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Behold, you desire truth deep within me ︎
and shall make me understand wisdom
in the depths of my heart.    

Make me a clean heart, O God, ︎
and renew a right spirit within me.  

I don’t know about you but this September- and now half of October-

has disappeared in a flurry.

A moment ago our choristers were returning to singing, to uniforms, timetables,  the rush hour of family life. And now many are off on half term!

Isn’t it funny how the term flies by.

Thirteen years ago I was deep into my own term at school in Oxford.

Vicar school, as it happens.

And during that term I made myself a promise that I want to share with you, and for us all to make for ourselves,

before very much more of the year passes by…

I promised myself that I would be MORE religious.

Not a big surprise, and perhaps a rather low bar for someone about to become a priest but I’ll tell you why I really promised that, and I hope persuade you why you should too.

It started a couple of months before, at the start of a long, hot summer, much like the one we enjoyed this year.   I had to give notice at my work.

I sat down with my boss and explained I was leaving and then something happened to me that startled me profoundly….

 ‘What to do?’, she said.

‘To train to be a vicar’, I replied, somewhat bashfully….

“I didn’t know you were religious!”, she answered back in a flash.

I didn’t know you were religious.

What a damning thing to hear when you’re about to go pro!!

With that in mind let me ask you the same question

Are you religious?

Yes?  No?  Not yet decided? Spiritual but not religious?

Well, how might one tell?

A religious person does religious looking things, I suppose,

and we’re all in Church…

The clergy here have certainly spent a lot of time here so far this term…

Perhaps that means we- and you are religious.

Our life here is certainly full of rite and ritual so much so

that time itself is set out in an annual cycle

telling the story of salvation over and over- year after year.

Creation, Harvest, Kingdom Season, All Souls, Advent,

Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Swithuntide….

Surely those of us who attend to such a cycle, who go about dedicating frontals

must be religious people?

or is merely being here and going through the motions properly religious?

Surely we all have our little rituals, whatever they are?

The daily walk, the Tuesday and Thursday volunteering….

The weather changes, leaves fall & nights draw in, the garden is tidied away

The Christmas market is being built , the congregation head off on cruise ships!

The visiting choir gets back together, as they do every year….

All of this annual round provides a sort of certainty and helpfulness,

But is this what makes us religious?

Even if our attendance to this round makes no difference to me,

or, more importantly, to our world?

Would my old colleague a work be able to notice the difference?

Or would they say to us too:

I didn’t notice that YOU were religious,

In short- no.     Of course, our routine

And our routine attendance will not make a difference.

As one writer put it:

Tradition- or- Religion is the living faith of the dead

to which we must add our own chapter while we have the gift of life.

The dead faith of living people is mere traditionalism-

• or in our terms- mere

Here’s another way of thinking about it, picking up the theme of pennies from the Gospel reading…

On the last day of our holiday, on the way home from Devon, we went to Wookey Hole Cave and spent our remaining small change on a Penny Arcade.

Two games I played there- sorry- my children played there (!)-

illustrate the two options that lie before us

as we continue another year here at Winchester Cathedral

I believe with all my heart that which option we take

will make a huge difference about what we get out of this year

and, more importantly- what we contribute to our society within it.

((And boy, doesn’t our society need that right now?))

First was what they call a ‘working model’. 

Popular in the 1940s when sweets and prizes were hard to come by

it is simply a light-up, and sometimes mechanical tableau.

You put your money in.

Something pleasant happens to entertain you for a short while.

You are briefly transported to an interesting, albeit imaginary, place….

I liked, the Nightwatchman.  You could imagine one of the Lost Coin.

My boys, preferred the Guillotine, which they played over and over again!

This represents playing it safe and NOT being religious.

We can turn up time and again, switch the lights on,

and play out the same scenes as last year and the year before that…

No doubt there will be some nice experiences

and perhaps even enough to entertain us

or even sustain us at a certain level

We can journey through each service and around the Church Year

but not enter into it.

We attend to the form of reliousity

but gain no more depth or intensity

than if we should listen to Smooth Classics at Seven on Classic FM

This, friends, is mere religiousity,

and take it from me-it’s not worth your money

The second kind of game was one we still see at Supermarkets and Stations.

The Coin Funnel or Spiral Wishing well.  This represents REAL religious life.

You put you’re money in and it goes round and round

But–  and here is the BIG difference:

as it goes round and round

it also goes deeper and deeper,

closer and closer towards the centre.

That is true religion- and it is to this depth that our readings today compel us, that we might seek to develop new intensity & struggle to discover new depth.

That, as the seasons progress and the story of the God’s love unfolds

we might pick up a momentum with the potential

not just to entertain and sooth

but to draw us close to God

to change our lives and actually impact or world.

It was for this very reason- St Paul says– that I was shown mercy

so that in me, the worst of sinners,

 Christ Jesus might display his immense patience that I may receive eternal life.

And that’s really why I suggest we make ourselves this strange promise:

to BE MORE RELIGIOUS. To GO DEEPER.

Because that is why we were saved and because the World needs it.

This year, in addition to the normal heave of getting through the term

there are significant extra challenges to meet.

The world has got lots of problems, and they’re deep.

They’re deep and seemingly worse than we think.

So it seems to me that the decision for DEPTH- to be MORE religious…

is not only good for ourselves, it is needed by the world

it is our calling and our proper destiny;

not temporary happiness, or impulsive pleasure.

Or spiritual soothing, or temporary therapy.

It’s as much of God as we can take in without bursting.

It’s as much responsibility as we can shoulder, without breaking.

Oh that we might recognise this, with the Psalmist- from today’s Psalm:

Behold, you desire truth deep within me

 and shall make me understand wisdom in the depths of my heart.

And pray with him, for a new religious depth:

Give me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.

AMEN