Bird Table Update

Interesting to note that the local robin quickly and readily attacks dunnocks when they approach the area under our bird feeders. Robins are combative birds, but he mostly doesn't attack the other birds that come to the feeders, so why the dunnocks? It may be that some of their behaviour is similar enough to that of the robin, especially during the mating season when the pair we have are constantly reacting to each other, to start him off. Then again, perhaps it's just that they are ground feeders prospecting the area under the feeders for spilt seed, and therefore competing a bit too directly with the robin, who also does that. Blackbirds also feed under the feeding station, of course, but they're bigger birds and pretty mean, and our robin is evidently not that daft.  But the robin does use the feeders, often perching right on top to show that he's the boss bird (except when nuthatches turn up) - yet only very rarely chases other, even much smaller, birds away as he does the dunnocks. Not that they seem to mind very much, they fly off, take cover, then just come straight back and take up where they left off.

Sunday Thoughts

A very pleasant man came to my door the other day to tell me all about Mr Glyn Davies’ election campaign. We had a chat about the political realities as the campaign hots up. “Can we rely on your vote for Glyn?” asked my visitor. “No” was my reply; or not yet, anyway - I’m a floating voter, and I’ll continue to float until I get to the polls. “There’s only a couple of weeks,” my visitor reminded me. Well, someone once said - was it perhaps Harold Wilson? - that a week is a long time in politics.  Anything could happen.

Anything could particularly happen in this election. There’s a definite undercurrent this time of a general discontent with politics, or perhaps with political parties, right across the board.  Mr Farage has been quick to exploit this; we’re different, he tells us, we believe the same things as you do, not like the “conventional” parties, so called. Somehow I’m not convinced. But I do think there is a general perception that politicians are just in it for themselves, that no-one really listens to what real people want, and that the whole process is mired in corruption and sleaze. They’re a sinful lot, politicians, said someone to me last week.

In contrast with that perception, I’d have to say that most of the politicians I’ve met, nationally and locally, have seemed to me genuine people who came into politics because they wanted to be of use and service to others. I’ve known a couple who left politics because they decided they’d be able to do more good elsewhere. The problem with any system is that you can end up serving the system itself rather than what the system is supposed to be producing or delivering, and our political system isn’t immune to that. Nor is the church, by the way. For the record, one senior politician I knew quite well and thought well of is now an ex-MP, having been caught out claiming expenses he wasn’t entitled to - so maybe my judgement isn’t exactly foolproof anyway.

We're right, of course, to expect the very highest standards from those in political power. They should be leading the nation not only in terms of the status they have and the fact that they hold the reins of power, but also in their behaviour, and in the example they set. Those who make the law are by no means above the law, and should not only comply with the law but be clearly seen to do so. It’s not surprising then that when they do fall, it’s quite a fall.

Today's news, as they say, is nothing more than the wrapping for tomorrow's chips. When election day comes round, who knows what the number one concerns in voters’ minds may be, or what events, speeches, gaffes or catastrophes might have shaken things up. Who knows what sins may find people out in the next two weeks or so, what incompetences might be exposed, or whether today’s popular politician of the moment might in a week or two’s time have lost their shiny charisma.

Sin, incompetence and unpopularity were all part of the story of the Passion of our Lord. There was an element of political sleaze about it too. This story isn’t about sin on its own; those other two things, incompetence, unpopularity often go hand in hand with sin.  The story of the cross includes the incompetence of the high priests and their allies, who hadn't the vision to see beyond their own little political games, and even then could hardly make their charges stick, or back them with reliable witnesses; and it includes the unpopularity of Pontius Pilate, who didn't dare listen to his own inner conscience, but listened to the mob instead.

In the reading I used this morning from the Acts of the Apostles, we find Peter and John being challenged over their healing of a lame man in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. A hard challenge, but I think Peter was in fact quite generous in his reply to it. He could imply have condemned the Jewish faithful for their part in the murder of the Christ, but he didn’t.  Instead, we find him telling them he knows they acted in ignorance - and though what they did was sinful, the consequences of their actions were a fulfilment of what God had planned and the prophets foretold.  He could have told them they had blood on their hands that nothing could ever wipe away; but instead he says “Repent, turn back to God, and he is ready to wipe away your sins.”

I want to reflect a little on what sin is and what we should be doing about it - starting right here, where we are. Someone I know well has just had their ceiling collapse. A pipe had been quietly leaking for quite some time, it seems, and damp had been building up unnoticed, until all of a sudden, disaster; everything gave way. It’s often true that though things look more or less OK, underneath the surface there’s more to sort out than you might imagine. Having heard his story, I spent a while carefully looking around everything at home, just in case. Mind you, his house is quite an old and historic building, while my place was built only about thirty years ago.

You do need to be vigilant if you're looking after an old building, and I’ve worried over a fair few of them in my time. Only the other Sunday at a chapel I often attend in Coedway I was agonising with the steward over the five year inspection that’s almost due. Do you have those here? All Church of England and Church in Wales churches have to have a quinquennial inspection, leading to an architect’s report. It’s good, it helps the vicar and churchwardens know what's urgent, so priorities can be set for maintenance and repairs. But of course, it all costs. If you miss something though, it can work to bad effect unseen for years, till by the time you realise things are wrong, they're very wrong indeed.

The other day I was looking through a little leaflet I found behind something else on a shelf, entitled “A Guide to Church Mission and Ministry”. I must have been given it at some time in my past ministry; anyway, it was interesting to note that the first chapter wasn't ideas for house to house visiting or setting up a prayer group or how to run your youth club; it was about keeping the church gutters and drains clear.  Why is that mission, I wondered? But then again, why not? Each church and chapel building is itself a proclamation of the Christian faith, and it does that proclaiming job all the better if it’s in good order, and cared for well. Chapter two, by the way, was about how to re-order your church so that it provides the welcome and the resources you need.

But regular maintenance is as vital for church folk as it is for church buildings.  Bad habits or foolish indulgences, left unchecked, can take us over;  and good practices like prayer, Bible study, or churchgoing, or even just checking to see how the neighbours are:  leave them undone and you may well get into the habit of not doing them.  Charity too: for the Christian needs to be more than an occasional off the cuff thing - for us giving, caring and acting need to be a regular and disciplined part of our Christ-centred living.

And sin, to get back to that little word I mentioned earlier - sin is what happens when we’re neglectful. My friend’s house was tidy, nicely decorated and furnished, well-swept; but the ceiling still fell in, because some vital things hadn’t been done. Sin’s a bit like that. Most of us don’t do much that is bad. We’re nice, we’re law-abiding, we’re here on a Sunday morning when we could be washing the car or playing Sunday league football or lying in bed reading the Sunday papers or the latest Danielle Steel. But that actually isn’t quite enough on its own.

The old prayer of confession in the Prayer Book of 1662 includes these words: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.” I think the prayer gets those the right way round, making “leaving undone the things we ought to have done” first on the list. For most of us, that’s the bigger part of our sin: the chances we let slip, the times when we can’t be bothered, the times when we think it’s someone else’s job.  If we’re not attending properly to this aspect of our lives, then it’s like the damp building up, that’s there and doing damage, even if the ceiling hasn’t yet fallen down.

We have rules to live by, of course. Many of our churches and chapels have the ten commandments inscribed somewhere; in one of my former churches, four one side and six the other, of the holy table. We can tend to think of sin as breaking the rules, therefore; but that’s not exactly it. Jesus wasn’t averse to breaking the rules on occasion, after all. Healing folk on the sabbath, for example. Simplest definition of sin - sin is letting God down. It's not so much that we break the rules as that we break God's trust.

The Greek word 'amartia’ is what we translate into English as 'sin'. ‘Amartia’ has as its origin the idea of falling short, of missing the mark, of not doing right; it means those things more than being about actively doing wrong.  John in his letter says that to sin is to break God's law, and if that's the case we need to consider what that law is at its most basic:  love the Lord your God, and love your neighbour as yourself.  Or as Jesus said to his disciples:  'I give you a new commandment, love one another, as I have loved you.'  Sin happens when we lose touch with the love of our Lord, when we become self-centred and not God-centred.

Politicians get labelled as corrupt and self-serving, even though often that’s more an excuse for people to be idle and apathetic and not bother exercising their democratic right to choose, than a genuine and justifiable analysis. Churches, ministers and church folk can get just as easily labelled, though, and I’ve heard it said: “Self-serving, hypocrites, only care for their own, no better than they ought to be” - I’ve heard it all said and sometimes I’ve had it said to me. Again, it’s more often an excuse than a reasoned argument, said, likely enough, by people who don’t want to do get involved, but feel a bit guilty so need to justify their inaction.

So we need to look after ourselves, our buildings, our institution - to make ourselves and our church as Christ like and as Christ filled, Spirit filled as we can. Paul often says this sort of thing to the churches he founded; people need to look at us from outside and see nothing to offend, nothing that detracts from or runs counter to the message we offer, and the claims we make.

The Easter season, which we’re still in, was for the first disciples a time of re-connecting, of discovering and engaging with their Lord who was the same as he was and yet was not the same, for he has moved on, he is now beyond death and dying - raised, as Paul tells us, as the first fruits, so that all may follow.

'I'm not a ghost,' Jesus assured his disciples, in the Gospel story we heard this morning from St Luke.  'Touch me, and see the wounds;  come, share your food with me, and watch me eat.  Believe.'  Belief in the risen Christ is relationship with a person, not just the adoption of an idea. That’s how it was for them, that’s true for us as well.

For us as for them the message of Easter is that love is the way to live, and the way to life.  That's why people built our churches, and that's why we worship in them on a Sunday (as opposed to any other day).  And while we won't ever quite shake off, in this life, our tendency to sin, incompetence and an over-large concern for our own popularity and standing, we are called again and again by our Lord, and challenged, to be repentant, to accept forgiveness, to be enriched by grace, and so rise above all that, as God gives us strength and vision. For us too, the Easter season is an opportunity to re-connect with Christ, to know his healing and redeeming touch, and to become what we need to be for the sake of the world - not just people who talk about God, but who do God, who are open to his indwelling presence and active in his service: faithful witnesses to the resurrection, and to the power and wonder of that divine love the grave could never hold.

A Poem I'm Working On

Saturday in the Park

On his usual bench, just north of the bandstand,
the man in the old grey coat sits quietly watching
the usual Saturday morning bustle, newspaper on his knees.
Mums with pushchairs and shopping bags hurry by;
a boy on a skateboard flips it up, catches it neatly;
the curate from the parish church, in billowing cassock,
surplice over his arm, glances at his watch without breaking stride,
a little late perhaps for his first wedding of the day.
Mid-April and a bright and sparkling morning, sunshine and smiles,
chiffchaffs belting away in the high poplars along the river path,
tulips and primulas in mixed array in the corporation beds,
and here and there, whisked on the wind,
the echo of children’s voices from the play-park near the old mill.
He’s here every Saturday, unless it really is too cold.
Years ago he would sit here while his Mary did the shopping;
now, ten years on his own, he still comes. But this is the best time,
with the daffodils out and the new green clothing the trees,
with the lawns dotted with daisies and celandines,
with everything just becoming. Spring! In heaven, he fancies,
if there is a heaven, and if heaven is as it should be,
it will be always Spring, forever just becoming,
everything just beginning to happen. He smiles, look at the time,
better go for that bus; he gets up slowly, folds the newspaper
he never really reads till he’s home, looks around once more.
Another Saturday vigil done, another week gone past,
and was that the year’s first swallow skimming by? He can’t be sure.
He was right about that wedding, though -
the old church bells have just begun to ring.

Bee Flies

Flies come in so many shapes and sizes, and some of them are rather lovely. The other day the garden seemed full of these little fellows, which are not uncommon, and I'm sure play a very important role in pollinating at this time of the year. They are like little balls of light brown fuzz, with black and white wings sticking out at right angles, while they are in flight. They can stop in mid air, and have the usual fly magic when flying, turning on a sixpence, etc. They were very busy in the bottom corner of our patch, visiting the many violets in flower there.

Butterflies

We've seen a surprising number of early butterflies - well, perhaps not so surprising, given the lovely weather we've got with us for a few days. Today I was delighted to see a brimstone wafting through the garden and on into the wood. Almost immediately afterwards, our first speckled wood of the year appeared, and patrolled the woodland edge in typical fashion. I noticed two whites today; they over winter as pupae, I think. I've seen small tortoiseshells here and there today, and tonight a peacock spent probably twenty minutes quartering our garden, and basking for a while in sunny spots. We saw our first comma of the year a couple of weeks back, but I haven't seen another yet. Along with the speckled woods, this is usually the butterfly I most expect to see in our garden.

Crossing the Bar

I read Tennyson's poem at a funeral today, and thought I should share it here too, as it's one I love :-

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness or farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Tame Creatures . . .

Creatures in our garden seem to be getting quite tame. Today a mouse appeared and wandered up to the bird feeders quite oblivious to the fact that I was standing near. I moved and he or she ran off, only to come straight back despite the fact that I was still there. This happened several times!  The mouse was literally a foot or so away from where I was standing.

Later Ann was sitting out when a sparrow hawk hurtled in and perched in a tree not more than three feet away from her. To be fair, it did fly off fairly promptly when it noticed she was so close, but even so, that's a pretty close encounter for both of them.

Meanwhile, the regulars, chaffinches, goldfinches, siskins especially, seem happy to let me get within a few feet of them as they visit the feeders. And the squirrels . . . well, don't get me started on that one! I can shout and curse and yell and even throw things, and they just sit up and grin at me. Oh well - lovely day today, and I got lots done. The garden is looking quite tidy.

A Sunday Talk for Easter Day

It is Sunday, the first day of the week; early morning, with the new sun sparkling on the white stones of the great temple in Jerusalem, and on the funeral monuments in the Kidron valley below.  The Sabbath, not just any Sabbath, but the Sabbath of the Passover has been observed, and, for all the tension of this season, with the people itching for freedom and longing for a new King David to seize the throne, things have passed off without too much in the way of problems.

It’s good to make an example at such a tense time, it helps to keep the unruly elements in check. Three men were therefore crucified on the Friday of Passover. No-one much will be talking much about that this morning, though; such crucifixions have become something of a routine event under Roman occupation.  It reminds the people who’s in charge, and is a useful show of strength.

Perhaps Pontius Pilate will still have been anxious. This year Passover had looked like being especially tense. If so, he’ll have been pleased at the reports of his officers around the city.  The garrison troops had been carefully active through the festival, and they’d have made sure their strength was noticed.  It had all passed off more peacefully than at one time they might have feared, and before long the pilgrims would be heading home, and this crazy city could return to what passed for normal here. People could breathe easy again.  There hadn’t, after all, been too many hitches.

Gnarled olive trees stand among the spring flowers in a garden outside the city walls.  It’s here that one of the crucified men Jesus has been laid.  One Jesus, a pilgrim from Nazareth, who seems to have claimed the title of King of the Jews. That’s what was inscribed on his cross, anyway.

The body had been wound around in its grave clothes, and then carefully placed in a new tomb cut out of the cliff face. So he lay in a stone coffin in a stone cave, with a great stone rolled into place to close off the entrance.  Probably Pontius Pilate will have known the place, having given the order that the body might be released into the care of Joseph of Arimathea. This Joseph was a member of the Jewish council no less, and this was the tomb he’d provided for his own future burial. Pontius Pilate had thought it prudent to place one or two of his own men on guard, though; there’d been some popular support for this one, and the Jewish leaders had seemed especially concerned.

But on this Sunday morning those who held power in Jerusalem had retained their grasp on that power: the controllers were still in control.  That’s how the world is, nothing ever really changes.  Just a few short days ago, pilgrims coming into town from the North, from Galilee had been shouting ‘Hosanna’ and acclaiming a new king. This sort of thing happened a lot at Passover; it was after all the festival that marked Jewish independence as a people. These Galileans had cut down palm branches, and strewn them on the road - because they’d found someone different, they’d found a teacher whose words so burned like fire in their hearts, that they were sure this was the one God was calling and sending, the one who would restore the kingdom, the one who would change their world. But on this Sunday morning they were packing for home. The world hadn’t changed after all. The system had won again, as the system always does.

It’s misty and mysterious, and the dew is still fresh, as women make their way through the garden.  Gnarled trunks of old olives look strange and unworldly, and the air is sharp and cold.

Mary and the others with her are anxiously wondering how they’re going to get into the tomb to anoint the body, which is what they are there to do.  How can they roll away that huge stone without help?  All of a sudden, they see the tomb through the mist, and it’s not as they expected to see it. The stone has already been rolled away.  They must have been struck with horror to see that. The only thing they could imagine would have been that something awful had happened, desecration, one more awful thing to add to the awfulness of their grief. A final sad ending at the close of what had already become for them a crushingly sad story.

That’s how it was in the early morning. But by day's end these women and other friends of Jesus will be beginning to realise that they stand not at the end of a story but at its beginning. In the early morning, they’ll have been thinking, “This is how it ends.” By day’s end, though, they’ll begin to understand the greatest event in history has happened, and the man whose final breaths they witnessed, and who they knew was dead, is alive.  He has been dead, and now he is alive.  And as their hardly believing minds grasp this, so they now live in a different world.  They now live in the Easter world, the Sunday world.

There’s a Saturday world and there’s a Sunday world.  The women in the garden and those to whom they ran to tell the news are now Sunday people, Easter people, and we are too.  That’s why we choose to meet on the first day of the week. Sunday by Sunday we affirm and celebrate Easter, and that on the first day of the week long ago in Jerusalem, the world changed forever.  We affirm that here and now we are citizens of a new world in which the old system no longer wins, and death itself has died.

But in the calendars and traditions of the Church Easter is not one but forty days; all those days would be needed for this great mystery to be discerned, rejoiced in, lodged in the hearts of the friends of Jesus, as they move on from their initial delight: “our Lord lives!” to understand what that means for themselves, what it will mean for the world. Easter is not the miraculous escape of one man from death.  We don’t meet on a Sunday to celebrate Jesus the escapologist. Nor has  Jesus survived anything, or returned from anywhere.  Jesus did not come back to life on Easter morning, he went forward into life, into a life he calls us to share. This is something new. 

We may be entertained by illusionists and escapologists, and we may marvel at how a magician manages to escape from what looks an impossible situation.  But illusion is what that is. As we go home at the end of the show we’re still in the same old world with the same laws of physics - and politics - in control. Easter is different from that. There is no illusion here;  this is real.

Similarly, we like to hear stories of survival against the odds told by or about explorers, solo yachtsmen, arctic travellers, people lost in the jungle.  If Easter was an escape like that, it would still be a story worth telling - but a story set in the old world, where the system always wins, and death still gets you in the end, however many cat's lives you might use up in the meantime, and however cleverly you may wave the magic wand.

This isn’t that story.  Jesus has not escaped from death, death really happened to him, he died, he was dead.  But then on Easter morning he broke through, changed the rules, and left the Saturday world behind, shaking off the chains of death for himself and for the world. 

In the days before Jesus came to Jerusalem, there was another death, and another raising from the dead, as St John tells the story in his Gospel. Lazarus died, friend of Jesus and brother of Mary and Martha. Jesus arrived on the scene too late to save him, and yet he still does save him. Lazarus emerges from the tomb  and the people are amazed who look on. But when Lazarus is led out of his tomb, he is still dressed in his grave clothes, he saved from one death to one day still die another.  Now, on the first Easter morning, those rules have been changed. The tomb is empty when the disciples arrive, Peter and John, but the grave clothes are left behind, they find them lying in the tomb.  Jesus has no need of them; death has no more power. He calls us to be Sunday people now, to be Sunday people, Easter people, even when the world about us is till a Saturday world, whose people are still in thrall to the old order of sin and death. 

It may look like the system still wins, we watch the news and see the old power games are still up and running. Easter morning found Pontius Pilate a relieved and happy man, glad to be still in charge, happy the Passover was done with, and things had stayed the same as always. Only they hadn’t. Not many people knew yet, but those few people would tell the world. The world has turned upside down, to turn a cross into a royal throne, and to reveal the love the man who died there showed and preached as stronger than death.

Let me close with some famous words from Archbishop Desmond Tutu:  “Good is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, through him who loves us.”  There is the truth of the Sunday world.

Holy Saturday

Another poem from my past writings . . .

A sabbath rest in the garden:
where the birds sing unchecked in ancient olives, where
flowers sparkle with dew, where vines
are bursting bright new leaves from the bud
where they twine and clamber across the stones.

A sabbath rest: and there is the tomb, sealed shut
and guarded well, by armed men for whom
sabbath is a working day like any other;
they lean on their spears tossing pebbles to scare the birds;  they know that
orders are orders, one does as one is commanded.

A sabbath rest - for behind that stone there is no magic:
the man laid deep inside was nothing less than dead, and
the processes of nature will already have begun
in the body's broken places, in his wounded hands and side:
shrouded the corpse and wrapped, though with some need still
for anointing and spices.

A sabbath rest for mourners lost in prayer
and in the sharing of tears, in some secret place not far away -
no-one expecting any hopeful news, and
all finding nothing to encourage, only to make afraid.
It will be necessary to go soon, to prepare
to join the pilgrims heading north,
keeping their heads down, and blending with the crowds;
they will have to go and they must leave him here.

A sabbath rest in the garden
that is the first day of forever:
for some, his Mother, an expected and dreaded forever
of grief and loss.  Yet while they hide in fear,
somewhere in the birdsong and among the climbing vines
a new forever is being made, and indeed
has already been established upon the wooden throne
that yesterday was raised for all to see,
though no-one yet has seen and understood.

A sabbath rest of birdsong and shining flowers;
an ending that is not an ending, but the quiet
preface to glory.

Peter

A poem I wrote some years ago . . .

No, lass, no, I never knew him,
I don't even know his name.
I'm just here to see what happens:
all this crowd of us, the same.

No, you'll not have seen me with him -
I come from a different fold.
Now gie's a sight of that fire, love,
for I'm starved and clemmed wi' cold.

Oh come on, so I speak like him -
and what's that supposed to mean?
Me and half a thousand pilgrims!
By heaven, hell, and all between,

by everything that stands created,
by God himself, I tell no lie:
Look, I never bloody knew him!
Oh!  The paling of the sky -

Let me out!  Just let me through there,
let me breathe the morning air. . . .
Cocks are crowing in the gardens,
and my heart is black despair.

Swept Off His Feet

I had a really enjoyable session today with fellow poets Llewelyn Rogers and Paul Jenkins. Each of us reads a poem, then the other two of us spend some time in discussion (with the author silent), and finally the author gets a chance to respond. It's been, so far, a very useful exercise, but I think that as we get more used to one another's styles and themes we shall be able to get a bit more deeply into the process and will find it to be an even more helpful and productive time together. This is one of the poems I read today :-

One moment it seemed he was safe and secure:

he had every part of his life mapped out, and organised, and sorted.

Then the next, he was swept off his feet.

And he had never seen it coming;

he had noted perhaps a few clouds against the horizon,

but far off, and nothing to worry about, nothing

that might change his plans.  Until, all of a sudden

he was swept off his feet.

And not simply knocked over;  that should have been

quite easy to deal with.  People fall all the time, after all,

the pavements being not what they were, but

they can generally pick themselves up,

or someone else will do it for them.  The fact is,

when he was swept off his feet

they never found him, that’s all.  He was

never seen again.

All they did find was

his umbrella, unopened, leaning against

his briefcase, likewise:  with all his carefully drafted plans

still secure within their folders.  A wet footprint nearby

might have matched the shoes he was probably wearing.

Those had been good, solid shoes, too -

you could see that from the tread -

the sort that cling securely to terra firma, boring

but reliable footwear.  Yet somehow, on that day,

those good shoes had let him down badly.

He was swept off his feet, despite having taken

(one might consider) every sensible precaution.

A search was made, of course;  after all, one cannot have

people being swept away without good reason.  But all the reports agreed

he had not been seen;

except that a clerk at the railway station

did recall having sold to a man without umbrella or briefcase

a single ticket to -

but no, he couldn’t remember; and anyway,

that man was smiling and bright-eyed,

and looking much more found than lost.               

Everything That Matters

A Sunday talk for Holy Week . . .

Everything that matters in the Christian story happens this week; though we must wait until next Sunday for the event that makes sense of it all. Today is Palm Sunday, and I remember how as a child in church we’d all be given twigs of pussy willow to wave; we called them palm branches even though they were willow. These days people get crosses made of real palm leaves. But I still think of the palm branches of my childhood whenever I see the pussy willows in bloom.

Like the people who greeted Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem, we waved branches cut from our own local trees. Theirs had been real palms, and the road Jesus rode along was strewn with their branches. And if ours were willows instead, perhaps it was more authentic in a way to be using branches from our own trees rather than importing palm branches from somewhere else. Of course, it was also cheaper.

Today we remember Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, something that drove the crowds wild. These weren’t citizens of Jerusalem welcoming their king; to be honest, Jerusalem folk would have seen it all before, things like this happened often at the time of the Passover. Though they might have felt concerned, as they thought about how the Romans might react to yet another so-called Messiah come to stir up trouble. Otherwise, though, it was probably all a bit of a bore.

The people doing the cheering were those who’d been travelling with him, pilgrims making the journey everyone who could would want to be making at this time of the year, to celebrate Passover at the Temple. This man they’d seen and listened to and been impressed and amazed by up in Galilee was now doing something that was a very deliberate statement of intent. For this is how the prophet had said the new king would enter Jerusalem, meekly riding on a donkey. So they cheered and chanted, and shouted Hosanna, hosanna to the Son of David.

And that word hosanna is more than a simple hooray. It’s formed from the Hebrew words yasha, meaning deliver or save, and anna, meaning to plead or beg or beseech. It might sound like a shout of praise, but it’s also a prayer saying “Please save us, please deliver us”. And of course, as they shouted Hosanna they also addressed Jesus as “Son of David”, recognising him as their new king, come to save them.

They’d mostly have been thinking about being saved from the Romans and from the sons of Herod, from the pagan emperor and from client kings not of the house of David. I wonder how the disciples felt? They weren’t in the loop, it would seem; Jesus seems to have planned this event with others, making the disciples as much part of the audience for his entry into Jerusalem as were the rest of the crowd.

They must have been really worried about going there. Here was where the enemies of Jesus were strongest, and Jesus had made no bones about telling them his life would be in danger. In fact he’d told them he was going to die there, not that they’d understood or accepted everything he’d said. Palm Sunday for them must have been a mixture of fear and excitement. It was very dangerous to go to Jerusalem, but Lord’s Messiah was bound to go there; now Jesus had declared his hand - and like the cheering crowds they must have expected that great things would now happen.

There’s a mystery at the heart of this and other events of Holy Week. Who did set it up? The disciples were expected, and the donkey had been made ready for them. Who by? In Jerusalem a room had been booked for what we call the Last Supper, and a secret sign arranged, so that safety was assured. Who did it, and who was the man carrying a pot of water - normally a woman’s job - that the disciples followed to find the room?

Perhaps Jesus had arranged all this with Mary and Martha, his friends in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. They were on the scene, and they’d surely have had all the right contacts. Not that it matters; the mystery isn’t so much who set things up so much as why the disciples weren’t involved. There’s a simple answer to that, of course. Jesus knew that one of the Twelve would betray him, so security would have been compromised if the disciples had been allowed to know too much too soon. Yet Jesus did need that betrayal to happen, when the time was right. The events of this week aren’t God’s plans for salvation being thwarted and defeated, though it must have seemed like that to the disciples as their Lord was arrested and taken from them, and as they themselves turned tail and ran for their lives. Far from it - the events of this week are God’s plans for salvation being accomplished and completed in the most decisive week in the whole of human history.

“He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant . . . and became obedient unto death, even the death of a cross” - so wrote St Paul, probably echoing or using the words of an early Christian hymn. Here is the heart of our faith. This week God shows us he loves us, loves us despite our sin, despite our wilfulness, despite our past mistakes; and loves us too much to leave how we are. People shouted hosanna expecting a new king in Jerusalem, and the end to Roman domination. That didn’t happen, and by the end of the week the shouts of the pilgrims had been forgotten; by then it was probably as well not to be speaking with a Galilean accent. By then the louder shouts from the Jerusalem rent-a-mob had prevailed, stirred up to yell “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

And for all that had been said to them, we find the disciples as much in the dark about what’s really happening as everyone else. For them this week of highs and lows would end with the lowest low ever: fear, confusion, defeat, dejection.

It’s good to feel a bit of that ourselves. The cross, we’re told, convicts us of sin. We have helped hammer in the nails, and it’s our sins this man is bearing: the bad stuff we’ve done, and more to the point, the good stuff we’ve passed up on, the times when self interest, short-termism, even just not being very organised, have meant we weren’t there when needed, we didn’t do what could have been done. Evil, we’re reminded, comes into the world not so much when bad people do bad things, as when good people do nothing and let them.

And yet at the very heart of these events Jesus explicitly includes us and shares himself with us. The clouds are at their darkest when he shares a supper with his friends, and by extension with all of us too. He breaks bread, he passes round a cup of wine, using words which must have sounded strange and even shocking when they were first said: “This is my body; this is my blood.” And he says, “Do this to remember me.” The sense of this word is stronger than just calling to mind old memories, it’s about active presence - it’s almost “Do this, and I will be with you.”

I remember being very moved by the way the Last Supper was staged in a performance I went to see of the musical Godspell. Controversially, Godspell ends with the crucifixion, and with the body of Jesus being taken down and taken away. The story doesn’t include the resurrection, or at least it’s implied at best, it’s not enacted. But I don’t mind; Godspell is still a wonderful story of love and bravery and sacrifice, it’s still an inspirational story. And maybe it’s the story as far as we need to hear it this week, for then, like the first disciples, we can experience the wonder and the pain of this holiest of all weeks as it unfolds, without needing to know yet how the story really ends, how next week begins.

Jesus makes it our story as well as his. He connects us in to the sacrifice that is made once and for all, made at that one and only time in history by the one man qualified to make the offering, and consisting of that one man as the only true and unblemished sacrifice, to which we are connected by bread and wine and by love.

The disciples, this bunch of frightened and confused people ended this week in hiding, hardly daring to speak for fear of betraying their identity, waiting for the chance to sneak back home and pick up the cast-off bits of their former lives. Of course they’d have remembered him whatever happened next. They’d have remembered his bravery and their own cowardice; the words with which he taught them, the hopes those words inspired, even now their hopes had been so cruelly dashed.
Yes, they’d still have remembered him, for as long as they could. But there’d have been nothing more than a good story, and fading memories of an heroic defeat.

There’d have been no Church, for the founding of the Church needed this week to be about victory and not defeat, it needed the hosannas of the people to have been decisively answered. And that did happen, it’s just that they hadn’t seen it yet. Everything important in the Christian story happens this week, except for what happens next Sunday. Only then do the events of this week make sense, not as a defeat, however heroic, but as the great and decisive victory, the last battle won, and love and light triumphant forever over darkness and death. Hosanna, this week’s prayer, is answered by the great shout of Alleluia, next Sunday’s song, meaning “Praise the Lord of life”. Look around the world today: everywhere people are praying hosanna prayers, everywhere people are longing to be saved. And our holy task is to be light and life and alleluia for the desperate and the suffering of the world, even if in doing this we take our share in the cross.

And doing that needs I think each year a visit to this week as it is, experiencing something of the time when it looked as though the darkness had taken control and sin held the upper hand. The world still looks a lot like that today, as we watch the news bulletins. But the story doesn’t end at the cross; we see Jesus surrender to the darkness, and we mourn, because we have helped make that darkness. But then we see that only through that act of surrender could the darkness have been transformed, beaten back, and turned into light. So this week let’s follow Jesus on the road to the cross, the Via Dolorosa, sharing that pain, breathing in the sense of unfolding tragedy, that nest week our alleluias may be all the more joyful, and an empowering, encouraging and enabling force in our lives and the life and witness of our Church.

The Cheek of It All

The cheek of it all, I thought, as I watched our resident sparrow hawk perch on top of our feeding station as though staking his claim to it. The garden, of course, was otherwise completely empty. He stayed there for about a minute, then flipped across to perch alongside the other two feeders that hang in our blossom trees. He was of course in a place where he had no chance of catching anything, so, though this might be fanciful, his tactic seemed to me to be purely intimidatory, entirely a matter of saying to the regular users of those feeders, "This is all my patch, really. Don't ever feel safe here, I can take you any time I want."  In fact, the majority of attempted sparrow hawk strikes are unsuccessful - but it's also true that all of our small birds live pretty much their entire lives in a state of intense trepidation; they need to, the world about them is a deadly place.

Samaritan

A poem I've been working on :-

I felt sad for a moment or two

today.  And the weight of it was pulling me down,

closing me off from the blue skies,

with my dark and desperate imaginings beginning to

feed off each other.  When it gets like that

I feel myself trapped in the vortex,

pulled down into a black hole, I am lost

to the light.  But today the fall was for

only a moment, until

somebody smiled who didn’t need to, and

their hand was placed upon my shoulder just for an instant

and at just the right time;

and so a small but necessary

miracle was enabled.  Like the man

on the Jericho road, I felt myself

taken to a safe place,

helped back onto my feet, amazed and delighted

to find the sun still shining.  My thank you goes

to someone I do not know, and

will likely as not never see again. Probably

you do not even know what it was you did,

but that is in the nature of

good Samaritans.

Back Garden Life

High drama yesterday morning in our back garden, as the sparrowhawk managed a successful surprise attack on our feeding station. I say successful, in that normally the early warning system works well, and the garden is completely empty of visible birds long before the hawk arrives. Not yesterday, though - the hawk appeared out of nowhere and at tremendous speed, scattering small birds in all directions. I don't know whether his success was complete, and he actually caught one. He may well have done, but it was all too quick to be sure. Certainly he (it was the smaller slate grey male sparrowhawk) lodged himself for a while in the bushes to the rear of our garden at the end of his raid. He was on the ground and moving, but I couldn't see whether he had a victim there or not.

It is perhaps unworthy of me to have hoped that if he did get something, then it was one of the abundant chaffinches and not our bullfinches, which are a single pair. Since they are around this morning, he didn't, anyway!  Watching them yesterday before the sparrowhawk strike, I was touched again by the way the male stands guard as the female feeds. Actually, he did at one point decide to move in alongside her and take some breakfast himself; she was having none of it, and saw him off angrily; "Not while I'm eating!" I sensed her saying. He returned to his branch and chased away a couple of blue tits. As soon as she left the feeder he moved in and ate as much as he could as quickly as possible - she had flown off and he needed to follow. Bullfinches mate for life (as I think I've noted before), but it isn't all marital harmony!

Sunday Talk

Some words I've prepared for tomorrow, Lent 5 :-

“If anyone wishes to serve me, he must follow me; where I am, there shall my servant be.”

From this morning’s reading from St John’s Gospel, here’s one of the hard sayings of Jesus. It may not have seemed so hard just then, when I read that single sentence. I don’t know what your image is of “where Jesus is”, but the picture that always springs up in my mind is one from my Sunday school bible, of Jesus sitting on a peaceful hillside, with a blue sky and the tints of heather all around, surrounded by sheep peacefully grazing. And that all seems very nice.

But Jesus has just said, “He who loves himself (or, he who loves his own life) is lost” – another hard saying, and pretty blunt if I may say so; and he goes on to talk about his death. So when you place those words – “where I am, there shall my servant be” into context, they are indeed hard words. Many of those who followed Jesus, including Philip and Andrew who were with him when he spoke those words – many of them would lose their lives as martyrs. The peaceful village churches and chapels we know and love were all founded in blood; as Tertullian wrote in the early years of Christian history, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Jesus himself said, of course, at the beginning of the Gospel reading I used this morning, that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains that and no more; but if it dies, it bears a rich harvest.” Today the traditional season known to the Church as Passiontide begins. Two weeks before Easter Day. With the shops just now full of eggs and Easter bunnies, it’s hard to forget about Easter; but for these two weeks I always try to do my best to forget Easter, so that, like the first disciples I can experience something of the mystery, the pain, the tragedy of these days.

As we read the Gospels, we find that Jesus talked quite a lot to his disciples about the fact that he would die, and die in a tragic way, at the hands of others. Most of the time they didn’t understand, not then, or else they deliberately stopped their ears and refused to listen. “No Lord, this shall never happen to you!” as Peter said, that time. For all his teaching, it will still have seemed to the disciples of Jesus as though everything had gone wrong, as though all their hopes and expectations had been dashed; indeed, it will have seemed to them that the forces of darkness had won, and they’ll have been confused and very afraid. The time came when they all fled and abandoned him. I want to feel something of that confusion and fear myself, each year at this time.

They’ll have felt guilt, as well, by the time these events were over. Think of Peter collapsing in tears as he hears the cock crow, knowing he’d done just what he said he’d never do, denied he’d ever known his Lord. But it wasn’t just Peter; they’d all promised they’d never abandon him, that they’d always stand by him. How must they have felt, knowing they’d all run away? I want to feel something of that, too, at this dark time in the Christian year. My hands helped hammer in those nails; I can’t escape that, I am to blame.

Yet many of those failed and guilty followers of Jesus would go on to share in his sacrifice, dying as martyrs themselves. John, the writer of this Gospel, was unusual in having lived to a great age and died peacefully. They dared to die because they’d realised the truth that their Lord’s passion and death wasn’t everything going wrong but everything going right. The seed not remaining a single grain but yielding a harvest only death could bring. A little earlier, John chapter 10 verse 10, Jesus had said, “I have come that they may have life, and may have it in all its fullness.” This is how it happens.

Darkness and light are great themes in Christian scripture, great themes indeed in all faiths. The Gospel accounts of the crucifixion speak of the sun’s light failing, and darkness falling over the face of the land, lasting from midday until about three in the afternoon. Well, we’ve just experienced an eclipse of the sun, and we’d all been well prepared for it, knowing just what time it would happen, what glasses to wear if we wanted to look at the sun, or we could even just watch on TV with informed commentary from the likes of Professor Brian Cox. But maybe in all of that we might still have managed to catch just a flavour of what our ancestors must have felt when something like that happened, the fear, the shock, the sense of impending doom. What had happened to the light? Would it ever return?

Whether there was an eclipse of the sun on the first Good Friday or whether what we have is a literary device on the part of the Gospel writers I shall leave for better brains than mine; but clearly what those accounts want to express is the sense that the whole creation was knocked off balance by what happened there that day. As I go through this year’s Passiontide I want to feel something of that, too. And yet this is what Jesus was bound to do; this is where Jesus was bound to go. This is the love of God revealed in all its glory; this is God’s loving plan for his world accomplished.

Where I am, there shall my servant be, says Jesus. I am come, he says, that they may have life, and may have it in all abundance; but this will be, or may be anyway, a hard road to travel. The news of bomb attacks on Christians at worship in Lahore in Pakistan last Sunday reminds us how hard that road still is, for many of our sisters and brothers who are Christian. There are still many Christian martyrs.

Some of those who witnessed the devastation caused by those bombs in Lahore reacted with violence themselves. Two people suspected of supporting the attacks were set upon and beaten to death. I’m bound to condemn that, but I’m also bound to wonder what I’d have done had I been there, had it been me seeing a holy place desecrated and loved ones killed. And I’m bound to admit too, and confess – none of us has clean hands.

Only Jesus dies deserving none of it. Only this one death can remove the stain of my own sin and failure and fear. But he still calls on me to follow, and to be where he is, and to go where he will go. Whatever the cost; however foolish that way may seem, as the world measures things. And all our living must be sacrificial, forgetful of self, challenged and directed by the impulse of love – the same whether my particular road is hard and difficult to travel, or else easy and full of sunshine. My challenge, and yours too, is to be a blessing to others, and to do my best to reflect the love and light of Christ into a world that is often hateful and often dark.

Methodists attend a very inspiring service at the beginning of each new year, where they use prayerful words originally penned by John Wesley to remind them of God’s call and challenge to them, and of their part in the covenant Christ has made with us on the cross: here are some of those words –

I am no longer my own but yours.

Put me to what you will,

rank me with whom you will;

put me to doing, put me to suffering;

let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,

exalted for you or brought low for you.

Let me be full, let me be empty,

let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things

 to your pleasure and disposal.

The young people picked up in Turkey a week ago and returned to the UK had no doubt had thoughts of martyrdom in mind as they tried to cross the border into Syria and join the extremist caliphate known as Isis. Every religion has its martyrs and just now martyrdom is a theme actively promoted by certain Muslim preachers, perhaps still in mosques at Friday prayers, but more probably through social media. It’s poisonous stuff, and those who peddle it deserve I think greater condemnation and punishment than those impressionable and idealistic young people who are persuaded by it to do such dreadful things.

We follow the man who gave his life as a sacrifice for others, and who seeks to write his word of love on every heart. To me it’s very sad to see the word “martyr” used of those who have taken human life in the course of losing theirs. There is nothing noble about that sort of death; but the saddest thing of all is that such people believe they are serving God, have been duped into believing they are serving God, when they in fact are serving a distorted travesty of a god made in the image of the hate-filled minds of false teachers.

“Where I am, there shall my servant be.” That’s what Jesus says. Those words bring us year by year, and I hope day by day to the cross, the cross where each one of us can say and must say - this man died for me, and died because of me: to wonder at the love displayed there, to grieve our own sin that has helped put him there, to long for a world where darkness is banished forever, and to dedicate ourselves to that wonderful love, freely and wholeheartedly yielding all things to his pleasure and disposal who has given so greatly, and suffered so deeply, for us.

Eclipse

So the sun shone after all, and we were able to get our binoculars working as image projectors and see it eaten away by the moon's shadow.

Of course, it never really got dark, but for a few minutes the light intensity had faded away quite substantially, leaving a strange and slightly creepy feeling, and making most of our local birds shut up for a bit. Had it been cloudy I suppose it would have got darker still.

Our garden today, and the trees behind, have been full of chaffinches. The pleasant spring weather has set insects on the wing, and the birds were clearly having quite a feast. At ground level, so were the robins, as I had weeded and forked through our beds. It doesn't take them long to spot their chance!

Litter

Spent the morning today picking litter around where we live. It's something I committed to do as a volunteer some time ago; I haven't done as much as I should of late, and it's time to make a fresh start. I enjoyed my litter-picking walk in the sun today, but it's bittersweet, since I don't like what I find, even if I do get a good feeling having done the job, and cleaned things up a bit.

It's disappointing to see so much litter thrown down. Welshpool is by no means short of litter bins, and they're emptied regularly. Wherever you are in town, more or less, you'll not be more than a couple of minutes' walk from a bin. Smokers are a particular annoyance. I don't like smoking anyway, and I don't like to see cigarette butts all over the place. But I get even crosser at the throwing down (or out of car windows) of cigarette packets, disposable lighters, cigarette papers, matchboxes. Presumably the smoker has been carrying that cigarette packet about all day, so what's the problem with continuing to carry it far enough to put it in a bin. Most of the ones I picked up today were within five metres or so of a bin.

There is, of course, too much packaging anyway, and too much of that is manufactured in a such a way that recycling is impossible or too expensive a process. Much of the litter that is just thrown away will go to landfill even if it is collected up, as sorting it into recyclable types is probably not an option. That's sad; but at least if it is collected up it's less of an eyesore and less potentially dangerous to wildlife.

Terrestrial litter can be dangerous to wild creatures, as they try to access what's left in a drinks can, or get snared in the plastic that holds a four- or six-pack of cans together, or just eat stuff that looks as though it might be food but isn't. Litter floating in our oceans is an even bigger problem, not least because it is less visible. Most of us landlubbers have no idea really just how much plastic is floating about our seas. It's a lot, and it's killing beautiful creatures and wrecking habitats.

Spring Approaching

Some signs of spring today :-

1) We have siskins in our garden! I wrote a piece about the fact that we hadn't had them as winter visitors (unlike last year), but I'd forgotten the fact that we had nesting siskins somewhere close by last summer. Today a pair appeared which I hope will settle in and produce young siskins to fill our garden with acrobatic delights like they did last year.

2) The bullfinches are doing what comes very naturally to bullfinches - attacking the buds of our early flowering cherry, which are just about ready to open. We don't mind; they won't take them all (we hope).

3) We called in at Llyn Coed y Dinas nature reserve this afternoon, and found the black-headed gulls gearing up for the new nesting season: very noisy and great fun. Also seen: three or four pairs of teal, mallard and tufted duck of course, a few snipe on the banks, two pairs of shovelers, and maybe around thirteen widgeon. Two oystercatchers seemed to be prospecting nesting sites. A male reed bunting showed just in front of the hide. A male goosander swept in but decided not to land and headed off to the river instead.

4) Elsewhere on the reserve we saw two chiffchaffs, my first of the season. I love when the chiffchaffs are back!

5) Song thrush and blackbird singing very lustily when we got back home.

A Further Thought on Celandines

I've spent half a day gardening today, and it's been lovely, with bird song all around and some real warmth in the sun, so long as I kept out of the wind.  Celandines are beginning to open out in earnest and, as always, it's a delight to see them. Except when they're taking over a bed I'm trying to weed: then they are tiresome and a nuisance. They take a lot of weeding out, and even then you never quite get all the bulbils, so they're always going to come back!

All of this leaves me with a thought. As with the celandines, so with us - we can be both a delight and a nuisance, it all depends whether we're in the right place at the right time. I think most of the time I do my best to be a help rather than a hindrance, but perhaps at times I need to be more attentive, more aware; and there are also times when you just have to accept that you can't please all the punters all the time!