Michaelmas Triads

The feast of St Michael & All Angels - and one of those golden, autumnal days that make it easy to sense the presence of angels at every turn. I love this feast, which celebrates the constant proximity of heaven...the endless progression of angels up and down from there to here...wonderful.

Last night I was in the congregation to see a friend licensed to a scary but potentially wonderful new post...FabBishop, preaching, talked about three aspects to the angelic calling (to be reflected in the life of the Church)...
"Feet on the ground" - or at least, focussed on the earthing of God's self in the incarnation (so, a church rooted in, and not over against its community)
"Hearts in heaven" - (Where your treasure is....) and
"Lips that tell"....(and, for the churches, LIVES that tell as well...since our proclamation of Good News must be evident in who we are as in what we say)...

Today, at a quietly joyful Eucharist, I reminded the tiny congregation of the traditional attributes of each of the archangels...Michael, (meaning "who is like God") the protector...
Gabriel (the strength of God) bringing good news to Mary "The Lord is with you."
Raphael (the healing of God) and we talked a little about the ways in which we could share in the work, as well as the song of the angels

Later I came home and read in a post by Bishop Nick Baines of another Bishop (Jack Nicholls, late Bishop of Sheffield) He is a speaker at the Southwark Diocesan conference this year, and shared with the clergy a lesson he'd learned from one of his own personal angels, a nun long since gone to her rest...

there are only three things to be involved with as a priest:

* the praise of God
* the pain of the world
* the repentance of the church.

He went on to say that the place and purpose of prayer is to locate us at the place where the love of God and the pain of the world meet … which happens to be where the cross is to be found.

I'm excited to be reminded of this truth, which resonates even more now as I try to serve in these parishes than it did when I first encountered Bishop Jack some 10 years ago, while I was still trying to run from my vocation.

I wish that I had the courage to draw a line under any and every thing that does not, at the end, boil down to one of these three things...my hunch is that all that gives me life in ministry can be distilled into one category or another.
What do you think?

The blogging future

Last week Cheesehead noted a decline in blog activity and the responses to her post confirm that many one-time enthusiasts are neglecting their blogs these days, though none of them seem to be glad about this.
And, of course, I'm in the same boat.
Despite my best intentions, regular blogging just doesn't seem to be happening.
Mostly, it's not a question of disinclination, or even of blogger's block - it's simply that I'm too. darned. busy. to do the sort of thinking that needs to happen to enable any blogging worth reading.
I'm more than a little embarassed by this.
After all, back in the carefree days of curacy (!), I managed to fill my days pretty convincingly, and rarely felt that I was short of things to do, - but somehow along the way there was always time to pause, to notice what God might be up to, to dig out the right quotation, to hunt the right image. and then to indulge in a little thinking aloud.

Now, though there is every reason to suppose that God is just as busy about the place, I seem to be too intent on galloping from pillar to post to actually reflect on this. That wouldn't matter too much if it was just the blog that was suffering - but of course, it's not. If I'm not reflecting here, I'm perilously close to not reflecting anywhere (the more so in the absence of WonderfulVicar and theological son to ramble to) - and that is positively dangerous.

It would be oh so easy to just pull the plug on this blog here and now. I could stop feeling guilty about my neglect of it, stop comparing my current contributions with the meatier posts of former days...So many of the things I might like to blog about are potentially complicated, and might cause distress close to home if misunderstood...while too much of my time is taken up with doing highly uninspiring things like...signing forms approving headstones, for example!
And yet...And yet...

While tweeting deals with my need to connect with the world beyond the parish, it doesn't constrain me to reflect on what is actually going on with God, these people, this place...or, of course, with me as I continue to try to fathom what being the priest for these parishes really means.
And there's the risk that if I don't look at it here, I may not do so anywhere,that I might have the experience and miss the meaning.

So, somehow, I need to return to the discipline of fairly regular blogging....
I'm not entirely sure where I might find the time for it, but there is simply no point in becoming a relentless activist...so much NOT what I was ordained for.
So, I need to have the courage to do my thinking aloud when I can safely do so...but I need to remember, always, that there are people reading my words whose stories, too, are played out against this backdrop, people whom I'm called to serve, people who are part of the reason I'm here at all.

God in the gap - a sermon for St Matthew's Day.

When I was working in London in my twenties I always knew when the tube reached Embankment station, even if it was too crowded to see out of the window. You see, Embankment had a recorded announcement, which started the moment a train pulled in….. "Mind the Gap".
It was good advice if you didn't want to look very silly indeed, spread-eagled on the platform at the height of rush hour. Gaps can be hazardous things….

On the other hand, gaps can also be places of creative potential……where there is the space for almost anything to happen.
When I looked at our Gospel reading for today, I noticed a big gap between the first half of the story and the second. If you remember, we hear that Jesus calls Matthew, who gets up and follows him.
Full stop. That's it…
Then the story starts again, in another place: suddenly they are having dinner at the house. We aren't told which house….whether it’s the same day…we don't even know for sure if Matthew's a member of the party, though the references to tax collectors certainly make it seem likely.But it's not spelled out. We have to use the gaps imaginatively to try and get an overall picture of what's going on for Matthew, and what it might mean for us.
This isn't rare in Scripture.
It's often in the gaps that the Holy Spirit has the space to work….to draw us in to the situation, and to apply it to ourselves, perhaps by placing ourselves in the scene. There's an ancient tradition of prayer that works in this same way, by inviting us to enter the Gospels through our imaginations, so that the experience becomes our own. Sometimes, this can be very fruitful.
So, can I ask you to brave the gap with me today?

Are you sitting comfortably?
Then we'll let Matthew speak for himself.

"I can't pretend that tax collection was ever a lifetime's ambition. I kind of guessed, when the school careers advisor talked about my problems relating to people that this might be the line he'd take…..after all, you don't have to be friends with people to relieve them of their money. In fact, it rather helps if you're not too popular beforehand, as you certainly won't be once you get started.
I've always been a loner.
On the fringes.
Maybe it's not so surprising that, with nobody else to like me, or care about me, I've rather tended to take care of Number 1.
OK, I'll be straight with you.
Sometimes that's involved some less than honest dealings with the tax payer, but if you have to go home each night to an empty house, it might as well be the most comfortable house that money can buy. With a moat. And a duck house.
I kind of hoped that feathering my own nest, if it didn't actually buy me friends, might at least soften the loneliness a little.
It didn't.
I hated my life.
I hated the way the holy people, the Pharisees and Scribes, looked down their noses at me.
I hated the way boys I'd been at school with crossed the road to avoid speaking to me.
I suppose, if I'm honest, I hated me.
All in all, not a good place to be.
Just this huge empty feeling inside, a gap which I didn't know how to fill. Horrible.

Well…that was me as I woke up this morning. Another day….counting shekels, diverting a few here and there, passing the time till I could go home to the empty house. A day like any other, going nowhere.
Then, abruptly, it changed direction. I heard voices……..loud voices……excited voices.
A crowd, coming this way, drawn by that wandering preacher man, the Carpenter……Jesus, his name is……
Well, I'd wanted to look into his dealings for quite a while. Not much tax coming from his group, I can tell you though I'm sure that anyone who attracts that sort of crowd is raking it in somewhere…… The mob were all around me, pushing against my table, till I was worried they'd knock it over, and some precious coins would be lost…
As usual, I only saw their back views.
No-one was interested in telling me what was going on.
No-one was interested in me, full stop. I might as well have been invisible…
Or that's what I thought, till he spoke.
Just 2 words, but they were enough.
"Follow me".

Well, I knew he couldn't mean me.
I looked behind me, to see who he was talking to…. but there was no-one behind me.
And those eyes of his, they seemed to focus on me as if I was the only person there had ever been.
"Follow me"
Jesus, the man whose attention everyone wanted, seemed to want mine.
What else could I do?
I followed him……
I left it all.
The booth under the tree.
The tidy piles of coins (might as well forget going in to work tomorrow, then…….that's a sacking matter)….
no going back.
I followed him.
No idea where we were going. What we were going to do.
Just knowing that, for the first time in years, someone was looking at me as if I might be worth bothering with, as if I might, after all, be vaguely human.

That's what we talked about, actually, as we walked. He told me wonderful things. That I was called by name, and precious to God. That God had more than enough love in him to fill my emptiness, and blot out my failure. That God didn't really mind that much that I'd failed all the official "tests" of the Law, that I never made it to worship on the sabbath….
When the Pharisees came bursting in, full of criticisms of my life style, and my friends (not sure I'd have called them friends, really………just people I knew…..people no-one else wanted to know…….)
Well, when the religious right arrived, and started telling Jesus how awful we all were……oh, I loved that bit.
Jesus wasn't rude or unkind………he just told them that we needed him…
"It's not the well but the sick that need a doctor"
They couldn't exactly argue with that, could they?
They'd been so busy telling him what sick life-styles we had, and he simply pointed out that he was there to help us get better…..then, and this was the best thing, he used the Law and the prophets to prove his point.
He asked them if they really understood the words
"I desire mercy and not sacrifice!"
I wish you'd seen their faces. Even to a bystander, it was obvious that they didn't get it.
They were hot-stuff at all the sabbath observances, the purity laws, the showy things that marked them out as godly people, but when it came to anything deeper……..well……. They didn't know where to put themselves.

To start with, I just sat there enjoying their discomfort, but then the words started buzzing in my head too.
Mercy, not sacrifice.
Not sacrifice…. No need to go on bleeding people dry.
No need to bleed myself dry either.
Mercy.
Not too sure I really understand that....but I do know it means that things are alright between me and God.
Jesus didn't just tell me that. He showed me, too. When he is around, I can somehow see myself as he sees me, in a whole new light. No need to condemn myself for the past, or even for the mess of the present.
Because he finds me loveable, I might just one day learn to love myself. Meanwhile, if what he says about God is true, then looking into his face is like looking into the loving face of God himself."

There we have it. Matthew found God when He allowed Jesus into the gap in his life. He didn't try to paper over it, to tidy up the loose ends before he followed. He just came, as the broken, unhappy soul that he was, and found the love and acceptance which is on offer for us all. It may take courage to admit our gaps, but when we do, God can use them to do something wonderful.

Things they didn't teach me at vicar-school 2

Patient souls who follow my tweets may remember that 2 weekends ago I spent much of Saturday and Sunday at the bedside of a rather special lady, who was so frail that it seemed most unlikely that she would survive to celebrate her 85th birthday the following Thursday.
Come the birthday, however, she was not only still with us but remarkably with it in her wakeful interludes, and one week on she continues to confound the medics. Which is fine and lovely in many ways (though there will be hard decisions to be made in the future about how this most independent and feisty woman can be helped to live in her stroke-damaged body) but does pose a few problems about the correct tone for bedside visiting. Some are adopting the resolutely cheerful "Soon have you up and about" approach, others the hushed voices that seemed appropriate when we thought our time together was likely to be measured in hours, not days.
Neither seems right...But nor is there a liturgy for now.
Are we thankful? Of course, because her illness was sudden, and nobody was really ready to let go.
But what do we pray for next?
It seems to me that healing, of whatever kind, might be a long time coming...
So I'm opting for the briefest of visits, and the most general prayers in which I don't have to commit myself.
And that feels like rather a cop-out, specially to one who takes pleasure in finding the "right" words for most situations. I know that God knows what I should be praying for, - and that should be all that matters, but it's always a plus when the words I choose somehow help to make sense of the situation for other people too.
But I'm pretty certain that none of my books have resources for a time like this.
I guess I just keep praying, then...

Things they didn't teach at vicar-school 1

(thanks to Chris for suggesting this theme for a couple of posts - I'm bored with blog silence but needed a hook to hang things on)

Yes, believe you me I do KNOW that working on one's day off without finding another day in recompense is pretty much a mortal sin...but at times, there's no way round it. This week was busy anyway, and when a funeral came in for a family I know, who really needed the service on a Friday, I was never going to say "No".
After all, I thought, it would give me a bit more time to sort things out for Back to Church Sunday at St Matthew's.
The first indication I had that things might not run entirely to plan was when the administrator from a neighbouring cluster of parishes phoned to ask if I might have any spare priests on Sunday...As it happens, this Sunday is pretty much the first Sunday since I've been here when the answer had to be an unequivocal "No" as my Associate is about to become my former Associate and is thus busy with farewells. I could, and did, pick up a funeral and an interment of ashes for early next week, but that didn't feel like enough, and I was (and am) bothered that there isn't enough give in the system to allow for a few rescue operations at times like these...

Assorted phonecalls, conversations and funerals later I was driving home, through my best-beloved of all woods - when a car approaching flashed its headlights and a slightly startled woman told me "There's a horse loose just around the corner".
There was indeed. A very beautiful chestnut, tacked up, tho wearing his saddle at a rather eccentric angle, BENEATH his body...Oh cripes! That must mean a thrown rider somewhere...
I stopped the car in the middle of the road (that was no other cars could get past and frighten the horse further) and tried to revert to Pony Club Mother mode, this having been a role I assumed every summer for several years, thanks to the combined determination of Hattie Gandhi and the Dufflepud. Catching the horse was a doddle as he was very keen to be rescued by any sensible human.Deciding what to do with him was more challenging as although we were right bestide a field where I thought I had seen him before, the gate of the field boasted a pretty hefty padlock. So, reflecting that there might be an injured rider anywhere, I phoned the police, explained the situation and our whereabouts and then did my best to murmur calming words to a very hot and bothered horse...

About 20 minutes later the rider appeared -shaken, bruised but not severely hurt as far as we could tell, and just hugely relieved that the horse was alright and hadn't caused any awful accidents. Nearly an hour on, the paramedic and police made it - the calm, collected and wonderful guy I'd spoken to when I'd dialled 999 had clearly a rather eccentric grasp of local geography as the location to which he'd directed the car had nothing to do with our conversation, or indeed our whereabouts. Fortunately nobody actually NEEDED medical help...
The poor rider kept on exclaiming excitedly
"I can't BELIEVE that someone who knows about horses should be the person to catch him"...and I was forced to conclude that all those miserable years of watching HG and a horse attempt utterly unreasonable fences, of hauling a trailer I couldn't park all round the Cotswolds, of breaking water in buckets to allow the horses to drink on frosty mornings, had finally proved their value.
I lost 2 hours that I didn't have to spare, and nobody has offered a method by which I can reclaim them...I am horribly aware of all that I have to do for Back to Church Sunday (this week at valley church, to tie in with our patronal), and that I have a wedding, and a long stint in the stocks at Hill Village fete tomorrow - but at least I knew how to catch and calm a horse when the need arose. A small think but my own!
Clearly, this is the week of all weeks for transport, in all its myriad forms, to play up. I expect to have a blister by bedtime...

A feather on the breath of God

Yesterday we were invited to remember Hildegard of Bingen...
For my congregation at the BCP Eucharist, remembering wasn't really an option as I'm pretty certain that none of them had ever encountered her before. Not to worry.
We read the blurb from Exciting Holiness and I talked a little about the readings, with their emphasis on the life of the Spirit, - and the link between "ghost" and gast/geist = breath...
Then we had some lovely (and unusual) silence and it was good. VERY good.

I came away thinking of Hildegard's famous image of herself

Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honour. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I

...A Feather on the Breath of God.

As I lose whatever tenuous control I ever had on my timetable (shall I tell you what this weekend looks like? no, better not - you'll only tell me off, and quite right too) I'm pondering how it would be to be so entirely relaxed in God's presence, and so conscious of God's strength that I could just let go and be carried, floating on God's breath.

I'm also realising that retreat time is called for.

Soon.

Displacement

this is the week to celebrate the intransigence of inanimate objects (or perhaps semi animate, since I am one who anthropamorphises many sensible things like cars, computers etc in entirely silly ways)...I always find this hard to deal with...my grasp of things technical is about as loose as it can be so I have little hope of sorting out, or indeed understanding, problems when they come along, and am left feeling vaguely panicked and distinctly miserable.
Currently it's the refusal of the liturgy for Sunday to fall into a nice little booklet with page breaks in the right places and space for pretty pictures that is driving me mad. The insertion of the Eucharistic prayer seems to have wrecked the whole shooting match but it's hard to see how I can celebrate a Eucharist without one, so by way of diversion I'll keep my promise to tell you of the unlikely angels of yesterday...It might even make me feel better!

Yesterday was all about cars. The day began much earlier than normal, as lovely parishioner cum car guru arrived on his way to work to deliver Hattie Gandhi's car and take mine away for a service...The plan was that I would get through the day on foot/bike, and she would drive to Oxford in the evening to collect Hugger Steward from the Oxford Tube, the cheapest route home from London. All went well til mid afternoon, when the garage phoned to say that they wanted to do some more tests on my car, but wouldn't have the necessary equipment till the morrow...could I manage without a car a bit longer. Dismayed, but not distraught, I thought I probably could...but had better use HG's car before it vanished, in order to do some hospital visits. First, though, it needed petrol

HG's car is just a little thing - with a tiny petrol tank, so I guess I should have been suspicious as the pump whirred on, til we'd clocked up almost as much as I'd normally put in my Citroen. The penny didn't drop, though, til I noticed a large puddle at my feet. Petrol. As fast as I was filling up, petrol appeared to be leaking out of the bottom. PANIC STATIONS!

Phonecall to car guru, but he's already on his way home...His colleague is wonderfully reassuring but can't do anything instantly (not least as he's about 30 miles away...) I realise that I do at least need to pay for the fuel I've so generously contributed to the forecourt, and go in to explain the situation to the very young guys working behind the counter. They could not have been kinder. Or calmer.
While I went into freefall about stranded offspring and diverse alarams and excursions, they simply got on with sorting things out.
Not a word about my disabling one of their pumps at the busiest time of day.
No complaints about the considerable fire risk baby car was posing.
Just much action with buckets of sand and then...would I like a coffee?

And it went on.
Car guru's colleagues were kindness itself.
Random customers at the petrol station stopped and commiserated
A dreadlocked biker, who tbh looked a tad alarming, offered to ride to Oxford to rescue Hugger Steward.
Within only a little over an hour of the whole grisly business starting, Baby Car had been made safe to drive and taken back to the garage to be sorted out and I was back home, feeling as if it might be worth lying by the wayside once in a while, if only to discover how many wonderfully good Samaritans there are to be found. Or were they really angels unawares?

Who do you say that I am?: sermon for Trinity 14B at All Saints, Selsley…Mark 8 27-38 & James 3 1-12

Sorry, patient reader...I've no idea where the week has gone, or what happened to my shining resolve to indulge in reflective blogging.
There have been some lovely moments along the way, but I'm not planning to go back and tidy up or I'll never keep up with myself. Instead, here's tomorrow's sermon for Church on the Hill - some of it a reworking of material I used for Petertide last year (so yet more apologies if anyone is still reading!)

Once upon a time, I’m told, George W Bush visited a home for those suffering from dementia.
He enjoyed a brief exchange with one of the residents, who seemed to be fairly lucid….so he risked asking
“Do you know who I am”
“No…” replied his conversation partner “but if you ask that nice nurse over there I’m sure she’ll be able to tell you”.
Of course, even on a bad day, George W wasn’t really in need of information…any more than Jesus is, in our gospel reading.
But that doesn’t mean that the question is unimportant.
Quite the reverse.
“Who do you say I am?”
In asking that crucial question, Jesus is doing all that he can to make the disciples think.
I’m sure you’ve met the old advice for teachers
First you tell them what you’re going to tell them. Then you tell them. Then you tell them what you’ve told them.
Put like that it raises a smile, perhaps – but adopted as a teaching strategy it’s unlikely to be successful. I’m sure we’re familiar with it, though…Teaching that is simply the passage of information from one person to another.
Teaching that relies on the expertise of the lecturer and the passive openness of the listener.
Teaching that, if we’re honest, demands very little of those on the receiving end and, I suspect, may not have much lasting impact.
It’s horribly easy to fall into that sort of pattern when you are the one “up front” – but it really won’t do.
Contrast this with the sort of teaching that engages you fully…
The teaching that begins by recognising the premise that to hear is to forget, to see is to remember and to do is to understand. Perhaps that isn’t the sort of thing you’d welcome week by week in your sermon slot but I’m sure you’ve noticed before that when Jesus wants his disciples to really learn something, he doesn’t give them the answer straight away.
Often, of course, he tells them stories, stories which leave things open, so that the hearers need to work out not only the inner meaning but also its application for their own lives.
Sometimes he asks them a direct question…as he does today. His whole ministry is a story that points to his identity…and now Jesus wants to see if his disciples have learned the central lesson he came to teach

“Who do you say I am?”

Who do you say I am?”
Imagine Jesus asking you….
I think it’s the most important question any of us will ever need to consider

“Who do you say I am?”

What would you answer?
Messiah?
Son of God?
Saviour?
Teacher?
Brother?
Friend?
Good man?
Innocent victim?
Colossal embarassment?
Blasphemer?
Threat?
Disturber of my peace?

“Who do you say I am?”

This isn’t a question reserved for theologians, for priests, for the great and the good, or those who like that kind of thing.
This is a question aimed at each one of us.
It’s a question on which pretty much everything depends…for if we decide against Jesus, then there’s not much point in hanging around waiting to see what will happen next.

We can, of course, answer with our lips…like dear Peter, quick to leap in with his extraordinary insight
You are the Messiah –
but then as quickly disappointed when Jesus turns out not to be the kind of Messiah he expected and longed for.
That’s something I can sympathise with. I have my own preconceived notions of who Jesus is, based on childhood imaginings, on received wisdom, and some serious Bible study…
Sometimes I think I know…Often I get it very wrong.
I think Jesus should be over HERE doing THIS, when he is apparently over there doing something else, and I feel confused and at odds with him.
That’s when I’m specially grateful for Peter – so proudly and gloriously wrong, but redeeming his blindness with the warmth of his love!
Listen to him, rebuking Jesus for telling his friends exactly where his path was leading…
I wonder if you would have felt any different. Here’s that part of our gospel as it appears in theologian Eugene Petersen’s paraphrase, The Message

. But Peter grabbed him in protest. Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. "Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works! Calling the crowd to join the disciples, he said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat;I am. Don't run from suffering, embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self Help is no help at all. Self Sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for? If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I'm leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you'll be an ever greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendour of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels.

Don’t run from suffering…embrace it.
You’re not in the driver’s seat. I am.

Gulp!

That’s not the sort of thing we want to hear, is it? We believe in self help, in independence, in clear rewards for effort and in prudent business practice…
In fact, this invitation to embrace suffering is indeed deeply embarrassing for us, - conditioned as we are to seek an easy path for ourselves and for our families. If this is what it means to be a disciple of Christ, then we want none of it?
Discipleship is so akin to discipline, and that’s something we none of us enjoy.
We would so much rather choose the easy way, the way of green pastures and still waters. The hard way is, quite simply, too hard.
Why go there?
We want Jesus to lead us to life, but we want him to clear the way and make it easy for us. We want to enjoy the glory, but skip the graft. But that is just where Jesus shone and where we must shine if we are to be his disciples. In the hard places…In the washing of feet and the carrying of crosses.
Christianity - not for the fainthearted!

So, though we might make a reasonable stab at answering that crucial question with our words, our actions too tell others just who Jesus is for us.
"Who do I say Jesus is when I cut in on someone in traffic?"
“Who do I say that Jesus is, when I ignore the Big Issue seller on the High Street?
When I fail to stand against injustice, at home or abroad?
When I put my own needs, or those of my family, ahead of the needs of my neighbour?
When I just can’t be bothered to go the extra mile?
When (to touch base just briefly with our New Testament lesson) my words are destructive and hurtful, not affirming and encouraging?
Who do I say that Jesus is, then?
If we are known as disciples, then our actions tell the world just who we say Jesus is as loudly as any declaration of faith…and sometimes they seem to be sadly at odds with our protestations here, Sunday by Sunday.
Think about that.

Of course, it’s fair to say that our understanding and our answer to the question will change and evolve through the years…
The Jesus of my childhood was above all a best friend, someone who shared my pleasure in creation, someone who understood when I was sad or hurting, someone who laughed with me at the strangeness of the adult world, and, quite often, of the adult church as well.
Today when I seriously engage with Jesus, he is rather different One who challenges me to a larger vision, a deeper commitment – though he’s also the one who scoops me up and loves me whole when the struggle with myself and with life threatens to overwhelm me, who laughs gently when I tremble on the brink of behaving as if it were down to me to save the world!
Most of all, he is the one I love, the one who first loved me.

Perspectives matter, and Jesus will have different words, a different call for you…so that your answer to the greatest question may be nothing like mine.
But you must HAVE an answer.
Jesus will not accept agnosticism from his friends.
He confronts us with the reality of his presence in our midst.
Coming among us, he invites us to be changed…
“Who do you say I am?”

He stands there, waiting for an answer…
There’s no time like the present…
We are each called to respond, and there’s no way to hide.
It’s such a deceptively simple question, really…but it must be answered not just with our words alone with our deeds as well,
A response of heart and soul
Of total commitment – for what will it profit us to gain the whole world and lose our life?

Standing in the Long Now 2 - Stillness

The long now is, of course, the very best place to engage with God.

There were many many opportunities across the weekend – some obvious, some completely unexpected (but for the fact that Greenbelt is such a thin place, encountering God is never really unexpected).
God-filled moments for me included

sitting in Centaur on Friday night listening to Christopher Norton (Mr Microjazz – just think of that! - I used that with many a piano pupil once upon a time) and Robin Thompson-Clarke playing Arvo Part's Spiegel im spiegel

a window opening in my soul as +Gene Robinson reflected on Jesus words to the disciples
“There is so much I would like to tell you but you are not able to bear it…But when the Holy Spirit comes she will lead you into all truth”...a reminder that the sometimes unbearably slow learning processes of the Church have been expected from her beginnings

much of the Sunday worship, where I was surprised by tears as each member of our small group, among the thousands took it in turns to use olive oil from the Holy Land to anoint the hand of their neighbour and to pray a blessing on them.

the peace and holiness that I characterised everything I attended in New Forms, (always a wonderful place to be) specially Blessed’s Mass of the Trinity (I could have spent far longer just sitting with God before that blue lit altar) and the Long Worship put together by emerging communities Dream, Grace, feig, and Safespace


I found 2 stations here particularly powerful.
One consisted of many many cards, each bearing a single word…This was liturgy, the work of the people – and we were invited to arrange the cards to express our own prayers, our own situations and post them on the wall.
Elsewhere, we could write a letter to our future selves, with hopes, dreams, reminders of wisdom encountered, moments to cherish from this year’s Festival. The letters will be posted on to us in early March. I was quite tough with myself – so can only hope it doesn’t arrive on a difficult day.
Being told off by oneself if everyone else is feeling fierce might not be the best thing, though the substance of my letter (the ongoing question of time, boundaries and space to be human) is something I undoubtedly need to work on...

"Standing in the Long Now…" part 1 - Serendipity

1......

Was the theme for this year’s Greenbelt.

What a theme for those of us caught up in feverish activity, in dreaming of 6 impossible things before breakfast and struggling to achieve them.
What a theme for a culture that still seems intent on instant gratification.
One of this year’s festival tee shirts reminded us “Now is all we have” so perhaps I was more conscious that usual of the need to take the festival gently,to savour the moment rather than hurtling with too much determination from seminar to seminar.
Whatever the reason, it worked for me.

I know that I missed some real gems.…
Somehow I failed to get to hear Nadia Bolz-Weber; doubly annoying as not only did she get rave reviews from all those who attended her sessions, but she really inspired Hattie Gandhi, - who normally claims that GB speakers are not for her, that she’s only there for the music and the festival vibe.
I queued fruitlessly for Rob Bell (once – then decided that life and Greenbelt were both too short), for Ikon and for Stephen Cotterel (deep deep fury, as his session was not recorded, but sounded particularly apt as I continue to struggle to achieve balance in my life and in my diary)
Indeed, Sunday was for me the day of standing in the long queues…and of discovering unexpected compensation.

After the service (which I'll hope to blog later) I waited for nearly 90 minutes outside, Centaur, the huge indoor venue where Rob Bell was to speak. It was fine. I had things to read, a spinach pancake to eat, and it wasn’t raining…but alas, when the doors were opened something really un Greenbelty happened as the crowd surged forward rather than proceeding decently and in order. In no time the venue had reached capacity – so I turned disconsolate away and headed for the Tiny Tea Tent to regroup.

Bummer!

But wait…

As many of you will know, while the speakers, the music, the theatre, the whole Festival atmosphere is very close to heaven, it’s the people above all that make Greenbelt heaven on earth…Every year, there are some wonderful meetings and happy reunions, and the days before the festival see many exchanges of mobile numbers, to enable these to happen.
Sometimes, though, it’s a bit harder -for example, when the person you are longing to see is coming from the States, with a phone that doesn’t work in the UK at all….
There are 20,000 people at the festival so it’s horribly possible not to glimpse people whom you DO know and recognise irl., still less find someone whom you only know via their blog.
Lilly Lewin and I have been blog friends for around 4 years now, and I was very excited when she wrote that she’d be at Greenbelt. We agreed that we must meet at the Tiny Tea Tent…We have a mutual friend who has my mobile number, - so I assumed we’d be able to fix something up relatively easily.
I’d failed to take into account the extreme busyness that overtakes this friend once the Festival gets going… He has Very Important Jobs to do and a scarily full agenda. A text to him yielded no results, and I was beginning to worry

Silly, really. I should have known.
Lilly is someone who prays – and isn’t ashamed of including some very practical requests along the way. She was as intent on our need to meet as I was and had reminded God of this that very Sunday morning so perhaps it’s not that surprising that I, who find it almost impossible to initiate a conversation with strangers unless I am in role as a priest, dared to ask the vaguely familiar American woman (does anyone actually look like their profile picture?) just leaving a likely table in the Tiny Tea Tent
“Excuse me, but are you Lilly…?”
and received the answer “YES”!

So, my grumpy failure to get what I thought I wanted led instead to an encounter that was exactly what I needed – friendship confirmed, exciting conversation, and some wise thoughts about a particular situation.
So often a “Greenbelt moment” is very much a God thing, and this one certainly was.

Another came later that same day, when yet again I was too late to make it into a venue – this time the beer tent for Beer & Hymns. I’m hopeless at estimating numbers, but there were surely a couple of hundred of us left sadly outside the picket fence, while the empty “beer garden” recalled the great gulf fixed between Dives and Lazarus, dividing us from the happy souls within, who could both drink and sing.
After a rather sadly ironic interlude during which a man near me decided to lay into the steward about the madness of the restrictions, and the unreasonableness of a festival that was trying to protect the safety of its visitor, while all around him the crowd sang “Praise my soul the king of heaven”, things looked up.
We might be beerless, but nothing could stop us singing. I was surrounded by good voices, who were quick to pick up parts and we had the time of our lives.
At one point a learning impaired adult left the crowd in the beer tent to leap on a table and conduct us
At another we sang my desert island hymn “And can it be”
That hymn has been part of so many important events for me – my farewell service at my sending parish, my first Mass, my licensing here – but singing it with all that I had, as I stood beneath the sign of the Jesus Arms, was maybe the best of all.
In case you hadn't noticed - I do so love Greenbelt!

Fresh perspectives

Time on the narrowboat always helps me see things differently.
Instead of hurtling from pillar to post, constantly diverted, filling my days with a host of different people, with widely differing needs, I'm constrained (happily) to travel at 6 mph down a narrow stretch of water, in the company of a very small group of people.
I read alot (of course) but I spend alot of time doing almost nothing - watching for herons on the bank, looking at patterns of ripples in the water (these are more exciting in our new world of river cruising - though there's lots I miss about canal life), smoothing the velvet softness of Libby's ears.

This summer, the usual feeling of being in a different world was compounded by the fact that we were actually very close to home.
From our home mooring at Tewkesbury we cruised down the Severn to Gloucester, the little city that I know best, in whose Cathedral I was ordained, whose geography is mapped out, for me, in terms of the parish boundaries of my friends.
Quite extraordinary to view it as a visitor...to look up at the Cathedral from the basin of the docks; to spend a while focussed not on the ecclesiastical present but on the maritime past as we wandered between the warehouses and noticed how the tiny Mariners' Church echoed the shape of the mercantile temples that surrounded it; to wander past the embryonic Gloucester Quays shopping mall, on which so much of the city's future may depend. To be a tourist at home!

All in all, a summer of interesting perspectives...but I suspect that it will at Greenbelt that I really find my eyes are opened and all sorts of things appear in a new light.

So, what HAVE I been doing lately?

Somehow we seem to be at the very end of August - the last gasp of summer (though it feels to me as if we've hit autumn early this year, with a chill in the air tonight that means a search for winter woolies before we depart for Greenbelt tomorrow).
I seem to remember that last year I had time to enjoy a new puppy during the school summer holidays...This year, I've been quite pushed to find clear evenings to enjoy the company of my own children. I guess that's an inevitable product of having been here longer...more contacts across the community = more demands on time. That's a good thing, of course - but it does make for rather full days, with little time or energy for writing.

So it is that I completely missed my own blogging birthday (Good in Parts turned 5 on the feast of the Transfiguration)...that I've failed to celebrate the Dufflepud's rather splendid exam results (or, come to that, his safe return from Africa)...that I've said nothing about the extraordinary evening that was my first big gig - U2 at Sheffield a week ago.

There has been some time to pause and breathe, and I've really appreciated that.
After a mornings meeting at Church House, I slipped into the Cathedral where there was an exhibition of contemporary icons filling that wonderful space.


I loved the absence of chairs - that in itself has a huge impact as you walk in.
I loved the icons themselves - both as art and as visual prayers.
I loved the words posted about the place

"It is not the viewer who judges the icon, but icon that judges the viewer"

"The light in an icon does not come from any physical sun, but is divine"

"An icon is itself a prayer - a hymn in colour"

Spending time immersed in divine light, surrounded by colours singing hallelujah for all their worth, I remembered alot of important things that might just have got lost in the shuffle.
And for a while, I stopped doing, and simply was.

Just to prove I'm back at work

And really will return to some sort of decent blogging one day soon, here's the text of my homily for the 8.00 tomorrow...
I'm not excited by it, but it's late and starting the first Sunday back at work in a state of exhaustion feels like a bad idea, so I'm leaving it for tonight and will see what actually emerges in the morning.
Meanwhile...

Dumbing-down is a phenomenon that seems to be discussed by many people in many places these days.
We hear critical voices complain that everything from A levels to Radio 4, and even the liturgy of the Church of England is not what it once was…
That can be hard to deal with if you know young people who are waiting anxiously for exam results...or if you are trying to reach out to people who are struggling with all their might and main to understand quite what goes on when we gather for worship in these strange stone buildings that we call churches, places that seem to speak of earlier times, different lives….

You may have gathered, then, that I’m one who feels that we have, in the churches at least, a duty to make our teaching and our worship as accessible as possible.
If that leaves us open to the charge of “dumbing down” then so be it.
Fortunately, God’s grace is not limited to those of a particular intellectual bent…His love is as available to those who will never learn to read as it is to Doctors of Divinity…
Faith, indeed, is a great leveller…and I guess at one level we could describe the incarnation, Christ’s coming into all the confusion of our world, as the greatest dumbing-down of all time.

But in this morning’s gospel it sounds as if this wasn’t quite enough for some people
“This teaching is difficult…who can accept it?”
That’s a problem we still have – reluctance to accept the things that challenge us…

But why now? Perhaps all these references to bread have finally become too much for the group gathered around Jesus.
Or perhaps they are just rather tired of them
Not MORE bread…
It’s hard for us to imagine the impact of words about eating flesh and drinking blood on those whose world-view has been shaped by the Torah, with its outlawing of all blood sacrifices, and its strict dietary codes.
We hear them softened and filtered through our own experiences of coming to Communion week on week…
We say to ourselves
“Yes, yes…of course we need to share Christ’s body and blood…”
and our thoughts move on…For us, this is perhaps abstract theology and not practical reality.

But it IS a hard teaching.
Small wonder that the early Christians were often vilified on the mistaken grounds that they practised human sacrifice.
You can’t really blame would-be disciples those who found it All Too Much and went home.
After all, it sounded for a while as if they weren’t really wanted anyway
“No one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father”
so it would seem that those who don’t come CANT come
Hard teachings indeed.

But, when you come down to it, at the core of all these teachings is the simplest of processes – the human need to be nourished, to be fed.
We all know the saying
“You are what you eat” and here Jesus promises that if we eat his body and drink his blood, we shall share his life…if we eat THIS bread, we shall live forever.
What we eat normally becomes part of us…
When we eat THIS bread, we become part of it.
Feasting on God, we are transformed to live a whole new life ourselves.

On Thursday I was part of an audience of several thousand listening to the band U2…Though they are not a band that plays overtly Christian music, 3 out of 4 musicians is a professed and active Christian and often their songs reflect this.
At one point during the evening, we all found ourselves singing along to an early hit
“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” –a song that reflects a process familiar to those who followed Jesus from the beginning, and to those who still seek him today.
That search for answers, search for hope, search for meaning is another core human activity…
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…
As so often in the gospels, Peter’s words speak directly into our own experience.
Here is another searcher.
One who speaks with a kind of desperate weariness
One who has struggled to make sense of the teaching of his friend and rabbi.
One who wishes that things were simpler, that Jesus would offer an easy beginner’s model of discipleship that would attract rather than deter followers.
Peter has longed to go home, to settle down and get on with ordinary life without the troublesome demands of the man who seems intent on rewriting the Law

Now he has no control over events, but is caught up in them despite himself, propelled in just a short time from a life of comfortable anonymity on the shores of Galilee to a dubious status as the known associate of a wanted man. I’m sure that there were a few unvoiced regrets along the way for each of the Twelve. But they have found themselves drawn irresistibly by the person of Christ, and even if they don’t always understand him, they know that he is speaking the deepest truth they will ever hear.

So, no escape. Nowhere to go. You have the words of eternal life

Once you have really engaged with Jesus, nothing else ever compares.

Yes, for us as for Peter, the way may often be hard. There will be countless times when living as a disciple seems just too much effort. If only we didn’t have to bother about justice, freedom, mercy. If only we weren’t called to love so much. Couldn’t we just forget all about it and get back to normal?

But then we realise that we’re on a one-way street, with no u-turns possible. That we simply have to follow the road, for it is the only one that will bring us safely to our destination. In our own time, so many still haven’t found what they’re looking for. But, ultimately, it is the voice of Jesus who calls us - by whatever name we know him. It is Jesus who invites us to come to him. Jesus who speaks to us the words of eternal life

Jesus, the living Word…the one who shows us what God’s life looks like lived out in humanity, the One who shows us how we are to be…and who feeds us, week on week, so that we too may live forever.

This week

We have been working on our slightly battered narrowboatPolyphony ...Removing and replacing windows, applying more mastick (sp?) than I knew existed to every conceivable joint, and beginning (in between showers) to cover her weary red paint with a rather pleasing blue.
On Friday, we are downing tools and taking her off for a cruise somewhere down the Severn or thereabouts (she is currently moored at Tewkesbury, so we're having to learn the unfamiliar ways of rivers, after the relative simplicity of canals).
Whatever else happens, I don't plan to spend much time online for the next few days. It's extraordinarily good to have all my children in one place, - so forgive me if I just concentrate on enjoying them.
See you on the other side!

Sunday special - high farce on the hill.

A good morning at both churches today.
Several groups of visitors, who were more willing to offer feedback than the regulars are - and were indeed distinctly complimentary
The return of a newcomer from a week or two back, who expressed her intention of coming again and didn't bolt when I suggested that I might drop in and see her after the hols.
A sermon that somehow carried within it (for the preacher at least) the friends who had been part of its production - making them feel very close throughout the morning.

And - the highspot of the day - the most fantastic offertory at Church on the Hill!

You remember that we are in the grip of all sorts of anti flu procedures?
Communion in one kind, a really thorough wash in warm soapy water and a quick squirt of hand gel before I consecrate.
So the sacristan up the hill asked me when I would want the water - and I said
"Oh, at the offertory...I'll just wash in the same place that I would normally do the token lavabo".
Cue an offertory procession comprising the elements, the gifts of the people AND a large red plastic washing up bowl.

The Herring and I both lost it completely for a few moments - it's amazing how long even the shortest aisle can seem as you battle with hysteria.
When the Archbishops' guidelines were first published there were some rather wonderful nonsense emails circulating about the correct liturgical use of gel etc
This morning, we enacted one of them!

Thank you God, for the gift of laughter :-)

Drawn by God - a sermon for Trinity 9B

What draws you to church?
You come here faithfully, once a week or once a month, and I can’t help but wonder why.
I guess that on one level at least there will be as many reasons for being here as there are people in this congregation – and for many of us it may be hard to work out exactly what is the prime motive that brings us together.

Perhaps you are drawn by long habit; you come because you always have – you simply cannot imagine yourself anywhere else on a Sunday morning.
Perhaps you are drawn by beauty – by lovely words and familiar music, by rituals and patterns that seem to make sense of things beyond the reach of rational thought.
Perhaps you are drawn by loneliness: you come from an empty house, in search of companionship.
Perhaps you are drawn by need: you are seeking authentic community and see it breaking down in the world beyond the doors
Perhaps you are drawn by anxiety; you come because church represents a place of safety and comfort in a changing world.

Perhaps you are drawn by love, your love for God.

I pray you are, that you come for an encounter with the living God, the God who can sweep you off your feet and set you down again facing in a completely different direction, the God who surprises and challenges, the God who feeds us, week by week, on the bread of life.

It is worth pondering why you come, because, of course, you will soon be asked to invite others. As we prepare for Back to Church Sunday next month it’s good to consider the place that Sunday church has in our own lives. Now is a good time to begin to think about whom you might invite to our worship that day…and also to pray, since we can be certain that God will already have prepared some of our friends for the invitation. We are told that there are 3 million people in Britain today who would come to church if only they were invited. 3 million! Some of those will be people we know, people in this community who are ripe for an invitation, because they have already been disturbed by an insistent disquiet, that kind of gentle nudging that is a sign of God at work…
Augustine wrote, long ago
“Lord you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless til they find their rest in you”
and though we may be very slow to notice and acknowledge this, it remains true.
God is now and always at work drawing people to him…

Whether we know it or not, we are, all of us, drawn by LOVE – God’s love for us.

God is constantly at work drawing us into his love…. – but we have our part to play, for we too are invited to co-operate with the process.
We are asked to be agents of his mission, to bring the whole of creation into relationship with Him. [Ephesians 1:9-10 according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up ALL things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.]
That is the underlying purpose not just of BTCS but of everything the Church attempts – we exist to share God’s love with the world.
Imagine that love as a great magnet, drawing us towards God. Then think of how things that are in contact with something magnetised behave. It’s fun, isn’t it, making a whole chain of paper clips dance in the wake of a single magnet… Those far away are still affected as the magnetism passes from one to another…

God’s love is the strongest thing in all creation, an unstoppable force that has drawn us…and, please God, will work through us to draw others.
“Be imitators of God, beloved children, and live in love…”
Is that what we see in our churches?
That question has extra point as positions are polarised and barricades manned across the Anglican Communion – where there is plenty of bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling and not a little slander at the moment. It’s far too easy for any institution to get side-tracked, and lose sight of core values, essential foundations…
We can, and must, pray that this will change but for now let’s concentrate on our own local context.

When we gather here week by week, I certainly hope that it is for more than just a social event.
If the church building vanished, if the organ imploded, if your familiar friends and neighbours all moved away, if you lost patience with the vicar, fell out with the Bishop and despaired of the whole Anglican Communion, you would still have a calling to be the Church, imitators of God, sharing the love you have received.
Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another
That’s our blueprint for behaviour here.
In other words – in our church community we practice the love we are to share with everyone…for it’s that love that will make a difference, that love that will draw others.

As I talked about this sermon with a friend, she asked
“How will people know that God loves them, if those gathered in God’s name don’t show them?” while another friend, on the eve of leave-taking before a big and difficult move, found time to bring me back to the heart of things, to the Bread of Life once more.
Between them, they made real the love that I’m trying to talk about, the love that draws us not just to this place, but, -which is far more, - the love that draws us to its source.

When we come to worship we come to give thanks to God for all his blessings, to celebrate his love and to be nourished and transformed as we encounter God in Word and in the Sacrament.
And it’s to that encounter that we should invite our friends.
Ultimately, it won’t matter if visitors choose to stay and become family here…
We’re not inviting our friends because we are setting out to fill our churches – rather we are inviting them because we want them to experience the limitless, unconditional love that we have received.
So our love for them must be no less without condition…

Martin Luther once described evangelism as “one beggar telling another where to find bread” – and as we seek to make God’s love real for our friends and neighbours, we know that here we are nourished by the Bread of Life.
We come together because we are drawn…lured by God.
Lured into God’s presence, lured into community, lured into hope.
And when we come, we receive all that we need, the living bread in whom all our hungers are satisfied
Christ himself, the bread of life, present not just not as we kneel for Communion, but present too in the friends around us – and in those people with whom we struggle.
Christ himself not confined to the sanctuary but close to us amid the mess and muddle of everyday life – where we spoil relationships, grapple with tiredness, mean well and do worse.
Christ constantly present, working his loving purpose that all should be drawn to Him, all redeemed, all raised up on the last day.

Thanks be to God

for a touch of sanity...
13 groups in the Church of England have now responded to ++Rowan's disappointing "Communion, Covenant and the Anglican Future" and their words are the ones I'd been longing to hear.
We wish to reaffirm our loyalty to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures, our commitment to the Anglican way, and our celebration of and thanksgiving for the tradition and life of the Church of England. Above all, our concern is for the mission of the Church in our world. We have no doubt that the Church of England is called to live out the Gospel values of love and justice in the whole of its life; these values are intrinsic to the calling of Jesus Christ to follow him and it is out of this context that we speak.

I'm glad that 2 groups to which I belong are represented (Inclusive Church, and WATCH of course) but slightly perturbed that Affirming Catholicism is missing from the list of signatories...I'd be very sad indeed if they felt unable to sign up to this.I've emailed to find out what is going on - the fact that there is a Catholic & Contemplative Fresh Expressions day scheduled for the middle of the Inclusive Church conference The Word on the Street worries me slightly too - as I'm pretty certain I'm not alone in believing that catholicism and inclusion should be synonyms. It may of course simply be a case of overloaded diaries, but I'd really prefer not to have to choose here - and I suspect there are others who are in a similar position...

Still, despite worries, this statement is an excellent expression of the views of so many. Now we must simply pray that it is heard.

The unknown god - a sermon for Evensong, Trinity 8 Yr B

As we enter an unpromisingly damp August, the height of the great British summer, I wonder if you are dreaming of far away places where the sun always shines… Imagine, then, that you are transported unexpectedly to Athens. I wonder what you would choose to do first. Retsina and stuffed vine leaves in the sun, or perhaps a spot of sight seeing? Athens has attracted visitors for centuries, and it’s the sort of place where past and present seem to blend into one another.… Tourists in the city tread in the footprints of generations – including the apostle Paul He too arrived there unexpectedly, thanks to a necessary deviation in his preaching itinerary. He had literally made the town too hot for him after his last preaching engagement…and was diverted to Athens for his own safety. At a loose end he wandered around, enjoying all there was to see….and casting a professional eye over Athenian places of worship. This is his starting point for a sermon notable because it’s the only one of his that appears to have been recorded fully…a sermon often held up as a model of good preaching. To start with, the venue is significant. Paul does not place himself in a synagogue with a band of the gathered faithful…. The message he has to share is too important for caution, or even discretion. Rather he goes for maximum challenge, in the hope of maximum impact. He takes his message to the place of greatest influence in all Athens. .The "Areopagus" is both a place, a small rocky hill northwest of the Acropolis (Greek for "hill of Ares" or in Latin "Mars Hill"), and an institution, the most prestigious and venerable council of elders in the history of Athens In Paul's day it was a place where matters of the criminal courts, law, philosophy and politics were adjudicated. Paul, who had been publicly proclaiming the Way of Jesus, was ridiculed by these movers and shakers as a "babbler" who advocated "foreign gods” But the Athenians loved a good discussion, and so they invited Paul to speak for himself at this most important venue…and Paul makes the most of the invitation. . He begins by making connections with his audience.He sets out to win their confidence, to build bridges so that it seems that they may have something in common after all as he admires their city, and compliments them on their religious practice… It’s a good technique. Instead of being on the defensive, they are likely to drop their guard, to trust this man despite his foreign ways. Wherever he goes, Paul sees signs that the citizens of Athens are intent on spiritual matters, with a shrine for every eventuality and even one to spare.

The story behind the shrine to the unknown god is in itself worth considering, with its underlying message of the need to hedge your bets in matters of faith and worship. Sometime in the sixth century before Christ, the city of Athens was being devastated by a mysterious plague. When no explanation for the plague could be found, and no cure was in sight, it was assumed that one of the city’s many gods had been offended. The leaders of the city sought to determine which of the gods it was, with a view to appeasing him. This was no easy task, since the city of Athens had literally hundreds of gods, and was pretty much the “god capital of the world,” a place so full of gods that (says one commentator) the Athenians “must have needed something equivalent to the Yellow Pages just to keep tabs on the many deities already represented in their city.” When all efforts failed to discern which god had been offended, an outside “consultant” was brought in from the Island of Cyprus, Epimenides. He concluded that it was none of the known gods of Athens which had been offended, but some, as yet, unknown god. He proposed a course of action which, if it worked, would at least provide a possible remedy for the plague. He had a flock of choice sheep, kept from food until they were hungry. On the appointed day, he had these sheep turned loose on the verdant pastures of Mars Hill. A flock of hungry sheep was bound to graze – but Epimenides was on the lookout to see if by any chance any decided against this. To the amazement of onlookers, several sheep did lie down, ignoring the lush grass beneath their hooves. Altars were erected at each spot where a sheep lay down, dedicated to an “unknown god.” On those altars, - by a cruel twist of pagan logic, the sheep concerned were sacrificed.

Almost immediately, we are told, the plague began to subside. Over a period of time, the altars were forgotten, with just one preserved, in commemoration of the removal of the plague by calling upon the “unknown god.” Who would have thought that centuries later, a foreigner named Paul would refer to this altar as the starting point for his sermon on Mars Hill?

That, you’ll be thinking, is a good story – but what does it have to do with us. After all, we are the products of a far more sophisticated age… We’d never indulge in that sort of behaviour. The sheep of Athens would be safe with us. Ummmm
Are you quite sure?
Look around you…open your newspaper, turn on the television.
There are all the overt spiritual adventures beloved of New Age devotees, of course – and we don’t have far to travel to encounter those…
There are crystals, tarot and all sorts of meditation systems…or you could sign up to be a Jedi if you prefer…
Beliefs that range from the slightly off-course to the wildly implausible all have their adherents.
But there are also any number of other belief systems that attract worship today. Wealth
Celebrity
Youth
Family
Security
Maybe good in themselves (though not always)…but all of these are transformed by anxious searchers into ultimate goods – things to be treasured and affirmed as the answer to all our needs… Gods, in fact – though gods whose power to sustain and transform is so limited that it is, in fact, non existent….

And perhaps as we gather in this lovely building, which has gained so much support from people far and near, we ought also to consider another potential danger…
24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything,
We love our holy places, and rightly so…but they carry with them a risk Listen to a friend of mine, Justin Lewis Anthony, writing recently in the Guardian
“Orthodox Christianity teaches us that God is everywhere; equally present at the high altar of Salisbury Cathedral as he is in the open-cast gold mines of Brazil. However, human beings are not very good at realising this. We seem to see God, know God, better in certain places than in others. We explain this away, by saying that "I'm more open to God in the beauty of nature" or "the veil between earth and heaven is somehow thinner here", and so the custom of pilgrimage grows up: places become hallowed by the recognition and prayers of others: it is possible to know God better in this particular place, and we divide the world into holy and profane.”
It is so horribly easy, I fear, to find ourselves confused…To treasure beautiful buildings for their own sake, instead of recognising that they are at best only signposts to the beauty that is beyond all human skill and art. But God cannot be confined in even a grade1* PreRaphaelite dwelling God is at large in all of God’s world – unpredictable, challenging, exciting…

God is at large – but God is also closer than we think, more intimate than we can imagine.
There is no chance of concealing our true serves, of hiding behind our best faces from the One in whom we live, move and have our being. We may feel safer if we assume an idealised version of ourselves as we come to worship…- and it’s tricky, because God does indeed recognise and honour our aspirations to be different, better – but God isn’t fooled.
Not for one moment.
So we need to be honest with ourselves about just who we are, - and we can take this risk without any fear because God knows us inside out…and still God loves us
God loves us because …ALL of us….regardless of colour, creed, race or sexual orientation are God’s own children.
In the same way that we cannot proscribe or limit where God may choose to dwell, we cannot limit those to whom God relates.
Everyone is related…everyone is invited.
No limits.
That’s a message that is both radical and exciting, a message that challenges each of us as we reflect on our tendencies to worship with like minded souls in ways that we find congenial.
We have other family members whom we ought to know and delight in.
Others who share the inheritance of love and glory that is God’s gift to his children.

So where will we find God?
Not among the sites of Athens, nor among the shrines that throng our streets and dominate our homes today.
We will find God wherever we seek God– for the whole world is a sacrament of God’s presence. Our God is not unknown…
For in Christ Jesus God meets us where we are, and invites us to join him where He is.