Good Friday 2011 The Way of the Cross

One of the blessings of the late Easter this year is that our annual Good Friday pilgrimage across the benefice was never going to be troubled by the horizontal snow and high winds, rain and hail that we had enjoyed on the same walk in previous (earlier) Holy Weeks.

This year the weather was hot; very hot. It was always a relief to reach the next church and enter, to feel the cool air suround us. We used the Common Worship Way of the Cross, with a dramatised passion narrative ably performed by members of all 4 churches. There is already talk of upping the ante a little next year with the addition of costumes and the possibility of setting Peter's denial in the White Hart in Stebbing High Street.

People of all ages from 5 to 75 (at least) took part, and although not every pilgrim walked the whole way, everyone was glad of the hot cross buns and drinks at the end of the journy in St Mary's, Lindsell

Nothing compares ...

Once again the old steam driven tower pc I persist in using won't let me cut and paste into a Facebook note so I am replying to one I was tagged in here.
It is the "Favourite Music for Worship" meme, following hot on the heels of a previous one about your least favourite chorus, which I declined to do (as it would have taken all day to decide which one of many cringeworthy things I have sung over the years would get that title).

So here are the questions
1.What is your favourite piece of music for congregational singing? Why?


2.What is your favourite piece of music for performance by a group of specialist musicians within a liturgical context? This might be a worship band or a cathedral choir or just a very snazzy organist or something else entirely, but the point is that it is not congregational singing and it is live music in liturgy.

3.What is your favourite piece of music which makes you think about God to listen to outside of your place of worship? Why? This could be secular music.

4.What is one thing you like about the music at your usual place of worship? Have you told the musicians about this lately?

And these are my answers. Reading this? You're tagged!
 
1. My favourite piece of music for congregational singing would have to be Keith & Melody Green's "There is a Redeemer". It was a close run thing between this and "Thine be the Glory", but I went for it in the end because it was sung at my ordination, and also because it was one o f the first songs I learnt following  my conversion in the mid 80's. The slight downside is that I usually end up thinking about Rory McGrath while singing it because he kind of looks like Keith Green...
 
2. I don't like the idea of performance in worship (justabout getting used to the concept of worship musicians having a "set list") but I am always very blessed by the worship team at St Mary's Church, Stebbing, when they play during the distribution at communion services. It doesn't really matter what they play!
 
3. The title of this post gives this one away. "Nothing Compares 2U by Prince (or more usually Sinead O'Connor). It's like a Psalm for me, a lament, though I know not all the lyrics really work. I'd love to do just the chorus in a Taize service one day.
 
4. See 2, and also, the organists in Lindsell and the Salings (who are both reading this via Facebook) never cease to bless me with their dedication and talent and desire to diversify.

What have I said Now?

This Sunday we were hearing in church about the calling of the first disciples from Matthew's Gospel. I'd never really paused to think much before about what Zebedee [no giggling at the back] thought when his sons James and John got up from their nets and followed Jesus. In terms of the theology of vocation, it may be (as in this case) that the effects of that calling, that conviction, are positive for those who are called, those who come to that conviction, but less so for others around them, family, colleagues etc.
On Sunday morning I preached about calling from this story (Matthew 4, 12-23). In the sermon I uttered words I never expected to say again after I said them last when I was about 7:

I am Zebedee

 (we were playing on a pogo stick ...)

You see I suspect that even if James and John and their father had already heard of or about or even from Jesus before this lakeside encounter, with the best will in the world, there must have been a little bit of a sarcastic "oh, well so long and thanks for all the fish then" from Zebedee. Perhaps he did have an appreciation of the validity of his sons' calling, perhaps not, but the stark fact is he was 2 crew members down. That can't have been easy to swallow.

I am Zebedee

 because the diocese of Chelmsford lost 300 or more people over the weekend. They followed their own convictions, their own calling (the clergy among them would probably go with the latter) into the Ordinariate [?sp] - Pope Benedict's accommodation for Anglicans departing to Roman Catholicism. I am Zebedee even though I don't personally know any of these people, but we are a fair few crew members down as a result of their expression of their calling or conviction. My opinion on it is not relevant to the decision, but it has an effect on me because the family that has been torn apart is my family, the Anglican diocese of Chelmsford. Oh yeah, great timing too - a happy "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity" to you too Holy Father ! [rant over]

They would say I'm sure (as James and John would say) "We have to go". They don't have to go, the Church wants them to stay and the diocese of Chelmsford is working hard to support them and others like them, but they want to go - it is their conviction, based on their opinion of the matter in hand (namely the making of women Bishops among other alleged 'departures from tradition'). I happen to disapgree with them enormously but I think it is a mistake to go.

Which brings me to the whole concept of the power of personal opinion. This weekend on Sky Sports Richard Keys and Andy Grey expressed personal opinons, which were broadcast unknown to them. The opinions (which I wont repeat here but if you live in a vacuum click the link) were widely condemned as unacceptable. Grey and Keys clearly hold convictions about women in sport which are a little old fashioned to put it politely. Had they been savvy enough to realised their mics were live I'm fairly sure they'd have been more discreet, but now we all know what they think, even though they have apologised.

I don't think those opinions are God-given. When it comes to the Ordinariate, that is a harder thing to say, as I do believe, even if I disagree, that many of those 300 or so souls genuinely did seek God's input on their decision to cross the Tiber. whether they found God's answer for anyone beyond their own selves is another question.

In all of this one thing we should remember (as Yoda might put it); forgiveness is not the same as saying it doesn't matter.

And finally, to bring two great films together in one pastiche, since I am married to a woman priest I can say ...

I am Zebedee and so's my wife

When your heart's not open

For Christmas this year I received "The Ballad of John Clare" by Hugh Lupton. It is without doubt the best novel I've read since 1981 (When I read "To Kill a Mockingbird"). It is a fictionalised biography covering a year in the life of the poet John Clare. It is set in 1811, at the time when in the countryside between Peterborough and Northampton where Clare was born, the land was being enclosed, following earlier legislation. At the heart of the story is the enormous feeling of injustice felt by the poor ands the smallholders when their rights to graze stock or grow crops on common fields were taken away. Lupton quotes the 16th century verse that arose from the first protests against enclosure:

"The law locks up the man or woman,


Who steals the goose from off the common.

But leaves the greater villain loose,

Who steals the common from off the goose."

So this year marks 200 years since that part of countryside (along with a lot of the rest of it) was effectively privatised, having previouslyy been either held in common or at least in the hands of a greater number of individual owners and tenant farmers. Those whose livelihoods were removed fell into dire poverty. As the industrial revolution got underway, many moved north to the city to try to find work in mills and factories, leaving their families and their roots behind.  It was a turning point for England.

There has been a lot of talk in the media and the blogosphere this week about another anniversary, the 400th birthday of the King James Bible (KJV) first published in 1611. This date was also a turning point, but for very different reasons.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say I think that 1811 is the more significant anniversary. Much has been made of the importance of the KJV in terms of its contribution to the English language - we all use phrases in our written and spoken language today that arose from the text of the KJV, there's no getting away from that. 1611 also marked a pause in the very turbulent place that was the English religious landscape of the 16th and 17th centuries. The KJV was for centuries a unifying text, to which the Christian Anglophone world looked. The British Empire took it with them in missionary endeavour, and even today the likes of Bono and Melvin Bragg wax lyrical about the beauty of its language.

Which is where the problem starts for me. The Bible wasn't written to sound nice, it wasn't meant to be a preserver of language or culture; it was meant to tell a story, the story of God, and to introduce us to a person - Jesus Christ. Now, no one Bible  translation is perfect, indeed the modern science of translation has a lot to say about the impossibility of actually properly translating anything. The KJV, I feel, was a good tool for its day, but like the ancient farming tools that were overtaken by the seed drill and the subsequent mechanisation of farming, it has been superseded by better, more accurate, more scholarly and more comprehensible Bible translations, and we need to let it go. It may have been a thing of beauty, but the KJV also contains (to our ears) myriad words and expressions that are not only meaningless but also in some cases do not do justice to the original text. Just google "kjv inaccuracies" to get a flavour of this.

Now, I realise 1811 is a bit of a non-specific anniversary, but I still feel that 200 years since the end of widespread smallholder and common land farming is a more important anniversary to mark. The injustice of it  led in some cases to open conflict between the landed gentry and the peasantry - a real live class war. For today's protester this intense and bitter disappointment and feeling of being crushed has come to the surface again. Our class structure and social and economic landscape was formed by the consequences of  enclosure. It contributed at least as much as the Industrial revolution to the breakdown of family ties and rural roots. Never forget, the nuclear family didn't exist in the pre-industrial, unenclosed age. People lived much closer to their relatives in multi-generational groups.

1611 and 1811 do have something in common though. They have both caused us as a nation to idealise - the Bible and the countryside respectively. After enclosure, the corporate mindset of the rural population always looked back fondly upon the pre-industrialised farming villages. This formed the "chocolate box" image of thatched cottages and winding lanes that we still operate on today as an archetypal rural scene. It wasn't really like that though (or at least not for long), even if people have been trying to recreate rural life in that image ever since.( I'm often tempted to suggest middens and no running water should be included in planning permission in villages where the planners want to preserve the chocolate box!)

After its publication the KJV froze in time the religious language of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and froze alongside it a set of religious assumptions (behind the translated text, from the minds of the translators) many of which have long disappeared, especially with regard to gender, to race and to the created order. We haven't changed our theology of these things by abandoning biblical (read: KJV) truth, but by studying the original texts (i.e. Hebrew and Greek) and discovering (sometimes also though science) that ther are other ways of understanding. To look back at the KJV is to idealise language in the face of a snowballing development of newer words and forms of language (innit?) I hesitate to suggest, but I believe it to be true, that those who also look back to the KJV for an idealised "traditional" faith, are holding back the church in mission, strangling us like a dog on a choke chain. It wasn't ever really like that, and can never be again.

The landscape of rural England is changing again in this age. Eco-town, anyone? Maybe not, but something has to give in the quest for more and better housing (but that's another story). Chocolate box villages are only on chocolate boxes; everywhere else has Range Rovers and Sky dishes and youth crime just like anywhere else.

The landscape of religious England is also changing in this age. I don't know how its going to turn out, but it is by trusting a person (Jesus) rather than a book (the KJV) that I intend to ride the storm.

Languages are meant to evolve, not to stay the same. English will still be English even when the KJV is long forgotten (that's "when" not "if") . I'm not sure 'evolve' is the right term for Christianity, but I do believe our faith is meant to adapt to each new culture in which it finds itself. You wouldn't take the KJV to an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon now, so why make the descendants of the disenfranchised farmers of 1811 read it here?

Not properly researched, I know, but there you go!

Christmas Eve Midnight Communion sermon 2010, St Mary's Church, Stebbing

This sermon was preceded by a video of "Nothing But a Child" by Steve Earle . What follows won't really makes much sense unless you click the link or at least google the lyrics.

Readings, though we had them, were fairly irrelevant (OK for purists the gospel was Matthew 1 18-25).


You know, they say Christmas is for the children, but we mustn’t forget that it started with a child too. That’s what that song is all about – and my apologies to the purists who say we shouldn’t involve the wise men until next week.

I love that line “once again we all can be children for a while”. Christmas evokes many childhood memories for us – good, and maybe bad too.

We are all someone’s child, and many of us have children and grandchildren of our own. In this the first Christmas service, just few hours before the earliest little risers will be asking to unwrap presents, let’s spend some time in reflection, thinking about children. As well as that song you’ve just listened to, I’d like to stimulate that reflection by reading you a poem.



This was written by an atheist friend of mine. The poem is called “waiting”, and this is what she told me about it.

“’Waiting’ is about the birth and subsequent illness of my third son. He was in hospital until he was 3 months old."

waiting

always on the stairs,

or in a lift, or on a path or street or hill that is

not there, but on the way, or

going to. where you see

nothing all around you

unread books on dark-shut trains,

silent taxis.

windowless rooms.



at christmas

in the church, uncomprehending

looking at your life

and seeing not the star, but just

the hole where it should be, while you wait for him

and wait,

then wonder,



when he's given, from so far away,

light,

for the one

who can't believe.



To be honest, it’s tempting to just leave it there, but if I do we’ll be singing O come all ye faithful too early, so I’d better continue.



You know there is only one thing about Christmas that I don’t like, and that’s having to sing “Away in a manger”. I know the children love it and are cute when they sing it in the nativity play, but in the middle 2 lines of the second verse that carol drifts into heresy – firstly because it claims Jesus didn’t cry. Now, he was a fully human child born on a cold night in in very rough conditions; he cried alright! Secondly, in saying Lord Jesus look down form the sky, “Away in a manger” perpetuates the myth that God is distant, disconnected from earth, and only interested in making sure we make it through the night. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

The heart of the Christmas message is the word made flesh – God coming to live and breathe and speak and work among us. And the great thing is that even though Jesus did depart this earth, his presence is still with us by his Spirit, whom he sent to be our comforter and guide. the Holy Spirit dwells in the hearts of those who believe. He is God, but not distant.



Having said all that – and I hope it didn’t turn into a rant – I perhaps need to give “Away in a Manger” another chance because of the third verse. Remember, we are thinking about childhood tonight.

We’re thinking about a child who was long expected but whose arrival was not as expected. We’re thinking about the difficulty of birth, of the fragility of a new human life and perhaps about the impossibility of parenting sometimes, when they get a little older!

We started with “Nothing but a child could wash those tears away, and guide a weary world into the light of day”. Jesus’ life and death, but supremely his resurrection, are what achieved that- the dawning of a new day, a new life, eternal life for those who believe. He didn’t do it all as a child, but he had to come as a human baby to fully live a human life, to fully redeem human life.

So you see, childhood is truly the heart of Christmas; in Jesus, God came as a child to remind the world that we are all his children. Even the adults are children, and for more than just a while.



If you tonight are in the church, uncomprehending, looking at your life and seeing not the star, but just the hole where it should be, then take a look with me at the last verse of Away in a manger. These words sum it all up really, in terms of how you get all this to work.

Be near me Lord Jesus I ask thee to stay

close by me for ever and love me I pray

bless all the dear children in thy tender care

and fit us for heaven to live with thee there.



The key word is ask – if you ask Jesus to be with you then he will come into your life. You may not feel any different – though some of you will – but a simple invitation is all he is waiting for, to come into your life, your heart and soul, and claim it again for his own. The hole where the star should be is filled by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. If you still have any doubts about this remember that God wants to be with us, he longs to be with us – the Angel told Joseph that Mary’s baby would be called Emmanuel – that means God with us, and that is what he longs to be. He’s just waiting for us to ask him.

Remembering that we are all someone’s child, the last two lines of Away in a manger can be our prayer too – asking God to bless us, but also to make us ready for eternity.

And if you’re getting cynical and thinking this is just a one off in the spirit of Christmas, let me take you back to another line from that song. Now, the birth of any child is a special occasion, which can inspire us and change our lives. But the birth of the Child we celebrate tonight means that we all can have another chance allowed – forgiveness is what the cross we see there brings. Forgiveness and a new start.

Yet if you are still “the one who can’t believe” let me say I respect that position, but would want to challenge you with a final thought.

The validity of all this, of Christmas, of the gospel, of the church and Christianity, does not hinge on whether or not people believe it. In that sense our faith or lack of it has no impact. God’s amazing plan for the world, to save his children, doesn’t need our permission to be true, but Christ does need our permission to include us in the fruits of that plan



let us pray