Taking notice

Passage for reflection: Isaiah 52: 7 - 9

Several times this week the need to suddenly take notice has been important. 

On Thursday evening I had to go into Harrogate to pick up something from B and Q we’d ordered on line. There had been a few claps of thunder before I went out, and as I got in the car it was raining heavily but I wasn’t expecting to drive through hail and to have to negotiate really bad floods across the road. I had to take notice of the car in front of me which kept braking suddenly and going in the middle of the road to avoid the worst of the water and the flashing lights of fire engines trying to get to a lorry and the 36 bus which were stranded on the other side of the road. 

After I woke up last Sunday morning, I noticed a little note in the letterbox of the front door. It was from a police lady letting me know both our front and rear car number plates had been ripped off. I spoke to her later and told her I assumed it had been done in the middle of the night as her note was written about 4am. She told me our number plates were spotted on a car towing a stolen caravan in Masham about 8.50pm the night before! I’d been out to water plants about 9 and hadn’t noticed anything amiss. 

On Monday we had to take notice of Chris Whitty and Patrick Valance who in a press conference were very gloomy as the number of people testing positive for Covid 19 is going up really fast. Then on Tuesday evening, the Prime Minister shook his fist a lot and told us in a Churchillian manner it isn’t good but we can get through a second spike. In this uncertain climate we have to make time to take notice of important information that affects all of our life. Some of us fear more drastic restrictions being enforced sooner rather than later even though Mr Johnson said he was “spiritually reluctant” to curb our freedoms. I wonder what he meant by “spiritually reluctant”?

 

The Bake Off was back on Tuesday, some light relief in the gloom. The bakers have to take notice of the recipe else there will be disaster. 

Does God sometimes call us to take notice of him in a sudden and dramatic way? I’ve been enjoying a book on priesthood by Stephen Cottrell, the new Archbishop of York, in which he reflects on different models of ministry. One of his models is being a sentinel. A sentinel was someone who gave warning to people that something that they should take notice of was coming, usually gloom and doom and danger, interpreting the world in the light of God’s purposes so usually God and humanity are far apart, hence the need to repent, but in Isaiah chapter 52, the sentinel has a different message. 

There will be peace and salvation, for God is coming in victory! Out of the ruins of Jerusalem, the people are told to break forth into singing. To most people that would seem mad, but here the sentinel sees a longer view and a larger vision than what is happening today.

Walter Bruggemann, my favourite Old Testament theologian in his book “The Prophetic Imagination” talks about us being robbed of the courage or power to “think an alternative thought” and he says before any new vision can be implemented it has to be imagined. He says it is the vocation of the sentinel to keep alive the ministry of imagination and to believe in an alternative futures to the single one  which some urge as the only ones thinkable.

What do we see and from what we notice can we dare to see God’s future and God’s blessing? I love the words of George Bernard Shaw: “You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?”

I drove along Harrogate Road in Ripon to visit someone who needed a pastoral visit. I noticed a huge notice on the church advertising Harvest this Sunday and a welcome to the new minister, whoever that is. The notice was so large and bold I could do no other than react to it. 

I wonder in a world of competing voices and signs, who are those people who make us sit up or stop and take notice of the divine script? And maybe those people for others might be you and me. More than ever before I think people need a different message. I think it’s out there. We just need to be alert to it and have the time, the commitment and the vision having noticed it to live it and believe in it. 

Passing on the story

Passage for reflection: Psalm 145

School for me was often not a happy time but one thing I loved at junior school was the Monday morning write in your news book time. We were to sit down and write down the story of our weekend. I would always write about going to our little village chapel and then I’d badly draw it. I wrote down what I remembered. 

Christmas is 100 days away as I write this. Goodness only knows how we will celebrate Christmas! We always used to gather as a family and after tea play games. My Auntie Doris would at some point in the evening turn to my Uncle and say “go and put some things on a tray, Bob!” We would then look at the things on the tray (which were the same every year) then the things were covered up and we had to shout out how many we remembered. 

I had an interesting night on Wednesday during sleep. I had a nightmare where a man was chasing me. It was vivid and I whacked my face on the bedside table next to me. I woke up with blood round my eye and my eye got blacker as the day went on. I’m amazed no one I visited on Thursday asked what I’d done to my eye. I looked like someone had thumped me! 

Passing on our story is an essential part of our spirituality whether we write it down or tell it out loud. Psalm 145 is the lectionary Psalm for this Sunday. The Psalm played a major role in the prayer life of the Jews. The Talmud, a collection of ancient Rabbinic writings on Hebrew scripture and worship, directed the people to say this Psalm three times a day every day.

 “Clearly,” one commentator notes, “the people of Israel were formed in their faith by repetition of their hymns of praise.”   

 

“One generation shall declare your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts.”

The Psalm reminds me of two important things.

First, we need to remember those who passed on the story of God’s love to us. Who were those wise, often older people, who gently told us of Jesus? For me there were saints at the Folly chapel in Wheathampstead, the chapel I wrote about and drew in my Monday news book. Claude Deaville was my Sunday School teacher. The Sunday School was just me! He enthralled me as we sat together in the vestry, pre safeguarding days, and he just simply passed on his faith to me.

Then I think we have to cherish our own story and be able to pass it on. At the end of my second week in a new appointment I’m really enjoying getting amongst my eight communities to hear what they want to pass on to me. This is being done through Zoom Coffee mornings, visits in gardens over afternoon teas (ginger scones and pancakes with jam!) meetings to discuss the future and the next few months, and wacky ways to do Church Councils: one in a car park last week, and another on a farm next week. I’m taking time to listen to people. What are the precious things we want to pass on? What are our spiritual items on a tray we want others to remember?

 I find the poem “The Sharing” by Edwina Gateley very helpful:

“We told our stories— that's all. We sat and listened to each other and heard the journeys of each soul. We sat in silence entering each one's pain and sharing each one's joy. We heard love's longing and the lonely reachings-out for love and affirmation. We heard of dreams shattered. And visions fled. Of hopes and laughter turned stale and dark. We felt the pain of isolation and the bitterness of death.

But in each brave and lonely story God's gentle life broke through and we heard music in the darkness and smelled flowers in the void.

We felt the budding of creation in the searchings of each soul and discerned the beauty of God's hand in each muddy, twisted path.

And His voice sang in each story. His life sprang from each death. Our sharing became one story of a simple lonely search for life and hope and oneness in a world which sobs for love. And we knew that in our sharing, Gods voice with mighty breath was saying "Love each other and take each other's hand."

For you are one though many and in each of you I live. So listen to my story and share my pain and death. Oh, listen to my story and rise and live with me.”

Barbara Glasson, last year’s President of Conference in her address to Conference talked about the importance of story and sharing what we remember.

“We are people of a multitude of wise, troubling, hilarious, faithful human stories - so let’s tell them, and surprise ourselves once again with the way of Jesus. And let’s find new confidence in the story of God, not as a mallet to knock in stakes of certainty, but with hearts strangely warmed wit the assurance that the world can be changed through unconditional love.”

They shall speak of the majesty of your glory, •
   and I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.
They shall speak of the might of your marvellous acts, •
   and I will also tell of your greatness.
They shall pour forth the story of your abundant kindness •
   and joyfully sing of your righteousness.
The Lord is gracious and merciful, •
   long-suffering and of great goodness.

You know, we wonder why people aren’t coming to church. I know why. It’s because we aren’t passing on the story. Surely as we think seriously in a pandemic world what matters, this sharing what is in our heart has to be the priority. We can pass gossip from one end of the city to the other, what will be pass on that is more healthy? 

Forgiveness: how many times?

Passage for reflection: Matthew 18: 21 - 35

I wonder what you think the hardest bit of Jesus’ teaching is? What’s the thing he expects of us we find so hard to actually do? I suggest that it is to forgive those we don’t want to forgive, the people who have hurt us. We don’t want to let them off the hook. And yet, Jesus makes it clear if we are truly his people, forgiveness has to be at the heart of our lives, and we have to mean it! If you have ever visited the ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral you will have seen on the altar these words “Father forgive.” Two words which take us to the cross and the cry of Jesus Christ who showed forgiveness to those who only showed him violence. 

In the Gospel passage for this Sunday, Peter asks Jesus how many times we need to forgive someone.  And let’s face it Peter was being quite generous – we might even say irrational - with the suggestion of seven times. But Jesus says seventy times seven – other translations have it as seventy seven – either way it simply means ‘just go on forgiving’  - be open to the possibility of forgiveness even when it seems to be the least likely outcome on anyone’s agenda.  Or perhaps another way of putting it is: ‘if you are keeping count – you probably haven’t forgiven in the first place.’

I think if we are really honest we like to hold grudges, we like to remind the person who has wronged us of their guilt and we will do our best to avoid reconciliation because we can’t want to move on from the hurt we have suffered. 

Let me share three examples: 

As a child, I would easily break things by being hand fisted. I still do as a child of 53!! My mother whenever I broke the latest Christmas present would not just chastise me for what I’d just done but would regurgitate every single thing I’d broken in the past, like setting fire to a Scalextric set... don’t ask! She never forgot or forgave. 

I had two church members years ago who were close friends. But one Christmas one of them dared to put a knitted nativity set on the communion table much to the horror of the other. He told her her knitted figures were rubbish. She got really upset. It was Friday coffee morning. She went home upset, slamming a few doors on the way out. A few minutes later, her husband appeared, and punched her critic in the face! I spent ages trying to get the two friends to reconcile. They continued to sit in church each week but never spoke again because they couldn’t forgive each other because the other “started it.” They both went to their grave not having sorted a silly thing out. 

I was asked to listen to a local preacher once. His service was on forgiveness. We were jollying on fine, until he decided to list all the people he could not forgive. The Japanese and Margaret Thatcher were top of his list! 

To harbour the hurt and cling on to the pain defines us as victims and can eat away at us to the point that we are captured by it and imprisoned by its negativity.

 

So how, I wonder, do we begin to forgive?
Of course there is no easy answer.  

I think we need to remember what Jesus has done for us before we can consider reaching out to others. Remember Jesus in the pain and darkness of the cross says “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We are forgiven! Isn’t that amazing? Jesus opens his arms around us and says “no matter what you do to me, I love you anyhow. I forgive you, not just once, but for always. Go and sin no more.” 

When he was Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey said something which gets to the heart of the matter. “To have been forgiven oneself is the greatest possible impulse towards forgiving others, and the will to forgive others is the test of having effectively received God’s forgiveness.” 

It’s the point of the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 18 – we who are forgiven ought then to forgive others.  Forgiveness is essentially relational – it’s not just a private matter of ‘Me and Jesus’ religion.  It’s about the lifestyle we adopt in any community – at home, work, church and society.  Are we people whose life is diminished because we have held on too long to our resentments instead of opening the door to a different sort of future? Like rehearsing old wrongs in our lives, not moving on, and not making the first move to reconciliation. 

 

Jesus tells Peter to forgive seventy times seven. Peter badly hurts him by denying him when Jesus needs him most on the way to death. 

Jesus meets Peter on a beach after he rises. I wonder how I’d have felt if I were Peter? What would Jesus say to me? Be like my Mum, the two involved in knitted nativity gate, or the preacher unable to forgive and expecting others not to forgive too? No - he offers reconciliation. He doesn’t mention the wrong. He asks if Peter loves him. He gives him a job. A new beginning Peter doesn’t deserve. At the heart of the Gospel there is grace. 

Great God of wonders! all thy ways
Are worthy of thyself divine;
And the bright glories of thy grace
Among thine other wonders shine:

     Who is a pardoning God like thee?
     Or who has grace so rich and free?

Pardon from an offended God!
Pardon for sins of deepest dye!
Pardon bestowed through Jesus' blood!
Pardon that brings the rebel nigh!

O may this glorious, matchless love,
This God-like miracle of grace,
Teach mortal tongues, like those above,
To raise this song of lofty praise:

How do I become a seventy times seven forgiving person? 

Dr Martin Luther King whose Baptist Manse was firebombed by his opponents in the Civil Rights campaign had, on the surface, many reasons to hold a grudge yet this is what he said: 

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.  Those who are devoid of the power to forgive are devoid of the power to love.  There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.  When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

To return to Coventry, I find the cathedral litany of reconciliation really powerful. It’s prayed to bring the hurt of the world to God and it’s a commitment  to a radical way which is the way of Christ. 

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
Father, forgive.

The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Father, forgive.

The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
Father, forgive.

Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Father, forgive.

Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,
Father, forgive.

The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
Father, forgive.

The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
Father, forgive.

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

I guess none of us would ever claim to be experts when it comes to forgiveness – yet maybe that’s no bad thing.  What’s important is to keep alive in our hearts the desire and longing to live at peace with each other and search together for what forgiveness and reconciliation actually looks and feels like in our community. It’s hard but we really need to try. Else we aren’t really Jesus’ people.

Putting On Christ

Passage for reflection: Romans 13: 8 - 14 

We have arrived at the beginning of a new Methodist year. For many of us, there is a new beginning: a new minister, a new context, a beginning of a process to reopen churches safely. I’m conscious that some of my new congregations  will be reading one of my reflections for the first time. The beginning of my new appointment is very different from how any of us expected it to be. But here we are, and from where we find ourselves, we journey on together. 

The 1933 Methodist Hymn Book had a lovely section in it called “Opening and Closing of the Year” and within that section of hymns was a hymn which included these words: 

“With grateful hearts the past we own,

The future, all to us unknown,

We to thy guardian care commend,

Do thou to all our wants attend.”

Where do I start as I begin a new ministry? I have eight lists of names, some information about stuff, a plan of services ahead which is very bizarre as I don’t take a service in a reopened church building until the first Sunday of October. I asked if I had a diary. I was told “there isn’t one because there is nothing in it!” The study is full of boxes and I can’t find anything...

The passage in the lectionary for the first Sunday of September I choose to reflect on is from Paul’s letter to the Romans. In the thirteenth chapter of the letter, Paul gives us advice on how to do church. Coming out of a period of uncertainty, and nervously taking tentative steps forward, we need some guidance. 

Let’s put three things into our action plan as we set out shall we? 

First, let’s remember what basic Christianity is: 

“Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” 

I’ve been glad since moving into our new manse to meet our neighbours in the little road we live in. It’s good to hear our neighbours story. It’s good we will clearly get to know each other well over the next few months. We’ve lost respect and care for neighbours, if we are honest. If this wretched pandemic has taught us anything it is that in this country when the chips are down, we do actually care for each other. We are judged by the quality of our love for those who need love most. We have to have unconditional love at the heart of what we do. A looking out for others.  

Victor Frankl, who wrote some powerful stuff reflecting on being incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp, helps us see what this love which puts the neighbour first means:

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”

Secondly, let’s wake up! Paul says now is the moment “for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.“

I watch very little live television these days. I fall asleep in crucial moments of dramas and thrillers. I need to wind the thing back to see what I slept through. I wake up and haven’t a clue what is happening because I’ve missed a crucial piece of information. There is a new day for us to greet, to throw off the bedclothes to welcome, the sun is rising to beckon us to possibilities beyond our imagining. We are to greet those possibilities with expectation. The light shines leading us from night to new adventures. 

It’s easy to miss what God is doing if we sleep. 

Years ago, in a church called Kinsbourne Green, where I was lay pastor in the early 1990’s, there was a sisterhood full of elderly ladies. One of them used to fall asleep regularly during my talk. I remember one day this happened as usual but after about ten minutes, the lady woke up with a jolt, looked straight at me and said, “Good God, are you still talking?!”

Maybe God is challenging us as a Church about sleepiness. Maybe we’ve been snoozing spiritually, and maybe it’s been easier to ignore the alarm, the call of God to get up, and pull the duvet over our head and stay snuggled in our comfort zone rather than going out to find what God is actually doing. 

Most of you will know we have six cats. We’ve not yet brought them to Ripon. They are still in Wisbech. But we will have to get used to them stamping on our heads in the early hours of the morning demanding we get up. They want food, now, not when we feel like waking.

“The night is far gone, the day is near.”

Then perhaps the greatest piece of advice we have as we set out on a new journey. 

“Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I’ve been conscious that apart from Sundays when I’ve led services over the last two years as I’ve recovered from illness, this week has been the first time in ages I’ve put a clerical shirt and dog collar on, my uniform as an ordained minister and that felt good. It was great fun on Thursday to walk round Ripon city centre in work clothes. A lot of people talked to me, even if some of them only wanted me to direct them to the public loos! We put a uniform on to say “this is who we are.”

There have been a lot of pictures posted on social media this past week of children in school uniform returning to school. Most of them are proud to belong to their school and be associated with it by what they put on in the morning. (We had to wear purple at my secondary school, so I rarely felt this pride!) 

Of course at the moment there’s a new “putting on” of something we have to remember. Outside a shop this afternoon a lady said, exasperatingly, as she reached the door “forgotten my mask... grrr, world!” The things are horrible, I struggle with them but we put them on in shops and in churches if we return to them, to keep us and others a bit safer. 

What does it mean to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”? 

I found these words which tell us better than I can:

“If you are tired and depressed, Jesus offers new clothes of peace and confidence.

If you are overwhelmed with pain and grief, Jesus gives you the new clothes of peace and comfort.

If you don’t like yourself and the way you have been behaving, Jesus offers you the new clothes of love, self esteem and the knowledge that he created you and that you are precious to him.

If you feel guilty and helpless in the face of temptation, Jesus gives you the new clothes of forgiveness and the help of the Holy Spirit.

He offers you these things and more as he joins himself to you and daily offers you fresh and beautiful clothes to wear.”

We like our tatty and old clothes, Jesus. Why do we need new stuff from you? To put on fresh things means we are ready to begin a new journey. If I turned up to my welcome service on Sunday evening in a dirty suit with stains and cat hair down it, and scruffy shoes with holes in them, well, that wouldn’t go down well. My suit is at the dry cleaners and I have a new pair of shoes. 

Maybe we need at the beginning of a new year a serious divine wardrobe refit. To put on Christ means we reject the ways of the world and we try every day to reflect him as he wraps himself round us so that he becomes part of us. 

So a very happy new Methodist year to us. Here’s to love being at our heart, waking up, and putting on Christ which will enable us to flourish and grow, whatever shape the Church is for us over the next few months. We need to be his people. We need a new start. 

On Friday afternoon I had to go to a gathering in York and I needed to use the sat nav to get me there and back. I decided to go to Morrison’s before coming home but didn’t turn off the sat nav. It screamed at me “proceed to the route, proceed to the route!” It couldn’t cope with Morrison’s car park. I had stopped following the suggested way and had gone my own way. 

Does God feel like that with us? I wonder, regular readers and new friends and members of my churches who are sharing my rambling for the first time, do we need simply to return to what we are meant to be doing and who we are meant to be?