Sensing Lent 3: Glass

Stained glass in St John the evangelist, Stoke Row, Oxon, UK.

Glass. It struck me looking at this beautiful window that those of us who spend a lot of time making church related visual aids out of cardboard and sticky backed plastic, are probably missing a trick. 

In the days when people didn't have bibles, or for that matter, WH Smith, the stories told through glass were vivid enough. 

It's a very different experience reading words on a page than feasting your eyes upon this image from one of Jesus' nature miracles, for example - the angled boat tossed and turned in the turquoise sea, the sails billowing out, the knots on the ropes looking real enough to touch. 

It tells, or shouts, the story. At least one disciple is praying through sheer terror, another holds his cloak to his neck, a third looks anxious. But the fourth looks downwards, perhaps more trusting. Another little story inserted there? Jesus commands the storm, his arm outstretched towards an artistic insertion of a white bird (I'm guessing doves, though seagulls might be more likely...did they have seagulls in Palestine?) 

Further images and symbols around the frame yield enough material for six bible studies, negating the need to go on Amazon or print out endless reams of paper.

Plain window, same church.

St Paul famously looked 'through a glass darkly', which has to go down as one of the most provocative and poetic images of the King James Version of the Bible. 

I know the church can seem boring and out of touch, irrelevant to modern life and stuck in the dark ages, but we do have some very good windows. Taken in slowly and thoroughly, with a little guidance on hand, I reckon they could convert a few people on the spot.

Whether you're looking through a glass, looking at a glass, or reflecting on whether you are currently seeing clearly or not, it's a potent piece of stuff for day three of 'sensing' Lent.

Sensing Lent 2: Stone

Day two of a Lenten focus on 'stuff', hoping to glimpse God through something physical. 

And today I thought about stone. In particular, these stones. 

Stone is solid, dependable. Those dry stone walls in the Cumbrian fells are a masterful example of craftsmanship without the aid of cutting edge technology - just stones, each one unique, piled in such a way as to keep sheep in/out, mark the boundaries and look beautiful as walkers clamber over them into the next field. It's not difficult to see why St. Paul used stones being built together as a metaphor for the church (the 'living stones' of 1 Peter 2:5).

I didn't realise when I got ordained that so much ministry would be bound up with emails, that even pastoral relationships would be so affected by the tone of them. Because there are ways and ways of writing emails...At least once I've sent one off with a bit too much haste and rued the consequences...There are currently over 4000 in my inbox (that is, 4000 read ones; panic not) - I'm not sure how many months went by since the last electronic clear out but that does seem an awful lot of ether...

With so much electronic communication going on, it was good to go somewhere today and look at something solid and immovable (barring earthquake, out of control tractors or the Second Coming, that is). Stone. You can touch it, it's cool. It's not just grey. Things grow in between it, other things actually live on it.

If you were to bump into it, or scrape your flesh against it, you'd know all about it though ('he is the stone that causes people to stumble; the rock that makes them fall', Isaiah 8: 14).

These particular stones house a building where learning and Christian formation takes place*, so in all their steadiness and physicality, they say to me 'we have been built; you are being built; the church is being built.' 

Which is a good solid sandwich between the emails of this morning and the emails of this evening.

*Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire, UK.

Sensing Lent 1: Ash

Research* into personality type of Anglican clergy has shown, in studies on both males and females, that on the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator test (MBTI) there is a markedly high proportion of clerics who tend towards the 'iNtuitive' pole rather than the 'Sensing'. 

Intuition (iN) and sensing (S) are two ends of a spectrum which offers an explanation of how we prefer to take in information. People who prefer 'sensing' will enter a room and notice all the details their senses are taking in, at face value - the peeling wallpaper, the sound of a distant hoover etc; those who prefer intuition will see patterns and abstract connections, e.g. the bookcase reminds them of a time when they browsed an antique book shop in Marlow and that red carpet there which was like wine or blood...

High end iNtuitives are happy with abstract theorising and probably come across as impossible dreamers to everyone else, so in many ways, the research has implications for how clergy teach and explain the gospel. When you're up there in the pulpit imagining for everyone the connection between sanctification and redemption, others are sitting in the congregation noticing all the cobwebs...

Frequently on a walk in the countryside I'll find myself emerging from a reverie about some abstract train of thought involving patterns and concepts, and suddenly look around and notice it's a sunny day, or there are a lot of trees, or the ground is very chalky, or I've taken a wrong turn. Taking in information through my 5 senses is not my default reaction. Even when confronted with a signpost that clearly says 'n'-town to the right, I'll follow my internal intuition which feels like it should be straight on, because that's how I imagined it in my mind, and no amount of being told it was in fact to the right, normally makes any difference (till I admit I'm lost and have to actually look at one of those oh so prosaic maps).

And so we come to Lent. As an attempt at self growth, I'm setting out to focus a bit each day on stuff - on something that caught my attention that day - something I can take in primarily through my senses which will hopefully be alive to a spiritual possibility. What does it look/sound/taste/feel/smell like? It's a spiritual challenge about realignment and a re-engagement with the ordinary things we have and hold. In short, it's an attempt at 'sensing' Lent.

First up: ash. (it became impossible to leave this as a straightforward description, and it turned itself into a poem, so I've probably failed already...)

Ash.
Black, dense, powdery,
sticky now with oil, 
product of our burning,
sign of our mourning.
Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust; or laid
in a hole in the ground,
the stuff from which we come,
the stuff to which we go.
Today in a small pot it waits
to be smeared, 
finger dirty it will
smudge the skin,
a sooty mark to the forehead
inside which we think 
and pray. A cross to recall 
identity; a witness to 
mortality; a sign of honesty.

* e.g. 'Women Priests in the Church of England: Psychological Type Profile', in Religions 2011, 2.

Prize leeks

3rd Sunday before Lent.

1 Corinthians 3:6

'I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth.'

It was a relief this morning to find a perfect excuse not to preach from the gospel , but go for the Epistle instead. I left Jesus' teaching on adultery and divorce for another, less contentious day, to embrace the somewhat easier (though only by a slim margin) topic of church growth.

This was in the light of reading the Church Growth research project, From Anecdote to Evidence, just published, which looked at factors which affect growth in church congregations. 

For visual learners, I added in a chance to compare two leeks - one grown in optimum conditions on our local, GM free, organic estate (the fat, juicy one) and the other grown in our back garden (the thin weedy one). 

The main verse from the Epistle was even written on the front cover of the report, so I knew I was onto something during my sermon preparation (some weeks I'm just so grateful for divine inspiration, as the time left to write these things often has a habit of trickling away to nothing).

I mainly have a love/hate relationship with findings on church growth, I think, because,

a) I'm worried that people in a large 'successful' churches with massive paid staff teams will tell me the perfect way to grow the church, which will of course not work in this situation, and then I will feel inadequate. 

And:

b) I nonetheless remain hopeful that they'll come up with some unique finding such as, 'if you're nice to people and smile a lot, your church will grow', and then I'll think, 'great, how hard is that going to be?'

Is growth only about numbers? 

The report, quite rightly, says numbers aren't the whole story, but researching growth in numbers is obviously a lot easier than researching growth in, say, holiness or prayerfulness, or generosity of heart. The paradox in church growth is surely the same in all Christian endeavour, even something as basic as prayer: what is the relationship between our effort and God's activity?

St Paul was quick to point out that although he might sow, and someone else water the seed, it is God who gives the growth, yet this apostle was hardly one to sit back and do nothing. When it comes to growth it would seem that we are to labour as though it all depended upon us, and trust for 'results' as though it all depended on God.

Finally, returning to leeks fat and thin - the report found 7 main factors positively correlated with church growth:

1.  Good leadership

2.  A clear mission and purpose

3.  Willingness to self-reflect, to change and adapt        according to context

4.   Involvement of lay members

5.   Being intentional in prioritising growth

6.   Being intentional in chosen style of worship

7.   Being intentional in nurturing disciples

Recalling the verse above, then, like a good gardener, it looks like we have to be intentional if we want to grow, while leaving the actual mystery of growth to God.

Decline and fall

The science of numbers in the Church of England always makes for sobering, if depressing reading. I'm not sure I can take much more of it. 

Linda Woodhead, writing in the Church Times this week, termed the decline in numbers of Ministers 'not enough boots on the ground', saying that 'there are no longer enough troopers to keep the show on the road, and the show will have to change.'

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/7-february/features/features/not-enough-boots-on-the-ground

As well as not enough Ministers, there are of course, fewer and fewer people attending Sunday worship. An influential American writer on spirituality said recently he didn't really connect with God through 'going to church', to which 'Christianity Today' responded with, of course, an article saying why going to church still made sense. They'd have to, wouldn't they, because deep down, we're all thinking what will happen if, say in 30 years time, no one in the UK really is going to church (or to an Anglican church anyway...)
http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/february/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go-why-i-could-stay-home-but-choo.html?paging=off

Of the people who do attend on Sundays, the graphs show ageing congregations, (in the C of E, the average age stands at 62) with few coming up from younger generations to take on all the jobs the older ones have done. A piece in Church Times suggests that the army of ladies born in the 1930s and 1940s are the real troopers - when they pass on, who on earth will keep all this stuff going?http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/7-february/features/features/generation-a-%E2%80%94-the-dwindling-force

Of course the church, in some form, goes on all through the week, with numerous volunteer run events up and down the UK - mums and toddler groups, lunches for the elderly, drop in centres, debt centres, etc. etc. All this is the church in action. But we still have the issue of Sunday worship. If congregations slowly dwindle to nothing, what will we do with all those buildings, for a start?

And so the question 'why go to church?' haunts believers, Ministers in particular. We're the ones who are supposed to be 'keeping the show on the road', who worry about the show grinding to a halt when all the people have gone. The likelihood of turning those graphs around till attendance is rising and average age falling to something more representative, seems small.

If people come to faith later in life, with ready made families and lifestyles, creating a culture of church going can be extremely difficult. It has to be fitted in to an already crowded life, and sometimes it seems it just cannot be. Cue Fresh Expressions of church - mid-week, Saturday mornings cafe-style, Messy church, etc. But people are still busy, busy, busy. Are we too busy to gather?

When you grow up from childhood with a rhythm of gathering, churchgoing, it's simply what you do on Sundays, just as going to school or work is what you do the rest of the week. As one writer put it, there's a noticeable difference between going if nothing else comes up, and going unless something else comes up.

Is there a way to lighten the dismal tale of ecclesiastical decline and fall? What do Ministers do about the significant number out there who believe stuff without 'going to church?' What even is 'church'? 

Linguistically the word ecclesia began in civic life - the 'ekklesia' was a gathering, pure and simple. That's what church is - it's us gathering. What we do when we gather flows from there. 

At first we gathered in homes - presumably gatherings got too big - after persecution and missionary scattering across the globe, people started putting up special buildings for gathering, some of them very large, some smaller, in every locality in the UK eventually, and organising themselves into manageable groups (with some acrimonious splitting along the way, as is only human) - and here we are today.

Church growth (decline) graphs are ultimately depressing, but they should tell us one thing - we must attend to what the point of our gathering is. When we know that, and know the relationship between gathering and being sent out again for a purpose, we will be on the right road. If we forget, we can say goodbye to the show, and the road, completely.

Happening Now

Among many unsettling moments at Theological College was the time when one of our lecturers, who liked to provoke both Catholics and Evangelicals (not to mention Liberals) was discussing with us 'the sacrament of the present moment'. Various people were nodding sagely and thinking 'Oh yes, I know what that means and what is more, I practise it daily - it is most definitely part of my (sophisticated, enlightened) spirituality...'

And then he looked mischievously around and said (in his inimitable Irish lilt) 'Of course, there's no such thing as the present moment...' 

This was the same lecturer who had also thrown cold water on the idea you can count up sacraments (2, 7?) with a lecture/bible study on how St Jerome translated the Greek word, 'mysterion', as 'sacrament' (e.g. Colossians 2:2-3) but it really meant 'mystery'. What was this mystery, hidden through the ages, and now revealed? Jesus Christ, of course: the (one and only) 'sacrament' of God. 

So, no 'present moment', and possibly a bit of doubt about 'sacramental'...Shock! Horror! No such thing, then, as the sacrament of the present moment, a revelation of the divine right here, right now...?

I can see how 'the present moment', and its possible spiritual opportunity, could become a 'thing', though. The idea would be that you slow down, think about what is around you - the sights and sounds and smells, and become aware. Present. You stop rushing, stop 'doing' and just 'be'. Feel the earth beneath your feet, hear the wind in the trees. Be grateful, know God's presence in the here and now. That sort of thing. 

I am generally no good at it, being naturally somewhat cerebral, impatient and an activist. On the Myers Briggs Personality Types (MBTI) weekend, in the middle of one session we had to go outside into the grounds for 20 minutes and note what occurred.

All I could remember was feeling bored, then impatient to get back inside and finish. Other people returned to describe in detail the intricate pattern on the brickwork and fifteen different species of bird they had spotted.


But the idea of being more available to the present, practising mindfulness, and what might happen if I did, still lingers.

Not generally one for New Year's Resolutions, I had decided at the beginning of 2014, I was going to have three - make sermons funnier; keep the house cleaner and practise being in the present moment more. The first two haven't been going that well, and in the light of the above, I'm wondering if I ought to abandon the third as well.


Then I stumbled upon a book, This is Happening. It's a collection of moments captured on camera for the social media site, Instagram. The blurb says 'Ever get that this-is-happening-feeling? The one when you notice something so beautiful, strange or wonderful that you can't quite believe you get to capture it?' The photos are as varied as life itself: a Ferris wheel; a freshly dug turnip; a picnic rug. I'm hoping to use it in some way during prayer times...Still photography as an aid to contemplation...?

It made me think. Mathematically there may well be no such thing as the present moment (looking forward to the moment makes it the future; as soon as you've had the moment, it's the past). However, there might be something in being attentive to the moments (plural) you are in. 

Noticing. Listening. Breathing. Being grateful. And God might be there.

Any Questions?

Second Sunday after Epiphany

John 1:35-39

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples,and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 

We live in an information saturated age.

In the age of Google, questions and answers are reduced to questions requiring information and the 'answers' which give you that information. 

What a search engine does, when you type in a question, is match your words as exactly as possible to places where you might best be able to find the answers.

But it’s not fail safe, and it’s shallow.

If, in a moment of existential angst, I type into Google, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ I get, initially:

 ‘"My Life" is a song by American rapper 50 Cent and the second official single of his forthcoming fifth studio album Street King Immortal’, and a link to his song…

After that, I might be luckier and find a second entry, encouraging me to ‘Take the ‘three minute Chakra test’.

Or the third entry: ‘How to discover your life purpose in about 20 minutes’.

A simple search for information cannot give me what I really seek.

Our gospel today has at its heart a question asked by Jesus, which is not answered; and a question asked him by some disciples, which he answers in a certain way.

I’d like us to look at these questions and answers and what they reveal about how Jesus deals with us.

We’re still in Epiphany, still thinking about how God is revealed in Jesus Christ.

We’ve seen how the Magi discovered that God was revealed in the baby in Bethlehem.

We’ve seen how Christ was revealed in his baptism.

And now we come to John, who’s always the odd one out.

His is the one gospel where the baptism of Jesus is not narrated, but alluded to.

So, instead of a riverside scene, such that we tried to imagine last week, with Jesus going down into the not so clean Jordan, here we have the event commented upon by the Baptizer himself.

The passage opens with John looking up and seeing Jesus walking towards him.

He is quick to comment: ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

He has recognized Jesus for who he is and he wants to testify to his real nature, until people understand.

It’s easy to forget that at this point John still had his own disciples, but that was about to change...

We’re told, ‘the next day John again was standing with two of his disciples…'

Again he watches Jesus walk by and again he testifies: ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’

This time it’s enough to make two of his followers turn from John and go after Jesus instead.

Jesus notices this, turns, and asks them a question.

Here is that question at the heart of the passage...

Different translations inevitably render it differently, but the sense of the question is ‘What are you looking for?’, or better, ‘What do you seek?’

As one commentator points out, a lot hangs on the way we phrase things: you ‘look for’ your glasses; you ‘seek’ the meaning of life.

To seek is a word associated with the Magi: they sought the King; they sought what the star meant; they were seekers.

Seekers is also a term used in reports on mission in the UK about which groups the church is effective in reaching and which groups it isn’t.

Spiritual seekers are at home with the spiritual quest for meaning, but they don’t necessarily think the traditional church can offer anything to this search.

Unlike Google questions and answers, ‘What do you seek?’ coming from the lips of Jesus, is a profound, 'meaning of life' question, and one which many people never really ask themselves.

It’s one of those bits of the gospel that is best slowed down, 'seen' in slow motion and pondered over.

When we read about Jesus in the New Testament, we can race through, jump over bits, miss their significance.

That’s why the reading out loud of Scripture in public worship is important.

Although it’s good to have the written word, the word that is heard can reveal something new for us.

I’d like to re-read that part of the gospel and see if, in your mind’s eye, you can slow it down to that one question, and then, imagine Jesus asking it of you, today.

Here we go: it might help if you close you eyes.

‘The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What do you seek?’’

It’s easy to miss that this question coming from the lips of Jesus is the very first thing he is recorded as saying, in this gospel.

In fact, for someone who is presented as the Word of God, Jesus has been pretty silent up till this moment.

‘What do you seek?’ is a fair question though, because so many, when presented with the life of Jesus, sought something other than what he stood for.

They sought political freedom, they sought to control him and they sought to control who could be saved.

‘What do you seek?’ he says to these disciples of John, who now appear to be following him.

It’s like today – people go to church for many different reasons – they like the music, they like the sense of history, the building; they are upset about a loss, or want to celebrate something happy, like a birth.

To all these people, and to us, who think we know why we’re here, Jesus still asks: ‘What do you seek?’

And He asks it repeatedly in life, in different stages.

I recall a period of life when spiritual things seemed a bit of a struggle.

I'd been a Christian for 18 years, had three small children, went to a big, lively church and a midweek bible study group for Mums. I had read the bible and I knew you were supposed to pray every day.

Not being a morning person and having small children meant I never found time to pray in the morning, so I decided I would try and sit down when they had gone to bed, at about 8pm each evening.

I would go into my room, sit on the bed, relax, and try and read a portion of the bible and pray, but it was hard work, partly because I was always tired but also because I wasn’t very challenged in my Christian life.

I’d been going to the same type of church for about fifteen years – I’d heard a lot of similar sermons and wasn’t sure, apart from looking after small children, what my role in the body of Christ really was.

I remember looking up from the bible one evening, looking out of the window as the evening drew on, and thinking ‘Is this it?’

It was a ‘meaning of life’ question.

I meant, ‘is this what being a Christian is always going to be like?’

Flat and same-y…?

If I was asking this question of God, I now believe He was asking it of me first.

Theologians call that ‘prevenient grace’.

He asked first, calling deeper, as He always does.

‘What do you seek?’

‘Is this all there is?’

Looking back with hindsight at what happened after that, in my life, and the life of our family, I can see that it was in many ways the end of a settled stage and the beginning of something very different, which eventually led to Ordination.

God knew this: I didn’t.

What was at the bottom of my apparent dissatisfaction was that fundamental question ‘What do you seek?’

The disciples’ answer to Jesus’ question is not recorded in our passage – it would take them a lifetime to work out.

But in any case, they, walking along behind Jesus and trying to work him out, now ask a question back.

‘Rabbi, where are you staying?’

It could be a request for information (like ‘where is the tomato purée?’- a question I always find myself asking in a new supermarket), or it could be they were trying to build up a picture of this man, this Lamb, about whom John was so enthusiastic.

And Jesus does give an answer, but it’s not an answer for information, it’s an invitation to come.

It’s the same for us:

‘Come and see’.

Come and spend time with me.

Come and let’s talk.

Come and let’s eat.

What do you seek?