Holy Brit

Liturgical intergrity

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:13:11 PST

This week I received another circular from the Prayer Book Society. In the UK this is a group which promotes and monitors the use of the 1662 Prayer Book in public worship in the Church of England. (The 1928 USA prayer book is substantially similar with some of the more florid language removed and replaced). Oddly I am wondering whether to join - although I am not sure that my views would be widely welcomed.
Why would I join such a thing you may ask. Well there is a bit of me that rather likes to revel in Shakesperean English but it is more than that - I would like us to be honest in the way we use our liturgy. Few clergy in parishes can say that they are going to do a 1662 Eucharist service without a shake of the head or a roll of the eyes indicating that they are not looking forward to it and are eager for the day when it can be dropped from the schedule in favour of the more modern liturgical offerings.
Perhaps there is no real argument here - the Eucharist should be open and inviting and using five hundred year old language is simply not appropriate. But if that is the point, if that is what we think then we jolly well ought to show some guts and some leadership and say so. Otherwise, if we are saying that the older liturgy has value we should engage with it and pray through it as we would any other piece of liturgy.
And really this is where my point lies - 1662 as presented in the Book of Common Prayer and in Common Worship Order 2 (traditional language) is a perfectly coherent liturgy in it own right. Yet, many congregations who believe they are using 1662 would be shocked and surprised if they were to be presented with a 1662 service in its extant form. My complaint is that tinkering by well meaning clergy has left us in many places with a sort of dishonesty which we need to clear up.
If a congregation balks at the genuine and complete liturgy we need to explore why that is. I recently attended an 8am which most of its attendees probably believe to be 1662 and the order and many of the words were. But there had been ammendments to make it more palatable - some of the priest only parts had been converted to congregational parts - nothing which does not happen in the other Eucharistic Orders mind you - the priest added in pieces throughout the service which are from the more modern rites, there was no sermon (and it was a Sunday) and the longer words of distribution were not used. I could go on, and it is easy to pick holes. But my point is that it did not have the rhythm which the authors of the 1662 liturgy intended because of the omissions and interpolations.
I am not making a legal point (although I certainly could) but a practical one. If the service, as written, no longer serves our purpose - if those who think that what they are getting is what they remember as a child 80 years ago and it isn't then we have to be honest about it.
Anyone who has done any level of liturgical and congregational development will know that there is always a heartfelt cry from traditionalists when change is mentioned - perhaps that is why the sneak attack has been so popular. But I wonder whether it is time to confess what has been going on - that, in fact, many Churches are using what was Rite B (1980 ASB) but in a mostly 1662 form.
Does God care how we talk to God? Within these sorts of legalistic strictures I am not sure God does - but that really is not my point - it seems too be a question of integrity. On the one hand we like to wave the historical, liturgical and community banner, on the other we tinker around the edges until we get caught and never really confront the deep seated spiritual and emotional issues of those congregations whose liturgy we are eroding.
Perhaps I would not complain if I went to services where I felt that the clergy were engaging with the liturgy which had been fiddled with but recently experience tells me that all the interpolations are them trying to fix something which they believe to be fundamentally broken. If we are regularly leading services which are using liturgy which we fundamentally disagree with and which annoys us it will come through into lacklustre and disillusioned congregations who may simply be coming to Church out of habit or worse, because they are too frightened not to.
That is why I gave the Prayer Book Society a second thought. Not because I want to reinstate the Prayer Book everywhere, it is simply not always a useful tool, but because I do not think the liturgy in it is broken. It is what it is and if it does not work we have the option not to use it.
If we need to publish a new version of the Prayer Book which maintains some of its integrity but offers a more palatable version (and remember 1928 was never legally approved in England - although from the amount of green books in churches this is hard to judge!) then that is a conversation we need to have. But let's not pretend - this is not about feeding the poor or world peace and some will say it does not matter. But I think it does - our liturgy is, week by week, our public and communal proclamation of who we are, of what we believe, of God's love and mercy to all people - and as such I think it is vital that we examine carefully what we are doing, that we do not call a cow a sheep because it is fluffier.
Jesus was hardest on those who pretended to be something they were not. With all the hypocrisy which besets us I am reluctant to use that word - but that is what this is. We need to express our hearts of love, hearts caught and turned by God in our liturgy - not slug through week by week, wishing it would go away and adding too much sugar, making the unpalatable just sickly sweet.

veggie lent

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:13:49 PST

Those who pay attention to such things might have noticed the resolve of a handful of bishops to give up meat for Lent. Much has been said over the past few years about animal husbandry and there is, thankfully, a slow move away from factory farming methods and in consumer opinion. What is less often talked about is the world development issue which goes hand in hand with our high levels of meat consumption. Simply put, if meat eating is linked with economic status ( ie if we can afford it of course we have it every day), it becomes a powerful and sought after symbol of that status.
This, of course, is part of the fuel that led to the whole factory farming industry, everyone who is anyone wanted meat every day and in significantly larger portions than would have been normal for our forebears. But the devastating impact of our consumption most rears its ugly head when it is translated to developing countries. Whilst the sight of large fast food chains cutting down rainforest to graze cattle is sickening what is worse, in lands of scarce resoursces, is the adoption of a western mindset about meat consumption – ie. That eating it every day is the norm.
Meat production takes up about fifteen times more land per pound produced than grain production. In countries with deepening poverty and growing elites who have financial resources (these are not actually contraditory and the latter contributes to the former) the problem is not hard to fathom.
Over 20years ago I read an article which criticized meat production methods and also pointed out the link to poverty
and famine. I have been a vegetarian since.
It was the development issue which persuaded me. I am not particularly sentimental about animals and I would certainly never favour an animal life over a human one. If I was in the middle of nowhere and the only food whch presented itself was an animal I don’t think I would have much trouble eating it to survive.
But that isn’t relly the point. Globalfood policy is vital tothe survival of millions of people around the world and some of that has to come from a grassroots and personal examination of the issues and whether our consumption is necessary or even moral.
I hope this conversation can be held withot the often lunatic element which simply rages about this issue. I hope the bishops involved make it through, bacon it the hardest I seem to remember. What we eat is not only our business. Creation, al creation, is from the hand of God and we really do need to share a little better.

A Puppet of language?

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:14:30 PST

Two days ago we had that rather stark reading from 1 Timothy 6 urging the readers who were enslaved to obey their masters. The Timothy epistles are, of course, on the list of not-so-sure-its-Paul. But from this text ,as from the texts on women in Ephesians and Colossians, and the Romans and other texts apparently about human sexuality are we to draw moral absolutes? Obviously not in the case of slavery - but that line between historically and socially governed suggestion and what is always true seems to slide around in different hands.
For every text which appears to be any sort of absolute (and remember that a couple of hundred years ago in this country, and more recently elsewhere this Timothy text was used in the same battering way) when it comes to gender and sexuality there is a perfectly sensible argument which says - look at the situation, look through the eyes of the original readers and you will see what the writer is talking about - and this creeping conformity when the pen passes from the hand of Paul to his followers in the later Epistles includes a greater social conservatism in the widest sense of that word - do not upset the order or we will be squashed like flies by might Rome seems to be the clear message.
There are well rehearsed arguments for all the passages in the Epistles about women and about sexuality - I can rant as well as anyone although I am starting to find having the Bible quoted at me rather naive and irritating. This is because I too can turn up at Church debates with a Bible and I can counter quote and what does this achieve - really? To use the Word of God as a weapon - and against each other - when all of us, if we a honest, are just trying to follow Christ as best we can.
Do I accept the Holy Scriptures as revealing all things necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ ( and there is a clever piece of theology from the Ordinal) - yes, absolutely. Do I think that the Word of God, the Bible, is the most amazing and liberating message ever - of course. Do I think that somehow God is the sum of all the words in the book - no - that would be to make God a simple puppet of language - and yet that is what we so often do - we parade our words, or someone's words, spoken centuries ago and say - this is God. No, I am sorry, but that is blasphemy.
I can only experience the God revealed in words through the Word, through faith and life and prayer. That God, that complete and utter God, that shocking and demanding God is revealed in incarnation - in a man, Jesus, who did not placate, who knew his place and time,yes; who showed patience and resilience, yes; but who ultimately chose a path which was to only conform to God's way and not that of humanity.
And this God, this God who speaks to people, who comes to all of us, more than anything this is a God of Compassion, of quiet conversation. God may be our shield and protector but when we start holding the Bible out in front of us in that same way we are heading in the wrong direction. Can we quote words of love when our hearts are set on the demise of another, or at least their point of view?
This is all so hard. We struggle for inclusion and praxis, we struggle to understand. We are angry. We are hurt. But God is never at our whim and His Word never reduced to writing on a sheet.

Boy world

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:52:34 PST

I was recently at a meeting about ministering to men in our churches, and more to the point , those not in our churches. We need blokey things, we were told, places where men feel safe.
All well and good but then the bit that made me fume. The speaker mentioned he had invited the bishop to think about the gender breakdown of one of the groups he spends a lot of time looking at, confirmees, and in particular adult confirmees. As I imagined for a moment looking through a bishop’s eyes I wondered about another group bishops uniquely face and that is ordinands. So,stupidly,because I knew the answer,I asked whether that was a factor that ought to be considered. The fact that from a predominantly female confirmation slate (not a good thing) we move, at least for the workhorse stipendiary clergy, to a still predominently male ordination list.
That was nothing to do with lack of men in the Church, I was told. I exchanged glances with a female colleague next to me who took up the baton, but to no effect – it was a different matter. We gave up. We have both been around the block enough times to know that there are times when the implicit mysogeny of he Church of England is not going to be taken seriously as an impediment to our growth and so we put it back in the bag until next time – or until we are in female clergy company.
This may sound like a feeble whine – but it isn’t – it is a thunderous rant. I do not whine. Public ministry is a risky undertaking for anyone. It might look from the outside like rather a cushy number – and I suppose it can be if you switch off an actual prayer life and actually listening to God and maybe even doing what God calls you to now and then. But that is not what most clergy do, most clergy spend a lot of time thinking and praying and honestly trying to discern and do God’s will in an environment which is often hostile and if not hostile then mocking.
Women are at a disadvantage in this already. Although we have been the backbone of parish churches for centuries we have not always or often had public voice. Those who have risked public voice have often been crusaders and campaigners and those sorts of on fire people are not the easiest to get on with and are often very easy to knock down with genderist comments – after all would you want to really have dinner with Jeremiah or John the Baptist.
There are realities to being a woman which strengthen us, and there are those moments at which we seem to be at war with the flesh in which we find our current existence. Writing down the joys and woes of womanhood sounds like a rather pathetic drip, but we all know that real life brings real challenges,whoever you are. In the Church strong women are accused of wanting to be men, women who show gentler traits are accused of being ineffective. It is a buffeting and baffling process to get through the ranks of the church to the ordination process. I once read that boys tend to play fight to show affection and often the process seems like this – kick after kick – but you know we love you, right?
There are layers and layers underneath this. Women have begun to express them over the past few decades and I have huge sympathy with the older feminist theologians such as Mary Daly who have found the image of God so completely shredded in the Church, the language of God so abused that they have rejected both – not because the should be no reverence to deity but because every instrument we use and know has been tarnished by the oppression and suppression of both female humanity and the female divine.
We have to deal with this – somehow and soon. We cannot engage either with society or, more vitally, with the true nature of God as community, if we do not hang up for good some of our ancient, deep and often assumed shackles. Sector ministry to encourage those outside in is all very well, deep rooted and dangerous experience of God is something much more central to who we all really are.
There are no easy diagnoses, there are only those glimpses and snags which we all have as we journey through life, our fascination with female mystics I think tells us that there is something we hunger for in this purer experience of the divine but we do not really know how to access this without reference to our ancient and mis-drawn boundaries.
I don’t like the feeling that comes from being adamant and digging my heals in, I do not enjoy a rush of power or use authority as a weapon, but too often in this ministry we are engaged in we are talked down to and belittled. Perhaps men experience this too – there is so much we need to learn.
There is concern over the women bishops debate about navel gazing, I am worried I might be encouraging us to more introversion – but is it introversion to find the still small voice which whispers in each heart and sets it free to truly live?. Is it introversion to accept that there is both unity and difference in all humanity and that these are not exclusive and do not have to break down, but can make truly alive?
Perhaps putting women in purple will change all this, perhaps a different way of being church will emerge – perhaps not radical, perhaps not even describable, but discernible. Or perhaps we are offering food to ravening lions of ancient and broken institutions – God can close those mouths and bring us through safe – but who is God to us anyway?

hands and time

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:17:16 PST

There are those people in life, aren't there, who are just waiting for you to make a mistake. They seem to come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and definitely in all sorts of places, but they simply love to have something to moan about, especially when it is at someone elses expense.

Unfortunately it is impossible to work in a church and not come across folks who seem to delight in being miserable, whose sole purpose seems to find fault and not with the purpose of making things better but just to moan and groan and revel in discontent.

Jesus had a cohort of these folks too and when, in Mark 3, he comes to heal a man with a withered hand you can almost hear the whispering and downright criticism starting up. The chatterers were certainly chattering when he challenged their underlying assumption that they had the right to uphold Sabbath law over and above God's works of mercy and healing - and you can imagine their anger at this as they listen to a calm and rational argument which undermines their sad weaponry.

God's purpose can be difficult to discern and God's mercy hard to see through the way we do things, through the way we expect them to be. We like a certain level of comfort, we have expectations and in a Church which promotes a level of ordinariness and stability in liturgy it is, perhaps, not unreasonable to have some expectations. However, when those expectations become so solid that we look to them, that we look to the way we like things, before we look to God - then we are running into trouble.

We all have grumpy days, those days when we feel picky, when we are eager to find fault and we know that that leaves a bad taste in the mouth and damages our relationships with those around us. If we find we go beyond that point of occasional sore headedness though, we need to take stock. If there are people to whom we always feel critical and generally unsettled or even angry we need to work to restore relationship (and, no, people do not always respond in like manner but that is no excuse).

Whilst we all fall into the trap of grumpiness, that sort of persistent nastiness engendered by personal expectation has no place in a Christian community. If Jesus says anything to those who uphold law over justice and mercy, he says that their expectations are way too low, that their picture of God is too small, that they are holding on so tightly to themselves that they are squeezing God out of their lives.

The man walks away healed and restored because he dared to walk with Jesus beyond the expected, beyond where he had been before - and that invitation comes to us too. We just have to listen.

a servant tale

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 08:55:14 PST

It is an odd thing that in Church today we move from this morning, thinking about the Magi and their presents to this evening thinking about today's other theme – and that is the Baptism of Christ. So from presents we go to presence – the presence of the Christ in the world and the presence of God in the lives of all those who have passed through the waters of Baptism.

There is not much to be drawn in many ways between these two things – our offering of all that we are and all that we have and God's offering of Godself in the person of Jesus and in our lives – they are not seperate. We sometimes see God as on one side of the room and us on the other, as if we are opposites. True there are things in our nature which might make us think that is true but, in fact, we are made in the image of God and it is in God that we find that we already truly are.

The book of Isaiah is really three books in one. The first part – chapters 1-39 is attributed to Isaiah of Jerusalem, and it is likely that there was such a person who either wrote those chapters or inspired a school of followers to do so. Tonights reading comes from the second chunk of Isaiah – second or deutero Isaiah which goes all the way up to the very last couple of chapters of our Book of Isaiah.

Sometime after that first Isaiah lived and worked the nation of Israel got taken away into captivity. In the prophets voice this was seen as a punishment for the nation turning from God. But then this second part of the book is a voice from captivity, or rather a collection of voices. The theme of God being high and lifted up is still there, but now there is hope of return and restoration.

One of the hallmarks of this section of the book is that it expects reverence – God is a God next to whom we are very small indeed and yet God is a God who will save and redeem God's people. As with all Biblical prophetic literature it is written at a specific time to a specific group of people and by a specific group of people with a definite outlook on life.

Whilst we, of course, see distant echoes of messiah in the writings it is by no means clear that this section of Isaiah about the servant is referring a priori to Jesus. That may sound strange – but in the socio-political world to which this passage was addressed and from which this passage came the revolution was political and in some senses finite.

Some people would say that that is the end of it but I think that is the genius of the Biblical literature. Whilst we should not apply passages carelessly, they can have layers of meaning. So whilst it might be perfectly possible that the prophet is talking about someone very human – the meaning transcends place and time and talks to us of Jesus, the Messiah who is to come and not just drag the people back from the hands of the Babylonions but drag people to full and wonderful relationship with God.

Sometimes we want to treat the prophetic literature as if is is a scientific formula capable of proof instead of as a wonderful painting capable of interpretation. There are truths which go beyond the constraints of time and place and the prophetic literature points us to these – sometimes quite rudely.

So when Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptised he comes both as one who follows in the footsteps of the heroes of so many stories but also as one who turns all those stories on their heads and, if you like, fleshes out another layer of meaning. This incarnation which the Magi witnessed and adored becomes announced and public and engaged in a ministry which will redefine all that has gone before, but not just redefine it, redeem and fulfil it as well.

So in all this, Jesus is rightly the suffering servant, the one who restores righteousness and justice in the earth – right as far as land extends – but Jesus is more, not just the one who serves but the one who creates, the one who Himself was at the beginning, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth, who breathes life into all creation. Servant and God is the prophecies ultimate proclamation, not in space and time but beyond it and into eternity.

Jesus bows his head and allows himself to be washed clean by a man, his cousin John. In doing so the son creeps a little higher on the horizon, my son in whom I am well pleased, I am the Lord, my glory I give to no other – there is only one person who Jesus can be.

All in all

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:24:30 PST

I walked n after a week off to find the Christmas star on the Church tower rather more a harbinger of doom that good news as it swung ominously in the atrocious winds. Our brave Churchwarden and his wife climbed to what must have been a very windy height on the church tower and removed it in case it broke loose and hit someone - starstruck a colleague quipped - I groaned - this was not a good start.

But my mood soon improved when we got to Colossians - not because I always get everything in Colossians 3:1-12 right but because of that last verse in the passage - Christ is our all in all. What better certainty to counter the vagueries (and bad puns) in life - Jesus is all that we are, want or need.

And this is the real magic and message of incarnation - that through this birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus we are restored. The collect for this week brings this into focus - but I like the version in the US Episcopal Book of Common Prayer

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of Him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ...... (2nd Sunday after Christmas, BCP 1982).

Perhaps this is what the writer in Colossians is beginning to say - that these lists of things which Christians should not do, which those whom he addressed used to regard as normal, somehow deface our human dignity. Saying no to things is a choice, just as saying yes is. Those who accuse Christians of being killjoys are simply seeing their own dignity, their own humanity in a different, and I would argue, un-Christlike light.

We all want to be the best we can be - and that means allowing ourselves to reflect God's image as well as we possibly can. We are knit together and held by a divine hand - from that we get our humanity and our worth - our dignity is reflected in God's eyes not in the faded mirrors of the world and that dignity is dependent upon our maintaining and demanding the human dignity of all God's people - that is of all people.

The sort of dignity which is won through a humiliating death on a cross should make us think hard but then so should the sort of incarnation that starts with a woman from Nazareth giving birth in a stable.

Sermon Advent 4

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:16:58 PST

From this single moment, human history is changed. An angel appears to a young woman, asks her to bear God's son, and she says – yes. From that moment she is changed, we are changed, the world is changed. God is coming and coming among us, on of us.

From this simple encounter Mary starts a new journey with God and with the Christ. Literally she and Joseph are called from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the Roman Census and they travel the long and hard road with her heavily pregnant. (If you are not sure about what this might look like our Family Service children helped put together a map which is on the board at the back of church.) But along with this literal travelling comes a journey which will both feed and challenge her to her very core. Never has such a yes been uttered.

Mary undertakes – not simply to be in relationship with the child she bears but to share and take the burden for that relationship in a much more public arena. It is only a short time after the birth of Jesus that she comes to the Temple and meets the prophet Simeon – this child, this light of the world is real and welcome, but her pain will be like a sword through the heart. But as well as being a paradigm for faithful obedience Mary has also been dragged into the arena of discord and argument in the Christian Church. Mary has alternatively been ignored and belittled or deified.

The Reformation in the sixteenth century overturned many abuses in the Church. Those involved tried to cut the Christian religion back to its basic roots – as we all know from history England ended up with a settlement which swung over the years in doctrine and churchmanship. Now we find ourselves with a wide theological and ecclesiological umbrella. Our creed states that we believe in the communion of saints but what that actually means changes depending upon whom you are talking to.

Whilst Martin Luther would have reduced the idea of the communion of Saints to the community of saints gathered in the Church on earth – I would not do the same. The idea that God is surrounded by a heavenly court and is praised constantly comes from the Bible. This quickly developed in Christian doctrine to the idea of heaven and a communion of saints. If you look at the creeds the sanctorum communionem – the communion of the holy of the saints – is mentioned in the earliest creeds of the Church – before the divinity of Christ was written in to counter heresies in the fourth century.

The real rub with the communion of saints and especially with Mary comes in the question of what they actually can or cannot do and how we should treat them. The phrase “with all the saints in heaven and on earth” should give us a clue that the idea of praising God, of praying to God in unison with the saints should not be foreign to us. But then we get on to the much stickier ground of asking Saints to pray for us, of praying to the saints and then of Saints performing miracles – even, apparently at their own volition.

I think the question I always ask myself is is this pointing to Jesus – because that is what we remember that saints do for us – their lives, their prayers, their actions point in the direction of Jesus – not perfectly whilst they were on earth but in some way which helps us to recognize the face of Christ a little more clearly in this world of ours. That could, of course, include all of the above, or possibly, for some, none of them.

What I do not think is helpful at all, is over – pietising the Saints and especially Mary. If we insulate her in some sort of religious bubble wrap which says that she was somehow very different to us, that she didn't feel things the same as us, that she was never angry or always perfect it would seem to me to take away that very human yes – that very human fear which she felt when she met the angel – that very human pain which she endured. Whilst she was certainly endued with God's grace she can only be an example to us if, at the end of the day, she is one of us – an ordinary person called to an extraordinary task.

Perhaps the nature of this extraordinary task is summed up in the Angel's greeting to her “Chaire”. The Greek word is Chaire is a way of saying hello, but is also the imperative of the verb to rejoice – this greeting not only acknowledges Mary but tells her that she must rejoice, in the face of such wonderful news what other response could there be? This is one of the key aspects of Sainthood – this deep rejoicing, this joyfulness in the presence of God in all things. It is not always happiness or even contentment (that word which means things held together) but beyond the sometimes pain and swirling seas of life there is a voice in the Saints which can still say, “You are God, your Holy Name be praised”.

It is worth hanging onto this imperative “Rejoice!” as we go about the next week. Things are busy, people are grumpy, taking the car to Waitrose is definitely a big time investment – but in all the hustle and bustle we can have in the back of our minds, and hopefully on our lips and in our actions, that with Mary we are instructed to find a place of rejoicing – The Christ is coming and coming soon.

I do not know the etimology of the Greek words but I would be surprised if it was pure coincidence if the word for rejoice Chairo and the word for love Charis were not somehow related. Charis in the older versions of the Bible is translated as Charity, in the newer ones love but the link I would want to make is, I think, clear – that we can only rejoice truly when we are looking outwards and looking at each other as those who are in relationship with one another – a relationship of community, of common care, a relationship, in other words, of love.

Mary, then, sits right at the heart of this intersection of rejoicing and love – because of her position with the Christ, because of her yes – she takes the burdens and cares of motherhood and of this especial motherhood and sits at the heart of Christian community – not as a figure of salvation but as an example of love and true discipleship.

This intersection of giving relationship and community then is at the heart of every Christian greeting. It is bounded by both love and rejoicing and, perhaps, gives up a good paradigm for our own thoughts about and devotion to those who have trodden this Christian path before us, and especially Mary.

When we look outward and beyond ourselves we start to notice all sorts of things – those points of light in our world which point to incarnation, those thin places where we can almost hear the host of heaven for ever praising God. Jesus, God incarnate, is at the heart of this intersection between earth and heaven, Jesus gives and lives and offers and becomes. Our God reigns!

As the angel comes to Mary it is as if time stops for a moment, all creation waits with bated breath for her reply, and then “yes”.

So in this last week before Christmas let us hear the angel's words and live into that same calling of obedience to which Mary committed herself. Let's really work hard to find rejoicing in our lives and actions – even when life it tough to dig deep within and beyond ourselves and to squeak out a little alleluia.

Greetings to all of you in the name Our Lord Jesus Christ who calls each of you into His service in joyful obedience, rejoice! Rejoice with Blessed Mary and all the saints. Rejoicing in Christ turn outwards in love to those who have no words for God, to those who have lost hope, to those with no voice. Rejoice that Jesus is coming, and coming soon. Amen.

Can't find Jesus

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:31:02 PST

Yesterday my daughter gave me a wordsearch to complete which she had made at school. I was a little challenging as she had handwritten a very large grid and then carefully written in partial parts of the words to be found several times. This was compounded again by her having obviously watched the photocopier copy with the lid partially open as there was an ominous grey patch down one side. Anyway, I persevered and found all the words except one - and I knew I was in for trouble. But you are a priest, mummy, she chuckled - the irony was not lost on the other members of my family - the word I could not find was Jesus.

The missing Jesus it turned out after careful scrutiny by several pairs of eyes was actually just not there and got quickly pencilled in to my copy of the search - but that would be to spoil a good story where I had found reindeer and elves, angels and even Mary but Jesus was nowhere to be found.

Sometimes Advent can feel a lot like that. When people ask me whether I am ready for Christmas I know that those words mean, have you finished you shopping and got your food sorted yet? I usually answer with, I have done the shopping, trying to leave a subtle vapour trail that this is the least of "getting ready for Christmas".

This Advent, for various reasons, has involved a lot of waiting. It feels like a real journey and by the time I get to Bethlehem I will be ready for a rest. But the really good thing is that I know Jesus will be there - there is a bright light telling me where to go, where to rest, where to adore. There is no question of a creators mistake, that somehow we will make this journey, bring our gifts and then find that the stable is empty - it simply does not work that way.

The other day I read John Betjeman's poem "Christmas" to one of our weekday congregations. It points to that same reality - that there is always mystery, always promise that God is really here hallowing all of our rush and bustle, being born in a stable and filling our lives with sacramental grace.

This is true for us in another century too, we still keep our lives, we still rustle and hustle, but we are still loved and held and summoned by a Jesus who is never really missing.

Counterculture?

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 06:33:05 PST

Sometimes, as we get towards Advent, it can seem as though we are pulling in the opposite direction to everyone else. After all folks tend to celebrate Christmas before the day whilst we are busy waiting and waiting and waiting.
But instead of getting annoyed at the early celebrations this year I am trying to concentrate on what is behind them. There are already a lot of Christmas commercials on the television - perhaps one of the most commented upon ones is the one for John Lewis, where a little boy is anxiously waiting for Christmas and then wakes up on the big day, only to run past his own stack of presents to retrieve a slightly roughly wrapped gift from its hiding place, this he takes to his parents room - we never find out what it is.
Generosity is something which is valued both inside and outside the Church - it is important to recognize this appetite for good and for hope in the people around us. The message of Christmas - if God entering into the world is all about generosity, about hope and a future for humanity. Those bright lights which seem to festoon the streets earlier and earlier point to a real need in people to come out of the winter gloom.
Is God's Good News at Christmas really so countercultural after all - I think if we look a little harder we might actually find that the people around us and outside our Churches are hungry for all sorts of things which we have ready packaged, not under a tree, but in a manger.

knees and fees

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:40:56 PST

As I was driving between a Church funeral and the crem the other day I was listening to Radio 4 – this turned out to be a mistake as I found myself turning into the gates shouting at the radio. Luckily I had a few minutes and that gave me the chance to compose a very quick text to the programme in question and calm down.
The basic premise of the argument from the contributor, in a programme based around issues thrown up by the occupy movement at St. Paul’s, was that Church Schools (en masse) were missing that mark by being highly selective – hit the knees, save the fees – to quote Rev.
Whilst we do have at least one such Church of England school in our area I was angry that all Church Schools were tarred with the same brush. Even the aforementioned Rev has changed its Church School stance – from the last series where we saw middle class parents turning up at Church to make sure that their electoral roll applications were backed up by the vicar actually knowing them and therefore being able to sign off on the school admissions form – to this one where we see children from apparently more challenging backgrounds interacting with the vicar. We shall see where the storyline goes.
The simple fact of the matter is that there are plenty of Church Schools out there who still elect to serve populations who live in difficult circumstances. Many of these schools are geographically placed in areas of social or low rent housing and draw by simple distance from the building and not by a long and complicated process of signing up for Church before the baby’s first nappy change.
I can only offer statistics from our own parish school – but children who enter as high achievers, often from middle class backgrounds, will (without any mitigating factors such as ill health) go through the school as high achievers and continue into top streams for secondary education. Children who enter with significant delays in development and/or with social problems will nearly all improve their personal development, results and thereby their opportunity later in life. This adding to a child is called Value Added – and our school does well in those scores. (And incidentally looking at value added is a much better indicator of what a school is actually doing than looking at the test scores which, in populations which were always going to do well, may look good but may not indicate much actual improvement in already bright children).
Our school has nearly four times the amount of seriously needy children than any other school in the Borough. It is Christian ministry at the front line and it is more than worth doing.
When people ask why we devote so many resources to this particular school, the obvious answer is that it is our Church school, but the deeper answer is that we are working, as Jesus did, with the most vulnerable and offering love to the, sometimes, not much loved. I suppose we could change admission criteria – but I hope not.

Sermon 6th November

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 08:42:00 PST

Third before Advent - 6^th November 2011

If you heard this preached you will note that these notes are in a slightly different order!!

Amos is probably not the first name that springs to mind when we consider the current state of our nation. Yet, with campaigners still camped out on St. Pauls Churchyard in London, today we have a nearly three thousand year old clarion call against social injustice and a nation which has become far too self reliant.

Some of you will be more than familiar with the events which had brought the people of Israel to this point – but let me just catch those of you who are a bit wobbly up on some Old Testament history. We are all probably somewhat familiar with the idea that God called Abraham and then Moses. That the Israelites escaped from Egypt and wandered in the desert for forty years. We remember that then they settled down and began to build cities in their new land. Eventually they appealed for a king and got Saul and then the great king David.

But then things started to go very wrong. Even as God was allowing a king in Israel he was warning the people, through the words of the prophet Samuel, that this was a very bad idea – that they would introduce a system where they would be giving huge amounts of their income and land to a political elite – that they would be working not to feed themselves plentifully but to support a huge royal machine.

The books of Kings and Chronicles, which contain the stories of the kings of Israel, have a rating system – they give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to successive kings. Solomon, David's son was the third king of the united Israel and the last – after him the kingdom split into two. Whilst the kings of the Southern Kingdom sometimes get a thumbs up from the writers of the history books in the words – he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord – the kings of the Northern Kingdom do not – they all did evil in the sight of the Lord. King after king sets up altars to other gods, increase political and economic disenfranchisement and sell out to other states.

By the time Amos is on the scene the situation is beyond precarious – the poor are so poor that they are dying from hunger and the rich are arrogant and have forgotten their place in the covenant with God – relying instead on themselves.

And that has always been the point of Covenant – from the earliest mention of it to Abraham – there would be a great nation living in relationship with God. The rules surrounding this nation would not be anoti-capitalistic, but they would ensure a level of justice where the widow and orphan would be provided for, where debts would be forgiven on a regular basis and where all the people would base their lives around the worship of God.

Amos talks about the Day of the Lord – this phrase pops up in several prophetic texts - it seem to have been a day when the people expected God to come and vanquish their enemies – to remove oppression and let justice rule – but the sort of justice which the people were expecting was highly political and the sort of justice which God was offering was about a parity of expectation across His people. Watch out, says Amos, there is a day of reckoning coming but it will not be against foreign nations surrounding Israel but against Israel itself.

Their worship is also lacking in real meaning. They go through the motions but in ways and places which are foreign to their own traditions – they may be saying the right words but their whole being belies the real truth of everything they are doing – and everything they are doing has become foreign to the God who loves them. They can burn all the sacrifices they want but without the real heart of the nation – without justice and a real burning love for God, they are wasting their time, and worse than that offending against God.

So, a few weeks ago when tents appeared outside St. Paul's I was relieved and intrigued that apparently the Church was siding with those who were questioning a top heavy system – I understood that the Occupy movement was a little fuzzy in it actual objectives – but then if the World Bank and International Monetory Fund cannot come up with a coherent solution to the financial crises around the globe, perhaps simply expressing dis-ease with the situation, calling out greed and excess, was a good enough place to start.

Then we had that bizarre roller coaster ride through the establishment and the Church looking just like it was worshipping at the high places of the corporations which inhabit the City of London. Now things have calmed down again, and the official line seems to be that we must engage with the debate and this is a frightening position to put ourselves in because we will not, suddenly, have specific answers, we do have knowledge of God who puts people first, a God whose justice and mercy is like an ever-flowing river.

Now, in case you are thinking, trickling brook here, don't. The river of God's mercy is a desert river, a wadi over flowing after heavy rain, it is a powerful flood. How dare you behave like this God says to the people – not a polite comment but a roar of outrage.

Our nation needs a roar of outrage, our world needs a roar of outrage. Christians need to stand up, to give up on the petty squabbling about really quite small pieces of theology and return to the meta-narrative, the big message, of the Gospel. That message starts with two simple commandments – love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength – stand in the flood of God's mercy and be strong, remain. The second is love you neighbour as yourself.

Whilst many of us do not understand the intricacies of economics, and my brain does not do well with those theories that actually seem to run in the opposite direction to what I would feel is common sense – we can all open our eyes and look around us. We know where we are, we know what life is like and we know that we are people who must speak for those who have no voice around the world – we have to keep justice and mercy for all human beings at the top of every agenda.

The criticism of the bridesmaids who ran off at the last minute to get oil was that they seemed totally unaware of the situation they were in. They knew the bridgroom would be arriving – weddings tend not to drop out of the sky – and yet they were not prepared and not only were they not prepared but to make it worse they ran off instead of waiting for the one they had been anticipating.

But I hope we are not those bridesmaids because despite the fact that the only thing which the Church seems to get into the news about, until the past week, are the endless wrangles about human sexuality we have always have this back beat of justice, or crying out for the poor and it is time to turn the tables on the news which we are proclaiming – to turn our division into a quiet conversation and to allow the voice of the Gospel – the Good News for broken people – to be heard again in our nation and the world.

A call for reformation, a call for the poor and needy, a call to right relationship is most certainly what we have been saying all along – but our voices have been tenuous – as if we are not sure. But what is there not to be sure of here? That our system has become self-supporting, that people are greedy, that public money is, in effect, lining already deep private pockets – the voice of the Church should not be quiet assignation in a system of which is is part – it should be outrage.

Let me finish with the words of the Bishop of London, Rt. Rev. Richard Chartres, who is at the heart of the current happenings at St. Pauls:

“Commentators have derisively written off the Church, and the Church of England in particular, as having nothing to offer, with a tale simply told of dwindling congregations; but the appetite for examining some of the great questions that face us through the Christian prism suggests that we are on the verge of a challenging but cery significant perions in the history of the Christian community.....” he goes on to conclude....

“ I believe that this is a moment in which St. Paul's, and the Church in general, has been shown how it can get away from an in-house ecclesiatical agenda and its passion for elaborating defensive bureacracy, in order to serve the agenda of the people of England at a critical moment in our history.”

Revisting Halloween

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:37:33 PDT

Having lived in the USA for nine years I have returned to the UK with different eyes on Halloween. Whilst I have never allowed our children to dress up as evil characters – preferring superheroes, princesses and various other sporting and historical figures – the sheer joy of the evening – one of the few times when people are out of their houses, on foot, and there is a real feeling of community – is hard to avoid.
Coming back to England I now find the stance which writes off everything Halloween as evil – somewhat curious. I am not a fan of the amount of teenagers wandering around in ripped shirts covered in fake blood – there is enough violence and evil in the world – but I am not sure that railing against the evils of the night is a very useful position for the Church to take either.
There is fun to be had and perhaps entering into that fun is a lot better than simply sitting at home with the lights of sulking. Festivals of light are one way to reclaim the Christianity in All Hallows Eve. But I wonder whether embracing some of the celebrations, offering a celebration of neighbours and family and quietly moving away from the horror aspect of the season might be better than simply refusing to join in.
Perhaps I am selling out – but every time my children tell their friends that their costumes are non-horror for a reason – they are saying something about why and our values – more than they would ever say by simply abstaining – I can argue the other side too – but we live in a changing world where I think engaging reform is often more effective than Victorian Preaching.

sliding off the dome....

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:05:25 PDT

You know that feeling when you are a kid and you decide to ignore the adult’s advice and run down a hill – there is that moment when you just know that your body is somehow going faster that your feet and there is nothing, nothing at all which is going to stop you falling. That rather nasty, sickly feeling of knowing that we are about to corporately hit the ground, and its going to hurt, is how I am feeling about the whole St. Paul’s debacle.
I have been running the line of “ignore it and it will go away” but with the article in the Independent suggesting a cover-up from a report written about salaries and bonuses in the financial sector and then not released I can feel the whole thing lurching forward into a toppling position. Add to that another resignation (all be it of a chaplain who is a curate elsewhere) and another chapter member threatening to go, and the whole thing seems to be lurching precipitously.
The Dean and Chapter are responsible, of course, for the best interests of the mission and ministry of St. Paul’s. But with a cathedral which is so much a part of national life, it is not quite as simple as that. Of course one should not comment on things which one only reads in the Newspapers or hears on the television news – who knows what is really going on behind the scenes – but I just hope, for the sake of the message which we all proclaim, that there can be transparency and a respect for humanity as things move forward. I can feel myself wanting to side with the protesters – but I am not sure what I am protecting.

Ssaints

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:38:23 PDT

Yes - I can spell but there is always that slightly strange conversation which we have somewhere around All Saints Day about Saints with a capital and saints with a small letter at the beginning.

I wonder what most people would say if you asked them - what is a saint - I suspect the answer would be people who help other people, people who pray a lot, people who do good things or people who go to Church every day. There is a social idiom to call people saints based solely on their external behaviour - she was a saint often expresses the kindness and generosity of a person with or without any apparent religious belief.

Saints with a capital letter are people who the Church has recognised as especially holy - but it does not take much reading of hagiography to realise that many of those who bear the title saint would not be the sort of people you would want to go down to the pub with on a Sunday afternoon - many were eccentric and some downright unpleasant.

The process for being made a Saint stopped in the Church of England when we split from Rome in the sixteenth century - since then anyone who we consider especially holy has been given what is called a commemoration. The Roman Catholic Church still makes saints - and as you might have picked up from the news has changed the rules and regulations for doing so - under the new fast track system the number of miracles attributed to a saint has been halved and the old "Devil's Advocate" the person who presented a contrary picture of the candidate for Sainthood as a sort of fail safe, has gone. When historians look back at the later 20th Century they might be tempted to think that there was period of religious awakening - looking at the number of new saints - when in fact it was a much more mundane rule change which let a lot of extra people in.

And that is really the fact of the matter - whilst Saints are good and holy, there are also plenty of good and holy folk who never become Saints, who never have a day named after them. Saints are like markers along the way and offer inspiration to those walking in the way of Christ - but that inspiration is not always exclusive.

When St. Paul writes to his Churches, he addresses the whole congregation as the saints in.....and adds a place name. It is good for us to think about this - although we are not in Corinth or Ephesus we are still the saints in, still called to Godly living, still called to display attributes of holiness.

These attributes of holiness are all the things we might expect courage, kindness, empathy...you could come up with a long list but what I want to suggest seperates all the saints from people who are just doing nice and good things are that saints see the world through God's eyes and that is not an easy thing. If we take every situation which we encounter and ask God to show us how God sees it - two things happen. The first is that the everyday suddenly becomes alive and holy - we see that God really is all in all. The little things we do become saintly acts - every time we say good morning or give someone a hug - this making all of life somehow caught up in God is wonderful and saintly.

The other thing that tends to happen is that we see things from a different and often larger angle. What had seemed simple and easy to point the finger at - say people behaving badly - suddenly becomes a bigger issue, not of blaming the individual but of healing wounds which lie deep in society - we find ourselves caught up in things - we are part both of problems and solutions because as the family of humanity - as those who are created - we are all linked together.

And we are linked with all who have gone before us in this path too - all those who have sought to look at the world through God's eyes and have based their action on that vision. The Communion of Saints (and I rather like to think that all of us get a capital letter when we are received into God's arms) rejoices with us - saints on earth and Saint above - all looking to God, asking God to work through us, and praying to catch divine vision - seeing the world as God sees it and acting on that sight.

Protesers in the Churchyard

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:16:32 PDT

I have been wondering what most of us would do if we woke up, ambled over to Church to say the Office, and discovered tents surrounding our buildings. For those of us who have paved areas (and not gravestones everywhere) it is an interesting question and the one the Chapter of St. Paul’s Cathedral has been wrestling with all week.
When I first heard Giles Fraser’s reaction my first thought was good on him – but really? Was the Dean on holiday I wondered. This week, of course, my pleasant surprise has abated and I am returned to my usual cynical state about the institution of the Church of England. Not that we don’t do good stuff, not that we aren’t brilliant in places, but just that we seem, and especially in our higher echelons, to have the ability to be like hairy mammoths in a fine china department, blundering around, trying to find a way out of this or that.
It did cross my mind to erect a tent on our churchyard (on the paved bit) and encourage others around the country to do the same as a sign of unity with the protestors and those who stick up for their moral principles – but it is not that easy. What would I be protesting for – a sense of irritation and injustice that capitalism has managed to get its fingers on the public purse and then behaved…well…capitalistically. A real concern about financial inequity in society. Yes all these things – but I am not sure exactly what I would be asking for – and this is the problem, we are in a bit of a maelstrom.
You see, when someone resigns like this one wonders whether that was the camel or simply the straw that broke his back. When the Church has to turn to litigation instead of conversation one wonders who is really doing the talking. When we know there is an issue but cannot really pin it down coherently and make positive steps forward we simply end up looking indecisive. Oh, and, Christians do not agree on everything, all the time, and that is OK – we are human.
The St. Paul’s situation is not simple, but I have to say, what I am hearing in the call to move the protesters on has money, power and influence eaking out of it in a rather ugly way. What I think the Bishop of London said yesterday was that the protesters need to move so that talks can continue with the financial institutions, but what I actually heard was run along children and let mummy and daddy continue with the grown up talk over a glass of brandy and a nice cigar. And this turns Giles Frasier into a rebellious teenager – in fact it turns all of us who have questions for institution into those who do not really understand, those who will be listened to when we grow up and conform.
The thing is the God who I believe in is not about conforming to anything except God’s own self and God’s own self is love. I was taught at theological college – and this has been a valuable lesson – that when we get into conflict with one another we should pray for the other – not pray that God will change their mind to agree with us – but pray for them, for who they are in God’s sight, asking God to allow us to see our adversaries as God sees them, and to ask God to look after them and to help us to do God’s will towards them.
Perhaps that is why I thought about taking a tent into the Churchyard – not because I have complex economic answers, but because I believe that those answers will only come about and come to bear the fruit of love when we look at each other, and ask God to see each other through God’s eyes. Then we are faced not with an institution on the inside of power, but a group of human beings, created by God, asking real questions. Then we are faced with overturned tables and angry traders.
No easy answer – but I have a very bad feeling that we are all going to have an uncomfortable weekend.

Sermon Sunday 9th October

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 05:17:19 PDT

Last Sunday of Creationtime

This mornings reading offer a smorgesbord of sermon possibilities. Exodus gives us the story of passover – of deliverance. 1 Corinthians offers an image of the Body of Christ where all are valued and welcome and the Gospel contains three seperate but related thoughts about feasting – where to sit, who to invite and the invitation which God extends.

I want ot finish this creationtimes series with four thoughts around food, but more specifically around this meal which we share in Church – this Eucharist or communion service. The things I would like to focus in on are Celebration, Communion, Contemplation and Confidene.

Celebration

When I am explaining what an altar is for to primary school children, I often refer to celebration and say that we have a sort of party here every week. If you have ever been around children when they are getting ready for a party, you will know what I mean. Their whole attention is on the activity, they look forward to the wonder of cake and balloons, of games and presents.

Celebration has that childlike quality of letting go, of being in the moment, of allowing vulnerability.

I wonder how many of us came out this morning ready to celebrate – with that eager anticipation of a little child, dressed and ready for a party, holding a carefully wrapped gift for God – the gift of all that we are. Perhaps that is an off-putting thought – after all life is real and complicated and come days we just do not feel like celebrating at all.

But ce;lebration is not about marking perfection, if it were none of us would ever celebrate anything – there are always problems. Celebrating does not deny the reality of life, it affirms who we are truly created to be – and that is people of God, a God who celebrates us.

Food is a big part of many parties and in this celebration here we are offered sustenance and blessing – a real feast and we pray and work towards a time when there is nearer perfection in our world as we ask God to take and heal all of us.

Communion (community sacrament)

As I said a few weeks ago, the word communion emphasises the joined up-ness of our being church together. We find community in this celebration and we extend community from it.

Extending community is not only about getting people in the door on a Sunday morning – it has a much wider reach. Extending community has implications for how we live in all of our lives and that is why we take time to consider issues like food, its production and distribution and the effect that has on other people, the environment and the balance of all our lives.

I was in Reading on Friday and there was a street evangelist preaching a Gospel of fear, of avoiding eternal punishment. I asked hime whether he did not think that people were already depressed enough and that God's love would be a better place to start – the God who made us from the beginning meets us at God's holy table. I would hope and pray that our motivation for going from this place, our motivation for ammendment of life and fair living is that love – and not a primal fear of what might happen if we are not good enough. There is enough guilt around to last all of us a long, long time – we may feel bad about our global food structures but if we are fixing them from the positive of God's love for us all, we will be more successful.

Contemplation

As we have seen already in this sermon series Luke's Gospel sits between the here and the hereafter – he writes both of the present reality of the Kingdom and that to come. When he is talking about banquets and feasts he is talking both about the reality of God's call to feast now and also the more perfect heavenly banquet to come.

We are living in a foretaste of perfection and one of the characteristics of that foretaste is abundance. This can be difficult to understand – our society is greedy and we like to hold on to things – but abundance is about outflowing, not about storage.

So as we come together week by week, we are called to reflect, not on a frightening judgementalism but rather on God's provision. Yes, there is real need in our world and yes we are called to address it – but behind the veil of humanity there lies a God of real generosity and in that generous interaction with us we can catch a glimpse of the eternal.

Confidence

Sometimes it seems as though every piece of news media is intent on denting our confidence. We are simply not sure that we are getting it right. We slide into a sort of entertainment providing mode where we want everything to be as it is everywhere else in life so that people will fall easily into our familiarity.

This meal which we offer as a church, this communion, the Eucharist, is both familiar and strange. It is simply bread and wine, every day stuff of life, but it is also taken and changed into something else, something of God, something holy – and this is a paradigm for everything that we are as a Church.

We are both ordinary, ordinary people made just like other ordinary people. Not immune from the worries and problems of ordinary life. But we are also different – we are caught up and blessed in this meal – changed and sanctified by God – and although we cherish that we do not own it.

This should give us some confidence – it is not ourselves we preach but Jesus – and if Jesus can lift us and bless us then we have to trust that He can do the same for those around us. When we call for justice in God's name we are not uttering a magical charm which will solve all the problems of the world but we are uttering a deep cry which resonates with all eternity.

We eat with joy, we eat together, we eat with anticipation and we eat assuredly – celebration, communion, contemplation and confidence. Our season on food ends, as it should, with the true bread of the world and that is our commonality with each other and with the rest of the world – commonlity in creation and need and invitation.

So as we come to the altar lets come as people who are nourished by one body and share in one cup and pray for one world where everyone eats enough food and where we put that commonality trustingly into God's hands and see all our food as truly his loving work of creation.

process and product

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 06:09:14 PDT

I have been leading a workshop for children's workers on children's spirituality recently. One of the conversations which this has led to has been the question of whether what we are doing is process or product led. Bluntly put, process is about the joy of the journey and product is about getting there. Of course, when working with children there is a delicate balance between the parameters which may be necessary to get to a particular teaching aim and the wandering which we allow, or encourage, within those parameters.
But what about for adults. Liturgy is seen by many people as product and a product which they are not very happy with. Why spend all out energy on getting this or that right when we should be worshipping God. Having been around liturgical churches for years I can see where this comes from - we all get flustered and concerned about some things but sometimes this gets in the way of what liturgy is - and that is a framework, and a framework for process.
This may sound counter-intuitive at first - but really it is not. Think of a house. When you walk in the door - and you do walk in a door - you want somewhere to hang your coat and put your shoes. You want a kettle for a cup of tea and chair to sit and drink it in. You may want a lamp to read your book or a television to watch. Houses have structure which enable our living - in our modern world it can seem like the places where we live define our lives instead of our lives defining the places where we live - but that aside, you get the point - a house is really only a framework in which we live, a space where our lives can take place and, hopefully, be enjoyed.
This is true for liturgy - it is a space to be inhabited. Good liturgy will open the door to an encounter with God, it will be a place where we recognise who we are and encounter those around us. Good liturgy will give us a comfortable base from which to explore and a place to relax into God's arms and be held. So Liturgy is only a valuable product in as much as it enables the process of worship - and even with that definition - liturgy should, in itself, remain dynamic and open to change.
I had a friend whose mother used to randomly move the furniture around in their house. One night he came home from a night out with friends and was creeping through the living room in the dark, a little worse for wear, trying desperately not to get caught by his parents. A crash and a bang later he came to in a room which had been rearranged, laying next to the sofa he had fallen over and the coffee table he had hit his head on.
Some people like to move furniture but when we think about liturgy, perhaps it is worthwhile remembering that most people do not, at least not very much and if you do move furniture in a house where other people are living it is always nice to tell them what you are doing so that they do not fall over various bits and pieces. I actually think that liturgy which is constantly switched around is more likely to turn into a self-defeating product that liturgy which is allowed its own space to breathe and develop slowly.
If every week we are spending huge amounts of time wondering where to stick the prayers or whether to do cartwheels at the offertory - if all the time we are looking for the new and exciting - then sometimes I think we learn to value the experience of the liturgy itself over and above the experience of God. And that is dangerous ground. God is always a process in our lives and we cannot hope to express all of God, not matter how clever and well devised our liturgy is. God gives and moves - we do not cram God into words and actions.

That seems to me to be a good reason for having a beautiful and simple and well known space in which to find God. Simple in the sense of still and somewhat stable rather than, necessarily, simplistic.
So my argument is for more stability in liturgy - for words which resonate with the congregation but for teaching words as well, for educating ourselves into our common worship. Lowest common denominator worship satisfies no one - for even the children which it is intended for soon sense the lack of integrity and mystery which loved liturgy brings.
Sometimes there are broken pieces in a framework, sometimes it will not support the weight and needs re-framing - but lets plan that process well, lets state what we are aiming to do with our framework and built it accordingly - lets trust God in that process of building enough that once built we basically leave it alone and inhabit it.Yes, do the maintenance but see that maintenance as part of a process and a journey, not as an end in itself.

Animal Welfare Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 23:52:47 PDT

I want to start by taking us back way into the Old Testament, to Numbers 22 and to a chap named Balaam. Balaam was a typical sort of reluctant believer. One day Balaam was riding his donkey when the donkey seemed to go a bit mad, first of all it stopped dead in its tracks, then it randomly swerved into a wall and hurt Balaam’s foot, then it just laid down and refused to move. Balaam became incensed with this donkey and started hitting it with a stick.

But the Biblical narrative makes it clear to the reader that what seemed random and bizarre to Balaam was in fact common sense to the donkey who could see something that Balaam himself could not see - and that was the angel of the Lord with drawn sword - the donkey was saving Balaam from disaster. As Balaam is shouting at the donkey and hitting it the donkey develops the power of speech - why are you doing this, he says, I have served you faithfully all these years and then a voice from God comes and says the same thing - why is Balaam being cruel to this donkey - and then Balaam is allowed to see what the donkey sees - the drawn sword in the hand of the angel.

There seems to be a few points that we could draw from this story, something along the lines of animal intuition and us being grateful for that, something about the strange miracle of talking animals but, in this context of animal welfare Sunday, the story condemns cruel treatment.

From the beginning of time, according to the Biblical narrative, there have been animals on the earth. That same Biblical narrative has animals being given to human beings to both care for and use. The ancient Israelites certainly did use animals - when Solomon was enthroned there is a biblical record in Kings of so many animals being sacrificed that they literally could not count them. This might seem barbaric to us but we cannot superimpose twenty-first century sensibilities onto the Biblical narrative - animals were important to the people but they were also eaten for food and used in religious ritual.To take from this that the Bible suddenly sees animals as equal to human beings would be ridiculous - it doesn't.

The Old Testament certainly revels in the beauty and wonder of God’s creation but it also looks at the fearfulness - there are fears about a great sea monster - Leviathan in the psalms. But listen to how Psalm 104 deals with this monster

24 O Lord, how manifold are your works!
  In wisdom you have made them all;
  the earth is full of your creatures.
25 Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
  creeping things innumerable are there,
  living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships,
  and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

Everything is God’s, everything is made by God and therefore we have to treat everything with respect. This is probably a very obvious thing to say - in Colossians we read that great claim that Jesus is from the beginning - that the creative spark which is in all creation is a thread of the divine. In Isaiah the prophet describes the ultimate revelation of God’s creation - a time of peace and harmony and God’s ultimate rule.

In his ministry Jesus does not talk explicitly about animals and animal welfare - the fact that he allows unclean spirits to send a herd of pigs hurtling off a cliff might not go down too well in some quarters. The removal of the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem is not an act of liberation of animals but an act of the liberation of humanity. No one is told to give up meat or farming and no pets are mentioned. Jesus is the shepherd, but the shepherd of human souls not actual woolly sheep.

So it is clear that we are meant to have respect and reverence for creation and for animals - what is less clear in this age is what that might mean. It is a very emotive subject and too often animal rights activists heap on so much guilt that it has the opposite to desired effect.

We do know when it comes to animals - using them instead of looking after them has often back fired on us with food safety and quality diminished by intensive farming methods. Simply put, meat from animals reared in humane and more nearly natural environments is less likely to kill you. Then there is the question of experimenting on animals - it seems quite clear that testing cosmetics and toileteries is cruel - but less obvious, when there is clear scientific mandate, is the question of pitting a human life against an animal in medical trials.

When dealing with any moral issue it is important to pull on the real strands around us and try to leave the emotive arguments behind. As Christians we need to look to the Bible and to our Church tradition - not only by trawling for passages which mention animals but by looking at the whole character of God - a God who creates and sustains, a God whose Son came and looks after each and every one of us - a God who cries for justice for the poor and the oppressed of the earth.

As many of you know I choose not to eat any meat but for me that is a justice issue which has much more to do with global food production than anything to do with animal rights. And we need to identify within ourselves a deeper theology which goes beyond an emotional reaction. A theology which sees humanity and all creation as wonderful and sacred, but not a theology which places unrealistic parameters around our interaction with the animal kingdom.

I read a sermon which said we should collaborate with animals - I hope the author meant that we should work to live together with kindness and respect - but I rather fear he had slipped into a sort of round table Orwellian mind set. A sort of united nations of species. That is not real life - there is a difference between real tough decisive doing of Christian faith and sentimental and guilt producing chatter. Even as someone who is pro-animal rights I will distance myself if I feel I am being emotionally manipulated by charities and advertisers.

When it comes to animals we have real decisions which we have to make about the way we behave, about our lifestyle choices and about where our world is heading. Advances in food technology mean that we are less reliant on meat as a necessary food source. I am afraid I cannot find a totally convincing animal welfare argument for reducing the consumption of meat which comes directly form the Bible, but I do find in the Bible a very compelling call to social justice, to a God who always defends the widow and fatherless, those who are deprived in society. If there is a Christian argument for a change in our food habits, I really think it is based there.

Wherever we end up, it is important that we all take time to engage with issues of animal welfare. We do not live in the same world as we did even twenty years ago in terms of possibility or understanding and we have to take time to prayerfully accommodate the real society, local and global, in which we find ourselves. Prayerfully, carefully coming to God, asking God to open our hearts and minds, asking God to bless our seeking for His will. Because this is Our God, the God who created everything, the God whose life breathes in all creatures and sways in every tree and flower. This is Our God, who calls us to listen and to pray, who calls us to steward His creation. This is our God who calls us to listen to the cry of the hungry and oppressed. Balaam hit his donkey our of anger and frustration because he did not understand, pray God that we will not be guilty of allowing our own emotional outrage – in any direction – to lead us to a blindness and sefl-assurance which denies the hand of the Creator.

Just love

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:14:19 PDT

My Dad used to get grumpy around church people - he had the normal string of complaints about having to give money and people not behaving the ways they talked and linked to this was a very common comment which he made - it is just a meal ticket.
What he meant of course was that going to church was a sort of insurance payment against eternity - to make sure we would end up where we would want to. The problem with the accusation is that, I suspect in all of us, from time to time, we have a moment of self-doubt (or God-doubt) in which we wonder whether that is exactly what we are doing - simply buying in by attendance at Church.
Of course, keeping God sweet, is not really the point of Christianity. There are those who interpret the Bible to say that if you butter God up and live in obedience (often to a very conservative interpretation of the Bible) you will prosper. Then there are those who hold off this prospering to after death and hold eternity as a sort of voodoo doll over our heads, threatening that not conforming (and it is often about conforming and not really about sin) will invoke a divine pin to stick us which will send us really into the firey arms of Hell.
This morning I was pondering this hymn:
My God, I love thee; not because
I hope for heaven thereby,
nor yet because who love thee not
are lost eternally.
Thou, O Lord Jesus, thou didst me
upon the cross embrace;
for me didst bear the nails and spear,
and manifold disgrace,

And griefs and torments numberless,
and sweat of agony;
yea, death itself; and all for me
who was thine enemy.
Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,
should I not love thee well,
not for the sake of winning heaven,
nor any fear of hell;

not with the hope of gaining aught,
not seeking a reward;
but as thyself hast loved me,
O ever loving Lord!
So would I love thee, dearest Lord,
and in thy praise will sing,
solely because thou art my God
and my most loving King.
It is a complete antithesis to the whole pie in the sky when you die theology - our sole motivation in this life is to respond to God's love for us, and specifically for this writer, to respond to the love which God has shown for us in Jesus Christ and his suffering on the cross.
I remember as a child not understanding this at all, how could you simply ignore the threat of Hell and not strive after the promise of Heaven. There are probably a lot of people who struggle with this hymn along the same lines but somehow to me it is a very liberating thing - not to be worrying about eternal consequences but simply to trust in the love of God for now, for today and know that that love is eternal and really is all that matters.
Of course, there is some practical worrying about the future in everyone's life - but the really substantial worrying is taken out of the equation if we remove that elementary school aspect of being a good boy or girl for God. That is not to say we live in a free for all, but that we know that the only response to love is more love and that is where we truly find ourselves.
To love God as God loves us is a small set of words but it is a lifetime's work and it is enough to occupy ourselves with. I am not saying that we will never have moments of fretting about things which seem so much bigger and more frightening but that in those moments we return to love, we remind ourselves who we are and where we are already held.
Perhaps having a few readings from Luke's Gospel at services recently has helped this - for Luke the kingdom of God is not just something which is coming, something to be striven for, but it is something which is here, made real in Jesus and in the Church. Luke has the advantage of the span of a Gospel and Acts to work out the idea of the end times being both future and now - and there is a continuity between those two things, which somehow binds them together in one, and that is God loves us enough, and calls us just to love back.

lopping off

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 09:51:04 PDT

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off....thus writes St. Mark in his Gospel (Mark 9:38-50). The whole passage is about pulling in the right direction, but far from being a mandate for self-harm it is calling the believer to pay attention to the things which are drawing them, and those they are likely to influence, in the opposite direction from the Gospel.
At harvest time we give thanks for good things - especially those which sustain us. At All Saints the Environment in which we exist and which we influence comes into focus for six weeks. We thank God for food and life and then in the middle of this celebration we find ourselves wondering at the ferocity and violence of the language in Mark's Gospel.
The comments below are obvious, there is nothing clever, but sometimes if does us good to remember the simple basis of our faith.
You could, I suppose, read it literally - but you would not survive for very long if you did which means a literalistic interpretation makes little sense. So what does all this mean? I want to draw out three simple points.
First of all, pulling against God is a serious issue. Secondly that even though something is a gift of God we can use it in ways which are not good and pull against God and thirdly there are times of real sacrifice in this road we walk with Christ.
So first, that pulling away from God is a serious issue. If the MPs expenses scandal a few year ago shone any sort of light on British society it should have been one which pointed out to us that too many of us have become folk who see what we can get away with. Now whilst I suspect most of us here are not fiddling expenses I suspect that every so often, most of us do a little something, which flies slightly under the radar - whether it is driving too fast or being a little too snappy with the checkout operator at that big superstore who you will likely never see again anyway - there are things which nibble away at our aim to reflect Christ in our lives. We might have good justification and even legal right to do what we do but we have to always pay attention to that internal radar which we develop over the years - is what I am doing reflecting the values of the kingdom and proclaiming Jesus? If the answer is absolutely not then that is probably a millstone moment - if the answer is maybe, maybe not then we can spare dragging a hefty lump of rock to a river but we need to be aware that pulling ourselves away from God is serious enough but we do not live in a vacuum and our actions reflect our values and our values and motivations need to be Christ centered.
Secondly there can be a temptation to say if you've got it flaunt it. After all if everything good comes from God then shouldn't we be able to do whatever we like with who we are and what we have? Again, this is not a matter of legality and the fact that Mark talks about lopping of limbs which are leading to sin should remind us that things, even good things, can go bad - that sin tends to creep in and that, again, our motivation and attention must be towards Christ.
Thirdly that there might be some very real sacrifice involved. Christianity is not a feel good religion - it does make us feel good but that is not how we should judge ourselves. Sometimes as we look at our world we feel dreadful that it is so far away from God, that things seem so broken, that the doors of so many lives seem to be hanging off the hinges. It is not primarily about me and mine but about God and who we are for and with and to God. Going to church is not a spiritual spa treatment where we simply feel better, it is an offering and a thanksgiving, and offering means sacrifice.
So I would suggest that all machetes and meat cleavers are returned to their drawers but that the force of action which is suggested in this passage is something which spurs us on, not to remove any vital organs or limbs, but to really be thorough in our assessment of whether we are pulling in the right direction, and self-sacrificing in taking up the slack.

in between times

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:42:26 PDT

Being a parent to teenagers often feels like you are living in the gaps. I am thinking very practically here - for example I dropped three teens off an hour ago and will leave in 45 minutes to retrieve them. Giving me a gap of about an hour and a half in-between. This is not unusual - the running too and fro and deciding what to fit into which piece of time and when just to give up and watch bits and pieces of television programmes - because you are always arriving after the beginning or leaving before the end of any sort of regular programming slot.
But in-between has a lot to be said for it. I remember at the beginning of my ministry being told that the real ministry happens in in-between times - in those little moments here and there where someone pops in or just happens to be somewhere. Some folk use the phrase - ministry is in the interuptions - but either way it is those unscripted and unexpected encounters which prove to be so fruitful.
But then should that be so surprising - after all most of our life is sort of in-between. Whilst we plot ourselves out with birthdays and weddings, with parties and celebrations - the simple fact is that most of our time is inbetween - and it is open to encounter and richness which often, if we are honest, does not come from the big splash red letter days.
In this harvest season we give thanks for that which sustains us - and perhaps we should thank God for those inbetween moments, those moments of calm when we are not rushing and running, those moments where we see glimpses of glory and notice each other just a little bit more. Perhaps even slow down and notice those times - smell the roses, and the apples and flowers in church - inbetween everything else.

St Matthew

noreply@blogger.com (C) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:40:48 PDT

It is difficult to put into context just how odd it would have seemed for Jesus to sit down with tax collectors. Most of us have running jokes about HMRC or the IRS depending on which country we are in - but that misses the point. So do jokes about lawyers and estate agents - folks who have jobs which make easy humour - but the point of all of those things in our own lives is that whilst, at different points we might feel hard done by, really the modern day tax collector is only fulfilling a role which is asked of them by the majority of citizens, namely that everyone pays what they should towards the government and social welfare of the country. There are always wrangles about percentages and priorities but even when we disagree with the government we can see that the idea behind the taxes is to benefit those who live around us and ourselves.

Not so with the New Testament tax collectors. Imagine that you live in an occupied country and are subject to a brutal regime - imagine that that brutal and unforgiving regime which really does not give you very much at all then demands taxes and some of your neighbours collect those taxes for the leaders of the regime - at best you would see those people as collaborators and probably you would label them traitors. Those same people are given all sorts of powers to collect the tax and many of them abuse those powers, lining their own pockets by taking extra money from yours.

These are the people Jesus sits down with, the worst of the worst. Who is that in our society, like I say, we might like to joke about certain professions but most of us live in democratic societies, we are not under foreign and aggressive rule. Perhaps in our own society we should think about those who most frighten and undermine us - who would Jesus sit down with - the bankers who gambled the fortunes of the country, the terrorists who threaten us - does it make us angry to think that perhaps those are the people who Jesus would be eating with....then perhaps we get a taste of the anger which the people around Jesus felt when they witnessed his behaviour but at the same time we have to challenge our own assumptions and ask who we are called to sit down with. It is hard, because we recoil from people who we feel under threat from. We hate to think of Jesus whom we regard as holy with people who we regard as the opposite.

But the really good news is that Jesus is still holy, Jesus is still Jesus and God still loves even in the depths of human depravity. When Jesus called Matthew he was calling not a foreigner but a Jew who was selling out his own people, someone who the Jews found obnoxious - and yet he still calls him, Matthew still responds and presumably turns his life around like Zaccheus, the other, famous, tax collector. If Jesus can call these fairly despicable people to faith then he certainly can call all of us, but more importantly, we can call those whom we most try to avoid and forget in life, those who we most villify for their behaviour and profiteering. Jesus would condemn the sin but not the sinner - on the feat of St. Matthew we should remember that we are called to do the sam

food and idols

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:50:35 PDT

Doing all for the Glory of God.

If you have raised children or had anything much to do with them you will, at some point, likely have heard a sentiment similar to this expressed – I don't have to do what you say, you are not in charge of me. It can be anything from picking up toys to staying out all night at a friends house – but as adults know, freedom to choose comes with resposibility for both ourselves and for the well-being of those around us.

In the letter to the Corinthians Paul is talking about adult choice and responsibility. He is caught between two schools of thought - one that food which has been sacrificed to idols is unclean and therefore should not be eaten by Christians, the other that Christians are not affected by the practice of false religion and therefore it does not matter. Whilst he sides with the second point of view – that food which has been used in pagan religion is just food and has no power other than to nourish as any other food would be introduces the idea that just because, under the strict letter of the law he can do something does not mean that he should – because of the effect it might have on other people.

The effect, he says, of eating food which has been used in pagan religious practices might be that Christians are misjudged to be condoning or participating in some way in these practices – although the Christians themselves will know that this is not true – might such behaviour trip up someone who is looking in from the outside, confuse or make a nonsense of faith in Christ? If that is a worry, says Paul, forego the cheap meat from the Roman Temple and simply eat something else, even if it costs you more money.

This means giving up a freedom for the sake of another, for the sake of clarity and sometimes common sense. Jesus in the synagogue is also making a call to give up, because, he says and he is quoting the prophet Isaiah, so this is not new, he is come to the poor and the outcast. Luke makes it clear that the kingdom which Jesus introduces is an upside down kingdom of favour and justice, a world in line with much Old Testament prophecy, but a world which is unpopular with those who rely on wealth and status around him. The price he nearly pays is high – and, of course, although he walks away from a stoning he does not, ultimately, walk away from the cross.

It is not just food, of course that we can apply these passages to. Our whole lives are called to – as St. Paul urges, glorify God. Jesus quotes Isaiah to proclaim a year of the Lord's favour, is this a year of Jubilee, a year of forgiveness of debts and freedom for those in bondage? This is who God is, a God of freedom and promise and our lives, our incarnation of Christ in the Church, has to reflect both the source of our being and our view of jubilee for those around us.

And this is now. St. Luke writes about a Kingdom of God which is both now and to come. Luke demands social justice as an ourworking of the present in-breaking of God's kingdom, this Gospel is far from the pie in the sky when we die philosophy that would give us an excuse just to exist within a little local and quite selfish bubble.

Our response then might start with a reassesment of community. We have made community very small in our society – and therefore ideas of jubilee tend to become parochial or even based in households. The primary unit of our community is often the household or a very small extension of it into close friends and neighbours. Some of us might live in places where there is a slightly better sense of neighbourhood and we are often proud of our town and work to make it better. But with every layer of community there are people outside that community.

getting noticed

noreply@blogger.com (HolyBrit) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 08:14:27 PDT

So how big do you have to write something for someone to run by it and still be able to read it. I always wonder how big Habakkuk had to write, Habakkuk 2:2
Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.
But more than that I wonder what we Christians should be doing to get noticed in this speeding world of busy people.
I imagine the prophet (and probably quite incorrectly) chiselling his message into an enormous piece of stone and getting quite frustrated that God wanted it quite that big - I wonder whether he moaned a bit saying "Lord, if only you had let me do this smaller, I would be finished by now and I could be doing something else."
A combination of listening and real, back-breaking effort. Hmmm......