Getting the Church Sorted

1662

2012-02-10T21:55:00.001Z

On Tuesday evening I was at Westminster Abbey for a service in which the United Reformed Church and the Church of England sought to heal memories and to make a commitment to joint working. It was in the turbulent mid-seventeenth century that many were forced to leave the Church of England in a move that became known as the Great Ejection. Those who refused to conform with the way set down to do and be church - non-conformists - had to find new places where they could worship.

This is also the 40th anniversary of the formation of the United Reformed Church in 1972, a union that was marked with a uniting service in Westminster Abbey. There are still many things that divide us, and we need to continue to find genuine ways to demonstrate our unity in Christ.

Bonus Culture

2012-01-29T22:14:00.000Z

I am just back from the United Reformed Church's Youth Assembly. It took place over the weekend close to Lichfield. It was hugely enjoyable but very full on. I was asked to comment on a news story of relevance to young people and its Christian implications. As economics, austerity and recession are very much around these days it seemed appropriate to comment on a story that hit the headlines about the massive bonus (almost £1m) being paid to the boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland. I noted one comment reported by The Guardian - 'even my parents think I'm overpaid'.

I also offered a reminder of Jesus's comment that 'the love of money is the root of all evil' and that, after the Kingdom of God, money was the topic on which he spoke most often. On the one hand, it seems obvious that such bonuses should not be paid. The money is surely better with Christian Aid or something like that. On the hand, this amount is significantly less than the amount that he could have been given and represents the deal was done with him - and we do need good and competent people looking after our money.

I suggested that the key thing is not this particular payment, but how we tackle the issues that need to be addressed to get society's structures on the right track.

The comments led to a number of questions about how we use money, where we invest, how the church uses its resources - and we need to keep asking these questions.

Thin Places

2012-01-27T08:33:00.000Z

In a sense places do not matter. God can engage with us wherever we are and whatever we are doing. Yet some places are special in all sorts of ways and for all sorts or reasons. Some become special because they are the location of particular experiences, while others are just special anyway. Some of these we sometimes call ‘thin’ places because we find ourselves especially aware of God’s presence.

It is worth reflecting as to whether there are places we should go in order to encourage and sustain our spiritual development. I believe that there is a sense in which Jesus needed to go to the wilderness. On the other hand he also needed to be on the Mount of Transfiguration.

The Mount of Transfiguration is clearly a 'thin' place. Is the wilderness? The place of temptation is a place of struggle, a place where you can feel lonely and apart from God. Yet it is a place of focus and it is a place that needs to be visited.

Change

2012-01-26T23:40:00.000Z

The theme for the 2012 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which finished yesterday, is change – and what a good theme. We serve a transforming God. On Sunday evening I preached at a service for Churches Together in Felixstowe which took the title ‘we will all be changed’. I hope we will, for we surely need to be. But this is not an impossible aspiration. Our God can deliver the change. As the apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians – So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.

Saint Paul

2012-01-25T23:28:00.000Z

Today is the feast of St. Paul, the day when we remember the conversion of Saul - and the big change that led to his becoming Paul. I was at St. Paul's Cathedral in London this morning for the consecration of the Bishops of Bradwell and Winchester, Bradwell being in the Diocese of Chelmsford, most of which is part of my patch. It was an impressive occasion and a good opportunity to remember the transformation that came to Paul and how he was able to see things in an entirely different way.

How do we cope when we need to view things differently?

The Garden Tomb

2012-01-24T23:25:00.000Z

The Garden Tomb - otherwise known as Gordon's Calvary (because the site was identified by General Gordon) - wasn't on our itinerary, as it is clearly not the site of either Calvary or the garden where the tomb was. However, I took the chance to go there on my own and found it a helpfully meditative place - and, of course, lots of pilgrims do go there. It all started when General Gordon noticed some indentations in a hill that gave the appearance of being the sockets for two eyes and a nose. He suggested that this was Golgotha - Skull Hill - the place where Jesus was crucified - and it is still outside the city wall. What is more is that there is an attractive garden nearby and that garden contains a tomb. Indeed, the garden gives a good view of the hill, which is beside a bus terminal, and so the sense of noise and bustle fits with the crowds passing by the site of crucifixions. Though it is not the authentic site, the Garden Tomb does offer a realistic picture somewhere around what it must have been like and, with that, the opportunity to reflect in the open air on the events of Good Friday and the discovery of the empty tomb on the first Easter Day! Indeed, the message, now as then, is: He is not here - He is risen!

Emmaus

2012-01-23T22:08:00.002Z

We went to Emmaus by coach. That's the twenty-first century way. And we were not entirely sure that we were at Emmaus - because, at least, four places claim to be the original Emmaus. We went to Abu-Ghosh. To go from walking the Via Dolorosa in the morning to taking a trip to "Emmaus" to celebrate the resurrection in the afternoon was quite a change of emotion - but, then, that is exactly how it was. The seesaw of experience must have been far greater for the first disciples. Unlike them, we could not help but know what was coming.

We went to the Benedictine Monastery and were able to celebrate the Eucharist in their chapel - I had the priviledge of concelebrating with our guide and teacher. It was a moving service, both because of where we were and because it was virtually the end of the course. As we heard the familiar words .... take .. eat .. drink ... in an unfamiliar, to us, language - they were spoken on this occasion, as the first time they were used, in Aramaic - it was good to think back across the years and, as they knew him in the breaking of the bread, so did we.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

2012-01-22T23:40:00.001Z

One of our first visits to anywhere in Jerusalem was to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, otherwise known as the Church of the Resurrection. This covers the site of Calvary and also the site of the Garden Tomb. It’s a complex place, the site of probably the earliest church in Jerusalem and yet now a place where different parts of the Christian Church vie to have control and different parts of the whole building are controlled by different factions within the Church. We were told how the key is held by a Muslim who opens the church each day. Indeed the same family has provided this service for several generations. There was an interesting sense of spirituality there too and yet challenged by the noise, the flash of cameras, even the ringing of mobile phones.

However it was moving to go to the place where the tomb was, although now decorated in such an ornate way that it would contrast strongly with any picture that might arise from the Gospels. It is also important to be reminded, as we were, that a church has existed on this site for so long and that is a telling reminder of the power of God down through the ages and that He will keep His church even when it is not doing what it should.

We visited the church again towards the end of our visit. After walking the Via Dolorosa early in the morning we ended up outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a little before 7.30am, and so were able to go in and be there when there were relatively few people.

A particularly powerful possibility rising from this was to climb the stairs to the location within the church that marks the site of Calvary. It is fascinating that Calvary and the site of the tomb are just so close. As we reached the top of those stairs, we could see that the Eucharist was being celebrated and I was able to sit quietly and just reflect on the huge significance of this particular place.

This is a massive place of pilgrimage and it was an enormous priviledge to be there when there were so few folk - to reflect on the love demonstrated in Jesus going to the Cross, on all the things that happened in that last week which contributed to his being there and then on the power and glory of the resurrection. God is great in so many ways.

Via Dolorosa

2012-01-21T23:38:00.000Z

Walking the Via Dolorosa was one of the most moving experiences of my time in the Holy Land. We left the college at 6am, before breakfast, appropriately on our last day in the Holy Land. There were six of us, course members, and four course staff. We were carrying a small cross about four feet high, perhaps a little less, but as a very visible symbol of what we were doing. We walked down the main streets to the Damascus Gate and entered the old city through that gate about 6.15.

There were not too many people around, one of the reasons for going at that time, but the city was beginning to come to life as shops were being opened, delivery buggies taking things where they needed to be, and the cobbled streets being swept and washed. Most people just let us get on with it, but apparently there is always some animosity from folk of other faiths to such an explicit expression of ours.

We took it in turns to carry the Cross. Sometimes, I was told, the person carrying the cross can be jostled or pushed, but that didn’t happen on our walking this special way. Indeed, I didn’t notice anything particularly untoward, but I was told, just after we finished, that there had been one or two who had spat as we passed and one young lad, in particular had sworn very badly (in Arabic.) There were also one or two who crossed themselves.

It was certainly something special to take a turn at carrying the Cross – and just try and think how it would have felt for Jesus and his first disciples. We stopped at each of the fourteen stations of the Cross (or as near as possible, where it was not permissible to go right to the location.) In each place we, in turn, read the Scripture that marked what was commemorated there and shared a brief, relevant prayer. We were using the prayers from John Peterson’s “A Walk in Jerusalem” (Morehouse, 1998) and, as he says, “The Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem today lead right through the busy marketplace; pilgrims are as uncloistered and unprotected as Jesus was on the first Good Friday.”

It is absolutely right that it should be so and, in one way, we felt quite exposed, doing something somewhat strange, though, of course, groups of Christian pilgrims walking the via dolorosa are a very familiar sight. On the other hand, it wasn’t too difficult to feel very absorbed in what we were doing and somehow separate from all that was happening around. We were, I think, very focussed on the significance of where we were and the footsteps in which we were following.

It was all finished by 7.15. We ended up, of course, outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As I thought of the pain and anguish that Jesus must have felt as he walked this way and heard about the minimal acts of swearing and spitting that had accompanied our walking, it seemed as though we had got off too lightly – and yet it also seemed as though it was so sad that we cannot live in sufficient harmony to allow each other to do those things that are important to us and to our faith without even minor molesting. In many places, while in the Holy Land, we read and heard the words ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’. How that is needed.

John Peterson tells us that in most places we are walking about sixteen feet above the original path and he comments: “Let us think about those sixteen feet. Every single millimetre, every single inch of dirt on which we walk includes the dust from the shoes and the tears from the eyes of pilgrims. They – we – weep for the prisoner condemned as The King of the Jews, “despised and rejected,” carrying so much more than a heavy, bruising, rough beam of wood. He is “enduring the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne.”

As we consider that, let us consider the legacy we are creating.

Church of St. Peter Galicantu

2012-01-20T23:15:00.000Z

The Church of St. Peter Galicantu is on Mount Zion close to the Church of the Dormition and David's Tomb. There are good views across to the Mount of Olives. This church commemorates the traditional site of Peter's denial. It is an attractive modern-looking church, though was built in 1931. There is some lovely painting inside and some mosaics from a much earlier period have also been discovered. Like many of the church it is not just on one level and, in this case, went down to excavations that would seem to be of a former prison. There was a cell into which we were able to go by way of a staircase but, when it was in use, prisoners would have simply been lowered through a hole. There was also what would seem to be a former torture chamber with sockets for chains and containers that would have taken the likes of boiling oil. It was a stark place which spoke of violence and isolation. In the church I found myself reflect on the agonies that took Peter to denial, thinking of why he did it and how he must have felt afterwards.

What are the ways in which we deny today? How does that leave us feeling? What do we do about what we have done?

City Walls

2012-01-19T23:03:00.001Z

One of the things it is possible to do at the old city in Jerusalem is to walk round part of the city walls and so, with some free time available, I decided to do just that. Lots of it was not particularly exciting with not a great deal more than views of rooftops. However, there were some good views across various parts and it was good to have the high vantage point. The views of the Jaffa and Damascus Gates were particular good as was looking across the city with the Dome of the Rock as a main feature. I got on to the walls by the Jaffa Gate and walked round to the Lions' (or St. Stephen's) Gate which is a fair chunk of going round the city. It was fascinating to see something of the buildings and effects of the three Abrahamic faiths and to reflect on the history of these and, in particular, in this city. It was interesting to reflect on the timelessness, and yet the changing times and, as modern playground sits alongside ancient building, to consider what the great and constant tenets of the faith say to today's culture - surely a crucial question in every context.

Church of the Dormition

2012-01-18T23:34:00.000Z

As a group we didn't manage to visit the Church of the Dormition, though we passed beside it. However, three of us took the chance to go there on one of those occasions when we could choose what to do. The Church of the Dormition dominates the top of Mount Zion. It is a large white stone church and stands on the site where, it is believed, Mary fell into an 'eternal sleep'. The church was built in 1910 by German Benedictine Catholics and there are some wonderful mosaics inside.

While we there we heard some terific singing start up and, following the sound, went to a lower part where a male voice were rehearsing. What a tremndous sound - and another chance to remember the role of Mary and, indeed, of other women in the Biblical story, and to be inspired by the comtribution that each made.

Mary's Tomb

2012-01-17T23:33:00.001Z

From the Garden of Gethsemane we went to Mary's Tomb, which is adjacent to it. There is an impressive flight of steps into a chapel and the grotto, which is believed to be at the place where Mary was laid to rest, is in the chapel. It was an opportunity to remember Mary's contribution - and also to reflect on our contributions. We all have a role in God's great plan - but how strong is our response?

By Mary's Tomb is the Cave of Gethsemane or the Cave of Betrayal which is believed to be the place where Judas betrayed Jesus. Do we betray - sometimes? And what do we do about it?

Gethsemane

2012-01-16T23:46:00.000Z

As we came down to the foot of the Mount of Olives we entered the Garden of Gethsemane and went through the garden to the Church of All Nations. This is believed to be the site where Jesus prayed just before he was arrested, though nobody can be sure of the exact location. One of the fascinating things about this church for me is the deer scultplted on the roof by the cross. As a deer longs for a stream of cool water ....

This is a place that speaks of prayer, of suffering, of betrayal, of being overcome by sleep. This is the place of that tremendous phrase - 'not my will, but yours be done'. It is a very moving place - and the garden contains ancient olive trees.

Part of the story is of the young man who ran away naked. That account is Mark, leading to speculation that the said young man was Mark himself. We may also wonder whether Mark was the one who got things ready for the last supper. Was he the man who, unusually, carried a water jar? Tradition has it that Mark looked after Mary at her end. If Mark did all this, he was certainly ready to do all that God asked of him. Again, we may ask: are we?

Dominus Flevit Chapel

2012-01-15T20:22:00.000Z

On the way down the Mount of Olives we came to the Dominus Flevit Chapel. 'Dominus Flevit' literally means 'the master wept' and this church stands on the site of a rock which medieval pilgrims identified as the place where Jesus stood when he wept over the city of Jerusalem and its failure to see what God was saying to it. Designed in the shape of a teardrop by Antonio Barluzzi this chapel was built in 1955 on the site of an earlier seventh century chapel. It is a good place for looking down, over and at the city of Jerusalem.

If we consider again the Palm Sunday story and that particular journey that took Jesus and his disciples this way, we can imagine them being on a high state of alert. If things looked like getting out of hand, the Roman soldiers would surely intervene. The crowds are cheering Jesus as he descends the hill and the worried Pharisees tell Jesus to instruct his followers to be quiet - only to be told that, if they keep quiet, the stones themselves will shout. As Jesus rides on the donkey through the Beautiful (Golden) Gate, the disciples still think he will overthrow the Romans. However, as he rides through the gate, instead of turning right to the fortress, and the place where he might find and challenge the Romans, he turns left to the temple precincts - and overturns the tables of the money-changers!

Sometimes we think we know what needs doing, what needs changing, only to discover that God has other ideas.

On the Mount of Olives

2012-01-14T23:23:00.000Z

The Mount of Olives is a very significant place in the story of the Holy Land. As we walked down the side of the hill from Bethphage to Gethsemane, we stopped a couple of times. When we first stopped, we had good views across the valley to the old city. In particular, we could see the Golden (or Beautiful) Gate, long since out of use. We slso realised that much of the hillside is given over to graveyards. Indeed, there was a Jewish funeral taling place not far from where we were standing. It is a great Jewish wish to be buried on the Mount of Olives. We were reminded of Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones. God's living presence is everywhere, even in those places where we mark death.

Another of the main landmarks as we looked to the city was the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock. It was also interesting to notice some of the graffiti. As we walked down the hill, we could remember, in particular, that Palm Sunday walk, but also other occasions when Jesus and the disciples would have followed this way as they made their way to the city.

Bethphage

2012-01-13T22:37:00.000Z

Bethphage, on the Mount of Olives, allowed us to look across to Jerusalem, but also to look down and see the wall and the checkpoint and look on towards Bethlehem. This is an important spot because of the place where Jesus' Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem began.

The crowd expected Jesus to set Israel free from the Roman occupation - and so they cried 'Hosanna!', whicch literally means, 'Save us!' We now sing that as a song of praise but, in the first instance, it was a political statement. What they had in mind and what Jesus had in mind were very different.

Church of the Multiplication

2012-01-12T22:15:00.000Z

After our trip on Galilee we went to the Church of Multiplication which commemorates the story of the feeding of the five thousand and were able to reflect on that story before going into the church which has a very famous mosaic of the fish and bread.

The story of the feeding of the five thousand helps us to explore the fundamentals of Jesus’ mission. On this occasion Jesus addresses their physical need for food, but he does not do so in order to attract those who will follow someone with unusual powers. His kingship is something very different from the kind that would normally respond to the demands of a crowd. The challenge is to respond to the actual physical needs, and so demonstrate appropriate care, without projecting a cult of the spectacular.

While we were in Galilee we stayed at Pilgerhaus Tabgha, close to the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes. On our second evening there we shared a service of Holy Communion at which I had the opportunity to preach and used John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand as the text.

As we were in Advent I reflected on the pregnancies of Elizabeth and Mary and their readiness to respond to God’s call, asking the question as to what we, in our turn are doing with God’s call. As Christina Rossetti's carol asks:
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him – give my heart.

The boy whose story is told in John 6 gave his lunch. We might wonder what God is asking us to give, but can be sure that he does not ask us to give something that we have not got, nor does he ask us to do something that we cannot do. Some folk worry that they are unable to do what God asks of them, but that will not be so. It is also interesting to reflect on what happens if we give what God asks. In the case of the boy and his lunch, there were twelve baskets of leftovers collected. It is, of course, no coincidence that there were twelve disciples, each of whom were given a collecting task. God did not waste any of that opportunity. If we respond to God’s call, then God will bless our response. We ought also to note that, though God sometimes asks big things of us, the small things are also immensely valuable.

To return to the story of the two pregnant women, Elizabeth greeted Mary by saying, “Blessed are you!” For one possibility, can we, like Elizabeth, offer a word to those who carry a heavy burden?

Jerusalem

2012-01-11T22:38:00.000Z

How fascinating to visit the three key sites in Jerusalem for the three major world faiths in a single day as we did. We went first to the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It was interesting to walk through the old City to get there, entering via the Damascus Gate.

The site is a very important site for Muslims and both the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Asqa Mosque are within the same area. When we got to the area in which the two magnificent buildings are set, we had to pass through a Police check-point and were given a guide who took us and showed us round the area. It was interesting to look across to the Mount of Olives and think of all that means in Christian terms and the times when Jesus must have been there, not least in the Garden of Gethsemone at the foot of the Mount of Olives. We could see the Dominus Flevit Church, the place where Jesus wept marked by this building now. That was a clear reminder of the central importance of Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is not used as a Mosque any longer but still is a place of prayer and it was very moving to see the magnificent architecture, the tremendous symbolism and to feel the presence of the prayer that has been there for so many years. It’s a special place for another faith but still has a strong spirituality and could speak of the power of God.

We walked across to look at the Al-Asqa Mosque and were again reminded of the power of God down through the ages.

Our next key visit was to the Wailing Wall, a very special place for Jews. Because of the destruction of the Temple, the wall is all that is left but it is a powerful place of prayer. It was interesting to see people praying, wanting to touch the wall but also to see the large number of little notes, prayer notes, that had been stuck into the wall. I was pleased to be able to go into that area and to go and touch the Wall and have a moment of prayer. God is indeed a God of us all and also to go into the Synagogue that is within the male area of the Wall.

The third visit was to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, otherwise known as the Church of the Resurrection. This covers the site of Calvary and also the site of the Garden Tomb. It’s a complex place, the site of probably the earliest church in Jerusalem and yet now a place where different parts of the Christian Church vie to have control and different parts of the whole building are controlled by different factions within the Church. Interestingly, the key is held by a Muslim who is responsible for opening the church each day. There was an interesting sense of spirituality there too - challenged by the noise, the flash of cameras, even the ringing of mobile phones. It was interesting that such things felt more out of place in the Muslim and Jewish holy places that we had visited. However it was moving to go to the place where the tomb was, although now decorated in such an ornate way that it would contrast strongly with any picture that might arise from the Gospels. Still it is important to be reminded, as we were, that a church has existed on this site for so long and that was a telling reminder of the power of God down through the ages and that He will keep His church even when it is not doing what it should.

Massada, Qumran & the Dead Sea

2012-01-10T21:56:00.000Z

The aim of visiting the Holy Land was to go where Jesus went but we did spend one day going to places where he didn't go.

We started by visiting Massada, the mountain-top fortress which played such a significant role in defence for so long. Herod (who ruled 37-4BCE) recognised the strategic nature of this location and used as a defence. During his time it operated as a luxurious palace and it is amazing to think of how they would have got all the necessary supplies up the mountain in those days. This was a very different experience, and yet a reminder of the possibilities of human achievement and a marker of the skills and abilities that God gives us.

From Massada we went to Qumran and learned something of the Essene community that was based there from the 2nd century BCE. This is, of course, the site of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so has gained a significant place in Christian history.

From Qumran we went to the Dead Sea, which we had driven beside and looked down on from Massada. Floating in the Dead Sea was an amazing experience - and we gave ourselves a skin treatment by rubbing mud into our bodies. This was very relaxing and refreshing - and here is a reminder of the need for relaxation and refreshment.

We live in a world where we tend to spend lots of time rushing round. It is good to remember that we need those times when we give ourselves space and are able to relax and so be refreshed. That is, as much as anything, a spiritual lesson to learn.

Yad Vashem

2012-01-09T22:47:00.000Z

One of the most moving experiences of the trip to the Holy Land was a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum The large site of the museum contains many stories from the holocaust and is, in so many ways, simply horrifying. Written accounts, video stories and exhibition cases offers accounts of the dreadful experiences that happened to so many. Frequently these are telling of relatives and friends who did not survive. At one point there is a pile of shoes. Elsewhere there is a model of a concentration camp crematorium, indicating how it all worked. The horror was almost overwhelming - yet must not be denied.

One story I remember was of some children being told to hide in a wardrobe when the soldiers were seen coming. The parents were being taken away and their mother asked if she could just get her coat. Given permission to do that, she went to the wardrobe to get a coat and whispered instructions to the children as to who they should go to for help. That was the last time they saw their parents.

The stories of death were many and traumatic, the stories of survival sometimes quite remarkable - and the big question how to make any kind of sense of it, and I don't think you can.

Are there things we can't make sense of? If so, what do we do with them?

Bethany

2012-01-08T23:35:00.001Z

Whilst at Bethany we were reminded of the interesting fact that, after Jesus' visit to Jerusalem as a boy on that occasion when he 'got lost' in the temple, there is no record of his staying overnght in Jerusalem again until he was arrested. However, he did, from time to time, when he was visiting that area, stay nearby and one of the homes in which he was welcomed was that belonging to two sisters and a brother, Martha, Mary and Lazarus. They were clearly great friends of his and pleased to welcome him to their home.

When we visited Bethany, we especially focussed on that traumatic incident when Jesus was asked by the family to go to Bethany because Lazarus was very ill and, indeed, he died. The story is so prominent because of Jesus' raising him from the dead, an incident that must have had a significant impact on that community - and reflecting on it was a reminder of the impact that Jesus can, still today, have on our communities.

We visited the church on the site of Lazarus' tomb - and contemplated the resurrection message that is central to our lives and our faith.

Mount of Temptation

2012-01-07T21:57:00.000Z

Most appropriately, the Mount of Temptation looks quite forbidding - at least, it certainly did when we were there. For us, it was just a momentary pause in the midst of a busy day and plenty of bus travel. We simply stopped near the foot of the mountain and spent a brief time looking and reflecting - but even that short opportunity to think was a timely reminder of the challenge and contribution of temptation to Jesus' ministry. Without it, he would not have been human - and that means that being tempted was a genuine challenge for him, as it is for us. That is not easy, but what we do with that challenge - and, at different times it will be different things - but our response contributes significantly to our Christian commitment and to our discipleship.

Mount Tabor

2012-01-06T16:34:00.000Z

From Banias/Caesarea Philippi we then went to Mount Tabor which is the Mount of Transfiguration - just as Jesus and his disciples did though, not having the advantage of a 21st century bus, it took them six days. It was a very different mode of transport, but fascinating to follow the same chronology.

There we were able to visit the chapel there which has depictions of Jesus and also of Elijah and Moses who were with him at that point. In order to get there we could only take the bus so far and then had to get on a mini-bus which took us up to the top of the mountain - with its tremendous views.

It was indeed a place of transcendence.

Caesarea Philippi

2012-01-05T23:46:00.000Z

I found our visit to Banias an extremely interesting, and quite challenging, experience. Close to both the Syrian and the Lebanese border and situated in the Golan Heights, this is the present name for the site that we might rather know as Caesarea Philippi. This was the place where Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was and Peter replied “you are the Christ”. It was a fascinating and moving place with the ruins of a whole range of temples representing what had been around in the time of Jesus and, in some cases, slightly more recently. It is also significant as being the site of the source of the River Jordan and the water was there.

We were led in a meditation, particularly focusing on the question – 'who is Christ for you?' And it was strongly, and helpfully, suggested that we should not dilute our answer to that question with information. It is very easy for us to focus on information and so miss out on encounter. We were reminded of the way in which the expectation that the disciples had of the Messiah was different from reality. This led to misunderstanding and this led, in turn, to betrayal something - that movement of ideas can be followed by reading through the chapters of the Gospels, for example Mark chapters 8, 9 and 10.

We were able to have some time here just to reflect and wander round which was good because there were virtually no other people there for most of the time that we were there. I found it helpful to focus on all the evidence that was around, in ruins of temples standing for a range of ideas and, with all that background, to focus on that important question that Jesus asked his first disciples in this location.

I was able to follow a path up the hill a bit and reflect in the beauty of that particular location but also thinking of the huge history that was there. It had been suggested that it was like the Las Vegas of Jesus’s time and how interesting that Jesus had gone there to have this particular conversation with his disciples. How ready are we to face up to the challenging questions that God asks in our day?

By Galilee

2012-01-04T11:00:00.000Z

As we spent time near Lake Galilee we reflected on the time that Jesus spent there, with his disciples, both ‘the twelve’ and others, but also encountering all sorts of people, preaching, teaching and healing. The Gospels include many accounts of people gathering to listen to Jesus. Those must have been exciting times as they listened to him talking about God and God’s Kingdom in new ways and watched him help and heal people in need. I enjoyed reflecting on some of those stories, knowing we were in the location in which these things happened.

One interesting thing was to reflect on the practicalities of preaching to large crowds in days when amplification was not around. It was also interesting to reflect on just where some of these gatherings might have taken place. Near the Church of the Multiplication (commemorating the ‘feeding of the five thousand’) we saw a large cave which is known as ‘Jesus’ Cathedral’, one possible location for some of these events. Just across the road – as it is now – we went down on to the beach and could see – and hear – how such a cove formed a natural amphitheatre in which sound travelled relatively easily. We could see how Jesus could have communicated his message in a first century context and a first century way – and might note the challenge to find the right – and best – twenty-first century ways to tell God’s Good News.

Peter's Primacy

2012-01-03T20:48:00.000Z

One of my favourite spots in the Holy Land is that little piece of shore beside Lake Galilee known as Peter's Primacy. It is a little piece of pebbly beach beside the lake, with a small chapel beside it. This is particularly noted as being the site where Jesus met the disciples after the resurrection and where he shared breakfast with them, the story that is reflected in John 21. We were reminded that for Jesus everything starts with prayer and that for Jesus everything ends with God. Jesus was trying to change minds and hearts which is never an easy task but he attempted it with great patience. Jesus went to meet people and to heal some of them, but it is interesting that for the disciples this is not a pure act. Jesus is dealing with the ex-communicated, but for Jesus no one is out. The disciples saw him as doing something against the Bible - you didn’t touch these things, as they were unclean - and so they needed time to digest what is happening. But Jesus says 'you are not slaves, you are friends'. He brings everyone together.

Jesus turns things round. While they were looking for fish - the disciples, particularly Peter, having gone out fishing, - the risen Jesus became the chef and then, of course, after the meal, Jesus said to Simon “Simon, son of John” Notice that he doesn’t give him any title. He doesn’t call him 'Peter' which means that he is no longer being referred to as the rock, and Jesus asks him about his love.

There are four degrees of love, love of mother for child, love of husband and wife for each other, friendship (in Greek "phileo") and the purest kind of love (agape). This last is the most generous kind of love - and so Jesus says to Peter, “Simon do you "agape" me?” and Simon answer “I "phileo" you”. Jesus then asked again “Simon do you "agape" me?” and Simon answers the same way “I "phileo" you”. Then Jesus moves to Simon’s level and asks “Simon do you "phileo" me?” and he then gives Simon the command, "follow me".

At this site we were able to go down right beside the lake and put our hand in the lake. We were also able to go into the little chapel there which has a rock in it which is reputedly the table that they used for that particular breakfast. There is also a statue commemorating the conversation between Jesus and Simon.

Sea of Galilee

2012-01-02T23:07:00.000Z

Sailing on Lake Galilee would have been familiar to Jesus. Four of his disciples were fishermen whose livelihood was found there. There are a number of occasions where the Gospels make reference to the lake and to Jesus and the disciples sailing across it. A brief trip on the lake was, for me, one of the highlights of my visit to the Holy Land as it was one of those times when I found it easiest to imagine being where Jesus had been.

Our trip was on a calm and sunny afternoon, a good time to be out on the water, but it was not difficult to imagine the varying conditions in which Jesus and his disciples would have sailed on that same lake. Indeed, while out in the boat, we read the later verses of Matthew 14 which records the disciples being caught in a storm when they saw someone approaching them on the water - and the famous account of Peter, at Jesus' invitation, stepping out of the boat, but then losing faith - and sinking. It was an interesting mix of 21st and 1st century that I read the passage from my iphone - as that was the only Bible that any of us had brought.

As we sailed on the lake we were able to reflect back across the centuries and consider what it would have been like for Jesus and his contemporaries, but we were also able to think of what Jesus' presence means for and to us here and now. Just as Jesus was with the disciples on the occasion recorded in Matthew 14, so he was with us on the same lake. In many ways that was the big lesson we kept coming back to during the trip. We were not following the step of a historical Christ. We were walking alongside a living Christ. Where we went, Jesus was.

Wilderness

2012-01-01T21:33:00.000Z

It was moving to spend even a brief time, as we did, walking in the wilderness and thinking of the times Jesus spent there as well as those times when he must have passed that way. Obviously we could not know exactly where Jesus spent time but, as we were there, we knew that it must be 'somewhere around here'.
The wilderness - unsurprisingly - is a rather bleak location, with the sand and rocks stretching out in front of where we stood. There were very few signs of vegetation. It had that feeling of loneliness, bleakness and even being abandoned. It is certainly a place to get away from it all. We walked there, knowing that our bus was only just out of view, and yet able to feel just a little of what it would be like to be in the midst of that place with no 21st century transport.

The wilderness can be a place to reflect and to pray, but it is also a place where you don't want to spend too long. It can be worth spending time in the wilderness, but very few want to stay there that long. The wilderness is a place to leave behind - when the time is right to do so.

It seemed appropriate that we were there as the day was heading towards dusk. For me that emphasised the sense of space and also of isolation - and yet we could also know, as Jesus surely did, the presence of God even in the bleakness of the desert.

Jericho

2011-12-30T23:10:00.000Z

A brief visit to Jericho got us thinking about those times when Jesus would have visited that city - and also its place in the broader history of the people of Israel. As we visited the remains of the walls we thought of that time when the walls came tumbling down and the role that Joshua had in the history of the city.

It was in Jericho that Jesus encountered Zacchaeus - and we were shown some ancient sycamore trees that served as a strong reminder of that story.

Jericho is, more or less, at the edge of the wilderness and it struck me as a place where you were either arriving at or leaving from all the facilities that would be needed by any traveller. There was a fountain with water pots, indicating the presence and importance of water.

Jericho spoke to me of God's enduring care and love. Just as Zacchaeus found what he needed there, just as Joshua was able to lead the people to a place of safety, so God's love is present and available to us.

River Jordan

2011-12-29T21:04:00.000Z

On our way to Galilee we stopped off at the River Jordan to see the baptismal site, the place where, approximately, John baptised Jesus - just a fairly narrow strip of river separating Israel and Jordan. It is well supplied with infra structure to keep it safe these days and - on the Jordanian side, a range of churches, and even a mosque. Each main denomination has been given a piece of land to build a church, part of a marking of this place belonging to us all. It must have been different in John and Jesus' day, but it was not too difficult to imagine John there in the water, encouraging his listeners to step forward and symbolically demonstrate their repentance for all their wrongs.

We were able to dip our hands in the water and we had a brief, but very moving, service of renewal of our baptismal vows. What a wonderful place to be to take the opportunity to remember God's grace and our Christian commitment.

It was also a significant opportunity to remember the importance of water. There were some monks filling up water carriers as this operates as their water source. Admittedly, they didn't have to lift the containers on to their head and walk back to the monastery - they loaded them on to a truck. Water is crucial to our human survival - and so its use in the sacraments that signifies our entry to the church is indicative of so much, life itself, as well as cleansing.

Cana

2011-12-28T23:33:00.000Z

When we visited Cana it was pouring with rain. Hopefully, the weather was rather different at the time of the story that has made this place so famous - though, in fact, Cana has moved - lock, stock and barrel - so the location is not precisely the same in any case.

However, that does not prevent there from being an attractive church to commemorate Jesus' first miracle and, just across the path, a souvenir shop that features tastings of Cana of Galilee wine - which was very sweet. However, this visit was an opportunity to reflect on the impact that Jesus made in so many different ways. Jesus was - and is - concerned with everyday things, the things that matter to us, and helps us respond to the situations in which we find ourselves.

When Jesus turned the water into wine at that wedding, that must have made a real difference to the lives of the families and friends at that particular social occasion. It is important to remember, as we were frequently reminded during our trip, that we are not just dealing with a historical Jesus but relating to a living one. It is not that he was in these places. He is in these places!

Capernaum

2011-12-27T23:01:00.003Z

It was very interesting to visit Capernaum and to be able to focus on this as being the place where Jesus spent a lot of his time and did a lot of his teaching and performed a lot of his miracles. We were able to see some of the ruins, including the ruin of the Synagogue that will have been the one that Jesus taught in. We were reminded that to start praying in a Synagogue you need ten men - you can’t start the prayer without that but Jesus said “that where two or three are gathered”. There is no gender requirement and a much lower number - he says where there are two or three “I am there”. God is of course ‘I am’ and we might compare Paul’s comment that we are all one in Christ Jesus.

As we looked at the Capernaum ruins we could imagine such incidents as the man being lowered down through the roof in order to get close to Jesus. The houses were clearly very small and it would not take many people to fill them up. There were also the remains of an adjacent army barracks, a reminder of the proximity of the occupying forces, with all its negative and positive connotations. The Capernaum synagogue was sponsored by the Roman centurion whose servant Jesus healed, a story that reminds us of the inter-action that would be necessary between different communities, no matter what they thought of each other. Capernaum was also where Simon Peter's mother-in-law lived and this may well have been his base, adjacent, as it is, to the lake. Capernaum would have been an ordinary villages that played host to some extraordinary events. That's what happens when God engages with humanity.

Kursi

2011-12-24T12:30:00.002Z

Kursi has been a place of pilgrimage since the 5th century, as it is regarded as the place where Jesus met and healed the demoniac, sending the demons out of the demoniac and into a herd of pigs which then cast themselves over the cliff.

This is an interesting site out in the countryside with the ruins of a monastery there today. There was a little chapel on what was presumably the site of the cave where this person had lived. When we visited this site we were led in a reflection asking the question as to whether, just possibly, the prodigal son was the demoniac. This is pure speculation but is it just possible that the prodigal’s father asked Jesus to go looking for his son and, if so, this shows the lengths to which Jesus would go in order to look for someone. The link between the two stories is possibly the pigs, and it is certainly true that Jesus went out of his way to encounter this man.. Jesus found the demoniac who recognised him. How interesting that the demons often recognised Jesus before everyone else did. Jesus then asked the question “what is your name?” and the response came “my name is Legion”. This man has actually lost his name, has lost his identity, but Jesus restores him. It is an interesting question as to what a pig farmer was doing in a Jewish country - was this man smuggling hams across Galilee for those who would buy them? We don’t know, but possibly so!

At the end of the story the demoniac wants to stay with Jesus, but Jesus tells him to go home. The question arises as to where did Jesus get his stories Was, for example, the story of the prodigal son drawn from a real-life situation? Whether or not it has anything to do with the parable, Jesus certainly came a long way to find this man.

Mount of Beatitudes

2011-12-23T23:13:00.000Z

Two weeks ago today we went first to the Mount of Beatitudes, the traditional site from which Jesus taught the disciples and others the Sermon on the Mount. We had an interesting reflection on this in which we were encouraged us to look, firstly, at the word but then, secondly, to look at the metaphor behind the word. Thirdly we should look at the morality of what is being said and, fourthly, we need to go and live it. We were focussed particularly on the first beatitude, ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’, asking the question “who are the poor in spirit?” Perhaps it means that blessed are those who know how much they need God. Jesus often spoke of Abraham and we might suggest that Abraham is the classic example of one who recognised their need of God. We can also see water as a symbol of need. We need water in order to survive. The Biblical message is ‘to leave and to go’ and Abraham is certainly the big example of that.

It was good to be up on the mountain and to look down and across and imagine the people there, listening to Jesus and being inspired by his challenging words – and to hear something of that same challenge from those same words today.

Nazareth

2011-12-22T12:48:00.000Z

Arriving in Nazareth, as we walked up the hill, we were immediately met by a sign outside the mosque declaring Islam to be the one true faith. This served as a reminder of the contemporary challenges to inter-faith dialogue. We were told, on other occasions, that the Holy Land has good relationships and regular meetings between Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders. There are many good engagements undertaken with great integrity, but all the major faiths have those who want nothing to do with anyone else. It also served as a reminder of the challenges which Jesus faced in his earthly ministry, not least when he came to Nazareth.

According to Luke, Jesus was brought up in Nazareth – though Matthew suggests that his hometown was actually Bethlehem. Walking through contemporary Nazareth, with its stalls and shops, selling the same kind of fruit and vegetables that would have been around in Jesus’ time, but also the electrical adaptors and pre-Christmas Santas of the 21st century, it was not too difficult to imagine Jesus and his family and Jesus and his disciples, walking an earlier version of these streets, looking for the things that they needed and encountering friends and acquaintances. For all of us most of life is lived in an ordinary context, our context for the moment. The question is as to how we engage with our extraordinary God in our particular context.

We all need to consider our particular calling which may, from time to time, vary. It was fascinating to look in to three 21st century carpenters’ workshops and remember how Jesus worked on the wood with his father Joseph. You might think that Jesus would have rushed into the preaching, teaching and healing ministry, that was his main calling, but that needed to wait for the right time. Patience is a good lesson to learn. There are times when we need to wait and prepare ourselves. We may not always understand God’s timing, but we can know that it is right.

Shepherds' Field

2011-12-21T15:27:00.000Z

A little way out of Bethlehem we went to visit the field where the shepherds were watching their sheep when they saw that dazzling light and heard that angelic choir. Well, actually we saw a field somewhere around where that might have been. There are, at least, three fields that make the claim to be the one, a Greek Orthodox one, a Roman Catholic one, and a YMCA one. It was the YMCA one we visited. Nobody can be sure just where the shepherds’ field was, but then that doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that there was a shepherds’ field, that were shepherds, and that they had this amazing experience. The field we visited had some large caves and it would seem that the shepherds may well have ushered the sheep into the caves at night as a means of keeping them safe, different from the picture I have had, but there you are. And then there were burn marks on one of the large rocks at one of the entrances. It is not suggested that these marks go back to Jesus’ time, but I could well imagine the shepherds there at the entrance, keeping the sheep penned in and safe for the night, chatting and cooking something to eat, when suddenly that heavenly choir appeared – Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth. They must have been scared stiff – but are told, don’t be afraid, and are despatched to Bethlehem, maybe five or seven miles away, to be the first visitors to a very special baby.

Shepherds did not fit the bill of those likely to be chosen for such a task – but that didn’t matter to God. Are we willing to recognise God’s unlikely choices? And are we ready to recognise the surprises that God has in store for us?

Bethlehem

2011-12-19T23:10:00.000Z

What a joy to visit Bethlehem just ahead of Christmas! I was there twelve days ago. Just like that first Christmas, as Luke tells it to us, there were lots of visitors in town – only these visitors were not there on business, needing to register themselves for the census that was being undertaken. These visitors were pilgrims, wanting to see the place where Jesus was born, marked now, not by a stable or any other form of domestic or farm building, but by a church. This is an interesting church, not just because of what it marks, but because there has been a church on this site from very early times, and we were able to see something of the indicators as to how it had been adapted and added on to down through the ages.

We were able to imagine a very tired Mary arriving in Bethlehem, desperately wanting to find somewhere to rest and then, almost immediately, discovering that the baby was on its way. We have sanitised the story and made a pretty picture of it, but giving birth in a draughty and, almost certainly, messy stable, cannot have been something anyone would have wanted for their child and themselves.

Being in Bethlehem and thinking back some two thousand or so years was very interesting. There were lots of folk wanting to see the place where Jesus was born. We only queued up some ten minutes or so, but I am told it can take an awful lot longer. Why are there so many twenty-first century pilgrims who want to encounter this spot, when it was just a few shepherds in the first century? One of the things to learn is not to be in a hurry, and to realise that God’s time is always best. People were selling all sorts of things, but mainly souvenirs. I suspect there were lots of people selling things in Jesus’ time too, but they would more likely be food and the basic necessities of life. What do we spend our money on? That is always an interesting question to ask. What are the priorities for us? And perhaps we are helped to work that out when we pause to ponder where it is that God would have us be, what it is that God would have us do?

At Bethlehem that first Christmas, that great thing that we often refer to as the incarnation took place. What does that mean for us here and now?

Ein Kerem

2011-12-18T22:29:00.001Z

I have just returned from twelve days in the Holy Land. In fact, I just got back late on Friday evening. It has been both interesting and exciting to spend part of Advent visiting many of the places where Jesus lived and taught.

One of the first places we visited was Ein Kerem, the beautiful village where John the Baptist was born and grew up. Ein Kerem is quite hilly with beautiful views across the valley. Someone living there in John’s time would probably have been relatively well off. When we got there, we went first to a spring known as Mary’s spring – and there we were reminded of the importance of wells and springs in Jesus’ day, both for the water they supplied, but also because they were a gathering place for the women. Just as today we might meet in the school playground or the supermarket, they met at the well and there exchanged the news and the gossip. Today we have so many means of communication, texting, emails, all the social networking, as well as the telephone and the letter. It was not so then – and it was important that they took the opportunities that were there to share news. Have you heard … ? Did you know ….? I always think it interesting to reflect on what is the news that we pass on. It is so easy to spread rumour and gossip, but what we are called to do is spread the Good News, the Gospel. Go and tell. I wonder what are the things that we are going and telling. What is it that we want to share?

From the spring we climbed a steep hill to the Church of the Visitation. The Church of the Visitation was completed in 1955 to a design by Antonio Barluzzi. It was built to commemorate Mary’s visit to Elizabeth - there they were, both expecting babies, and both, it might be assumed, should not have been in that state. Why did Mary go to visit Elizabeth? Was it because she wanted to share her good news? Or might it just be that Mary was sent there to get her out of the way for a bit? How scandalous that she was unmarried and pregnant! And Elizabeth wasn’t much better. She was probably the source of gossip too. She was married all right, but you shouldn’t be having babies at her age. As Calvin Miller says: “Elizabeth must have found her joyous old-age pregnancy the brunt of community gossip”, adding, “She stood with one foot in the grave and the other in the neonatal ward.” How do we respond to the scandal of the Gospel? What do we do with those awkward things that come our way?

Mary, of course, responded by writing a fantastic song, the one that we now know as the Magnificat – and on a wall in the grounds of the church was written, as gifts from many nations, the Magnificat on plaques in many different languages. There it was in Greek, in Hebrew, in Arabic. It was in Spanish and French, Swahili and English and many more. The Magnificat has many important things to say to us about God’s care for the disadvantaged. Are we ready to listen? Are we ready to hear the message of liberation?

Teaching in Zimbabwe

2011-10-17T21:30:00.000+01:00

In August, as part of my sabbatical, I was able to spend three weeks in Zimbabwe. My main task while I was there was to teach Bible to a group at the training centre linked to Kuwadazana Presbyterian Church. That was particularly interesting for me as Kuwadzana has long had a link with a United Reformed Church, though not in Eastern Synod. The link is with Westborough URC in Guildford where my father was, at one time, the minister. The training centre was dreamed up by Jonnah Masaka, then and still now, the minister there together with my Dad, so it was just a little disconcerting to be teaching with his photograph beaming down at me every day. A class, that was supposed to be capped at 15, but actually varied between 18 and 23 (or thereabouts) explored with me the books of Jonah and Revelation. We spent three mornings on Jonah and nine on Revelation and had a fascinating time, exploring a wide range of questions which emerged from the themes of those books. The lectures were translated from English into Shona and the questions in the other direction. Language was a barrier, but not nearly as big a barrier as I thought it might be. The training centre was a great context for me. It includes classrooms, accommodation, a kitchen and dining facility as well being a pre-school and a school. There is a computer room and a library. Kuwadazana is a high density township, some distance from the centre of Harare, not somewhere to go off wandering around, which gave me a great excuse to spend chunks of the afternoons reading and relaxing – and, of course, enjoying the hot sun.

The London Olympics

2011-10-16T18:50:00.000+01:00

One of the big mission opportunities in 2012 will be the London Olympics. There can be little doubt that these will impact, in some way, on most people.

The main source of resources for doing Olympic stuff is the ‘More Than Gold’ organisation. The Olympics in your own country, it is said, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, if that and, indeed, the last time the games were in the UK was in 1948. My Olympics started in September of last year when, along with representatives from each of the other Synods of the United Reformed Church, I went on a tour of the Olympic park and attended an afternoon’s consultation when we heard lots of things about the Olympics and how the church might engage. I followed that by going to a ‘More than Gold’ meeting – and we then, as a family, applied for our Olympic tickets – and, unlike many, we got some. We only applied for two lots of tickets and had a 50% success rate but, based on what I have heard, that seems pretty good – so don’t try and book me for anything on Saturday 4th August next year. I shall be watching the opening day of the show-jumping at Greenwich Park.

But the Olympics, whatever you think of them – and, as it happens, I am not a great sports fan – but the Olympics will provide lots of opportunities for engaging with all sorts of people. It is worth thinking about that – and it is also worth knowing a bit about it. For instance, it is worth knowing that it is illegal to use the Olympic symbol. That’s why ‘More than Gold’ has developed its own symbol which churches are free to use without checking it out with anyone and without any payment. The ‘More Than Gold’ website – www.morethangold.org.uk – is the best place for information and ideas but, if you don’t have and can’t get internet access, do contact us in the office and we will find a way of helping out. And it is not just the Games themselves. The seventy days leading up to the opening of the Olympics will see the torch relay running the length and breadth of the UK. In my area Cambridge, Chelmsford, Ipswich and Norwich are all places where it has already been announced that the torch relay will go. Then there is the Paralympics. All sorts of resources and ideas are and will be available. Here is an opportunity to find ways of offering something that is indeed more than gold.

Saying Yes

2011-10-01T19:48:00.000+01:00

How we approach things is important, and part of our call. On the way back from Zimbabwe at the end of August, on the plane, I watched the film ‘Yes Man’, based on Danny Wallace’s book of the same name. The central character in the film is a banker who routinely turns down loan applications, and that pretty well sets the tone for the kind of person he is – until he is challenged to open up his life by saying ‘yes’ to everything. Needless to say, keeping up the challenge up takes him into some situations he would rather avoid and some comic moments and, in the end, he learns that some balance is needed – but the message is clearly that it should be more of ‘yes’ and less of ‘no’. As we consider God’s call and the challenge of a refreshed commitment, may we be ready with our yeses!

Having a Past

2011-09-30T21:19:00.000+01:00

When we talk about someone having a past, that tends not to be seen in a particularly positive way. If we say, he has a past, she has a past, we wonder what she or he has done. But we all have a past – and, whether we view it negatively or positively, our past contains the roots out of which our present grows. Of course, we can put it another way. We can say that we have a story, and that tends to conjure up a rather different impression. It is good to have a story. And, yes, our stories do make us who we are – and they are all, in their own way, important. There are many things that I could tell you about my story, just as you could tell me many things about yours.

Our past contributes to our present, and so takes us into our future. Our stories are part of God's stories because God calls us to be partners.

The Importance of Celebrating

2011-09-29T23:50:00.002+01:00

In his classic little book Celebration of Discipline Richard Foster lists twelve things, twelve practices, that he suggest ought to be part of our following the Christian way. There is meditation, prayer, fasting and study. There is simplicity, solitude, submission and service. There is confession, worship and guidance. And there is celebration. I am so glad that celebration is on that list. I like the idea of celebration as a discipline. I like the thought that celebration is something that we ought to be doing. Commenting on the practice of this particular discipline, he says: “Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit. Often I am inclined to think that joy is the motor, the thing that keeps everything else going. Without joyous celebration to infuse the other Disciplines we will sooner or later abandon them. Joy produces energy. Joy makes us strong.” And he adds: “It is healing and refreshing to cultivate a wide appreciation for life. .. Celebration helps us to relax and to enjoy the good things of the earth.”

Forgiving People

2011-09-27T23:26:00.000+01:00

The Church ought to be a place of forgiveness, but we don't always manage to achieve that because we are focussed in the wrong place.

In understanding what is going on when we face the challenge of forgiving, perhaps it is helpful to remember what Richard Holloway says in his little book on fotgiveness. It is an obvious thing to say, but something that we often miss. He says: ‘We forgive people, not sins. We forgive and accept people, in spite of their acts against us.’ In other words, in forgiving people we are not condoning what they have done, but we are accepting them.

Water and Prayer

2011-09-16T22:01:00.000+01:00

I have been reading Thomas Green’s book “When The Well Runs Dry”. Green, very helpfully and very powerfully, explores the image of water as representing prayer, drawing his initial inspiration from Teresa of Avila. Teresa engages with this metaphor by suggesting that we are as assistant gardeners whose task is to tend a garden owned and planted by God. The primary job is to water the garden – and watering is an image for praying.

Teresa suggests that there are four ways of getting the water. The first way is to draw the water from the well by hand. This is hard work. It takes quite a while and water gets spilled on the way. Sometimes we even wonder if it is worth it. In the same way beginning in prayer can be a struggle. We are easily distracted. But what we manage is worth it.

Teresa’s second way of drawing water is “by means of a water wheel and aqueducts in such a way that it is obtained by turning the crank of the water wheel”. Perhaps a slightly more modern equivalent would be to talk about a water pump. When I was in Harare recently I several times saw people queuing up at water pumps because the city supply is often turned off. Here less effort produces more water. The mechanism does much of the work. As we persist in prayer, it becomes much more natural. The water flows much more easily. The point is that if we allow our prayer life to develop, it will.

The third way of drawing the water of prayer for the garden of the Lord is from a river or stream. Green, citing Teresa, puts it like this: “One day, if the Lord so pleases, we find a stream flowing through the garden: the water is there and we have done nothing to secure it. Even our work of remembering seems unnecessary; God comes to us without our doing anything to seek him. We arise in the morning and take up our bucket to go to the pump, and, lo and behold, the water of the Lord’s presence is right at our feet. What must we do now? Only one thing, Teresa says: to “direct” or channel the water to the flowers.”

But there is still more – because there is a fourth way, and the fourth way is the rain. Now we don’t need to do anything. The watering just happens. I will leave you to make the connections as to how this image works and how prayer might develop in our lives – except to say two things. One is a little comment from Thomas Green’s book. At the end of explaining Teresa’s imagery he says: “The art of praying, as we grow, is really the art of learning to waste time gracefully – to be simply the clay in the hands of the potter. This may sound easy – too easy to be true – but it is really the most difficult thing we ever learn to do.

The other thing that I want to mention also comes from Thomas Green as he uses this wonderful image of water in a slightly different way later in his book. He uses the image of prayer, as we do it, as being like swimming – but suggests that what we need is to be floating. Green talks about the energy of swimming, the way in which we are focussed as to where we are going. By contrast, the secret of floating is to relax, to learn to not do all the things we instinctively want to do. Green comments: “The swimmer is intensely active and is going someplace; the floater yields to the flow of the water. .. the floater, too, is going someplace, but that is the concern of the current .. “

Green suggests that most of us want to do a bit of both, but that we need to learn the confidence of what he calls total floating because then, and only then, are we really putting ourselves at God’s disposal.

An Exciting God - and Cuthbert

2011-08-06T23:32:00.000+01:00

I have been reading about Cuthbert who was clearly an amazing character. There are some fascinating stories about him. David Adam in The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, using Bede as a source, retells the story of Cuthbert and a young monk walking beside the River Teviot, reciting psalms and sections of Scripture. As they were passing an outlying farmstead they were offered a meal, but Cuthbert declined, offering the explanation that they were fasting. However, he shared the Gospel with the family and offered them a blessing. The two then left for the hill country. When they had gone a good distance, Cuthbert asked his young companion where he thought they would find food for the day. The boy was at a loss, but Cuthbert encouraged him saying: ‘The Lord will provide for us today, as he always does.’ He then pointed to an eagle – ‘See that bird flying high above us. It is possible for God to refresh us by the ministrations of the eagle.’ The young man didn’t really understand what Cuthbert was suggesting, but they then saw the eagle settle on the bank with a fish. ‘Run and see what food the eagle has brought us from the Lord.’ The young man went and returned with a large fish. Cuthbert reprimanded him for not sharing it with their provider, telling him to cut it in half and take the eagle her share. He then said that they still had more than they needed and should seek out a poor household with whom they could share the fish. Possibly a little reluctantly, the young companion agreed – and they continued until they found such a household to who they presented the fish. The family broiled the fish and they all shared the fish as Cuthbert shared the Gospel with them. This is the kind of story that was typical of Cuthbert. Adam notes (p. 53): “In telling this story, Bede would be well aware of its symbolic meaning: the eagle was the symbol for St. John’s Gospel and the fish, in Greek ichthus, was a code name for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’.

It all links well with that my parallel reading the first six and a half verses of Revelation 4 and Peter Hicks’ comments on them. I particularly like his comment on verse 5 – “The throne of God is where everything happens. It’s so exciting there, it’s like sitting on a volcano about to erupt. Our God is a God who does big and glorious things.”

I am not sure I want to be sitting on a volcano that is about to erupt – but I know that God is an exciting God!

The Big Silence

2011-07-19T11:03:00.000+01:00

Recently I spent a week in North Wales on an Individiually Guided Silent Retreat. I went to St. Beuno's, near Rhyl/St. Asaph. Apart from being very close to a major road (the A55), it is a beautiful rural location, with plenty of opportunity for walking - as well as silence and prayer. St. Beuno's is run by the Jesuits and so uses an Ignatian methodology which I found very helpful.

I wondered what it would feel like to be in silence for seven days, a new experience for me, but one that I found extremely helpful in centring myself for the next phase of ministry.

I met with Richard, my retreat director, for 20/30 minutes each morning and we were able to talk things over and Richard suggested Scripture passages that I might use as a basis for prayer and reflection. Meals were together but with background music and no talking - and the idea was not to do any other reading. There was a daily Eucharist and a shared time of silent prayer (half an hour). Otherwise the time was for each retreatant to use on prayer, reflection and, as you wished, walking and/or enjoying the beautiful and extensive grounds.

This method worked for me - it might not for everyone - and it reminded how crucial it is to give space to God.

St. Beuno's was featured in the BBC television series 'The Big Silence'.

Adding the Power of Heaven

2011-07-18T23:49:00.000+01:00

I have been reading D. Peter Burrows' book JONAH, the reluctant missionary (Gracewing, 2008) in which he explores the book of Jonah, but does so by offering a wide range of Biblical links. He links the story to many other parts of the Bible in a fascinating way.

I was particularly struck by a little comment about Moses in which he uses what happened to Moses, when he was called and empowered to do God's work, as a definition of a sacrament. He is pointing out that what matters is the difference that God makes.

Thus, he writes (p. 103/4) - "This reliance upon God rather than upon self is called 'faith' and Moses has no signs of power - he is a weakling. God clearly likes this about Moses and says in effect: 'You supply the staff, your right arm and a little water; I will add the power.' The staff becomes a serpent, the right arm becomes leprous and the water turns to blood. Moses supplies the little things of his life; God adds the power. What better definition of a Christian sacrament? 'You bring what you have and offer it to me; I will add the power of heaven.'"

God doesn't need our strength, just our weakness.

God comes from Essex

2011-07-04T18:01:00.001+01:00

On Saturday I was able to participate in the Bradwell pilgrimage 2011. Each year Christians, mainly from Essex and east London gather in large numbers at St Thomas's Church Bradwell-on-Sea on the first Saturday in July. After a brief service we walk 'on pilgrimage' to the little St Peter's Chapel near to the beach, remembering that this was where St Cedd first brought Christianity to our part of England. We then have a service there and various activities. This year I was glad to have the opportunity to lead the service near to the beach and to introduce our two speakers.

As it is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible in 2011, we were focussing on the Bible and invited Bishop Stephen Cottrell, new Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford since the autumn, and Bishop Thomas McMahon, about to retire as Roman Catholic Bishop of Brentwood after 31 years, to each share a Bible passage that had really meant something to them. Bishop Thomas spoke of the power of the resurrection story and the words 'He is risen'. Bishop Stephen 'cheated' by mentioning several passages, but began with a reference to the young people's custom of using the word 'well' instead of 'very'. Something isn't very good or very important or very trendy - it is well good or well important or well trendy. Bishop Stephen commented that Essex people used this form of expression before it became popular. However, God got in first, said Bishop Stephen, referring to the story of Jesus' baptism - and God's saying: this is my beloved Son, with whom I am WELL pleased. So God comes from Basildon, Essex.

And that's the point- he does. God comes from your place and mine, and so he understands where we come from, and can be with us in what we are doing.

Values

2011-06-29T22:41:00.000+01:00

Inevitably and unsurprisingly we all tend to think that we are operating by the right set of values. Indeed, we might go further and reckon to be approaching things in a neutral way. I think there are very few, if any, occasions when we are really neutral. There are always things colouring our judgment and approach.

I have been doing some reading around Revelation in preparation for some teaching I am going to be doing when I spend three weeks in Zimbabwe in August. Revelation is a fascinating and challenging book, but often reminds us that things are frequently not quite what they seem. As Christopher Rowland points out in Revelation (Epworth, 1993, p. 136): "Revelation asks us continually whether the instruments we use to achieve our goals are as value-free as we would like to think. It criticizes a political economy geared to the satisfaction of the fortunate minority at the centre of trade. .... It roots the church in the midst of social and political protest. Its horizon of hope is not utopian, for it never offers a blue-print of how things will be. The construction of ideal societies can easily degenerate into fantastic speculation out of touch with the real world. The readers of Revelation are left in their own circumstances the task of working out what faithfulness to the testimony of Jesus might mean.”

We do need to work at working out how God would have us live.

Being Abandoned

2011-06-28T23:57:00.001+01:00

Miroslav Volf writes: "Jesus’ greatest agony was not that he suffered. Suffering can be endured, even embraced, if it brings desired fruit, as the experience of giving birth illustrates. What turned the pain of suffering into agony was the abandonment; Jesus was abandoned by the people who trusted in him and by the God in whom he trusted. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34). My God, my God, why did my radical obedience to your way lead to the pain and disgrace of the cross?"

How challenging is that - yet how true? How we need to reach out, so that nobody need feel abandoned! - and how can we do that?

Clinch Things for God

2011-06-26T21:52:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's Celtic Daily Light had the title "Clinch things for God". The Biblical quote to provide an example came from 1 Kings 18:21 - "Elijah went up to the people and said, 'How much longer will you halt between two opinions? If the Lord is God, worship him.'"

I was reminded of that fairly similar challenge issued by Joshua and recorded in Joshua 24:15 - "But if it does not please you to serve the Lord, choose here and now whom you will serve: the gods whom your forefathers served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But I and my family, we shall serve the Lord."

We live in a day, certainly in UK society, where there are many challenges to those who seek to follow the way of God. Lots of barriers are put up, and there are many suggestions of allegedly better alternatives. Our task in the church is to refute these and to demonstrate the great things God does. Let's look for every opportunity to clinch things for God!

Towers of Babel

2011-06-24T22:47:00.000+01:00

One of our great problems in the church is that we think we can go it alone. We have big ideas - and we are good at planning. But how often do we ensure that the plans are God's plans? We are also good at building so many Towers of Babel. We develop grandiose schemes when what is needed is simply to let God work through us. Are we are ready to have a go at doing it that way?

Embracing the Četnik

2011-06-23T22:58:00.000+01:00

Miroslav Volf, in Exclusion and Embrace (Abingdon Press, 1996) tells an insightfully challenging and moving story - p. 9 – “Professor Jürgen Moltmann stood up and asked one of his typical questions, both concrete and penetrating: ‘But can you embrace a četnik?” It was the winter of 1993. For months now the notorious Serbian fighters called “četnik” had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities. I had just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God has embraced us in Christ. Can I embrace a četnik – the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? What would justify the embrace? Where would I draw the strength for it? What would it do to my identity as a human being and as a Croat? It took me a while to answer, though I immediately knew what I wanted to say. “No, I cannot – but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”

We all need to face that challenge of being ready to embrace the unembraceable. We can all work out for ourselves who that might be – and, if we have done that properly, we are going to struggle with the concept. However, God’s ways are so very different from ours that we need to be ready to address the otherwise unthinkable. The Bible is full of stories of dodgy neighbours, unacceptable alliances and needing to see things a different way. That’s what churches should be like.

Cultivation

2011-06-21T13:40:00.000+01:00

Near the end of his book Missional Map-Making (Jossey-Bass, 2010) Alan Roxburgh talks about cultivation, offering it as a model for effective missional leadership. He suggests that we need to abandon traditional leadership models which (p. 179) “start with strategic planning, with articulating a vision, forecasting a future, and working to secure support from the congregation.” He suggests that there is a role for strategic planning “but towards the end as people initiate experiments in mission.”

He identifies the leadership role as one of encouragement and facilitation. P. 180 – “Leaders can be available to assist and facilitate, connecting people with resources, and so on, but this is a genuine work of the people that emerges from among their common life of discernment. The role of the leadership is to continuously cultivate the environment that enables people to gather energy and imagination for mission at multiple points of experimenting.”

He thus identifies the model of cultivation as the helpful one, pointing out that this is something that most of us need to learn. Our forms of cultivation tend to focus on using mechanical equipment and poisons to establish control. That is how we do our gardening – and can be how we lead our churches. Cultivation rather ought to be about understanding the place and role of all the plants – rather than a sort of ‘slash and burn’.

In church terms – p. 181 – “this means that the leader is continually functioning as an interpreter, pointing out how and where these experiments connect with, come out of, and are shaped by both the biblical narratives and the core values of the tradition to which the local church belongs.”

People Are My Scenery

2011-06-18T23:46:00.000+01:00

One of the comments in yesterday's Celtic Daily Light is 'People are my scenery.' It is attributed to 'a London landlady'. I like that comment which, for me, offers a slightly different take on people-watching. There are many good things around us to see, wonders of nature and constructions of humankind - but people matter most. People provide the context for our engaging as church. Each church should be asking itself how it is engaging with the people around it.

Hospitality

2011-06-17T23:16:00.000+01:00

Hospitality is a key concept for the church. It is something we ought always to be practising. It can be a cup of coffee after the service - the problem is when it stops there.

Alan Roxburgh says: "Hospitality, a profoundly Christian habit, is a radically alternative practice in a culture where people feel like strangers to one another in their own neighbourhoods .... The DNA of the Gospel calls Christians into a way of life that addresses this fear and suspicion of the stranger. People hunger to be welcomed, to be recognized and given worth in a culture that moves in the opposite direction. Welcoming the stranger is a revolutionary act ... " (Missional Map-Making, Jossey-Bass, 2010, p. 154/5)

Hospitality needs to become a description of how we function.

As Henri Nouwen says: "The term hospitality should not be limited to its literal sense of receiving a stranger in our house - although it is important never to forget or neglect that! - but as a fundamental attitude towards our fellow human being, which can be expressed in a great variety of ways." (Reaching Out, Collins, 1976, p. 65)

Don't Divide

2011-06-15T23:09:00.000+01:00

We are so good at dividing things up. We put people - and churches and all sorts of other things - into categories. They are filed under a particular heading - but God doesn't recognise the distinctions we make.

I like Barbara Brown Taylor's comment (in An Altar in the World, Canterbury Press, 2009, p. 15) - "Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish - separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognise the distinctions we make between the two. Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars."

God engages with us wherever we are, whatever we are doing.

The Right Soil

2011-06-14T22:49:00.000+01:00

The parable of the sower (Mark 4:1-9 and parallels) has some important things to say about sowing seed in the right place. There is plenty of good ground in the parable, but an equal amount of soil that doesn't work. Some seed falls on the path, some in rocky, and some in thorny ground - but there are three lots of good ground, yielding thirty grains, sixty grains and a hundred grains.

Alan Roxburgh (in Missional Map-Making, Jossey-Bass, 2010, p. 140) offers an interesting take on this when he talks of "the soil in which most of our churches have grown" as being "like the packaged soils one buys from garden centres that are crammed full of chemical compounds that will ensure vigorous growth without any trouble whatsoever. The parallel in so many churches is that the "soil" in which they are planted is all about strategies for growth in numbers or meeting individual needs or shaped around some form of worship or programmes for multisite church life. This kind of soil has been developed to yield church members who serve in programmes and agree with the vision, mission and goals of a church staff or board. Such soil does not produce environments in which people believe the Spirit is shaping a new world through the ordinary lives and imaginations of the people themselves. The soil we have to cultivate needs the nutrients that give back to our people the conviction that church is a safe place for them to be who they are, to dream and to believe that from within their lives can come forth the imagination of the Spirit for their communities and neighbourhoods."

I agree that we try too hard to manufacture church - instead of letting the Spirit provoke it. We need to allow more room for imagination and to realise that God is the initiator of the church and will take it where it needs to be. God chooses to use us - that's great - but is able, when necessary, of operating in spite of us: and God is doing great things, even when we don't recognise them.

Has the Church Gone to the Dogs?

2011-06-13T22:56:00.000+01:00

Alan Roxburgh (in Missional Map-Making, Jossey-Bass, 2010) quotes G. K. Chesterton noting "that many commentators through the ages have predicted that the church was going to the dogs with no hope for any new life. But, said Chesterton, it is the dogs that have gone and the church is still here."

I agree that predictions of the church's demise are premature, even though it is perfectly possible to argue that it is heading in that direction. Certainly in the UK, for many years, mainline denominations have declined year on year. But there are also many signs of hope and many places where potential is being realised.

Any reckoning that the church is in terminal decline is ignoring the presence and the power of God's Spirit. We are people who can. We can do all things through the strength of God. Indeed, it is the dogs who struggle to survive - the church is in God's care.

Islington Reads The Bible

2011-06-12T22:31:00.000+01:00

Today I paid a visit back to Islington where I was minister from 1983 to 1990. I went to share in the 'Islington Reads The Bible' event, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The Islington churches combined to read the whole Bible over a period of some 82 hours. The reading started at 10am on Thursday and was due to continue, without stopping, until 8pm. today - though it was running ahead of schedule when I was there. I heard from the beginning of Ephesians to the end of 2 Timothy, reading three chapters, one from Ephesians, one from Colossians and one from 1 Timothy myself.

It wasn't an event that attracted a great deal of attention, especially on a rather rainy Sunday lunch-time - but it was good to be a small part of the whole Bible being read in public in a London borough.

You're Welcome

2011-06-11T23:51:00.000+01:00

As my role takes me round a range of churches, one of the things I hear most often claimed is that 'we are a welcoming church' - and I am yet to hear of anyone claiming that theirs is not a welcoming church.

I have just been reading Stephanie Spellers' book Radical Welcome (Church Publishing, Incorporated, 2006). In the book we are challenged to be much more radical in our consideration (and practice) of what it means to be really welcoming. Stephanie Spellers talks about various aspects of this, but not least the need to pay attention to our context.

She also stresses the vital role of reaching out that is part of the very essence of being church - ".. the church's primary mission, identity and ministry are not wrapped up in those of us who are already inside. It is not primarily about our comfort and sense of peace. It is not primarily about our sense of belonging. It is not primarily about doing good deeds or maintaining a cultural heritage. All those priorities, valid as they are, must be a means to serve our primary call: aligning our will with God's, loving as God loves, welcoming as God welcomes." (p. 163).

Let's search for a welcome that really reaches out!

Being Like Babies

2011-06-09T23:08:00.000+01:00

In 1 Peter 2 Peter says, we are to be like babies. Be like newborn babies, always thirsty for the pure spiritual milk. This is an interesting idea. Babies are helpless. They are dependent – they need a lot of looking after. They need to be fed so that they will grow. At times they make a lot of noise. They are constantly developing. I am sure I could say more if I thought a bit harder – but there are some of the main things we might say about babies. Peter wants to say some pretty powerful things about the people who are the church. He wants to stress their potential, and to encourage them to realise it. But first, and I am sure quite deliberately first, he reminds them of their dependence upon God. Yes, there is lots they can do for God, lots we are called to do for God. But, first, Peter’s reminds us of the need for growth. He reminds them that, just as physical maturity is something which develops, so with spiritual maturity. Christians should know that they always have room for growth. We can always learn more. Peter emphasises the importance of nourishment as a source of spiritual life. We have traditionally talked about feeding on the Word of God, but probably use that image less these days. Perhaps we would do well to recapture it? Peter says that we should continue to long for that spiritual food which God freely gives so that we may continue to grow spiritually. We do that receiving Communion. We do that hearing God’s Word. We do that when reminded of God’s love and forgiveness.

Happy Bible Reading!

2011-06-08T23:28:00.000+01:00

In this 400th anniversary year of the publication of the Authorised/King James Version of the Bible, there is a lot of emphasis on the Bible and the value of reading it.

Three of my very special Bibles – and I have a number – are all KJVs. My first Bible – so far as I can remember – was my Boys’ Brigade Bible received in 1967, followed by my Crusaders’ Bible in 1969.

Another very special Bible for me is that received on the day of my ordination in 1979.

Of course, these days I use many different versions. How wonderful that the Bible speaks to us in our language just as it did in 1611. My Spanish Bible reminds me of my time in Panama and the ‘Good As New’ version is one of the contemporary language versions that helps me bring things up to date. May the Bible continue to be special to all of us, inspiring and guiding us, helping us to be the Church. Happy Bible reading!

John Wesley's Journal

2011-06-05T22:45:00.000+01:00

I have just started reading John Wesley's Journal. It is one of those - or in this case eight volumes of those - that has been lying on my bookshelf for quite a while. It was a gift from my (Methodist Minister) father-in-law when he retired. As I am on sabbatical across the summer, it is one of my (many) reading projects.

I am struck by the commitment of Wesley and his associates. Their determination to discover and follow what God wanted of them is a really good model. The 'holy club' they formed is the kind of thing that many of us could do with.

They were willing to engage in great adventure and risk because they felt it was what God wanted of them. How ready are we to encourage and challenge our friends in responding to God's call - and to go wherever it takes us?

The Church Has Got Talent

2011-06-04T22:38:00.000+01:00

Tonight has been the final of the Britain's Got Talent Show for 2011. It's an annual search through a mass of acts, many of them quite appalling, to find one that is really something special. Indeed, as usually happens, they found several that could be regarded as special, though only one could be the winner. However, as always, part of the story was the unexpected opportunity for talent to emerge.

I think there is a parallel with the church. Too often we can lack confidence and are unsure of where we are going. We need to remind ourselves to put our confidence in God. As I go around, of course I see churches that are struggling. I see churches that face problems. But I also see so many good things that are happening. God has equipped us with so much potential. The Church has got talent - let's use it!

Thinking Ahead - Advent and Christmas

2011-06-03T22:29:00.000+01:00

It may seem far too early to be thinking of Advent and Christmas in June - but I have spent the last couple of evenings helping to run events to encourage churches to be thinking well ahead. We were encouraging them to plan to make the best use of one of the church's most significant missional opportunities. I suspect that the time of year when we are most likely to attract non-church people to church is around Christmas.

For me, personally, Easter is our biggest festival - but I think that Christmas has the bigger impact on the world outside. So we shared ideas around how to make the best use of nativities and carol services, how we can use Christmas lunches and Christmas fairs as opportunities to communicate the true Christmas message, and a range of things that we had done.

One person told of having a nativity set in a special box with messages that was then "hosted" with a different family each night through Advent. Could that be worked in a school with sympathetic staff? Someone else talked of putting pictures up in the church windows through Advent as a kind of large-scale Advent calendar. Someone else spoke of giving away mince pies.

The wonder of Christmas must have really those who experienced the original version! How can we recapture that and share it in our day?

Mapping

2011-05-21T14:43:00.000+01:00

I have just started reading Alan Roxburgh's Missional Map-Making (Jossey-Bass, 2010) in which he refers to the internal maps that direct us. This works on both the personal level and that of community. There are stories that we know that shape who we are and how we behave.

Much of western culture was for many years substantially shaped by the Christian story, but that has now changed - and many do not even know that story. This raises questions as to how we can effectively be church in this changed environment.

It is worth reflecting on the internal maps that guide us, and perhaps comparing these to the internal maps that are more prominent in today's society. But we do need to move our map-making on. As Roxburgh points out (p. 16) - "we must relinquish the desire to copy our inherited maps and learn to listen to the stories of pioneers so that we can make new maps. In this way, we can reshape the imagination of God's people." As he adds, it is worth remembering that "for some, this is an exhilerating adventure, for others, it is a disconcerting process."

Easter People

2011-05-20T19:13:00.000+01:00

Pope John Paul II once said: "We are an People and Alleluia is our song."

Absolutely! Too often we don't let our joy shine through and spill over. It ought to be one of our hallmarks. People coming in to church ought to be struck by the positive note that ought, overwhelmingly, to be everywhere.

We are about hope, love, peace, joy - and so many things that contribute to a positive outlook and to building community. Of course, it cannot always be that all is well - but that ought to be the underlying perspective.

we ARE an Easter People and Alleluia IS our song!

Stealing Wheelbarrows

2011-05-04T23:40:00.001+01:00

Graham Cray tells how: "Os Guiness wrote a story about a man stealing wheelbarrows from a shipyard. Every day his barrow was searched and nothing found. But all along he was stealing the barrows.". ("Disciples and Citizens" p. 77)

Sometimes we miss the obvious because we are looking for something much more subtle and/or complicated. We don't see what is happening right in front of us because we are trying to second-guess what is going on round the corner.

Are our churches seeing and taking the opportunities (challenges to mission) that are there right in front of them?

A Corinthian Case Study

2011-05-02T22:57:00.000+01:00

I have just started reading Graham Cray's Disciples and Citizens (IVP, 2007). Graham sub-titles his book "a vision for distinctive living" and explores how we ought to appropriately engage in the challenges of citizenship. In the third chapter he uses Corinth as a case study. He talks about the pressures of the culture, commenting that "the Corinthian church had to be countercultural to survive". Knowing how to respond in a range of situations brings plenty of complicating challenges. In particular he concludes that "Christians bring a special view of power .. a view of power held as a stewardship to be used as a tool for service for the common good."

John Campbell (in Being Biblical (United Reformed Church, 2003)) also uses Corinth as a case study. John recognises that Paul "is a pastor responding to particular problems and pressures, a committed friend inviting those he loves to think again and change their ways." Thus, Paul is very specific - but this does not mean that we cannot allow him to be a model for how we engage in the challenges of citizenship or, to put it another way, confront a range of ethical questions. John goes on to suggest that 1 Corinthians "offers us an invitation to join a later stage of the same conversation that Paul once shared with God and the Christians of Corinth."

What are the things of the moment that ought gto be part of our Christian citizenship conversation?

Normally

2011-05-01T22:21:00.000+01:00

Often we talk about what we do 'normally'. In the United Reformed Church it is a common means of our explaining our practice. It means that we can say what usually happens, but we do allow for the possibility of something different.

I think it is a great concept to have on board. We ought not to be all over the place all the time, just doing what we happen to want for the moment. It is good to be rather more ordered than that - but it is equally vital to have room for the exceptional, and to accept that the common way of doing things ought, from time to time, to be abandoned.

Let's look for the different things that ought to be part of church life, making that special impact for God.

Martha and Mary

2011-04-30T23:47:00.000+01:00

I love the story of Martha and Mary - Luke 10:38-42. Martha was so busy looking after Jesus - but "only one thing was needed", and Mary knew what that was. She wasn't going to miss out on hearing what Jesus had to say.

Throughout my ministry I have quite often heard people explain themselves as being like Martha, but I don't ever remember someone making the other claim about being like Mary.

Actually both are needed - but I think we more easily go the Martha-way, which is why we need the message of the Mary-way.

Valuing Suffering

2011-04-29T21:58:00.000+01:00

It is natural that we should want to avoid suffering, if we can. It hurts! Yes, there are many positive things we can say about it - though that probably is not true of all contexts. However, even when there is a positive side, the likelihood is that we would rather avoid it.

In Speaking of Faith (Penguin, 2007), Krista Tippett offers some interesting - and challenging - reflections on this theme when she refers to an encounter with the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh - "When we are attentive to our own suffering .. we will know that of others. That knowledge can help break cycles of suffering and violence in the world around us." She further comments: "He could not imagine the kingdom of God to be a place without suffering .... For how, then, would we learn to be compassionate?" (p. 228/9)

I happen to be writing this on the day of the royal wedding. Amid much joy and ceremony - and massive TV coverage - Prince William and Kate Middleton have married in Westminster Abbey, emerging as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It has rightly been a day of great celebration in the UK.

Celebration and suffering do co-exist, rightly so, and we do well to recognise that.

Speaking of Faith

2011-04-26T23:27:00.000+01:00

Speaking of our faith is something that we often find difficult. I guess that is because it is often just beyond what we can easily say. There are lots of things we can say that describe aspects of faith - but really pinning it down is complicated.

Krista Tippett (in Speaking of Faith, Penguin, 2007) quotes a comment by Lawrence Kushner on speaking of faith (p. 221) - "It pushes the edge of language. One of the reasons that speaking of faith is such a slippery and a moving target is because we're trying to talk about the stuff of which we are."

Speaking of faith may try to elude us, but it's worth the effort.

Being Human

2011-04-25T22:53:00.000+01:00

God wants us to be the best that we can be - and to do the best that we can do - but doesn't expect us to go beyond that. God created us as human beings and wants us to engage with us as human, and God is able to cope with our flaws.

I have just started reading Thomas Merton's The Ascent to Truth. Merton recognises the need for us to remain within the limits that our humanity imposes when he writes: "The Church does not seek to sanctify men (sic) by destroying their humanity, but by elevating it, with all its faculties and gifts."

Of course, it is also true that we need God's help if we are going to be the best that we can be.

Imagination

2011-04-24T23:21:00.000+01:00

One of the great gifts we human beings can enjoy is that of imagination. Our imagination, if we use it well, opens up all sorts of possibilities for us. We can dream. We can have vision. We can be creative. Our imagination can help us to see how things might be different.

I believe that God wants us to use our imaginations to envisage all sorts of Kingdom possibilities. We can imagine possibilities of justice. We can imagine how love might change things. We can imagine the impact that peace might make - and so on.

Imagination takes us into the realm of possibility - but the real trick is to work out which things we need to move from imagination into reality. If God helps us to imagine something, ought we to be doing something about making it happen?

Today is Easter Day. The first disciples were stunned by the resurrection because they hadn't managed to imagine that what Jesus had told them about his rising might possibly be true. As they gradually experienced the impact of the risen Jesus, they began imagining what might be - and the church was born.

Multiplication

2011-04-23T14:56:00.000+01:00

One of the best known stories about Jesus is that which we normally refer to as the 'feeding of the five thousand'. In the story a small boy's lunch is multiplied up so that there is enough for the whole crowd to have something to eat - and plenty to spare. There are various theories as to how this happened. In the end the 'how' is not the important thing - what matters is that it did happen, and it serves as a reminder of how God multiplies his love towards us.

The principle of God's multiplication is one of the great things of our faith. God's blessings are abundant - and are always becoming more abundant.

Near the end of his Confessions, Augustine makes some reference to this idea of God's multiplication. "I know that a truth which the mind understands in one way only can be materially expressed by many different means, and I also know that there are many different ways in which the mind can understand an idea that is outwardly expressed in one way. Take the single concept of the love of God and our neighbour. How many different symbols are used to give it outward expression! How many different languages have words for it and, in each of them, how many different forms of speech there are by which it can be conveyed!" (Book 13, Section 24)

He goes on to talk about God giving "increase and multiplication" by enabling us to draw a range of different and relevant things from a single source - "I believe .. you granted us the faculty and the power both to give expression in many different ways to things which we understand in one way only and to understand in many different ways what we find written obscurely in one way."

Indeed, God allows us to see things from so many different angles, and enables a huge broadening in the range of our perspectives. Are there things that we, at the moment, need to see in a different way?

The Impact of God's Word

2011-04-19T22:20:00.000+01:00

The Bible is a powerful expression of God's engagement with us. It can be extremely challenging, but offers us support in so many ways.

I have been reading on through Augustine's Confessions during Lent. At one point he writes: "How wonderful are your Scriptures! How profound! We see their surface and it attracts us like children. And yet, O my God, their depth is stupendous. We shudder to peer deep into them, for they inspire in us both the awe of reverence and the thrill of love" (Book 12, Section 14).

The Bible impacts our lives in so many different ways. It is a source of encouragement, inspiration, challenge and so much more. One of the great things is that it will do different things for us in different circumstances, offering that which we need for the particular moment.

Augustine recognises this - "... since I believe in these commandments and confess them to be true with all my heart, how can it harm me that it should be possible to interpret these words in several ways, all of which may yet be true? How can it harm me if I understand the writer's meaning in a different sense from that in which another understands it? .... Provided, therefore, that each of us tries as best he can to understand in the Holy Scriptures what the writer meant by them, what harm is there if a reader believes what you, the Light of all truthful minds, show him to be the true meaning? It may not even be the meaning which the writer had in mind, and yet he too saw in them a true meaning, different though it may have been from this." (Book 12, Section 18).

Power and Relationship

2011-04-18T23:50:00.000+01:00

Ana Draper reflects on the importance of relationship and the complications of getting the balance right if we are to be church in an effective and correct way (in Jonny Baker's Curating Worship p. 117/8). Conversion is part of following God, but we need to remember that it is God who does the converting - that is not our task. So she talks about "a relational theology that looked to walk alongside and be with rather than convert."

She also describes the challenge of dealing with the power thing. "We tried to address power differential - the 'them and us' stuff that often happens. I sometimes think that church can seem like it is saying, a la Animal Farm, that 'we are all equal before God, just some are more equal than others.' So we tried to practise a way of being that was about exploration, discovery and being in the moment."

It is hard to use power in the right way, and so easy to use it wrongly. It is also very easy to think that we haven't got any, when we have got loads.

Letting God Speak

2011-04-16T16:02:00.000+01:00

One of the mistakes that we often make is to offer too much explanation. We spell things out that don't need to be spelt out. We try and explain the detail when we would be far better to let things speak for themselves. We give too much direction, forgetting that God may want to say different things to different people.

We need to remember that God doesn't want us all to be the same - variety is needed.

One of the main ways in which Jesus taught was through the stories he told, those little descriptions of everyday events that we now normally refer to as parables. We need to take note of the fact that it was rare for Jesus to say anything about what the story meant. He let it speak for itself - and, no doubt, the same story would sometimes say different things to different people. As Martin Poole comments (in Curating Worship by Jonny Baker, p. 77): "It's a true form of parable, where we just 'tell the story' and let the participants drawn their conclusions themselves. I guess I'm saying the epiphany needs to come from God, not us."

Vulnerability

2011-04-15T22:33:00.000+01:00

It is natural to want to be invincible, but we are not - and it doesn't even help to pretend to be so. Indeed, on the contrary, we need to allow ourselves to offer our weakness, even our brokenness.

As Cheryl Lawrie says in Jonny Baker's Curating Worship (p. 62): "I've been thinking recently about our temptation to try to become more like God - more holy, more sinless, more perfect. Perhaps the thing we should be working for is to become more human - more fragile, more vulnerable, more unfinished; to be better at being human. We try to give people a chance to be more human in a space; then it's up to God to do what God can do."

God doesn't expect us to be super-human. Our call is to offer our humanity.

Listen

2011-04-14T15:43:00.000+01:00

There's a Chinese proverb that says: "God gave us two ears and one mouth. Why don't we listen twice as much as we talk?"

James, of course, warns us of the risks of our tongues. So the tongue is only a tiny part of the body, but its boasts are great. Think how small a flame can set fire to a huge forest. .... nobody can tame the tongue - it is a pest that will not keep still, full of deadly poison" (James 3:5,8).

It is worth reflecting on those times when we have spoken and it would have been better if we had not, and those times when we failed to listen, and it would have been better if we had done so.

Church as a Design Problem

2011-04-13T23:34:00.001+01:00

In an interview with Steve Collins, Jonny Baker (in "Curating Worship" p. 24/5) explores the idea of treating church as a design problem. Steve Collins talks about the aims of architects and what they are trying to say through the buildings they design. He goes on to comment: "what I've done is treat the church as a design problem - take things apart, look at the pieces, see if they can be assembled in different ways, respond to emerging contexts, imagine alternative futures to aim for. ... Churches often assume that they already have the right forms, having found out what God really wants. But I think God wants to play."

It seems to me that so often we want to fix things when God is calling us to be flexible - and I love the idea of God wanting to play. I think there is a lot to draw out from these images.

Being Awkward

2011-04-12T23:40:00.001+01:00

"To those who have the gift of not fitting in.". I have just started reading Jonny Baker's book "Curating Worship" (SPCK, 2010) and was immediately struck by the book's dedication - "to those who have the gift of not fitting in."

We all know folk who don't fit in and, to be blunt, they are a nuisance. They are the awkward squad. They get in the way. They are disruptive.

How refreshing to see them as a gift! And how challenging - but we do need to value everyone for who and what they are, even though it is not always easy.

Place - Hospitality - Pilgrimage

2011-04-11T23:04:00.000+01:00

Ian Adams, in Cave, Refectory, Road (Canterbury Press, 2010) explores issues around place, hospitality and pilgrimage, all of which he sees as a focal part of Christian living.

He suggests that we should think about how we use space and make room for those special spaces - "Imagine, for example, what the idea of cave might produce in your context. What might the creation of a 'still place' in your school or workplace do to the school or work community - particularly if it is envisioned, planned and created by that community?" (p. 93)

Equally it is well worth considering the difference that our approach to people makes. How welcoming are we? "How might the idea of the refectory change how our visitors, customers, clients or patients are received - and how might that in turn enable us to bring good to the local piece of the world that is around us?" (p. 93)

He also encourages us to, as it were, get out and engage with new things and in new places. "It's easy and natural to be static. We like what we know. But perhaps we need to get out more! ...... What about meeting up with people working in very different arenas and cultures from our own? What energy and inspiration might that kind of cross-boundary encounter produce?" (p. 93/4)

Hard Realities

2011-04-10T23:09:00.000+01:00

Krista Tippett, in Speaking of Faith (Penguin, 2007), talks about the need to deal with difficult things - and comments that good things don't just cancel them out. She comments: ".. the way we deal with the loses of our lives, large and small, may be what most determines our capacity to be present to the whole of our lives; we burn out not because we have stopped caring, but because are hearts are too full of grief." She adds: ".. the concomitant consequences of endless, needless suffering in the world do not become less troubling with time. Even as I learn new vocabularies of sense and wonder I continue to find that suffering too has imponderable variation. I learn not to imagine that beautiful words and lives will somehow snuff out what is dark and difficult. Again and again I am fatigued by a sense of powerlessness at injustices and atrocities close to home and far away." (p. 212/3)

Wouldn't it be good if we were able to use good things to cancel out bad ones - but it doesn't work like that, though it is true that though the bad things damage us, the good ones sustain us. It is also true that God is with us in all things.

Tell the Story

2011-04-09T22:52:00.000+01:00

Story-telling was one of Jesus' great means of engaging with people. He told stories that worked for his time. Our task is to tell stories that work for our time. That includes telling our story, telling the stories of Jesus and telling stories that speak of God's love in all sorts of ways.

Today's reading in Celtic Daily Light (by Ray Simpson, Hodder & Stoughton, 1997) is based on the story of the raising of Jairus' daughter and gives a travelling person's version -

Here is the latter part - Jesus has just arrived at the house: "'T'was a house with stairs. Stairs all the way up, and didn't Jesus go up them stairs, an' he was nearly deaf 'cos there was loads of women an' they were bawlin' and shoutin' and he's never heard anything like them." Then he goes in to the little girl - "An' says he to the corpse: 'Get ye up out of that!' An' she, she opened her eyes an' looks at him, an' she's able to get straight up there an' look at him again. An' she wasn't sick any more. An' Jesus Christ, he looks at her too. An' he sees she's well, an' says he to the mammy, 'Give her a cut o' bread.'"

Let's get story-telling!

Terry Currey

2011-04-04T22:49:00.001+01:00

I went to Terry's funeral today. Terry was Church Secretary of one of the two congregations in Islington of which I was minister through much of the 1980s. He became Church Secretary while I was minister, one of many roles he undertook.

Terry was an ordinary bloke, only he wasn't. He was one of God's saints. He was a postman, a job that suited him - because the early start meant an early finish which left him free to do all the other things he wanted - most of them what we might call Kingdom things.

Terry's commitment was phenomenal - Boy's Brigade captain, church organist, day centre bingo caller etc etc

Terry is one of those people to whom I will always look for an example of one of God's saints.

The Urgent v The Important

2011-04-03T23:55:00.000+01:00

The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, in his book To Heal a Fractured World talks about how we think of ourselves and of others, and he explains it like this. He says that one of the most daunting things he faced when he first became a rabbi was the conduct of funerals. Often he would not have known the person that he was faced with having to say something about. And so, he would talk to family and friends to begin to build up, at least, a small picture. And he describes how he quickly began to discern a pattern in the replies he received. “Usually they would say that the deceased had been a supportive husband or wife, a loving parent, a loyal friend. They spoke about the good they had done to others, often quietly, discreetly, without ostentation. When you needed them, they were there. They shouldered their responsibilities to the community. They gave to charitable causes and, if they could not give money, they gave time.” He further comments: “Those most mourned and missed were not the most successful, rich or famous. They were the people who enhanced the lives of others. These were the people who were loved.” Sacks then goes on to make a very interesting and, I think, significant comment about how this distinguished for him “the crucial difference between the urgent and the important. He goes on to comment, and I think this says a lot, “No one ever spoke, in praise of someone who had died, about the car they drove, the house they owned, the clothes they wore, the exotic holidays they took. No one's last thought was ever, 'I wish I had spent more time in the office.' And he goes on to say, and these are two very important sentences for me - “The things we spend most of our time pursuing turn out to be curiously irrelevant when it comes to seeing the value of our life as a whole. They are urgent but not important, and in crush and press of daily life, the urgent tends to win out over the important.”

I have to say that I think Sacks is spot on here and I find this distinction between the urgent and the important very helpful. We do spend our lives running round doing things that we certainly treat as though they are urgent. We live in a society and a culture that is always hurrying. We define each other by what we do. What's the question we most often ask first of someone whom we have just met: what do you do? Our occupation is what defines us. And there are all sorts of other ways in which we rush around after things that are nice and, yes, certainly, can be enjoyed. But these are the urgent things, and that's how we treat them. And that, actually, is fine, so far as it goes, except for the risk that it may well contribute to our neglect of the important.

Spirituality v Religion

2011-04-02T20:51:00.001+01:00

Krista Tippett comments ("Speaking of Faith" p. 174) "A rabbi, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso,gave me the best illustration I know of the difference between spirituality and religion. On Mount Sinai, she says, something extraordinary happened to Moses. He had a direct encounter with God. This was a spiritual experience. The Ten Commandments were the container for that experience. They are religion."

The Ugly Duckling

2011-04-01T23:57:00.002+01:00

Hans Christian Anderson has a fairy story about an ugly duckling. Do you remember it? One day there was trouble in the farmyard. One of the ducklings was a different colour from the others and his brothers and sisters didn't like the look of him. So the ugly duckling was thrown out. He found a place to hide and tried to settle down amongst some wild ducks. But they, too, didn't like the ugly duckling. He was pretty miserable. .... until a flight of swans passed overhead. One of them glanced down at the ugly duckling and shouted, 'Hey, you're a good looking swan.' 'I'm not a swan. I'm an ugly duckling,' our hero shouted back. But in time he was persuaded and began to enjoy life and fulfil his potential as the swan that he really was.

Who knows what possibilities lie ahead?

The Good That I Would

2011-03-30T23:48:00.000+01:00

I have been continuing with Augustine's Confessions. Unsuprisingly, there is a lot about the tension between how he was living and how he should have been living. For most of us, at times, that's life - but how important it is, both individually and communally, to struggle with that tension.

In one section he states it particularly strongly. He writes: "In this warfare I was on both sides, but I took the part of that which I approved in myself rather than the part of that which I disapproved. For my true self was no longer on the side of which I disapproved, since to a great extent I was now its reluctant victim rather than its willing tool. Yet it was by my own doing that habit had become so potent an enemy, because it was by my own will that I had reached the state in which I no longer wished to stay."

We all end up there sometimes - but the Good News is that, even then, God is alongside us, helping to pull us out of what the psalmist calls the "miry clay" or "deadly quicksand" (Psalm 40:2).

Common Clay Pots

2011-03-28T18:48:00.003+01:00

Writing to the Corinthian church Paul says: Yet we who have this spiritual treasure are like common clay pots ..... (2 Corinthians 4:7)

We are like common clay pots. In Paul's terms this was ordinary kitchenware and yet, as such, it played a crucial role in everybody's lives. This is interesting. If we are hosting a special dinner party we are likely to get the best crockery out. Paul talks about treasure, the treasure that God gives us - but God is content that we are the vessels for this treasure, even though we are the equivalent of "common clay pots".

Many times in the Bible it is stressed how God is in partnership with us. When we are feeling like fragile, chipped, and very ordinary, clay pots - let's remind ourselves that God uses us as containers of his treasure. Then, let us - confidently - get on with the task of being the church!

Forgiveness and Being Forgiven

2011-03-27T22:31:00.003+01:00

Frederick Buechner has said: it is as hard to absolve yourself of your own guilt as it is to sit in your own lap. In other words, it is impossible.

We need to be forgiven - we need to be ready to forgive. The church works on forgiveness - thank God that forgiveness is always on offer.

Elmer

2011-03-25T21:36:00.004Z

Elmer is one of my favourite story characters. A few years ago I would often be reading Elmer stories to my daughters. Now they have grown past that, but I have inherited the "Elmer" one of them once had. Elmer is an elephant with a difference. He is multi-coloured. But Elmer doesn't like being different - and so one day he paints himself grey, so that he will look like all the other elephants - and he does - until it rains and the paint is washed off. The other elephants like Elmer and they feel for him. So they respond by decorating themselves in all sorts of multi-coloured patterns. Of course, the result is the same. Everything is fine, until they get wet. Are we willing to be different in the ways that we should? Equally, are we ready to recognise that there are some things about ourselves that we just can't change. We can put on a show and pretend that we are different - but, deep down, we are who we are. But God loves us as we are. God wants us as we are - and God has a role for us where we are, being who we are. Sometimes we want to change things - when God is telling us 'just be yourself - but do those things that I am calling you to do!

On The Road

2011-03-24T09:03:00.002Z

At the bend of the road I looked back again and saw the gold light die behind her; then I turned the corner, passed the village school, and closed that part of my life for ever. ...... I was propelled, of course, by the traditional forces that had sent many generations along this road - by the small tight valley closing in around one, stifling the breath with its mossy mouth ........ And now I was on my journey, in a pair of thick boots and with a hazel stick in my hand. ... These words come from the opening pages of Laurie Lee's autobiographical travelogue "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning". Journeys of all shapes and sizes are a big part of life for all of us. The journey is also often used as a symbol of life in so many different ways. Jesus calls us to follow him. That means going on a journey. He also tells us to travel light which tells us something about how we should be. In "Cave Refectory Road" (Canterbury Press, 2010) Ian Adams suggests that we need to live out our faith "in the open, in the market place, on the street" (p. 12) and he uses the road as an image of this. He makes a number of interesting comments about this, but I was particularly struck by something he says about our vulnerability on the road p. 36/7) - "We are vulnerable on the road. 'Have a safe journey', we say. 'Call us when you get there,' urge anxious parents. Travel can be an anxious business. Home is so much safer. But there is something vital about this human experience of stepping out into the unknown with little but our equivalent of Laurie Lee's 'small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese.'"

God Is Great

2011-03-23T23:04:00.002Z

Often we think we know it all, or something close to that. We need to learn that God is beyond what we can know. Augustine's "Confessions" make the point - "A man (sic) who knows that he owns a tree and thanks you for the use he has of it, even though he does not know its exact height or the width of its spread, is better than another who measures it and counts all its branches, but neither owns it nor knows and loves its Creator. In just the same way, a man who has faith in you owns all the wealth of the world, for if he clings to you, whom all things serve, though he has nothing yet he owns them all. It would be foolish to doubt that such a man, though he may not know the track of the Great Bear, is altogether better than another who measures the sky and counts the stars and weighs the elements, but neglects you who allot to all things their size, their number, and their weight." (Book 5, Section 4)

Living Letters

2011-03-21T23:44:00.002Z

Writing to the Christians in Corinth, Paul describes them as "living letters" - You yourselves are the letter we have written, written on our hearts for everyone to know and read. (2 Corinthians 3:2). Paul continues: It is clear that Christ himself wrote this letter and sent it by us. It is written, not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, and not on stone tablets but on human hearts. (2 Corinthians 2:3). In verse 1 Paul additionally refers to letters of recommendation. For what kind of things do we end up being a recommendation? If we are 'living letters' what are we saying? Those are interesting questions, particularly when we remember that God indeed wants us to be living letters, telling the story of the light and love that is found only with God.