All posts tagged London Bridge

In joy and in sorrow

It’s a powerful moment when you stand, as a priest, before a couple who are getting married. The practice generally is to dictate the words of the vows and the couple repeat those words, first the groom, then the bride (sadly we aren’t yet able to marry everyone equally). The vows embrace the reality of life

‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health’

It’s a powerful statement, a powerful promise that one person can make to another. It’s reinforced then in the blessing that the priest prays over the couple

‘Bless them in their work and in their companionship; awake and asleep, in joy and in sorrow, in life and in death.’

The harsh reality is there and it has been for us at Southwark Cathedral over these last four days. We have been surrounded by the wonderful celebrations of the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen but we have also been conscious that before we could party we had to remember. As the clergy and staff at St Paul’s were getting ready to welcome the Royal Family, the nation and the world to the service of thanksgiving across the river we were making final preparations for the service of commemoration on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack on London Bridge and the Borough Market. We had to hold back the celebrations of a wonderful reign until we had remembered before God the eight people who died and those injured and the many whose memories are scarred and their emotions bruised in the experience. I count myself among them. I too needed this time to remember, to pray and to look to the future. I needed to hear the words that are on the plaque unveiled and dedicated on this occasion ‘Hatred does not cease by hatred, but by love alone.’

The plaque outside the Cathedral commemorating the events of five years ago

In many ways five years is a long time; it was a different decade, it was pre-pandemic, we hadn’t brexitted, it was pre-Boris. Yet in other ways it feels just like yesterday, such a defining moment in our lives that it will take a lifetime to come to terms with. Half of my time so far as dean has been coloured and shaped by the events of that evening. Five years ago was, of course, a terrible and frightening period of our history. There were five terrorist incidents in just a few months – 22 March at Westminster; 22 May at the Manchester Arena; 3 June at London Bridge; 19 June outside Finsbury Park Mosque; and 15 September on the tube at Parsons Green. We had become involved in the first of these events in that Southwark Cathedral was the venue for the funeral of PC Keith Palmer killed in the grounds of the Houses of Parliament. As I preached at that service, relayed to the thousands lining the streets from Westminster to Southwark, little did we know that we would also suffer in just a few months time.

On Friday before the service of commemoration I went to join those gathered in our local mosque for Friday Prayers. The prayer hall rapidly filled and a message was got to me that the imam was happy that I address the congregation. That had happened five years before when, following the attack, I went to Friday Prayers and was invited to speak. On this occasion the sermon had been all about the importance of honouring family and especially our mothers. So when I was led to the space in front of the mihrab to speak I was able to say to those there that we were all family, that those before me were my brothers, that those in a different space were my sisters and that as a family we were stronger, had grown stronger over these five years.

Sometimes in life we just say things, but this is all true. We have grown stronger by sharing in the pain, the sorrow, that harsh reality and then being able to share in the joy. After the service at the cathedral we were all invited back to the mosque. Tea had been laid on for us all and in that same space, that place of prostration where I had spoken earlier, we drank tea and ate cake and began to be able to enter the celebrations going on around us.

Through all these events and so many more the Queen has been a solid and constant pressure, reassuringly there, in the good times and the bad, experiencing her own annus horribilis but never losing faith in the God who sees us through the worst to the best. There at the end of the Book of Revelation is a vision of a better place, a better city and those words that surround the memorial olive tree at the Cathedral

The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22.2)

It is that vision and that hope that sees us through the sorrows and into the joys.

God, hold us when life is hard, be with us when life is good; take us through the sorrow to know your joy. Amen.

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by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 5, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 5, 2022

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Speaking into it

My family has a long tradition of talking too much – it’s somewhere in the double helix of our DNA!  Back in the days when you could be caned at school or have the board rubber whistle past your ear, my mother, was still being punished for talking in class right up to the time when she matriculated.  I have one of those agonising memories of being made to stand in the middle of the classroom (when humiliation had replaced corporal punishment) during a VIth form study period for talking on the back row when we were meant to be working in silence! But some strokes of the cane or a bit of humiliation cured neither my mum nor me of this desperate need to talk.  And I can see the same in many members of my family.  When we get together we all seem to be talking and very few are listening!

Moulton-School-photo-fix

Everyone looks well behaved here!

But, to be honest, it has stood me in good stead.  I and the Cathedral community at Southwark are very grateful to all those who sent messages of support to us during last weekend when we were faced with another terrorist attack in the London Bridge area.  As I said then, it all served to reopen old wounds and stir memories, uncover hurts that still need healing.  On Friday, after returning from our local mosque where I had been for Friday Prayers, I joined people gathered in the nave of the Cathedral at the time when the attack took place and we stood, not talking, but in silence, remembering Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones who were killed and all of those who were in any way caught up in what happened.

But especially around the weekend and immediately afterwards the media were on our doorstep and wanting to talk to me about what had happened.  Colleagues were concerned for me, all these demands being made, how was I doing, I needed to look after myself.  I knew they were right to have those concerns, so I did a bit of thinking about all of that and came to the realisation that for me talking is therapeutic, talking is how I begin to make a bit of sense of things.  I don’t think  I am very different to many other people, it’s just that I was given numerous opportunities to tell the story and to articulate what we were feeling as a community, to put into words things that are at times very difficult to express or describe.  But when you are asked the question, you have to find the words.,

We have a team of trained listeners in the Cathedral and it was good to see that they were being well used last Sunday after the Choral Eucharist.  People just needed to talk and they needed someone who was prepared simply to listen.  The speaking and the listening have to go together – and listening in a good way, attentive, focused, careful.

So I am grateful to the BBC and ITV and Sky and even the Sydney Morning Herald, among others, for doing that bit of therapy for me, asking me the questions and then listening, enabling me to express my own feelings and, I hope, speak of what others are feeling after listening to what they have said.

Whilst all of this has been going on we have been having carol services and carol concerts – I’m in my element, I love Christmas! – and so I have already heard the Prologue to St John’s Gospel read on a few occasions.  And what has struck me is John’s use of the Greek word ‘logos’ which we translate as Word.

Logos.svg

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1.1)

In Greek, the word for the written word is ‘lexis’ but for the spoken word it is ‘logos’.  The incarnation that we celebrate is of the word spoken into our being, the word that God spoke over creation in the very beginning, taking flesh and speaking.  And what is so powerful for me is that the spoken word becomes flesh as a child who must learn to speak, the logos begins by speaking words of complete vulnerability that only his mother can begin to understand.

The poet Carol Ann Duffy in her poem ‘The Virgin punishing the infant’ reflects a little on this.

He spoke early.  Not the goo goo goo of infancy
but I am God.

And God finds a voice and speaks the logos into the world – and for once we listen.

Logos of God,
speak to me,
speak through me.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on December 8, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on December 8, 2019

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Déjà vu

The conditions were going to be perfect.  The forecast was for a cold but dry night.  I could just about cope with that.  Plenty of people had signed up for the annual Robes Sleep Out and my own fundraising was going really well.  So as I headed back from leading a retreat on the ‘Four Last Things’ – heaven, hell, death and judgement – at the Society of Mary & Martha at Sheldon (a great place if you have never been there) – I was getting quite excited. This was Advent weekend and we were on the brink of all our festivities happening in the lead up to Christmas.

london-bridge

So I was unpacking and putting on my dog collar when someone texted me to tell me that something was happening on London Bridge.  Déjà vu is a strange feeling when we experience it – ‘I have been here before’ – but we know that it is some strange psychological reaction to a number of random things coming together and passes as quickly as it comes.  But this was different – I had been here before.

I headed off to the Cathedral and crowds of people were heading towards me.  I kept going.  In Clink Street people were running away from the area where the Cathedral is.  I kept going and managed to get to the doors of the Cathedral just as they were being locked.  We often practice a ‘lock-down’, the theory was now being put into practice.  The doors were locked behind me.

The nave was the gathering place.  There were people there who had come to the Friends’ Christmas Fair which had just opened, other visitors to the Cathedral, staff and volunteers all there, unsure what was happening.  A visiting organist began playing some gentle music.  We waited to see what would happen.  Finally we were told by the police to evacuate the building.

We moved as directed to the edge of the Borough Market.  Local people were distressed, we had been here before, just two and a half years ago, and, I know it sounds pathetic, but we didn’t think that it would happen again – you just don’t. Lightening doesn’t strike twice.

We had to make a decision.  The sleepout would have to be cancelled.  It was with huge regret that we did this, but there was no option.  In fact it wasn’t until late in the evening that the police cordon moved and we were able to get to the Cathedral at all.  A huge disappointment but nothing by comparison with what had happened on the bridge.

That bridge which has seen so much of London’s history again witnesses another episode in our life. Now that more is coming to light about what took place in Fishmongers’ Hall, the bravery of people there and then subsequently on the edge of the bridge itself, the response of the police, the killing of the assailant and then the reports of the death of two of those who were injured make you realise that whilst it felt like history repeating itself this was a different event.

But the result was the same.  People dead, lives scared, physically, mentally, emotionally, heroism displayed and the realisation, again, that the unimaginable forces of evil that we have to face up and recognise are around.  As I waited in the streets with others, not knowing what was happening, I was able to talk to local people.  We were all shocked and coming to a recognition that the effects of the events of not so long ago were just below the surface.  And if it was like that for us what was it like for the families of the eight people who were killed on 3 June 2017?

I am sure all my sponsors and all those who sponsored us for the sleepout will understand that there was nothing else we could do.  The work of Robes, our night-shelter and day time drop-in will continue.  But there is other work to do, helping people to come to terms with what has happened in our community yet again.

We talk so much about the values that define us as a community, in the cathedral and beyond, and all of that remains true.  We remain committed to openness and inclusion, to celebrating diversity and not fearing it, to never seeing the stranger as a threat but a welcome guest, knowing always that goodness and love and peace and hope are so much stronger than anything that evil can do.

This is what I see every time I look at Jesus, who lived what he taught and made himself vulnerable in doing so, but ultimately life and love won.  Goodness can never be defeated.

This is the prayer I wrote on Friday evening.  I will continue to pray it.

God of unfailing compassion,
make us strong in the face of terror,
loving in the presence of hatred,
bold in our diversity,
always knowing
that your hand holds us
and your life sustains us,
today, tonight and always.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on December 1, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on December 1, 2019

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The tree of healing

I said last week that I needed time to reflect before I said anything about the first anniversary of the London Bridge attack. In fact I had to say a great deal without the luxury of much reflective time.  But that is the reality of life – you are asked and you have to answer. But as we approached the Sunday, which was the first anniversary – the media wanted to get answers to their questions.  In the welcome that I gave at the beginning of the service of commemoration I said this

Let me be honest, I’ve been fearful approaching this day.  Memories have risen to the surface, tears have once again flowed, scars have been reopening.  The media have been asking me what I hope for this service – my answer has been simple – I hope it helps our healing.  Whatever your hopes are, whatever your pain is, whatever has kept you awake at night, whatever anger or sorrow or guilt you’re feeling, God is here for us, God is here for you.

Love is stronger than hate.  Light is stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death.  It was true a year ago, it’s as true today.

Olive tree

The Tree of Healing

I was fearful approaching the day, I was being entirely honest. The whole lead up to that weekend served to open up memories and wounds and, I suppose, I hadn’t, until that moment, thought that I was a ‘victim’ of the event as so many others had been. But my needs to think and reflect were nothing in comparison to the family members who came along that afternoon. Those who had been so brutally murdered, slaughtered, that evening were at the forefront of our thinking.  Whether it was in the candle lighting or the completion of the planting of the Tree of Healing, they were the ones we were focusing on.

We had decided last year that a tree needed to be planted and as we cleared the mountain of flowers that had accumulated by the needle at the south end of London Bridge a commitment was made that that would happen.  But most wonderfully the London Borough of Southwark committed to taking those flowers away, composting them and bringing back the compost so that the tree could be planted in it.

One of the moving songs in Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ is the circle of life. The lyrics say it all

It’s the circle of life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle
The circle of life.

Those flowers left as signs of love became the food for new life to grow, like that would bring healing, all part of that circle, the divine circle.

The olive tree, of course, carries huge symbolic power; its oil provides, heat and light to very many people, it helps in the cooking of food and is used to anoint particularly in the tradition of the church.  Priests have always taken olive oil and anointed the sick, as a symbol of our prayer for healing.  Babies and adults are anointed with it as they come to baptism. Monarchs are anointed with it before ever a crown is placed upon them.  But even more significantly for Jews, Christians and Muslims when the dove returned to Noah in the ark it carried a branch of the olive, a sign of peace and of God’s blessing.  This will be our tree of remembrance but also our ‘Tree of Healing’.  Around its pot will be inscribed a verse from scripture that was read at the end of the service as with the families we gathered at the tree.

‘The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.’ (Revelation 22.2)

But as moving as all that was, as emotional as it was as we all gathered on London Bridge at the end of the service it was the Grand Iftar held in the Cathedral later that evening which spoke so powerfully to me.

For the two weeks before the commemoration a group of twenty of us had been meeting to rehearse a ‘play for voices’. The script ‘Testimony’, had been put together by local writer, Michelle Lovric, from the memories that we had been sharing with her over the last year.  She had turned our reflections back into an account of that evening and afterwards.  It took thirty minutes for us to ‘perform’ and we had practised it, in her apartment and in the Cathedral, on many occasions over those weeks.  But standing there and speaking my own words and hearing my friends speak their words to a nave full of people was emotional and powerful and staggering.

Part of that was about being reminded of what happened, part of it was hearing about what had happened to others, part of it was about realising how strong our local community has been, and part of it was about recognising how much I had depended over these months on God and on my sisters and brothers.  The Iftar began with the Borough Market Choir singing ‘Lean on me’

‘Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friends, I’ll help you carry on, for it won’t be long, till I’m going to need somebody to lean on.’

Bill Wither’s words are powerful. It was part of the healing for me. But I’ve got a lot more thinking and praying and talking to do.

Lord Jesus,
you do not forget us
and hold us in the palm of your wounded hand;
as we continue to remember the events of a year ago,
the dead and the injured,
the traumatised and the sorrowful,
heal our memories,
bind up our wounds,
calm our fears
and remember us in your kingdom.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 10, 2018  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 10, 2018

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Broken Beauty

This is the sermon I preached this morning in Southwark Cathedral.  The readings were Deuteronomy 5.12-15; 2 Corinthians 4.5-12; Mark 2.23-3.6

One of the joys of Sunday – for me – apart from being here with you of course – is watching ‘Antiques Roadshow’.  What could be more quintessentially British – a bunch of well dressed, well spoken people in the grounds of a stately home talking in the sunshine about a piece of pottery – and envious, intrigued and delighted faces looking on?

But then, horror of horrors.  The pot that was grandma’s, given to her after the war by an old spinster neighbour who looked after them as children – there’s always a good backstory – the pot has been repaired, it isn’t perfect after all.  The owner looks closely as the expert points it out.  Eagle eyed they’ve spotted where the damage has been concealed.  It would’ve been worth millions but now ….

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Broken Beauty by Alison Clark

Alison Clark is with us as our Artist-in-Residence, part of our commemoration of the events one year ago when terrorists attacked our neighbourhood, the events we’re marking all day, but especially this afternoon as the families of those who died in that attack, people who were injured and representatives of so many groups of people caught up in the terrors of that night gather here to remember the past and look forward to the future.  And in the evening, with the local Muslim community, we will be hosting a grand Iftar and local people will be sharing their memories.

Alison is calling her work, ‘Broken Beauty’ and as part of it she’s employing a Japanese technique called Kintsugi.  Instead of concealing damage to a piece of porcelain the Japanese repair it using gold, the scar is not hidden but glorified, the damage not avoided but confronted.

St Paul in our Second Reading likens us to clay jars.  In the world of the Corinthians into which Paul was speaking, these jars were as commonplace as plastic bottles are to us.  They were used for everything, transporting, storing, but they were fragile and the rubbish heaps that archaeologists dig through testify to that.

Paul suggests that we’re as fragile as these clay jars and that that fragility is not a mistake on God’s part.  This is who we are.  We were made from the clay of the earth and God breathed life into us, but ‘remember you are dust and dust you shall return’ says the priest to us on Ash Wednesday.

We are very easily damaged, very easily scarred.

Jesus is in the synagogue.  It’s the Sabbath and there were rules about the Sabbath, handed down from God to Moses, the rules we heard in our First Reading.  And then a man approaches Jesus.  He has a withered hand.  It meant he couldn’t work and people look on him as cursed.  It was the day when no work could be done but it was a day of blessing and Jesus gets to work and tells the man as the others look on

‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

The hand was repaired but the hard hearts of those ready to condemn Jesus for making good what was bad, for showing compassion, those hearts couldn’t be changed, until they were broken.

‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.’

Paul’s powerful words spoken into the fragility of our lives speak to our community today.  Those with such hard hearts that they sought to destroy what was beautiful here have not succeeded.  Yes, eight lives were lost and eight families and eight groups of friends will be grieving today in a way I cannot imagine.  Yes, numerous people were injured, physically and mentally and they bear the scars.  Yes, this church was damaged and this area was scarred.  But what is fundamental about this part of London, what was fundamental about this community was not destroyed but was strengthened – that deep sense of inclusion, that deep joy in diversity, that absolute passion for life.

Broken beauty sums it up.  We carry in our fragile, earthenware body the death of Jesus, as he bears on his hands, on his feet, in his side the marks of the violence we inflicted on him.  And God has glorified it, the Lord of the Sabbath, brings us blessing, so that the life of Jesus is always visible in us.

And to remind us of the truth, of broken beauty, bread will be taken and it will be broken. It’s the only way we can share it.  We hold in our hands the brokenness of God who touches our scars with his own wounded hands and makes them shine with a glory like his own.

Lord Jesus,
you do not forget us
and hold us in the palm of your wounded hand;
as we remember the events of a year ago,
the dead and the injured,
the traumatised and the sorrowful,
heal our memories,
bind up our wounds
calm our fears
and remember us in your kingdom.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 3, 2018  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 3, 2018

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Living God

It was 25 years ago that an Australian rom-com film hit our screens and changed our language. The film was called ‘Strictly Ballroom’ and was all about a dancing competition. Sounds familiar? As far as I understand it it was that film that gave the title to the BBC show that for many people has become must-see television, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, and the way in which the word ‘Strictly’, as the shortened version, has dropped into everyday language.

Dancing

Dancing without fear

But for a sequins and sparkle film, it also came up with a phrase which I’ve found really helpful this year. One of the characters talking to another says this ‘A life lived in fear is a life half lived.’

This has been a tough years in many ways and for very many people. As a nation we have experienced horrific terrorist acts in Manchester and London. We watched with horror as Grenfell Tower burnt on our screens and seared its way into our memories. We’ve seen refugees fleeing war and the Rohingya fleeing oppression. We have seen a gunman shooting from a Las Vegas hotel into a crowd of music fans. We have seen families without anything in the blockade of the Yemen. We have seen so many things that have made us weep.

Fear has dominated so much of the year – the fear of Brexit for some, of no Brexit for others; the fear of the newcomer and the stranger; the fear of nuclear standoff in the Far East; the fear of the unknown becoming known.

For the community in which I live and where I serve as Dean all of that became very real for us on the 3 June when on an evening when the crowds were out, having a great time in the London Bridge and Borough Market area, three men, armed with a van and knives wrecked havoc, mowing down people on the bridge and going on the rampage in the streets around Southwark Cathedral. As soon as I heard something was happening I headed out of my house close by and tried to get to the Cathedral to open the doors as a place of refuge and safety. But I couldn’t get any where near. The police held me back and I found myself on the main street, Southwark Street, filled with vehicles with blue flashing lights, pavements filled with the injured and the traumatised being tended to.

I don’t mind telling you that I was petrified. I’d seen this on the news, in the movies, but this was the evening when I lost my innocence. Terror came to our streets and we suffered.

All of that followed the attack on Westminster Bridge and the Manchester Arena; the attacks on Finsbury Park Mosque and Parsons Green tube would follow. These were a terrifying few months that we lived through that took from us the young and the hopeful, friends, colleagues, those who were dedicated to helping others, the innocent and vulnerable.

That evening when I got back to the Deanery it all felt hopeless, everything that we sought to stand for, inclusion, cohesion, all those buzz-words of communities nowadays, seemed to be under attack. But the new day dawned and we got on with helping one another through the grief and through the horror to a better place.

Amongst the cards that we will have received for Christmas will be many, I suspect, of a scene in a stable, of a baby with its parents, some sheep and oxen and donkeys looking on. It all happened a long time ago, in a foreign land but each year we remember again something as simple and ordinary as the birth of a baby but something as wonderfully profound, according to Christians, as God living along side us, ‘God with us’.

Beuronese Nativity

A baby is vulnerable, helpless, dependent, humanity at its weakest. The child quickly knows how to get attention, crying out, for food, or warmth or comfort but relying on someone else to provide all of those things, unable to do anything for themselves. And this is how God, Almighty God, enters into the world, not in strength but in weakness, and shares the vulnerability of what it means to be human. That immersion in what it means to be human would take that baby from that crib to a cross, where apparent weakness would be on display for the whole world to see. But this, as we have discovered is the way in which God works.

Although I was frightened that evening and though I felt hopeless I didn’t want the fear to overwhelm me or the hope I do have to desert me. Because I knew then as I know now, I believed then as I believe now, that God is with us and that when we look into the manger and see the baby we see the hope of the world, we see the Living God.

Some years later when he had begun his ministry and called his disciples to follow him, Jesus was talking to them. In the course of what he said he told them

‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’ (John 10.10)

The ‘they’ is us, you and me, and this is what we are celebrating when we give our presents and sit and eat and spend time with family, an abundant celebration because of an abundant gift, the fullness of life. And that is why that line from ‘Strictly Ballroom’ is so important – ‘A life lived in fear is a life half lived.’ Jesus wants us to live life in its fullness, not a life diminished, half-lived because fear is traumatising us. A fearful life is no life and when we simply give into the fear of where we are going as a nation, of where we are going as a global community, the fear of the person we don’t know, of the one who believes something different to me, looks different to me, acts differently to me, the fear of things that are beyond our control, once we allow ourselves to be taken over by that fear then life is not being lived as it should be. What is more we end up unable to deal with any of the things that have the potential to make us fearful.

That baby in the manger, that child in his mother’s arms, the God who is with us, is the one who desires for us life and gives us life – so that we can live it, fully, and dance if we can. This is the Living God.

Living God,
your life gives life to the world;
live in us,
live in me,
may our lives reflect your life.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on December 24, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on December 24, 2017

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Suffering, endurance, hope

Thank God for Oscar Wilde who bequeathed us so many epigrams in his plays and writings.  In that wonderful play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ he writes

‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.’

What can be said of truth can be said of life, it is neither pure nor simple. If it were simply grim then we couldn’t bear it, but it isn’t. But these have been some grim weeks for those of us in London and these have been a grim few months for us as a nation as a whole. For some what is grim for others has been life-changing and life-destroying.  For the injured and the bereaved, Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge mean that life will never be the same again. For the residents of Grenfell Tower the horror that they have gone through is unimaginable, the real stuff of nightmares. The loss of life, the injuries, the stress, the implications for ongoing life when your home, your things, your papers and documents, the stuff that holds your memories are all taken from you in an instant must be beyond description.  I was with someone the other day who had been through a devastating fire herself.  The pictures from Kensington brought it all back.  ‘I can still smell the smoke’ she said and she always will.  The smell lingers in the memory as much as physical scars which are always reminders of horrendous experiences.

prince-harry-makes-surprise-visit-to-borough-market-after-terror-attack

Prince Harry with Paul in the Borough Market

 

This past week has been one of trying to begin to get back to some kind of normality, a new normality, in the community around Southwark Cathedral. The church was the first of the major places to reopen. The Borough Market opened on Wednesday and in between the bars and restaurants gradually opened.  Just before the Market bell was rung by one of the traders at 10.00am on Wednesday morning to announce the commencement of trading, the Bishop of Southwark with some of the Cathedral clergy and servers went out with holy water and incense to cleanse and re-hallow the area after the horror of what had happened.  The procession then arrived in the Market as it reopened.

I was talking to Paul, the trader who rang the bell, who was visited, amongst other by Prince Harry on Thursday.  He runs a fruit and veg stall in the market, a proper east-end market trader. And he told me that not only was he reopening and supporting the market in that, but he was organising his fellow traders to send food over to Kensington for the people now made homeless.  It’s acts like that which relieve the grim reality and reveal that deep-seated goodness that is a true part of human nature.

On Friday we hosted at Southwark Cathedral a ‘Service of Hope’ at which were survivors of the attack, families of the injured and those who lost loved ones gathered with first responders in an act of solidarity and hope.  The stories of bravery and the acts of goodness that I’ve hard in the past two weeks, the tremendous images of community acting together around the base of that burnt out tower are humbling.  Good people are everywhere.

I was reminded of a passage from the Letter of St Paul to the Romans.

‘Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.’ (Romans 5.3-5)

Hope

Suffering, endurance, hope, an experience of community – and every part of that needs to be recognised for what it is, along with the acts of goodness, generosity and love that are woven through it.  The grim reality remains in broken lives, destroyed homes, shattered dreams but into that is shot the transcendent love of God that is revealed in broken humanity and transformed in divine and everlasting life.

God, take our suffering,
build our endurance,
crown it with hope
and may all be suffused
with your love.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 18, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 18, 2017

https://southwarklivinggod.wordpress.com/2017/06/18/suffering-endurance-hope/

‘I am with you always’

This is the text of the sermon I preached at Southwark Cathedral on Trinity Sunday 2017 the day on which we were able to reopen the Cathedral following the terrorist attack on our community a week before.

Saturday night last week was like a living nightmare. It’s the kind of experience that only happens to other people, not to you, not on your own doorstep. But it happened to us, it happened on our own doorstep, literally; it happened in our own community that we love and that we’ve served in Christ’s name for over 1400 years. Those years have seen their share of war and pestilence and fire but I doubt that ever before has the church been inaccessible to worshippers for a week, inaccessible as the place of peace and contemplation that people expect and need, inaccessible as the place of welcome and embracing, radical hospitality and love that we seek to be. But it happened.

Flowers

When I first heard that something was happening in the London Bridge area I put on my dog collar and headed down Bankside to try and open up the Cathedral so that we could be a place of refuge. But initially I didn’t get far.

So I went through the back alleys and got as far as Park Street and Neal’s Yard Dairy and the Market Porter. But heavily armed police barred my way and forced me back. ‘Run, run’ was all they shouted. I was directed on to Southwark Street and there saw people lying on the pavement being cared for by the emergency services. ‘Run, run’ was all I could hear through the sound of sirens and helicopters and I was forced on and on until I got back to the Deanery and shut the door behind me on the living nightmare.

Around midnight I received a text from Amir Eden, a young man who lives on Park Street, a lawyer who was a pupil at Cathedral School, a practising Muslim who’s the chair of the Bankside Residents Forum. ‘Could I come to yours? I can’t really go anywhere.’ was his text. I texted back ‘Of course’ and so he arrived and with 8 other people spent the night in our house.

The rest I suppose you know about. 8 brutally killed, 48 horribly injured. The Cathedral was forcibly entered by the police searching for more attackers, doors broken down, glass smashed in a desperate effort to stop more bloodshed. It happened on our doorstep, on the threshold of God’s house.

And now we’re here on this Trinity Sunday, back in this sacred place, which is still sacred. The risen body of Jesus bears the marks of the nails and the spear and Jesus shows his hands and his side to his disciples. The Sacristy door shows the marks of the baton rounds fired at it to break open the door and allow the police access. We bear on our body the marks of suffering that so many bear in their flesh and in their soul and spirit.

St Matthew places the final encounter of the disciples with the risen Jesus not on the Mount of Olives, just outside the city of Jerusalem, but back in Galilee, the place where they started, the place of call and from that place of call he sends them out to the nations, to take the Good News, to baptise and teach. But then, before he leaves them he makes a promise, a promise to them and a promise to us.

‘Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’. (Matthew 28.20)

In the horror of the moment it’s all too easy to imagine that you’re on your own, that you’re abandoned to the nightmare, lost in the terror, but Jesus says ‘No; remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’.

God was not absent on that Saturday night; God is never absent. The Psalmist knows it to be true when they say

Where can I go then from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there;
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. (Psalm 139.7-8)

We are not abandoned by the Sprit, we are not abandoned by the Father, we are not abandoned by the Son for we have this promise ‘I am with you always.’

On Friday I was invited to go to our local mosque by the Imam. I went with other clergy from here and we were welcomed with open arms. I’d been invited to speak to a packed congregation. The Imam preached about our shared humanity and our shared heritage through Adam and I was able to respond to that, taking your greetings to our brothers and sisters, telling them that we do not hold the Muslim community to blame, telling them that we recognise that we share so much, praying, peace upon you, greeting them as Paul greets the Christians in the multi-cultural, multi-faith, complex and exciting city of Corinth

‘Live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you’. ( 2 Corinthians 13.11)

That is what we have to do. What we share is what God has given, a shared heritage, a shared humanity, not just with the Muslim community but with all people, all men and women, regardless of anything that others might identify as difference. Difference does not mean division unless we chose to make it so, and we chose to make difference a blessing and an enrichment to our community which is why we celebrate who you are, who we are, male and female, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight – and I will say that again and again and again from this pulpit until it is deep in all our hearts, to the very core of our being.

The great metaphysical poet and Dean of St Paul’s, John Donne, famously wrote a poem, so well known.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

‘Any man’s death diminishes me’ which is what the Quran teaches, that killing one life is killing all life. We have all been scarred by what happened last Saturday on our doorstep and we will bear those scars. But they will not make us bitter but make us stronger.

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’ said Edmund Burke. We will not do nothing. We will rebuild with the community what good things we have, we will rebuild the joy and diversity, the confidence, the acceptance, the inclusive, radically beautiful nature of this community that has been built over centuries and millennia. The roots go deep and cannot be destroyed by evil men and we will not allow it but will confront that evil with love.

wounds of crucifixion

We bear on our body the marks of Jesus

 

The Feast of the Holy Trinity is the feast of relationship, that beautiful relationship of diversity in the very Godhead, the Perichoresis, the divine dance into which we’re drawn. And we’re drawn and invited to this altar, through the Spirit, by the Father, to share in what the Son gives to us. With scarred hands he gives his broken body to us, gives his shed blood to us, and he asks us to eat and drink so that through his death we may have life. He is always with us, always, at the altar, in the world, walking through the dangerous places and showing his scarred self to a scarred world and making it, ultimately, beautiful.

Loving God,
when terror came to our doorstep
and stalked our streets
you were there with us in the fear and agony.
Remain with us
and with all those caught up
in the horror of these events
the injured and distressed
those who died
and all who seek your peace
which passes understanding.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 11, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 11, 2017

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A night of terror

Thank you to all who have been sending such messages of solidarity, hope and care.  Your prayers are so appreciated.  At the moment we don’t know when we will be able to get into the Cathedral.  Until then, on this Day of Pentecost, I am praying this prayer.

Loving God, when terror came to our doorstep
and stalked our streets
you were there with us
in the fear and agony.
Remain with us
and with all those caught up
in the horror of these events,
the injured and distressed
those who died
and all who seek your peace
which passes understanding.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 4, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on June 4, 2017

https://southwarklivinggod.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/a-night-of-terror/

Blessing

We have a couple of really exciting days ahead of us at Southwark Cathedral.  Sunday, the Feast of the Baptism of Christ, is the day on which we gather on London Bridge with the Parish of St Magnus the Martyr, our neighbour across the river on the other side of the bridge.  For as long as the bridge and the Christian church has existed in London our two churches have had the care of the bridge and its residents (during the mediaeval period). We live out that responsibility by meeting where our parish boundaries meet and have a short service during which a cross is thrown into the river as a sign of blessing.  The river has been such a feature of the lives of both churches as has the bridge and that concern for both continues in this very public act.

The icon of the Baptism of Jesus at Southwark Cathedral

The icon of the Baptism of Jesus at Southwark Cathedral

On the following day we will be blessing the twelve bells that were removed from the Cathedral tower in July and have now returned.  Two have been recast and so will be baptised but all will be blessed by the Bishop of Southwark.  Bells have rung out from the tower since before the fifteenth century when we know that the original ring of seven was augmented for the royal wedding that took place in 1424 in the Priory of St Mary Overie.

At that time, the Bishop of Winchester, of which Southwark was his liberty, was Cardinal Beaufort.  His niece, Joan, was to marry King James I of Scots and, as at that time he was in prison in the Tower of London, he was let out in order to come across the bridge and to the Priory to be married.  And the bells rang out as their marriage was blessed.

Priests get called on to bless all kinds of things.  In the next few weeks I’m going into the Borough Market to bless the ‘First Flush Darjeeling’, very special tea that is sold at one of the stalls.  What reading we will have for that goodness only knows.  But I’m delighted to be able to do it, just as I’m delighted to bless the First Loaf at Lammas and bless anything else that is shoved in front of me.  After the Mass on Epiphany a young women asked me to bless two prayer books she had bought in the Cathedral Shop for a friend, lovely.

So we wait with anticipation to see what the House of Bishops will recommend to General Synod and the church at our meeting in February.  After the Shared Conversations – which had gone so well as far as I was concerned – they went off to deliberate what we might do and be able to offer to those in our congregations, as well as those in every part of our society, who wish to marry their same-sex partner and do so with a blessing.

It just seems odd to me that I can bless a river, bells, books, tea, bread, cats and dogs and not two people who love each other. Perhaps if I can’t bless two people, who happen to be of the same gender and who have decided that they want to spend the whole of their life together in a loving committed faithful relationship I shouldn’t bless anything.

Jesus blessing the world and all creation

Jesus blessing the world and all creation

God seems to treat us all equally, for as Jesus says of God in St Matthew’s Gospel

‘He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.’ (Matthew 5.45)

and as I cast out indiscriminate blessing from the altar at the end of every Eucharist it falls in the same way.  But perhaps we are going to have to think differently about blessing in the future and, against the will and action of God, bless only those who REALLY deserve it.

God,
you bless without distinction,
love without discrimination,
may your church
bravely reflect your nature.
Amen.

by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on January 8, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by Very Revd Andrew Nunn on January 8, 2017

https://southwarklivinggod.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/blessing/

Holy Land

A pilgrimage for returning pilgrims

My Lent Diary

A journey from ashes to a garden

In the Steps of Martin Luther

A Southwark Cathedral Pilgrimage 2017

sabbaticalthoughtsblog.wordpress.com/

Canda, Jerusalem, Mucknall

Southwark Diocesan Pilgrimage 2016

Hearts on Fire - Pilgrims in the Holy Land

A good city for all

A good city for all

In the Steps of St Paul

Southwark Cathedral Pilgrimage June 2015

LIVING GOD

Reflections from the Dean of Southwark

Andrew Nunn's reflections from General Synod

the personal views of the Dean of Southwark

Southwark Cathedral Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela 2013

Reflections on the Way