Vine

A lady whose garden I help look after asked me yesterday to completely remove the lush trailing vine that was a feature of her back garden.  The vine did not produce edible grapes, but its leaves were picked through the season for making dolmades, a traditional Green dish; but no more, alas - her Greek Cypriot husband passed away last year, and maybe the vine, growing so lushly, was too potent a reminder of his absence.

So the vine had to go (the main stem remains, so it will grow back, if allowed to), but it was a sad task to remove it, the more so in that the vine is such a symbol of life in Scripture.  It is such a free-growing plant, so rampant in its profusion of new leaves and shoots - and is held up as an example of self-sacrifice, as the trailing branches, which need to be supported as they cannot support themselves, are supposed to pass on all of their strength and vigour to the fruit, keeping nothing back.  No wonder Jesus shared a cup of wine on the eve of his crucifixion.

The lushness of the growth of this vine could be in part I suppose because it had not been cut back as usual before the growing season - but I imagine this year's warm summer will also have played its part.  Anyhow, there was growth a-plenty - a large builder's sack was filled to the brim with the collected leaves and branches.

They will be recycled, composted - and so life goes on.  But this potent symbol of life remains only as a shadow of what it was, and I am sorry to have been the one who had to wield the shears.

Finches

We had a lovely day out yesterday.  Ann and I and our two Mums took the road out through Llanfair Caereinion, Mallwyd and Machynlleth to Aberystwyth, and later drove back via Llangurig, Llanidloes and Newtown.  Rather a nice round trip along open roads with mountain scenery such as only Wales can provide, with a stroll along the prom and cod and chips with a fine and sunny sea view.

On the way we also stopped at the 'Osprey Project' at Cors Dyfi.  This is the most famous component of the conservation work of the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust, having features on BBC Springwatch, which I suppose makes Monty, the male who has been at Cors Dyfi for a fair few summers now, Britain's most famous osprey.  This year he has a new mate, but the late spring and a very confused start to their relationship mean that their two chicks are maybe a month behind where one might expect them to be, in terms of growth and development.  Most years that would be very bad news, but maybe this year, with our pretty good summer so far, will be an exception.

We watched the webcams of the nest, and scanned the marshes with our field glasses.  The chicks are little punks with their spikey feathers, but are growing well.  Monty brought a fish while we were watching (a pollack, I think), and his mate fed the chicks with great care, tearing off very small pieces.  We also walked along part of the boardwalk through the marshes, noting a fine stand of marsh St John's wort but not seeing the reclusive water buffalo which help graze the area.

But I think we enjoyed the hide best, not just because of the views of Monty and his family, both on screen and through our glasses, but also because of the busy feeding station just outside.  I love finches, and they were there in plenty - chaffinches and greenfinches, but also (and delightfully) the smaller and very lively siskins and redpolls.  The males are specially colourful, the male redpoll having not just a prominent red cap to his brow but also pink suffusing the brown streaks of his breast.  Male siskins are lovely birds, with a black cap and green plumage with prominent black and yellow markings.  One male had so much yellow that he really shone in the bright sunshine of the day.

These are lively and acrobatic birds, and to watch them jostling for space on the feeders was an entertainment in itself.  For this stage in the season they were all in fine condition, which is I suppose a tribute both to the excellent weather and the excellent feeding they get from the Trust!  In our garden, these small finches are winter birds, not seen at this time of the year (we have to make do with chaffinches, greenfinches and bullfinches, not that that's much hardship!), so it was good to see them on a bright summer's day.

Arena

I had a dream of running
blood, of stone columned terraces filled with
snarling and baying faces, of whips and nails and spears.
The stench of it all seemed to stay in my nostrils,
the noise of it still rang in my ears
even as I awoke to dappled sun behind my curtains
and the gentle murmur of a distant dove.

Perhaps I read too much history,
and perhaps I think about it more than I should; anyway,
praise the Lord that today we live in a calmer clime; there are
no Christians thrown to the lions in these parts,
no tiered crowds to delight in the violent spectacle
acted out in the arena beneath them, and
to cheer on every hurt inflicted.

These days we stay at home, and watch the soaps.

Jackdaws

My most recent 'Nature Notes' :-

I was watching some young jackdaws the other day, and was reminded that this was an annual delight when we lived in Minsterley, as they always nested in the locality.  Indeed, living as we did in an old Victorian house, it was an ongoing battle to prevent them nesting in any of the many chimneys, and the protective mesh had to be regularly checked.  For someone I know, failure to prevent this resulted in two young jackdaws, plus amounts of soot, arriving unexpectedly in the lounge, via the fireplace (you can imagine the mess).  More commonly, the chimney just gets blocked.

Outdoors, the young jackdaws were as ungainly as any other young bird, but of course much bigger than most.  They had much to learn, but the parents always seemed attentive and watchful.  It can be a stressful life as a young jackdaw, as viewers of this year’s ‘Springwatch’ programmes will know: two young birds were mercilessly harassed by a couple of adult birds who it seems wanted the nest, though these youngsters did seem to be fighting back pretty well.  But for social birds like jackdaws, pecking orders and argumentative neighbours are just part of the scene.

Jackdaws are black-plumaged with a distinctive grey nape, and typical habitats might be cliffs and derelict buildings, but also woodland and open country.  They are of course members of the crow family, smaller than ravens, rooks and carrion crows, but still pretty big.  They are very happy to live close to people, and jackdaws used to visit our feeders in a previous garden, but without much success, being too big and ungainly to access them, despite scaring most of the smaller birds away.

Away from human habitation, jackdaws will exploit holes of any sort, including rabbit burrows sometimes, as nest sites, though they will build nests in more exposed situations.  Nests are untidy, made of twigs lined with grass, hair and wool.  Jackdaws have been known to pluck wool for their nests from the backs of grazing sheep.  Like other members of the crow family, jackdaws will steal and collect shiny objects.

Jackdaws lay between three and seven eggs, which are incubated by the female, with the male making sure she is fed on the nest.  The young fledge at about a month old.  The jackdaw’s “jack” cry gives it its name - my great-aunt, who had a pet one, told me she’d taught it to speak, but I only ever heard it say its name, which as it happens was Jack, which fell some way short of convincing proof.  Jack had a liking for bits of apple and for ham sandwiches, I seem to recall.

In the wild jackdaws eat a wide range of foods, including grain, fruit and insects and invertebrates.  They eat carrion, competing with magpies and carrion crows for roadkill.  They will also take young birds and eggs, though they represent a danger mainly to inexperienced young parents whose nests are not well hidden.

Jackdaws are common throughout the UK, and are present all year, sometimes in very large flocks.  Numbers are increased by continental birds that winter here.

Moth

I am not sure why I should have such a fear of moths,
knowing them to be harmless, but, alas, I do.
Nor do I know what it is
that so alarms me - perhaps the size of the body,
gross against the slim form of the butterfly,
perhaps the pulse that I seem to sense in the brown and grey moth wings,
when forced to touch or hold them.  Today’s moth,
encountered while mowing the lawn,
I could identify:  a yellow underwing, scrambling helplessly about,
nervously flashing the bright yellow beneath its upper browns, but
seemingly unable to fly very far, and in my way.
This moth was beautiful, I suppose, but also very big -
but also not to be destroyed.  It took a lot of nerve
to stop and scoop it up, but I am glad I did.
It lifted out of my trembling hands, to fall rather than fly
down onto that part of the lawn I had already mowed:
a life saved (for now) despite my fear.  And a small hooray as, settling into its new refuge,
the moth quickly hid the bright yellow of its lower wings, to become
just one more withered leaf, snagged in the shortened grass.

Kingfisher

I had heard him before seeing him
along the narrow chalk stream,
that disturbed and distinctive cry
that rippled through to my spine.  In fact
there wasn’t much to see,
just a flash of electric blue,
a tiny bird made larger by its brightness, but still
gone too quickly for those walking with me to see.

We were walking quiet paths in search of a pub lunch,
on an early summer’s day of dappled sunshine
and vivid greens, of dustings of lady’s lace along the hedgerows
and, as we rounded one shaded corner,
a cascade of long-tailed tits flitting through the alders.

And it had already been, I think,
my happiest day of the year - and yet I’d have traded all the rest,
every bit of it,
for that one single flash of blue fire.

Morning Prayer

Under a perfect sky
where
every leaf’s gold-splashed with morning dew
with
curlew and cuckoo calling
and
pigeons clapping their wings in soaring and tumbling flight
I see
mayflies dance their ephemeral waltz above the slow waters
I hear
a sedge warbler chirr from the bright jumble of kingcup and yellow flag
I taste
a myriad scents that mingle in the gentle air.

And if heaven is not something at least a bit like this
then I shall feel sorely cheated.

Thoughts on Prophecy

A Sunday talk . . .

Jesus talked to his disciples about being like light, and salt, and yeast.  Small things that maybe work quietly and unobtrusively, but which make a real difference where they’re used.  I preached about this somewhere else last week, and I talked about how even a small light, a single candle perhaps, drives back the dark and makes a place brighter, better and indeed safer.  I talked about how a little bit of salt can bring out the flavour of the tomato on my sandwich, or the fish and chips in my paper.  I talked about the way just a pinch of yeast allows my dough to rise and to become something than can be baked into a loaf of bread.  And part at least of the task of the Christian disciple is to work in quiet ways, and not to our own glory but to God’s glory, to make the world around us a better place, more light and more loving.

But then thinking it over later, it occurred to me that light and salt and maybe even yeast can also be troublesome things. Of course we know that too much light can be an instrument of torture, and too much salt can swamp and spoil the flavour rather than bring it out, and too much yeast will produce something sour and inedible.  But even in smaller quantities, light and salt and yeast can be a bit troublesome.  Light shows up things we might prefer stayed hidden away.  Salt gets into sore or wounded places and makes them smart.  Yeast changes the shape of things and forces the components of my loaf of bread to work together in ways they otherwise might not.  These images show up another necessary part of the ministry of the Christian disciple.  Christians are called to be troublesome sometimes and not just nice, because we are called to bring the truth of God into places where just perhaps that truth is denied or distorted.  One word for this is prophecy.  Christians and the Church, capital C, are called to a prophetic ministry.  So what does that mean?

There were lots of prophets in the Old Testament days.  Our Bibles hold the writings of some of them, and tell the stories of others.  Prophets had a place in the courts of kings, and in the decisions made by great men.  So let’s look for a moment or two at two prophets who were around at the same time as each other, but whose prophecies followed dramatically different paths.

One of these prophets was Hananiah, and the other was Jeremiah. They were both important and well known figures within the court of the king - and this at a time when, politically speaking, things were tense and worrisome in the little kingdom of Judea.  The Babylonians whose empire lay to the north were flexing their muscles. They’d already carried the previous king and many of his people into exile, along with a substantial part of the temple treasury.  Faced with this situation, Jeremiah was saying 'Things must not go on as they are.  We need to face up to the truth.  We've let God down, and now we are being punished for that.  It's his will that Babylon should conquer us.'  That’s what Jeremiah was saying;  Hananiah, on the other hand, was saying something quite different, along the lines of: 'Don't worry. You know that God will always be on our side, because we are his special people.  So of course he won't allow the Babylonians to win. Everything will be all right.'

In our New Testaments we can read St Paul’s warning to Timothy about the false teachers whose words would, as he said, 'tickle the ears' of those who heard them.  Of course it's always a big temptation for a speaker or preacher to say things that will please his audience.  Everyone likes to be liked.  To his cost Jeremiah discovered that if you say things people don't want to hear they won't like you.  They may even attack you.  But these were the words God had given him to say - they burned inside him, and he couldn’t be silent.

That's what being a prophet is like, or should be like.  There’s an important and valid Christian ministry of comforting and soothing, of affirming and supporting.  We are to be bearers of good news, and good news should be a good thing to hear, a comfort and a strength.  But not at the expense of the truth.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be nice all the time?  The Christian Church continues to be very much part of the establishment of our nation, so that all kinds of civic and national events have a Christian religious content; so that bishops still sit in the House of Lords, and officiate at royal weddings, and crown a new king or queen.  I don’t have a problem with that, unless being part of the establishment means you’re expected to give uncritical support and blessing to whoever is in power and to whatever they might choose to do.

Because that's the sort of thing the prophet Hananiah was doing.  It’s also what he said God ought to be doing. If we're God's people then it's his job to stand beside us and fight for us:  that's more or less what Hananiah had to say.  But when Jeremiah talks about God he talks about him in very different terms.  Jeremiah talks about a holy God, about the righteous God who calls from his people a standard of holiness and righteousness that is a match for his.  St Paul is saying something very similar when he writes about becoming slaves to righteousness.  If instead we choose to go our own way, if instead we choose to live in a way that denies God's justice and righteousness, we can't expect him to come and bail us out of trouble whenever we ask him to.

I'm sure that when Jesus talked to his disciples about being light and salt and yeast he was urging them to take hold of the truth and to speak it and act it out in a prophetic way. Faith that’s a living faith has to be do much more than a safety net or a comfort blanket or a spare time hobby - it ask of us nothing less than the whole of our life.

Faith that’s a living faith will be the faith of a prophet.  A prophetic Church will be ready to comfort the afflicted, but part of its brief is also to afflict the comfortable;  it will be quick to bind up the wounds of those who are hurt, but will also be salt to aggravate a few wounds where people are too apathetic to see their neighbour's need or too self-obsessed to recognise their own responsibility.

What will that mean in practice?  It means that the Church, capital C, must never be afraid of unpopularity, for it must always be on the side of the truth.  The prophet is the one who sees the bad things that happen and doesn’t turn aside from that;  who hears the voices of those who are weak and powerless, and responds, and speaks for them, and pleads their cause.  Politicians may say, “Keep out of our world of politics”; and others will say the same, from their own positions of entrenched self-interest.  But the Church has a duty not only to seek out the lost and the hurt and to bind up wounds, but to challenge the people and the policies that do damage.  That’s a political task perhaps, but it isn’t a party political task.  The Church has to be independent of party politics, for we serve a higher master than any earthly ruler.

Should the individual Christian be a member of a political party?  Personally, I’m not, and I’ve cast my vote for many a different party in my time.  But of course an individual Christian can be a member of the political party of his or her choice - and I’ve met many politicians who are marvellously inspired and motivated by their active Christian faith.  But as with our membership of any organisation, I think that Christians should always be somewhat uncomfortable members - active, hard working, encouraging, supportive, all of those things, but never so tied to our allegiance to any one cause that it takes precedence over our allegiance to our Lord.  Sometimes our faith will require us to challenge things that are wrong.  Sometimes other people won’t like that.

But while a prophetic Church will always praise, applaud, encourage and pray blessing upon the things that are good in the world around us, the prophetic mantle we inherit is that of Jeremiah and not of Hananiah.  So easy to turn a blind eye, but we must never do that.  So easy too to go along with the crowd, to say the popular and populist things that everyone else is saying, but we must never do that either.  So easy to pass by on the other side, and you may remember that in the parable Jesus told that’s exactly what the expected good guys, the priest and the Levite, chose to do.

But where would that leave us?  I’m reminded here of the well-known piece by the German pastor Martin Niemoller, who was imprisoned by the Nazis and became a symbol of peace and reconciliation in the post-War German church:

First they came for the communists,
 and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
 and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
 and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
 and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
 and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.
Then they came for me,
 and there was no one left to speak for me.

We must never keep silence about the things that are wrong, about the abuses of power, the distortions of the truth, the injustices that mar the face of the world.  It's no excuse to claim that they don’t directly impinge on our lives or the places where we happen to live.  Anything that hurts other people, that cripples other lives, that damages other parts of our world has to be our business, because it is our Lord’s business, and we are his people.

Christ continues to call us to be lights in the world, to the glory of God - lights to comfort and reassure, lights for joy and safety and peace, but also lights to reveal and challenge and change the things that other people try to hide, and the deeds that are born of darkness.

Telling the Faith

Another Sunday talk . . .

I remember that once when I was very small my grandfather took me to see a launch at the shipyard where he worked on the banks of the River Tyne.  I stood in a big crowd of people to watch the bottle smash against the hull of the new ship.  And then nothing happened.  Not straight away, and not for quite some time.  In fact, in my youthful naivety I began to suspect things had somehow gone badly wrong, but of course that wasn’t so.  It’s just that some things take a while to get moving.  And yes, at last I could see that the hull was moving, moving very slowly at first, almost too slowly to see, but moving. And then the newly named vessel gathered pace on its maiden journey down the slipway, to slide smoothly into the river to the shouts and cheers of the crowd.

I used that story a few weeks ago when I preached in another chapel on Trinity Sunday.  It came into my mind on that occasion because I found I wanted to think about naming things - and of course every new ship gets named at its launch.  But perhaps there’s also a lesson to take away from the slowness of it all;  things were happening straight away in fact, once the vessel had been released from the chocks that held it - but from where I was standing there was nothing to see, nothing changing, no movement.  In my innocence I’d imagined a sudden dash down the slipway and a great splash into the river, almost as soon as the bottle had hit, but it isn’t like that.  A giant pile of metal like that is going to take some time to start moving.

This theme of things that happen unseen is one that Jesus returned to again and again as he taught his disciples and the crowds that came out to hear him.  He told them stories about hidden things that became revealed or discovered, like the pearl of great price, or the seed that grows in secret.  He told them stories about little things that have a big impact, like the mustard seed that grows to be a huge great plant.

And Jesus called his own disciples his ‘little flock’. He told them they must be like salt and yeast - they must be like the small and hidden things that make a big and crucial difference when they’re put to use.

St Paul described the work of an apostle as planting seeds from which others will reap a harvest. The one who starts the process off may very well not see things through to fruition.  Maybe from where he’s standing nothing seems to be happening, despite all his hard work and careful planning, despite all his prayers, even.

But things are happening, even so;  seeds grow in secret. Of course, some of the seed may not grow at all, or at least not fruitfully, as we know from a reading of the Parable of the Sower.  But the sower’s work must still be done.  For if the seed hasn’t been sown, nothing can ever grow; and if the word hasn’t been proclaimed, then no-one will ever respond.

Reality today, for the churches of our land with their history of being large and secure, is one of having to come to terms with being little flocks, even perhaps just barely hanging on, with a future that looks anything but certain.  It could feel like an inescapable decline, and it certainly does involve a real loss of influence and position and security.  Perhaps, though, the picture isn’t as bleak as it may look from where we’re standing.  The shape of the Church, capital ‘C’ is changing, but meanwhile my experience is that people are still asking big questions about faith. One form of worship and of church organisation may be in decline, but meanwhile other ways of being Christians together emerge and grow. Of course it’s also no longer true that Christianity’s the only faith option in town - that can feel uncomfortable and even a bit threatening to those of us with a long history in church or chapel, but in a way it’s only a return to the situation in which the mission of the first apostles began.

The work of mission is essential, be the Church large or small, because it is the Church’s raison d’etre. The German theologian Emil Brunner once said that the Church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning. That’s a good comparison, for if the Church isn’t doing mission, then its fire has gone out. But how are we to do mission today, and what sort of return will we see, and when?

Well:  churches are organisations, and so they’re organised;  sometimes they’re so organised that the organisation of things matters more than anything else.  I’ve been in churches like that, anyway.  How do we do mission?  Let’s organise ourselves to do it.  Let’s look at methodology, lets set a few targets, let’s train some people up and commission them and give them special titles.  Maybe we’ll be really serious, and do a feasibility study and a cost-benefit analysis;  oh - probably we ought to stick a health and safety audit in there too.  And we’ll need a committee and quite probably a few sub-committees too.  And a budget.  And an archdeacon or a moderator or a chairman of district, someone like that to chair the working party.  Goodness, there’s the advertising to sort out as well.  We’ll need a catchy slogan;  let’s see if we can get some air time;  and how about a big service in a football stadium, just to start things off? I wonder why Jesus didn’t think of all that?  You’d think he would have.

Let’s look at what he did do, when at one point in his ministry he sent his disciples out to prepare the way.  He said to them, you won’t need much, in fact take as little with you as you can get away with.  It’ll only get in the way if you have too much.  And then, just do and say things that’ll make a positive difference:  feed the hungry, heal the sick, visit those in prison . . . love your neighbour.  Mission should be the natural activity of the Church, but that doesn’t mean we all need to stand on soap boxes to do it.  St Francis told his followers: preach the word at all times, and where necessary, use words.

Much of the best mission is wordless.  It’s about loving our neighbour;  it’s about walking the extra mile;  it’s about daring to be a bit different from those around us, though without making a big thing of it.  After all, mission never says “Hey, look at me” - it’s always about Jesus.

Light, salt, yeast - the images used by our Lord.  None of these things is about making a fundamental change, they’re all about making what’s already there that bit better, that bit tastier.  Sunlight through a stained glass window brings the colours to life;  a single candle burning in a dark room drives back the dark, so we can find our way and see all the things that are there, and, I suppose, not bump into things too much.  A grain or two of salt will make my salad tomatoes taste much more tomatoey, or my fish and chips like fish and chips really should.  And just a grain or two of yeast will allow the things I mix together to make my loaf of bread achieve their full potential.

There’s no need to be too heavy about this.  Too much light simply dazzles, or indeed becomes painful, it can even be used as a form of torture.  Too much salt, and my tomatoes don’t taste of tomatoes any more, they just taste of salt.  The same with yeast:  too much, and the loaf rises too quickly and just tastes sour.  In fact, of course there are times when the churches of a place need a big mission push, so in reality all the planning and organisation I made such fun of earlier can be good and have a purpose - but even then, if the quiet work of yeasty and salty mission isn’t going on before and during and especially after the big event, then all those big plans will have gone for not very much at all.

In fact, any big declarations in mission that we make as churches stand or fall by what people see of the local Christians they know, or the local churches or chapels they may occasionally attend.  We are the measure by which the message is judged to be true or false.

That feels like a big ask, and it is.  It would no doubt be better if mission was something we held back on until we were sure we had the strength and the resources and the courage and the cash to really do it.  But in fact everything we are and do as Christians is mission.  It isn’t that we’re either doing mission or we aren’t, so much as that we’re doing it all the time, sometimes well, sometimes badly.  All that we are and do either proclaims Jesus as Lord, or else doesn’t.  In which case, it’s sort of negative mission, isn’t it?  I was cut up quite badly the other day by a car with a fish emblem on the back - there was a bit of negative mission, if you like.

But, thinking back to the story of Jesus sending his disciples out - he sent them to the towns and villages he was intending to visit himself.  And that’s still the case.  There isn’t anywhere we go in mission, nowhere we get sent to, that Jesus isn’t going to himself.  I’m reminded of something written by a missionary of a century or more ago, who had gone into dark and pagan places to take the light of Christ.  Or that’s what he thought he’d been doing - but in his memoirs he noted how again and again he found his Lord already at work in the places he travelled to preach the Gospel, and in the hearts of those to whom he preached.

And, to repeat what I’ve already said, often there won’t be anything much for us to see, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.  We sow the seed, someone else may reap the harvest;  or, we knock away the chocks on the slipway, but it may be a while before anyone can tell that the ship is moving.  A former colleague of mine, when visiting his local hospital as a young curate, once called to see a parishioner who at the time was quite rude and resentful, and didn’t want to be bothered by God or by anyone working for him.  Years later, revisiting the church where he’d served his curacy, he found that the man he’d visited that day was now one of the churchwardens.  That day, unknown to himself, he’d planted a seed of faith that eventually blossomed big time.

I had a similar experience.  When clergy take weddings and funerals - and even baptisms, for that matter, a lot of the people in church look bored, uncomfortable and even hostile at times.  They don’t want to be in a church;  they’re just there because they have to be, or maybe they’re just there for the beer and sandwiches afterwards. It’s tempting for the minister - and for the regular churchfolk there too - to write off such people, or maybe not to try too hard.  I hope that’s not been true of me, but if it has, I should stand corrected by someone I came across in a church not far from here, who told me his conversion began with something I said in the address I gave at a wedding he happened to attend.  I don’t even remember the event;  I’m just glad that on that one occasion, the Lord was able to use me.  Maybe there were other I’ll never hear about, who knows?

But there are other stories I could tell you, such as the lady who eventually started coming to church despite her own doubts and inhibitions just because her neighbour who did attend always seemed so happy and positive and helpful, so much so that she started wondering why.  Or the chap out walking his dog who each Sunday used to pass the time of day with a neighbour on her way to church.  Their greeting was the same each time:  “Say one for me while you’re there!” he used to say.  “Why don’t you come yourself some time?” she’d reply.  “Maybe I will and surprise you!” he would always say back.  And one day he did;  and the next week he brought his wife;  and the week after her brother came, with his wife;  and then his wife’s parents started coming;  and ultimately the church grew by ten or eleven souls because of that one encounter.

Well, God moves in mysterious ways, but always exciting ways as well - and it is his work, of course, and not ours.  All we need do, but we must do it, is to keep sowing the seed, not by saying a lot, but just being Christ-like in our thinking and in our acting, and adding a bit of salt or a bit of yeast to the mix.

Thoughts on Trees

My "Nature Notes" article for this month :-

We’re very fortunate in that our new garden backs onto woodland, and so as we look down from our veranda there’s a green wall on the other side of the flower beds, providing lots of hiding places for birds and squirrels.  It’s quite a varied patchwork of green;  there are many different species of tree here - oak, sycamore, rowan, wild cherry, crab apple, a good stand of laurel that ensures some green leaves all the year round, elder just waiting to come into flower, and, planted at our garden edge, pyrocanthus, rhododendron (beautifully in flower as I write this), various blossom trees and what looks to us like a climbing hydrangea.

But the trees I want to dwell on specifically are two that are a cause for concern:  ash and elm.  Since elm trees have more or less disappeared from much of the UK, thanks to the depredations of Dutch elm disease, I was delighted to see a mature specimen directly at the back of our garden.  It has flowered and fruited well this year, and looks very healthy (see picture above).  Has the dreaded disease simply not found it out yet, I wonder - or is it one of those fortunate trees that has a natural immunity to it?  I hope for the latter.  I hear that there’s a scheme under way to establish cuttings taken from disease-resistant elms in settings throughout the UK, n the hope that one day the elm can be once again be as familiar a sight as it is in, say, the paintings of John Constable.  The young trees will be carefully monitored, and I hope the project meets with success.

There are several ash trees in our patch of woodland, and now we have ash die-back disease to contend with, a disease that has already been identified in Wales, where it seems usually to be associated with the import of young saplings.  It astonishes me that we should have felt we needed to import saplings of a tree that reproduces so readily in this country that I must have pulled up over a hundred baby ash trees already since moving in here, growing in gravel paths, plant pots and even in one untended gutter.  The answer, presumably, is all to do with money, and sometimes what seems to be cheap is in fact ruinously expensive.

There are indications that warnings were ignored from conservationists and foresters  - though I suppose it’s easy to be wise after the event, and deciding which warnings, out of the many that cross the desks of environment ministers and their staff, should receive a prompt response can’t be easy.  If there is any cause for hope it’s that ash reproduces so well and is a comparatively quick-growing young tree.  Given a natural immunity within our ash stocks, they should recover in time, and perhaps, as with elms, a helping hand can be given.  However, although dead trees have their own wildlife benefits (ask any woodpecker, if you can prise him away from the nut feeders in your garden), it would be sad to see the old standard ash trees bare and dead that are such a familiar feature of our field edges and the turnings in our lanes.

And you can’t help but wonder - what next, for the ancient and lovely trees of our green and pleasant land?

Daffodil

A surprise on June 1st to still have a daffodil in bloom in our garden.  Here it is, photographed this morning :-

Names

A Sunday talk for Trinity Sunday :-


I remember that when I was very small I was taken by my grandfather to see a launch, at the shipyard where he worked on the banks of the River Tyne.  I stood in the crowd and watched as a bottle was swung with due ceremony to smash against the hull of the new ship.  After which, nothing happened.  Nothing happened for quite a while, in fact.  In my youthful naivete, I began to think that something had gone wrong, but of course it hadn’t.  I became at last aware that the hull was moving, very very slowly at first, almost too slowly to see, like the minute hand of a clock.  Then it gathered pace, and to shouts and cheers it slid smoothly into the river, where it was positioned by tugs so that the remaining work on the superstructure of the vessel could be carried out.

The reason why that story came to mind is that one significant thing that happens at a launch is that a new vessel gets named.  Until the launch ceremony it’s still just a giant pile of metal on the stocks - but then she’s named, she’s given an identity, she becomes a ship.  I suppose the other significant thing alongside that is that words of blessing are used, and the name of God invoked:  when the ship’s been named, the next words are ‘God bless all who sail in her.’

Names are often very important in the Bible, in the Old Testament especially.  I could think of Genesis chapter two, for example: Adam gives names to each of the creatures God has made, and that giving of names establishes the identity of each creature, and also Adam’s authority over them. I could also think of the ways in which names are changed to reflect a new reality or status, like when Abram becomes Abraham, and Sarai Sarah.  Their new names mean, respectively, ‘Father of a Multitude’ and ‘Princess’.  Or when Jacob, after wrestling with the angel of God, received the new name of Israel - which means ‘God fights’.

In the Church calendar today is Trinity Sunday.  All the churches which form part of the World Council of Churches, that is - are Trinitarian in belief:  God, we say, is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and yet not three Gods but one God. One God who has chosen to reveal himself and make relationship with us in these three ways.  We may speak of there being ‘three persons, yet one God’ - though for me the word ‘person’ can be a little misleading.  I find myself thinking of an individual and separate human being, the chap sitting on the bus, the lady ahead of me in the queue at the supermarket, or for that matter the fellow standing in the pulpit to preach.

To say ‘three persons’ can feel as if we’re breaking God up into three separate and individual parts, but that’s not what the Church teaches.  Each person of the Trinity participates fully in the life of the other two, so that, as Jesus says to his disciples, in St John chapter 17, ‘the Father and I are one’.  That’s also why Paul can say as he reflects on what it means to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that ‘we have the mind of Christ’.  Trinity is an essential doctrine, a belief that we as Christians are bound to share - but I don’t find myself thinking of it as a precise and complete definition of God, just our way of making some sense of how God relates to us and reveals himself to us.

How relevant to that is my reflection on names, I wonder? In the Bible the naming of things establishes identity, and says something about status and purpose - as when Adam names the animals. I suppose the same thing would have been true of the ship I saw launched. It occurs to me though that to give a name, or even to know and to use a name, says something important about relationship.  The same person might be called ‘sir’, or ‘Mr Jones’, or ‘Dave’, or ‘Daddy’ - depending on what the relationship is.  To give or know or use a name may also claim a knowledge of a person or even an authority over them, which is why Jacob asked to know the name of the person with whom he wrestled at the Jabbok ford.

The word God isn’t a name, but a title.  But God does have names, in the Old Testament.  He is ‘Yahweh’ or ‘Jehovah’ - which sort of means ‘I am’ or indeed ‘I am who I am’. Like when he is encountered by Moses in the wilderness. He is also ‘Elohim’, which may mean ‘Majesties’ (note the plural).  But the people of the Old Testament would have felt it wrong and even blasphemous to call him by those names.  That would imply that he was in some sense their possession, rather than that they were his possession.

That’s why the name of God remains hidden and unspoken in most renditions of the Old Testament. God is generally called 'The LORD' - the word 'Lord' being printed in capitals.  That’s an English version of the Hebrew title 'Adonai', used in place of the name of God because that name was too holy to be spoken aloud.

But we no longer stand under the Law, and Christ sets us free to call God by name. The name Jehovah in fact derives from the vowel sounds in Adonai, blended in with the YHWH which are the consonants in Yahweh.  And while as members of the mainstream Churches we don't often call God Jehovah, we do sing hymns like 'Guide me, O thou great Jehovah'. And some Christian Bibles, like the New Jerusalem Bible used in Roman Catholic churches, always use the name 'Yahweh' rather than ‘the LORD’ (Adonai), as in other versions. But Jesus teaches us a new and better name than the Old Testament Jehovah. For when his disciples asked to be taught how to pray, Jesus told them: "When you pray, say 'Our Father, who art in heaven...'"

That’s amazing, don’t you think, that God the unknowable Creator of all things, we can call him ‘our Father’!  St John writes:  'No-one has ever seen God, but Jesus Christ, the only Son from the Father, he has made him known to us.'  On Easter morning in the garden, Jesus told Mary Magdalene to say to the others that he was ‘ascending to my Father, and your Father, to my God, and your God.'

Here is a great mystery over which the Church has pondered through many years.  Jesus was a man with a known origin and provenance.  He didn't appear out of nowhere.  People knew him to be the son of a carpenter in Nazareth.  One of a fair-sized family in fact:  he had four brothers, and he had sisters too.  His disciples knew all this too. They travelled with him, ate and drank with him, listened to him and learned from him.  And they knew who he was, in human terms. They knew his name.

But as they reflected on all they had seen and heard, they wanted to say more about Jesus than the name Jesus could contain. He wasn’t just a specially good and godly man, he wasn’t even just a prophet like the prophets of the olden days.  They’d seen how this man died, and they’d also seen what happened on Easter Day and on the days that followed.  They wanted to say like Paul that in some way 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.'  And then there is what John says right at the beginning of his Gospel. John’s great image is of Jesus as the living Word of God, the Word through whom all created things were made.  The Word who first named all things into being.

And John also tells us that "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."  In his life and through his death Jesus shows us the truth about the Father:  that he loves his creation with a love that cannot be denied and that calls us to respond.

John again tells us how Jesus says to Nicodemus that he must be born again, not of flesh but of water and the Spirit. In both Greek and Hebrew the word translated as ‘spirit’ can also mean ‘wind’, and I’m reminded of how the wind makes itself known in the way it moves and changes things, though we can’t see the wind itself. If you were to catch the wind in a bottle, it would immediately disappear.  Paul, writing to the Romans, completes the circle by saying that it’s through the Spirit that we’re able to call God ‘our Father’.

So it’s our experience of God that leads us to speak of him as Trinity, as Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  This isn’t a philosophy dreamt up from nowhere, but the way God is to us, in scripture and in our own encounters with him.  Nor is it the last word about God, a formula that neatly ties God up, just the best way we can find to express the ways in which he reveals himself to us.

In brief, we first of all know him and name him as our Father: and as our Maker and Creator, the Origin of life and the Ground of Our Being. He names himself Elohim and Yahweh, names that may speak to us of unapproachable holiness, but he also names himself as Father, and he opens the way for us to call him by that name.

Secondly, his nature and creative power is divine love, and that love was made visible among us in human form; in Jesus of Nazareth, the Man for Others, the Christ.  Here is God present within what he has made and sustains in being, present among his people as both priest and sacrifice, as both lover and gift.

And the God of love continues to offer himself to us, continues to be present in and with and among his people.  His love is revealed not only in the creative work of the Father, and the redeeming presence of Jesus, but also in the living power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God strengthens our faith, renews our vision, enriches our fellowship, enables our love.

This is why the Church dares to speak of the one God who is equally three persons: God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, together in a perpetually loving relationship into which we are invited, through which we too are made holy.  Trinity is not a closed and fully worked out formula but a way to speak of the dynamic nature of God, the constant movement and interplay of love between Father and Son and Holy Spirit that affirms our being and inspires our love.

Love: the key to all of this is love.  Whatever other names we may have for God, including those three great names of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, to speak of God as Trinity is to affirm what one of the hymns calls ‘his new blest name of love’.  Here is what establishes the unity of the Godhead.  So finally, if we are Trinitarian in our belief and doctrine as the Church of God, so we should be Trinitarian in our action and service.  The divine interplay of love and mutual sharing should be constantly and consistently modelled in us - in our relationships together as people of faith within God's Church, and in the service we as Church render to the world in God’s name.  For Jesus who said ‘The Father and I are one’ also said of his disciples, 'May they be one as we are one, that the world may believe.'

Potato Field

Somewhere on a rock that hurtles through space

at a speed incomprehensible to him,

a man is standing in a field of potatoes

scanning the crop for spots on leaves.

He sees the things that matter:

the weeds between the rows,

the good growth and the yellowing,

the low grey clouds with their promise of rain.

Kicking the stones, he curses his aching back

and blows on his hands: do you call this summer?

And he watches the kestrel standing high against the wind

at the field’s edge;  and the kestrel’s eyes have not missed

the vole on the headland below

as it scurries for cover in the nettles and docks.

Meanwhile, the rock continues to race around its star,

spinning on an axis of iron as it goes.

We cannot tell its motion, only in the things that matter:

hours and days, the turning seasons, changing leaves,

greetings and farewells

and the tumbling circles of the ageing years. 

Comma

The latest of my 'nature notes' articles :-

Despite the rather cool and changeable weather we’ve had quite a bit of, I have managed to see a few butterflies around this spring - small tortoiseshells, peacocks, large whites (the gardener’s delight - not!), and spring specialities like the orange tip and the holly blue.  But I was delighted to see a bright and beautiful orange comma in our new garden, on a sunny day at the beginning of the month.

The comma has been described as “looking like a tatty small tortoiseshell”, as its wings have a jagged outline.  When at rest with its wings closed this provides good camouflage, as the undersides of the wings are dark, and the butterfly looks for all the world like an old withered leaf. The Comma is now a quite familiar sight across much of the UK, bucking the trend of butterfly decline by expanding its range. The butterfly carries a single white marking on its underside, which looks like a letter “c” (hence its Latin name of  Polygonia c-album) - or a comma.

This butterfly is one of several for which the stinging nettle is a larval food plant. The caterpillars do feed on other plants as well, including hops, and a decline in hop growing is thought to have been the reason for a sharp decline in comma numbers a century or so ago. The comma overwinters as an adult, and emerges quite early in spring if the weather is suitable. The male will establish a territory, often on the sunny edge of a patch of woodland (which exactly describes our garden). I observed “our” comma flying up and down and returning to settle on a chosen perch - typical behaviour. The caterpillars are black and white, and manage to look a lot like bird droppings.  As well as nettles and hops, they may feed on blackcurrant plants.

The adult butterfly is known in a number of forms, but there are two main types, one with a dark underside and one with a lighter underside (these are also brighter on the upper side).  The darker butterflies are normally the majority, and these appear by about the end of June or early July, to overwinter as adults.  The lighter coloured butterflies, however, go on to breed again almost straight away, to give a second generation of comma butterflies, appearing in August and September.  There will be more of these after a good and warm spring (so not this year, I should think!).

Butterfly life-cycles are often quite complicated; the trigger in this case seems to be day-length at the time the larvae are developing.  More of the lighter type of adult will be produced if at the time the larvae are developing the day length is still increasing. But a gloomier spring, and therefore a later start with the first brood, will mean that most of the offspring will not breed again, but will overwinter as adults.  Their darker coloration adapts them well for hiding in dusty corners or under bark.

Adult commas can be seen at any time of the year - even emerging on some warm winter days - but the main flying period is from April to the end of October.  Adults take the nectar of thistles, along with, for example, blackthorn in spring, ivy late in the season, and also fallen plums, blackberries and other fruit.

Listening - a Sunday talk

English is an easy language to speak, but it’s rather a hard language to speak well. And two words that often get confused by those who are learning to speak English are “listen” and “hear”.  For example, someone may say (as a non-English friend said to me not long ago over the phone), “I am not listening you very well.”  I knew what he meant . . . but of course, to hear and to listen do have quite different meanings, don’t they?  I suppose you can’t really listen without hearing, but you certainly can hear without listening.

I can think of lots of examples of that, but the one that lodged in my mind as I prepared these words was a sketch eons ago from Les Dawson. Les himself and - I think - Hugh Paddick played the part of two elderly ladies, all headscarves and self-righteous rolling of eyes;  and on this occasion there they were, gossiping over the garden fence, except that what you got were two monologues and not any sort of conversation.  Neither was paying a blind bit of notice to anything the other one had said.  The comedy, of course, derived from the accidental meanings and double entendres that happened as the two monologues were connected together.

At other times it can be quite frustrating when you’re trying to explain something and proper attention isn’t being paid.  I recall how in my schooldays, my teachers got rid of their frustration by flicking bits of chalk and occasional board rubbers at recalcitrant boys.  These days of course, they’re no longer allowed to do that, and quite possibly they weren’t supposed to then, either.  And so the frustration remains;  I was giving a talk a couple of weeks back, and the fact that two of the people attending engaged in conversation all the way through all but knocked me off my stride. In a previous church Doreen used to get her knitting out as soon as I started to preach.  I was dismayed at first, but she explained that it helped her to listen.

And maybe that was so, since the one Sunday she forgot her knitting she was fast asleep about five minutes into my address.  The rest of the congregation kindly allowed her to sleep on until the end of the service, when, highly embarrassed, she told us she’d had her little grandson staying, so she’d had hardly a wink of sleep the previous night.

Anyway - last Thursday was Ascension Day, and next Sunday is Pentecost, and in the Bible (in St Luke’s Gospel and his second book, the Acts of the Apostles), this, for the disciples of Jesus, was a time of preparation and prayer.  And that always sets me thinking about the difference between hearing and listening.

The Gospel stories of Jesus don’t always present the disciples in a very good light.  Don’t you find that strange?  Don’t you think they might have tweaked the story so as to look a bit better and brighter than they do?  St Mark’s Gospel was written, we’re told, by Peter’s companion and secretary, who therefore is really telling Peter’s story - yet in it Peter himself comes across as fallible and sometimes foolish.  I’m reassured by that, and I hope you are too;  there’s nothing self-serving in the Gospels - it’s all about Jesus.

But I can’t help but think that it must have been frustrating for Jesus from time to time.  He spoke to great crowds sometimes, other times round supper tables. Folk heard him and were even entertained by him, but often they never really listened.  There were those who didn’t listen because they’d already got their own agenda. People of the party of the Pharisees, or of Herod, or the Temple priests - they weren’t there to be informed or persuaded, certainly not to be changed in any way.  They just wanted to trip him up, to find some creative ways of misusing his own words against him, as indeed they did their best to do on the night before Good Friday, as Jesus stood there on trial for his life.

Meanwhile, for many in the crowds it was all about the thrill of the spectacle, the latest thing.  It almost didn’t matter what he actually said. Maybe some of the time that was true of his own disciples, too.  They already knew what he was going to do.  For why else would you go to Jerusalem, other than to seize the throne and re-establish the ancient kingdom of David?  And if they were the new king’s men then surely they too would get thrones.

So it’s no great surprise to me as I read the Gospels to find the disciples getting it wrong, failing to understand, not  really listening.  Hearing is of course a passive activity;  odd bits of what goes in one ear might lodge within, but no effort gets made to prevent it from all going out through the other.  But listening is an active thing, and it can be hard work.  So there’s a difference between hearing someone - passive - and giving someone a hearing, which means more, doesn’t it?  To give a hearing means you’re involved, you’re giving something.  More to the point, it means (or I think  it does) that you’re exposing yourself to the risk of being challenged, changed even, by what you are hearing.

There are times in the Gospels when we see that happens - to Nicodemus and to Nathaniel;  to Mary and maybe also Martha, out at Bethany;  perhaps to Joseph of Arimathea, certainly to Mary Magdalene.  But there are lots of times when what Jesus says isn’t received, isn’t understood.  Is that surprising, do you think? - that when the Son of God speaks the message of God, which is a message of inclusion and acceptance and of forgiving and healing and reconciling love, it isn’t gladly received by all who hear;  that he preaches, and yet there’s opposition and, more to the point maybe, misunderstanding.  Some of the stories Jesus told address this very point, notably perhaps the parable of the sower, which compares what the preacher does to someone sowing seed on every part of his land. It’s all potentially good seed, but it doesn’t all grow well, and it doesn’t all bear fruit.

And, if you remember, when Jesus spoke about this parable to his disciples, he quoted the scripture about those who look and look, but do not perceive;  those who hear and hear, but fail to understand.  That’s how things are - yet the fact that not all the seed takes is no a reason to stop sowing it - that you still have to do.  Perhaps there’s also a note of challenge to the disciples themselves:  don’t be like that yourselves - work at this, put in the effort to listen and to understand, to be changed, and to grow.

When we read about the earthly ministry of Jesus we often find the disciples not listening, not understanding, failing really to absorb his teaching, but after Easter Day it’s a different world.  One of the features of the Easter stories is that we read a lot about eyes being opened;  we see people not recognising to begin with, but then the scales fall away.  And this isn’t just to do with what they see, but also what they hear.  Like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus - “didn’t our hearts burn within us, as he taught us along the way?”

To mention hearts prompts me to say that surely faith can never just be about being persuaded by intellectual argument or by factual analysis - there needs also to be an emotional investment.  You could say we need not just to listen to the words, but to sing the whole song.  Or that Jesus doesn’t just argue us into faith, he also loves us into faith;  and those aren’t two separate strands to his teaching, it’s all one.  As someone, maybe the great William Barclay, said: “Jesus was himself the message he preached.”  In the precious time between the resurrection and the ascension, the disciples had experienced that to the full;  but now their Lord was gone from them, gone with a blessing and with a promise, but no longer with them in the way he had been.  But he has told them to wait.  To wait in Jerusalem, and to wait in prayer, for the new thing that God would soon be doing among them.  For his wonderful gift of himself, as Holy Spirit.

Wait in prayer.  We tend very often to use a lot of words in our prayer times, but I suspect there wouldn’t have been a lot of words in the prayers of the disciples over that time.  It’s right of course that we should use words in prayer, whether that prayer be praise, or penitence, of petition, for God wants to hear what we have to tell him, or ask him, or even beg of him.  But prayer is (or should be) conversation.  And good conversation can’t happen without listening. Sometimes the listening is far more important than the speaking.  For the disciples of Jesus, this was surely one of those times.

I came across a rather jokey piece a while back in a manazine which ranked voices: which voices were listened to with most attention?  Preachers didn’t come too high on the list, if I remember rightly, but they were some way ahead of politicians, even so.  Stand-up comedians came higher than preachers, but the real winners were satnavs and bingo callers.  Interesting, don’t you think?  Satnavs and bingo callers.

I rarely use the satnav in my car, but when I do I sit fairly lightly to what it tells me.  Clearly that’s not true of everyone, since I know a chap who lives along a narrow lane, and often there are big lorries stuck up there trying to turn round because (quote) “that’s where the satnav brought me.”  For better or for worse, some people are prepared to place themselves completely at the disposal of their satnav when they travel. It’s as if they no longer belong to themselves, but to the disembodied voice on the top of the dashboard.

While that seems daft to me, but it does say something important about real listening, and about prayerful waiting such as the disciples were doing in Jerusalem: it needs to involve a measure of letting go - letting go of our own autonomy, lowering the barriers that normally we raise around our selves.  It’s about taking the risk of faith.  How well founded that faith may be when it comes to satnavs is one thing - but the disciples knew they could trust their Lord.

So they waited, and they waited in listening mode, so that when it happened, whatever it was that was going to happen, they’d be ready.  I’m sure they were also speaking words of prayer, and reading words of scripture, and singing words of praise, but the words weren’t as important as the listening.  And this was real listening, now; self-offering, and purposeful.  No longer were they just passively hearing as they sort of drifted along;  now they were attending, getting themselves tuned in.  They were taking the risk of faith, and opening themselves to the possibility, no, to the certainty of change.

And here’s where to leave it for now, perhaps.  Next week is Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, and the birth day of the Church.  “Be still, and know that I am God,” - the words of the Psalmist.  Sometimes it’s good for us just to take the time to wait;  always, I think, it’s good for us to take the time and make the effort to train ourselves up in the discipline of listening - so that we’re able to listen well to one another, and to those to whose voices we need to attend, because they need us to respond and perhaps then to speak for them;  and to the voice, sometimes the still small voice, of our Lord.

Having Moved

We've just moved house.  We liked our old place, but we like where we are now too - but it's a different world, having moved.  We're a different household, with one more member than before, and there's some settling in to do, not just in terms of finding our way about the premises, and getting to know the neighbours, but also in finding a sustainable and enjoyable - and ultimately fruitful - way of living together.

Years ago I remember reading Bonhoeffer's little book on community life.  This morning I was listening to an interesting radio interview on renunciation.  Living together (the title, if I recall it correctly, of Bonhoeffer's book, which I no longer have to hand) requires some measure of renunciation.  I can't do everything I want to, I have other people's welfare and happiness to consider too.  But one of the wise things said this morning was that it is as we renounce our selves that we find our selves.  There are those who are called to a genuinely solo, and perhaps eremetical, existence, but for most of us the self is formed and re-formed in the various patterns of relationship and community through which we travel, or so it seems to me.

A Small Alleluia

A small alleluia in the enveloping darkness,
a gentle but firm refusal
to give up on the light.  However deep the shade
I refuse to accept that night could be forever.
I may walk alone here, and I can see it's getting dark, but
for sure I shall still find a star or two to guide me,
and I know there will be a dawn.

Seen From My Car

My most recent 'Nature Notes' article :-

A couple of months back I was nature-spotting from the 71 bus;  but I seem to see a surprising amount of wildlife even from my car, especially at this time of the year.  Our delayed spring has meant that the trees and hedges have stayed leafless longer than usual, and, though many of our summer visitors are understandably late to arrive, they are coming at last - the chiffchaffs can be heard again in the woodland - while some of our winter birds have yet to leave.

I’m always glad when I hear chiffchaffs, often among the first spring arrivals - but in fact all the birds I’ve seen of late from my car have been birds of prey.  (I suppose a chiffchaff counts as a bird of prey if you happen to be an insect, but you know what I mean!)  The first of these was a barn owl.  Our small fields, good old hedges, barns and other old buildings mean that this part of the world is still barn owl country, and I often see them at night, not least because they frequently course along our lanes and hedgerows, which make for good hunting.  But this barn owl was hunting by day, as I left Guilsfield one morning.  It was a sunny morning (though extremely cold, which is probably why the owl was out in the daylight) and the pale plumage of the owl positively shone as it lifted above the hedge to my right.

A few days later, I was literally just getting out of my car when a sparrow hawk hurtled past me, with quite a large bird securely held in its talons.  It was, I think, a thrush - one less, sadly to join in the dawn chorus.  The speed and precision of the hawk’s flight hugely impressed me - there wasn’t much room for manoeuvre.  Folk with bird tables often moan about sparrow hawks, but there is a natural balance between predator and prey (one result of which is that if you artificially increase the prey population by garden feeding you’re bound to increase the predator population as well - and why not?  It’s a beautiful bird).  Last week, as I parked my car outside a house in Pontesbury, I had a good view of another sparrow hawk, this time certainly a female - quite a large bird - which sailed across to a nearby roof which gave it a good view all around.

The final bird, glimpsed near Arddleen, was a bit of a star if I’ve got it right, and I’m fairly sure of my identification.  I was driving home when I saw a large bird flying across, and being mobbed by smaller birds as it did so.  I thought in terms of buzzard or kite, but it certainly wasn’t either of those.  Herons are often mobbed too, as are large gulls like lesser black-backed - but, again, no.  Though it was only a brief sighting, I was able to get a good view of the colours and, crucially, a side view of quite a distinctive head.  I’m pretty sure that what I saw, on quite a cold and cruel day, was an osprey on migration.  They do pass through this area (and these days, of course, they do nest in Wales), and the week I saw this bird there were sightings coming in of returning ospreys arriving at traditional nesting sites.  So, however unexpected, I’m fairly sure of what I saw.  It’s amazing what you get to see from your little tin box on wheels!

Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

A Sunday talk :-

I love to sing hymns and choruses and worship songs; in fact, I love to sing all kinds of music, and I’ve always got some song or other roaming around in my mind.  Having said that, it isn’t just the music - the words are just as important to me, and the thing about the very finest hymns for me is the way in which word and tune support and enhance each other to produce something that strikes through to the heart.

It’s worth my mentioning that hymn singing as a congregational activity doesn’t go back all that far as a tradition in worship - really to the new independent congregations that began to flower in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Eventually, of course, hymns were sung everywhere, and there was a huge flowering of hymn writing from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries onward.  Before that time carols would have been sung, not only at Christmas but on many other occasions through the year, but carols weren’t sung in church services - they were songs of the people, sung out in the streets, and disapproved of, I should think, by the authorities and hierarchies of the Church.

That would have been true of hymns as well, to begin with.  The idea of the whole congregation joining together to sing something would to some have sounded rather subversive: it might encourage enthusiasm, which might seem fine to us, surely it’s good to be enthusiastic, but then would not have been welcome, for enthusiasm would lead to a loss of order and control.

Of the early writers of hymns in the English language none were more prolific than Charles Wesley.  We continue to sing so many of his hymns today, because they still work - partly because they’re all so firmly rooted in scripture, and also because they spring from his own very real experience of personal conversion.

My personal top three of Charles Wesley’s hymns would have to include ‘Jesu, lover of my soul’ and ‘And can it be?’, which are both hymns that have their roots in the story of his conversion. The other would be one that’s surely in nearly everybody’s list, the one I’d like to spend a little time on this afternoon, ‘Love divine, all loves excelling.’

These days we’re probably most likely to sing this hymn to the fairly modern Welsh tune ‘Blaenwern’, but there are quite a few other tunes - including the one called ‘Love divine’, which is a four line tune rather than eight lines.  Whenever I hear that tune, I’m transported back to a Sundayschool outing back in childhood days, when I must have been about seven or eight years old.  I suppose we must have sung it then.  But Charles Wesley actually wrote the words to be sung to Purcell’s tune ‘Precious Isle’, which was then very popular in the theatres and halls.  Wesley thought that it was too good a tune to be wasted on secular audiences;  it’s interesting to reflect on what tunes he might pick on were he still writing today - maybe he’d want to write Christian words to the theme tune of Eastenders (I do believe someone has).

But what a hymn he wrote!  What amazing words!  Of course, it isn’t a hymn about a thing called love;  it’s a hymn about a person called love, indeed, about the man whose very nature is love. You’ll be aware, I’m sure, of one particular way you can use the reading I used earlier on, Paul’s wonderful chapter thirteen of his First Letter to Corinth.  As you read through the passage, with all the things Paul has to tell us about love, you can take out the word ‘love’ each time and replace it with the name of Jesus - and as you do that you see that Paul too wasn’t thinking about a thing called love, but of the person who had changed and transformed his life when he wrote those words.  Then you can replace the name of Jesus with your own name: which gives us the challenge of discipleship, that’s shows what we’re called to live up to. 

What a challenge that is!  But it’s not a challenge we have to attempt on our own.  Charles Wesley writes: ‘Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down.’  This is his poetic description of our Lord, and of his Holy Spirit. A hundred years later, Christina Rossetti wrote ‘Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine.’  This is God’s decisive act of salvation:  Jesus Christ is the joy of heaven come down to earth, born at Bethlehem, walked the byways of Galilee and Judaea, died at Calvary and yet three days later was walking in the garden and blessing his disciples.

Jesus tells his disciples that he will be with them until the end of time.  He will no longer be physically present among them, they won’t see him any more, but they will know him by the gift of his Holy Spirit.  And you only have to read the story of the first Christian Pentecost to know that this is a love that’s not rationed out, it’s not something that comes in small measures.  Charles Wesley knew that very well, he knew how love had flooded into his heart at his conversion.

‘Fix in us thy humble dwelling;  all thy faithful mercies crown.’  Until this happened to Charles Wesley, he’d got only half way to where and what God was calling him to be.  He was already an ordained minister, and engaged in revival and mission;  and he was able, compassionate, prayerful, learned and thoughtful about the faith, and totally dedicated. But as yet there’s still a separation between him and God;  as yet he’s still trying to earn God’s approval.  I think that his anxiety to strive ever harder, to do more and more, had in fact worn him out, and made him ill.  So at the time of his conversion Wesley was a troubled soul.  He worried about whether he was good enough, whether he was working hard enough.  He’d had a difficult experience as an evangelist in America and had come back home filled with a sense of failure.  But everything would change for Charles Wesley on the feast of Pentecost, Whit Sunday, in 1738.

He’d been in close touch with a Moravian pastor named Peter Bohler, who’d led him to study verses, for example in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, that spoke of the need for a personal faith in Jesus - indeed, for a personal relationship with Jesus.  He read Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians, where in the verse Galatians chapter two verse 20 - “And the Son of God loved me, and gave himself for me” - Luther had placed particular stress on that word “me”.  This had a profound effect on Charles Wesley, who was then about thirty years of age, and the conviction never left him, that this love divine is to be experienced in a profoundly personal way.

One way in which I’ve heard it expressed is that God doesn’t love people.  It’s not people en masse he loves, but each individual person, the unique spark of his creative will that each one of us is.  He loves us despite our own failures in love, he loves us despite our apathy and hatred and deceit.  He is the man who prayed forgiveness on those who hammered the nails that fixed him to the cross: “They do not know what they are doing.”  And the love he has for me, and for you, and for each individual person, well, it’s as though each one of us was the only person he loved.  He loves each one of us with that recognition, with that compassion, with that intensity.

That’s not something we could ever do;  often we struggle to show that measure of love to even one other human being.  But our own human attempts at love are never more than a pale reflection of his love divine.  We may demand a return on our love;  but God loves us even when we don’t love him back. I’m always inspired by that wonderful picture by Holman Hunt, ‘The Light of the World’, in which our Lord stands at the door, and knocks, and waits.  He waits for us with an infinite patience; he waits for us to open the door and let him in.  We’re unfinished and incomplete without him, and he longs to complete his work of love within us - but always he waits for us to invite him in.

This is something the Church has a special opportunity to reflect on at this time of the year.  Between Easter and Pentecost we take time to think about the ways in which our Lord appeared to his disciples - not just to assure them that he truly was risen from the dead, but also to prepare them for what would happen next, for the new relationship that would begin with the gift of the Holy Spirit. God would be with his people in a new and dramatic way, and the Church whose story begins at Pentecost is not supposed to be a band of folk who gather to remember Jesus and to tell and share stories of a figure from distant history, but a pilgrim people who are living and walking with Jesus today.  As Paul writes, “We have the mind of Christ”;  and we remember how Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room, “Receive my Spirit”, and breathed into them the spirit of power and authority and love.

But let me return to Wesley’s wonderful words.  He writes

“Jesu, thou art all compassion,                           

 pure unbounded love thou art,                                 

visit us with thy salvation,                                 

enter every trembling heart.”

Pure, unbounded love: there are no limits here, no limits to the depth and intensity and clarity of this love, no bounds or barriers to limit its reach, no-one excluded from its gracious touch, except by our own choosing.

Charles Wesley’s own experience of this love as his own personal gift, not granted him because of the earnestness of his endeavours, the quality of his sacrifice, the hardness of his labours, but just there for him, freely and graciously bestowed, set him back on the right road.  Elsewhere in this hymn (we don’t always sing this verse), he writes “Breathe, O breathe thy Holy Spirit into every troubled heart.”  That was what it had been like for him.  He discovered that he had to invite God into the whole of his own self, but he also discovered that this was all he had to do.

There were no special incantations needed, no liturgy.  It didn’t have to happen in any special place, or at any particular time.  Pure unbounded love thou art.  There were no tests or examinations he had to pass to prove himself worthy, no fire to walk through, no list of achievements to audit.  Visit us with thy salvation.  This is about being saved from the otherwise certain failure of even our best intentions.

Enter every trembling heart.  At the heart of the hymn is Wesley’s desire that everyone should share the experience that had so transformed his life.  It was an experience his brother John shared it some three days later. Love divine is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t enough just to know about it and to sing about it;  we have to live in it and live by it, and as we do this to set our hearts on all that’s there in Paul’s wonderful words in I Corinthians 13.

So, to conclude, I do hope we’ll never get to think of hymns like ‘Love Divine’ as crusty and old, even though we’re two and a half centuries further on from the time when they were written.  For me Wesley’s words are as full of freshness and life as ever.  His conversion led to a great outpouring of hymns, and these hymns of his were I guess part of God’s gift and blessing on him, and essential to the birth of Methodism and to the Evangelical Revival of those days. 

Enter every trembling heart;  our motivation in mission is that we know that our Lord is waiting to do just that.  He isn’t somewhere far away, so that you need to shout for him to hear you, he isn’t so separate and holy that you have to be consumed by worry about whether you’re good enough.  That’s something you can leave him to sort out.  All you have to do, all I have to do, is ask, as he stands, waiting, at the door of our hearts.  For this is love divine, all loves excelling, here is our Lord waiting to finish his new creation in us, waiting to make us clean, waiting to make us worthy, waiting to complete within us the transformation of love.

An Easter Poem

I wrote this one some years ago . . .

Taking a handful of words in the half-light,

he shook them, scattered them,

gathered the pieces, shook again.

The people watched in wonder

at his bardic dexterity.  Then,

just as they had begun to suspect

he might have lost the plot, suddenly

in a great cawing of rooks and crashing of waves

the Poem emerged from his word-sack

to challenge the sun in its new-day brightness.

And they knew in that golden instant

that nothing in their lives could ever

be ordinary again.