3RD BEFORE ADVENT, Year C: November 11 2007

Preacher: Fr Peter Barnett, Warden of the Pilsdon Community, Little Malling

Readings: Job 19:23–27a, 2 Thess 2:1–5, 13–17, Luke 20:27–38

Jesus said: 'Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him everyone is alive'. (Luke 20: 38)

It is an interesting exercise, particularly with a house group or parish conference, to get everybody to write down which titles and names for God they find most helpful and also which they don't. I did this with about 70 fellow Spiritual Directors at the Franciscan House at Compton Durville in Somerset a few years ago. When we all compared our lists it was significant that of the 100 or so descriptions of God most of them were relational, such as Father, Mother, Friend, Lover etc or they were relating to nature, such as Rock, Wind, Fire, Bird etc or they were relating to suffering, such as Crucified, Greaving, Suffering, Agonizing etc. Virtually none referred to royalty or military or power or triumphalism. Now look and see what most hymnody and prayers use!

I think our Gospel today is fundamentality about our relationship with God. And our relationship with God is intimately related to our relationships with others, both alive and dead.

Commentators describe the Sadducees as a privileged priestly group, centred on the Jerusalem Temple. They co-operated with the oppressive, occupying Roman army and authorities to protect their privileged position. Consequently when the Romans destroyed the Temple, they disappeared as well. They held that only the Torah – the first five books of the Old Testament – was scripture. They read it fairly literally and claimed that the resurrection was a later Pharisaic innovation. Jesus answers their question about the resurrection by quoting the Torah. He dismisses their wooden literalism. Knowing scripture involves embracing relationship more than grasping facts or using it as a rule book. God's covenant love must transcend death, since to be 'God of' someone means to be in an active, caring relationship with them. I believe this is something we Anglicans need to rediscover in our debates about gay people and their relationship with God and each other.

This season of All Saints, All Souls and Remembrance is also all about relationships. Our relationship with God is bound up with eternity. The saints give us examples of how to relate with God, often through recognising God in the eyes of the stranger, the marginalised and those who suffer. We continue our relationship with our departed loved ones and friends with our prayers for and with them. We particularly remember in prayer today those who have died in war on all sides. This continues to remind us of the need also to pray and work for justice and peace to avoid the evil and awfulness of war.

The Pilsdon at Malling Community in West Malling, Kent where I presently live and the Pilsdon Community in Dorset, where my family lived for 10 years, try to emphasise the importance of relationships with each other and with God. Our inspiration comes from the first Christian Community in Acts and the Religious Communities that developed through Celtic Christianity (like St Martin of Tours and Iona) and the inspiration of St Benedict's Rule in the Roman tradition. But our Anglican/Ecumenical vision comes from a hamlet not far from Cambridge – Little Gidding – near Huntingdon off the A1. In 1625 Nicholas Ferrar (a graduate of this university) established the first Anglican Community after the Dissolution of the Monasteries nearly 100 years earlier, at Little Gidding. He founded it around his own extended families, farmed 10 acres, said the daily offices from the BCP and extended open hospitality to all comers, especially the poor, as well as entertaining King Charles 1st.

The Pilsdon Communities have been imitating this model in a contemporary fashion for the last 50 years. We have a chore group of Community Members and their children. We welcome all comers as Guests, especially the homeless off the street, as well as those who come to us or are referred to us because they are isolated and lonely and often suffering from alcohol or drug addiction, mental illness, a breakdown, seeking asylum or have just lost their way in life. But often behind these symptoms is a fundamental breakdown in relationships, with husband or wife or partner, with children or parents, with their work, with their faith. They have often lost their self-respect and motivation in life.

No-one is salaried to look after anyone in the Pilsdon Communities. Rather everyone who comes to the Community, whether a Wayfarer for a weekend or an alcoholic wanting a safe, dry house for the rest of his life, participates in the life of the community and contributes their gifts and skills. We established a new Pilsdon Community in Kent three years ago. There are now 25 in the Community and we farm a smallholding of 6 acres with sheep, pigs, poultry and large vegetable and flower gardens and greenhouses. The Dorset house is nearly twice the size. About 50% of our food we produce ourselves and everyone shares in the work involved and the chores of everyday living as well as our maintenance and building projects. We rely on donations for much of what we do as well as the contributions our guests are able to make from their own resources and for most, who have no income of their own, Housing Benefit pays the rent and overheads.

We say 4 Offices a day from Celebrating Common Prayer and celebrate the Eucharist 3 or 4 times a week, in addition to the daily prayers of the Benedictine Sisters who live next door to us and are our Landlords. However chapel attendance is voluntary but meal attendance is compulsory. This is where we rebuild relationships. Every meal in many ways is Eucharistic. Our working together and eating together – often the fruits of our labours – are the fundamental building blocks of community life and relationships. We also find that our animals are often excellent therapists!

So our Communities are very much about building up relationships through the love of God with justice and peace. This is another way of saying that we try to build God's Kingdom. The values of God's Kingdom often turn our world upside down. That is why we read the Beatitudes on All Saints Day. The saints live by Kingdom values, that is Gospel values. They cross all human barriers of nationality, class, culture and language and they are eternal. They even cross the barrier of death. This is the vision of every Christian Community, whether you live communally as I do, or gather from separate homes like most parish churches do.

Thomas Merton (Thomas Merton – The Power and Meaning of love) put it like this: 'The true apostle, is not preaching a doctrine or leading a movement or recruiting for an organisation: a true apostle is preaching Christ, because he or she loves others and knows that thus he or she can bring them relationship and happiness, and give meaning to their lives. The proselytiser is selling doctrine because he or she needs proselytes. The apostle is preaching Christ (by word and example) because people need the mercy of God and because only in the love and relationship of Christ can they find happiness.'

All this is summed up in the Eucharistic action that we are involved in now. We have heard God's word that guides us in our relationship with God. In a moment we will share in the action of God's peace, this demonstrates our loving relationship one with another, with all our differences. Then together we offer the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist and consummate together our relationship with God in Holy Communion – the foretaste of that heavenly party or banquet with all the saints.

Archbishop William Temple, whose anniversary of death was last week, gave us a classic definition of Christian worship: 'Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of the will to his purpose – and all is gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.'

May we all through our community life and worship be enabled to develop those relationships that give purpose and happiness now and in eternity. For our God is God of the living, and to him everyone is alive. AMEN.