Blog posts | St Michael and All A

Items posted here reflect the authors' own views

and not necessarily the views of the Church in Wales

The video link here is a recording of the wonderful sermon John Morgans gave to the Thursday congregation on July 24th 2025. A thoughtful reflection on attitudes from across the religious divides impacting on the current situation in the Middle East, with life lessons for us all.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, June 15th 2025

“Jesus said to the disciples, ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now’

(John 16:12).

When I hear Jesus talking about the unbearable things of life, I want to run away. But we know we can’t. We know that many things in our own lives or what we witness in the news seem to be unbearable.

As painful as it is to remember and as difficult as it is to talk about, I understand what Jesus means when he says, 'You cannot bear them now.'

I think that maybe every one of us sometimes has thoughts and fears of the unbearable. Every one of us has possibly lived or maybe is living a reality that is more than we can handle, a reality that has left us wondering how or if we’ll get through it. And somehow, we do.

The unbearable is that which we do not wish for ourselves or our worst enemy. It maybe comes to us in the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage, the loss of a job, a diagnosis, or in a thousand other ways. It is the most painful experience we can imagine. It is that moment when all we can do is either call God’s name or rant at our God, and sometimes we do both.

But just for a moment let’s think about a time when love, joy, or beauty were so real, so deep, so full that we felt we couldn’t hold it all. It was more than we could bear and maybe we shed some tears, and it was as if our hearts were somehow enlarged. Maybe all we could say was, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' Maybe we stood in awe and amazement of what was happening and silently wondered, 'Who am I that God would be mindful of me?'

When has that been your experience of the unbearable? In what ways have beauty, joy, or love been more than you could bear?

This kind of unbearable reality is beyond our wildest dreams and imaginings. It’s more than the greatest, biggest, and best wish for ourselves. It leaves us in speechless gratitude. It comes to us in the miracle of birth, a life filled with meaning, a love that is eternal, and in a thousand other ways. The unbearable opens us to receive a life we could never create for ourselves. It shatters our fears, breaks through our defences, and can move us to tears.

The unbearable in one sense of the word, I believe, can kind of open our hearts. It can make us vulnerable, real, and sort of help us to realise who we really are. And so there’s a sense in which we need the unbearable.

Here’s why I say that. Sometimes I think we maybe tend to live unconscious lives. We can kind sleepwalk through our days - missing life, love, beauty, and each other. The unbearable can wake us up and offer insight into our life, it can teach us about ourselves and maybe help us to be more fully ourselves. And for each of us I think it can reveal the presence of God.

I can’t help but wonder, what if God is never more present to us than when we bear the unbearable?

The unfathomable love. The beauty that leaves us speechless. The tears of joy. And the tears of loss or pain. What if those things that ask more of us than we can handle and offer us more than we could ever have imagined are the very places in which God is most present and most real?

Bearing the unbearable places us on the threshold of our lives. It takes us to the limits of who we are and what we have. It’s the place where life is too real, too much, too big. And I know there’s that saying that human beings can’t bear too much reality, as TS Eliot said - and we just need the routine and the day today and the ordinary.

But when we stand at the edge of life, bearing the unbearable, something stunning and beautiful can happen. We are standing at the opening 'into all the truth.' That’s a pretty big and bold statement. But that’s exactly what Jesus says will happen. The Spirit will guide us into all the truth. The Spirit will declare, bring, and offer all that Jesus has and all that the Father has. Nothing is withheld. We may not know it, understand it, or believe it but in the midst of unbearable reality we are being guided into all the truth. And that I think is a great mystery. The sacred mystery of the love and the presence of the

Holy Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So hard to define. And so I thought I’d end this sermon with some visual art on this Trinity Sunday. The sacred mystery, so hard to define. The sacred mystery of the love of God, three persons in complete unity coming to us, present with us and around us in love every day of our lives.

Caroline x

Like many who may read this, I attended the evening meeting in May at St. Margaret’s, Roath, where people were invited to a listening exercise on the future of same-sex relationships within the Church. Bishop Mary presided and in all fairness to her, she led the proceedings very well – although I felt that a few too many clerics were invited to speak.

And it is from the viewpoint of one that great army of ordinary churchgoing volunteers - who keep the show on the road, open and maintain the buildings, set up services, arrange the flowers, make the tea and coffee, clean the toilets, sort the rubbish, pay the quota – that I wish to speak, because without us there would be no church.

Listening to the clerics on that Thursday evening, I was reminded of the duel of wands between Professors McGonagall and Snape in ‘Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows’ – Leviticus 18:22, take that! – Galatians 3:28 – ker-pow! Perhaps sadly but unsurprisingly, I have never known anyone come into church on a Sunday morning asking about Paul’s views on sexual (im)morality, or what the Old Testament says about homosexuality. People ask about others’ health problems, their strained relationships with family members, difficulties with finances, their car not starting. The trivial mixed with the more serious. But what churchgoers do remember is the central message of Jesus Christ – love God, love your neighbour as yourself. In the end it is all about love, actually.

Another issue I have is the absolute insistence on the Bible as the source of all authority and knowledge of God. It is nigh on impossible to reconcile all the contradictions within the Bible. Why were none of the women wearing a head covering on that Thursday evening? What if anyone had had prawns for tea? How many wives had disobeyed their husbands that day? Why do we allow divorce when the marriage service says: ‘til death do us part’? I firmly believe that scripture, the revelation of God, does not end with the Book of Revelation. So, I would like to end by quoting some cultural scripture written in 1664, the first verse of one of my favourite hymns, which - for me at any rate - sums up God’s love entirely:

My song is love unknown,
my Saviour’s love to me;
love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.

O who am I,

that for my sake

my Lord should take

frail flesh and die?

General Dogsbody

Sermon preached by Reader Liz Haigh, Passion Sunday, April 6th 2025

They’ve both gone, now. My sister Martha, who spent so much of her life organising people that even at her own burial I found myself wanting to check with her what was to be done next or what the name was of that distant cousin who turned up a bit late. And Lazarus, the brother we loved so much. Burying him for the second time decades after the first time brought back memories, I can tell you. It’s all anyone ever wanted to talk to us about for years after.

So now it’s just me left. Me, Mary of Bethany. I’m not expecting to live many more years myself, and it’s time for me to tell my story.

We had to be a bit careful for most of our lives, ever since Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. Lazarus, bless him, never did anyone any harm, but sometimes it seemed this second life was hardly worth living. At first it was people coming up to see him, touch him. Ask him questions. Were you really dead? What was it like? And lots of stupid stuff I won’t go into. But then it got worse. We were warned not to spread the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead, or we’d be in trouble. Well, we weren’t the ones telling everyone. But they wouldn’t listen. We had messages from the Pharisees, even someone who said he had a message from the high priest, saying we had to stop this wicked lie about Jesus being able to raise people from the dead, and if we weren’t careful they’d silence Lazarus for ever. You couldn’t make it up, could you? Soon as the poor man’s out of the tomb, he’s having to watch his own back in case someone puts him back in there for good.

With all this arguing about what Jesus did and didn’t do, I think it’s good that people are starting to write the story of his life. There was one already a year or so back, Mark’s account, they were asking about what people remembered Jesus saying and doing. We knew they’d want to include the story of Lazarus, after all it was the biggest miracle Jesus ever did before he rose from the dead himself, but Martha sent a message to say not to put it in. Not while Lazarus was still alive. We didn’t want anything written about any of us. We wanted to live our last few years in peace. Once we’re all gone, then someone can write our names down. But not yet.

It was difficult for us, being friends of Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have missed knowing him for the world. But what I do miss is the quieter times we had with him, when he could get away from the crowds for an evening and come and eat with us, Bethany being just outside Jerusalem. I could have listened to him for ever. I remember one day I just sat on the floor and listened to him for so long that Martha had a go at me for not thinking to help her get the food ready or tidy up. She was even more cross when Jesus told her she was fussing too much and it was fine for me to listen. Now that’s a story I’d like someone to tell some time. Not a lot of drama, just Jesus standing up for me, saying there was more to life - and more to my life - than cooking and cleaning.

But there’s one more story I want to tell. It was mentioned in that life of Jesus that Mark wrote, but he didn’t put my name in, which I was grateful for, just said it was a woman. Jesus had come round for supper with about a dozen of his friends. Martha had cooked lots of food and she’d just been serving Jesus and Lazarus. I was at the other side of the room from Jesus and he was smiling, but his eyes were so sad. And my heart went cold. He was going to die before long, and he knew it. All those threats were going to come true. The powers that be would probably spare Lazarus, if he kept quiet, but they wouldn’t spare Jesus. They were going to get him and it was going to be horrible. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. And it was tearing me in pieces. We hadn’t got over the shock of everything that had happened to Lazarus. I was still reliving it in my head sometimes, hearing Martha’s terrible wail when she realised Lazarus was no longer breathing. And then that cold, blank despairing anger that filled her afterwards. When Jesus said to open the tomb and Martha snapped back that after four days in there he’d just be a stinking dead body. Horrible. And I remembered that we had a whole pound of pure nard that we could have anointed Lazarus with, and with the shock of everything we hadn’t done it.

And then I suddenly thought. The nard. It’s still there. And I knew what I had to do.

I think at first everyone thought I was bringing in another dish of food. But I knelt down in front of Jesus, and I put the nard all over my hands, and I started to massage it into his feet. All of it. The whole lot. The fragrance was unbelievable. It filled the room. Everyone went silent. I looked up at Jesus, just for a moment, and I knew he understood what I was doing. I was anointing him for his burial, because they might not let anyone do it later. And I just started to cry, and cry, and I couldn’t stop. And my tears were falling on his feet with the perfume, and I tried to wipe them with my hair, and my hair and his feet smelled of this unbelievable perfume and it was the most terrible thing I had ever done - I didn’t dare look at Martha - and the best thing at the same time.

Martha said afterwards she’d never been so embarrassed in all her life. But she gave me a hug as well, which wasn’t like her, and she didn’t say anything about the cost of the perfume.

If love remains, though everything is lost, we will pay the price, and we will not count the cost.

Thank you for listening to my story.

If you have a few minutes to spare, have a look at this video of a sermon preached by Canon Lucy Winkett of St. James', Piccadilly (lovely church!). This is everything we believe as an inclusive church.

In the times we live in, where there seems to be so much division and discord, this poem by Jay Hulme from 2021 popped up on social media recently and beautifully sums up everything we believe as a church and community in St. Michael's. All, all, all are welcome - just as you are!

A poem for thought on Mothering Sunday, inspired by the painting by Max Ernst, The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses (1926)

The Virgin Punishing the Infant
by Carol Ann Duffy

He spoke early. Not the goo goo goo of infancy,
but I am God. Joseph kept away, carving himself
a silent Pinocchio out in the workshed. He said
he was a simple man and hadn’t dreamed of this.

She grew anxious in that second year, would stare
at stars saying Gabriel? Gabriel? Your guess.
The village gossiped in the sun. The child was solitary,
his wide and solemn eyes could fill your head.

After he walked, our normal children crawled. Our wives
were first resentful, then superior. Mary’s child
would bring her sorrow … better far to have a son
who gurgled nonsense at your breast. Googoo. Googoo.

But I am God. We heard him through the window,
heard the smacks which made us peep. What we saw
was commonplace enough. But afterwards, we wondered
why the infant did not cry, why the Mother did.

From the Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, Church of England Spokesman on Refugees:

No one wants to see people risking their lives to reach safety, but we must ask is this Bill the right response - one that is built on compassion, justice and moral leadership?

It’s likely to push thousands of people, including children, into a prolonged legal limbo and imprisonment, and does nothing to support timely and effective consideration of asylum requests.

It would label all those crossing the Channel illegal entrants and therefore people to whom we do not owe a responsibility and would criminalise the act of claiming asylum - without acknowledging that many are highly vulnerable people escaping persecution and war, who have been left with no safe routes.

Providing safe and legal routes is part of the solution and not one only to be explored after Channel crossings have ended.

The Home Secretary acknowledges the growing global refugee crisis, which we can’t solve on our own, but it is disappointing that the Government has decided to not take on a greater role in leading the world to equitably support those forced to flee their home.

The consequences of this will be felt by vulnerable migrants, and by poorer countries in the global south already supporting the vast majority of the world’s refugees.

We must not abdicate our legal and moral responsibility to some of the world’s most vulnerable by simply treating asylum seekers as a group not to be welcomed or integrated, but detained and returned. We must do and be better.

QUIET, PLEASE!

Is it me, or has the world just become more and more strident in recent years? Or is my patience wearing even thinner as I age?

Several things have come together – as is the wont of the Holy Spirit, I feel – to make me think long and hard about the way of the world, and particularly how we seem to have lost the ability to ‘disagree well’.

Currently there are arguments in the Church (what a surprise! Arguments in the Church? ‘I am for Apollos’, ‘I am for Paul’, ‘I am for Christ’ – ring a bell?) about same-sex marriage, and in society in general about identity and gender.

For what it’s worth, my radical approach to solving the argument about same-sex marriage is to relieve the Anglican Church of its ability to officiate at and license weddings altogether and make all marriages civil, with the religious institutions providing blessings - if they wished - for all couples, gay or straight. I read recently that the Christian Church did not hold marriage services until several centuries after Christ and that marriage in the Bible was seen very much as a legal contract between the heads of two families whose offspring were to be married, with dowries and the lowly status of women legalised; so all this talk of Christian marriage is a relatively new concept. It’s not that long ago that women had to promise to ‘obey’ their husbands. Obey has gone and marriage is seen as a union of two equals, and really I couldn’t care less if they were male and female or any permutation of the two.

I find it hard to understand fully the arguments about gender and identity as it is beyond my realms of experience, but I am more than happy for people to be the people they want to be – as long as it’s not hurtful or harmful to others.

What I am finding increasingly hard to do is to listen to and respond to people in church, in our community, on our TV screens and social media accounts who voice their opinions with such vigour, who dismiss others’ views in a disparaging or condescending manner, and who become increasingly aggressive (as their best form of defence) with anyone who may think differently. Lately, having heard a talk on safeguarding, I fear that this is becoming a form of ‘spiritual’ abuse. And I also fear that the Church is losing members because of it.

The Church of England in its ‘Safeguarding e-Manual’ has the following wise words, amongst many others, for a healthy church community:

Examples of characteristics of a healthy Christian culture include a culture in which:

There is a genuinely open dialogue, there is positive encouragement and active welcoming of different perspectives and views.
Everyone is valued, respected and nurtured and no one is isolated or excluded.

We pride ourselves in our church on our inclusive approach, where all, all, all are welcome. I hope and pray that this continues to be the case.

ANGELS

In the season of Michaelmas, members of the congregation were asked about their experience of angels, or if they had an 'angelic' experience. Well, here's mine . . .

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an angel – well, not some very tall supernatural being with
wings, as is usually depicted in works of art. The word ‘angel’ is supposed to mean
‘messenger’ – and I’ve seen plenty of those; some with good news, others with bad.

But if pushed about an ‘angelic experience’, I can think of one occasion quite clearly where I
sensed a presence of enveloping benevolence and protection.

I had been summoned to the manager’s office and was being subjected to claims about my
behaviour and performance at work which became increasingly aggressive as well as more
and more inaccurate.

I was quite unnerved by the degree of malice in this confrontation and felt at a complete
loss as to how to respond. It took place in the manager’s office and the autumn sun was
shining low through the window directly onto my face. I felt suddenly that the light was
burning just a touch more brightly and a sense of calm came over me – and did I hear a
voice that said: ‘Stand your ground, don’t accept this; this is neither true nor fair’? I felt as if
someone or something had picked me up and wrapped me in a warm protective blanket.
Somewhere from within me came this still, small voice of calm that began to refute and
disprove the allegations made to me. The manager seemed unused to someone choosing to
disagree and was somewhat taken aback. Our differences were resolved and amicable
relations restored.

I have used this experience many times since to find the strength to play the guardian angel
for others, looking out for people, supporting them in their struggles. The Bible tells us
many times: ‘Do not be afraid’ and I am sure that this is what my guardian angel was telling
me all those years ago.