Preacher of the Year

Preacher of the Year

Barbara Baisley, the associate minister of St John's, has reached the final five of the Preacher of the Year and will be preaching at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster on the 20 December. Come and hear her.

Canon Barbara Baisley

The final consisted of a 'preach-off' where six preachers, selected in a Booker-style judging process from the hundreds of original entries, preach sermons of up to ten minutes each during a lively service of song, worship, praise and prayer.

This year, 1999 the final took place at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster on Monday 20 December at 1.30pm.

The judging panel was chaired by Dr Peter Graves, superintendent minister of Central Hall.

Each year, the top 30 sermons selected by the judges are published by Cassell in a Times book of best sermons, edited and with an introduction by Ruth Gledhill.

This year's book, The Fifth Times Book of Best Sermons, will be published at the end of October, price £9.99. It contains biographies of all 30 preachers, as well as summaries of their views on the future of preaching in the new millennium

Barbara acquitted herself well but didn't manage to get into the top two. The full text of her sermon follows.

It was the idea of clover skies that got to me!

I remember very clearly brimming my brush with Crimson Lake to change a dusty blue into just the right shade for the skies over Bethlehem. That was the Christmas I spent so long over my one special card, I could hardly bear to part with it. I think it was for Miss Parkins, so I would have been nine. And the clover skies were terribly important. It was years before I realised that the heavens were only boringly cloven, not clover, after all. But I still look on Christmas Eve and Birmingham lights give a faint tinge.

The other thing that made that carol memorable was the millennium date. It bothered me. I tried: 'beneath the angel strain have rolled nineteen hundred and fifty six, or seven, or eight years of wrong,' - but it doesn't have the same ring. At last this year we have finally got it right, or close enough. So satisfying after all those years of frustration. I wonder why it matters? Not my particular neurosis, but dates in general. Why are we always marking this or that, anniversaries and birthdays, wanting to keep a track of time?

It seems our mortality haunts us. At one level we are constantly aware that every minute is distinct and unrepeated. In the face of our death, we know that the only way to live happy is to be fully in the 'now', savour each encounter, give thanks for every breath - but we catch hold of the days and collect them. (Pressing them like flowers) The fact of our death drives us, too, in a search for meaning. Can we find some significance in who we are, know where we are going and why? So we take stock, celebrate, make millennium - and nurture delicate young hopes for tomorrow. It is natural that we should.

Edmund Sears, writing in Massachusetts in 1849, looks back to 'sin, strife and 2000 years of wrong' with reason. Revolution had swept Europe, Les Mis barricades heaped Paris streets, and America itself was recovering from an horrific war with Mexico. But with typical Victorian optimism he looks forward to a coming 'age of gold' in the last verse! We are more cynical, more fearful, perhaps more realistic about ourselves. Our world is smaller. We finally understand that there are no islands, complete in themselves, we are part of one another - and we know there is nothing/little to celebrate in Chechnya, millennium or not.

This awareness of our true state is no bad place to stand at this marker for our lives. It must give force to a resolve for a more just world. As a hymn to peace, the carol is one we can all share. I have to say, though, that resolutions have never got me very far, at a New Year or any other moment of fervour: 'I'll never doubt you again, Lord', 'From now on I shall love everyone!' I've been promising on and off ever since the Upper Seconds when I made the Christmas card. With precious little result.

So does the carol offer more than pious hope?

It talks of angels, divine messengers breaking through the clover or cloven skies! Like Edmund Sears, our idea of angels tends to be limited to gold-clad shimmery creatures. But biblical angels are less limited and frequently appear in human form, like Jacob's wrestling partner, or Abraham's visitors. In fact it is sometimes difficult to tell whether they are spiritual beings from another realm, even God himself in disguise - or simply individuals acting and speaking for God.

Of course there are heralds of truth in every age and it may be easier for us to attend to a figure like Nelson Mandela than a winged harpist; enduring the worst in humanity, he holds a vision of God's possibilities - of what we might become, and speaks out with angelic authority: 'We ask ourselves:' he says "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" 'Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. … We are all meant to shine as children do.'

Hard bitten though we may be, we yearn for such encouragement as we stumble towards a new millennium. And the moment of 'solemn stillness' that the Christmas angels celebrated? Is this the spark to change us and make us 'shine', the blob of Crimson Lake that turns blue to clover? Not just the stable routine, though it is lovely - but the life that was lived out after the skies had faded back to ordinary wonder. Is there something real on offer in that life-generating warmth that has attracted and compelled men and women ever since - from Ghandi to Mother Teresa?

Can Christ's liberating integrity and beauty reach us still? The life-bringer, who hung so loose to his own, that he gave it away - pouring himself out for us to feed on? Does God draw close to us in this one life and death, giving ours meaning? Despite the record of bigotry and fear that litters and shames the church, I believe this is the kernel of truth, hidden away like a jewel. For the church's tragedy has never been that people have believed too much, just that mostly we are converted so little.

The miracle that can change us is here. God reaches out to us in Jesus Christ, showing us that we are accepted and anything is possible. So the song of the angels goes on; speaking out God's truth that we are created for a purpose, dearly beloved.

'You are a child of God.'

Now - the God of your childhood longings comes close to you.

Amen.