The Lord's Prayer

It's been a while since I posted anything!  Here is my sermon preached today at St Mark's, Marton . . .

Everyone knows the Lord’s Prayer. I wonder if that’s still true, in fact; still, I’m sure most people do. But because we know this prayer so well and can just reel it off, perhaps we don’t realise just how radical these words really are. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, like John the Baptist had taught his disciples, they were asking him to do something quite subversive. The response Jesus gave was what we call the Lord’s Prayer: a prayer that sums up within itself all the things prayer needs to contain; a prayer that makes the radical and subversive statement that we - ordinary people, every man or every woman - we don’t need temples and cathedrals, or priests and prelates, in order to speak to God. We can speak to him direct, and we can speak to him anywhere; and a prayer that begins with the one title for God that means more for Christians than any other: Father, our Father.

Everything else Jesus says in this morning’s Gospel reading builds out of those great opening words of his prayer; he promises that, like the most excellent Father we can imagine, God will hear us and respond, so that we can pray to him with confidence and trust, and out of a relationship of love. This is radical; you could even say that it’s the end of religion. Imagine: people think of Jesus as the founder of a religion, when in reality he came to end religion.

Or perhaps to set religion right. If I’m asked to say what’s distinct about Christianity, as compared to, say, its closest relatives, Islam and Judaism, my answer would have to include two fundamental things about being a Christian: firstly, that every Christian is a priest - more about that in a minute, but the Bible speaks very clearly about the priesthood of all believers; and secondly, that being a Christian isn’t about being good enough for heaven. Heaven is God’s gift to us, a gift of grace; and the Christian life is a thank offering to God for what he has freely given.

And that has to distil down to those two words that begin the prayer Jesus taught us: “Our Father”. We don’t have to placate our God or to be fearful in our praying, even if some of our prayers may feel as if they do that, you know, things like “Almighty and most wonderful God, we do beseech thee.” It’s good I’m sure to remind ourselves of the God is so great and so full of majesty, but he is not unapproachable; he makes himself available to us. We can call him our Father.

Now you may very well be saying, or thinking anyway, that Church feels in practice a lot like other religions. It has hierarchies of ministry, and titles like Reverend and Venerable and Very Reverend, Right Reverend, Most Reverend; It has its rules and customs and expectations, feasts and fasts, days of obligation, canon law - not to mention any number of arguments and divisions about matters of belief and doctrine and practice. I’d want to say this: Jesus came to bring us to faith; so what’s the relationship between religion and faith? The role of religion I think is to be the servant of faith, to be the means by which faith is tested and channelled, and to enable people of faith to work and worship and witness as God is calling them. If those things aren’t happening, then faith and religion are not in balance. And sometimes they’re not.

So while I love the Church, I hope I won’t ever be an easy or docile or uncritical churchman. Jesus calls us to be sheep, but not I think to be sheepish. For every one of the sheep of the Church is also called to be a shepherd - not only to follow, but also to take responsibility for one another; not only to learn but also to guide, not only to be supported but to be a support and a friend, not only to be prayed for but also to pray. And we all share a responsibility to do mission, to invite and bring others into the flock. So none of us are pew fodder, consumers of packaged religion; each and every Christian can pray on his or her own, calling God “Our Father” - for we are all also priests: Church is a kingdom of priests.

So what exactly is a priest? Well, you can say this about the role of a priest: a priest is someone who stands between - who stands between the people and God, God and the people. So at the time of Jesus, people went up to the Temple so the priests there could make on their behalf the sacrifices and prayers that they weren’t able or competent to make for themselves. The Lord’s Prayer releases us not to have to do that any more; now we can speak to God direct.

That doesn’t make priests redundant; but it makes us all priests. All Christians share a priestly task of speaking God’s word in the world, and taking in prayer the needs of the world to God. The call to prayer, to mission and to service, is not restricted to some Christians but shared by all Christians, and that means the work of God only happens as it should when everyone gets involved. In practice the Church places limits on who can and cannot do certain things, for example the celebration of Holy Communion, and that’s something done for good purpose - it ensure orthodoxy and agreement on what’s believed and taught and required of churchfolk. But - sticking my neck out a bit - for me that’s a matter of Church order rather than of God’s ordinance, and not something that should lead us into too high a view of ordained priesthood. The Church is greatly weakened if it fails to take seriously what it means to be a priesthood of all believers.

When you read the Acts of the Apostles, you see again and again the Holy Spirit falling on people, all kinds of people, not always the expected people. Jesus speaks of the gift of the Spirit in this morning’s Gospel. It’s the Father’s gift to his children, and it’s freely given to all who ask him. Not all our prayers are answered as we would want; and bad and sad things continue to happen to good people, and there’s another sermon to be preached on that I think. But Jesus does firmly promise this: that the Father will give us his Spirit. And that what we ask for according to the Father’s mind and in order to do his will, he will give.

The Churchyard by the Pool

You must bury me here, close to the shore,
where the high arch of the old timber bridge
will form a ring for my remembrance
with her rippled sister below;
where the woods stride down through the water,
and the slate-spread wings of the rising heron
reflect in those soft, sunsparkled pools
as she lifts above the salt flats.

You must bury me here, close to the shore,
at that time when the scarlet tides move
to meet the dying sun, and
when the darkening waters of night
hide for a while the secret of the magic dawn.

You must bury me here, close to the shore,
so that when the wild cries of curlew and raven and gull
echo across the high rocks where we stood that day
you will know that I am not far from you,
and I promise that I shall be
close as the gentle breeze on your cheek,
as the feather touch of rain in the April sun,
close as your own breathing, joined
in the one forever stream of love.

In Memoriam

He was not a man much noticed,
keeping within safe limits, dutiful, obedient,
reliable, of course, and sound:
a man who got the job done,
but you never really noticed the doing of it.

He attended well enough to his
Mondays to Fridays, always quietly there on time;
and then it would seem he kept his weekends
much to himself, a back pew in church on Sunday,
the eight o’clock, when there was one.

Now he is wearing his Sunday suit
for his last church attendance (on a Thursday);
a sprinkling of folk, there for form’s sake, mostly. After all,
he had never really made a splash,
having never gone overboard.

Christopher Street

Today an earthquake will hit Christopher Street.
Its neat suburban semis will all lose their foundations:
they will rock and reel and tumble, while their
neat garden beds, trimmed hedges and lawns lift and shake,
and the neighbourhood sparrows fly up in alarm.

It is ten in the morning, and the sky is dark,
the daybreak sun having gone into hiding.
And on the doormat of number thirty-five lies a letter
delivered a little later than usual
by the friendly postman,
today’s well-meaning bearer of seismic change:
a letter whose scent of honeysuckle and rose,
hint of an unsafe shade of lipstick where the note was sealed,
both attracts and appals.

Daring to open the envelope in her husband’s absence,
she reads the list of demands
thinly veiled behind words of pledge and adoration;
and the tremors lift off the Richter Scale,
the walls around her fall.
It was always sunny in Christopher Street,
and the ground beneath her had always seemed
so safe and stable.
Now it never can be again.

Brexit - a new poem

Brexit

To my slight surprise

the world still seems to be revolving,

the same sun, clouds, birdsong

as yesterday. Maybe

a different horizon,

a different road on which to travel.

“There may be trouble ahead,”

someone is singing - well,

I hope no-one was pretending it would be easy

whoever won the day. But hey,

we may be on a different road,

but it’s still the same people travelling,

my sister is still my sister,

my brother my brother.

In the end, I find

I don’t really care how you voted,

only that we’ll only get to where we want to go

if now we choose

to travel together.

Tolerance - a sermon for this Sunday

The other day I asked a friend to help me with something, not a big job, but it needed two of us. I wasn’t in a hurry at all, happy to wait until whatever was convenient for him. But his immediate response was, “No time like the present! Let’s get it done, then.” And we did.

To those who looked on sceptically - as some certainly did - Jesus hadn’t done much of a job assembling his disciples. Any rabbi would be expected to gather disciples, but what a rag taggle bunch this Jesus of Nazareth had got! None of them had the education and erudition you’d expect. They were fishermen, people of that ilk. What kind of disciple could you make from a fisherman?

In the Gospels we can read how some of them were called, and the common factor is this: these were the sort of people who were prepared to say “yes” straight away. For them there was no time like the present. That wasn’t true for everyone Jesus called. “Of course I’ll come, but can you hang on, I’m not quite ready yet” - that was their response. Their reasons for not coming straight away weren’t bad ones. If my friend had come up with something like that I’d have waited, I wouldn’t have minded. But Jesus demanded an immediate response.

He even comes across as a bit uncaring. He says some tough things to them. “Leave the dead to bury their dead”: what kind of thing is that for the Messiah to say? Though it could actually be that the man’s father was not actually dead, some people think - in which case he was saying, “I shan’t be free to follow you until after my father has died.” While that might make what Jesus said easier for us to accept, the challenge behind his words remains the same. In every matter there comes a crucial moment of decision; miss that moment and the thing never gets done at all. My friend was a friend indeed when he said he’d come straight away. I’ve got past history of never doing the things I don’t do straight away.

And then, how often we say we’ll do something, sign me up, when really we only want to look good, or maybe get the person whose asking off our back. But Peter and the rest of them came as soon as they were called> They dropped everything, just got going. And if they weren’t the brightest sparks in the box, they were what Jesus wanted, people who’d just get and do it.

Mind you, they still had a lot to learn. You can see that from the verses that began our Gospel reading. If you travelled from Galilee to Jerusalem, your most direct route would be through Samaria. But Jews and Samaritans were old enemies. Though they were from the same stock, and worshipped the same God, they kept themselves totally separate, and worshipped in different places and different ways. It’s sad but true that close neighbours can make the most bitter enemies.

So it would be strange for any Jewish teacher to send his people to a Samaritan village to get help and accommodation. Jews and Samaritans wouldn’t sit at the same table. Why would a Samaritan help a Jew to travel to Jerusalem? Samaritans believed it wasn’t a holy city at all, that Jews were worshipping in the wrong place. Maybe Jesus wanted to offer a hand of friendship, as he did by the well of Jacob in a story we can read in St John’s Gospel. Or maybe he just knew he could use the rejection he expected to teach a lesson to his disciples. Anyway, that’s what happened in the end.

The messengers were duly turned away; and when they heard about it, the most boisterous of the disciples of Jesus, James and John, wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy the village. Remember their nickname - Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder - it was bound to be those two, really. Jesus would have none of it. They went on to another village. Jesus had presented the Samaritan village with an opportunity to be hospitable. He must have been sorry they didn’t do it, but even so, this was a matter for forgiveness, not retribution.

And so he taught his disciples a lesson in tolerance. One commentary I read on this passage calls tolerance a lost virtue. If that was true when that commentary was written, some fifty years ago, what about the world of today? I think tolerance has been in short supply over the past few weeks. And in general, though we may be more free these days to do our own thing and choose our own path, even to make our own truth, I’m not sure that our society has all that much of the tolerance we find in Jesus.

We have an “anything goes” society. That seems tolerant, but it’s tolerance based more in indifference than in mutual care. Of course there is still a lot of care and kindness about, and I thank God for it, but I also can’t help but feel that in some ways society is growing ever more fractured. If we don’t need to know our neighbours - and these days often we don’t - then we also don’t need to care too much about how they live. But that’s not really tolerance, but indifference.

The tolerance of Jesus is tolerance based in love. Abraham Lincoln was once accused of being too soft on his opponents. He should destroy his enemies, he was told. This was his answer: “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” Good words, but harder to live than they are to say. But that’s how Jesus saw that Samaritan village. They’d not been able to accept his offer of friendship now, but that didn’t mean the offer was withdrawn.

There’ll always be those who don’t share your views, those who see the world differently from how you see it. Even in church we don’t all sing from the same hymn sheet. I’ve found that when I’ve chosen hymns in a church I’m visiting, only to find them sung to different tunes from the ones I expected. St Paul wrote, “Our knowledge is partial.” That applies just as much to me as to the person I might disagree with or want to criticise or correct. As William Barclay wrote, “God has his own secret stairway into every heart.”

For when people disagree, the truth is not usually 100% on one side or the other, but somewhere between the two positions, however entrenched those positions may be. Jesus believed that the Samaritans had got it wrong about God, but so had his own people. When he did enter Jerusalem, the first thing he did was to cleanse the temple, to make clear to his own people just how much they were getting wrong.

I heard someone say last week, “I’ve had to live with the word brexit, but if anyone starts talking about braftermath I won’t be responsible for my actions!” But braftermath is upon us, like the word or not. We have to deal with the aftermath of the debate, and the fact that a decision has been made that one lot of people won’t like, while the other lot of people might be tempted to be triumphalist about it. It behoves both sides to be patient, tolerant and caring. Too much hot air has been expended already; and let us not forget that, whether you connect it to how the campaign has been conducted or blame the madness of extremism, one person has died.

We need to be clear about this: neither alternative was the truth; neither alternative had all the right on its side. For better or worse, there’s now a job of work to be done, that must be done for the sake of the whole, and that work begins with a process of healing and of toleration. There’s not been a single view across church folk in this debate: people have rightly come to different conclusions by thinking through the facts and testing them according to their Christian beliefs. Again, the truth lies somewhere in the space between us: only God sees all things as they are. And his call to us? There’s no time like the present. I hope that Christians take a lead in tolerance, and set an example of discipleship. A decision has been made. But we still need those who voted the other way, we still need to hear what they have to say, and we still need to remember that those who may seem to be our enemies contain within themselves, as do we, the possibility of being friends.

Remain

I shall be voting REMAIN on 23rd June because . . .

1) I am proud to be British, and I want to remain proud to be British. The Britain I am proud of is a place of tolerance, refuge, welcome, generosity and care for others, that played its part in encouraging and supporting, in our continent and our world, the highest standards of democracy, understanding, tolerance and peace. With very few exceptions, I have heard nothing from the Brexit side increasing and improving our positive contribution in the wider world; if I had I might consider it. Brexit seems to be about the nation I love becoming more insular, less tolerant, less prepared to give and to help; it seems to me it’s mostly about what we can get rather than what we can give. I am saddened and ashamed that our nation should be motivated by self interest and small-mindedness in this way. I hold my hand up as European as well as British - I don’t believe that’s an either/or. The EU is far from perfect, and reform is clearly needed, but as someone proud to be British I want our nation to be in there, rolling its sleeves up to contribute to an ongoing process to which we have a positive contribution to make, and within which we will find allies who share our vision.

2) Immigration is a real issue that deserves to be taken seriously, but it’s also a much more complex matter than some brexit supporters make out. Workers from overseas do benefit our economy, our health service, etc, and most people who come here do come to work and not to scrounge. We are not bound by the Schengen Agreement which does (or did until the recent crisis) allowed free travel across some internal European borders, so we have retained control of our borders within the EU. Outside the EU we may well have no more control than we do now, especially if we wish to retain access to the single market. Immigration from beyond the EU needs Europe-wide action; we might be less able to deal with this issue on our own than as part of the EU. And I am also mindful of the many British people who wish to live and work in the EU. These have included one of my children, which is why I now have a Polish son-in-law.
 
3) The UK retains a great deal of influence as a world power; we are in the G7, and have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, etc, etc. We presently punch above our weight as a nation, but it is at least arguable that an exit from the EU could reduce our influence on the world stage. While this isn’t in fact a big issue for me, and I would like my nation to get rid of some of its remaining imperialist trappings, the point is still worth making.

4) I am not convinced by brexit claims that the UK as a trading nation will do better unshackled from the EU. In the 1950’s and 60’s we still had an industry that we owned; now we are very dependant on multinationals. In the 1950’s and 60’s we still had (the remains of) an empire to provide a market for our goods (whatever their quality); now we don’t, and we were already struggling to sell what we make before we joined the then EEC. Case in point: look at what happened to our motor-cycle industry.

5) I find it hard to understand, as does most of the rest of the world, how we imagine we are going to negotiate free trade deals to replace those we have as part of the EU, at least without taking a great deal of time. And I wonder whether those multinationals whose investment in UK industry is so vital these days will be prepared to stay the course while we do all that?

6) There is virtually no doubt that our economy will dip if we brexit. Households will lose income, GDP will be reduced, imports will be more expensive, tax revenues will be squeezed. We are much more dependant than we used to be on our financial sector. While London will continue to be a good place to do international business, it will not be quite as good and as inviting as it is now, and Frankfurt and other financial centres will be more than ready to receive those who would rather be dealing within the EU. The simple point here is that there will be a cost, and everyone will share that cost. Some people will be happy to do that, they will feel it’s worth it in order to regain our sovereignty (whatever that means). They are entitled to that view, but I don’t share it.

7) There’s no doubt that the EU costs money, quite a lot of money, though in fact a very small amount of our national budget as a nation. Brexit campaigners have been very good at making the amount we pay (net) seem considerably larger than it really is, and they have also spent it on lots of different things, when in reality what we save by a brexit can be spent only once, if it all. It might need to be spent on replacing revenues hit by our leaving. It certainly can’t all be spent on, say education, or the NHS, or any other single cause.
 
8) Everyone, from Caesar to Charlemagne to Napoleon to Hitler who has tried to unite Europe has failed. And what does a united Europe do for us anyway? Well, thank you, Boris, for that one. Actually, some of those “united Europes”, in particular the Roman Empire, lasted quite some time and achieved a great deal that was on the whole good. But, leaving that aside, to compare the voluntary union of independent European states with the territorial ambitions of a Napoleon or Hitler was crass in the extreme.

In practice, the EU has helped ensure a European peace that we should be wary of taking for granted - and, while other international bodies have played their part in that, to belittle the contribution of the EU to peace in Europe would be wrong and dangerous. Recent years have witnessed the wholesale transition of the soviet bloc nations of Eastern Europe into thriving democracies; again, the result of changes and movements wider than the EU, but a process in which the EU has certainly played its part, and has significantly encouraged the development of these nations. If the cost of this has been partly borne by us, hasn’t it been a cost worth meeting, and a work worth doing? The EU has significantly improved human rights in ways that have directly impacted on us: the rights of working people have been developed and protected, along with positive impacts on personal and family rights and security.

9) Of course, one thing that is clearly true is that if we leave the EU, that will likely be the end of David Cameron’s political career, and there are many people who might be tempted to say “Hooray” to that. Frankly, though, for all the deficiencies of Mr Cameron, I’d rather him (for now, anyway) than Boris Johnson, his most likely successor.

10) To sum up: I am proud to be British, but I am also able to think of myself as European. I don’t think I have to make a choice between these two, and I think that I want the UK to continue to be involved in this experiment in working together that is the EU. Two things to add to that: (1) I would like the UK to stay united, and I feel increasingly sure it won’t if we brexit; and (2) I don’t buy into the “us versus them” argument peddled by the brexiters - every nation state in the EU remains a nation state, and all have their own concerns, hopes, agendas, which sometimes will be opposed to where we stand, and often will be close to our own views; only on a very few occasions have we not been “on the winning side” in Brussels or Strasbourg. So for me the positives about the EU outweigh the negatives, especially in a world that in many ways is becoming more chaotic, less ordered, less easy to read. A strong and united Europe can be a force for good in this world, and together can make strategic economic and political agreement and common cause with other powers, and provide ordered and principled criticism and opposition to others. I believe that being part of the EU provides a definite boost to our economy, a platform for negotiations that work to our good, and a financial market we can exploit; and that the EU supports a democratic consensus across the continent that we should be wary of taking for granted.

And one final and simple fact: once we’re out of the EU we’re out. There won’t be a way back in. If we remain in, the opportunity to leave in the future if the experiment really isn’t working is still there (whatever Mr Cameron might say about “once in a lifetime”). And that nice Mr Farage will still be there, to make sure we don’t forget it . . .

Legion

A sermon for this Sunday . . .

The New Testament reading we heard this evening was a story of deliverance, the healing of a man possessed not just by one demon but a whole legion of them. It’s a story that raises as many issues as it resolves - for one thing, it leaves me feeling distinctly sorry for the pigs themselves and for the farmers who owned them. I can only hope that their insurance policy covered acts of God. But it’s worth pausing to ask why Luke tells this story. Obviously because it happened and he knew of it; obviously to demonstrate the divine power and authority that rested in Jesus. But also to assure his readers that they, we, are offered the same deliverance and freedom and restoration as was the man possessed.

Now we may find it a bit of a challenge, to identify with the man who was delivered of all those demons. After all, he was so obsessed and possessed that he’d been thrown out of the community. That’s not how we’d see ourselves, but think again: there is a connection. This was a man beset by fear, and fear’s a big thing in every human life. We have lots of fears: we fear not achieving, not being accepted, not finding friends, we fear losing status, losing possessions, and we fear dying and death. That’s just to name a few - there’s a million more besides. So there’s a legion of fears around that could well possessed us, control our lives.

Fear is a boo word, isn’t it? - a threatening word, a bad word. And yet it’s also a positive word in church. As a child in Sunday school that confused me. The Book of Proverbs tells us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” So to “fear God” is a good thing, something Christians are supposed to do. As a minister I’d often edit the word ‘fear’ out of, for example, funeral services, because many of those hearing me wouldn’t understand the theology. Instead of “fearing God” I’d talk of “honouring God.” My version of  Psalm 130, for example, would be “the merciful goodness of the Lord endures for ever on those who honour him”, rather than “on those who fear him”. I wanted to use a more positive and understandable word, but maybe I did lose an important facet of its meaning.

For it may well be a good thing to “fear the Lord,” because that fear takes the place of all the other fears that otherwise control, damage and deface our lives. If we fear the Lord, we have nothing else to fear, all the other fears are shown up for what they are.

So that’s good, if we want it. Notice though in the story we’ve heard tonight, that as the one man is delivered from all those nameless and terrible fears, the community he came from is now so filled with fear that they beg Jesus to leave them. The man we have to call Legion since we’re not told his real name was so beset by fear that he had become terrifying both to himself and to others; but the rest of the villagers were living fairly comfortably with the lesser fears that controlled their lives. They didn’t want them challenged, and so they wanted Jesus to go away and leave them alone. As ever, I find myself asking where I am in this story. Am I like those villagers, not wanting Jesus to challenge and change me?

I remember once walking up a mountain path where at a certain point I had to cross a chasm. It really wasn’t that much more than a decent step from the one side to the other, but when you looked over the edge you could see it was an awfully long way down, fifty feet or more. It was quite scary - I don’t do heights and drops. I was tempted to give into my fears and turn back. One member of our group did just that, in fact. But I’m glad I did dare to cross.

But the villagers in the story didn’t dare. They preferred to live with their fears, so they sent Jesus away. Maybe the reason why Jesus didn’t let the man Legion go with him, but told him to go back home, was so he could persuade the villagers out of their fearfulness. A memory that pops into my mind at this point is our pet rabbit when I was a child. It escaped, and a whole world was open to it, full of grass and dandelion leaves and other good things. We couldn’t catch it. But after a while it went back to its cage, to its hutch, back to the prison in which it felt safe.

Perhaps that’s it, then: fearing God isn’t a safe place to be. Or it doesn’t feel that way. God is always more than we can imagine, his glory more than we can bear. And any attempt we may make to say “This is what God is like” must always fall short, the reality is far beyond us. Even if we say, as St John says, that “God is love” it’s not enough. This story shows us the love of God in action, love that works always to deliver, to set free, to open new ways. But when we speak of love we are limited by our understanding of human love, complicated as it is by liking, by desiring, by possessing and being possessed, by falling in love, all of which are less than the love divine we experience only in flashes.

Religion, sadly, does have a habit of (a) trying to define God, and then (b) falling out about it. Anthony de Mello tells the story of being asked by a blind man to describe the colour green. He told him it was soft, like gentle music being played. The next day another blind man asked him the same question, and this time he told him green was soft, like the feeling of silk or satin. Later he saw the two blind men belting each other over the head with bottles. One was shouting, “Green is soft like music!” while the other was yelling “You’re wrong, green is soft like satin!” It’s on such flimsy foundations that religious argument, dissention, division and even war is built. That’s what happens when we try to define God, rather than honouring and fearing God. In place of the real and mysterious God we substitute a flimsy image of our own devising, a little god to encourage and nurture the legion of all-too-human fears which we allow in to control our lives.

But here is one thing we can say, and agree on as Christians: God is like Jesus. And the God who is like Jesus doesn’t want to load us, with fears and cares and reasons to fight, but simply to love us, with a love that sets us free from fear. So St Paul wrote, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” Elsewhere he says that we are made children of God, with no more cause to fear, that we can put on Christ as a garment, at home and at peace in him.

Left to my own devices, I’m as bad as Legion, reduced to rootling about among the graves, among the stuff of time, the waste of human endeavour, the futility of an existence that’s heading nowhere. I’m held prisoner by both fears and desires: I worry about being found out, I worry about what others might think of me, I worry about whether I match up to expectations, whether I’m liked, successful, I worry about measuring up and fitting in. I need to be stroked, to be patted and praised, to be pleased and entertained. And in all of these I find chains that bind me. Chains we all share.

And sadly it’s true that left to its own devices, religion can be just another of those chains. We can be imprisoned by doctrines, we end up disagreeing over things we ourselves have made important and decisive. We make this or that statement about what God is like, and then fight about them. The truth is that we know nothing about God. God is by definition unknowable.

Religion is pointless unless it encourages and nurtures faith. And faith is misguided unless it is centred on grace and compassion and love. Knowing things about God is not the point; relationship with God is. It is as we call him Father and are simply still and expectant in his presence, it is as we fear him in that way, that he reveals to us that he is like Jesus, and that like Jesus he desires our freedom, our wholeness, and our peace. He offers us a one-to-one relationship with him that then fuels and enables and supports our relationships with one another. The key to that relationship is Christ, and the words he teaches us that begin “Our Father”. Here we have, like the madman by the lake, the chance to break out of our chains, and banish our fears, the demons that beset us. Here we can become aware of our true selves, discovering that we’re loved not because we deserve it or we’ve earned it, but because that is what God does. We are claimed by grace, by the forgiving and healing and restoring power that only Jesus offers. In him, and only in him, do we find our freedom.

Receiving grace, showing love . . .

My sermon, preached today at Marton and Trelystan parish churches, and at Arddleen Tabernacle PCW chapel . . .

Where little has been forgiven, little love is shown. A sentence from this morning’s Gospel reading. Last weekend and into the beginning of the week, before all the storms began, we had the sort of days where you could sit outside, or if not you could keep the doors wide open. Last Sunday I was remembering a communion service I took at the district church of Cristo Redentor, in the San Juan de Miraflores area of Lima in Peru. The service had been due to start at 7 pm, so by about twenty past seven I was beginning to get a bit agitated. “Shouldn’t we have started?” I asked the deacon. “No,” he replied, “there are not enough people here yet!” In fact some of the congregation had gone to an event at the cathedral, and they were a little late getting back. But we began, with the double doors to the little church wide open to the street, and people wandered in and joined us as the service went on.

I mention this because it would have been a bit like that at the house of Simon the Pharisee. The meal to which he’d invited Jesus would have been eaten in a room open to the street outside, and that was partly the point. It would reflect well on Simon, that he’d invited this new preacher to be a guest at his house; so he wanted people to see it, and maybe even to stop and listen.

Having said that, I don’t suppose he’d reckoned with the woman, a woman of dubious character who may have been Mary of Magdala herself, who not only stopped but wandered in; and not only wandered in but began to act in a manner that was certainly not in accord with the strict rules that governed such social occasions. For a woman to be present at all would have been strange. For a woman to have her hair down would be almost scandalous. For a woman to be anointing this man’s feet and washing them with her tears, and drying them with her hair . . . Simon must have been mortified. And how come this great and perceptive teacher hadn’t cottoned on to what kind of woman this was?

Not all the Pharisees were fierce opponents of Jesus, not at this stage in his ministry anyway. Some of them were very interested to know more about this new teacher, and Simon may have been one of them - in which case, he must have been quite perplexed. Or maybe he had invited Jesus in the hope of trapping him into saying something heretical or subversive, in which case he would have been rubbing his hands together with glee. Either way, he had a lesson to learn.

I came across a quote the other day, which reads: “Be like Jesus. Spend enough time with sinners to ruin your reputation with religious people.” Well, this story is a good example of that. My theory, for what it’s worth, is that in fact Simon the Pharisee’s eyes were opened, and he became a follower, a disciple - but that’s based on nothing more than the fact that we are told his name.

Friends give. Two words that express a fundamental truth. It’s been well said that to have a friend you must be a friend: to surrender yourself to the other person. I suppose there are degrees to that surrender, and therefore degrees of friendship; not every friend is a best friend. Simon’s initial invitation to Jesus hadn’t been one of friendship. It was all about Simon, all about Simon looking good, being the first to get this interesting new teacher into his house. He’d done very little to welcome Jesus and to make sure he was comfortable - it was all about getting on with the show.
And then in comes this woman, this notorious woman. “Simon,” says Jesus, patiently but firmly, “she could not and would not be doing this unless she really wanted to get rid of her old life and start again. More than that, her heartfelt prayer for forgiveness has been heard, and answered. What she is doing is her thank-offering for what she has been given.” The unsaid coda to that is, perhaps, “Simon, you have been forgiven little - not because you don’t need forgiveness, but because you haven’t asked for forgiveness.”

And therein is Simon’s wake-up call, which perhaps he heard. Being a Pharisee, he was totally hooked on keeping every detail of the Law, a Law that had been broken down into many many detailed rules, one to cover every action, every decision, every event. To keep the Law is to be pure, to have merit, to be worthy of heaven; or is it? The way of the Pharisees had consigned God to a bit part, a spectator’s role. All God had to do was to look on and approve, as these holy people kept his Law to perfection.

Jesus tended to do better with sinners, people who knew how horrible they were and didn’t want to be like that any more. The sheer abandonment with which the woman anointed Jesus and wept over his feet must have caused scandal and consternation to those who looked on, but she was giving, simply giving, in a way Simon hadn’t managed to do at all. And that maybe he learned from.

Some years ago I went with friends to a meeting in the quite palatial setting of Darlington Street Methodist Church in Wolverhampton, to hear the American evangelist Nicky Cruz. You may well know his story, but briefly, Nicky Cruz was born in 1938 in Puerto Rico, and at the age of about fifteen sent to live with family in New York. He soon ran away from home and established his credentials within the gang culture of the day, becoming the leader of the notorious Mau Mau gang. A young preacher named David Wilkerson had felt called to take the Gospel to these gangs, and he spoke to Nicky Cruz, whose reaction to this attempt at conversion was a very serious threat to kill David Wilkerson. But the preacher didn’t give up, and Nicky Cruz came to realise just how fundamentally he hated the life he was living, and yet he was trapped in that life and not able to escape. The patience and persistence of David Wilkerson led eventually to Nicky Cruz and several of his gang members being converted. At the age of 77, Cruz still travels the world telling his story, and working for Christ.

David Wilkerson, who died in a car crash five years ago, told the story in one of the best selling Christian books of the last century, “The Cross and the Switchblade”, while Nicky Cruz also wrote his own account, “Run, Baby, Run”. There are many stories like this, of people who came to know Jesus in situations of degradation and despair and self-hatred, who perhaps couldn’t know Jesus until they reached the point where they could fall no further. John Newton’s greatest hymn, “Amazing Grace” tells the same story. As does the woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee.

I sometimes wonder why it is that we as Church fail in mission. The words we have are words of life and truth, so how is that every heart is not instantly persuaded? It’s not a new problem. Jesus told the parable of the sower in response to it - the seed still has to be sown, in order that some of it at least can grow and be fruitful. So maybe we fail because we don’t speak, seed isn’t being sown as it should be. But it’s also true that in a world that is as comfortable as ours is, here in the safe and wealthy west, no-one much is looking for forgiveness, no-one much is aware of need. A nod to God from time to time is as much as we need, if that.

When David Wilkerson first told Nicky Cruz that Jesus loved him, the response he had back was a threat to kill him, which would not have been the first murder performed by the Mau Mau gang. Wilkerson’s response was to say that if his body was cut up into a thousand pieces and laid out across the street, each piece would still love Nicky in the name of Jesus. There is true Gospel fervour; there is a person in whom Jesus was alive. The spirit more of the woman who just came in and gave than of Simon the Pharisee who - up until that point anyway - really wanted mostly to look good himself, and so was careful to ration what he gave. So where are we in this story, where am I? Challenged, I hope. Let me just leave you with two lines from a song that came into my mind: “The Spirit lives to set us free - walk in the light.”

Notes from the Feeders - Jackdaws

When Jackdaws get onto our fat ball feeder, as they have in some force today, they can strip it in no time. There's plenty of food around for the birds just now, and I'll keep the sunflower seed feeders going, but I think it's time to close the fat ball feeder down for a couple of weeks. I've nothing (much) against jackdaws, but when they come in gangs the smaller birds are driven off and don't get a look in. And I'm not made of money . . .

A friend mentioned to me today that he has a real rarity on his patch . . . very exciting news. Sadly, I can say no more, about either what, or where. My lips have to be sealed. At some time in the future, when it is safe to do so, I hope I may be able to post a picture.

It's always interesting to see birds ganging up to mob possible threat species. Today, travelling down to Newtown, I saw jackdaws (again) furiously mobbing a lazily circling red kite. The kite would probably have presented little real threat, but they clearly weren't going to take any chances.

Notes from the Feeders - Oystercatchers

Our garden is very busy indeed just now. Greenfinches were feeding their young yesterday, and there are a couple of very querulous blackbird youngsters about. This morning a couple of young robins turned up; they seemed already quite adept at feeding themselves. Our blue tits are no longer flying back and forth to the nest box, so I imagine the young there have fledged, though we missed the event. The parents are visiting the fat ball feeder and then flying back into the woodland behind, so that I think is where the youngsters are, probably in the ivy that grows thickly around an old telegraph pole there.

I had to go down to the livestock market this morning, and was interested to find a pair of oystercatchers strolling about as if they owned the place. They seemed totally unfazed by our presence, and made no attempt to take flight. I also found a large piece of oystercatcher egg shell. Was this brought by one of the parent birds from a nest site? Is that nest site actually within the livestock market, or perhaps by the river which is not far away? Or was the eggshell evidence of a failed nesting attempt? Sadly, that is not unusual, oystercatchers being ground nesters and often choosing rather vulnerable situations.

Later, also at the market, I glimpsed a painted lady butterfly. These cannot survive a British winter (or for that matter, winter anywhere much in Europe), so they migrate to us from North Africa. Numbers are very variable, but sometimes you can get a "painted lady summer". Maybe this year will be one. I walked along by the river, where sand martins were busy, then back along the canal towpath, accompanied by damselflies throughout.

Nature Notes - Glorious June

Summer turned up early this year, at least in this part of the country - not so good in London, or, indeed, in Paris as I write these words, but some remarkable early June weather just here. Whether it will last into July, and perhaps we have the barbecue summer someone always promises, remains to be seen.

But it’s probably one of the reasons why our garden has been so busy. I’ve never seen so many birds, and they’ve been eating me out of house and home. That’s partly because the local blackbirds have learned the trick of perching on our fat ball feeder, and, boy, can they get through it! They look quite ungainly, and flap their wings a lot, but they manage it. As do the local house sparrows from over the road. They don’t normally come into our back garden much, but they love the fat balls.

I decided to not fill that feeder for a few days, just to quieten things down and encourage some of the regular users to look elsewhere for food. But when I did refill them, it took no time at all for the birds to return. I had a nuthatch on the feeder by the time I got to my back door, and when I came out again a few minutes later with a cup of coffee, the blackbirds and house sparrows were there in force.

The fine weather has also increased the number of insects in our garden. These include a lot of bees, I’m glad to see. We’ve added a second and rather larger insect hotel to our garden this year, with a combination of bamboo pipes, wooded bits and pieces and shavings that will provide suitable habitats for a range of insects, some bee species among them. Our first one was well used last year.

Ann found an unusual ladybird the other day, and imprisoned it under an upturned glass so we could identify it. Perhaps it was one of the harlequin ladybirds, a large immigrant species that is - sadly - feeding on some of our native ladybirds. But no, this rather attractive orange ladybird with yellow spots is a leaf-eating ladybird which seems to lack an English name, but rejoices in the Latin name of Halyzia 16-guttata. It has sixteen spots (you might have worked that out), and is associated with woodland, especially if there are sycamore trees. My book tells me that it was thought to be rare in the UK; not here, it isn’t. I quickly found another two in our garden.

We’ve also had quite a few bright orange-red cardinal beetles, which are quite free flying and regularly visit flowers. They look at first like flying ladybirds, before you realise that this is a much longer insect. The larvae live under the bark of fallen trees.

And then, on a particularly warm and sunny day, we were visited by a ruby-tailed wasp. This is a small insect only about a centimetre in length, but remarkable in colour - the body is a vivid metallic blue, with the abdomen a bright ruby red. There are several closely related species of this wasp, whose larva is parasitic on other wasps and solitary bees. More insects next month, if the fine weather keeps up!

The Widow of Nain

A sermon for this Sunday . . .

This morning's short Gospel reading shows us Jesus engaged in a very real situation of life and death. As he and his disciples enter the small town of Nain, they encounter all the drama and tears of a funeral procession. And what happens next causes such a stir that the story was spread far and wide.

Some scholars think the boy wasn’t really dead, but in some sort of catatonic trance so that he appeared dead. So what, is my response: what difference would that really make to this miracle event? The important thing about this remarkable story is this: that in how he reacts, Jesus shows us something vital about the nature of God. Perhaps we can trace in this story some sense of what St John meant when he wrote that though no-one has ever seen God, Jesus has made him known among us: as God's only Son, the nearest to the Father's heart.

That's a lovely phrase: "the nearest to his Father's heart" - but many of the philosophers of those times would have been shocked at the very idea of a God with a heart capable of feeling. Their argument went like this: to feel for someone, to feel happy or sad or sorry for them, is to allow that person to influence you, and if you are influenced by someone then that person is somehow in a higher place than you are. Put simply, they are in that small sense greater than you. But no-one can be greater than God, not even for a moment. To feel emotion is an expression of human vulnerability, but God can’t be vulnerable. Emotion is weakness; God cannot feel it.

That’s how some of the Greek philosophers thought. But the Gospel stories provide a very different view, of a God who is like Jesus. And Jesus is vulnerable, he feels for others, and in this chance encounter with human grief and tragedy we see him react with compassion and sympathy to a woman in need, we see him feeling something of her pain.

For Luke tells us that Jesus was "moved to the very depths of his being" by what he encountered there. That’s what the original Greek implies - Luke uses the very strongest word possible, to describe how Jesus reacted to the child and his mother. So this is what we Christians believe God is like. We can’t believe in a God who is apathetic and unfeeling, because in Jesus we see God’s compassion and mercy the divine heart allowing itself to be vulnerable to our tears and our needs, as the son of God takes the road that will lead to the cross.  The God of Jesus is the God whose whole nature is love.

Our other reading this morning shows us Paul getting things wrong about God. In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul writes about his young self. He was Saul in those days, and he was the zealot, the keenest student in his class, wanting so much to serve God, but serving a wrong idea of God. Not the impassive, immovable God of the Greek Stoics, but God the law-giver and rule-maker. Well, that is God: he does indeed give law and make rules, but he does it with  purposeful intent:  the commandments he gives us are intended to ensure and enable our love for one another as his people.

Sadly, for many of the Pharisees - the strict sect among which Paul had been educated and trained - respect for the Law had become a "rules for rules' sake" understanding of what God wanted from his people. The Law was given to help us love and serve and care for one another; but for them the Law was about dividing those in God's favour who kept the Law, from those outside God's favour who didn’t or couldn’t keep the Law. What might they have made of the woman at Nain? They might well have looked for a reason for the tragedy: someone must have broken God’s Law, that’s why the woman and her son to have earned God's disfavour. But Jesus simply responded to the woman's need; her plight had touched his heart.

So compassion didn’t have much of a place in Paul's life while he was still Saul, before he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus. He was full of zeal for the Lord, he wanted to serve him, he was striving for holiness, but none of this connected in any way to the heart of God; and the only way God could break through was to strike him down and leave him blind; only then could the eyes of his heart be opened.

But the Damascus road changed Paul from a persecutor of the Church into its greatest apostle. And in the Church he helped to build rules still exist, for you have to have them in any human organisation, but rules and laws need to be doing what they’re supposed to do: helping people live together in community - with compassion and service, in a way that will be a witness to the world of the God of love.

If only that were true of the Church as we see it! Too often the Church is closer to Saul the Pharisee than to Paul the apostle of Christ. If we get too hooked on rules and laws and traditions and rituals, love gets squeezed out of the picture.  Our intentions may be good, and like young zealous Saul we want to serve, but we can lose touch with the heart of the one who calls us. He is the God we see in Jesus, the God who makes himself vulnerable to us, and offers himself in love for us, the God who feels to the very depths of his heart our need and our weakness, and our rejection and scorn.

Many years ago I was taught in Sunday school that you must “seek God in the morning, if you would find him through the day". Everything we do begins with our seeking the heart of God, and allowing him to reach us and to speak to us, making ourselves vulnerable to his heart of compassion. Ministry based in this will be true to the mind of Christ: loving, compassionate; and with a heart to be moved by human need.

Notes from the Feeders - Siskins

Last winter was a good siskin winter - here anyway - and at times we had thirty or forty in the garden. They are lovely birds to watch, very agile and quite attractive, small finches not much more than blue tit size and just as good at making use of the feeders. They were with us from soon after Christmas, and then later in the winter they were joined by a few lesser redpolls. We saw our last redpolls a month ago, but a few siskins have stayed around, just as they did last year. We probably have a couple of pairs, and they were around this morning. Last year they certainly must have bred close by, as just for a while we had young birds. By the end of the summer any siskins we might have had have moved on, and we don't get to see them again in the garden until winter is well under way.

These were actually photographed in our previous garden, just up the road . . .

Notes from the Feeders - Youngsters

As well as the young blackbirds (see yesterday's post), we've had a few other youngsters around. On Sunday, for example, the garden was filled all of a sudden with young coal tits, and we've also had young great tits examining the feeders. No young robins yet, though the pair we have are very busy ferrying food to somewhere not too far away.  The only nest I know the location of is the blue tit nest in our nest box not far from the feeders. The parent birds are frantically trying to gather large amounts of food, and are back and forth constantly, so there's clearly a large and growing brood! The birds fly straight from the box into the wood (or sometimes to the feeders), with their characteristic looping flight. It's rare that they fly straight back, though, preferring to perch on a cable nearby or on the lamp fixed to the corner of that wall, and have a good look round before nipping into the box. In another week or so the garden will be inundated with young birds, which need to learn quickly the survival skills they need, as life out there can be dangerous, and many will not live through their first year.

Notes from the Feeders - Blackbirds

Among our feeders is one we stock with fatball pieces (Peckish, £2.99, "Home Bargains"). During the winter they are visited a lot by woodpeckers, nuthatches and blackcaps, among others, We've left the feeder in place for the summer, and at present it's a hotspot for blackbirds. We seem to have a remarkably high number of blackbirds in our garden, with the males chasing each other about with furious intent. In fact there are no females to see just now, so I suppose most of the incubation work, as well as nest-building, is left to them.

The blackbirds used to hang around under the feeders pecking up whatever was dropped by those birds nimble enough to use them, but they've now learned to use the fatball feeder themselves, managing to perch there long enough to get what they need. They don't do it in a very stylish way, and there's plenty of flapping of wings, but they manage. Just now they've been joined by some pretty well-grown first-brood juveniles, all spotty and full of attitude, but these haven't to my knowledge tried to perch on the feeders as yet. Occasional jackdaws are able to perch quite confidently on the feeder, despite their larger size, generally staying long enough to wheedle out a big chunk they can fly off with. This morning the song thrush had a go for the first time that I've seen, not very successfully.

The great spotted woodpeckers continue to visit, and the fatballs have now attracted regular visits from the house sparrows that normally live over the road and don't often come to us. There are other feeders nearer, including some we have in our front garden, so either some of those are now left empty or else the fatballs are specially attractive to them. Anyway, from the regularity of their flying visits I suspect we're helping to raise a fair number of sparrow chicks. Last summer we had a visit or two from a family party of starlings - not a bird we normally see on our patch - with the parents teaching the young birds how to do it. Between them they cleared half the food in one sitting - but after a couple or three days they moved on.

Notes from the Feeders - Corvids

It's time I had another go at writing at least occasional notes from our garden feeders. As it happens, there's quite a lot to report just now, so here goes with yesterday's news:

The woods to the back of us contain magpies, jackdaws, carrion crows and a pair of ravens. No jays. sadly - we had them two years ago, but I've not seen or heard one since. Rooks pass overhead now and again, but it's very seldom we see them here. As far as our resident members of the crow family are concerned, though, yesterday was quite fraught. Clearly there are young birds still in the nest - somewhere not too far from us they are being quite vocal. So parents are being protective, and they probably need to be.

So as I was sitting in the garden, a sudden commotion caught my attention, and I looked up to see a carrion crow, a jackdaw and a magpie all involved in aerial combat. Quite a battle was going on. The magpie peeled off and flew back into the wood, toward the sound of what I take to be young magpies in the nest. The other two birds flew on, with the jackdaw continuing to harry the carrion crow. Whether the magpie and jackdaw were acting together or the magpie was seeing off both birds I am not able to judge.

Later, as I cradled an evening glass of tempranillo on my veranda, there came another rather more gutteral commotion. Looking up again, this time I saw a carrion crow in hot pursuit of a raven. They were soon out of sight, but the exchange of words continued for some time. The wooded area behind us is none too large, and none of these birds has a clean slate when it comes to predating on eggs and chicks, so I imagine they are often too close to each other for comfort.

Time and the Kingdom

There’s always time, I tell myself. I spent a full day last week trying and failing to deal with the papers on my desk, the list of people I needed to phone or visit, the bills I should have paid, the lawn that needed mowing, stuff in the garden I’d not quite got round to planting out yet. It didn’t all get done, not by a long way. But maybe I’ll have time to catch up tomorrow. And if things are a bit behind at the moment, I’m OK, there are some windows in my diary next week. Stuff may have built up a bit, but I’m sure it’ll all get cleared, given time.

But maybe there isn’t always time. I need to spend a bit of time looking at priorities, learning to use my time better. Last Wednesday those of us looking at the Lord’s Prayer were thinking about the bit that goes ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.’ But how seriously do we consider those words when we say them? Bishop Stephen Cotterell, in the introduction to the week two session on the Lord’s Prayer, said quite bluntly I thought that we shouldn’t think of praying for anything we’re not also committing ourselves to work for. I guess that applies to the Lord’s Prayer itself as much as any of the other prayers we make. So what is the kingdom and how do we work for it to come?

One day we shall all feast in the kingdom of God. So it’s something to look forward to, then. It’ll happen one day, all in God’s good time. Yes, but not just that. When Jesus talks about the kingdom he’s talking about now, about something urgent, about a priority for our deciding and for our living.

While we might think of kingdoms in geographical terms, as having acreage and borders and boundaries, in Biblical terms a kingdom is wherever the king is honoured and served, without much regard to geography. So the kingdom of God is close to us wherever acts of love put right what is wrong, or heal what’s hurt, or forgive what is amiss: wherever the majesty of the  King of Love is honoured, wherever his will is done.

It may find its fulfilment in heaven, and beyond that gate we call the death of the body, but the people of God are to proclaim the kingdom of God here and now, and that’s not just a matter of words but of deeds, of how we live in community together, and how we reach out to those who need to know God’s love. And if there is feasting in the kingdom to come, we don’t get an entry to that feast until we respond in the here and now to the invitation Jesus gives us.

Statistics published last week state that across the UK 48% of the population now defines itself as having no faith, up from, I think, 25% at the last census. An atheist friend of mine was very quick to celebrate that on Facebook, noting that the various sorts of Christian added together came to less than that. Interestingly, virtually all the increase in those with (quote) no faith seemed to come from a decline in those who labelled themselves C of E. It’s a big decline, but mostly made up of people who used to put “C of E” without really thinking, and who never actually went to church. It may even have to do with how the question was phrased. But it’s still a concern.

Christians do get labelled as boring, as spoilsports, and as outdated, illiberal, Bible bashers who are out of touch with the modern world. Given the way the Church sometimes acts, it’s not always easy to mount a convincing defence against that sort of claim. But when I look at the Jesus of our Gospels, surely to follow this man shouldn’t ever mean to be dull or boring, shouldn’t ever mean not enjoying life, or being closed-minded and illiberal. But it is about getting things right in life.

I love the encounter in this morning’s Gospel reading. The centurion was a man who knew authority when he saw it. He had a quality of faith many of us could learn from. “Just say the word,” he says to Jesus. Just say the word, and I know my servant will be cured.

That is kingdom faith. Expressed by a man who knew about holding authority, giving orders, establishing priorities, getting things done. Which brings me back to where I started, with my untidy desk and untidy life, and my list of things I’ve not got round to yet. Hidden in all of that is a bit of procrastination, if I’m honest. It’s easy to find excuses for putting off the important but challenging things, by doing all the easy and trivial stuff first. It leaves you feeling good because you’ve been busy; except - what’s really been achieved?

I remember this helpful illustration from a training day with the theme of managing time and priorities. The speaker took a big glass jar and a pile of pebbles, and he filled the jar with pebbles. ‘How much more can I get in?’ he asked. ‘Nothing,’ we replied; but of course he could. He got some gravel, and managed to get quite a lot of that in between the pebbles. Well, we knew the jar was full then - except that he got some sand, and there was room for that too, in between the gravel. And then he took a jug of water, and he was able to pour that in too.

‘What does that prove?’ he asked, and we decided he’d proved that you can get more into a jar than you might think - so maybe also more into a day, or more into a diary. ‘That may be true,’ he told us, ‘but the real message from the jar is about how to get so much in: how to establish priorities. To start the other way round, beginning with the little stuff, would leave me not getting a single one of the big stones into the jar.’

I’m exactly the wrong person to lecture anyone on priorities, even from the cosy perch of retirement. My desk is still untidy and the most important thing is whatever’s on top of the pile, or in the forefront of my mind, at the time. Unless it’s something difficult or tedious like my tax return, for example, in which case I’ll probably find something else to do first.

Remember the man Jesus asked to follow him who would have done, except that he had five yoke of oxen to try out first? What would be the equivalent of that for you and me? Well, at least we’re here, and that’s a start! We’ve been praying for the evangelisation of our nation, and that’s an urgent and important prayer. But that can only begin with the evangelisation of me, with me  getting my priorities right. Jesus says, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God.’ Not, seek it when you’ve got the time, when you’ve got the other stuff sorted. Actually, the way you do all the other stuff begins with seeking the kingdom, begins with our saying yes to God, allowing him to Lord in all of our life.

Kingdom living is about getting our priorities right in life - doing the right things, and doing things in the right order. Get the pebbles into your jar first. And, remember, kingdom people are invited to a feast, to something that should be good, of which this table in church of a Sunday is a foretaste and a promise. The  mission of the Church requires of us this: that we are eager ourselves to live kingdom lives, allowing God to reign, and then, in acts and words that reflect and channel his love, eager to pass on his invitation to the world.

What We Do Not Know

The poem I posted yesterday, still in process of revision (even the title has changed!)


Early morning, lakeside:
a lone fisherman steers his dugout across the waves,
returning from his night’s work. He sees the cormorants
drying their wings on the rocks just offshore.
He sees the scientists already at work at their station on the beach;
sunlight reflects from the rotating blades of their apparatus.

Mostly these days, his is the only boat. It is a longer night than it used to be,
and harder work, and further from shore.
The scientists watch him from the shoreline. They know
how short the time is, and how much they still do not know.
In one place storms level trees and flood the land,
in another, fertile valleys are turned to desert, as the good soil blows like sand.
Tiny dots of life in the oceans that feed the great whales,
are part as well of what makes our climate work,
part of a chain that may be breaking. The stuff we do,
the stuff we empty into the water, maybe on the other side of the world,
is changing the physics and chemistry of the oceans,
and therefore their biology too,
while the plastic bits and bags we throw away
pile up on the beaches of remote Pacific islands,
and in the guts of turtles, too.

Each dying turtle takes a part of our planet with it;
and if the planet is dying,
then be sure that we shall be dying too.
Standing as we do on the shoreline of discovery,
too often we choose to look the other way, with
our souls replaced by microchips, and our selves encased in chrome;
we must not forget the sober, essential truth
that we ourselves link into the same chain as turtles.

Early morning, lakeside: all the fisherman knows
is that the fish are no longer what they were, or where they were;
the morning sun ignites as always a rosy glow on the lakeside hills,
but let us not be fooled; things that used to be balanced
are in balance no longer.

Zerena

Early morning, lakeside:

a lone fisherman steers his dugout across the waves,

returning from his night’s work, passing the rock where

three cormorants are drying their wings in the early sun.

The fishermen sees that the scientists are already at work

at their station on the beach,

sunlight reflecting from the rotating blades of their apparatus.

These days, his is the only boat. It’s a longer night than it used to be,

harder work, and further from shore;

but the fish are still there, for now, if you know how to do it,

if you know where to look.

The scientists watch him from the shoreline. They know

there is far too much we do not understand. Winds and waves

still confound us, ocean currents, the mix of warm and cold waters;

in one place storms level and flood the land,

in another, fertile valleys dry into desert, and the good soil blows like sand.

All of it caused by the unexpected flutter

of a butterfly in some rain forest clearing -

or it might as well be, for all we know.  And time is short.

The scientists know that we do need to know. We are discovering how

tiny forms of life in the oceans feed not only whales but the climate of our planet;

but what feeds them, and what allows them to thrive?

Or, more to the point, what stops them thriving? The stuff we do,

the stuff we empty into the water, maybe on the other side of the world,

is changing the physics and the chemistry of the oceans,

and therefore their biology too.

Meanwhile, plastic bits and bags are piling up

on the beaches of remote Pacific islands,

and in the guts of turtles, too.

And if the planet is dying,

then be sure that we shall be dying with it.

Standing as we do on the shoreline of discovery,

too often we choose to look the other way, with

our souls replaced by microchips, and our selves encased in chrome;

we must not forget the sober, essential truth

that we ourselves are part of it all.

Early morning, lakeside: all the fisherman knows

is that the fish are no longer what they were, or where they were;

and that, although the morning sun ignites the same rose glow as always

on the hills above the lake, things that used to be balanced

are in balance no longer.

(Note on Wednesday evening  -  Thanks for comments . . . this is still in the early stages of writing, and has a little way to go I think before it's fully ready to be unleashed on the world!)

God's "Yes"

A sermon for Trinity Sunday . . .

Trinity Sunday sermons: never easy. I never was much good at either numbers or theology. But here’s an idea I came up with a few years ago for a family service on Trinity Sunday. It’s about names for God, and the first of those names is for God as Creator and Father and King. We read how God in the Old Testament formed the children of Abraham into a nation, leading them by Moses across the wilderness to the land he’d promised. His names are holy and not to be spoken out loud, but in scripture we find his name written down as the Hebrew letters YHWH. Our Bibles express that as “The Lord”, but the name itself was translated Jehovah, or for modern scholars Yahweh. So our first name for God is Yahweh, and I’ll write down a Y for Yahweh..

The Gospels of our New Testament show us another image of God: God born among us and living alongside us, God known and revealed in the man Jesus of Nazareth. Prophets of old had said that God would send his chosen one, his Messiah, to set his people free, and one name they gave him was Emmanuel, which means “God with us”. So let’s take that as our second name for God, and write the letter E.

Perhaps you can see where this idea is headed. We now look beyond the New Testament and into the history of this thing called Church, born on the Day of Pentecost. We think of God inspiring, directing, enlivening, and enthusing his people today; God present among us as wind and fire. We might sing “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.” Jesus told his disciples that though he was going from them, they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth. So our third name for God is Spirit, giving us the letter S.

It won’t have escaped your notice that those three letters together give us the word ‘Yes’. For me, God is the ultimate “yes”. His yes in Creation brings all things into being. His yes to the way of the cross lifts from us the burden of our sins. His continued yes to all of us inspires and enthuses and enables his Church in mission and service.

I could stop there, but bear with me as I say a bit more about this great little word yes. Yes is a releasing word that allows all kinds of possibilities. Contrast it with no: no is a shutting down word, a word to deny potential, a word that refuses to dream dreams. Yes may be a risky word, not all the possibilities it allows are going to work; but the God we believe in is a God who takes that risk. This is God saying yes to us even though we may make mistakes, even though we may go against his will, even though we may even deny his existence. For me God is that yes that releases us to be ourselves, that allows us an independence we can use or misuse.

Yes is a relationship word. Christianity, Judaism and Islam share a history and a scripture, and we worship the same God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. All three faiths speak firmly of the one true God, and the Islamic statement that ‘God is one, and beside him there is no other’ would be echoed both by Jews and Christians. But we Christians wish to say more than that about God; we wish to say that God is not only one, but also three. That’s a difficult concept to understand: how can God be three and one all at the same time? St Patrick used the shamrock leaf as an image of Trinity; others have used images like ice, water and steam, three forms of the same substance.

But no image of that sort can ever be enough; all of them fall short of what Trinity tries to express about God. Anything that tries to define God tends to fit God into a box, but the real God isn’t boxable or safe, and can’t be contained. That’s why the name of God in the Old Testament is never pronounced: to name God would be to claim to control God, but God is not to be controlled. Christians can sometimes seem to be saying that the doctrine of the holy Trinity somehow sums God up, is somehow the last word on God: not true - nothing we think or say can define the indefinable God. All the doctrine of the Trinity can ever be is our attempt to say what it is God has revealed of himself to us. We encounter him in these three distinct ways, as Father, as Son, as Holy Spirit: in three different ways of saying ‘yes’. And Father is not separate from Son, and Son is not separate from Spirit: that consistent ‘yes’ is one God. And Father, Son and Holy Spirit form a moving trinity of relationship, in which all three are fully and deeply interdependent. As Jesus says to Philip: ‘Do you not know that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?’

God reveals himself to us as Trinity; and in doing so God invites us to participate in that relationship. Jesus prayed that his people might be one, their unity a witness to the world of the eternal commonwealth of love that we call God in Trinity. We are one in Christ, we belong to one another as we belong to God-in-Trinity; our witness to the God who is Trinity must itself be Trinitarian - a oneness that transcends human barriers, that transcends the boundary between church and chapel, between here and the other side of the world, between wealth and poverty, black or white, language, culture and tradition.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York called for a wave of prayer with mission in mind, between Ascension and Pentecost but onwards too into this long season of the Sundays after Trinity that begins today. Trinity speaks of three persons and one God, a dynamic interplay of love in which Father, Son, Spirit belong together, and each one is that wonderful word yes expressed to us and to the world in its own distinctive way. Reflecting on what they had seen and known in Jesus, the first apostles said (in the words here of Paul) that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” Reflecting on what they had been gifted with on the first Christian Pentecost, the apostles knew that, though their Lord Jesus no longer walked alongside them, his Spirit was with them always - again, as Paul said, “We have the mind of Christ.”

Today on Trinity Sunday we celebrate all of that; and, yes, we rehearse a theological theory, a brave attempt to define the God who is one and yet more than one. More than that, though, we affirm God’s ‘yes’ to us and to the world, his yes that sets us free and empowers us. Our mission prayer should be that people encounter for themselves the yes of God to them. And that we may also offer our own ‘yes’ to God in response to God’s yes to us: yes, we shall live together as God’s people, yes, we shall do our best to build and maintain relationships that bear witness to God’s self-giving and creative love, and yes, we shall both serve and proclaim the one we honour as Father and Son and Holy Spirit, as the three persons, three revelations, who together are love in action, the one true God.

More On Pecking Orders

Nature Notes for the month ahead . . .

A couple of months ago I wrote about the way our local robins seem to target dunnocks, frequently flying the width of our garden to see one off. Robins are feisty little birds and often quite combative toward other species, but the special zeal with which they chase off dunnocks probably has to do with similarities in terms of habitat and food.

But I have noted similar battles between a number of other closely related species. Blue tits, for example, which come a long way down the garden pecking order, will frequently fly at visiting coal tits and chase them away. To some degree size does matter in the garden, and blue tits are among the smallest birds to visit our feeders, losing out to some degree to larger species like greenfinches or for that matter great tits. However, they are persistent, and of course they are quite acrobatic little birds, able to exploit openings some of the other larger species  aren’t agile enough to use to their advantage.

Coal tits are just as agile, but don’t seem to do as well at all. I wonder why. They are about the same size as a blue tit, and I imagine they have a very similar diet. Coal tits are very definitely at the bottom of the pile as regards bird feeder pecking order, and only manage to sneak in when other birds have their backs turned. Their strategy is to zoom in, grab a seed and zoom away - and in fact they will hide most of these seeds for later use.

Blue tits show a particular antipathy toward their close relative the coal tit, and I’ve observed them - again, like the robin - flying almost the width of the garden to tackle a coal tit and turn it away from the feeder. I presume once again that it’s because they have such similar needs, in terms of diet and habitat. They can’t help but be competitors.

Recently, I’ve also noticed a similar interspecific conflict between blackbirds and song thrushes. Song thrushes have declined considerably in recent years, so I was pleased to find one beginning to visit us regularly through the latter part of the winter just gone, and into this spring, when in fact there is clearly a pair - good news! But a song thrush has only to hop onto our lawn for it to be attacked by blackbirds. Closely related species, again, with song thrushes a little smaller than blackbirds, and more specific as regards diet.

There are many more blackbirds than song thrushes in our gardens, and it may be that - if what I’ve observed is replicated nationwide - song thrush decline might have to some degree have been assisted by this blackbird/song thrush conflict, even if the primary reasons for decline lie elsewhere as I expect they do. Blackbirds will anyway be assisted by being more generalist feeders. Some have even managed to use our suet feeder. They don’t do it very well, wings flap wildly and then the bird sort of falls off back to the ground - but they do manage to win their morsel of food.

A sermon for Pentecost

Thomas Alva Edison once said, “Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.” In other words, it’s a general truth that the initial breakthrough is only the first step in a long process.

You could look at the first Christian Pentecost as a crucial breakthrough: suddenly, as if out of nowhere, comes the gift of the Holy Spirit. The story in the Acts of the Apostles attempts to describe the indescribable; how can you describe being clothed with power from on high, and filled and over-filled with joy and delight? You can’t. Luke speaks of wind and flame - mysterious and uncontrollable forces. People saw the disciples out on the street and thought they must be drunk on the new wine of Pentecost, which is one of Jewish harvest festivals. And maybe in a way, new wine was indeed the cause of it all - just not the new wine the scoffers in the crowd imagined, instead an experience beyond language, for the disciples and also for those who saw and heard them.

But this immense spiritual high was only a first step. Jesus had told his disciples that the Spirit of truth would lead them into all truth. So Pentecost is not only an event, it’s also a process, a process of discovery and enlightenment, a process of apostolic formation. We may experience the Spirit as either fire or dove, and both are valid. The Spirit can be  the tempest wind that throws the windows open, but she can equally be the gentle breeze that quietly breathes new life into our hearts. The Spirit is God's personal touch upon us, and that’s different for each different person.

Holy Spirit may come as storm wind or as gentle breeze, but the Spirit always comes to bring power and joy. And the Spirit  stirs up those gifts within us which form a foundation for building the Church: not only joy but also love, peace, and things like patience, kindness, self-control and gentleness that enable us each to be Christ-like ourselves and to be Christ-centred together as a community of faith.  

On that first Christian Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell in full force upon the disciples; but their joyful preaching that day was still only a first step. They had much still to learn, to discover, and to experience. It took time to realise that this gift could be received by those who were not Jews as well as those who were. When you read the Acts of the Apostles you discover a community founded in the Spirit that all the way through the book is still receiving the Spirit, and still learning what it means to have God present in power among them and within them. Still learning too just what their Lord was calling them to do in and for the world. That first Day of Pentecost didn’t answer all their questions in one go, wonderful and life-changing though it was. In fact it probably raised a few new ones.

Simple statement: the Church must continue to be Pentecostal. The Church was founded in the Spirit, and it must be always open to the Spirit. That word Pentecostal usually describes a particular and quite narrow definition of Church; for me that’s never enough. To be Pentecostal is not to be some particular style of Christian, but just to be Christian, open to the God who isn’t only out there, in heaven or in some mysterious place of glory, nor is he only in here, in the pages of scripture or of history. To be Pentecostal is to believe in God in us, in God's empowering presence in my own life and yours. In my case it hasn’t ever been quite the rushing wind and tongues of fire that we read of in Acts chapter 2. But I certainly can think back to times when I’ve felt God’s presence and power (times too, if I'm honest, when I’ve tried to push him away). 

I do thank God for the times when his love has broken through the protective shell I’ve erected of selfishness or fear; these are times when the penny drops, when eyes are opened, when I've understood what God is calling out of me more deeply and clearly. So you could say that the work of the Holy Spirit is to bridge that decisive gap, the eighteen inches or so that separate mind from heart. Billy Graham once called those eighteen inches the most important mission journey.

Jesus said that the Spirit of truth will lead us into all truth. This isn't the truth of book-learning or lecture halls, this is the truth of emotional engagement, truth not only known in mind but also felt like a fire in one's heart; and Pentecost is a celebration of the truth that possesses us, and claims us as its own, a celebration of God in breakthrough mode, empowering a little group of disciples to begin the mission that would be worldwide, and that continues to this day. 

As long as the Church remains prayerfully open to this wild and unpredictable Holy Spirit, to God as wind and flame, to God as gentle dove, to God as comforter, to God as disturber, that breakthrough mode persists; things happen, new disciples are made, great works are done. But when the Church prefers to keep God under lock and key in however beautiful a shrine or safety box, the fire of that breakthrough day fades away, and the Church becomes a thing rather than a movement. But of course, what has happened again and again through history is that when the Church gets jaded and old and no longer going anywhere, the Spirit breaks through again in renewal and revival, and people rediscover the joyful Pentecost awareness of God as love, God not just as a doctrine or philosophy, but as a truth that dances within us. We have had ten days of a wave of prayer, or at least that’s what the archbishops called us to be doing. How hard were we praying? And were we praying for the filling of our churches, or, more honestly and Pentecostally, for people to encounter God for themselves, to meet with Jesus, to be filled with his love? Maybe at last the time is right for the Spirit to move again across our land.

Waiting

A sermon for the Sunday after Ascension Day :-

I thought I might spend some time with you today musing on the Christian ministry of waiting. For I think there’s a real and valid Christian ministry of waiting that ties in with the theme and story of this Sunday, the Sunday that falls between Ascension Day and Pentecost. Today we think back to the friends of Jesus waiting in Jerusalem; waiting, as their Lord asked before he left them, for the gift he would send upon them. We think of them waiting for the Holy Spirit, waiting too for the call and summons that would launch the Church, that would send them out to do mission, that would begin their story and ours of active and apostolic mission and ministry across the world.

Waiting: “I seem to spend all my life waiting,” said one of the women at the stop as we waited for the bus from Shrewsbury to Welshpool last week. I don’t often catch the bus, usually I’ve got my car, so it’s a sort of waiting I don’t do very much. She obviously did it every day. There were other people waiting that day in other ways and for other reasons. Along the street there’d been some kind of accident or disturbance which had resulted in a shop window being broken. I’d passed a young policeman waiting there, standing in the gutter facing the shop, keeping an eye on things I suppose until his mate came back in the car. I’d also passed a motley crew of urban beggars; they were also waiting, sitting at one end of the footbridge across the river. Theirs was not a very purposeful sort of waiting, but I suppose waiting was a way of life for them, waiting without much reason and with little reward. Maybe it was one of their number who’d broken the shop window. If so, maybe he’d at least get a bed for the night, albeit in a police cell.

So how would a Christian ministry of waiting be different from other kinds of waiting? Well, the first thing to say about the disciples waiting in Jerusalem was that they were waiting prayerfully. They were waiting purposefully. And they were waiting joyfully. Their waiting wasn’t just empty time, but preparation for what was to come. They had seen Jesus go from them, but what they saw on the hillside wasn’t only departure, it was also coronation. And now they were waiting to be commissioned into the service of their King.

My son came up to visit last weekend, and we found ourselves talking about one of the last times I was down in London with him. We’d met in Borough Market in London, near Southwark Cathedral. John had come from work, but I’d been at Southwark Cathedral to attend a service within which new bishops were being consecrated. And thinking back now, that service was itself a conscious act of prayerful waiting, as is every service of ordination or consecration or commissioning. On one level it’s about people being given jobs to do, or maybe people being accorded a new status in the Church. But there’s more than that going on. We’d been calling on God to send his Spirit upon these two people who, within all the ceremonial stuff, were being called and commissioned into a new and demanding role - that of being shepherds to God’s people, and leading and preaching and serving and loving according to the call of Jesus and after the example of Jesus and in the name of Jesus. And, as at every service of that sort I’ve been at or taken part in - ordaining a new minister, welcoming a minister into a new charge, baptizing or confirming new Christians or new members of a church, all of us there were drawn to reflect on our own call, and on the presence of God, of his Holy Spirit, in our own lives. All of us were being drawn to wait on God.

One title given to the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. But God’s Spirit is as much Disturber as Comforter, for he’s not soothing us into a holy huddle but turning us round to point us out into the world. The Church Spirit-filled won’t be inward-looking and all tied up with its own affairs. If we’re waiting on God we’re surely waiting, like the first disciples, for a change of mind and heart and vision. God calls us to love our neighbours as ourselves, whoever and wherever that neighbour may be.

Years ago I remembering listening to the then Bishop of Coventry talking about what in Germany is called Nagelkreuzgemeinschaft, and in this country the Fellowship of the Cross of Nails. It connects Coventry and Dresden, it connects Britain and Germany, but more than that, it seeks to be an agent of reconciliation and peacemaking globally. The Bishop described how his wartime predecessor, standing in the burnt-out ruins of the old cathedral in Coventry, the ruins that still stand next to the new church, said: “Those who did this thing must become our friends.” The first cross of nails was formed out of three medieval nails found on the floor of the cathedral; it became a symbol of hope – of the Christian hope that by God’s grace and his power within us, even bad and tragic and hurtful things can be turned round and used for good.

The Spirit is not to be contained by human borders. The friends of Jesus waiting in Jerusalem were fishermen and ordinary folk, not travelled people, but they were about to launch into the unknown. The story of the Ascension ends Luke’s Gospel of Jesus and begins the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s ‘Gospel of the Holy Spirit’, where he tells of the Spirit releasing the good news of Jesus Christ from its Jewish setting out into all the world.

Christian Aid Week is just around the corner, starting next Sunday, and it is itself a witness I believe to the way in which a Spirit-led Church will dare to cross borders and make friends. Those who this Christian Aid Week will be distributing and collecting envelopes door to door, or standing on the street with a collecting tin, or organising some special event to raise funds but also to tell stories - if we’re doing any of this we’re showing the world how Christians care for our neighbours.  Remember the question Jesus was asked: ‘Who is my neighbour?’ He replied by telling the story of the Good Samaritan, of a man who reached across the boundary, the division, the enmity between one kind of person and another. My neighbour is anyone; anyone who needs my help, my support, my vision, my love. Their need puts them in my power. I can help, or I can walk away. I know what the Samaritan did. I know what my Lord would do. The disciples in Jerusalem were waiting for new vision, and waiting to see the world – and to recognise their neighbour - through the eyes of Christ. We should wait and pray for the same vision.

But there’s a sort of waiting I’m all too prone to, that I need to confess to you. Maybe in fact you share my problem. There is that waiting which is about putting off the evil day when you’ve to start doing that thing you really don’t want to, or when you have to begin that job you fear might be too big for you. ust now at home, it’s my decking. It’ll be a big job, so I think: better not to start yet. Time’s not right. I need a week of good weather. I need the loan of my son-in-law’s power washer. I need . . . actually what I do need is just to get on with it. And that applies just as much to the spiritual tasks I find reasons to postpone. For all their uncertainties, the disciples waited in hope, waited with a deep desire to get on with things. There was nothing of the avoidance tactic in their waiting.

A few months back I was listening to a talk given by a youth worker from the Church of South India. She was very young herself, and full of enthusiasm and commitment. She talked about the 150 evangelists that were at work in her remote, poor and very rural part of India, travelling from village to village, but finding it hard. So they were equipping all of them with bicycles. So far they had fifteen; only 135 to go. She was very excited about that. Her church was very poor, and there wasn’t much chance they’d be able to raise enough money to buy all the bicycles they needed, but she was sure they would arrive somehow, because she was sure this was what God wanted.

So for now they were waiting, waiting for help to arrive from friends and partners. But what struck me as she spoke was that just because you need to wait doesn’t mean you don’t also make a start. And for the young woman who was addressing us and for her co-workers back home, the fact that they’d been able to make a successful start was all the assurance they needed that they’d be able to finish the job.

A week today is not only the start of Christian Aid Week but also the Day of Pentecost. Today we wait on our King ascended into heaven but at the same time always with his people. We  wait on his promised gift of the Spirit. May we wait prayerfully and purposefully, may we wait with confidence and hope, may we wait with enthusiasm, wanting to make a start, ready to offer ourselves in the service of our Lord and in his mission of love to the world.  Lord, lift our vision, and help us to wait with the hope of a better world in our hearts. Renew us in eager faith and in mutual love. And as we see what you would have us do, help us to begin now, but always to expect more. Amen.