Remembering but not resolving…

This morning, the 11th November, at 11am, I should have been leading the village remembrance at the war memorial in Bishop Monkton. On the 11th November, at 11am, we stop to remember the armistice: the end of the war to end all wars, they thought at the time.  On Remembrance Sunday this year I was really looking forward to being in Boroughbridge, largely because it would have been my first Remembrance Sunday with serving military personnel. The base at Dishforth joins in with the service. Due to flipping costochondritis, and recovering from bleeding ulcers and a corneal abrasion both are not to be. 

I have used the story many times of the little girl who wrote in her history schoolbook “Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, and since then we have had two minutes of peace every year.” 

I think it’s in Nehemiah in the Old Testament there is a cry we can all cry: “they cry “peace peace, where there is no peace.” We remember the fallen of two horrific world wars this weekend, but we also remember that war and disharmony are contemporary problems.

This Remembrance weekend we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War. I was born in 1967 and was 15 when Margaret Thatcher sent the task force to the Falkland Islands as Argentina suddenly claimed sovereignty over them. For the first time in my life, war was real and it was scary. We remember this year how many casualties of that war there were on both sides. 

War heightens emotions. Remember the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, who in a service after the war and after Thatcher had been jingoistic, dared to pray for the Argentinian fallen, getting into all sorts of trouble: War isn’t easy.

In a social media age, war can be in our faces. The Ukraine and Russia conflict has been going on since last March. Maybe we have stopped reacting to it. We used to hang Ukrainian flags on our churches and hold prayer meetings. Many Ukrainian families are still in this country, refugees from war. We have some in Boroughbridge who use our food larder at church each week. Will they ever be able to return home? 

What do we pray today and on Sunday? We cannot solve Ukraine and the other places in the world where there is conflict, but we can do our best to work for reconciliation where we are not at peace with others around us. It seems to me military contexts aside, we just aren’t at peace…

Take government for example… Sir (really?) Gavin Williamson resigning before he is pushed  because of vile bullying. Then a Home Secretary overseeing chaos with refugees fleeing terror arriving on the shores of this country by boat forced to live in inhumane conditions only known about when a child throws a bottle over a fence to let us know what is happening, and she calls frightened people an invasion.

Then there’s Matt Hancock. Matt Hancock, the former Secretary of State for health who did the majority of the 5pm bulletins at the height of the Covid pandemic who made some devastatingly wrong decisions, and now he’s there on ITV’s most successful programme, and it just isn’t right. 

How come we are so disunited? Not just war and peace, but a lack of respect for those different to us who we find a threat. I hope Hancock gets to do some horrible trials and eat kangaroo penis, but really, he is a symbol of what is wrong with us at the moment. 

Think about:

The mess in Northern Ireland and the DUP blocking elections for a new executive.

 A Rishi Sunak government which he says will be full of integrity and compassion, yet hasn’t shown much of either yet. Can’t we have Liz back!?

A world worried about climate change as COP 27 meets in Egypt.

A church which cannot stop upsetting people became it cannot stop discriminating against those who are different, or finding out a piece of gossip and spreading it. 

What do we pray for as we gather at war memorials this weekend?

May I suggest not just Ukraine or our troops, like Dishforth near us, but for us to better at relationships where we are. We cannot solve all the world’s problems but we can make a difference where we are.

The Archbishop of York has shared these words this Remembrance season:

“ On the cross Jesus confronts the hate and anger, disease and divisions of the world. And he does it with love. He receives the worst the world can give. And he goes on loving.  He lays down his life for his friends. He asks us to do the same. The God of Jesus Christ is a barrier breaker, tombstone roller, barricade buster God. Sins forgiven. Those who are separated are brought together. Enemies even become friends.”

I reckon that’s my prayer this Remembrance tide… 

Can we just treat people as human beings again?

Some regular readers may have wondered why I’ve been missing from Facebook and there have been no blog posts or sermons on line for the last few weeks. 

I left hospital in Harrogate on 28 September after 9 days following ulcers and internal bleeding caused by me being given medication my body couldn’t take for the costochondritis diagnosed earlier that month. That morning I woke up with a red and sore eye which they thought might have been caused by me hitting myself in my sleep in the night. 

I came home and took a funeral the next day. My eye was still red and even sorer than the day before. At the graveside, I realised I couldn’t read my service book clearly. It’s a good job I know the committal liturgy by heart! At the thanksgiving in the church as I preached, I had to move my i pad to the left of me as the sight out of my right eye was very blurry. I knew taking that funeral and being back amongst people would wear me out. But I wasn’t expecting what came next! 

The next day my eye wouldn’t open. I went to the GP and she referred me that afternoon to the eye clinic back at Harrogate hospital. They told me I had a corneal abrasion in my eye and told me not to read or write or watch television - hence why I haven’t been on social media. That weekend my eye hurt like crazy I was sent by 111 to the emergency eye doctor in York who cleaned it. Three appointments later in Harrogate, my eye has now healed, the cornea though has changed shape so I won’t see properly to read or drive safely until I get new glasses which will take time. 

The other problem I discovered the weekend after I left hospital was I was more weak than just being exhausted from leading a large funeral. Back to the GP we went to be told I was extremely anaemic and why did the hospital not put me on iron tablets? The doctor declared me unfit for work… my haemoglobin levels had dropped in hospital losing a lot of blood but not enough blood to be given any in there. 

The levels went back to where they should be and things were beginning to improve until on Sunday 23 October I was overwhelmed with pain in my abdomen and stabbing pain in my ribs. Reluctantly we called 111 and I ended up in another ambulance and back into hospital for another 12 long days… 

Over the last 12 days they’ve given me various drugs to try and get to the pain. We discovered the root of it was at the bottom of my right rib which when prodded really hurt. The pain spread from there. Every day the doctors came and asked me if their latest drug or gel had worked. The answer was always no. 

This morning, being woken at 6am, the nurse on duty told me it was discharge day. I told him whilst the stabbings round my body had gone, the pain I came in with was no better. The team swept in at 9 and despite me telling them the same, they told me they were sorry, it was “tricky” and to “put a water bottle on it.” A few minutes later, the sister came in and told me I was to go to the discharge centre now. A few minutes later I was put in a chair and dumped with others who had also been told to go home with speed! So here I sit, still in agony, glad to go home, but incredulous that I haven’t been heard and that I’ve spent 12 long, boring, unnecessary days to be told “put a hot water bottle on it!” (Readers - I put a hot water bottle on it last night and it did nothing…) 

I’ve only ever been in hospital overnight for minor 

things before so 21 days of this over two stays has been an education! I think I sit here watching wheelchair rugby league with a diverse mixture of dumped humanity reflecting on dignity… 

First dignity of those who care for others. I have nothing but respect for those who work as nurses and carers on wards like I’ve been on. They work extremely long hours and clearly despite many issues still see their work as a vocation. I sat this morning thinking how these people do this day after day, with some patients being nice but others being horrible. 

My ward this second time was short staffed, especially at the weekend. But I will remember lots of kindnesses: Grace, a student nurse from Leeds learning on the job; Louise, a care worker who took time every day to listen to me; Charlie, a newly qualified nurse who had just moved to Harrogate who treated us all as people with a story and took time to sort my medication out. It took five days for all my pills to be put on the system, and I was told I needed an ultrasound, which took someone four days to sort. The man opposite me kept badgering them “when’s my scan, when’s my scan?” and they mostly kept patient! Then I would mention Darren, the lead chaplain at the hospital who gave me communion last Sunday on a day I really struggled not being at work as my chapel at Kirkby Malzeard was closing. The chaplaincy team as in every hospital, do an amazing job. 

We need to remember at the moment all those working in the NHS. It’s easy to criticise. I might be critical of the doctor’s care I’ve received (“put a hot water bottle on it”) but not at all about those on the ground. We clapped the NHS during the pandemic at its beginning. Now we need to push our government to properly fund it. I fear in the coming recession there may be cuts to the health budget which would be criminal. 

Then I think I reflect on a lack of dignity and respect for people generally. I will get over being discharged without solution to my pain and the speed of getting out of here, but there are people today we fail to treat as humans. While I’ve been in hospital, we’ve seen the situation with migrants fleeing danger arriving on the south coast and despicable scenes of overcrowding in a detention centre at Manston in Kent and messages in a bottle thrown over a fence to alert the wider world what is happening. 

We’ve heard stories of people dumped in London on the streets, and I’ve just read of Ukrainians and homeless people being housed in a hotel in Northallerton being told they must go so migrants can be put up in it to ease the chaos in Kent. We have a Home Secretary who calls it an “invasion” despite a new Prime Minister who promised compassion in this administration.

 Mind you, there are those who agree with Ms Braverman. I found some clips on the right wing GB News of last night’s Nigel Farage programme which came from Stoke on Trent opposite a hotel like the one in Northallerton alleged to be housing migrants. Some of the views made me shudder! Even a government minister this morning said migrants have a cheek moaning about conditions in the detention centre. Sometimes I despair about this country. 

Then there’s America! The mid term elections are a real worry. If the far right bit of the Republican Party do well, it’s clear we will be heading for a second Trump go at the Presidency. 

Then there’s Russia. How do you stop a man like Putin? 

And then there’s Israel? The rise again of Benjamin Netanyahu and and a coalition with the religious Zionists is deeply worrying…

Why can’t we treat people as humans? Why don’t we listen to stories honestly told? Why can’t we show some care when that care is desperately needed? There are people today, like I am up a dead end medically, who feel helpless and lost and at the hands of others who make them feel even more helpless and lost, even if that wasn’t their intention. I’m sure the doctor this morning who said sorry to me is very nice, but I needed her to listen but she had run out of ideas. 

I think it was Tutu in South Africa who used the word “ubuntu” - a Zulu word meaning a common bond between humanity - literally, “I am because you are.” We need each other, one person’s actions affect everyone else. I’ve seen a huge turnaround in people in the beds around me over the last twelve days. Mostly we have formed community, chatted and laughed but you know one man’s snoring and grunting in the night makes every man not sleep! 

Likewise, government policy affects everyone for good or ill, and labelling people as invaders or unwanted or getting rid of them from our space makes us lesser as a community. How many people do we want to send to Rwanda if we are truthful? We aren’t good at genuine dignity and community that listens to everyone and gives them room to be as they were created to be. We are all made in the image of God. None of us are worth less than our neighbour. 

I’m feeling exhausted and cross as I leave this hospital because I’m still in pain. I need someone to hear me. I just feel at the moment people are okay with others not being heard or treated properly. Remember those words of Paul to the fractured church in Corinth: “when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer.” 

Embracing Father,

You grace each of us with equal measure in your love.
Let us learn to love our neighbours more deeply,
so that we can create peaceful and just communities.
Inspire us to use our creative energies to build the structures we need to overcome the obstacles
of intolerance and indifference.
May Jesus provide us the example needed
and send the Spirit to warm our hearts for the journey. Amen.

(Prayer from the Roman Catholic Church in the USA)

A sermon: “Questions and Answers”

Steve Turner was a Christian poet popular in the 1980’s. In one of his books he has this poem:

“Do you need to go to the toilet when you are dead? Does God grow old? Life is full of unanswered questions when you are five years old and late for school.”

 

Life is full of unanswered questions, and difficult ones we want an answer to. I’ve been bombarded with questions while I’ve been in hospital…

Can I take your blood pressure?

What is your name and date of birth? (Asked before any pill is given you.)

Have you had your bowels open? 

And my favourite – would you like a bottle for the night? 

 

They were asking the man opposite me  some questions the other day to test his memory. The questions were:

Do you know where you are?

Where do you live?

Can you count backwards from twenty to one?

Who is the Prime Minister?

I thought asking him that was a bit unfair as there was a different Prime Minister from when he came into hospital! 

 

The Episcopal Church in America has this sentence as part of its raison d’être: “We don’t have all the answers and we welcome others who love the questions.” There are hard questions and then there are questioners who just want to trip you up. 

When I was minister in West Sussex, I did a lot of Bible studies and discussion groups and I had a man called John who didn’t believe Jesus was anything other than a good man. He would come to every gathering to try and tie me up in knots. He saw it as sport and fun! His wife would shout at him “oh John, stop it!” After five years of this when I was about to leave that church, I told him he wanted to believe more and he was searching really otherwise he wouldn’t have kept coming. Ministers after me told me he did the same to them! 

Luke Chapter 20 opens with Jesus in the Temple. It is the start of the final week of his earthly life and takes place after his ‘cleansing’ of the Temple from the misuse it had fallen into. 

Loved by his crowd of listeners, Jesus has also made many enemies amongst the various religious leaders, and in this chapter, each group attempts to question his authority, to catch him out or trick him into a falsehood or blasphemy which will give them the opportunity to arrest him. Jesus answers them all faithfully.

 

When the Sadducees, a sect that didn’t believe in resurrection, made their challenge, it was in the form of a hypothetical situation fantastical, almost ridiculous. Yet Jesus doesn’t dismiss them, and listens to their question with patience, without laughing, and answers seriously. Evidence of the truth of resurrection will not be found in a reproduction of the structures and confines of earthly society, but in the Sadducees’ own Jewish history, where God is the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are alive with Him as demonstrated to Moses in the burning bush. 

To question this would be to deny their own beliefs; the Sadducees are silenced, and even the scribes admit “Teacher you have answered well.”

 

To hear that marriage as we understand it is not recognised in heaven, where each individual is a child of God and like the angels, may be a disappointment to many people, whether Christian or not, who fondly imagine loved ones reunited after death. 

After the death of our late Queen, there were some lovely cartoons of her and Prince Philip together; in one cartoon Her Majesty is walking hand in hand with Paddington Bear, and the speech bubble says “Paddington, I have worked hard and I’m very tired, please let me go to be with my husband.” It is a consoling picture, and let us hope that they are reunited, even if not in marriage, nor as monarch and consort, but as angels and children of our heavenly Father.

 

Let us hope that all people who have died in faith have risen again in that place where “there is one equal light, one equal music” as John Donne wrote in his prayer:

 

“Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity: in the habitations of thy majesty and glory, world without end. Amen.”

 

There is a lot we don’t know, but as Christians there are things that we do know. How confident would you be if you had a John or a Sadducee challenge you? Would you be able to give an answer or would you freeze? We know despite much uncertainty, of new life, a heaven, victory over death, that how it is today is not how it will always be. We need some hope. 

Collins Dictionary this week shared it’s new words of the year. One was “permacrisis” – did you know we are living in a state of permacrisis? Permacrisis: a term that describes ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’.

 

We don’t have all the answers about what is to come,but we know it is true. Job even knew it in the midst of undeserved and unbelievable suffering: “For I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.”

While Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees’ question silenced his critics, it still leaves all of us mystified as to what form that kingdom of God will take. Will it be the ‘heavenly city’ of the Book of Revelation, or will we be made to ‘lie down in green pastures’ as in Psalm 23? Will there indeed be a heavenly banquet? Or are all these things just an extension of what we have wished for in our earthly lives, and the reality something yet more wonderful? I remember a vicar coming to our youth group to talk on “what is heaven like?” He stood up and said “I don’t know, I’ve not got there yet.” 

 

Life is full of unanswered questions. That’s okay. 

But we do need to be more certain in what we do know in our hearts, as it said on the front wall of the chapel at Kirkby Malzeard, “great is our God, Jesus Christ is Lord.”

 

Part of my trouble in recent weeks has been a corneal abrasion on my right eye, got in my first stay of my two in hospital.  

That has meant I haven’t been able to read very clearly. While off sick, I’ve attended some Evensongs in the cathedral. I have found I know the words of the creed by heart. These words are, in the midst of all the questioners and doubts we face, what we treasure and what we proclaim as the Church:

 

“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. 
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. 
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. 
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. 
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.”

That’s the right answer!

 

Kirkby Malzeard Chapel - Letting Go

The last Sunday of October sees the sad closure of one of my chapels in the Ripon and Lower Dales Circuit at Kirkby Malzeard. 

I’ve served in six Circuits and resided in a seventh in my ministry. I’ve only had one church close before while I was the minister, that was Ashington in West Sussex. There the small congregation found keeping their building going too hard. They formed a house group in the village which is still going strong twelve years later. 

This Sunday, we end a long chapter of our story as the people called Methodist serving the community of Kirkby Malzeard as we sadly let go of our building, for similar reasons Ashington closed: a building we cannot afford to keep going, financial worries and a lack of people who can commit themselves to hold office and be there every Sunday.

The congregation will be gathering on Sunday with many emotions. Some will no doubt be thinking of those saints who have gone before them who are part of the chapel’s story, people who loved the place and lived out their faith from it, others may be thinking of special family occasions, baptisms, weddings, funerals that have happened, or times of rich fellowship and togetherness shared together over the years, and those who have come to us more recently will be thinking of the warm welcome they received walking through the door which made them stay with us. Kirkby chapel has had an important part to play in the story of God’s love, without it, many people would not have come to know Jesus.

  

On Sunday afternoon, people can come and see pictures and memorabilia that tell something of the Kirkby Methodist story. 

It’s been a story of sharing God’s providence, leading people to Christ through faithful service and community. I hope folk will take time to say thank you for this special place, laugh a lot, cry a bit, and take time to remember. 

However, the closing of our building is not failure, or the end, but a pause, a full stop of the chapter of our first 142 years. A new chapter will open for us. I look forward to leading our people writing the first words of a new chapter, free from worries about money and fabric, and who is going to open the church and now instead open to what God might want of us as we do things a bit differently. 

 

“Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts!
We are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple.

You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds, God our Saviour,
the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas, who formed the mountains by your power, having armed yourself with strength, who stilled the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations.
The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.”

(Psalm 65)

It’s not been an easy decision to make to cease to meet, but I write again this is not failure, and we must open ourselves, freed from some burdens and responsibilities to where God might be calling his Methodist people to be now. Wasn’t it Churchill who said “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It might though be the end of the beginning.” 

 

Moving isn’t easy. Standing still in God’s plan though is never an option. To stand still or try and avoid movement is to become stale and we will eventually die. “To grow is to change, and to become perfect is to have changed often.”

 

Some changes are easier to deal with than others. And this Sunday will be hard for the Kirkby congregation and I want to thank them for their devotion and energy over the last few years which haven’t been easy for them. 

What has been the message of our holy place? And any holy place? Well, when people came in to Kirkby chapel, they came in under the words “Ebenezer 1880.”

Remember when Israel defeated the Philistines, Samuel built a monument in the place it happened. He called it Ebenezer, “stone of help”. Those who built any chapel, like Samuel, built it because they wanted people to remember God’s very present help in trouble. As the hymn said  “here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’ve come.” A chapel can be a sign of the reliable help of God. Not the only sign but a reminder as people pass that God is about. I find it sad that when a church closes, people who don’t come tell me it is so sad and we should have done more to keep it open. They never came! We all have a church or chapel we want there but today keeping things there needs commitment. There was an event close to my smallest church the other month. I was told “we must keep the chapel open.” I told those who said this I needed them to start coming to it then. 

 

The help Ebenezer states is there is seen most clearly in Jesus, so those coming into Kirkby chapel will have been reminded of this in these words in front of the chapel on the wall: “Great is our God, Jesus Christ is Lord.” That Jesus has been shared faithfully is a cause for rejoicing and celebration. We are called to plant seeds and we might never see how faith growed in those we taught. I bet there are many memories of Sunday School of old shared on Sunday! 

I, being the minister of the church at Kirkby, so wanted to be there on Sunday to lead the services, but that is not to be. I will be thinking of everyone. It will be hard not to be with them. Devastating, actually.

I pray my good people at Kirkby Malzeard, like any other little Methodist society that is challenged about its future, find new life having decided bravely to let go. The church after all is not a building but the living moving, vibrant people of God. I’m thinking about other places I’ve served which have since closed. Millbrook and Tame Valley in my first appointment, Whissendine and Somerby from my second, Auckland Park from my third, Ashington in my fourth, and Tydd St Giles in my sixth. All the churches I served in Hastings, my fifth appointment are still going, two have moved from rickety unsustainable church buildings into community centres but they still meet every week. 

With Kirkby, who knows, we might grow again doing church in a new way. I do not believe God has finished with us yet… so when people ask me how many churches do I have, I shall still answer eight as while I might soon only have seven buildings, I still have eight communities - it’s important to say that. 

The society at Kirkby Malzeard moves on. This is not the end. On December 11 we shall hold a carol service in the afternoon at the mechanics institute in the village and then from January, there will be a Methodist service on the last Sunday of the month at St Andrew’s C of E. We are grateful to the Rev Ian Kitchen and the PCC for their kind ecumenical welcome. We also hope to meet together as a church for fellowship when we can. On behalf of the local congregation in Kirkby I ask, please pray for us. 

 

In the words of Dag Hammarskjold: “For all that has been — Thanks. For all that shall be — Yes.”