St Stephen’s day

To-day is St Stephen’s day. St Stephen is the first Christian martyr and he didn’t die of overeating. Instead he is stoned to death having enraged the pious and the orthodox by his works and his words. Why celebrate him to-day? Perhaps as a counter to the excess and good cheer of the day before. It is important to remember the dark side. Whenever we think of the stable we should also think of the cross. It’s possible to sentimentalise the stable but it’s quite impossible to sentimentalise the cross.

The background to Stephen’s story is trouble in the chapel. Stephen although a Jew is Greek speaking. He’s got a Greek name. He has friends and companions with Greek names. These Greeks had a more cosmopolitan outlook than the old guard. They felt they were treated as second class, pushed aside, their spiritual gifts ignored. Attempts to calm things down by giving them jobs didn’t succeed. Stephen’s fate is sealed when he is accused of challenging the central place that the Temple had among both the Jews and the first Christians. At this stage the Jews and the Christians had not separated into two separate and antagonistic communities.

Stephen is framed and brought before the Council on a capital charge. His death is preceded by a long sermon. In this sermon he describes Israel’s history in considerable detail. He lists Israel’s various acts of faithlessness in the past and he accuses his hearers of failing to respond to God’s saving acts in the present. “As your fathers did so do you”.

There is no invitation to believe the good news and be saved. He simply tells his hearers that they have betrayed and murdered the righteous one, he means Jesus of course. It’s almost as if he wants to invite the to murder him. They are not slow to take advantage of the invitation and proceed at once to his execution.

His death is the death of the righteous prophet. He is said to be full of the Holy Spirit-he gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God-and as he dies he forgives his murderers using words that recall Jesus’ own words. “Father forgive them for they not what they do” It is all rather splendid.

But is it wise? How appropriate is it to pray for the forgiveness of others when you provoked their sins in the first place. A sermon that provokes its hearers into murdering the preacher seems to me to be doubly ineffective-not only is the congregation left without hope its situation is gravely worsened. They now have blood on their hands.

This is what moralists call an occasion for sin. An occasion for sin is an invitation to sin-like leaving your car unlocked, or your back door open-or driving your relatives into a state of fury and exasperation by being difficult. For many people and in many ways Christmas is itself an invitation to sin. That’s why the government runs an anti-drink driving campaign at this time of year.

Stephen’s sermon seems to me to be an occasion for sin. Well that’s as may be but I am sure that such a point is very far from the author’s intention. The author of Acts presents the heroes of the faith as making a public profession of their beliefs regardless of the consequences. St Peter, St Paul and Stephen all make long speeches in Acts in defence of the faith and all suffer the consequences. There’s a sense of necessity about all this. In the same way Jesus’ own death was necessary. Stephen and Jesus before him die the death of martyrs in the same way as the prophets suffered for their fearless proclamation of God’s truth.

Stephen’s sermon lacks something in terms of pastoral sensitivity but then it is in a sense a speech from the dock and he would have known that his number was up. In any case he redeems himself in my eyes at least by his act of forgiveness. This echoes Jesus’own words of forgiveness from the cross. Stephen and Jesus before him die the death of martyrs in the same way as the prophets suffered for their fearless proclamation of God’s word.

The essence of God’s truth is that all should turn to him and be forgiven. God has compassion upon all but especially upon the poor, the outcast and the lost. Having accepted forgiveness for ourselves we should have compassion on others and work for their acceptance as well. So Jesus’ prays for those who crucify him and Stephen prays for those who stone him to death. But I expect that not all the first Christians would have admired Stephen’s

heroic death. They might not even have been entirely sorry. I can hear them now. He was a nice lad but he would go on so. You mustn’t upset people; whatever the cause. Don’t rock the boat.

And what has all this to do with Christmas. On the face of it not a great deal. Yet it is appropriate that Good King Wenceslas should have looked out on the Feast of Stephen and had compassion upon a poor man. The author of Luke/Acts would have been pleased. And it is also right to be reminded to-day of the cost of discipleship and of the necessity to bear witness no matter what.

That act of looking out is important. Christmas is far too much about looking in, shutting the door, excluding those who are not ours. Stephen wanted to look out beyond the cosy inward looking world of the synagogue. Wenceslas looked out from his cosy castle and had compassion on the poor. That’s what St Stephen’s day and Boxing Day should be about.

Looking out, bearing witness to the good news that is for all whether they are “ours” or not that is what this feast ought to be about. Facing up also to the cost of discipleship and of the necessity to walk the way of the cross whatever happens.

As Simeon said to Mary:

Behold this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against. (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also) that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.

The “Real” Meaning of Christmas.

It was one of those moments in the Church Council. A service for children and their families was being discussed and it was said that it would provide a means to get across the real meaning of Christmas. And that to my mind raised the key question which I then proceeded to ask: “What is the real meaning of Christmas?” The first answer I received was this: It’s not about shopping or consumerism. It’s about the birth of a baby. Somebody then said: I thought it was about the birth of God. Another voice then whispered in my ear: “Incarnation”. Gosh I thought that’s a big word. All three answers have their merits and are an attempt to put into words what Christians have always believed about Jesus-that in him we see God come amongst us as one of us. So God became man in Palestine for our sakes and in this sense its true; the story of Jesus is indeed the story of the birth of God.

Luke has a story about this birth with which we are all familiar. Matthew mentions it and then tells other stories about Jesus early days and Mark and John don’t mention the subject at all. In their books Jesus enters the narrative at the moment when his ministry begins. So perhaps the story of the baby in the manger isn’t really doing the business and is misleading us as to the true significance of what God is doing in Jesus.

The Danish writer and philosopher Kierkegaard told a story to illustrate what God has done for us. It’s as good a story as any you’ll hear this season. Yes it does sound like a fairy tale but it’s actually deadly serious and very effective. Just suppose he said; once upon a time there was a girl who belonged to the poorest class and lived in the most deprived circumstances.

A powerful and noble-minded King fell in love with her. However he has a problem. How can he win her love? Would she be happy to live at his side? She would lack self-confidence. She would always remember that she was a humble girl and he a great King. How could the love between the King and the girl be a truly happy love without any delusion or deception creeping in? To overcome the girl with a display of glory and power might satisfy the girl for a moment but would not satisfy the King. To deceive the girl with a display of apparent humility would also fail to achieve a true union of love between them.

Kierkegaard applies this parable to God. How is God’s true love to win the hearts of human beings? How is God to reach out to us and win us? How is God to overcome the infinite difference between him and us? Union, Kierkegaard concludes must be attempted by descent. Love must alter itself.

God must become our equal and appear in the likeness of the humblest and in the form of a servant. And that likeness is no mere disguise as it would be if the King assumed a beggar’s cloak. God in Christ will be born in a stable, will suffer all things, endure all things and make experience of all things. He will be forsaken by his friends, condemned by the powers and put to death on a cross. This is how much God loves us. God has become, as we are that we might become as he is.

God out of love wants to be equal with the lowliest of the lowly. God the king plants himself in the frailty of a human being. He becomes a new person. How extraordinary, how painful and difficult, how much like death. Yet this is what God wants and does. To sit with us in love as an equal so that we the life of God shall know as God is manifest below.

Kierkegaard’s story is a parable-a very effective one. It’s won wide admiration and it shows that creative thinking about Jesus didn’t cease with the gospel writers. What Kierkegaard has done is that he has shown us in this way how Gods’ love works and that is the real message of Christmas.

The Season with a Reason

During the Christmas season many churches will have a wayside poster proclaiming ‘Jesus – The reason for the season’. Despite having some theological reservations about the statement I will concur that Christmas is a season and a season with purpose.

The birth of Jesus is, no doubt, the most joyous and celebrated of all holidays in our culture. Families get together, gifts are exchanged, and a good time is usually had by all. Even people who know or believe little about Jesus celebrate together. However most people think of Christmas as a singular event and when it is over, it is over until the same time next year.

Although the birth of Jesus was a momentous event, it was not a singular event. Jesus’ coming has deep roots in the religious and cultural tradition of the Jewish people; and the fact that God – Emmanuel came in the form of Jesus has had a profound effect on human life that show no sign of abating even after two thousand years.

The season that we call Christmas began thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. The Messiah had been expected for a long time. Ever since the Jewish people got into so much trouble that they realised their condition was beyond human help, they had been expecting divine intervention into human affairs in the form of a messiah. Their expectation of a coming messiah was intense but also intangible. Mothers prayed that their unborn would be a male child, and that he would be the Messiah. The expectation of the coming was not casual, like expecting a white Christmas, it was heart rending and visceral.

When times were good the expectation was less intense. Like most of us they did not feel the need for divine assistance when they were getting on quite well by themselves. The intensity of expectation was in direct proportion to the degree of national and personal difficulty they were experiencing at any given time. But, the expectation was always there, albeit at times in the background. When times were tough, they expected the imminent arrival of divine help. Like present-day Christians, when in trouble, the first words out of their mouths were: “Dear God, where are you?” It became increasingly obvious to them, as it does to us, that God’s timetable does not necessarily correspond with our timetable.

Crises came and went and no messiah. False messiahs came and went. In every age there are religious charlatans who exploit for their own selfish purposes the simple faith of the naive and desperate. There is always a following. People who live in the zone of desperation will grasp at any straw of hope and help. 

There were many widely divergent concepts of what the Messiah would be like when he came. For the most part their hopes and dreams tended toward a political and religious “strong man,” a warrior-like messiah who would destroy the enemies of Israel and restore Israel to the power and splendour of the reign of David. They never dreamed that the Messiah would come when and as he did. Only Isaiah came close with his “suffering servant” who would be a light to all nations, and this was a fragmented glimpse that had little ideological support by the Jewish people (Isaiah 53). The Messiah is on his way! The time is drawing near that the hope of the ages will be fulfilled, but in a most unexpected manner.

Of course we would not have mistaken the truth of the Messiah, but how many people today yearn for a revived ‘messianic’ church which is full, wealthy and powerful.

The epicentre of Christmas is the birth of Jesus. Even those who know nothing but the solitary fact of his birth can be blessed by the event, but blessing and insight await those who know how it all came to pass. No one puts it all together in such a fetching story as Luke. Luke takes the loose ends of strange and obscure events occurring in the lives of the most unlikely people and leads us unerringly to Bethlehem, a stable, and the manger in which the newborn Messiah was laid by a wide-eyed teenage mother as a puzzled, but faithful, Joseph looked on.

Again Luke’s nativity began before the birth in Bethlehem. It is Luke, with his scientific mind, who tells us that in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy (which she had kept secret), an angel appeared to a teenage girl named Mary and informed her that she would bear a son without benefit of an earthly father, who was to be called “Jesus.” The angel informed Mary of the pregnancy of Elizabeth, her kin. So, in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary came to visit. When Mary greeted Elizabeth the baby leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth said to Mary: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” These two women share a secret that the world has waited long to know. As they revel in what they have come to know, Mary speaks a song of praise that has more to do with her unborn son than herself. It is Mary’s song. We call it “The Magnificat,” from its Latin name.

The song thanks and praises God for including her in this unfolding divine drama. As Mary sings of the power of God, we can read what she says to be the power to be exercised by her unborn son. It portends a revolution and a reversal of present reality. This is the most comprehensive statement of liberation theology in the Bible:

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1:51-55)

We look around the world today and realise that Mary’s prophecy is still to come to pass. Like our Jewish ancestors who looked for the coming messiah we hope and yearn for this new messianic world.

Do not give up hope, Christmas isn’t over yet!

Christmas blessings, Alan.

Are we nearly there yet?

I am sure we have nearly all experienced a car journey as a small children where the moment you pull off the drive the chorus starts – “Are we nearly there yet?”. The driver will roll their eyes and tell us to be patient. But we can’t, we are just too excited to reach our destination and so ten minutes later the question rises again – “Are we nearly there yet?”

Well the first snows of winter have fallen and in conversation people say they can’t believe that it’s December and Christmas is around the corner. Quick get the tree up and decorate the house with lights, but before we reach Christmas, we must first travel through Advent. Like an exasperated driver I need to say “Be patient.

One of the challenges of Advent is to stop being busy and spend some time in prayer. Prayers for patience. Prayers for tempering our enthusiasm. Prayers for remembering not everybody enjoys this season. Prayers to slow down and think.

Advent is a time for giving praise for what God has done, is doing, and promises to do. We focus first on the One who was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, as we sing in the Gloria Patri. The One who breathes into us the breath of life, who sustains and guides us through our years and receives us when we die. The One who comes again each year at Christmas that we may never lose hope.

Thanksgiving naturally follows. We thank God for being God, for coming into our world to be One with us—Emmanuel. We thank God for God’s unconditional love and forgiveness. God who understands us when we do not understand ourselves. God who is patient with us when we have none. God who receives us back when we wander away, rejoicing in our return, embracing us in arms of grace. 

This, too, is a season for confessing sin. Imagine what breaks God’s heart. Living and dying with Covid. Political divisiveness. Economic injustice. Fear of the stranger. Quickness to judge and slowness to listen. Climate change and mediocre environmental stewardship. Housing and food insecurity. Racial intolerance and misunderstanding. There are so many reasons we need Christ to be born into our world as Saviour. Lots to lift in prayers of petition too. 

Remember also to build in pauses for silent prayer, that you may hear God’s voice speak an Advent message to us. Remember prayer is listening as well as talking.

I believe it essential in our prayers that we honestly name evil alongside goodness, sorrow alongside joy, agony alongside hope. Remember in the joy and sparkle of Christmas there is a story of a heavily pregnant woman have to journey on foot(!) from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Remember, too, of a family with a baby having to flee a tyrant and seek refuge in another country. Give thanks for God’s incarnational, suffering, resilient love, no matter what happens in life.

In all things we believe God is working for good. So, we pray to God honestly, but not always patiently. We won’t stop asking ‘are we nearly there, God’ because we are confident we will reach our destination. No matter how long it takes.

Grace and peace this Advent season,

Alan.

Nec Tamen Consumebatur*

Have you ever considered what type of burning bush Moses encountered when God showed up?  There is a garden shrub called “burning bush” (euonymus alatus) that takes its colloquial name from the story, but it is doubtful that this is the bush that intrigued Moses.

Exodus 3 tells us the bush was aflame though not consumed when Moses spotted it in the wilderness.  Putting plant taxonomy aside, is there any value in considering the binomial nomenclature of the burning shrub in the wilderness? Ancient rabbinic commentaries on the book of Exodus believed the curious endeavour was worth pursuing. 

I feel that our church has entered a wilderness experience. That experience has been ‘sharpened’ by the effects of the pandemic lockdown. Like Moses, once a prince now a shepherd, our churches find themselves no longer at the heart of a community but viewed as an irrelevance, a paragraph on the pages of history. 

Yet into this wilderness God will direct us to bushes that are alight with the flame of his Spirit. 

Hear this good news: the story of God always begins in the wilderness. The Christian tradition is adamant that when God acts in the world, it is always with the people and the places least expected; the people called no one in the places called nowhere.

A very common cry at present is “The church ain’t what it used to be” and the decline of the Church parallels the changes in society. As we’ve lost the interdependence of communal life, we’ve also lost the ancient identity of the church’s propensity. To confront the catastrophe of church decline, we may also need to reconsider the very essence of the church. We need to reimagine the church, because in reimagining the church, we may reimagine our place in society. 

This is why the ancient rabbis earnestly declared that the bush of Exodus 3 was, of course, a thorn bush. When the Divine presence creatively manifested by name to unleash Israel’s covenant in the world, it came through the same medium that imaginatively related to the esteemed  Garden of Eden of Genesis. As the commentary goes, the garden of creation was surrounded by thorn bushes as a hedge of protection; a source of preservation to foster the vitality of that Garden free from the influence of ‘fallen‘ humanity. The intention of the bush theophany was a reminder that Israel, too, was meant to be a thorn bush for the world; that which protects, preserves, and sees to the life of all creation. Israel was to be a thorn bush for the flourishing of the earth. 

If the church is the continuation of such a covenantal vision, is the church meant to be a thorn bush for the world today? As we scan the dismal landscapes in our desolate wilderness, we ought to take solace in our history. One may wonder, is there an organisation, a group, or a movement dedicated to making the world good and fostering the health of places by taking responsibility for its future through ordering its present life? 

There is. The local congregation has been on this mission since that bush was aflame.

The prophet Jeremiah proclaimed a similar daring vision. In speaking to the covenantal people when they were staring at a future that looked nonexistent, the prophet sent word for how the Jewish people were to embrace their bleak situation and imagine a new future:

“But seek the welfare (shalom) of the city (place) where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare (shalom) you will find your welfare (shalom)” (Jeremiah 29:7 NRSV). How will the exiles endure? What is their directive in a world that has been destroyed? See to the welfare – the shalom – of the places where they are. 

The church needs to become thorn bushes in the places where they are. Be a subversive body for the good of the larger body. Be a signpost for God’s reign by offering healing and hope, cultivating transformation, and supporting and guiding our communities toward God’s dream for the world. 

If the local church has the best propensity to form, nurture, support, create belonging, and compel relational and economic life, churches can be the hope of the ‘city’. Churches can be that force to honour a place’s memory, adapt to a place’s context, and through shared history, shared vision, tangibly enact God’s reign.

What would it look like if God is in charge here? As with the wilderness meeting tent in the book of Leviticus, we can embody God’s story in such a way to activate the imagination of the places we serve and give a glimpse of what is possible. 

We need to stop trying to do the normal conception of church better, and start imagining how we can do church differently; which isn’t about being new or cool or exciting. Rather, we embraced the ancient art of being meaningfully adapted to our place as thorn bushes.

What would happen if churches used their buildings as a third space in declining communities who have little access to gather neighbours together? How might local churches use their platform, their message, and their organisational capital to mobilise the meeting of needs and catalyse the gifts of the people who call that place home? How can we foster a way of living that is adapted to our particular context? 

What else could the church be?

Reimagining the church in our community might be the only thing we can do in our present circumstances; but it might also be the only thing we ought to do. 

May we embrace the vulnerability of desperation.
May we take advantage of the wilderness’s bountiful imagination.
May we seize the propensity of the local church.
May we see ourselves as thorn bushes.

And may the world never be the same.

God bless, Alan.

*And yet it was not consumed (Exodus 3:2)

The Communion of saints

In our society we have become so obsessed with Halloween we forget the following day, November 1st, is All Saints Day.

When we confess the Apostles’ Creed*, in particular the phrase ‘the communion of saints’ our words echo with the voices of the saints, believers from throughout history.

All Saints’ Day is a time for us to remember the ordinary people who’ve made possible our faith, to recognise that we speak with their tongues, that we’re indebted to their faithfulness. On All Saints’ Day, we remember that we are not alone, that they accompany us.

In the book of Revelation, we glimpse a heavenly vision of the communion of saints, of believers in solidarity with us — a multitude “from every nation, tribe, people and language” around the throne of God (Revelation 7:9 NIV). When we say, toward the end of the creed, that we believe in “the communion of saints,” we’re calling upon that scene in Revelation 7 — the reassurance of a people on our side, the knowledge that their God is our God.

“The communion of saints” isn’t a select club of very special people. Instead, the phrase is a name for the church through the ages, the many people who’ve made possible our communion with God. They welcome us into a community that reaches out to us from beyond death.

Saints are people who offer their lives as a home for God, to make room in the world for God’s life to grow. They bear witness to what it looks like to let God live in this world through them. In other words, saints show us how to be disciples. They reveal that discipleship is about hospitality to God: welcoming God’s love into our lives so that new life may be born for others.

That’s why Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the first saint, the person who “brought God’s salvation to the world.” She is the first one in the Christian story to show hospitality to Jesus — God with us, God of her flesh.

Other than Jesus, there are two people named in the Apostles’ Creed: Pontius Pilate and Mary, “the one who says ‘no’ to him,” the Anglican theologian Rowan Williams remarks, and “the one who says ‘yes’ to him.” Pilate the sinner, Mary the saint. Their lives outline the possible responses to God.

As sinner and saint — each of us as both at the same time — we wobble from one figure to the other. From day to day, moment to moment, we teeter between resistance and reception of Jesus.

We’re usually like Pilate in our rejection of God’s work in the world and in our lives. But we’re called to be like Mary, to echo her yes, to emulate her posture of welcome to God’s life, the labour of hospitality, to make room for God.

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord,” Mary responds to God’s plan for her life. “Be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

Saints like Mary, the mother of our faith, guide our discipleship. They testify to the miracle of grace. They bear witness to the movement of God, the labour of the Spirit who transfigures our lives with the Word when we say yes to the gospel. They share the life of God with the world. Their witness beckons us into the gospel, into Christ’s love, for God’s love to become flesh with us.

The lives of ordinary saints not only provide models for discipleship; they proclaim a truth about God, that the Spirit dwells with people, that Christ welcomes us into his body. Like Mary, Christ has said yes to each of us. He has opened his life to receive our lives; he draws us into communion with the saints.

We are here, as members of God’s people, because the Holy Spirit has baptized us with grace, joining our flesh to the faithful who’ve come before us, all of us as members of one another.

All Saints’ Day is an announcement of the hospitality of God — that we are being welcomed into a communion that reaches from Mary to us, through people of every generation, all as a declaration of God’s love for the world. Saints surround us with the Spirit’s embrace.

God bless,

Alan.

*Apostles Creed.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth;
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead;
He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

Small Church – Big vision

October used to be the month for counting in church. If it moved we counted it, if it didn’t move we counted that as well just to be sure. The figures were sent off to Church House in London and after a few months with the number crunchers the results were published. Methodism had declined for another year.

Sadly we did not need the statistics to tell us that in the circuits, it was obvious week by week. So in the end, a couple of years ago, the Methodist Church thankfully stopped counting. However we are still obsessed by numbers.

Post lockdown I keep being asked what the congregation was like on Sunday morning. I think the person who asked wanted to know how many people were attending rather than my answer that they were ‘an ugly looking bunch but quite friendly!’.

Why do we equate success with large numbers? Over the years I have been minister to churches of many different sizes and ultimately there is no difference between a 20 member church and a 200 member church.

There are no small churches because people are in them, and the needs of people are as real in little congregations as in bigger ones. In the small churches I served, people were poised to grow. They were ready to move from membership to discipleship. In these churches people got sick, they died, they had discouraging marriages, they had wayward children, they had aging parents to look after, they had stressful work settings, etc. Potential blessings and painful problems were present in small churches just as they were in the bigger ones. Sadly small congregations believe that their problems will be solved if they become ‘bigger’.

I also learned the perception that most churches are larger ones is an illusion. It was true decades ago, and it is still true. The last time I saw a statistic I found that over 50% of Churches in this country have a membership of 75 or less. That may even more post lockdown.

But perhaps most of all, small churches are places to learn what Henri Nouwen once wrote to a friend who was discouraged because of a small response to her ministry, “In the area of spirituality, statistics do not count. Two or three people who hear you well, may be able to do miracles.” Henri J.M. Nouwen, ‘Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life’ (Convergent, 2016).

In the end there are no small churches only small vision. And without vision the church will perish despite the numbers in the pews on a Sunday morning.

God bless, Alan.

A Warm Welcome?

As we begin to open up our churches and get back to normal (what ever that might mean!), we hope that some of the people who engaged with our churches and circuit over the Internet will want to engage with us in person. But what will that mean for our churches?

Over the years as I have gone through the stationing process and visited prospective new churches the one thing the church stewards are keen to emphasise is that ‘we are a friendly church’. To be honest I would be surprised if a church ever said it was an unfriendly church! However after a few months into an appointment I feel like saying “You know when you said you are a friendly church…”

Is your Church a friendly church or a church of friends. The two are very different and easily confused by those who are on the inside.

Most churches have some form of welcome on the door but when the visitor arrives will you cut short the deep conversation you are having with some one you spoke to just two days ago and focus all your attention on the visitors?

Do the welcomers take the visitor into the church and help them settle WHERE THEY WANT TO SIT(!) or is the welcomers role to steer them away from the ‘reserved pews’ and into the pews where no one else wants to sit. Or are the visitors simply left on their own to play ‘pew roulette’.

Even if the visitor is fortunate to land on an empty pew would members of the congregation move from their ‘spot’ to go and sit with them too make them welcome or to they twist round in their seats, give them a good stare and ask the person next to them in a loud Methodist whisper “Do you know who they are?”

Does your Church give the visitor a plethora of books and leaflets without any explanation of what they are? (Is it obvious that the black hymn numbers are from the old book and the red ones from the new book – which nobody but the minister likes). Or do you fail to tell the visitor looking for a hymn book that the words of the service will appear on the screen apart from those we know by heart so we don’t bother with those, but that’s OK because where they are sitting they can’t see it any way.

After the service are they taken to the coffee room or simply told where it is? Are they sat at the ‘spare table’ while people put table and chairs together so that they and their friends can all sit and chat ? If you do go over to talk with them do you sit or hover over them like an impatient waiter?

What of you conversation? A very Methodist thing to do is to apologies for the preacher “It’s not our own Minister, just a Local Preacher.” And to the outsider what is a Local Preacher? or the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or the offering?

Do you, in your best jokey voice tell them that we will have to get them on Church Council?

When the visitor leaves do we just ‘hope’ to see them next Sunday or do we ask questions of their experience and what we can do to help them feel more welcome?

Oh yes we’re a welcoming church, it’s just some people don’t want to be welcomed!

God bless, Alan.

Jesus -a Green??

This piece is dedicated to the Streetly Eco Festival and might have been a sermon but I thought it better for this medium.

Concerned as we are about the environmental crisis we Christians need to ask ourselves a question. What do we Christians bring to the table? How does our faith in Jesus empower our actions and direct our thoughts and prayers in this matter. After all Jesus of Nazareth lived in the first century AD and had no knowledge of climate change science. Nor did he have the benefit of being briefed by Greta Thunberg and Richard Attenborough. So is Jesus irrelevant in this matter and does Christianity really make no difference at all because our thinking should be driven solely by the science. My answer to that is, No! Jesus does make a decisive difference and in our concern for the environment he is with us.

I want to answer my own question in three ways: First let’s look at what Jesus read, said and did.

Secondly let’s remember what happened to him.

And thirdly let’s call to mind what his followers came to understand about him and his place in the story of the salvation of the world.

What Jesus read! Perhaps you don’t see Jesus as one who spent his time in Libraries and to be honest nor do I. What I mean is that Jesus received the Hebrew Scriptures, taught their meaning and quoted them and in his life he fulfilled them. These scriptures are rich in references to our topic teaching the goodness of God and the goodness of his creation. Here’s one to take to heart but there are many others. Speak to the earth and it will teach you. In the hand of the Lord is the life of every creature and the breath of all human kind.

And Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says this: look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap and yet your heavenly father feeds them.

Jesus teaches his disciples that love is primary and is always looking to extend itself to outsiders, to heretics and foreigners-to Canaanite women, to Samaritans, even Romans and to the earth itself. Yes even the earth.

Jesus taught his disciples not to seek crowns and thrones but to embrace humility for the sake of love that is sacrificial in character. Christianity is not all about me or my individual rights it’s about the others, the family, society and creation itself-everything is connected. Jesus not only said these things he practised them as well. So when Jesus and his friends find themselves in the midst of a storm at sea the friends panic but Jesus calms the storm and chides his friends for their lack of faith. Who is this they say! That even the winds and waves obey him. Good question! Who indeed!

And so secondly we must ask ourselves; what happened to him.

Now remember if you embrace his teaching and follow his example you will encounter opposition not only in those days but also to-day. The opposition yesterday and today are the power hungry, the profiteers, the privileged, the followers of consumerism, those who use their position to exploit others for the sake of their imagined rights and those who believe there is no such thing as society. You know their modern names!

So these people went after Jesus as today they will go after you. Arrest, trial (of a sort) and execution was what Jesus faced. His disciples suggested armed rebellion as a response but Jesus said no. He breaks the cycle of oppression and revenge. Jesus foresaw his death but accepted it freely. In this way love wins the ultimate victory.

And so thirdly what did his first followers come to understand about Jesus. At first of course they were bewildered, frightened and confused. Some of them still are! But then they came to an understanding that Jesus had been raised up and that although the body they had known and touched had disappeared they could still experience his presence in all manner of ways not the least of which is the Eucharist.

Jesus, they realised, is the best image of God we have. God loves the world so much that he had sent Jesus for the sake of the world-that it might be saved. Yes things are in a terrible state-creation groans as Paul says but all is not lost for Jesus is at the heart of creation and in his rising we see the inauguration of a new creation.

So is or was Jesus a green. My answer is no. We should never seek to make our faith in Him an add on to our personal political inclinations. Nevertheless the person and work of Jesus provides a crucial (important word that!) insight into how we might address our environmental crisis. But we shouldn’t think of Jesus as simply my personal saviour-such individualism is at the heart of the crisis. Our faith is not just all about me, it’s about the others, you and I together and not just us but the whole created order as well.

Our problem in the Church is that we don’t always see what’s staring us in the face. So it is the Samaritans, proverbial outsiders who the godly despise who are shown getting the message. So in John’s gospel they declare together with one voice. This is indeed the saviour of the world.

I am no longer my own…

September is, of course, the beginning of a new Methodist year and it has become a tradition in many churches to use the first Sunday in September as their Covenant Sunday rather than the first Sunday of the calendar year. 

On occasions for Covenant Sunday I have used Pauls conversion as the basis for my sermon. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3–6) was dramatic and utterly life-changing. The resulting insights from this initial experience became central to all he taught for the rest of his life. While most of us have a different, less extreme experience, the result should be the same. The insights from our encounter with Jesus should be central to our lives.

Before conversion, we tend to think that God is out there. After transformation, we see that God is not out there but is in here. When we look at life we don’t look at reality, we look from reality. We’re in the middle of it now; we’re a part of it. This whole thing is what the writer Richard Rhor calls the mystery of participation. Paul is obsessed by the idea that even before we recognise Jesus we’re all already participating in something.

I’m not writing the story by myself. I’m a character inside of a story that is being written in co-operation with God and the rest of humanity. This changes everything about how we see our lives. If we’re writing the story on our own, we think we’ve got to write it right. We’ve got to be clever, we’ve got to figure it out. If anything goes wrong, we’ve only got ourselves to blame. That’s a terrible way to live, even though many Christians do. And that’s ‘bad news’.

The good news is a completely different experience of life. A participatory theology says, “I am being used, I am actively being chosen, I am being led.” It is not about joining a new denomination or having an ecstatic moment. After authentic conversion, you know that your life is not about you; you are about life! You’re an instance in this agony and ecstasy of God that is already happening inside you, and all you can do is say yes to it. That’s all. That’s conversion and it changes everything.

This idea of participating in the goodness and continual unfolding of God’s creation reminds me of the prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that begins, “Make me a channel (or instrument) of your peace.”  As a follower of Jesus we recognise that we are called to be his instruments, to be the conduit through which the love of God flows into the world.

Looking back on my life, I can see that God did everything. God even used my mistakes to bring me to God and God’s wisdom to others! I hope this week will inspire you to look at what has happened when you also said yes to participating as God’s instrument in the world.

God bless, Alan.