Through all the changing scenes of life

In an attempt to resume some regular blogging (have an awful feeling that when not reflecting here, I may not actually be doing much reflecting anywhere) I'm marking my very own rite of renewed blogging passage by playing this week's Friday Five.
Inspired by May Day's significance in the pagan calendar, Sally writes

I believe that we live in a ritually impoverished culture, where we have few reasons for real celebration, and marking the passages of life; So

1. Are ritual markings of birth, marriage and death important to you?
No prizes for guessing my answer is a resounding Yes...Being involved in what the C of E rather quaintly describes as "the occasional offices" (those services which mark particular life events) is one of the parts of ministry I most treasure. So many times, they have offered the perfect opportunity to help build bridges for someone between their own story and the God-story in which our stories find meaning...Rituals allow an opportunity to pause, and, by word and gesture, to accept(or at least respond to) the changes that come our way, so far as we are able. The privilege of being with people at these times of transition, when there is no more room for pretence, can be almost overwhelming. Being invited into their lives and asked to hold some of the pieces while they try to make sense of the new picture that emerges is quite simply mind-blowing. In itself, that opportunity makes me glad that the Church of England is still the "default" option for many - even in this year of grace, 2009.

2. Share a favourite liturgy/ practice. I'm a catholic Anglican, - so the choice is almost overwhelming. I love using oil - in so many ways...with the sick and the dying...to mark the cross on the candidate's forehead during baptism( - and I love even more the fact that Common Worship offers the opportunity for family and godparents to do so too. Somehow that enforces their involvement in the committments that are being made as mere words can never do.) The most significant liturgical act for me during a rite of passage was the anointing of my hands during my ordination as priest. As I wrote soon afterwards, somehow that act turned my hands into a sacramental sign in themselves, so that whenever I stand behind the altar to preside, whenever I pray a blessing, I look at those hands and remember what happened that day, Whose hands they should now be... Writing this, I'm struck by the connection with the Experience Easter station "the Servant King", which invited the children to dip their fingers in the font and mark their own hands with the cross as a sign of dedication to loving service in the world...Dear Theresa of Avila....

3. If you could invent ( or have invented) a ritual what is it for? Not an invented ritual, but something that was hugely significant for me was the decision, just before diaconal ordination, to write out the experiences of my first selection conference (at which I was told I had absolutely no vocation to ordained ministry, and ought to go home and feed my (non-existent) chickens without more ado). On the last day of our ordination retreat, with 2 friends for moral support, I set fire to the paper on which I'd penned the whole thing, doubts and anxieties (what if they'd been right all along?), resentments and sadness - and flung (a decorous scattering just wasn't right) the ashes into the nearest flower bed while apologising to God for having doubted my calling.
It worked.
Even on my least adequate, most self-doubting days I've always known that this is who I am, that priesthood is the fullest expression of my being I'll encounter this side of eternity.

4. What do you think of making connections with neo-pagan / ancient festivals? Have you done this and how?
Well, leaving aside the Yule/Christmas and Eostre/Easter connections as too obvious to mention- yes, I think it's a great idea. I've not yet done something explicitly making the connections, though as my parishes are in an area where New Age & Paganism spiritualities are very much part of the culture I can see it becoming an important element in ministry here some time in the future. I also want to do more to create links with the Hallmark feasts (Valentine's Day et al) which the church is rather inclined to dismiss in a po-faced, superior way. People like celebration: that seems quite a good reason to provide it as we try to act as sign posts to life in all its fulness. The medieval church was so wonderful at providing a festivals at the drop of a hat - the only holidays to be had. In contrast, today we often seem to be saying "stop celebrating with your family, - come and have an altogether less joyful time here with us". But wholeness and holiness belong together - God so loved the world, - not, thank goodness, the church...

5. Celebrating is important: what and where would your ideal celebration be? A meal for all the people I love most, - though somehow there's room for us all to sit round a table without it being too ridiculously huge...not sure how we'll achieve that. We're at a restaurant on a balcony beside the sea...at twilight on a warm evening. I guess we might be in Italy or Greece, as it's the kind of place where small children can run around between the tables, smiled on by all and sundry, and we're eating fish, and lovely aubergine fritters (must be Greece then), drinking chilled wine and watching fireflies in the bushes nearby, and stars reflected in the water below. As to what we are celebrating? Life, I think, don't you?

Oh God, why? a sermon for Easter 3 on the hill

I’d planned this week carefully.
Knowing I had the Gift Day at St M’s to occupy me all day yesterday, I’d arranged for Mary to preach at both churches today.
I would just turn up and preside and everything would be just fine…After all, last week looked set to be a busy one, with all the admin that had been put on hold during Holy Week & Easter, and had then waited while I took a week off. Today would be a good day NOT to preach.
But then, Tuesday happened…one of those occasions when even the most devout soul is left scratching their heads and wondering how, if God is real, such awful things could happen.
There is no possible way in which it is right and just that a lady of almost 100 should have to stand by and watch her much loved brother being worked on by paramedics as he lies in the aisle at their sister’s funeral…..nothing that can make it OK for a family already mourning the loss of a much loved mother/grandmother to have her service derailed by another death…
That sort of injustice is a perennial feature of life – but it’s possibly easier to close our minds to it as long as it affects people a long way away, - victims or famines, earthquakes, conflicts that touch us only by way of our tv screens.
It’s when it comes close to home – our village, our family, our selves, that the questions are too huge, too loud to ignore.

Yet we’re here in the Easter season, when we proclaim as confidently as we can the reality that Christ is victorious, that death has no sting, that all things work for good for those who love God.
And we know it doesn’t add up.
All that pain, all that brokenness and an omnipotent, benevolent God.
It just doesn’t work.
So, assuming we are still speaking to God at all (and it’s a pretty fair assumption that at least some of us will not be) we divert all our confusion, all our sadness, all our anger into one great cry
“Oh God, WHY?”
and there is, it appears, no answer.
Just the great, cold silence
And in that silence we have to confront the unthinkable question
“Do we really believe what we profess, week by week?
Are the words we cling to an expression of the deepest truth or, quite simply, codswallop?”

And of course, the rational answer is that there IS no answer.
We cannot produce a coherent proof that God’s in his heaven, all right with the world, because we’re not dealing with provable certainties.
In the Easter world of this morning’s gospel, the risen Christ moved among his disciples and reassured them of his presence by sharing in that most prosaic of meals, a piece of broiled fish….
But we’re among those of whom he spoke last week as he reminded Thomas
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”
We eat our fish alone – and sometimes that seems both cold and lonely.
So what do we do?
It seems to me we have 2 alternatives…Either we can dismiss all that we profess to believe, and give way to a desperate cynicism that accords very well with the spirit of the age or we can opt for faith, knowing that we won’t ever have the concrete assurances we may long for.
And it’s not easy.
Christ himself struggled, as the weight of doubt and dereliction bore down on him in Gethsemane, burdened him intolerably on the cross…
And he found the language to express those feelings in the psalms of lament which, for millennia, have allowed people to express the inexpressible, to contain pain that would otherwise overwhelm and destroy them.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” he cried
knowing that the psalm that began thus moved from agonised abandonment to resolution.
That’s important, but what is significant above all is that he kept on talking
Though he felt himself to be forsaken, he carried on as if God were still there, within easy ear-shot.
He never gave up on the relationship but continued to voice all that was on his heart, even in the face of God’s apparent absence and oblivion.
It is the experience that framed psalm 22 and the other psalms of lamentation, which also made it possible for faith to survive even the nightmare of the holocaust. When a council of rabbis met in the late 1940s to determine whether God or man should be blamed for the death of 6 million Jews the discussion was anguished and prolonged. Finally, after many hours of talking, it was agreed that the fault lay with God…a profound silence fell in the room. Minutes passed, until one elderly rabbi went over to the window and drew back the curtain. Outside was the pale light of dawn, and the rabbi turned back to his colleagues
“It’s sunrise” he said “It’s time to worship God.”
Those rabbis had ample evidence to condemn God, but also the remembered, treasured experience that encouraged them to forgive him.
For us, if faith is a matter of intellectual conviction rather than heart knowledge, it will always be harder…Christ knew this. That’s why he gave his disciples such ample proof that he remained very much part of their material world, a world of wounded hands and side, of broiled fish, and bread and wine.
We can’t have that same direct experience, though as we gather to share bread and wine in His name we may feel that he truly touches and transforms us.
Intellectually, we will probably be doomed to fail in any attempts to justify God
Emotionally – this God who cried out in desparation as he hung on the cross surely has something to say to us in our sadness, our fear, our brokenness.
We want to believe that we are in control, that nothing can touch us; we invite God to bless our comfortable lives, and then keep out of our way - but then life slaps us in the face and everything looks very different.
Suddenly we need God in a way we had never envisaged...but we're not sure he can help us, if he's hanging on the cross.

BUT the God who hung on the cross is the same God that rose, the God who floods the world with Easter hope, the God who makes all things new. .So when we witness disasters or all the news is bad or when the people we love die before our eyes...we have the choice, to be transformed by Christ’s risen life or to remain forever in the shadows.
We don’t know, we can’t know while we peer through a glass darkly…but we can hope and believe and so live our lives that they show to others the transforming power of those beliefs.
Almighty Father, who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples
With the sight of the risen Lord
Give us such knowledge of his presence with us
That we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life
And serve you continually in righteousness and truth…….

What shall I do to-day?

Currently a tad tearful as LongsufferingClockMaker has just taken Hugger Steward properly back to Cambridge, where he will stay til late June...Hattie Gandhi was only here for a flying Easter visit, as she is up to her elbows in dissertations & final essays, & the Dufflepud is away too, preparing for his summer trip to Africa.
But I don't want to waste the day. The question is - how to spend it?

I have 48 hours of holiday left & would normally rejoice in the prospect of a good long dog walk or a few hours working in the garden. Frustratingly, neither of these options is open to me. I can't manage 2 dogs on leads with only 1 reliable arm, & all the off-lead walks round here involve at least a short drive first...while the garden is so far from even existing as yet that there is nothing I can do without a few hours of solid digging & a trip to the garden centre too.
I'm reluctant to simply use the day to clear remaining debris from the study & feel the need to do more than sit read.
Any bright ideas for a project suitable for a one-armed extrovert with empty nest syndrome?
I'd really love to do something positive with the day.

Time for some good books.

Back in January I recall making some rather extravagant promises relating to my distressing tendency to buy books by the hundred and read them only by the dozen.
To my shame I must report that not one of the waiting "work" books has yet been read - perhaps sorting them into some sort of sensible order would be a useful task for the week. However, once the drug-induced dappyness of early days with The Arm had passed, I did rather better in the "just for fun" category, enjoying all the Phil Rickmans I had amassed, plus a clutch of mindless who-dunnits and, at long last, Gilead (which the puppy are as soon as I'd finished it!).
There was also The Shack, of course - though I remain ambivalent about this, at least it was a very quick read!
I loved Alexander Frater's tale of India "Chasing the Monsoon". which is every bit as exciting in its portraits of people along the way as evocative of the great weather system Frater sets out to follow, but I was much less excited by Jasmine & Arnica
I wanted rather more of India and (heartlessly, I know) less of the author's own struggles to work out her new identity as a blind woman. I really wanted to love this book - such mad courage travelling India as a blind white woman alone - but I couldn't get past the character of the author.


The great excitement, though, has been Michael Arditti's Easter.
I began it as Passiontide approached and finished it, exhausted but delighted, just before Palm Sunday...It contains some of the best writing I've encountered in a modern novel, and its setting in an Anglo-Catholic parish in North London was always going to please me...but it challenged too. The vicar who wonders if liturgy has become, for him, a substitute for faith, the gay curate who confronts the an HIV positive diagnosis at the beginning of a turbulent Holy Week, and the beautifully drawn cast that journeys with them through the week present a re-worked passion narrative, complete, praise be, with both death and resurrection. There are some disturbingly graphic accounts of gay sex on Hampstead Heath, which made for very uncomfortable reading (it was the clarity of writing and not the gay context I struggled with) so that, having initially recommended the book to my clergy reading group I lost my nerve and back pedalled wildly, but despite this it's a wonderful read, if not for the faint-hearted.

Having barely opened anything but Common Worship and the NRSV last week, I'm now back in India with Shantaram. Love it so far, with its vivid writing about Bombay, warts and all...it's a huge book, but this week is holiday. I'll try to keep you posted.

looking back

This having been my first Easter as a proper grown up priest with 2 parishes to call my own, a spot of reviewing of the past week's manic activity seems called for.
Overall it has been wonderful & 2 particular struggles (the need for new orders of service for practically everything & the struggles of producing them via one handed typing & the general challenges of the arm) should, please God, be unique to this year.

Highs included

• the opportunity to be creative with the worship offered from Monday to Wednesday & the pleasure with which this was received...I now feel able to plan a monthly creative happening of some kind. Small numbers wont matter but knowing that there are half a dozen others who would be glad to see something develop is a huge encouragement & putting this sort of thing together feeds my soul too.
• the lovely intimacy of a congregation small enough to gather around the table on Maundy Thursday & a largely similar group around the fire and the font on Holy Saturday night;
• kneeling with my colleagues before the cross on Good Friday;
  
• the recording of the Wesley psalm 22 that the Dufflepud found & played as we stripped the altars - not the same as having St M's choir to sing for us, but a very acceptable substitute all the same. Using recorded music to enhance atmosphere went very well sltogether & emboldens me to try more too.
  
• singing the Exultet in the dark church - there's such a feeling of history combined with freshness: on one hand, I'm very aware that I'm using words & chant that go back to the eighth century, and I'm conscious of all those who have stood and sung as I now stand and sing - but at the same time it feels as if I am proclaiming the resurrection for the first time ever...I realise that makes no sense at all, but is truly my experience
• seeing a mini egg clutched in an elderly lady's hand as she came up to Communion (on arrival at the All Age Communion yesterday everyone was given a glass pebble; in the prayersthey were asked to use these to represent all the stones that are rolled across to cut us off from sharing Christ's risen life & invited to leave them at the Easter garden, in exchange for an egg - sounds a bit tacky but went down so so well).
• really good congregations at both churches (though church in the valley is big enough to demand unrealistic numbers before it feels full, most of those who were with us on Palm Sunday returned to share the Easter joy; tiny church on the hill was crammed - and I ran out of eggs)
• Another high (for which I had no responsibility whatsoever) was the Chrism Mass on Thursday: it's always inspiring to renew ordination vows alongside so many others - this year two sides of the cloister at Glos were filled as we waited to process in - a great flock of white birds flapping gently - & lovely to catch up with friends, of course

Things I would like to improve/develop/consider further:

• perhaps because we had put so many resources into Experience Easter, there seemed to be very little to engage children...I had hoped some younger families would share the Good Friday walk, but having trudged up the hill myself can see it's a bit much for younger children, & the stations as they stand would be unlikely to hold their interest. On the other hand, the tradition has been in place for a good long time, it's a rare opportunity for the two churches to do something together - and the cross on the hill looks simply stunning from the by-pass below - a very public statement
• the Agape on Maundy Thursday was gently convivial, but again would not have worked for families...perhaps we have a Messy Church passover meal next year (though not on Maundy Thursday); I want to see the questioning and story-telling restored. Also because it followed straight on from the meal it was hard for those who wanted to attend the Eucharist but not the meal to know when they should appear; I'm told this deterred a few who would otherwise have joined us
  
• where was everyone on Good Friday in the valley? Several of the Sunday congregation are older, non-drivers who might well hesitate to turn out in the evening, so a low attendance on Thursday was sad but unsurprising, but I was disappointed that more people did not appear for the Last Hour at the Cross. I would have thought this would be absolutely on the map for most of the regulars - but clearly not. Despite all I could say about the need to experience Holy Week, rather than leap from Sunday to Sunday, that is very much what the majority did
• it was sad that church on the hill were unwilling to either host any of the additional services or, for the most part, to travel down the hill to experience them.
  

Things to remember:- all relate to the Vigil I think

• it's a real struggle to light a taper from a blazing fire in a dustbin
• check whereabouts of incense grains before switching all the lights off
• a congregation that isnt used to gaving the Eucharistic prayer sung wont instinctively know how to sing responses to "The Lord be with you.."etc
• the tendency to consider numbers when evaluating "success" (another dodgy term) MUST be resisted: though I came home anxious from the Good Friday service, I actually had a really complimentary email..............and, now I think about it, I have No Idea whether the church was full or practcally empty on those occasions when God was specially evident to me as I sat in the pews
• if you invite readers in advance, it's a way to lure more people along & also enables them to practice reading in normal light levels (ie completely unlike the situation in church -oh well!)
• if you want people to make lots of noise at the start of the Gloria - give them the means to do so & tell them this is what you want!
• repeat till you get the message: just because worship does not match SJDK or St M's, it's not a problem
• not all parishes have a tradition of major church cleaning on Holy Saturday morning: if youu want this to happen, you have to mention it!
  

I'm sure there is lots more to think about - maybe I'll add to this as I think of things in the next few days....Mainly I had a wonderful time & I pray & believe that those who came to worship went home feeling that something real had happened...

indeed - Aleluia

Yesterday

we carried the cross from valley to hill...hard work, for the hill is steep & at the end the ground was rough beneath our feet.
When we reached the place appointed, we paused for a while then turned with relief to the pleasures of hot cross buns and gentle chatter at the church below.

We left the cross alone.
People always have, right from the beginning.

Spread out below us, my 2 parishes and beyond...Thousands of people oblivious to the event at Golgotha, whose lives and whose eternities were changed for ever by what happened that day.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

What music?

From the very beginning I have wondered -- what is the real music of his life?
Born homeless, - in a minor key,- with dangers lurking on the streets that night
And me unable to provide that small security each baby needs.
As I rejoiced at new life given, I shivered, knew I'd failed already,
That my arms could not be enough to hold him safe, confined.
How could I welcome the angels' song, all glory & hosannas?
I craved the gentler music of a homely lullaby.

We longed to do things right, to be in tune with the traditions of our faith.
"I was glad when they said unto me, we shall go to the house of the Lord"
And so we went to join the crowds and add our simple theme of gratitude to the . Temple's age-old counterpoint. We hoped this way to silence creeping gossip, that makes scandal of a miracle. But even here the harmony was disrupted, as Simeon, that gentle, holy man, offered us words to soothe and terrify, music to bless and curse. Was he the good angel or the dark demon at our feast? I could not tell, but felt my own song falter, silenced by forebodings I did not understand. A light and a spear...how to make music here?

More dissonance: the fanfares, pomp & circumstance of travellers bearing kingly gifts, transformed in hours to the searing threnodies of mothers mourning, their life's music broken beyond repair. From then on, always, when I held my boy, I felt the weight of all those others who would never grow, nor sing their own songs in the joy of life.

I did not sing much in those years, listened instead to try and catch the theme of Jesus's own heart-song - but always it eluded me. I never really knew this child I loved, yet could not fully mother. Always, there seemed reserve, - and yet that's nonsense...for he gave and gave...perhaps he was all gift, if only I could grasp it. His complex simplicity was music pitched too high for me to hear, - but it drew others, whose rough instruments blended and supported in a way my softer lullabies could never seem to.

Even a few days ago, their sound rang out over the city - loud, bold and brassy, like a victory parade. For a while it seemed His song had changed its tune, modulated into triumph in a major key - but soon song was replaced by shouting.
"Out - my Father's house no place for this!"

Then we returned to shifting tones, the minor thirds of gathering shadows and insistent dread, a muted drum-beat heralding the men of night who came to lead my shining son into the gloom.

Confused cacophany.
Instruments flung aside, the players fled.
Silence.
Darkness.
Deeper silence than before the world began.

There is no music now.

Homily for the Eucharist of the Lord's Supper, Maundy Thursday 2009

During our Lent course this year, we took one session to explore how we learn & grow in our faith…We realised that we all learn in different ways – some by reading, some by watching or listening, some by doing.
Often in church it seems we expect only to learn by hearing but not in Holy Week. As we’ve travelled through the week together, so we’ve tried to enter into the experience of Christ’s Passion, to make those once for all events live again in our own lives.
And tonight we are told to remember

Clearly Jesus knew all about our different learning styles, because when he wanted us to understand what he was really about, what God is really about, he didn’t tell us, in a 3 point sermon, or in a Lent course. He didn’t, on this most important point, even tell us stories.

No…he showed us, and he involved us.
He both showed us, as he knelt to wash his disciples feet.
And he involved us in the action, when he gifted us with the Sacrament.

Hugely subversive behaviour…Not the stuff of after dinner speeches at all. I guess we’re used to the concept of foot-washing as a radical gesture– and its impact was brought dramatically up to date by the Bishop of Birmingham, who last year spent Holy Week busily cleaning shoes outside his own Cathedral. Think of the shoe shine boys of the depression…. Think city pavements and dog mess...and then imagine someone, anyone you place on a pedestal getting to grips with all that.
That’s what’s going on here, as Jesus kneels at the feet of his friends.
That’s what God’s love is like…the love at the very heart of the Kingdom.
Jesus turns himself into a parable to demonstrate once again the self-giving love that has service written into every action, every thought, every moment. He shows his disciples, and through their eyes we too see, and together we have remembered…

But this alone is not enough… Jesus also gave us something to do.
I received from the Lord what I handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said “This is my body that is for you. DO THIS in remembrance of me”
Here too Jesus is upsetting the natural order. Blessing and breaking are reserved for the Master of the feast, the head of the household. Taking the loaf to the table and giving out the pieces afterwards, - this task belongs to servants, or (in homes too poor for servants) to women.
So Jesus involves each of us in something that exists to change the world as it currently is. At supper with his friends he made it clear that the coming Kingdom is for everyone, men women and children, slaves and masters…for all are called to follow the servant king in lives of loving service.
He tells us to do this…to take and bless, to break and share and as we do so to remember – and he will be with us.
Whatever your theology of Eucharist, there’s no getting round those actions and those words.
This, this fragment of bread and sip of wine, is Christ’s body – offered to us.
All that we bring to the table is our feeble, damaged selves..
But as we offer those selves, wounded by life, dented by disappointment, we find ourselves taking part afresh in the drama of our redemption. Because as we bring ourselves to his table, Jesus exchanges those poor offerings for his own self, - the life of God contained in bread and wine.

So, whenever we gather the meal continues, with places ready for each of us.
Here in bread and wine is all the sustenance we need to enable us to live for God and to serve God's people.
Here is the life of God offered to us.
Christ in us, so we may recognise and love him in everyone around us, and serve them as we are served.
Let us do so…and as we do so, let us pray that we may understand

Remember me

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuges of fugitives in caves and the dens of the earth.

Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetish because the yams have failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the think June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundred part of them.

And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei – the holy common people of God.

Dom Gregory Dix: The Shape of the Liturgy (London 1945)

So this is what I shall do in a couple of hours...Oh the privilege of this calling!

It's been a quiet week

at Church in the Valley.
On Monday, 6 of us gathered in the Lady Chapel for an Iona Eucharist. Hugger Steward & I had gone overboard with tea lights & fairy lights & there was lots and lots of beautiful silence. Such a good place to begin our journey towards the cross.
I found myself almost unable to continue as I read those searingly honest words from the Prayer of Consecration
"our hands are empty, our hearts are sometimes full of wrong things"
Every time, something in liturgy from Iona forces me to halt, to really hear the words I am saying. That's not a comfortable process - but it's a good one.

Tuesday, we walked the stations of the cross - such a small group that I worried that Jesus might feel lonely. When I was a child, I was much perturbed by the huge crucifix outside Christ Church, St Leonards-on-Sea
"Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?" it enquired as we chugged past on the 76 bus - and I always hated that sense of dersertion, of nobody seeing the depths of His pain. Last night, as a bare handful followed the via dolorosa, those feelings re-awakened. Each year in Holy Week I try vainly to protect Jesus, in all his frail humanity, from what lies ahead...last night I worried that we were adding to the hurt. Station 3 of Experoence Easter focussed on Christ's loneliness in the garden, inviting the children to make models to remember times when they had felt alone or afraid. Being the children they are, they made even their fears rather beautiful - an unexpected bloom in the garden. As a handful of families walked the trail on Saturday, another mum and I agreed that our worst fear was of leaving our children - that our failure to feel OK about trusting those beloved offspring to a world without us was a distressing indicator of the state of our faith. But our God knows about feeling alone - so maybe it will be alright.

Tonight was Tenebrae - which I loved. The same small nucleus, joined by just a few more, we gathered by the high altar. As we shared the Passion narrative together the darkness grew & shadows lengthened. In a kind of mirror image of the Holy Saturday Vigil, we sat listening to stories in a dark that increased as each candle was extinguished...I took the Christ candle out as the Dufflepud read the last words from the cross
Eli, eli, lamma sabacthani.
Hiding in the vestry all was quiet til I banged a metal tray relentlessly...
Earthquakes, the veil of the Temple rent asunder, graves giving up their dead. Then the Christ light returned & we heard once again of Isaiah's Suffering Servant
"Surely he has bourne our grief and carried our sorrows".

Maybe not such a quiet week for we who have been there.

One year on

I was licensed to these parishes on 6th April last year, though the liturgical calendar means that I'm mostly remembering my final week at St M's (which I left last Easter Sunday) as I travel through this Holy Week.

But though one year is no time at all, I guess it does mark a transition...Since the arrival of a colleague February I have not been the newcomer at Chapter, and with 52 weeks behind me I think I can stop thinking I'm the "new" vicar, and begin to believe I'm really here, where I belong.

So - what have I learned this first year here?
I remember the initial realisation that, however good a curacy may be, it actually prepares you above all to be vicar of your training parish! The first weeks here were spent frantically adjusting to familiar things that were still utterly different, because of the new context (and resisting the constant urge to ask FabVicar if I was doing alright!...that's not something anyone will be likely to tell you in the world of grown-up vicaring).
I've learned that many of the aspects of church life & worship which I had assumed to be essential just aren't on anyone else's agenda particularly. People mostly appreciate what is offered but wont be hugely disturbed if this is simple fare.There is no sense that the churches have a "right" way of doing things, which you disturb at your peril, - and this flexibility is a great gift. Conversely, of course, it can mean that I need to provide a high proportion of the energy and motivation for anything I want to introduce - though as Messy Church demonstrates, people are wonderfully supprtive if they see the point of something.
I do need to be careful that, with my alarming tendency to produce new ideas in bulk, I don't exhaust those splendid souls who find themselves lumbered with helping me see them through...but mostly I need to learn to balance my role as a vision holder with enabling the vision of others. It would be disturbingly easy to dream my dreams for these communities, sweep up others as we make them real, and then see them falter and die when the time came for me to move on...Whatever happens in these parishes in the next year, and beyond, needs to be truly "home grown" - a vision that, under God, belongs to these communities. I know there is one...I need the patience to allow it to emerge in its own time, the wisdom to lead without imposing a direction, the grace to set aside my vision should it threaten to impede fragile growth.

One year on, I still need to pray that I may really mean the easy words about shared ministry, that those ringing phrases from the licensing service may truly reflect the lives of these churches

" Together, by God's grace, we will grow in our faith and discipleship...Together by God's grace,we will be a Christ-like community of love...Together, by God's grace, we will tell the good news of Christ to the world...Together, by God's grace, we will worship him in spirit and in truth...Together by God's grace, we will seek to be the living body of Christ..."

Together, - that's the key.
It is not good for clergy (or anyone else for that matter) to be alone.

Servant King

The second station...focussed on foot-washing & what that might look like in 21st century Cashes Green.
In the interests of practicality, the children weren't invited to take off socks & shoes but rather to dip their fingers in the water & trace the cross on their palms as a silent prayer that God would use them to help someone in a special way this Easter. As I listened to their ideas about situations where they might make a difference, it was clear that they had got the idea well and truly, were doing well as they thought about the essence of service.
But for my own part, I have to say that I felt a bit like Simon Peter
When you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you wanted to go; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will gird you and take you where you would rather not go (Jn 21:18).

It's so easy to agree to serve...but to be served- that's such a different matter.

During this most peculiar Lent I've learned so much about the state of dependence. It was (relatively) easy to accept (and even ask for) help from my children & a small cluster of good friends, but well nigh impossible to ask for help from the congregations. To-day is my first anniversary here & there are many good souls whom I'm happy to know, several who are well on the way to being friends, one or two whom I'd visit if I were having a bad day....but nobody whom I could envisage asking to wash my hair or do my ironing. Not yet.

I think I may have failed to grasp the potential lessons of this Lent. I did try, truly - but I think I'll be working on meaning these words for a while yet.
"pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too" .

During the Maundy Watch some years ago I wrestled with my reluctance to allow Christ to wash my feet.
I recognised the need to jettison such arrogant self-sufficiency, but I guess I am a slow learner.

Hopes & Dreams

This was the title of the first "Experience Easter" station (the one for which Hugger Steward washed 500 pebbles).
`Jesus said "If the crowds were silent, the stones themselves would speak." What do you think he meant? '
A long pause...nobody is quite sure, then a small voice.
"Stones do speak. There's a stone out in the churchyard that says how much we miss my mum."
................
Having thought about the hopes and dreams of those who lined the road into Jerusalem, the children reflected on their own hopes before writing or drawing something on a stone to symbolise them. Responses ranged from the predictable "to play rugby for England" to the heart-rending "to have a good friend" "to see my mum smile".
By bedtime last night, the pile of stones was huge, - each one a child's dream, looking forward but memorialised as surely as those names carved in stone in the churchyard.
The idea of 500 children's dreams piled on our chancel steps all but undid me.
Holy ground.

Palm Sunday sermon for church on the hill

This will surely be the oldest sermon I have ever preached! As pressure mounted over the last week, I comforted myself with the knowledge that I would surely have a reworkable Palm Sunday sermon from my curacy that could be pressed into service for Evensong on the hill. I had forgotten, of course, that a full dramatised Passion meant no sermon at the Eucharist at St M's, while a service of musoc & readings replaced Evensong every year. So it turned out that I had no recent Palm Sunday offerings at all - and was thrown back on words I offered in a similar Cotswold village 1o years ago. With only a gentle tweak they fit quite well with what I would want to church on the hill to hear, so I shall take a deep breath & preach it when the time comes.

“Hosanna!” “Hooray” “Here comes the king”
The crowds who lined the road to Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday certainly though they had something to celebrate. After many abortive uprisings, here at last was the Messiah, who would free them from Roman domination. No matter if his triumphal entry was on the most unlikely beast, a scruffy, workaday donkey of most uncertain temper. This was the start of something big. Life would never be the same again. For the holiday crowds, there was certainly something stirring in the air. If they had known what would happen on Friday, I wonder what they would have cried
“Fly, Lord.” perhaps?” Go home, before it is too late”.

But here are we, some 2000 years on, using the same word, ”Hosanna” if not quite with their excited fervour. What do we think we are doing? After all, the Roman Empire has long since passed away, and we are citizens of the privileged west. Why are we still remembering a journey made centuries ago, which, in political terms, did nothing to alter the course of history? You will tell me, quite rightly, that Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week, the crown of the Christian year. Those who cried “Hosanna” “save us now” were in fact being unwittingly prophetic: the process of man’s salvation was being worked out before their very eyes. Certainly that is not something I want to argue with, but I would like us to think a little more about what was happening when that man rode into Jerusalem in a week that was to lead him from public acclaim to public betrayal.

For we who come week by week to worship here and listen to the “old old story” it is perhaps difficult to grasp how surprising was the course of Jesus’s ministry. From the moment when the Magi find the infant king amid the dirty straw of a Bethlehem cave, Jesus constantly confounds all expectations. Those lavish gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh must have seemed miss-matched to the child found living in poverty as a refugee. But that apparent contradiction, at the very beginning of his earthly life, was to be the recurrent theme for the whole of Jesus’s ministry and reached its most perfect expression in the events of Holy Week.

Some years ago, the well-known Jesuit priest Gerard Hughes published a book which he called “God of Surprises”. It’s a splendid book, deserving of the rave reviews it received, but one of the many remarkable things about it is that no-one else had apparently used that title before, for our God loves to surprise . For us, his people, there is an historic tension between our need for, and recognition of God as unchanging and inviolable, and our knowledge that he is too a revolutionary God, who puts down the mighty from their seats & exalts the humble & meek.
God is “the same yesterday, to-day , forever” but he nonetheless constantly challenges his church to change direction, pulls the rug from beneath our comfortable certainties and demands that we start afresh, gasping at his ingenuity. Certainly, He is a God of surpises.

Jesus, of course, repeatedly surprised the Jewish authorities. After centuries of prophecies, and devoted adherence to law and tradition, they were confident that they knew exactly how the Messiah would look, and how he would behave. Though the pedigree of the prophet Jesus of Nazareth, of the house of David, qualified him for the Messianic role, his behaviour excluded him. Despite firm grounding in the precious religious traditions of Judaism, he repeatedly stepped outside its boundaries to challenge its teachings. As God’s Son, his love for the whole of creation superseded his adherence to any manmade system, however beloved, and he demanded a radical rethink in which compassion for the individual took precedence. When this compassion led him to welcome social outcasts, dine with prostitutes and touch lepers, the guardians of tradition were shocked. When he dared to speak of tearing down the Temple itself and asserted that the Sabbath was for man’s benefit, and not an end in itself, he outraged them. Though the Jews longed for a revolution, they wanted it on their terms, a revolution which would leave all their cherished traditions intact. The surprise that was Jesus was just too great for them.

It’s very easy, as Christians, to claim some moral superiority here. We recognise Jesus as Saviour and Lord, and are happy to pray for the coming of his kingdom, but I do wonder if really we are so very different in our response to him. As he constantly challenged the beliefs and expectations of 1st century Palestine,. so he surely challenges the comfortable certainties which threaten to stultify the church of to-day. That King who entered the city on a down trodden beast of burden must have something to say to us about a world in which churches are rich and people starving, in which people can profess to love the God they have not seen, but neglect Him in the stranger sleeping on the street. Though people have clung to the idea of Christ’s kingdom as “not of this world”, the Incarnation tells a different story, of his total involvement with the world, his passionate care for its victims. If we claim to follow him, we too must share that active compassion, and there will be a cost. When his Kingdom comes, I don’t think we can expect to be home in time for Sunday lunch!

Sometimes it seems that, like the Jews,we are so intent on forcing Jesus into some mould of our own that we refuse to notice when he breaks free of it. We refuse to be surprised by him, preferring him tamed and fettered by our own expectations, our very own God in a box. When we do this, we miss the point completely. The world of Good Friday and Easter Day is a world turned upside down. Here is the greatest surprise of all, that death , ignominy and defeat are transformed into resurrection, triumph and victory. Can we wholeheartedly welcome this, with all its implications for our lives, or is it easier to leave Jesus slumbering in the tomb, and slumber there beside him. If we let him break out, there is no knowing where he may take us.

So as we begin to tread the familiar path through Holy Week we must learn to expect the unexpected. We can rely on the love that beckons us onwards, but we cannot dictate the direction. The transforming righteous revolution for which creation waits with longing may be just around the corner, for, if we pray “Thy kingdom come” we must be prepared to let God answer our prayer. We need to look at the world with clear eyes and an open mind, so that we can truly celebrate the triumphal entry of the man on the donkey, who by his cross and Resurrection turns the whole world upside down.

I've got that Holy Week feeling

Things are pretty frantic in the vicarage. Having welcomed every child from two out of three schools in the parish to Experience Easter, and with funerals continuing to come in droves, time to prepare practically for Holy Week has been cut to the bone. I look set to be printing service sheets minutes before handing them to the congregation pretty much all week - there's not alot in the church cupboard that I'm happy to use untweaked, and one armed typing remains a challenge. So I really ought not to be blogging at all - but the Friday Five was so apposite I could not resist.

Sally over at the RevGal site says:

Holy Week is almost upon us, I suspect that ordained or not, other revgal/pals calendars look a bit like mine, FULL, FULL, FULL........

Jesus was great at teaching us to take time out, even in that last week, right up to Maundy Thursday he withdrew, John's gospel tells us he hid! He hid not because he was afraid, but because he knew that he needed physical, mental and spiritual strength to get through...

So faced with a busy week:

1. What restores you physically?
Sleep. Hot baths (oh I do wish I could hurl this plaster cast to oblivion - but I don't even see the Great Bone Man til Monday & nothing is certain even then). Walks with dogs & children.
Currently & unusually I'm not sleeping that well - which probably fuels the escalating panic which in turn prevents me sleeping....aaargh.

2. What strengthens you emotionally/ mentally?
Hugs from those I cherish. Reading words that have inspired me before (two saint Johns, Donne & the Evangelist are particularly effective, but there are many many others). Music - Bach is best, Mozart too (but please can someone help me dislodge the phrase from the Credo of the Weber Mass we are singing in choir that has been haunting my dreams since Monday?:I think I have it right now).

3. What encourages you spiritually? Doing my job - at the altar (though not at the desk)...in the community...that sense of being swept up into the ceaseless praise around the throne that so often comes during the Sanctus when I preside. My friends & soul mates & of course the Best Spir Dir ever. Music again - I think I need to put on the B Minor Mass urgently to restore some perspective.

4. Share a favourite poem or piece of music from the coming week.
So much of Holy Week has a sound-track for me dating from my time as a chorister at St John the Divine, Kennington. The Vittoria Passion; Lotti's Crucifixus; John of Portugal's Crux Fidelis...That's just not going to happen in an little church in the provinces...so I will be focussing on the Passion Chorale as we sing it around 3.00 on Friday.

5.There may be many services for you to attend/ lead over the next week, which one are you most looking forward to and why? If there aren't do you have a favourite day in Holy week if so which one is it?
In this first Holy Week here I'm too conscious of the responsibility for enabling the worship of others to dare to look forward yet. Some of the services that loom so large will be new to the parishes, in some we will have to find a route that honours their traditions but makes liturgical sense to me...It's going to be an intereseting week (specially if I dont get typing/copying very soon).
I'm also aware of a part of myself that is courting disappointment by wishing that the liturgy might be more finely-tuned and polished than it's likely to be. I realise that even if I hanker for it, the house style of St M's would not be authentic here, so I need to get over this fast! As I said, interesting...
But with all that going on, I am really looking forward to Stations of the Cross on Tuesday evening. I've a lovely set of posters from the sisters of Turvey Abbey, and just to try to follow Jesus, one step at a time, is surely all I need attempt - in Holy Week or ever.

Friday Five - Blog roll spotlight

Even before I found myself reduced to one-handed typing, my blogging had been pretty erratic recently - & this is part of a more general decline, I think, as twitter & fb enable us to keep connected via one-liners hurled into the ether as we rush to our next appointment. It's not the same, though...I guess those networks have mostly replaced the blog posts that were all about sharing news (I was startled at how pleased I was to be able to tweet from A & E), but a real blog entry is far more satisfying, both to read and to create.
So I'm very happy to know of a plethora of great blogs. I suscribe to bloglines, which spares me the need to check all my favouites every day, but as Mary Beth has invited us to list 5 of our must-reads, here are some of those I turn to directly I spy an update. The full list, of course, is substantially longer - & pretty certainly includes you

Reflectionary - Songbird was the first American blogger I "met", probably the first blogger to whom I didn't have at least a tentative, friend-of-a-friend type connection. I found her, not sure how, very early in our blogging lives. Now she is my soul sister, a friend whose thoughtful writing & gentle wisdom I value so much...I still haven't quite forgiven God for putting us on different continents - but I guess if Songbird lived here in the UK I might never have met some other wonderful women. This time last year we were all afloat together.

Telling Secrets - Elizabeth is an inspiration - the kind of priest I'd love to be - and her blog is in turn funny, passionate about social justice, poignant in the transparent love which suffuses her ministry. I'm so grateful for her writing.

Digging a lot - a new find this year...in my rather derailed Lenten practice this year I have really appreciated Graham's series "I'm thinking about Grace". I'm looking forward, too, to seeing where his blog will take me when Lent is behind us.

The Crimson Rambler - when I first visited & discovered the warning "caution: this blog is protected by irritable panda bears" I knew that the Rambler and I had a similar sense of humour. Since then I have discovered we have much more in common(including our debt to the metaphysical poets in shaping our faith)- & her writing style is a delight.

Jen Lemon - joyously creative, Jen seems always to have the courage to dream the most beautiful dreams, and to act to make them come true. I love it!

B - a tribute in memoriam

A Time for Everything
1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God


In the conversations I’ve had over the past few days, as I’ve tried to get to know a little of the essential B. one word that kept coming up was “Contented”.
What a gift!
If you judged his life by an arbitrary, materialist index, it might seem that he didn’t amount to anything much….but all who knew him described B as “a lovely man” – reminding us that there is far more to being fully human than paying off a mortgage or engaging with the rat race.
................[personal biographical details followed here]
His final months were spent in ___________ House, where his undemanding approach, together with his splendid sense of humour, endeared him to many. B did NOT want to be a bother, telling both A & J that they really didn't have to visit, that he was quite OK, had everything he needed, was content with his own company.
No wonder so many described him as a lovely man.

We chose that reading from Ecclesiates because it seemed to sum up B’s philosophical approach to life…there’s a time for everything – go with the flow and enjoy what you can while you are here.
I’ve no idea what B’s views on faith were – but I’m certain that no matter what B thought of God, God adored B. That’s just the way God is, and after all, Jesus told us that to enter his Kingdom we needed to become like children. It seems to me that there was something childlike in B’s calm contentment with whatever came his way. As Ecclesiastes reminds us…God has set eternity in our hearts…another way of expressing the truth that as we are made to relate to God we will be restless & discontented till we are safe home in his arms. B never seemed to be restless or driven – so perhaps he understood instinctively that he was both fully known and wholly loved,
We may come to recognise this as we make our way through life…but whether we do or not, the love and the welcome are there for us. That is the message that will be preached in countless different ways, in countless different churches through the coming season of Holy Week & Easter.
Jesus, hanging on the cross, opens his arms to embrace the whole world.
"Look," he says, "this is how much I love you….and that love turns out to be stronger than death."
So, lets give thanks for B. that lovely gentle soul, and commend him now to the God who made him, who loves him and who died so that we might live forever in love.

Small graces on Lady Day

This was always going to be a busy time, even before The Arm happened.
My invitation to our local schools to follow the "Experience Easter" trail was unexpectedly popular, meaning that I'm needed in church to meet, greet, explore & explain not just for one week but for two. So far, with 5 out of 14 classes gone through, it's going fine. Interesting to notice which stations inspire the most thoughtful responses here - quite different in Ch Kings though the material, & my presentation of it, has not changed noticeably. I'll hope to blog the trail fully later - for now I'm only mentioning it as a clue to why life is a bit pressurised.
Add to that the Minister's Report for the Annual Parochial Church Meeting this coming Sunday at Church in the Valley, special services for Palm Sunday, pretty much every day of Holy Week & the Triduum (and a broken photocopier in the parish office - what stellar timing!) and a sudden run of funerals & tis unsurprising that my diary has looked a little alarming. When I got up this morning, I really wasn't certain that the different bits of the day would dovetail at all - but in the event they did, and there was so much grace in evidence throughout a long long day.

A decidedly ordinary assembly began the day. Theme: courage, but I failed completely to engage the room full of infants, whose attentions were focussed on the imminent excitements of some medieval "time travellers" who were due to arrive any moment. I left pretty certain that we hadn't connected at all, and consoling myself with the thought that I would be back next week - except that as we followed the Easter trail later in the day, a little girl snuck up to me and told me that my ramblings had in fact made a huge and important difference, that she had dared to tell someone about a heavy situation she was facing, that she no longer felt so alone and afraid.
On that basis, this morning's flop was probably the most significant assembly I've taken. Do pray for M and for all children carrying big burdens in silence...

A lovely Eucharist for the Annunciation. We prayed the Angelus together, the first time it has been used in public worship in the valley for quite a while. It's not a reflection of the dominant spirituality of the Sunday congregation, but that close-knit Wednesday group sank into it with comfortable devotion and it was just right for that time and that place.

Despite an emergency dash up to school to copy material for the Lent course (see what I mean re our copier's timing?) I even had the opportunity to ask someone to stand for election to the PCC - and he agreed. Splendid! He will be a real asset :)

Lent Course - the caring church. Startlingly difficult to persuade the group to recognise the examples of Christian service in their midst, even with some real saints of the church there among us. Even the towering figures, the William Booths & Mother Theresas, took a while to surface so that I'm left with the nagging though that we're still a long way from really making connections between faith and life. Even after dredging up examples of Christians who have made difference, it was hard to move on to discover what this might tell us of the fundamentals of our faith. Ah well - still a good conversation and who knows what may have surfaced once I'd departed for a funeral, taking with me, I suspect, the worry that they might not come up with the "right" answers.

Funeral at the crem for B, a man in his 90s whom I had never known, and whose executor was his solicitor. Did your heart sink like mine when you read that? Usually such funerals are bleak occasions when it can be hard to thank God for a life of whose course you know nothing. Not so B's service. His appointment o the solicitor reflected his lifelong determination not to burden those who loved him, and in fact B had an affectionate niece and a loyal friend who shared memories with me for the address, and suggested just the right readings for this quietly contented man. There were just a handful of us there in the chapel, and as we listened to Ecclesiastes "there is a time for every purpose..." I think we all knew we were on holy ground.
I rarely post funeral addresses, as I feel that they are too personal, not really mine to share, but I'm going to make an exception for B., because I learned so much in that half hour about the value of life, and really felt the words I spoke.

Experience Easter with another class, then book group looking (along with most of the world) at The Shack. We are divided: I hate the "style" but love some touches of the content and others were more enthusiastic. I have at least one parishioner who needs the reminders the book offers that God is not a vengeful ogre - but I fear she would be put off by the transatlantic context and not hear the truth through the background noise.
The real grace here, though, was the grace of sharing with friends in ministry. We trained together and over delicious scones that J had made we told our stories, mourned, grumped and celebrated ogether - and it was very good.

Thanks be to God for Wednesday - now to engage with Thursday's busyness, praying to notice God's presence along the way.

A bit like what I said

Mothering Sunday – the Caring Church (3rd in a 4 sermon series on aspects of the healthy church)

A couple of questions this morning.
What would you write if I asked for a "job description" for mothers?
And, as a supplementary, have you ever known one that lived up to it?
Each year on Mothering Sunday, while I feel happy and grateful for all the love and care I receive from my family, I also feel horribly uncomfortable, because I know that I just don’t match up to the ideal of motherhood the tv commercials would like us to see as the norm.
I shout at my children sometimes.
I seldom if ever welcome them with a smile into an immaculate home where a tasty and nourishing meal is cooking, making the whole house smell wonderful.
Far too often, I tell them to go away and let me carry on using the computer for something REALLY important….and on occasion I’ve even had to tell a distraught child that I can’t listen to their woes because I have to leave to take a funeral…
In fact, if my family depended on me for all their mothering, things would be pretty bleak.

However, all is not lost.

The 2 Cor reading talks about God's love for us…
"God of all consolation" makes me think of the way mums are always supposed to be ready to "kiss it better" no matter what. We can't always do that, but Paul tells us that God can - so we don't have to "mother" unaided. Of course, the idea that God cares isn’t exactly news, is it? You’re all here today because you either have, or are seeking, a relationship with God, and you might perhaps have direct experience of the way God cares for you, like a perfect loving parent. Even if your experience of human family relationships has been difficult or disappointing, God offers us real care, real love with no strings attached.
Of course, God is beyond male and female, but I hope that for today you’ll not feel too uncomfortable if I invite you to think about the motherly qualities of God … I’d like those of you who are parents to think back to when your children were tiny…Did you love them then? If so, can you think why??
Was it because they did wonderful things for you? My guess is, probably not.
My babies were excellent at crying, at demanding feeds, at filling nappies but I don’t remember that many cups of tea in bed, or bouquets of flowers in those days.
But I have to say that I quite definitely loved them because they were, and are, my children.
In the same way, God loves us because God loves us, because God loves us,
There is nothing we can possibly do to make God love us more.
There is nothing we can possibly do to make God love us less.
Each of us is Ioved, completely and fully, like a precious only child, held securely in a warm embrace.

God mothers us.

But there is more…The Gospel reading shows us a son (Jesus) who cannot be the son he'd like to be to his mother and a mother (Mary) who cannot be the mother she'd like to be to her son. The expectation of the time would have been that Jesus would have a duty to look after his mother, to care for her in old age while Mary, like any mother, would have longed to protect her child, hated to see him suffer.
But circumstances intervened. The ideal family seems to be breaking down at the foot of the cross…
But because Jesus knows that he and Mary can't be what they would like to be to each other, he entrusts her to John, and John to her.
Together they form a new family – the church….the family we belong to too.
We are a family for each other and even if we lose our own families, or things go badly awry with those relationships, here in God’s church we should find lots of mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters to support us.

Remember, if you would, all those who have offered you love and care unlooked for…then reflect that within our Christian family each of us has a responsibility to share in the mothering of the world with God, by passing on the love and care we have been so freely given.
That is part of what being Church – the Body of Christ – is about.
Theresa of Avila understood this very well

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no feet but yours, no hands but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which the compassion
of Christ is to look out on a hurting world.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless all now.
Christ has no body now but yours


Today, then, we celebrate all those who mother us in all sorts of areas of our lives. Let’s thank God for them, and be on the lookout for chances to share in the work of mothering the whole world for God’s sake.