Halloween reclaimed?

Passage for reflection: John 11: 32 - 44

I’m really not sure about Halloween which falls this Sunday. It now seems to have become another commercial date which we are almost forced to mark. The supermarkets have been full of freaky chocolates for ages and costumes for children to go out in the dark dressed like ghosts and ghouls are added to over stretched parents demands lists! Like Christmas some will ask us “what are you doing for Halloween?” The pub across from church is having a Halloween quiz with fancy dress expected. Not really our scene! 

It would be very easy for me as a Christian minister to say let’s condemn October 31 as a bad thing. It is a bad thing when what might be perceived as harmless fun leaves people frightened when trick or treating gets out of hand. The commercial world seems to be promoting the celebration of dark things. We were in Whitby on Friday evening to see the abbey illuminated. The town was full of windows lit up for Halloween. This feels a new idea.

But… if we returned Halloween to what it used to signify then we make it more healthy. Let’s begin to call it again by its proper title: All Hallow’s Eve. On 1 November the Church celebrates All Saints and on 2 November it celebrates All Souls. These are two days we remember the light shining through those who lived faithful lives and are remembered for pointing people to the way of Christ. But before both days were marked, the Church used to acknowledge that death and evil are real. Whereas nowadays we don’t want to talk about death or evil but rush on to say “oh well they have been defeated, so we needn’t dwell on them too long.” But death is part of human experience and bad things happening in the world is part of human experience and sometimes it feels they are overwhelming.

We want those things to go. And some of us don’t want to talk about them. How about this to cope with the clocks going back this weekend? 

“With the darker days drawing in and British Summer Time, we wanted to reward the British public with a warm, comforting treat. Alongside gaining an extra hour in bed this Sunday, we’re giving away 3000 vouchers for free hot Greggs sausage rolls and the award winning vegan sausage rolls to take the edge off the arrival of the colder darker months.” 

The raising of Lazurus is an event that shows us the dramatic presence of God even - and perhaps especially - when other powers appear to be at the fore. Mary and Martha were devastated to lose their brother; Lazurus’s friends stood numb at the tomb; even Jesus wept. Remember Jesus got it in the neck for not coming to help earlier. Death was very powerfully the winner. 

What’s the Christian message? That God in Jesus enters the darkness and suffers the evil before doing anything about it. So maybe we need a night, an eve, which just acknowledges things aren’t now they should be, the dark side of life is a raw experience for so many people right now, but that a better day is coming, a walking out of the tomb, a bright light anticipated by the saints and the souls who tried through love and hope to send the dark things of the world packing. 

I just wonder whether Halloween is a spiritual opportunity to say that God transforms. But he comes into the reality we face to do that. To deny darkness and death happen is to say life is just fluffy, and we know that it isn’t. 

And let’s remember this from a wise scholar I enjoy: 

“New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

(Barbara Brown Taylor: Learning To Walk In The Dark)

Opening God’s word

I love a good bookshop. I love to browse in good bookshops. Leave me in a secondhand bookshop for hours and I’ll be very happy. We have a fabulous bookshop here in Ripon and there’s another one in Thirsk where you can get a coffee as well. I discovered it has an upstairs the other week. I always vow not to buy any more books because I’ve no more room on the study shelves but I fail miserably most times. You see, a good book draws me into it. A good book invites me to invest in it. I may read a word in its pages that might change my life for ever. 

 

So it should be with the Bible. It’s an exciting and challenging and comforting and life changing read if we would only invest in it again and hear God inviting us to hear a word for today in it again. 

 

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’

declares the Lord.

 ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’

 

And later you know we have an even greater promise…

As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

 

Someone once described the word of God as a span from heaven to earth. This was true every time a prophet spoke of old. And it became true in the most wonderful form in Jesus Christ.

In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John 1:1, 14)

Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, is the all-sufficient span between heaven and earth. 

The rain and the snow have come down from heaven. 

God’s word is not just on a printed page, it lives in the person of Jesus. Isn’t that exciting? Don’t you want to read more and more of God’s word? Don’t you want to encounter more and more of the word incarnate? 

 

In The Handmaids Tale, remember the Bible is kept locked up, the way people once left tea locked up so the servants wouldn’t steal it. It is an incendiary device: says the text, who knows what we’d make of it if we ever got our hands on it. And yet we seem to have made it less important in our programme than it should be. Early Methodists met to study it, discuss it and learn from it, in small groups. Maybe we need to put some of those groups back in our church. Does the preacher on a Sunday bring the Bible alive for you? Perhaps better not to ask that question.

 

Remember the collect for Bible Sunday : 

Merciful God,

teach us to be faithful in change and uncertainty,

that trusting in your word

and obeying your will

we may enter the unfailing joy of Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

Trusting in your word… to do that we have to accept the invitation to be immersed in it. Do you remember the late Methodist minister and broadcaster, Dr Colin Morris? He once told a story about a Methodist  encountering a Jehovah’s Witness. The Jehovah’s Witness asked the Methodist to quote him a verse in Leviticus. And the Methodist thought: “Leviticus? Is it in the Old Testament? Is it in the New Testament? Is it the name of a racehorse?” And Morris concludes: “would you trust a garage mechanic to touch your car if he didn’t know what was under the bonnet? Everything your Jehovah’s Witness knows, he counts on you knowing less.

 

Let me put it like this. We trust other bits of words that are shared. My life mother thought the Daily Mail was infallible and that every word she heard on the Jimmy Young programme on the radio was Gospel. This week I got a cough from somewhere and I was put on steroids and in the packet of pills is a little leaflet you read throughly and urgently. But the Bible? Well…

We have to do better for the sharing of God’s word depends on us. 

 

Billy Graham once said “I’ve read the last page of the Bible, it’s going to turn out all right.” 

We have a positive, exciting and vital word to read, hear, live and share. Imagine what would happen in our communities and in our world if we really had this sort of faith in God’s unfailing word, and if we really were willing to accept God’s call on our lives. What a different church we would be then.

The day of small things

Passage for reflection: Zechariah 4: 1 - 14

At the height of this pandemic, we started to remember those key people without who much of life would grind to a halt. We stood outside our houses and clapped all those working in the NHS and we appreciated lorry drivers and refuse collectors and people on supermarket tills and people started to value people who before were largely forgotten. 

I’m asking us to revisit doing that appreciation again. I actually think life at the moment as we approach winter is really complicated for so many people and we really need to value those who quietly but diligently make life better for us. I had to go for a PCR test last Tuesday as for some reason I’d developed a dry cough and was struggling with my breathing. The York centre on the park and ride at Poppleton runs like clockwork. From the folk directing you into the right queue, to those checking your ID, to the man who did the necessary down my throat and up my nostril, the whole experience went well because people were kind and efficient and knew what they were doing. I said thank you to each of them which I think was a bit of a shock! Then another day this last week we had to have our drain unblocked at the manse. Two men arrived to do what isn’t the pleasantest of jobs! Again I thanked them and there was genuine surprise from them I’d bothered to do that. 

Is doing small things largely unnoticed faithfully going to get us anywhere? 

We may need to hear again the word of the prophet Zechariah, spoken to a people captivated with the big: do not despise the day of small things.

When the returned exiles of Israel began rebuilding the temple under the leadership of Zerubbabel, the young rejoiced; the old wept (Ezra 3:10–13). Compared to Solomon’s temple, which the grey-haired among the people still remembered, the new sanctuary seemed a mere stump. Their dreams of the kingdom, restored to its former glory, suddenly died in a day of small things.

To which Zechariah responded,

Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of “Grace, grace to it!” . . . Whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice. (Zechariah 4: 7,10)

While the elders of Israel wept over this day of small things, the God of Israel did not. Despite his big plans for his people, he is not afraid of the small. Nor is the small any sure sign of his displeasure, as we so often are tempted to think: If God were really in this, things would be bigger by now! No: God had rescued them, God was with them, and God’s plans would prosper — even through a day of small things.

To be sure, God’s mission in the world does not culminate in a day of small things, and we would be wrong to rest content in such a day. But we also would be wrong to despise it. Instead, consider a lesson from Zechariah and Scripture’s other prophets: if we are genuinely faithful in the day of small things, our small obedience will become big — but not usually right away, and not often in the ways we expect.

The big God is apparently patient enough to endure centuries of small days. His kingdom, which will one day cover the earth, does not begin big. It grows from one old man and his barren wife (Isaiah 51:2). It grows from “the fewest of all peoples” (Deuteronomy 7:7). It grows from a mustard seed and a bit of leaven (Matthew 13:31–33). It grows from an embryo in the womb of a virgin (Isaiah 9:6–7). It grows from twelve uneducated men (Acts 1:8).

This week remember the folk in shops you visit, like the man who wipes down the baskets in Booths, remember GPs and receptionists in your local surgery, remember the drain men and those who do the jobs we would rather not do, remember those who keep your church running for you - not the minister -  but those who turn up to put heating on and those who just serve quietly day by day without who we would not function. Celebrate faithful plodding on where it feels like there are no results. One day the small offerings will become big. Remember the mustard seed. 

Do not neglect the day of small things…

What will it mean for us to worship a God who works like this? It will mean praying for the big, longing for the big, and working for the big — all while faithfully and contentedly devoting ourselves to the small. Pray for revival, and then get on with being church where you are. Dream of the knowledge of God’s glory flooding the earth and then bring a taste of that glory to your neighbour next door. Preach a grand vision to dozens or hundreds on Sunday, and then sit and listen to the wounded one on Monday.

The day of big things is coming. Until then, do not neglect the day of small things.

Doors - open or closed?

Passage for reflection: Matthew 9: 9 - 13

A church was torn apart over an issue in its life. There was too much noise before worship and the organist threatened to walk out. Her compromise was to arrive at one minute before the service, slam in, and start playing. The atmosphere when she started doing this was dreadful. The minister, trying to be helpful suggested they shut the door into the worship area to encourage people to meet each other and chat loudly in the foyer, to enable others to be quiet in church and listen to the organ. He was told shutting or not shutting doors should be taken to the Church Council. For two weeks, the door was shut by some, and opened by others and it got ridiculous, and people who wanted quiet got cross, and people who felt they had been told to be quiet said they would not come again. All over whether a door should be open or shut.

 

That was the last issue I had in my Circuit when I served in the North East – I have never heard how it was resolved. 

 

But today I believe the question about doors is a real one for us, it’s not about a door open or shut to deal with noise, it is about whether the doors of our church are open or shut when it comes to attitude. 

 

Let’s think about what sort of church we are today…

Perhaps we want to be a church that the door opens to let us in but then we shut it to keep everybody else out. To come through a door into a safe haven can bring us protection and warmth and security. 

There’s an old hymn which goes:

When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door, 
less the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer, 
may our prayers, Lord, make us ten times more aware
that the world we banish is our Christian care.

 

 If our hearts are lifted where devotion soars
high above this hungry, suffering world of ours, 
lest our hymns should drug us to forget its needs, 
forge our Christian worship into Christian deeds.

 

 We want, once we are inside to shut the horrible world out, because that world is dangerous, we don’t want it inside here, we are immune from it here with like minded people. We want the door to open to give us the love of Christ and then we want to stay inside without distraction, don’t we? Of course, having a door open can be risky indeed dangerous.

 

 

 We think about Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh on Sea and their regular opening of their door for the local MP to have his surgery with his constituents. We know on Friday, Sir David Amess was brutally stabbed to death. David Amess was a much respected MP. 

 

He has been described as “kind and caring and had the gift of disagreeing without being disagreeable.” I guess it would now be easy for MPs to abandon the surgery to be safe, but I’m not sure many of them would want that.

 

The open door can be unwelcome… 

I read one of my old sermons yesterday looking for inspiration. I told a story of when I was on a train coming back from a lovely peaceful stay on Lindisfarne. I got on at Berwick upon Tweed. The journey due to engineering work was going to be 8 hours. Until Newcastle, I had Coach G all to myself. That didn’t last long. A large group got on together with provisions. Coach G now party coach - all those who are around me are together about 30 of them and the gin, lager, Pinot Grigio and shouting loudly started before we left the station!!!! Four on the table opposite me had between them two bottles of white, one bottle of red, four cans of lager, and four cans of gin! The vodka and the Daily Mirror crossword were opened as as we left York. The lady who clearly was in charge on her fourth glass of wine complained it wasn’t difficult enough.  At Doncaster the mini eggs were passed round. 

 

At Peterborough how I wished Brian Blessed were not one of the crossword answers. It was not fun listening to impressions of him. Then they started having a pop quiz involving blasting out tracks on the iPod for the carriage. Robbie Williams Angels with actions!  At Kings Cross they congratulated me for putting up with them! 15 London civil servants who were returning from Newcastle after an overnight sail there from Tilbury Docks (as you do)! I really must get a life....  The open door then, was unwelcome.

 

Sometimes we want it like that in the church. We want to come in and hide behind the door, in safety, like disciples did post the crucifixion of Jesus, remember they were locked behind a door for fear of their lives, for being associated with Jesus. 

 

Sometimes, when life is hard, we shut down, we want to hide away, we want to shut ourselves away behind the door of our faith, and I guess there are times we need to do that, to receive, but I also want to say that a shut door can say to the community we are set in, we don’t want you in here, and we don’t want to know about your problems, we are safe in here and we have no challenges, and that is how it is going to stay, thank you very much!     

 

Is that the sort of church we celebrate being today? I don’t think so. 

Perhaps we celebrate being a church with an open door, or at least a church that tries to be open. What do you think?

Dare we mix with the world?

 

I read a blog by a girl who was seriously considering fleeing this country, fed up with bad news. She was passing St Pancras Church in London. There was a man there, sat with all his possessions next to him in wet boxes, eating sandwiches out of a bin bag. She writes “Now I don’t know about you, but I think as long as that man and millions like him are eating leftovers out of the rubbish, wallowing in pity or booking the next flight out of here is not going to feed the hungry.” There is need out there and we can talk about why there is, and what “they” must do about it, but the need gets worse as we talk, people need action beyond the door. 

 

Sometimes you have to go out of a door to find life. 

There is a story, and I don’t know how it was ever resolved, that I was so shy as a little boy, that at the Junior School I attended at the age of 7 I would hide in the classroom toilet all day and not interact with any other children. 

I remember vividly we all had a number to shout out when the morning register was called, and I would open the door and shout “5” but I have not idea what mediation was needed to get me out of there. I wasn’t living the school experience or progressing. Sometimes living behind a door can be claustrophobic, you need to get out to find life! 

 

I rather love that story of the young camel, who was very young and confused.

 

“Why,” said the young camel to an older camel, “why do I have such big feet?”

 

“Oh,” said the older camel, “God gave you big flat feet so that you could run easily across the desert sands!”

 

“And why,” said the young camel to the older camel, “why do I have such long skinny legs?”

 

“Oh those, “ said the older camel. “God gave you those so that you do not sink into the desert sands.”

 

“And,” said the young camel, “why do I have these long eyelashes?”

“God gave you those to protect your eyes in the desert storms.”

“And what, ” said the young camel, “is this huge lump on my back?”

“That’s very useful. God made that so you don’t get thirsty on long desert journeys.”

“So tell me then,” said the young camel, “if God has given me all these, what am I doing in a zoo?”

 

How open are our doors so that we can use the gifts God has given us and which have been nurtured in this society especially, to be his people beyond the door? How open are our doors to others? How are we encouraging others to come through, if not the door of our church building, through the door of Christ’s love? Or, are we afraid of what we might discover and who might want to come back through the door of the church with us?

 

Matthew represents today the open door approach of our Lord. Remember in Jesus’ day, tax collectors were despised because they were part of the system hated by people, collaborators with Rome and all that. 

 

And yet, Jesus dares to be the agent of God’s love with tax collectors and sinners, he receives strangers and welcomes them in, he comes for the sick and not the healthy, and he says to people leave your old ways behind and come through my door! And he says to religious people condemning things – change your ways and unlock your door of fear and prejudice…

We need to be renewed to keep our doors open don’t we? Let me share a quote from someone I read recently about the Church…

 

“Church at one time meant a gathering of people. Now it means a building with a steeple. Worship at one time meant the act of celebrating God’s presence. Now it means a collection of rituals at 11am on a Sunday morning. Faith at one time was a red-blooded response to the stirring of the Spirit. Now it is a set of beliefs so insignificant that they can be contained in doctrines. The Way has become religion, it’s meaning drowned in a sea of ceremony.”

 

Perhaps the quote is a bit harsh, it was written to an Anglican parish, perhaps by a frustrated vicar but you see the point don’t you? 

 

And of course, it can be very hard for people to come through the church door. Those of us who have always been to church don’t get that. Perhaps it is because I am an introvert and hate crowds and find entering somewhere new difficult I understand people’s hesitance. 

 

Our challenge, as the challenge is for every church, is to continue grappling with the needs of our community and being church wherever we are and offering the presence of Christ in their lives. We are called to celebrate the presence of God and share God’s love. We need therefore to come through the door to be refreshed by God and go out through the door to share him. John Wesley had plenty to say about going out beyond the door even if it is hard for us. 

 

Remember these words: 'One great reason why the rich, in general, have so little sympathy for the poor, is, because they so seldom visit them. Hence it is, that, according to the common observation, one part of the world does not know what the other suffers. 

 

Many of them do not know, because they do not care to know: they keep out of the way of knowing it; and then plead their voluntary ignorance an excuse for their hardness of heart. "Indeed, Sir," said one person of large substance, "I am a very compassionate man. But, to tell you the truth, I do not know anybody in the world that is in want." How did this come to pass? Why, he took good care to keep out of their way; and if he fell upon any of them unawares "he passed over on the other side."

 

When the Church of Jesus shuts its outer door,

Lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer:

May our prayers, Lord, make us ten times more aware

That the world we banish, is our Christian care…

 

I like Pope Francis on this subject of doors:

“The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door.” And…

 

“But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.” The context of this image is a sobering reflection born of his “Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators.”

Arbiters of grace: What an indictment of tollhouse Christians! We can do better. We can “facilitate” grace in part by behaving “like the father of the prodigal son, who always keeps his door open so that when the son returns, he can readily pass through it.”

 

I want us to be challenged by Matthew the tax collector. 

 

He was definitely outside the door of religion, but Jesus brought into the door of divine love and acceptance, and this is our task as we go forward as a church today. 

 

The doors of our churches were opened many years ago, for people to find God in Jesus and that people have been brave enough to go out and help others find him too ever since. May we be encouraged to continue that work now and always. 

Daring to journey

Passage for reflection: Hebrews 11: 8 

Of all the characters of the Old Testament, I think my favourite is Abraham. Here is an elderly man who took risks because he had a strong faith in his God. In Genesis chapter 12 he’s told by his God to leave his home and country and kindred and a rather comfortable life, and go to a land that his God would show him.

Here’s the story. His God said “Go!”

And Abram (as he was called still then) went. No ifs, no buts, no details of the destination except a promise his God would show him it one day and he would be with him.

 Imagine Abram telling his wife!

“We are moving, dear!”

“What made you decide that, we are happy here and we are not as young as we were, moving is stressful.”

“Oh my God told me we must go.”

“Where are we moving to? Has your God bought us a new home to live in?”

“He just said we should go and he would show us the way. But I’ve no idea where we’re going but I know we just have to go.”

“You’re mad, do you know that? I don’t want to move. I’ll miss my friends and my family.”

“I know, but there’s no choice. I just know we need to go. I trust my God.”

“I still think you are mad!”

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” That’s how the writer of the letter to the Hebrews describes Abraham, pointing to him as the supreme example of putting faith into practice, without having all the details of the journey. 

Imagine we have a call to journey. Imagine an open road ahead of us. I guess there are two responses we can make to that road. 

Maybe the road feels scary. We can’t see the end of it. Where’s it going? We want to know what’s beyond our sight. So what do we do? We decide we can’t go. Staying at home is safer, sticking to what we know is comfortable, staying just where we are feels a better option than going out on a road that might have dangers on it which could hurt us or even worse threaten our life. We want all the details of the journey and they aren’t given us so its reckless to even think about going. So we choose not to go. 

But maybe the road feels exciting and inviting. Yes, we can’t see the end of it, but that’s okay because we are stuck where we are today. Maybe if we just set out on this road, we will be shown things we’ve never seen before. Maybe there are amazing things to see round the corner if we are brave enough to just go. 

What was Abram thinking as he made the decision to go? Will it be okay? Is this really foolish? What if my God lets me down? What if he doesn’t show me what he’s promised and I’m left in the middle of nowhere… or did he just trust his God so much he just felt held in the uncertainty by the certainty of the one who held him and would hold him. 

I love how the authorised version of the Bible translates Hebrews 11 verse 8:

“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out not knowing whither he went.”

How often do we have to go out not knowing whither we went? It isn’t easy. We all want to know where we are going but sometimes we just need to trust a bit more and be a bit more adventurous. 

I guess I’ve had the challenge of the journey at points in my life  maybe not as drastically as Abraham, but the choice I made was really important. To stay in bed would have been easier! There are times we are given an exciting opportunity ahead and it needs us to step out to see it. There are times where we are just isn’t working and we’re just not functioning so we need to walk away. So often that leads to surprises and new life because we’ve made that choice. Our God is with us, and is ahead of us, and the call on us is to sometimes catch up with where he is, further down the road he is asking us to journey on. Read the whole of Hebrews chapter 11 and the first two verses of chapter 12. God blesses those who obey him. Abraham and others hold fast to faith, despite really challenging circumstances. The journey would not be easy. But the road was just too inviting not to travel on… later Hebrews says Abraham was “looking forward to the city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God.” He didn’t know the route or the earthly destination, but he believed in the eternal. No wonder Abraham is the father of three great religions. What an amazing thing his response to journey turned out to be.

This week, I encourage you to remember Abraham. God said go and he went. Dare we do the same? Maybe it’s about letting go of our baggage and following. 

God who sets us on a journey
to discover, dream and grow,
lead us as you led your people
in the desert long ago;
journey inward, journey outward,
stir the spirit, stretch the mind,
love for God and self and neighbour
marks the way that Christ defined.

Exploration brings new insights,
changes, choices we must face;
give us wisdom in deciding,
mindful always of your grace;
should we stumble, lose our bearings,
find it hard to know what’s right,
we regain our true direction
focused on the Jesus light.

End our longing for the old days,
grant the vision that we lack –
once we’ve started on this journey
there can be no turning back;
let us travel light, discarding
excess baggage from our past,
cherish only what’s essential,
choosing treasure that will last.

When we set up camp and settle
to avoid love’s risk and pain,
you disturb complacent comfort,
pull the tent pegs up again;
keep us travelling in the knowledge
you are always at our side;
give us courage for the journey,
Christ our goal and Christ our guide.

Noticing holiness

Passages for reflection: Isaiah 6: 1 - 12 and Luke 4: 31 - 37

My grandfather liked to go walking. He’d walk from his house to the town every day for his beloved Daily Mail. And on a Sunday he would walk from his house, rest an hour in church, then walk on to our house for his dinner, then about 5.30 he’d do the same in reverse, resting another hour during evening service before going home for his cocoa. But eventually the walking was his downfall, because he’d shuffle along, his eyes on the pavement rather than what was ahead of him. Looking down all the time meant one day he fell and broke his hip and his days of walking were over. 

 

If we look down too much maybe we too will fall. That’s my argument today. For some reason this week I’ve been thinking afresh about the call of the Church. I think we’ve lost our focus. I think we are looking down so much we are forgetting to look up. We are wondering in some places why it is hard and it’s hard because we aren’t looking up to God enough. We are like grandfather, shuffling along when God has so much for us to see and encounter if we will only look to him and for him again. We come to worship to encounter the living God. We come to glimpse his holiness and then we go to be holy and find holiness in the world. We look up in order to cope with what is down. If we don’t look up then what is down will feel overwhelming. Or even blight us like a spiritual broken hip. 

 

Barbara Brown Taylor is a lovely American spiritual writer. Her wonderful book “An Altar in the World” has this challenge to us in it: “Whoever you are, you are human, wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.”  We look up to notice the beauty of divine holiness, we go out to be holy people because God is holy. We seek God and lift our heads up. 

 

The old hymn in the MHB said it “ looking upward every day, sunshine on our faces, pressing onward every day, towards the heavenly places.” A pop song in the 1980’s by Yazz and the plastic population said it “the only way is up.”

 

How do we notice holiness? It can take us by surprise. I’ve just joined the chaplain’s rota at Fountains Abbey. Apparently the local Methodist minister is included because he or she has churches within the Anglican Fountains Benefice. I’m not complaining! I get to wander about and speak to people visiting that beautiful place. 

 

Some are tourists, but others make a pilgrimage and are deeply moved by being part of the story of divine encounter joining the monks of old, others just find having the space in a busy life to discover other priorities. Holiness does its stuff. Folk looking up, see a glimpse of the glory of God even if some of them don’t name their nice day out as that. 

 

We can do that in church too, you know. We gather to notice the holiness already here. All our worship is a response to an encounter with a God who is above us and beyond us yet comes down to us in Jesus. I know we have to have discussions when we come about the boiler and how we pay the circuit assessment or another worry we have, but I just worry what seems to be coming first…

 

Maybe we need to learn from Isaiah. He could do no other than look up when he was in the Temple that day. He was overwhelmed by the theophany around him. You know the story recorded in the sixth chapter of the first Isaiah’s prophecy. There are three Isaiah’s of course. Here’s Isaiah number 1 at worship. He said “Woe is me. I am lost. He was undone, because he came before the great and wonderful God, he was worshipping with his whole being, and God was so great, he for a while felt inadequate.

 

King Uzziah’s reign was at an end, and Isaiah saw the true and eternal king, and heaven manifested right there in that Temple. Fiery angelic beings, seraphim, attended the king, they sang that his glory and holiness will fill the whole world. The foundations of the Temple were shaken by the noise of the hymn, and the smoke of the incense of the heavenly worship filled the building, and Isaiah cried out first that he was unworthy to be there, polluted by his own sins and those of his people. Surely he must perish!

 

But one of the seraphim flew to the altar of incense and with the priest’s tongs takes a burning coal and touches Isaiah’s lips and his sin is purged and expiated, and his lips in particular are ready for the service of God. 

 

Isaiah had an experience of the divine, and is changed by it. He looked up and wow – he would never be the same. He noticed the holiness already there. I read a magazine article this week about daring to be in the presence of God, even for a little while and being really open to his will. It said you need to be receptive to what God might want to give you. I wonder what would happen if we spent time being honest about how we feel as we enter this place before worship and what emotions come here. 

As a leader of worship, I am always conscious in the congregation are all sorts of moods, problems, joys, people in need, people feeling they don’t matter, people who need God to speak to them just as they are.

 

The writer went on to say that most important is offering a period of time to God and sticking to it, trusting that God will use that time, and asking the Holy Spirit to guide us. 

 

Isaiah was transformed in the encounter with God from a man of unclean lips into a man ready to be used, God’s power would commission him to be of use in the world. He would be a changed person because of the encounter. He arrived there in despair – despair about himself and about the world.                 

 

Perhaps we come to worship in despair. Despair about what is happening around us in society, in the world feeling inadequate, world situations never changing. Despair about ourselves, a personal situation we have carried with us in private through the church door, despair about the church, maybe some of you are worried or frustrated about your church. I have eight Church Councils in the next month or so! Like Isaiah, very often we can feel that there is nothing we can do to put our life right or make the church grow.

 

I want us to take inspiration from this story. Look up and notice the holiness already there. Isaiah felt inspired to carry on with his life and his ministry to the people. His response was definite – when God asks who will go, he says, “Here am I. Send me!” He saw service as response to the divine. God through the angelic beings brought to him healing and wholeness in a whole new way. 

 

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness… then share the rumour of the Holy in the world by being holy. 

 

Isaiah was given a responsibility – and it would not be easy. 

If you read on in the prophesy you’ll see that the work will be hard, there will be rejection as he will be saying there will be exile and ruined cities. Note the warning by God, that people will not be receptive.

 

My Old Testament tutor at Hartley Victoria, one David Wood said never ever end the call of Isaiah reading at verse 8 with send me, but remind people what we might be sent to! 

 

Can holiness change not only us but the world? In the Gospel story, when the man with an unclean spirit cried out to Jesus, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God”, Jesus rebuked the spirit, saying “Be silent, and come out of him!”

Some commentaries on this passage, point out that it was impossible for a man with an unclean spirit to be allowed in to the synagogue. If you were possessed by an unclean spirit, you were not allowed at all to live in the community let alone to enter the synagogue. This person might have been expelled from his family and friends, marginalised from the entire world that he used to live in. 

 

On the day Luke records, Jesus’ presence freed him from the unclean spirit and gave him his place back in the community. It also challenged the people who were trapped in their own pride and prejudice that they were qualified to be present in the synagogue. Jesus destroyed the boundary between the sick man and the comfortable congregation, and there’s a lesson for us about where holiness and divine work happens… not just in here but out there. Maybe the holiness of God is ahead of us. Maybe the holiness of God calls us to make a difference. Maybe the holiness of God leads us to make a stand when things are wrong. Maybe God is doing a new thing for us to notice, so we need to chill out and look… 

 

Have you ever walked into a church for an act of worship and walked straight out again? I have! Yesterday. I was invited to be at the ordination and induction of the new pastor of the baptist church in Ripon. I walked in in a face covering. I was stared at by some men in the foyer. One of them handed me an order of service without saying a word. I went into the church and the congregation were packed in, no distancing and not a face covering in sight. I didn’t feel safe so I turned round and left, past the staring men and out the door. Across the road I found Blossomgate Barbers and I needed a hair cut. There I met Sean, what a great name for a barber, and we had a good twenty minute conversation about life, the church, what I do all day and God. He was fascinated I was quite ordinary and he told me he doesn’t do church but that “God is everywhere, isn’t he, mate?” We were discussing holiness. The congregation across the road had an hour’s sermon that was really quite uncomfortable. Apparently everyone but strict and peculiar Baptists are doomed. 

 

Are we needing to rediscover the Holy as a priority to be revitalised as a church no matter how many of us there are? Or as children of God?

I’m beginning a four week series on Thursday evenings this month on a Methodist Way of Life in my two Ripon churches. John Wesley’s early Methodism was a commitment to a holiness project. For John Wesley holiness of life was, ‘the aim of his life, the organising centre of his thought, the spring of all action, his one abiding project’.The purpose of the Methodist movement was to ‘spread scriptural holiness throughout the land’. Wesley once claimed that there was no holiness but social holiness. It is within Christian community that holiness of life is to be realised.

 

Are we needing a new commitment to take time to notice the holiness already there? This may mean more expectation that God might do something in our worship time, it may mean we spend more time in prayer, it may mean being where God wants us to be to spread it about a bit.

 

Do we shuffle along and fall, or are we prepared to look up, and notice God again? I’m making two out of my three congregations this Sunday say part of the Te Deum. It’s a mighty piece of writing.

 

We praise you, O God, we acclaim you as the Lord; all creation worships you,

the Father everlasting. To you all angels, all the powers of heaven,

the cherubim and seraphim, sing in endless praise:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

heaven and earth are full of your glory.

The glorious company of apostles praise you.

The noble fellowship of prophets praise you.

The white-robed army of martyrs praise you.

Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims you:

Father, of majesty unbounded,

your true and only Son, worthy of all praise,

the Holy Spirit, advocate and guide.

 

If we have had an encounter with God in our Temple this Sunday, revealed to us today as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, we will be all-embracing, loving, respectful, at all times, to whoever comes here, and whoever we meet wherever we are. And we will be God’s people countering all that is wrong. 

Our conversations, meetings, decisions, priorities all should be pure response. This is my 25^th year of doing this. Those moments when we get it right, when we treat each other with kindness and respect, when we get a tingle in us that comes when we see his possibilities, when we see his light shine and his grace shared in the world we are noticing his holiness and believing holiness can change the world, beginning here.

 

No matter how we are feeling and no matter what we have done, God will touch us anew. God chooses to love us, in Jesus. God desires us to be his people. God invites us to respond. 

 

Having met God, how will you be his people? Will you look up? 

 

I hope so.