We will be adding new sermons to this page regularly, so please check back to see the latest updates.
Sunday 12 June 2022 – Trinity Sunday
Called to Ministry: On Vocation and Volunteering
• Sunday 6 Feb 2022
• Readings: Isaiah 6; Cor 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11
• Commemoration of The Accession of Queen Elizabeth II (1952)
By Canon Dr Paul Overend, Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral
All three of our readings today are about God calling and sending people to forms of ministry.
1. Vocation in the Lectionary Readings
When Isaiah is called to be a prophet, he reacts in despair, saying, ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips…’ But a seraph touches his lips with a burning coal, symbolically purifying his speech that he might fulfil his calling.
Paul recounted his own call as an evangelist, writing to the Corinthians, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” But he adds, ‘But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.’ God’s grace enables him to become an innovative missionary, developing a creative theology.
And when Simon Peter is called, on seeing the large catch of fish he says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” But Jesus encourages him with a dreadful pun, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
In each of these readings about a call to a particular ministry we see a pattern of initial reluctance, a feeling of being unworthy, which is answered by God’s encouragement – through the seraph, through grace, or through the words of Jesus. But today a significant anniversary also sheds light on the same theme of vocation.
2. Vocation & the Monarchy
This day is the 70th anniversary of the death of king George VI, in 1952. His own call to the throne came unexpectedly. His older brother, King Edward VIII, abdicated the throne in December 1936. The institution of the monarchy was rocked by the abdication, at a time when the dominions of the commonwealth and parts of the empire were seeking political independence. So it was in response to a sudden and demanding call to meet a need that Prince Albert became king George VI, King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, and the last Emperor of India.
But on the anniversary of his death we also remember that his eldest daughter Elizabeth was just 10 at the time of her uncle’s abdication, turning 11 at the time of the consecration of her father in 1937. It was as a child that Elizabeth learned that she would be called upon to become queen, if her father died before her. At her own coronation in June 1953 she was still a young woman, just 25 years of age.
Her own call was thrust upon her, by the vacancy left first by her uncle and then by the death of her father. Princess Elizabeth responded to that call and as our Queen her exceptional service for over 70 years has demonstrated a commitment to her vocation, which we can only view with admiration and gratitude. There will be occasion to say more at the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June, so let me return to our theme of vocation.
3. On Christian Vocation
The discernment testing and formation of Christian vocation for ministry has been very much a part of my work teaching ordinands and lay ministers over the years. My work often led me to reflect on the issue of vocation and even my own sense of calling.
We speak of vocation not only to refer to ordained or lay ministry in the church, but about a Christian vocation in the world of work, particularly in a caring but underpaid profession like nursing, teaching, work in the judicial system or social services. All of these vocations involve the church recognising and encouraging the use of personal gifts, skills and attributes. But there’s something in me that sinks just a little when a candidate for lay or ordained ministry speaks of “my vocation”, thinking of vocation in only individual terms. For while a sense of call needs to be felt personally, a
vocation is not individual, but always about the church’s vocation.
4. On the Church’s Vocation
The church is called by Christ to share in Christ’s mission and ministry. In turn, the church orders its ministry and it is the church that calls suitable people to particular roles. It’s generally better then to first think of vocation communally – the call of the whole church — and then to see how an individual might be called to share in this and respond to need.
But a call is also responsive to context. Prince Albert responded to the need of the nation in becoming King George VI, and when Britain entered the war in 1939, though he was advised to relocate in the countryside, he remained in London to provide morale support for the British people by visiting traumatised communities at bomb sites the late queen mother. His vocation as king was shaped by the needs of the people. He strengthened us by his solidarity and in so doing contributed to reshaping the monarchy and commonwealth.
So a person’s vocation is a part of the Church’s vocation, which needs to be responsive to the context and its need. When a teacher joins a new school, a manger a new business, or a vicar joins a new benefice, before they can exercise leadership well, they first need to discern the call of the school, the business, or church community. What is the mission and ministry of this organisation in this particular place and how can I respond to what is needed. And when someone is to be ordained a deacon, they must be called and licensed to serve in a context, to what we call a ‘title parish’.
In practice then, it is the church which calls people to its ministry.
Of course, sometimes a vocation emerges as an inner sense of God’s calling to some role, whether to volunteering roles in the life of a church, or to a holy orders. When this happens, the church needs to test that sense of vocation and see if the particular gifts offered can be well used to meet the needs of the church. But more generally a call comes from a need in a community and an invitation to consider it. Someone is approached with the
suggestion, “Have you ever thought about such and such a role – you could be be good at that?”
5. The Vocation of Lincoln Cathedral
Here in Lincoln Cathedral the Dean and Chapter have been working hard over the last few years discerning what is the vocation of the cathedral within the life of county of Lincolnshire and the city of Lincoln; in the Christian church and particularly in the Anglican Diocese of Lincoln, alongside its bishop. This is an ongoing work, but has resulted in a consultation document Transform and Thrive that some of you (the leaders of teams of volunteers) will have seen, and which is on the cathedral website for anyone to read.
From this discerning of what the cathedral is called to be and do at this time, it can now call more people to the many volunteer ministries needed to fulfil that calling, whether that is stewarding, serving as a tour or library guide, teaching or hosting the exhibitions, verging, serving, singing, or the many other roles.
6. Closing – on our calling
The occasion of remembering the Queen’s 70 years of service, gives us good cause to reflect on our own service and calling. Over the pandemic years many valued volunteers took a step back from ministry, and understandably so: Some had worked for almost as many as her Majesty has. But this leaves many volunteer vacancies into which we need to call people today into the ongoing ministry of the cathedral. Members of the volunteer teams here might help put that question to you and challenge you to consider your call to be a part of the cathedral’s ministry, with the suggestion, “Have you ever thought about such and such a role – you could be good at that?” The cathedral’s volunteer coordinator also can help
identify the needs and help you discern your call to a volunteer ministry too.
So please consider your call. Like those who were called in our readings, we may be reluctant or feel unsuited to the challenge, but as St Paul says, it is by the grace of God That we are able to fulfil our calling. And so may the God who calls us, unworthy and unfit though we may feel we are, bring us by His grace and by words of reassurance to share in the ministry of His Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ
St Stephen – on the church as a living temple of the Holy Spirit
by Canon Dr Paul Overend, Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral
On the second day of Christmas, the church gives us the stoning of Stephen. It is unsettling the way that the church remembers the death of Stephen immediately after the birth of Jesus.
The Acts of the Apostles is the only source for the life and death of Stephen from which we heard the closing 10 verses in our second reading. But this wasn’t written to be an historical biography of Stephen: the evangelist Luke shapes the character of Stephen for his own purposes.
Where Luke’s first volume, The Gospel, is about the birth and mission of Jesus, his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, is about the birth and mission of the church. These texts are united by common concerns, and two themes in the account of Stephen can illustrate this. One is the Holy Spirit, and the other is the Temple.
The Holy Spirit
Luke’s primary focus is the Holy Spirit. His version of the Gospel begins with the announcement to Elizabeth and Zechariah that John will be filled with the Holy Spirit (1:15) to be a prophet, then the conception of Jesus is said to be by the Holy Spirit and Jesus is anointed by the Spirit at his baptism by John. Luke’s Spirit-led understanding of Jesus is important, though it will fall short of the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed. But that anti-Arian creed, first drafted in the year 325, is about a quarter of a century later than Luke.
For Luke the Spirit-led understanding of Jesus links him with a Spirit-led church in Acts of the Apostles. The church begins with the spiritual anointing of Pentecost, after which Peter heals the lame beggar who was each day by the entrance to the temple, called the beautiful gate. Peter defends the healing in a speech in which he says that the apostles are not drunk but they are full of the Holy Spirit. Peter’s speech after this healing echoes Jesus’s Nazareth Manifesto. So where Jesus cites Isaiah about the Spirit anointing him to bring good news to the poor, Peter cites Joel about pouring out the Spirit on all flesh, opening the church to the same spiritual mission.
Stephen is Greek Jew, said to be a “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit”, who “did great wonders and signs among the people”. He’s appointed with other Hellenists to oversee a food bank for widows, showing the spirit of Jesus in action. And as Jesus, when he is killed, says, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit,” so when Stephen was being stoned he commends his spirit, saying “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
So here in our first theme of the Spirit, Luke’s character of Stephen shows the unity of the Spirit and mission of Jesus and the Church.
The temple
The second theme linking Luke’s two volumes is the temple of Jerusalem.
In the gospel, Luke tells us that after of the birth of Jesus, he is presented at the temple and recognised there by the priest Simeon and by an elderly prophet Anna. Then, as a boy, Jesus is found teaching in the temple (ch.2). These represent the priestly, prophetic and scholarly traditions.
But the implication in The Acts of the Apostles of Peter’s healing of the beggar at the gate of the temple after Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit was not in the temple, for the blind man had not been healed when begging there.
This critical perception of the temple in the account of Stephen’s martyrdom, in chapter 7, for in a speech that is too well constructed to be historical, Luke makes the temple the contentious issue that leads to Stephen’s death.
The speech first contrasts the tent of meeting (where Moses met with God) with Aaron’s idolatry. God had raised up Moses to free the Hebrews from slavery, but the people looked back and longed for life Egypt and so Aron helped them make a bull of gold, likely to have been the sacred bull Apis, in Egyptian mythology, which was an emblem of the Egyptian god Ptah. In the account of this episode from Exodus 32, God spoke to Moses and called the Hebrews a stiff-necked people, which is a line Stephen quotes in today’s reading, when he says, “You stiff-necked people…, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do.”
Stephen’s speech also contrasts king David’s tabernacle tent with the construction of the temple by his heir, king Solomon. In the second book of Samuel (2 Sam 7), the prophet Nathan criticises King David’s plan to build a temple. God relents but will only let King Solomon build it after king David’s death. The prophets were critical of the temple cult.
The temple that Stephen criticises is the second temple that was rebuilt after the Babylonian exile. It had recently been expanded by King Herod, in a massive building programme in the twenty years before Jesus’ birth. But Stephen says “The Most High does not do well in houses made with human hands”. This provocative phrase, “made with human hands’ was used by the prophets about idols. To make sense of Stephen’s severe critique of the temple it helps to know that king Herod’s temple had been destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans, leaving only one wall of the extended platform
around the temple left standing, known today as the wailing wall.
Luke is writing over ten or twenty years after the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem. So why is this harsh condemnation of the temple as idolatrous written of a temple that no longer existed. Luke’s writings are polemical, aimed to help Christianity emerge from being a Jewish messianic and apocalyptic sect into a new religious tradition, opening it up to Gentiles. It was breaking away from other emerging post-temple Jewish movements, such as Pharisaism (from which the rabbinic Judaism would emerge). Both Rabbinic Judaism and Pauline Christianity are born at this time, the twin offsprings from the death of priestly temple Judaism. Luke shapes his two volume narrative to present the church as the new living temple of the Holy Spirit, a prophetic movement the likes of which God raised up in generations previously.
Luke gives us the character Stephen as an example of that church. We may know nothing about the historical Stephen, if he existed, and it’s one the ironies of history is that this Stephen who is said to have been stoned to death for criticism of the temple made with human hands, became the patron saint to stone masons!
Yet as we celebrate the birth of Jesus this Christmas, the character of Stephen introduces us to Luke’s conviction that the Holy Spirit which conceived Jesus and anointed him at his baptism to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind now leads the church. The Holy Spirit is a prophetic spirit of social critique that leads us in service to the poor.
So as we give thanks to God for Jesus’s birth, we pray that the Holy Spirit may fill us and lead us in Jesus way to be God’s continuing presence in the world.
A sermon on the Lectionary Year of the Evangelist Luke
by Canon Dr Paul Overend, Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral
—
A few moments ago you heard the gospeller say: “Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.”
Today, I want to us to consider just that one liturgical line.
1. “Hear…”
It begins with the opening word, hear! But is this
• an invitation?
• an announcement?
• a command?
• or a warning?
I ask you, because these require a different sort of attention and response from us: – a response of gratitude, or interest, obedience, or alarm.
Our answer is found in the Hebrew prophets, who often begin, “Hear, O Israel”, or “Hear the word of the Lord”. At the very climax of the Book of Job, God addresses Job directly, saying, “hear and I will speak to you…” (Job 42:4) So I think this opening is a call, an echo of God’s calling you, God’s speaking to each of you. The gospeller calls you all to hear the word of God Incarnate. It’s a prophetic call hear what God is saying in Jesus.
This is not just a call to listen though: It’s a call to hear. To hear is more demanding of us than to listen. I once had a colleague who used to say, “I hear you”. It sounded like a counselling cliché, but it’s true that to be heard is more than to be listened to.
To truly hear is to attend with the ear of your heart. This involves encountering what is heard, recognising how it resonated with you, hearing God’s call to you, which calls for a response to what is heard.
This distinction between listening and hearing evokes for me an image of a stone being thrown into a still lake. The stone makes a splash, breaking the silence and stillness. But if we stay, we can watch the energy of that splash being conveyed by the water, the ripples spreading out.
To listen is to attend to the splash, which is the good news of Jesus. The gospeller is bringing us tidings of great joy, announcing this good news of his words and deeds.
But to hear is to be energised, to let our lives reverberate with joy as we respond to what we have heard. To truly hear is become caught up into the ripples of history as they flows out from the splash.
2. “…The Gospel according to Luke”
The opening call of the gospeller though, was to “Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke”.
Today we begin a new year in the church’s cycle of Sunday readings, or “lections”. At most Sunday Eucharists this coming lectionary year, we’ll be listening to the gospel as it was heard and shared by Luke.
In shorthand, we sometimes refer to “Luke’s gospel”. But this is so misleading, that I’d advise against it! There is, for us, only one good news, the one gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, not a gospel of St Paul (Gal 1:7), or Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John. This year though we listen to that gospel of Jesus, as it is told “according to Luke”.
While we don’t really know the third evangelist’s name, we do know this evangelist wrote two books in our bible: the Gospel, on the mission of Jesus; and the Acts of the Apostles, on the mission of Paul and his companions. Both are written to a certain Theophilus, a name that means ‘God-lover’. We also know that the evangelist was not an eye witness to events of Jesus’ life. He’s not a news reporter. He’s an evangelist – one who had heard the gospel of Jesus, as “good news of great joy for all the people”, as his angel of the Lord says to the shepherds (Luke 2:7). Luke was energised by what he heard, so caught up in the ripples of joy and hope, that he helps to spread them.
For Luke, this gospel is summed up in Jesus’s brief Nazareth Manifesto, the mission statement that Luke includes in chapter 4, when Jesus opens the scroll of the prophet Isaiah at the synagogue in Nazareth and reads,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19)
Luke heard this good news on a deep level. He heard its message of salvation. The evangelist passes this on to us as having four key themes, which I want just name today, and to unpack through the year to come.
Those four themes of salvation of the Gospel according to Luke can be remembered if we summarise each with the letter R. They are release, reversal, reorientation, and restoration.
1. Release – is a release from all captivity:— from sin, from sickness, from attachments, even from death to life.
2. Reversal – is a reversal of positions of privilege and oppression, with the humble and poor taking the place of the mighty and rich (as in the Magnificat of Mary, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and Luke’s woes and beatitudes).
3. Reorientation – is a redirecting of our lives, a turning ourselves about — like Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus who after recognising Jesus in the breaking of bread immediately returned to Jerusalem (Luke 24).
4. And Restoration – a re-establishing of God’s covenant relationship, which renews and restores us. So we find lots of shared meals in Luke, renewing relationships and building bridges, with baskets of bread left over.
These four themes are each a part of our being saved. And for Luke, to be saved is to be “merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).
End
I end with my analogy of listening and hearing in terms of a splash and ripples. If the splash was Jesus, the evangelist who wrote the third gospel heard this good news and became a vehicle of its message of salvation as ripples through history. But the gospel was written for us to share in this joy and to find in it our salvation. So the call of the gospeller through this lectionary year is for you — to “Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.”
I pray this coming year that we may all deeply hear the gospel according to Luke; that we may resonate with what we hear and be energised by this good news for all people, and may we all be caught up in those ripples of history as we become merciful as God is merciful.
I pray for this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Homily on John 10: 1-10
By The Very Reverend Christine Wilson
I first began to understand the nature of sheep when I moved from city life to spend a few years in the beautiful countryside of the Peak District in the heart of the English midlands.
I have three particular images from that time which I think can help us to understand the vulnerability of sheep.
The first was the time I discovered a sheep caught up in a thicket of thorns. The more it struggled the more it hurt itself and became even more tangled. It was helpless and vulnerable to attack. I called the local farmer to rescue it.
Then there was the time I glanced into a field and saw a big fat ewe stuck upside down with its legs in the air unable to right itself. It wasn’t happily basking in the sun, it was dying because without rescue left for too long in that position, it was likely to suffocate.
The final image is rather cute. It was a particularly ferocious early spring and lambing had just started. The rain had been falling in torrents for weeks on end. As I passed a field I noticed lots of bright red plastic and was curious. To my amusement all the new lambs were wearing little red raincoats to protect them and keep them dry.
Jesus uses the image of sheep to describe us as those who are vulnerable to predators, susceptible to danger, inclined to get lost and having a herd mentality.
Identifying that we are the sheep in the story and Jesus is the Good Shepherd is the easy bit. But what about Jesus as the Gate?
It helps to know that sheepfolds came in two varieties. I read somewhere that there was the town version where several flocks could be held together with a porter or doorkeeper. The Shepherds would come in the morning and the sheep would respond to their distinctive call and would be led out to pasture It was important to know your sheep not least because the Shepherd was accountable for every one of them.
The other was the remote sheepfold out on the hills. A circle of stones with an opening. The Shepherd would lie across the entrance to keep the sheep in and wild animals out. The Shepherd as the gate.
Shepherds knew their sheep. They protected, guided and provided for them and were constant companions. They were ready to lay down their life to save the sheep.
In our Gospel today, Jesus gives I us these two images of Gate and Good Shepherd to describe the life and relationship that he offers each of us.
We are reminded of all this in Psalm 23
The Lord is my Shepherd, therefore I shall lack nothing, he makes me to lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters – he restores my soul.
But being followers of Jesus invites us not only to receive the life he offers and invite others into the security of the fold, but also to become like him as Good Shepherds and Gates offering his love, his protection and his care.
In these days we know that many are exhausted, needing protection from harm or illness, anxious about the future, lost or alone.
Jesus calls us by name and he bids us to exercise leadership, setting before us his example as we care about the safety of the vulnerable, look to the needs of the hungry and draw all who are lost into the green pastures of his life and love.
A Sermon for Easter Day – The Rt Revd Dr David Court, Acting Bishop of Lincoln
A Sermon for Palm Sunday – The Revd Canon John Patrick, Subdean
Please follow the links below for previous sermons:
A Sermon for the fifth Sunday of Lent – The Very Reverend Christine Wilson, Dean of Lincoln