I wandered lonely as a cleric...

I wandered lonely as a cloud, or cleric (apologies to Wordsworth)

Wearing the collar is an interesting exercise in self identity.

A trip to Westminster meant I had it on all day going across London. 

Zero reaction. 

Which suited me fine. Until I got to Westminster tube station where I needed to find a loo. 50 pence piece at the ready, I approached the turnstile; the woman assistant looked up, smiled gleefully, said 'no, no', and waived me through before I could pay. Flummoxed, I mumbled a confused 'thank you' and put the money back in my purse while my un-collared friend paid up and came through after me, along with all the other women in the queue behind.

A visit to Parliament was a reminder that I have sworn allegiance to the Queen. I'm part of The Establishment, apparently. Saying Evening Prayer in Westminster Abbey, the collar made me feel like an insider. A not unpleasant feeling, but a strange one. Any Christian should feel an insider in an Abbey. Any person should. But it sometimes doesn't happen that way. I was a minister amongst lay people. I know the words, I know the form. 

But not entirely an insider, as every cleric taking part in that Evening Prayer (leader, readers, and of course, choir) was male.

Later in the same week I pondered multiple roles in which wearing the collar provokes different reactions: offering myself to a State School to 'help with assemblies'; being a Governor of a Church of England School, where it cannot be pretended that everyone is entirely certain what this 'religious' designation really means; worrying about the non-plussed reaction of a group of mums at a Toddler Group as a female cleric with no obvious toddlers in tow turns up for a coffee, hoping to meet locals.

Where do clerics belong?

Anywhere and nowhere.

Being on the outside can be painful. Being alone is okay, but being lonely...

Heavily involved in many groups yet intrinsically part of no particular group day to day.

What do people think of you, really? Only someone with the skin of a rhinoceros would be entirely unconcerned.

It can feel isolating unless you remember that other clerics probably feel the same (but it takes a brave one to admit it).

And unless you remember there is the unseen God who 'fighteth for us'...

And of course the whole company of heaven, which includes, fittingly on this Michaelmas, the angelic hosts, no less.

(Picture: Dorchester Abbey, taken 29.09.12).

Back to basics

Mark 12: 28-31

'One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ '

Isn't it a bit inflexible to command that someone love you?

Or is Jesus saying 'You shall love the Lord your God...' as in: 'this is a promise'?

Hopefully with a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone, we will love God; love is the fruit of the Spirit, the first listed in Galatians 5: 'For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control.'

We began looking at the 'fruits of the Spirit' at our All Age service today; one fruit each fortnight should keep us going till next year...

Far from being an inflexible command, love of God is the life spring of everything we do as Christians.

But the well occasionally runs dry (more than occasionally sometimes).

I have been wanting to 'up the anti' recently in my prayer life; something to do with a challenge presented to me on retreat - to spend some time in the middle of the day in contemplation, as well as the usual morning prayer (in which I rush through the daily readings before getting up...)

This would be 'extra'; agenda-less; unhurried; focussed entirely on drawing near to Christ.

Scary...

How would I do this? Where would I start?

Well, I have a 'prayer corner'; the Russians called it a 'poustinia', a special place where contemplation (attempts) to take place.
It's a small chair in the study so I have to be careful to keep thoughts of computers, emails and admin out of my head in order just to contemplate.
The comfort of the chair helps; a candle, a cross, any visual or tactile aid helps to focus on God.


I was encouraged in it all this week by an amazing story of healing (honestly, I don't often major on these; this one however is completely authentic and happened to someone I know). 
http://tracingtherainbow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/an-unexpected-outpouring-of-grace.html

The special place where the healing took place was a retreat centre in Wales where loving the presence of God is sometimes so strong that people cannot move from the place where they're standing or sitting. To be reminded of this loving powerful presence pervading the world is to be encouraged to keep on entering into the still centre. You can read about the retreat centre in the book by Roy Godwin.

But we don't need to be in a charismatic/contemplative/Celtic retreat centre to experience the well of God's love never running dry. A small corner of a study will do...Come down O Love Divine...

Taming the tongue

James 3:2

'For all of us make mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.'

In a week which saw the final publication of the truth about the Hillsborough cover up, a former Editor of The Sun accepted that the headline at the time of the disaster which famously read 'The Truth' (that victims were drunken, violent  hooligans with no tickets) should in fact have read 'Lies'.

'How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire' (James 3; 5b-6a)

I'm afraid George Bush Senior, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg also came in for some slightly harsh treatment this morning as we looked at James Chapter 3 in church together.

Read my lips: no new taxes

George Bush Snr., in 1988 in a soundbite which was the central plank of his acceptance address for his party's nomination at the 1988 Republican National Convention.

As Presidents sometimes do, he later raised taxes. His words were used against him by the then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, a man who would later go on TV and swear 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.'

That was a disaster - they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? It's just ridiculous...She's just a sort of bigoted woman who used to vote Labour. I mean it's just ridiculous.

Andecdotal evidence suggests that even Vicars sometimes leave their roving mics on as they  return to the vestry after leading worship. So perhaps we're not the ones to judge. The fact that these words were played back to Gordon Brown live on Radio 2 was especially cringe making. The phrase 'curl up and die' springs to mind...

I should have been more careful perhaps. At the time I really thought we could do it. I just didn't know, of course, before we came into government, quite what the state of the finances were.

Nick Clegg on his party's U turn on University tuition fees, a gaffe which will ensure that no teenagers I know, at least, will be voting Lib Dem for a decade or so...

But before we get all self righteous, there's a sobering verse in James 3 about those of us who aspire to teach...'Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1).

To which the only response is 'Lord place a guard at the door of my mouth, a sentry at the door of my lips' (Psalm 141:3).

Amen.

Can you be good without God?

Can you be good without God?

I was plagued by this question recently whilst getting 'out and about' in the community in my dog collar. I must have been having a bad week as it seemed to me that there was so much good happening outside the church that I couldn't actually remember what the church was for.

Which is bad, for a Minister.

Sometimes when I'm preparing a sermon I think........why.........? Do people need to be told this stuff again and again over numerous years? Why don't we just go out and do a great big litter pick. Or offer to do people's gardens for free. 

Community groups do so much good without the assistance of the church, no wonder people can't see any relevance in going to church.

It's an old temptation but such a strong one. Turning stones into bread instead of living by the Word. Yes, the living Word might tell you to go out and do someone's garden, but you have to be able to hear the Word in faith first. We separate faith and good works at our peril.

Can you be good without God?

Can you believe without acting?

All good things come from God so we must believe he is the source of everything that is good about community life, regardless of whether it grows out of someone's personal Christian faith or another motivation. I guess it's both possible to be a kind secularist whom God is longing to transform inwardly, and a lazy 'believer' whom God is wishing would get off their backside and go and do something useful.

I'm still pondering these things, not least as we're on the second week of James in the Sunday Lectionary; this week I'm preaching on 'faith without works is dead' (Chapter 2:17).

I conclude that we'd better not separate faith and good works; keeping them together could result in people actually sitting up and noticing God With Us for the first time.

What a thought.

Stop, look and listen

Installation by Jeppe Hein

STOP

Turns out the book of James in the New Testament is a good antidote to gospel preaching fatigue. Refreshingly short on doctrine (sorry, Luther; know you hated this) it brings you up short with its no nonsense pithy images (mirrors, tongues, bridles) and its exhortation to action.



LOOK

From the Lectionary this Sunday we had James 1:17-27:
v. 22: 'But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror, for they look at themselves and on going away, immediately forget what they are like.'

The Danish artist, Jeppe Hein, has an artwork installed in the Saatchi Gallery called Mirror Wall (2010). When you approach it, it vibrates slightly, making you reassess yourself and the white background behind you. It's spookily interactive.

When we approach God' Word it should be similarly two way. If we are open, it reflects back to us what we're really like. It looks into us ans we look into it. 




LISTEN

In theological college we did a scary listening exercise - a cross between 'Just a Minute' and an embarrassing counselling session. In threes, the first person was given an unprepared subject on which to speak for two minutes; the second had to listen and report back afterwards; the third observed the pair's body language. 

As a speaker, it was pretty uncanny to be seriously listened to for two whole minutes. 

As a listener, it was really hard work, listening for two whole minutes.

As an observer it was fascinating to watch body language, mirroring, eye contact and to assess what was going on.

The whole experience profoundly changed the way I approached communication.

So James is right about the importance of listening. James 1:19: 'You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to wrath...'

Imagine a world, a church, where everyone was so busy listening to each other, misunderstandings were cut by 50% or more, and even the voiceless felt valued.

And a final thought: those long lists of James's about the vices we ought to rid ourselves of...'Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has power to save your souls...' (v. 21)

...I do LOVE the King James Version of this: we should definitely rid ourselves of  our 'superfluity of naughtiness' don't you think?

Thank you James and King James.

Saving Paradise, Greenbelt-style

Maybe there are a lot of tulips in Paradise. Perhaps the relative size of things differs there, like the size of reputations. The first shall be last and the last first. And the Lord said 'Behold, tulips will  be bigger than people. Blessed are the tall red flowers, for they shall bring much joy, taking people's mind off the mud.'

The theme at this year's UK Greenbelt Festival was Saving Paradise. You can tell a lot from a strap line and Greenbelt does some good ones - recently we've had: Dreams of Home (2011); Heaven in Ordinary (2007); Standing in the Long Now  (2009) and perhaps my favourite, from 2010: The Art of Looking Sideways. Are they due merely to clever artistic types being a little bit alternative, in a nice middle class sort of way, or do they actually mean something?

The strap lines from Greenbelt increasingly reflect its vision that the whole earth is the arena for God's activity; that the gospel compels us to engage global inequality, human rights, climate change, culture and the poor. All the strap lines quoted above play with themes of 'the here and now' and 'the then', when God will renew the face of the earth and bring justice and peace. Paradise is clearly lost. Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden. But this is not the end of the story. How we live in the interim and what the death and resurrection of Christ have to do with it all, has been the stuff of debate amongst Christian people for centuries. 

But there's a bit more to this year's strap line, in that Saving Paradise is the title of a recent book (2008) by two American theologians, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebeccca Parker (right)  http://savingparadise.net/

who made an astonishing discovery when they set out on a five year pilgrimage to document early Christian art in the churches and catacombs of Mediterranean Europe. What surprised them was that until the end of the first Millennium Christ is depicted primarily as the risen One, involved in this life, as baby, infant, man, shepherd, teacher and healer. Paradise is close at home. Only at the turn of the Millennium does he begin to be depicted as the Crucified One, and themes of torture, death and martyrdom point people beyond this world to the next, and, for the Crusaders, appear to sanction bloodshed in his name. This world may be going to hell in a handcart, but no matter: God will welcome us into the next. We are heaven bound, no matter what happens here. Paradise is not here but in the next world. When you're mainly concerned about the next world, it doesn't take too much imagination to conclude that this world is not so important. What we create here (art, writing, dance, music) is of limited value. In addition, 'You will always have the poor amongst you', said Jesus; so tell them the gospel; at least they'll go to heaven when they die, despite having been starving in this world...

Complex themes. We walk a tightrope in faith. 'Set your minds on things which are above, not on things that are on earth', says Colossians. Yet all the great movements of the Spirit have raised up Christians to make a difference here and now on this earth. How can you make a difference if you eschew this world and think only of a Paradise that is to come?

And so Saving Paradise neatly sums up the ongoing sea change in British and American Evangelicalism. Dallas Willard; Brian McClaren; Rob Bell; Shane Claiborne; and in the UK, Steve Chalke and NT Wright, have all pointed to how we need to live in the here and now; bringing heaven to earth, alight with a vision of a Jesus who is teacher, example and ideal human, not just a crucified Saviour who guarantees us a ticket to Paradise when we die. 

And so the net widens. At Greenbelt you will come across Christians engaged at all levels in 'saving paradise': stewarding the earth; fighting injustice; rediscovering spiritualities for every taste in recognition of the diversity of a questioning 21st Century Christianity.

Where it will lead......? 

Who knows. 

What exactly is our part in 'saving paradise?' What is God's part?

For further thoughts and reflections on tulips in Paradise, over to you.

Unholy Communion

John 6: 51-58

⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ ⁵³So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’

It's dark o'clock in a lesser known satanic backwater, and the ever wiley serpent is cooking up some trouble for those wretched humans who are hurrying and scurrying around on the earth, circa 30 AD.

Satan (to lesser satanic minion): Hey, you, we need to move fast. The Son of Man, that idiot  human who wouldn't follow me even though I promised him all the kingdoms; he's causing more trouble by talking about his body again.

Lesser satanic minion (groaning): Oh no...what now?!

Satan: Well, he's calling himself the bread of life or some such nonsense. It's looking bad.

Minion: That is bad...they like their bread down there. Kind of staple diet, isn't it? The Israelites went crazy for that manna stuff too. 

Satan: I know. Only good thing about that was they forgot God gave it to them and died in the wilderness anyway.

Minion: Yeh, what losers. But if this Son of Man guy is coming up with new bread jargon, what are we going to do? They all love him anyway - this'll just make it worse.

Satan: Yes, it may do...on the other hand, if I'm not mistaken, people are a bit hacked off about the extremes he's taking it too. I mean he appears to be saying he's going to give his body and blood for everyone. That's cannibalism isn't it?

Minion: Yes, frankly, even though I am a huge fan of all things evil, I'm appalled at this Son of Man bloke. I mean, common decency an' all that...it's disgusting.

Satan: He is dangerous, there's no doubt. This sort of thing can spark revolutions. If it goes on much more we're going to have to see he is.... extinguished.

Minion: Yes Sir...would you like to me to incite the crowd? They're a pretty fickle lot you know.

Satan: That should do it. Then all this pious talk of self sacrifice will cease, and we'll be free of him for ever.

Minion: We need to make sure no one remembers the living bread talk - they might try and perpetuate it or something.

Satan: I've thought of that. How about we sew some demonic seeds amongst his followers?

Minion: How do you mean, Guv?

Satan: Well, if this body and blood business is important to him, perhaps we should make sure they can never agree on what he meant by it.

Minion: Oh, you mean like with those dimwits in the Garden of Eden - fell out over whose fault it was about the apple? That was amusing...

Satan: Precisely, but this time we'll come on stronger...I'm thinking of multiple factions down the centuries - people who claim they're following him but who are willing to denounce each other, maybe put each other to death, over how best to remember him...

Minion: Yes, maybe we could do it via the twisting of words again...Did he really mean his flesh, or was it just symbolic...that kind of thing...

Satan: Good one...surely he didn't mean we are really eating his flesh; it's just bread...or...it really is flesh underneath but it looks like bread...or even...you don't need the bread, only faith...

Minion: I'm getting the picture...and they could claim that those who didn't agree with them were going to hell. I'm even picturing some bonfires for 'heretics'...of course each side would accuse the other of being heretics...so that's quite a lot of bonfires...

Satan: Yes, and when they've had that 'Enlightenment' thingy and they've gone all tolerant and post-modern we can still keep them in different camps, distrusting one another and calling each other names, never able to agree in principle over who's saved and who's not.

Minion: That's absolutely brilliant. When do we start?