Good Friday

Because we are moving house, this has been a less holy week than usual, as regards our formal observance. There has been so much else to do.  It couldn't be helped, really - and all the snow certainly hasn't assisted our plans - but I'm sad because the solemnity of Holy Week when fully kept has, over the years, been terrifically important to me as a Christian and as a minister.  And within the journey of this week, Good Friday itself has been a stark and necessary reminder of the true meaning of love and the true cost of sin.

In one of my previous parishes we developed a system of keeping the week that included a special table, at the back of church, upon which palms were laid on Palm Sunday, and the various other things through the week (this varied a bit year by year, depending on the theme of our daily services;  for example, one year each service focused on a different 'bit player', if you like, in the Passion Narrative, and another year on particular words of importance within the story).  On Maundy Thursday the sacrament was brought to this table (and then used on Good Friday), and the table became the focus for the vigil of prayer that was kept after the Maundy Eucharist and washing of the feet.  A chalice and paten remained part of the collection of items, to represent the Supper given by our Lord.

On Good Friday a purple robe, crown of thorns, and nails were laid on the table, and three crosses were erected there.  I should say that an inventive array of different sized boxes on the otherwise very ordinary table, which were then covered over with white sheets, allowed it to represent the Hill of Calvary.  On Holy Saturday the Easter Garden was created on the front section of the table, and of course on Easter Sunday morning the stone was rolled aside, and the grave clothes and an angel placed in position, as prayers of dedication were said.

Any professional liturgists or experts in ritual reading this will probably throw up their hands in horror, because no doubt we "didn't do it properly".  All I can say, though, is that it worked for us, and I'd love to be doing it that way still.  In fact, it didn't seem to translate into any of the places in which I served since those days, or at least, not as the entire process.

An Address at Easter

There are times in life when words just burst out of you, when certain words have to be spoken, if not yelled out loud.  A week or two back, when I was struggling with a large wooden gate and the wind just caught it and it then caught and trapped the back of my foot, there were words then I just had to yell, and I have to say that I do hope there was no-one within earshot, since at least one of those words was one that perhaps a good Christian ought not to be heard shouting.

Confession is good for the soul, and that’s one off my chest.  But not all the words that just have to be spoken, that burst out of you, are negative or bad words.  There are times when the shout is one of praise, times when we want to shout ‘Hooray’.  There are times when we want to shout the word I want to spend a bit of time on today, the word ‘Alleluia’.

Let me first of all touch on the seasonality of some religious words.  At Christmas the refrain is one of ‘Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace’.  Those are angelic words that for me form a sort of salvation manifesto. The birth the shepherds were told about, up there on the wild hillsides, was a birth that would glorify God and bring peace to men and women of faith and good purpose on earth. 

A week ago, on Palm Sunday, the word on people’s lips was ‘Hosanna’.  We quite often think of ‘Hosanna’ as a word of praise, and certainly it has a praise element to it, as it was shouted and sang to hail the king who chose to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey.  But it’s more than just that;  it’s a prayer and a plea.  If the Christmas words are a salvation manifesto, the Palm Sunday word is a salvation prayer:  it can translate as ‘Lord, save us.’  Maybe it’s also a salvation credal statement, for those who shouted it that day it was their declaration that yes, this was indeed the promised Saviour, come to claim his throne.

Of course, not even his closest disciples realised quite what that throne would be and how it would be claimed and attained.  They couldn’t for a moment imagine that the crown placed on their Lord’s head would be one of thorns, and that the title ‘King of the Jews’ would be one nailed to a cross.  So on Good Friday there are no words at all, only wailing, and that anguished cry, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ But there is also that last shout, as Jesus breathes his last - and I’m sure that we should understand that to be not a cry of despair or desolation, but a shout of triumph. ‘It is finished!’ - not in the sense of ‘It’s all over’, but rather ‘It is accomplished;  it is complete.’

The work is done.  And then comes the great Easter word of alleluia.  But surely that’s also a Christmas word? - you might ask, thinking of the traditional Christmas singing of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and in particular of the ‘Alleluia Chorus’.  Well, that’s a modern tradition, and it isn’t at all what Handel intended, or when he expected his master-work to be sung.  Alleluia is more than anything an Easter word;  of course, Christians can and probably should be using it all the time - but then of course, we are an Easter people.  Easter is what forms Christians into a single holy nation, and what unites us is that we praise the Lord.

Alleluia is an Old Testament word, but I believe it is found only in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament.  It is a holy word, or really two words fused together.  Hallel means praise - not praise as a noun, a thing, but praise as a command;  and Yah is God, or the Lord.  Alleluia is an instruction, an exhortation, to give praise to the Lord.  In the Psalms it has exactly that role;  in those wonderful poems of worship, the word alleluia encourages the people to lift their hands and voices in praise, to be joined together as the praising people of God.

The very fact that Alleluia as a word contains the name of God (or a name of God) should encourage Christians to be careful in the way we use the word.  We should not want to be found taking the Lord’s name in vain.  But a look at how the word is used in a secular setting can be instructive, even so.  One dictionary I looked at notes that ‘Alleluia is used to denote happiness that a thing longed for or awaited has at last happened.’ 

In Anglican Sunday services, very often the minister begins the service with this greeting:  ‘The Lord be with you’, and the people respond ‘And with thy spirit,’ or these days, more prosaically, ‘And also with you.’  But at Easter, the minister may well begin ‘Alleluia!  Christ is risen!’ and the response is ‘He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!’.  Those words are written with exclamation marks, of course, in the hope that that will encourage the words to be spoken joyfully and with a sense of triumphant celebration.  The thing longed for an awaited through Lent and Passiontide has happened, at last:  the King is risen and alive, and Mary meets with him in the garden.

And the alleluias of Easter follow on from the solemn fast of Lent.  For though Alleluia is a word that Christians can use at any time, since we’re an Easter people, by tradition, we don’t say alleluia in Lent at all.  The focus of Lent is on things earthly rather than things heavenly;  on penitence rather than praise;  on pilgrimage rather than on paradise.  And Lent leads us into Holy Week, and to Good Friday when I have always tried to be aware only of the tragedy of the cross, and to link my thoughts and reflections in with what those first disciples of Jesus were thinking and feeling - that it was all ended, that it was all demolished, that all their hopes had been destroyed, that the light in which they had put their faith had been squashed and extinguished by the forces of darkness.

It’s for that reason that the first Easter service in some churches starts with the building in darkness.  And then the light is kindled and shared, and then the whole building is filled with light, and only then is that word ‘Alleluia’ sung.

For this is how I feel it to be: on Good Friday human goodness is found to be fatally flawed.  Not all our best efforts can prevent this man’s death.  Even brave, foolhardy Peter is forced onto his back foot by the accusations of those around him, so that - just as his Lord had predicted - he three times denies he even knows Jesus, before the cock crows.

We can’t do it on our own;  our end, our inescapable end, is dust and ashes.  But the good news of Easter morning is that we are not on our own, and never will be on our own.  On this day divine love is triumphant even over death.  The Lord is risen, he is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Alleluia is exactly the right word.  Praise the Lord, for without him we are lost;  praise the Lord, for without him our very best efforts are all doomed to failure;  praise the Lord, for we are set free to join with the hosts of heaven, for whom alleluia is surely their constant refrain.  Alleluia is a word of heavenly praise.  Alleluia is also a simple and profound credal statement;  it is the heart of our faith.  We belong to our Lord, for only in him can we find real life.

Alleluia seems to have been a word used in the very earliest liturgies and forms of worship of the Church.  Because it is both a call to praise and a statement of faith, it is a word that should always be used with purpose and with joy, and never in a throwaway fashion.  For this is who we are.

Whatever actually happened on that first Easter Day - and, however you read the Easter stories in the Gospels, there always remains an aura of mystery about them - whatever happened that day, it was utterly convincing.  It changed the hearts, the lives, of those frightened and defeated disciples.

Pentecost is sometimes called the ‘birthday of the Church’. If that is the case, then the great Easter season is, I suppose, the gestation, the pregnancy, the time during which the infant Church was formed and fashioned - as the risen Christ appeared to his disciples not just to dazzle and bemuse them, not just to delight and reassure them, but also to teach and prepare them.  These were men (and women) who went gladly and joyfully even to death because of what they encountered in the empty tomb and in the days that followed.

In other words, alleluia is more than just a word, a sort of Christian version of ‘hooray’;  it is a way of life.  Christians, as I’ve said twice already, Christians are an Easter people.  So we are an alleluia people;  we should be deeply infected with joy, even when things seem to be going against us;  praise should fill all that we do, even when the path is rough and steep and the day is dark;  we should be immune to defeat, because we know the victory is already won;  we should be unafraid of death, because we know our Lord went there and is there no longer.

We can’t always manage that;  there are times, of course there are, when it all gets too hard for us.  Times when the words on our lips, the words that burst out of us, are more like the one I used when my foot got trapped under that gate.  Times when despair, anger, disillusionment, pain, or for that matter shame and sorrow, tower over us and drive the alleluias out of our life.  I suppose that’s why we need this day each year, to hear the story again, to stand with Mary and the others in that garden;  to have felt the pain and the shame, to have passed through the hard times, the dark times, and to know - even if as yet we don’t quite believe what we’re seeing - that today something new is abroad in the world.  The Lord is risen;  he is risen indeed;  alleluia!

Osprey? (2)

Information that came my way yesterday makes it more likely that the bird I saw the other day could have been a migrating Osprey.  If so, I bet he or she wishes they were back in West Africa - more snow is falling this morning!

Osprey?

I saw a strange sight today, from my car, as I was driving through the small village of Arddleen.  A large bird was being mobbed by a number of smaller ones;  nothing too unusual about that, I often see such a thing - usually the large bird is a buzzard, sometimes a heron, a great black backed gull, even a red kite.  This bird was none of those, that much was clear from my car, but I can't be sure what it was.  My best guess, though, is osprey:  something about the shape of the head and the markings, but it was such a brief view, and I had no opportunity to stop.

The bird in question was certainly a raptor, and ospreys are passing through at about this time of the year, though I suppose the present very wintry weather has to make it less likely that one should be present:  surely any osprey with half a brain is going to have halted its migration, faced with wall-to-wall snow and biting winds.  So I feel this has to be filed away as 'unknown', or at any rate 'indeterminate'.  Pity;  an osprey at Arddleen would be a very special tick!

Barn Owl

We are so lucky to live in a part of the country where barn owls are quite common.  They are such marvellous creatures.  The countryside around us here is still quite mixed as regards the way it is farmed and managed, and there are lots of hedgerows and quite a few old buildings with suitable nest sites.  I quite often see barn owls at night, sometimes leading me along the lane as they fly along the hedges.  Sadly, a few are killed by vehicles because they so often hunt by flying low along, and of course at times across the lanes.

Yesterday though I saw one lift from a hedge top well into daylight hours, as I made my way along the road between Guilsfield and Arddleen, the back route to my place of work at Four Crosses, which I was taking because of very slow roadworks on the main road.  I was very grateful for that diversion, and quite startled by the paleness of the bird as I glimpsed it - looking, in a way, more like a huge moth than a bird, and remarkably white in colour.  I tend to think of barn owls as being of a buff to light brown, as regards wings and upper parts, but they do vary, and whiteness can be the dominant impact as you see one, so the Latin name of Tyto alba (white owl) is appropriate.  The wings are broad and enveloping, almost like a sort of shroud as the bird rides the hedgerows.  The tail is short and wedge-shaped, and the heart-shaped face, which is a very pure white, is quite distinctive, though that part of the owl wasn't visible to me as I drove by yesterday.

Just at the moment, I don't seem to have the time I'd like to go watching birds, so it's a double pleasure when these chance meetings occur!

A Bible Verse for Today

To stand in awe of human authority may be a snare,
but to trust in the Lord is to find a tower of refuge.
Many may seek audience of a ruler of peoples,
but it is the Lord who decides each case.

Proverbs 29. 25-6

The Love of the Cross (a Sunday talk)

I was reading an article in my paper yesterday about HMS Belfast, the battle cruiser that’s moored on the Thames not far from Tower Bridge.  It caught my eye mainly because a couple of years ago when my wife and I were visiting our son who lives and works in London, we decided we’d visit HMS Belfast.  I’d walked past it so often when I was doing a job that required me to visit London regularly, and I’d always wondered what it was actually like on board. Anyway, the first thing I discovered about being on board was that it was going to cost us ten quid apiece to get there. Ten quid, I thought, just to go and look round a boat.  What a waste!

That’s what I felt at the time, but of course, we’d agreed that’s what we were doing, so we did it.  And I have to admit that once on board I really enjoyed it: there was so much to see that we were there nearly all day, so our ten quid, somewhat to my surprise, turned out to be pretty good value in the end.

The reading I’ve just used today tells of something that was claimed to be a waste of money.  A bottle of really expensive oil had been just poured over the feet of Jesus! Surely something much cheaper would have done just as well, if something like that had to be done at all.  And surely better things could have been done with all the money it cost. This is a story that turns up in different forms in the various Gospels.  Perhaps Jesus was anointed on more than one occasion;  or perhaps what we have are different recollections of the same event, which the different Gospel writers each use in their own particular way?  But let me reflect for a while on this particular story - both on the event itself, and on the reason why the story has been told in this way.

For one thing, there’s a whiff of scandal about the story. It’s quite an intimate thing to do, to anoint someone’s feet.  And for a woman to liberally anoint the feet of a man, and to dry them with her hair, which therefore must have been flowing down and not respectably up - this was behaviour rather shocking and somewhat out of the ordinary, even before you start to consider what the ointment actually cost and whether it was a waste of money.  A woman would not normally ever loosen her hair and let it down in mixed company.  This was a rather reckless and immodest act.

And therefore the first message I want to take from this reading is that it has to do with the risk and the extravagance of love.  To be in love is to be totally caught up in the other person, so however far apart you may be there's a closeness heart to heart, and a sense that one is incomplete without the other.  People in love do rash and foolhardy things, which other people can then write books or make films about. Actually on the quiet I'm a bit of a fan of rom coms, and I was watching ‘Love Actually’ on the box the other night;  it’s easy I find to get caught up in all the angst and the misunderstandings and the confusion - the twists and turns in the story that precede what you hope is going to be a “happy ever after” ending.

Today’s Gospel is hardly the script for a rom com, but it is about love.  Mary's love for Jesus has led her to behave in a foolhardy way, and as she does what she does she doesn’t care what anyone else might think. But this isn’t the passion of romantic love, but something quite different.  What we see here is the love of a penitent for the means of her salvation: the same love we find in the apostle Paul when he writes that he "counts everything as sheer loss, compared to the gain of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord."  Jesus revealed himself to Mary as "the resurrection and the life", and for her too nothing else matters.  Her Lord is everything to her.

Her anointing of his feet is a sign of penitence. Anointing can be a sign that honour is being conferred, for example, when the head is anointed at a coronation.  That sort of anointing is performed by a superior - at a coronation it’s the archbishop who acts in this way to the blessing of God on the newly crowned king or queen.

But this is an anointing act that springs out of sheer helplessness.  Mary has come to her Lord in total humility, and the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment, for she didn't ration it out, she used the lot, she held nothing back.  For me the force of that fragrance filling the whole house says something important about the way in which a loving and generous act can have an impact beyond itself:  what happens is that others are affected and drawn in to what is happening.  In the marriage service the minister may pray that the love between the two people standing before him or her will be a force for good beyond their own household, that love will flow into the community in which the couple will make their home.  And on so many occasions I’ve seen wonderful examples of how that can happen, though I’d have to say that I’ve also seen the reverse - that bad relationships also can have an impact - a bad impact - beyond themselves.  The Presbyterian Bible scholar William Barclay wrote that loving and generous deeds can become the possession of the whole world.  The Gospel is far better preached through generosity, through giving and sharing, through the practical outworking of love, risky though that can be, than through the most brilliant words, or the most superbly organised campaigns and rallies.

Having said that, as we read the story not everyone was moved positively by the fragrance.  What a waste of money, Judas said.  Maybe others too said, echoing my thoughts at the ticket booth for HMS Belfast.  And it’s understandable.  It does seem like a waste of money.

There are some important lessons I draw out of the words Jesus used in his reply.  "The poor are with you always, but you will not always have me," is what Jesus says, more or less.  The first thing I draw out of this is that charity toward the poor shouldn't be an occasional grand gesture, nor something we do only when we decide we can afford it - it should be our constant commitment.  The poor are always with you - so you should always be aware and concerned and compassionate. It’s important to say this, because you could use those words as an excuse to put off till tomorrow the care that we should be offering today, and I’m quite sure in my own mind that that isn’t what Jesus is meaning here.

But what he is meaning I think is this, the second lesson I take from these words: while acts of charity need to be built in to our programme, and this is something best done in an organised and disciplined way, there are also opportune times in life that you just have to grab there and then, or they will slip away.  How easy it is not to stop and marvel at a sunrise or a sunset, since you know there'll be another one tomorrow;  how easy it is to put off our prayers, or our greetings, or maybe our apologies, rather than seizing the moment and just doing it.  There are moments in human life when the penny drops, when something becomes clear, when a problem is solved or when something is recognized as valuable or lovely, there are times when we just feel uplifted and want to raise our hands and our voices in praise.  Don’t let those moments slip away: now is the time - for action, for decision, for commitment, for worship, for praise.

So the actions of Mary that day, as I read them in this story, challenge me when I’m tempted to be too cautious, and when I seek to measure and ration my generosity or my goodwill. No single person can do everything, but in every life there are times when we mustn’t hold back, and that's how it was then for Mary: now was the time to give all she could, and Mary held nothing back: her Lord was worth all she’d got, and more.

That’s the message I want to leave you with on this Sunday often called Passion Sunday, a fortnight before Easter Day.  Our focus over the next couple of weeks is bound to be the cross.  On Good Friday we may perhaps be thinking of the tragedy of the cross, the pain of the cross, even the guilt of the cross, the weight of sin this dying man bears, our sin and not his, but borne freely.

He gives his all for us, and he does so while we are yet sinners. Every year I am caught up again in the wonder of such a sacrifice.  Every year I am freshly moved by the words of the hymn, “Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.”  Mary, I think - even before that first Good Friday - she understood this, very deeply.  Today we reflect on the love of the cross, of the cross as the place where the true meaning of love is expressed and displayed and acted out more fully than it could ever be again.  And yet that same love is all around us, we are affirmed by it, convicted by it, called by it.

What should it mean for a church to be cross-shaped?  Some ancient churches are literally cross-shaped, but all churches should be in a spiritual sense - motivated and challenged by the love of the cross to be sacrificial ourselves in our mission, in our service, in our outreach, and in our praise.  And nothing that is a heartfelt response to the loving heart of our Lord could ever be a waste of money, or a waste of time, or a waste of self.

Tree Creeper

Looking out of my lounge window a week or two back, I was surprised and delighted to see a tree creeper, not creeping up a tree but prospecting the mortared crevices on a retaining brick wall just a few feet in front of the window at which I stood.  I was very glad of the chance to observe this bird at such close quarters.

Tree creepers are sparrow sized, and have cryptic plumage of browns, buffs and greys that blend in well against the bark of a tree (though not against our brick wall).  At first sight, they can be more mouse-like than bird-like, as they creep up the trunk of a tree, often circling the tree as they do so.  They keep close to the bark, and use  their stiff tails as a sort of prop as they climb.  The bird then flies back down to start again, or to transfer to another tree.

They feed on small insects and other invertebrates, and life can be tough in a hard winter.  They are efficient hunters, though, and the long, thin, curved bill makes an excellent probe.  Watching the one on our wall, I was interested to see how the bird can stretch its neck upwards and back so as to raise the head while keeping the body close to whatever it is climbing on.

There are some insects active at every season of the year, except when the weather is really cold - but tree creepers are also searching for hibernating insects, and for eggs and pupae too.  We used to see them regularly on the giant redwood we had in a previous garden;  the soft bark of this and other coniferous trees is especially attractive, and its deep fissures and loose pieces of bark provide shelter for insects and also a possible nest-site for the bird.  Tree creepers will nest behind loose bark or ivy, making a loose cup of a nest, lined with bark fragments and feathers, where the female will lay her six or so eggs.  The nestlings leave the nest after a couple of weeks, by which time they can climb well, but are not yet good fliers.

“My” tree creeper spent maybe ten minutes on the brick wall, usefully I hope, before moving its attention to an old stump which it climbed in the traditional manner.  This is a bird that does exactly what its name says!  Then it moved to a small tree, and on to another out of my area of vision.  Normally, you’ll see a tree creeper begin its search near the base of the trunk of one tree, spiral its way up, then fly down to the base of the next tree along to continue prospecting. 

The main distinguishing marks are an eye-stripe which is white or light grey, the stiff tail which divides into two points, and of course the very distinct long curved bill.  Both sexes are alike.  Another species of tree creeper, the short-toed, is found in continental Europe;  the two species are very hard to tell apart in the field, but the short-toed tree creeper is very rarely ever found in the UK.  Someone I used to know in south Shropshire had a tree creeper that regularly visited his feeders, something I have never known elsewhere.  In winter, though, they can be found in mixed flocks, with tits and other small birds.

Epitaph (a poem)

22nd March - I've been working on these lines, and have decided to post a revised version:

When it is time to go

I shall hope to be remembered with smiles,

though I’d like there to be tears as well.

And I'd like to think there might be stories to tell

assisted by the raising of glasses

and maybe the odd eyebrow too.

When it is time to go

I'll hope to leave knowing

there’s a job well done, and a journey boldly made;

but maybe there might be a touch of frustration besides,

for I could have had a little more to try at,

might have found a mile or two further to walk; but anyway

I'll hope there may not be too much to regret.

I didn't get everything right, I know: I shall not hide from my faults.

The mistakes were all my own; I feel for every hurt I've caused.

But when it is time to go

I’d like to think they might be looked on kindly;

I hope I might be welcomed wherever it is I'm going -

with forgiveness and forbearance and maybe a little love.

For let this be known of me,

let this be believed, friends, when it is time to go:

I put my heart always into all I set myself to do,

always tried hard at love, and always hoped that in the end

I should have made more smiles than tears.

Psalm Sixteen

Another first draft of a poem . . .

On this grey morning

with the wind soft in my face

I am looking over the valley

from this path by a stream that chatters idly to itself

as it flows gently down under the stone slabs

of the old sheep bridge, sweet cold water splashing between

the new and hopeful greening of early spring.

You are down there somewhere,

I imagine,

doing something timely and important:

chairing a meeting, playing a violin,

hanging out the washing, waiting for a train.

I am for now outside the reach of time,

with nothing important to do,

and nowhere important to go;

but the wind blows soft in my face, and

standing where my eyes can scan the world,

just for this quiet moment

the lines have fallen for me in a goodly place.

For here I can feel it to be true:

that God is set at my right hand,

so that I can be glad, for safe held I shall not fall.

The quiet breeze and the soft grey clouds

seem alive with the Spirit, with the Creator’s presence;

the stream’s splashing motion sings

a constant litany of prayer and praise.

High on this hillside

each unspoken thought is laid open

to the mind of God;  and he hears,

for he is close by, he is close by.

Thou shalt show me the path of life;

in thy presence is the fullness of joy,

and in thy right hand

are pleasures for evermore . . .

. . . with the wind soft in my face.

Keeping the Fast

A talk prepared for this coming Sunday :-

I was cleaning my teeth the other night, and as I took the toothbrush out of my mouth and rinsed it to put away, I found myself suddenly thinking, “How on earth did my toothbrush get into such a state?”  There it was, all straggly and soft and with bristles sticking out in all directions.  As a means of cleaning my teeth it was no longer much good.

How on earth did my toothbrush get like that?  Gradually, is the answer.  Bit by bit and without me noticing, is the answer.  As with toothbrushes, so with so much else.  Things get tatty and run down and worn out without us noticing.

A friend of mine was complaining to me the other day that he was getting pins and needles and his hand was swelling up.  He was still complaining at work the following day and they sent him to casualty.  Turns out he’d broken his wrist, maybe a couple of weeks earlier taking a tumble on the ice as so many of us did.  He hadn’t realised and had just worked on. Quite often even fairly large problems and deficiencies go unnoticed because we’ve got other things to think about, too much else on our minds.

So here we are in Lent, and that’s what Lent is for.  We need times in our lives when we take a closer look at our selves, take a step back as it were in order to notice the things we otherwise don’t see.  What am I doing that I really shouldn’t be doing?  What have I stopped doing that I ought to still be doing?  What bits of my life, and especially what bits of my spiritual life, are getting saggy and worn out and really no longer quite fit for purpose?  And what am I going to do about it all?

In other words, let’s get back into shape, let’s get back into a disciplined way of living, let’s get back into touch with our spiritual heart, let’s get back in touch with God.

And of course, that last bit is the bit that’s most important.  Let’s get back in touch with God. Jesus directed the attention of his disciples toward those people, chiefly the Pharisees, who made a big deal out of fasting and praying. They anointed themselves liberally with ashes so that people wouldn’t be able to help but notice they were fasting.  They stood on the street corners to pray so that no-one would be able to ignore what they were doing.

Said Jesus - if you do what you do so that people will see you and applaud you, well, don’t be surprised if that’s the only reward you get.  That’s the one you were aiming for, after all.  The point of fasting is that it’s between you and God.  It isn’t what other people see, and what other people say, that matters.  This is between you and God.

A former colleague of mine who happens to be a Muslim used to take gentle but nonetheless serious issue with the way Christians do fasting, compared with the proper Muslim fast - as he saw it - of Ramadan.  During Ramadan, Muslims (as I’m sure you know) fast completely throughout the daylight hours, neither eating nor drinking, and they only break their fast when the sun sets.  Ann and I were in Istanbul one Ramadan, and we felt quite guilty really, every lunchtime, seeing as so many other people around us weren’t eating a thing.

So when my Muslim colleague used to tell me, “We Muslims fast properly, while even in Lent you Christians don’t really seem to fast at all” to be honest, I tended to find myself more or less agreeing with him.  I think I recall saying something about how sad it is that in this secular and materialistic age people here are no longer as serious about things like fasting as they used to be.  Mind you, that might all be changing now, with the news recently that the fasting diet is actually a very good and sensible way to keep your weight down, and maintain your body in good health.

Be that as it may, what I could have said to my Muslim colleague was that Christians aren’t supposed to make a big public thing about their fasting, not even in Lent.  If our fasting is saying ‘Look at me’ rather than ‘Look at God’ then somewhere we’re going a bit wrong.  Nonetheless, we should keep the Lenten fast as a fast, in some quiet but sincere way - because we really do need it.

We need it because we don’t notice as we should when we get slack about our praying or our Bible reading or our charitable giving or our care for one another.  And we need it because we don’t notice the ways in which other things, pleasures, possessions, ambitions, take too big a place in our lives, so that they become idols, little gods in their own right blocking our view of the one true God.  And we need it too because maybe at times our Christian fellowship together needs a little repair and refurbishment too.

But fasting isn’t about beating ourselves up just for the sake of it.  It doesn’t have to be a miserable time.  One prayer I sometimes use talks about the joy of the Lenten fast - and why not use that word?  Surely if we’re drawing closer to God then that should be a joyful thing!  Nor is it just about giving things up.  It’s also about taking things on.  If during Lent we give up a meal, and what we would have spent on that meal goes into our holiday fund for later in the year, that doesn’t seem very right.  If giving something up saves us money, then how we use that money is also part of our Lenten commitment.

There’s plenty about fasting in scripture.  Sometimes the people of Israel seems to have imagined that all they needed to do was to fast a bit and pray a bit, and all their woes would be reversed because God was bound to be back on their side now.  Prophets like Hosea told them in no uncertain terms just how wrong they were.  God isn’t bound to support you just because you press the right buttons, he told them.

In other words, it isn’t what you do with your hands or on your knees that matters, it’s what is happening in your heart.  Jesus knew that very well.  Do things in secret, he told his disciples, so that your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.  It doesn’t matter that no-one else sees what you’re about.

Solving my toothbrush problem wasn’t a problem.  They come in packs of two very often anyway, and the other half of my last pack was waiting for me, pristine and ready to brush, there at the back of the bathroom cabinet.  My friend with the broken wrist is off work for a couple of weeks, but by then he should have healed up OK, and he’ll be back in the thick of things.

I suppose the sort of things the Lenten fast is supposed to sort our might need a little more work.  If my biggest spiritual problem at the start of Lent is that I’m not praying as I should, then just giving up eating chocolate isn’t going to be the total solution.  If I don’t succeed I end up feeling miserable;  if I do succeed I may also be miserable, as life without chocolate isn’t much fun - but I may also be so full of pride that I’m tempted to boast about how well I’m doing.  And at the end of it all I’m probably still not praying.

So we do need to be purposeful about Lent;  sorted out and realistic.  What do I really need to do, for me to be stronger and more effective, better tuned in to the will of my Lord, better able to serve him and to praise him and proclaim him?  Giving things up will help, but only if I’m also taking things on.  And the right things, for me as I am.  Otherwise, it’s a bit as though I’m saying, “Oh, I see my toothbrush is getting a bit threadbare, I think I’ll buy myself a new hat.”

Now at this point you might be thinking, “Well, this is all very fine, but we’re already two Sundays into Lent, why is he saying all this now?”  Well, your Lent might be all sorted out, but it might not be.  Or you might even have given up.

At Lent as at the New Year, we make resolutions full of fervour and good faith, and then we trip up and don’t keep to them, and so we give up and say, “Well, never mind, there’s always next year!”  Fasting is too important a principle to be thrown out just because you missed to keep it on one occasion. I personally think Christians should always fast, and I know a very holy couple - no, I’ll rephrase that, because it makes them sound like the sort of pious head in the clouds types that are no fun, and that’s not them - I know a very jolly but also very prayerful couple who fast every Friday throughout all the year, in honour of Good Friday but also because it just brings them back to God in a firm but gentle way, it’s a way in which they remind themselves each week just who comes in at number one in their lives.

But that was to digress.  Not giving up was what I wanted to talk about.  Purposeful fasting is about making progress through Lent, drawing closer to God, mastering our rebellious selves, bringing ourselves back into line.  It stands to reason that we won’t always manage it first time.  High jumpers at the sports get three goes at the bar, at whatever height it’s set.  We get as many goes as we need, so long as we keep on trying, and with good faith.  We’re not disqualified, just because on this time or that one we didn’t manage to clear the bar.

I seem to be mixing my images rather today.  If you come away from this sermon with a mental image of a chap with a broken wrist trying to clean his teeth as he clears the high jump bar in an athletics contest then (a) hopefully it will at least raise a smile, and smiling is allowed, even in Lent, among God’s people;  and (b) well, sometimes it does seem as difficult as that to get it all right and to be good and faithful disciples . . . but Jesus never did say it would be easy, just that he would be there always with us, and that in the end it would be worth it.  Happy Lent!

What is it with staplers - or is it just me?

I self-publish my poems, printing up books whenever I have a reading, in the hope that some might sell - so last night I was busy printing and folding, as I was talking to a group a few miles from here.  A little while after we moved here two years ago I decided to invest in a new long-arm stapler, as my old one - the latest in a small succession of such things - was just not behaving.  Anyway, for a while all was well.

But not now.  This is I suppose the fourth or fifth long-arm stapler I've owned, and I've never bought cheaply, figuring that it would make good sense to invest in quality.  Quality?  My trouble is, none of them have really lasted the course.  This one was fine for about a year, but by last night it was skittishly refusing to properly inject the staples.  About every other one was crumpled and distorted, and not holding in place.  I want my books to look neat and professional, and so I make sure they are well laid out and printed . . . so you can imagine my frustration when it all gets spoiled because of one stupid stapler.

Yes, I am one of those people who get cross with inanimate objects.  I know it's silly, and I know we all find it so terribly amusing when we see John Cleese bashing his recalcitrant car with a stick in 'Fawlty Towers' - but no, I have to admit it:  after just one more distorted and useless staple messed up my handiwork last night, I became Basil Fawlty.  'The whole world is against me, and it's being channelled through you, you stupid b****y stapler.  Take that!  And that!  And that!'  It didn't do any good.  My stapler now hates me, and won't ever work for me again.  I had to give up making up poetry books (fortunately, I had finished enough to take to my reading).  In fact nothing moved forward in any way;  And if I felt briefly better for having vented my wrath, not even that  lasted for long.

Anyway, in the sober light of the next day, my question is, I suppose, is it just me?  I mean, are long-arm staplers just inherently flimsy and untrustworthy bits of tat, so that they always go wrong for everyone - or is it actually somehow my own fault?  No need to answer.  I'll buy another stapler, and see what I can do to treat this one with love and care.  And maybe, just maybe, it'll see me out.  One can but hope.

Disaster?

I was at work yesterday when my wife called in a state of panic from our new home.  Water was pouring through everywhere, and what could she do?  What could I do, I wondered, particularly as at the time she rang I had a newly bereaved family with me, who had come to view father in our chapel of rest.  Everything seemed to be falling down about our ears, all our plans and expectations in ruins, and we were helpless.

Well, we knew where the stop tap was, at least, not that that solved the problem instantly.  A friend who does some plumbing work was quickly mobilized and, bless him, dropped everything to rush over a help.  The central heating system was the problem - a combination of things, including, it would seem, the failure of safety equipment that should have directed excess water outside, rather than allowing it to fill the roof space. Damage has been done, though we think - and hope - not as much as we'd feared at first.

And we have to look at the positives.  That can be hard at first.  We'll not be covered by insurance, as they don't cover this sort of thing until the policy has been in operation for fourteen days.  Putting everything right will cost us three or four thousand pounds, not money we have readily lying around.  And we remain worried about things like electrical damage.

But I have to admit that it's better that it should have happened now, before we move in.  We'd expected to spend money on the central heating anyway, and at least this means that anything we get done will be "root and branch" rather than tinkering at the edges.  And getting it done will perhaps allow the house to feel more "ours" at the outset.

It's easy to be spooked into thinking about kismet, fate, to be tricked into a sense that this is a project doomed from the start by bad luck.  Such a way of thinking can become self-fulfilling;  but it shouldn't be.  I think I have a past history of just getting on with things when the going gets tough.  I do not intend to give in to anything, and certainly not to unfounded speculations about jinx or hoodoo.  Someone said (though I can't remember just who) that we're never given dreams without the means to make them come true - except that often the journey from dream to reality involves a lot of hard slog.

Transfiguration

The text of an address prepared for this Sunday, the last before Lent :-

Here’s a story you might have heard before, but I’m sure it’s worth re-telling, especially in a Presbyterian church. A bishop who was guest of honour at an event in one of the churches of his diocese found, somewhat to his consternation, that he was being followed around by a little girl as, sherry in hand, he made his tour of the room.  The little girl was the vicar’s six year old daughter - and every time the bishop looked round, there she was, staring at him.  Wherever he went, there she followed.  He just couldn't shake her off.  Finally, he could take no more:  "Why are you following me about, little girl?" he asked.  "I'm waiting to see you do your trick," she replied.  "What trick?" asked the bishop in consternation, not being much given to tricks.  "I’m waiting to see you do your trick with the glass," said the little girl.  "I don't do any tricks with glasses," replied the bishop sternly.  "Daddy says you do," replied the little girl serenely.  "Daddy says you can drink like a fish."

Really, my starting point for today is that people followed Jesus - and many of them followed him for reasons much the same as the reason why that little girl was following the bishop.  They wanted to see what tricks he was going to do - for he was, after all, the latest thing, and they wanted to be dazzled and amazed.  And I want to keep that image in mind as I think this morning about what it means for us as his Church and as individual Christian people to be followers of Jesus today. 

We’ve heard one version of the story of that remarkable event we call the Transfiguration - and we’ve seen how three of the disciples were so dazzled and amazed, up there on the mountain, that for a while none of them really knew much about where they were at all, or even whether they were waking or sleeping.

Not that they’d gone there with him expecting any of that. Not everyone was following Jesus just in the hope of seeing magic tricks and miracles. Peter, James, John and the others were following Jesus because he had called them. And, I suppose, because something about the things he said and the things he did burned in their hearts.

Here are four things I want briefly to say about following Jesus, looking at it from the point of view of, say, Simon Peter. First: If Jesus called people Simon Peter then he might call anyone.  He doesn’t call people of a certain grade, with established qualifications, with a certain measured quality of goodness.  Jesus called fishermen (and tax collectors, and all sorts), not scholars - or at least, not necessarily scholars.  He didn’t look for book-learning -  the one thing he requires is this:  that when he calls, we say yes.

So my second point follows on: all we need at the outset if we’re to follow Jesus is this - that we have an obedient faith.  Jesus said, "You are my friends, if you do what I command."  Doing what you’re told to do is the mark of a servant, but Jesus doesn’t leave us that way.  He says very clearly, "I call you servants no longer. You are my friends."

And that takes us to my third point: Following Jesus means learning from Jesus and growing like Jesus.  "Are you following me?" Those are words a teacher may say to her class, or a storyteller to the people listening.  And when Jesus asks us to follow him, he doesn't mean tag along behind me like so many of the crowds did, or like that little girl did to the bishop. He means come and learn from me, follow me as your guide in life; so that, as St Paul wrote, “we have the mind of Christ”. Let me complete that quote from St John - "I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I learned from my Father." To learn from a teacher is to grow like that teacher - the great Christian call and challenge is to imitate, to grow like, to grow close to, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The fourth thing I’d want to say is this. It’s a point made by one of the cast in a very moving and challenging play I went to watch at Marton Village Hall last week, performed by the wonderful Riding Lights Theatre Company.  Jesus doesn't say to anyone he calls that following him will be a safe thing to do.  Quite the opposite, in fact:  it won’t be safe, or easy.  It can be tough, and it will be costly. But what he does say is that it’s going to be worth it. For another thing he says to his disciples is:  "I am the way, the truth, and the life." 

The Church is a community of people who’ve heard Christ’s call and decided to follow. Its members are people who as friends of Jesus are pilgrim companions together. Jesus told the disciples that the world would know the truth of his word when it saw how his friends loved one another. He laid down his own life for love of his friends, and for love, even, of those who hammered the nails into his hands and feet. And his one great commandment is this: love one another, as I have loved you.

So the renewal of our Church in mission and outreach depends on our obedience to that great command. If we’re to grow and thrive and make new disciples, we need to be renewed in unity and fellowship and love. If we don’t notice, encourage, correct and support our fellow disciples, if we let ourselves be divided so that labels like Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or Catholic mean more to us than the one that says Jesus, then we fall short of he calls out from us, and we short-change our witness to the world of his love. 

I’m not sure what right I have to say any of these things. I wouldn’t claim to be a shining example of discipleship. Nor would I dare to speak from any platform of ministerial authority; I stand here with no authorization other than that of fellow pilgrim. I am amazed to hear Jesus call me, but he does, just as he calls you. All I can do is to try and follow. And why? Because in Jesus I see a great man, and a fine teacher, and an example of faith and service. But not only that; there is more.

And that takes me on to reflect on just what it was that happened on the Mountain of the Transfiguration, just what it was that Peter and James and John saw there. Transfiguration means fundamental change, and we’ve heard how in their eyes Jesus was changed, how his clothes, his face, became dazzling white. And yet I don’t believe Jesus changed at all.

My take on what happened on that mountain side is not that Jesus was changed, but that the eyes of his friends were opened, or maybe their hearts, and just for a moment they were able to see him as he always is - aflame with the glory of God, shining out with the purity of God.

For this man is so closely joined to God, the Son and the Father are so closely one, that all the radiance of divine glory shines out in that human face. It always does. It did in the stable at Bethlehem, it did as that man hung broken and dying on the cross. For the most part its shining was hidden and unseen; but the miracle on the hillside was not that Jesus suddenly shone so radiantly, but that they just for a moment were granted leave to see it, to see him as he always is.

For in this man we see all the radiant glory, all the loving power, all the creative authority of God.  So to say yes to his call and to follow him is to join ourselves in to that closeness to God.  When we are friends of Jesus we can call God ‘Our Father’ and we can pray to him in a new way, with no need for intermediaries or special ritual, for priests and temples, but just as ourselves, in perfect confidence and trust. We can discover the truth of the promise made in Isaiah that God is with us and will uphold us if we pass through fire or water. Follow me, says Jesus, join yourselves to me, so that I am the vine and you the branches. Cut off from me you can do nothing, he tells us. But when we’re joined to him, when we follow him in faith, we too shall shine, as our lives and the life of our Church will bear the fruit of his love.

Home

We picked up the keys to our new home today.  We still live in the old one, and we'll be here for a while yet I think.  But our new home is now accessible to us, and for a period we'll be a bit confused, I suppose, as to which one really counts as 'home'.  We've lived where we are for two years;  it's a bit small for us but otherwise it's lovely, in a slightly ramshackle sort of way, and I'm sorry to be moving, although I recognise we have to go.

We made lots of changes to our present place, before we moved in and during our first, say, six months here.  So, although it is of course indelibly stamped with the marks of its previous residents, it also very much feels like 'our place'.  It may take a while for the new place to feel so much ours, I don't know.  It's lovely and it suits us, we wouldn't be going there otherwise, but . . .

"Home is where the heart is," they say.  Well, spring is a time for hearts and flowers, and maybe that'll help us to settle.  The garden will be a project to get our teeth into (or more probably our forks and trowels!), and I think I'll enjoy seeing the woodland behind us leaf up.  So I'm sure it will all work - but just at the moment I do find myself wishing I felt a bit more excited than I do.

Snowdrops

I'd just like to pay a little tribute to the humble snowdrop.  I was out and about today, covering some ground as I travelled from mid-Wales through Shropshire and into Worcestershire (and back) - and in quite a few places my heart was gladdened by little clumps, and in one or two spots huge drifts, of snowdrops.  It was good to see them, especially on a day that featured a fair dusting of snow and some cold winds.  Spring may be a little way off yet, but we're reminded that it is coming.

Most of the snowdrops we see in the countryside have been deliberately planted, but they naturalise well.  Except in my garden, that is.  Since it's a flower I really love, it's always been a particular sadness that for me they seem not to grow as they should.  I plant them, they flower, they disappear, there's no sign of them next year.  Why should that be?  Other people think of them almost as weeds, they get so many!  But it's such a special flower that I am determined to keep on trying!

February Baby

As a February baby - born, indeed, on the first day of the month - I've always tended to think rather proprietorially of this month.  It's a transition month, often - you begin to notice at last that the evenings are opening out a bit, and snowdrops and celandines, primroses, perhaps even a few early daffodils signal the spring days that are not too far around the corner.  The shortness of February was always a relief, too, particularly in the days when my income barely kept pace with our family expenditure.


February gets its name from the Latin Februa, the purification festival held on the fifteenth day of the month, as designated in the old lunar calendar. I presume that there is some connection between this pagan ritual and the Feast of the Purification (or Candlemas) which falls on February 2nd in the Church calendar and signals the end of the Christmas / Epiphany season.  It is possible there might also be a connection with fever (febris), and certainly this is a month when many of us find ourselves laid up with the flu!

A few years ago I prepared a talk about this month for one of our local ladies' clubs.  February is the month chosen to vary in length so as to correct the calendar, and I was able to discover and share some interesting facts about February's varying length - there have been, in various places, Februarys with anything from 24 to 32 days, as calendars were brought in line with each other. Normally, of course, the variation is between 28 and 29 days, and, as our oldest child was born on 29th February, this has directly impacted on us.  She had a decision to make, since her 'real' birthday only comes round every four years.  On the other three years, should she go for 28th February (and thus remain a February baby), or  opt for 1st March (which of course would be the full year on from her previous birthday)?  Wisely, she decided to go for both, reckoning that two substitute birthdays might atone for the lack of one real one.

This year, February started cold, then got a bit warmer - it's been quite mild here today - and, glancing ahead over the next few days, looks as though it's getting colder again.  There may even be a bit more snow.  But it's still light at tea time, the bulbs are growing in the garden, and I'm happy with whatever my little month sends my way.  Anyway, in three and a bit weeks' time, it'll be March!

Volunteers

I've had a busy day today.  I popped in to the Saturday coffee morning held every week in our local church hall.  Each week is organised and staffed by a different charity - this week it was the local Welsh Society.  After that I had a chat and a coffee with some friends and fellow members of the local branch of the Royal British Legion, to discuss arrangements for this year's Poppy Appeal.

After lunch I did a quick litter pick along the roads and footpaths between our home and the middle of town, including the hospital car park which we walk through - something I try to do each week as one of the local "Litter Champions" organised by 'Keep Wales Tidy'.  Then I spent  a couple of hours in Sainsbury's supermarket collecting for the Marie Curie Nurses, who do such a fantastic job in caring for cancer patients and their families.

In the evening I was part of the choir singing at a concert to raise funds for Hope House, our local children's hospice, and also for a local lunch club / day centre for the elderly.  It was a very well attended concert, with all those performing giving their services free, and it will have raised something in the thousands of pounds, I very much hope.

It's unusual for me to do so many different things with a charitable focus all on the same day, and I list them now not to draw attention to myself in any way (after all, in the main I was only playing a bit part in proceedings!), but to highlight how absolutely essential all those masses of people who volunteer are to our society and to each local community - including all those with whom I was in contact today.  So much caring work is done by volunteers.  So much vital fund-raising is done by volunteers.  And those who go week by week to events like our coffee morning also play their part.  Many of the people I met and chatted to today are, I know, involved in not just one but many different bits of charitable work (if you want something done, find a busy person, they say).  Probably, most people don't know just how much volunteering these generally unsung heroes do.  Well, I am happy to sing their praises here, and to hope that others will join them and make sure their work continues and grows.

Conversion

A sermon to be preached tomorrow in a little wayside chapel not too far from here:

Let’s think a bit today about conversion.  Friday last is a date kept by many in the church as the Conversion of Saint Paul, and because Paul was the man more than any other who took the Christian message out into the wider world, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is deliberately timed to coincide with that day - indeed, it always ends on 25th January.  Paul was the man who had the original 'Damascus Road' experience;  many others have had similar experiences of a dramatic meeting with Christ in a way that claimed them and shamed them and won them and changed their lives.  Their stories are always a great inspiration to me. But at this time of the year we reflect on the story of how Saul became Paul; how the chief persecutor of the first Christians became one of the greatest of the apostles of Christ.

My own background is rather ecumenical, Anglicanism, Methodism and a dash of Presbyterianism were all part of my upbringing, and for some of my ministry I worked as an ecumenical officer over in Telford. I was of course an Anglican minister for over thirty years, but I would not choose or claim to speak now with the authority either of the Anglican Church or of the ordained ministry, but simply as a fellow pilgrim, as someone journeying along the same road.  

And I'm certainly still on a journey;  still discovering what God is calling me to, what he wants from me, who he is . . . and to discover and discern the answers to questions like that is to encounter and to meet with Christ. I've not had a Damascus Road experience; there has been no sudden, one-off conversion that brought me to faith. But I do understand and want to use words like conversion; for conversion is part of the experience of every Christian pilgrim.

For me as for many of us, conversion has been gradual, made up of small events, small discoveries of God's love - not the tremendous, one hundred and eighty degree turnaround of the Damascus Road.  I have experienced my Lord chipping away at things in my life, nudging me from one path to another;  but he couldn’t reach Saul - Paul - in that way.  He had to break through, he had to be tough with this man.  So let's think for a bit about that event, about what it was that changed Saul to Paul - what happened to him, and why it had to happen.

Our first meeting in scripture with Saul of Tarsus is as a bystander at the stoning to death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Not that Saul was one of the people who  threw the stones - in fact he was there to look after the coats, or so we’re told - but we’re also told that he thoroughly approved of what was being done.  He was concerned, you see, for the purity of the faith.  For the young firebrand Saul this Stephen was a heretic and an enemy of God; and his people, followers of the Way as they were called then, not yet known as Christians, were a huge dangers to the faith Saul loved so much;  they were a scandal in the face of the God he was doing his best to serve.

A scandal that needed to be rooted out. Saul was determined to play his part in stopping these people polluting the faith.  This was his duty as a Pharisee;  this was his duty as a faithful servant of God.  For let’s affirm this about Saul, even before his conversion: this was a man of immense and unswerving faith.  This was a man who longed with all his heart to serve God and to please God.  This was a man who had taken a firm pledge to live faithfully under God, to keep his commandments, to do his will, to do always what was right under the law.  For you see, first and last, what you have in Saul is a righteous man.  A man who was trying to be good.

A strange way of going about it, you might think.  Well, I wondered, as I read again last week the story of how Steven was stoned to death - as this righteous man stood there watching Stephen die, did a small seed of doubt begin to germinate somewhere deep inside him?  What he actually did next was to embark on an eager and thoroughgoing persecution of the followers of Jesus, with full authorisation from the high priests.  But I wonder - was that his attempt to drown out a voice from deep inside himself that was already saying 'Maybe this Stephen was right.'  After all, he had seen how Stephen died, forgiving those who were stoning him;  so was Saul trying to stop his ears to the thought that such a man must have been a man of God?

I wonder.  I’ve seen how some people, once they've decided on what they believe, simply can’t begin to consider any new evidence that might challenge that belief.  I’ve heard of something similar happening in, for example, a criminal investigation:  once someone's in the frame, evidence that might point in another direction gets overlooked or quietly shelved. And in religion the line between firmness of faith and narrow minded, intolerant bigotry can be a very fine one.

So here's how I picture Saul who became Paul.  I think that somewhere deep inside himself he already knew the truth:  I think that he already knew, at a deeper level than he could admit to, that Jesus is Lord, and that a man like Stephen and those like him must have been truly serving God.  And yet Steven challenged all the things he held dear, the faith as he had been taught it from his youth up, the organisation he loved and served and was a member of.  He refuses to abandon his upbringing and his heritage, and so Saul stops his ears to that voice within himself;  there's a hard shell around this man as he goes zealously off to wreak havoc among the Christians in Damascus - a hard shell that nothing can break through.

Conversion is a continuing part of every Christian life, I believe.  We are called to be disciples, and disciples are people who are constantly being changed - converted - by the things they learn.  If we're already listening or at any rate open to the idea that God might have new things to say to us, conversion is a gradual process, a series of discoveries and disclosures for the person who is already searching. Often in quiet ways, sometimes catching us by surprise, the love of God, the good news of his love, breaks afresh into our lives.

But that sort of conversion couldn’t happen to Saul;  for Saul was refusing to listen.  I’ve heard people say that they’ve longed for a ‘Damascus Road experience’ - indeed, I’m sure I’ve said it myself:  the one moment that changes everything.  So it’s worth noting perhaps that the experience Saul had on the road to Damascus was in fact a terrifying event, something that quite literally knocked Saul for six.  You know the story - he was thrown to the ground, he was struck blind, he was left so helpless that others had to lead him along.  This was the only way God could break through to this faithful, stubborn man who was refusing to be changed.  He wouldn’t open his eyes to the truth, so he had to be struck blind.  He was proud of the power he had, so he had to be rendered weak and helpless.  He needed to be put in touch with the things his own heart was already saying to him, except that he refused to listen.  For this was the tragedy of Saul: he was a man whose one ambition in life was to serve God.  But far from serving God, he was persecuting him.

Two quotes that came my way the other day.  The first is something repeated by Gerard Hughes in his great and inspirational book “God of Surprises” - ‘Nothing so masks the face of God as religion’.  The other is from the internet - ‘I have no problem with God, but I wish I could say the same about some of the members of his fan club’.  Saul was a man full of religion, but he had yet to truly encounter God.

I remember years ago knocking on doors in preparation for a parish mission, and being told more than once by people sending me on my way that (quote) ‘religion is responsible for too much bad stuff for me to believe’.  Sadly, there’s truth in that.  Something of the same zeal that was there in Saul can be seen in young Muslim men going off to fight jihad, and in young American Christians training with their guns and honing their survival skills for the day of Armageddon. And for every wide eyed young zealot there are cynical political opportunists ready to exploit the power of religion for their own ends.  Anything that people believe in strongly and without question can be distorted and abused for bad ends, with the name of God used in vain, while the true God of love and peace is left outside in the gutter.

So I thank and praise God that he did get through to Saul.  And I praise him too for the experience of conversion in my own life and in the lives of others.  God is like Jesus - or, as Paul himself would go on to write, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”  In his love he never gives up on us, and that’s true even when we give up on him, when we wilfully go our own way.  We may not find ourselves struck down like Saul was on the Damascus road, but there is a message for us I think in the blindness that left him so helpless that he had to be led like a child into the city.  However the process of conversion happens to us, it is always about realising our own helplessness and resolving our own blindness.  We can’t do it on our own, we need to discover and God's saving love, and admit our need for his presence in our lives. 

And I do believe that all of life must then continue to be a conversion experience.  Faith is as much about living with questions as finding answers.  We don’t and we can’t know it all:  we continue to be disciples, learners, approaching our Lord with open hearts and minds.

And of course, coming to him with the desire to serve. Paul's deepest desire when he was Saul the firebrand was to serve his Lord.  That's why he was converted, and that desire never left him;  and God certainly had a lot of work for him to do.  Our own conversion and journey of faith may be more gradual, for nearly all of us it’s going to be a lot less dramatic - but the reason God is calling us and challenging us, the reason God wants to change us is not just for our own sakes but because he has work for us to do.  The God Saul so zealously tried to serve was locked up inside the laws and rules and customs of his religion, strict Pharisee that he was.  But the real God can never be contained in such a way;  he is wild and free, he is the breath of the Holy Spirit abroad in the world like wind and flame, and he is calling us to get out there with him, to cross boundaries and sail seas like Paul did. The world still needs apostles:  there still is a Gospel to be proclaimed, and good news to be told.  And the work that Paul began, God is calling and arming his people to continue today.