Easter Sunday - two down, one to go!

Two services down, one to go! Service one was a lovely all age communion in a growing village chapel - 23 of us there from ages of six months to over 80. A hearty plate of bacon, scrambled egg, sausage and mushrooms after it. Service too was a lively all age communion in my largest church, a vibrant time of worship and praise, and much laughter. Tonight I am offering a gentle Taize service. I am looking forward to that.

I've enjoyed writing a blog every day this week. It's been a very powerful Holy Week for me doing it and experiencing different kinds of worship almost every day. The passage about resurrection in Matthew has struck me this year so I close this week of blogging with thoughts on how the Easter God shows himself.

We want to have Easter and still have our world unrocked by resurrection. We are amazingly well adjusted to the same old world. We want tomorrow to go back to normal - or if we are clergy people, to sleep!

Resurrection is a shock that needs some thinking about. I think that's why Matthew says that when there was Easter, the whole earth shook. Luke does Easter as a meal on Sunday evening with the Risen Christ. John has resurrected Jesus encounter Mary Magdalene in the garden. But Matthew? Easter is an earthquake with doors shaken off tombs and dead people walking the streets, the stone rolled away  and an angel sitting on it.

Well, there was an earthquake this past week – a 3.2 magnitude one in this country, near Oakham in Rutland where I used to live. Oakham folk don’t get excited  about very much, it is Middle England and we’ve gone there to retire. Sometimes as minister there I wished for a bit of a rumbling!     

Here are some tweets about it: 

"We've just had an earthquake in Oakham. The house was shaking for about 10 secs."

 "What the hell was that. Whole house shook about 7.07am! It was either an explosion or earthquake in Rutland. Anyone else feel it?"

 "Woke me up. I thought the house was falling down." 

Sara Dodd, who is in Whissendine, tweeted that it "felt like an explosion but without any sound. I even thought a train had crashed at the back of us."

Matthew says Easter is an earthquake that shook the whole world.

We try to "explain" the resurrection. One says that Jesus was in a deep, drugged coma and woke up. Another said that the disciples got all worked up in their grief and just fantasized the whole thing.

You can't "explain" a resurrection. The truth of Jesus tells on the faces of the befuddled disciples who witnessed it. Not one of them expected Easter. Death, defeat, while regrettable, are utterly explainable. 

Let me leave you with Tom Wright’s commentary on Matthew 28:

“Earthquakes, angels, women running to and fro, a strange command. A highly unlikely tale. Yes indeed, and that’s the point. It was always a strange, crazy, wild story. What else would you expect if, after all, the ancient dream of Israel was true?

If the God who made the world had finally acted to turn things around, to take all the forces of chaos, pride, greed, darkness and death and allow them to do their worst, exhausting themselves in the process? If Jesus of Nazareth really was the Son of God, what else would you expect? A calm restatement of some philosophical truths for sage old greybeards to ponder – or events which blew the world apart and put it back in a new way?”

As we began with Jesus a week ago entering the city in a new way, so we celebrate Easter by singing as God's people "O sing to the Lord a new song, his right hand and his mighty arm have brought him victory."

Awesome stuff! 

Easter Eve - the "night of nights"

I've just returned from a very powerful and very interesting Easter Vigil service at All Saints Church in Hastings Old Town. I try to worship on Holy Saturday and do the first communion of Easter for me. It is rare for us ministers to receive so I really valued being there tonight.

It only occurred to me sitting there listening to the liturgy that Christ rose in the night! We had readings about God conquering the darkness, we went outside to a fire and the Easter candle was lit from it, we all had candles lit to receive the light of Christ, we renewed our baptismal vows, we heard a homily from the Rector, we took communion, and we sang three mighty Easter hymns accompanied by a superb organist. The lady in front of me turned to me after the service, which lasted one hour and forty minutes, and she said, "It was lovely to have a man singing!" I was clearly having a good time!

I thought this prayer was very helpful:

Heavenly Father, in the joy of this night, receive our sacrifice of praise, your Church's solemn offering. Accept this Easter candle, a flame undivided but undimmed, a pillar of fire that glows to the honour of God. Let it mingle with the light of heaven and continue bravely burning to dispel the darkness of this night. May the Morning Star which never sets find this flame still burning: Christ, the Morning Star, who came back from the dead and shed his powerful light on humankind, your Son who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

The journey from death to life is an unexpected one and this service was wonderful at sharing that. It was a delight to receive in a pew and kneeling at an altar. Tonight has been a real gift to me, I am glad I went.

Preparing to enter Good Friday

O come and mourn with me awhile; O come ye to the Saviours side, O come together, let us mourn, Jesus, our love, is crucified.

Have we no tears to shed for him, while soldiers scoff and foes deride? Ah! Look how patiently he hangs: Jesus, our love, is crucified.

How fast his hands and feet are nailed, his blessed tongue with thirst is tied, his failing eyes are blind with blood: Jesus, our love, is crucified.

His mother cannot reach his face; she stands in helplessness beside; her heart is martyred with her son’s: Jesus, our love, is crucified.

Seven times seven he spoke, seven words of love; and all three hours his silence cried for mercy on the souls of men; Jesus, our love, is crucified.

O break, o break, hard heart of mine! Thy weak self- love and guilty pride his Pilate and his Judas were: Jesus, our love, is crucified.

A broken heart, a fount of tears, ask, and they will not be denied; a broken heart love’s cradle is: Jesus, our love, is crucified.

O love of God, o sin of man! In this dread act your strength is tried; and victory remains with love; for he, our love is crucified.  

I love that scene from Father Ted. The old priest Father Jack driven by anything he can drink, has drunk too much floor polish. Father Ted and Father Dougal think he is dead. They keep vigil with his body in the crypt prior to his funeral. Ted says “Funny, one moment you’re there, the next… Someone once said that life is just a thin sliver of light between two immensities of darkness. Makes you think. Dougal says “It does, Ted. About what?” Ted, angrily: “About death, Dougal, about death. To which Dougal, sitting in a crypt with a corpse says “that’s a bit morbid isn’t it? What started you off thinking about death?”!

For many Christians, today is too much. “What started you off thinking about death?” they want to say. So they avoid this day and come back on Sunday. Good Friday and thinking about death and a Cross and blood and sacrifice and suffering is not what we need to be doing. But, what is Easter Sunday without today? What is new life without death, and what does Jesus rise from? Darkness, death and defeat. Christianity for me is about hope – hope that the worst the world can do to you, the worst the world can send you, the worst day you are having, the crappiest time you are facing, and the day when no one understands you, Christ is there with you and will lead you through it to new things. But we have to live it with him. We die with Christ to rise with Christ.

           
Jesus knew the reality of death. It was not as that poem we often read at funerals says “nothing at all.” Remember he wept at the death of his friend Lazurus. He knew what death on a cross would be like. That’s why he is in agony before it, and on it he cries out to God, if it is possible take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours. But let’s voice that we don’t want it. What got you thinking about death?

The problem is we have forgotten what sort of death Jesus would beat. I found in a history book Good Friday sermons by Bishop Lancelot Andrews given in Whitehall before King James I in 1604 and 1605. 

These words show me why some people want to avoid thinking about it:
“Our very eye will soon tell us no place was left in his body where he might be smitten and was not: his skin and flesh rent with the whips and scourges, his hands and feet wounded with the nails, his head with the thorns, his very heart with the spear point, all his senses, all his parts laden with whatever wit or malice could invent, his blessed body given as an anvil to be beaten upon.  They did not whip him, they ploughed his back and made long furrows upon it, they did not put on his wreath of thorns and press it down with their hands, but beat it on hard with bats to make it enter through skin, flesh, skull and all; they did not pierce his hands and feet, but made wide holes like that of a spade, as if they had been digging in some ditch.”

If such seventeenth century descriptions of the scene make us shudder today, and we’d rather not hear them, perhaps they help us remember that Jesus is not some remote and far off figure but one who knows real human affliction. That’s the heart of the story of today – he knows, he endures it, and he will beat it.

So two things I take from doing Good Friday.

First, I remember in Jesus we have someone who knows what suffering and death are. He doesn’t avoid them, and he is with us in our times we struggle. What do you need Jesus to do for you today? How is Friday “Good” for you? It is from the Cross that Jesus invites us into life. He says to the man next to him “today, you will be with me in Paradise.”

Paradise can only be entered through our abandonment of all that we are, through death itself. God’s way is all about life – life after death, but also life before death. The cross is a sign we are to enter the death places of the world and be Christ there, for that is what he did for us and asks of us.  You’ve got to know Jesus’ love for you, today, before you can do anything else as a church. You can’t evangelise the community if you aren’t evangelised yourself. Jesus dies for you.

Then I think we need on Good Friday to hold on to hope. My picture is from Lindisfarne and I took it two weeks ago. The cross on the picture is on a little island called St Cuthbert’s Isle where St Cuthbert, Bishop of the island, and leader of the monastery went on retreat. It takes some getting to at low tide scrambling through rockpools, but it is worth the climb. Note in my picture the flowers. I see this picture as a symbol. Today is hard, black, too much for some, what got you thinking about death. But there is a tomorrow. Think about the disciples – most could not do this scene and they fed, locking themselves away. Later they will discover the crucified and risen one living and transforming the darkness of the world. A blog that came my way reminded me of the theologian Jurgen Moltmann who said, “Good Friday is the most comprehensive and most profound expression of Christ’s fellowship with every human being.” I simply want to say don’t rush to that place. Encounter death, stay with it, worship at the cross, let Jesus suffer for you, let him save things, that’s his name, he will save the people from their sins. Let him die, to bring life. Whatever got you thinking about death? Without death there is no resurrection. Death is real. With Christ death is not ignored, sidelined or too difficult to face. It is conquered. 

O Father of our souls, the sovereign Lord of life and death, comfort with your presence all who fear that life’s riches joys and fairest hopes have been buried in a tomb; give them the assurance that what has been truly precious cannot be holden of death, nor that which is holy see corruption. Into your hands we commit ourselves, and those near and dear to us. In our frailty and grief we rest upon your love, O God, from which neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, can separate us. Amen.  

Maundy Thursday - classic Nouwen

I cannot better anything today than this passage of classic Henri Nouwen. This is day about service and being there for others.

"Just before entering on the road of his passion he washed the feet of his disciples and offered them his body and his blood as food and drink. These two acts belong together. They are both an expression of God's determination to show us the fullness of his love. Therefore John introduces the story of the washing of the disciples' feet with the words: "Jesus, having loved those who were his in the world, loved them to the end."

What is even more astonishing is that on both occasions Jesus commands us to do the same. After washing his disciples' feet, Jesus says, "I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you." After giving himself as food and drink, he says, "Do this in remembrance of me." Jesus calls us to continue his mission of revealing the perfect love of God in this world. He calls us to total self-giving. He does not want us to keep anything for ourselves. Rather, he wants our love to be as full, as radical, and as complete as his own. He wants us to bend ourselves to the ground and touch the places in each other that most need washing. He also wants us to say to each other, "Eat of me and drink of me." By this complete mutual nurturing, he wants us to become one body and one spirit, united by the love of God."

(From "The Road to Daybreak")

I ponder these words. How much am I willing to love people to the end? How do I let Jesus be my example? Where are the places in my day I need to bend to the ground and touch? How do I work for the unity of the Church around one table? I'm glad tonight I'll be sharing communion and foot washing with my Anglican friends in Rye. There is much to work to live out Nouwen's commentary on this day. A bowl of water, a towel, bread and wine, perhaps these are the only tools we need in Christian ministry. Discuss!  

Reciting it until you see it - Holy Week thoughts for Wednesday

I wasn't sure what to write about today - a reflection on plan making and proof reading the plan and my window cleaner coming didn't sound very exciting...

I had a hour and a half pastoral visit this afternoon which wasn't easy. The person was very low and thought no one cared. They thought I didn't care because I hadn't visited for a couple of weeks. They had cancelled an appointment not being able to face people, and for some time they didn't make any eye contact with me. We got onto some deep stuff about naming our pain and our hurt before God, even if God feels very absent today. The person thanked me for coming as I left, having been quite hostile when I arrived.

I've been thinking about this visit all evening as I sat in a Passover meal with Churches Together. Part of the Passover is all about reciting and remembering God's steadfast love. Jews state it as a present reality even in the midst of rubbish going on. There is a need to say it over and over again, especially when we are struggling to believe it: preach faith til you have it. Tomorrow on Maundy Thursday we remember Jesus breaking bread, we remember him as present with us every time we do that, and I know how renewed I am when I am given bread and wine each time at communion. I am reminded that God in Christ cares, suffers, understands, transforms from within and is patient with me until I see the reality of his presence myself. He is always there, it is our life that separates us from him. Perhaps my picture is an illustration of where our spiritual life can be sometimes. Edinburgh Castle a couple of weeks ago had not moved, but I couldn't see it as I walked near it in the evening fog. I had to wait to see it when the sun came out. But it was still there.

I think it is okay to voice when we feel alone or no one cares in our perception. The person I visited today I think was somewhat surprised by my prayer. "Help us voice how we feel O God when life is crappy." Well, life is crappy sometimes, isn't it???!!!! Part of what this week is about for me is that there is nothing in life or death and so on that separates me from the love of God. And I need to say that to myself over and over again.

Holy Week Blog for Tuesday - seeing glory

I am reflecting on a passage I am about to lead worship round in a communion service - John 12: 20 - 37.
In this passage, people (some Greeks) want to see Jesus (a reminder of a plaque in my home chapel The Folly in the pulpit) and Jesus says the hour has come for him to be glorified. Later in the passage, he talks about followers living in the light, so that we may become children of light - making a difference to others, showing Jesus' glory to others.

People want to see something/feel something that will make a difference to them.
Yesterday with a friend in London I saw lots of crowds:

• Crowds in Trafalgar Square watching people stand motionless dressed as a character (Peppa Pig!)
• Crowds taking mobile phone pictures of a nice day for them on Westminster Bridge.
• Crowds queuing having been given a flyer for a "fantastic" Italian restaurant, queuing for a table. 
• Crowds on the South Bank watching some dancers from Ghana balance bicycles on their head for no apparent reason, and further on some singer blasting out. 
• Crowds in a pub opposite Cannon Street station enjoying a post work drink. 
• Crowds on a train home, just wanting to get home, after a long day. 

Everyone, be it watching escapist entertainment, or having a meal out, or a drink, or waiting to go home, wanted something to make them feel better. There is inquisitiveness in a crowd, sometimes we just join one to see what is going on.

I keep suggesting to churches that we live in an age where people encounter us with all sorts of questions, or not much clue about faith or Jesus or the church. Can we show them Jesus in a language that will make them stay and engage with us, or will we either not speak to them, or if we do speak to them will be it in a language that is long out of date? So, they walk away. I overheard someone say about my worship the other week, "We like him because he talks about things we know about." That's one of the greatest compliments I've ever heard. People need to see God makes a difference to them. They need to see the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. We need, those of us who profess to be Christians to live in the light, being attractive, wanting people to see us and stay with us. In today's on line bible study on the Methodist website, the President Designate Ken Howcroft writes, "like candles lit from a flaming torch, his followers must take his love and life into themselves so that when he is not physically with them, they can enlighten the world in his name. So must we."

Sadly I still think parts of the church are so unaware of the needs of the crowd, the crowd will pass her by. I've been watching "Rev" with interest this series, less a comedy, more a commentary on people's needs. We've had episodes this series touching on gay marriage and the rehabilitation of sex offenders and the response of the church to people coming with real life out of the world to find blessing and hope. I nearly cried when Adam the vicar turned on his highly critical verger and said, "do you think Jesus had rules?"
We don't glorify Christ by not meeting the crowd. In the end, meeting the crowd, making the crowd notice his claims cost Christ his life. But you don't get anywhere by being judgemental, ignoring and passing by.
As Ken says, we only enlighten the world in his name by taking him into ourselves. It is a challenge. But one meeting people this Holy Week where they are, I cannot not take seriously.

Holy Week Blog part 2 - for Monday

I've been thinking today about stickability and Jesus sticking to a cause entering Jerusalem, indeed setting his face resolutely towards the city.
We've been thinking this weekend in my Circuit about stickability. Yesterday, we dedicated the fab new church in Battle "The Emmanuel Centre - Home of Battle Methodist Church" in an inspiring service. The people there have stuck at it through hard decisions, setbacks and uncertainty, and now celebrate immense possibilities.
I watched Britain's Got Talent - the amazing dance act with a man hurling an 80+ year old lady round the floor. They've had to stick at practising, Simon Cowell had to stick at watching it until he saw it liven up. It was brilliant - go find it on You Tube!
This lunchtime, I had a meeting with my St Helens congregation who have decided to vacate their poorly building next year. We are waiting to see what other churches round us what to do, perhaps coming together with us, but we had a very positive conversation about sticking to our vision to be present where people need us. I was heartened that people in their 80's and 90's were saying this, with deep emotional attachment to our present building, but seeing a bigger picture.
Then this afternoon and tonight, we've had a Circuit gathering preparing and sharing worship for all ages where we've explored what we stick with. Volunteers were asked to come out and share what they would stick with no matter what - Fair Trade, a school supporting the Gambia and Southampton FC. The congregation were invited to ridicule them to put them off. Then we had someone play Jesus and we shouted at him "Crucify" to see what that felt like.
I have known in life how much it is to stick at things, especially when others round you are not being very nice. You have to believe in what you are standing up for.
In an age where we so easily give up, replace, throw away, rubbish an idea that doesn't seem to be working, we need to take inspiration from Jesus. How would we be at sticking at Christianity if we had to stand up for it? Perhaps we have it too comfortable - but I've been heartened this weekend by people showing signs that sticking to a cause might bring life. And worship tonight by the way with dancing, children, flags, drama, a worship band, participation and a talk by me with no notes whatsoever - was stonking!
No blog tomorrow as it is my day off - but back on Tuesday with a thought for Tuesday.

Palm Sunday - Holy Week blog part 1

Wouldn’t it be great not to get involved? To be apart from the problems of life forever, to be detached and not to worry – for ever? Let the world and its pain pass us by.

Most of you know I’ve returned these past days from a week’s retreat on Holy Island – if you come to Guild on Tuesday I’ll show you some pictures, including my latest set, Holy Island in the fog and cold. How lovely it was to avoid stuff for a bit, to step away, to sleep for 13 hours every night, to eat, walk, talk with companions, escape with no television, no mobile phone signal, no e-mails, and no hassle. Wouldn’t it be great to be like that permanently, to never have to bother with anything?

Of course, the Bible is full of people who didn’t want to get involved with God’s call to be in the world and who wanted to escape the world. Jeremiah is a good example. He is called by God to deliver a message of doom to the people, to warn that disobedience will mean years of exile. He is got at, and he turns on God and says blow this, deal with these people, get angry with them, I’ve had enough. Moses is similar. He’s called to lead the people to the Promised Land. He is stuck in the middle of nowhere and he wants out. He turns on God and says basically God, you have done nothing at all. Sort it! I can’t take any more. Elijah remember – well what does he do? Facing pressure he runs into a cave and hides, hoping it will all go away. That’s where Palm, Sunday begins really, with Jesus disciples wanting not to be where Jesus wants them to be, with him – Jerusalem. They would rather go anywhere but Jerusalem because Jerusalem meant trouble.

There’s evidence of two processions that day in Jerusalem.  Jesus’ was the counter-procession, stealing the pomp from Pilate’s ceremonial procession. The Roman battalion, solemnly advancing  through the western Damascus Gate, on the Syrian Road.  Awesome stallions. Clanging hooves against the paving stones.  

Pilate was marching his men because the Jewish Feast Days were beginning, and that stirred a restlessness in the people. He was sending a message, any trouble would be crushed.  The Pax Romana, Caesar’s peace, would be enforced.

At the Beautiful Gate, on the opposite side of town, coming in through an olive grove, rode Jesus, alone, sitting on a donkey, one leg draped over her colt, someone’s old cloak under him. Laughter and foolishness brought travellers together into a waving crowd, good naturedly throwing palm branches in the rutted path.  This was the gate legend held was the one through which the Shekinah, the glory of God, brought the Sabbath each Friday at sundown, and the gate through which the Messiah would one day come.

It was for this procession that they arrested him, scholars say.  Whatever trouble he made among the sellers at the Temple was a Jewish problem, not a Roman one.  But this counter-procession, this mockery of Pilate and Rome that drew a huge throng and filled the city with laughter, was intolerable.

“Who is this?”  The crowds asked. No wonder the disciples don’t want to be there.

Why would Jesus want to walk straight into trouble? Is Jesus saying in entering the city we have to hit the world head on?

There was no turning back. He was determined to see it through to the end, and trust it all into the hands of his Father in heaven.  Sheer determination, determination to love, determination to face humanity and its selfishness, humanity and indifference to his message, determination drove him on into the city of Jerusalem.

I want to suggest to you we need the same determination and steadfastness as Jesus today on this Palm Sunday to face our Jerusalems. To get involved and not be detached and remote.

Our society is deficient in the kind of spiritual drive that Jesus showed on that first Palm Sunday. There is a lamentable lack of willingness to get involved. Instead we opt for easy answers or diversions. We are not prepared to face misunderstanding, rejection and suffering.

Why is this? Well, let me suggest three reasons using three stories we would rather not get involved and stay out of trouble.

First, we might get ignored. Who might care if we stand in the middle of people and give our message? I was interested on Monday when I was in the driving wind and rain of Edinburgh. I went into St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile. I was interested in how the cathedral was set out. The pulpit and the altar are in the middle of the building, called The Crossing, with people either side of it. There was a midday act of prayer and a preacher in the pulpit. The majority of people ignored him, kept walking round, mobile phones going off, he simply kept going, looking at the people. Some of us were listening, but most weren’t. The word was in the middle of people, easily brushed by, but waiting for encounter. But most of us won’t want to speak it in the middle of life for fear our effort might be wasted.

Second, we might get laughed at. And that’s not nice. Being laughed at. But we live in a world that likes to laugh at what looks ridiculous. Read a tabloid newspaper. We like it when a celebrity falls. Who is this? What sort of king is this? One I can laugh at and reject – a donkey riding deluded false Messiah. It isn’t easy to pick yourself up when people laugh at you. I struggled on Tuesday afternoon with my luggage getting across London on the underground. I got on a Northern Line train at Kings Cross. I got in the carriage and was pushed, I tripped over my luggage and landed on my bum, on the floor. I was shaken up. And this party of Americans opposite me looked at me, and burst into fits of laughter.

And I gave them one of my ministerial glares and wasn’t very happy. Do we fix not venturing into places we might trip to save face? Remember Jesus the Bible tells us set his face resolutely towards Jerusalem.

Then I wonder whether the real reason for not wanting to enter a trouble place is that we might be persecuted. Perhaps not common persecution in Rye is it? But in some places of the world it really is? Not easy to stick with Jesus. I’m doing some work at the moment in my spare time on the spirituality of World War One, I hope to do a series of talks and sermons later in the year. We know that many people who saw the carnage of the battlefields lost their faith, but many did not. The Bible Society are currently collecting stories of people who have bibles that were in their ancestors possession during the war. Private William James Duffy was a baker living in Toxteth with his wife Maggie and children Edith and Harold when the war broke out.

It wasn’t until 1917 when the 28-year-old signed up and joined the King’s Liverpool Regiment.

Inside his brown Soldier’s Bible he lists the 17 engagements in which he took part including Ypres and Passchendaele.

He was given it before he set sail for France in July 1917 by E Chapman, who wrote in it a poignant verse from Ephesians, ‘For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.’

His grandson is certain that this well-thumbed Bible was important to his grandfather.

‘Not only was he carrying it, but he was using it to, and he knew it,’ he says. ‘I think it would have meant an awful lot in terms of comfort and belief that what he was doing was the right thing, and the belief that if you died it wasn’t the end of it.’

Private Duffy spent his war first in the trenches, and then close to the Hindenberg Line where he and other members of the Liverpool Regiment fought in near hand-to-hand combat between villages.

‘His faith remained very strong,’ ‘One would imagine that it could have gone one of two ways: either having been weakened if you thought, “How can there be a God with this evil?”. But he must have had a sense of gratitude for his own survival.’

But it must have been so easy to give up on God, encountering such evil. I think we begin Holy Week with a need to remember that Jesus knew what was coming (and so did his friends, hence their wanting anywhere but there, and their eventual denial and fleeing and hiding.) Indifference, ridicule, torture, evil and death. Not very nice things, but things that are part of the call. Sometimes we are called to encounter them, not avoid them to be authentic as Christian people. On the Sunday after Easter, we shall remember Thomas, the one who doubted, but we forget it was Thomas who once said when Jesus mentioned where he needed to go, “let us go with him that we might die with him.”

If we do it properly, then we will find this week hard, but we have to do it to find life. I like this from one of my favourite contemporary authors Sara Miles:

http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20140407JJ.shtml

 I love going on retreat, indeed I’ve booked to go back to Holy Island twice next year because I think next year might be a bit busy for me, but you’ll notice I did come back. Despite it being easy to stay away from things, from life, from issues, from pain, from engagement with pain and suffering and real hurt in people, there is no other way.            

I hope we will renew again our commitment to him and to the values of his Kingdom which are sometimes not of this world and need to be stood up for. There was much wrong in Jerusalem that day and there is in our world today. It is not an easy way, but he promises never to leave us if we choose it. I know that. On Palm Sunday then, will we hear him say to us, “Come follow me” and will we say “Lord, I don’t want to get involved.”?        

Back at work two days...

I've just returned from a fantastic retreat time on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. This time it was very cold and very foggy, the sea fret meant you couldn’t see very much at all for three days of my stay. But on the last day, the sky turned from grey to blue and I sat watching this piece of sea, without a soul in sight, just me and God and the wonder of the wind and the waves, the only sounds around me being them. A sense of real peace.

As part of my spiritual top up on the Island, I enter the rhythm of prayer and space offered by the Parish Church of St Mary, morning and evening prayer at 7.30am and at 5.30pm. The church was very cold, and I was glad to have taken my winter coat! The readings each day were quite miserable, the lamentations of Jeremiah in and around chapter 18. Read them sometime, he is very low indeed and he is cross with those he is sent to serve and at one point he turns on God and tells him to sort them out! The pain of the prophet felt very real being read slowly in the cold. But later in the week, we listened to Jeremiah voicing hope – the hope of a new relationship with God, a new covenant. And on Sunday morning at 8am communion, beautifully read from the Book of Common Prayer as I confessed my manifold sins etc, we heard Psalm 63 – “my soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me.” It seemed again to me despite everything life (and sometimes the church) throws at you, God’s word says there is a better future, there is hope and there is immense possibility. 

I believe our church task is to offer hope.

The American theologian and social commentator Jim Wallis once said that “you can feel optimism, but you have to choose hope.” I see what he means. Hope is a lifestyle that expects it even if your life and your church aren’t easy today. You keep practising the story, reciting the truths, and one day you will see them coming to you leading you to new places. Perhaps our trouble is we don’t expect hope anymore so we dare not trust, and we content ourselves with grey skies rather than wait for blue ones.

How can the church offer hope? Where things have gone wrong, what do we need to do to rediscover God’s hope for us and those around us? What hopeful signs do we see right now? And how do we hang on to hope when life hits us again? Well, I think when life is hard, you need to work harder at keeping close to God, simply that. We come to worship, we take some spiritual space in order to live where we are and find God’s hope there too. So, let me end these ramblings with a prayer. Each night, the community at Marygate House, offers prayers in a beautiful crypt for those of us on retreat. This year, six of us formed very deep community. There was me and five ladies – an Anglican priest in training; a spiritual director from Manchester; a lovely lady who plays the organ in her church in rural Cumbria, and a very chatty mother and a not so chatty daughter who sometimes got a word in edgeways when Mum was quiet! We only met on Wednesday, by Sunday it felt we had known each other for decades. On the night before we left, this prayer was offered. Perhaps we might use it, as we work out in daily struggle how to offer hope and how to know hope for ourselves.

Lord of our lives, we thank you for bringing us to this place where we could rest for a while and find what we needed to find; where we could wander freely and feel your breath on the wind. Thank you that we could come before you with all our hurts and wounds and you cradled us in the stillness. We know that you are no more present here than anywhere else; but when the noise is too great to feel you, hold us steady in that truth and help us always to carry the treasure that we have found.”