Advent medicine.

Advent Sunday was nearly a wash out as I went to bed the night before feeling poorly.  A poorly priest on the eve of a Sunday is a very bad thing. Next morning - that really difficult decision - do I struggle out of bed, feel worse and start the working week on the back foot (tricky as loads of important things brewing up this week) or be sensible, stay in bed, let other people use their gifts and learn the very difficult lesson of being dispensable...? A strange thing occurred liturgically at that point. I had a real Psalm 137 moment - 'How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?' i.e. the thought of missing Advent Sunday, the candles, the wreath, the purple, the Collect (give us grace to cast away the works of darkness') the singing ('O Come, O come, Emmanuel') was unbearable. I couldn't bear to be left out of the worshipping action, like those Israelites weeping by the rivers of Babylon. It 's the beginning of the church's year. I'm an Anglican priest. I have to be there! Being in church actually made me feel physically better. Never mind paracetamol, give me the first Sunday of Advent any day.

Some King

Feast of Christ the King - and I thought maybe this Sunday could be the first time I reused a sermon - last year we had Jesus and the penitent thief - 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom' and Jesus promising 'today you will be with me in Paradise'. Then I realised (liturgical ingénue that I am) there was a different reading set for Christ the King this year, that of the separation of the nations at the end of all things, into sheep and goats - righteous and unrighteous. The Son of Man, sitting in kingly glory, meets out a seemingly final judgement, but by what criteria? - how well we preached, prayed or read the bible? No, it' s about practical action. Those poor goats, they had no idea that every time they turned a blind eye to the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner, they ignored Jesus, incurring judgement upon themselves. The sheep, by contrast, had no idea that whenever they ministered to these ones they ministered to the king. Some king. There's no escaping the discomfort you feel in the story. With this king, forgiveness and judgement seem both to be part of the package.

Remembrance

Of all the services I have presided over and preached at, Remembrance Sunday filled me with the most disquiet. Something to do, perhaps, with being young (ish) (who am I kidding, but it's all relative...); being female (?) and having come from a long line of Wesleyan pacifists. 

Then I was conscious that Remembrance is one of those unique confluences of civic, religious and local life which, if done well can bless many and enhance the gospel; and if not...Well, we prepared for possibly 50 attending the local War Memorial - perched precariously on a hill which is also the busy main road between two village settlements. Cars ground to a halt and all around, people could be seen walking down the hill and up the hill to converge at the Cross. We ran out of service sheets and still they came. In this tenth anniversary of Afghanistan, perhaps we were even more conscious of the need to honour those who are dying there every week, as well as those lost in the two World Wars. 

The theological and liturgical challenge was to be a Minister presiding over a community-owned Act of Remembrance, whilst also being a Minister of the Gospel. Not all decisions about war can be uncritically baptised by anyone wearing a cassock and surplice. But pacifism and politics aside, people clearly still wish to honour the memory of the fallen, and 'it is meet and right so to do'. And so we made the most of this annual propitious mingling of church and state; gospel and harsh reality of war.

Frustrations at the Cathedral

It's been a frustrating week for anyone who longs for the church to break out of the 'private, ineffectual religious club' image that it seems to suffer under in the UK. At just the point when there was a ready made group of people literally on the doorstep of St Paul's Cathedral (what amazing opportunities - quick what shall we do? go and mingle; be seen in dog collars; have outdoor discussions/services...?) the Cathedral closed down, to bizarrely reopen a few short days later. The heavy symbolism of the church shutting its doors just when the action was hotting up was not lost on journalists, who on the whole seem to have shown a slightly better grasp of the many ironies than anyone towing the official Cathedral party line. 'What astute Anglican (...) could look out over a sea of the best behaved civic protesters (...) and see a problem instead of a vast, synergetical opportunity?' asked Lucy Mangan in the Guardian. Astute Anglicans indeed. I don't like to think (and nor did Giles Fraser) of how this is going to end but at least it's shown that the supposed Christian messsage isn't entirely lost on commentators - and when there's a meaty subject to hand, the church has a vital role to play in contemporary life and many rich, if sometimes squandered, opportunities.

aaaaagggggghhhhhhh, the sermon.

The sermon. 

Long, short, boring or riveting, at some point in an Anglican service the priest is expected to stand up and spout. As an exercise in balancing bible with current events; doctrine with experience, it's pretty challenging. Cardinal sins: too much personal information/too little personal information; too much enthusiasm/too little enthusiasm; for a mother - talking about your children too much, especially if they are unfortunate enough to be in the congregation. Evangelicals like 'em long; middle of the road-ers are happy with 10 minutes; Catholically-minded brethren insist on calling them homilies (?) Increasingly I'm wondering how they sit with education theory and practice which rightly values interactive learning. Didn't Jesus do something along those lines too? I sometimes come home and imagine what would have happened if I had just stood up and asked a whole lot of awkward questions that needed debate, stirred things up a bit. After wanging on for a while and noticing that some are looking at the floor/ceiling/have head in hands (clearly responding in profound repentance so that's okay) I do wonder sometimes....and Anglicans are so polite - you never can gauge a response ('Nice sermon, thank you').

So what are people expecting from a sermon? (Thoughts welcome) and what is the general point of it? (Thoughts welcome) And as for the pulpit - in this egalitarian, de-constructing, post-modern era, is it not a totally anachronistic piece of church architecture? Or am I just stirring things up a bit?

Connections

Being a priest is all about connections. I get depressed about the loss of connection between God and the rest of life that is perceived by society and underlined in the media. And the church can collude - we act like a private club where people who 'are into that sort of thing' can sing hymns, pray, etc., while 'normal' life continues for everyone else.

But some glimmers of light this week - Frank Skinner's 'I don't worship the great God normal' lifted me - and the Radio 2 broadcaster, Janey Lee Grace, a bold positive advert for women, said 'I pray all the time, for everything, big and small. It's a conversation with God - and apparently he listens' (Church Times). Also Jeanette Winterson (she who wrote so scathingly of oppression in Christianity, in Oranges are not the only fruit) celebrated the Sixty-six Books bible- as- theatre project at the Bush Theatre - writing that it was 'an intellectually alive, socially aware challenge, not afraid to explore spirituality in a secular society'.

It is a constant priestly challenge to connect people and God in a two-way conversation about life, hope, fear, sadness, loss, joy. Good liturgy is able to touch someone in that moment, in that experience. Connection is a particular challenge at funerals; this week some more light broke through - literally: I took an ashes interment of a gentleman who was fond of quoting St Matthew: 'The sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous alike'. At the moment of interment the sun beamed down through a gap in the autumn branches, directly onto the grave - nowhere else - to the comfort and delight of all. It was quite a moment of connection.

X Factor - love it or loathe it?

It happens every year - I swear I am not going to watch it, then one of the children switches it on and over the weeks I get hooked. So how many other Anglican clergy watch X Factor and what do they think of it? Do Christians talk about it after morning worship? How often does it feature in a sermon? Love it or loathe it, you can't ignore it. Why? Firstly it's about people and stories - preferably an 'underdog made good' story, with tears. This can be moving or mawkish. Then it's about gift, dreams and delusion - some can really sing but don't know it - others really can't but embarrassingly think otherwise. At its worst it's the modern day freak show, like the Victorians with their Elephant Man or Bearded Lady. And it's about mentoring, the judges passing on their expertise to the less experienced who want to grow and need someone to believe in them.

Does all this have anything to say about how we do church? Church is people and if we don't hear each other's stories we're like strangers to each other. It's also about gift - discovering yours and putting it to work. It's about believing, hoping, dreaming, celebrating. So in true X Factor speak, I want to follow my (God given) dream; 'nail it' and put 110% into this thing called church.