hopefulimagination

The Eve of Christmas... Waiting

2011-12-24T10:48:00.001Z

1 Earth was waiting, spent and restless,
with a mingled hope and fear;
and the faithful few were sighing,
'surely Lord the day is near;
the desire of all the nations,
it is time He should appear.'

2 Still the gods were in their temples,
but the ancient faith had fled;
and the priests stood by their altars
only for a piece of bread;
and the oracles were silent,
and the prophets all were dead.

3 In the sacred courts of Zion,
where the Lord had his abode,
there the money-changers trafficked,
and the sheep and oxen trod;
and the world, because of wisdom,
knew not either Lord or God.

4 Then the Spirit of the Highest
on a virgin meek came down,
and He burdened her with blessing,
and He pained her with renown;
For she bare the Lord's anointed,
for His cross and for His crown.

5 Earth for Him had groaned and travailed
since the ages first began;
for in Him was hid the secret
that through all the ages ran-
Son of Mary, Son of David,
Son of God, and Son of Man.

Walter C Smith (1824-1908)
8 7 8 7 8 7 Trochaic

Copied from HymnQuest 2011

Fourth Week in Advent: Love

2011-12-22T17:09:00.004Z

This week's Northumbria Community readings do include some familiar mentions of love, but I am opting to share three alternative ideas that emerged from my readings and pondering.

Firstly, Proverbs 15: 16 - 17
Better a little with the fear of the LORD than great wealth with turmoil. Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred.

I wonder how much fake jollity has been, or will be, expressed over groaning tables this Christmas... better the soup-run with love, beans on toast with a loved one, an apple halved with a friend...

Next, Matthew 13:31 - 32
Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

If love is a (the?) defining quality of the Kingdom of God, then is love like a mustard seed or a mustard plant? Shelter, shade, security... attributes of love

Lastly Psalm 1:1 -3 and Jeremiah 17:7-8
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Love as a stream - refreshing, cleansing, invigorating, leading to flourishing and blossoming to fruitfulness.

God of love
Shelter and sustain us
Cleanse and refresh us
And may we
Share with others
The love you give us
Amen

As advent nears its end, what does it mean for us to look at the world through the lens of love? What does it mean for love to become incarnate where we are? Come, Lord Jesus, be born in us today...

Imago Dei

2011-12-21T21:14:00.001Z

One morning, God was staring at the wall.Not a blank wall, but not patterned either. It was a wall of chaos: brightcolours, dark colours, swirling patterns, eternally dark and infinitely brightboth at the same time. God wondered what could be made of the wall, so hereached out a hand and swirled the colours around. Soon order and pattern beganto emerge: luscious pastoral greens coalesced, deep aqua blues combined, and thisnew creation seemed very pleasing to God.

After contemplating the wall for a whilelonger, God began to wonder what to do next, so he spoke gently to the wall,and a lustrous sheen began to appear. The wall became shiny, as if a layer ofglass had been laid over the top of it. As God continued to stare at the wall,he could now see his own reflection within it. He saw himself inside hiscreation. When he moved his hand, the image of God waved back. When God smiled,his image smiled back. When God blew at the wall, the image blew a kiss back.God loved the image in the wall, and was happy with all that he had made.

But then something unexpected happened. Theimage of God reached out and punched the wall from the inside, and the shinysurface of the wall now had a flaw in it, like a stone-chip on a carwindscreen. Suddenly the image of God didn’t look quite so much like Godanymore: the flaw in the surface had damaged the reflection. The order that Godhad brought to the wall was distorted, and God was very sad. But still he stoodthere, staring at the wall and not turning away. Then the image hit the wall again,this time harder and angrier, as if trying to get out, trying to get at God.God flinched, but still he stared at the wall. The surface was by now crazedwith cracks, and the image continued to fragment into lots of tiny, sharpfragments. God contemplated walking away from the wall, but knew that if he didso his image would vanish from the wall forever. Distorted as it was, it wasstill his image; it was still the image he had loved, waved at, and blownkisses to.

God wondered what to do next. And then hadan idea. He took a few steps back, and threw himself violently at the wall. Theforce of the impact stunned him and shook the wall, and the millions of tinysharp fragments ripped at his skin. Powered forward by the momentum of hisrun-up, God seemed for a moment to merge into the wall. His blood streaked thesurface, and the mark of the impact was clear to see. But God himself hadvanished.

After a while it was just possible to makeout the faint image of God through the crazed, blood-stained, fragmented surface.God had gone into the wall. Gradually the image of God grew stronger andlarger, as God walked up to the wall from the inside. He reached out his handand carefully joined two broken shards together, and then two more, and thentwo more. Gradually, slowly, God began to repair the wall from within. As Godrepaired the wall, he looked at it very carefully, and started to see his ownimage reflected back.

The end.

Without warning

2011-12-19T12:56:00.002Z

Something I wrote for our 9 Lessons: One Story service last night at Belle Vue Baptist Church.

Without warning
no expectation
no anticipation
God speaks.
God speaks to Abraham
That he will be blessed.
This Abraham is
Without children
No reproduction
No future generation
But God speaks
God speaks you will be blessed
To be a blessing

With hope unswerving
With trust unfailing
Abraham believes.
Abraham believes
That like stars in the sky
And sand on the beach
Will his descendants be

This aged man and his wife
Past child-bearing years
Are promised a son
And the God who spoke blessing
The God who made a promise
Is faithful to his word
Is truthful to his word
A child is given
A son is born
Isaac
A one and only
A one and only and much loved
Son

Without warning
no expectation
no anticipation
God speaks.
God speaks to Abraham
Take your son, your only son
Up the mountain
and there give his life as a sacrifice.
Without reason
No explanation
No justification

Abraham does as he is told
And he takes his
One and only
One and only and much loved
Isaac
With him up the mountain

Without warning
no expectation
no anticipation
as Abraham is ready to strike
God speaks.
God speaks to Abraham
That he should refrain
And go no further
The one and only
The one and only and much loved
Son is spared

God speaks
God speaks again to Abraham
Because you have not withheld
Your one and only and much loved
Son
You will be blessed
With a family
More numerous than the stars in the sky
More numerous than the sand on the beach
You will be blessed
To be a blessing

Another child is given
Another son is born
One of Abraham's family
The Father's one and only
One and only and much loved
Son
Born to be a blessing

And God did not withhold
His one and only
But gave him up for all of us
God's love revealed:
He sent is
one and only and much loved
Son
Into the world
That we might have life
That we might be blessed
To be a blessing

Third Week in Advent: Joy

2011-12-15T10:12:00.003Z

My decision to follow the Northumbria Community readings during Advent has shown me, afresh, how mischievous God's spirit is... some of these readings are at best puzzling, and many of them present what I have come over the week to term 'unjoy'... the opposite of what I understand joy to be.

To me, joy is not an emotion or a feeling, it is something inner, more akin to an attitude or a state of mind, a kind of indefatigable positivity that recognises reality as it really is but refuses to be defined, constrained or restrained by it. Unlike Pollyanna's ridiculous glad game (I'm glad that bad thing happened because now....) joy has a sense of defiance (that which happened is frankly awful, but I will not allow it to destroy me) and even, I am discovering mischief.

Unjoy is manifest in bitterness, in unkindness, in lack of generosity, in resentment... as we spot hints of unjoy we seek to subvert them with joy.

One reading appeared twice this week (I am sure a transcription error... or was it divine mischief?) and, to me, illustrates how Jesus, tempted to an life of unjoy, chose instead joy in all its costly authenticity...

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread." Jesus answered, "It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’" The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered, "It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’" The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down from here. For it is written: "‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’" Jesus answered, "It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’" When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time. (Luke 4: 1 - 13)

Unjoy... arising from a focus on material satisfaction, power or celebrity. I wonder what tempts us to unjoy rather than joy? I wonder what it means to look at the world through a lens of joy, spotting the hints of God's indefatigable positivity and gentle mischief?

God, grant us a fresh experience of inner joy
Remove from us the temptation to unjoy
And lead us in your mischievous path of unquenchable shalom
Amen

Hope...

2011-12-13T15:21:00.004Z

A few weeks ago I had a miscarriage. Not as awful as it sounds; I've been prepared for some time with the knowledge that I cannot bear children – I did my grieving long ago.

I mention it only because it did something very strange to me. It reminded me of the pain of hope. Advent hope is an oft spoken of theme; we talk of God’s people waiting for God’s promises to come true; we talk of a people waiting with expectation and hope for the time when their suffering would cease; we talk about Elizabeth and Zechariah, who were given a new hope for a child, long after they thought it was possible; we talk of the people walking in darkness who saw a great light. We talk of this wondrous feeling of hope that gets us through the dark and difficult days. Because at the end of all this waiting, there is a baby.

My own experience caused me to stop, and question for a moment. What about those for whom there isn’t a baby at the end of all the waiting? What about those waiting for that which will never come? What about those whose wait will end in bitter disappointment? Because it’s true, isn’t it, that as we celebrate the joy of Christmas, we often gloss over the bittersweet truth. The truth that for some, the lights will be taken down, the tree packed away and the wrapping recycled, and all that will be left is emptiness. The truth that the birth of Christ is a story not without tragedy, for as the baby was born, so a plot was being made to kill all the boys in Bethlehem under the age of two.

During Advent I cannot hide from the fact that at the end of my wait, there will never be a baby. Not for me. And so I think perhaps, as we work up to the joy of Christmas, I want to suggest that we don’t forget that sometimes hope is painful, hope leads to disappointment, and un-fulfilment. And perhaps sometimes it’s okay to voice that.

Counting Down the Days

2011-12-12T06:26:00.002Z

(From Phil Durrant)

We seem to be constantly at war with time here in the West, there’s so little of it in the day, and so few days in the ledger for our lives. At our backs we always hear, Time’s winged chariot hurrying near. We can’t decide if we love or loath it. But our obsession leads us to strap time gauges to our wrists and wave our filofaxes around as if they were the Good Book. We flood our bodies with caffeine and our environments with artificial light. Come on people! Squeeze out every drop!

I do think that if whoever it was that invented time were to show up, we’d say ‘well it’s all right for you, you’re impervious, you’re unimpeachable’, and if there was a glimmer for a split second that he weren’t, we’d rig a show trial; tick-tock his head; pin him to the clock face and nail down his hands. ‘Three, six, nine o’clock and time for bed’, we’d say. ‘Remind us of our mortality will you? Well try it on for size; try tasting the inside of a tomb’. But then time’s creator would never lay himself open to such an onslaught, surely? Never himself become vulnerable to time, to the curse of ‘your days are numbered’. Or would he? I suppose that’s what we’re waiting to find out during Advent.

But we don’t want to wait do we? That’s time wasted. And to wait is to accept we are powerless and to acknowledge our mortality. We are a breath; our days a passing shadow. And no one wants to square up to that old chestnut. Not to mention that to wait is also to accept that only God is truly powerful and eternal. For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. He is God and we most certainly are not.

But should we choose to force ourselves to wait, to grit our teeth and try on this discipline, perhaps we might experience God’s gracious ‘now’ which outstrips past, present, and future. Perhaps we’d experience in our persons the advent of his likeness in our members; a certain transparency to an everlasting glory.

Gaudete

2011-12-11T15:14:00.002Z

Gaudete in Domino semper

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, known as Gaudete Sunday in the western churches. The day marks a mid-point in the season and is, as such, a day of rejoicing. The name itself comes from the first words traditionally sung as the ministers and choir entered the church on this day ‘Gaudete in Domino semper’ or ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’.

Advent is a sombre season and one in which penitence is called for. The liturgical colour for Advent is purple. Gaudete Sunday, however, is a time of rejoicing and anticipation for the coming of the Lord. Today the colour is rose, a colour not to be used at other times during this season (this is why one of the candles in an Advent wreath is pink rather than purple).

So today the invitation changes: today, we do not simply adore ‘The Lord who is to come’ but we also rejoice and hail ‘The Lord who is now nigh and close at hand.’

The nativity story

2011-12-08T08:29:00.000Z

This was something I wrote for our christingle service last year. When performed we had objects to lift up whenever certain words were said.

First there was Adam and Eve
and a long while later there was Abraham
and a long while after that there was David
and a long long while after that we get to our story

There was Mary
no more than 14
in love with Joseph
who made things from wood

There was Mary
and then there was an angel
saying DO NOT BE AFRAID
God has smiled on you and
you’re going to have a baby
Mary said ‘But …’ and then ‘Ok, if you say so’

There was Mary
getting bigger by the day
and there was Joseph
who was getting more and more
suspicious
until the truth could be hidden no more
Joseph was not best pleased
until he had a dream
in which there was an angel
saying DO NOT BE AFRAID
Mary's baby is from God
and he will be the saviour of the world
When Joseph woke up
he was well pleased
and took his Mary with baby inside
to be his wife

There was Mary
no more than 14
married to Joseph
and going to have a baby
5 months, 6, months, 7 months, 8
when the news was announced
that all the people had to go
back to where they were born to be counted

There was Mary
heavy with child
and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem
Mary was read to give birth
when they arrived
but there was no where to stay
apart from a stable

There was Mary
no more than 14
There was Joseph
who made things from wood
and then there was also Jesus
born in the night
and put to bed in an invented cot

There were shepherds
with their sheep
on a hillside
out in the cold night
and there was suddenly another angel
saying DO NOT BE AFRAID
great news to tell
a baby is born
who will save the world
and there were suddenly more angels
and they were all singing
happy songs of joy

There were shepherds
running down the hillside
all the way to Bethlehem
and found the baby
the little child Jesus
and crying he did make

There were wise men
who gazed at the stars
and one day spotted a bright one
which they followed
many miles by camel.
When finally the star stopped
and so they did too
and there they found
Mary
no more than 14
and very tired
with Joseph
who made things from wood
also very tired
with Jesus
who was very much awake

There were wise men
with gifts
gold for a king
frankincense - maybe to cover the smell
for we all know what babies do
and myrrh
a strange gift that one
not one you would expect
not one you or I would think to give
but it was used some years later
but that's another story
for another day

There was Mary
no more than 14
and Joseph
who made things from wood
and there were shepherds
and their sheep
and there were wise men
with presents to give
and there was Jesus
born in the night
a miracle of God
sent from above
to bring us God's love

Second Week in Advent - Peace

2011-12-07T09:32:00.005Z

Using the Northumbria Community readings and looking for hints and glimpses that pertain to peace has not been easy, not least as we are treated to some that most erotic (or is it metaphorical?) scripture in the Song of Songs. Peace is an elusive quality it seems, and I have found the need to hunt quite hard to get anything more than the most trite or twee of connections. However, here are the three texts that I have found most helpful so far, see what you make of them!

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. (Mark 1: 35)

"In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry... Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4: 26; 32)

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. Psalm 139: 13 - 18

What does it mean for us to read scripture through the lens of peace? What does it mean for us to view our world through the same lens?

Give peace in our minds, Oh Lord,
Give peace in our hearts, Oh Lord,
Give peace in our world, Oh Lord,
Amen

singing salvation songs

2011-12-05T08:00:00.001Z

Most of the country at the moment seems caught by the song Wherever You Are sung by the Military Wives Choir. Its testimony to the power of music and of song to connect with our souls – songs get inside us more than any other kind of speech … the oft repeated saying is that people learn what they think about God from their hymns and not the sermons they listen to. There is something about human beings that needs to make music, something that insists on song.

At the centre of our two readings this mornings are two songs, sung also by women – two women in response to the grace of God … Hannah sings in response of the gift of Samuel, Mary sings in response to the gift who will be Jesus …

... Hannah and Mary sing about a new God-transforming world that will unsettle … Israel are also good at the protest song, songs that sing about justice and politics … These women are not pristine, meek and mild … no Hannah and Mary are feisty, stubborn and unashamed, they are gospel singers … singers of God’s good news … they are singers of a deep and dangerous hope that God – the Mighty One, the Rock, the Holy Incomparable Untameable God of Israel who will not be opposed, who is faithful to the promises made to Abraham – this God is acting to save, to judge and make right all of creation … now that is something to sing about …

As Walter Bruggemann writes 'when people can no longer believe the promises of the rulers of this age, when the gifts of well-being are no longer given through the established channels, these songs voice an alternative to which the desperate faithful cling' (1 and 2 Samuel, WJK, 1990) … God is on the move … Mary’s song sets the whole tone for Luke’s gospel … we see this song made concrete in the words and actions of Jesus … this is a song that is both a promise of God who is acting, and a call to respond (HT to Maggi Dawn's Beginnings and Endings, BRF 2007) … Jesus is that promise and response, and for those of us who call him Lord, we receive both the promise that God is making the world right and at the same time the call to be those who live as those who are part of that new world … the first words of Jesus’ ministry pick up the song of his mother in the words of Isaiah 61 …

These songs are salvations songs, songs that re-imagine the world, songs that redefine our vision of life … in God’s world the poor are lifted high, the hungry are blessed … and these are our songs … the question then is what does it mean for us to sing them?

Hannah and Mary are our Advent voices, they are singing to us and how will we respond? … will we say, thanks Hannah and Mary a nice sentiment, a wonderful dream, but come on be real … will we say, Hannah and Mary I’m not sure its appropriate singing about God and singing about politics … will we say Hannah and Mary, its great you’re singing this song, but it’s a bit risky, a bit dangerous to be singing songs like that, so we wish you well … or will we say Hannah and Mary, is there a part for me, can you help me learn this song, I can’t keep silent any longer, let us sing salvation songs together …

Bread of Life

2011-12-04T10:01:00.001Z

Often when I was younger, many of our church youth leaders would tell us that ‘if Jesus had lived today, he would have had the last supper with a Big Mac and a Coke.’ I can understand why they may have said this, to reinforce the transformation of the mundane into the holy. But I wish they hadn’t.

There are, of course, many problems with the image of a ‘McEucharist’, but I want to take particular issue with the idea of the Eucharist as ‘fast food’.

It is easy to think of bread as a fast food in our culture. Bread is often a mass-produced, long-life commodity which we buy in and consume largely as a useful container for whatever lies between two slices. We don’t think about the bread much, it’s just always there.

Recently, though, I have started to play around with making my own bread. One thing which instantly struck me about the process is that it takes a lot of time. It’s not like baking a cake, where you mix some stuff up, and pop it in the oven. To make bread, you have to mix, knead (beat it about for 10-15 minutes) and then… wait.

To get a good loaf of bread takes time. You have to wait for the dough to rise. Then you knock all the air out and let it rise again. You may even knock it back and let it rise once more before you put it in the oven to cook. Even using fast-action yeast, you’re looking at at least 2 hours of waiting where you are not doing anything else at all. If you make sourdough (I haven’t yet!) it could be some days between you starting out and getting your first loaf.

I don’t make my own bread anything like every day – I don’t have time (or so I say). But I have learned something. The bread I do make is so much nicer than any I buy in Sainsbury’s. It’s more flavoursome and has more body to it. Good things, they say, come to those who wait.

Which brings us back to Advent, and to Jesus, who we remember through the breaking of bread, and who called himself the ‘bread of life’. All of that, though, comes later. Because in Advent, we wait for a while as we hope that the dough will rise…

Waiting as a way of life

2011-12-02T08:56:00.001Z

(From Miriam Pugh)

Life in our village in the mountains of northern Tanzania is all about waiting. Most fundamentally, we wait for our visitors to sit in silence before we greet lest they should feel rushed and unwelcome in our houses. We wait for the food to be prepared and eaten together before we can take our leave in a house we visit. We wait for the rains before we can plough; we wait for the donkeys to complete their trek up the mountain before we can drink. We wait for the groom before the weddings can start, we wait for the village before meetings begin. We wait and begin to learn the discipling of just sitting, just being with people. Asla'am, asla'am naemamit - slowly does it, and you will achieve much.

Why wait?

In instant societies where a meal can be conveniently prepared in three minutes, and an entire weeks shop ordered on line in ten or fifteen, waiting is an inconvenience. Making someone else wait is the height of rudeness and shows real lack of consideration. Time is money.

But what if...what if waiting had a value in and of itself? What if learning to wait allowed a still peace to settle on your soul? What if waiting helped you develop ears to listen to the world around you? What if you had to wait so long on a regular basis that you found beyond the cultural pain threshhold of waiting, a suprisingly good thing was waiting for you?

Isaiah tells us that those who wait on God will renew their strength. Waiting on God brings us strength and expresses our dependence on him. Waiting on God can fill us with peace-that-passes-understanding as we know the one we are waiting on is completely faithful. Waiting on God means that we cannot and do not have to be the solution to all our problems. Waiting on God takes the focus away from busy tasks and towards the Giver of all life and love and truth.

Let us wait for Christ, our Messiah with a thirsty soul and a humble heart, knowing that He is the answer and we are not. Let us be ready to wait for a long time... and in the waiting find the peace that passes all our understanding.

Exhausted from sorrow

2011-12-01T08:28:00.001Z

(by David Kerrigan)

On Friday morning last week our staff met for prayer, this time led by our mission department. I was tired, and I had a huge amount to do, but I went. I didn’t seriously consider not going but I know the difference between “I ought to go” and “I really want to go.” This was an ought, but don’t tell anyone!

Least of all Sarah, who had organised different stations around the room, with verses that picked up on the prayers of Jesus in Luke’s gospel. We were encouraged to spend the time quietly and move around the different parts of the room. I went to the first one, sat down and read these words: “When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.” (Luke 22:45) I didn’t move on. This was where I needed to be.

Now, this is the advent season, so why am I taking us to the scenes that belong more to Holy Week? Well, let’s make a connection. You see, I had never ‘seen’ those words before. Of course, I have read this passage many times. I know the story well, and I knew they fell asleep because they couldn’t stay awake. But I had never seen that they were exhausted from sorrow.

Fast forward a couple of millennia, and arguably much of the world today is what the disciples were then – exhausted from sorrow. That may not be your experience, but it is the experience of many who long to live their lives in peace and tranquillity, with a reasonable dollop of hope, yet circumstances mean they cannot do so.

They long to live in such a way that they feel secure, that their kids can get a half-decent education, or see a doctor reasonably easy when they’re sick. They long to see jobs out there that their children can aim for. They’re fearful lest their pension, if they have one at all, isn't enough to live on.

They want to know how they can be free from the sin that niggles away from their conscience and the despair that sucks the joy out of their very marrow.

They may want to know what life is about, and given half the chance they may even want to know if there is a God at all, let alone one that loves them.

And that’s the link to Advent because the primary response to these feelings, yearnings, hopes and frustrations is not a philosophy, and certainly not a political agenda nor a development programme.

The answer is a person, one who enters the human story the way we enter the story, as a babe. And the significance is that from that starting point as an infant he embodies (good word in this context) all our stories.

So if we want to know how to start, then start at Christmas for it’s the part of the divine story that almost all people understand. That’s why Carol services and once-in-a-year church attendance are OK. People come – drawn by something they can’t quite name.

Ordinary people. Exhausted people. People exhausted from sorrow.

First Week in Advent.... Hope

2011-11-30T08:10:00.004Z

This year I have set myself a challenge for Advent... to read the scriptures for each day listed in the Northumbria Community order for morning prayer and to seek within them a glimpse of the 'attribute' for the week and to post them on my own blog. The first week in Advent is 'hope'.

Rather than repeat my reflections here, I have chosen simply to repeat some texts that have struck me, and to offer them for you own consideration. What hints, glimpses of hope do you see?

"I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name." Isaiah 45:3

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit herself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Romans 8:26 (emended)

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me." Isaiah 49: 15 - 16

What does it mean for us to read scripture through the lens of hope? What does it mean for us to view our world through the same lens?

Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy... be there in our living and give us, we pray, your peace in our hearts, Lord, through all of our days. Amen

Happy Advent 2011

2011-11-27T08:50:00.001Z

Today is advent Sunday. So I'd like to wish a happy new year to all my readers. Here's what I have just posted at my blog

Advent is the beginning of the Christian year year because it's the time when we get ready for the coming of Jesus, bringer of the Kingdom of God

There's a great post on a blog I hadn't come across before but will be checking out now. You can find it here. It's by an American writer and reflects on whose calendar we live our lives by - Caesar's or God's? The Christian calendar reminds us that we live our lives by a different story, the story of the coming of our king, his crucifixion and call to live our ordinary time as his disciples rather than as followers of some other value system.

I have often pondered shifting our church year from the three-term academic treadmill we currently follow to the ebb and flow of Christian year, beginning today with a period of reflection and preparation before the celebrations of Christmas, proclaiming through our programme the Lord whose values shape our lives.

Advent gives shape to the longing for change we see all around us at the moment - in the occupy movement, in the conversations with people talking about their daily struggles, in the dreaming of young people for a life that matters. Advent is the time when we reflect on what life is about and how God has promised to come and deliver us from the sins and chains that prevent us from experiencing lives of justice and hope.

Advent reminds us that God has heard and seen, that he is responding to the cries of his people by sending a saviour, a redeemer, a liberator, one who will fulfil the great prophetic hope that God will come to set things right. Advent reminds us that there is an alternative that flows from the heart of our creating, coming God.

And for Christians, advent gives shape to the story we live by, a story dreamed in the heart of God and told in a baby in Bethlehem; a story embodied and articulated in the life and teaching of Jesus; a story realised through the cross that breaks the power of injustice and inequity and in the resurrection that announces new creation starts here: see, says your God, I am making all things new.

As we mark advent, we are preparing ourselves to be part of that game-changing story. What a great to start the year.

Thank You!

2011-01-01T14:11:00.002Z

Can I usurp my position as a mere contributor and thank Andy for organising what I feel has been the best set of reflections yet? Somehow we seem to have found a new depth and breadth which has been inspiring, encouraging, challenging and uplifting. It is good to know that people with Hopeful Imaginations are alive and well and blessing the churches.

Blessings one and all for 2011

Pause for Thought - Radio 2

2010-12-25T06:30:00.025Z

This is Simon Woodman's Pause for Thought from today's Roger Royle programme on Radio 2. Reproduced on the Hopeful Imagination blog with kind permission from the BBC. You can listen again here, 30 minutes into the show.

Good morning, and happy Christmas.

It’s a strange day, Christmas day, isn’t it? I mean, at one level it’s a day like any other, falling rather predictably between the 24th and 26th days of the 12th month. But at another level it’s a day like no other.

We’ve been building up to it for weeks, months even, and the sense of anticipation has been mounting inexorably. From garish grottos in garden centres, to cheesy canned Christmas music round every corner, there has been no escaping the increasingly imminent arrival of Christmas day itself.

And now it’s here, it’s arrived. So happy Christmas.

And what, I wonder, will today hold? Giving? Receiving?; Eating? Drinking?; Family? Loneliness?; Happiness? Sadness? For each of us, today will bring a unique mixture of emotions and activities. But then, as quickly as it began, it’ll all be over. The day passes, and we wonder where on earth it went.

And also, we might wonder, what on earth it meant? Dinah Washington famously sang ‘What a difference a day makes’, and we might well ask this as a question of Christmas day. Just what difference does this one day make?

Within the Christian tradition, Christmas is a day of celebration, but it’s also a day of remembrance. It points back in time to another day, long past, when a young woman gave birth to a child. Just another day, just another birth. And yet Christians believe that that day, that that birth, in some way changed everything. The birth-day of Jesus, one moment in history, one day among many, is celebrated as the moment history changed, the moment God became human.

The Canadian singer Bruce Cockburn puts it beautifully in his song Cry of a tiny babe: Like a stone on the surface of a still river, Driving the ripples on forever, Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe.

So, as I said, happy Christmas.

Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T12:02:00.002Z

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.

Peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.

Peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair, I bowed my head:
'There is no peace on earth,' I said,
'For hate is strong and mocks the song,
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.'

Peace on earth, good will to men.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep;
'God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With Peace on earth, good will to men'.

Peace on earth, good will to men.

For so long now my default “go to” carol over advent has been “O come o come Emmanuel”. I’ve appreciated its element of lament, the great theology in it, the cry of the hurting human heart “O come!”, and the reply of heaven, “Rejoice, Emmanuel shall come”.

However, just recently I’ve been turning to this HW Longfellow poem that has been set to a variety of tunes, but I first encountered performed by John Gorka.

Longfellow wrote this on Christmas Day 1864, a few years after the tragic death of his much beloved wife, Frances, and a few months after the terrible maiming of his son, Charles, who fought in the American civil war.

On first reading it can seem quite simplistic, with its pithy response that the wrong shall fail and the right prevail. That sounds a lot like the kind of things I tell my five year old son, to reassure him, to shelter him from the harsher realities of life as it’s experienced.

And yet, as simple as it sounds, it’s the truth. And for Longfellow, writing in the midst of pain and loss, it speaks of the hope that we’re looking forward to receiving afresh at Christmas, even though sometimes we receive that hope as if from a distance. It’s a declaration of faith. It’s part of the meaning and message that we’re celebrating tomorrow.

Because of this baby, justice will be done; because of this baby, peace becomes a possibility; because even though this baby gently sleeps, God never sleeps.

This Christmas eve, we’re waiting. Waiting for news, waiting for the celebration, waiting for it all to be over, waiting to finish work finally, waiting to see friends, waiting to see if we can make it through, waiting for a clear sound from a pealing bell that will preach the message again. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.

However this waiting day finds you, I pray that when you hear the bells, you’ll hear the angel afresh, Peace on earth, good will to all people.

Another Kind of Waiting

2010-12-23T07:50:00.000Z

“When angry, count to 10 before you speak.”

“Think before you speak.”

“Look before you leap.”

Wise words from wise people: stop and think before you act, perhaps to prevent an action which you might regret. My favourite ‘stop and think’ advice has to be “Before you criticise someone, try walking a mile in their shoes. That way you'll be a mile away and have their shoes!”

Advent is a powerful time for reminding us what we are waiting for. But as these sayings remind us, there are more reasons to wait than just waiting for something; sometimes we wait because of something, holding back from something... “Before you set out just check the forecast will you?” This might only involve waiting a minute, or even ten seconds – just to make sure we’re not making a mistake. This waiting is just long enough to show us that everything might not be as it seemed, and allows us to act from a more thought through or informed position.

We find Joseph receiving his own ‘wait a minute’ call in Matthew:

When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." (2.18b-21)

In general the sayings collected above are good common sense advice that might be plastered round any anger-management course or self-help manual, but Joseph could have followed every good piece of advice given on prudence and would probably still have resolved to dismiss his pregnant fiancée. The angel’s words however are tailored just for this man whose world has just taken a battering. Joseph was asked to hear a higher perspective on what was happening to him, to stay from his course of action: “stop, wait, know what God is doing.” For Joseph it was an angel, for others it has been different. For me it has been scripture, the preacher, the songwriter, the friend or the silence, all of them carrying the voice of Christ. It is Christ who knows our hearts and our ways.

Anyone can ask us to stop and think, but only those with an extra perspective on our lives will be able to tell us why. Advent reminds us, as we consider both Jesus’ coming and return, that God indeed has that all-embracing perspective. In Advent we hear the voice of the one who is the beginning and the end – might that voice, this Advent, be saying ‘wait a minute!’?

A perilous journey

2010-12-22T00:01:00.004Z

“The call of God is essentially a question to which you need to respond, expose yourself, and kneel before. You don't want an answer you can put in a box. You want a question that will become a chariot to carry you across the breadth of your life.” (Greg Levoy, Callings)

This is all Van Div-s’ idea. With all the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the newly initiated priest he had suggested this preposterous journey. The signs were clear enough – of that we were all pretty sure – but most of our seniors were too settled to feel the need to do anything about it. I can’t say that I blame them. Most of them are on a pretty good package for the rest of their days, barring major political upset, that is.

Characteristically it was Van who volunteered to investigate. We’d only just finished poring over the charts, consulting the scriptorium, and deliberating as to the significance of this strange conjunction of the heavenly bodies. The land of the Jews was fabled and the possibility of a new king arising among their people was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. ‘Too good to be missed!’ he had assured us.

I have to say that his speech to the Counsel of the Wise was a bit stellar in itself. It sparkled with wit and passion and secured the much needed patronage, protection, and funds for the journey. I guess the two of us weren’t thrilled with the idea that he should get all the glory for himself and although we made a show of pretending we needed persuading, he probably suspected we were interested in the same things he was: fame and glory!

In the private chambers he’d urged us to consider. Phrases come to mind even now: ‘A bit of an adventure! Every new ruler needs wise counselors!’ ‘’Even if we come home it’s got to look good on our Records of Service.’ After fifteen minutes we feigned our reluctant agreement and drank to the idea. We were set. The three of us made preparations and readied ourselves to leave after the allotted two weeks.

Strangely, the journey’s provided time to reflect on why we were foolish enough to actually believe that this would lead to anything at all. None of us had actually considered that we and the Counsel might have been wrong. Sure, we’ve enjoyed one too many nights over a pitcher of wine during which we’ve smiled and laughed at the brass-necked nature of what we thought we could achieve, but I’ll be very relieved to get back home safe and in one piece.

A frosty, arguably menacing, audience with King Herod didn’t reassure me much, other than by providing us with a possible location to check out. Herod’s infamy is commonly reported throughout the civilized world and it’s clear to me now that the possibility of serving as counsel to a potential rival is not going to be a long-term career move in this part of the Roman Empire. So, we’re heading to Bethlehem with just two more days’ to go and I can’t say I’ll be sorry to get back to the Star-temple once we’ve delivered the Respect of the Counsel: their gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Still, I can’t help wondering what we’re going to learn after all of this. Far from fame and fortune I suspect we’ll be lucky to make it into the text of even one of the minor annals, although I hope it’s going to add to our repository of wisdom and stature. The one thing I can begin to draw from it, even now, is the compelling nature of our dreams and ambitions. They can readily grow into a call; something stamped upon our lives that can stay with us for a very long time indeed. The parting advice from the Counsel elders as we left was something in this vein. Something about ‘Remain alert to what you may hear in your dreams. The stars only point to the story, the story is always more than the stars.’ Not a bad piece of advice, I suppose. It may yet come in useful.

(Darrell Jackson)

Do our neighbours see what the shepherds saw?

2010-12-21T12:29:00.001Z

I'm trying to work things out
I'm trying to comprehend:
am I the chance result of some great accident?
I hear a rhythm call me,
the echo of a grand design;
I spend each night in the backyard staring up at the stars in the sky:
maybe this was made for me,
for lying on my back in the middle of a field;
maybe that's a selfish thought
or maybe there's a loving God.
Maybe I was made this way
to think and to reason and to question and to pray
and I have never prayed a lot
But maybe there's a loving God...

Life’s full of maybes, some more mundane than the ones Sara Groves sings about: maybe we’ll make ends meet next month; maybe I’ll get that promotion at work; maybe my child will make more friends at school next term; maybe life’ll be better next year…
We’re living through trying times, symbolised by snow-bound Britain making getting about so tiresome. Shrinking incomes, rising prices, job insecurity, a general feeling of uncertainty and malaise leave us feeling we could use some good news.

Like the shepherds: slumbering, star-gazing, shivering, stoical; suddenly roused by choirs of angels and a startling message. I wonder if they got it. We read Luke’s account like good Bible students picking up the echoes of Isaiah, allusions to past stories. But did the shepherds get it as they shambled down the hill into the town looking for the bizarre sign the angel told them to look out for: a baby in a feeding trough?
It was all too unbelievable for words. And yet, they went. Maybe what drew them was the thought that if a baby had been born, there’d be a party going on; there’d be free food and drink and a warm room to gather in for a while. And probably when they arrived at the house, it was teeming with people: relatives crammed in because of the census, neighbours invited to wet the baby’s head, curious on-lookers.

Babies are always good news; they might turn our lives upside down, but they also fill them with joy – even though we know that they are another mouth to feed when the taxes are high and work is hard to find (is that what Joseph felt?).

But this one was particularly good news; this one would bring unimaginable change to the lives of his family, to the neighbours peering into the manger, to the shepherds shambling down the back streets, to the magi setting off from their palaces in the East, to Herod fearfully hanging on to power in near-by Jerusalem, even to Caesar, oblivious to events so far from Rome, who had sent this family on their perilous journey to this birth in the first place.
Everyone’s affected; life will never be the same. This child is the one that Isaiah spoke about: ‘For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace…The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord— and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth' (9:6; 11:2-4).

Did the shepherds see this? Probably not; not fully, anyway. But they felt warm and filled and included. The neighbours had come because of the screaming – first Mary’s then Jesus’ (whatever Away in the Manger says!) – but the shepherds came because angels summoned them; God invited them to celebrate the birth of his Son. They could fill in the details when Luke published his book.

Often we live through events that we can only make sense of later. This morning someone described the 7/7 inquest as the first opportunity to create a continuous narrative of that momentous morning. The gospels are the first continuous narrative of the Christmas story that was experienced by participants in bits and pieces and whose significance was debated and chewed over for days and weeks afterwards.

And our friends and neighbours who shamble through their Christmas celebration, holding on to traditions that are part Christian, part family, part consumerist, do they get it? Probably not; not the first time we tell them or the second or the fifteenth…

But we keep inviting them because this is good news; because God really does like them and look on them with favour – however they choose to celebrate this day; because this child is for them as for the shepherds. And we, like the angels, are sent with the good news of Jesus’ birth to summon them to wonder and possibly even worship.
As Sara Groves sings:

Maybe I was made this way
to think and to reason and to question and to pray;
and I have never prayed a lot;
but maybe there's a loving God...

Continuing the theme of Mary...

2010-12-20T11:05:00.004Z

Yesterday morning heralded adverse conditions. Two significant snowfalls in quick succession on Saturday left our congregation with an early morning decision to be made: enjoy a relaxing, leisurely time in warm homes or venture out to church in the sub-zero temperatures. Understandably those with impassable roads or a legitimate fear of the adverse weather rightly stayed at home (or to use Black Country speak ‘stopped in’). However the effort made by many to “be in the Lord’s house on the Lord’s day” was commendable and there was a lovely spirit of teamwork and collaboration: people accompanying others and arriving on foot together, offers of lifts for the elderly, others on hand to shovel the snow from the church pathway, extra mince pies for afterwards.

Our service focused on Mary, the bearer of God’s son. We reflected on the adverse conditions that were encountered in Bethlehem. Probably no snowfall when Christ was born, but the fear of being a young Jewish girl living under Roman occupation during times of mistreatment, poverty and injustice. Despite this, Mary overcame her anxiety. She knew how to say ‘Yes’ to God even though the future was not yet clear to her and she knew very little detail of what was to come. This young girl’s initial stuttering confidence in God became complete openness to be used for divine purposes, ‘may it be to me as you have said’ she replied to Gabriel.

Mary was as human as we are. Along with other young girls in her day she was perhaps not viewed very favourably by others with more authority and control in her culture, and yet she was captivated by God’s kingdom, of a world put right by God. So she responds with faith-inspired protest:

‘he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts'
‘he has brought down rulers from their thrones’
‘he has lifted up the humble, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty’

Not at all easy for a young teenage girl under foreign occupation to have such audacious confidence, yet her faith in God enabled her to see beyond the adverse conditions surrounding her and to imagine life lived under the kingdom of God.

During our service we also watched a presentation related to the words of a song called ‘Labour of Love’ – reminding us of Mary’s condition. In a gentle way this song gives us some reality of the adverse conditions into which her son, our Saviour, was born. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjYi4tYvXU

Faith and obedience in the midst of adversity. May it be so for all who struggle this Christmas.

Poor Mary Sits A-weeping?

2010-12-19T06:00:00.004Z

Advent 4: the Sunday that liturgically ought to see us focussing our thoughts on Mary the mother of Jesus. But come to most Protestant Nonconformist churches and we will be doing other things. Good things, great things even – the Sunday School Nativity, the Community Carol Service, the pensioner's party, the outreach event... But Mary will do well to get a bit-part in the day and may be ignored completely. So does she "sit a-weeping" as we carry on our own way?

Poor Mary! In some churches she is forced to become a plaster saint, eternally perfect, perpetually young and, of course, ever virgin. In other churches she isn't even given house room; prophets are listened to, the Baptiser is feared, but Mary finds herself overlooked or avoided, maybe a young woman pregnant outside wedlock is a step too far. Poor Mary indeed.

Authenticity and acceptability: two things that Mary seems to be denied. All of which makes me think about our own churches and who might be the weeping Marys this Advent.

Who is it, male or female, young or old, who we ignore, overlook or push out in all the busyness of our services? In our doing of much that is good, who is it we inadvertently bruise? Who stays home because it is all too painful? Who is weeping on the inside even they are smiling on the outside? Are our churches places where people can be truly authentic and still be accepted?

The playground song has its Mary weeping for a playmate – someone with whom she can be authentic and still be accepted; someone who will share the lows and highs. Someone who will be there with and for her when she finds herself overlooked or marginalised. Who might be that playmate for us in our own 'Maryness' and to whom might we offer the acceptance they so desperately need?

When the Mary of the song finds her playmate everyone is happy. When Mary the mother of Jesus encountered an angel, she was declared blessed, in Greek makarios, which can also be translated happy.

Can we be messengers of blessing, of true happiness, to the 'Marys' we meet this Advent, accepting them as they are in their raw authenticity? I dare to imagine, hopefully, that we might.

Postscript

Among the Hopeful Imaginers I know in the 'real world' are some who have had a very tough year; those with eyes to see may have spotted the hints in their posts. Some have faced personal or family problems and some have seen their churches struck by tragedy or ignominy; each has maintained their authenticity and their acceptance of others as well as their ability to imagine hopefully. I am glad, in whatever measure, to count them among my playmates, and to pray that they may dance with other 'Marys' in the ceilidh of God's Shalom and so find blessing indeed.

How Shall This Be?

2010-12-18T10:10:00.002Z

‘How will this be?’ asked Mary when Gabriel announced that she would give birth to Jesus. ‘How will this be? I’m a virgin.’

It was a good question. After all, true faith isn’t, as a child is reported to have said, believing in things you know aren’t true. One of the main arguments perpetuated by the modern atheist lobby is that believers are simple people, believing superstitious nonsense, whilst they just look at the world as it is.

That wasn’t Mary’s faith. She might only have been 12 or 13, from, Nazareth, a bit of a backwater town. Chances are she was uneducated, illiterate even. But she wasn’t gullible. She knew where babies came from - and she’d not been there. She knew what she’d just been told didn’t make a huge amount of sense. But she’s not afraid to ask the question. For Mary, belief in God didn’t mean leaving her brains at the door.

So often in churches we don’t really offer space for questions. Some churches quite explicitly condemn it. Others are more subtle. Early in my ministry someone wiser than me, warned me against referring to ‘what God has given me today’ because it can suggest that ‘God’s given it, so don’t you question it.’ Even the lecture style set up of our worship can create that kind of impression.

But Mary asks a good question and isn’t chastised for doing so. But nor is her question utterly sceptical. Her questions isn’t ‘how can this be?’, but ‘how shall it be?’ There’s a sense of ‘ok, I believe you, now show me how that works.’

It’s a really good question for the Advent season. We are people, like the Jews of Mary’s day, with a promise that has not yet been fulfilled. We have that great Revelation promise that ‘he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. I am making everything new.’

And we might ask the question... how will this happen... after all, this person’s cancer continues to spread, these two people haven’t spoken in years, nobody’s taking on new staff these days... you fill in the blank. When millions of people across our globe have no access to medication, how will that happen?

Mary isn’t left completely without evidence. Some of it is within her, in the Holy Spirit overshadowing her. Some of it is external - why else would she go dashing off to see Elizabeth - she wants to know if it’s true.

And before all that she is offered a reason, a why it will happen. Which on the face of it is no reason at all. Because she is favoured and God is with her. The word for favour is the same word as the word for grace.

Why do we believe God will keep his promise? Because God is good, God is gracious. When we ask how will it happen, we can’t see it because we look at ourselves and realise our own inability to bring it about. And God says ‘that’s hardly the point - it happens because of grace.’

Ultimately she is left with one proposition she has to accept - that nothing is impossible with God. At Advent I can name the reasons why on the face of it God can’t keep his promise and we’re not chastised for doing so, but because of Jesus we can say ‘ok I believe you, now show me how that works.’ And we can ask that because nothing is impossible with God.

The people walking in darkness

2010-12-17T01:03:00.003Z

"The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned."

Isaiah 9:2

As I approached advent this year I have been very conscious of the above words from Isaiah. These words speak of the contrast between dark and light. We don't easily talk about darkness nor are we comfortable living in darkness. At this time of year we like the sparkle of fairy lights, the warm glow of artifical lights, but not the great light, and certainly not darkness. I've wondered what it means to walk in darkness. Is it not knowing where you are walking? Does it mean not knowing what's ahead of you? Is darkness everything that is not of God - injustice, violence, terror, abuse, disease, and death? And if this is darkness what is deep darkness?

It seems we start advent walking in darkness. Then as the season unfolds our gaze is lifted upwards to see the greatness of the light that is on the horizon. As we see it is coming on the horizon we recognise we need to rid ourselves of the artifical light to make room for the great light. And as we rid ourselves of the artifical lights so we become conscious of the darkness. As we continue to live in darkness a light dawns. Our eyes are drawn to this light. As the light breaks we start to see again. We might only see a chink or ray but we wait in ancipation of the dawning of the fullness of light. In those chinks and rays we wait. We watch for the brightness of the midday. We become intrigued by the light and how it dispels the darkness. We are in awe of the light for through it we begin to see. Our whole being is uplifted and peace fills our hearts.

In this chink of light we don't forget the darkness nor do we disregard the coming of the fullness of light. Instead we wait in that mid-point in time. In it we pray "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." My prayer this year is that the light of the world might shine in the darkness; and particularly being with those that experience a chink or a ray admist the darkness.

The Guitar

2010-12-15T23:29:00.005Z

(A story to loosely orbit Luke 2:25-35)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any man in possession of even the most modest of fortunes must be in want of a guitar; especially if, as in Len’s case, one already has a wife. The possession and mastery of a guitar, Len had always felt, was the modern equivalent of wielding one’s trusty spear upon the misty and mammoth-ridden plains of yesteryear. He had dreamed of owning one for many years, but it was only on one cold November morning, in his 43rd year, as he examined his reflection in the bathroom mirror, that the lifelong desire finally congealed into concrete resolution. He went to the music shop that very day; strummed his way fervently through an entire gaggle of guitars; until, at last: there it was! According to the long haired assistant with his unseemly piercings, it had been carefully fashioned from cedar wood by an up-and-coming manufacturer called (rather extravagantly) Messiah Guitars, and was able to do several whizzy things Len had never even heard of (although this didn’t stop him from nodding sagely). ‘I felt like Harry Potter picking up his wand in Ollivander’s!’ he told his wife (Maz) afterwards, his face transfigured with excitement. She’d not read the book, but as it turned out, shared his gift for nodding sagely. After a bit of to-and-fro-ing, Len finally persuaded her to make the purchase and go through the farce of wrapping it up for Christmas. He then spent several tortuous weeks almost wetting himself with anticipation.

The big day finally came however, and there, squat beside the twinkling tree sat the beautiful dream. Len almost fancied he could hear its siren strings whistling under the wrapping before he tore it off. He missed the Queen’s speech, a slice of yule log, and several films he’d circled in the TV times, because of his new love; and tinkered away on its frets and strings with the concentration of a saint at prayer. He kept up the strumming for what his neighbour dubbed ‘three blesséd weeks’, and bought no end of gadgets and guidebooks to fuel this ‘new way of life’. But, sadly, as is often the case with these things, and despite his wife’s continued encouragement, his enthusiasm began to wane. He realised the closest he’d got to becoming an acoustic maestro were the calluses that now crowned his fingertips. He couldn’t even do block chords. And – insult to injury – it all finally came to a standstill when his friend Mike popped round in early Feb, presumptuously plucked Len’s guitar from its stand, and deftly knocked out some Eric Clapton number. ‘Didn’t know you played’, Len observed darkly; ‘Yeah. 12 years. Guitars ay?! Five minutes to learn; a lifetime to master!’

Quite a lot of dust settled on the Messiah after that. On the odd occasion he’d pick it up, but the strings were all out of whack from neglect and he didn’t have an ear for tuning. Over time he even came to feel that the thing was quietly judging him from the spare room; accusing him with its polite and infuriating silence. Having said that, he surprised even himself when he smashed the thing to splinters three years later. He’d come back from a high school reunion, where his old classmate Dave Romanov had had the cheek to turn up in a Merc. Len knew he’d had a few too many by the end of the evening, but felt bizarrely sober as he thoroughly annihilated that guitar against the garage wall, before burning the evidence in the metal bin at the end of the garden. As the firelight spluttered over his down turned face, he reflected glumly that he’d have to make up some story to tell Maz about lending it to Mike. She still proudly described him as ‘the musical one’ to friends; it’d pierce her heart like a dagger if she knew. It’s funny, he mused, how you end up hating the very thing you once longed for. He blandly watched the popping blaze for some time. Should have sold it on e-bay, he added to himself, would have got enough to buy that exercise bike. The one from the Argos catalogue.

Christmas is all about presents...

2010-12-15T12:33:00.005Z

This weekend I took my annual trip to London. I’m not a massive fan of London, I must admit, it’s big and anonymous and the tube line I need is never working properly. But once a year I take a trip to London and do the oh so commercial walk from one end of Oxford street to the other, admiring the christmas lights, and spending a few hours in Hamley's, to do my Christmas shopping. Now I’ve spent many years kicking against the commercialism of Christmas, to the point where I’ve been a bit of a scrooge. But sitting in a coffee shop on Carnaby street, watching the happy shoppers pass by the window, I came to the conclusion that Christmas is all about presents. And we’d all be better off if we just accepted it.

You see a precedent was set in that very first christmas story, as the magi made their very long journey to visit a new born king. I suppose my thoughts may have been somewhat coloured by the salvation army’s rendition of We Three Kings outside the window. So I sat and pondered the gifts the magi brought with them to greet that baby, born in a stable among the animals, his life already threatened; not the most regal birth one could imagine.

“Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown Him again.”

Gold is the symbol of wealth, and power, and excellence. We still give gold medals to those who achieve great things. Our wealth, our material substance, represents the investment of our time and the application of our abilities. Our “gold,” whether it’s money or some other entity, shows what’s important in our life. What we do with our “gold” reveals what we hold to be of greatest value. It was important to the Magi to find the Saviour of the world, and when they found him they honoured him with their substance, that gold that speaks of his royal authority.

How do we allocate the resources with which the Lord has blessed us? For truly, our “gold” isn’t about us — it’s about God, and how he has worked in us to bring about the rewards of honest labour and diligent effort. Will we, like the Magi, recognize and honour our Saviour with our gifts of gold? Will we bring our substance to the feet of our King, no longer a babe in a manger but the victorious Lamb seated at the right hand of the throne of God — “King forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign”? What we do with our money and other resources tells the whole world who we think our King and Provider really is. When we offer our gifts for the work of the gospel of Christ, we join the Magi in declaring his kingship. “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12).

“Frankincense to offer have I; incense owns a Deity nigh.”

In the Bible, incense is a symbol of prayer and worship, for it was offered along with the sacrifices of the sanctuary. The Psalmist cries, “Let my prayer be counted as incense before thee, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice!” (141:2). When the Magi offered incense to the Christ child, they were acknowledging that they knelt in the presence of the holy, they came, worshiping — bending the knee, falling down before the Christ, perhaps bowing in awed silence in the presence of a divine mystery they could not fathom.

As we enter the place of worship, do we come with that same sense of the holy mystery of God that the wise men brought to the Christ child? Do we come, offering the “incense” of our worshipful expectancy and humble adoration? Do we come with “prayer and praising, voices raising, worshiping God on high?” The Magi remind us that it’s no casual thing to enter into the presence of the living Christ. They remind us that we don’t come to be entertained, amused or even instructed; we come to meet the Lord, to encounter the overwhelming majesty of God. If that doesn’t happen in our gathering, we haven’t brought the right gift into his presence. We’ve brought another agenda with us, an agenda that runs counter to the purpose the Lord has for us when he declares, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Let’s always come into God’s presence as the Magi did, offering the gift of our prayerful devotion.

“Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom.”

What kind of a gift is this for a newborn — myrrh, the spice used in preparing a body for burial? Death is usually the furthest thing from our minds when welcoming a new child into the world. Yet, somehow, the Magi knew that this child of Bethlehem was destined for death — not in the massacre of King Herod, who murdered many innocent children in trying to wipe out this threat to his rule, but death on a cross bearing the sins of the world. Had the wise men heard the ancient words of Isaiah, “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (53:3)? Somehow they understood what would happen to this child, and their understanding was perhaps confirmed when they saw the reaction of the Jerusalem leaders to the news they brought of the birth of a ruler. And so they came, kneeling in humility before a King, kneeling in worship before a God, and kneeling in sorrow before a Saviour who would one day give his life for them.

How do we offer our own gift of “myrrh” when we come to worship the Lord Jesus? As we gather about his holy table, we remember the words of the apostle Paul: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes”. As we gather around his table, we hear his words: “This is my body which is for you; do this in remembrance of me. . . . This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Even at the most joyous of times, even in the high of the Christmas period, we never forget the price Jesus paid to reconcile us with our heavenly Father. We come in humble thanksgiving, remembering what Jesus has done for us, “sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,” his body “sealed in the stone cold tomb.”

You see in our own Christmas story the precedent was set; giving presents is an important part of Christmas. Sitting around the tree together and exchanging gifts is not something we need to kick against, it is something we can embrace. But we need to remember, as we swap gifts with one another and share our generosity, not to forget the birthday boy! We must ask ourselves as we walk along our high streets laden with bags full of presents and cards and wrapping paper, what gifts we will be offering to our king this Christmas, will we arrive empty handed and underprepared, too worried about who we have and haven’t bought for? Or will we arrive full of wonder, love and awe, offering our gold, frankincense and myrrh?

Advent, Eschatology, and the Unity of the Church

2010-12-14T00:01:00.006Z

I’m posting to hopefulimagination from Regent’s Park College of Oxford University, where I’m serving as a member of the Baptist delegation to the international ecumenical dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the (Roman Catholic) Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. It’s fitting that we’re having these conversations during the deeply eschatological season of Advent, for the Christian eschatological vision is the only thing that can make sense of the otherwise hopeless task of seeking after the visible unity of the church in the midst of its divisions.

The basic premise of New Testament eschatology is this: the reign of God that has come near in Christ is already a present reality, but it is not yet fully realized. That’s the biblical framework for the quest for the unity Christ prayed for his church in John 17. Christians already possess unity in that they belong to the one body of Christ and are indwelt by one Spirit. But as the current divisions of the church attest, this unity is not yet fully realized, for its fullness is not visible. If unity, however, is conceived primarily as a spiritual reality, we may see little reason to devote our energies to the earnest contestation of church-dividing issues of faith and order that must precede visible unity. After all, this unity in Christ and in the Sprit is already a present reality quite apart from any visible manifestations of this unity.

Likewise if visible unity is only fully realized in the age to come, then some may decide there's little or no reason to seek it in the present age. Many Protestants have insisted that the four “marks of the church” in the Nicene Creed, including the oneness of the church, are eschatological marks of the church. That’s true enough. One legacy of this insistence, though, is an aversion to efforts to realize these marks, especially the mark of visible oneness, in the present. But even if the oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the church will fully be realized only eschatologically, that does not mean that the church shouldn’t seek to attain to those marks here and now.

The inadequacy of both of these patterns of relating eschatology to the ecumenical task is apparent in light of an analogous relation of eschatology to the saints’ quest for holiness of life. Even now in this earthly life, the saints already are just that—“holy ones” (Eph. 1:1) who are “seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6 NRSV). But in this earthly life the saints are not yet fully holy in person or practice. The completion of sanctification awaits the “eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” (2 Cor. 4:17).

Just as the present positional holiness of the saints in Christ does not warrant a refusal of the sanctifying work of the Spirit in the present, and just as the deferral of the glorification of the saints until the resurrection should not de-motivate the present pursuit of the sanctification that will be completed in the eschaton, so it is with the already / not-yet nature of Christian unity. Because we’ve already been entrusted with the lasting reality of oneness in Christ and in the Spirit, we must seek to make this oneness visible to the world in advance of the age to come. And because visible unity is a vision of the last things disclosed by Jesus himself, we can be confident that when we take action to seek the visible unity of the church, we’re joining God in what God intends to do in and through the church in the culmination of God’s goals for all things.

May it be so. How long, O Lord, until it is? Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Steven R. Harmon teaches Christian Theology at the Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, and is the author of Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010). This blog post is adapted from a chapter he contributed to A Century of Prayer for Christian Unity, ed. Catherine E. Clifford (Eerdmans, 2009).

Waiting for God

2010-12-13T03:00:00.008Z

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard examines two aspects of stalking animals: stillness and pursuit. She employs them both to catch a glimpse of the fish and the muskrats that live in the creek. Dillard writes about seeing. She writes of encountering nature and the divine. Like Moses in the cleft of the rock she waits motionless and watches, for fish and muskrats and, we suppose, for God; or like Jacob at the Jabbok she pursues her quarry with patient, unrelenting persistence.

‘You have to stalk everything. Everything scatters and gathers; everything comes and goes like fish under a bridge. You have to stalk the spirit, too. You can wait forgetful anywhere, for anywhere is the way of his fleet passage, and hope to catch him by the tail and shout something in his ear before he wrests away. Or you can pursue him wherever you dare, risking the shrunken sinew in the hollow of the thigh; you can bang at the door all night till the innkeeper relents, if he ever relents; and you can wail till you’re hoarse or worse the cry of incarnation always in John Knoepfle’s poem: “and Christ is red rover . . . and the children are calling / come over come over.” I sit on a bridge as on Pisgah or Sinai, and I am both waiting becalmed in a cliff of the rock and banging with all my will, calling like a child beating on a door: Come on out! . . . I know you’re there.’ (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Perennial Classics edition, 1999, 207)

(By the way, I have read a few of Knoepfle’s poems but have never come across the one Dillard quotes – does anybody know where I can find it?)

Advent is about waiting, not only for Christmas but also for God. It is about opening our eyes and ears, attuning our spiritual senses to the presence of the Spirit. We can do this in at least two ways: We can sit or kneel quietly and, ceasing all other activity, turn our attention toward God. We can also, during the course of everyday living, pay greater attention to the people and circumstances around us, actively looking and listening for traces of God there. We need both approaches. When we follow them we might find, with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes –
the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘Aurora Leigh’, The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Macmillan, 1897, 466)

Taken together, these two ways might produce a kind of virtuous circle. The practice of Morning Prayer attunes our senses to the presence of the divine. As we live attentively, we discover God in the everyday and so return our prayers in thanksgiving. As Abraham Joshua Heschel puts it, ‘Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.’ (Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, Aurora Press, 1998, 5)

Advent gives us an excuse to practise.

‘Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!’ Psalm 27.14

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

2010-12-12T06:30:00.002Z

No one filled Tommy’s wellies

as we turned on Christmas lights

in the park.

No one forgets your name

while taking your loan repayment

on Thursdays.

No one gives you chocolates

way past their sell-by date:

a thank-you.

Tommy has moved.

Kath has died.

Elsie has died.

Jimmy is in Chorlton

but where are his kids?

Margaret, now well again

is in Withington.

Beryl, across the park

has regained her spring.

But where are the Nguyen’s?

Where’s Canadian Steve?

Where are the nameless Czechs

who loved to hear me play the guitar

over their garden wall?

What has happened to Phil, the dealer?

Or Angela or Janet, his terrified pawns?

Where is Jimmy, whose unpronounceable name

was never given?

And where is the church they were all drawn to?

Where is the church where community gathered?

Where is the church where people communed?

I will destroy this temple that is made with hands,

and in three days I will build another,

not made with hands.

Three days

Three months

Three years

A thousand years is like a second.

Two thousand years—a baby born

Two thousand years—a baby sought

Two thousand years—a baby forced to flee

Three days

Three months

Three years?

Homeless.

Refugee.

Asylum seeker.

Censused in Bethlehem

Dwelling in Nazareth

Hiding in Egypt

Lost to the system

Where are the Bar-Josephs?

Whatever happened to Yeshua?

A voice cries in Ramah

A voice cries in Openshaw

A voice cries across the demolition site

A voice cries in the wilderness

Interruptions

2010-12-11T09:42:00.005Z

This has been a very strange Advent for me this year. The weekend before Advent Sunday I ended up in hospital for 4 nights. Others had to step in quickly and lead the services and did so willingly. A planned return to hospital on the 17th December for the day will hopefully see me fully back in action after that.
It has been frustrating. Much that I had planned has come to nought and I keep thinking of all the things I should be doing and could be doing. This episode rudely interrupted my carefully mapped out Advent. But the severe weather in many parts of the country has also, I am sure, disrupted many other carefully laid plans during the past weeks.

But, of course, the Advent story is full of interruptions to the plans of those involved.

Gabriel’s visit to Mary with the news that she was to have a child would surely have interrupted her plans for how she imagined her life would begin to unfold with Joseph.

Joseph’s plans were equally torn up because of Mary’s pregnancy and by the angel visitor who assured him that he should continue to take Mary as his wife. That was no easy decision.

The Roman census that meant a journey to Bethlehem must have seemed such an inconvenience at that moment in their lives as they awaited the birth of the child. Why was this happening just when they wanted to be at home surrounded by family?

The shepherds in the fields had their night’s work interrupted by the angelic messengers who told them of the good news - to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord. What should thy do about it?

Even the wise men on their journey went by way of Jerusalem, expecting to find the new born king there. This was a dangerous detour on their journey because it brought King Herod into the event and that would result tragedy to many families. It would also result in Mary, Joseph and Jesus seeking safety in Egypt. That would not have been part of their plan.

How do we deal with the interruptions that come to our plans? Some interruptions may be quite trivial and easily dealt with while others are more serious and difficult. One visitor suggested that I should see the interruption to my Advent plans as an opportunity - the opportunity to have some time for myself. Perhaps this interruption is the reminder that I am not indispensable and there are others in the church who are more than capable of doing things.

Do I need to take heed of the advice that I have so often given others in the past? When faced with unwelcome interruptions that seemed to make no sense in their lives my response has often been to encourage them not to get hung up on the question of why this interruption has come. Rather the encouragement is to reflect on the question, how will I react?

Isn’t that really the question that the main characters in the Advent story faced up to and answered, and often did so in the most remarkable ways?

The Cosmic Comma

2010-12-10T07:26:00.004Z

Last week we spent a day with Stuart Murray-Williams looking at Anabaptist history, theology and spirituality and its possible implications for BMS. It was a fascinating day, well presented, easy to engage with and highly relevant.

In the middle of the day came one of those nuggets you remember, something that stops you in your tracks. Reflecting on the centrality of the life of Jesus to Anabaptists, Stuart made the observation that the historic creeds of the church so often ignore the everyday life of Jesus.

For example, we are familiar with the line from the creed “…born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate…” to which Stuart added ruefully “the whole of life between birth and death reduced to a comma!”

Pop that in your pipe and smoke it!

The incarnation is about God Immanuel coming to share our life. That life was not simply the preamble to his death, nor just the necessary passage of time that needed to elapse before ‘the hour has come’. Jesus came not just to die but to show us how to live, and God knows we need help knowing how to live!

Maybe our mission, 'should we choose to accept it', is not to mention the death of Jesus in a Christmas sermon this year. When our message is condensed to ‘he came... to die’ we perpetuate the mistake of the cosmic comma.

Instead, enter into the Advent story and help people imagine how Jesus developed in his mother’s womb, how he grew and began to learn carpentry and scripture side-by-side, maybe a playful boy but certainly a thoughtful one. How else would he be able to hold his own with the Rabbis in the temple at the age of twelve years?

Tell people about how later in life he loved to share meals with people, rough diamonds we might say, and how he taught in a way that captivated the masses but alienated those with power.

Find the words to describe the trembling fear of the woman accused of adultery, all of life before her but now screaming with nausea at the vile death that seemed inevitable. Find a way of describing her unbelief at the mercy she found in Jesus.

Take people to the Sermon on the Mount and help them struggle with the command to love your enemies, and turn the other cheek. Do it with the bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other.

Talk about weddings in places like Cana. Talk about feasts and festivals, about fried fish and fresh bread, and the biblical importance of hospitality.

Advent is about life. Its about travelling in the winter, having a baby in the frost, wondering about the future, being very poor. It’s about breast-feeding and exhaustion and finding some swaddling clothes for the poor mite in the barn.

Its about infant cries and mother’s sighs and Joseph feeling inadequate and unsure.

Tell people about the comma! Tell them about life.

There’ll be time enough for death.

David Kerrigan

Waiting in the creativity of God.

2010-12-09T08:49:00.002Z

Most of my inspiration this advent has come from two particular friends:

– Simeon who I know no more than anyone else and what I read in Luke chapter two.

– Geoff Colmer who told me something about the nature of all good musical composition.

Simeon, it strikes me, lived in hopeful imagination. We simply know how others viewed him – ‘a good man, a man who lived in the prayerful expectancy of help for Israel.’

He waited … patiently, hopefully, righteously…. but he lived out his life in that place of creative tension. The word was now, but not yet. The tension it created in him was only resolved when he held the tiny Jesus in his arms – ‘you now release your servant; release me in peace as you promised.’

Geoff explained recently how any decent musical composition, (whether it be Humpty, Dumpty, or a Wagner Opera, which were the two examples he used) works with a dynamic built around three elements:

Equilibrium – ‘Humpty, Dumpty sat on a wall’

Tension – ‘Humpty, Dumpty had a great fall’, then (sing it out loud or in your head because it gets worse ….) ‘All the kings horses and all the kings men’.

Resolution – ‘Couldn’t put Humpty together again.’

The thing, which struck me especially, is without the tension, conflict, anxiety music lacks dynamism and movement.

I remember when more involved with counselling individuals and couples, so often hearing how ‘last week’ (ie their counselling session with me) had ‘made things far worse’. My response was always ‘that’s very good’. The thing I discovered was things usually had to get worse before they could get better – the tension had to increase. Only when we dare to confront the reality of submerged emotion and repressed feeling do we invariably get close to the real issues, or the resolution people despair for seeking after in grief.

There is no Christmas story of any eternal significance without an Easter story.

There is no resolution without tension.

There is no resurrection without a cross.

There is no Christmas worth having without an advent of the tension of waiting, the frustration of preparation, the infuriating nature of listening, the pain of unrealised hope.

The tree was my favourite image of those I took driving home yesterday. It was absolutely freezing, just getting out of the car to take the photo. A solitary tree waiting for spring.

Without Faith?

2010-12-08T09:40:00.003Z

“This is my church.

This is where I heal my hurts

For tonight

God is a DJ.”

The scene is not a church or cathedral, but a huge warehouse of an arena, packed with people of all different ages, juggling pints of beer in plastic glasses, taking photos with mobile phones and “bouncing” with arms waving ecstatically in the air. The music is loud and strobe lights pulse with the rhythm of the beat. An image gradually builds up across the light bank that forms the backdrop of the stage. Deborah thinks the image is a huge church or cathedral. I interpret it as skyscrapers forming a cityscape. Either way on the words “God is a DJ” the lights explode with a flash of sudden revelation.

After such a call to worship and time of praise, then comes the sermon, a powerful prophetic and poetic oratory, “misinformation… racism… fear… greed… inaction is a weapon of mass destruction”, underscored by moving words of light proclaiming the shocking world statistics of injustice and oppression and cost to human lives.

Then comes stillness and confession as we are humbled and challenged with the words of Salva Mea, “How can I change the world if I can’t even change myself?”

We are then invited to participate in a congregational sharing of a vision of how things could be, a vision of the kin-dom, “We come one” “Christian and Muslim, We come one…. Beneath the skin we are all the same, We come one”.

At the end, the skinny bare-chested, middle-aged singer/rapper bows low, not so much to the congregation but to something greater or deeper or maybe the divine image within, and sends us out with words of profound thanks and blessing, exhorting us to honour ourselves and each another and build a different kind of world.

Is this not the message of Advent hope that John the Baptist proclaimed a long way from the synagogue or temple hall? Is this not a glimpse of the Dancing Scarecrow? The poet, prophet and priest?

Maybe I should explain? Last Saturday, having spent most of the day preparing the Advent service for the next day on the theme of John the Baptist, we went, along with around 20,000 other people to see the misnamed Faithless live in concert at the MEN arena in Manchester.

O magnum mysterium

2010-12-07T08:58:00.000Z

This past week, I’ve discovered the Christmas responsorial chant O magnum mysterium. It celebrates the presence of animals at the birth of Jesus, notably the ox and the ass (extrapolated from Isaiah 1:3 and part of the Septuagint’s translation of Habakkuk 3:2: ‘you shall be known between the two living creatures’). My simple reflection is this: O magnum mysterium, though a Christmas chant, allows us to recognise that during the advent season, it’s not just humanity that waits for the One to come; it’s the whole of created reality, beasts included. Jesus comes as Messiah of all, as the high priest of creation. An obvious point, perhaps, but one seldom emphasised.

Here is the text of O magnum mysterium in both Latin and English; and do listen to Morten Lauridsen’s sublime arrangement of it.

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum.
Alleluia.

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!

Have we tested and tasted too much already?

2010-12-06T11:46:00.002Z

With the numerous Christmas parties and activities well under way (including many of those organised by the church) it is easy to forget that Advent is supposed to prepare us for the feasting of Christ’s nativity by leading us, like Lent, through a period of fasting and penance. Given how easily the word ‘austerity’ has been recast as the universal bogey-man of western living in the last twelve months there seems little prospect of the High Street embracing a more penitential or self-denying Advent, but we might expect more of those who claim to follow the child who will be born with the government of the world upon his shoulders.

The hopeful imagination on which we reflect in this Advent blog is rarely nurtured at the table where people have already ‘tested and tasted too much.’ Knowing so much and being materially so satiated many lives can turn stale and cynical, bereft of hope or imagination. Tipped into the perpetual activity of tinselled light and jingling sound that so infects this time of year it can be difficult to anticipate the deep mysteries of Christmas or appreciate it when it finally comes, because ‘through a chink too wide there comes no wonder.’ But the virtue of a hopeful imagination is commonly found among those who inhabit the disciplined rhythms of fasting and feasting, silence and speaking, lament and celebration.

Patrick Kavanagh’s poem ‘Advent’ offers us the possibility of a wonder restored and indeed an innocence reclaimed … in these lines below he shares his own hopeful imagination for life lived not only in the spirit of Christmas but through the disciplines of Advent: Four weeks of reading will not exhaust its treasure or curb its challenge:

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Christ comes with a January flower.

Here is a truly hopeful piece of imagining worthy of the prophets and of our attention: that after Christmas, wherever life ‘pours ordinary plenty’ there will a new richness in our lives so that we might bin the ‘clay-minted-wages of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour’ and truly welcome the Christ who comes ‘with a January flower.’ In the mean-time we might try to test and taste with some restraint and let the wonder in.

New People are learning to pray

2010-12-05T08:39:00.004Z

A favourite Advent hymn with us is "The light of the morning is breaking" by H Elvet Lewis (found in Baptist Praise and Worship at number 146). The hymn is set to the Welsh traditional tune "Crugybar", and has a particularly powerful effect in this Advent season amongst our Slavic community here in Prague. At Sarka Valley Community Church, Praha 6 we have sung this hymn with great feeling as the tune resonates with Russian hymn tunes and the Advent themes are powerfully addressed.

The line from the first verse "new people are learning to pray" came to me afresh in a deep way today. On the first Sunday of the month (5 December) we continue our worship after the breaking open of the Word with an Agape meal. Everyone brings something and, of course, the food is amazing and international - speciality dishes from Bulgaria, Uzbekhistan, Lebanon, Lithuania, Belgium, Kazakhstan,USA, Ukraine, Czech lands, Latvia, Russia, Hungary, Netherlands and the UK - providing a truly international feast. Our Advent Agape is up to the usual standard. A candle is lit. We recall the many times that Jesus sat down with people - on a hillside, by a lake, at Emmaus, with tax gatherers and sinners - in a simple liturgy. Then freshly baked bread from within our own community is broken and shared, after which guests are free to take food from the amazing international buffet assembled to the side. Regulars join in and like the feeding of the five thousand we never seem to run out ! The children have a special treat. As they take the bread they are allowed to dip it into milk and honey, a reminder of their discipleship journey to the promised land of future incorporation into the church of Christ.

Conversation is rich and varied and by the time we get to dessert one of our Co-Moderators asks for news and testimony. So we are updated on our homeless ministry in Praha; our involvement with a group supporting chidlren of parents who are caught up in alcoholism or drug abuse; our missionaries engaged in church development in the east end of London and in Kosovo; our support for Burmese Baptist refugees offered asylum in the Czech Republic. Personal needs of our own members are also mentioned and then we pray. Prayers offered in many languages. We all use our mother tongues in prayer so we do not always understand exactly what is being said, nevertheless we participate in the heart worship and the warmth and passion of the people praying.

And so we come to parting. The Advent anticipation of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of god is somehow very real and powerful. The cup of blessing is passed around. Rich Frankovka wine from Mikulov in Moravia. We recall our Anabaptist foreparents who restored the vineyards for the Lords of Liechtenstein in the 1500's in return for safety to worship as they wished.

As H Elvet Lewis put it

Your throne, great Redeemer, be founded
In radiance of wisdom and love;
Your name through the wide world be sounded
Till earth be as heaven above.

- Keith

via John (and Stanley)

2010-12-03T18:03:00.007Z

During this week as I've been preparing for sunday morning I've been confronted by John the Baptist. Every Advent, there is John standing in our way. The church says to get to Jesus we have to go via John. John makes us uncomfortable because he doesn't avoid saying hard things. In a season where the pressure is to prepare the annual christmas talk about the love of God found in a baby's birth to those once-a-year-church-goers, John says 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near' and 'the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire'. Hands up who wants to the preach that! Where perhaps we want to wrap our message in shiny paper in a desperate attempt to be relevant and welcoming, John says its time to change our ways, our direction, our life because there is a new world arriving, which is coming with one more powerful than him with a winnowing fork in his hand. The advent carol 'On Jordan's bank the Baptist cry' suggests John brings 'glad tidings from the King of kings'. Well I guess so. Stanley Hauerwas (who has some similar traits to the Baptist) and William Willimon in their widely-read book Resident Aliens say this:

Earlier we noted how the church is dying a slow death at the hands of pastors who are nice ... Indeed, one of us is tempted to think that there is not much wrong with the church that could not be cured by God calling about a hundred really insentitive, uncaring, and offensive people into the ministry! [Me: some might be tempted to say we are not short of those!]
A better way is for us to be so confident that the gospel is true that we dare not say less to the people we are called to serve.

The church says to get to Jesus we have to go via John. So this advent season let us not avoid John and his hard words (if we think John is hard, it doesn't get any easier with Jesus!) and those of us who are called to preach and lead worship let us not airbrush John out of the way, but let him speak. To return to Stanley, the description of him by the magazine The Door in 1993 reminds me of John and why every second sunday of the church year we listen to him:

'Stanley is a loud, blustery, locomotive of passion for the Gospel; his eyes deep, intense, penetrating, full of sparkle and fire; his discourses passion-filled, spluttering with expletives, crashing into everyone else's opinion in the room, his thoughts thundering into your consciousness - sometimes against your will, often making you angry at his lack of ... well ... senstivity. And yet. And yet ... You realize this is man who is so in love with the Gospel - so in its grip - that he must say what he says or the rocks will say it for him. There is such clarity about Stanley Hauerwas. You have no doubts about what he thinks, about what he believes. And, there is no question in our minds that his clarity often leaves him alone, isolated from those whose ideas are of the mind and not of the heart. There are times when he spoke that a kind of holiness filled the room and you knew you were hearing the words of a prophet ...'

Lantern Bearers

2010-12-02T17:11:00.011Z

Advent is a time of waiting, hoping and expecting.

As Mary's pregnancy entered its final trimester she waited in nervous anticipation for the God-child promised by the Spirit. As the elbows of the Son of God pushed at her ribs, as his head pushed down into her pelvis and as she could trace his spine along her swollen belly, she longed to see his face, count his fingers and see if her first child resembled her in any way - to see if this God-child would look 'normal' or strangely holy. There was no denying that a promise was about to be fulfilled, but what exactly this would look like she could only guess.

As Mary's pregnancy entered its final trimester the people of Israel waited in nervous anticipation for their promised redeemer, a ruler expected to fulfil prophecies of liberation, deliverance and freedom and initiate a shift in power and control in their favour. They longed to see their values honoured and respected once again, their way of life understood and they longed to end their time of living as exiles in their own land. There was no denying that a promise was soon to be fulfilled, but what exactly this would look like they could only guess. Only a few anticipated the surprises that would be in store.

As Mary's pregnancy is once again remembered and honoured the followers of Jesus in Britain and much of Western Europe wait in nervous anticipation of what the place of Christianity will be in an increasingly post-Christendom society. Some long for their values and beliefs to be respected and honoured as in days gone by and in fear of alternative ideals pray for a shift in power in their favour. Others embrace the invitation to live on the margins as exiles, choosing to live in hopeful anticipation of God's ability to move even in the midst of perceived weakness, vulnerability, powerlessness and uncertainty.

Some dream of an impossible return to the past. Some motivate us to hope for a confident, powerful future. Some urge us to hold onto the light in the coming darkness and anticipate surprises.

For Mary there was no turning back the clock. There was a privileged and optimistic journey ushering ultimate hope and opportunity, but there was also danger, darkness, pain and cost as she carried the Light into a World which didn't always understand and recognise it.

'I sometimes think that we stand at sunset', Eugenus said after a pause. 'It may be that the night will close over us in the end, but I believe that morning will come again. Morning always grows again out of the darkness, though maybe not for the people who saw the sun go down. We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us, to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind.'
Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

As we continue to follow Jesus in uncertain times may we faithfully reflect the radiance of the Light of the World as he shines eternally in the darkness and keep our eyes open for other Lantern Bearers and signs of Light evidenced in creative ways of following Jesus on the margins.

Hopeful living

2010-12-02T12:24:00.005Z

With the carelessness of someone who pays too little attention to the church year the last of a sermon series entitled ‘Putting God First?’ ended up with a sermon on stewardship for the first Sunday of advent.

Stewardship is about more than money of course, but in the middle class world I’m part of the way we use our money says more than we would like about our priorities, principles and preferences. At least my bank thinks so because last week I also had problems with my credit card. It turns out that someone using my card number wanted to buy things quite outside my normal purchasing pattern; thus alerting the bank. So while I may not be conscious of my use of money, the bank is keeping a close track of it believing that there is a link between how I use money and who I am!

Turning to Matthew’s account of the parables of the 10 bridesmaids and the talents reminded me that both are responses to the question ‘how should we live’ in what seems to be a lengthening delay and ‘how can we prepare’ when we are unsure what we are preparing for?

The answer is not to develop a theological scheme to smooth over the uncertainty, nor a doctrinal system to fill in the gaps but rather to cultivate a way of life which is always prepared yet always patient. To steward our lives in a manner which is faithful to God’s call on us; wise enough to be fit for the longer term, bold enough to create and take up opportunities.

It is the essence of hope that in Christ all things will be remade, a process whose fulfilment has yet to come. In the meantime we wait; but our waiting is not resignation it is active faithfulness. Sowing generously; using the gifts, talents and resources we have to point to the Lordship of Christ over the whole world.

Advent is a time of hope, a time of looking forward, but also a time to live as good and faithful followers of Christ. And when the snow days are over and shopping for Christmas recommences, may our choices reflect who we are.

Slow Down

2010-12-01T23:07:00.006Z

I write this advent reflection with two feet of snow outside my house. Yes, the city has come to a partial standstill. And not just any city - the capital city of Scotland. The airport has been closed more than its been opened for the last four days. The main Forth river crossing, that carries thousands of vehicles a day between Fife and Edinburgh was closed until 3pm. Schools are on their fourth day of closure and one drives a car slowly through dirty snow that has not yet become slush because every few hours another few centimetres falls afresh.

S....l....o....w d....o....w....n

With this background, I trudged for 45 minutes through the snow to spend some time unpacking the humanity and divinity of Jesus with the students on our church's year-out programme.

I found that the snow slowed me down. I wasn't rushing around the house to get kids out to school, as school wasn't on. I wasn't running for the bus, as the buses weren't running along my street. I had to walk slowly to get my boots up and over the drifting snow. I wasn't bolting from the morning seminar to my next meeting, as my next meeting wasn't happening. I had time for lunch. I had time to talk to my colleagues.

S....l....o....w d....o....w....n

John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

God became flesh and lived among us.
God became human and came to live among humankind.
Jesus, the Son of God,who existed before the world began, came to live among US.
God wants me to see something of his glory and I really want to see it.

Slowing down has brought to me this week a fresh revelation of what this means.

My contribution to this blog is therefore a simple but very personal one.

What might slowing down mean for you who read this?

S....l....o....w d....o....w....n

A light shone

2010-11-30T13:18:00.002Z

(From James Grote)

On Sunday at my church, from a dark place, a bright light shone and the waiting was over. This may seem like the end of the story of Advent with the dawning of Christmas, but this is what happened. It was expected and planned. It was a baptism.
John Bunyan Baptist Church, Oxford, where I am the minister, is also the home to a creative arts project called the Ark T Centre. Each week around 900 people use the building for dance, music, drama or visual arts. There’s a café where people gather for coffee or lunch and four artists have studios where they produce their own work as well as working in the community. This weekend was a busy one which started with two of the artists leading a Christmas Light procession in the city centre on Friday night with hundreds of children carrying lanterns through streets rammed with thousands watching. On Saturday we had a craft fair where local artists sold their work – a warm cosy affair where we were surprised by one of the Ark T Centre’s volunteers who came with his guitar and sang throughout the afternoon. He has been a volunteer with us for about 3 years, I knew that he played drums, he had mentioned a guitar but I didn’t know that he sang. He had waited that long. He said he was nervous.
Then on Sunday Louise was baptised. Louise is in her late 20’s and came to the Ark T Centre as a volunteer 3 ½ years ago. Like many of the volunteers in the Centre, Louise came to us to be helped as well as to help (though I could say the same about my work in the church and the Centre). Louise was going through a particularly difficult and dark time. She settled in well and became very much a part of the place. Just over a year ago she started coming to church and six months ago she asked to be baptised. The service on Sunday brought together people from the church who now know her well and love her dearly, her family, friends and many people from the Ark T Centre, none of whom regularly attend the church. Louise gave her testimony in which she told her hard and painful journey to faith, the time she sat in the church one day when she was volunteering and how, at a very scary moment, she clutched the little cross which was given to her when she first came to a Sunday service (we always give a little cross to anyone on their first visit to the church, they are hand-made by people in the church). She spoke about how important the Ark T Centre had been to her as a home and a safe place and somewhere that she felt she belonged. She spoke about friends and family who had loved and supported her through dark times. Today though, the light shone and Louise was baptised.
Two weeks ago we celebrated the 13th anniversary of the Ark T Centre in an exhibition and dance performance. Louise is the first person to have come into the Ark T Centre and, through it, to have found her way to the church and to baptism and to faith in Christ. The purpose of the Ark T Centre is not to bring people into the church or even to bring them to faith in Christ, its mission is broader than that and belongs, for me, in the more complex web of the Kingdom which even Jesus struggled to explain with parables . However, as the minister of the church (as well as being director of the Ark T Centre), I cannot hide from the fact that Sunday was very special. There are many many wonderful stories of people finding (advent) hope through the Ark T Centre, some of whom were also there on Sunday. Louise is one of those but, as a Christian minister, for me her story has a particular significance. A light shone and the waiting was over.

The Comic and Cosmic Significance of the Annunciation

2010-11-29T06:27:00.002Z

In spirituality as in much else I guess we all have our conceptual and devotional comfort zones. As in most other areas of life, a comfort zone is a good place to be, for a wee while. But living there long term does little to set free our imagination, stimulate intellectual curiosity, develop emotional stamina, sustain mental and physical health, or change much else about us so that we might want to be more than we presently are content with being.

Being a man, may be a biological accident, but it's also an inevitable part of my human identity, a partial and incomplete way of looking at the world, and therefore a limitation of horizon and persepctive that I need to allow for - being a man, I can only guess at what it was like to be a young woman, visited by an angel, who announces my future, and links it to the future of the whole creation. The Annunciation is one of the most stunning moments in the history of human religious experience, an event with comic and cosmic significance; comic, because it begins a drama that will resolve in an unimaginable triumph of love, life and goodness; and cosmic because the drama is the drama of the world's salvation and the redemption of all Creation. The great artists of the Renaissance saw this with instant clarity and portrayed it with magnificent anachronism, extravagant symbol, and theological sensitivity.

Now as a 21st Century man, I encounter such art and realise I'm out of my depth, summoned by a beauty beyond me, addressed by strangeness, compelled to read but uncertain of the language, and therefore needing a grammar of aesthetics and a dictionary of medieval religious concepts and affections, to help me unlock the syntax of images that say more than words. So a painting of the Annunciation like that of Vittore Carpaccio above, invites me to be perplexed, impatient, and conceptually disempowered - that is, it beckons me across the thresholds of my comfort zone. And only if I have the courage to go, will I discover through contemplative patience, and through intellectual welcome of new and different ways of knowing, yet one other way of theological encounter, spiritual openness and personal surrender - which is prayer and a deepening love of God.

And let's face it. Devotion to the Triune God whose life of eternal self-giving is ever interwoven in mutual love, and is inexhaustibly expressed in infinite goodness, and overflows in endlessly creative purposes, reaching out to embrace the Creation called into being by that same self-expending love, requires of us more than the complacency, contentment and constraints of our personal devotional comfort zones.

And so to Carpaccio's painting, and Advent. Because whatever else Advent does, it forces upon us a reconceptualising of what God is about, and what our lives are about. The Annunciation is an event that changes forever and a day, the life of a young woman. Theologically, it reasserts the limitless paramaters of grace, it redefines the nature of redeeming love, it reconfigures the hopes of a nation, a world and all humanity, all of which hangs on the yes of a young woman. That is what the painting is about. Look at it in that light - that crisis moment that awaits the words, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word".

The cost and consequence of love on a divine scale.

2010-11-28T06:30:00.002Z

The Master of the Embroidered Foliage is not a person, more probably a school of painters working around the 1480's. There are several paintings of the Madonna and Child, each with the background foliage painted to resemble textile embroidery.

More than five centuries on, the painting remains a masterpiece, but one much less accessible to a digital age more used to image, movement and sound, controlled by sophisticated technology. Less compelling too, for a culture in which entertainment ranges from fantasy to soap opera, from horror to stylised violence, and from reality TV ( which bears little relation to real reality) to 24 Hour News with saturation coverage of the daily narrative of our troubled world.

Which brings me to Advent, and the power of this time of promised change and imaginative hope to call us in question. Good liturgy always does that, calls us in question. The importance of paintings such as this, if we are ready to pay attention to them, is the capacity of unfamiliar beauty to subvert the contentment that constrains our imagination and to interrogate the unexamined assumptions that shore up our contemporary complacency about our own importance. We've become accustomed to the self-description, "21st Century People", and the subtle way such discourse relegates previous centuries to "then", which is always inferior to "now".

The subject of the painting is a mother and child...."for unto us a child is born, to us a son is given." The open Bible, central to the image, is the Word interpreted by the Word made flesh, the child not content with a single text is turning the pages of Scripture, the mother looking down with puzzled adoration, the child looking into the distance. The red robe is redolent of redemptive love, the green foliage a richly woven texture of a living world, behind the Madonna's shoulder the church and the town buildings, the holy and the secular together. And of course the peacock, ancient symbol of resurrection and new beginning, stands at the gate looking down the unseen road.

This is an Advent painting. But its message isn't cleverly communicated with digitally mastered precision. The precision is not technological but theological, and the message is neither for entertainment nor information, but is transformative of human hopefulness and draws us back towards God, our hearts once again bright with future possibility. Of course you can dismiss such a painting as 15th Century late medieval devotional piety that dissolves under the scrutiny of 21st century media savvy minds like our own. But that would be a mistake.

I mentioned the puzzled adoration on the Madonna's face. Again and again she is portrayed by the great artists as one who smiles, but whose smile is quizzical, or hesitant, or even sad. Mary Oliver has a three line poem that explains what might lie behind such a smile.

We shake with joy
We shake with joy we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.

Advent shares that same oscillation of joy and grief, the cost and consequence of love on a divine scale.

Advent Blog 2010 Sign Up

2010-11-10T22:50:00.022Z

28 Jim Gordon
29 Jim Gordon
30 James Grote
1 Lynn Alexander
2 Neil Brighton
3 Juliet Kilpin
4 Andy Goodliff
5 Keith Jones
6 Craig Gardiner
7 Terry Wright
8 Tim Presswood
9 Nigel Coles
10 David Kerrigan
11 Alan Mair
12 Clare McBeath
13 Robert Parkinson
14 Steven Harmon
15 Rowena Wilding
16 Phil Durrant
17 Lucy Wright
18 Andrew Jackson
19 Catriona Gorton
20 Andy Scott
21 Simon Jones
22 Darrell Jackson
23 Ben Dare
24 Jonathan Somerville
25 Simon Woodman

Keeping Hope Alive

2009-12-22T19:17:00.007Z

It's that time of the year when Advent begins to merge into Christmas. The anticipation and expectation of the last month now blends into the joy of announcing that a Saviour has been born. And we are being held in that hope.

Meanwhile, at the Tate Modern in London there is a new exhibition, 30 metres in length, 10 metres in width, creating the impression of entering into a vast black hole. The Polish artist, Miroslaw Balka, said he is trying to remind visitors of recent Polish history - the ramp into the black hole chamber is like the entrance to the Ghetto in Warsaw, or the trucks which took Jews away to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz. Says Balka, "You'll start to touch darkness. I'm touching the subject of disappearing".

For many during the joy of Christmas, darkness still lurks. The threat of redundancy, a friendship turned sour, a broken marriage, a tarnished reputation, an empty space at the dinner table... Black holes come in various forms.

But we are called to hope, and Isaiah the prophet historically and poetically described how the people of Israel were to go into a black hole... and then come out of it again. The southern kingdom of Judah lies in wait, its days are numbered. Babylon was to mercilessly trample all over the nation. Dark times, indeed.

But we are called to hope, and spurred on by the interesting reflection given on this blog on 8th December by my father-in-law (thanks Alan!), I decided to use Isaiah's image of a tree stump (chapter 11) as the dominant theme at our Carol Service last Sunday evening. A shoot will come up, a Branch will bear fruit. New growth will occur, and peace will mark the new Messianic age through the coming of the Anointed One of God. A message brimming with the hope that still remains so applicable to our world today.

In 1945 some graffiti was found on the wall of a basement in Koln, Germany - where a Jew is thought to have been hiding from the Gestapo:

"I believe in the sun even when it isn't shining, I believe in love even when I am alone, I believe in God even when He is silent".

Thank God that in Christ the silence has been shattered, the black holes of life are shot through with brilliant light, and we can go on our way rejoicing again.

A year after the black hole of 9/11, the theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote a reflection in which the theme of hope-ful-ness was all-pervasive. In it he included the following words:

"We turn to you in that heaviness, for we do afresh ponder our mortality, think about our naked exposure, fully cognizant of the fragility that is the truth of our lives. And so we turn to you seeking assurance, consolation, embrace. And you receive us, faithful mother who holds, sure father who welcomes and embraces, and we settle in peaceableness even midst the chaos, we do... and we give you thanks.... You are risen in power and wonder; you are risen out of the shambles of death and terror and doubt and fear; You are risen to turn the world to peace and justice and freedom and well-being; You are risen with healing wings to cure our diseased hurts and our public pathologies... Let us, good Lord of the dying and the living, hide ourselves in Thee. And then let us follow your Easter way, that the world shriveled in deathliness may turn to joy and to newness". (Inscribing the Text: Sermons & Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, 2004, Augsburg Fortress, p1175-177).

The people walking in darkness have now seen a great light, so may God keep hope alive in us.

Be Careful What You Wish For: A Reflection on Malachi 2:17–3:5

2009-12-22T08:45:00.001Z

Israel acts in the world, observing her traditions. Torah establishes order; but she sees chaos. She proclaims light; but she perceives only darkness. She trusts in a sovereign God; but for what reason? In a world of injustice, cruelty, pain – in a world like this, the most natural conclusion to make is that the LORD is pleased with those who do evil. ‘Where is the God of justice?’

This conclusion wearies the LORD. God has not ordained injustice. God is not benefitted by the exploitation of those with no money, no property, no hope. Seeing a teenage girl get raped does not turn God on. God is not mirrored by the ecclesial machismo that insists on a manly Christianity. But God is wearied by the suggestion that because nothing changes, God is idle and God is indifferent.

And why is God wearied? Because once God’s messenger has prepared the way, then suddenly – suddenly! – the LORD will come to God’s temple. God will overturn tables and God’s people will be aghast. God’s people establish order, but the LORD brings chaos, challenging the order that God’s people have instituted by bastardising the commands of God. When the LORD comes, he will refine, he will bleach, he will burn away all the filth that clings to our bodies, smearing and smudging all that we do, see and touch. The LORD’s fiery entrance is literally shocking, stinging and shaking us from our own lust, greed, pride, self-centredness and complacency. When pleading for the LORD to act, we must be careful what we wish for, because it will be painful.

But now – now the Church of God, the body of the One who is to come, bearing his scars, can announce with full confidence: ‘The LORD is here: His Spirit is with us.’

Mary - Godbearer

2009-12-20T09:29:00.001Z

Today, for much of the Church, Advent becomes more focused on the first coming of the Christ, with the reading from Luke's Gospel of Mary visiting Elizabeth.

I preached on Mary last weekend, and I've also preached on Mary on the occasion of an induction. It seems to me that Mary has a huge amount to say to us about the nature of ministry. I've drawn on a superb book, 'The Godbearing Life, The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry', by Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster.

Their point is the totally awesome one, that God asks a teenager to bring God into the world. The angel Gabriel had never delivered a message like this before to an adult, much less to an adolescent. And they quote Frederick Buechner, who puts it this way:

She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he'd been entrusted with a message to give her, and he gave it.

He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. 'You mustn't be afraid, Mary', the angel said.

As he said it, he only hoped she wouldn't notice that beneath the great, golden wings he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.

And what sets Mary, this poor, unmarried teenage girl, apart from the rest of us is quite simple. She says, 'Yes'. And with Mary's 'Yes', the transformation begins and she becomes 'God-bearer', Theotokos. And she becomes a model for us, because we too are called to be God-bearers, Theotokoi. We bear God to others, as we seek to serve them. And service is ministry.

Creasey and Foster go on to talk specifically about youth ministry, but what they applies to all ministry.

Youth ministry is a womb, an incubation ward for potential God-bearers as they ponder and struggle with the news that God is crazy in love with them, would die for them and, in fact, has. What youth need more than gung-ho adults are Godbearing adults, people whose own yes to God has transformed them into messengers of the gospel.

And speaking of how Godbearing ministry begins,

it begins with a conscious 'yes' to God, a decision that flings wide open the doors of our souls so that grace no longer needs to sneak in through the cracks. Now the Holy Spirit rushes in 'like a mighty wind' and fills us, overshadows us, transforms us by forming Jesus within us, restoring us to the image in whose likeness we were created. Now our soul-wombs, already prepared by grace, can carry Jesus into the world.

Returning to today's reading of Mary's visit to Elizabeth in Luke 1.39-45, the poet Luci Shaw expresses it like this:

Framed in light,
Mary sings through the doorway.
Elizabeth's six-month joy
jumps, a palpable greeting,
a hidden first encounter
between son and Son.

And my heart turns over
when I meet Jesus
in you.

Shockingly Simple... Simply Shocking... God made Human

2009-12-19T00:01:00.006Z

This sculpture of the infant Jesus, anatomically correct and with the umbilical cord still attached was displayed in London for Christmas in, I think, 2001. Some people were scandalised by it, because it made Jesus really rather real. For me it seemed a beautiful sculpture - simple and realistic, its shock value being not its reality but its simplicity.

Recently I read a book that bemoaned the fact that most of the images of Jesus we have essentially emasculate him, presenting him more like a holy action man figure than a real person (i.e. devoid of genitalia). I think that whilst that is largely true of the adult Jesus, it isn't true of the infant - numerous Madonna and Child images show a naked child. And this is what is so shocking, not the nakedness, not the authentic maleness, but that God would choose to be conceived and then born fully human with all the vulnerability and particularity that requires.

One of the carols we will sing in our 'Gathering Place' this Sunday is the Iona 'Shepherds Watch and Wisemen Wonder' with its wonderful verse

Who would think that what was needed
To transform and save the earth
Might not be a plan or army,
Proud in purpose, proved in worth?
Who would think, despite derision,
That a child should lead the way?
God surprises earth with heaven,
Coming here on Christmas Day.

It is simply shocking, this shockingly simple way chosen by the one who creates all things.
Don't be shocked by a naked, anatomically accurate Jesus, be shocked by a vulnerable infant Christ who shared our life.

prepared, or not?

2009-12-18T09:31:00.004Z

OK so why are you here? No, it’s not my introduction to the Carol Service, nor even trying to raise questions of our human existence…. Why read an Advent blog?

Well, if you’re like me you’re involved in Christian Ministry in some shape, or form, and this might just give an insight, provide a story, or even better – a piece of information about some aspect of the Christmas story you’ve come across before. Of course, the real advantage of this latter point is – you can then pass it on to the gathered congregation and they will be suitably impressed.

Cynical, or merely deeply suspicious of the inner workings in my own heart?

Having now spent eight Christmases as a Regional Minister – and primarily, therefore, as an attendee (Christmas for most congregations is very DIY, which is good thing imo) rather than a ‘performer’ - can I make a plea from the congregation?

I don’t judge how advent, carol, Christingle, and all the variations on the theme, services by whether I hear something new, or in a novel way. I just need to hear the story. I need to know the story. I need to see how I can play a part in the story. My hunch is many other people feel the same way.

So, if you believe Advent is partly about preparation, could I urge you to spend your time and energy primarily in preparing your heart rather than spending hours frantically surfing the web and the children’s address books with the naïve belief ‘if only I get this illustration right, I shall hook them’? How about that burden of expectation some feel on their shoulders – where’s that coming from? It may even be just like Father Christmas.

Garrison Keilor said ‘a lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm and we all go through it together.’ I don’t think we have an option when it comes to Christmas: it’s compulsory. We have, also, a responsibility to re-tell this wonderful story of which I shall never tire. Let’s remember, however, there’s no burden upon us to make it up.

from Lucy ...

2009-12-17T20:34:00.002Z

This is my first year in full-time ministry, and the assorted Christmas celebrations are in full swing: Christingle, Carers and Toddlers Christmas Party, and Senior Citizens Christmas lunch. Through the hive of activity in the kitchen, at the table, in the hand shake, and even the wave to the little person in the pushchair; all of these things made me think about the welcome of God. The season of advent is about preparation, preparing our hearts and lives for God who comes to us in the person of Jesus. This time of year we swing wide the church doors and welcome folk from our community around, we share with them the story and celebration of God. Although we do this throughout the year, there is something about the advent message that speaks about finding space for God to come. We are called to find space for Him in the stranger, in the child, in the humanness of our existence. As we prepare to find room for others, making them feel welcome, offering them hospitality and kindness we are indeed finding room for Christ Himself.
For the Christmas story starts with God loving the world so much. It starts with God stretching out towards us, wanting to get near to us, and involved in our lives. Advent is a time to prepare our hearts, to have our arms open, and the palm of our hands facing upwards. Its a time to welcome God with us, welcoming the humanness of God in the poor, in the stranger, in the weak, and in the distressed. May our hearts be prepared in finding the welcome of God in the smile and presence and of the ‘other’ that we might find the unexpected hospitality in the guest.

Waiting in the Ark

2009-12-16T10:20:00.005Z

I went to see '2012' at the cinema the other day. It was pretty awful in an entertaining sort of way, as you'd expect from Hollywood, and managed to cheerfully massacre a Noah-and-the-Ark metaphor that was running through the film. I turned to my friend towards the end and said 'For the love of all things good and true, don't let there be a dove with an olive branch at the end of all this'. I'm glad to report that the film managed to stave off such an excessive touch of cheese. Not that it made much difference in the end - the camel's back had already been broken several times over!

This incident however reminded me of a poem which I had written during a quiet day at the end of my term here at Regent's, and I felt the sting of hypocrisy! But since it's on the theme of advent waiting, and picks up on Ark imagery, and the idea of richly waiting for a new world, I thought I'd share it with you.

Adventus

He holds the fretful bird
Within the ribcage of his hands
Feels its tug and shunt;
Its pinions animated by frustration.
Like a Noah he stands over it, absorbed,
Unyielding, as its leapings lapse
Into spasmodic assertion,
Are loosed into warm wax, soft down.

But the tiny flame still beats under his fingers' curl
Dark eyes askance, watch him lovingly.
They are both waiting now forever,
At the window, and their waiting
Is a splurging fountain of gestation;
A pregnant sprig.

But then ... they appear

2009-12-15T10:07:00.010Z

After W.H. Auden had visited the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, and seen Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s c.1558 work, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, he went away and penned the following cynical words:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

William Willimon recalls Brueghel’s painting, and Auden’s poem, in his book On a Wild and Windy Mountain, wherein he observes that we trudge past bleeding crosses with a shrug of the shoulders, that Good Fridays are so commonplace among us as to be unnoteworthy, and that tragedy achieves nobility only in the theater. ‘Everydayness and ordinariness’, he writes, ‘become our best defenses, the most effective relativizers of the tragic in our midst. Some young Icarus falls from the sky every day, so one had best get on with the business at hand until the extraordinary comes. For now, go to work, eat, make friends, make money, make love, mind your business – that’s the best way to cope, for the time being, with the expectedness of the tragic. The old masters knew best’ (p. 15).

Willimon proceeds to compare Landscape with the Fall of Icarus with another of the Dutch masters' works: Numbering at Bethlehem. He notes the ordinariness of the depiction, a day mundane and unpromising – in its highlights at least – and nothing beyond the expected.

But then … they appear.

They appear. ‘An inconspicuous, thoroughly ordinary young woman on a little donkey led by a stoop-shouldered, bearded peasant who carries a saw. Here is Mary, with Joseph the carpenter, come to town to be counted. They are so easily overlooked in the midst of ordinariness. Old masters like Brueghel’, Willimon rightly suggests (and we might add Rembrandt), ‘were never wrong’. Rather, they understood, and bore witness to in their work, the truth of Emmanuel, the scandal of the unostentatious God living – and dying – with us, of God stained with the sweat of human bondage and soaked – baptised – in the blood of human violence, of God incognito. ‘They understood our blindness not only to the tragic but also to the triumphant in our midst … In life, the Presence goes unnoted as we thumb through the evening paper. And so we wait, sitting in the darkness of the everyday until something extraordinary breaks in. Someday God may break into this world, we say. But for the time being, it is best to work, eat, make love, pay taxes, fill out government forms, and mind our business. The old masters knew it best’ (p. 16).

I have posted elsewhere on the pseudonymous activity of God, suggesting that ‘in the economy of holy love, the locus of greatest clarity equates to the point of greatest incongruity and surprise’. It is precisely that we may ‘see’ what Willimon so beautifully refers to as ‘the triumphant in our midst’ that we are graced, and that that we might witness to the day when good will triumph over all, certain that the grace of holy love will win at last because it did not fail to win at its most decisive time. In the meantime, such seeing typically requires what is another great advent theme: waiting, or what R.S. Thomas, in his poem ‘Kneeling’, called ‘moments of great calm’:

Moments of great calm,
Kneeling before an altar
Of wood in a stone church
In summer, waiting for the God
To speak; the air a staircase
For silence; the sun’s light
Ringing me, as though I acted
A great role. And the audiences
Still; all that close throng
Of spirits waiting, as I,
For the message.
Prompt me, God;
But not yet. When I speak,
Though it be you who speak
Through me, something is lost.
The meaning is in the waiting.

Emmanuel

2009-12-14T14:04:00.002Z

This weekend I went home. Well, not home. I was born and raised on a council estate in Birmingham, but as I'm currently in ministerial formation at Regent's Park and I've recently gotten married, I'm now living in Oxford.

Oxford is very different from Chelmsley Wood. And to be honest, I was nervous about going back, nervous about not fitting in anymore, nervous that everything would have moved on without me and I wouldn't really be welcome anymore.
I don't know if any of you have ever been back to the place you grew up only to discover that it's just not the same anymore. Things are all a bit different, not quite as you remembered - it's all changed.

For those of you who have read Great Expectations, I draw your attention here to Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham fell in love with a man who was out to swindle her riches. At twenty to nine on their wedding day, while she was dressing, Miss Havisham recieved a letter telling her she'd been defrauded and left at the alter.
Years later when Pip stumbles across her mansion, he finds her still dressed in her wedding dress, the wedding cake rotting on the table and all the clocks stoped at twenty to nine.

Miss Havisham was unable to move on. Eerily everything was exactly the same as the day she had been jilted, even down to her single shoe.

It wasn't the same when I went back to Chelmsley Wood, things had changed, people had moved on. But it wasn't a bad thing. And somehow, it was still home. And so, whilst sitting in our church hall, surrounded by old friends and family, staring at the messiest Christmas tree I've ever seen (decorated by Sunday School...), and wondering why, even though the place isn't home anymore, even though it's a million miles away from what I've come to be used to, being there felt perfectly natural, inspiration struck. I thought I'd share it with you.

The old man living
In his rented room
Grows steadily lonelier
As the darkness looms

And the boy shooting drugs
As he sits on the street
And the loneliness takes him
Despite who he meets

Lovers lie sleeping
Side by side
A wilderness between them
From which they can't hide

And their unborn infant
Is already alone
So soon to be discarded
Without a place to call his own

Because the scatterer
Has overtaken us
Estranging lovers
Breaking promises

Tearing us inwardly
And tearing us apart
Keeping us restless
And breaking our hearts

And this is why
Those of us who are sated
Find it so easy to ignore
Those of us who are starving

Yet, taken all together
Or taken one by one
We are the holiest of earth's creatures
Taken at our sum

For he who kindled
The fire of the sun
He who draws out new life
From the dead of the winter's cold

He who has whittled
A cabin for the snail
Has also carved our names
In the palm of his hand

He became a child
The better to be near us
Born on a journey
Undeservedly saving us

He grew to be a man
And lived among us
To be our healing
When we were sick
Our bread
When we were hungry
To be the wine at all our weddings

He suffered at our hands
And he forgave us
He sweat from head to foot
With human anguish
And shedding every drop of blood
To give us each other
That loneliness would be dispelled

He gave himself to us
That we might live forever
Together

He gave us even more
Than he has given the angels.

God journies with us, he is living and moving, working with us right now. Advent is about the past and the future. We look backwards to the birth of Christ, and forwards to his coming again. But maybe we've got it wrong; maybe in looking and backwards and forwards, we're missing out on something. Because Christ isn't some dead hero of the past, nor is he a distant hope for the future. He is for the here and now, reconciling us to himself, and to one another.
When we're with God, God is with us. And God's people now, and throughout the ages, are with us too.

God with us...vulnerable...

2009-12-13T15:48:00.004Z

I was struck anew by the way that when we first meet Jesus in the Christmas story, he is completely vulnerable. Reliant wholly on his parents, and then as he grows, belonging not only to his parents and family but also to his community. Can anything good come from Nazareth?
At his birth, he is receiving- nurture, gifts, love. He is allowing people to care for him.

The great adage goes that it is more blessed to give than to receive; for me, one should add- actually it is extremely uncomfortable to receive. I find giving much more comfortable- if I am honest, at times receiving seems to be a sign of weakness. Furthermore, when one is the recipient of love, care, or gifts, one becomes vulnerable to the giver. You have to trust that the giver will use their power wisely.
Jesus showed his great love for us by giving all he was- part of that was allowing himself to receive. He made himself vulnerable first to Mary and Joseph, and then as he grew to many other people. Some of those givers did not use their power wisely. And yet, we see with Peter for example, Jesus continued to invest in and receive from Peter even after being let down.

In the Christmas story, we see God's wholehearted commitment to mankind, becoming "God with us"; vulnerable in a love that receives as well as gives.
I am challenged to keep on receiving as well as giving. In our culture of individualism, it is easy to withdraw and be self reliant when people let you down. Yet we are called to be as vulnerable as a baby to each other, to allow others to care for us, just like Jesus,
"...Who being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness,
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself..."

An Epic Advent

2009-12-12T10:10:00.002Z

Being a minister at this time of year is an odd experience. Preparing services that fit the advent season whilst making plans for the period from Christmas to Easter. Yesterday I was talking about Palm Sunday, this morning I was thinking about how changes in society affect the church and this afternoon I’m grappling afresh with advent promises.

Advent is becoming one of my favourite times of year with its reminders of what Christ’s coming entails. A promised ruler who will be no petty king or oppressive empire builder but one in whose hands the weakest will be safe and the oppressed released. A reign in which old hostilities will cease, in which the scattered are gathered in, drawing back those who have drifted off. The one who is with God from eternity past comes forth revealing grace and truth.

In thinking about changing culture I was reminded of Leonard Sweet’s suggestion that post modern and digital culture can be understood to be Epic where E=experiential, P=participatory, I=image rich, and C=connective. This is not the moment to discuss the merits, or otherwise, of Sweet’s proposal but it strikes me that advent fits this well.

Advent invites us to:
Experience the God who is now and the not yet. The growing familiarity of ritual with readings, candles and hymns magnifies the sense of God’s promise and presence.
Participate in the faith. The themes of advent incorporate the great doctrines of the Christian faith but not as propositions to believe but as truth to live and incorporate into daily living.
In an image driven culture we are reminded that the one who comes is the image of God; God in the flesh.
Connecting with the community of God’s people, advent is an invitation to respond afresh to Christ’s invitation to be children of God.

O Come O Come Immanuel

Birth

2009-12-10T10:23:00.003Z

28 years ago today I was in labour and about to give birth to our second daughter. So today I want to be with Mary as she and her baby anticipate his arrival. A time of joy and anticipation but also of fear and worry. The unique role of Mary in the story of God’s plan of salvation is oft much disputed but it speaks to me as a mother in a very special way but it also reminds me of the very tricky place women hold in the world of faith: revered and rejected all at the same time….

So two poems:

You lie within the womb of time
Kicking to break free,
To find release from the dull routine
Of feeding, loving, living.
The heart beats a note of urgency
As you push hard
As if against a stone.
Yet you do not move:
Is it still not time?
What is it that prevents you
From reaching ecstatic freedom
For which you long so much?

You are enclosed within this womb of mine
And must wait patiently,
For it is I who pulsates you to maturity
And it is I who pulsates you to maturity
And so from birth to freedom

The Womb of God Kathy Keay

Dear God
They call me woman:
They blame me for the first sin of lost innocence.
The call me Eve

Dear God
They call me woman:
They tell me
I bore your son.
The call me Mary

Dear God
They call me woman:
They show me
A greater sinner
Reconciled, forgiven
By her love allowed to be first.
The call me Mary Magdalen

Dear God
They call me woman:
They send me
From your table – unworthy
From your presence – unclean
From your life – unable

Dear God
I am a woman
Worthy of you
Cleansed by you
Able through you
Make me glad
When they call me woman

They call me Woman Charlotte Methuen

(both poems taken from Dancing on Mountains, ed Kathy Keay Marshall Pickering 1996)

Presently Absent

2009-12-09T10:01:00.002Z

Advent is a season for waiting patiently for the LORD to come, to act. ‘Since ancient times no-one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.’ (Isaiah 64:4, NIV). Scripture and liturgy together encourage us to reflect, to meditate, to pray, all the while using the time and space afforded by Advent wisely to anticipate God’s coming and action in the man Jesus of Nazareth.

But I struggle with this noblest, this most pious of attitudes, for I have difficulty focussing on the One who is to come. Instead, I focus on the One who is presently absent.

Presently absent. This is a curious phrase. It suggests that God is silent; that God is uninvolved and unconcerned; that God has withdrawn from God’s people and the world that God made. God is presently absent. But contained within the phrase is a glimmer of light, the faintest, occasional flicker of a single candle in the darkness of a night-time wilderness. God is presently absent, but soon – soon, God will be present.

Nonetheless, it takes only a zephyr nearly to extinguish that dim, distant flame. Every time I yearn for evidence that the Father has embraced me in his Son’s arms; every time I knock, knock, knock on heaven’s door and find its impenetrability a source of frustration; every time I sin a sin I’ve sinned before; the light dances its death throes, and the Spirit appears a spectator, another of the great cloud of witnesses that encourages from afar. But amazingly, even comfortingly, the light shines in the darkness but is not overcome by it.

Advent is a season for waiting for the LORD to come, to act; but I hesitate to include the qualifying patiently. The reason that Advent is a season for waiting is because God is presently absent. And this is where Scripture and liturgy together are vital, literally so, for maintaining my direction and sanity, as I enter the prayers of the longing impatient and make them my own. God knows it’s hard to wait for God, and that’s why the silence of Advent is a deafening cacophony of the discords of protest, lament and questions taken into God’s awesome symphony, the incarnation of God’s eternal Son, the man Jesus Nazareth.

Let all that I am wait quietly before God,
for my hope is in him.…
O my people, trust in him at all times.
Pour out your heart to him,
for God is our refuge.

Psalm 62:5, 8 (NLT)

Holy, holy, holy

2009-12-08T08:33:00.004Z

This week my Thursday evening study group will complete a short Advent series using the 5 O’s of the great Advent hymn O come, O come Emmanuel. As you might expect as well as the study there will need to be food shared on this final meeting before the New Year.( being in Yorkshire this is sure to include Christmas cake and Wensleydale cheese).
This ancient Advent hymn is well known with its Old Testament words about the Messiah and the haunting tune to which it is sung. It certainly has gone round and round in my mind over the past few weeks.
The description of Jesus as the ‘rod of Jesse’ took us to one of the great Advent readings - Isaiah 11 - ‘a shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse and branch shall grow out of its roots’. Following on from this statement is the poetic description of the promised One.

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD -
and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

In his book ‘The way of Jesus’ Eugene Peterson draws this reading together with chapter 6 of Isaiah. He suggests that preachers tend to concentrate on the beginning of Isaiah 6 which describes the awesome experience of the prophet in the Temple as he responds to the call of God. On hearing the call the prophet boldly reacts, ‘Here I am; send me.’
Peterson complains that by not continuing to read the rest of the chapter we neglect the word which immediately comes to Isaiah and which sets out the unenviable task facing him. Peterson suggests that we need to reflect on the whole description of the call of the prophet which includes the worrying word that he receives as part of his call. This word indicates that his own people will not listen to him and even worse is to come because he is about to see his nation destroyed. The Assyrians will march through the land and the barren image given is that of a forest that has been cut down and all that is left is the tree stumps. But the final word is that ‘the holy seed is its stump’. All is not lost.

As Peterson reflects on this he comments:

“Isaiah provides an abundance of metaphor and vision so that we are able to recognise the way of The Holy in unlikely circumstances, wilderness circumstances, among neighbours who are deaf and dumb and heartless. The Holy, God’s unmanageable but irrepressible life is ever present and hidden within and around us. Unpredictably but most surely it breaks forth into our awareness from time to time. The bush blazes, the heavens open, the temple rocks, the stump puts forth a green shoot. Holy, Holy, Holy.”

The same Holy, Holy, Holy that filled the Temple is a holy seed in a field of stumps and a holy child in a borrowed manger and………..

I leave the final ‘and…………’ for us to reflect on our own experience of those unexpected and holy moments.

2009-12-07T17:21:00.002Z

8.30am, and once again struggling to cram onto a packed tube carriage, jacket dripping with rain water and clammering around for something to hold onto before the inevitable jolting into action.

20-40 minutes later, you jolt to a stop somewhere, battle your way off the train (how do you always end up on the opposite side to where the door opens?), negotiate through the crowded platform, perilously close to the edge, up the escalators and out into the street on autopilot.

You then run the chicane past hawkers, salesmen, leafleters and advertisers, and dash along to whereever you are going wrapped up in waterproofs and under little twinkly lights that have been on for over a month and have now become part of the street furniture.

A typical Advent morning for some 3.4million people.

This morning, rather than fostering contempt at the world which created this surreal daily ritual, I decided to switch what was on my MP3 player to something, anything, calming. I stumbled upon some Taizé.

And suddenly, even in the bustle, everything seemed a little calmer, a little brighter, and a little more human.

Advent for many of us is far from a time of quiet reflection. There's just too much to do at this time of year, without any other demands on our time. Today, I've decided maybe Advent isn't about doing something, but about being something; about being reflective, rather than setting time aside to reflect?

The Word of God comes to . . . who?

2009-12-06T09:01:00.006Z

In the 15^th year of the emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, when Herod was Tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip prince of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias prince of Abilene, during high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. Luke 3:1-2

The evangelist Luke believes it is important to situate his story about Jesus in its wider historical context. Why else would he take such pains both here and in others parts of his Gospel, to inform us who the various important people are: emperors, governors, rulers, princes and high priests. Yet, whether he intends it or not, he sets up irony by first telling us who the powerful people are, what position they hold, and then informing us that the word of God came not to any of these but to John the Baptist in the wilderness. Compared to all these powerful and influential figures, John is a nobody. Yet it is to John that the word of God comes.

It would be like saying that in the 56^th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, when David Milliband was Foreign Secretary and his brother Ed Milliband was Secretary of State, during the Archbishopric of Rowan Williams, the word of God came to Doris the open air preacher in rural Essex!

When those who should be open to God's Word are not; God bypasses them in favour of those who are open and courageous and obedient. However, to the hearers and readers of Luke’s Gospel, John is not a nobody. In chapters 1 and 2 we are introduced first to Zechariah, a priest, and then to his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth is the cousin of Mary who will be the mother of Jesus. Old and childless, Zechariah receives a visit from the angel Gabriel who announces that Elizabeth will conceive a bear a son to be called John. It is this John who is born and grows up to be a preacher in the wilderness. John goes all over the Jordan valley proclaiming that God’s chosen people need to turn away from their sinful ways of life, seek God’s forgiveness, and as a sign that they have done this they need to be baptised in water. John calls them to do this because he is preparing the way for the Messiah and the coming Kingdom of God. There are many ways through which we can prepare the way for God's Word to come to others: friendship, empathy, critique, service and honesty being some of them. It matters not who we are but whether we are open and willing.

quiet day ponderings

2009-12-04T14:00:00.003Z

Tuesday was College Quiet Day marking the last day of term for us ministerial students. We were led this time by Steven Bevans (who has been the CMS missiologist in residence this term). I missed the morning session but was there afternoon has Steve led us in reflecting on Luke 10.21-24:

At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to the childlike; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.’

Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.’

As we read and reread this passage different things jumped out ... that revelation is always a gift of God ... what does the word 'rejoice' mean? ... what are 'these things' that the disciples have seen and heard? ... the tension between the blessing of having seen and heard and the demands of discipleship that follow ... the problem of the feeling around advent of having 'seen' and 'heard' the stories so many times ... is there more light and truth to break for ... what new (or old) things will God's Spirit - the giving gift - reveal this time? ... is Jesus being negative about wisdom and intelligence or is his point that we should approach learning like the child - with wonder, with questioning, with joy, with frustration, with dependence on one who will provide answers? ...

In this season of beginnings and endings, looking forward and looking back, in this season of familiar stories, we wait for the advent God to come and reveal himself, God's gift to the world, we wait to join in the rejoicing, we wait with children as they struggle to wait when everything around them suggests the time for celebration has already arrived, we wait to see what 'things' we will see and hear this year, we wait for the Son ...

Take A Moment

2009-12-03T07:41:00.006Z

This is a very busy week at a very busy time of year. And it is all too easy for me to get swept along in a tide of doing: partly that's how I like it, partly that's how I'm made, and partly that's just the way it is. If I'm honest I woke up thinking 'oh heck, it's my turn to post today and I haven't had time to think about it...' So what I am writing is to myself as much as, if not more than, to anyone else.

Yesterday I briefly re-engaged with a lifestyle I'd left behind long ago, rushing through airports among be-suited professionals and hi-viz-vested staff, hearing the ubiquitous 'I'm just calling from the airport on my mobile' calls designed to impress someone, somewhere, seeing the EXCEL spreadsheets on the laptops, the pencils poised over the latest report on that all important project.... Busy, busy busy.

Two contrasts.

Yesterday I was conducting a funeral 300 miles from home. The format was church then crematorium, and it is a 30 minute drive between the two. One of the practices I have developed for such occasions is to invite families to choose a piece of quiet music to be used for a short time of quiet reflection between the opening sentences, prayer and Bible reading the final act of committal. Just a couple of minutes of stillness, a 'few moments pause to reflect' as I usually say.

Today is our second lunchtime Advent reflection and prayer. Here, too, is space to be still, to listen to music, to reflect on words of scripture or simply to be. Today the theme is 'the miracle of hospitality' and the focus on the beginning of Luke 2.

Psalm 46 includes some words that boil down, broadly, to this:

Desist! Stop it. Take a moment
Focus on me, on God
Be still and allow yourselves to be aware of me...

Wherever we are, and whatever we are doing, no matter much how we thrive on activity, it is good to take a moment, to reflect on God's blessing received, to enjoy God's presence now, and to hope in God's promises to come. Take a moment...

Children's View of Jesus

2009-12-02T18:21:00.005Z

I'm really blessed to have a senior pastor who doesn't just welcome opportunities for children and young people to play a full part in the life of the church but proactively makes space for that to happen. We see children worship alongside adults in many of our Christmas activities over a three week period - and far beyond. This is very liberating for me as a children and family pastor.

Something has struck me this year: the wide-eyed innocence of very young children; the longing to belong and share in our Big Story of younger primary kids; the bounce and sparkiness of older children as they challenge and ask questions; the aloofness of some teenagers which actually belies a deep desire for authentic faith: all of these are characteristics of growing and developing faith and are engaged by the Christmas story. It transcends age and stage and language development and understanding and intellect.

Why is this?

Because in the person of Jesus we have one who allows us to talk to the Father face to face - as a man talks to his friend

He is glorious and immanent but he is engaging and loving.
He is far away, ascended to heaven, but he is also near.
He is omnipotent but also personal.
Children understand this far, far better than some adults think they do.
He was Mary's child and God's son, his life spanned the gap between humankind and heaven. The verse quoted from Exodus 33:11 demonstrate his incredible attraction for children - his life gives us ALL access to the Father.

Advent - to wrest with mystery, and rest in mystery

2009-11-29T18:54:00.009Z

"Arise! Shine! Your light has come." Light exposing the ultimate nothingness of darkness is a primary colour in my advent theology. "The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not..." The King James rendering has a cadence and tone solemn enough to remind us we deal with the vast intricacies of a universe when we say "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...and the life was the light of all humanity".

Throughout Advent I will be slowly reading my way through Rebecca Elson's A Responsibility to Awe. So I'll spend Advent in the company of one who made no bland confessions of faith, Christian or otherwise. What Rebecca Elson trusted deeply, is the capacity of the human mind to wrest with mystery as hard and as long as intelligence could go, and then she had the confidence to rest in mystery, awed into acceptance by that which is beyond our grasp but not beyond our wonder.

Thus some of the most spectacularly learned scientific essays and papers emerged from the same mind as some of the most sublime poetry offered in praise of the vastness of existence and the delicate fragility of the human mind. Wresting with, and resting in, mystery. That's how I feel during Advent. The poet astronomer studying stars to discern the origins of being, and setting her mind to measure the range of human intelligence, content to know beforehand that what is, is greater than those who ponder it.

The poem which gives the volume its title is a confession of intellectual humility, a surrender to the ethic of learning, both a celebration and a caution about how the fascination of science can so easily lead to missing the significant because we are too preoccupied with the obvious. This Advent, that is my prayer - to not miss that which is significant, in my own life and in the lives around me. To "wonder as I wander", to look where I'm going, to listen for vibrations of human hopefulness and good intent that is the music around me, to ask questions deep enough that they honour mystery and acknowledge that divine subterfuge by which God perlexes, bewilders and persuades us that love is eternal, and has entered our time and space. Answering the wistfulness of Elson's poem, the astonishing claim, "In him was light, and the light was the life of all humanity. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never been able to extinguish it...."

We Astronomers by Rebecca Elson

We astronomers are nomads,
Merchants, circus people,
All the earth our tent.
We are industrious.
We breed enthusiasms,
Honour our responsibility to awe.

But the universe has moved a long way off.
Sometimes, I confess,
Starlight seems too sharp,

And like the moon
I bend my face to the ground,
To the small patch where each foot falls,

Before it falls,
And I forget to ask questions,
And only count things.

Advent Shaking

2009-11-28T17:05:00.004Z

"...the celestial powers will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming with power and great glory." Luke 21:26-27

The compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary, in assigning this text for the First Sunday of Advent (Year C), seem to be deliberately wrong-footing us. We are expecting to prepare for the coming of Christ as the infant Jesus; instead we are confronted with predictions of the return of the glorious Son of Man. This return, it is claimed, will be preceded by a shaking of earth and heaven. Our planet, with its land-masses, waters, mountains, ravines and craters, is living testament to an ongoing shaking as tectonic plates move and asteroids collide. This ball of magma with its hardened crust and breathable atmosphere, rotating and orbiting in space, is always moving and changing. The shaking of which Jesus speaks, however, is different than this perpetual motion. It is the shaking that God causes; a shaking that coincides with the Advent of the Son of Man.

If, as interpreters of this text, we move from the literal to metaphor, we find that shaking is not restricted to Christ's return but is part of what God does with his people. God shook Israel's moral and religious order out of idolatry and polytheism when God made covenant with it and gave it the Law. God shook Israel further through foreign exile and occupation. But perhaps the greatest shaking occurred in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; a shaking of the very foundations of what it means to be in right relationship with God. Andrew Shanks interprets the Beatitude blessings that Jesus pronounces as, 'How blessed are those who are shaken'. In other words, how blessed are those whose attitude to being shaken in life (poverty, sorrow, gentleness, seeking righteousness, merciful, pure, peacemaking, persecuted) makes them open to God and to others. But those who hate change, except on their own terms, would not tolerate shaking of this sort and therefore nailed down the one who so unsettled them. As Colin Morris writes, "...in crucifying Jesus the 'powers that be' imagined they were doing one thing; in fact they were being used to accomplish another. They became instruments of the God who shook the tomb until it fell apart and let loose his great agent of change into all the world and for all time.” (pp. 157-8, Things Shaken - Things Unshaken)

We who identify with the incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended and returning Christ—we who worship the God who is Spirit and is therefore 'pure activity'—cannot avoid being shaken. Yet we are given courage and hope by the author of The Letter to the Hebrews, who writes that after God has finished shaking "...what cannot be shaken [will] remain. The kingdom we are given is unshakeable…" Hebrews 12:27b-28a

Advent Blog 2009 Sign-Up

2009-10-31T09:52:00.017Z

29 julian templeton
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2 lynn alexander
3 catriona gorton
4 andy goodliff
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7 ashley beck
8 alan mair
9 terry wright
10 julie aylward
11 jim gordon
12 neil brighton
13 miriam pugh
14 rowena greenwood
15 jason goroncy
16 phil durrant
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18 nigel coles
19 catriona gorton
20 geoff colmer
21 lynn alexander
22 terry wright
23 andy scott
24

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

2009-04-02T17:48:00.019+01:00

[I'm cheating by doing 3 books. His Dark Materials is a sequence of 3 books called Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass].

I first read Northern Lights as a teenager, when it was first published in the mid 1990s. My school librarian gave it to me, saying she knew I'd like it. Of course I'm sure she thought she was just doing her job. I ended up as a school librarian (was I inspired by her knack of picking me decent books?!) and spending a year reading it over and over, writing 20,000 words about the sequence for my MA Children's Literature dissertation. Luckily it is the type of story you can debate for hours upon hours in pubs with people like Andy G and never get bored.

It may seem a little strange that I'd pick this book (really it's only in 3 parts because the book would be too big otherwise. And Pullman probably couldn't afford not to publish it in bits) to write about on this blog. Many Christians have heard of Pullman and his work in the media - Peter Hitchens calling him 'the most dangerous author in Britain'(1) and the Catholic Herald condemning the books as 'the stuff of nightmares' (2).

So surely I don't agree with anything Pullman is saying? Actually, yes. He raises interesting points about the Crusades, witch hunts, the way Christians can think they're right about everything, the way Christians can think only Christians can be decent people, the corruption of power within the church, the outdated views, this either / or position between religion and science. Things like that which I have encountered growing up in the church, things that I'd also like to criticise the church about sometimes!

Whether Pullman sat down one day and realised before he began what an epic he was writing is hard to say. It depends which interviews you look at. On a very basic level, it's just a good story, although I don't say that in a dismissive way. It's not like he has written a mediocre story into which he decided to cram all the things he hates about the church into. He says, quite rightly when people try and pigeonhole him, that 'I'm not making an argument, or preaching a sermon or setting out a political tract; I'm telling a story... My intention is to tell a story - in the first place because the story comes to me and wants to be told.' (3)

And whilst you can sit and analyse how he portrays the church as The Church in his books, with its evil followers, servile priests, endless rival factions and evil leaders going about chopping out people's souls at puberty to stop them sinning, or his portrayal of a dictator God, who he refers to as The Authority, as a senile, Gnostic angel who's so decrepid he blows away like a dandelion, or the afterlife as a meaningless holding pen for ghosts which is a bit fat lie the church tells people so they'll behave, it's not that shallow. He wrote an amazing story, one with characters who are good, kind, brave, exciting, awe-inspiring. It's a story with adventure, fantasy, multiple universes, deep relationships. It's a story where you meet armoured bears, gyptians, people whose souls are manifested as animals, witches, spies who fly on dragonflies, children who battle against the odds to save the people they care about. It's the kind of thing you read, and you feel that it's true, it resonates, in the way that characters experience and what they say. Pullman wrote a story which contains echoes of classic mythology and Christian tradition.

It's one of those stories which reminds us how inseparable our culture is with the power of story - and that in fact 'the story of the Fall is the key story of contemporary children's literature'(4) if not of our whole culture. When he said in his acceptance speech for winning an award for NL he said 'Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever" he had a point. Whilst I'm obviously not dismissing the 1o commandments [disclaimer!], our culture, whether we're looking at the Bible or other traditional oral tales, is based on stories. And fantasy is a genre which takes us away from our normal surroundings, to then reflect back on them. 'Trues fantasy' as Natalie Babbitt says, 'aims to define the universe'. (5)

Children's author Gillian Cross (she of The Demon Headmaster fame) nailed it when she said 'when it [HDM] is most truly a story, it is close to the central insights of Christianity'(6). Pullman wants to take all the good stuff about being a Christian, but manage it ourselves, without the need for God. Ultimately it can't work, but that doesn't mean the story doesn't work. This is a book that inspired me to really look at what being a Christian meant, more than any "Christian" books I have read.

(1) The Mail on Sunday, Jan 27 2002, p.63
(2) The Times, Oct 18 2000, p.12
(3) 'Heat & Dust' , Third Way, April 2002, p.23
(4) Neil Philip, Signal, 37, Jan 1982, p.21
(5) RN Lynn (1989) Fantasy Literature for Children & Young Adults: an annotated bibliography, NY: RR Bowker.
(6) Books for Keeps no. 140, May 2003, p.11

Loving God with heart, soul, mind and practice.

2009-03-31T10:19:00.002+01:00

Gazing at my bookshelves looking for the book that has influenced me most is not easy. Some, which felt influential years ago now seem less so. Others authors continue to be important in shaping who I am (Eugene Peterson and Stanley Hauerwas for example).

Of the books, I’ve read in the last year, one that is worthy of mention is Tony Jones’s ‘The Sacred Way’. I read it whilst on the train to London and Didcot last autumn and have suggested it to a number of people in church since. The book, subtitled ‘Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life’ looks at different approaches to spirituality along with some pointers to help integrate them into our daily lives; contemplative approaches such as the Jesus Prayer, Sacred Reading and the Daily Office; bodily approaches such as pilgrimage and fasting together with some thoughts about developing a Rule of Life.

For those who have experience of these different approaches the book may seem lightweight but for those with little exposure to them it may be just the encouragement you need. Jones grew up in a church-going family and went to a Christian college in the US. As he puts it, “by the time I was 25, my views of God, prayer, the Bible, etc. were pretty screwed up.” The shallowness of this eventually provoked him to look at how people had connected with God in past generations, whereupon he discovered, “the incredible richness in the spiritual practices of ancient and modern Christian communities from around the world.”

This is a book for those whose prayer life and walk with God has become stale. It is accessible without being lightweight, insightful but generous, practical because it is about God and about the practice of daily living. Buy a copy, read it and then give it away to someone who will need it more than you.

As Julian of Norwich wrote:

“Therefore we can with his grace and his help persevere in spiritual contemplation, with endless wonder at this high, surpassing, immeasurable love which our Lord in his goodness has for us; and therefore we may with reverence ask from our lover all that we will, for our natural will is to have God, and God’s good will is to have us, and we can never stop willing or loving until we possess him in the fullness of joy.”

Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant

2009-03-27T07:30:00.001Z

Back in the nineties, a couple of years into my ministry in a local church, I had something of a personal crisis. I found myself seriously questioning my call as the minister of that church, and indeed my call to Baptist ministry.

I’m glad to say that I survived the crisis, and this was due to at least three factors. The first was the wise and calm influence of my Regional Minister, who in the process introduced me to the insights of Family Systems Theory. The second was the support and prayer of some excellent friends. And the third was the writing of Eugene Peterson, and in particularly his trilogy for pastors: Working the Angles, Five Smooth Stones, and Under the Unpredictable Plant.

While I feel very un-trendy, I still hold to his emphasis upon the three basic pastoral acts which determine the shape of everything else: praying, reading Scripture, and giving spiritual direction. I resound to his statement that ‘The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God.’ (Working the Angles)

However, it was the third of these books, Under the Unpredictable Plant, which helped save my life! Using the Old Testament book of Jonah, Peterson clarifies the pastoral vocation in terms of helping to recover what he calls ‘vocational holiness’. I’ve returned to this book on countless occasions; I’ve recommended it to many; and I’ll continue to do so. But let Eugene Peterson speak for himself:

‘It is necessary from time to time that someone stand up and attempt to get the attention of the pastors lined up at the travel agency in Joppa to purchase a ticket to Tarshish. At this moment, I am the one standing up. If I succeed in getting anyone’s attention, what I want to say is that the pastoral vocation is not a glamorous vocation and that Tarshish is a lie. Pastoral work consists of modest, daily, assigned work. It is like farm work. Most pastoral work involves routines similar to cleaning out the barn, mucking out the stalls, spreading manure, pulling weeds. This is not, any of it, bad work in itself, but if we expected to ride a glistening black stallion in daily parades and then return to the barn where a lackey grooms our steed for us, we will be severely disappointed and end up being horribly resentful.

There is much that is glorious in pastoral work, but the congregation, as such, is not glorious. The congregation is a Nineveh-like place: a site for hard work without a great deal of hope for success, at least as success is measured on the charts. But somebody has to do it, has to faithfully give personal visibility to the continuities of the word of God in the place of worship and prayer, in the places of daily work and play, in the traffic jams of virtue and sin.

Anyone who glamorizes congregations does a grave dis-service to pastors. We hear tales of glitzy, enthusiastic churches and wonder what in the world we are doing wrong that our people don’t turn out that way under our preaching. On close examination, though, it turns out that there are no wonderful congregations… I don’t deny that there are moments of splendour in congregations. There are. Many and frequent. But there are also conditions of squalor. Why deny it? And how could it be otherwise?… Ordinary congregations are God’s choice for the form the church takes in locale, and pastors are the persons assigned to them for ministry…’

Seeking God and Benedictine Spirituality

2009-03-23T08:13:00.002Z

In 1984 I bought a small Fount Paperback. It was called Seeking God, by Esther de Waal. It was an Archbishop of Canterbury Lent book, an exposition of the Rule of St Benedict intended to encourage non monastics to live by the key principles of the Rule. This wasn't as odd, quaint, daft, as some people thought at the stime. Nor was it an attempt to make the Saul's armour of monastic spirituality fit spiritual striplings facing their own Goliaths in the culture wars of the eighties!

Instead De Waal presented a sensible, attractive and simple set of ideals that had helped transform the outward direction and inner temper of Christian spirituality. By placing several spiritual practices at the centre of community life, the Rule aimed to create a balance between individual and community, to provide liturgical rhythm and equilibrium, and to establish Christian community as a stable commitment of covenant relations intended to last for life. I'm on my third copy of De Waal's book - the first turned brown and the glue on the spine cracked leaving me with a collection of ad hoc pamphlets held together with a rubber band - cannae be daein wi' that! The replacement second copy I lent to someone about 1997, and I hope they still enjoy it (I'm not bitter, honest). My current copy has also now been read and used enough to show signs of wear and tear - but it's still in print. And I'm not surprised because it is a life enhancing and life affirming book - and completely transformed my understanding of what that journey we call seeking God is like. It also provided a short list of essential virtues for pastoral work, and a framework within which virtues grow out of values by being practiced with disciplined regularity, as habits of the heart lived out in relationship with others.

Listening, to God, to each other, and to God through each other, and listening as alert docility before the text of Scripture; stability, that commitment to people and place that does not see walking away as an option; change, as conversion of life, the transformative shaping of the Spirit through the sacrament of community; balance, avoiding those excesses and extemes so characteristic of overspiritual drivenness, opting instead for moderation in all things bu the love of God; material things, to be enjoyed and gratefully recieved, and also to be enjoyed and generously given away; people, those whom God gives to us to be part of the community in which we live and move and have our being - not our choice who God sends, just our requirement to love; authority, in Benedictine terms under the Abbott, and while I resist the idea that one person has authority over another's spiritual life, I do recognise the wisdom of willing submission to the wisdom and guidance of the trusted friend, even the trusted community; prayer as way of life, as daily rhythm, as lectio divina, as the offer of praise and intercession, love for God and others enfolded in the love of God.

All this and more, distilled from the Rule opf St Benedict and written in accessible style by one who herself practices the Rule in a lay context. As one example of the pastoral wisdom of the Rule of Benedict:

Your way of acting should be different from the world's way:

the love of Christ must come before all else.

You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge.

Rid your heart of all deceit.

Never give a hollow greeting of peace,

or turn away when someone needs your love.

Imagine reading that, and committing to living it, on a Monday morning at the beginning of whatever your week looks like - how transformative of workplace, community and home if that ideal of the monk were the reality of Christian daily practice..........hmmmm?

Jim Gordon.

Christology by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

2009-03-21T14:29:00.002Z

Apologies that this is a day late.

There's a lot that is inspiring about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so much so, in fact, that he has often been referred to as a 'protestant saint'. Bonhoeffer was born in Germany in 1906, and had a doctorate in theology. When the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany, Bonhoeffer was offered several oppourtunities to move to the USA and work there, but chose to remain in Germany. Bonhoeffer taught and preached against Hitler's regime and was involved with a secret group that helped Jews escape into Switzerland and plotted to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer was banned from preaching, imprisoned and finally executed in 1945, aged 39.

Bonhoeffer writes in an accessible way that I think anyone can read, and this may well be one of the reasons he has become so popular. I think most of us are put off theological writing because it's so often written in dense, difficult language. Christology is about 100 pages long and the dimensions of my copy would enable it to fit into a shirt pocket. This is no dense tome, then, and it's style is immensely readable.

The reason I have chosen Christology to write about is two-fold. The first reason is simply because I think it is a book that anyone can read. I think too often theology is too removed from the Church. Theologians write for other academics, and for these ideas to affect the Church, we either have to wait for someone to write a book that summarises their thoughts in easier language, or we have to wait for a generation of teachers who teach a new generation of church ministers with these ideas in mind. Theologians can often forget that the purpose of theology is to inform, help, build up or sometimes challenge the Church, not just the university.

Which leads me on to my second reason. Bonhoeffer moves the Christological discussion on in an important way. Christology, typically, has been concerned with the question of how Jesus can be both God and human. There have been many complex attempts at answering this question throughout Church history, the earliest authoritative example being the Chalcedonian Definition. Bonhoeffer argues that we should move the discussion away from the traditional 'how?' question, and focus instead upon a new question: 'Who is this God-Man?'

This is important because it shifts our theology out of purely intellectual realms and into real-life. The question 'who?' demands relationship, in this case, demands relationship with Christ. We can't really say who someone is, after all, until we get to know them personally. For me, Bonhoeffer's Christology reminds me that theology without a relationship with God is pointless, and acts as an encouragement for me to try and go deeper in my faith as well as in my theological studies. I think this book, more than any other, has impacted my life and thinking.

Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses

2009-03-18T11:17:00.005Z

It was good to read the previous post about Eugene Peterson's The Jesus Way. I have been nourished by another of his books called Run with the Horses. It is much older, written in 1983 but, along with much of his work, has a sense of timelessness about it. I first read this book when I was doing a correspondence course on the prophet Jeremiah about 9 years ago. The insight Peterson gives combines theological and pastoral commentary. He delves into the interior life of this notable Old Testament prophet and lets his ministry speak into the heart of contemporary ministry today.

What I particularly found nourishing was the way he wove the themes of exile, hope and imagination into his interpretation of Jeremiah's life. I will briefly mention three sections of his book under these three headings.

Exile (based on Jeremiah 29:4-14)

Peterson comments 'Exile is traumatic and terrifying. Our sense of who we are is very much determined by the place we are in and the people we are with. When that changes, violently and abruptly, who are we?... We don't fit anywhere... We are extra baggage... Israel was taken into exile in 587BC... leaving home, temple and hills' (p147).

But Peterson draws out the benefits of exile, highlighting the spiritual growth that it offers. Jeremiah told the exiles to stay rooted in exile, to make their home there, to get their hands into the Babylonian soil, to settle down and marry and seek the city's welfare. Peterson says 'The result was that this became the most creative period in the entire sweep of Hebrew history. They did not lose their identity, they discovered it' (p154). He ends this chapter by saying 'Exile is the worst that reveals the best' (p156).

Hope (based on Jeremiah 32:9-10, 15-17, 24-27, 42-44)

This is the story of the prophet buying the field at Anathoth, a thoroughly practical act. Peterson makes the point that his action was also intensely prophetic. Buying a plot of land at the very moment the invading armies were camping on it does have the mark of folly about it and exposes Jeremiah to ridicule. Theologically and practically, it was an investment in God's future. "Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land" (Jer 32:14-15). Living lives of hope in God's future may look incomprehensible but is a mark of buying into what we believe. Peterson concludes 'It takes courage to act in hope. But it is the only practical action, for it is the only action that survives the decay of the moment and escapes the scrapheap of yesterday's fashion' (p178).

Imagination (based on Jeremiah 18:1-4)

When Jeremiah visits the potter's house he is exercising his God-given imagination. I love the concept of imagination as a gift from God. It's so easy to think that God is only interested in our reasoning-power and intellect, but it is often imagination that fires us forwards to new creative initiatives in God's kingdom and saves us from a cerebral faith. Peterson believes Jeremiah had an artistic imagination which served his vocation well. He says 'The great masters of the imagination do not make things up out of thin air; they direct our attention to what is right before our eyes. They then train us to see it whole - not in fragments but in context, with all the connections. They connect the visible with the invisible...' (p75). Jeremiah was able to see God as the divine potter, making a people for his glory. He concludes 'Being a Christian is very much a matter of the flesh - of space and time and things. It means being thrown on the potter's wheel and shaped, our entire selves, into something useful and beautiful. And when we are not useful or beautiful we are re-shaped. Painful, but worth it' (p81).

(Andy Scott)

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

2009-03-16T13:56:00.003Z

A book that has had a profound impact on me over the last year is The Jesus Way- a conversation in following Jesus (Eugene Peterson). We have been using it as a basis for study in the evening congregation I am a part of. I have learnt so much and seen many things anew since starting to read it, but one chapter stands out for me in the journey.

Even as I committed my life to God (aged 7) I had a deep sense of my own sinfulness and my need for God. At best, this can be a strength which keeps me humble and reliant on God. In weaker moments, this always spills into a cycle of setting unrealistically high standards for myself, inevitably failing to reach them, then condemnation, new resolve, new standards, etc. In my teenage years I heard many sermons unfolding the simple 3 points to a more effective passionate Super-turbo boosted-Christian life which I could only copy at best for a few days. And so the cycle continued…

Although I felt like I had gained some understanding of this “thorn in my side”, reading the chapter on David was a revelation to me. Peterson defines the way of David as “…from start to finish, the way of imperfection.”
It was all too familiar to me as I read his descriptions of perfectionism: “It is a way of perceiving Christians in two categories: carnal and spiritual Christians…Perfectionism has a way of claiming the term “spiritual” for itself- some Christians are spiritual, and by implication the others are not.”

He states in the strongest terms: “Perfectionism is a perversion of the Christian way. It is responsible for disabling countless sincere Christians for common usefulness in the company of their neighbours on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.”

Peterson underlines that fact that David, despite flashes of brilliance- e.g. slaying Goliath, cutting Saul’s cloak instead of a revenge killing- was continually messing up. David did some pretty terrible things. And yet not only is he recorded as a man after God’s own heart but Jesus was not embarrassed to be called the Son of David.
The big lesson David has to teach us is not his good acts or his great faith, but his relationship with God and his honest desire to be close to God through confession and repentance. Many of his psalms contain such prayers.

As Peterson says in the chapter, “The story David lived and the psalms he prayed provide us with an imagination that is capable of understanding the operations of God to do his perfect work in us, not our capacities to perfect ourselves.”

For me, this chapter not only gives a healthy framework with which to view sin and imperfection- where there is plenty of conviction but no condemnation- but it is also extremely salutary in thinking of what we communicate to others. We all have the responsibility to encourage our fellow believers into the freedom of relationship with God- to understand how to journey with “God working with the raw material of our lives as he finds us”.
Let me never by my words or example disable my sisters or brothers but let me live and pray and model a life which gives God space to be God and do his perfect work in me.

Jeremy Begbie, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music

2009-03-13T08:23:00.004Z

I’ve chosen this book because it’s a book I eagerly awaited and, when it was published at the beginning of 2008, it would be an understatement to say that it didn’t disappoint. I knew what to expect having read some of other Jeremy Begbie’s writing, and having heard him speak on a number of occasions. He is an accomplished musician, a theologian of substance, and an excellent communicator, and the way in which he has brought music and theology together has sounded a deep resonances in me.

Jeremy is part of a movement which calls itself, ‘Theology Through The Arts’. Theology of the arts asks what theology can bring to the arts. But theology through the arts asks what the arts can bring to theology: how can the arts help us think and re-think the gospel that we hear? ‘Resounding Truth’ focuses especially upon music, an area which has been hugely neglected.

At the start the book he spends a fair bit of time bringing clarity to what music is, and in the process providing a hugely useful map of the current musical landscape. He goes on to look at music in action in biblical times, before moving rapidly through church history, hitting on prominent thinkers in relation to music. A chapter on JS Bach leads into a chapter on three musical theologians, Schleiermacher, Bach and Bonhoeffer; and then two theological composers, Messiaen, and James MacMillan. There is superb material in these chapters, but the study expands in the next section of the book.

Jeremy Begbie puts forward ‘a Christian ecology’, ‘ecology’ in the sense of ‘a guiding framework’ but also in the sense of a doctrine of creation asking what kind of world does God create and relate to, and what might our role be in relation to the created world at large? Having laid this foundation he asks this question: ‘Where might music find a place in the ecology sketched in the last chapter? In the purposes of a Triune Creator who has created and gathered up all things in Jesus Christ and now perfects all things by his Spirit – what can music contribute? In a world crafted out of freedom and love that praises God in its goodness but is never divine, a world made to flourish toward its end, a world of ordered openness and diverse unity – where do the sounds of singing and playing belong? And in the human vocation to focus and articulate creation’s praise, to discover, respect, develop, heal, anticipate, together – how might music play a part?’

I can’t do justice to the answer to these questions that he pursues and develops in the rest of the book, except to say that I’m still exploring them! So, if this flicks your switches, go read! But in the meantime, try this nugget, ‘The church is the song of God – God’s “breathing out” of his own trinitarian polyphony. It is the way the world hears the music at the heart of God and joins in.’

For me, this book is absolute gift, because it brings together the two worlds I know best. And I confess to frequently drawing on the creative thinking that I’ve found here and will continue to do so. Thank you Jeremy!

Books Half Remembered

2009-03-06T07:00:00.013Z

One of the challenges of serving a small, mainly elderly congregation whose outreach work is mainly to another 70 or so elderly people is that sometimes they get sick or die. In recent months they seem to have decided that at any one time no less than three of them will need to be visited in hospitals scattered across the county, hence opportunities to read are few and far between. So, what you have is more an account of ‘books half remembered’ and I crave your forgiveness and indulgence.

The brief was ‘choose a book that has made an impact on your life or thinking’ – which in itself made me think, which are these books? In the forty or so years I’ve been able to read, to which books have I returned because in some small way they inspire me? I identified a whole heap of storybooks and novels and I don’t think that’s a bad thing; after all countless theologians use fiction – film, drama, poetry and prose - in their work, and my own research has uncovered people using anything from Sleeping Beauty to Bridget Jones as resources for reflection.

My earliest recollections are the Happy Venture (Dick and Dora) and Beacon readers (Old Dog Tom and Briar Rose come to mind) and they are important because they taught me my love of reading – whole worlds waiting to be explored and ideas to be discovered. I also recall blagging my first reading lesson – a full two terms younger than the rest of my class, I had not yet done letters never mind phonics (as they’re now known) so I listened carefully to what the children ahead of me said, and casually repeated it when my turn came. I still recall my fear of being found out as illiterate and my joy at this new ability; fortunately I quickly learned to read!

The first book I read ‘over and over’ was Ladybird Sleeping Beauty. Something about love that overcame ugliness (from Beauty) and the love that would let its beloved go free (from Beast - who looked more like a chimpanzee than a monster) struck a chord I guess. Having tracked down and bought a copy of it to re-read ahead of this post, I discovered that forty years on it doesn’t work as it once did – not only have I grown (much) older but the world has changed: the language and pictures are of a bygone age. However, I like to think that my memory of the book’s significance outweighs its merits in the present.

A book to which I do return every few years is Jane Eyre and the yellowed pages of my well-thumbed Dean and Son Ltd (abridged) edition have accompanied me since I was ten. As a child I guess it was the young Jane with whom I identified, and over the years, in some ways, I probably grew up with her, reading the book through different eyes. The assumed backcloth of Christianity of this book and of others I read at the same age – Tom Brown’s Schooldays (same edition) springs to mind – undoubtedly shaped my thinking in some way but it would be as an adult revisiting these beloved tales that I spotted it.

Teen years saw me devouring Christian biography and autobiography – Corrie Ten Boom (The Hiding Place), Brother Andrew (God’s Smuggler) and Gladys Aylward (The Small Woman) stand out, and I even named my first car ‘Corrie’ in honour of the first of these! In each of these accounts was evidence of struggle as well as triumph, of human nature as well as divine calling, and, although I never seriously entertained the ideas of overseas mission or active Bible smuggling, these people’s lives impacted on my thinking.

Adult life has been filled with reading – from thermodynamics to theology, nuclear fusion to pneumatology, mathematics to missiology; along with any amount of fiction, classical and pulp. Choosing significant books is not easy but I do recall one of the oft derided ‘Kingsway paperback’ genre. Today’s Christian Woman by Ann Warren, published in 1984 and costing the princely sum of £1.60, was the book that gave me permission to explore my Christian vocation in ways the church (in many denominations) had failed to do, and showed me that it was, after all, OK for women to be ordained. I’d hesitate to re-read it in case, like my Ladybird book, later learning and more sophisticated theology break the spell, but I’m glad I read it when I did because its effects were liberating.

So, finally to books that shape my current thinking. There are too many to name, but I’m very glad to have read Paul Fiddes’ Participating in God and David Bosch’ Transforming Mission whose relational Trinity and authentic missional diversity respectively underlie so much of my understanding of ministry and mission.

I apologise again if this is mere self-indulgent waffle but I am still left wondering if, after all, the most transformative book was Dick and Dora Book 1?!

Evangelicals in Exile

2009-03-04T20:41:00.006Z

I first read Evangelicals in Exile (DLT, 1997) by Alistair Ross in 1998/99. I was at the time in my final year of A-level studies. The book is an account of Alistair's spiritual journey from a child to training for baptist ministry, being a church minister and pastoral counsellor. It was the honesty of Alistair's account and the questioning of faith, and specifically as the title suggests, an evangelical faith, that grabbed me. Around the same time I had also read Clark Pinnock's book on the openness of God, which was in a different way a questioning of the generally accepted evangelical theology.

Reading it again this last week, the chapter about Alistair's time at a baptist theological college was particularly interesting, as I saw how training for ministry has both changed since the late 70's/early 80's and in some ways some of the experiences (perhaps obviously) are the same. On one particular, and hear I cannot speak for the other colleges, but it does feel as I am currently training that spouses and families are still often left on the fringes of 'formation' process, despite the fact that they are experiencing everything you are feeling. Colleges I think must do more to recognise and find ways to engage with and support the families of students - what does it mean to be married to a minister? what does it mean to a child or a young person who's mother or faith is a minister?

The book's real strength is its integration of biography and theology. Another book that made a similar impact on me was Frances Young's Face to Face. I firmly believe we need more theology like this, theological reflection that arises out of and engages with one's life story and experiences. Evangelicals in Exile is a book that deserves repeated readings, the other book, I look forward to reading again and again is Under the Unpredictable Plant by Eugene Peterson, which incidently Geoff is blogging about later. The repeated readings remind us of important truths and differente sentences to stick-out.

I haven't got to the end of the book on this current reading, so here's a quote
from early on: there is an appalling danger in the Church, especially in the
evangelical tradition, of 'splitting' between theory and practice and between
good and bad. We affirm the good and deny the bad. We work hard at clarifying
the theory and in doing so somehow assume that practice will just happen. [Me -
Interestingly I think that the reverse is also true, we get stuck into
practice and hope that the theology grounding will just emerge, sometimes
what feels like thin air!]. Real life has a way of blasting holes, like rock from quarry, in our careful archaeological dug-out theology. (p.52)

Alistair Ross is a Baptist minister and is currently a lecturer in counselling at Birmingham University, where he is also pursuing doctoral studies. He is the author of several books beside Evangelicals in Exile, including Understanding Friends (1993) and Counselling Skills for church and faith community workers (2005).

Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense

2009-02-27T16:26:00.006Z

In 1977 I paid £2.95 for my copy of Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense. Ever since, I've lived more deeply, theologised more humbly, loved God more intelligently, preached more creatively, cared more compassionately, prayed more fervently, hoped more persistently, felt more passionately, wept more willingly, laughed more lightheartedly, taken friendship more seriously..at least if I have, it's because of the basic insight that illumines this book.

Canon W H Vanstone is one of that long tradition of Anglican theologians who don't teach practical theology, they instinctively think and live it. For Vanstone all theology must ultimately be pastoral. He never went into academia; resisted any promotion that removed him from his vocation as parish priest in a housing estate in the north of England. He only wrote three books, and this was the first.

The book is about the love of God - risk-filled and vulnerable, precarious and self-emtpying, patiently redemptive but with no guaranteed outcome. Love is essentially the outgoing of generous self-gift. God who is love is "the God Who will not abandon and to Whom nothing save himself is expendable". (65)"If the creation is the work of love, its "security" lies not in its conformity to some predetermined plan but in the unsparing love which will not abandon a single fragment of it, and man's (sic) assurance must be the assurance not that all that happends is determined by God's plan but that all that happens is encomapssed by his love." (66)

The number of analogies from human experience used by Vanstone is a clue to the pastoral nature of his theologising. From half a dozen pastorally borrowed parables here's one to ponder on the way to Easter:

[The love of God] is the love which overflows from fullness. Its analogue is the love of a family who, united in mutual love, take an orphan into the home. They do so not out of need but out of the sheer spontaneity of their own triumphant love. Nevertheless, in the weeks that follow, the family, once complete in itself, comes to need the new-comer. Without him the circle is now incomplete; his absence now causes anxiety; his waywardness brings concern; his goodn4ess and happiness are necessary to those who have come to love him; upon his response depends the triumph or the tragedy of the family's love. in spontaneous love, the family has surrendered its own fulfilment and placed it, precariously, in the orphan's hands. Love has surrendered its triumphant self-sufficiency and created its own need. This is the supreme illustration of love's self-giving or self-emptying - that it should surrender its fullness and create in itself the emptiness of need. Of such a nature is the kenosis of God - the self-emptying of Him Who is already in every way fulfilled." (69)

What do you want?

2009-02-25T00:13:00.001Z

I am presently reading: Howard E.Friend, Jr., Gifts of an Uncommon Life (Herendon: The Alban Institute, 2008).

Came across it on a 'Mennonite' inspired book site. Know next to nothing about the author except that he appears to be one who has lived an uncommon life. Was interested in its central idea that contemplation and activism are not two opposites poles on the spectrum but instead belong together in an integrated way of living. Indeed Friend argues that if a person is 'contemplative', yearning to celebrate the divine presence in all creation, and to welcome Christ deeply into their life then they will be 'inevitably, intrinsically, an activist as well'.

Ground to a halt early on in reading though. Not because the book is bad but because the author told me to. For early on Friend says, put this book down and go away and ask yourself, really ask yourself and take the time to consider:

'What do you want? Really, profoundly, urgently, want? Personally and professionally? What is your "pearl of greatest price," the "hidden treasure" you search for tirelessly? What do you yearn for? Long for?'

Now in my experience, Christians like me, are masters in giving the clichéd responses to such questions. Lent I think is a period for rejecting the cliché, for exorcisng its seductive promise, for lingering a bit in the wilderness of the question...I am living with this one and with this book' which thankfully allows you to read the chapters in any way that you want - 'Prophets Wanted: The Gift of Outrage' was a good chapter.

Lent group book blog

2009-02-12T10:53:00.011Z

Choose a book (apart from the bible) that has made an impact on your life and thinking - could be from a long time ago or very recently. The hope is to have at least one or two books over the six weeks. Tell us a little of something about the book (and perhaps the author), why it made an impact and perhaps a short extract. Via comments let me know the date and if you can book title.

Readers are then are encouraged to post comments either with their thoughts on the book or with some questions if they've not read it.

Feb 25 Stuart Blythe on Gifts of an Uncommon Life by Howard E.Friend, Jr.
26
27

Mar 2 Jim Gordon on Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense by W H Vanstone
3
4
5 Andy Goodliff on Evangelicals in Exile by Alistair Ross
6 Catriona Gorton (TBC)

9
10
11
12
13 Geoff Colmer on Resounding Truth by Jeremy Begbie

16 Miriam Pugh on The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson
17
18 Andy Scott on Run with the Horses by Eugene Peterson
19
20 Ash Beck on Christology by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

23 Jim Gordon on Seeking God by Esther de Waal
24
25
26
27 Geoff Colmer on Under the Unpredictable Plant by Eugene Peterson

30 Neil Brighton
31
Apr 1 Andy Goodliff on Living the Christian Story by John Colwell
2
3

6
7 Helen Swinyard
8
9
10

expecting, terrified, hurried, search(ing)

2008-12-23T08:36:00.003Z

On Sunday morning John Bunyan had their carol service with christmas story. As we listened to the story we were encouraged, lectio divina-style, to listen for a word that struck us and ponder on it ... here are my four words ...

Lk 2.1-7 - expecting
what are we expecting? I start advent with high expectations, but the closer I get to Christmas, it as if my expectations get lower ... the tension of early advent, seems to get resolved, as christmas encroaches evermore into advent ... December becomes one long christmas season, which is over by 3pm christmas day ... what should we be expecting? ... the theme of second advent often gets lost it seems these days ... looking back is easier than looking forward ...

Lk 2.8-14 - terrified
what are we terrified about? any terror in the story is removed ... it is a disney-verison of the christmas story ... I must confess I'm ambivalent about angels ... why in children nativity plays are they always girls ... but in scripture, they always seem to be male (or in the film dogma asexual) ... I'm not sure I'm terrified about the economic crisis or the threat of terrorism ... do we need a healthy sense of fear, fear of the Lord - is that why the shepherds were terrified?

Lk 2.15-20 - hurried
where am I hurrying to this christmas? I always have this sense when I hear the story that Mary's labour must have been quick and easy ... but I wonder in the shepherds hurrying they arrived to early and they weren't exactly welcome by Mary ... did Jesus hurry in his coming into the world ... or was it a long and agonising coming? Like the shepherds we seem to do a lot of hurrying, but where they were hurrying to see the birth of a long-expected messiah, we hurry for other reasons ...

Matt 2.1-12 - search
The magi and Herod are searching for a child. Jesus is not easy to find, you have to go looking for him ... perhaps ever so more true today ... what are we searching for this year? is there any mystery left? where is God hidden? Recently in a sermon class I heard Will Willimon preach a sermon (from the Great Preachers video series) on Gen 29.16-30 ... one sentence that has stayed with me was the idea of God whispering/lurking in the shadows of this family ... God is in the background, hidden from centre view, in the shadow of Jeruslaem in Bethlehem, not in the palace but in the stable ... it may not be that God feels that present around the table on Thursday lunchtime, or in front of the television, or as you explain how to play that game to hard of hearing granny for the tenth time, but if you search just a little, you will find he is Immanuel, God with us.