A reminder what we are for

We are in the Peterborough area this weekend for personal stuff to be sorted. This morning I attended worship in the cathedral. Here is the view from my seat. It’s always a privilege to worship in it. I’m still in awe every time I am there we got married in it. This morning had I not been feeling a bit wobbly I would have helped serve communion - seriously! They were short of clergy people and I was asked if I’d help. I needed to receive this morning for reasons I need not go into so I declined. But as last week with the invitation to read the Gospel at 5am on Holy Island, it meant a lot to be recognised as an ordained person.

This morning’s service was very powerful for two reasons. The Canon Missioner, Sarah Brown, preached a belter of a sermon. She reminded us on the second Sunday of Easter that the resurrection “is a glimmer of the world to come” and the Gospel is the same as it was when it was written and the disciples after they received the Holy Spirit prepared themselves in prayer and talking about Jesus for evangelism. She challenged the cathedral congregation they had a task to share their faith. “The problem is the Church,” she said. We’ve lost the confidence and the desire to tell the story. So the Church is dying. I’m not sure how what she said went down but it was good to hear a challenge. 

But what I will remember more from this morning is that I was welcomed as me into the worshipping community. I went up for communion.

I badly needed to receive this morning to earth me when at the moment much is uncertain. Canon Sarah put the wafer in my hand, looked at me and said “The Body of Christ broken for you, Ian.” I’ve only met her a few times and I don’t attend the cathedral often, but she called me by name. I mattered and I belonged. And after the service I was given pastoral care by people that know me a little and wanted to include me. It’s amazing that Peterborough Cathedral is my space at the moment like Hailsham Methodist Church has been. Next Sunday I am in their service thanking them for their care in the six months we’ve been in their fellowship. All of us need to belong. It’s been good to receive well. 

Canon Sarah challenged us that we need to live as though we believe what we sit and listen to in these Easter weeks. Christ is risen. Death has been defeated. Jesus gives us his peace. Even in misery and despair, we hold onto the promise of God that love will come again. Tonight’s Nite Blessing is a challenge:

‪When you stand in the wasteland of hurt may you be given grace to give God the pain. If you have hurt someone else may be you willing to apologise. If someone has hurt you may you be able to address it properly, not lightly. May God protect you from further heartache.‬

At the moment, life is uncertain. There are many huge unanswered questions in our life. We went to A and E this afternoon as Lis has a gammy foot and is in pain. She can’t walk very far. We need answers about some important stuff. And answers aren’t coming. But I hold on. There is a possibility of something to brighten us, but we are in the hands of others and big answers are out of our control. But Easter faith tells me to believe God has a plan and all will be well, indeed flourish for us. 

We keep going, remembering the basics. We journey and work for a new world which in the risen Jesus we have glimpsed. Church matters for people, but does the Gospel? If the world is going to change, we need to relearn urgently what we are meant to share. We sang this this morning: 

At the Lamb's high feast we sing 
praise to our victorious King, 
who hath washed us in the tide 
flowing from his pierced side; 
praise we him, whose love divine 
gives his sacred Blood for wine, 
gives his Body for the feast, 
Christ the victim, Christ the priest.

Where the Paschal blood is poured, 
death's dark angel sheathes his sword; 
Israel's hosts triumphant go 
through the wave that drowns the foe. 
Praise we Christ, whose blood was shed, 
Paschal victim, Paschal bread; 
with sincerity and love 
eat we manna from above.

Mighty victim from on high, 
hell's fierce powers beneath thee lie; 
thou hast conquered in the fight, 
thou hast brought us life and light: 
now no more can death appall, 
now no more the grave entrall; 
thou hast opened paradise, 
and in thee thy saints shall rise.

Easter triumph, Easter joy, 
sin alone can this destroy; 
from sin's power do thou set free 
souls newborn, O Lord, in thee. 
Hymns of glory and of praise, 
Risen Lord, to thee we raise; 
Holy Father, praise to thee, 
with the Spirit, ever be.

Thinking about a book!

I need to say a huge thank you to those lovely people who’ve sent me messages to encourage me to write more. I’m still unsure what ministry will mean over the next year and a bit and have no idea where it will be. But a lot of people have said maybe my call for now is to write and to support others as I slowly build myself up. 

I’ve had a book in me for ages since my sabbatical and maybe it is time to actually put it together. I have thoughts on journeying: perhaps an opening chapter on why we journey, then a chapter on journeying with tradition using some work I did on sabbatical in Lancashire and Manchester, then a chapter on journeying on Shetland (again using sabbatical writing), then a chapter on journeying to the cross and resurrection on Holy Island then a final chapter on the ongoing journey. Would anyone read this?? 

We have a journey between tomorrow and May 2 sorting life out in various places before we return to Hailsham. We haven’t a clue about very much at the moment but as I’ve tried to write this past week and a bit, we trust...

I like this collect for the first week of Easter:

God of glory,

by the raising of your Son

you have broken the chains of death and hell:

fill your Church with faith and hope;

for a new day has dawned

and the way to life stands open

in our Saviour Jesus Christ.

That’s the hope: the way to life stands open.

And the lectionary Psalm tonight is Og smited!!!

Psalm 136

1  Give thanks to the Lord, for he is gracious, •

   for his mercy endures for ever.

2  Give thanks to the God of gods, •

   for his mercy endures for ever.

3  Give thanks to the Lord of lords, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

4  Who alone does great wonders, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

5  Who by wisdom made the heavens, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

6  Who laid out the earth upon the waters, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

7  Who made the great lights, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

8  The sun to rule the day, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

9  The moon and the stars to govern the night, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

10  Who smote the firstborn of Egypt, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

11  And brought out Israel from among them, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

12  With a mighty hand and outstretched arm, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

13  Who divided the Red Sea in two, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

14  And made Israel to pass through the midst of it, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

15  But Pharaoh and his host he overthrew in the Red Sea, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

16  Who led his people through the wilderness, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

17  Who smote great kings, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

18  And slew mighty kings, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

19  Sihon, king of the Amorites, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

20  And Og, the king of Bashan, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

21  And gave away their land for a heritage, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

22  A heritage for Israel his servant, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

23  Who remembered us when we were in trouble, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

24  And delivered us from our enemies, •

   for his mercy endures for ever;

25  Who gives food to all creatures, •

   for his mercy endures for ever.

26  Give thanks to the God of heaven, •

   for his mercy endures for ever.

Easter Sunday: Out of darkness, light

I’ve been to three deeply moving Easter services here on Holy Island to greet the risen Lord. It’s been a huge privilege to do the story of Holy Week from start to finish in this community where it has been told since Aidan brought Christianity here centuries ago. 

Last night we gathered on Cuthbert’s beach round a fire from which the paschal candle was lit. The light of Christ was celebrated and carried into church.

Until I discovered this Saturday service a few years ago, it never occurred to me that Jesus rose at night, in the dark. When the women went to the tomb in the first early morning light, he was not there. I used to find it odd to sing Christ the Lord is risen today at 10pm, but now it makes perfect sense! Resurrection begins in darkness, the darkness of our experience, transformation comes when God meets us in our pain and the things that make life dark. 

In the poem ‘Resurrection’ in his book In Search of the Lost, Richard Carter puts it this way.

Resurrection begins in darkness
There is distraction
There is confusion
And uncertainty
In the mind and stomach
The yawn of despair
And I look round
And I cannot find whom I am looking for
And there is fear so caustic that I will never find him again
And then Christ comes
Comes so simply
As though to dispel all fear
He comes like joy comes without introduction
Like healing which has dissolved the pain
He comes
Like rain on dry brittle land
He is simply there
Like light which ends darkness with no struggle
For then it was dark
But now it is light
He comes with his balance and with his beauty
And order returns
Like a bird returning home from another land
Spring comes
He comes with no explanation or reason
And there is song
And a hope
And a future
We are surprised by his love
But he is not
For though he kept us waiting and doubting and trusting
He always knew he would never leave us.

A powerful part of the liturgy last night was a renewal of our baptismal vows. We rejected the devil and his wiles! We committed ourselves to live in the light. The vicar rather enjoyed dousing us with a lot of holy water!!

This morning this lesson of how God transforms darkness into light continued as I got out of bed at 4.30am and joined others to greet Easter morning at sunrise. I was deeply moved when Rev Rachel, the URC minister, greeted me with these words: “Good morning Ian, would you like to be ministerial on this Easter morning?” She invited me to read the Easter Gospel. It was powerful to read it into the silence and as the light began to come. 

The women went to the tomb expecting nothing. They went to pay respects to a dead body in a sealed tomb. They did not expect another chapter to the story. We sat mostly in silence watching the colours come in the sky. There was a deep communion between us even though few of us knew each other. We were united in deep worship. Sometimes worship doesn’t need words! 

The 10.45 service in church was a joyful and fun occasion. It was another privilege to be invited to sing in the choir. I came here last Saturday focussing on my illness and all our uncertainty. Today for the first time since last August, I believe the healing process has begun. We go back soon to a lot of critical meetings about what form my ministry will take and where we will live. I still haven’t a clue about either but I believe there is a future and maybe the future might be better than I dare hope. I need to trust in the power of God. Jesus goes ahead of me into my Galilee where he will meet me. Anywhere in the Methodist Connexion!!

What is Easter all about and what’s our priority having experienced it? I hope the vicar won’t mind me borrowing a poem she began her sermon with this morning:

The 12 O’Clock Mass, Roundstone, County Galway, 28 July 2002
On Sunday 28th of July 2002 –
The summer it rained almost every day –
In rain we strolled down the road
To the church on the hill overlooking the sea.
I had been told to expect “a fast Mass”.

Twenty minutes. A piece of information
Which disconcerted me.

Out onto the altar hurried
A short, plump priest in late middle age
With a horn of silver hair,
In green chasuble billowing
Like a poncho or a caftan over white surplicr and a pair of Reeboks - mammoth trainers.

He whizzed along,
Saying the readings himself as well as the Gospel;
Yet he spoke with conviction and with clarity;

His every action an action
Of what looked like effortless concentration;
Like Tiger Woods on top of his form.
His brief homily concluded with a solemn request.

To the congregation he gravely announced:
“I want each of you to pray for a special intention,

A very special intention.
I want each of you – in the sanctity of your souls –
To pray that, in the All-Ireland
Championship hurling quarter-final this afternoon in Croke Park,
Clare will beat Galway.”

The congregation splashed into laughter
And the church became a place of effortless prayer.
He whizzed through the Consecration
As if the Consecration was something
That occurs at every moment of the day and night;
As if betrayal and the overcoming of betrayal

Were an every-minute occurrence.

As if the Consecration were the “now”
In the “now” of the Hail Mary prayer:
“Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”
At the Sign of the Peace he again went sombre
As he instructed the congregation:

I want each of you to turn around and say to each other:
‘You are beautiful.’”

The congregation was flabbergasted, but everyone fluttered
And swung around and uttered that extraordinary phrase:
“You are beautiful.”

I shook hands with at least five strangers,
Two men and three women, to each of them saying:
“You are beautiful.” And they to me:
“You are beautiful.”

At the end of Mass, exactly twenty-one minutes,
The priest advised: “Go now and enjoy yourselves, for that is what God made you to do -

To go out there and enjoy yourselves
And to pray that, in the All-Ireland
Championship hurling quarter-final between Clare and Galway
In Croke Park, Clare will win.”

After Mass, the rain had drained away
Into a tide of sunlight on which we sailed out
To St Macdara’s Island and dipped our sails –
Both of us smiling, radiant sinners.
In a game of pure delight, Clare beat Galway by one point:
Clare 1 goal and 17 points, Galway 19 points.
“Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”

Paul Durcan
(From The Art of Life)

We need to remember we are beautiful. We need to stop destroying one another through nasty words and deceitful actions and commit ourselves again to authentic and respectful community. We need to tell others that they are beautiful rather than trying to put them down so we can be on top. The powerful tried to defeat the love of God in this story. Look what happened! 

I’ve found being here and living this story really moving. I got tearful in church this morning partly because I wasn’t leading worship today and partly because of an overwhelming feeling of being held even with continuing questions.

I’ve found writing these blogs really cathartic this week and I’m glad to learn some people have found them helpful. I finish them with this quiet assurance: we are never abandoned.

Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia! 

Holy Saturday: Silent Vigil

Most people will celebrate today as Easter Saturday. The holiday weekend is well under way and the stash of chocolate has been opened and the sun is shining. The supermarkets ran out of essentials by mid morning. There was a small crisis in Morrison’s earlier as all their Mary Poppins Returns DVDs had sold out - it’s a good job I got mine on Thursday!

If we are doing the drama of Holy Week properly this is not Easter Saturday but Holy Saturday. Jesus has died and has been placed in a tomb. The Jesus project is over and we have come away from witnessing brutality and annihilation in shock and in grief. We now wait to see what on earth life holds for us next. 

This morning, I was glad to be at an 8am Tenebrae Service in church. Various honest and heartfelt readings were shared, and after each one a candle was extinguished. The darkness of grief after any death is real. One of the readings was Hezekiah’s prayer. He’s been having a rough time! Life feels hard. Here’s a bit of it: 

Isaiah 38: 10 - 13

10 I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave:

I am deprived of the residue of my years.

11I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living:

I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.

12Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent:

I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness:

From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

13I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones:

From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

The order of service told us the service would end with the collect then a loud noise before we left in silence. The collect was shared then everyone stamped their feet! I had to look up what this was all about. Apparently it is to remember the terror and shock of the crucifixion and the earthquake before the resurrection. The world is shaken by these events. I’m learning a lot from a different tradition this week. I’m singing in the choir tomorrow (how did that happen?) I gather it gets me a seat as the church will be bursting at the seams. A lot come here to do Easter Sunday.

After the service I went to walk by the harbour in silence. Today is a day to ponder, to wait in between events, to yearn for news, to take time to contemplate the things that have happened. We rush people on after grief too quickly to move on, to get over it, to feel better. We need time to mourn before healing can come. 

But our vigil is that healing will come. And later tonight we gather in the darkness on Cuthberts beach to see what might come to pass. This Saturday experience spiritually is painful but in the waiting and the reflecting we hold on to the belief that God isn’t finished with the story yet...

Good Friday: Jesus Remember Me

We’ve had a really special time of worship here today. I’m really grateful to Canon Sarah who has led us this week. It’s rare to receive Holy Week in my profession.

We were in church for three hours of devotion which included two hours of interactive prayer round the stations of the cross. As in every service this week I waited for some words from the story to hit me. 

The criminal who hung by Jesus’ side at the crucifixion saw something in him others did not see. Not a heretic but the herald of a new era. Not a criminal but a king. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom” he cried. 

Surely that’s our prayer and our hope on Good Friday. 

Jesus remember me...

Remember my pain...

Remember my worth...

Remember your promise...

Remember my name...

Remember me today... in what I face.

Jesus remember me...

Let me leave my life and what I can’t sort myself at your cross...

As I stand by it help me to remember you are with me always in the darkness as well as the light that will come.

Jesus remember me...

When others don’t remember me...

When I feel like I’m on my own...

When the world feels too much to bear...

Remember me and all those who feel lost. 

Jesus remember me when you come into your Kingdom.

On this Good Friday we worship and we watch and we weep and we wait...

Jesus remember me and give me your promise of paradise. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury puts it better than I can writing about the point of today: 

Today is the most confrontational and difficult day in the Christian story. 

The Crucified God tells us that the human problem of sin is too serious to be dealt with by us alone. It needed God himself to carry the pain and cost of sin. 

To understand what Good Friday means for us all – for the whole world – we have to do the hard work of reflecting on the pain and despair that Jesus felt on the cross and on our contribution to his crucifixion. 

We have to be willing to hear his cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

That cry was his in order that it need not be ours.

 

That cry echoes through the centuries. That cry tells us what it means for God to love us so much that he become one of us. More than that it tells us of the cost of sin, of the darkness that our choices bring over the earth, and which is absorbed into his light. 

Another cry from the cross comes at the end: “It is finished." 

Jesus means, it is completed. The work of the cross has been entire, and he has done all his work. In John’s gospel the cross is seen as a moment of triumph, for through it life is offered to every human being. 

 

On the cross, Jesus knew all our pains and guilt – so that we would never again be alone in facing them. So the message of today is this: we are offered hope. Wherever each one of us is: in light or darkness, in joy or pain, God is with us. 

As we move through the final days of the Easter story, I pray that you know the comfort of God’s presence, his hope and his forgiveness – today and always.

Jesus, remember me...

At one of the prayer stations was this poem. I stood and read it over and over. Think deeply on it. It’s great! We all matter..

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

 

Maundy Thursday: Wrestling

We’ve just commemorated Maundy Thursday in church, with a remembrance of the Last Supper; Jesus washing his disciples feet, stripping the altar to remember the bareness of the events that were to come, and then an invitation to watch in the darkness to remember the garden until midnight. I baled out at 10.20, not feeling brilliant but Lis is still there as I write (11.30) - she’s a much better Anglican than me :) 

As I sat in the silence and watched for a while, the bit of the story I was thinking about was Jesus alone in the garden. After the supper he’s been abandoned, the disciples can’t even watch with him for an hour. I lasted an hour and twenty minutes! 

Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. (Luke 22:41-44)

I think Jesus is petrified. He knows what is coming. He also is deeply lonely. Don’t we need our friends when all feels lost? Those he thought got it, have now deserted him. He maybe also feels a failure. Despite three years of hard work trying to convince people of his message it has come to this. He wrestles with God. He doesn’t want what is ahead - who would? 

When we have those moments we are in our own garden, don’t we have those questions that make us wrestle in our mind? 

How did I get here and how do I get out of here?

Why have things gone so badly wrong?

Perhaps if I’d done things differently...

What is your will for me now, God? 

I’ve just reread Luke 22 as I thought about what to write for tonight’s blog and I’d never really noticed an angel appearing at this point in Jesus’ passion. Angels have a habit of turning up when we need reassurance or a firm telling to not be afraid. When Jesus is alone in the wilderness facing Satan and his wiles, an angel ministers to him, and now, as he suffers indescribable torment, an angel gives him strength. Amazingly, when most of us would have given up, and told God to stuff it, he submits himself to God’s will, knowing the cup of suffering cannot be taken away.

Tonight I’m not in a garden as bad as Jesus was, but I am in one. I ponder what the will of God is for me. I worry about the future. I feel guilt that torments me a lot having curtailed my ministry in Hastings, letting a lot of people down. I never wanted to be here, waiting for the wider Church to decide what it is going to do with me and seeming to take ages to tell me. Can I really say “yet not my will but yours God” when I thought it was clear what that was and now it isn’t? 

Walking out of church tonight I noticed the moon lighting the way. The light was bright. Perhaps a parable that in whatever darkness, torment and uncertainty we face, we are held by a greater presence. Tomorrow we shall remember as Jesus goes to a cross there is no experience that God doesn’t face with us. That God dies on a cross is the beginning of knowing the dregs of human experience are never outside his love and care. 

Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

Jesus our brother,

once you knelt sleepless

in the darkness of a garden

alone

and wept and prayed,

sweating, bleeding,

with the pain of powerlessness

with the strain of waiting.

An angel offered you strength -

but it was a bitter cup.

We pray for all

who wake tonight

waiting, agonising,

anxious and afraid,

while others sleep:

for those who sweat

and bleed, and weep alone.

If it is not possible

for their cup to be taken away -

then may they know your presence

kneeling at their side.

 'Gethsemane Prayer' © Jan Sutch Pickard taken from 'Lent and Easter Readings from Iona' 

The Wednesday of Holy Week: Hard choices

Bonhoeffer seems to be coming into sermons a lot this week. The story of Germany in the 1930’s is an interesting one about humanity latching on to an ideal offered to them that following it life will be better. Hitler offered perfection and prosperity - the wiping out of the different was for some, swept up in the promises, a small price to pay even if they thought about it. The message that “we are better” and “we get rid of them” is horrific. 

Bonhoeffer and others took a stand against it and it cost them their life.

“Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization,” he wrote.

One of my friends this morning posted this:

We live in frightening times. We seem to have learnt little. To follow an ideal, a leader without realising the consequences of the message is dangerous. We seem to be moving to “we are better” and “get rid of them” again. 

Holy Week is a story of deciding what we will choose. The Roman regime was brutal, but to challenge it could cost you your life. When Jesus entered Jerusalem people were confronted with a

stark choice: two distinct kingdoms; force and threat or peace and love. The trouble was the majority saw Jesus as a threat, a heretic, a rabble rouser so it was easier to get rid of him. We might know the Romans, the Nazis, the unjust today are wrong, but it’s easier to put up with them than choose publicly to support another way. This week do we crucify him through not speaking out or do we discover our prophetic call to be different? 

It’s hard to speak out, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd, but for the world to change we need to be more courageous. “Don’t get involved in politics” the Church is told. But if we don’t get involved and we don’t live in the world and try to change it then we’ve lost the point. It’s isn’t easy to speak out, it doesn’t make you popular...

Tonight on my walk I passed the priory on Lindisfarne. The Vikings attacked the island msjy times but the holy community persevered on Lindisfarne, though the monastery was mostly abandoned in AD875; the majority of monks sensibly fleeing, taking the sacred relics of St Cuthbert with them. They held firm to their beliefs when it was easy to give up.

On this Wednesday of Holy Week, we thank God for the outspoken and we pray when we need to have courage we might be given strength to do what is right. 

The Tuesday of Holy Week: Come and die

I stood tonight after night prayer here in the church on Holy Island looking over to the cross on St Cuthberts Isle. I’m led to reflect tonight on the call on Christ’s church in Holy Week to be a cross centred authentic community. 

Perhaps the best text to consider the challenge of the cross is The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

He writes: “The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our  lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.”

“When Christ bids a man, he bids him come and die.” 

We don’t go to church to die! But perhaps we need to. When we come face to face with God in the silence of worship, we are confronted with our selfishness and desires and how far we are from sacrificial living. We want what we want! But perhaps what we want needs to die. 

 The cross standing in the midst of the fire in the Notre Dame is a powerful image. A lot of what that building stood for has died in the flames but out of the tragedy new life can come. The cross stands at the heart of suffering.

Canon Ian Black, one of the canons at Peterborough Cathedral writes very helpfully in the context of this week: “Tonight a Cathedral has been seriously damaged by fire - the full extent is yet to be revealed. Churches stand as symbols of stability, security and the soul of life. To see one on fire shakes us to the core.

This is the holiest week of the year when we journey to the cross with Christ. As we do we are reminded of our mortality where we come from dust and to dust we return. We make our progress not in despair but in the hope of the resurrection that comes through Christ. 

Good Friday holds our sorrow and real grief, and all for whom Notre Dame stands for so much will feel that acutely. But Good Friday is itself held in hope by the life giving and restoring power of Easter. 

For all who mourn and grieve may this week be a journey from death to new life.”

Can we this week come and die in order to find new life? What needs in your life tonight to die in order for new life to come? Where do you need to be sacrificial rather than getting all you want?

Over the last few months I have not got what I wanted. I didn’t want to leave my appointment in Hastings. It was going well! But circumstances have meant I’ve had to let it die. It’s painful and it hurts and tonight I don’t know what the future holds. I need help to walk the journey of bereavement and yes, death. But I believe at the foot of my own cross this week new life can come. I have to!

 Someone wrote this to me the other day: “Your ministry still continues to offer solace to others Ian even if you are not in church, do not underestimate the good you do so quietly.” 

There is a future, while there is still uncertainty - I don’t know where we will be living and what shape ministry is going to take but I’m glad of those who stand at the cross with me.

We need a cross shaped Christianity urgently. We need to focus on what Christ leads us to rather than our own agenda. When we let things go and stand at Calvary God can speak to us. If we always get what we want then we will never be open to new possibilities and if we aren’t prepared to see what dying might lead to we aren’t really doing it right, are we? 

The Monday of Holy Week: Lament

The reading for morning prayer today was from the first chapter of the book of Lamentations, a beautiful and honest piece of writing. That Jesus laments is really good news for us as it proves he lives the same life as us. 

“Is any suffering like my suffering...that the Lord inflicted on me...?”

That sounds just like what Jesus must have felt, doesn’t it? You can imagine him framing that question in his mind, wanting to fling it at those who passed him that day in Jerusalem, as he was led through the busy streets carrying a cross, and then, just outside the walls, was lifted high—stretched out, nailed, and naked for all to see. “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering...?”

 Those words were written about six centuries before Christ, by another sufferer in Jerusalem —some anonymous Jew who had survived (barely) the devastating siege and total destruction of the city by the Babylonian army. The poems that make up the book of Lamentations were composed by the shocked and shaken. The poems were ancient already in Jesus’ time, and almost certainly he knew them. So it is appropriate that Christians have traditionally read from the book of Lamentations on Good Friday, as though the words came from Jesus’ own mouth contemplating the worst humanity can do to another and the absence of God his Father, at least in his head:

“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that he dealt me,

that the Lord inflicted on me on the day of his heated wrath.”

Why is lament an important part of Holy Week and indeed our lives? Some people might say “get over it”; “pray harder”; “have more faith”; “God has a plan.” But the Bible is full of it! It has in it terrible cries of anguish and bewilderment, accusations directed against God. We hear them from Psalmists, from prophets, especially Jeremiah; from Job and Lamentations. We hear Jesus’ own cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Taking their clue from that cry from the cross, real Christians, not fluffy bunny ones, through the ages have not been afraid to say that these terrible words from the third chapter of Lamentations sound just like Jesus on the cross, having his say about God:

He has shattered my bones....

He has walled me in so I cannot break out.... He shuts out my prayer....

He makes me the target for his arrows....

He has filled me with bitterness....

So the biblical witness and the church’s tradition together declare this truth about the suffering of the faithful: it often feels like abandonment by God, or worse, like God is aiming at you with a deadly weapon. 

I read this in a commentary earlier today: 

“Suffering is one of the deepest mysteries of life with God.”

Believing that God is implicated in our suffering and yet somehow not being able to give up on God entirely—this is an abiding problem for us. It is not a problem we solve once and for all, either as individuals or as a community of faith; it is a problem with which we are struggling to live. Part of the honest struggle is crying out to God and others who share both our faith and our outrage. That crying out is itself part of our answer to Jesus’ question: Yes, Jesus, my sense of abandonment by God is a lot like yours.”

Life is hard and unjust and unfair and horrible sometimes. The innocent pay. The evil persists. It feels so wrong. But not admitting that I think makes it worse. To pretend everything is okay when it is not okay and to hide our feelings inside us and put on a fake smile because we don’t want to be vulnerable really doesn’t help our longer term healing from stuff that hits us. 

To really get Holy Week and the agony of torment, abandonment and crucifixion, we need to stand with Jesus in those things and not gloss over them too quickly. Before we can move on, we need to identity the hurt, name the pain and lament the loss, and yes —- get angry. 

Remember on this Monday of our Holy Week journey, the depths of human experience we go through. Remember it’s okay whatever we face to voice it. Who are the people you can safely be honest with? Say thank you to God for them tonight. Remember too God works from within the lament - resurrection comes out of brutality and injustice and the most hopeful words the poet says are still said on the rubble. 

“I thought...my hope had died before God.

...This I recall to my heart—therefore I do have hope:

The faithful acts of the Lord are not ended; his mercies are not finished; they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.” 

Lamentations chapter 1:

⁸ Jerusalem sinned grievously,
   so she has become a mockery;
all who honoured her despise her,
   for they have seen her nakedness;
she herself groans,
   and turns her face away. 

⁹ Her uncleanness was in her skirts;
   she took no thought of her future;
her downfall was appalling,
   with none to comfort her.
‘O Lord, look at my affliction,
   for the enemy has triumphed!’ 

¹⁰ Enemies have stretched out their hands
   over all her precious things;
she has even seen the nations
   invade her sanctuary,
those whom you forbade
   to enter your congregation. 

¹¹ All her people groan
   as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food
   to revive their strength.
Look, O Lord, and see how worthless I have become. 

¹² Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
   Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
   which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted
   on the day of his fierce anger.”

Palm Sunday: Protest

I want to use this “receiving” Holy Week to listen for words I react to, both in worship and in reading. The word that hit me in church this morning was “protest.” 

We joined in a procession round the village where we are, we sang Sing Hosanna, and we went into church, it was peaceful, apart from a woman looking behind her curtains it provoked little reaction. 

We were reminded in church that the procession into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday was very different. The Jesus minority was walking into a political hotbed and to challenge it was potentially life threatening. The might of Rome was in control. 

Perhaps some of those walking behind Jesus saw it as a party that Sunday morning. Until it got frightening.

Perhaps some of them started with good intentions but then got scared. 

The Anglican tradition reads the Passion narrative in Palm Sunday worship. As I listened this morning, the people didn’t protest long.

When Barabbas is chosen for release, they shout for Jesus to be crucified. 

When they are asked if they know him, one denies it, the others flee.

A few watch from a distance but at the crucifixion and agony of Jesus there are no protests. It all goes quiet. The injustice of the power crazy has won.

The protest is that of the dying Jesus as this week goes on. It is a revolution that the power of love defeats the love of power. The protest that says sorry world, your way cannot win. And today, anyone who says they are Christian have to live like we believe that —- and live working towards it. 

The trouble is we don’t protest for long. When it gets nasty, we say nothing even though we know what is happening around us is wrong. We don’t want to be unpopular by saying something controversial so we hide and pretend we weren’t involved and we are sorry that innocent people suffer or get wiped away through the actions of the powerful — but it costs too much to make a stand, sorry Lord.

The human bit of Holy Week is about people not protesting, forgetting what Jesus was all about, running away. We were told this morning we still have to sing our song - the loud hosanna - to a world where that song is not welcome but needed. Am I brave enough to sing it?

 The good news of this week is that despite ourselves - there is no health in us says the ancient prayer - the cross says no matter your lack of protest post the fluffy bunny stuff - I love you anyhow, no matter what you do to me. I love this picture - I took out of the window last night. The world tonight is dark. But there’s just enough light to hold on. Perhaps today we thank God for the people who just keep protesting! 

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

–Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents 82-83 (1770) in: Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 1, p. 146 (Liberty Fund ed. 1999).

It will pass

I was really sad when BBC Three went off ordinary telly. It had some compelling if awful programmes, Snog Marry Avoid being a highlight. So I was pleased the BBC had a rethink and at 10.35 on Monday to Wednesday, BBC Three programmes are on BBC One. In this slot, I discovered the second series of Fleabag, an absolute masterpiece. I’ve now watched the first series and it’s genius. 

In the second series, Fleabag has had desires for the “hot priest” knowing he is out of bounds. There’s a fabulous scene with Fiona Shaw as the psychiatrist - find it on i player. At the end of the series Fleabag in a heartbreaking scene says to him  "You know the worst thing is that I fucking love you. I love you.”

"No, no don't," she adds moments later before the priest replys. "No. Let's just leave that out there just for a second on its own. I love you."

Then, in one devastating motion, the priest reaches across, grabs her hand and says matter-of-factly: "It'll pass."

“It’ll pass.” Will it? When the pain of what we can’t have feels like it will never go away? I feel tonight for Fleabag. 

There are people tonight who feel their pain will never pass. It’s hard for them to accept what they want cannot be and the pain of that feels unbearable. To be told “it’ll pass” feels trite. Even if it will pass. 

Some of my readers will know through continued ill health I’ve had to decide to curtail a very happy appointment as Superintendent in Hastings after seven years of trying to serve the Circuit faithfully. I’m really struggling with the pain of having to make that decision. I feel guilty as I’m letting people down and I feel sad because I’m now in a very uncertain place. I have no answers about the future medically and about where we are going next. We are in the hands of others and we are both finding that hard. We need direction out of the pain - but that may not come yet. 

I guess I hold on in the pain of uncertainty that it WILL pass. In God’s time, but for now, I have to keep journeying and waiting for answers. Where is the path going? I have to accept ministry for the next year or so will be different. I don’t want to leave Hastings but I have no choice, it isn’t fair to the Circuit I deeply care about to keep them hanging on for answers when I might be well enough to come back to work. I don’t want to leave Hailsham at the end of May, I’ve loved living there and the church there, but I have no choice as they need their manse back! I have to accept an occupational health report says I will not be fit to return to work anytime soon. 

How do I live with the pain of bereavement until it passes? My occupational health report done by a very through doctor, says I need to do things slowly and take the pain afterwards to build up my resilience and self esteem again. I’ve discovered an app called Active 10. It encourages 10 minutes of brisk walking a day. I’ve done it over the last week and I’m pleased I’ve managed more than 10 minutes a day. I’ve also been invited to share in a service of worship on 5 May to see how I do. The occupational health report says the powers that be need to see me trying to judge if  I’m fit to enter stationing for 2020. On my walks daily out of the manse in Hailsham, I’ve discovered this pond. It’s a peaceful place and I’m finding it helpful to walk round it. I place my pain in the peace into the hands of God. 

“It’ll pass” - well maybe it will - but we need resources to live in the pain for now. Fleabag couldn’t have the love she longed for; I can’t have the ministry I long for; in the Brexit mess, people can’t have what they want, either those passionate about leaving, wanting the 52:48 vote actioned, or those who feel we need to think again. It’s frightening today that Nigel Farage has today formed a new political party. God forbid we move to the right. There are others pastorally who suddenly find life’s circumstances mean radical change initially that they just can’t cope with. 

We are about to enter Holy Week. I’ve been encouraged to go away for it and seek what God is saying. My regular readers might guess where we are heading! I’m taking books by my favourite authors, Barbara Brown Taylor, Nadia Bolz-Weber; Rachel Held Evans and Tom Wright’s book on the events of Holy Week, plus my Book of Common Prayer, and with them the acts of worship I attend, let’s see what God might say about this pain and how I move out of it. 

We were in Westminster Abbey the other day for evensong. The choir sang these words. Perhaps the key to surviving until the pain passes is to give our uncertainty and frustration to the Christ who suffers on a Cross. His pain was real and it lasted for some time. The Christian experience is to remember we are never alone in these times and to remember the end of the story, which will come in God’s time. The pain will not have the last word but sometimes we can do no other but live it but we aren’t alone in it. 

These words perhaps are my prayer tonight until it passes...

Oh, the sweetness, and delight 
of the human race, Jesus Christ, 
you who for our salvation 
were stretched out on the Cross, 
by all the limbs and bones 
of your body, which were stretched out 
in you, and were numbered, 
I ask you, O most merciful Jesus, 
to join my unhappy self 
to you thus, 
that through prosperity or adversity 
of this world, I may never 
be separated from you. Amen.

O suavitas et dulcedo (Philippe de Monte)