Sunday . . .

Heavy rain and a bank holiday weekend - even so, fairly pleasing numbers in my churches this morning. The rain had slackened by the afternoon, which was just as well, as I was due to go to the Steam Festival near Shrewsbury, where I was leading the annual service. This normally takes place in the ring, with steam vehicles, but not this year as everywhere was far too muddy. But I had a great afternoon looking at vintage vehicles, some static and some working, meeting a few old friends and revisiting some childhood memories too. The reading I chose and my short address follows (and we raised £42 for the Severn Hospice) . . .

LUKE, CHAPTER 7, VERSES 1 TO 10 :-

WHEN Jesus had finished addressing the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a servant whom he valued highly, but the servant was ill and near to death. Hearing about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to ask him to come and save his servant’s life.  They approached Jesus and made an urgent appeal to him: ‘He deserves this favour from you,’ they said, ‘for he is a friend of our nation and it is he who built us our synagogue.’  Jesus went with them; but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends with this message: ‘Do not trouble further, sir; I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, and that is why I did not presume to approach you in person. But say the word and my servant will be cured. I know, for I am myself under orders, with soldiers under me. I say to one, “Go,” and he goes; to another, “Come here,” and he comes; and to my servant, “Do this,” and he does it.’ When Jesus heard this, he was astonished, and, turning to the crowd that was following him, he said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.’ When the messengers returned to the house, they found the servant in good health.

The reading partly I chose provides a good example of what it means to have faith. The centurion was so confident that what Jesus ordered would happen that he sent his servants to turn Jesus back; he didn’t need to enter the house, his word would be enough. As a non-Jew, the centurion felt he was unworthy to have a Jewish rabbi enter his house. But as an officer in the Roman army he knew all about giving orders, and he knew that once given, any order he gave would be obeyed.

And the reading also reminds me that there’s a sense in which the machine age has potentially turned us all into officers. The machinery we celebrate at this fair greatly empowered its new owners. For the most part, it did in the end also empower and ease the lives of the workers. But perhaps we’ve lost touch with the wonder of that these days.

After all, this is how we live today. We walk into a room, flick a switch, and the room’s lit up straight away. We sit down, pick up the remote, point and press, and immediately we’re watching Corrie or East Enders, or maybe University Challenge or Mastermind if you prefer. And when I sat at my desk to write this, I didn’t need a pen, thanks to the wonders of Microsoft Word.

Technology gives us an easy life, but we no longer see the workings or understand the process, and that’s a shame. Now that everything’s digital, you press a button and you’re really not always sure what will happen. Microsoft Word is a good example of that, Mr Gates: I press a button, and a poster prints with the border only half the size it should be. That’s not how it was on the screen, and I’ve no way of knowing what glitch in the machinery caused it to happen.

But that’s my problem. Here you have real machines, and the workings are very visible. You pull a lever, turn a wheel, and a whole army is at your disposal, with the different components working together, supporting, controlling and  co-ordinating with each other, making you the possessor of power. Steam especially has that sense of being alive about it, which is why it continues to thrill those who’re easily bored by boxes filled with microchips.

The apostle Paul came up with the great image of the Church as the body of Christ, each part working in harmony, making its own distinct and special contribution, under the control of Christ as the head. If only Paul had seen a traction engine - I feel sure that would have been his image instead: each part in good fettle, doing what it should, under the control of Christ as the driver. The Church as a machine, achieving what it needs to because every part is working well.

Of course, even the best machines do break down; for that matter even the best armies will probably have the occasional grumbling or rebellious soldier. But just as the Roman centurion naturally understood the authority of Jesus, so should we who have machines at our disposal. We give the command, and it is done. And of course, our making of machines is our creative response to the creative power that made us.

And when he gives the command? Well, every part of the complex machine that is us needs to be working well, needs to be taking orders. Each part needs to be in the right place, doing the right job. Machines don’t work if you replace one part with a totally different one. If things aren’t working as they should, the machine will lose power, and it’ll maybe break down altogether. So if we’re serious about being God’s people, we need to be a well-oiled machine, which is not, by the way, a reference to the beer tent; we need to hear and obey the orders given, to respond as we should to the pull of lever or the turn of the wheel; we need to know our place and play our part, so that, in all of his people together, God’s will is done. Amen.

A sermon for Trinity 13

Tomorrow I'm preaching at Leighton and Marton. I'm also due to be going to take the Sunday service at the Shrewsbury Steam Fair, but that's looking a bit doubtful at present - I've seen the weather forecast for tomorrow, and it doesn't look good.

Anyway, here is my address at the morning services, based on Ephesians 6.10-20 and John 6.56-69:

“From that time on, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”

Having based last week’s sermon on the first line of a hymn, today I found myself with a song by the Eagles in mind, as I started to think about what to say. I’ve always liked the Eagles. Many of their songs are thoughtful and a few are quite challenging; often they have something to say, and they make good music.

Air guitarists (real ones too, I guess) may go for ‘Hotel California’, but the song in my mind was ‘New Kid in Town’. It’s a song about the being the latest thing; the kid who, having just arrived, is an overnight sensation, the guy they all want to know.  Malcolm became an instant celebrity in my school. He arrived out of nowhere part way through our first year;  his dad was in the RAF, so he’d seen quite a bit of the world - Germany, Cyprus, even Singapore. For a while he was a shining light in our little school (and, all these years later, we’re still friends).

But as that Eagles song goes on to say, being the new kid in town only lasts until the next new kid arrives. And when that happens you may find that just as quickly you’re forgotten, once there’s a new latest thing, a new star to rave about.

That’s life, I guess. Things come into fashion and then they go out of fashion again; crazes spring up, for a while everybody’s doing it, then they burn out and the next latest thing takes over. People too come into favour and then go out again. Boris is always doing it. The charts are littered with one hit wonders, and you get sporting heroes who for a moment or two can do no wrong, then turn out to have feet of clay. Today’s society like none before seems obsessed with celebrities, people very often famous mostly just for being famous, followed on Twitter by thousands, and then just as quickly dumped.

But as we found in our Gospel reading, even some of the disciples of Jesus walked out on him. After this point in the story they no longer went about with him. Why was that? The celebrity culture of their day, perhaps. Now that Jesus was no longer new and fascinating, it was no longer trendy to be seen with him. After a while the latest thing starts to seem a bit tarnished. Maybe other rabbis were around, with more interesting stories to tell.

Or possibly less challenging things to say. One reason why people had started to walk away was that they were beginning to find the things Jesus was saying difficult to take. Some of his words sounded quite shocking. Maybe they’d started to feel he was demanding too much; maybe they were worried about the way he seemed to be offending some of the religious leaders of the day. Not only was it no longer trendy to be seen with Jesus, it was perhaps beginning to feel not all that safe, as Jesus began to ask more than some were ready to give, and to challenge things they weren’t prepared to change.

Perhaps they’d been following their own idea of what the Messiah should be and how he should behave. They couldn’t cope with the real Jesus, who said difficult things, and made big demands, and wasn’t always comfortable or safe to be seen out with. There are times in life when you have to stand up and be counted, and there were some among his followers who weren’t up for that.

Church used to be much more popular, and certainly more secure in its place in society, than it is now. I think we’ll all agree about that. I remember how as a little boy at evening service I couldn’t see up the church because the pews in front of me were all full of big grown-up people. That was probably harvest festival, but even so, people went to church in a way they now don’t.

Things change. And while there are times when everyone’s happy to hear what we believe and say as Christians and churchfolk, we shouldn’t let it go to our heads, because there’ll also be times when no-one wants to know us, and when people make fun of us, or worse. It’s when things are not so good that you find out who your real friends are. It’s when the road gets tough that you need people with some stickability about them. That’s the point we reach in today’s Gospel. The real friends of Jesus, his real disciples, were the ones that stayed with him when others turned against him. The ones that were more than fair weather friends, and who weren’t there just so that a bit of his celebrity would rub off on them.

Stickability was much needed in the early days of the Church. Things were often tough. St Paul wrote many of his letters, including his Letter to the Ephesians, to people who knew what it was like to face opposition and even persecution. Today we’ve heard from the closing chapter of Ephesians, and as he wrote Paul clearly had in mind the very effective armour with which a Roman soldier was kitted out. So he instructed his readers to put on the whole armour of God.

That’s how we’ll stand firm against the wiles of the devil, says Paul. By taking the armour of truth, righteousness, faith and peace. This is the armour we take when we choose to live in an honest, open, scriptural and loving way, when we’re looking to the power of the Holy Spirit, when we’re bonded by the Spirit in fellowship together, when we’re firmly joined to the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The fundamental base for this is prayer. Paul writes that we need to be watchful and alert as we pray, looking out for whatever temptations might lead us astray, taking account of the troubles, needs, challenges, opportunities that face us in our daily lives.

Bishop Alistair quizzed me about my prayer life when I was interviewed. If I’m honest I don’t find prayer easy, and I hugely admire those people I’ve met who’ve been deep and natural prayers. But I do know how necessary it is to all I do as a priest and indeed as a Christian, and I need the discipline of regular prayer. But it isn’t so much about keeping monastic hours of prayer or using the right words. It’s about being deliberately and faithfully open to God’s presence. Words, in fact, can sometimes get in the way. Any discipline of prayer needs to make space so we hear what God might be saying to us.

Paul talks about praying at all times. In monasteries, as well as the hours of formal prayer, everything done is done prayerfully – from reading the scriptures to greeting guests to cleaning the kitchen to digging the monastery garden. It’s all done to the glory of God, offered to him, in all that is done, God’s help and direction and presence is sought. For “to pray is to work, and to work is to pray,” as the saying goes.

My prayer can be a matter of "new kid on the block” enthusiasm, I'm afraid, in that I take it up with great gusto, and for a while I get a lot out of it, but then as perhaps it begins to feel burdensome and difficult, or squeezed out of my schedule by other stuff, I start finding excuses to miss. In other words, it can easily go the same way as all those other things I try to do: that course of study or healthy diet, or all those New Year resolutions - it becomes one more thing I enthusiastically start but don’t keep on with as I should.

But I shouldn't give up; prayer is not an optional extra, it's the vital heart of the thing. Having the whole armour of Christ requires us to build our lives around a discipline of prayer. The soldier doesn’t don his battle armour only when he feels like it, or give up on it when other more interesting things come along. He just does it, for he knows his life depends on it. Our best efforts may fall short, and we can be fickle and half-hearted in our allegiance. But God is never less than whole-hearted with us. His love for us never fails, and we can trust in that love; it's a love in which each one of us is personally known and treasured. That's what I believe anyway. And so with Peter I say: “Lord, to whom else can we go?  You have the words of life.”

Nature Notes - Song Thrush

Out for a stroll a few weeks back, I came across a table bearing slices of cake, neatly wrapped and priced, with an honesty box for hungry walkers. I decided I fitted that category, so I stopped, paid my money, and enjoyed a very good and generously cut slice of home-made sponge. While I stopped to eat, the peace was disturbed by an insistent tapping sound.

A little bit of quiet delving revealed the origin. A song thrush was working at his anvil. “Anvil” is the name often given to stones selected by song thrushes to bash snails against, so that the shells are broken and the bird can eat the contents. I’m not sure whether it quite counts as “using a tool”, which is something some birds do, in the crow family especially, but a thrush will often have its favourite anvil stone, and if you find one it may well be surrounded by lots of bits of broken shell.

A large pebble I brought home from a childhood holiday and placed in my own little garden plot (I and my brothers each had one) was, to my delight, taken over by a local song thrush. Finding the one on my walk took me right back to those days.

Song thrushes were commoner then, though they never were as common as their relative the blackbird. Today there would be about five million breeding pairs of blackbirds in the UK, and maybe a little over one million pairs of song thrushes. A decline of more than 50% in the numbers of song thrushes in little more than 25 years has caused some concern, but more recently there has been a slight recovery.

Song thrushes are a little bit smaller than a blackbird. They are birds of mostly larger gardens, parks, woodlands and well-grown hedgerows. Song thrushes like plenty of trees around and are seldom very far from cover. The sexes are alike, and they have a distinctive speckled front, plain brown back and wings, and orange on the underwing, though this is only briefly visible in flight.

Though famous for its song, usually delivered from a prominent position perhaps near the top of a small tree or bush, for me the song isn’t as inventive or attractive as that of the blackbird. It consists of short phrases which are repeated several times. Like most songbirds, it sings through the spring into early summer, but it will sing a bit in the autumn and through the winter too, though not as much as its larger relative the mistle thrush. It will sing quite late into the evening.

As well as snails, song thrushes eat worms and many kinds of insect, as well as berries and other fruits. They nest in trees and shrubs, well concealed, where three to five chicks are raised. They are semi-migratory, and the song thrush you see in the winter might not be the same as your summer resident. They remain one of my personal favourites!

A sermon for today . . .

. . . based on verses from Ephesians 5, and "Servant Song" :-

Our readings this morning touch on faith and practice, and I want to think a little about the reading from Ephesians. Much of this Letter centres on how Christians should live together in fellowship, and it’s important stuff I think. However good we are at important things like  maintaining our buildings, paying our parish offer and being good at worship - and they’re all really important - they come second to the call to be in fellowship: fellowship with Christ, and fellowship together as his people. One of my favourite hymns begins with the line “Brother, sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you.” Let’s use that line as a way in to thinking about Christian fellowship.

The first two words are brother, sister. And I’m reminded that the very first message Jesus sent to his disciples on the morning of the first Easter Day called them his brothers. And he told Mary Magdalene to tell them “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

In the car the other lunchtime I found myself listening to “Call You and Yours” on Radio 4, and feeling rather sad as so many people called in to talk about splits and rifts and divisions within their families. In my family we’re always falling out, but we always just as quickly fall back in again, and woe betide anyone else who might attack or smear or threaten any one of us. But there are serious splits in maybe five percent of families in the UK, and that translates as several million people. So in our human families we don’t always get on together as well as we might; what about the family of God?

Sadly, churches are made up of human beings, and as much at risk of splits and dissentions as any other human organisation. But it’s a shame when that happens, because fellowship is fundamental to our call. And in God’s family, our relationships should take their cue from him. Paul said to the Ephesians: “As children of God, aim to be as like him as you can.” How can we mere mortals aim to be like God? By trying our best to be like Jesus.

So the first line of that hymn, the Servant Song as it’s known, goes on to say, “Let me as Christ to you.” Being Christ-like together surely means being humble, patient, forgiving, helpful, supportive, caring, all the things we see in Jesus when we read the Gospels. When Jesus said, “Follow me,” he wasn’t just saying literally walk behind me along the road, he was also saying learn from me, follow the things I do.

Blessed are the meek, said Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. But being meek doesn’t mean being a soft touch. There’s no Christian ministry of being a doormat, as I’ve said many a time before in sermons. People who follow Jesus know from him what we stand for, and if we’re truly following him we’ll be firm in our support for what’s good and right in the world, and equally firm in our opposition to the things that do damage, and to everything that’s unfair and unloving.

To say that takes me to the middle bit of that first line of our hymn, which is the four words: “Let me serve you.” Serving is the “why” of our fellowship. That’s what takes us, or should, from being a comfortable holy huddle, happy together without much regard for what goes on outside, to being something more world aware, more apostolic, hard-working. I believe that the God I serve and worship is offering himself as Father to every person, whoever and wherever they may be. I believe that we’re all his family, if we choose to be. And I believe that even when people turn their back and walk away he still loves them. I love the picture Jesus gives us of the father watching from the rooftop for his prodigal child to return. Christ loves people like me, but he loves people who aren’t very much like me too.

So our fellowship should be purposeful and outward-looking. And for me, the test of a Church isn’t how many people are in the pews or on the electoral roll or the list of regular givers; nor how lively and joyful our worship is.

Don’t get me wrong: as our church grows, and our giving grows, and our worship grows in spiritual strength and beauty, I’ll be the first to rejoice. But the main test of whether we’re getting it right is that we’re asking things like “How can we serve the people here? How can we help make a positive difference to this community? How can we make our bit of the world a better place?”

Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down as he said mass in his cathedral. I’ve taken a quote from him as my thought for the week, and I’ll read some of it now: “Every effort to better society . . . is an effort God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.”

Archbishop Romero was of course ministering in a part of the world where monstrous injustices were being done by the ruling powers. But even in our own peaceful and fairly comfortable communities there are things we can do, things that need doing. Things that could be better, people who need a bit of help or light or comfort in their lives. We may be few in number, weak in resources and maybe very aware of our own smallness - but even the tiniest Christian congregation has the privilege and call to pray together for the whole community. That means those who’d like to be here but can’t be, those who get distracted and never make it, right across to those who have no time for either church or God. Remember that God loves every single one of them.

At our communion service, and often at other services too, we’re sent out with words like “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.” God calls us together in worship, but then God sends us out into the world, and he sends us, as the response at communion puts it “In the name of Christ. Amen.” I hope our worship helps bond us in fellowship and lift us in spirit, but it’s also given us to use, given so we can be made useful, together, to God. And can I just say now that all that I’ve said this morning will be my theme, God willing, throughout my ministry here: “Brother, sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you.”

A sermon from last Sunday (12th August)

Based on Hebrews 12.1-17 and Luke 12.32-40 :-

“Have no fear, little flock.” Those of us with a clear memory, if only from childhood, of the Church as well-attended, strong and self-assured can often find ourselves (a) very aware of our present smallness, and (b) as a result, maybe a bit depressed and even fearful. For me, as a country vicar these days, with a congregation of a dozen or so in a church built to seat hundreds, it’s all too clear that the established Church isn’t what it was.

But those words of Jesus remind me that the Church started small, and on the edge of things, and maybe even fearfully, since there was plenty of opposition. The disciples needed those words of encouragement. While now being small when once we were large does bring its own problems and issues, not least how I deal with a grade one listed monstrosity (sorry, with a valuable part of our historical and architectural heritage), we shouldn’t be afraid of being small, for much of what Jesus said and other folk wrote in New Testament scripture was addressed to small people, in small groups.

Though I could ask, how small are we really? For the beginning of our reading from Hebrews describes us as being part of a very great company. In the previous chapter, the writer of Hebrews lists some of the people who, in Old Testament times, had lived by faith in God. All these “won God’s approval by their faith.” And we live out our faith in company with them; when we sing to God, our songs join in with a great chorus of the praise of saints and angels.

But I’ll accept it often doesn’t feel like that, here on the ground. We’re small, we know we’re smaller than we used to be, and to be honest, for the most part we seem to be getting on a bit. We can have an uncomfortable sense of the world having moved on somewhere else, leaving us behind. And there is some truth in that.

To be the faithful remnant is a very Biblical calling, but it won’t always feel all that comfortable, especially when much of the media seems biased against religion, and churches and chapels making an easy target for those who want to criticise or poke fun. It is, of course, much easier to criticise the Church than to go after other faiths. If instead of comparing burkas to pillar boxes, Boris Johnson had made fun of the robes worn by (say) nuns or monks, would there have been even a fraction of the protest and kerfuffle? I think not.

The Letter to the Hebrews was written to a church familiar with opposition and persecution, and so to people who perhaps were asking, “Why is God allowing this to happen to us?” Its writer speaks about the need for discipline, and also reminds them that the cross is our sign. From those for whom much has been given, much will be expected.

And he encourages them to “Aim at peace with everyone.” Paul has similar things to say in his letters, while, in our reading from Luke’s Gospel, we find Jesus instructing his disciples to be ready for action, always on the watch. Small and vulnerable groups of people, in testing times, are being told to offer peace to friend and enemy alike, and to be alive to every opportunity for service and witness.

In this way, says Jesus, “Provide yourselves with purses that won’t wear out.” The way of the world is not to be our way. To be honest, I worry more about the Church when it’s big and rich and influential than when it’s small. A rich and powerful Church is tempted to be conformed to the ways of the world, to be more concerned with its own standing and prestige than with the Gospel call to humble service. It won’t find it easy to aim at peace with everyone, it can throw its political weight around, and it can even be itself a source of oppression.

Back Boris Johnson’s comment about the burka; support came from the slightly unexpected source (to me anyway) of Rowan Atkinson. Old Blackadder has played a few vicars in his time, and he caused a bit of a stir with his portrayal of the Archbishop of Canterbury not long ago. I rather think he used to be a churchgoer, but he does seem to have put those days behind him. This is what he said about vicars. ‘I used to think that the vicars I played, or the exaggerated sketches that were written about clerics, were unreasonable satires on well-meaning individuals, but actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.’

Well, though I don’t recognise in those words most of the vicars and ministers I’ve known through the years, I can’t say he’s completely wrong. I have known, or known of, a few vain and pompous churchmen. But I quote Atkinson’s words to make the point that loss of status and position may not altogether be a bad thing. There are plenty of examples of bloated, corrupt and cruel churches when you read your church history. Plenty of damage done. But you also see that where faith has really been lived and preached, it’s often been on the edges of things and in situations of vulnerability and smallness. I think of Francis of Assisi, I think of some of the Celtic saints who brought the faith to these islands, I think of  John and Charles Wesley; William Williams, the author of “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah” was another. He started off in the church, but gave that ministry up to be a travelling preacher. And the crowds flocked to hear him.

Here are two important things: firstly, the truth is still the truth even if most people refuse to accept it. And history shows us how the Gospel truth remains alive even when the Church itself becomes corrupt and lazy.

And we are in the service of the truth. So, secondly, how does, how should the truth we serve affect us? Someone who thinks they know the truth when other folk don’t could be smug and self-satisfied, and liable to look down on others. But that’s not what this truth does to us if we really know it. The truth we know and hold is the truth of the cross, the truth of the love that holds nothing back, that gives everything, that lays it all down. This is a truth that convicts us, exposing our sin and frailty, that we’d like to hide away but can’t.

It was this truth that strangely warmed Charles Wesley’s heart, as he came to see that he’d nothing of his own to be proud about. Like Paul, he could boast only about Jesus Christ, and him crucified. But he also knew that despite his own deficiency he was known and treasured and loved, claimed by grace. And there’s grace enough for everyone, the amazing grace of which John Newton wrote: “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

And this truth will naturally lead us to be at peace with all. For there’s no-one to whom the offer of grace is denied. We who know the truth have the obligation to live that truth with humility and generosity. We serve and follow the Man for others: our highest aim is to be as like him as we can be. We may be small, but we’re still called by him to be in the business of “fishing for people.” We may be weak, but we have access to our Lord in prayer, and his Spirit is with us. And we’re surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses; our humble attempts at praise are joined with theirs.

The kingdom is everywhere and anywhere that God is praised and served and witnessed to. “Have no fear, little flock. Your Father has chosen to give you the kingdom.” That kingdom is witnessed to not by what we have, but what we give; not in status and worldly approval but in humility; in the sharing of peace and the outreach of a hand; and through amazing grace.

Sermons

I've missed posting a weekly sermon over the past couple, not because I haven't preached, but because I just haven't quite got round to it! We are in the final run-up to my collation and installation service (i.e. the service at which I am formally made incumbent of the group of parishes in which I have been ministering on a semi-formal basis since the start of the year). That takes place at St Michael's Church, Chirbury, Shropshire on Tuesday 4th September at 7 pm.

But meanwhile parish life goes on, and - bearing in mind that I am supposed to be giving Sunday and the equivalent of two days each week - it certainly fills up all the time available, and a bit more. Last week that included the wedding of Mark and Aimie at Trelystan, one of my churches which is situated in a field on the top of the Long Mountain, just a short way into the Welsh side of the national boundary between England and Wales. There were eighteen bridesmaids, which beats my previous record of eight by some distance! They and the bride (and the bride's mother) all arrived sitting on straw bales on a trailer towed by a John Deere tractor. They were making more noise than the tractor. A very enjoyable occasion, even if Aimie and her entourage were a little late arriving! I wish them well!

In between parish duties, I set up sound relay systems for events, often for funerals where the congregation is likely to overflow the church or chapel. We had one such on Saturday at Kerry, piping the service out from the little Baptist chapel there into the beer garden of the Kerry Lamb pub just behind the chapel (there's a door from chapel to beer garden, which struck me as novel). We had maybe thirty or more outside. There was, however, a wedding at the same time at the parish church not far away. We'd been asked to keep the volume down so as not to disturb the wedding; in fact, as the wind was blowing from the church to us, the problem was more the other way round! But I think we managed to balance things fairly well.

Anyway, I shall post two sermons - one I preached last Sunday evening at Newtown Methodist Church, and the other today at my church at Leighton, and also (slightly amended) at the wonderful little Methodist chapel at Pentre Llifior, between Berriew and Bettws Cedewain, a place full of history and well worth a visit, but with a lively and very outward looking congregation.

Transfiguration

A few words penned for tonight's Taize service at Trelystan, on the Long Mountain . . .

Here we are in a fairly high place, on the traditional day when the Church remembers and celebrates that strange event called the Transfiguration, that happened in a high place. In scripture, hills and mountains are often holy and special places, and Jesus often went up onto a hillside to pray. On this occasion he took Peter and James and John with him, and they saw him transfigured, shining with a dazzling whiteness. With him are the two great heroes of the Jewish faith, both of whom were recorded as having not died, but been taken up bodily into heaven.

What really happened up there? All we can really say is that it was something special, remarkable, and very strange. And just a fleeting glimpse: after a moment Jesus was just Jesus again; and they had to go back down the mountain, back into the rough and tumble of life at ground level. They were headed for Jerusalem, and Moses and Elijah had been talking with Jesus about what he would be in Jerusalem to do. I don’t suppose very much of what the three disciples had seen made very much sense - not then. When everything seemed to go wrong in Jerusalem they were as shattered and fearful as any of the others. Later, in the light of Easter, they would come to understand more clearly, but there was a lot they would have to go through first.

“Now we see through a glass darkly,” wrote St Paul in chapter 13 of I Corinthians. “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face.” I have a habit on these warm sunny days of wearing my clip on sun glasses, forgetting to take them off when I go inside, and then wondering why everything around me’s so dull. Now we see through a glass darkly. I think that’s true, generally, in life. We don’t see or understand everything there is to see. So was Jesus really transformed and transfigured on the mountain, or was it that the three disciples were suddenly able to see him as he always really is? Did scales somehow fall from their eyes - or maybe from their minds - that for most of us, most of the time are firmly held in place?

Theologians - and psychologists - talk about “disclosure moments” - times when the penny drops, times when we suddenly come to understand something that up till then was closed off from us, times when we see the world around us with a new and discerning clarity. For some it could be the moment of being brought to faith; for some it could be the discovery of a particular call, a decision made, a direction set for future travel; or it could be a sense of profound and unfailing peace to help bring us through a difficult or sad or testing time in our life’s journey. It can happen during prayer or on a retreat; or it could be sparked off just by something someone says, or the particular words or tune of a song; it could be the view from a mountain-top, for they always are special places; it could be a great cathedral or abbey. But it could be anywhere, and maybe just out of the blue; it can’t be planned for or generated, it just happens.

Or at any rate that’s my experience: they happen, they’re real, and they’re precious but brief and momentary things, that won’t necessarily change the whole course of a life. Though sometimes, for some people, they may do. For me the disclosure moment or religious experience has usually been mostly a bit of a nudge. But to me it seems that these moments are always given for a purpose: maybe to correct me, maybe to confirm a call, or to restore my confidence and faith. But not just to make me feel good - what we’re given we’re given to use and to share.

And so it was for the disciples that day: what happened on that mountain, when they saw for a moment the truth of Jesus the Son of God - this was part of the process of formation that would turn them from being disciples - learners and followers - into apostles: into those sent to share the message, and to lead the way. “This is my Son, my beloved,” said the voice they heard. “Listen to him.” And so must we, for we share their call to sing God’s praise and share God’s glory not just in the special moments but in every part of our lives.

Potholes

Travelling by road in my parishes has been interesting, to say the least, over the past few months. Potholes have been opened up in roads in every part of the land, due to a combination of poor investment in road maintenance and last winter's seriously wintry conditions.

My patch straddles two counties. Powys did temporary fills fairly quickly, and since then have done quite an impressive amount of resurfacing, in our area anyway (maybe we're just lucky, and other parts of the county haven't fared so well, I don't know).

Shropshire, however, seems to have done very little temporary filling. Many months ago, people came out and painted yellow lines around the worst of the potholes. Then, it seems, they sat back and waited for the pothole fairies to come and fill the holes, which of course, they didn't. Later, as new holes had appeared, people came out and painted white lines round these ones. And I think they had another go with the yellow paint after that. Drivers had resorted in some cases to driving down the middle of the road, while others swerved violently from side to side. The holes, for most part, remained unfilled.

My own personal bill came to £250, or thereabouts - the cost of two tyres. The first of these was damaged - I think - by a very deep pothole on the main A490 near Chirbury. I can't be sure, as I only observed the problem a few days later - seeing a bulge in the sidewall as I washed the car. By then, Shropshire Council had (somewhat surprisingly) filled that particular hole!

The second one went in a more spectacular way, on the lane between Chirbury and Priestweston. A huge hole has opened in the lane a little way short of Priestweston village, largely due to the heavy rainstorms we've had. A culvert has collapsed, it seems. I swerved to my right to avoid it. Many previous drivers had done the same, resulting in the erosion of the verge on that side, leaving some nasty rocks projecting out. One of those pierced my sidewall, there was a loud bang and I limped into the village, fortunately finding a safe place to put the car, and a parishioner with a phone to call the AA.

My car does not carry a spare wheel, and the stuff they give you to repair a tyre stood no chance with this sort of tear. The AA man, bless him, managed after several tries to close the gap with a nut and bolt, closing onto large washers on the inner and outer wall. He then accompanied me on my slow journey home, re-inflating the tyre on three occasions as we found places to stop. I could have been waiting many hours for a flatbed truck otherwise!

Our local County Councillor, Heather, organised a public meeting earlier this week at Priestweston Village Hall to test public opinion on the pothole situation - particularly as the Council's response to complaints and claims regarding "the big hole" has been to close the road, which is the main route into one of the less easily accessible villages on my patch. It is still passable, with care, as I proved the other day - but of course if any further damage had been caused I would have had no claim. Not that I have claimed - I was going to replace that tyre anyway by the end of the summer. I just want them to get on and fill the holes.

The senior officer who attended the meeting had to endure some stick; but he made promises that the work on most potholes would be completed within two weeks or so (a new machine has been hired in, and it will be based in our part of the county). Re-opening the road to Chirbury will take longer, because the culvert will require extra work. The best he could promise there was that work should be under way during August. We'll see. It's also worrying that substantial amounts of money have had to be diverted from the already shrinking fund for capital projects, to enable this work to be done. The pothole scourge is partly the result of inadequate capital investment, after all.

But it's clear that things need to be done better than they have been. It's certainly not clear to me why the people filling the holes should not themselves be allowed to identify what holes need filling, for example. And comments like "I can't fill that one, it's not on my list," are just ludicrous.  Meanwhile, the summer heat (combined with passage of heavy vehicles) has started to do serious damage to the road surface in some places, while holes that have been there since January remain unfilled.

I should mention that Powys apparently has the worst maintained roads in Wales . . . but on my patch they're better than the Shropshire roads.

A Walk along the Canal

I had a very pleasant evening walk in mid-July along a stretch of the canal I’d not walked before. I parked my car by the turn from the main Newtown road towards Abermule, and walked the short distance toward the iron bridge over the river, turning just before the bridge to join the canal towpath and head towards Newtown.

Chiffchaffs and a song thrush were loud in the trees, and the surface of the canal was very busy with pond skaters and other water insects. River and canal are close to each other along much of this section, and the splash of the river was much in evidence. There had perhaps been a shower or two up country, and the river was higher than I’d expected after weeks of sunshine - though still not very high, of course.

Plants in flower along the canal included typical waterside plants like meadowsweet, marsh valerian, hemp agrimony, great willow-herb (also called “codlins-and-cream” for its attractive flowers, deep pink with a splash of cream at the centre), and marsh woundwort. Hogweed was also present, one of the plants at least as tall as me. “Is that one of those giant hogweeds?” asked one of a couple of walkers coming the other way. But no, it wasn’t, just the ordinary home-grown species, which can easily grow to five or six feet given the chance.

Giant hogweed was introduced (from Russia, I think) as a garden plant in Victorian times, and is notorious for causing skin rashes and other problems if touched. A couple of other introduced plants along the canal were Himalayan balsam, which is getting to be a problem along rivers, and Japanese knotweed, an annoying problems wherever it grows. I only saw one small stand of this. More common was creeping Jenny, a pleasing ground cover plant of the loosestrife family, which may well have been imported with garden soil when canal banks were being strengthened.

Walking along, I passed a pair of mute swans with five attractive and quite young cygnets. It may be that a previous attempt at nesting had failed, as I’d have expected them to be more fully grown by now. The canal was increasingly full of weed, with a good covering of bright yellow water lilies for much of the distance. I passed two locks in good condition, then a third that was derelict, after which the canal was dry.

Here was my destination, Pwll Penarth nature reserve, former sewage settling pools I think, and host that evening to an impressive number of mallards. Along the paths it was very dry, and I even observed a young oak tree completely dried up, with leaves the colour of parchment. Here and there the white of rough chervil (carrot family), and the purple or mauve of knapweed and burdock were evident. A reed warbler briefly emerged from the phragmites reeds around the pool. Magpies chattered as they hopped from bush to bush, and swallows and sand martins dived across the pool. 

And, by the river bank, a giant hogweed, flower heads the size of dinner plates and huge blotchy stems: a monster of a plant. I decided not to touch!

Sermon for Sunday 8th July (2)

Based on "2nd Service" readings, from Jeremiah 20.1-11 and Romans 14.1-17 :-

You know, I do often find myself feeling sorry for Jeremiah. I know he moans a lot, so that in past generations anyone who tended to moan and complain might well be nicknamed Jeremiah. But he did have some cause to moan. He hadn’t really wanted to be a prophet, but he ended up being one anyway. Not a bad career move on the face of it, prophets could earn a good living, folk looked up to them, they had status in society.

But the words given to Jeremiah to say tended not to be the sort of hopeful, upbeat pronouncements people liked to hear. Where other prophets were saying to the king and his council, “Your plans are good, and God is on your side. Press ahead, you can’t go wrong!” - or words to that effect - Jeremiah was saying things like “Your plans are rubbish, and God has had enough of you; the kingdom will fall, and if you’re lucky you might get carted off into slavery and exile.” Not surprisingly, he wasn’t heard gladly.

No wonder then that Jeremiah spoke of having been duped! But the word he has is the word of the Lord, the word of truth, a word that would simply burn within him were he not to speak it. The work of a prophet is to speak for God, to speak his word as it is, for good or for bad. Prophets weren’t supposed to be augurists or fortune tellers, predicting the future, even though they might well be looking at what would happen next. The great prophets like Jeremiah were there to tell it like it is, to coin a phrase. And often to say that things can’t go on as they are.

So, says Jeremiah, I’ve been duped. People should be looking up to me. Instead they deride me and search for ways to do me down. But after he’s had his moan he goes on to say, “But the Lord is on my side, a powerful champion.” Moaner he might be, but he was also a man who kept the faith. God chose him as a prophet, as a true prophet against all the false prophets feathering their own nests, because of he was the kind of faithful man who could be trusted with the truth. However unpopular it made him, he’d speak it.

The Church is supposed to be prophetic. What does that mean? I suppose that we’re here to show the way to people, and to shine a light into the world’s dark places. That’s not always going to be a cheery and songs-of-praisy sort of a job. Sometimes we’ll have hard things to say, and if we have we need to say them and not hold back. So long as they really are God’s hard things, and not our own gripes. And so long as our own deeds match our words - since we’ll quickly be caught out and discarded if they don’t. People are on the watch for any slip we might make, just as they were with Jeremiah.

Paul’s letter to the Romans is different from many of his other letters. Elsewhere, Paul’s often writing to places he’s been, churches he’s had some share in founding, and people he knows. To Rome, though, Paul is writing to commend himself, and to make sure the church that is already there will accept him. So it’s much more a statement of where Paul stands, a manifesto for his mission you might say, than his other letters.

But that’s not to say he doesn’t spend some of his time and ink trying to put right those things he thinks might be going wrong. Deeds need to match with words, and maybe they didn’t always, even in the Roman church. “None of us lives, and equally none of us dies, for himself alone,” writes Paul. We need to be serious about belonging together if we’re serious about belonging to God.

So, says Paul, don’t fall out about stuff. Stuff like differences in the way we do things, differences in the way we see things. We won’t always all of us agree on everything. But it’s no job of ours to sit in judgement on one another. That’s God’s job, and we all stand under the same judgement, a judgement that’s guaranteed. We can safely leave the judging to him.

The boundaries between denominations are certainly not as strong as they were when I was little. We went to both church and chapel, and were looked on with some suspicion as being neither fish nor fowl, neither one thing nor the other.

But we do tend to still be very tied to our own church, building by building. I don’t understand why people who’ll drive twenty miles to visit their dentist won’t drive a mile down the road to attend church when there isn’t a service in their own. But there we are, that’s human nature, I suppose.

Still, it’s good that people are different. We eat different things, listen to different music, vote for different political parties, and mostly it doesn’t make that much difference. We can still be friends. We make space for one another, mostly. And we should never cease to listen to those we don’t agree with, because our own beliefs are tested when we put them against others. We best discern God’s word together too, sharing, challenging, being challenged, and also of course praying. I never trust anyone who claims to have their own personal hot line to God. One of the things I like about Jeremiah, by the way, is the way he and God are always falling out with each other. That makes him real. I do that too.

“Love divine” was the top ten hymn when I did a survey recently on my patch; but it’s sung to a lot of different tunes, and not everyone wanted the same one. Most people wanted “Blaenwern”, but there were some who preferred the John Stainer tune “Love Divine”. Chapel folk often sing it to the tune “Hyfrydol” which we use for “Alleluia, Sing to Jesus”. “If we sing it, I want it to the original tune,” said someone to me as we talked about it. “I bet you don’t even know the original tune,” I replied, and when I sang it to him he didn’t. Charles Wesley wrote the words to fit the Purcell tune “Precious Isle,” which was very popular in the theatres at the time, and Wesley thought it ought to have some religious words. These days he’d probably have been writing hymns to fit things like the Eastenders theme tune. Someone has, by the way. For the record, the guy who liked the original tune was thinking of the Stainer one.

Here’s the point, though: it’s the same love divine, whatever tune we sing it to. It’s the same love divine, whatever our tradition of worship. And of course I chose that hymn very deliberately. Love is what makes sense of it all. God loves all kinds of people who come to church, whether they make the sign of the cross and kneel a lot, or raise their hands in the air and dance a lot. More to the point, he also loves all kinds of people who don’t come to church - people who mean to but don’t get round to it, people who refuse to have anything to do with it, people who’ve been hurt by the church, as some have. God loves people who are out playing Sunday league soccer or home washing their cars or watering their cucumbers. I’m sure he’d like to see them in church, but he loves them anyway. They may not know he loves them or care all that much, but that’s where we come in.

For a prophetic church isn’t prophetic in order to look good, and to make sure in the process that everyone else knows just how bad they look. A church in mission isn’t doing it so we can fill our pews and pay our bills. It can sometimes come across that way, but what we need to be is servant churches in the image of our servant King. And prophecy and mission done in his name and after his example must rest in this simple statement: God wants people to know the truth, so we who have the truth mustn’t keep it to ourselves but need to be spreading it around. People may not always like what they hear, because no-one can sign up with Jesus without changing, without being changed. Nor can we, by the way. And no-one likes change.

But our motivation for mission is love - for live is God’s motivation all the way through. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son . . .” Are people hearing that from us? Are people seeing that in us? They need to; we mustn’t hold back. God’s word should be burning in each one of us just as it did in Jeremiah: not that we’re all quite called to do all that he did, but we are all called in some way to be part of the process.

Sermon for Sunday 8th July (1)

Based on the "1st Service" readings, from 2 Corinthians 12.2-10 and Mark 6.1-13 :-

Many people have speculated about Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” What was it? A physical ailment, maybe a bad back, or hip, or knee? Was it perhaps malaria, not uncommon in the Mediterranean region at that time? Malaria keeps flaring up and coming back once you’ve had it? We sometimes use the phrase “thorn in the flesh” to refer to a person, someone who’s annoying to live with or maybe to work with. Wow - maybe some people are saying that about me? Anyway, could that be the problem? Did Paul have someone who aggravated him, and who he’d like to be rid of?

Personally, I’ve often wondered whether the thorn was some aspect of Paul’s life he’d tried to put right but found he couldn’t. Like my brother and his smoking. Often when we meet up he tells me he’s given up, but then next time we meet there he is, still puffing away. No tobacco this side of the Atlantic in Paul’s day, but was there some aspect of his character he wanted to change but always found he couldn’t. After all, in another letter he wrote, “The good that I want to do, I find I don’t do.”
So Paul, whatever it was really that troubled him, Paul wanted to be stronger than he was, but he’d come to understand that wasn’t going to happen - and that it would be in his own weakness and imperfection that the strength and wonder of God’s love could be revealed. There was only Jesus he could boast about.

Our Gospel reading today has Jesus sending his disciples out to prepare the way. His ministry is still in its early days, as he travels from village to village in his home district of Galilee. We might think the disciples are rather poorly equipped. They’re sent out with no money, no food, not even a change of clothes. What kind of mission campaign is this? Answer - one in which the missioners also have things to learn and discover. To speak of the Lord, they must also trust in the Lord. They themselves must be trusting in him utterly, completely, for everything.

And this is the example taken to heart by Francis of Assisi when he began his own personal ministry some thousand or more years later. He and the members of the order he founded of Friars Minor, or Little Brothers would also have no money, no pack, no change of clothes, as they journeyed around the villages of that part of Italy, and by doing so began a movement that spread worldwide. “In our poverty, we are rich,” he said.

“In my weakness, I am strong,” says St Paul. Or maybe, in my weakness, my Lord is strong within me. I generally worry more about the Church when it’s strong than when it’s weak. I worry more about rich and powerful churches than poor and struggling ones. With this proviso, though: the church may be small in numbers and poor in resources, but it needs to be big in faith, big in its trust in the Lord.

Like St Paul, and like the disciples Jesus sent out with no pack or second coat, we are in the service of truth, we proclaim the God of truth. My faith tells me this: the love of God is the ultimate truth behind everything I see and know. Love is what makes sense of my life. And I may be small, I may be vulnerable, and I may be getting on a bit, but the truth is no less true for that. Nor is it any less true because not so many believe it.

Father Brian D’Arcy was doing Pause for Thought on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show the other day. I don’t hear him often, but he’s always worth hearing, and here’s something he said the other day: “Always treat with caution anyone who claims to be one hundred percent sure of what they believe.” Isn’t that the opposite of what you’d expect? Surely the more certain and sure the someone is in what they believe and preach, the better?

It may seem counter-intuitive, but I do think that faith is about living with questions. Here’s what Paul himself wrote: For now we see through a glass, darkly; then, we will see face to face. I believe in that “then” Paul looks forward to.

For now, though, I still have questions. Not long ago, someone asked me, “Can you prove to me that what you believe is true?” No, I can’t. I can’t prove it because to live a life of faith you have at some point to take a leap of faith; every step isn’t clearly marked. For one thing, good things don’t only happen to good people, bad things don’t only happen to bad guys; I can see that. Some of the world’s evils can be laid at the door of human greed or avarice or prejudice, but not all of them.

As a Christian I believe that evil has been defeated once and for all, that God’s love is triumphant, and that the place and time and event where this happened is Calvary and the Cross. But I can’t prove it. All I can say is that generations have lived this faith (Francis of Assisi among them), and that I’ll live it too. I may not always feel like living it, I may not always be good at living it, and we all have our thorns in the flesh. But it’s in the living, not through the spoken argument, that our faith becomes persuasive.

And that’s why Jesus sent his disciples out to do things, to heal and befriend and to listen and to forgive, to be compassionate and caring. He sent them to live the Kingdom faith and not just speak about it. Some folk they went to would see and hear and understand; others, perhaps would not, and some would even jeer at them. That’s the reality of mission. That’s what happens. “Take nothing with you,” Jesus had said. So the disciples had nothing to offer but themselves - and their Lord.

However good I may be at speaking and preaching the faith, it’s whether I live the faith that counts. And if my words and deeds don’t match up, however wonderful my words, it’s not going to work. To be blunt, if our message as a church really amounts to “Come and join us and keep our church going,” that’s not going to be enough. We need to inspire people, and to be inspired they need to see in us that what we have is worth having, and worth the living of it.

So here are a few points in conclusion: whatever the thorn was in Paul’s flesh, it wasn’t there to derail his ministry but to keep it real, to keep him on the straight and narrow. That thorn reminded him that he wasn’t Paul the superstar preaching himself but Paul the apostle, preaching Christ. To do that he needed to be humble and self-aware, to know that his own strength could never be enough, and to keep living the life of faith. And those disciples of Jesus? They may have seemed under-resourced when they were sent out, but they weren’t. God was with them all the way, and as they worked they would learn to trust him.

Like them, we go in the strength of the Lord and not in our own strength. Like Francis of Assisi and his band of “little brothers”, our mission needs to begin with service, with things done rather than things said. Think about that, because I’d like each church in this group over the coming months to be settling on one thing (or at least one thing) that we can do, that is within our strength and capabilities, to be of service where we are. And if you’re not sure, nor am I. And if you think you’re too small and weak, so do I. And so, I suspect, did those first disciples when Jesus sent them out on the road. So did Paul, with his thorn in the flesh - maybe that was the thorn in his flesh.

But you know, I think it may well be what God wants of us. And one last thing, a rule of my life. If you want answers, don’t go to the guy who’s got them all, or thinks he has; go to the guy who’s still got questions.

More Random Thoughts from the Garden

A new "Nature Notes"

After all, I’ve been sitting out here a lot just lately! We were still busily filling the bird feeders each day, but they were getting repeatedly swamped by young birds that I’m sure really ought to be learning how to fend for themselves rather than just cashing in on the fat chunks and sunflower seeds we put out, so with a slightly heavy heart I’ve decided to take it out of action for a week or so. It seems to have worked, in that there are still plenty of young blue tits about, but they’re now doing what they’re supposed to do, hunting along the branches of the oak tree behind us for the hoards of little creatures there are there, which frankly are easy pickings just now.

It is sad to watch a tree slowly die. I mentioned our elm last time. It still has some green leaves, but slowly but surely the fungus is spreading, with new branches succumbing all the time. Leaves fall as they die in the autumn, because the tree makes them fall when it no longer needs them, by sealing off the leaf stem. The tree still needs these dying leaves, so even the ones that are completely brown and withered are still there hanging on the branches, which really just makes the whole scene look so much worse.

Tree bumble bees are a new species to the UK, first recorded in 2001. We’ve had loads on the white flowers of our strongly scented thornless rambling rose - this is the first time I’ve identified them. Our rose has a distinct flowering season which is over, so the bees have moved on too. They’re not large, and they have a fluffy ginger thorax, a black abdomen and a white or grey tail, quite distinctive. They often nest in bird boxes (wasps and other bees will also do this). At a time when bees are under pressure, it’s good that this new species is spreading well. We need the bees!

Anyone who thinks we’re not made of the same stuff as the animals has only to listen to young blackbirds chasing after their parents for food. They have a particular call which has exactly the same wheedling cadence as kids mithering mum or dad for an ice-cream on the way back from school. The hard cherries on our earliest blossoming cherry are tiny and certainly not for human consumption, but blackbirds love them. Dad refused to listen to his kid’s wheedling, and flew off, leaving junior to make quite a decent fist at tearing off ripe berries and gobbling them down. So obviously he had been watching and learning.

Swifts arrived a bit late this year I think, but they may well leave early, as we have had some quite prolonged sunny spells and that means good hunting for swifts. They don’t linger here - they’ve come to raise a family and once they’ve done that, they go. So swifts leave earlier in a good summer than in a bad one, the opposite way round from what you might think. They leave a lot earlier than most other species, but even so it’s a reminder that for migrant birds August really is the first month of autumn, rather than the height of summer. Birds are already on the move!

His name is John

Sir Christopher Chope MP is, I imagine, the usual mixture of good, bad and indifferent that most of us are, even members of the House of Commons. However, for at least the next short while, and maybe longer than that, he’ll be remembered as the man who halted the progress into law of a bill designed to protect the freedom and safety of women. It seems he wanted to make the point that laws of this kind should be made by government bill rather than by using up the precious time allowed back-benchers; but if so he picked the wrong time and under-estimated both the importance of this particular issue and the strength of public feeling around it. One foolish word and the whole world was suddenly against him, or that’s certainly how it felt, by his own admission. He may even wish now that at that decisive moment he’d been struck dumb.

Zechariah at the start of our Gospel reading this morning had been struck dumb. Zechariah was an old man with no children, and by now no expectation of children. As a temple priest, born into one of the priestly families, he held a position of honour. And at last his turn had come to have the greater honour of being chosen to burn incense in the inner court of the temple. But as Zechariah took his turn to perform this work, he too spoke out of turn, and his world came crashing down around him.

This is how it happened: an angel spoke to him, and told him he was to be the father of a son. A message from heaven that promised to fulfil Zechariah's deepest longing, a son to bear his name! The  last thing he should have done was to answer back. But he did: No, he said, that can’t happen! My wife’s far too old, this is surely some kind of joke. No it’s not, said the angel, and promptly struck Zechariah dumb. Which meant he couldn’t fulfil his temple duties or any of the rest of his work as a priest.

So our Gospel reading starts with Zechariah off work and unable to say a word. Meanwhile, the angel's promise has come true, and the child’s been born. It’s the eighth day, time for his son to be circumcised, and also named. By tradition the first born son would be named for the father, or perhaps he’d be given another close family name. So that’s what the folk gathered there expected. But the angel had said that the child should be named John, so that’s the name Elizabeth tells them. ‘Hang on,’ the people say, ‘this isn’t a name in your family!’ Squadrons of angels - as I imagine it - are all holding their collective breath, as the people turn to speechless Zechariah, who surely won’t let his wife do something so foolish. He’ll put her right! Zechariah calls for a writing tablet, and what he writes is: ‘His name is John.’ And just as suddenly as it went, his voice returns.

Zechariah did what he should have known to do all along. A priest is supposed to trust and obey the word of God. And his moment of trustful obedience leads to the return of his voice, so that any instinct for protest or ridicule there might have been among the onlookers is instantly defused, and turned to amazement and wonder. A miracle has happened.

In fact this is a story shot through with miracles. An elderly childless couple blessed with a son, a temple priest struck dumb, and his voice miraculously restored; and God using Zechariah’s initial doubt and subsequent faith to proclaim his divine purpose and power. The name John actually means ‘God is gracious’ – giving this name to the child acknowledged him as God’s gift and special. And John wasn’t God's gift just to Elizabeth and Zechariah, he was a gift to everyone. Everyone was talking and wondering about these events. Everyone must have expected great and wonderful new things to spring from this birth.

And one thing I take from this story is that God has a way of bringing good results out of bad stuff, and of transforming human weakness and stubbornness and failure. Those months unable to speak must have been torment for Zechariah, but it was nobody's fault but his own. If only he’d not spoken out of turn; if only he'd kept his doubts to himself. His priestly ministry had been disabled, God had smitten him, and who knows, maybe God had permanently written him off? What if he could never be a priest again? He must have wondered. It happens all the time in human relationships: we fall short, make a mistake, let someone down, and we’re marked with a permanent blot, labelled by our mistakes.

Well, we may treat each other that way, but God never does. What about the times when I’ve blown it, wanted my own way or refused to listen to advice? The times I’ve decided for myself what can be done and what can’t without asking God, gone where I wanted to go, and not where God wanted to send me? God’s word to us: ‘Trust me for what you need, and work for my kingdom’ - Jesus is always saying things like that. But it’s easy not to trust, not to believe it can be done, to look down when we should be looking up.

Basically God said to Zechariah: ‘Who are you to tell me what I can or cannot do?’ - and that’s when he struck him dumb. So Zechariah the priest learned humility and obedience the hard way, as we often have to do. But here’s something I see, looking back through my life: when I’ve made mistakes or wrong decisions, failed to trust as I should, cut God out of the process, in the end I find that’s not the end, and God still brings good out of it all. Things we regret may in the end serve to deepen our spiritual awareness and our knowledge of ourselves, and God can start to use us in new ways. Our doubts, once worked through, may lead us to a stronger and more vivid and worked-out faith.

John isn’t my given name, and yet in a way it is my name, and it’s yours too: for the declaration that ‘God is gracious’ lies at the heart of our shared faith. To say God is gracious means God gives more than we deserve, and loves us though we don’t merit it, and that God renews and keeps his promises to us, even when our first reaction, like Jonah in the Old Testament, has been to rush off in the opposite direction and go our own way instead of his. We Give up on each other, and we may well give up on God, but I believe that God never gives up on us.

‘His name is John,’ said Zechariah, or at least, that’s what he wrote, as his son was circumcised and named. And in our own naming and baptism we become members of the community of John who was himself the first baptizer. In baptism we’re made members of the company of folk who know God is gracious, and who - even if they don’t always get it right - are learning and striving to trust in his divine and holy love. And as I look to whatever lies ahead for me and for us, who can tell where God in his love might be leading us?

Son of Encouragement

On a bright sunny morning a couple of weeks back I was walking along the streets near where I live, and feeling pretty good. So I smiled at the people I passed, and even said ‘Good morning!’ to one or two of them. But no-one much made any reply. OK, it was Monday morning, but even so - I was beginning to feel a bit depressed. Possibly the fact that I was wearing a high viz jacket and picking up litter meant that people didn’t even see me, let feel they needed to relate to me in any way. I do a stint now and again as a litter champion, trying to keep the streets around me a bit tidier. I enjoy doing it, but for the most part it does seem to render me invisible.

And then I came across a little girl with her mother and I would guess her grandmother - and as I smiled, each one of them smiled back. I felt so encouraged by those smiles, and I had to say thank you. ‘You're just about the first people who've smiled at me all morning,’ I said. ‘Well,’ said granny, ‘it's going to be a gloomy old world if we can't manage a smile between us.’ 

Last Monday was the feast day of the apostle Barnabas. That wasn’t actually his real name, which was Joseph, but a nickname, which means 'Son of Encouragement'. His story’s in the Acts of the Apostles; read it and you’ll find that Barnabas was a man who really lived up to his nickname. He was good at encouraging people, and he did it all the time.

To offer encouragement and support is one response to the simple truth that, as the poet John Donne said, “No man is an island, entire unto himself.” We belong together. The readings set for today focus on ‘The King and the Kingdom’. Jesus told lots of stories about the kingdom of God, and we heard two in today’s Gospel. The kingdom of God is like a seed that sprouts and grows in secret. And it’s like the tiny mustard seed that nonetheless grows up to become a bush big enough for birds to shelter in. 

When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God he’s talking about what happens when people start serving God faithfully, and doing what he wants them to do. A kingdom isn’t an acreage of land but people who loyally serve their king. And to encourage one another is a big part of the service our King call us to give.

The kingdom of God starts small and grows secretly, because it doesn't depend on people showing off or throwing their weight around or looking big. Nor does it need people to be religious experts or able leaders or skilled performers. It just needs people to be encouraging one another, loving one another, even sharing a smile or two. Jesus said: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” And he went on to say, “That’s how people will know you belong to me.” God’s kingdom is built on encouragement, on generosity, on compassion, and most of all on love. It’s built when people know we belong together because we belong to God.

The late Scottish bible commentator William Barclay often inspires me with his reflections on scripture, so here’s something he wrote: ‘One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement.  It’s easy to discourage, and the world is full of discouragers. Our Christian duty is to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a person on their feet. Blessed is the one who speaks such a word.’ Amen to that, I say; take inspiration from Barnabas, be ready to encourage each other, and keep the kingdom growing here. 

You don’t need to be an expert Christian preacher to pass on the Good News of God. Often a smile and a hug can be enough to start the ball rolling. I was collecting on the street for charity yesterday morning - that’s another situation where you can often think you’re invisible, but I smiled at as many people as I could as they passed by, and I was pleased that quite a few smiled back, and even more pleased at the amount of money in my tin. It’s true: a good smile goes a long way. 

Every churches should be a place of encouragement. It’s been truly said that we come to faith not when we believe in God, but when we know God believes in us. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “Jesus died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but should live for him who for their sake died and was raised to life.” Wherever we meet in his name, Jesus wants us to be a community of encouragement: to be truly living for him, and sharing his love.

We don’t always know how we’ve encouraged others. Paul wrote that it isn’t always the one who sows the seed who gets to reap the harvest. Let me share an inspirational story that I found quite moving when I heard it. It’s about a man who’d become housebound and severely disabled by an accident at work. Confined to his home, he decided to spend time to writing letters to people in prison. His constant pain meant it wasn’t always easy to write, but he stuck at it. He had a lively mind and the ability to tell a good story, so he knew this was something he could do well.

His letters had to go via the prison chaplaincy, and when he first started writing the chaplain told him that the prisoners he wrote to wouldn’t be able to reply. He understood and accepted that to begin with, but as time went on he began to get discouraged and his confidence waned. What if no-one was reading his letters? What if no-one was even receiving them? He didn’t know, and it was more and more painful to write. Maybe he was just wasting his time. 

At last he decided it wasn’t worth going on. He would give it up.  But just as he made that decision, a letter arrived - not from a prisoner, of course, but from one of the prison officers. Just a very short note, on official prison paper, saying: “Could you please write your next letter on stronger paper? Your letters get passed from prisoner to prisoner, until eventually they fall to pieces. It would be great if we could make them last a bit longer!”
 
We all need a bit of encouragement. We’re all that bit happier for a smile. But the encouragement of Barnabas -  encouragement not just so I can feel comfortable, but so I too can keep on giving help and encouragement to others. This is the heart of my Gospel: I know that I’m cared for, and that God believes in me. I believe in a generous God who calls me to be generous too. And whenever I pass on something of his love, in however small a way, I’ll be helping the seeds of his kingdom to grow. And so will you.

Tree Bumble Bees

The roses in our front garden are particularly lovely this year. They're ramblers of some kind, with a simple open flower that comes in clusters, looks sweet, and smells sweeter. This year they've been festooned with bees, that I've identified as tree bumble bees. These are a new species to Britain, first identified I think in 2001, but they've spread very rapidly across the whole of England and a good chunk of Wales, and into Scotland too. At a time when our bee population is under threat, a new species has to be good I think, and scientists tell us that there's no evidence the tree bumble bee's spread is harming other species.

The tree bumble bee likes to nest in holes in trees, as its name suggests. One reason for its spread across the UK is that nest boxes will do just as well, and it has even been known to evict the existing avian tenants in order to take over. I don't know where the ones we have are coming from, but they don't seem to be nesting on our premises. They like to come to our rose when it's in shade, there aren't anything like as many about when it's in full sun. I've seen them on one of our fuschias too, but they clearly like the rose better than anything else we've got. The wide open flowers will help. These bees don't like tubes like foxgloves, unlike many other bees. It's interesting to see where different species go. Our cistus - white open flowers like the rose - doesn't attract tree bumble bees, but instead has lots of visits from solitary bees of some species, black and honey bee shaped.

The tree bumble bees have a fluffy russet thorax, often with a black mark in the centre, then a black abdomen and a white tail. They vary in size, depending on the role they play in the colony, but none of them are all that big. They do seem to be very active and hard working bees. I'm glad to have identified them, and glad too that bees of all kinds have certainly benefited from the good start we've had to the summer.

A Sermon for Trinity 2

(For St Mark's, Marton and St Mary's, Trelystan)

I’m not sure where Jesus is at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading. But he’s in a house somewhere, whose I don’t know; he’s not somewhere out on the road, or in a boat on the lake, the sort of places we often find him. He’s in a house; but wherever he is, you’re going to get a crowd: so many people, and so much going on that Jesus and his friends can’t even get a bite to eat.

The story Mark tells us focuses on two sets of people who really should have known who Jesus was and what he was about. But it seems they don’t. Firstly, there’s Jesus’ own family; and then secondly we have the scribes, or teachers of the Law, people who knew the faith inside out. 

So the family of Jesus arrive, determined to save him from himself. They can’t get near; they’re somewhere on the edge of the crowd, and they have to send a message in to try and get Jesus to come out to them. Why? Because they really don’t understand what’s going on. In fact they think he’s gone out of his mind. “He’s beside himself,” they say. The verb used here in the original Greek of Mark’s Gospel means literally “to stand outside of”.

I suppose that was true in way, though not in the way the family were thinking. Jesus was beside himself. Or at least, Jesus was living in more than one world; yes, he was the carpenter’s son from Nazareth, living in the First Century equivalent of the world in which you and I live.

But was that world his real home? Jesus talked a lot to the crowds about somewhere else, another world that he said had drawn close to them as he spoke, as he forgave, as he healed. A world he called “the kingdom of God”. The Kingdom of God is anywhere and everywhere, and it’s the world how God always intended it to be. The world in which God is honoured as Father, the world in which people live together as sisters and brothers. And that was the world of Jesus’ true life, the world he told stories about, the world in which he invites us to join him.

But that was something that really annoyed the scribes, the teachers of the Law. They were there in the crowd, because it annoyed them so much that they’d come down specially from Jerusalem to challenge Jesus. You see, they also didn’t understand what was going on. Religion had to be done their way, or else it wasn’t real. I wonder if we really grasp just how radical all this talk about the Kingdom was? The idea that people could themselves talk to God, could call him “our Father”. Here I am standing here today in a Church, wearing liturgical robes, part of the “organised religion” of our times. We’re human beings, and we need to be organised, and Jesus himself went to synagogue and to the Temple. But when he talked about the Kingdom what Jesus was really saying is this: what we do in church and in the organised religion bit of our lives is less important than that we ourselves are right with God, and right with one another, right with our sisters and brothers, right with the other people God loves just as much as he loves you and me.

Now the scribes so couldn’t get their heads round that that they could only imagine that Jesus was in league with Beelzebul, with the prince of demons, with Satan himself. Or maybe they just wanted to persuade the people of that, so they could discredit this new and dangerous preacher who was such a threat to the way they did things.

What they hadn’t grasped, I think, was the difference between religion and faith. They’re two different things. Religion should be an expression of faith, the servant of faith, a way in which we share our faith, a place where we can encourage one another in faith. But faith comes first - the living relationship with the living God that Jesus called “living in God’s Kingdom.” That’s what it’s really about, much more than hymns or liturgies or ministries or venerable buildings, however much we may love all of that. Religion must never become an end in itself, and maybe for the scribes that’s just what it had become; a system which had God safely and securely locked up inside it.

So what’s the Church really about? The Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cotterell, a very mission minded man and a pretty good preacher, once noted that “Christians have made a religion in the name of the one man who came to end all religion.” But that’s only if the Church isn’t being what it’s supposed to be. That’s only if Church becomes an end in itself. What the Church is supposed to be is a sort of outpost of the Kingdom of God, a community of people united in mission by his Holy Spirit.

Within this story there’s one really difficult bit, and that’s to do with the unpardonable or unforgivable sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit. What does Jesus mean by that? I still wrestle with this, and with the idea of any sin being unforgivable, for surely God’s love is greater than any sin. What exactly is Jesus saying to the scribes? Maybe that they know that what he’s saying is true - and yet for their own ends they continue to work against him. They’re working for themselves while they claim to work for God, and for as long as they do that, they’ll not be forgiven.

Anyway, Jesus dealt with the scribes. And he dealt with his own family, too - not by rejecting them, so much as by including everyone in as family. This is the picture of God the Father that Jesus always gives us: God who invites us in, and assures us of a place. So let’s become part of that crowd as Jesus speaks. Hear how he says “Here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters, for whoever does the will of God, and whoever lives in the Kingdom of God, is my brother and sister and mother.”

Where am I really in that picture? Where are you? God is always saying to us, “Come closer, receive more from me, do more with me.” What might that mean for me? For you? Where does his Spirit touch mine? Where is my heart being pressed? How can I grow to be what God’s wanting me to be? To live in the Kingdom is to love in the presence of miracle and mystery, and at the heart of it all, love. And just at this point in my life my task is simply this: to learn how to be, here and now, the person, the child, God says I am to him. Amen.

Random Thoughts from the Garden

My "Nature Notes" for the month :-

Sitting on our patio on a gloriously sunny Saturday, I’m very glad we’ve been able to develop a garden that’s really good for wildlife. It’s helped by the woodland behind, but we’ve installed a good array of insect-friendly plants, we have plenty of bushes and trees, we’ve left some scruffy bits to give shelter, and, though we have no pond, there is a stream in the valley below us, so we’re not far from water.

This means we have plenty of bird visitors - currently young blackbirds pursuing their parents and begging for whatever they can get, and coal tits working furiously to keep their young ones fed too, plus a noisy family of jackdaws rampaging through the treetops. I haven’t seen any young blue or great tits yet; sadly our resident nest of blue tits was I think raided by the local pair of woodpeckers, who very probably took all the young just as they prepared to fledge. All that work by the parents came to nothing - but that’s nature, and we do have young woodpeckers at our feeders.

Finches come to us in many shapes and sizes, and I particularly love the two pairs of bullfinches we have around. They mate for life, and we usually see male and female together, even though they must have a nest full of young. Siskins have stayed with us through the summer, and goldfinches are always around too - along with chaffinches and greenfinches of course. Robins are less visible just now - hard at work I imagine. We have two pairs, each of which think their territory includes our feeders, so some serious arguments develop from time to time. We is plenty of floor level browsing space for dunnocks and wrens, and at the moment wrens are often to be seen prospecting the stems of our lovely tree peony.

We have many more bird species, but starlings are only very occasional visitors, and house sparrows, though regularly seen, only visit us from the gardens on the other side of the road, attracted by the fat and seed chunks we put out.

This seems to have been a good summer so far for butterflies and bees, but there aren’t many wasps - I’ve seen only one queen. Last year hornets passed through from time to time along the woodland edge, but none this summer as yet. When it comes to larger creatures, we’re not short of grey squirrels! And we have also seen frogs, a toad, a hedgehog or two, even slow worms. We don’t see these often, but there’ll be others around we never see. You’re never very far from a brown rat, for example.

Among the trees behind us, the elm succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease last summer, so we were surprised when this spring it leafed up and produced flowers. But now the leaves are drooping and shrivelling branch by branch, and I suppose we’ll never again have the great elms we used to know when I was a child. I’ve planted a young elm which I hope will grow to fill its place. While there’s a good mix of trees behind us - ash, sycamore, oak, wild cherry, crab apple, even a yew - I do hope we can manage to keep an elm or two.

Rules

A sermon for Trinity 1 :-

Where would we be without rules? Maybe a lot happier and a lot less hassled, you might think. After all, rules can be a bit of a bore. They’re frustrating and annoying, and they stop us doing what we like. But live a few days without rules and I suspect we’d be ready to ask for them back. Life wouldn’t be safe without the rules of the road, or the rules that govern, say, electrical installation or plumbing standards. And, though just now we might be shaking our heads over the new GDPR - General Data Protection Regulations, if you’ve been asleep for the past six months - the fact is we do need rules to make sure our personal information is handled properly, not sold on to others or used in ways that annoy or worry or endanger us. And that’s before we get to criminal law and all that that involves. I’ve been burgled, and while the police didn’t catch those guys I’m glad they were at least tried to, and that they took it seriously as a crime - against the rules, against the law.

Religious and secular laws and rules are different things in 21st century Britain; but for Jews at the time of Jesus, they were one and the same thing. They would be for Orthodox Jews today as well, in that God’s law governs every aspect of their life. And prominent within the commandments given by God to Moses, from which all the rest of the law derived, was this: remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. If you don’t keep the Sabbath, you don’t do honour to God. He rested on the seventh day; so should we. No lifting burdens, no harvesting crops, no work at all.

The Pharisees kept these rules rigorously and diligently; Jesus, however, did not, or so it seemed. His disciples had been plucking ears of corn as they walked through the fields on the Sabbath, for no better reason than they were hungry, and Jesus had done nothing to stop them. Pharisees saw it happen; they were looking out for opportunities to challenge Jesus so they could discredit him, so they could show the people just how far short he fell from their own high standards.

We’ve heard the story, and also Mark’s account of one of the many healing miracles Jesus performed on the Sabbath. He seems almost to have made a point of healing people on the Sabbath; and here he even does it in church, or in the synagogue. Now of course, Jesus was very much in favour of keeping the Sabbath; where he differed from the Pharisees was in how you go about that. What does keeping the Sabbath really mean?

The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath, was how Jesus put it. And that applies not only to that particular rule about keeping the Sabbath, but to all our rules and laws. It’s a test we need to apply. Put most simply, does this or that particular rule add to the health of the community, or detract from it? Does it apply a burden? Well, yes, of course it does - all rules are in some way burdensome, all rules restrict our freedom to do just whatever we want. But is that burden balanced by a benefit? It should be, if a rule is good. Good rules make our lives better by balancing my rights and freedoms and hopes against yours. And notice that word “balancing”. If a rule is designed to make life really tough for one group just so that another group has it easy or is given a dominant place, then that law is wrong, unjust, immoral - ungodly, I would even say.

“That’s just the way it is, some things will never change.” Lines from a song by Bruce Hornsby and the Range that was a chart hit around the world in, I think, 1986. Written by Bruce Hornsby, the lyrics of the song challenge the idea that segregation (in the deep South of the United States) was just how things were, how things always had been, how things were bound to remain. You’d even hear voices saying that’s how God wanted things to be; to challenge segregation was to challenge God’s order. The Christian witness of Dr Martin Luther King was countered by voices on the other side that also claimed the authority of God and of the Bible. Some things will never change.

Rules govern our lives, and they do need to. We need our own freedom to do whatever we want to be to some degree curtailed, so that other people too may have a measure of freedom, and we can live safely and happily and well together. Good rules aim to ensure the greatest good for everyone. But not all rules are good; Jesus told the Pharisees, who it has to be said loved their rules, that where the law was used to stop good things happening that need to happen then that law needed to be challenged.

Christians are supposed to be law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. Our default position, if you like, is that we’re loyal and obedient to whatever government is in charge of our daily lives, and to whatever system of law is in place. But, as Jesus makes clear, that loyalty to the state must never be at the expense of our first and prior allegiance to God. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.” That is the summary of the law as given by Moses, and we’re reminded of that at every communion service.

If the rules imposed by others stop us from serving God as we ought, and prevent us from loving our neighbour as we’re called to, then we should be ready to ignore such rules - to oppose them and campaign against them, for God wants better for us than that. Christians should be the first to stand up against injustice; but a combination of niceness and fear often keeps us quiet. Martin Niemoller, who as a Lutheran minister spent seven years in Nazi prison camps, wrote this: “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.” Those words are inscribed at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC.

Good rules are there so we can to live together safely and well;  God gave us the Sabbath Day because he knows that folk need a rest and a change of pace in life; but he didn’t give it so that people could beat each other over the head with strictures about what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do. If you let the Sabbath stop good things from happening, then you’ve got it wrong. And the Sabbath is certainly not there so that one group of people can lord it over another saying, “Look how wonderfully good we are, unlike you sinful lot!”

As ever when we hear what Jesus says, we’re to go and do likewise. And that means valuing and keeping the rules, because  most rules, most of the time, are good and will serve us and protect us, and the very best of them will make particular space and provision for the weak and the vulnerable. But that’s the point about rules and about ourselves as disciples: rules are there to serve us, and we are there to serve God; the Sabbath is there to serve us and not to enslave us. Get that perspective right, and we can start to live.