Meeting people where they are…

I booked a ticket ages ago for the annual THEOS lecture. This year the lecture was held for the first time outside of London at Methodist Central Hall in Manchester and it was given by Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester.

I love Manchester and its spirit. I trained for ministry here from 1994 to 1997 and living here changed my life. It always feels like coming home when I visit. I stood and rang Lis on Piccadilly Gardens earlier and it was like it was 31 years ago when I landed nervously in the city as a southerner!

Central Hall was reintroduced to me when I needed to see an ecumenical project. My now friend Ian Rutherford invited me over. The place does an amazing work in the city in partnership with others and Ian and other faith leaders work with the Mayor to increase community respect and wellbeing. Andy Burnham sees faith communities as vital in building relationships.

It was a privilege in a packed Central Hall tonight to hear the Mayor give a lecture on moving from a crisis of trust to a culture of encounter. He talked about government systems treating people as numbers, which hammers hope out of them. He said if you don’t start with the person you’ve no chance. He said to us we need to start with him investing in the local again. Manchester has found devolution positive and there are lots of groups working to major things better. One is a faith group. The Mayor warned us we face a choice at the next general election - working together or a dark path we’ve never been down before. He told us we should give hope to people every single day, and be strong. He was inspiring. Manchester has always had spirit in adversity. The Peterloo riots, the IRA bomb in 1996, the Arianda Grande concert and the recent attack on a synagogue recently. People at all four of these have said “enough - this cannot be.”

After a nice Thai dinner I checked into my hotel as because I live in the sticks I can’t get back tonight. I needed a drink. In the bar were Ross and Kyle. Ross once I told him I was a church minister started to pour out his story of his mistakes and his past and his search for meaning. An hour later he thanked me for listening and told me as he is chef at a posh hotel at Langdale in Ambleside, that dinner is on him if I visit. Kyle was slightly worse for wear and told me he knows a vicar in Blackpool then he disappeared to the loo! I was reminded tonight Christian hope all about relationships and building people up. We need a new commitment to being together and understanding each other again. Manchester has had it for ages! For Manchester is the place where people do things… ‘Don’t talk about what you are going to do, do it.’ That is the Manchester habit. And in the past through the manifestation of this quality the word Manchester became a synonym for energy and freedom and the right to do and to think without shackles.” Edward Abbott Parry was Judge of Manchester County Court 1894-1911.

Tonight has been an inspiration. We need to change the world together. Whether Andy Burnham is beginning to think about returning to Westminster and wanting to be PM, I don’t know but tonight he has inspired me to make a difference where I can and to stop and see what’s around me and then work out how I can speak hope into it…

Let’s not let hatred tear us apart

I feel like stopping watching the news but I cannot because I live in the world and need to know what’s happening in it. The world seems to be mad at the moment. 

I’m writing this after the shocking news of the attack on the synagogue in Manchester on Thursday which happened on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, a day of reflection, confession, and seeking forgiveness from both God and others. The day's main observances consist of fasting and abstaining from physical comforts, attending extended prayer services  (usually at synagogue ) It is a day for goal-setting, and intentions for the year ahead.

To have such an action on such a holy day hits at the heart of identity. It says you aren’t me, I’m threatened by you so I will lash out. I don’t know you but I’ve heard about you through the opinions of others or in the press or on social media so I’ve decided I don’t like you. 

Surely, hatred, antisemitism and racism have no place in our society. Those facing increasing violence and hostility on the basis of their race, faith or where they are from need us as Christians, following Christ who came to break down walls that divide us, to stand alongside them. 

Paul puts it this way: For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle way of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace.

(Ephesians 2:14-15)

By His death on the cross, Jesus broke down the barriers. The physical curtain in the Temple was split from top to bottom, but He also broke down other barriers that divided people.

The Message explains it this way: He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped (Ephesians 2:15)

Sadly this time of people feeling threatened by another not like them is hitting the headlines but there is another narrative. There are people and groups who have talked together and find unity in their diversity. Coffee morning on a Thursday at Allhallowgate is full most weeks of interesting people. This week I was glad to chat with some Roman Catholic ladies from Lancashire. They go to church in Nelson at the only joint Roman Catholic and Methodist Church in the country. There are things that the two denominations don’t agree on but they told me most of what happens is done together happily. 

Let us pray urgently for respect and communication to come back where it’s gone missing. And let us pray this week that there be peace on earth. And let us celebrate difference. And let us thank God we are not all the same! 

Joanne Cox-Darling the Superintendent of the Manchester Circuit has written a helpful piece on the Methodist website about understanding.

She says “it will begin, as the holiest day of Yom Kippur (the festival of repentance) reminds me – with my own confession - that I too have been complicit through my ignorance and apathy. I cannot now escape from the knowledge that I haven’t been paying enough attention, or listening deeply enough to what I have been shown and told.

It will begin by naming antisemitism within communities, learning how to see it, challenge it, and to speaking it out.

It will begin with rebuilding friendships with Jewish neighbours; intentionally reaching out to ensure they and their families are safe. In time we will find brave spaces to continue to hear the lived experiences of the Jewish communities in Crumpsall, Manchester, Britain, and beyond.

And it will begin around tables with broken bread and shared wine, retelling sacred stories of God’s faithfulness to God’s people within the broken and corrupt systems of the world.

Because with terrorism on our doorstep once again, we have no choice but to pay closer attention.”

The newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday morning that “hatred and racism of any kind cannot be allowed to tear us apart.” If Christ is our peace we need to work harder to break down walls not build more. 

Living in hope

I’m thinking about hope because on Wednesday I joined 14,000 others in the O2 in London to hear President Obama speak. He wrote a book didn’t he called the audacity of hope. In underground stations they have signs called all on the board. This one was at North Greenwich station where you alight for the O2. I’m glad Lis found it on line for me as I was in the middle of 14,000 in the station and couldn’t get near it. He once said … Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.”

What do you hope for? For yourself? For your church? For the world? 

Yesterday at Masham Sheep Fair we had a chatterbox space where people could stop for conversation and write prayers. People hoped for peace in Gaza and Ukraine and Sudan, sunshine, the 70’s back in Leyburn, those were the days, a stop to deforestation, for my sheep to win its class and for compassion and understanding.

It was an absolute privilege to one of the 14,000 people on Wednesday night listening to President Obama. Maybe history will view him as one of the greatest American Presidents although the current one wants to be remembered as THE greatest doesn’t he? As I reminded you earlier Obama viewed hope in one of his books as audacious. He said this famously:

“I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us, so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.” So hope is something to do, something to believe, to work for something that will come. The late theologian Walter Bruggemann said the prophetic tasks of the church are to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion, grieve in a society that is in denial and express hope in society that lives in despair.” 

We need hope. Hope never disappoints. 

The Bible warns us that if our hope disappoints us, it’s because our hope rests on the wrong object. There is only one place to look for hope that is secure, no matter what. Consider these verses:

You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word. (Psalm 119:114) 

O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. (Psalm 130:7) 

The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. (Psalm 147:11) 

I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11) 

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:24) 

Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:5) 

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13) 

Notice what each of these verses does. Each confronts us with the radical, life-reshaping truth that ultimately true, lasting, and secure hope is a person — the Lord Almighty. Hope — the kind that transforms your life, gives rest to your heart, and ignites new ways of living — is attached to him. Scripture repeatedly invites us, commands us, and implores us to hope in the Lord, and it gives us reason after reason to do so. 

We express hopes every day. I wasn’t going to join the queue and scramble back to the underground on Wednesday night after President Obama had finished and I got out of the O2 which takes some time. So I joined a slightly shorter queue for a taxi to get me back to Kings Cross.

My taxi driver called Joel hoped for a lot of things —- 

He hoped his football team, West Ham, might do a bit better - “Potter needs to be sacked.” He got his wish as Graham Potter was sacked yesterday. He hoped the traffic jam might end soon. He hoped we might all get along - growing up in the East End he was introduced to curry and Jamaican food and “ a decent kebab.” And he hoped for a Nigel Farage government. 

£72 later I got out of his cab. We had “had a nice chat.” 

Joel’s hopes though relied on human intervention. A board at a football club making a decision to change the manager, a decision to be made not to dig up around the 02 again when a American President is visiting, a common humanity deciding to understand each other, an election and democracy and political leaders trying to persuade us our hopes can be realised by them bringing a new order to things. Napoleon Bonaparte gave this very unique statement to leaders when he said, “Leaders are dealers in hope.” We need some of those leaders don’t we? 

Christian hope is about God. And it never disappoints and it is eternal. 

Hope is always fueled by some form of desire. It may be the desire to be loved, to be cared for, to be protected, to be understood, to be provided for, to be accepted, to experience comfort or pleasure, to have control, to be forgiven — the list could go on and on. Also, hope always has an object. I look to someone or something to satisfy my desire. Lastly, hope carries an expectation of when, how, and where the person or thing in which I have placed my hope will deliver what I have hoped for. 

Almost every day, you entrust your smallest and largest longings into the hands of something or someone with the hope that your longings will be satisfied. To be human is to hope. And when hope isn’t there it’s just well, empty. 

Lis and I went to a funeral this week of one of the ladies who came to the craft group. It was a humanist funeral. I’d never been to a humanist funeral before. We celebrated the lady’s life. We watched pictures of her while Queen sang these are the days of our life. The celebrant told those assembled their only comfort was memory and being together. I wondered how the thing would end. He stood in silence and then thanked people for coming. The family gathered round the coffin which was still there visibly upset. There was no proper ending and no hope and no consolation and no God and no eternity and we left feeling something vital was missing. The service disappointed. Hope does not.

Back in the 2nd World War when England was going through some of its most trying times, Sir Winston Churchill went to a place called Harrow, an exclusive prep school. He began to give a speech and in the middle of that speech he said these words, he said, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.” Then he said it again, “Never give in.” What he was saying at that time to the people of England was, don’t ever give up your hope. And I say to you as a people today the same thing, don’t ever give up your hope. 

We hold on and we hope for what we don’t yet see…

In some African folklore, there is a tale of a small, bright bird known as the Hope Bird. This bird doesn’t sing when the sun is shining. It doesn’t wait for clear skies or calm winds. No—the Hope Bird sings before the storm is over.

It’s said that you’ll hear its voice while the rain is still falling, while thunder still echoes across the plains. Long before other birds dare to chirp again, this one begins its tune. To the people, it became a symbol—an icon of faith before sight, of believing good is on the way even while everything still looks bad.

That’s what hope in God’s promises looks like. It sings before the answer comes. It praises before the healing. It trusts before the breakthrough. Romans 8:24 reminds us, “Who hopes for what they already have?”

So maybe today, your skies are still grey. Maybe the downpour hasn’t let up yet. But if you have God’s promise, you can sing early. Hope does not disappoint.

So are we hopeful or hopeless? I hope it’s the first of those. We have a gospel to proclaim to our communities. The God of hope goes with us every day, we live in hope.

The feast day of Saint Matthew

I was sent the readings on the notice sheet for our LEP the other day and there are two alternatives to go with this week - 21 September is the The Feast Day of St Matthew, for the bits of church that do saints. Apostle and Evangelist, Martyr. Patronages – accountant, bookkeepers, bankers, customs officers, financial officers, money managers, guards, security forces, security guards, stockbrokers, taxi drivers and tax collectors…

I was driving down the A 1 last night in torrential rain delivering a missive for the folk at Boroughbridge to have to read out this morning. It turned into a long evening as most of Boroughbridge was flooded and after I’d left the missive in the vestry I went and used the necessary before coming home and I found water dripping through the vent and a lake on the floor. So I was there a while mopping up and placing a bucket to catch the drips. My work is varied! Driving there I was catching up with Radio 2 programmes and Michelle Visage on a Friday nightwho plays some upbeat stuff. She always begins by saying what the rules of the party are: “everybody is welcome, everybody is equal, and everyone single one of you is a superstar.”

In the Methodist safeguarding material, we are reminded of our purpose. The phrase ‘all are welcome’ is characteristic of the Methodist

Church: you’ll find it on Methodist noticeboards and notices all

over the place. It says something important about who we are as Methodists, and our experience and understanding of God. At its heart, ‘all arewelcome’ is a statement about God’s limitless love and grace and

it is therefore about so much more than human hospitality.

It speaks of the never-ending boundless love of God for every

person, no matter who they are, and God’s constant invitation to,

and promise of, salvation. It’s that assurance of God’s ceaseless

love and grace for us that guides, inspires and shapes our life

together as part of Christ’s Church.

 

The Methodist Church’s desire to welcome all is a part of its own

response to God and its witness to God’s love in Jesus.

 

This involves seeking to be a community marked by love and care

for one another and for all whom it encounters, especially the

marginalised and hurting and those who have been outcast in

some form.

 

Sounds alright doesn’t it? All are welcome. Really?

 

But we should mean that and embody that. “The church is a people called out of the world to embody a social alternative that the world cannot know on its own terms. The idea that the church is to be the body of Christ is not just something to read about in theology books and leave for the scholars to pontificate about. We are literally to be the body of Jesus in the world. Christians are to be little Christs—people who put flesh on Jesus in the world today.”

― Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals

 

Imagine Jesus were President or Prime Minister or King. Imagine Jesus on the council. I think Ripon City Council might need him at the moment. Would we cope with his radical and inclusive agenda that all are most definitely welcome and everybody is equal and everybody is a superstar.

So there’s the context Matthew comes into. He’s called Levi too, son of Alphaeus. Some scholars suggest that the tax collector simply had two names, one for each language in the region. “Matthew” might have been his Greek name, while “Levi” was his Hebrew name. This practice of having both a Hebrew and a Greek or Roman name was not uncommon in Jewish society.

To fully appreciate the call of St. Matthew, his background is a remarkable part of his story. Before embracing the path of discipleship, he served as a tax collector under Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee. Tax collectors, also known as “publicans,” were held in low regard within Jewish society during Jesus’ time. They were often seen as collaborators with the Roman oppressors who occupied the land of Judea. The tax collection system, fraught with potential abuse, allowed collectors to gather more than the prescribed amount, pocketing the surplus for themselves. This encouraged extortion and corruption, leading to the accumulation of wealth through dishonest means.

As devout Jews, association with Gentiles, like the Romans, rendered individuals ritually unclean, and tax collectors’ constant interaction with Roman officials further tainted their reputation.

Consequently, their income was considered impure, rendering it unfit for religious dues or temple offerings. These factors combined to socially ostracise tax collectors, categorising them among the “sinners” in many New Testament passages, reflecting their low moral and social standing. So note the religious muttering about this new preacher about: “he welcomes sinners and eats with them.” All are welcome? Yes but not him. He’s no superstar, he’s a cheat and not a nice person.

Understanding this context makes the call of Matthew remarkable.

St. Matthew’s church, Westminster has a statue of him holding a book and a quill pen. Is he about to make an entry in a tax ledger or write a gospel? The Jews had to pay taxes to the Empire. To make matters worse, collection was not the work of civil servants but of private contractors. So tax collectors were collaborators, traitors, part of a system of oppression. They were allocated a sum to be raised from their district. They received no salary, so they added their cut to the assessment. The wealthy would, no doubt, find ways of reducing their liability – a judicious bribe here and there – so the burden would fall disproportionately on ordinary people. Collection was backed up with force, so they had no choice but to pay up and see their hard-earned money go to support imperial armies or the grand building projects of the Herod dynasty.

Matthew knew what it was like to feel excluded. Although he was Jewish, he was shunned by other Jews, because his work as a tax collector made him a collaborator with the hated Romans. Socially, he was an outsider, and outcast. His fellow countrymen wanted nothing to do with him.

When Jesus encounters Matthew sitting at the customs house collecting taxes, he issues a simple yet profound call: “Follow me.” Matthew immediately arose, leaving everything behind to follow Jesus. Jesus dined at Matthew’s house with more tax collectors and sinners that night. This incident drew the ire of the religious leaders, prompting Jesus to declare that He came not for the righteous but for sinners, emphasising the importance of mercy over sacrifice.

Jesus’ choice to openly associate and dine with tax collectors and sinners, including Matthew, stirred controversy among religious leaders of his time. However, this association embodied Jesus’ mission to seek and save the lost, demonstrating God’s boundless love and grace, even for society’s most sinful and marginalised. The Gospel may be in miniature in this call. The mercy of God is wide.

Our doors are open. But there are churches where the message still needs to be be preached and heard. And even here, where inclusivity seems part of the DNA, we always need to be asking ourselves: “Who are we excluding? Who is not made to feel welcome here? Who does not have a place at our table and in our ministry? Who are our tax-collectors and sinners?”

All are welcome? Including us! I like what C H Spurgeon has to say about Jesus finding the unlikely…

We do not know that, even if Matthew had wished to follow Christ, he would have dared to do so. He must have thought that he was too unworthy to follow Christ; and if he had dared to attempt it, I should suppose that he would have been repulsed by the other apostles. They would have snubbed him, and asked, “Who are you, to come amongst us?” They dared not do so after Christ himself had said to Matthew, “Follow me,” but certainly there is no indication that this man named Matthew was seeking Christ, or even thinking about him; yet, while he sat taking his tolls and customs, Jesus came to him, and said, “Follow me.”

 O my dear hearer, if you have been converted, it may be that something like this was true in your case! At any rate, this I know is true; you were not the first to seek Christ, but Christ was the first to seek you. You were a wandering sheep, and did not love the fold; but his sweet mercy went out after you. His grace made you thoughtful, and led you to pray; the Holy Spirit breathed in you your first breath of spiritual life, and so you came to Christ. It was so, I am sure; you did not first seek Christ, but he first sought you. Let us who are saved present the prayer to God now, that many here who have never sought the Lord may nevertheless find him; for it is written, “I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.” See, then, the freeness of the grace of God, the sovereignty of his choice. Admire it in the man named Matthew; admire it still more in yourself, whatever your name may be.

Jesus says, it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. One of my favourite quotes about church is that a church should be a hospital for sinners and not a museum for saints. Jesus is making the point loud and clear that the reason he came into the world is the same reason he came into Matthew’s life that day – not to affirm the self-righteous but to heal the sick, which includes the sick of soul.

The call of Matthew should say to all of us that no matter how we think we stand with God nonetheless he is always there to heal and redeem us. No one is beyond the love and grace of God. In fact the sicker and further off we think we are the closer God stands to us and wants to heal us. And for those who may have been walking with God for a long time we should never allow ourselves to become self-righteous and Pharisaic about those who seem most unlike us or who seem most un-Christian in our eyes – for they are exactly the ones that Jesus may choose to sit and eat with.

What happened to Matthew?

Following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, Matthew remained in Jerusalem with the other disciples, receiving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. As an apostle of the Lord, he dedicated his life to spreading the Gospel and leading the early church. Matthew’s profound teachings and insights into the life of Jesus culminated in the writing of the Gospel according to Matthew. Matthew designed his Gospel to establish Jesus as the Messiah, particularly for his Jewish readers.

Beyond his written legacy, Matthew’s apostolic journey is steeped in rich history and tradition. Early Church fathers like Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria suggest that Matthew initially preached the Gospel in Judea before embarking on missions to other lands, with Ethiopia often cited as one of his destinations.One notable tradition associated with Matthew involves his encounter with King Hirtacus in Ethiopia. Matthew’s steadfast devotion to his faith led him to confront the king for lusting after Ephigenia, a nun consecrated to God. Matthew’s rebuke, delivered at a Mass, ultimately led to his martyrdom, solidifying his commitment to his faith.

So what to learn from his call on his feast day? Methodist theology asserts that every person reflects God's image and therefore possesses intrinsic value that must be celebrated. All have to be welcome else we aren’t the church of Jesus. We live in a world this day that wants to say all aren’t welcome. We get a letter as minister from the Secretary of the Methodist Conference. He was reflecting on the rally of the far right in London last weekend.

 “Accounts of the numbers at the rally in London that day vary, but most estimates are something over 100,000. That is about the same as the number of members of the Methodist Church in Britain.

I was worried that afternoon on the train by the attitudes I saw displayed and the falsehoods that were being repeated, but I cannot despair because I serve a Church whose calling is to respond to the love of God in Christ. If the woman on the train was right, and 100,000-plus people listening to hate-mongers can make a difference, how much more can 100,000-plus people who listen to the gospel and speak words of grace change things for the better?”

 All are welcome. All are equal and yes Michelle, even the Matthew’s can be superstars!

God of mercy, you chose a tax collector, Saint Matthew to share the dignity of the apostles. By his example and prayers help us to follow Christ and remain faithful in your service. Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Searching for and finding the lost

Are you good at losing things? What things do you lose and panic until you find them? 

I’m very good at losing keys, clerical collars, bits of paper I need right now, my car in a multi storey car park but I’m better now because I take a picture of where I park the car and the door of the floor I go out of. I also lose my phone a lot. 

We lose our phones at home and we ring the one that’s lost to find it! We had a rental car recently and a woman said as you opened the door after the journey “excuse me, you have left your phone in the car!” She became rather annoying.

Have you ever been so lost on a journey you just go into a tailspin? It usually happens to me when I’m driving in Leeds and in the wrong lane. I love the picture of people lost in the woods, one says help we are lost in the spoom! The other says “you’ve got the map outside down!” 

The story of our God is that he keeps trying to find us. Even when we are wayward. In the reading from Exodus today we’ve just heard he considers not helping - the people are stiff necked! But he changes his mind. We know Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. 

This Sunday in my service we celebrate that God is love. We are reminded of that in a baptism. Louise and Nathan bring little Aston and to say thank you for him. As we share this sacrament let’s be reminded that our God keeps searching for us until like keys and bits of paper and cars and phones we are found.

Saint Luke has in his fifteenth chapter three stories of things that are lost. The third story of a lost son rather overshadows the other two. A story of a lost coin and a lost sheep. 

Jesus is in trouble once again for hanging out with the wrong people.  As “all the tax collectors and sinners” come near to listen to him, the Pharisees and scribes begin to grumble: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  

In response, Jesus tells the scandalized religious insiders two parables.  In the first, a shepherd leaves his flock of ninety-nine to look for a single lamb that is lost.  He searches until he finds it, and when he does, he carries that one lamb home on his shoulders, invites his friends and neighbors over, and throws a party to celebrate.

In the second, a woman loses one of her ten silver coins.  Immediately, she lights a lamp and sweeps her entire house, looking carefully for the coin until she finds it.  Then, like the shepherd, she calls together her friends and neighbours and asks them to celebrate the recovery of the coin: “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” 

It used to strike me as very unlikely that a woman could expect her friends and neighbours to come to a party in the middle of the night to celebrate the finding of a single coin. There was also a question in my mind about the shepherd who had a hundred sheep and found that he had lost one of them. We are told that he left the ninety-nine in the wilderness to go after the one he had lost. But maybe the stories are about the joy and celebration in the finding again.

Think about it - when you find your keys or your car or your phone or your clerical collar (although I have been known to put a piece of paper in the place it goes at times) there’s a sense of relief and life can go on again. When we find our way back to safety even being vulnerable in our lostness there is joy and relief. 

We live at home with indoor rescue cats who don’t do going outside but last week I inadvertently let Toby the tonkinese out the back door while I was getting some washing in. We put it on social media he was missing and notes through our neighbours doors to keep a look out for him. One of our neighbours rang a few days later to say they’d seen a cat in their garden they didn’t recognise. The next night I went with a light on my phone to the ginnel behind our houses and Lis went to the front of the house where he was seen. We both called him and heard a faint miaow. It was a nightmare getting him through the undergrowth and into a cat carrier to get him back indoors to safety. He’s not interested in the back door now! 

The lost sheep in the first parable belongs to the shepherd’s flock from the very beginning of the story — it is his sheep. Sheep are stubborn and wayward. I love to watch them as we drive to take the service at Dallowgill.  Likewise, the coin in the second parable belongs to the woman before she loses it; the coin is one of her very own. 

We get lost over and over again, and God finds us over and over again. Lostness is part and parcel of the life of faith. The great Christian hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer said“God loves the lost.”

But what does it mean to be lost?  It means so many things.  It means we lose our sense of belonging, we lose our capacity to trust, we lose our felt experience of God’s presence, we lose our will to persevere.  We get lost.  We get so miserably lost that the shepherd has to wander through the craggy wilderness to find us.  We get so wholly lost that the housewife has to light her lamp, pick up her broom, and sweep out every nook and cranny of her house to discover what’s become of us.

And here’s the good news today. The good news our church is here to share. God experiences authentic, real-time loss.  God searches, God persists, God lingers, and God plods.  God wanders over hills and valleys looking for his lost lamb.  God turns the house upside down looking for her lost coin.  And when at last God finds what God is looking for, God cannot contain the joy that wells up inside.  So God invites the whole neighbourhood over, shares the happy news of recovery, and throws a party to end all parties. If Jesus’s parables are true, then God isn’t in the fold with the ninety-nine insiders.  God isn’t curled up on her couch polishing the nine coins she’s already sure of.  God is where the lost things are.  God is where lostness reigns.  God is in the darkness of the wilderness, God is in the remotest corners of the house, God is where the search is at its most urgent. 

And maybe the church today is the broom sweeping and the shepherd looking and maybe the church is a place where people who feel lost can be found. We need to be a place where those who’ve got questions or feel lost in the world with worry or because of where they find themselves can find that party happening. 

Let me end with a story. 

A lady called Edith didn’t care at all about God or religion, she said, but one Sunday morning she was struggling with inner discontent about life; she felt hopeless and helpless. She decided to go to a church near her house, and that Sunday morning the text for the day was Luke 15. The preacher got up and read from the King James version verses 1 and 2. He got to the end of verse and read what it said, “This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them.” But here’s the way Edith heard it, “This man receiveth sinners and Edith with them.” She sat upright in her pew and eventually figured out what happened. God began that day to work in her the gospel that she was a lost sheep, and Jesus had offered to become her Shepherd.

People might need our church so we need to be accessible and visible. Harrogate Road where I will preach this is being talked about. Why? Let me share the thing people have said to me this week: “have you seen that posh new fence?” What a fab fence! It’s made the church more visible and open I think. And they won’t have to cut that hedge anymore. And maybe too the church needs a new commitment to sweeping and searching. The 13th century Sufi mystic, Rumi, said, “What you seek is seeking you.” 

Friends, that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we share it in worship, in communion, in baptism, at coffee mornings, wherever we are.  God will say come rejoice with me. The lost will be found. 

Exploring the Lord’s Prayer

Martin Luther talking about the Lord’s Prayer said this : “It is true that God’s name is holy in itself, but we ask in this prayer that it may also become holy in and among us.” How does this come about? Luther answers this question: “Whenever the word of God is taught clearly and purely and we, as God’s children, also live holy lives according to it. To this end help us, dear Father in heaven!”

It was a Friday afternoon in the crematorium at Dukinfield in Greater Manchester. I’m sorry if you’ve heard this story before. I had three funerals there on the same day and to keep it fresh for the third one I decided I’d use the Baptist service book instead of the Methodist one. I had a large unchurched congregation. It came to the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer wasn’t written out in full in the book. I started “our Father, who art in heaven” then a voice in my head said “you’ve never heard of this prayer, you’ve not got a clue how it goes!” The whole congregation stopped because I stopped. I bumbled through a few sentences and got to the Amen. It was very scary. And ever since that day I’ve always had the prayer written out when I lead it.

The Methodist minister Gareth Hill in his weekly blog on the lectionary passages suggests this: perhaps we have done the prayer – and God. – a disservice by repeating it so often hardly anyone pays attention to it. You might discuss that. Certainly I think we’ve forgotten the revolutionary power of the words in it, but I’ll come to that in a bit.

Easy to forget? Easy to rush? (I’ve heard many a worship leader garble it) Too familiar we’ve lost its meaning? Do people know it today? I had a church in Hastings which had a choir which did an introit and an anthem every Sunday and we sang the Lord’s Prayer at every service. In fact, I had two churches in the Circuit which sang the Lords Prayer and each had their own tune. If you read the history of Methodism in that part of Sussex there was a huge rivalry between the choir at Calvert Memorial in Hastings and the choir at Rye and I found minute books from around the First World War where in writing they would minute how much better their choir Sunday had been than the others! Anyway I remember suggesting to dear Ralph, the organist in Hastings that people coming new to worship might not know the tune so maybe we ought to say it now and again… he looked aghast at me and said “ they should learn it!”

Michael Green says in his commentary on Matthew: Prayer is not informing God of something he does not already know. Nor is prayer seeking to get God to change his mind. It is the adoring submission of the creature to the Creator, of the disciple to the Master. He knows. He cares. He is your Abba, your dear Father.

That’s why we can pray

Father, hallowed be your name.

‘Hallowed be’ is a statement of longing, for our own lives and the whole world. We long for God’s character - and therefore God’s name - to be the bedrock not just of our lives but of all people, everywhere.

We are called to live lives and pray prayers that recognise God for who God is. Our worship and prayers do not make God holy; they are our recognition of all that God is and an attempt to align our beings and lives with that truth.

It’s where this wonderful prayer begins because, until we have understood properly who we are praying to, we dare not bring our requests to this God. Isn’t it great that God is both big and other but also accessible? Maybe we are here as a church to remind people of that.

I have a baptism in September and I went to meet the family on Monday nightat their home in North Stainley. I parked the car. Suddenly a load of little girls came running up the street. “ Rev Ian Rev Ian!” they shouted “you come to our school!” Then after I’d seen the family, I got back in the car and started to drive off, they chased me down the street, giggling. I guess going into school I remind those girls about God and being seen about I show them God – the church – is accessible and friendly and meets people where they are. The Lords Prayer enables us to approach this vast God. And later we invite God to do stuff…

It is a deeply accessible prayer that lifts us to God in praise, in awareness of our needs, and in acceptance of the way in which our loving God meets our needs.

The prayer goes on, with admirable directness, with, "Give us…Forgive us…Lead us…Deliver us…" 

So why pray the Lords Prayer and never forget it? “ In it,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “every prayer is contained.” All of our prayers, he goes on to say, “are summed up in the Lord’s Prayer and are taken up into its immeasurable breadth.” The prayer that Jesus taught us is the most beloved of all our prayers, with good reason.  And Martin Luther who I began with said of this prayer: “Since our Lord is the author of this prayer, it is without a doubt the most sublime, the loftiest, and the most excellent. If he, the good and faithful Teacher, had known a better one, he would surely have taught us that too.”

 

One of the most moving experiences for me is when I pray this prayer with people suffering from dementia when I take care home services. They may not remember who I am, or even the names of their own family members, but they invariably join me in praying the Lord’s Prayer. It is always a holy experience for me. There’s a dear soul I see every month in Boroughbridge who is always a few verses behind when we pray it but she’s word perfect. She also is a verse behind in every hymn but I let her have the last verse on her own when the others have all finished and then she laughes at me!

This prayer connects us to one another in profound ways, across the generations, across denominations, and around the world. A powerful thing to do if you ever visit London is to go to a service under the dome in St Paul’s Cathedral. The congregation is an international one and you are invited to say the prayer in your own tongue and so there is a wonderful cacophony of words around you, emphasing that this Father is truly our Father, no matter where we come from or what we look like. And think about this: when we pray this prayer, there is almost certainly someone else in the world who is praying it at that very same moment. When we pray this prayer, we are never alone.

Why pray this prayer? I like how Eugene Peterson answers this question.

 

I was visiting a woman in her mid-forties. She had been widowed for several years, children grown, and feeling at loose ends.

Nobody needed her; she had no need for employment. For a few months she had been worshiping, but erratically, in the congregation that I served as pastor. I was sitting in her living room, listening to this familiar rehearsal of mid-life meandering, a soul adrift. The conversation, like her life, didn’t seem to be going anywhere. There didn’t seem to be any place for me to get a foothold. She had a piece of needlework in her lap, stretched across an embroidery hoop. Then, with just a faint note of vibrancy in her voice, she said, “Do you know what I need? I need something to give tautness, shape to my life. I need an embroidery hoop for my soul. I’m a limp piece of cloth—you can’t do fine needlework on a limp piece of cloth.” She had given me my foothold. I said, “I’ve got just the hoop for you. The Lord’s Prayer is exactly that sort of device for your soul: a frame across which to stretch your soul taut with attention in the presence of God.”

 

Isn’t that great? The Lord’s Prayer is the frame that can keep our souls “taught with attention in the presence of God.” It can give us the foothold, the words, that we need. It can offer us the frame for all of our prayers. God is accessible, approachable and just there and we need the time and the space to seek him out. 

Joseph Scriven  sees prayer as a solace. In it we are reminded that God hears our cries and for us we are caught up in the purposes of God again when we stop our wittering and our worrying and as AI says when I put in the search engine coming to God in prayer Coming to God in prayer is a deeply personal and varied experience, but at its core, it involves approaching God with an open heart and mind, seeking connection, guidance, and support.Whether through formal or informal prayer, individuals express their thoughts, emotions, and desires to God, trusting in His presence and willingness to listen. 

Let us be praying churches. Let us be bold enough to pray. Let us expect God to answer. Remember John Wesley said “the neglect of prayer is a grand hindrance to holiness.”

“Whenever the word of God is taught clearly and purely and we, as God’s children, also live holy lives according to it. To this end help us, dear Father in heaven!”

Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.”

Needing each other - and praying for peace

I’m writing this while BT Openreach drill a hole into the hall wall at Boroughbridge trying to get WIFI sorted for us. We’ve had five attempts to get it sorted which I won’t bore you with and today nearly didn’t happen. He arrived and said he’d need a hoist to climb the pole in the lane behind the church and he said it would be a day’s work. I said “haven’t you got a hoist?” He put in a call to “hoist support”! We will see what happens! Clearly “hoist support” hold the key to progress today! 

 

We all need somebody alongside us to help life move on or be fuller. On Monday, I was in Liverpool. My meeting didn’t last as long as I thought it would so I had time to explore the vast Anglican cathedral, and then walk along Hope Street to the Roman Catholic one. Half way down Hope Street are two sculptures of the two Archbishops who decades ago did much for Christian Unity in the city, David Shepherd and Derek Worlock. Underneath the sculptures, is a circle with the words “Better Together” on it. We all need somebody alongside us to share insights, challenge our position and tell their story or just do something we cannot do, like “hoist support”! 

 

Take our Circuit at the moment. We are seeing churches worshipping together more. We are sharing each other’s stories more. We are being honest about our problems more. It was good for me last Sunday to guide Harrogate Road through their annual church meeting. It’s been over two years since I worked with them and while we miss Sarah, it was good for me to hear where they are as Allhallowgate work in partnership with them. Ecumenical partnerships are developing as well. It’s my role in the District to encourage this. I’ve turned up at a lot of C of E special occasions recently, the licensing of Sue, the new vicar in Boroughbridge, the Diocesan Synod in Leeds and in a few weeks the licensing of my friend Claire as vicar at Kirby Hill. The Bishop of Ripon said to me the other day “oh for goodness sake, just become an Anglican!”

John Wesley preached a sermon about the importance of different groups of Christians working together called “Catholic Spirit” (“Catholic” meaning universal.)Wesley asked this question: “Is thine heart right, as my heart is?” He recognized that, in the church, we have many differences. Those differences are important and we must not deny them, but the core question for whether we can work together is, “Are our hearts alike?” I am confident that the answer for us in our Circuit in this moment is, “Yes, our hearts are alike!” 

Wesley goes on from there to ask, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may…”If it be, give me thy hand.” I do not mean, “Be of my opinion.” You need not: I do not expect or desire it. Neither do I mean, “I will be of your opinion.” Keep you your opinion; I mine; and that as steadily as ever… Let all opinions alone on one side and the other: only “give me thine hand.”

We need each other!  And the world needs to remember we need each other. Else all is lost.

This prayer offered by Rev Dr Raj Patta is where we are and from where we pray. It’s very powerful.

In the meantime, I’d better go and see if “hoist support” has done anything. It’s gone awfully quiet!