Quotes for the Day

“The more surpassing all imagination of Prophets and Psalmists and Apostles the Divine Nature is,—the more true it is that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man what God hath prepared for them who are for ever to be made partakers of the Divine Nature... "Now it is necessary to know, and ever to keep in mind, that prayer is the all-comprehending name that is given to every step in our return to God. True prayer, the richest and the ripest prayer, the most acceptable and the most prevailing prayer, embraces many elements : it is made up of many operations of the mind, and many motions of the heart. To begin to come to ourselves,—however far off we may then discover ourselves to be,—to begin to think about ourselves, is already to begin to pray. To begin to feel fear, or shame, or remorse, or a desire after better things, is to begin to pray." - Lord, teach is to pray: sermons on prayer By Alexander Whyte

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, Unuttered or expressed; The motion of a hidden fire That trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, The falling of a tear The upward glancing of an eye, When none but God is near. James Montgomery

Quote for the Day

"Everyday fears are increasingly shaped and intensified by the threat of global disaster – climate change, nuclear attacks, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, pandemics – all reinforced by the media. In popular culture, we see it most pointedly in films which portray the apocalypse or life in its dystopian aftermath. Such movies, like Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (inspired by the assumed ending of the Maya calendar), expose human anxieties and reveal the yearnings for a better, more secure hope. Indeed, while the threat of the end is inevitable, hope that the final destruction of humanity is avoidable runs through virtually all apocalyptic films.

"For Christians, hope is not an optimistic belief in our capacity to meet every eventuality. Rather, hope derives its shape from trust in the God who has acted in Jesus Christ, who is working out his plan of redemption, and who will one day inaugurate a world free from ‘the old order of things’. Christians believe not in the end of the world, but in the beginning of a renewed world."

Anthony Billington, London Institue of Contemporary Christianity, 'Connecting with Culture' 21st December 2012

Between: Advent: Time for change

Between: Advent: Time for change: “It’s time for change” was Barak Obama’s slogan in his 2008 Presidential campaign. When we heard in our Bible readings ( Malachi 3. 1 - 4...

Quote for the Day

How is it that the more able man becomes to manipulate the world to his advantage, the less he can perceive any meaning in it? - Owen Barfield, quoted by Malcolm Guite in Faith, Hope and Poetry, 76

There is, I suspect, an interaction with the Incarnation here. For God, who in Christ masters life and death, came amongst us in weakness, something which Paul especially unpacks in his two letters to the Corinthians.

Waking up in Advent

What will heaven be like?

Actually, this is the wrong question. The Bible speaks of Jesus returning to this world and of there being a New Heaven and a New Earth.

Wer should ask: What will eternal life be like? For Jesus arose from the grave in this world. It is this world that God is making new.

The question is: what will this world be like after God has made all things new?

At the heart of the answer is Easter Day. We can think about what Jesus was like after he rose from the dead. He is the first fruit of eternity.

He was very much alive! No whispy clouds and angels playing harps. Rather, he enjoyed a bar-B-Q by the lakeside (John 21).

The Bible sometime speaks of being awake, waiting for Christ. Perhaps we could say that this world at best is like a dream. Sometimes a very pleasant dream, sometimes a nightmare. But one day we shall be fully awake, when Jesus returns and makes all things new. This world will seem like a dream. Then it will be solid, more real!

With no more pain, or suffering, or death.

What is your greatest dream for life? Eternal life, God's eternity will be even better than that!

Advent is when we wait, wait for Christ's coming. This Advent, let's through prayer and reading the scriptures, ask God to wake us up that bit more, so we are ready for Jesus' coming, when we wil be goggle-eyed awake!

PM's Same Sex Marriage Statement

Church of England response here

Quote for the Day - The Weight of a Snowflake

The Weight of a Snowflake (from Megan McKenna's Mary, Shadow of Grace)

Once upon a time there were two birds sitting on a branch of a tree. One was a dove and one was a titmouse (a small gray bird, sort of like a sparrow). They were sitting and talking about all the things that were going on in the world. They had heard stories from all over as they migrated and visited with other birds, and they were exchanging the news. Then, as was there habit, they begun to discuss philosophy and theology and politics. But after a while they became bored with that. 

Then it began to snow. It was the kind of snow that brought fat, fluffy flakes. The dove looked at the titmouse and asked; "Do you know how much a snowflake weighs?" 

The titmouse thought about it a while and said, "No, I never thought about it." 

"Well", said the dove, "I think it weighs nothing more than nothing. I mean, look at the snow floating down, these fat, soft, fluffy flakes." 

The titmouse thought about it some more and said, "If you think a snowflake weighs nothing more than nothing, I have a little story to tell you. Once when I was sitting on a branch, just like this one, I didn't have anything to do. It started to snow, so I began counting snow flakes, fat and fluffy ones just like these. I counted a lot, a couple of hundred, a couple of thousand. I got up to one million, eight hundred and forty-six thousand, six hundred and twenty-two snowflakes and then, one snow flake-which you say weighs nothing more than nothing - floated down, landed on my branch, and cracked it straight through. The branch went falling to the ground, and I had to fly off."

With that, the titmouse flew off and left the dove sitting alone on the branch.

The dove, who was always been associated with peace, sat there trying to figure out the story. Suddenly it dawned on her.

Of course. One snowflake, one person, when added to all the others, may be the one that makes all the difference in the world.

McKenna comments, 'What if we, who are nothing alone, are the difference between the way world is now and the coming of peace on earth? What if we are the difference between darkness pervading the world or light coming into the world?'

My Quote for the Day

from Lord, teach us to pray : sermons on prayer

"instead of it being a difficulty, and a hardship, and an offence that the love of Christ passeth knowledge,—that is the crowning glory of Christ's love : that is our crowning blessedness. The love of Christ has no border: it has no shore: it has no bottom. The love of Christ is boundless : it is bottomless : it is infinite : it is divine. That it passeth knowledge is the greatest thing that ever was said, or could be said about it, and Paul was raised up of all men to see that and to say it. We shall come to the shore, we shall strike the bottom, of every other love: but never of the love of Christ."

Lord, teach us to pray : sermons on prayer By Alexander Whyte

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Quote for the Day

In the process of moving and reorganizing some bookshelves in the middle of October, I recovered something long out of place. A small Nativity scene carved out of olive wood had been inadvertently left behind from the previous year's Christmas. Holding it in my hand, I cowered at the thought of digging through boxes in the garage long buried by post-Christmas storage. At this point, it seemed better to be two months early in setting it up than ten months late in packing it away. I decided to keep the carving out.

Strangely enough, my decision then coincided with a friend's mentioning of a good Christmas quote. Advent was suddenly all around me. In a Christmas sermon given December 2, 1928, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes.  Christians rejoice!" To be early with my Nativity scene suddenly seemed a wise, but convicting thought. I had kept it around for the sake of convenience, what about the sake of remembering?

Jill Carattini, managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia - from A Slice of Infinity emailing, 28th November 2012

Sunday Sermon 25th November 2012

In El Salvador refugees flee the government troops, hiding in the jungle only a couple of thousand yards away from the troops. The group stops long enough for a woman to give birth. The silence and pain are devastating. The woman around hold her, willing her to make no sound. The child, once born, is passed from hand to hand, prayed over. Will this be the child that will free the people and bring peace to the land. Then they move on, with new life to be celebrated at the first place it is safe to sing, rejoice and eat.

(- adapted from Mary, Shadow of Grace by Megan McKenna, 59)

We are approaching Advent. We begin to think of Mary pregnant with the Christ-child, bearing him in an area where war and conflict still make no child safe.

She bears the child, full of hope. Christians have long called her the God-bearer.

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, 'Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.'

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words... 30 But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33...; his kingdom will never end.'

34 'How will this be,' Mary asked the angel, 'since I am a virgin?'

35 The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

To her child, so weak and totally helpless, she brings the gifts of a mother.

Caring, compassion, gentleness, tenderness, patience, listening, pain, suffering, tireless love, sacrifice.

Wonderful virtues, on which we all depend.

In a male governed world, qualities that are easily forgotten, seen as  weak.

Women know they are not weak

And Mary bears the Christ Child

God.

Straight away as we read the Bible (though in reality months if not years may have intervened) power, violence announce themselves.

Herod wants to kill this child.

Mary flees Bethlehem to Egypt,

As Herod's troops sweep in, to kill the God-child she has born. He massacres the children of Bethlehem

Three weak people flee, God cares for them

Joseph too cares

For he has something of God's ways

And trusts.

The weakness of motherhood triumphs

And of course, I speak as a fool

For as my very story tells

It is not weakness but strength

But male power

Thinks the opposite

In swoops Herod. He massacres the innocent. He thinks power wins.

But years later, another Herod will swoop in with Pilate

And catch up with that child

Hang him on a cross

And power will pat itself on the back

Think it has triumphed.

And Mary will be at the cross, crying in anguish. Watching over her son

As only a mother knows how.

From the moment of his birth to tragically

that of his death

And a mother's love triumphs again.

For there is another power

A power so powerful that those of this world do not recognise it

This world thinks it is foolishness

In the Narnia stories, the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

The White Witch has killed the Christ figure, the Lion Aslan

She has overcome his powers by her Powerful magic.

But Aslan rises from the grave

Aslan says, "though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitors stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards..."

And so it will always be for those who love power

Who ignore the ways of God

Who do not know the ways of God.

Mary, the God-bearer.

Sharing in the suffering of motherhood

Through the bearing of children, women, and all of us, are saved.

For Mary bore Christ.

A woman, the God-bearer

The first one to proclaim Christ's coming

Another Mary the first one to announce the resurrection.

Women still suffering as we still do not yet listen to St Paul's who tells us that in Christ there is no male, no female. Still treated unequally in church leadership.

But God's ways will triumph.

Women, who are so vital for the health and well-being of our families

Still so often made to take second place in marriages

Men thinking of themselves as having authority over a woman, their head. But in the ancient world the heart and soul were in the heart not in the head; head rarely means authority.

It probably here means source. Woman came from Adam. Paul is speaking of interdependence, not authority.

Men, love and honour your wives. raise them up to the same authority you have. Do not rule over them. Submit to one another in the Lord.

Women, who bear the brunt of family life, bearing and bringing up children

With men still not listening to the injunction of Paul in Ephesians 5.21 that men should submit to women; indeed, that they make the greater sacrifice. 

Ephesians 5.22 - women should submit; but this is balanced by male submission; indeed, a harder submission is spoken of for the man in v 25, that of agape love, men should submit and lay down their lives.

There I guess - and I am guessing - will be men here who use computers for inappropriate images.

This does not encourage submission to one another.

You know what you have to do in Christ

There will be men here tempted to leave their wives

But learn from Joseph, who was faithful

Mary, the God-bearer

We are all God-bearers

We are together a Temple of God's Holy Spirit

"let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple" 1 Peter 2:5

As you walk from hear bearing God, bearing the Spirit of Christ, in your life

What will you bring to birth today, this week?

What will you do to safeguard the Christ within your life.

For you too are Mary - God-bearer

You too are Joseph - called to be faithful

Go and be God's people in the world. Be a Transforming Presence. Be temples of God's Spirit.

Prayer Spaces in Harlow

This evening at the Heart4Harlow prayer meeting we heard about Prayer Spaces. This is now underway in Primary Schools. The vision is for this to be in every Harlow school.
Prayer Spaces is open to all faiths and none.
Prayer Spaces begin by speaking to children (Key Stage 2) about prayer. Then half the children visit a prayer space, the others do craft related activities eg painting, drawing etc. on paper plates in a prayerful way.
In the Prayer Spaces are various stations eg Sorry, Fizzy Forgiveness, the Plasma Ball etc. The children are encouraged to make the best use of each space.
After 15/20" the children swap over.
Feedback has included:
"Prayer is a powerful thing, and it works"
"When I need help I only have to prayer"
So far, Prayer Spaces is underway in 2 schools. The aim is to be underway in 4 more school this coming year.
Please pray for more to be involved.

Today's Poverty

Part of my retreat is about preparing for Advent and Christmas.

Today I read some of Luke 1 and 2, followed by a portion of Mary, Shadow of Grace, by Megan McKenna. I have been pondering how I / the church should respond to the anticipated financial hardship of further welfare changes next financial year. Sadly I anticipate an increase in use of the foodbank.

McKenna tells a story of the birth of a child to El Salvador refugees. Suddenly I realise that the story of Mary in her hour of need is also the story of so many around us.

Strange things occur around the birth of Christ, things that become good news. But all focuses on the child. Mary stores these things in her heart. She is a 'believer, not a knower. She believes in her child.... She treasures words, events, moments in her life...Simple, ordinary occurrences are her path to knowledge. She experiences conversion, insight and ever-deepening awareness and love of God by the way God deals with her, in her present reality.' (McKenna, 63).

I must yet learn yet more of contemplation. This is what Luke puts here at the beginning of his gospel, where interestingly he is also paralleling Pentecost. We learn of each from the other, I believe. Contemplation is not something I have immediately associated with Acts 2. It is however strong in Acts 1, as the disciples 'waited'. Which brings me to my reflections on waiting on God here.

Contemplation and Mission

The story of Christmas is in part the story of Mary, who treasured and pondered things in her heart.

These words from the Archbishop of Canterbury are perhaps relevant:

Evangelization, old or new, must be rooted in a profound confidence that we have a distinctive human destiny to show and share with the world. There are many ways of spelling this out, but in these brief remarks I want to concentrate on one aspect in particular.

To be fully human is to be recreated in the image of Christ’s humanity;  and that humanity is the perfect human ‘translation’ of the relationship of the eternal Son to the eternal Father, a relationship of loving and adoring self-giving, a pouring out of life towards the Other.  Thus the humanity we are growing into in the Spirit, the humanity that we seek to share with the world as the fruit of Christ’s redeeming work, is a contemplative humanity...

To be contemplative as Christ is contemplative is to be open to all the fullness that the Father wishes to pour into our hearts.  With our minds made still and ready to receive, with our self-generated fantasies about God and ourselves reduced to silence, we are at last at the point where we may begin to grow...

And we seek this not because we are in search of some private ‘religious experience’ that will make us feel secure or holy.  We seek it because in this self-forgetting gazing towards the light of God in Christ we learn how to look at one another and at the whole of God’s creation...

[C]]ontemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them...

Jacob Needleman, in a controversial and challenging book called Lost Christianity: the words of the Gospel, he says, are addressed to human beings who ‘do not yet exist’.  That is to say, responding in a life-giving way to what the Gospel requires of us means a transforming of our whole self, our feelings and thoughts and imaginings.  To be converted to the faith does not mean simply acquiring a new set of beliefs, but becoming a new person, a person in communion with God and others through Jesus Christ...

Invoking the Holy Spirit is a matter of asking the third person of the Trinity to enter my spirit and bring the clarity I need to see where I am in slavery to cravings and fantasies and to give me patience and stillness as God’s light and love penetrate my inner life...

In a very important sense, a true enterprise of evangelisation will always be a re-evangelisation of ourselves as Christians also, a rediscovery of why our faith is different, transfiguring – a recovery of our own new humanity.

And of course it happens most effectively when we are not planning or struggling for it.  To turn to de Lubac once again, ‘He who will best answer the needs of his time will be someone who will not have first sought to answer them’ (op. cit. pp.111-2); and ‘The man who seeks sincerity, instead of seeking truth in self-forgetfulness, is like the man who seeks to be detached instead of laying himself open in love’ (p.114).  The enemy of all proclamation of the Gospel is self-consciousness, and, by definition, we cannot overcome this by being more self-conscious.  We have to return to St Paul and ask, ‘Where are we looking?’  Do we look anxiously to the problems of our day, the varieties of unfaithfulness or of threat to faith and morals, the weakness of the institution?  Or are we seeking to look to Jesus, to the unveiled face of God’s image in the light of which we see the image further reflected in ourselves and our neighbours?

That simply reminds us that evangelisation is always an overflow of something else – the disciple’s journey to maturity in Christ, a journey not organised by the ambitious ego but the result of the prompting and drawing of the Spirit in us.  In our considerations of how we are once again to make the Gospel of Christ compellingly attractive to men and women of our age, I hope we never lose sight of what makes it compelling to ourselves, to each one of us in our diverse ministries.

Rowan William, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the Synod of Bishops in Rome, 10 October 2012

Full address here

On Retreat

Am on retreat. As before, when I have set time aside, it seems that God is here already (which of course he is!). The books I slightly randomly decided to pick up (ones that related to spirituality rather than 'work') leading me down a particular path.

One is Bill Johnson's  Face to Face with God (p18f), which struck me because at the moment I am reflecting on Psalm 139 which includes from a different perspective the ideas that follow (and which nicely link into 1 Peter 2 on which I am preaching on Sunday in the context of Bishop Stephen's Transforming Presence.)

'First, we must realise that seeking the presence of God is not about trying to get God to do something. He's already given us the Holy Spirit without measure...
'Another foundational revelation about the presence of God is that God actually holds all things together.' He refers to Colossians 1:17.
'A more profound truth is that God has come to live in each person who receives Jesus Christ through his work on the cross...
'We progress to a deeper truth when we learn that whenever there are two or three people gathered in His name, He is there in their midst...
'David discovered a wonderful and even deeper truth that adds to this revelation of increasing degrees of His presence. he said , "You... are enthroned upon the praises of Israel" (Psalms 22:3). His throne is an even greater measure of His presence.'
I'm not sure I like the sense of progression. My sense is that any one contains the others within it. But it is perhaps helpful if seen as a journey WE progress in.
That be as it may, today I am learning verse 4 of Ps 139:

Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely

Later, Bill Johnson speaks of seeking God. This too rings a chime with me. I arrived on retreat with a certain passivity towards the tasks I am involved in - passively committing them to God while energetically I get on with them. The more energetic - (and I enjoy energetic) - the less I feel able to 'shape' what I am involved in, which is not helpful.

Then on Monday in the midst of working hard I had a real sense of calling out to God - in effect that I would know his power. I was deeply aware if my weakness and ineffectiveness. So anything which has to do with 'seeking God' is going to catch my eye, as an answer to that prayer.

Bill Johnson speaks of 'seeking God' in various ways (chapter 6):

- resting in the Lord (Psalm 37:7)
He suggest that as well as meaning, be still in the Lord, it can also mean 'take a leisure walk'. That is what I do as part of my devotions each day. He links this to the thought of how Adam was with God in the Garden of Eden. Thus any obstacle is overcome - all is provided for in salvation. And this I think is strongly present in my spirituality. He gives the example of Mary and Martha: 'To say that we need Marys and Marthas is to miss the point entirely... Mary wasn't a non-worker. Rather she was beginning to be like her master, who only did what He saw the Father do.

- then he speaks of 'waiting patiently for the Lord. We tend to define patience as a sort of passivity. But in the Bible the Hebrew word is used of waiting 4 times, but of 'writhing in pain, as in childbirth', or 'whirling in the air in dance', 49 times. Now I probably need to do work on the Hebrew, as definitions are tricky. But there is at least food for thought here. There is an intensity about such waiting.

- finally he notes that in Psalm 37:9, waiting means 'to lie in wait', as in setting up an ambush. There is thus a sense of looking eagerly for him. This is something I am not so good at. I need to learn from the woman who reached out to touch Jesus' hem (Matthew 9.21).

And with the thought that perhaps that is exactly what I decided to do by coming on retreat, I have a sense that perhaps in this too God is at work in me before I knew it (which of course he is.)

Synod voting

Was so hopeful yesterday and so sad at the vote. I believe the scriptures are with those longing for women bishops. I hear this in Paul himself - in the sense of relief he has in turning from 'in culture' to 'in Christ' as it were in 1 Corinthians 11: 11.
We are now experiencing the cruciformity I wrote of in the last blog. Good Friday is very bleak, verty painful, very dark.  But it is not to lessen the awfulness by saying that resurrection comes in Easter Sunday. That is the point of resurrection - it surprises, comes from nowhere, and doesn't look like we anticipate.
I'm not over-bothered by how this is viewed in the wider world (though there are consequences.) I give thanks that I am part of God's church where we can struggle with these issues. And I believe that God is bigger than us all - the God who leads us all into cruciformly.

Quote of the Day - Cruciformity

I so enjoy Michael J Gorman's, Cruciformity. He presents an exegesis and spirituality that makes sense of Paul's writings. It brings together but steps beyond the normal approaches both in theological terms and in day to day spirituality. With regard to those passages that I have always we missed something (eg Phil 2:5), I go 'ahahhh!' ("Have this mindset in your community, which is indeed a community in Christ … ")

Today I have enjoyed p 48f:
'Cruciformity... is a term more appropriate for what has often been referred to as the "imitation" of Christ. Cruciformity is an ongoing pattern of living in Christ as of dying with him that produces a Christ like (cruciform) person...
'[C]ruciformity cannot be attributed to human effort. There is a power at work within him and within his communities that somehow... produces Christ-like qualities. This power enables the exalted crucified Christ to take shape in and among those who belong to him and live in him. It enables the narrative of the cross to be retold and relived. This power is, for Paul, the Spirit of God.'

P.57: '[F]or Paul the Spirit is the Spirit of cruciformity.'

At p 56, quoting Robert Tannehill: 'the Spirit has an active killing function.' (Italics in original)
P 55 '[T]he Spirit powerfully brings life out of sin and death.'

This helpfully links in my heart to Robert Farrer Capon's approach to the parables in his writings, and hence helps me draw together various strands of the New Testament.

Note that this is not just the experience of one person, such as Paul. It 'is the defining characteristic of the Spirit-filled community as a whole...' '[T]he Spirit dwells in our midst, not just in our hearts. The Spirit of cruciformity is the Spirit of Christian community, and it is by means of cruciformity that the Spirit produces unity. That is the explicit or implicit foundation of every call to unity found in the Pauline epistles.' (p.61) Gorman then gives the example of Philippians 2:1-11, 'in which the cruciform Lord Christ is set forth in narrative as the paradigm of the Spirit's activity in the Philippian church.' (p61f)

Sabbath Keeping

In his memoir, The Pastor, Eugene Peterson, who writes the only really good material I have ever read or come across, about Christian pastoral work as a whole, describes Holy Saturday through to the Sabbath Keeping of Easter Day as 'Staying in touch with people in despair, knowing them by name, and waiting for resurrection.'
He has just written of the Pastor's "work" assignment as paying more attention to what God does than I do, and then guiding others to find those daily, weekly, yearly rhythms that help get this awareness into our bones. And part of the awareness is the waiting of Holy Saturday.
This is to do with being alongside people in heir waiting. It is the 'Jesus wept' of pastoral ministry, the phase than spoke to me in the recent fire of Barn Mead.
Eugene Peterson learnt his lesson of Holy Saturday for the whole of ministry. Much of my ministry has to do with waiting. This gives me a Biblical context, at the heart of the Easter Story.
And i I must revisit what Isaiah says about Sabbaths. Isaiah 58:3 is relevant here. I must explore further this as an understanding of the Sabbath. Perhaps this has to do with Sabbaths as well as Saturdays, for the Sabbath of Sabbaths (Leviticus 16:29-31) is to do with fasting.

Isaiah 58:
6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

Interesting sign in Stratford upon Avon

Prayers following the Barn Mead fire in Harlow

In this last week great tragedy and grief has struck our town.

How do we respond?

We respond as God did. God in Christ came amongst us at the first Christmas. As a grown man, he went to the tomb of a friend, and we read ‘Jesus wept’.

Weeping is not all Christ did; but that is where he began.

In weeping we share in our common humanity

As we allow ourselves to weep and to mourn

We know and see ‘the other’.

We begin to see them as God sees them.

We who spend so much time seeing ourselves

see the other,

and their need.

And that is why we pray and why we need to pray.

Prayer unlocks our hearts.

Prayer unlocks them to action

Prayer draws us to one another.

That is not all that prayer does. For as we are drawn to one another

God is enabled to work

in us and through us

and he hears our prayers

And the prayers we utter now were answered 2000 years ago

when Christ suffered with us

on the cross,

and arose from the dead

opening the door into God’s eternity

So today, we remember:

Sabah Usmani, and her children Sohaib, Muneeb, Rayyan, Hira and Maheen.

We pray for their father Abdul Shakoor

We remember and pray for all their neighbours, friends, family, and all involved this last week.

 It is right that we bring our grief and anguish to God

Psalm 6:6,7

I am weary with my moaning;
    every night I flood my bed with tears;
    I drench my couch with my weeping.

My eye wastes away because of grief;
    it grows weak because of all my foes.

It is right that we bring our questions to God.

One the cross Jesus cried: 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.

Lord, there are times when I am worn out with grief,

With no way forward and no way back.

Surely you are supposed to hear my cries,

And have mercy and save me.

But still my pillow becomes wet from my tears;

My body loses its appetite;

My mind falters;

My soul is weak to the point of exhaustion.

As trouble overwhelms me,

And panic sets in and I have nowhere to turn,

My only words are to you;

God give me strength. Amen

(Derek Browning)

[2 minutes silence]

Psalm 121: 1-2

I lift up my eyes to the hills – from whence will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. O God our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, we seek your comfort and your blessing for those who mourn the death of those they love, for all whose lives are torn apart by violence, for all the suffering people of the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord

Gracious God,

through your Son you have taught us

that nothing in life or in death

is able to separate us from your love.

Look in mercy on all to whom overwhelming sorrow has come.

Help all who are injured

Comfort all in anguish.

Strengthen the members of the emergency services -

the Fire Brigade, The Ambulance Service, the Police, PAH and Broomfield Hospitals,

and all who bring relief and comfort.

Console and protect Dr Shakoor

Give your light in darkness

to all who are near despair,

and assure them that you hold us all in your arms of love

through Jesus Christ our risen Lord.

Amen.

 A prayer scratched on the wall of a prison cell in Cologne during the Second World War

I believe in the sun,
even when it does not shine.
I believe in love,
even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God,
even when he is silent.

Prepared for history?

Am reading Vaclav Havel's To the Castle and Back. Love this quote,
"I find people who are completely prepared for history rather suspect. They have a lot in common with the communists, who so arrogantly believe they have understood the world and therefore know perfectly how everything should be."
This speaks to my desire to understand everything and my frustration when I don't! Learning godliness means learning humility and learning not to know.

Quote of the Day

It is this single factor of being aware of personal need that enables someone to recognise that which God is doing in the earth - Bill Johnson, Face to Face with God, 112

Thought for the Day

Ivan Illich says that if you want to change society, then you must tell a different story .

Between: Metaphorical language is essential to faith

An interesting blog here for those preaching the parables, as we are at present at St Paul's and St Mary's...
Between: Metaphorical language is essential to faith: Here's an interesting segment from Stephen Abell's review in the Guardian of How to do Things with Fictions by Joshua Landy : 'The read...

To extend the quote slightly: 'As Landy triumphantly concludes: "the Sower is a meta-parable, a parable about parables, a parable that only indirectly concerns the kingdom of God, being focused, rather, on the ability to handle figurative language".

When we read the parable, then, it is the very experience of reading that is crucial.'

Well done Brendan Barber!

"Horrible to say, in a manner, I am a Communist.  England has grown hugely wealthy but this wealth has not reached the working classes.  It is a dreadful thing for the greatest part of a very rich nation to live a hard life without dignity, knowledge, comfort, delights or hopes in the midst of plenty." - Gerald Manley Hopkins

"TUC leader Brendan Barber is to urge the government to "learn from the Olympics" in creating policies to boost the economy." - BBC News website

I am grateful to Brendan Barber. We are the 6th wealthiest economy in the world (UN Statistics). Hopkins' words are more true than ever. Yet we are like the rich fool whom I preached on yesterday (Luke 12).

The passage is not about guilt. It is about God in his grace coming to us and saying, You fool, see what you have done to yourself. You have lived for Self and now you are alone, without friends or family even to pass your wealth onto. Christ bids us go the way of radical trust in the Father (see the rest of the chapter), where we find our wealth in, amongst other things, relationship with others.

I wonder whether the difference between Brendan Barber and government policy is Hope. For the government, there is economic 'reality'. For Brendan Barber, there is the thought that together we might do things differently. Perhaps he is the bringer of Hope, the one who unknowingly perhaps is calling us to trust in God.

It would involve rises in tax for the middle class and wealthier. The Games were funded by the regressive Lottery Tax (a sleight of hand that). So it comes to whether there are those amongst the more well off who are willing to give the lead and say, Let's do it. In the case of the higher earner, George Osborne said it wasn't doable (by lowering the tax rate). So it will need leadership from higher earners to say 'Yes We Can'.

This summer has been amazing - the Olympics and the Paralympics. In all our rejoicing, let us be grateful to God for the weather. A record breaking wet summer, with rain virtually everywhere except during the games. In this we are reminded that all we enjoy ultimately comes from God our Father. The weather was a key constituent of the celebration.

As was the generosity of the Gamesmakers, the thousands of volunteers who made it all possible.

These things speak of how things can be better as we trust God and live sacrificially.

For my vote: Let's do it! For myself, please Chancellor, raise my taxes!

PS Many thanks to J John for his blog 'What legacy are we leaving behind?' (click here)

Today at the Paralympics

Quote for the Day

It would be a misunderstanding to think of grace as a security from risk; rather, it is risk at its most urgent and intense because it is the point at which freedom is forged.
- James Hanvey on The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (Gerald Manley Hopkins)

Quote for the Day

Anne Lamott writes in Traveling Mercies that our two best prayers are, "help me, help me, help me" and "thank you, thank you, thank you" (p. 82).
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=7/25/2010&tab=4

Between: The Dark Knight Rises

Between: The Dark Knight Rises: Having watched The Dark Knight I commented that it was the theme of sacrifice and substitution, which runs throughout the film, that set up...

Quote for the Day

"The Spirit of Cruciformity is the Spirit of Christian community, and it is by means of cruciformity that the Spirit produces unity."
Cruciformity, by Michael J Gorman, p 61

Sabbatical - Concluding Reflections

At an informal level, I began with the inspiration of Thomas, who's true knowledge came from being overwhelmed by the knowledge of Christ.

In fact, though I 'met' Thomas on many occasions, I lost sight of him as a 'hero'. But looking back, perhaps I did indeed follow in his footsteps.

Geographically, probably yes (and I have since learnt that current debate is as to whether he went also to China); but spiritually, yes as well. For I was overwhelmed - out of my comfort zone for virtually the whole time, totally dependent on my new friends in India, whom I will never forget. India carries you along in a wave of life, and it was great to be helped on that experience by those who gave us such a welcome and embraced us. I will be forever grateful and transformed by that experience, and grateful to my supervisor for advising me to let that happen. My instinct is to head-knowledge (Thomas, and yes, I learnt much with my mind); but this was something I learnt from the heart most of all. Looking back, that remains with me. The writings of David Ford provide me a theological basis for what I have experienced. I dare to think and hope that this will be one of the lasting personal legacies, perhaps the biggest.

More formally, I began with the awareness that Indian Christians I have met in Harlow have a lively faith and are well-taught in Christian things. Their faith is generally more vibrant than that of Christians in the UK. I was asking what is distinctive about The Church of South India's liturgy, its worship and spirituality that we can learn from in Harlow.

To some extent, it is perhaps fair to say that anything Indian is likely to be more vibrant than in England. That is the nature of Indian life, which teems with energy. To explore that is outside the brief I have set myself and would probably demand a book in itself.

But within my more limited aims, what may I say?

1. Deeds and words go hand in hand in mission. Faith is to do with the whole of life. Therefore it has to be more vibrant if it is to mean anything. I hear a fresh call to whole-life vocation.

2. There is no sacred-secular divide. This is rooted in European culture. The call of the western church must be to address this.

3. A practical commitment to evangelism by the church at large, in its structures and institutions - certainly the parts of the church that I met.

4. The value of knowing the 'tradition' of the church, of sensing one's part in the stream of Christian history. This is not the same as being 'traditional' - much of the church was far from that; but there is a sense of knowing one's place in the stream of history. Much of this is virtually innate, eg the inspiration of Thomas. But it is important. I need to explore what this might mean for us in England.

In closing, thank you India. Thank you to the Church of South India. Thank you to Jayaseelan and Ramila for organising our visit, and for all your time; and thank you to all God's family in Chennai.