Today we are beginning a labyrinth retreat at Launde Abbey. I am very excited about this as I think a labyrinth is a very useful tool for meditative prayer and contemplation; for review of our lives and our walk with God; for healing of memories and for discernment, and for peace and wholeness. It is also something that one can come to as a seeker or searcher.

But I have found that many people do not know what a labyrinth is. Too many people seem to think it is another name for a maze. Whatever the meaning in the past (and some authorities say it has changed) today the labyrinth is different from a maze.

If you have ever been to a maze you will know that it has high walls or hedges which you cannot see through or over. It is full of corridors that promise a passage to the centre but then, after having given you a very confusing journey, end in dead ends from which it is very often impossible to find your way back the way you came. You can get thoroughly lost in a maze and even a little frightened. It is not surprising that the fourth Harry Potter book, “The Goblet of Fire,” ends in a terrifying maze where the hedges take on a life of their own as they close in on the characters.

In a labyrinth today, certainly as used in Christian spiritual exercises, if the path is followed from the entrance, you will eventually get to the centre. In fact, you can see the centre at all times. It is just that the route to the centre winds around, so that at times you are closer to the centre and then further along the path you may see (and feel) that you are as far away almost as when you started. Are you getting anywhere?

The labyrinth is a good metaphor for the spiritual life. At times we feel very close to God; at other times we feel very far away. Sometimes we feel as if we are turning towards him; sometimes we turn our backs to him; sometimes we are in “consolation” – feeling open and in tune with the world and ourselves; sometimes we feel in “desolation” – distant from God, others and negative about ourselves. But the truth is we are always journeying towards God as long as we stay on the path.

Sometimes, however, our lives feel more like a maze. We cannot see where we are going. We don’t know what we are going towards. Things we hoped would open up for us come to a dead end. We feel as if we have no control, no power; the path we are on is not friendly.

Jesus in his teaching invited all of us to trust. The path he invites us to follow him on is a friendly path. His way (and in the first days of the Church, those who were Christians were said to follow “the Way”) is one that will take us eventually to the God who loves us. Each seeming dead end will open up and invite us into a new place; even dying will do this for us. His road is open and empowering; not enclosing and frightening. Truly, the metaphor for our walk through life is one of labyrinth, rather than maze.

There has been a lot of news and interviews around the theme of poverty in the last couple of weeks.  This is hardly surprising when you consider that it was Christian Aid Week and there was an excellent advertising campaign highlighting part of the work of Christian Aid on our televisions.  But it is, of course, about so much more than the call to look after those who are less fortunate than we out of some altruistic motive (although, understand me, I am not putting down altruism!).  Looking after those who are poor makes good sense in the end because it is self-serving in an entirely rational and wise way.  In an inaugural parliamentary lecture to launch Christian Aid Week, Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, highlighted the role that inequality plays in provoking violence.  Growing inequality threatens social cohesion, prosperity and democracy the world over.  The link between violence and historic poverty, terrorism and poverty and poverty and the breakdown of the rule of law in normally law abiding countries is well documented.

In our country we are told that there is a growing divide between the rich and the poor.  The harsh spending cuts are being felt in cities with the most children living in poverty.  A worrying 38% of kids in Manchester live below the breadline – 33% in Liverpool.  People can only take so much.  When they see so much wealth around them and know they have so little, their resentment and anger will grow.

“The Spirit Level” is a brilliant book which came out a few years ago with the subtitle, “Why equality is better for everyone.”  This book is full of the sort of statistics and graphs that usually turn me off, but the evidence it produces is challenging and overwhelming.  It asks similar sorts of questions to the ones Archbishop Rowen asked in his lecture.  Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Australians? The answer: inequality.  If we want health and contentment; if we want the joys of the kingdom of God – peace, justice, love and mercy.  If we want to live well with our neighbour and happily with ourselves, we have to share; we need to seek a more equal society.  Too much wealth in too few hands is bad for us, including being bad for the people who have it.

Christian Aid Week may be over for this year, but the message of Christ continues, love your neighbour as yourself (that you may live well in the land your God has given you.)

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

We are in the season of Easter still, the season of resurrection. But we sometimes forget that resurrection is not bringing back to the same old life but taking us on to new life. Jesus was different after the resurrection. We, too, are different when we have died and been raised with Christ in this life, let alone whatever comes next. This new life is experienced differently, lived differently, as if from a different angle. It is, at its best, life in all its fullness.

I was reminded of this last Saturday, the 3rd May, when I had the great privilege of being one of a thousand people, mainly women wearing dog collars, who marched from Westminster Abbey to St Paul’s Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving for twenty years of women’s priestly ministry. It was in 1994 that dioceses across the country first ordained women as priests and I was one of them, ordained at St Paul’s Cathedral on the 16th April of that year.

It was a particular pleasure and privilege to have presiding over our Eucharist at St Paul’s, the Canon Treasurer of the cathedral, Philippa Boardman. I first knew Philippa when she was a member of the youth group in the church I attended, where I taught Sunday School. We were both lay people, of course, and young! Assisting Philippa at the Eucharist as deacon was the Archbishop of Canterbury and this was a particularly moving and powerful statement of shared ministry but also a vivid reminder that we are called to be servants – all of us, lay and ordained.

Philippa was there fighting for the rights of women to be ordained priest right from the beginning. It was her photograph that was splashed all over the front page of many of the newspapers the morning after the vote to ordain women was passed in General Synod in November 1992 – a happy, laughing face of joy. But, lest you think that Philippa is simply a political woman, in the past twenty years she has worked as parish priest in some of the very poorest and toughest areas of London. New life – yes! Twenty years ago Philippa could not have imagined that one day she would celebrate the Eucharist with the Archbishop at her side on the twentieth anniversary of women’s ordination to the priesthood. I am sure the life God has given her to lead in between has been exhilarating and tough, joyful and dismaying, life enhancing and exhausting. I am pretty sure there have been times when she has wanted to give it all up. It goes with the territory. But it is all real life.

But, as the Archbishop reminded us in his very simple but very incisive message in the cathedral, in the end, we are called not simply to celebrate (although that day a party was in full swing – and quite right, too!) We are called, lay and ordained, to follow Christ and dare to minister wherever the need is. Women’s priesthood simply makes whole that offering of the fullness of the image of God spoken of in the Creation story. In 1994 that was recognised more fully and women were given authority to lead, but more importantly to serve because a priest never stops being a deacon, and deacon and priest together express the authority that has service as its core value; in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ who knelt to wash his disciples feet.