How can this be?

Perhaps like me, you watched The BBC production of The Nativity in the run-up to last Christmas. Its producer Tony Jordan, best known for his EastEnders scripts, said to The Telegraph newspaper:

"I don't come from a religious background. I don't think I'm anybody's fool. I was expelled from school at 14. I've been in trouble. I know people from my background have discounted the story of the nativity. I certainly didn't believe it when I started on it three years ago. But now I do." “If you accept that Jesus is the Son of God, why would you not believe that Mary was a virgin and that God might have had some hand in the impregnation?... “The only thing I know for sure is that the words I read as coming from Jesus Christ are the most truthful thing I have ever heard.”

Quite a transformation!

I used to be an English teacher and one of my favourite lines from Shakespeare is spoken by Hal, the King's son in Henry the IV part one. Hal is a bit of a waste of space really. He knows that he has been wasting time and is ill-prepared to be king but intent on changing his ways, he says about his future life, his improved life, his reformed character, that 'like bright metal on a sullen ground, my reformation glittering o'er my fault shall show more goodly and attract more eyes than that which hath no foil to set it off.' And indeed he is right, if we couldn't compare the renegade Hal with the improved and reformed Hal, we would not know how great the new version was. Tony Jordan experienced a reformation of his outlook on life.

In this passage too from Luke about the conception of Jesus, the angel's news to Mary that she will bear a Son: the Saviour of the world, we can not help but compare this bright metal to that foil - John the baptist. God's gift to Zechariah and his barren wife Elizabeth is John, a foil to the greater Jesus – the brightest one of all.

Jesus is greater than John, and John is always keen to tell us this – John is not worthy to tie up Jesus' shoelaces remember! And... Whilst John baptises in water, Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit … so in their births too, Jesus' is more miraculous, completely miraculous, so much greater than John's.

Jesus' birth occurs like the miracle of creation -- out of nothing - God creates life in Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit which overshadows her. Compared to this John the Baptist's conception is at least conventional, even if it occurred probably long past Elizabeth being biologically able to conceive.

What this birth means for Elizabeth also points to the greater meaning of what Jesus' birth means for us. Whilst God's miracle for Elizabeth delivers her of her shame – for it was harder then to be a woman who could not have children than it is now for all sorts of social reasons - Jesus' birth delivers us of our shame. Jesus' birth delivers the whole of humanity of its shame. For us this baby's birth is the fulfilment of a promise of long ago, a promise our reading from Isaiah made plain. It is as if the whole world has forever been waiting pregnant with expectation for this moment of delivery from its shame. For in the birth of Jesus, we have the promise of a deliverer, a deliverer will be delivered as Mary gives birth to one who will deliver us from death and sin and shame and set us free and give us life, indeed new birth in the miracle of eternal life.

In our creed we profess that For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. Was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. This is God's plan from the beginning, his dwelling with us, is a becoming one of us. His love for us is so great, he chooses to send his Son not in the form of a great King or emperor but in the form of a small, helpless child to an unexpecting and then expectant, frightened teenage girl. This king for the whole world is born to a poor family in an insignificant city on the outskirts of Israel. Born in shame and dying in shame he delivers us from our shame.

And even though this passage leaves us in no doubt about Jesus' status, The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever. And There will be no end to his kingdom (v. 32), it is important too that we concentrate on this Jesus, this Son of God, also being the son of Mary. Because of this, like us, he was born. Because of this, like us, he grew up. He died. Because Jesus, the son of Mary, was human, he rejoiced at a wedding and wept at the death of a friend. He was misunderstood. He suffered distress and was betrayed a great many times by those he loved. He experienced physical pain. He became tired. Sometimes he just needed to disappear for a while by himself to find himself and his purpose again in prayer. He even felt abandoned by God. It is because he was also Mary's Son and therefore completely human (as well as completely God) and son of the "Most High God" that we trust that God not only knows, but has experienced everything that we experience. It is also because of this very humanity that we also live with hope and expectation because this Jesus, this son of Mary -- this human being -- died but was raised from death, and so we, too, are promised the same thing and look to him, to Jesus, as the risen one to know that that promise is also true for us.

You know, struggling to believe it at times means we are in good company. Mary was unsure, could she really be carrying such life within her, the angel understood her confusion, God understands ours. The angel told Mary of her cousin Elizabeth – she is pregnant even now and far gone and she had been barren, look to her Mary and see the truth unfold there as it will in you. God says to us I know you also doubt, you say those words of the creed and marvel at them, you wonder if you have such life within you, look to my Son, the resurrection life that is his, is also yours. You can expect to follow where he has led.

The message we take away from this then is that it is okay for us to be weak and uncertain at times, to be simply human and questioning. Like Mary we can ask – How can this be? We do not have to try and be something else, we can be just human – we can ask God to unfold in us his truths over time. God will bring to birth his life in us, we are just being asked to make room for him and wait.

And in that waiting too, we are to wait for one another – one of my favourite verses in scripture is this – When you come together to eat, wait for one another – we are to apply it to everything and if in everything we wait for one another, then we will open up our church more easily to those who are uncertain, to those who don't even believe yet. Ours is the waiting, God is the deliverer. Jesus will come to live in us, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, as with Mary and Elizabeth the gestation periods differed. If we can look at every person in our world and think to ourselves I only have to welcome and wait, God is the one who can create life where there is nothing, then we will wait more generously and with greater expectation. God manifests himself in the least expectant people, in the lowliest of places, in the doubters and in the uncertain, in the frightened and the weak because in all this his glory shines only more brightly like that bright metal on a sullen ground that Hal describes in Shakespeare's play.

Welcome God this morning and then wait and watch God unfold his promises in you, through you and all around you but be careful to watch for that unfolding in the least expected places. Hear John the baptist too call you into a waiting for something greater, something promised that will make all you have known before fade in comparison to such brightness.

As we close this meditation on this passage of scripture this morning I just want us to take one or two things into a minute or so of silence that we are going to sit in and I ask you to settle on one.

'How can this be?' Luke 1:26-38

FOR YOURSELF
• EITHER
  Ask God to show you just how far you have come – that the changes he has brought about in you mean you shine now with life much more brightly than you did before.
  Thank him for the transformation that has occurred.

• OR
  Ask God to be with you as you wait patiently for what will be delivered. Ask that you become more aware of the stirrings of his life within you and around you.

FOR OTHERS

• Bring to prayer some of those situations or people in whom you want God to bring his life. Ask that God increase in you the ability to wait patiently and place your trust in him.

...and today I went to Wesley Owen but....

Rowan Williams - notorious

See Archbishop of Canterbury in three day Derby visit (image from BBC NEWS DERBY) Andy Ward of St Augustine's Normanton, Derby, out in Normanton with Rowan Williams. 

This morning I went to see Rowan. He is visiting the diocese where I serve and we (ordained and training clergy and ministers) listened to him talk about Making a Witness in the Public Square.

Alastair introduced the AB of C with words about blessing and how yesterday became an an example of what it is to call down blessing on people as the AB of C walked in Normanton along Normanton Road in the heart of the city where there are 24 different Christian faith establishments and various other faiths besides, and yet the atmosphere of the road became bound up with this person (the A B of C) as a moment of significance stirred people who flocked to feel and receive a blessing. Alastair described this moving moment where encounter was created and how as a church we have this capacity to bring together many different groups whom we would never normally see conglomerate. Here he was referencing the ‘Making a difference’ debate at Pride Park with the AB of C and Lord Hattersley, a former Labour Government Minister, Ms Dianne Jeffrey, Chair of Age UK, and Mr Colin Walton, Chair of Bombardier England and Ireland, where each had presented to an audience how society is affected by their particular specialism (faith, politics, the voluntary sector and business) the evening before (23rd September).

So in making a witness in the public square, how do we step up to this in our day-to-day life in the church?

Rowan began by referencing Acts 26:26 and 'These things were not done in a corner'. Here is Paul before the tribunal. What he insists has been going on is something public. It is notorious. People can not but be aware of it. Christianity started as a visible shift, about how people live together. It is not just a set of new ideas. The imprint of the cross and the resurrection means there are new ways to respond to the world. The most obvious effect is that it created a new kind of solidarity and identity. When you come into the body of Christ, you are to be loyal to God's vision for the human race, over and above ethnic, National and even, swallow hard, family loyalties. It calls you also to be loyal to something that has not yet happened. For the Roman Empire this was seen as a rival claim. But we can not be loyal Roman citizens and in choosing not to be, death was the consequence for some. Christians work out a theology of citizenship which means that the country itself can not be treated as a god. Rowan referenced the second century Sicilian martyrs who affirmed that they would give to Caesar what was due Caesar and to God what was due God and were beheaded as a consequence.

What does human loyalty mean? 

It is a commitment to a vision of neighbourliness, to a vision that doesn't get in the way of God's vision. If there is a point at which the state says that they have an absolute claim on you, it is right to perceive that loyalty to Jesus Christ has implications for how we live together. You won't be surprised to hear this: the Roman Empire got it wrong. The Roman Empire got it wrong in seeing Christianity as a rival claim. But the church was a great, big organisation. It was one legal system against another. The church has to step back and not compete for territory. To borrow Bonhoffeur's language, it has to speak about what is ultimate and penultimate. It has to be committed notoriously to God's vision for the human race.

Rowan anchored much of what he spoke about in the work of William Stringfellow, who died in the 1980s: a Harvard Law scholar and lay theologian, Episcopalian and nuisance! Stringfellow was critical of the clericalising of the church, we are not to be ceremonial and superfluous lay people. He set up Bible studies in Harlem amongst the knife gang culture with typically uncompromising expositions of the Book of Romans with references to the Greek. He was obstinate and courageous, with an absolute passion for the bible. He differentiated between being a religious person and a biblical person. He stood in fear and trembling before a living God. The Gospel is to be a notorious proclamation. Rowan quoted from 'Conscience and Obedience,' written in the late 1970s. This book explains how the Church is to be an exemplar - speaking God's vision for a renewed creation, presenting this to whatever political authority there is around, telling that authority that it has a vocation from God. Vocation is different from blessing, it is a responsibility to join in with God's call to combat the fear of death in the world, however that manifests itself, internally or in external oppression. Whether it realises or not where this vocation comes from, it is to push back these forces in the name of Christ. Karl Barth championed this vision too and when Stringfellow attended his seminar in the 1960s, Barth declared that all of America should be listening to Stringfellow.

Rowan went on from this, inspired by Stringfellow, to describe how the church is the only real community with real legitimacy. It has a legitimacy that rests on God's law. We are to throw our energy in with it. Stringfellow is writing against the backdrop of the Vietnam war where draft resistors like him were imprisoned and indeed he was wanted by the FBI for harbouring resistors on the run. He was also in a gay partnership which means he is interesting reading for evangelicals who find this hard to square with his uncompromising biblicism.

When is it right not to obey the law, asks Stringfellow...when the law seems to be going in the opposite direction to God's vision. Stringfellow proposes vocal advocacy - we do this and we take the consequences. Civil disobedience is not something Christians should never consider. We have to be able to say to the state - by what authority can you do this if it defies a Godward direction?

So what does it mean to witness in the public square? 

It is not about our being a community of outstanding virtue.

We are to be a community with global loyalty and solidarity to the vision of humanity restored to God.

We do not embody God's vision but we witness to it. Other kinds of authority are all measured against this. It is all to be judged against God's purpose.

This is not about a few exceptional martyrs but about the church.

When we baptise we are committing that child to a life under a particular authority, we are speaking to them of a vocation. What do we think we are doing? We are bringing them into a society. We had better help them live in it.

What holds the church back from being that kind of witness?

We need to keep a clear eye out for racism and nationalism - these infect the church. The church must not create a class-based priesthood for a class-based church. In our own church people have spoken out against this and have vision like Andrew Shanks in a book called 'Praying for England.'

Shanks is witty, searching and engaging. His is a down-to-earth, pragmatic theologian, envisioning a solidarity that lies beyond conventional politics.

The challenges for us are how we translate Stringfellow's passionate response in the C of E today. Stringfellow does not write about the C of E and he would have found it difficult!. It is embroiled with the state and muddled in its loyalties. Grace Davie, who writes passionately about belonging and then believing, writes also about the strengths of our being a weak institution. We no longer have the power to put presbyterians in jail! We have lost our hegemony but we are still there in the public square. People project upon us their fantasies, their hope and their contempt. We have to be committed to being notorious. Ours is a commitment to being visible. How do we make the most of this? 

We do so through mutual dependence and not rivalry
By refusing to ignore anybody
By being there for this society and not just those we get on with
By having reverence for the least powerful
And by being a community that gather and say certain things to God in light of the death and resurrection - this is vision, purpose, vocation, accountability

It is deeply challenging - to be a weak establishment trying to be visible
To live according to the beatitudes
To live notoriously by giving thanks
To live according to a vision that is also a vocation to the human race
To be a community locked into a global human project
To be loyal to one another because we are loyal to God's vision
To test everything according to that.

Ask critical questions - are we, are you, moving in the direction of God's vision for humanity?
Are we defending our territory or a hope for human fullness? 
Defend instead a vision for humanity!

Bonhoffeur wondered from prison which he had really defended but he could wonder because at least he tried.

We are to defend humanity against the forces of death.
We need a loyalty that transcends institutional loyalty. We defend this because of Calvary and because of the empty tomb (this is not humanistic and optimistic) this is rather what we are all about and this is how we are called to be different.

The ABC then answered questions ranging from what his response is to Robert Mugabe, whom he will meet, to the challenges of rural ministry, to bemusement over callings that were to the pastoral over proclamation, to the challenges of speaking relevantly into environmental issues.

In amongst the answers he gave, he spoke about doubting that he would ever, like Jonah, be surprised by a Mugabe taking on the attitude of the penitent Ninevahn King.

He explained his lack of comfort with any redefinition of the meaning of marriage.

He spoke about what it really means to pastor in that it is not about stroking and maintaining but feeding people to grow.

He also spoke about his delight with Fresh expressions, that the church renews itself through movements of the Holy Spirit, that he can talk about what the church is doing by visiting dioceses like Derby in the way that he does.

He ended on our round of applause in response to his attitude to those who threaten schism: he told us somewhat wittily how he invites them instead early into the inevitable ecumenical partnerships that we will increasingly find ourselves being called into!

Preaching the virgin birth

How anyone can fail to be moved by this... (Youtube: here)

THE ANGEL’S GREETING (Meister Eckhart)

St Luke i. 28.—“Hail, thou that art highly favoured among women, the Lord is with thee.”

Here there are three things to understand: the first, the modesty of the angel; the second, that he thought himself unworthy to accost the Mother of God; the third, that he not only addressed her, but the great multitude of souls who long after God.

I affirm that had the Virgin not first borne God spiritually He would never have been born from her in

bodily fashion. A certain woman said to Christ, “Blessed is the womb that bear Thee.” To which Christ

answered, “Nay, rather blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it.” It is more worthy of God that He be born spiritually of every pure and virgin soul, than that He be born of Mary. Hereby we should understand that humanity is, so to speak, the Son of God born from all eternity. The Father produced all creatures, and me among them, and I issued forth from Him with all creatures, and yet I abide in the Father. Just as the word which I now speak is conceived and spoken forth by me, and you all receive it, yet none the less it abides in me. Thus I and a creatures abide in the Father.

Hereto I adjoin a parable. There were a certain man and wife; the woman by accident lost an eye, and was sorely troubled thereat. Her husband then said to her, “Wife, why are you troubled? “She answered, “It is not the loss of my eye that troubles me, but the thought that you may love me less on account of that loss.” He said, “I love you all the same.” Not long after he put one of his own eyes out, and came to his wife and said, “Wife, that you may believe I love you, I have made myself like you: I, too, now, have only one eye.” So men could hardly believe that God loved them till God put one of His eyes out, that is took upon Himself human nature, and was made man. Just as fire infuses its essence and clearness into the dry wood, so has God done with man. He has created the human soul and infused His glory into it, and yet in His own essence has remained unchangeable. If you ask me whether, seeing that my spiritual birth is out of time, whether I am an eternal son, I answer “Yes,” and “No.” In the everlasting foreknowledge of God, I slumbered like a word unspoken. He hath brought me forth His son in the image of His eternal fatherhood, that I also should be a father and bring forth Him. It is as if one stood before a high mountain, and cried, “Art thou there?” The echo comes back, “Art thou there?” If one cries, “Come out.” the echo answers, “Come out.”

Again: If I am in a higher place and say to some one, “Come up hither,” that might be difficult for him. But if I say, “Sit down,” that would be easy. Thus God dealeth with us. When man humbles himself, God cannot restrain His mercy; He must come down and pour His grace into the humble man, and He gives Himself most of all, and all at once, to the least of all. It is essential to God to give, for His essence is His goodness and His goodness is His love. Love is the root of all joy and sorrow. Slavish fear of God is to be put away. The right fear is the fear of losing God. If the earth flee downward from heaven, it finds

heaven beneath it; if it flee upward, it comes again to heaven. The earth cannot flee from heaven: whether it flee up or down, the heaven rains its influence upon it, and stamps its impress upon it, and makes it fruitful, whether it be willing or not. Thus doth God with men: whoever thinketh to escape Him, flies into His bosom, for every corner is open to Him. God brings forth His Son in thee, whether thou likest it or not, whether thou sleepest or wakest; God worketh His own will. That man is unaware of it, is man’s fault, for his taste is so spoilt by feeding on earthly things that he cannot relish God’s love. If we had love to God, we should relish God, and all His works; we should receive all things from God, and work the same works as He worketh. God created the soul after the image of His highest perfection. He issued forth from the treasure-house of the everlasting Fatherhood in which He had rested from all eternity. Then the Son opened the tent of His everlasting glory and came forth from His high place to fetch His Bride, whom the Father had espoused to Him from all Eternity, back to that heaven from which she came. Therefore He came forth rejoicing as a bridegroom and suffered the pangs of love. Then He returned to His secret chamber in the silence and stillness of the everlasting Fatherhood. As He came forth from the Highest, so He returned to the Highest with His Bride, and revealed to her the hidden treasures of His Godhead.

The first beginning is for the sake of the last end. God Himself doth not rest because He is the beginning, but because He is the end and goal of all creation. This end is concealed in the darkness of the everlasting Godhead, and is unknown, and never was known, and never will be known. God Himself remains unknown; the light of the everlasting Father shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. May the truth of which we have spoken lead us to the truth. Amen

Loving this...learning that...

RANDOM THOUGHTS....

THIS...

This has been flagged up and I think it is great... just got to think of the best way of getting it into a sermon.

AND THOUGHTS ABOUT APLHA....

Also with some of us having had a conversation about how to lead a session for Alpha about Why Jesus died? my mind is turning to these things, prompted by Giles Fraser's Thought for the Day this morning (23rd Sept), which you can download from the radio 4 website. I thought it was really helpful. He was, of course, challenging conventional (Psub) readings of the work of Christ. 

Download Giles Fraser's talk here 

The Church where I serve has just launched Alpha, we are using some but not all of the Alpha material and Nicky Gumbel's explanations, neither is it my job to explain why Jesus died, I will deliver the Does God Heal Today session. However, I think that it is important that we are aware of how people, intelligent people, thinking people, hear the message of Why Jesus died and how we can help with careful explanations and illustrations. I have discovered one man's blog as he journeys through the Alpha experience. Whilst I am yet to read everything he has written, I think it is important to keep reading his thoughts so that as Christians, we become more conscious about the ways in which we are describing the gospel. 

...AND THAT TALK I DID ON THE TRINITY

When I was teaching the Trinity, I was able for a moment to become objective about what I was saying and strangely enough, it was all prompted by a light-hearted, tongue in cheek skit in which characters in a Wild-West saloon share ideas that this Trinity character who is rumoured to be part chicken - it's ridiculous isn't it, but if the ridiculous can have us just for a few seconds climb inside the head of someone from a different culture and ideology who remains confused about this idea of the Holy Spirit manifesting himself as a dove at Jesus' baptism and somehow derive from this that the Trinity is part chicken, it has got to be a good thing. Our faith is robust enough to be questioned, to be wrangled over. It was with part-embarrassment that I shared this clip and I remember being glad that they had not pushed the joke too far in presenting one of the three feet as a chicken leg at the end. I realise on reflection that this was my sensitivity. We need strong and confident apologetics, we need humility and the ability to explore the truth with those seeking, not implying we have it all sorted out, we need a faith that is beyond head level and more a demonstrated way of life. This ministry thing is all a lot messier than I thought it was going to be. Your faith is challenged again and again and again as you unpick what you believe and why you believe it in order to make it reasonable and attractive to others. 

Much of it becomes in the end a philosophical question about our starting point. 

I realise why I find Barth so helpful, it is much to do with the fact that God and revelation and the scriptures are the starting point, I begin there. The wisdom of the world really does seem only foolishness compared to this. I also see why God, to so many, will seem so very foolish but then God always told us that this was how it was going to be in the first place. 

Oh well, for the while this minister keeps muddling through... a whole host of things... how to make the Harvest service a bit more cutting edge? What it will really be like for my two girls growing up as daughters of a vicar and how I can help them remain engaged with the world around them and full of faith? How I can convey the joy of following Jesus in the days of a society that is unaware of its Christian heritage and for the most part, understands Jesus as a cute baby in a manger on a Christmas card? In some ways there is nothing to unlearn - this can be a good thing but on the other hand there is the challenge of finding fresh and plausible analogies, illustrations and explanations for this truth that can change your life. 

... and now to write a sermon for Sunday on the Virgin birth - expect more blogging!

...and surreal though it seems, tomorrow I will see the Archbishop of Canterbury...maybe he can help... then again ... with all that apophatic theology of his....?

Going Catholic

It's an ecumenical thing...

This morning I began a Wednesday morning fixture at the Catholic church which will pepper my diary I hope and regularly. I went to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour and joined in with Christian Meditation. It is run by an American lady and is based on the work of John Main, which advertises itself with the following motto:

Mission of the World Community for Christian Meditation
“To communicate and nurture meditation as passed on through the teaching of John Main in the Christian tradition, in the spirit of serving the unity of all”.

...so this morning with a kind of boldness that is yours on moving to a new area, where there is little to hinder you and little to lose because you can always claim newness and not knowing any better as an excuse, I knocked on the door of the Catholic parochial house and was invited inside to take part in meditative prayer. I had met the Catholic priest at a meeting the evening before. He had invited the attendees of that ecumenical meeting to the weekly meditative prayer slot at his Catholic Church.

As a charismatic evangelical, I have not been schooled too well in sitting down and shutting up and now that most of my parish work involves some giddy busyness, which I love, I hasten to add, I feel the need for a period of silence in my week. It is a gift. My weekly pattern of college used to involve an hour of silence between 10 and 11 on a Wednesday and lo and behold this new venture for me is exactly at this very time and so in some ways, I sank more rather naturally into it, perhaps as a result of this, as if each part of me was recovering the memory of doing this.

On first encountering the silence, there are areas of your body that you realise you are not fully relaxing and you almost have to let go of each part or at least offer it up in some way, almost as a quite obvious mental exercise. I was then faced with a tickle in my throat which I convinced myself I could pray away. This worked for a while, but a cough was more effective. I then dealt with a load of random and annoying interruptive thoughts about what I was doing, a conversation with myself about why I was doing this, a short reflection on my boldness that had a lot to do with my ego, some fantasizing about ecumenism and how God must be so pleased, another trapping of the ego, a sudden consciousness of all the sounds outside and then eventually a settling into a repetition inside my head of the word Ma-ra-na-tha, which is what we had been asked to do.

I then travelled to this place, I go to sometimes, which is neither sleep nor waking, where there is a clarity and some meaning but it often needs interpreting and there is something very visual and yet not seen. I saw a bride, dressed in white, but unhappy, tense and complaining, un-ready, ill-prepared, nervous. And then she was gone. I wondered if it was us, the Church, in preparation for the groom: Christ, but so un-ready, not yet perfected, aware of all our inadequacies and nervous. I thanked God and settled again and on being lifted out of the meditation by the tinkling of a small bell about twenty minutes later, I captured sensations of safe times. I felt as though I had been dipped into a deep and soapy, warm bath, where the bubbles cover your ears so that you are enveloped in muffled sound and can travel inwards more easily into the warmth. I always had very happy bath-times as a child, so this is triggered somewhere. I felt as though I had perhaps slept for a long time but there I was with these people I had never met before but already felt profoundly connected to and I think I am beginning to unpack something of the individualism of charismatic evangelical worship and the contrasting communitas of this new way of being with Jesus in fellowship with others.

I have perhaps been searching for this ... we will see...there's always fresh manna...


You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity, or carry report.
You are here to kneel, where prayer has been valid.
And prayer is more than an order of words,
the conscious occupation of the praying mind,
or the sound of the voice praying. (T S Eliot)

12 week learning curve

Ten more things I have recently learnt, in no particular order and not deeply or theologically thought-through. 

• Do not offer to shake the hand, on first meeting, of a person who is ringing the church bell - duh!
• Expect waves of emotion at funeral visits - keep swallowing hard. 
• Take a bottle of water with you where ever you go - the caffeine highs mess with your emotions.
• If you forget to say 'this is the offertory hymn,'and the service is nearly over, think on your feet and quickly, you'll come up with something. 
• Get used to being stared at - just smile and say Good morning, what ever the time of day. 
• If in doubt, don't, smile instead and continue like you meant it all to flow that way from the beginning. 
• Be prepared to have your hand shaken, be kissed on the lips, scrumpled on the head or squeezed, if you really aren't in the mood for any of the above, a few preliminary sneezes or coughs into a handkerchief seem to be the way forward. 
• Carry Ruth Burgess, David Adams or Richard Pritchard around in your handbag - buy a bigger handbag.
• Synch your google diary with the ministry team, program your phone to send you reminders and use satnav app - this means you just need to concentrate on being there rather than getting there. 
• If they might not think you are a real vicar or you are a little uncertain, wear the black clergy shirt, throw a nice scarf around it and you're fit for any occasion. 

Headed to Hell or .....?

I am half way through this book but ended my talk on trinity with this idea that it is all about WHO God is and God is love, with a correct understanding of the trinity we can not possibly come to any other conclusion - God is love, so maybe this book is worth finishing, after all.

Pulp

As I prepare to discuss the Trinity on Sunday, I recapture my own puzzlement as a child over the Trinity. Never really clearly taught this essential doctrine, I understood a Jesus more human than divine and quite frankly, I didn't really want to have too much to do with a person described as a ghost and so this person of the trinity was less of a puzzle and more a potential threat.

However, I do remember meeting with God in ways that I didn't understand as I listened to the prayer of preparation before Holy Communion as a Brownie, as I was confirmed and understood how much my human Jesus suffered and on praying in the Spirit when I knew that my parents downstairs were receiving daylight breaking telephone calls about the death of my grandfather.

I also remember how the Holy Spirit seemed to clothe a woman who once came out of a prayer meeting at Lee Abbey who was so animated and friendly, calling my sister 'Anna Banana...Anna Banana' in her exuberance, I just sensed that something powerful had just happened to her, feeling myself, that I was being deprived of something very special by being sent off to the creche which I had long outgrown.

As a child, I seemed to create a God in the image of I am not sure what...distant, yet benevolent, all powerful and watching, a God of the middle classes as I witnessed a gentrified church and shiny red books with ribbons in a variety of colours, a God of the strange as exotic and sometimes downright unfashionable Christians visited my parents' house but a God who constantly nagged for my attention, who visited me in dreams and captured my interest through films and books which seemed in veiled ways to refer to him: the Velveteen Rabbit, Milton's Paradise Lost, poems by marginalised nineteenth century female poets and even Pulp Fiction as I traversed university days, neither attracted to Christian Union for its over certainties nor finding a home in either the guitar-stringing, slightly wet halls' homegroup or with the townies who spent too long discussing their babies and their children, of which I had neither.

...Pulp Fiction communicated this God of vengeance of whom I was afraid and yet, of course, Pulp Fiction does no such thing...

...and so with that in mind, I wonder if anyone on Sunday will discover that their God is too small, that they have cultivated a relationship with one aspect of the Triune God at the cost of the fullness of what He offers. As I have reread my Fiddes and my Tanner, grumbled again at the short-fallings of Grudem and Ware, I marvel again at the beauty of this God - the three in one, Father, Spirit, Son - Glory to the blessed Trinity.

...and a word about Pulp Fiction

More on preaching a God who believes in us

Image by Derek the Cleric

I sometimes drop by blogs outside my tradition like those of Newfrontiers and I have read the blog of Adrian Warnock in the past, some of it helpful, some of it less so - but hey, that's okay. I also blogged my way through Wendy Virgo's book. Whilst their teaching on gender and service in the church might differ to that of the tradition to which I belong: Anglicanism, there is a lot to be gleaned from Newfrontiers. Their encouragement of the Holy Spirit in all his aspects is liberating and their rejection of cessationism is surely right. They are often very studious in their reading and surmising about theology and value teaching from Scripture very highly.

As I develop as a preacher, I am becoming more aware of my own theological bents, one of which is to concentrate maximally on God's initiation, condescension and grace. The other is to be careful that I preach with an emphasis on Him rather than us - theocentric preaching seems to be more powerful. I do not want to preach some kind of accidental moral code which we must impossibly try to live up to. I am hyper-aware of preaching that somehow asks us to emulate the disciples. Rob Wilkerson's blog references the Torrence brothers A Passion for Christ.

Alongside my last blogpost on preaching about those left in the boat as Peter walks and how this story might be more about Christ condescending to reach us than our faith helping us make our way to him, I add this (below) from the Torrence brothers. (I am starting to realise that preaching a sermon doesn't mean it is left there. It will morph, change and be added to, it will be perhaps spoken again 'in front' but more than that, with each of these experiences of preaching, my relationship with Jesus changes and the way I see the world transforms.

"It is not easy to preach the truth that we are saved by the Grace of Christ alone ... I know that I cannot rely on my own faith but only on the vicarious faith of the Lord Jesus... Salvation and justification are by the grace of God alone. Faith, as John Calvin taught, is an empty vessel ... it is not upon your faith that you rely, but upon Christ and his Cross alone. That is what the Covenant in his body and blood which the Saviour has forged for us actually, practically, and really means. It is of the very essence of the Gospel that salvation and justification are by the grace of Christ alone, in which he takes your place, that you may have his place.

"I believe this emphasis in the mission of the Church may well be more important than anything else today. There is a kind of subtle Pelagianism in preaching and teaching that has the effect of throwing people back in the last resort on their own act of faith..."

Preaching a God who believes in us more than we believe in him

I am into 'radical hermeneutics'. I am reading Caputo's 'What would Jesus deconstruct.' Barth is often my starting point for the way that I then go on to articulate faith. It is not as if I have read my way through the Church Dogmatics, no mean feat, but somehow my theological education was Barthian because it was given this flavour over all others by the faculty at college.  That it is all God's initiation is so helpful, that it all begins with him and in him and it is not about us working up a faith which is often where I am left with evangelicals who have to have all their doctrine in order before they feel like they are really walking in the way, helps so much.

So this morning i spoke about Peter but really I spoke about Jesus. The bible is so very much a book from which, rather than us learning how to behave, being taught a moral code - boy, it it is that - it gets confusing, we are shown instead the character of God through Jesus Christ...Jesus is revealed and how to live is worked out in the light of that and changing circumstances.

...so we concentrate on Peter when perhaps we are to look at Jesus and his approach - this God of promises who is actually making his way to the boat, to join us in those situations we can not bail out of, we can not leave.  Peter steps out of the boat and is often then a hero of the faith - someone to emulate. If we can only keep our eyes on Jesus we can even surpass him in the faith stakes and somehow it becomes a story about trying harder, being more focussed, being better than I am and it can be exhausting. We are made to wonder about the should be's and the could be's...about making our way to Jesus. This can not be right can it? What about with a right view of the sending, missional God, this was instead always a story about Jesus coming to us, getting almost interrupted by the bold faith of Peter as Jesus makes his way to us!

What if we concentrate less on Peter and more on the disciples who remain in the boat. What if we focus instead on how we are are to remain in the boat. We have reason to stay there  – to remain in a family when family life is hard, to keep working at a job when we feel we are not being as valued as we could be, to remain in a church where it is not always very comfortable, a church that is perhaps undergoing lots of change. Staying in the boat requires just as much faith - trusting that Jesus will come to us and climb into the very beaten-up by the waves situation that we are in.  Peter might be heroic but no more heroic than those of us who stay in the boat – was Peter even perhaps more into being self-sufficient and proving who he was when Jesus instead demonstrates how powerful Jesus is when we are not.


Jesus draws near to Peter indeed but he is on his way to the boat. In that storm Jesus is walking toward that boat when Peter sinks. He comes so much toward them all that finally he just gets in that beaten-up boat with them. We focus on Peter walking toward Jesus when the whole story is about how much Jesus walks towards us.

The truth of this story is that Jesus walks toward us. The truth of the story is that the piles of faith I have or the lack of faith I have do not stop God from drawing close. We say that creed of ours, which we are exploring in church this term and sometimes we enter into it fully and sometimes it does not see us in a good place but we declare it nevertheless because of this God reaching out to us whether we are steady and sure or not to say trust me. I believe... is I trust and God seeks relationship with us, not our subscription to a bunch of propositions.

As Isaiah writes “For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” – Isaiah 41:13 – it is those promises that we build our trust upon – this is the God we believe in. This is the one God, Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth who reaches for us, steps into our boats to sail the storms with us. It is okay to be unsure in the water. Jesus knows all about it.