Dying and rising

Some random thoughts about dying and rising reflecting on this week's lectionary:

I’ve been thinking this week about Saint Aidan. Saint Aidan brought Christianity around the year 634 to Lindisfarne, Holy Island, where I was on retreat last week. The English in the north were described as “an ungovernable people, and of an obstinate and barbarous temperament.” No one wanted to go and share with these people and it was Aidan at a conference who offered to go. Just like that he seems to have been consecrated bishop and sent out to preach on the island. We learn that although he didn’t want to be there, he knew a large group of people had a real hunger for God. He was not like a normal bishop who rode a horse, he walked around meeting people where they are, at their own level. He shared a message that God loved and accepted everyone.

It is often I think being led somewhere difficult, we find the resources within us to be the person we are meant to be. To die to the world means being different, being put out, not behaving like others do, being Jesus where we are, even when that puts us out. I was reminded yesterday of two quotes of Mother Theresa, who said, “I know that God will not give me anything I can’t handle, I just wish that he didn’t trust me so much.” (Ever had that inner struggle?) But she also said, “I have found the paradox that if I love until love hurts, then there is no hurt, only more love.”

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground…   

Then maybe we need to think about dying to self, falling in order to rise, dying to the sin that separates us from God, the need for a new heart. Sometimes we simply need to say we need to stop behaving so atrociously and seek a new beginning as people. We get it wrong. We don’t take responsibility for when we get it wrong. Part of our faith is the need to say to God we’ve made a mess, and God reaching out to us and saying we can start again. I think there is a need for some of our ways to fall in life, in order for new fruit to grow. Perhaps we need to show some regret about words we have said, mistakes we have made, wrong decisions, hurt we have caused. Part of what we do when we come to worship is to say sorry, and when we do and really mean it and show we can move on, God comes to us and gives us a new heart and new spirit. Jesus calls us to be selfless and open to being renewed to his agenda  but sometimes we aren’t really that committed to take that seriously. But I believe in the end we shall only grow as a Church if people notice there is a difference in us and we show some regret when self becomes dominant in us. We need a constant commitment to community and to the other. Otherwise, all that will happen is that we will be permanently unhappy. 

Unless a grain of wheat should fall into the ground and die…

And maybe this dying to self, the seed falling and dying in order to bring new life is really healthy. Sometimes when things die, we think it is the end of everything. When a cause finishes, we assume we have failed. I think in today’s church where people have more commitments outside, and less time to be here, we cannot sustain everything we once did.

But actually letting some things go, can lead to new beginnings in different ways. Let me give you an example:

My church at Ashington closed in October 2010. We now have a house group there. We sold the church to a lady who is opening a nursery in a few weeks. On Friday I spent an hour looking at what she has done to the building and to the grounds. It really is lovely, especially a lovely play area outside. She has asked me to be the “local vicar” and go in for specials to share with them when they do God. In many ways, this is a parable I think of dying and rising. We still have a presence and an influence in Ashington. We couldn’t maintain what we had. Without it dying, new life would not have been able to rise. Sometimes we need to let things die, in order to have space to breathe and live healthily.

We need to be people prepared to give, to go to a cross, to die to self in order to enjoy amazing new life. We follow a Jesus who does this, and we are called Christians after him.

I find Jean Vanier's words from The Broken Body a challenge as Holy Week gets nearer... 

This road is not always an easy road to follow. There will be times of discouragement and anger; there will be many setbacks, times of ups and downs, times of doubt. But little by little if you are well accompanied on the journey you will begin to see the light in the darkness, you will drink the water, which springs from arid land.

Reflecting on clearing our Temples

There is nothing like a good clear out at home. We keep far too much “stuff”! It is therapeutic to have a tidy up. There are periods when my study is a mess, piles of paper everywhere. It feels good when I make the effort to do some sorting and then I feel in control. What about spiritual spring cleaning and the priorities of the church today?  

Jesus was angry with a place of prayer and worship being overtaken with commercial activity and financial reward and profit being more important than God – a danger for us today where we need to fund raise, but fund raise for what? But there is more to this cleaning up of the Temple in John’s Gospel than in other Gospels where this story appears. It is right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in John, and it says well actually you don’t need the Temple you need me. To defile worship of me to neglect prayer to me, is to desecrate me. Put me first. We must note John’s Gospel is all about us reflecting on who Jesus is, primarily, it is a commentary on him rather than a series of events. To destroy the Temple for orthodox Jews was blasphemy, no wonder Jesus went to a cross. But they failed to understand that worship of God can never be dependent on physical properties alone, but on Jesus’ love and life in the believer. One commentary I read this week says, “if these are absent when we engage in worship, we talk to ourselves rather than communicate with God.”

We must note also that John wrote his Gospel after the Temple had indeed been destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, that event was huge in the Jewish calendar, and with no Temple the people had to completely rethink their spiritual life. Imagine coming to a place of worship since birth and suddenly it was no more. What would you do? Methodism today has too many buildings, our headquarters are saying, some of them are in the wrong place, and are not doing very much, but if you’ve been to a church which closed, that is hard, and to have your church criticised by someone, or ruined from within sometimes, is really painful. The General Secretary of our church, Martyn Atkins, was at Ministerial Synod in Canterbury with us on Wednesday. He said the aim of our church over the next few years is to say less “I belong to that church” and more “I am a disciple of Christ.” Perhaps buildings will become less important and perhaps we will be church where people are, more. I don’t know. It is a frightening yet also exciting time to be a Christian.

I wonder reflecting on this passage, and most of the passages in Lent are really hard – what do we need to clear out in order to be better Christians? Are there things we need to stop doing? What in our lives needs a good scrub and a good deep clean in order for us to feel better? Jesus simply today asks us to think and maybe reassess what is important. 

Ash Wednesday afternoon...

I am sitting in my study having cleared up a mess and now the desk is tidy so I can start doing things that need doing!
This morning, I shared in an Ash Wednesday with 11 Methodist folk. It was a good time of communion and quiet reflection. We committed ourselves to turn to Christ and to support one another on a Lenten walk together, as we work out what it means to be Christ-like in today's world. Tonight I shall receive rather than lead in an Anglican service in our village, which will include ashing - a sign in the end we are God's people, and we are meant to respond to him in all that we do. Our lives should be a faithful response to his care, even in the mess of our lives.
This weekend, I have a church AGM. Perhaps the first Sunday of Lent is a good time for such a meeting! I hope my folk will clear up what mess there is (and there is some!) then commit themselves to start again, trying to be more like Christ, engaging, suffering, celebrating, enjoying, dying and rising, as a community. I hope the meeting will end with an act of commitment, perhaps not with ash, but with renewed enthusiasm to be centred on God and his will for us, where we are called to be.
I am not in the practice of giving things up for Lent, although I need to keep away from chocolate and biscuits. I think it more helpful to have time to think about what it is all about. I hope to have space each day to breathe in, to be aware of my surroundings, the people who love me, and what is important in my life and in my ministry, and where God is leading me each day. In the end, I think Lent is a time for real self examination and resetting of priorities, both for individuals and for churches.
I dipped into Rowan Williams' book "Silence and Honey Cakes" the other day. It is a book full of the wisdom of the desert thinkers. I was challenged by this quote, attributed to one John the Dwarf:
"You don't build a house by starting with the roof and working down. You start with the foundation. They said, "What does that mean?" He said, "The foundation is where we start. Every commandment of Christ depends on this."
What I believe will be tested by what I do, right here. There's a Lenten challenge!
So, on with what needs doing, then.          

A discipleship movement equipped for mission?

The other evening I arrived on the premises at my church a little early for a meeting. In our hall was a Zumba class, a group of ladies moving very fast to tracks such as “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5 and “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga. The walls were vibrating as the music was so loud and there were smiles as the minister knew the words to these songs and was attempting to dance along the corridors! Movement and enjoying movement is what a Zumba class is all about. Movement does you good.

When I was at infant’s school, I remember “musical movement” in the hall, where we were invited to use our bodies to be creative, to pretend, to make shapes, to move freely, until the teacher told us to freeze and stay still, to not move anymore. We didn’t like being told to stop moving. It was contrary to what we wanted to do. Movement is exciting, inviting, to not move leaves us extremely weak. My Mother is building up her strength, not simply from major surgery, but from lying still in bed for over three months. Not moving leaves us vulnerable. But, so many churches today don’t seem to want to move anywhere. They want to stand still, or repeat a familiar programme that is safe, with no risks. I understand this. Many people in churches are overloaded, tired and frightened as numbers drop, as congregations age, and as resources get scarce but there is the same amount of work to do. Many churches have become not movements anymore, but monuments. The pressure of life has left them with no energy to move on and they are unable to move anyway because they do not have the confidence.

Over the next few years, the Methodist Church is being invited as a denomination to revisit what it is for. Methodism was raised up, our history books tell us, to “spread Scriptural holiness throughout the land.” Wesley formed the Methodist societies as revival movements within a structured Church. He was frustrated that the Church of his day was not on the move enough, not reaching people where they lived and worked, not relevant in worship and concern to a local context, not exciting and radical enough. I don’t think he ever wanted to form another Church; he wanted to shake his own up. However, another denomination is what we are but with a distinct purpose and life. We need though to discover what that life is.

The General Secretary of the Methodist Church, Rev Dr Martyn Atkins, presented a report entitled “A Discipleship Movement Shaped for Mission” at  the Methodist Conference last year and local churches are now to begin to study it. Many Circuits are beginning to review their life in the light of it.

We are beginning that in our Circuit this month at staff level, and I know the folk in Hastings, Bexhill and Rye Circuit are beginning a process of honest review which I shall pick up in September. One of my churches to be has an enormous building once full, now perhaps too big, and another one, doing some wonderful outreach to families, has voted to come out of their building by 2015 as they are wasting money patching it up.

The report, which was adopted by Conference asked what sort of Church we want to become in the next few years, and what is our mission? Also, what sort of disciples will we be? There is an urgent need to encourage one another, Dr Atkins says, to have conversations about our discipleship. This will have a different conclusion in every church.

Methodism today is extremely diverse. Some churches have elderly congregations, who need care. This is true of our churches locally here, we need a good pastoral system, and we need to provide activities that are appropriate for a senior age group. We are trying hard at this. Younger congregations may have much more energy to grasp opportunities to serve their community, but we need to find something that together we can work on to show we are a movement moving out to people rather than waiting for people to move towards us. We do not ever retire as Christians!

We also need to remember that some followers of Jesus may not be in churches at all. How will this alter our priorities in years to come? Will there be more need for chaplaincy work in our shops, offices, factories, how will we minister to those suddenly unemployed? How do we maintain relationship with elderly folk who can easily be forgotten once housebound or with families too busy to come to church on a Sunday? Will we need to go to them more or provide some sort of multiplex church model where people come when they can, at times we might think are silly? But will we have the energy to do more, and if not, will we be brave enough to stop some things to enable this necessary moving out? There are lots of questions!

I believe there will always be a need for a church to meet in, and this article is not to criticise what we are doing here. All of us work hard to keep our buildings going. I am just wondering what sort of church I will work in say towards my retirement in 20+ years time? Many people are now saying if it doesn't move, Methodism will not be here as a denomination. I do not believe that, but I think we need to be honest about what the needs are, how we can respond, what is tiring us out, and what needs to stop.

If Methodism is to “spread Scriptural holiness throughout the land” then every little thing we do needs to centre on the Bible, on relationship with God, and out to our community so we respond appropriately, and we need to help one another go out and move, if we are to be equipped so we may need some training!

Long term, are we brave enough to move and enjoy moving, or would we rather the teacher (Jesus) allow us to stand still, for ever? Remember he says, “Follow me.” One new initiative is a thing called “Tell, Show, Be” – we will be judged on how we share our faith, how we live it both in church buildings and out of them, and how we are as a disciple, our attitude to life. I challenge you if you have the internet to look at this site and let me know what you think – www.tellshowbe.com; and also perhaps this film on You Tube called This is Discipleship – www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8ERxqCqQ

I have just put these thoughts into our church magazine. I wonder if I will get any response? How will our churches be in a few years? Does movement in the Spirit of God scare you, or excite people? I take courage that Jesus promises I will not be alone, when I try, even if I fail. And most of what I do, I think, will not be done in a church building, which people may not like. I remember that old quip - "he calls us to stand on his promises, but all we do is stand on the premises." Movement or monument? 

Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. I simply, thinking about injustice and today's genocide and putting down of others, share some words I find powerful, and I pray I might have the courage where things are so wrong, even locally, to speak up and speak out. We pray for a world where no one lords it over another and destroys them because of difference.

Pastor Martin Niemoller was an ardent nationalist and prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last 7 years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

Here Lord is my life

I have just finished my sermon for my second Covenant Service tomorrow morning. We will be thinking together about Jesus' invitation to "come and see" in John chapter 1, and our response to that invitation.
In recent days I have really noticed, in my slow return to work responsibilities, that so much can detract people from the actual invitation of Jesus to come to him. So often, the institution of church gets in the way. We have to spend so much energy on raising money to keep the church going; we fret where things are done a little differently to the script we cherish and find safety in; we find church tough because there are less of us, so sometimes we turn on one another and relationships become difficult. And yet, the church is built on faith, not rules, not numbers on seats, not how busy the building is and how much money we are bringing in. Jesus says to Peter at that moment when he shares his views on who he has been following, "on this rock, I will build my church" - a rock of faith, not a book of routine, rules or stress!

Tomorrow morning, I am taking two services for the first time since my return and will give communion to people for the first time since September. I have missed giving the people in my pastoral care communion. I believe it is the greatest privilege of ministry. As people come to the altar, Jesus allows them to remember his invitation, to start again, to find the reality of a new covenant, to go into the world renewed and wanting to do things differently - at least that's what he hopes will happen in people, I think!

I am using two readings which I share here. Today is the birthday of Albert Schweitzer, born in 1865, a missionary who set up a hospital and leper colony for the very poor in Africa and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. I found a little prayer of his which is powerful:
"Here, Lord is my life. I place it on the altar today. Use my life as you will."

As we come to the altar, the table, we come to see again the grace of God and his love for us, despite who we are. We offer this God our lives and try to be better people as we receive of him. We come and see, and then we go and live.

I find strength in knowing I can always have this new start. I need to know I can receive this strength for life daily, especially when dealing with some things the church does when it gets sidetracked from the invitation!
We are also sharing these words tomorrow. In our new Methodist hymn collection "Singing the Faith" there is included this hymn by the New Zealand hymn writer, Shirley Murray. These words remind me of the quality of the invitation and the challenge of our response being worth something in return:

Because you came and sat beside us,
Because you came and heard us speak,
And we ignored you and we refused you,
We ask forgiveness, Jesus Christ.

Because you laughed and loved the child-like,
Because you lived from day to day,
And we love status and steady money,
We ask forgiveness, Jesus Christ.

Because our peace was your agenda,
Because you wept to see us war,
And we love power, and winning battles,
We ask forgiveness, Jesus Christ.

Because your cross compels an answer,
Because your love absorbs our sin,
And we are wounded because we wound you,
We ask forgiveness, Jesus Christ.

Because you came on Easter morning,
Because you come at Pentecost,
And in the Spirit, we are forgiven,
We live to praise you, Lord Jesus Christ!      

Going round and round?

I have been sitting thinking about what to say to a congregation I haven't been in touch with for nearly four months and I only have seven months left with. The annual Methodist Covenant service is a good opportunity to remind people about direction and opportunities. I was reminded of passing this roundabout the other week in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, known locally as the "magic roundabout" - I used to dread driving lessons which included it. The initial reaction facing something like this is to panic, to think I can’t keep travelling and want to get out, because the journey is too complicated. But if you look at it differently and think it is only several little roundabouts in a row, you can tackle it. If you say, I am in control, and I can cope with the obstacles and the traffic coming at me in all directions, I can tackle it. I have the resources. I am in control.

There are people who face 2012 with great uncertainty, going round and round without confidence in their own resources. Our local Rector in his letter in the Parish magazine said one parishioner said he would rather not think about it when asked about hopes for a New Year. There are people worried about money, job security, health, relationships and we seem to have begun 2012 with a lot of stabbings and killings for no explicable reason. 

How do we help people find direction rather than go round and round in a circle of panic? Perhaps we need to begin to face up to our task to simply care for people and help them on the road. 

Surely we are to care, and be there for others. We are to care for one another, to help one another find direction, to be there pastorally when life is like a confusing roundabout and we don’t know what to do.

I like this prayer written by the current Methodist Vice President, Ruth Pickles, on Day 1 in the current Methodist prayer book, inspired by Hebrews 12: 12:

Gracious God, through your Son, you call us to walk in your way of service and sacrifice. We don't expect it to be an easy way; we know we will get tired, sometimes lost and disillusioned. But you promise always to be with us: strengthening, guiding, uplifting. Help us to trust always in your promises, that we may walk with determination, faith, courage and joy until we find our rest in you. Amen.