The Advent agenda

1 Thessalonians 3:13
And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. 

 Luke:  21:25-6

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 

Sermon for Advent Sunday

I attended the Memorial Service of my mother in law this week.

Her church is very rural, a tiny church in a hamlet of about four dwellings, around it chilly autumn fields and the rolling Sussex countryside.

People were already gathering there, half an hour before the service began.

The church was warm and inviting, there were candles burning and a choir was already assembled, with organist playing.

We were welcomed at the door by smiling stewards who gave us our orders of service, all people who knew and loved my mother in law as part of God’s family.

The vicar arrived and gave me a hug, although I’d never met her before.

The service began, with dignity and solemnity, but with a sense of celebration and tenderness as we shared our memories.

In our singing, sharing and praying, we affirmed our faith that though death parts us, in reality ‘nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

The Church does this sort of thing well.

Candles and stained glass and paintings and hymns, sacred words and participation - the every day and the holy – all God’s people together, laughing and weeping, joined by more than blood.

Afterwards we adjourned to the new extension where wine and home made food was served in the meeting room, and people could use the modern facilities that include a kitchen and disabled toilet, also appreciated by the Sunday School that meet there once a month.

In a climate of apparent deterioration in church attendance, a Memorial Service in a well-loved and well cared for church is a sign of God’s continuing presence in the community and, for that matter, in the Church of England.

The C of E was in the news this week as cinema chains declined to air the Lords’ Prayer advert that the Church of England Communications Department had put together and were hoping to screen in the run up to Christmas, to coincide with the release of the new Star Wars Movie.

The short film shows a series of different people each saying a line from the Lord’s Prayer.

It’s well made, current and touching.

See link left for the 'banned' Lord's Prayer ad.

The ‘actors’ on the video include the Archbishop, a young man laying flowers on a grave, a Police Officer, a weight lifter, a farmer feeding his cows, a choir, two people in a coffee shop, a woman in a campsite, a mother and son at a joyous full                                                       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxgwWzh0h-w
immersion baptism, cute children in an assembly and a couple kneeling at their marriage service.

The cinema group, initially positive, later said they had a policy of not showing religious or political advertising.

Cue headlines of the ‘banning’ of the Lord’s Prayer in cinemas and much handwringing...

It has caused the C of E, and others, to think with many furrowed brows about the position of the Established Church in today’s society.

As one writer suggested, (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/25/church-of-england-lords-prayer?CMP=share_btn_tw#comments)

since cultural disestablishment is practically complete, perhaps actual disestablishment will follow shortly.

In his view, the Church of England needs once and for all to shed any assumption that it is a cultural force in British society and stop acting hurt when its message is apparently rejected by secular institutions.

In a world where ISIS want us to be divided along binary lines (Muslim and infidel) the writer actually celebrates the ‘grey area’ that he thinks the Church of England inhabits, although he thinks we should die off in our present incarnation in order to be reborn for the good of society (which sounds biblical to me).

About the ‘grey area’ that is the C of E, he writes ‘It is between Catholic and Protestant, between organ and drum kit, between robes and T-shirts, between conservatism and liberalism, between certainty and doubt, between silence and noise(…) In a culture that is increasingly polarized and awash with labels and identity politics, the C of E is a beacon of murkiness, and is all the more beautiful for it.’

I’m not sure how I feel about being part of a beacon of murkiness, but I see his point.

So, a little village church, still full of life, and the controversy of the Lord’s Prayer.

What have these got to do with Advent Sunday?

They can be united in the question we ask today at the beginning of the new church year…

And the question is, ‘Who sets the agenda?’

St Luke's Linch

That joyful Memorial service in a tiny rural church was a little knot of resistance to the secularisation agenda, that wants to leave a troublesome God and a troublesome prayer out of society if at all possible.

In that quiet church, Christian hope that God’s kingdom come and his will be done, is alive and well.

So who sets the agenda for our lives?

At this time of global terrorism, is it fear that sets the agenda? (as expressed by one listener who phoned the Jeremy Vine show to say that as a result of the Paris terror attacks he’d canceled his shopping trip to London this Christmas).

Or even if you don’t fear terrorism, maybe you fear that the Christian faith will disappear altogether from society, or at least the Church of England will disappear…

We all have fears, but they pale into insignificance in the face of the fear spoken of in our gospel today:

Luke records Jesus’ prophecy that at the end of the world, people certainly will be in fear, but it will be fear on an astronomical (literally) scale, as people ‘faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming on the world’, and as nations are ‘confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves’.

To those who think that global warming is a myth, maybe we should point them to these verses in Luke.

Or maybe in the face of unknown fears, we seek to numb reality with distraction, with the huge number of our relatively small daily worries.

Luke suggests we should be alert to much more important things.

And so we pause this Advent Sunday and take note of the season.

Advent is the season of waiting, of watching, of reflecting.

And it’s a good question for Advent: What or who sets the agenda for your life and energy?

Advent is a good time to reset the agenda.

In both our readings, the agenda is Christ’s Second Advent, his return to earth in triumph.

It is this agenda that ultimately dictates the future of the earth and of history, not the agenda of terror, or secularisation, or shallow distraction.

Luke does not want his readers to be caught unawares by the return of Christ, and it’s the same for us.

He writes, ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation (i.e. the one seeing these things) will not pass away until all things have taken place’.

Meanwhile Paul prays that the hearts of his fellow believers may be ‘strengthened in holiness’ so they may be blameless at the coming of Christ.

‘Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’, says Luke.

‘Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’.

What better way to begin Advent, as we re-set our agendas today?

G(r)owing nowhere fast

There's a conversation going on at the moment within the Church of England, about growth (or in other words, how to halt decline), which is proceeding along depressingly predictable lines, as reported recently in the Church Times: 

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/17-april/news/uk/church-growth-bishop-broadbent-rounds-on-the-critics-of-reform-and-renewal

This week it was the turn of the evangelical group, Fulcrum, to address the criticism of Reform and Renewal, the Archbishop's vision for the renaissance of the C of E. It was the contention of the Rt Revd. Pete Broadbent, Bishop of Willesden, that now that the Church of England is finally looking hard at some really important things, asking awkward questions like 'what actually leads to growth? (or, if you like, how do we get out of the mess we're in?) those more used to managing decline suddenly don't like what they see, and are resorting to accusations that the Church is adopting un- thought through secular management techniques, seeking safety in numbers, and ignoring the fact that sometimes priests do struggle on bravely in the toughest ministry circumstances, whilst numbers drop inexorably away, sometimes to zero.

The narrative of this increasingly polarised debate goes like this: liberals are hopelessly happy to preside over decline, stressing prayerfulness and holiness above numbers, and relying on presence as an evangelistic strategy, while evangelicals unquestioningly adopt secular management techniques, flog their programmes, pinch other people's churchgoers and rely on a certain sort of leadership mystique for numerical growth (thought they're always quick to add, as an afterthought, that growth is about quality, not just quantity).

Bishop Broadbent declared himself to be 'allergic to Rev.', the gritty, award winning BBC series about an inner city priest who struggles on despite having, to all intents and purposes a 'failing' church, with no money, smug authoritarian overseers, and a handful of oddballs for worshippers.

Being allergic to Rev. is also a predictable part of the narrative. Rev. has a decided 'liberal catholic' flavour, and evangelicals got short shrift in series 1, episode 2: Jesus is Awesome, with the satirising of 'smoothie bar' Christianity. Okay, maybe a bit unfair, but excruciatingly funny precisely because there was more than a grain of truth in it.

If you're primarily geared up to growth and how to achieve it, watching the Rev. Adam Smallbone lurch from one crisis to another in a church which is teetering on the edge of closure (which is in fact what sadly happens at the end of series 3), will of course leave you feeling queasy. But from a dramatic, and even a theological point of view, anyone who's 'allergic to Rev', for me, is dangerously close to saying they're allergic to the underdog, therefore allergic to the Beatitudes, even allergic to the possibility of resurrection...?

It's a cloudy picture, this debate about decline/growth/leadership etc... In the mix is another unseemly argument around the word discipleship, a word I admit is beloved of evangelicals, but also a rather hard to ignore idea in the New Testament. I'm keen on the word and do not share other people's scruples about it. Anyone brought up on David Watson's 1981 seminal book of that name is likely to read a critique (see link below) of the concept as an attack on the very foundation of a serious lifelong commitment to following Jesus, which is how I interpret discipleship.

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/30-january/comment/columnists/dissing-the-d-word

So there you are - I love Rev. and I don't want to 'diss' discipleship. And I'm desperately hoping that instead of arguing about growth, we Christ followers could just get together and 'seek first his kingdom and his righteousness', then 'all these things' (numbers; or at least, the people God is calling, which are not always the same thing) would maybe be added to us as well....

Is it too much to hope for? Or in our little camps, promoting our own brand and dissing the others, are we just going to be going (growing) nowhere fast...?

Pondering Priesthood

Two priests outside Church House on day of Synod vote on women bishops

I had two main problems with the call to ordination in the Church of England. Well, actually there were multiple problems - the course of vocation never did run smooth - but two main intellectual ones. And they were big. They kept me thrashing around in the bible and Christian tradition for about six months before I dared talk to anyone official.

The first was some formative church experience where women as teachers and leaders were at best absent and at worst disallowed. This reflected a conservative theological reading of St Paul where Eve's deception in the garden of Eden, and the perceived creation hierarchy, were cited as reasons women cannot hold authority over men. I needed to know if I shared this view or rejected it. With something of a tussle, I rejected it.

Second, and more pressing, was the problem of priesthood. If you are ordained in the C of E, after a preliminary year you will be a priest. What did this mean? Was it legitimate in terms of the New Testament's 'priesthood of all believers'? Could I come to an understanding of 'ordination' that felt, not  so much comfortably numb, but comfortably mine?

So much hangs on language. If you are brought up non Conformist it's hard to even say 'priest' with any real meaning. To my ears 'priest' sounded male and it sounded Roman Catholic. It also sounded Old Testament. The female equivalent was worse - cult-ish - in a bad way - priestess of the cult of Diana or Astarte or something. My meetings with those that prepared me for selection were all around this problem. 'What do you understand by priesthood?' To which I would mumble something about 'the priesthood of all believers' and the patient response would come: 'yeeees, but what do you understand by priesthood?'

And so I was stuck, grappling with something that was fundamental, and yet excessively difficult to pin down theologically, which has furthermore been the cause of so many divisions within the church. Only men can be priests. Only the priest can 'celebrate'.The priest is representative. The priest is one of the people. The church can do without priests. The church can't exist without priests. Anglican orders are null and void. There were no priests in the the early church  There were priests in the early church. Ordination is indelible. It's just setting you aside for a function. Only the Bishops' hands. 'Tainted' hands.

So, reeling and tripping like an amateur ice skater, I came to the night before Ordination. We were holed up in a small chapel for the final Eucharist. I must admit I found that last Eucharist as a 'lay person' very hard. It had an awesome sense of the Holy. In fact I had taken my shoes off. It's the only time I've ever taken the bread and wine in bare feet. It felt like the final ascent of a high mountain. The lower slopes had been manageable but I feared failing at the last few metres. I desired yet drew back from the summit. It was like when you can see the bank on the other side of the water and you really need to get over there but there's a huge jump.

Three years in and I am no closer to defining priesthood. It grows to encompass many things, but with an expanding breadth of meaning it tends to get diffuse. President, intercessor, conductor, enabler, sign, presence, shepherd, witness, leader, visionary? 

I felt decidedly weird on the day of

'Ontological instability'?

Ordination, but this had a lot to do with getting up too early, being nervous, being hot, being photographed a lot, being told what to do by multiple Church of England officials and being first in the alphabet. At the end of the day a friend wondered facetiously if I was suffering from 'ontological instability'. I thought 'how clever, it must be that'. But was anything ontological really happening, or was it more a rite of passage, with all the attendant  feelings of liminality, uncertainty and unique spiritual opportunity? 

Recently I was challenged by reading a former Bishop in Australia reflect on the phrase 'ordained ministry':  'The notion of the ordained ministry suggests an ontologically distinct order within the ecclesia into which certain persons are inducted. This generates the entirely fictitious idea that those whom the church calls to the office of deacon, priest and bishop, are, in the first instance, being relocated to a different metaphysical realm, that is the ordained ministry.'* 

So I don't know...My gender and background keep me from identifying wholly with a position which makes me 'Christ's representative'. Yet it has to be more than just the 'charism' of leadership taken to its logical conclusion. Maybe its

meaning will always elude me. Maybe it doesn't matter day to day. Maybe the more you focus on priesthood the less you remember you are still just an ordinary Christian trying to be obedient.

I suppose the bottom line is this is where I seem to have come, this is where I am now, and this is where, with God's grace, I'm going.

*Stephen Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, p. 21, my italics. 

The REAL A - Z of Ministry in the Church of England.

There may be a common misconception that Anglican priests spend a lot of time being holy and pious, praying and reading the bible and the Prayer Book.

The real truth is revealed in this A - Z of real, actual day to day preoccupations; things which irritate, preoccupy, keep us busy and define the happy days of ministry in the real world. Mostly they are things nobody talked about at theological college.

A is for.......... Acronyms.

Like any organisation, there's plenty of jargon. You could in theory spend the morning on IME (Initial Ministerial Training) working on your MDF (Ministry Development Folder); attend your MDG (Ministry Development Group) in the afternoon and go onto an evening governors meeting at the local C of E school where you will need to know the difference between an SEF (School Evaluation Form), an SDP (School Development Plan) and an RAP (Raising Achievement Plan).

B is for..........Bat droppings. 

Bats are a protected species in and around many ancient churches. They sit up in the roof. Which means the priest must protect the Chalice after filling it up with Communion wine, or the consequences could be liturgically complicated, not to mention unhygienic  Very important, that little cardboard square covered in white linen (the pall).

C is for..........Coffee.
You will consume vast quantities of it. You will long for it when it's unavailable and drink too much when you don't need it. Some will be delicious, some will be undrinkable, but you must plough on regardless as it's part of the etiquette of pastoral visits. 'Come in...would you like a coffee?' (Thinks: that'll be my 4th this morning...) 'Yes, that'd be lovely, thank you!'

D is for..........Driving.

Multi parish ministry is so spread out these days you may find you're spending quite a lot of time in the car. This can be an opportunity for prayerful reflection, or an opportunity to pick up two speeding tickets, one on the way to an important church meeting and one on the way back, for instance.

E is for.......... Enervating meetings.

Obviously we don't have any in this parish, but I have endured my fair share in other ministry contexts. Random thoughts during these times have included: 'What a strange green lampshade';  'Is that clock actually working?' and 'Will I be home in time for Waterloo Road?'

F is for..........Freezing cold.

A burial in the snow; a February 8 o'clock Communion; being able to see your breath as you preach; fingers too cold to pluck guitar strings. We praise God heartily for heating that works; otherwise we soldier on with many jumpers. I once wore a green woolly hat during the Eucharist. It was Ordinary Time.

G is for........Gaps.

Gaps in perception - your perception of 'success' and what you can in reality achieve; gaps in the perception others have of you, and what they think you can achieve; gaps in rotas; gaps in the night when you can't sleep; gaps into which you think you can squeeze your car when you're late for a meeting. I suppose it's life and death and all that mess in between: there are just a lot of gaps.

H is for..........Heating.

If you have some that works and doesn't cost equivalent to the GDP of a small country, you are blessed beyond compare. Even then, someone will need to think about when it comes on, how long it stays on, how efficient it is, how often it's checked, how you read the meters, who reads them and what to do if the electricity company overcharge you by 1000%.

I is for..........Ignorance.
There are the things you know you don't know which you can ask about and which others will kindly tell you about. Then there are the things you know you don't know but no one else has a clue about either. And then there are the things you don't know you don't know which everyone else does know, but is too embarrassed to point out to you. This last category is the one to worry about. Except you don't know about it. Proving, after all, that ignorance is bliss.

J is for..........Juggling.

I guess everyone who works does it, but working from home makes it interesting. And combining ministry and motherhood makes it even more interesting. It occasionally feel like rising river levels - bits of work seeping into other areas that are usually boundaried. On the plus side I can prepare sermons with a background of drum practice; I know exactly how many minutes it takes to drive from the Crematorium to the school bus stop and evening meetings at least get you out of onerous maths homework duties.

K is for..........Keys.

It goes like this: you need something from the church safe. You find the car keys, go out of the house, lock the house, unlock the car and get in. Then you remember you haven't got the church keys. You unlock the house, find the church keys, relock the house and drive to the church. Once there you lock the car, unlock the padlock to the porch, and the main church door, open the safe door with a key and a metal lever carefully hidden in special designated place, pick up the item, relock the safe, hide the metal lever, relock the main door, padlock the porch, find your car keys and drive home, lock the car and let yourself in with the house key. 
You can see that with all these variables the potential for something to get lost/go wrong is quite substantial.

L is for..........Laminating.

Once you start it's very addictive. It makes your assembly visual aids and church posters look vaguely professional. If they're bound for outdoors, however, laminating posters only protects them from the water ingress if you learn the subtle art of trimming the poster to exactly 1cm smaller than the laminating pouch and only putting the drawing pins through the edges that do not touch the paper. Otherwise within two days your poster will become a soggy, pulpy mess no one can read.

M is for..........Muscles.

You need them for moving the following objects: pianos; photocopiers; crates of wine; piles of hymn books; Curate's Training files and large babies presented for baptism.

N is for..........Noticeboards.

They are specifically designed not to admit any drawing pins except some kind of industrial strength variety that you would need to blast in with a power tool. Once in they can never be removed. Prepare for chipped fingernails.

O is for..........Onions.

It's a strange thing but the more you think about it, every ministry situation is like an onion with many layers. The more you peel back, the more you see. And sometimes it will make you cry.

P is for..........Paperwork.

I thought I had a lot of files until I became a Curate. Even the files I do have are now full to bursting and most weeks I go out to buy some more. The lever arches usually collapse after a few weeks and I shove everything into a drawer with a fancy label on it. I recently received an email with 14 attachments. I couldn't bring myself to print them out.

Q is for..........Quiet moments.

These occur when you have lost your voice; when someone's just said something in a meeting that's gone down very badly, and when you're reminded in the middle of a bad day that the clouds are still skimming the sky and the Church of England is still standing.

R is for..........Revising.
Revising your theology in the face of life; revising ministry expectations in the face of illness, retirement and relocation; revising the service mentally when a couple of children turn up unexpectedly (or are unexpectedly absent). You will always be revising.

S is for..........Sugar.

If you're out and about a lot you can never tell if you're going to be offered food mid morning. You may need that energy to get you through the next 3 hours before you get home to the kitchen. And so I find myself in an endless internal debate about whether to ask for sugar in coffee or not. If yes, AND a biscuit appears you are going to be over sweetened; if nothing appears AND there's no sugar, you're going to go under. Best to be over than under I find.

T is for..........Treats.
You need things to look forward to. Chocolate, obviously; a solitary coffee shop hour; dropping off on the sofa in the middle of the day whilst watching Waterloo Road on iplayer. Everyone needs something.

U is for..........Underestimating.
Morning Prayer, a planning meeting, a mid-morning bible study, bring and share lunch, two hours admin and two pastoral visits before an evening governors meeting is likely to be too much to pack into one 'day'. Not only do we underestimate the amount of time it will take up but also the amount of energy. You are not a super-being.

V is for..........Voices.
Think of it from the point of view of the congregation. If it's squeaky  whiney, monotone, irritable, shouty, too high, too low or too sibilant, life is going to be miserable for everyone. Make yours interesting, mellifluous, dynamic and audible.
If you yourself are hearing voices, seek professional help.

W is for..........Worrying.
Given our Lord said don't do it, it's extraordinary how much time is spent on this. I think I speak for most fellow clergy. Or maybe not...? 
Now that's a worrying thought...

X is for..........Xtreme temperatures.
It will be at least 25 degrees in the local Care Home, with all windows shut. The churchyard can reach minus 8 for a burial in winter. Employ layers.

Y is for..........Yo-Yo-ing.
Only you might know the really sad news just received about someone in the church, but meanwhile you put on a brave face and turn up for the primary school Carol concert. You could do a funeral visit and a baptism visit in the same evening, in theory. Talk about up and down emotions.

Z is for..........Zzzzz

Whatever you do, just get as much as possible as often as possible.

an oxymoron for starters

Is it sacrilegious to speak of being a part time priest? Isn't the phrase an oxymoron? (Perhaps it is but it is also pleasantly alliterative, so I'll stick with it). But part time priest? Isn't priesthood an all encompassing calling for life which is rightly held up as a serious undertaking which cannot simply be switched off when you've 'done the hours'? Yes - however a 'non-stipendiary' Curacy in the Church of England comes with a certain number of hours per week, and this suits me, because I have another 'job' - and have had for nearly eighteen years - my job is the work of motherhood. I'm saved, if you like, by that little phrase 'part time' - it reminds me that amidst funeral preparation, sermon writing, study, phone calls and PCC meetings, I do need to hold back time and energy for my 'other job', even if it only really begins at 3.30pm with school pick up time.

So are demands of motherhood and priesthood in unredeemable conflict or do they merge beautifully into one joyful holistic experience? The clue is in being rather than doing. Whilst I do often switch off from both the sermon writing and the ironing, what I generally find is that I'm always a priest and always a mother.