Give up giving up.

John’s Gospel is a bit like a spring being wound as we hear the repeated refrain of ‘It is not my time yet’ from Jesus.  And we wait, with the disciples, for the moment of ‘the time’. We are good at waiting in church, good at reflecting and maintaining and waiting.  But what if now is the time?  What if God is calling us to action?

What is happening around us?  Thousands wait anxiously to know if they will have a job in a few weeks, charities are looking around to see if they will even exist in a few months, all at the same time as bank bosses are being given millions and the government announce a freeze on council tax.  Why have they abolished Labour’s increase on council tax?  Because an increase would ‘hammar middle England’.  At least we know now, if we didn’t before, where this government’s priorities lie, and it’s not with the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalised.  Services to those on the edges of society are being reduced or removed and people will suffer and even die because of it.

And what is the church doing this week in the face of all this?  Giving up chocolate and the internet.

Give up giving up!  While you’re eating your chocolate biscuit and dunking it in a caffeinated coffee, why not pray, meet with friends and colleagues, find out what’s going on and see how to respond.  And while you’re on the internet, why not do some looking and searching, follow blogs of people who know things, write emails of protest, get informed and act.

My plea is that we stop ‘giving up’ stuff for Lent and start ‘getting on’.  The great thing is, it will be at least 40 days before anyone will respond!

Isaiah 58….. ⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,

The need for maturity

So some Archbishops aren’t going to the Primates’ meeting because they don’t agree with what some of the others think or do.  I realise that this is a simplification, but in essence this is the situation, “I don’t agree with you therefore I cannot possibly be in the same room as you, or go to the same meeting as you.”  Personally, I don’t feel this is very many steps away from the attitude of children in playground.

The fact that this is the week of prayer for Christian Unity makes it even sadder, if we can’t even have unity within the Anglican Church there doesn’t then appear much hope for working with other churches.

These men are meant to be our leaders.  They are meant to be setting us an example of how to conduct ourselves in our ministry and, frankly, they’re doing a pretty poor job of it.  If every Anglican clergy person were to follow their example what would happen to deanery, diocesan and general synod?  In effect, the governance of the Church of England would be significantly hampered, if not disrupted to the extent of making it unworkable.

This is divisive and immature and they need to be challenged.  Should part of an Archbishop’s working agreement include attendance at these events, and if they don’t attend should there be ramifications?

 We need to love each other deeply, even when and especially when we disagree with each other.  Jesus told us to love, and love even our enemies and this is not a loving act. 

I think I understand to some extent why they don’t want to go as I have always noticed that it is much easier to disagree with someone when they aren’t in the room and I don’t have to actually look them in the face.  If I talk to someone I disagree with then there is always the possibility that I will have to change or at least re-evaluate what I think.  One sure way to avoid the messiness of changing our opinion is to make sure that we only talk to people who we agree with.

We are all sinners.  We all make mistakes, make poor decisions and mess up our theology.  We learn and grow through sharing with each others, not through hiding away and entrenching our position.

We are not the remnant, nor are we the elect

How do we cope when our Church isn’t growing?  How do we cope when we work so hard, we try lots of things, we deal with all the church politics and for what seems like nothing.  I worry that we begin to justify it, ‘isn’t it a shame that this is a time of decline in church attendance’.  And if it’s not a sociological reflection, then it can become a theological one.  We can begin to think that we are the valiant remnant, holding on to faith in a growing sea of secularism (which, I don’t agree with, but that’s for another post); nor we are the elect and we can remain inside our church, doing our own thing and waiting for glory.

We are not the remnant nor are we the elect.

This is hard to write, because the last thing I want to do is to add to the stress levels of fellow clergy by being seen to criticise. Neither am I wanting to suggest that ‘successful’ churches (whatever that means) are big ones.  I help to lead one of the smallest churches in the diocese and I love them, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

What I do want to do is to highlight the possibility that our unconscious theology can affect our vision, our dreams and our hopes.  If we begin to believe that we are remnant or elect then it will influence the way in which we plan, minister and mission, because if we think that people really aren’t going to be interested then we may well not be so motivated in sharing with them.

I believe there is hope; I believe there is a future, and if that makes me naive or idealistic, then I’m happy with that.

Here are some words that I encountered this week, I  think they’re a real encouragement.

Go as far as you dare, for you cannot go beyond the reach of God;

Give as extravagantly as you like, for you cannot spend all the riches of God;

Care as lavishly as you are able, for you cannot exhaust the love of God;

Keep on moving, for God will always be with you.

A Christmas story

Cold isn’t it?  There’s a definite nip in the air.  Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been sat out on these hills much recently, too much going on and I’ve forgotten what it’s like.  Well, what with all that’s been happening in Jerusalem recently everyone’s been a bit distracted.

Family business this is.  My Dad was a Bethlehem shepherd, his Dad before him, his Dad before him, his Dad….you get the picture….we’re into the old genealogies around here, get a bit carried away sometimes.  Every shepherding family in the area reckons they can trace their family right back to King David – as if, think they’ve been round sheep so long they’ve got wool between their ears.

Anyway, my Dad was one of those shepherds.  You know, you must have heard of them, no-one spends much time around Bethlehem without hearing about what happened that night, even if was over 30 years ago now.  I was only little, don’t remember much about it.  Everyone likes to talk as if they had been there that night.  Though to be honest if everyone who said they were there actually had been, then there’d have been a whole flock of shepherds.

Not that Dad really spoke about what happened much.  Not like the others, I think they were drinking out on that story for the rest of their lives.  Dad wasn’t much a talker, but I knew it’d changed him.  He’d always had this worried look in his eyes before that night, not surprising really what with the taxes and us kids to look after.  He went around as if he had the whole weight of everyone’s problems on his shoulders.  Not that he spoke to others much, well, not before hand anyway.  Kept to himself a lot, said that he didn’t want to bother others with his problems.

But after that night, he was different, changed.  A new light went on in his eyes.  He started to chat with the neighbours, ask after them – he even started doing things for them….he kept it quiet, used to sneak out at night and leave people a denarius if they were short for their taxes, or a little more milk if their kids were hungry.  I knew because I followed him a few times.

Years later I asked him about it.  He told me that he’d just got the point of giving up.  The rich were getting richer by taxing the poor, the Romans were attacking people and no-one seemed able to do anything about it.  Who cared about the poor, the hungry, the helpless, the weak?  No-one it seemed.

And then it happened.  That night.  The Messiah came and my Dad was there to see it.  Born among the poor, the dirty, the smelly, the ones who were struggling the most.  That night God showed that his heart was with those on the bottom of society’s heap.  He didn’t just come along for a special visit, or afternoon event to look sympathetic and say that he cared.  He showed that he did.  He was born poor.  He was born like me and my brothers and sisters were.  He is our Messiah.

And that’s why Dad changed.  He knew that God really knew him, really knew his struggles and was with him in them, that he really did care.  So he spent the rest of his days living out the hope that I could see in his eyes.

And now?  Well, it seems as though Jesus is back in the area.  We all hoped he’d pop over for a bit of a reunion, but seems like he’s been a little busy.  I’m a bit scared though, I don’t mind telling you, that’s why I’ve come back to the fields tonight, feels safer. 

The rumours are that he’s been upsetting people, and upsetting the wrong type of people.  I guess throwing stuff around in the Temple was a bit much for some, but he did it because he wants us to know how to pray, he wants us to know God, to love each other – even to love our enemies.  I mean, how can an unarmed man start a revolution, because that’s what they’ve been saying. 

And now they’re saying he’s been arrested.  Honestly, what is so threatening about a message of peace, love and justice.  Who’s going to get upset with that?  We’ll just have to see what the morning brings.

The truth is out there (which is fine, because we’d rather not have it in here)

How much do we really want to know or hear the truth?  How much are we able to tell the truth? After all at least if the truth is ‘out there’, somewhere, then it means that it’s not ‘in here’.  If the truth is somewhere else, is to be sought out, then does it allow people not to look for the truth where they are? Maybe this is why people in our country will spend so much time and money exploing Eastern religions and mysticism rather than explore the truth of the Gospel that is around them.

Several things have prompted this reflection.  I was chatting with someone over breakfast at college the other week about their hospital placement after Christmas.  I thought it would be helpful to share that actually, when I did the placement, I found it really hard – after all, isn’t it better to be prepared for the potential reality?  It would seem that this wisdom wasn’t exactly what the recipient wanted to hear – maybe it was the porridge…

Then, during a different conversation, I said something outloud,  knowing that this was what the others were thinking too.  But there’s something in the saying of it and the naming of the truth.  This was, judging by the response I got, something to be thought by people but not to be said. 

My perception of Church, especially the Anglican Church which I love, is that we can often value ‘niceness’ above truth.  A succesful time at Church is when everyone has been as nice as possible to everyone else and no-one has had a row.  But does this lead to any depth of relationship with the other, or does this simply mean that we stay at the superficial level of absent-minded greetings?  I’m not advocating all out war-fare at Church, because sometimes people say nasty things that aren’t true, but I am really wanting a place of honesty, integrity and depth of relationship.  And I don’t think I’m alone. 

But as always, I have to turn this back on myself.  How ready am I to hear the truth? Well, to be truthful, probably not as ready as I should be.  I have some wonderful friends who I know I can rely on to be honest and am happy to accept truth from them, but that doesn’t necessarily extend to others.

Maybe we struggle with truth because we don’t have a robust theology of conflict.  If we can work out how to disagree with people in love – and really in love, a rugged, strong love, not a wishy-washy, sentimental Christmas card love – then we may well be a better place from which to tell the truth.

‘This is the truth sent from above, the truth of God, the God of Love.’

Photos of ‘taking Jesus out there’

As a follow up to the previous post, here are some photos…..

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=48500&id=100000078747762&l=3a54056480

Is it all about numbers?

Barth writes that Church should be more about growth in depth of faith than simply getting more people in through the door….

“We cannot, therefore, strive for vertical renewal merely to produce greater horizontal extension and a wider audience. At some point and in some way, where it is really engaged in vertical renewal, it will always experience the arising of new Christians and therefore an increase in its constituency, but perhaps at a very different point and in a very different manner and compass from that expected. It is it used only as a means for extensive renewal, the internal will at one lose its meaning and power. It can be fulfilled only for its own sake, and then – unplanned and unarranged – it will bear its own fruits. As the communion of saints takes place, the dominant and effective force in always primarily and properly that of intensive, vertical and spiritual growth.” Barth, Church Dogmatics.

How would it be if instead of collecting attendance during October (for those of us who are Anglicans) we collected data on growth of faith?  How would this change the way that we did Church?  Obviously we have to be cautious about promoting the idea that we give up on evangelism or mission and just focus on discipleship.  But then how many of the ‘big, succesful’ Churches that have people joining in large numbers also have a big back door with people leaving just as quickly?  Maybe if we focused more on discipleship there would be a different picture.  Didn’t Jesus command us to make disciples, not converts?