People of the light

Friday for me was one of those frustrating days you can sometimes have. In the morning I had a meeting that was quite important in Kings Lynn. I jollied along the A17 and then I saw a queue in the distance. The sat nav pulled me off the road and somehow eventually I ended up by the Adrian Flux arena. The roads into Lynn were all closed or blocked. I had to cancel my meeting. There had been a fatal accident. I had to come home but how? While working it out a man tapped my window. He didn’t have a sat nav or a map and was relying on signposts. “How do I get to Fakenham?” he asked. We were in Wiggenhall St Germans. Where on earth is that? I don’t know how I got home! 

Then on Friday afternoon we had to go to Lynn again. Coming home on the A1101 road with all those signs saying it is a race track and people have died on it, there was another crash. A motorcyclist had collided with a concrete post. The road was closed and everything came along Little Ramper just north of Leverington. 

Little Ramper is a tiny little Fen back road. I wouldn’t want to try and drive an articulated lorry along Little Ramper. The traffic jam was horrendous with one poor police lady in a fluorescent jacket trying to direct us all. The man in the lorry behind us yelled at one point “oh come on!” Everybody wanted to move forward. 

It is part of the human psyche to want to move forward, move on, get results, and not be stuck or have to go back.

 We are put on hold on the phone and we get annoying music played at us and we get cross, we write an e mail and want an instant answer, we don’t want to wait for our dinner when we go out eat. 

But sometimes in our faith and I’m sad to say in our churches, we act every way we can not to go forward, we revel in being stuck and moaning we are stuck or we want to go back to the old days when the sun shone every day and the church was full three times a day. 

The challenge I see for us is to ask are we really wanting to be God’s people in Christ constantly inviting us on, leading us through our traffic jams and changed plans through unexpected things on our road, to new possibilities and a kingdom of overwhelming life and hope? Or shall we just sit and moan or reopen as a museum to past glories? 

In her book Walking in Darkness and Light, Kathy Galloway writes that because we so rarely experience real darkness it is easy to forget what it’s actually like to walk in the dark. It takes longer to get to where you’re going, sometimes you don’t get there at all, you get lost or you get fed up or despondent, you turn back, you give up. 

In the dark you shorten your steps, bump into things and feel the physical tension as you stumble and feel your way ahead. In the dark you hear noises that seem different, louder, stronger, perhaps more threatening than they would in the day. Your imagination plays tricks, you see things that aren’t there and fears rise. Your heart starts to race and your breathing falters.

  

 Walking in the dark you are guarded, tense, fearful. Freedom, mobility, beauty, relaxation are all gravely limited. What a relief to see a light in the distance. You follow the light you have and pray for more light.

Darkness suggests a world where nobody can see very well or knows which way to turn; it conveys a sense of uncertainty, of being lost, of being threatened or afraid; it suggests conflict between races, nations, individuals of all types and ages; darkness fills our newspapers; and it is often darkness that causes us to pray.

 The way forward is this message: the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out.

 Communities this weekend are marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

 Once a year now we remember the atrocities beyond our comprehension as people of a certain creed or race were just wiped out. We need more than ever to be people of the light because the things that led to the gas chambers are still there. 

Prince Charles had it right in his speech this week visiting Jerusalem: 

“The lessons of the Holocaust are searingly relevant to this day. Seventy-five years after the Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart, still tell new lies, adopt new disguises, and still seek new victims.

All too often, language is used which turns disagreement into dehumanisation. Words are used as badges of shame to mark others as enemies, to brand those who are different as somehow deviant. All too often, virtue seems to be sought through verbal violence. All too often, real violence ensues, and acts of unspeakable cruelty are still perpetrated around the world against people for reasons of their religion, their race or their beliefs.” 

We need a different way. Jesus invites us to live it. So secondly today, we need to be prepared to move forward.

We are called to be distinctive in a dark and confusing world and that’s hard. 

But we can’t avoid the call to be involved. In America it was Martin Luther King Day this week. He once said “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.  The true neighbour will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others.”

Someone wrote this: “This may seem like a very difficult call – to get up out of the comfort and convenience of our boats to lift up our shaky voices and join this terrifying movement of following Jesus.  And yet, the good news is that Jesus does not call us to follow him by ourselves.  He calls us in community to follow him in shining His light in the darkness and lifting up our voices together to spread the good news of the kingdom.”

I was in Peterborough tonight. I was shocked by the number of homeless people there were in the city centre. Surely this cannot be right in January 2020. 

In the covenant prayer Methodists say this month, we say to God we will come with our fears and our doubts, with our hopes and our dreams and we will accept the yoke Jesus puts on us and we will willingly serve him as and where he chooses. 

We don’t have all the answers, we might be frightened, we might not be confident in the future of our churches but like fishermen of old the first step is to come, move, believe, walk, live in the light of new possibilities. 

Then, we have to be a people who actually put this stuff into action. We need once again to give the conviction that Christianity makes a difference. We need once again to enjoy exploring our faith together. We need once again to have confidence in our Church and do less moaning. I always say to churches when I’ve done a bit of time as their new minister what is it we do well here, and let’s do more of it, rather than everything. We need once again to remember the call of Christ on us. The Kingdom of heaven has come near. 

We are still relatively towards the beginning of a New Year. Maybe we have had a tough time, plans have been dashed and we’ve had to go home, maybe it’s all too overwhelming and we feel stuck on our own Little Ramper unable to think straight, or maybe we see something new.

 “I will make you…,” he says. He makes us more who we truly are to be. The light shines ahead of us and we need urgently in a world where darkness and separation and discrimination and blame are dominant for so many people who yearn every day for light and inclusion and community and a voice. Why can’t we learn? A lady was visiting the local church coffee bar last week. She told me her minister is gay. “But he is a very good preacher!” She was a bit aghast when I asked her why she used the word “but”. Remember the atrocities of genocide in Nazism began with a convincing of ordinary people the “other” didn’t fit. Victor Frankl is a hero of mine. Even in the darkness there is hope when those who’ll risk living light do something. 

 “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” 

As I often quote thinking about light, one little candle says to the darkness, I beg to differ. 

We can make a difference. 

Epiphany Today - the end of a blogging series

I’ve been blogging through Advent and Christmas and I end my little series today as we reach the feast of Epiphany, the day we remember wise men coming to the toddler Jesus. It’s much later in the story than most people place it. Hence, this skit has been doing the rounds! 

As we reach the end of Christmas I notice some things in the Epiphany narrative. First, to really find Jesus takes some effort and some searching. The wise men, probably astrologers, planned their journey for ages. They assumed where they would find the new king. They were wrong. The star led them to unexpected surroundings and to a very different king indeed. Maybe the story as it ends reminds us that when we think we have God all sorted, he confounds our expectations and our careful planning. And we have to think again! 

I think taking more time to read the Bible, alone, and together would be a good new year resolution. I’m astounded the Circuit I find myself in has virtually no study groups in it. I keep quietly offering to start some, but I guess I’m only around for another eight months! The joy of exploring Scripture together or in a social media group is that someone else shows us something we had never thought of in a verse or a story. The wise men were led to a new experience through being led to God’s place of good news and reign, rather than a human palace. Where is the star leading us as we look up? Do we need to alter our plans however careful they have been? 

We’ve been tonight to the Epiphany service in Peterborough Cathedral. As the Gospel from Matthew was read the last verse of the reading hit me. “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” Herod, representing dodgy power crazy leaders of the world in history and today, was rattled by a rival king. So he orders a vile act of genocide and we know the holy family are soon to be refugees in a foreign country. 

I was badly bullied at school. I used to have my head kicked against a wall a lot. My pants and socks would be nicked from the changing room after PE! Children can be vile! The bully wants you to retaliate. They don’t want you to ignore them or avoid them but they certainly don’t listen to reason if you choose to engage with them. The nasty letter writer or the campaign of hate mastermind often is the loser as people soon tire of their antics. Someone wise, probably reading this, taught me to respond to nasty e mails “thank you for your comments. They have been noted.”

Herod, and his like, in the end, do not win. The peaceful kingdom wrong-foots them. I find it powerful “their own country” was probably Iraq. This Epiphany sees Iraq and Iran once again volatile after President Trump’s decision to take out an Iranian military leader. If ever the world needs “another road” it is as Christmas ends on this 6th January night. 

To return by another road needs courage, conviction, and hope. To return by another road needs a firm belief we need to follow a new path to find rest and peace. To return from the Christ child by another road means we have experienced new birth, new joy, we have like shepherds and wise men seen his glory. To return from the Christ child by another road means we make a difference in our own country because of what has happened to us. To return by another road is an act of commitment to say no to death and destruction and threats and bombs, and yes to peace and love, light and love. We have to journey to find what we seek and rest in its presence and find life different.

We are currently living in a vast former vicarage with a huge staircase. My little Velvet cat who needs to know where I am at all times is getting used to the stairs having to be climbed to find me at bedtime. She is hesitant to come up but when she makes the journey she finds my lap and snuggles up and all is well. 

What difference has making the journey to incarnation made to us this season? Like wise men of old, I guess if we have really understood it and found it then we will live the rest of this already bumpy year very differently. Rebecca Long Bailey has just entered the contest to become Labour Party leader. She used tonight these words about her party but I want to use them about Christians and other people of faith having a burning desire to travel differently and hopefully with fire in their bellies. As my late beloved theological college principal Graham Slater used to say assessing worship when he turned up at places like Bacup or Atherton or Rawtenstall and you’d come out of the vestry and think “oh no, he’s here” and he’d sit with his eyes shut all service, “where was your clincher, young man?” Meaning, how are these folks going to apply the story you’ve just shared with them? 

“You are part of a courageous movement of millions of people who are ready to stake everything for a better world.” 

In the cathedral tonight for some reason I remembered this poem by Edwina Gateley: 

 We are called to say yes.

That the kingdom might break through
To renew and to transform
Our dark and groping world.

We stutter and we stammer
To the lone God who calls
And pleads a New Jerusalem
In the bloodied Sinai Straights.

We are called to say yes
That honeysuckle may twine
And twist its smelling leaves
Over the graves of nuclear arms.

We are called to say yes
That children might play
On the soil of Vietnam where the tanks
Belched blood and death.

We are called to say yes
That black may sing with white
And pledge peace and healing
For the hatred of the past.

We are called to say yes
So that nations might gather
And dance one great movement
For the joy of humankind.

We are called to say yes
So that rich and poor embrace
And become equal in their poverty
Through the silent tears that fall.

We are called to say yes
That the whisper of our God
Might be heard through our sirens
And the screams of our bombs.

We are called to say yes
To a God who still holds fast
To the vision of the Kingdom
For a trembling world of pain.

We are called to say yes
To this God who reaches out
And asks us to share
His crazy dream of love.

Having journeyed, Velvet has what she has sought. A nice lap! Our prayer surely on this Epiphany feast is that journeying, finding, celebrating and returning, we might know a peace and a strength to keep going whether this year brings.

Thank you for journeying with me these past few weeks. I continue to be amazed anyone reads this stuff and more than that, find it helpful! 

Knowing we matter - a Covenant sermon

It has not been the best of starts to 2020 has it? I’m always fascinated that people need to mark the turn of the year. Some gather with friends on New Years Eve, as we did, others fill pubs and have rowdy parties, others stand out in the cold in big cities and watch firework displays. The New Year is going to be the best yet! 

Then five days in we’ve had Australia in flames, in 45 degree heat with some people and animals dying and others fleeing their homes or trying to save them, and tempers rising. They call the Prime Minister an idiot and refuse to shake his hand. Then quite unbelievably your man Donald Trump, apparently with no authorisation takes out an Iranian military leader by drone and bombs start flying about and the world is suddenly very unstable.

How do we enter a New Year when it’s all a bit mad? It’s hard to go forward when going forward might bring uncertainty and even danger. 

January of course is named after Janus, a deity found in the religion and myth of ancient Rome. The Romans  believed that Janus was the god of doors, beginnings and endings, and transitions. In accordance to the role he played, Janus is depicted as a two-faced god, one face looking to the future and the other looking to the past. There is a tendency in us to want to go back. The past was glorious in memory even if it wasn’t in reality. 

Well, I’m very anxious about the future, but I come this morning to say this. Maybe to get through the year we need to remember what we have just celebrated. I went in the big Tesco Extra in Wisbech the other day and all of Christmas had gone. It was the 30 December. The shop was full of Valentine’s Day and Creme Eggs. 

Few things pack up and disappear so quickly as the Christmas spirit. After what seems like months of preparation, for many people the point of Christmas seems to evaporate after any unwanted presents have been recycled, the last remnants of the turkey have been transformed into a final dish, and the pine needles have been swept from the floor. Few, if any, celebrate the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas now, losing that gradual sense of unwrapping the Divine Mystery that is the Incarnation.

 The gift of the Christ-Child is not only for Christmas; he is for the whole of the year. Jesus is God’s outrageous gift of generosity who has come to address the chasm that yawns between the Divine and the human.

 Jesus, Word made flesh, the physical presence of God, takes us from the reality of the incarnation to the unfolding realisation of who and what God is and does.

 Apart from God’s inspiration and engagement, humanity would have remained stuck in a place far from hope and far from heaven. The reality of human helplessness and hopelessness can only be transformed by the unshakeable presence of the living God. When the novelty of secular festivities has long gone, the celebration of God’s inventive appearance and reappearance in the history and experience of humanity shines an inextinguishable light into the darkest of days.

So I’m glad the lectionary for the first Sunday of the year today was what is perhaps the greatest passage in the whole of the Bible. The prologue to John’s Gospel, in which the gospel writer tries to explain what God coming into the world means. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

What does this mean for our journey? 

Two points I would offer:

One, we matter! God cares enough to join us every day in 2020. In the Christmas story, angels say over and over again “do not fear”! 

Those three words are in the Bible 365 times, one for every day of the year, well, maybe we can fear one day this year as it is a leap year. God has come into our world in Jesus to share all of life with us. He has in Jesus became flesh, one of us. 

I like the American writer Nadia Bolz Weber on this: 

“God came and made God’s home with us and in a real body.

So I wonder if maybe in the incarnation God has done nothing less than blessed all human flesh. So, let us remember that our good and imperfect bodies are born of God and so we have no business calling what God pronounced good anything but good. Because if the Word became flesh and lived among us ~ then despite our botoxic quest for the illusion of perfection, your body is beautiful to God.

Take care of your beautiful selves.”

 The Covenant God says to us, you matter. No matter how you are, you matter. The Covenant God says to our churches, you matter. It doesn’t matter how many of you there are, you matter. When I went on my visit to my Circuit to be, we arrived at a little chapel in a pretty village.  Some ladies came out to meet us and looked a bit hesitant. Lis said to them, “It’s okay, he does small churches!” And they immediately relaxed and we had some banter. They needed me to tell them they matter and I am not going to close them. Here is the good news: we are no longer our own, but his. 

Despite the world of unhinged leaders and so much trouble, God has it all under control. Someone once described the covenant as “abandonment to divine providence.” I like that a lot.

Then this: God’s love is made visible in the vulnerability of a tiny child and that love underpins the whole universe. 

That gives us the courage and strength to play our part in bringing healing and hope to our families, our communities and to the world itself. For “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” We have power to become children of God. We can be the people God wants us to be. The Covenant response is to give our best, employed or laid aside, doing or suffering, full or empty, offering all we have and are as and where he chooses. Someone sent me this poem by Maya Angelou the other day and I share some words of it... 

My wish for you

Is that you continue

         Continue

To be who and how you are

To astonish a mean world

With your acts of kindness

         Continue

To allow humour to lighten the burden

Of your tender heart

         Continue

In a society dark with cruelty

To let the people hear the grandeur

Of God in the peals of your laughter

          Continue

To let your eloquence

Elevate the people to heights

They had only imagined

         Continue

To remind the people that

Each is as good as the other

And that no one is beneath

Nor above you

              Continue

To dare to love deeply

And risk everything

For the good thing

       Continue

To float

Happily in the sea of infinite substance

Which set aside riches for you

Before you had a name

       Continue

And by doing so

You and your work

Will be able to continue

Eternally

We don’t just matter, what we do matters too. We can’t do much about the war and injustice apart from prayer and protest but we can change lives, one by one, through just living Christianity. Can’t we?

And here’s a final encouragement. The Jesus who has just been born will face trouble in his life. And we know He will be killed by the political and religious leaders of His day. 

And we know, that somehow, the power of this person, this hope, will be enough to roll away the stone, and pierce the darkness, and lift the gloom, and keep the promise, and be Emmanuel. God with us. for always. 

Whether in a crib in Bethlehem, or on a cross at Calvary. Whether in the fire-blackened regions of Australia, or the war-fearing countries of the Middle East. Jesus is the word made flesh and even in the mess we can behold his glory.

It was a cold and misty Christmas morning in the very depth of winter after a heavy fall of snow and only Farmer Evans and the Reverend Joseph Lancaster managed to arrive at the church for the morning service.

'Well,' said the Vicar laconically, 'I guess there's no point in having a service today.'

'Well that's not how I see it.' said Farmer Evans smartly. 'If only one cow turns up at feeding time, I still feed it.'

May we this year know that God has come.

May we know we matter.

May we make a difference.

May we feed people, every day. 

That is the Methodist covenant. Let’s on this fifth day of January with so much uncertainty, pray it and live it.