Leonard Cohen, the singer, was in the news this week because he had written a letter to the woman who was his muse in the 1960s, Marianne, the ‘Bird on a Wire’ in his song, who died a couple of weeks ago. Before she died, he wrote this to her: 

“Well Marianne; it’s come to this time 

when we are really so old that our bodies are falling apart

And I think I will follow you very soon.

Know that I am so close behind you  

That if you stretch out your hand

I think you can reach mine. 

…

Goodbye, old friend. Endless love

See you down the road.”

I’m sure that this lovely poem will be read at funerals a lot in future. What I want to point out is that Leonard Cohen shared something which is at the heart of our Christian belief: that is, the ‘sure and certain hope’ of the resurrection to eternal life: that there is a life after death, and that we will, in some way, be reunited with those whom we love. 

St Paul recognised that this is all beyond human understanding. He wrote, ‘For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face.’ But because we know about Jesus, we have seen a glimpse of that resurrection to eternal life. Jesus was himself, somehow, raised from the dead. He was, clearly, not ghostly: remember the story of Doubting Thomas. ‘Touch me; feel me’, Jesus said. And Thomas did. He recognised that he was in the presence of God. 

It was a sign for us. I hope you will remember that, and that when you think about Marjorie, believe that like Leonard Cohen, if you stretch out your hand, you can reach hers.

Sermon for Evensong on the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 7th August 2016 

Isaiah 11:[1-9]10-12:6, 2 Corinthians 1:1-22

Retired rescue greyhounds. Yes, retired rescue greyhounds. Keep those words carefully in mind. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Godfrey and I and some others of the faithful meet for morning prayers here and at St Andrew’s. At morning prayers we say a Psalm and read two lessons from the Bible, chosen according to the lectionary; we also read out a daily reflection from a book called ‘Reflections for Daily Prayer’, published by Church House Publishing. It has reflections by a particular writer for several days at a time. This week we have been reading reflections on certain psalms by a writer who has come up with very interesting illustrations – ‘interesting’ is perhaps the wrong word: ‘off the wall’ might be more like it.  

For example, on Thursday, they commented on the first half of Psalm 78, which is one of the mega-psalms, which actually gives you a complete potted history of the Israelites: the covenant with Jacob, the giving of the law, the turning away from God to worship false gods, being exiled in Egypt, then rescued by dividing the Red Sea, manna from heaven, then the wrath of God again – Psalm 78 is a serious psalm.

In commenting on this, the writer started like this: – “In the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty the princess’ fairy godmothers give her beauty, wit, grace, dance, and song, thereby equipping her to have to become a sure-fire winner of the X Factor. In a long-running British drama, a local chef and sharp practitioner promises to teach his new godson how to cook spaghetti carbonara and how to cheat the tax man.” 

Yes, really: the X Factor and spaghetti carbonara. It was really supposed to be about Psalm 78. Now obviously, in the face of such a mysterious message, some of us surreptitiously turned to the index of authors and the potted biographies contained in it. It is sometimes quite a good idea to see who is writing the stuff which we are supposed to read. 

And this is what it said. The writer is the rector of a particular church and, before ordination, served as a prison governor. And here is the key: she is a keen walker, quilter, and ‘devoted adopter of retired rescue greyhounds’. Well of course, for ever afterwards, we have looked to see whether our reflection for the day has come from the writer whom we have come to know and love as the “greyhound lady”.

In passing I would just query what a ‘rescue’ greyhound is. That is, as opposed to a normal retired greyhound. Perhaps they have been experimenting in Switzerland with greyhounds instead of Saint Bernards, in order to get to avalanche victims even faster. Those dogs would indeed be ‘rescue’ greyhounds. Who knows?

Tonight we sang the beautiful Psalm 108, paratum cor meum, My Heart is Ready, which contains the immortal words, ‘Moab is my wash-pot’, which I am sure we will all remember smiling at ever since we were at school. 
‘God has spoken in his holiness. I will rejoice therefore and divide Sichem and mete out the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine and Manasses is mine.’ God is in charge. Moab is His en suite facility.

It’s the same theme in our Old Testament lesson: the vision of the Kingdom of God, the rod out of the stem of Jesse. In the first part of Isaiah chapter 11, leading into tonight’s lesson: ‘The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding.. The vision of the Messiah, who will put everything right. ‘… with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. … The wolf shall lie with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them… They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’

The Greyhound Lady has not had to expatiate on Psalm 108 so far, so I don’t know whether she will be able to bring the idea of Moab the Wash-pot into a reality TV reference. But seriously, how are we to make sense of the vision, on the one hand, of the rod of Jesse, the Messiah, someone coming from God to put things right, to bring people back into a right relationship with God the Father, but on the other hand, the undoubted suffering and imperfection, separation from God, which we see today?

Saint Paul’s idea, in his second letter to the Corinthians, seems to be almost a kind of homeopathic approach. God comforts us in our afflictions – ‘who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.’ Saint Paul seems to be saying that there is a sense in which God’s suffering, Jesus’ suffering, in some sense stands for, or enters into, our suffering.

It’s not the same as the idea of substitutionary atonement, Jesus being punished vicariously for the things which we ought to have been punished for, as some theologians have argued. The difficulty with that is that we end up with Jesus as some kind of human sacrifice, which does not square with the idea of a loving God.

This is different. This is rather like when St Paul talks about being “in Christ” when he means, in a way, having Christ in us, having the spirit of Christ in us. When we suffer, when things go wrong for us, Saint Paul is saying in some sense that God empathises, that our suffering is in some sense God’s suffering as well. When Christ suffered, this was in a sense a kind of homeopathy, or inoculation, perhaps. In his passion and death, Jesus was separated from God in a way which was similar to, but far worse than, anything which we can suffer, but which, to some extent, showed that God suffered in Jesus, and in so doing, he entered into, he shared in, our suffering.

It’s similar to the idea that Aristotle put forward for how tragedy in the theatre is meant to work. We enter into the emotion, the pity and the fear, that the actors are showing in the drama: we feel for them. It works as a kind of clearing out of our soul: Καθαρσις [catharsis: Aristotle, Poetics,1449b21-29]. We lose our fear and terror when we come out of the theatre. We have had it cleaned out of us, by entering into actions and emotions in the play. We do this as well in church, when we take part in a sacrament. A sacrament is almost a sort of drama. It is ‘the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’. 

Such a blessed picture. But unfortunately, in a time when, sadly, we can even imagine Donald Trump’s ungainly thumb on the nuclear trigger, the leopard has not yet lain down with the kid, or the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, let alone their being in such a peaceful world that a little child could lead them. 

There is still plenty to pray for. Even so, perhaps, on God’s holy mountain, among the menagerie, among those peaceful animals, we could hope that there might just be – a retired rescue greyhound.

I acknowledge the fact that this extract from an article by Canon Angela Tilby, and the letter commenting on it by my friend Arnie Gabbott, first appeared in the Church Times. I reproduce them here conveniently for my readers.

Angela Tilby, Church Times, 29th July 2016 – ‘Is this the moment for Marxism?’

‘…. Reading MacKinnon again has put the fight for the future of the Labour Party into a new perspective. Jeremy Corbyn’s sup­port­­ers believe in the unity of theory and practice. They see the current moment as an oppor­t­­­­unity to be grasped.

This is the time to cast off the Blairite error of seeking peace with capitalism; it is the time to seize on the disillusion­ment of the masses, especially the young. It is a moment for ruthles­sness, for overthrowing the parlia­mentary party, and being prepared (as some already are) to throw bricks through windows and take the struggle to the streets.
The issue is whether the new Left’s attempt to seize the moment by demagoguery could ever deliver a fair and just society, or whether the argu­­ment is just as flawed now as it was then.’

From Mr T. A. Gabbott [Church Times, 5th August 2016]

Sir, — The attempt to overthrow the Labour Party is being brought about not by the stone-throwers or by demagoguery but by members of the PLP who can’t work with the democratically elected leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Although the arguments of the Left may be flawed in Canon Tilby’s vision, they are surely understood by millions now living in our deeply unequal society — a vision not given by demagoguery, but prompted by poverty wages, zero-hour contracts, benefits sanctions, and being driven to foodbanks while seeing billions lost to tax fraud.

If Canon Tilby could move to an inner-city church, she would then live alongside the poor, recognise the suffering, and ask herself whether this was a fair and just society.

Sermon for Evensong on the 9th Sunday after Trinity, 24th July 2016​

[Genesis 42:1-25]; 1 Corinthians 10:1-24 – The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. (1 Cor. 10:8) 

As those of us who were undergraduates of a certain antiquity can remember, at university fornication is only possible before 10pm. But here, St Paul seems to be saying not only that it’s difficult, but extremely dangerous, possibly lethal. Really?

This is one of those passages in St Paul’s letters which does read rather strangely, unless you understand its background and context. St Paul is writing to the Christians at Corinth, which, then as now, was a Greek city. So when he wrote, ‘our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea’, it seems a bit strange, even against the time it was written – because Paul was giving a potted resumé of Jewish history, to a congregation who must have been mainly non-Jewish. It wasn’t their fathers he was talking about.

Maybe this was because Christianity started out as a Jewish sect. Indeed it was a live issue among the early Christians whether they had to be circumcised and convert to Judaism. Saints Peter, Paul, Barnabas and the early church dealt with this in the Council of Jerusalem, which you can read about in Acts 15. The answer to the question, whether on becoming a Christian, you had to be circumcised, fortunately, was ‘no’ – and St Paul emphasised it in his letter to the Galatians, chapters 2, 4 and 5. No need to become circumcised, to become Jewish, in order to be a Christian. The early Christians widened out their membership beyond Judaism to include non-Jews, Gentiles – peoples, tribes, nations, that were different from the chosen people, the Jews. 

What mattered was – what matters still – is faith. ‘A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ’, as St Paul wrote in Galatians 2:16, for example. But Paul must have found that the early, non-Jewish, Christians were well enough up on Jewish history for them to understand the force of his argument when he drew on Jewish history in support of his telling the Corinthians not to behave like people who were heathens and worshipped idols instead of worshipping the One True God and Jesus his son.

It’s difficult to be sure exactly what the Corinthians were doing wrong, in order for St Paul to try to correct them. It looks as though they may have thought that, by having a holy meal together, by participating in a sacrament of holy communion, they were then assured of salvation: they had nothing to fear at the Last Judgement, whatever they did from then on. They had a free pass, a licence, to do naughty things.

This comes across to us today as one of St Paul’s rather gloomy pieces. You’re not allowed to eat, drink and be merry. You’re certainly not allowed to chase girls.

In a way, you can understand St Augustine’s prayer, ‘Lord, make me pure, but not yet.’ There used to be a birthday card, on which was a rather gloomy-looking owl. It said, ‘Owl had never had too much to drink: he had never had sex: he had never smoked exotic cheroots’. Inside, it read, ‘In fact Owl had never been to university at all!’ 

Happy birthday, poor old Owl. But is that really what Christianity is all about? Is it just rather joyless rectitude? Of course, I’m not advocating unrestrained licentiousness. And there’s no doubt that St Paul did want the Christians to stand apart from the Romans’ vices. 

There were great temptations in Roman life. You may remember a rather jolly film (which, however, we might struggle to show in our ‘Spiritual Cinema’) by Federico Fellini, called ‘Satyricon’, which was based on a book by the Roman author Petronius, which includes the ‘Cena Trimalchionis’, or Trimalchio’s Banquet, a text much loved by all boys studying Latin in the Lower Sixth: this is where those scantily-clad maidens leaping out of pies and other extraordinary pieces of decadence come from. Sin in Ancient Rome was clearly great fun.

But how did it become possibly lethal to indulge in feasting – how come ‘the people sat down to feast and stood up to play’: how come some of them committed fornication – and ‘23,000 died in one day’! Why?

St Paul was referencing the Old Testament, Numbers chapter 25, when ‘Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab’. What was wrong with the daughters of Moab and the Midianites was that they worshipped idols, the Baals. The people of Israel were not meant to mix with those heathens – and God punished them. The lesson which St Paul was drawing was that although the people of Israel were saved, although God had made a covenant with them, it didn’t absolve them from the obligation to keep their side of the bargain, to abide by God’s law.

The same went for the poor old Corinthians. I have this rather irreverent picture in my mind of St Paul as a fierce maiden aunt, rather like my old Aunt, Margaret Bryant, the historian and Girton Girl, terrorising the curates at Holy Trinity, Clapham Common: just like her, St Paul had a tendency to pull you up short and tell you to tie your shoe laces properly. So he was telling the Corinthians in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t enough simply to the church, as though it were a golf club, ‘The Christian Club’. They had to be new men, new people, reformed, born again in the faith of Christ. It didn’t give them licence to misbehave any more.

But it’s not all so serious. There is real joy in the faith of Christ. Just a couple of pages further on in St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, we come to that wonderful hymn to love – it doesn’t matter what kind of love – in I Corinthians 13: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, …’ If I have no love, no charity – for that’s what one kind of love is. 

And in his letter to the Galatians, St Paul lists all the ‘fruits of the spirit’, the things that come to a Christian through his or her faith: ‘love, joy, peace’ are the first three on the list. Joy. Indeed. Just don’t confuse the sacrament, the holy commemoration, of Jesus’ Last Supper, with just any banquet, with any blow-out. It certainly isn’t a riotous party. But there is joy, the joy of faith. ‘Solid joys and lasting treasure’ indeed. 
Glorious things of thee are spoken

Zion, City of our God

Solid joys and lasting treasure

None but Zion’s children know. (John Newton, Olney Hymns, 1779).

Theresa May says that she would definitely press the button to launch a Trident missile and explode a nuclear bomb, if this country had suffered a nuclear attack.

Jeremy Corbin says that he definitely wouldn’t.

Some further thoughts. The main context of this discussion is the the theory of MAD, or mutually assured destruction.

In order for MAD to be effective, the opponents have to be willing – and committed – to launching their weapons if the trigger condition (as defined) is met. Put another way, there will always be a situation where one of the opponents can reasonably expect that, if A launches an attack, B will respond with a nuclear strike.

Conversely, MAD doesn’t work if various conditions occur. These include the following.

MAD will not work if one of the opponents has foresworn the use of nuclear weapons, ever. There is no mutual threat.

MAD will also not work if one or other of the opponents does not have free and unfettered use of a nuclear weapon.

In the context of the UK and its Trident weapon, MAD may well be, in view of the above, not operative, either actually under May or potentially under Corbyn.

Under May, although she is willing to wreak nuclear destruction, she may not be not a free agent in relation to the use of the Trident missile system, if she needs a ‘second key’ from the USA in order to launch a missile. Unless the USA have previously let it be known to the other side that she is authorised by them to act, her threats are empty.

There is a 2005 response by the Ministry of Defence to a Freedom of Information Act request, (see https://ukdjcdn-b4d.kxcdn.com/uploads/2014/07/UK-Nuclear-Deterrent-FOI-Response.pdf), according to which the UK does not have to obtain the USA’s prior consent to a nuclear strike. It is difficult to know what weight to place on this. Obviously, if one takes it at face value, then the condition for MAD deterrence is met: Mrs May is willing to strike back, and she is not constrained by the USA in so doing.

But it is possible that the Mandy Rice-Davies doctrine may apply here: ‘[They] would say that, wouldn’t [they].’ To some extent, nuclear deterrence may depend on cardboard policemen. If the opponent believes you have a nuke, are willing and able to use it, your threat will likely be taken seriously. You would not want to bet on it being a bluff – albeit that it might be.

It follows from this that it may not be necessary to spend much on nuclear weapons renewal. For a threat of MAD to work, all you need is a credible chance that your old nuke would get through. Can we offer such a threat, if it rests on a (necessarily unsupported) assertion by the MOD in 2005?

Under a hypothetical Corbyn government, there is no risk of a nuclear strike by the UK, as Corbyn has foresworn the use of nuclear weapons.

If a nuclear threat from the UK may not be credible, why would the not inconsiderable cost of renewing the Trident ‘deterrent’ be justified?

The other thing to observe is that Theresa May appears to be upholding the ‘no first use’ doctrine, although the UK has not made any formal treaty commitment to this effect.

She is saying that there would always be nuclear retaliation if the UK had been attacked with a nuclear weapon. No First Use (NFU) must surely rule out deterrence. The argument is that our opponents would not attack us, because they would suffer nuclear retaliation. It must be doubtful whether, in order to maintain a credible threat to retaliate, one needs to have four submarines.

There would appear to be some illogicality in the NFU argument, because if there is a first strike against us, deterrence will have failed. There will then be no point in our making a retaliatory strike. Again, Mandy Rice-Davies may come to the rescue. ‘Would you retaliate?’ ‘Yes, definitely.’ You would say that, whether or not it was true, in order to maintain the threat. Again, a well-presented bluff might be just as effective – and much cheaper.

Note that these conclusions may be reached without any consideration whether the UK’s opponents in any potential nuclear exchange are identified, or, arguably, identifiable.

Hugh Bryant
20th July 2016

Theresa May says that she would definitely press the button to launch a Trident missile and explode a nuclear bomb.

Jeremy Corbyn says that he definitely wouldn’t.

Some thoughts. The context of this discussion is the the theory of MAD, or mutually assured destruction.

In order for MAD to be effective, the opponents have to be willing – and committed – to launch their weapons if the trigger condition (as defined) is met. Put another way, there will always be a situation where one of the opponents can reasonably expect that, if A launches an attack, B will respond with a nuclear strike.

Conversely, MAD doesn’t work if various conditions occur. These include the following.

MAD will not work if one of the opponents has foresworn the use of nuclear weapons, ever. There is no mutual threat.

MAD will also not work if one or other of the opponents does not have free and unfettered use of a nuclear weapon.

In the context of the UK and its Trident weapon, MAD is, in view of the above, not operative, either actually under May or potentially under Corbyn.

Under May, although she is willing to wreak nuclear destruction, she is not a free agent in relation to the use of the Trident missile system, as she needs a ‘second key’ from the USA in order to launch a missile. Unless the USA have previously let it be known to the other side that she is authorised by them to act, her threats are empty.

Under a hypothetical Corbyn government, there is no risk of a nuclear strike by the UK either, as Corbyn has foresworn the use of nuclear weapons.

The question therefore arises that, given that, under neither the actual or the potential regime, is a nuclear threat from the UK credible, why would the not inconsiderable cost of renewing the Trident ‘deterrent’ be justified?

Note that this conclusion may be reached without any consideration whether the actors in any potential nuclear exchange are not identified, or, arguably, identifiable.

Hugh Bryant

19th July 2016

Sermon for Mattins on the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, 17th July 2016
Colossians 1:15-28, Luke 10:38-42

I went to a Confirmation service at Saint Martin’s Church in Camberley this week. Bishop Andrew confirmed seven people, ranging from a teenage boy called Israel to two ladies of mature years, a Mum with grown-up children, a young couple who are getting married, who had attended the Alpha Course and discovered a Christian faith, and the children’s and youth worker at St Andrew’s, our sister church, Esther, who, although she had professed a sincere and deep Christian faith for many years, had never actually been confirmed.

It was one of those services where a couple of the candidates gave a short testimony to explain how they came to faith. These were moving stories. In the midst of adversity or loss, on certain instances, the person had suddenly seen clearly that God, in the person of Jesus Christ, cared for them; that they were not alone in the world or lost, and by bringing Jesus into their lives, their lives suddenly became better; everything made better sense. And they felt the love of their fellow Christians, sometimes as a result of coming to Christian belief, and sometimes as part of coming to Christian belief. 

One lady said how she was walking past the church when there was a carol service; she was bustling along, going off to do some errand or other, when, as she put it, her feet told her to turn off and go into the church, (whereas her mind was telling her to carry on running her errands). And she followed her feet: and in church she found people she already knew in another context, who made her very welcome.

In that fellowship of faith, her own faith was nurtured and grew. In St Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he deals with this, with the heart of our faith, with what St Paul sometimes calls ‘being in Christ’. He describes what Christ is, ‘the image of the invisible God’, the creator, by whom ‘were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers. All things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.’

So Jesus is the image of God the creator, the Unmoved Mover, the creator from nothing. And then St Paul goes on to say, that ‘he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead;’ and that we who are Christians, who are members of his church, are bound up with that creation. It’s not just something that is going on, which we can admire from a distance or comment on with detachment. We are involved: and we are involved in a secret, a mystery, which St Paul proclaimed in his various missionary journeys: ‘the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but is now made manifest to his saints’. And that secret is ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’.

In Christ and through Christ, God in Christ is at the heart of our being. And that was what those confirmation candidates, who stood up and told us about their faith, had experienced. Their faith in Jesus had brought them harmony in their lives. They were in a right relationship with God. Bishop Andrew invited the congregation, as we said the prayers towards the end of the confirmation service, to renew our confirmation vows; to reaffirm our faith. We were all very happy to do so, especially as we had all been so inspired by what the candidates said.

Sometimes we let our busy lives intrude and obscure our relationship with God, with Jesus, just as in the story of Martha and Mary. Martha was too busy, doing the chores. She and her sister were at opposite ends of the pendulum swing, I suppose. Mary was almost too spiritual, and Martha, too practical. But Jesus said that Mary had the better part. She was the one sitting at Jesus’s feet and receiving his teaching. And she was doing that rather than preparing lovely food and hospitality – which was what her sister was doing.

I guess we very often come into the same category as Martha, and we are too busy, we have too many things going on. We don’t take enough time, we don’t set aside enough time to say our prayers and perhaps read our Bible or reflect on what Jesus would say or do. Jesus told Martha that she was fretting and fussing about so many things; but that what Mary was doing, sitting at the Lord’s feet: that is the important thing to do. 

Which brings me neatly to another member of the church, somebody who must be unbelievably busy, fretting and fussing about so many things, as Jesus would put it, but who is very happy to let it be known that they go to church; they are part of the Body of Christ, the church.

I am, of course, talking about our new prime minister. As the Church Times editorial said, we wish her well and hope that, with all her duties, she will still get time to go to church. She belongs to the congregation of Saint Andrew’s in Sonning in Berkshire, and her father was a clergyman, the vicar of Wheatley in Oxfordshire.

In her first speech Mrs May went out of her way to emphasise her social concern, saying that her government would look after the poor and the disadvantaged in society. It’s fair to say that a lot of commentators were rather surprised to hear a Conservative Prime Minister offering this message. It was suggested that it might have come just as easily from a Labour leader; but I think the secret is probably that Mrs May is a Christian, and as a Christian she is concerned that we are all one: that we are all one in God’s creation.

‘He is therefore all things, and by him all things consist, and he is the head of the body, the church’. Mrs May is in that body, and she seems very well aware of how it works. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Let us pray that Mrs May continues to feel Christ in her, at work in her, and that she maintains that hope of glory, that sure and certain hope that sustains the family of Christ. 

Sermon for Evensong on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, 10th July 2016

Genesis 32:9-30, Mark 7:1-23

I’ve just got back from a few days on business in Hamburg. Hamburg is one of my favourite places. As well as being a very beautiful city, a city on a lake, as well as being a very important industrial centre and port, full of life and culture, two universities, two opera houses, a world-class concert hall, a symphony orchestra, and so on, it is also the friendliest city in Germany towards Brits.

They say, ‘When it rains in London, they put their umbrellas up in Hamburg.’ I am very proud to belong to the Anglo-German Club, which is a Pall Mall style club with about 1000 members, which was founded at the end of the Second World War to revive the friendship between the people of Hamburg and the people of the UK. It is situated in a beautiful mansion on the side of the Alster lake.

I met a number of friends last week, a number of German friends. You can imagine that there was an ‘elephant in the room’, something which we had to air before anything else. A typical conversation went this way:
‘What did you do? You were our friends; but now we are not sure. You seem to have rejected us.’ I, of course, as a convinced European and a Remain voter, was extremely embarrassed and apologetic, but I couldn’t get over the fact that a majority of our population have voted to leave the EU.

What happens next? What is the right thing to do? I couldn’t answer my friends in Hamburg. What, indeed, did our country vote for?

It is a difficult question to find out what we as a people actually want to do with the decision to leave the EU. Never mind what we don’t want to do – we don’t want to be part of the EU: but where does that take us?

Is it the case that the people wanted to save £350 million a week and pay it all to the NHS – which is what the Brexit people were promising right up to the end? Although the Brexit people refused to withdraw the promise, as soon as the results had been declared, they admitted that it was not true. There is no more money for the NHS, at least from that source. It never existed.

Does it mean that we are content to allow the NHS to suffer really severe staff shortages rather than continue to employ over 100,000 immigrants in it as we do at present?

Does the vote to leave mean that we should stop immigration into this country completely? Over half of the immigration into this country now is from countries outside the EU, and these migrants are already subject to the ‘Australian-style’ criteria which those in favour of Brexit were arguing for. It still resulted in 180,000 immigrants coming in from outside the EU. Perhaps again, the truth is rather different from the way things were put in the campaign. Perhaps we really need the immigrants.

But, if the popular will really is that there should be a greatly reduced number, does this mean that we don’t want to participate in the single market any more? Freedom of movement of labour is a non-negotiable requirement for entry into the single market. You can’t have it both ways, as Boris Johnson claimed you could.

And so on. All these unresolved questions. I think maybe that some people who voted to leave the EU, if they had met my German friends, and heard what my friends were saying, like “You don’t want us any more; you have rejected us”: might try to say, “Oh no, that’s not what we wanted at all. That’s not what we intended. You are still our friends.”

How? Perhaps people don’t realise that what we have just done as a country is perceived, by the people I met in Germany at least, as doing enormous damage to the European Union. It’s a funny thing for real friends to have done. We might not look like friends any more.

Can we get any guidance from what the Bible says to us today? In today’s Old Testament lesson, there is the story of Jacob coming face-to-face with God. There is the mysterious all-night wrestling bout in which Jacob ends up with a dislocated hip. He brings the bout to an end by demanding and getting from the other side a blessing, a blessing from the mysterious nocturnal wrestler who attacked him.

Perhaps it was a bit like Cato attacking Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther; the idea being to keep Jacob on his mettle, on his toes. The place where it happened, Peniel, means, in Hebrew, ‘face to face with God’. It’s a legend. Other ancient writings, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, are said to have similar weird stories about the founders of nations. But it is a very important story, as it marks the founding of the new nation of Israel.

How annoying it is that we, who are looking at, if not the founding of a new nation, at least a revolution in our constitution, how annoying that we have not bumped into God in the way that Jacob did at that crucial time. It would be very good for us to get some confirmation, even indeed after some kind of contest, that we were on the right lines, whichever path we eventually choose: that we are blessed by God.

Think how confused the Pharisees must have felt when Jesus was ticking them off about being hypocrites, playing things by the rules, by the Jewish law, rather than trying to discern what God really wanted.

Why do you wash your hands before you eat? It’s quite interesting that things seem to have gone full circle since the time of Jesus. A lot of the instructions in the Old Testament about what to eat and what not to eat, we would say now, are pretty soundly based in food hygiene. Pork, in a hot country, goes off very quickly, so it’s probably a good idea to steer clear of it.

Similarly, washing your hands before you eat is sensible, because it prevents the transmission of diseases. But then Jesus comes along, and says that it is not what you eat that will do you harm, not what comes in from outside, but the bad stuff that you have in your heart, what comes out from inside you, that causes the trouble.

A philosopher today might well say that Jesus was making what’s called a ‘category mistake’ for the sake of his argument here. The dirt on your hands when you are about to eat is not the same ‘dirt’ as dirty thoughts inside you. They are two different types of ‘dirty’, and strictly speaking, Jesus is confusing them.

I can see that the Pharisees might well have been confused. Why is the Jewish law such a bad thing? It was almost that they were being faced with a kind of revolution. Their old way of life was being upset. After the Brexit vote, we also have been thrown into confusion. What should we do?

What would Jesus have done? Jesus would have been very clearly opposed to the rise of xenophobia and race hatred – a 43% increase in reported race hatred crime – which appears to have been stirred up by the referendum. Of course not everyone who voted for Brexit is a racist or a xenophobe, but it does look as though a significant number of racists and xenophobes have been encouraged in their views by the vote for Brexit.

The Pharisees should have been reassured when Jesus said he came ‘not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it’ (Matt. 5:17): for in fact, Jesus endorsed the Jewish tradition: love your neighbour as yourself, which goes back to the book of Leviticus, chapter 19: and think of all the references in Deuteronomy to looking after the stranger, the alien in your midst, alongside widows and orphans. Love God – and love your neighbour.

In Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan, the hero, the Samaritan, was not a Jew; he was a foreigner (Luke 10). Or think of the Roman centurion in Capernaum whose servant Jesus healed (Matt. 8), possibly the same centurion who in Acts 10 was called Cornelius: he was definitely not a Jew, but his faith, said Jesus, was greater than anyone else’s he had met, even in Israel. To Jesus, being a foreigner was completely all right.

Think of how the gospels spread. First it was a gospel for the Jews. For the chosen people. Then, mainly through St Paul’s good offices, it became known also to the Gentiles, to the nations of the earth; ourselves among them. No one then was uniquely qualified, by their nationality, to be saved; so why should we, who happen to live here, keep out others who are poor and who are trying to find a place where they can have a better life than where they came from, by working hard? What is the Christian attitude to that?

What do we want now, what did we vote for, in the referendum? There is a Christian way of looking at it; as we weigh up all the twists and turns into which the Brexit vote has led us, we should all remember to try to discern what Christ would have done.

Dear Mr Raab
One of the frustrating things about living in a parliamentary ‘safe seat’ while being a member of a party other than that of the incumbent MP is that one rarely finds oneself in political sympathy with the said MP. You will have noticed this from previous correspondence where I am concerned.
However, in the EU referendum I found myself on the side of the substantial majority of Elmbridge voters who had voted to ‘Remain’, and it was you, as a ‘Leave’ campaigner, who was not in tune.
Now, as I understand things, before any notice can be given for Britain to leave the EU, pursuant to Art. 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, the provision of Art 50.1 that ‘Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements’ must be complied with.
In our case, this must mean that the European Communities Act (‘ECA’) 1972 must first be repealed, before notice under Art 50 can be given. This will require a vote in Parliament.
As our MP I call upon you to recognise that a large majority of your constituents do not want to leave the EU, and that a fortiori they will not want you to go against their wishes in voting to repeal the ECA. Will you therefore please assure me that, when the possible repeal of the ECA 1972 comes before Parliament, you will vote against it, in accordance with the express wish of a substantial majority of your constituents?
I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully

HUGH BRYANT
[Dominic Raab is MP for Esher and Walton.

The Borough of Elmbridge voted 59.5% to remain, and 40.5% to leave the EU, on a turnout of 78% of those entitled to vote.]

Sermon for Evensong on the Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 26th June 2016

Genesis 27:1-40, Isaac blesses Jacob; Mark 6:1-6
Jacob and Esau. Twins. Twins who didn’t get on, even before they were born. Rebekah their mother found that ‘the children struggled together within her’, and she asked the LORD, the Lord God, why. (See Gen. 25:22-23.) The Lord answered, ‘Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels [which means, born]; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.’ 
Yes, ‘.. the elder shall serve the younger’. As indeed it turned out. With his mother’s connivance, Jacob conned his aged, blind father Isaac into thinking that he was ‘a hairy man’ like his elder brother Esau, and was in fact Esau – whether one has to imagine some luxuriant chest foliage like the Bee Gees’, I don’t know, but anyway, he was hairy. 
Rebekah dressed Jacob up in his brother’s clothes, and covered his neck and hands in goatskins. Isaac was a bit doubtful – ‘the voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau’, he said, when Jacob first went to see him. The smell of his borrowed clothes seems to have persuaded Isaac – ‘he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, …’ His raiment, his clothes. But they were not really his. They were Esau’s.
Isaac was taken in. He ‘blessed’ Jacob. He confirmed that Jacob would be the one to inherit. Then in came Esau, the real Esau; it dawned on Isaac that he’d been conned. It’s interesting to see how he reacted. He acknowledged that he’d been taken in. But, for whatever reason, he had given his blessing, and his blessing was his blessing. Jacob would get the inheritance.
The Lord God had been accurate in his prediction. Normally the elder would inherit, by the ancient principle of primogeniture. It still occurs today. When I was little, my younger brother and I had a cousin, older than us, whom we called Uncle John. Uncle John was a kind uncle, and he gave us extra pocket money when he saw us. But he always gave me, the elder one, twice as much as my little brother. Once she found out what was going on, our Mum organised an evening-out of Uncle John’s gifts, so I gave away the surplus and we both had the same.
You can imagine Isaac’s dilemma. Who was telling him the truth? And it wasn’t just an inconsequential thing. Who was going to lead the family when he was gone? 
How does one know whom to rely on? Even Jesus had a credibility problem. ‘A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his kin, and in his own house.’
Jesus had a problem that all young solicitors know about. It’s never a good idea to stay on at the firm where you served your articles. The older clerks and secretaries will always see you as the callow articled clerk, and not the well-read young assistant solicitor, on his way up. The people you’ve grown up with tend not to be dazzled by your brilliance. 
But the problem is the same. Whom do you believe? Whom do you rely on? Two tribes went to war, as the pop song puts it. Sweeping generalisation follows! The metropolitan elite in London and the Home Counties, educated, graduates, young, not bothered by boundaries or nationalities, on the one hand: and the older, poorer, less educated people, for whom globalisation has not been helpful, in the manufacturing areas on the other. In – or out?
The politicians made strong statements: if this happens, these things will turn out better – or worse. Whom to believe?
In Biblical times, democracy was far more limited than it is today. You would never have had a referendum like the one we’ve just had, in the Roman Empire, or more specifically in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Only the free-born, male, Roman citizens could vote. Educated men.
But even in ancient times, if a popular politician came up who appealed to the masses, unimaginable consequences happened. Here’s what one modern Classics professor has written:
‘For most of its history, the Roman Republic was governed by old political families and reliable power brokers who knew how to keep the masses in line. Elections were held, but they were deliberately designed to give the ruling classes the lion’s share of the popular vote. If the Roman aristocracy, which voted first, chose a man for office, officials often would not even bother to count the ballots cast by the lower classes.
‘On occasion, disgruntled farmers, tavern owners and donkey drivers would rise up and press their rulers for debt relief and a real voice in government, but these revolts were put down quickly with promises of better times ahead and by hiring a few off-duty gladiators to rough up the chief troublemakers. In the late second century BC, the aristocratic Gracchi brothers tried to bring about a political revolution from within only to be killed by the conservative nobility.
‘The man who ultimately brought down the system was a wealthy and ambitious nobleman named Publius Clodius Pulcher, a populist demagogue who refused to play by the rules. ….
‘Nothing was sacred to Clodius. The more audacious his behaviour, the more the public loved him for it. In Rome, for example, Clodius, a noted ladies’ man, committed sacrilege by dressing up as a woman and infiltrating the female-only religious festival of the goddess Bona Dea, with the aim of seducing Pompeia, Julius Caesar’s wife. The scandal led Caesar to divorce Pompeia and gave rise to the famous quip that Caesar’s wife needed to be beyond suspicion.
‘After escaping punishment by employing a large legal team and doling out generous bribes, Clodius entered politics in an effort to secure the respect of the ruling class, which was quick to dismiss him as a buffoon. What Clodius’s critics failed to realise was that he was smart, determined and very much in touch with the frustrations of the common people’. [Prof. Philip Freeman in Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-freeman/trump-rome-populist_b_9659660.html%5D
‘What Clodius’s critics failed to realise was that he was smart, determined and very much in touch with the frustrations of the common people’. He didn’t, however, lead them on towards enlightenment or good government. His leadership of the democracy resulted in the dictatorship of the emperors, and the eventual decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Could this remind you of anyone in politics today?
What, then? Should we distrust democracy? Canon Dr Giles Fraser has written an article [http://gu.com/p/4mt8b?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other] in which he writes about ‘post-truth’ behaviour. Although it may be stupid to elevate completely uneducated people to high office, there are often ordinary people who can assimilate good theological and philosophical writing, and criticise sloppy thought most incisively. But it is to be regretted the way in which during the referendum campaign academic experts, particularly economists, were shouted down. 
If this is what being in the age of ‘post truth’ means, we should worry about it. During the campaign it was asked about one politician, who was dismissing the possibility that certain adverse economic consequences would follow a vote to leave, whether, if he had appendicitis, he would be content for one of his colleagues to operate rather than a qualified surgeon. He had argued that economists had failed to predict the 2008 crash, so they should not be trusted. This is dangerous nonsense. Sadly, we are already finding out that the economists were right.
Archbishops Justin and John issued a statement on Friday morning, in which among other things they said,
“The vote to withdraw from the European Union means that now we must all reimagine both what it means to be the United Kingdom in an interdependent world and what values and virtues should shape and guide our relationships with others.
As citizens of the United Kingdom, whatever our views during the referendum campaign, we must now unite in a common task to build a generous and forward looking country, contributing to human flourishing around the world. We must remain hospitable and compassionate, builders of bridges and not barriers. Many of those living among us and alongside us as neighbours, friends and work colleagues come from overseas and some will feel a deep sense of insecurity. We must respond by offering reassurance, by cherishing our wonderfully diverse society, and by affirming the unique contribution of each and every one.”
Enlightened. Postmodern. Post truth. It isn’t new. But remember that, whether someone’s forecast turns out to have been ‘Project Fear’, or actually a serious assessment of current reality, let’s pray that our two tribes don’t turn into Jacob and Esau.