Straight talking

I’m confused. Please help me! 

I’ve just read on the front page of one of tomorrow’s Sunday papers and now seen in Robert Jenrick’s tweet below that all of us who are shielding will be allowed out from Monday. I’m amazed that major government changes to what is allowed like this i discover first on the BBC news website and then on Twitter on Mr Jenrick’s account.

“From Monday, the 2.2 million people who’ve been shielding can go outside for first time.

This will be with either members of their household, or, if they live alone, to meet one other person.

Full guidance will follow tomorrow.” 

I so want to go out and see other people. But am

I safe? I can’t help thinking this is all too fast. There hasn’t been a hint of this change coming all week. Schools can go back on Monday - though some aren’t going to because heads and governing bodies think it is too early; we can meet folk in our gardens though they really shouldn’t use the loo inside; and horse racing is back also from Monday. As Matt Hancock tweeted earlier:

Thanks to the nation’s resolve, horseracing is back from Monday.

Wonderful news for our wonderful sport.

To which someone responded: 

If you wanted to show how out of touch you are, you've succeeded admirably.

I’m as frustrated by this being unable to live fully as anyone. We are having to go back to the Old Vicarage to sort stuff before removers come to put our stuff into storage from June 12 and tonight I drove past a pizza shop and I’d love a pizza - Pizza Perfection in Sutton Bridge is one of the best pizza take aways I’ve ever experienced. But we cannot risk being out yet, can we? I can’t risk interacting with society just yet. Professor Van Tam earlier said we are at a dangerous point. I’m

amazed a major change in government policy has been leaked at 10pm on a Saturday night. There was no sign of any change for those shielding all week! 

I guess all of this comes down to who you trust. I’m listening far more intensely to the likes of Professor Van Tam, who I’ve always liked through this and to Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance than I am to Boris Johnson and Robert Jenrick and Oliver Dowden. The latter really wanted us to get excited that horse racing is back from Monday. 

I want to trust the politicians who are guiding us through this crisis. I feel for them as this is unprecedented. But suddenly announcing the shielding and the vulnerable can go out and meet people, well, it feels like it’s all too fast, especially as the scientists warn government the R is still very near 1. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really pleased, if it is safe, to have limited interaction with wider society. But I’m not yet sure it is... 

For now, I will choose to almost shield and get my food shopping delivered. We will come out of this stronger, but for now, we dig in and we keep going. There is a bright future ahead. But we have to be careful for now, don’t we? 

I want to engage with society more. I’m bored of staying in. I want those who yearn to see their grandchildren to be able to see them. I want life to move on. But I need to know the answer to this question: 

How am I safer now than I was when you locked me down in March, Mr Jenrick? 

A Church Anniversary sermon for two former lovely churches

Passages for reflection: Acts 2 (all of it!) and    John 20: 19 - 23

This Sunday we reach another major festival of the Christian year, the feast of Pentecost, the day God’s Holy Spirit came upon his people, the birthday of the Church! 

In the time BC, before coronavirus, this Sunday I should have been leading Church Anniversary services in two of my former churches in Rutland, Uppingham in the morning (pictured above) and Empingham (pictured below) in the afternoon. I have promised both churches I would still write them an Anniversary sermon, so here it is. The day of Pentecost is the right day to celebrate the Church, universally and locally.

At Pentecost we usually think about the Church being out in the world. At Whitsuntide in the past I’ve led ecumenical services in the park and we’ve had praise parties in the community, and in my first appointment Whit Friday was a huge day when the churches walked their streets each behind a banner and a brass band with people on the pavements in huge numbers watching. We would then go back to church for sticky buns with icing on the top of them. No one could ever tell me why! 

Some history of this for those of you who have never done Whit Friday!

“ Schools and factories would be closed and in the 1800’s people stirred early in the morning, as early as 4am, to prepare for the day and with the absence of any licensing laws the doors of pubs and shops would open at 5am to begin the day.

Led by a band in a Procession of Witness people would walk on a tour round their local area with the church officers, vicar or minister, the cross and children carrying baskets of flowers or ribbons attached to their Church banners.  Whit Friday was the Church's Annual Day known as the "Scholars' Walk" when the girls would have a new dress and the boys would have new trousers. Neighbours, friends and relatives would line the streets to witness the procession having often given a penny or two towards the new clothes.” You have to experience a Mossley Whit Friday else you haven’t really lived!  I do remember when it was my turn to lead the ecumenical service on the market ground before the walk being told off I’d gone on too long. I dared to read the account of Pentecost from Acts 2 but “we only have a hymn and a prayer” the scary person from the Traditional Whit Friday Committee told me. I think they’d missed the point a bit.  Here’s a scary picture from 1998!!!!! The account of the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 is quite remarkable. There is an event, a response and an outcome. First, the event: Luke notes that it is the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, so already several things are going on. Originally a harvest thanksgiving, it is also the celebration of the giving of the Law to Moses at Sinai, one of the foundational moments in the Exodus.  Luke finds this Pentecost almost impossible to describe. It is like flames coming out of your head; it is like being drunk at nine o’clock in the morning. The event is real, but – like the Resurrection and Ascension – it is elusive. Language struggles to describe it. Then, the response: Peter addresses the crowd. He uses Scripture to encourage, illustrate and call, telling them about a crucified Lord who is yet alive and active. Finally, the outcome: repentance and baptism, and then, the formation of a new community, holding possessions in common, meeting each others’ needs, united in prayer, worship and teaching; and with evangelism not as a separate, special task, but the normal outcome of the life of the Church: “the Lord added daily to their number those who were being saved.”  If Pentecost is a celebration of the birth of the Church and the Holy Spirit coming on people turning them into a dynamic force, what does being that Church mean today?  If you read Acts 2 and then the account of Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit in John’s Gospel on demoralised disciples in the upper room, you can see different things a Spirit filled Church might think important. Two churches I had the privilege to serve in Rutland are two of millions of groups of Christians across the world. On Whit Sunday, at a Church Anniversary, we celebrate that God hasn’t finished with the Church yet and can still use us as he used those first disciples who, before the Spirit came upon them, were an unreliable shower. I think we celebrate two things:  One, that the Holy Spirit unites us as a people. Different people from many nations gathered in Jerusalem heard the message in their own tongue. The Church is a rich tapestry of diverse people united by Christ into a mystery. There is a deep fellowship if we do it right.  Uppingham folk, I remember my time with you being a time when I was part of a lively caring fellowship. You were not frightened to disagree energetically sometimes! I remember a good Friday morning drop in, and a very close Wednesday evening  house group, and some folk who I could trust who let me be when I was with them. You remain an attractive community for people to join and receive care. The Spirit brings people together. I wonder whether people who have been joining in on line worship are longing to be included and nurtured.  Then the Holy Spirit makes us look outward. Those disciples behind locked doors, quaking in fear, were turned into brave and confident evangelists. Some were martyred for daring to name Jesus in the world. At this mad time, the Church has not shut, it has been deployed.  Empingham folk, I remember my time with you because we shared a vision to serve our village together.  Ian and Eileen spoke to me within days of my arrival in the Circuit to say they had a vision that their church should be refurbished and that we might get the village post office reinstated on our premises. As I looked at their dreary worship space and saw water dripping in through the ceiling and noting the size of their mostly elderly congregation, I thought they were quite mad.    But Empingham taught me never to mistrust a vision. After regular prayer, a lot of fund raising, and encouraging each other to keep going, we put a mobile post office in our hall on a Monday, and four years into the appointment, we reopened a refurbished church with most of the bills paid. Empingham will always be special to me, I think you awoke in me a love for rural mission, where a small group of people with some energy can do amazing things. Dreams and visions have to lead to service and involvement where we are meant to be.  So, what’s the point of a Spirit filled community especially at a time of coronavirus?  First, people ARE searching and we need to be there to listen to them. Many are worried and unsure about the meaning of life. House groups like the one in Uppingham are important but equally as important is the cup of tea and the conversation with someone letting them know we care. What’s our task today? Look at the picture below. For some it’s meeting a deep philosophical need, for others it’s comfort today like fries on a pier!  Then we are called to be where we are needed most. Empingham had a vision of a post office, it’s still open seventeen years later. For others it’s getting involved in food banks and other agencies badly needed in this uncertain climate where its looking like we will see more poverty and high unemployment again. The Spirit enables us to be Christ to others. We need to be bold in our engaging with the world and speaking out if we see injustice, even if that costs us with some letters saying “please don’t get involved — and stay out of politics!”  So happy Anniversary to Uppingham and Empingham and a good Pentecost for us all. The Church us having to reassess what matters at the moment. Much may not reopen when we can go back into our buildings. Can we be more theocentric because maybe over the last two months we might have seen God matters and we could be a bit less building centred? Let’s see!  Whatever, I’m convinced if we are faithful there are many new adventures and surprises to come. You don’t receive the Holy Spirit and have it comfortable all the time. Believe me!  Spirit of justice and community Give us the confidence to challenge injustice And to nurture the flame of justice until it burns brightly And may the Spirit of justice and community Accompany you and light your way   May this Spirit move you, heal you, Guide you and challenge you Call you to action and to prayer   May this passion for justice burn through you and in you And may it warm the hearts of those around you Encouraging hope and overcoming fear.  Amen Linda Jones: CAFOD

Aldersgate Sunday: Methodism for today

Passage for reflection: Mark 16: 14 to end.

This Sunday is Aldersgate Sunday, the day we remember how John Wesley, an Anglican priest, struggling with his faith and his purpose, went unwillingly to a meeting in Aldersgate Street in London. 

Here’s the famous quote we remember every 24 May, from this day in 1738:

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.”

Three days earlier, on Whit Sunday, 21 May, Charles Wesley had a similar experience. He wrote in his journal that the Spirit of God “chased away the darkness of my unbelief.” I also love how he describes his palpitations!

On 24 May 1738, John Wesley felt God’s presence in a way he had never experienced before. Saving faith was given to him, and the assurance of sins forgiven.

He was so excited by this turn of events that he felt he must share his news with his brother Charles. Charles was in bed, recovering from pleurisy, when John came round, late on the evening of 24 May, to tell him all that had happened. What John didn’t know was that just three days previously, on Whit Sunday, Charles had had a very similar experience. In his sickbed Charles had written a hymn to describe his spiritual reawakening, and the brothers and their friends now sang this new song together:

Where shall my wandering soul begin?
How shall I all to heaven aspire?
A slave redeemed from death and sin,
A brand plucked from eternal fire,
How shall I equal triumphs raise,
Or sing my great deliverer’s praise.

I wonder on this day, the closest day we have as a feast day as a denomination, whether we can find in this story of conversion, the future of the Methodist people John Wesley founded. As we are seeing in this coronavirus crisis we shall have to “do church differently” for a long time, maybe this is time given to us by God to only keep alive what is important. What do you think? 

First, maybe we need to rediscover being a people who enable the warmed heart or strange palpitations! John Wesley went to a meeting where he heard someone reading from Luther’s preface to Romans and suddenly it all made sense to him. His faith had been out of a book, now it was personal. He was convinced he was forgiven and that Christ had died for him. It was like the pop song that has just come into my head by Depeche Mode: 

“Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there...”

Can we be a church again that leads people to a personal faith in Jesus? John Wesley put the Methodist people into classes where they prayed together, read the Bible together, supported each other and shared testimony with each other what God had done in their lives since last they met. They were also accountable to each other. I love that an early Methodist hymn book had a section in it called “hymns for backsliders”! 

We need to rediscover the power of small groups. We may need to meet virtually for a while. For our folk not on line we may need to provide study material on paper. We also need to put pastoral care higher up on our agenda. In this strange time, some churches have put their folk into groups of three or four and they ring each other up to give some support and care. I think that will need to continue. 

The warmed heart comes when we suddenly see this Jesus can change our lives. Think back how it happened to you. For me it came through the old Methodist Association of Youth Clubs (MAYC) London Weekend when we went to the Albert Hall to join thousands of others for inspiring worship and I just was overawed by it, and it also came through the preaching of my minister when I was a teenager, the Rev Geoffrey Hawkridge, at Folly Methodist Church pictured below. He was enthralling as a preacher and it was as though he was speaking to me only. He wrote in my service book on my confirmation his favourite verse of Scripture, Isaiah 26: 3:

3 You will keep in perfect peace
    those whose minds are steadfast,
    because they trust in you.

The warmed heart. Remember Jesus gave people time and having been given time and care they believed in him. 

Then secondly I think we need to discover our call to go. John Wesley would later say “I look upon the world as my parish.” Sadly keeping the church going has meant we have in recent times acted as though the parish is our world. Maybe, just maybe, we will, even when we are allowed back into our buildings, think about our buildings less and being in the world more. I love cathedrals and I think they have it right. We take in the space and the awe of choral evensong to be energised to leave different people. We sit and pray I the holy space with the Church triumphant in order to be what the 1936 Methodist Hymn Book calls the Church militant. We need holy spaces to connect with God again and find what Wesley found. There is a call to get churches open for private prayer. It isn’t safe yet, but it will come. Remember in the afternoon of 24 May 1738, John Wesley went to evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral, where the choir were singing Henry Purcell’s setting of Psalm 130: “out of the depths have I called unto thee.” Maybe sitting taking in inspired him to take the next step. He saw his spiritual unrest. What made him go to that meeting later albeit “unwillingly”?

Jesus’ last command to his disciples is to “go” - go into all the world. The disciples were to be his witnesses and take him into the places which needed good news. Methodism has always been a movement. Remember John Wesley was an Anglican priest frustrated that the church of his day was not reaching ordinary people. Remember he remained an Anglican! We were a revival movement called to shake up the C of E not meant in his day to be separate. His preaching outside enabled him to reach huge crowds. Perhaps our corporate worship will start again outside where this virus spreads less than inside. Drive through Methodism!

John Wesley encouraged his people to get involved in society, to challenge injustice and to go where no one had gone before. He wrote on medicine and encouraged schools and his last letter before death was to Wilberforce about the evil of slavery. 

Our best work as a denomination is still done when we go. We are called to know what is going on in the world and protest where things are wrong with the message of the Gospel. If we spend all our energy keeping a building open then we have lost our way. I keep remembering when I worked at the Overseas Division of the Methodist Church from 1986 to 1991, pictures of missionaries on the walls, and a great chart of their years of service, in what was then Committee Room A. Some of them didn’t last very long but they had a conviction that “going out” was their call.

I found these words, which, while a challenge, sum up our evangelistic task:

“ People sometimes argue that involvement in political life involves getting our hands dirty, so is something Christians should avoid. Butwe believe in a God who is present I  everything, including political institutions, a God who is heard.”

President Trump on Friday said that churches should open “right away, this weekend” as they are essential and America needs prayer. He has caused some churches to remind him they have not shut, despite a lockdown. I like this response from the Bishop elect of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Missouri:

"The work of the church is essential. 

The work of caring for the lonely, the marginalized, and the oppressed is essential. 

The work of speaking truth to power and seeking justice is essential. 

The work of being a loving, liberating, and life giving presence in the world is essential. 

The work of welcoming the stranger, the refugee and the undocumented is essential. 

The work of reconciliation and healing and caring is essential. 

The church does not need to “open” because the church never “closed”. We who make up the Body of Christ, the church, love God and our neighbours and ourselves so much that we will stay away from our buildings until it is safe. We are the church."

We are to go. 

Then finally, I think we need to rediscover what John Wesley called “the optimism of grace.” This, for me, is the most exciting bit of Methodist theology. That God in Jesus reaches out to us in love and takes away our sins, even ours, is quite something. When we receive grace, it communicates forgiveness and makes renewal possible. God's love is intended to be received and to create a bond that encourages further receiving and giving of love. This bond enables us to share in the nature of God and be renewed in God's image. God continually initiates and empowers to provide new possibilities for us to respond in love.

I can do no better here than quote from a blog called Holiness Today:

“God's prevenient, co-operant grace is crucial to the practice of ministry. We join with God in the work to redeem humanity and all creation. As we proclaim the gospel in our cultural contexts, we can be assured that God is already working to restore all of creation.

Prevenient, co-operant grace also reminds us that regardless of a person's religious background or heritage, God is at work in that person's life. God is drawing and calling all people to respond properly and live abundant lives.

Prevenient grace has important implications for evangelism. Wesley is convinced that God's Spirit is at work everywhere in the world, extending God's love to all peoples. Christians can be assured that the Spirit is already present and at work before we arrive to evangelize. Before we act, God is acting to reconcile and give new birth. Wesley's "optimism of grace" describes the hope we enjoy that God is universally active today and always.”

Here’s the message of Methodism. We are to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land and we are to remember this grace, freely given, chiefly in the cross of Christ, is for everyone. Charles Wesley’s hymns have the word “all” in them a lot. We need to be optimistic again. We need to believe again in what we say we believe. It IS good news for everyone. If our Methodism doesn’t encourage people then well, I’m not sure we have any purpose. We also need to mean that all are welcome, and I mean all. Our table is an open one. 

People sometimes ask ministers what their favourite hymn is. I have several, but this one for me sums up what we stand for and what I try inadequately to share in ministry. 

Let earth and heaven agree,
Angels and men be joined,
To celebrate with me
The Saviour of mankind;
To adore the all-atoning Lamb,
And bless the sound of Jesu's name.

Jesus, transporting sound!
The joy of earth and heaven;
No other help is found,
No other name is given,
By which we can salvation have;
But Jesus came the world to save.

Jesus, harmonious name!
It charms the hosts above;
They evermore proclaim
And wonder at his love;
'Tis all their happiness to gaze,
'Tis heaven to see our Jesu's face.

His name the sinner hears,
And is from sin set free;
'Tis music in his ears,
'Tis life and victory;
New songs do now his lips employ,
And dances his glad heart for joy.

Stung by the scorpion sin,
My poor expiring soul
The balmy sound drinks in,
And is at once made whole:
See there my Lord upon the tree!
I hear, I feel, he died for me.

O unexampled love!
O all-redeeming grace!
How swiftly didst thou move
To save a fallen race!
What shall I do to make it known
What thou for all mankind hast done?

O for a trumpet voice,
On all the world to call!
To bid their hearts rejoice
In him who died for all;
For all my Lord was crucified,
For all, for all my Saviour died!

Isn’t that fabulous? Read all seven verses slowly. Then ask before lockdown, what was your church spending its time and energy on? Remember John Wesley’s last words on earth: “the best of all is, God is with us.” He believed in an incarnate God who comes into the world to embrace it with unexampled love and all redeeming grace. 

So on this day, as we remember our beginnings out of conversion, we ask what we are for. We adapt to a new world around us and we hold on to what we know to be certain. That God’s love is sufficient. We take it in, we go with it, we party with its optimism and we celebrate no one is outside it even if we try and exclude them or ignore them. 

“A Methodist is one who has ‘the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him’; one who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength.’ God is the joy of his heart, and the desire of his soul; which is constantly crying out. ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee! My God and my all! Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.’

John Wesley’s words are a call to us today. What will we do with it? I rather like a new thing for us to consider - a Methodist way of life. Maybe we need to concentrate on these priorities: I think they could have been written by Wesley himself. 

The calling of the Methodist Church is to respond to the gospel of God’s love in Christ and to live out its discipleship in worship and mission.

As far as we are able, with God’s help:

Worship

• We will pray daily.
• We will worship with others regularly.
• We will look and listen for God in Scripture, and the world.

Learning and Caring

• We will care for ourselves and those around us.
• We will learn more about our faith.
• We will practise hospitality and generosity.

Service

• We will help people in our communities and beyond.
• We will care for creation and all God’s gifts.
• We will challenge injustice.

Evangelism

• We will speak of the love of God.
• We will live in a way that draws others to Jesus.
• We will share our faith with others.

May we be a blessing within and beyond God’s Church, for the transformation of the world.

So happy Aldersgate Sunday, everyone. I think our beloved church has a future if we really think about what we are for again. It’s far far more than fund raising to keep things going. Like John Wesley wanted, we need to be relevant. So let’s not be frightened if the thing is a bit different when we emerge out of this mad time. It may not be a bad thing to have a radical shake up. We need some Wesleys today! Don’t we? 

Mental Health - it’s okay to ask for help.

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week. 

I saw this morning a campaign to get men to speak out if they need help. This has led me to share that at crisis points in my life I have found counselling a life saver. Someone else has had to say to me “I think you need help” because I am one of those people who will just carry on and I’ll say everything is fine when it isn’t and it clearly isn’t fine for those around me as I either go in on myself and become even more introvert than I usually am, or my mood becomes irritable and I will not be very nice, or perhaps worse of all I will worry until I am ill because I don’t want to face what might need unravelling.

But I want to say those times when a counsellor has enabled me in a six or twelve week block of sessions to tell my story of where I found myself each time and gently ask me questions so I could put myself back together, have been life giving. 

Whether it was dealing with my upbringing, or after a time of being bullied or when my first marriage broke down or more recently dealing with my loss of identity having found myself unwell and having to cease Circuit ministry for a while, I was made to see there was a way forward. Often the best bit of advice given to us is what we all forget: “you have forgotten to look after you, haven’t you?”

Mental well-being begins when we can look after ourselves, when we can love ourselves. But when we are at rock bottom we don’t think there is much in us to love. So we beat ourselves up with thoughts that we are worthless and useless and when things go wrong it is all our fault.

I’ve suffered at times with mild depression and being so unwell a year or so ago I used to sit in the manse in Hailsham with no purpose and couldn’t see the point of anything. I even gave up on the Church. I made every excuse not to go on a Sunday morning. Lis had to drag me back saying if I didn’t go back soon I would never go back. 

It’s no accident Jesus says we are to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. If we don’t love ourself, we cannot give out to others. But like the times in my life when I’ve been very low, there are people around us who can’t see anything good in themselves. For some, they suffer with desperate mental unrest and anxiety every day and need help. The charity MIND is literally saving lives as over the past few years government funding for mental health has been savagely cut. We need to lobby our MPs that mental illness is equally as debilitating as physical illness. The trouble is you can mend a broken leg, you cannot see what someone is suffering with inside, and there is still a tendency in society to say to people “pull yourself together and get over it.”

Which brings me to the other side of what needs saying in a mental health awareness week. We need to be less cruel as a people. I’m acutely aware when I lead public worship that in front of me are a group of people, who have all come to church with different needs and problems. And in that group, will be someone facing things no one else may have a clue about. We easily label or want everyone to be happy, and we will often say “I know how you feel.” We don’t know how they feel. We all deal with things differently. We need to walk alongside people with patient caring concern, and our care unless it is dangerous not to share something we discover, should be confidential. I’ve sat in too many prayer meetings where prayer has been a string of things someone has found out about someone they were not meant to share! I keep saying now and after this crisis is over we will need to be with people who need help in picking up the pieces of life again or to mourn what they have lost.

We binge watched the series Normal People on the I player. Without giving a spoiler if you are watching it each week, one episode at a time, it is brilliant the story includes a sensitive dealing of a breakdown one of the characters has. That mental health is in a drama on prime time television can only improve our awareness of a subject many still choose to pretend isn’t there. I remember telling a group of pastoral visitors we would be having a training session on mental health — they were horrified! Almost like saying “we don’t have and don’t want those sort of people here.” We have come a long way from when we locked people away in an asylum and we called them imbeciles, lunatics and idiots, but there is still an unkind stigma out there.

I ask tonight please pray for people who are struggling. I ask tonight we might become a safe place where people can find what they need to be the people God intends them to be. I ask tonight we might take time knowing what agencies and resources there are to refer people to if they come to us in distress and we need more expert help for them. I ask tonight most of all we might just be more kind. 

I therefore commend two pieces of writing to you both of which I found this morning. One is in the form of a picture of a discussion someone had with the author Charlie Mackesy, and the other is today’s poem by the wonderful poet, Brian Bilston. 

Brian has it so right. If we spread kindness where might we be then. Enjoying together a world where everyone matters and where people struggle that’s okay, because we will not judge them we will care for them. 

“Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counsellors there is safety.”

Proverbs 11: 14 

That verse calls us to care and then for ourselves when we struggle ourselves and feel worthless there is this one, also from Proverbs.

Going away...

Passage for reflection: John 14: 15 - 21

“I will not leave you orphaned, I am coming to you.”

How many times in life have we prepared people very carefully for something that is going to happen, but when it does, it is still a huge shock to them? 

When someone announces they are going away or leaving it leaves a huge hole in us. We will have to get used to them not being around in our lives every day. They might be moving on to exciting new adventures but we ask “what are we going to do without them?”

When we leave a place or people we care about, it is hard. Those of us in itinerant ministry find,  although moving on is part of our discipline, it can be painful to let go of people you’ve cared for in their sorrows and their joys for a few years. I especially feel for those who are in the last few months of an appointment this year as I don’t think there can be any huge farewell parties. Marking a leaving is important. I left Hastings through illness very suddenly. I did not end my appointment properly and did not see some people again. I was grateful that it was made possible I could go back for a farewell. Similarly I will leave the Fens without finishing. A global pandemic ended my recuperative phased return to work on Sunday 15 March! 

When we know we are leaving somewhere, in usual circumstances we make plans so that we know those we are leaving behind will be cared for. It’s natural that people knowing they will be left behind, feel worried, because what they know is changing and there is a void to cope with. 

In his farewell speeches, which the Gospel reading for this Sunday is part of, Jesus addresses this uncertainty and anguish. 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” 

He recognises sometimes life and what it will bring us is tough...

“You will weep and mourn. You will be in pain, a pain as fierce as labour pain.”

“In the world you will have tribulation.” 

Pastoral care at huge times of transition in life is so important. The bit of the ordination charge I still find a huge challenge is “let no one suffer hurt at your neglect.” I’ve not got that one sorted yet and I have forgotten people. I think ministers who are caring for their people at this time are giving them assurance when what they have known all their life - going to chapel - has gone. 

I like to think about Jesus’ tone of voice as he prepares his closest friends for what is to come.

“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.” 

“I will not leave you orphaned, I am coming to you.” 

How does it feel to be orphaned? 

The solicitor in Harpenden has just completed matters concerning my late mother’s estate, nearly three years after she passed on. It still feels strange not to be able to ring her up and go to the house in Harpenden I grew up in. To not have that generation above us is very odd to begin with. We have to grow up! 

There are orphans in the world today: babies being abandoned, those who never knew their parents. It’s been a problem through history. The Foundling Hospital' (offering hospitality) was a very famous London institution, founded in the 1740s by an old sea-captain called Thomas Coram, as a home for deserted children.

He had been very distressed by knowledge of the large numbers of unwanted children that were found on doorsteps or under bushes, sometimes dead from exposure because found too late. His idea was for a charitable institution that would take in these unwanted children, and care for them until they were of an age to fend for themselves. All children taken in as foundlings – even those whose names were known – were given entirely new identities at the outset. The hospital provided shelter, food, clothing, medical care, education, and work placements so its children were well equipped to cope out in the world.

We all need to know we are cared for, at times of vulnerability. I continue to remember those of us classed as “vulnerable” at this time when parts of the country seem to be moving again. We want reassurance. We watch the government briefing as we are unsure it is safe to send our children back to school. Gavin Williamson is sent out to reassure us. A lot of people feel his style is like a vicar of old delivering a sermon from a lofty pulpit. One tweet says:

 I want @GavinWilliamson to say ‘if you’d turn to your hymn books we will now sing our final hymn ...’

I think one of the most horrific and cruel things to happen in this pandemic will be the end of funding by the government to help the homeless on our streets helping local authorities to “get everyone in.” Now people will be forced out into the night again and into danger. That cannot be right. 

“I will not leave you orphaned, I am coming to you.” 

Jesus, into the panic of his friends, announces a comforter, his presence with them in a new way. I don’t think they got what he meant at all. Imagine being in that upper room listening to him. So much to take in. But his message to them was you will never be on your own. 

And surely that is the heart of the Gospel, isn’t it? 

That no matter how unsettling life is, no matter how abandoned by society we feel, no matter how fearful we are that we are still on alert level 4 with this virus, no matter what happens to us in life especially when things we thought we could rely on for ever are taken away, we will never be on our own. The Holy Spirit of God comes with power and with peace. 

That doesn’t mean life suddenly becomes easy, but it does mean there is no part of life, however shitty, we are abandoned to cope with alone. 

“I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you.” 

The late Rachel Held Evans preached this text well. She wrote these words in the context of adults dealing with being abused by their parents but in the context of where we find ourselves if we are honest right now, they are words for all of us: 

“You are not alone. You are not orphans. You have not been forgotten. That stubborn voice inside of you, that champions you, that is angry on your behalf, that calls you beloved, that tells you not to give up — that is your Advocate, your Paraclete. Listen to him. Believe him. Obey him. 

You have not been orphaned, not by the Spirit, and not by those in whom the Spirit has made a home.”

And her conclusion is the pastoral care Jesus gave his friends, and we all need I think, and that which we are charged to give to all who think they are left to fend for themselves is freely given. 

“May all of us who feel vulnerable, for one reason or another, be reminded that we have an Advocate and Comforter, and that sometimes the hardest, most liberating thing to do is to listen, to obey, and to actually believe he’s in our corner.”

Go and write that paragraph out and stick it somewhere you see it every day. To know we are always loved and cared for, makes a huge difference. And believing it makes us to cope when all around us is quite mad... 

So many questions...

I’ve had a lot of people write to me today to say they’ve been feeling anxious. Having listened to the Prime Minister last night, then in Parliament this afternoon and just now in the daily briefing —- (how uncomfortable did lovely Chris Whitty look?) —- it’s no surprise many of us aren’t feeling brilliant at the moment. 

We now have a road map of how to live in 50 pages and 8 documents about making workplaces safe. So here’s what I know tonight:

I am told to stay home but I can go out for exercise as often as I like. 

I am told as I’m still in the clinically vulnerable group of people just below shielding I should stay home but if I do go out I should take care. 

I am told I can go to a garden centre on Wednesday, or play golf on my own or with my wife on Wednesday. I don’t want to do either, but I can if I want to. Lis doesn’t want to do either, either! 

I can meet one person in a park who doesn’t live with me as long as we stay two metres apart but if while there I bump into other people I know I must ignore them or run away from them. 

I can meet one person two metres away from me in the park but I cannot have them come to meet me over the garden gate, even if my garden gate is further than two metres from my front door.

 

I am told I can drive for exercise anywhere I want as long as I don’t stay there overnight. So if I want  I can drive to Blackpool, see the Tower, walk along the Golden Mile, get fish and chips and drive home. I cannot though drive into Wales or Scotland despite really wanting to live anywhere but England at the moment. 

(Loving the Scarfolk website...)

If I did a proper job, I would be encouraged to go to work from Wednesday, but not get the bus or the train and if I had to use them wear a face covering made out of an old tee shirt. (There’s a serious government document telling us how to make one of these 😂) My employer would have to have made my workplace safe, even though the guidance on how to do this was only published at 5.30pm tonight. 

If I had children and needed to go back to work I could have my nanny and my cleaner back. We would all be fine if we open some windows (it’s in the appendix of the 50 pages, that!) 

I have friends who are teachers. I am told some primary school year groups could go back to school maybe from June 1. How on earth do you get toddlers in reception to socially distance? 

I have friends who are shielding. The advice to them has not changed and the implication in the guidance is that they may need to keep shielding for much longer. 

There is nothing about non essential businesses opening in the short term, so no moving yet, and no hair cut, and no beer in a pub or trip to a cinema or dinner out. I feel for the hospitality industry much of which may not recover from all of this. 

And what do I know about church long term?

Well, places of worship are listed in phase three with any movement in them no earlier than the beginning of July. 

What might that mean?

Clergy being able to film services in a church building as a first step? Small funerals and weddings with limited numbers maybe? 

Longer term how could we gather for public worship and be socially distant? I know some churches have people sitting as far apart as possible now, but it is a serious issue. Would we need to offer services at different times, work out how many people could safely come, and get them to book in somehow and given a time slot? 

How on earth could we administer communion? Have someone in PPE put a little bit of bread and a little cup by each allocated seat before people arrived and we all consume together? 

What will pastoral visiting be like? Do we do that in the park? If we could yell at the church member over their gate from the road, that might work! 

Will meetings now always be on Zoom? 

What does the poet laureate of Twitter, Brian Bilston make of it all?

Brilliant!!

And what I am not told...

How am I safer on the 11 May than I was on the 23 March? 

No wonder we are feeling anxious. 

I guess we hold on and keep safe. I don’t need to go to the shops or do anything silly. I’d love to move. I want to be able to work properly in September. I live with fretting in my head. I’d love to drive to Blackpool, but I’m not going to. 

I guess as I’ve always done, I write my anxiety out and give it to God. Yes, I’ll keep alert, but for now, I’m staying home, and can I ask this, where has protect the NHS gone?

Keep alert let’s not forget in all this does have a more positive message. In all our anxiety, we hold on to what we know. And if we can’t do that tonight, well, there’s always cider. Cheers! 

Night everyone x

The Way Ahead

Passage for reflection: John 14: 1 - 14 

I love the dialogue between Jesus and Thomas I the Gospel reading for this Sunday. 

Jesus says in what is the beginning of his farewell discourse in John’s Gospel, “ you know the way to the place that I am going.”

And Thomas, always honest, says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going so how can we know the way.”

Perhaps today we are saying the same. We do not know where we are going. Tonight we will hear of a road map from the Prime Minister. A Sunday paper has leaked the government’s new slogan. It’s a bit worrying that stay at home has gone. Let’s hope he knows where we are going. We need some assurance if any of the lockdown measures are to be lessened. 

The way ahead needs some planning. This weekend we’ve been commemorating the 75th anniversary of VE Day. There was euphoria on the streets as five and a half years of war in Europe came to an end. But I wonder what people thought the way forward might be. Just to have some hope and some light must have been amazing. 

I’ve also been thinking of people in the Channel Islands, who were liberated the next day, 9 May, 75 years ago. They’d endured years of occupation. I visited Jersey several times in a previous life (!) and the moving thing I remember was a visit to the war tunnels museum. What folk so close to home had to endure has stayed with me. No wonder there is, in Jersey, every 9 May in Liberation Square, a yearly celebration. 

We know now, of course, there was a lot of thinking during the war about the way ahead after it. The Beveridge report of 1942 set out how we might build a different world. The 1944 Education Act was ground breaking for schools and much of it is still law today. It’s quite something that Churchill was defeated in the 1945 General Election as people saw we needed a radical new way to help us move on. Clement Attlee’s Labour government brought in measures such as the NHS and is seen as one of the most reforming in modern history. 

When I was studying in Manchester, I enjoyed doing a course on Christian Social Ethics at the University, which was taught by the wonderful Canon John Atherton from the cathedral. He introduced me to the book pictured above, Archbishop Temple’s “Christianity and the Social Order.” I’m so glad to have a copy of it on my shelves. The book is a landmark in Christian thinking about a just society and it influenced the Beveridge Report that laid the foundations for the post-war Welfare State. The Archbishop’s most famous quote is this:

“The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

William Temple and countless others in history showed Jesus the Way by passionately working for that Way to be at the heart of policy making, planning and thinking. If Jesus IS the Way then the Christian has to not only follow that Way but then live it in the world. No wonder the early followers of Jesus were known as “people of the Way.”

Like Thomas in a world that is confusing, we might ask how can we know the way. The way is not a road, it is a person and we need to journey to him and from him if our Christianity is to be relevant and authentic. 

What is this Way? First, it is to him.

I love the picture below. It’s in Castor Church on a night we turned up for evening prayer. There was just me and Lis and lovely Brian there. It is powerful that people like Brian used to turn up day after day in sacred space to keep the prayers of God's people alive as others have done for centuries before. Let’s hope one day we can do it again. 

The board outside advertised angelus and evensong. I asked Brian what angelus was. An interesting idea. I found this article and I like the concept of being "called to prayer". 

"Over the centuries workers in the fields halted their labours and prayed when they heard the Angelus. There is an 1857 painting that shows two workers in a potato field stopping to say the Angelus. There are also stories that animals would automatically stop ploughing and stand quietly at the bell. 

Like a heavenly messenger, the Angelus calls us to interrupt our daily, earthly routines and turn to thoughts of God, and of eternity."

Eugene Peterson once wrote this: “The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.”

To follow the Way, we have to journey towards him. In normal times that might involve being in a holy place with people like Brian, reciting the story of the providence of God together. We are having to understand that now we will need to find new ways for some time to find the divine as the Angelus bell rings within us to stir in us a consciousness of God’s love at least once a day. It might be through a sustained pattern of prayer, it might be through reading the Bible and some theology, it might be through forming a Zoom house group, it might be through silent walking in creation two metres away from others. As Saint Augustine said “you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Then we need to enable others to find the Way for themselves. We go out (when it’s safe) to live and work to God’s praise and glory. These words above were the daily reading in the Northumbria Community prayers for Friday. Read them slowly. They speak of the call of the Christian to be an encourager. I’m convinced as we work out what the future of the Church might be, it is to be encouraging, to help people see a new way might be possible. 

William Temple in his writing and ministry saw the need to put worship first and in doing that one would naturally look outward: the Way of Christ for him was to open the heart to God’s love, surrendering one’s will to his purpose and “all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centred ness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.” 

The planners of a new way post war, wanted to put others first with a conviction that a new society could be built. Attlee after a landslide victory in the election said this: “You will be judged by what you succeed at gentlemen, not by what you attempt.”  There was an excitement and a conviction a new way was possible! 

And tonight, we wait for Boris. What will be the way ahead for us in this mad coronavirus world? I love this tweet which reckons the “find a slogan or a catchphrase committee” has been meeting! But seriously, we need direction later as to what comes next in this crisis. As I’ve said before I don’t envy him his responsibility.

 Following a person they need to gain our trust, even if that person has deep convictions. I watched again  last night Gary Oldman’s superb portrayal of Churchill. It took some ages to trust his way of doing things that “you cannot negotiate with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.” 

Tonight we will analyse the PM’s every word. But at least we will know a way. This week of speculation and a lot of people thinking the lockdown is over has been difficult. 

SHUT THAT DOOR ✖️

THEY DON’T LIKE IT UP ‘EM ✖️

YOU GET NOTHING FOR A PAIR (NOT IN THIS GAME)✖️

STAY ALERT✔️

A way is two way - in spiritual terms we take in in one direction and we serve in the world in the other. 

The Way of Christ is a way where there is room for everyone, after all, Mr Shapps says we are to have wider pavements! 

The Way of Christ is a road full of diverse people celebrating life together. 

The Way of Christ is a lifestyle choice and it brings life, it isn’t always easy, but no one comes to the Father except through following it. 

Being a Christian means renouncing ourselves, taking up the cross and carrying it with Jesus. As I said earlier, it’s very powerful Jesus speaks the words of today’s Gospel passage with dark clouds and uncertainty looming. He sees the cross but says to all his friends “do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 

The Way of Christ is the answer to the Thomas’s of today who haven’t a clue where they are going so how can they know the way. All will be well. “In my Father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

“How can we know the way?”

“I am the Way.”