15/06/2026
A sermon preached at Berkswell Church
14th June 2026. 2nd after Trinity Yr A
Exodus 19: 2-8a; Romans 5: 1-8; Matthew 9: 35 – 10:8 [9-23]
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From our reading today from Paul's letter to the Romans:
“Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”
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I saw something beautiful the other day. It lasted just for a moment, a fleeting, very short moment but it was certainly beautiful. It moved me, and quite literally brought tears to my eyes. It wasn’t aesthetically beautiful. This wasn’t some sublime, if transient, moment in nature, a sunset, or a bank of flowers, it wasn’t the soaring of a bird or the leaping of a fish. Neither was it a glimpse of a great work of art. There was no Titian, no Tiepolo, combining colour and composition, light and shade to charm from the viewer a response of admiration.
This beautiful moment took place in the inauspicious surroundings of a residential home for people with dementia, one that I visit regularly. It was an exchange of smiles, an exchange of love and affection between two people. I don’t know either of them well. One is a lady, quite elderly, with very limited mobility and in an advanced state of dementia. The other is a care assistant, in her early twenties. I know a little more about her, although not much. I know her name and that she lives in Willenhall in South East Coventry, and that she catches two buses to get to work, where she does ten-hour shifts giving personal, indeed intimate care to men and women who can no longer care for themselves. I admire her. I have tried to give the kind of care that she gives, and I failed.
It took place a little before lunch-time, in the slightly shabby but cheerful residents’ lounge. The two were sitting together. The older lady reached out with her hand and gently stroked the face of the care assistant, and smiled. The carer responded, and caressed in return the elderly lady’s cheek, and looked at her with the kindest of smiles. The carer’s smile went beyond the compassion that has to be channelled in the discharge of her duties. The older lady’s smile went beyond gratitude. What I saw was unmistakably real affection, a mutual exchange of a kind of love. It was a beautiful moment.
Old age can be cruel. Not for all of us, but certainly for some. Dementia can be particularly cruel. It takes things away. It can erode your friendships and your family relationships, by taking away your ability to recognise people as your family and as your friends, it takes away your ability to interact with people whom you have known and loved, and been loved by, perhaps for decades. It can take away your words, your vocabulary and your speech, your power to communicate and express your thoughts and feelings, leaving you vulnerable to the misinterpretation of others. It can take away your memory, perhaps your memory of now, and perhaps also your memory of then, of long ago. It can take away your dignity, as you are no longer able to do for yourself what even toddlers learn to do for themselves. It can take away your autonomy, leaving you dependent entirely on others, entirely dependent, quite probably, on people you do not know. It takes away the fullness of identity, as the complex web of roles and relationships that we acquire in life become forgotten by ourselves, and which were probably never known by those who care for us. The achievements and successes, and indeed also our failures and our shame, which distinguished our lives, become unknown to the few people who surround us. Not for all, certainly, but certainly indeed for some.
And what of discipleship? Does old age and dementia take that away too? When words are taken, can prayer abide? When the coherence of the mind becomes confused, and when a wish is no sooner expressed than forgotten, what can commitment mean? When we can no longer remember our own yesterday, how can we participate properly in the collective remembrance of Jesus, which is what we are doing here, [in this Eucharist,] now? How can we love God with all our mind when our mind no longer apprehends even the reality of daily life. What happens to our discipleship? Can we, in our dementia, in any meaningful way be said to know God?
My conviction is that salvation consists in our being prepared in this life for the fullness of life in God who is himself Love, that we are made in the image of God and are slowly and inexorably being formed into his likeness, moulded into shape by God, as a potter moulds clay, taught as a parent teaches a child, licked into shape as a bitch in whelp licks life into her pups. We learn in this life here and now how to participate in God’s life yet to come. While we mature, and learn and grow, this makes sense. So when dementia destroys, hollowing out our capacity, snatching away what we know, eroding our capacity to remember, when we visibly deteriorate, in what sense are we being prepared for life in the loving community of the Kingdom of God?
It would be easy to despair . But we are Christians, and that would be wrong. Discipleship is taking up our Cross and following in the way of Christ, participating in the life of Christ. We are called to make our lives like his, to imitate him, to walk with him. To suffer alongside him. Christ did not eschew suffering, and our human suffering as men and women was shared in by God-in-Christ himself. That is what the incarnation entails. And salvation comes because Christ shared fully in our humanity, so that we may share fully in his divinity. He shared fully in our suffering in order that we may share fully in his exaltation. It would be crass to suggest that Jesus experienced dementia. Of course it would, just as it would be crass to say that taking up the cross and walking in the way of Christ leads literally to arrest, to scourging and Crucifixion. But when we look at Jesus in his Passion we see Jesus sharing fully in human degradation.
The way of the cross that we are called to follow as disciples, is indeed a way of degradation. When he was arrested in the garden, Jesus had his personal and social autonomy snatched away. He was cut off from family and friends and lost his capacity to act. As he was scourged at the pillar his body was no longer his own, no longer his to command, his movements, his motions, no longer under his control. Whipped and flayed, his body was no longer a thing of beauty, but instead a cause for shame. As he was crowned with thorns his dignity as a true king, as the only true king, his status, his very identity was wilfully misunderstood. Paraded through the streets he was dehumanised, and humiliated and became a mere subject of the power that others had over his body. On the cross itself, there is no mistaking the delirium of a man in agony. In spiritual agony. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me” is not merely a quotation from the Psalms. It is an expression of spiritual desolation.
Human suffering, the suffering we endure, was shared by Jesus. Human degradation was shared by Jesus. The social and personal isolation. The loss of autonomy. The humiliation. The loss of dignity. The eclipsing of one’s identity. The delirium. The loss of a sense of connection to God. Jesus shared in all of that. He shared in our suffering - and we in our turn shall share in his exaltation. The degradation of the cross was followed by the glorious triumph of the Resurrection and Ascension. That is the way of the Cross. That is the way of discipleship. Always to exaltation, even if sometimes through degradation.
The twelve disciples set out on that path, on the way of the cross. They left behind their previous lives, they left behind their families. Theirs was a path of uncertainty, of suffering, of endurance. Their path of discipleship led inexorably through suffering to horrible death. Some of the twelve were themselves crucified. Some were pierced, with arrows or swords, or hacked to death. One was stoned. One, Bartholomew, was flayed of his skin. Only John died of natural causes. So from the start, discipleship was inseparable from suffering and endurance. The Christian faith grew out of their discipleship, their endurance and their suffering. Though they suffered degradation they came to share in exaltation to glory, and we remember them to this day.
Paul’s words to the Romans are true: our suffering does indeed produce hope, and a spirit of love is indeed being poured into our hearts. Through our suffering, though it be degradation and indignity, though it be delirium itself, we are formed as vessels for God’s love; formed first as recipients of love, and then formed in turn as sources of love for others, and of love for God. Even in our suffering we remain vessels for God’s love , even as we are lost, powerless, afraid, and vulnerable – in the holy state of vulnerability, in which our humanity becomes fully real. Through all this we remain both sources of love and recipients of love, because that is what God intends for us, and we will, in the end, be subsumed in God’s community of mutual self-giving love.
That exchange of smiles, that sharing of mutual affection, that love that I glimpsed, gave hope. It was a glimpse in the here and now, in the holy vulnerability of our humanity, of the exchange of love that awaits us in the coming Kingdom of God. That is where our discipleship leads. And our hope will not be disappointed.
Version of 12th June 2026