Ascension Day - My Sermon

Last Thursday (and again last Sunday) Christians around the world celebrated Ascension Day, the anniversary of Jesus Christ ascending bodily into heaven, beyond all our physical universe, until he comes again in Glory.

My church in Wolston was so moved by this event it took leave of its senses/very generously trusted me to preach a sermon for the first time in church. Feel free to steal liberally for your own sermon/talks/inspiration. The reading was Acts 1:6-11.

"Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

For a long time I have found the Ascension one of the most perplexing bits of the Bible. I think I've decided that is because the Ascension can be confusing, and it can feel like a loss. It can be confusing because, what does it mean that Jesus ascended into Heaven? On the most naive, physical interpretation he rose into the sky and then vanished. That makes it sound a bit Star Trek. But, what is important is not how it physically happened, it is one of the great and otherworldly miracles of God - a True Mystery,  that we can never fully understand with our limited, mortal perspective. And like all miracles its true importance is spiritual. We must understand why it happened, and what it means for our deepest spiritual life, our hearts and our souls.

Anyway, Jesus isn't described shooting upward and away like a rocket taking off, he rises above them, before being enveloped by a Cloud, and disappearing entirely from this world. At many times in the Bible God is described as being manifest in the world as in a great cloud, at the same time vast and powerful but hidden - when God descended on Mount Sinai to speak with Moses and the Israelites face-to-face, at the Transfiguration when the Father directly claimed Jesus as his Son, and more. A fine way for God's glory to be revealed, in part, to Man in a way our minds can at least begin to understand.

But Heaven is not physically above us, Heaven, like God, is in every direction and no direction. It is all around us and it is nowhere in this physical world. It lies in a totally different dimension, reached along a totally different axis to any in our material universe. It is a spiritual direction and axis that lies entirely beyond physical description. And straightaway the angels redirect the disciples' view back to earth.

And we know it is true, because there is no place where Jesus's body rests on earth. There is a tomb, but it is empty. You can go and see it in Jerusalem, there's no body there. We know where Muhammed's body lies, it's in Mecca, we know where Buddha's body lies, it's in India, we know where Marx and Lenin's bodies are, in London and Moscow. But though we know where Jesus was born, and we know where he was killed, and we know where he was buried, his body is not there anymore, it is risen, and it is ascended into Heaven.  

And the Ascension can feel like a loss as well, for that very reason, because how clear things would be if Jesus had never left, if he was still here in the flesh to lead us. We wouldn't have to make difficult decisions about priorities and strategies and plans. We could just follow, like sheep after their shepherd, knowing he would lead us the right way.

What a weight off our shoulders that would be!

It would be too easy though. We would never truly grow and take responsibility for ourselves and for the whole world, to fulfill our potential and become the free people Jesus wanted us to be. And with Jesus here in physical person he could never be with as many people as he needed to be, as he could be in the Spirit, as deserved to have Christ as a real presence in their lives. In his ministry on this Earth only a lucky few, such a lucky few, could sit and eat with him, could stand and hear him, could see him face to face.

But Jesus' ascension meant his ministry could become universal, as it must always be. It was not enough that Jesus could be with the disciples in the person. But he must be in heaven, and so able to be with us all, everywhere in the world at the same time through the Holy Spirit, where and when we need him.  With Stephen when he was being stoned evilly, with Paul on the road to Damascus, with us here in this building now, and at the same time with other Christians, and non-Christians, all around the world.

He had to ascend so he could take his throne and rule over all the world, and still be here with unlimited people through the Spirit. The Son was born as a human being, so he could be a brother and speak to us as a brother to his sister, as a friend to a friend. That is a personal and direct experience and relationship to God that no other method could replace. But through the Spirit, God does not only came next to us as a neighbour, but also lives in us and joins with our souls, filling us with grace and forgiveness so we can start afresh, with new opportunities, day after day. We should not mourn the departure of Jesus. We should be glad, because the departure of Jesus, means the coming of the Spirit, and the increase to Infinity of Jesus' capacity to be with not just a privileged few, in the right place, at the right time, but with all women and men and children across the whole world forever.

Christ's ascension was the last and essential part of his earthly ministry where God combined himself, united himself, with out material reality. In the words of the Prophet Isaiah, who lived five hundred years before Jesus, but still through God's grace saw Jesus' life, and described it in his Servant Songs like a man who was right there.

"He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of sorrows, who knew pain well.
Like a man people turn away from,
    he was hated, and we held him in contempt." and the prophet goes on. But now I want to focus on these words,

"He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground."

God Almighty, the Holy Lord, the One who holds the whole Universe with its spiralling galaxies in the palm of his hand; he, himself, grew up from our ground, like the tender shoots we have growing in our gardens. He grew from our world, and he grew into our world, eating our food, drinking our water, breathing our air, beneath a blue sky just like the one outside.

And so he joined our mundane world with God's infinite, holy being. And his whole life that holy power burst out of him touching and transforming the lives of people around him. People couldn't help but be seized by his personality, his integrity, his love, his insight and wisdom, that we benefit from still today. But that was just the beginning. Being united with a sinful world carries a terrible price, Christ came to bear the whole world within him, so just as the world suffers pain and death, Christ suffered pain and death, murdered by fearful, sinful men.

And when they killed him, Christ's enemies thought they were done, they thought they had won, and the problem they had was solved forever. How wrong could any person be? But as we so rightly celebrated this Easter he rose again, proving that sin and death will not have the final victory. Will never have the final victory.

Please excuse that slight divergence from the Ascension itself, but I think it's impossible to properly appreciate this wonderful event, without refreshing the incredible passage of Jesus' life and ministry. Jesus' conception and birth, was the essential, beautiful moment of bringing Almighty God, the Holy One of Israel, into our physical, material world, and thus blessing it, making it holy forever. Jesus' mortal growth, and life and ministry, was the deepening of God's infinite and eternal joining with our small and passing nature, and the spilling out of his love and wisdom to fill our minds and souls with the light of a better and more hopeful way. His death, the sad but inevitable consequence of taking on our sinful, painful, world. His resurrection the inevitable result of God's overflowing, never-ending, inexhaustible power and love.

And finally his Ascension, the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake, the one thing that is left in this glorious story, to carry Christ's mortal body, the body which grew inside the young woman Mary from a single human cell; that fed at her breasts, that grew up and grew strong on bread and olives and cheese and meat, that was beaten and broken on Good Friday, and carried the wounds on his hands and his feet, and his side where the spear pierced him, but then had risen again!

That body that had carried our sin, and carried the pain of a human life with its scars and its suffering Ascended!

Ascended bodily into heaven and carried our  physical, mundane humanity to the glory of God the Father, heavenly and eternal, to sit on God's throne forever. Just as Christmas brought God down to grow up in the  earth in our human nature, so the Ascension carried our Humanity to be forever at the right hand of God the Father, to be glorified and worshipped by the Angels and the Saints for eternity. So a human being should be seated at the centre of everything that is and could possibly be, and so forever we have someone who knows and understands our weakness and our pain, because he has experienced it, and bears the scars still today.

And not just for this. Christ ascended into heaven bodily because he had already died and passed through resurrection, he could not die again, but he returned to our earth for a while to ensure the disciples knew and truly understood this glorious news, and to say goodbye for now to the people he loved, the goodbye he never had to time to say amid the confusion and terror of Good Friday. After this his ascension was the completion of the next stage of the Resurrection, but still, not its total and final completion.

For St Paul calls Christ's rising from the dead, and then his ascension into Heaven, the 'First Fruits' of the Resurrection. But First Fruits are only distinguished as the 'first' because there are second, and third, and fourth, and more and more until there is a complete and rolling harvest.

And we are that harvest!

Jesus said "I go and prepare a place for you", and that is what he is doing. As St Athanasius said, who helped write the Nicene Creed, the creed of the Church that unites Christians all round the world for the last 1700 years. As he said, "God became man, so man may become God". Not literally, in terms of his essence, there is only one God, this is no easy new-age trick, but in a very real sense nonetheless.

Through the Resurrection and then the Ascension Jesus' entirely human body is gone to sit on the very throne of God Almighty, creator and sustainer of all reality, at the very heart of all things; but not so Jesus himself could be there for his own sake, but to puncture a hole in the barrier of sin and darkness that separates us from the full and true presence and knowledge of God. So every one of us, and every person in the world as well, could have the chance to follow where he led, the chance for our humanity to be transformed into Glory, and leave behind fear and hatred and bitterness and envy, and all the evils that drag us down inside.

For Jesus the Resurrection and the Ascension happened close together, forty days apart, so the understanding of what was happening could be transmitted to the Apostles in human terms and from them through many generations to us. But for us it may actually happen as a much longer process, with more stages, but still truly all as part of the one same glorious "upward call of God in Christ".

What do I mean by that?

Well, for us resurrection begins not after our first bodily death, but, through Christ's grace, before it, as we first come to know and love and place our trust in Jesus; whether that happens as a child or an adult, all in one blinding flash of grace, or with a light that slowly grows from a tiny glimmer until it outshines the sun. That growing of God's love within us allows us to overcome fear and pain and guilt and grief, not all at once, but as time goes by and we discover and move deeper into love, not just our Love of God, but more importantly God's love for himself, and God's love for us, and God's love for the world.

That is how 'Man becomes God', as 'God became man', by joining in the stream of his love: never ending, never fading, never running out, through the Grace that is open to us thanks to Christ's descent to earth, and ascension again into Heaven. And you're never too young, and you're never too old, and there's a new chance each and every day to go deeper, and there's no bottom to that Well, it's as infinite as God himself, there is always just the chance for more and more riches of love and peace and joy and confidence.

And maybe you don't feel like any of those things right now. Maybe you feel angry, and hurt and sad, but that's alright. While we're still in this material world our resurrection and ascension can only be partial, there will still be ups and downs and griefs and pains, sometimes terrible. But still each and every new day there is the opportunity to be washed clean and hand our pain and grief and bitterness to God, and he will take them far away, so without that terrible weight we can dive even deeper into His love, that can bring us more and more peace. For we too, like Christ, must pass through mortal death before we can come to that complete and total ascension into God's glory and presence, and then we will be truly ascended, in harmony and at peace. But in this world it continues as well, and it isn't easy, but still it is powerful.    

How Powerful? Well, I remember Kevin, our vicar, saying once: 'I sometimes think, how must the disciples have felt coming down that hill after the Ascension and turning to each other and saying, 'Right, so what do we do now?'" And what a shower of reprobates they were! How many times did Jesus have to correct them and rebuke them, and still after three years they ran away on Good Friday, and still they didn't understand after the resurrection, but eventually when the Spirit came they did.

And after that history knows what they did. In their lifetime they took the Good News that God had come in our humanity, and he'd been killed, and he'd risen again and taken our humanity ascended into heaven, so the power of the Spirit came, so Men may be free of fear and guilt and hatred; and they took it from Rome in the West to India in the east, full of joy and hope, and founded a worldwide community that means we're here today, and they changed the whole world forever like nothing else. And if they can do it we can do it too! Through the power of the same Holy Spirit and with the presence of the same Ascended Lord Jesus Christ among us all.

Amen.         

The Dream of the Rood

The latest in my occasional series of Great Poems I love, and in honour of Easter, albeit a bit late, this is The Dream of the Rood. It's a beautiful, epic poem, well over a thousand years old, originally written in Old English by an Anglo-Saxon monk sometime between the 8th-10th Centuries. It is in the characteristic style of Old English epic poems, with the extensive use of alliteration on lines with two stressed halves, rather than the rhyme used in modern English to achieve the poetic flow.

Rood was the Old and Middle English word meaning a wooden stake or cross, but The Rood was always the One True Cross on which Christ was crucified. In this poem the Cross itself appears in a dream and tells of Christ's death and resurrection.

The poem is a fascinating mix of both Christian (originally Hebrew and Greek) values and aesthetic with its spiritual but fundamentally optimistic focus, and the Germanic and Scandinavian heroic, epic (originally pagan) tradition that was essentially pessimistic about the world and its future. Christ is a strong, powerful young Lord, who leaps eagerly onto the Cross to do battle with Death and the Devil through the crucifixion. The disciples are his thanes, the men who had sworn themselves to their lord and would accompany him into battle. The Cross itself is a loyal retainer, fearful of what it must do in the Battle, but knowing it must hold its courage and do the duty its Lord has embraced.

People sometimes say Chaucer (14th Century) is 'the Father of English Literature', but this is complete rubbish. A proud, creative English literary tradition of epic poetry, both religious and secular, history, songs, spirituality, law, etc, goes right back into the darkest, Anglo-Saxon times of the so-called 'Dark Ages'. The past only seems so 'dark' because we have lost or forgotten about the traditions, festivals, songs, stories, poetry, and factual and fictional prose that were widespread at the time.

Travel back with me a thousand years and more, to hear the story, through Old English hearts, of those events another thousand years and more ago. . .

"Listen! I will speak of the sweetest dream,
which came to me in the middle of the night,
when speech-bearers slept in their rest.
It seemed that I saw a most wondrous tree
raised on high, circled round with light,
the brightest of beams. All that beacon
was covered in gold; gems stood
fair at the earth’s corners, and five there were
up on the cross-beam. All creation, eternally fair,
beheld the Lord’s messenger there; that was no shameful lynching tree,
but holy spirits beheld him there,
men over the earth and all this glorious creation.
Wondrous was the victory-tree, and I was fouled by sins,
wounded with guilt; I saw the tree of glory
honored in garments, shining with joys,
bedecked with gold; gems had
covered worthily the Creator’s tree.
And yet beneath that gold I began to see
an old wretched struggle, when it first began
to bleed on the right side. I was all beset with sorrows,
fearful for that fair vision; I saw that eager beacon
change garments and colors – now it was drenched,
stained with blood, now bedecked with treasure.
 And yet, lying there a long while,
I beheld in sorrow the Savior’s tree,
until I heard it utter a sound;
that best of woods began to speak words:
“It was so long ago – I remember it still —
that I was felled from the forest’s edge,
ripped up from my roots.
Strong enemies seized me there,
made me their spectacle, made me bear their criminals;
they bore me on their shoulders and then set me on a hill,
 enemies enough fixed me fast. Then I saw the Lord of mankind
hasten eagerly, when he wanted to ascend onto me.
There I dared not bow down or break,
against the Lord’s word, when I saw
the ends of the earth tremble. Easily I might
have felled all those enemies, and yet I stood fast.
Then the young hero made ready — that was God almighty —
strong and resolute; he ascended on the high gallows,
brave in the sight of many, when he wanted to ransom mankind.
I trembled when he embraced me, but I dared not bow to the ground,
or fall to the earth’s corners – I had to stand fast.
I was reared as a cross: I raised up the mighty King,
the Lord of heaven; I dared not lie down.
They drove dark nails through me; the scars are still visible,
open wounds of hate; I dared not harm any of them.
They mocked us both together; I was all drenched with blood
flowing from that man’s side after he had sent forth his spirit.
 Much have I endured on that hill of hostile fates:
I saw the God of hosts cruelly stretched out. Darkness had covered
with its clouds the Ruler’s corpse,
that shining radiance. Shadows spread
grey under the clouds; all creation wept,
mourned the King’s fall: Christ on the cross.
And yet from afar eager ones came
to that noble one; I watched it all.
I was all beset with sorrow, yet I sank into their hands,
humbly, eagerly. There they took almighty God,
 lifted him from his heavy torment; the warriors then left me
standing drenched in blood, all shot through with arrows.
They laid him down, bone-weary, and stood by his body’s head;
they watched the Lord of heaven there, who rested a while,
weary from his mighty battle. They began to build a tomb for him
in the sight of his slayer; they carved it from bright stone,
and set within the Lord of victories. They began to sing a dirge for him,
wretched at evening, when they wished to travel hence,
weary, from the glorious Lord – he rested there with little company.
And as we stood there, weeping, a long while
fixed in our station, the song ascended
from those warriors. The corpse grew cold,
the fair life-house. Then they began to fell us
all to the earth – a terrible fate!
They threw us in a deep pit, yet the Lord’s thanes,
friends sought me out … adorned me with gold and silver.
Now you might hear, my dear hero,
that I have endured the work of evil-doers,
harsh sorrows. Now the time has come
that far and wide they will honor me,
men over the earth and all this glorious creation,
and pray to this sign. On me the Son of God
suffered for a time; and so, glorious now
I rise up under the heavens, and am able to heal
each of those who is in awe of me.
Once I was made into the worst of torments, most hateful to all people,
before I opened the true way of life for speech-bearers.
Listen! the King of glory, Guardian of heaven’s kingdom
honoured me over all the trees of the forest,
just as he has also, almighty God,
honoured his mother, Mary herself,
above all womankind for the sake of all men.
 Now I bid you, my beloved hero,
that you reveal this vision to men,
tell them in words that it is the tree of glory
on which almighty God suffered for mankind’s many sins
and Adam’s ancient deeds.
Death He tasted there, yet the Lord rose again
with his great might to help mankind.
He ascended into heaven. He will come again
to this middle-earth to seek mankind.
on doomsday, almighty God,
the Lord himself and his angels with him,
and he will judge — he has the power of judgment —
each one of them as they have earned
beforehand here in this loaned life.
No one there may be unafraid
at the words which the Ruler will speak:
he will ask before the multitude where the man might be
who for the Lord’s name would taste bitter death,
as he has done on that tree.
But they will tremble, and little think
what they might even begin to say to Christ.
But no one there need be very afraid
who has borne in his breast the best of beacons;
but through the cross we shall seek the kingdom,
every soul from this earthly way,
whoever thinks to rest with the Ruler.”
 Then I prayed to the tree with a happy heart,
eagerly, there where I was alone with little company.
My spirit longed for the journey forth; it has felt
so much of longing. It is now my life’s hope
that I might seek the tree of victory
alone, more often than all men,
and honor it well. I wish for that
with all my heart, and my hope of protection
is fixed on the cross. I have few wealthy friends on earth;
but they all have gone forth,
fled from worldly joys and sought the King of glory; t
hey live now in heaven with the High Father,
and dwell in glory, and each day I look forward
to the time when the cross of the Lord,
on which I have looked while here on this earth,
will fetch me from this loaned life,
and bring me where there is great bliss,
joy in heaven, where the Lord’s host
is seated at the feast, with ceaseless bliss;
 and then set me where I might afterwards
dwell in glory, share joy
fully with the saints. May the Lord be my friend,
He who here on earth has suffered
on the hanging-tree for human sin;
He ransomed us and gave us life,
a heavenly home. Hope was renewed
with cheer and bliss for those who were burning there.
The Son was successful in that journey,
mighty and victorious, when he came with a multitude,
a great host of souls, into God’s kingdom,
the one Ruler almighty, the angels rejoicing
and all the saints already in heaven
dwelling in glory, when almighty God,
their Ruler, returned to his rightful home."


Author: Unknown
Source: the Exeter Book,
Translation: R. M. Liuzza.
Thanks to @ClerkOfOxford for making me aware of this epic poem.
Image borrowed with thanks from: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth212/liturgical_objects/dream_of_the_rood.html

A Good Friday Reflection - 2017

After a long wait we finally enter Easter through Good Friday.  This is the most emotionally powerful day in the whole of the Christian calendar, the culmination of Jesus’ life and ministry, and the whole story of the Bible: the day they murdered my Lord, and everything changed.

I have often been struck by the simple beauty of the traditional English name for this day - Good Friday. How can it be good, they day they crucified my Lord? But it is right because it is a perfect example of how words can fail us, how the most profound and important of days cannot be properly described, do not need to be described. No more words could do better, so leave them aside. All the better to truly experience.

It was Good, Christ knew, when he prayed that the cup would pass, but he went forward anyway, knowing what must be done. That he would unite God with creation in its suffering, as he had in its birth, and its life. As creation suffers, he would suffer, because God bears creation within him, but through God's power transform and redeem it as well. Salvation comes through the Resurrection, through the bursting forth of God's power to overcome the old enemies: Sin, Death and the Devil, so that holy power could flow through our veins forevermore.

But without Good Friday there could be no Easter Sunday. So it is a good friday, but never have joy and sorrow been so mixed. For he was my friend, and my brother, even though he is my King. And they beat him and humiliated him, they tortured him and murdered him, and all alone, abandoned and forsaken by those whom he has loved, cherished and taught. Another unseen victim of casual brutality and oppression.

And his pain was not his pain alone, but the pain of the whole world forever, that God bears within him. So today is a good day to weep and to mourn. For the whole year round in suffering we must cling to hope, and the faith that evil never has the last word. But today we can give ourselves to grief for the whole world and its hurts and let it all out, for Syria, for Chechnya, for all the evil men and women do, and the suffering they cause to us and we cause to them.

But not forever, for now it's Friday, and time to weep, but Sunday is coming. . .

The Journey Of The Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

By T.S.Eliot



I was introduced to this poem about a year ago by a friend up a ski-lift in France (of all the places). It struck me at once.  Maybe it's easier to feel the force when you're freezing amidst unending snow in the dead of winter. Maybe the grumbling but heartfelt tone makes it chime more with my own sense. Even if you're an optimist sitting by a warm beach, the clarity and strength of the images is enough to put anyone right there hearing the old Wise Man, feeling the chill in your bones, and also, in the end, the unconquerable unease that follows the Nativity.

After the birth of Christ the whole world was changed forever, as History records, although it would take many years for the world to know it. In a staggeringly individual sense for both me and T.S.Eliot the world changed forever in our own age. My life will be (and his was) forever haunted by the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ. Like the Magus, after a long and hard journey, I can never be complacently at ease again in a world of everyday pleasure that does not have Him at its centre. However strange the world may find that.

I'm Proud of my Church in 2014

We've seen food banks become increasingly high profile. It is little known, but the Trussell Trust, by far the largest organiser of UK food banks, is a Christian Charity. Churches across the country have been key to helping organise many food banks for years, in Coventry since at least 2007.

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, made a high-profile attack on Wonga (exploitative payday lender) threatening to "compete them out of business" and raising the issue repeatedly in parliament. Churches up and down the country have begun promoting credit unions as an ethical alternative. Since then Wonga has been forced to write off £220 million of debt and overhaul its business model, halving its profits in a year. 

This December the Church of England, along with others founded their own nationwide credit union, which in a few years will hopefully be open to all churchgoers, providing an ethical, compassionate alternative to current banks and lenders for churches, charities and millions of people.

In Coventry itself Anglican churches have organised their own homeless night shelter over winter for the 2nd year. It is housed in different church buildings and staffed by volunteers, to make sure that there is definitely a warm, safe bed available for every potential rough sleeper in Coventry this winter.

It's really good to see the Church making a difference on important issues. Here's to even more in 2015. ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Matthew 25:35-36

What are Church Services For?

First I want to draw attention to how artificial our church services are in a way.

We gather together for an hour a week, generally, in order to worship God, carry out our liturgies, and celebrate the eucharist. And then we go out back to our lives.

But we all recognise that God's call, and particularly Christ's call in the Gospels, is a call about our whole lives. We are meant to be first transformed by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, and then also grow in  holiness throughout our lives, not just on a Sunday.

In fact God makes it very clear that the details of our worship are irrelevant, almost worse than useless if we don't have love and faith and sincerity in our hearts generally.  

 And sometimes what we do in church every week can seem detached from how we live our lives, especially when we spend so much of our time surrounded by people who aren't Christian and don't necessarily know or understand anything about our faith.

Now, to be honest, this s already quite a common topic for Christians.  I'm sure we've all sat through at least one sermon about not just being Sunday Christians, or Christians for one hour each week.  But I'm just going to share some thoughts about it that I've found useful.

 Today in many churches, whether Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, URC the basic service can be divided into two main sections: The Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Sacrament.  

Basically the first is based around offering prayers, reading the Bible, and discussing it in a Sermon, which is taken from the traditional Jewish Synagogue service (which was based around the Torah).

The Second is based around Eucharist, re-creating the last Supper as Jesus commanded "Do this as often as you eat and drink it in remembrance of me".

In more Protestant churches there has generally been an emphasis on the first part, preaching the Word, in more Catholic and Orthodox churches over the centuries there has been a growing emphasis on the 2nd part:  The Eucharist.

What is clear is that this basic form comes from the earliest days of the Church.  The quote below is from Justin Martyr, one of the earliest of the Church fathers, writing only 70 years or so after the writing of last of the New Testament books, and giving a description that must be familiar to any Christian today.

The two main differences is that this describes a relatively simple structure compared to some liturgies today, and that it obviously dates from a time when there was no set liturgy or text for the service. This came later, when instead of relying on the president to make up the prayers set texts were given both to give the ‘best’ prayers, to ensure that correct doctrine (Ortho-doxy in Greek) was taught and just to save the presiding person from always having to come up with something.

Fundamentally, though, this is the same structure we all use today and reflects the essential features of Christian worship and community. 

Historically what happened to the liturgy/service was a steady trend of making the central communion service more and more elaborate and mystical, with embellishments and more prayers and sections, until the time of the Reformation, when in reformation churches steps were taken to simplify it.

In some churches such as among the Quakers this led to totally abandoning formal, structured worship or liturgy, and in evangelical churches it led to a dramatically reduced form of liturgy.

In the Catholic church it led to one stable form of the Mass being adopted that endured for 500 years from the 1580's before it was simplifed slightly (and translated out of Latin) following the 2nd Vatican Council In 1960's.

What is astonishing to me though is how similar the liturgies and services still are, not just in general structure but right down to individual bits of vocabulary.  Below are selections from the current Anglican common worship, and a translation of the Latin Mass set in 1580, itself derived directly from forms of the Medieval Catholic Mass. 

 Services in Western Christianity (Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran etc) contain a very similar basic structure dating back to the medieval Catholic service containing many or all of the elements I list below, and at least many of these should be familiar to any Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran and many other western Christians. 

Eastern Orthodox churches are slightly different and date back even earlier, but contain most of these same features in a slightly less instantly recognisable form.

 Some more protestant services have a considerably more simple structure, especially if they don't necessarily involve communion.

A common evangelical approach is known affectionately as the Sandwich:  'Worship'-Prayers/testimony-Sermon done.

 Some evangelicals at least claim that they don't like liturgy, they say it's boring and fake and meaningless, but what they generally mean is they prefer a minimalistic liturgy. But the evangelical churches I've been to are definitely using a liturgy of a type even if they don't know it. Whether it's a better or worse liturgy is a very good question. And it can be just as boring and repetitive as any full Catholic-orthodox traditional liturgy.

But the evangelicals do have a good point, I don't think there is any point to church services or liturgy if we are just mumbling through the words every week, or just sitting there feeling bored, however complex or simple our liturgy may be. There is very little to be gained whatever form we use if it is not helping us grow in holiness throughout the week and the year and over our whole lives.

(Slight disclaimer: ‘catholic’ Christians such as myself who believe in the Real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist believe there is a real spiritual, blessed benefit to taking that Eucharist more or less regardless of what else we get from the service. I think what I say here is still strongly relevant in addition to that value though).

Some bits of the liturgy just don't seem to make much sense as we commonly perform them. My favourite example is the confession, which sounds a bit like this:  

 Now certainly in churches I have visited this is read out by the priest and then there is a two second delay before he pronounces God’s forgiveness for our sins. Now I don’t know about you but I need more time than that to confess my sins for the week.  In fact I’ve usually only got to about Monday lunchtime. 

And that’s not the only thing.  If we really, truly confessed our sins, in full realisation of what that meant, of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, the Love of God, and the darkness of sin then we would only ever need to confess them once and never again.  And again, I don’t know about you but I find myself coming back week after week and confessing more or less the same sins.

So what is the point of this?  Is it just bad, lazy religion?   

I think the answer is no. I do really value the liturgy and structure to our services, I really think that there is a lot that is really beautiful and valuable in these bits of liturgy that have come down to us and have been treasured by centuries of Christians.

So I want to try to think of how we can think about our liturgies and services to make them useful to our whole lives:

And my idea is basically this: Our services and liturgies offer us a model in concentrated form of what we should be trying to think about and follow for the rest of our week.  They don't do the job on their own, though they are particularly valuable as you are doing them.  But their main value is in acting as a model of spiritual discipline and the things we should be thinking about all the way through the week. In order to help us reflect on those ideas and grow in holiness.

On The Person of Jesus

I recently attended a talk by someone from the Student Christian Movement on 'The Person of Jesus'. It was good and one thing he said in particular struck me. Christians are divided into many, many different groups that disagree on almost every imaginable question of doctrine and practice large and small.  But the one thing they all have in common is the person of Jesus. That sounds like it should be really obvious but it made me think about the type of man Jesus must have been, to have made such an impact on people. In particular in contrast to the apparent provincial nature of his life and death. This quote by James Allan Francis, I think, says it better than I could.

"Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.
He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...
While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.
I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life."

For me another the thing that makes Jesus even more remarkable is just how little we do know about him but he stills has this impact.  We have 4 short, extremely partial, fragmentary accounts of a short period of his life spanning at most 3 years. He spoke largely in riddles and metaphors that can be difficult to access today and the exact meaning of which people disagree massively. He left no writings and died an apparent failure.

Look at other great spiritual leaders.  Muhammed died a successful military leader, ruler and lawgiver of a powerful and united state that had already conquered all Arabia and would sweep across most of the civilised world in a single lifetime. Buddha died leaving a thriving and spreading community of monks and disciples several thousand strong and was mourned across much of Northern India. Both died peacefully surrounded by their adoring followers.  Jesus died alone, leaving no money, no written works, no organised community or military force, an apparent failure, and for centuries after his death his followers were a scattered and persecuted minority in states that hated them.

What a man he must have been. How incredible must have been his character and his sheer force of personality, that he could tell people to leave all their possessions and follow him to life and death and they did.  How incredible must he have been that his memory and example was enough to drive his followers through three hundred years of persecution. And that even today, even through the cloudy mirror of those partial, 2nd hand accounts we have of him, he is a real force that speaks to people and changes their lives and is as real and present as any person they know.

And today there are more Christians than any other religion in the world, his words exist in more languages and have been distributed more widely than any other words ever spoken and continue to influence people from almost unimaginably different backgrounds, nations, geographies and lifestyles today. Despite the partial, fragmentary nature of the Gospels the personality and person revealed in those pages shouts loudly enough to capture the hearts of people in every corner of the world in the deepest, most personal manner possible.  And is revered almost universally, even among countless people who don't count themselves as Christians. To 2 billion Christians he is God Incarnate, to a Billion Muslims a revered prophet of God, to many millions of Hindus and Buddhists a respected teacher or incarnation of God, and even for many non-religious people around the world an important spiritual and moral example and innovator.

For me personally the man I met in those Gospel pages has filled my entire life, despite the distance, the huge distance of space and time that physically separates us. It has shouted with a voice that always, even in my darkest and most faithless moments, I have never been able to get out of my head and heart. He has been my teacher, my example, my constant challenge to do and be better, my friend, my ever-present support, my master, My King and my God.

In classic Christian theology there is no book or law or thing or vision that is the Revelation of God. There is a person, Jesus Christ, who is the Truth, the Word, The Revelation, the Way, the Love, the Life, the Salvation, the Being of God, and everything that matters is defined in reference to him. And we could do vastly worse than for us all to have nothing in common but him.

Christmas & Family

Merry Christmas! (I know this is a bit late.  But my excuse is it is still within the 12 days of Christmas. Just.  And hence still technically Christmas. Oh, and happy Epiphany as well.)

Christmas is the great stereotypical time to spend time with your family. I am lucky that my family have always got on well together without much stress. I've always enjoyed Christmas get togethers, as much now I'm an adult as when I was little. For some people Christmas and other family occasions are not relaxing, to say the least, and that is very sad.  It is a rupturing of what family means at a time dedicated to a uniquely unique family.

Thanks to the good works of a friend whenever I think about what family means I will always think of a line from a certain Disney Film. "Ohana" in Hawaiian, "means family, and family means no-one gets left behind". Family means a commitment to one another -to care, to sacrifice, to have patience and compassion- to not give up on one another because there is a responsibility that cannot be put aside. The difference between Family and other relationships is that Family is a bond you're not allowed to give up on. Family may annoy you, they may irritate you, there certainly may be times you don't like them, but if they're family you're stuck with them. And so you do whatever you can to get along, to mend relationships and get to a situation where you can enjoy your time together because you are stuck together. This is a type of Love. Love always means commitment, of a type. A commitment you can't walk away from.  It  also means a whole lot more. It's true that you don't always even like the ones you love, sometimes you can even hate them too.

Family is a commitment. A commitment that we don't necessarily choose.  That usually means blood. The most common basis for that commitment and relation is a blood relation. The saying is "you choose your friends but your family you're stuck with". The nuclear and extended family are the historical basis of human society, the glue that holds society together, that cares for children, cares for people in their old age, and makes sure that almost everyone has someone who is obliged to care about what happens to them. It is the environment in which we are formed, and the original and most essential human social bond and organisation. It is not surprising our wider social, moral and religious ideas are widely constructed by expanding analogy to it.  Blood family bears the advantage that we share experiences and genetics, meaning we have a good chance of being quite like each other and having some sympathy for one another. Sadly it doesn't always work, but it is at least a start.

Family isn't just blood. The rituals by which we add to blood family have always been the most serious in human society. Marriage has always been considered so important because it means two people committing to becoming family to one another, and the traditional language surrounding marriage borrows overwhelmingly from our understanding of what family means. Adoption is another traditional means of grafting onto family, and the issues about the blood family, adopted family and identity of the person are so deep because family bond is crucial to our identity.

In the modern day nuclear families have become more complicated. In addition to the traditional archetype of husband, wife, children some families have single parents, unmarried parents, divorced parents, sometimes with new partners and step-children. A lady I know spends Christmas with her mother, step-dad, step-dad's ex-wife and step-dad's ex-wife's new partner and various respective children. Now these families may be as happy or unhappy as traditional family arrangements, but certainly they introduce complications that must be overcome because of their differences from the standard archetype introduces difficulty in defining who family is, and who bears the responsibility that brings.

Family does not just mean blood family, not even with all its various grafting and extensions through rituals like marriage and adoption.  There is also the family of choice. The families we make. The people we informally adopt as family throughout our lives. Often, and especially in the hectic modern world, we may find ourselves away from our blood family and unable to draw directly on the network of love, support and familiarity they offer. We may not even have a family that offers that. But people have the most wonderful capacity to build entirely new families for ourselves by adopting people as family and extending that bond of support and commitment. Unlike blood family these families carry no legal sanction or recognition, and are often not even explicitly stated, though those involved generally understand.  They are voluntary, but all the more wonderful for that, being a responsibility we choose and build for ourselves, rather than one merely given at birth. They may come about through an individual act of generosity, through some shared extreme experience, shared ideological or social association or just the enduring commitment of deep friendship. In their best moments they may be as permanent as blood family.  But even when they are more temporary they are defined by a depth of commitment and responsibility, which goes beyond whether you find a person useful in this or that particular moment. They provide support, rest,  belonging, understanding, and home. They give us people who will always care, always listen, always try to help, always be available (if at all possible), always say yes (unless there is a damn good reason to say otherwise).  And they are crucial to surviving in a difficult and complicated world cut off from the families we grow up in, and without them we will struggle, sometimes not even knowing the reason why.

These families we choose for ourselves often mirror blood family in many ways.  Someone is like a brother or sister, or even Mum or Dad to us. These families are still often based around people living together, through the way this throws people so closely together. These families of adoption are often more alike our blood family than we are prepared to admit. They are not entirely random or free. We are thrown together with certain people, with whom we may choose to build that bond or not. But generally who we come across is dictated by circumstances we do not control. On the other hand, really, all family is the family we choose.  Blood provides a strong motivation, and a social expectation, that we will treat certain people as family, but really nothing can force us to hold and to honour that commitment of compassion and respect, of Love and devotion, that defines people as family.  In the end that is a choice and a decision we make and hold to, whether consciously or not.  Our society is sadly littered with examples where people have not honoured that commitment, even to those who do share close relation, and the damage and hurt this causes can extend over entire lives.

Family being a choice we make brings me back to Christmas, where we traditionally gather as families, and hopefully remember that most special family of the Nativity. Because the Nativity very much was a Family of choice, of adoption, with more in common, in many ways, with the messy, modern arrangements of so many families today, than the neatness of the traditional archetype.  There was no blood between Mary and Joseph, only a previous commitment he did not have to honour, given the circumstances, and a duty of kindness and compassion. There was no blood between Joseph and the baby he adopted as family and raised as his own, only a choice that was thrust upon him to make that commitment for the rest of his life. There was blood between Jesus and Mary, but not the assurance the baby was shared and accepted by a human father, only the choice to accept a responsibility, and bear the distance of knowing the baby she bore was not just her son, but had a destiny and responsibility that would take him beyond her and from her as well. This was a family that was barely formed before it was forced into the life of political and religious refugees, forced to flee to a alien country, having given birth in difficult conditions far from family and home.

Nativity means a family that only existed thanks to the choice Mary and Joseph made in the strangest of circumstances, as they said Yes to the chance God had sent them, and the Love and commitment they put into making that family a reality from then on. The amazing things about the Nativity are not just the miracle of God become Man, but also that in placing himself physically in the hands of a young peasant girl and her uncertain fiance in a dirty, poor stable, God took on our aching vulnerability. Putting himself utterly in the hands of human weakness and fragility and relying on the choices they made. The fact the family of the Nativity was this uncertain, this mixed family of choice and adoption just increases the vulnerability and contingency around the coming of God into the world in flesh.  God took on not only the weakness of human flesh, and the danger of sinister human political machinations, but also the fragility of human emotions and the decision taken to build a family outside usual expectations. That God would show that trust in human nature and rely so utterly on the choices individual humans made, that is a miraculous affirmation of the human emotion & spirit, in the same way that God growing in human flesh is miraculous affirmation of the physical world we dwell in.

The most emotional illustration of this vulnerability of the Nativity in that distant stable that I have ever experienced came in an email I received on November 25th a few years ago. At the time I was a volunteer at a Night-shelter for homeless refugees in north Coventry. Refugees and asylum seekers generally can't access homeless shelters because these are funded by government welfare and refugees and asylum seekers can't access welfare. Usually without family or connections in the places they end up in, struggling with physical or emotional trauma, and without the legal right to seek work or access welfare, they often end up homeless. A lady called Penny ran a shelter in a previously abandoned North Coventry terrace house, providing a safe, dry, warm place to sleep and a free dinner and breakfast each day for homeless refugees and asylum seekers. The place ran on a shoestring and donations of food, and the support of volunteers from the local community and the University, where I got involved.  Volunteers were responsible for looking after the place over the evening, sleeping there overnight, making sure nothing went wrong, getting people up, serving breakfast and getting people out at the right time. It was pretty unpleasant throwing people out at 8 am, when it was cold and raining and you knew they had nowhere to go all day but wander round outside, but it was sadly necessary to keep the place running. The refugees were from Eritrea, Congo, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo and various countries across Africa.  They were mostly Male with the occasional woman, a woman usually from somewhere in Africa, and usually the most quiet, usually the most scarred by what they had experienced. In the many dirty conflicts across the world women are generally most vulnerable. Penny sent out a few emails every month to ask for volunteers and arrange a rota. One year in November in the email to prepare the next rota Penny left a note.

"Hi everyone,
   
I hope you are all have a happy festive season, Christmas, new year, winter solstice. Here is the rota for January. Please can you arrange a swap if there is a problem with the date. PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS ROTA, it saves me making lots of phone calls. If you know anyone else who would like to volunteer, I am doing some training for new people on Wednesday 17th Jan at 6.30pm. Please ask them to let me know they are coming.
   
And to finish on a Christmas note, we currently have a woman who has just arrived from Nigeria staying the week-end before she goes to
claim asylum in Croydon on Monday. Her name is Mary and she is 8 months pregnant. That's true.
  
best wishes to you all,
Penny"

What world was that baby born into? And what opportunity did the world offer that baby and its mother: Single, far from home, refugee, homeless, destitute? How similar to that world Jesus was born into in a stable far from home. But there is one crucial way that it it is a different world, and that is the fact that Jesus was born into our world two thousand years ago. Because that Nativity wasn't just the birth of one family of adoption of a teenage peasant girl, her fiance and the unique baby that God had given to them. Nativity also means that we all, all humanity, become family to God by adoption in its deepest sense. Through his birth and then life, death and resurrection that came from it he covered us over with his Holiness, washed away our Sins and folded us in with his Holy Spirit.  We became children by adoption, with God as our Father, and a relationship of the enduring Love and consistent commitment that defines family. We become family to one another, us to God & God to us, and brothers and sisters in Christ with the duty and responsibility to one another that comes with that.

The story of the world has been the gradual moral expansion of Love from family to clan, tribe, nation eventually to theoretically encompass all mankind, and even our duty to other species and the environment. Moral commands like 'Do not murder' have been present across all forms of human society. But they have always historically been limited within certain communities, while those outside, whether of a different nation or race or religion, could be killed without moral sanction. Most originally hunter-gatherer communities would have lived in separated extended families, each with their own hunting and gathering lands. Slowly those standards were applied more widely, as human society expanded from family to clan to tribe to people (the words for tribe and clan themselves are literally derived from words for family) and even more expanded human societies: nations, countries, Empires have historically been scattered with symbolic references to family.

The expansion of moral prescriptions (like do not kill), the commitment of Love, and the idea of family, from blood family to clan, tribe, nation and then the whole world, have gone hand in hand.  The development of the great Universal Empires of the ancient world, Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese, Indian brought the first idea of the whole world as one universal community. But although these communities expanded the idea of  'Do not Murder' they were only shadows of the true fulfilment of what family should mean. They had negative moral boundaries on behaviour, like forbidding killing or stealing, but without an idea of filling in the positive commitment of family.

But it was the Good News of Jesus Christ that for the first time transformed the idea of a global community based on law and order into that of a Family based on love and commitment. The Gospel tells us to love our neighbour, and tells us our neighbour must be whoever is in need; it tells us to love our enemies, as well as those who do us good.  It tells us to give, to lend, go the extra mile and turn the other cheek, without boundary or restriction and practice radical forgiveness, forgiving the seventy times seven times that any family will tell you is necessary when imperfect people are glued inseparably together and know they have to make things work. We are called to love one another as God has loved us, as a father to a child, and to love one another as Brother and sister and spread that message and community to the whole world, with the simple practical acts of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving thirsty people a drink; that go with that radical message, as they must do for any family to be real. We are called to build a worldwide community, Church, that should be a well of support in the same manner as those families we choose. This is nothing less than the expansion of our notion of Family, in its true meaning of a choice of Love and continuous commitment, to the whole world, to all of creation, to reflect the Love God has for us all and the duty we all have for each other. It is building a complete world where nobody gets left behind, and all are looked out for and cared for, because we each take it as our positive commitment to do so. So that child born in north Coventry in Winter to a refugee mother would also have a family.

And this is not just an ideal; it is a promise through God's Spirit and power.  Sometimes it may seem distant and unimaginable, but through the power of God's spirit, the birth of God as man as Jesus Christ, the family of adoption of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the Good News of radical Love that Jesus lived and taught it becomes not just a possibility but an eventual certainty.  God's Holy Spirit gives us the power to extend Love to all humanity, despite our deep personal fallibility; the instruction of what that means in our individual lives and choices; and a vision of what that could achieve if we  make the choice and commitment to join that family the same way Mary and Joseph did in Nazareth a long time ago.  

And that is what, for me, family means and Christmas means.  Through gathering together and sharing gifts and hospitality, the tokens of the love, commitment and patience, the fundamental meaning of family; we celebrate the bonds that give meaning to our lives, through the choices we make whether due to blood or experiences we have shared. We remember the unique family of the Nativity, forged in the choice of Mary and Joseph, and the wonderful birth of the Christ-child; and we remember how that birth  means we are all adopted as family of God, children of God and brother and sister to Christ and one another, if we choose to make that commitment. And through God's power we have the chance and duty to make that bond real for all mankind, building a complete family of all mankind where no-one is forgotten or left behind.

Something worth remembering.

The Giant Blind Spot of Human Rights NGOs - By Ziya Meral

The Persecution of people on the basis of their religion is one of the largest, most serious and most widespread forms of Human Rights Abuse in the World.  But it receives far too little attention from Human Rights campaigners because these campaigners and organisations are overwhelmingly European or North American and hence are overwhelmingly secular. They are either ignorant of religion or just don't particularly care, compared to almost any other cause. This blinds them to the suffering faced by hundreds of millions of people.

Ziya Meral says it much better than I could . . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ziya-meral/the-giant-blind-spot-of-h_b_991304.html

The one thing that he doesn't say explicitly (though he does hint at it through his examples)  is that it is overwhelmingly Christians being persecuted, hundreds of millions of them. This is something we should all be aware of, and something that gets even less exposure than religious persecution generally.  This is because most Christian or Christian-heritage countries have strong religious freedom, while most Non-Christian countries, whether Atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or other, don't.  And even in the 'Christian' countries where persecution does occur, it is generally authoritarian governments persecuting Christians and churches who they view as a threat to their control.

(By saying this I don't mean to detract from his main point that we ALL are biased towards carrying more about human rights violations against people like us, and ignoring ones against people unlike us, rather than on the objective basis of how bad things are. And this is something we should all be consciously aware of.  Christians are just as bad at this as anyone else.  But it is right to note the largest actual real-world example, the collective blindness among almost organised human rights advocates towards persecution on basis of religion, and the fact that by far the largest real-world example of this is the frequently horrifyingly violent persecution of Christians around the world. )

Dear Father, we pray . . .

.   
  
For those who live in fear,
That they may find courage,


For those who live in Darkness,
That they may find Light,


For those who live in Anger,
That they may find Peace,


For those who live in hatred,
That they may forgive.




In Jesus's name we ask this, 


Amen.










An old prayer of mine, from about ‘04.

Love Is . . .

.
Love is patient; Love is kind;  Love does not Envy; Love does not boast; Love is not arrogant; Love is not rude. Love does not insist on having its own way; Love does not get irritable; Love does not resent; Love does not rejoice in evil; Rather Love rejoices in Truth. Love bears all things; Love believes all things; Love hopes all things; And Love endures all things.  Love never ends.

Love is the meaning and purpose of a human life.  Everything else is a tool, a method, a stalling tactic.  We eat so that we may have strength, we breath so life goes on, we study so we know more so we can achieve more, but all these are merely means to the end of having the chance, the opportunity, the possibility to Love; whether we love our life itself, the Universe we inhabit, the joys and wonders we experience, or discover, or learn to understand, the other unique human beings we meet or the God Almighty who gave us all this.  And gave us all this to Love.

But what is Love?  St Paul gives us a description that takes the breath away, that stills the voice, that rests perfect.  But it is a list of features, rather than an essential definition. Love comes in many different forms, we can love another human being , as a friend, as a lover, as family; or we can love a piece of beauty or music or calm or expression, or we can love a sensation, like the taste of chocolate chip ice-cream, or we can love a subject and be driven to learn more, understand more, know more of the thing we love.  Or most mysterious of all we can Love God, who we can never clearly see, or truly know, but people like me feel utterly drawn to none-the-less.

All these Loves are different, as many and diverse as there are different individual possible objects of Love.  But still they are all very much the same.  The Greeks famously had three different common words for what we simply call Love.  And it is important to recognise how Loves can be different.  But also to realise that they all have so much in common.  Though one may be a thing of little importance, whereas another can define an entire life, or shake the whole world.

All Love has so much in common, though still each is utterly unique, to the person loving and the being loved.  What it always is is the utterly deep appreciation of the value of the thing loved.  This leads to care, this leads to kindness, this leads to constant devotion, this leads to boundless optimism.

Love is not just a feeling and Love is not just a commitment. In fact if it is any one thing it is a realisation. But really it is all these things and more.  It is utterly unique and it is totally universal. It can involve your whole being; body, mind, heart, and soul. And Love binds you together as one being, just as it binds you tightly to the thing you Love.

Love is revelation, Love is the one thing that is truly transcendent; Love is true prophecy because in Love the person sees utterly through the skin of things, through the ordinary everydayness of the world, into the Truth that lies hidden just out of ordinary reach. For in Love a person sees through the stuff that makes up the world and catches of glimpse of what lies beneath it: the endless, bottomless well of value, the beauty, the wonder, the perfection hidden inside every ordinary thing whether anyone else sees it or not. And he doesn't just see it, he falls head first into it.

And the world is then filled with light. William Blake said "To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour."  A single flower can be enough reason for an entire life's devotion if someone truly sees the wonder that is contained in it. A single sight of beauty can leave you transfixed for hours.

The world can be grim and dark, the world can hurt, the world can wear you down, the world can seem bleak and grey. But just a little bit of Love shines through all that and fills the world with light that darkness in the entire world can not overcome.  Love makes the utterly ordinary extraordinary.  Love makes a bunch of noises a piece of music, love makes the fall of night a beautiful sunset. Love makes you realise in all the darkness that good will certainly win, that Heaven is real, because through Love we experience it, and that evil will never destroy all that is good. Love is solid and real in the world even when everything else slides into dust.

To Love another person is to truly live. It is to see them as they truly are, the bright Image of God. For in love you see the infinite beauty in their eyes, the infinite nobility in their soul, the infinite possibility in their life if only they chose to do it. And you see the sheer perfection even though on an intellectual level you know that they have flaws like everyone else.  For just a moment you cannot see the flaws at all. You just see the kindness, the generosity, the wisdom, the dedication, the gentleness, the patience, the elegance, the warmth, the intelligence and the laughter. You see the one you Love as we all should truly be, were we all not fallen, and you realise why Life is sacred.

To know someone loves you is the greatest thing in the world.  To see someone's love for you written over their face in a moment is that greatness and wonder captured in a single frame. To be standing unaware, and then to see them looking at you with that incredible, indescribable, unforgettable, unmissable look, which says more perfectly than anything else could ever say, I Love you. Who knew a human face could express so much. And it takes your breath away. And you would live in that moment forever if you could.

Love gives you strength. Love means you can endure more than you ever thought you could.  Love means that the cold and the dark don't touch you because Love transforms every situation. Even a boring or dull task with someone you love becomes a source of joy and laughter and an experience to cherish, because you are sharing it with them.  Love is incredible because uniquely love is not something about yourself but is utterly about the those you love, and so it connects you more deeply with the Universe we inhabit than anything else can.

Love drives you to great things.Love alone can make you sacrifice anything and everything, even if they do not love you.  Love gives true heroism, courage, nobility, wisdom and without it none of these things really exist.  Love makes you realise what truly matters and Love drives you to do something about it, because Love makes every obstacle  and danger seem like a tiny thing compared to all the wonder.

Love may not be grandly expressed; Love may not burn brightly for all to see; Love may be unspoken; Love may be a quiet thing, but it is no less wonderful for that.  Love goes on and on.  You may not feel, but you may still Love, in your commitment, in your dedication, in your kindness, in the actions that you do. And that is Love to.

Love can hurt, and if you trip and fall Love can lead you to do terrible things.  Love can bring great pain, it can be fragile, and it can break, and then it can hurt more than anything else. "Sometimes it last in love, but sometimes it hurts instead".  Love can lead to great loss that cannot be healed, even with time. It can only be slowly forgotten.

But to Love is to realise that the risk is worth it.  To realise that to feel great loss means that you had something wonderful, if only for a while.  Otherwise it would not hurt so much to see it gone. To Love is to realise that it is better to have stood on the peak of the highest mountain and seen the Sun for a few minutes than to have spent all your life in the valleys in the shadows, never knowing what could be possible. Love is a light that even its pain and darkness cannot put out.

Love is the meaning of the Gospel and the Law and the Prophets.  Love is the 1st and 2nd Commandment. Jesus talked about the pearl of great price that a man sells everything he has to hold that pearl and is happy, the treasure in a field that a man sells everything he has and owns just to buy that field. He speaks about the reckless joy and abandon of Loving something and truly knowing it matters, whatever that may be, and that is his description of the Kingdom of Heaven and God.

Christians argued for Centuries about the importance of Faith, and Works, and Gifts of the Spirit, and Knowledge. But in a few lines St Paul bats them all aside. If I speaks prophecies and do wonders and speak in tongues but do not have Love, it is nothing.  If I have all faith, but do not have Love, it is nothing.  If I do all works, but do not have Love, it is nothing. If I know all things, but do not have Love, it is nothing.

St John says it even more briefly: God is love.

God is Truth and Being and the only thing that is truly solid and real in a world of shadows.  But far more than all that God is Love. and as St John also says whoever Loves is truly of God.

And with that I don't know what else to say.   Nothing can truly describe.  Yet if anything is worth writing about it I would say that Love is.