesus’ ministry shows us that God works most where people suffer, where they know anxiety and fear.  In ending his Gospel on a note of fear, Mark challenges us- the reader- as to how we will respond.  Will we have the faith to overcome our fears, or will we allow them to consume us?

Whatever these 50 days hold in store for us, whether it’s joyful or not so joyful, we can know, as the women did, that God’s loving presence goes ahead of us.  We can have the courage to reach out to God and to each other, trusting that he will lead us into new and reassuring experiences of his grace.

“Do not be alarmed” says the young man in the tomb. As Christians, we should rejoice and take courage in that, during this Easter and beyond.

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