London, 2025
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Al Green - For The Good Times.
Saturday, 31 May 2025
International Times: The Edge of Chaos
My latest poem to be published by International Times is entitled 'The Edge of Chaos'.
My earlier pieces for IT are an interview with the poet Chris Emery, an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, a profile of Bill Fay, plus reviews of: 'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, albums by Deacon Blue, Mumford and Sons, and Andrew Rumsey, also by Joy Oladokun and Michael Kiwanaku; 'Nolan's Africa' by Andrew Turley; Mavis Staples in concert at Union Chapel; T Bone Burnett's 'The Other Side' and Peter Case live in Leytonstone; Helaine Blumenfeld's 'Together' exhibition, 'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller; 'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt, the first Pissabed Prophet album - 'Zany in parts, moving in others, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more unusual, inspired & profound album this year. ‘Pissabed Prophet’ will thrill, intrigue, amuse & inspire' - and 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.
Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.
IT have also published several of my poems, beginning with 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.
To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'.
I am among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a recent anthology from Amethyst Press. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.
'Five Trios' is a series of poems on thin places and sacred spaces in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The five poems in the series are:
These poems have been published by Amethyst Review and International Times.
My earlier pieces for IT are an interview with the poet Chris Emery, an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, a profile of Bill Fay, plus reviews of: 'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, albums by Deacon Blue, Mumford and Sons, and Andrew Rumsey, also by Joy Oladokun and Michael Kiwanaku; 'Nolan's Africa' by Andrew Turley; Mavis Staples in concert at Union Chapel; T Bone Burnett's 'The Other Side' and Peter Case live in Leytonstone; Helaine Blumenfeld's 'Together' exhibition, 'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller; 'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt, the first Pissabed Prophet album - 'Zany in parts, moving in others, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more unusual, inspired & profound album this year. ‘Pissabed Prophet’ will thrill, intrigue, amuse & inspire' - and 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.
Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.
IT have also published several of my poems, beginning with 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.
To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'.
I am among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a recent anthology from Amethyst Press. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.
'Five Trios' is a series of poems on thin places and sacred spaces in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The five poems in the series are:
These poems have been published by Amethyst Review and International Times.
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Michael McDermott - What In The World.
Friday, 30 May 2025
Unveiled Poetry Evening
Tim Harrold read a selection of his poems at Unveiled in St Andrew's Wickford this evening. His poems included: 'AntiChrists & False Prophets'; 'Not Enough Tears in the Sea'; 'The Insurrection of Resurrection'; 'Urchin Church'; and 'You are the Tribe of Bezalel', among others.
Check his poems out at https://www.instagram.com/harrold.tim?igsh=dHFnMzF2dnY5d2I1 and find his Verses versus Viruses collection at https://redballoonpublishing.co.uk/our-books/ols/products/verses-versus-viruses-by-timothy-harrol.
My poems included 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, and 'Barking' from my 'Five Trios' series, a poem about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey which draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. Both have been published by International Times. I also read several poems inspired by the art of Nicola Ravenscroft including 'The Language of Angels', which has been published by Stride Magazine.
Our Parish, and Wickford as a town, has historic links with Wickford in Washington County, Rhode Island, USA. These are links that we are currently seeking to re-establish and, as such, we have made contact with Fr Spencer Reece, who is Vicar of St Paul's in Wickford, Rhode Island. Fr Spencer is a prize-winning poet with a fascinating story in regard to life and ordination, as well as being a writer and artist.
In my review of ‘Acts’, Fr Spencer's latest poetry collection, for Stride Magazine I wrote: 'He has written that 'A poet, like a priest, works with facts and mysteries: the facts mysterious, the mysteries factual' and has said that what he is after in poems or prose is 'telling the truth in the art'. Time, he suggests, “must somehow be dilated or pass before I can understand much of anything” but, when time has passed, 'in poetry, the autobiography becomes something else entirely, somehow selfless.' This is the essential movement in his life and work which, in the words of Jonathan Farmer, means that he 'offers pastoral attention to the wounded and discarded of the world—including, frequently, himself.' Poems, Reece suggests, are 'spiritual suitcases' which provide 'comfort in the hour of need.'
Tonight, I read a small sample of Fr Spencer's poems from his 'The Road to Emmaus' collection.
Check out the remaining programme of great events this term at Unveiled, our fortnightly Friday night arts and performance event at St Andrew’s Church (7.00 – 9.00 pm, 11 London Road, Wickford, Essex SS12 0AN):Unveiled Summer Programme 2025
- 13 June (7.30 pm) – Open Mic Night organised with John Rogers. Everybody is welcome to come along and play, read, sing or just spectate. See you there for a great evening of live performance!
- 28 June (7.00 pm) – The Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields in concert. The Choral Scholars sing for services, concerts and other events at St Martin’s, exploring a huge range of repertoire from the Renaissance to the present day.
- 4 July (7.00 pm) – An evening with Neil Tye. Hear British-born and Denmark-based artist Neil Tye speak about his work; paintings that entice the viewer to be immersed in their colours, shapes, and movement, where hidden images, feelings, or meanings can be revealed.
- 18 July (7.30 pm) – Eva Romanakova and Andrew Palmer in concert. Hear Mezzo-Soprano Eva Romanakova and pianist Andrew Palmer perform a wide selection of music including musical theatre, classical, opera, pop, jazz, folk and songs from the movies.
These events do not require tickets (just turn up on the night). There will be a collection to cover artist and church costs.
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Tim Harrold - A Blessing.
Church Times - Art review: Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone. The Art of Friendship (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin)
My latest exhibition review for Church Times is on “Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone. The Art of Friendship” at the National Gallery of Ireland:
'Jellett and Hone are significant as pioneering Irish modernists, as women artists undertaking that mission at that time, and as artists allowing their understanding of the ways in which faith and art intertwine to shape the work they produced. As a result, they are important counterpoints to the narrative that treats modernism as a primarily secular endeavour, and abstraction, through its lack of content, as a primary example of art that was principally for art’s sake alone.'
For more on Jellett and Hone see here, here, here, here, and here.
Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here, those for Seen & Unseen are here, and those for Art+Christianity are here.
'Jellett and Hone are significant as pioneering Irish modernists, as women artists undertaking that mission at that time, and as artists allowing their understanding of the ways in which faith and art intertwine to shape the work they produced. As a result, they are important counterpoints to the narrative that treats modernism as a primarily secular endeavour, and abstraction, through its lack of content, as a primary example of art that was principally for art’s sake alone.'
For more on Jellett and Hone see here, here, here, here, and here.
Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here, those for Seen & Unseen are here, and those for Art+Christianity are here.
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Van Morrison - Into The Mystic.
Seen and Unseen: The late Pope Francis was right – Antoni Gaudi truly was God’s architect
My latest article for Seen and Unseen is entitled 'The late Pope Francis was right – Antoni Gaudi truly was God’s architect' and explores how sanctity can indeed be found amongst scaffolding, as Gaudi’s Barcelona beauties amply demonstrate:
'In welcoming the news that Gaudí had been declared Venerable, Cardinal Juan José Omella, Archbishop of Barcelona, said “It is a recognition not only of his architectural work but something more important.” He continued: “He is saying you... amid life's difficulties, amid work, amid pain, amid suffering, are destined to be saints.” Ultimately, he notes, “Gaudí’s life and work show us how beauty and holiness can transform the world” as they include the “recognition that sanctity can be found amid scaffolding, suffering, sublime obsession.”'
For more on Antoni Gaudí see here and here.
My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.
My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.
My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.
My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.
My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.
My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.
My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.
My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.
My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.
My 10th article was 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.
My 11th article was 'How to look at our world: Aaron Rosen interview', exploring themes from Rosen's book 'What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World'.
My 12th article was 'Blake, imagination and the insight of God', exploring a new exhibition - 'William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum - which focuses on seekers of spiritual regeneration and national revival.
My 13th article 'Matthew Krishanu: painting childhood' was an interview with Matthew Krishanu on his exhibition 'The Bough Breaks' at Camden Art Centre.
My 14th article was entitled 'Art makes life worth living' and explored why society, and churches, need the Arts.
My 15th article was entitled 'The collective effervescence of sport's congregation' and explored some of the ways in which sport and religion have been intimately entwined throughout history
My 16th article was entitled 'Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d' and reviewed the ways in which artist Richard Kenton Webb is conversing with the blind poet in his former home (Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles).
My 17th article was entitled 'Controversial art: how can the critic love their neighbour?'. It makes suggestions of what to do when confronted with contentious culture.
My 18th article was an interview entitled 'Art, AI and apocalypse: Michael Takeo Magruder addresses our fears and questions'. In the interview the digital artist talks about the possibilities and challenges of artificial intelligence.
My 19th article was entitled 'Dark, sweet and subtle: recovered music orientates us'. In the article I highlight alt-folk music seeking inspiration from forgotten hymns.
My 20th article was entitled 'Revisiting Amazing Grace inspires new songs'. In the article I highlight folk musicians capturing both the barbaric and the beautiful in the hymn Amazing Grace and Christianity's entanglement with the transatlantic slave trade more generally.
My 21st article was entitled 'James MacMillan’s music of tranquility and discord'. In the article I noted that the composer’s music contends both the secular and sacred.
My 22nd article was a book review on Nobody's Empire by Stuart Murdoch. 'Nobody's Empire: A Novel is the fictionalised account of how ... Murdoch, lead singer of indie band Belle and Sebastian, transfigured his experience of Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) through faith and music.'
My 23rd article was entitled 'Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion'. The article explores how popular music conjures sacred space.
My 24th article was an interview with Alastair Gordon on the artist’s attention which explores why the overlooked and everyday capture the creative gaze.
My 25th article was about Stanley Spencer’s seen and unseen world and the artist’s child-like sense of wonder as he saw heaven everywhere.
My 26th article was entitled 'The biblical undercurrent that the Bob Dylan biopics missed' and in it I argue that the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey.
My 27th article was entitled 'Heading Home: a pilgrimage that breaks out beauty along the way' and focuses on a film called 'Heading Home' which explores how we can learn a new language together as we travel.
My 28th article was entitled 'Annie Caldwell: “My family is my band”' and showcased a force of nature voice that comes from the soul.
My 29th article was entitled 'Why sculpt the face of Christ?' and explored how, in Nic Fiddian Green’s work, we feel pain, strength, fear and wisdom.
'In welcoming the news that Gaudí had been declared Venerable, Cardinal Juan José Omella, Archbishop of Barcelona, said “It is a recognition not only of his architectural work but something more important.” He continued: “He is saying you... amid life's difficulties, amid work, amid pain, amid suffering, are destined to be saints.” Ultimately, he notes, “Gaudí’s life and work show us how beauty and holiness can transform the world” as they include the “recognition that sanctity can be found amid scaffolding, suffering, sublime obsession.”'
For more on Antoni Gaudí see here and here.
My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.
My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.
My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.
My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.
My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.
My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.
My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.
My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.
My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.
My 10th article was 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.
My 11th article was 'How to look at our world: Aaron Rosen interview', exploring themes from Rosen's book 'What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World'.
My 12th article was 'Blake, imagination and the insight of God', exploring a new exhibition - 'William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum - which focuses on seekers of spiritual regeneration and national revival.
My 13th article 'Matthew Krishanu: painting childhood' was an interview with Matthew Krishanu on his exhibition 'The Bough Breaks' at Camden Art Centre.
My 14th article was entitled 'Art makes life worth living' and explored why society, and churches, need the Arts.
My 15th article was entitled 'The collective effervescence of sport's congregation' and explored some of the ways in which sport and religion have been intimately entwined throughout history
My 16th article was entitled 'Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d' and reviewed the ways in which artist Richard Kenton Webb is conversing with the blind poet in his former home (Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles).
My 17th article was entitled 'Controversial art: how can the critic love their neighbour?'. It makes suggestions of what to do when confronted with contentious culture.
My 18th article was an interview entitled 'Art, AI and apocalypse: Michael Takeo Magruder addresses our fears and questions'. In the interview the digital artist talks about the possibilities and challenges of artificial intelligence.
My 19th article was entitled 'Dark, sweet and subtle: recovered music orientates us'. In the article I highlight alt-folk music seeking inspiration from forgotten hymns.
My 20th article was entitled 'Revisiting Amazing Grace inspires new songs'. In the article I highlight folk musicians capturing both the barbaric and the beautiful in the hymn Amazing Grace and Christianity's entanglement with the transatlantic slave trade more generally.
My 21st article was entitled 'James MacMillan’s music of tranquility and discord'. In the article I noted that the composer’s music contends both the secular and sacred.
My 22nd article was a book review on Nobody's Empire by Stuart Murdoch. 'Nobody's Empire: A Novel is the fictionalised account of how ... Murdoch, lead singer of indie band Belle and Sebastian, transfigured his experience of Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) through faith and music.'
My 23rd article was entitled 'Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion'. The article explores how popular music conjures sacred space.
My 24th article was an interview with Alastair Gordon on the artist’s attention which explores why the overlooked and everyday capture the creative gaze.
My 25th article was about Stanley Spencer’s seen and unseen world and the artist’s child-like sense of wonder as he saw heaven everywhere.
My 26th article was entitled 'The biblical undercurrent that the Bob Dylan biopics missed' and in it I argue that the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey.
My 27th article was entitled 'Heading Home: a pilgrimage that breaks out beauty along the way' and focuses on a film called 'Heading Home' which explores how we can learn a new language together as we travel.
My 28th article was entitled 'Annie Caldwell: “My family is my band”' and showcased a force of nature voice that comes from the soul.
My 29th article was entitled 'Why sculpt the face of Christ?' and explored how, in Nic Fiddian Green’s work, we feel pain, strength, fear and wisdom.
My 30th article was entitled 'How Mumford and friends explore life's instability' and explored how Mumford and Sons, together with similar bands, commune on fallibility, fear, grace, and love.
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Iain Archer - The Acrobet.
Thursday, 29 May 2025
Responsibilities and resources, challenge and means
Here's the sermon that I shared at St Catherine's Wickford tonight in our Ascension Day Eucharist:
The expression “step up to the plate” refers to “voluntarily assuming responsibility for something.” However, when someone seems to have a particular role or responsibility covered, it is then difficult for others to see the part that they could play or to think there is a need to play their part. That is, in part, what Jesus is addressing with his disciples when he speaks to them in his farewell discourse before he goes to the cross.
In that farewell discourse and also in many of his parables, Jesus was preparing his disciples for the point when he would leave them. That point was reached with his Ascension. Among the parables Jesus told to prepare his disciples was the Parable of the Talents, where the Master in the story is absent for much of the time. By telling stories where the central character was absent or had left the action, Jesus was saying that he would be leaving and that, when he did so, he was going to entrust his disciples with the responsibility of continuing his mission and ministry.
That was, and is, an awesome responsibility and we can readily understand why, for example, the third worker in the Parable of the Talents was depicted as being paralysed by fear at the prospect of the Master’s absence. However, it also shows the value that Jesus saw in his disciples and sees in us. It is amazing, but true, that God believes in us enough to entrust us with working towards the coming of his kingdom, on earth as in heaven.
The question, then, was whether Jesus’ first disciples (and by implication, all who follow, including ourselves) will step up to the plate and assume responsibility. When the one that was thought of as being in charge and responsible was no longer with the disciples physically, they were made aware of their own responsibilities. Jesus is recorded in our Gospel reading as saying that there were things he did not say to his disciples at the beginning because he was with them at that stage. It was only at the point that Jesus was to leave that it became essential that they heard those things. It was only at that point that they could hear those things.
What Jesus was saying was a version of the popular statement that no one is indispensable, even him. “The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” is another similar saying, popularly attributed to Charles de Gaulle. The reality for Jesus, as the incarnate Son of God, was that he could not personally share his message and love across the known world or throughout history without disciples committed to following him and sharing him with others.
In that farewell discourse and also in many of his parables, Jesus was preparing his disciples for the point when he would leave them. That point was reached with his Ascension. Among the parables Jesus told to prepare his disciples was the Parable of the Talents, where the Master in the story is absent for much of the time. By telling stories where the central character was absent or had left the action, Jesus was saying that he would be leaving and that, when he did so, he was going to entrust his disciples with the responsibility of continuing his mission and ministry.
That was, and is, an awesome responsibility and we can readily understand why, for example, the third worker in the Parable of the Talents was depicted as being paralysed by fear at the prospect of the Master’s absence. However, it also shows the value that Jesus saw in his disciples and sees in us. It is amazing, but true, that God believes in us enough to entrust us with working towards the coming of his kingdom, on earth as in heaven.
The question, then, was whether Jesus’ first disciples (and by implication, all who follow, including ourselves) will step up to the plate and assume responsibility. When the one that was thought of as being in charge and responsible was no longer with the disciples physically, they were made aware of their own responsibilities. Jesus is recorded in our Gospel reading as saying that there were things he did not say to his disciples at the beginning because he was with them at that stage. It was only at the point that Jesus was to leave that it became essential that they heard those things. It was only at that point that they could hear those things.
What Jesus was saying was a version of the popular statement that no one is indispensable, even him. “The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” is another similar saying, popularly attributed to Charles de Gaulle. The reality for Jesus, as the incarnate Son of God, was that he could not personally share his message and love across the known world or throughout history without disciples committed to following him and sharing him with others.
Therefore, at the Ascension, Jesus was like an Olympic torchbearer passing his light on to his disciples and calling them to bear his light. This could only happen when those following him acted as his hands and feet, his eyes, ears and mouth, his body wherever they were. That is essentially the challenge of the Ascension for us, but this challenge is combined with the promise that Jesus will send his Spirit to us to empower and equip us to be his people.
For this reason, the Ascension and Pentecost are intimately linked. The Ascension provides the challenge – “Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples” (Matthew 28. 19) – and Pentecost provides the means - “when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” In this way we have been given the resources needed to fulfil our responsibility. Similarly, in the Parable of the Talents, the Master gave out resources (the ‘talents’) alongside responsibilities. In the same way, after the Ascension, the Holy Spirit came to empower Jesus’ disciples.
Do we recognise that each of us has much that we can give; that we are all people with talents and possessions however lacking in confidence and means we may sometimes be? We all have something we can offer, so how can we, through our lives and work, benefit and develop the world for which God has given humanity responsibility? What resources - in terms of abilities, job, income and possessions - has God given to us in order to fulfil our responsibility to bear his light in this dark world? Through his Ascension, Jesus challenges us as to whether we will be faithful or unfaithful servants? How will we respond?
If we accept the responsibility we have been given, we can then pray for quiet courage to match this hour. We did not choose to be born or to live in such an age; but we can ask that its problems challenge us, its discoveries exhilarate us, its injustices anger us, its possibilities inspire us and its vigour renew us for the sake of Christ’s kingdom come, on earth as in his heaven.
For this reason, the Ascension and Pentecost are intimately linked. The Ascension provides the challenge – “Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples” (Matthew 28. 19) – and Pentecost provides the means - “when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” In this way we have been given the resources needed to fulfil our responsibility. Similarly, in the Parable of the Talents, the Master gave out resources (the ‘talents’) alongside responsibilities. In the same way, after the Ascension, the Holy Spirit came to empower Jesus’ disciples.
Do we recognise that each of us has much that we can give; that we are all people with talents and possessions however lacking in confidence and means we may sometimes be? We all have something we can offer, so how can we, through our lives and work, benefit and develop the world for which God has given humanity responsibility? What resources - in terms of abilities, job, income and possessions - has God given to us in order to fulfil our responsibility to bear his light in this dark world? Through his Ascension, Jesus challenges us as to whether we will be faithful or unfaithful servants? How will we respond?
If we accept the responsibility we have been given, we can then pray for quiet courage to match this hour. We did not choose to be born or to live in such an age; but we can ask that its problems challenge us, its discoveries exhilarate us, its injustices anger us, its possibilities inspire us and its vigour renew us for the sake of Christ’s kingdom come, on earth as in his heaven.
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Wednesday, 28 May 2025
The most dynamic gift to the church
Here's the sermon I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:
Mike Leigh is the well-known director of films such Secrets and Lies, Mr Turner, Topsy Turvey and Life Is Sweet. Improvisation is a significant part of his directorial methods. He begins a film with an initiating idea, which conjures up a number of possible actors he can cast. With improvisation, casting is obviously critical. Since he doesn’t work with formal scripts, the auditions take the form of an exercise where the actor delivers a caricature of a person they know. This demonstrates their ability to observe real people and convert this knowledge to a performance. Once the cast is established, a list of potential characters is devised, out of which a base character who lies at the core of the drama is established. After this, the actor researches the character and does solo improvisations with the director. This process of solo improvisation and research goes on for weeks and even months before the actor is introduced to another actor who has been cast, and they begin duo impros, discovering who each other is and exploring the dramatic potential of the situation. He shoots two thirds of his film without revealing the ending. Then the crew pauses for a week or so while he does improvs of the final scenes. After that, the end scenes are shot. (http://www.markpoole.com.au/articles/improvisation-the-mike-leigh-method.html)
Improvisation is also what Jesus is talking about in this farewell discourse to his disciples (John 16.5-15). He is going to leave them (as happened at the Ascension) and then he will send the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, the comforter and advocate, to them (as happened on the Day of Pentecost). The Spirit will speak to the disciples whatever he hears from Jesus; both the many things he wanted to say to them but which they could not bear at that time and also the things that are to come. Earlier in his discourse, he also said that the Spirit will teach them everything and remind them of all that Jesus had said to them. The result will be that they will do greater things than him.
Jesus said many amazing things that people still repeat regardless of whether they follow him or not. But his farewell discourse to his disciples must be among the most amazing because in it Jesus says that those who follow him will do greater things than him and will be led into all truth. When you think how amazing Jesus’ own actions were, it is hard to imagine how people like us could do greater things than that, and, when you think how profound his teaching was, how could we be led into deeper or greater truth than that?
But Jesus was articulating something that all good teachers think and feel; the sense that all the time he had spent with them and invested in them was not so they would be clones of him, simply repeating the things he did and said, but instead that he had equipped, empowered and enabled his followers to follow him by using their own gifts and abilities and initiative which would inevitably mean that they would do and say different things from him but still with his Spirit and based on all they had learnt from him. He was saying that each one of us is a unique combination of personality, abilities and potential and, therefore, each of us can make a unique mark on the world. His followers can do greater things than Jesus because they will do different things from him in his name and Spirit – things that only they can do for him because they are that unique package of personality, ability and potential.
Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields has described this in terms of improvisation. He says that we constantly “face new circumstances in each generation that the Bible doesn’t give us a script for.” Instead, the Christian story is like “a five-act play -- creation, Israel, Jesus, church and eschaton. We find ourselves in Act 4, and the most important events have already happened. Our role is to be faithful in Act 4, because God will do the rest in Act 5.” “The most dynamic gift to the church is the Holy Spirit working amongst people who learn to trust one another and see the abundant things that God can do with limited materials. That’s analogous to what happens in theatrical improvisation.”
“Improvisation isn’t about being original, clever, witty or spontaneous. Improvisation is about allowing yourself to be obvious.” It’s about being so soaked in a tradition that you learn to take the right things for granted or as Jesus put it the Spirit will teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus said so that we intuitively do those things on an improvisational basis. People who train in improvisation train in a tradition. The Spirit comes to remind Christians of the Christian tradition by reminding us of all that Jesus did and said, so we embody it in our lives. In this way we can do greater things than Jesus because we will do different things from him, but in his name and Spirit.
Mike Leigh is the well-known director of films such Secrets and Lies, Mr Turner, Topsy Turvey and Life Is Sweet. Improvisation is a significant part of his directorial methods. He begins a film with an initiating idea, which conjures up a number of possible actors he can cast. With improvisation, casting is obviously critical. Since he doesn’t work with formal scripts, the auditions take the form of an exercise where the actor delivers a caricature of a person they know. This demonstrates their ability to observe real people and convert this knowledge to a performance. Once the cast is established, a list of potential characters is devised, out of which a base character who lies at the core of the drama is established. After this, the actor researches the character and does solo improvisations with the director. This process of solo improvisation and research goes on for weeks and even months before the actor is introduced to another actor who has been cast, and they begin duo impros, discovering who each other is and exploring the dramatic potential of the situation. He shoots two thirds of his film without revealing the ending. Then the crew pauses for a week or so while he does improvs of the final scenes. After that, the end scenes are shot. (http://www.markpoole.com.au/articles/improvisation-the-mike-leigh-method.html)
Improvisation is also what Jesus is talking about in this farewell discourse to his disciples (John 16.5-15). He is going to leave them (as happened at the Ascension) and then he will send the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, the comforter and advocate, to them (as happened on the Day of Pentecost). The Spirit will speak to the disciples whatever he hears from Jesus; both the many things he wanted to say to them but which they could not bear at that time and also the things that are to come. Earlier in his discourse, he also said that the Spirit will teach them everything and remind them of all that Jesus had said to them. The result will be that they will do greater things than him.
Jesus said many amazing things that people still repeat regardless of whether they follow him or not. But his farewell discourse to his disciples must be among the most amazing because in it Jesus says that those who follow him will do greater things than him and will be led into all truth. When you think how amazing Jesus’ own actions were, it is hard to imagine how people like us could do greater things than that, and, when you think how profound his teaching was, how could we be led into deeper or greater truth than that?
But Jesus was articulating something that all good teachers think and feel; the sense that all the time he had spent with them and invested in them was not so they would be clones of him, simply repeating the things he did and said, but instead that he had equipped, empowered and enabled his followers to follow him by using their own gifts and abilities and initiative which would inevitably mean that they would do and say different things from him but still with his Spirit and based on all they had learnt from him. He was saying that each one of us is a unique combination of personality, abilities and potential and, therefore, each of us can make a unique mark on the world. His followers can do greater things than Jesus because they will do different things from him in his name and Spirit – things that only they can do for him because they are that unique package of personality, ability and potential.
Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields has described this in terms of improvisation. He says that we constantly “face new circumstances in each generation that the Bible doesn’t give us a script for.” Instead, the Christian story is like “a five-act play -- creation, Israel, Jesus, church and eschaton. We find ourselves in Act 4, and the most important events have already happened. Our role is to be faithful in Act 4, because God will do the rest in Act 5.” “The most dynamic gift to the church is the Holy Spirit working amongst people who learn to trust one another and see the abundant things that God can do with limited materials. That’s analogous to what happens in theatrical improvisation.”
“Improvisation isn’t about being original, clever, witty or spontaneous. Improvisation is about allowing yourself to be obvious.” It’s about being so soaked in a tradition that you learn to take the right things for granted or as Jesus put it the Spirit will teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus said so that we intuitively do those things on an improvisational basis. People who train in improvisation train in a tradition. The Spirit comes to remind Christians of the Christian tradition by reminding us of all that Jesus did and said, so we embody it in our lives. In this way we can do greater things than Jesus because we will do different things from him, but in his name and Spirit.
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Martin Joseph - This Light Of Ours.
Sunday, 25 May 2025
Windows on the world (520)
Dun Laoghaire, 2025
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Evanescence - My Immortal.
The Holy Spirit as the breath and peace of God
Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew’s Wickford this morning:
There are two occasions on which we are told Jesus’ disciples received the Holy Spirit. The second was at Pentecost but the first was one of the Resurrection appearances, in which Jesus appeared to his disciples and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20. 21 & 22). On this occasion the Holy Spirit came as the breath of God and as words of peace.
The Spirit’s coming in this way was promised by Jesus who, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading (John 14. 15 - 31), said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth … he abides with you, and he will be in you” (John 14. 15 – 17). “The Holy Spirit … will remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14. 26 & 27).
By giving them the Spirit he was giving them his peace and doing so in a similar way to that in which he had received it; as, when he was baptised, the Spirit descended upon him in the bodily form of a dove. The dove being a Biblical symbol of peace; a symbol that derived from the dove which brought news to Noah of the flood having receded, enabling life to begin again on earth.
When I was at St Martin-in-the-Fields we had an art installation which saw two thousand white paper doves hanging in the nave of the church forming a 15-metre-long paper sculpture called Les Colombes – The White Doves. Following successful installations with over 300,000 visitors in Jerusalem and Munich, these origami doves bore hopes and greetings from people who came into the church, from passers-by, from night revellers in the bar around the corner, from locals and strangers, people from all over the world. Catholic and Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, poor and rich, anyone could fold them and should fold them. In the flock each individual, separately folded dove became one of many. The German artist, Michael Pendry, said: “Folded by different people, the doves in their unity stand for such a fundamental human right. The time has come to admonish and to stand up for this – for the right to peace and freedom! So that that the flock of doves might grow, from place to place, from country to country, across all borders.”
In this way, the flock was a symbol of a collective spirit of peace; one which is particularly needed at this time when terror has revisited our streets and leisure activities. The flock of doves headed from the entrance of the church towards the sanctuary, where lies the answer to all the questions of our spiritual potential – who am I, where do I come from, where am I going? In answer to these questions, the descent of the Spirit in the bodily form of a dove told us that we are the beloved sons and daughters of our Father God and that we are here to use our God-given abilities to do work for him that only we can do.
Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Sam Wells, said that: “When at his baptism the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove Jesus wasn’t blown away – he was touched more deeply that words can say or eyes can perceive. That’s what this exhibition is about – and what’s more, it affirms that the Holy Spirit works through the humble hands of you and me.” Jesus gives us his peace, in the form of the Holy Spirit, so that we can then be peacemakers ourselves.
Sam has explained that “The Holy Spirit is the part of God that gives us here and now and forever and always those things that Jesus brought us once and for all. Jesus has shown us and brought us peace, but we need the Spirit to continue to make peace in and among us. The one Spirit proclaims “peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” (2:17). One of the most difficult things in life is to balance your care for those who are near – your regular circle of friends, family, neighbours, and colleagues – with your responsibility for those who are far off – distant friends, family, fellow citizens, and people of other nations and faiths … how easy it is to become so wrapped up with a small circle of intimates that we can’t register the need of those outside our own tiny world … It’s hard to be at peace with those who are far and at peace with those who are near … Jesus is our peace because he gives us the Holy Spirit to reconcile those from whom we are far off and those to whom we are near. Jesus is our peace because he gives us the Holy Spirit to reconcile the parts of ourselves that are far from God with the parts of ourselves that are near.”
Sharing the Peace is the climax to which the first half of our service moves. We are used to it and probably imagine that it has always been part of Anglican worship. However, it was the liturgical reform of the later 20th Century that rediscovered the Kiss of Peace of the early church, and it was introduced in the Church of England’s experimental Series 3 liturgy in about 1971. Holy Communion is celebrated by the whole people of God gathered for worship and at the sharing of the Peace we are reminded that we are together unified as the body of Christ.
This is the moment when we are reminded that Jesus said Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be called children of God. We are to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since as members of one body we are called to peace, and we are reminded that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. If we live in the Spirit of peace, we are to walk in the Spirit of peace.
This is the moment in our service when Christ breathes on us so that we receive his Spirit and live in his peace. His promise was, Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. The Peace is the moment in our Service when we are reminded of that promise and encouraged to receive it.
Many of us shake hands or hug on Sunday mornings without thinking about what the symbol means. Sometimes, we “cross our fingers” as we say “peace!” with people we don’t like, and keep bland, expressionless faces as we shake hands with someone we haven’t yet forgiven. The Peace calls us to go deeper than that.
“Before you offer your gift at the altar,” Jesus says, “be reconciled.” In our Service, the Peace always comes after the Prayers of the People and the Confession and Absolution. We are called to prepare ourselves to go to the altar: to pray for those we’ve hurt, and those who have hurt us; to confess the sins we need to confess, and to receive God’s forgiveness; and then to be reconciled, one with another, as a symbol of our new life in Christ.
Then, we can truly go to the Altar with clean hands and a ready heart, and receive truly the gift Christ makes available to us all: his body and blood given in love for us.
When others spread war, anxiety, division and strife, those led by the Spirit make peace. Sharing the Peace is the time in our service when we can make peace amongst ourselves. Then, at the end of our Service we are told to go in peace to love and serve the Lord in the rest of the week because those who are led into peace by the Holy Spirit become peacemakers in the world and in their local communities. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
There are two occasions on which we are told Jesus’ disciples received the Holy Spirit. The second was at Pentecost but the first was one of the Resurrection appearances, in which Jesus appeared to his disciples and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20. 21 & 22). On this occasion the Holy Spirit came as the breath of God and as words of peace.
The Spirit’s coming in this way was promised by Jesus who, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading (John 14. 15 - 31), said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth … he abides with you, and he will be in you” (John 14. 15 – 17). “The Holy Spirit … will remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14. 26 & 27).
By giving them the Spirit he was giving them his peace and doing so in a similar way to that in which he had received it; as, when he was baptised, the Spirit descended upon him in the bodily form of a dove. The dove being a Biblical symbol of peace; a symbol that derived from the dove which brought news to Noah of the flood having receded, enabling life to begin again on earth.
When I was at St Martin-in-the-Fields we had an art installation which saw two thousand white paper doves hanging in the nave of the church forming a 15-metre-long paper sculpture called Les Colombes – The White Doves. Following successful installations with over 300,000 visitors in Jerusalem and Munich, these origami doves bore hopes and greetings from people who came into the church, from passers-by, from night revellers in the bar around the corner, from locals and strangers, people from all over the world. Catholic and Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, poor and rich, anyone could fold them and should fold them. In the flock each individual, separately folded dove became one of many. The German artist, Michael Pendry, said: “Folded by different people, the doves in their unity stand for such a fundamental human right. The time has come to admonish and to stand up for this – for the right to peace and freedom! So that that the flock of doves might grow, from place to place, from country to country, across all borders.”
In this way, the flock was a symbol of a collective spirit of peace; one which is particularly needed at this time when terror has revisited our streets and leisure activities. The flock of doves headed from the entrance of the church towards the sanctuary, where lies the answer to all the questions of our spiritual potential – who am I, where do I come from, where am I going? In answer to these questions, the descent of the Spirit in the bodily form of a dove told us that we are the beloved sons and daughters of our Father God and that we are here to use our God-given abilities to do work for him that only we can do.
Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Sam Wells, said that: “When at his baptism the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove Jesus wasn’t blown away – he was touched more deeply that words can say or eyes can perceive. That’s what this exhibition is about – and what’s more, it affirms that the Holy Spirit works through the humble hands of you and me.” Jesus gives us his peace, in the form of the Holy Spirit, so that we can then be peacemakers ourselves.
Sam has explained that “The Holy Spirit is the part of God that gives us here and now and forever and always those things that Jesus brought us once and for all. Jesus has shown us and brought us peace, but we need the Spirit to continue to make peace in and among us. The one Spirit proclaims “peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” (2:17). One of the most difficult things in life is to balance your care for those who are near – your regular circle of friends, family, neighbours, and colleagues – with your responsibility for those who are far off – distant friends, family, fellow citizens, and people of other nations and faiths … how easy it is to become so wrapped up with a small circle of intimates that we can’t register the need of those outside our own tiny world … It’s hard to be at peace with those who are far and at peace with those who are near … Jesus is our peace because he gives us the Holy Spirit to reconcile those from whom we are far off and those to whom we are near. Jesus is our peace because he gives us the Holy Spirit to reconcile the parts of ourselves that are far from God with the parts of ourselves that are near.”
Sharing the Peace is the climax to which the first half of our service moves. We are used to it and probably imagine that it has always been part of Anglican worship. However, it was the liturgical reform of the later 20th Century that rediscovered the Kiss of Peace of the early church, and it was introduced in the Church of England’s experimental Series 3 liturgy in about 1971. Holy Communion is celebrated by the whole people of God gathered for worship and at the sharing of the Peace we are reminded that we are together unified as the body of Christ.
This is the moment when we are reminded that Jesus said Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be called children of God. We are to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since as members of one body we are called to peace, and we are reminded that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. If we live in the Spirit of peace, we are to walk in the Spirit of peace.
This is the moment in our service when Christ breathes on us so that we receive his Spirit and live in his peace. His promise was, Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. The Peace is the moment in our Service when we are reminded of that promise and encouraged to receive it.
Many of us shake hands or hug on Sunday mornings without thinking about what the symbol means. Sometimes, we “cross our fingers” as we say “peace!” with people we don’t like, and keep bland, expressionless faces as we shake hands with someone we haven’t yet forgiven. The Peace calls us to go deeper than that.
“Before you offer your gift at the altar,” Jesus says, “be reconciled.” In our Service, the Peace always comes after the Prayers of the People and the Confession and Absolution. We are called to prepare ourselves to go to the altar: to pray for those we’ve hurt, and those who have hurt us; to confess the sins we need to confess, and to receive God’s forgiveness; and then to be reconciled, one with another, as a symbol of our new life in Christ.
Then, we can truly go to the Altar with clean hands and a ready heart, and receive truly the gift Christ makes available to us all: his body and blood given in love for us.
When others spread war, anxiety, division and strife, those led by the Spirit make peace. Sharing the Peace is the time in our service when we can make peace amongst ourselves. Then, at the end of our Service we are told to go in peace to love and serve the Lord in the rest of the week because those who are led into peace by the Holy Spirit become peacemakers in the world and in their local communities. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
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U2 - Love And Peace Or Else.
Saturday, 24 May 2025
After The Fire: Bright Lights 1974-1983
Rupert Loydell has just published an interesting review of Bright Lights, 1974-1983, After the Fire (6CD box set, Cherry Red)
In his review he concludes: 'In retrospect, After the Fire live played a noisy, high speed new wave pop that never quite translated to record, although at times it came close. Clearly there was a desire for commercial success at play, courtesy CBS/Epic, Mack and some band members, but also room for a genuine place in the rock world, as evidenced by the positive response from Van Halen and their fans. If the sometimes questionable fashions the band at times adopted or the sustained interest in space travel as a metaphor reveals the music’s age, the songs on show here are quirky, energetic and inventive, keyboard or guitar led music that can proudly hold its head up alongside its musical neighbours from the time. The bright lights might have eluded the band, but now we can all hear what we missed out on at the time.'
The definitive collection of After The Fire, 'Bright Lights' contains all of the bands five albums as well as demos, B-sides and live tracks, with 12 recordings that are issued on CD for the first time and 14 that are completely unreleased. The project has been overseen by founding member Peter Banks who, along with members Andy Piercy and John Russell, has been interviewed exclusively for the sleeve notes and has also opened up his photo archive, providing a wealth of rare images.
I was at their final Dominion gig and also saw the Andy Piercy solo performance at Greenbelt. Laser Love, with its worship songs, pre-empts the focus that CCM has subsequently developed on worship music, the attempts by Delirious? and others to take worship music into the charts, and does so with far more original and contemporary imagery than any of the later bands achieved. Laser Love and Batteries Not Included still stand up as excellent albums. The solo Andy Piercy album also has some strong material. It was a real shame that they couldn't sustain it long enough to ride the wave of Der Kommissar. I really enjoyed getting to know Peter Banks, doing some services together with him, and writing 'The Secret Chord' together. Good times.
Writer and poet, Rupert Loydell has also written a great piece for Ship of Fools looking back to the collaborations and collisions between church culture and the wider culture in the 1970s and 80s, with a cast including Jesus Rock Music, the Greenbelt festival, Mary Whitehouse and musicians such as Larry Norman and Steve Fairnie of Writz. Read Rupert's article here.
Loydell is a poet, painter, editor and publisher, and senior lecturer in English with creative writing at Falmouth University. He is interested in the relationship of visual art and language, collaborative writing, sequences and series, as well as post-confessional narrative, experimental music and creative non-fiction. He has edited Stride magazine for over 30 years, and was managing editor of Stride Books for 28 years. His poetry books include Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone (both published by Shearsman), and The Fantasy Kid (for children); he has also edited anthologies for Shearsman, Salt and Knives, Forks & Spoons Press.
For more on the period about which he writes, read my dialogues with musician and poet Steve Scott here, here, here, here, and here, plus my other posts on CCM. For more of my writing on music, see my co-authored book with Peter Banks, ‘The Secret Chord’, which has been described as an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief.
The book can be purchased from Lulu - https://www.lulu.com/shop/jonathan-evens-and-peter-banks/the-secret-chord/paperback/product-1pey2g67.html?q=peter+banks&page=1&pageSize=4
Covering a range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, The Secret Chord conveys enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers. The book asks is there really a 'Secret Chord' that would both please the Lord and nearly everybody else as described in Leonard Cohen's popular song 'Hallelujah'?
While a significant number of books have been published exploring the relationships between music, art, popular culture and theology - many of which Peter and I have enjoyed and from which we have benefited - such books tend either to academic analysis or semi biography about artistes whose output the writers' enjoy. By contrast, 'The Secret Chord' is an accessible exploration of artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives which seeks to draw the reader into a place of appreciation for what makes a moment in a 'performance' timeless and special.
In his review he concludes: 'In retrospect, After the Fire live played a noisy, high speed new wave pop that never quite translated to record, although at times it came close. Clearly there was a desire for commercial success at play, courtesy CBS/Epic, Mack and some band members, but also room for a genuine place in the rock world, as evidenced by the positive response from Van Halen and their fans. If the sometimes questionable fashions the band at times adopted or the sustained interest in space travel as a metaphor reveals the music’s age, the songs on show here are quirky, energetic and inventive, keyboard or guitar led music that can proudly hold its head up alongside its musical neighbours from the time. The bright lights might have eluded the band, but now we can all hear what we missed out on at the time.'
The definitive collection of After The Fire, 'Bright Lights' contains all of the bands five albums as well as demos, B-sides and live tracks, with 12 recordings that are issued on CD for the first time and 14 that are completely unreleased. The project has been overseen by founding member Peter Banks who, along with members Andy Piercy and John Russell, has been interviewed exclusively for the sleeve notes and has also opened up his photo archive, providing a wealth of rare images.
After the Fire were the first British band to emerge from the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) scene and regularly make the charts. Before U2, before Delerious?, ATF went where no band had gone before. They hit the UK Top Twenty in 1979 with One Rule for You and made the US Top 5 in 1983 with Der Kommissar, in between they sandwiched three chart albums. The only fly in the ointment being that their biggest hit came six months after the band had split.
Formed by Peter Banks in 1972, early ATF exhibited progressive rock tendencies. All that was lost though by the release of the first CBS album, Laser Love, in 1979 when, on the back of the New Wave, they transmuted into an energetic power pop outfit. Laser Love was - in the title track, Take Me Higher and Like the Power of a Jet - one of the first times when rock music worshipped God in contemporary words and music, a seminal moment indeed. It was therefore no surprise to find ATF lead singer Andy Piercy linked to Delerious? A case of passing the baton on to the then latest runners in the race for CCM visibility, surely.
Loydell is a poet, painter, editor and publisher, and senior lecturer in English with creative writing at Falmouth University. He is interested in the relationship of visual art and language, collaborative writing, sequences and series, as well as post-confessional narrative, experimental music and creative non-fiction. He has edited Stride magazine for over 30 years, and was managing editor of Stride Books for 28 years. His poetry books include Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone (both published by Shearsman), and The Fantasy Kid (for children); he has also edited anthologies for Shearsman, Salt and Knives, Forks & Spoons Press.
For more on the period about which he writes, read my dialogues with musician and poet Steve Scott here, here, here, here, and here, plus my other posts on CCM. For more of my writing on music, see my co-authored book with Peter Banks, ‘The Secret Chord’, which has been described as an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief.
The book can be purchased from Lulu - https://www.lulu.com/shop/jonathan-evens-and-peter-banks/the-secret-chord/paperback/product-1pey2g67.html?q=peter+banks&page=1&pageSize=4
Covering a range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, The Secret Chord conveys enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers. The book asks is there really a 'Secret Chord' that would both please the Lord and nearly everybody else as described in Leonard Cohen's popular song 'Hallelujah'?
While a significant number of books have been published exploring the relationships between music, art, popular culture and theology - many of which Peter and I have enjoyed and from which we have benefited - such books tend either to academic analysis or semi biography about artistes whose output the writers' enjoy. By contrast, 'The Secret Chord' is an accessible exploration of artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives which seeks to draw the reader into a place of appreciation for what makes a moment in a 'performance' timeless and special.
The Secret Chord seeks to explore a number of the dilemmas which musicians and other artists face, not so much in order to map out one route through or around these dilemmas but in an attempt to get the creative juices flowing. Our experience of creativity is of disparate and often contradictory ideas being crushed, swirled, fermented, shaken and stirred in our minds in order that the fine wine of creativity results. Our hope is that The Secret Chord, by exploring artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives, will mature in reader’s minds just like fine wine or a precious pearl.
Peter Banks and I wanted to write a book that would be an accessible interesting read but also with sufficient depth to engage those with an interest in academic and theological study. Peter is a successful composer and musician with mainstream chart successes in many countries in the world within his most well known musical collaboration, 'After The Fire'. As well as a musician he has worked in other creative industries and now contributes professionally to various online publications as well as his popular music and technology blog, The BanksyBoy Brief.
Rev Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard, author and co-founder of IntoUniversity said "Secret Chord is well written, full of wisdom, great quotes and illustrations. It's great to read something about art and Christianity that embraces such diverse material."
Carol Biss, Managing Director of Book Guild Publishing, said “Secret Chord is an interesting and impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life, written through the prism of Christian belief. Covering a huge range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, Secret Chord conveys a great enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers, which readers are sure to find engaging.”
Heather Joy Rowe said it is a highly informative and eye-opening book: 'The writers ... are delving into the arts, mainly looking at the subject from a theological point of view and they have certainly opened my eyes as before reading this book I had a very 'one-dimensional view' of this huge subject.'
Another response noted: "For someone who treats music as art, as something to be understood as an art form within a particular context etc etc, or someone who is themselves creatively active, then it's certainly interesting and worthwhile reading. You might have an epiphany!"
Rod Williamson said: "The book gives a very thoughtful look at the artist's role, inspiration, challenge and so on. There are many examples and anecdotes from popular and classical fields, and beyond the realms of music. As one who wouldn't know the difference between a D minor and a Morris Minor it kept my attention throughout, but I'm sure it would appeal to the Monsieur Highbrow fraternity."
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Rev Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard, author and co-founder of IntoUniversity said "Secret Chord is well written, full of wisdom, great quotes and illustrations. It's great to read something about art and Christianity that embraces such diverse material."
Carol Biss, Managing Director of Book Guild Publishing, said “Secret Chord is an interesting and impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life, written through the prism of Christian belief. Covering a huge range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, Secret Chord conveys a great enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers, which readers are sure to find engaging.”
Heather Joy Rowe said it is a highly informative and eye-opening book: 'The writers ... are delving into the arts, mainly looking at the subject from a theological point of view and they have certainly opened my eyes as before reading this book I had a very 'one-dimensional view' of this huge subject.'
Another response noted: "For someone who treats music as art, as something to be understood as an art form within a particular context etc etc, or someone who is themselves creatively active, then it's certainly interesting and worthwhile reading. You might have an epiphany!"
Rod Williamson said: "The book gives a very thoughtful look at the artist's role, inspiration, challenge and so on. There are many examples and anecdotes from popular and classical fields, and beyond the realms of music. As one who wouldn't know the difference between a D minor and a Morris Minor it kept my attention throughout, but I'm sure it would appeal to the Monsieur Highbrow fraternity."
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After The Fire - Laser Love.
Sunday, 18 May 2025
A new possibility for the world, existence, and history
Here's the sermon I shared at Holy Cross Basildon and (in a condensed form) at St Andrew's Wickford this afternoon:
To us, the resurrection is a wonderful event. One that we have been celebrating since Easter Sunday in hymns such as Jesus lives! and Thine be the glory risen, conquering Son. But to the women who first encountered the resurrection it was anything but wonderful. Instead, it was a shocking, unexpected, fearful experience.
We are often surprised to read that that was their reaction because we are so familiar with the resurrection stories and the idea of resurrection itself. And we wonder why they weren’t instantly grateful to know that their teacher and Lord was alive again. But those people who were there at the time were on unfamiliar and disturbing ground and they were unable initially to see the wonder and glory of what had occurred.
And many people today who are not Christians would react in ways that are similar to the reactions of those women. Many would struggle with the whole idea that someone can rise again from the dead and would view this central Christian belief as a reason for rejecting, rather than accepting, Christianity.
So, what I would like to share with you this evening then are two things from this passage that suggest that Jesus did rise from the dead and two things that suggest why his rising is important for us today.
First, the reaction of the women suggests to us that there was nothing in the Judaism of their day that had prepared them for the idea that one person could rise from the dead. They were distressed and fearful, in part, because they had no way of understanding or comprehending what had happened. It was totally outside of any frame of reference that they had.
Most Palestinian Jews at the time believed that God would resurrect the bodies of the dead at the end of the age. When Jesus had spoken to the disciples about his own resurrection, it is probable that they would have understood him to have been meaning that he would rise again as part of this general resurrection at the end of the age. This belief in a general resurrection was not accepted by all Jews. The Sadducees, in particular, argued that there was no resurrection at all. But even where this belief in a general resurrection was held, there was never any thought that one person would rise ahead of everyone else.
The reaction of these women - bewilderment and fear – is entirely consistent with situations where we are confronted by things that are totally outside our way of understanding the world and life itself and which radically challenge beliefs which we had thought were unchallengeable. The idea that one person could rise from the dead was so far outside their understanding of life, death and God that they could not have invented it. And, if they had, then they would not have responded with astonishment and fear because they would have known where the idea had come from and would have wanted to have appeared confident in their claim. You don’t convince anyone by being confused and in hiding.
So, instead the reaction of these women suggests that something significant had occurred and that that significant something could only have been the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
The second factor in this story which suggests that Jesus did rise from the dead is the idea that it was women who first discovered his resurrection. The Judaism of their day, like most cultures at that time, was patriarchal. The testimony of women, particularly in a court of law, was either inadmissible or regarded as of lesser value than the testimony of men. If the disciples had wanted to make up a story about Jesus rising from the dead then they certainly wouldn’t have said that it was the women in their group that had discovered his resurrection.
It is interesting, in this context, that the first known pagan written critique of Christianity builds on the Gospels’ report of women as the first witnesses and proclaimers of Jesus’ resurrection. It is called The True Word and was written by the middle Platonist Celsus in A.D. 175. Celsus claims that a ‘hysterical’ female was the witness to Jesus’ resurrection. To Celsus’ patriarchal mind all women were unreliable witnesses because they were hysterical and as a result, he then discounts the claims of the Gospels about the resurrection.
Both these factors then can give us confidence that the resurrection stories are telling us about actual events because if they weren’t then the Gospel writers would not have written them as they have. If the stories about the resurrection had been made up, then in order to be convincing they would have had men as the first people to discover that the resurrection had occurred and those people discovering the resurrection would be portrayed as entirely confident and clear about what they had seen and heard instead of the portrayal that we actually have, one of confusion and fear.
These are not the only factors which give us confidence that these stories have the ring of truth but they are two that emerge clearly from this account of the resurrection in Mark’s Gospel. What of the meaning of the resurrection though? Why is it so important and how can it affect us today if we believe that it occurred?
Again, two ideas drawn from this account. First, the message of the young man to the women (verse 7) – “He is going … ahead of you”. Literally, this means that Jesus had gone to Galilee where he would show himself to the disciples when they followed him there. But, at another level, it indicates what Jesus’ resurrection means. We read in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus has been raised from death as the guarantee that we will also be raised from death. He is described as being the first fruits of those who have died. In rising from the dead, he has gone ahead of us into the new risen body and existence that we shall experience in future when Jesus returns to this earth to fully bring God’s Kingdom into existence here.
When Jesus walked the earth, he looked ahead to that future time when the Kingdom of God will be made perfect, and all suffering will come to an end. But he also announced that, because of him, there is a sense in which that Kingdom has already begun. When he healed sick people and brought good news to the poor it was a sign that the Kingdom had come. In the same way, when he overcame death by rising from the dead he became the first fruits of the Kingdom, an example of what we will all become in future.
Jesus wants us to be signs of God’s Kingdom in the same way that he was. He commanded us, his followers, to love in the way that he did. He wanted people to see us practically demonstrating love, so that we will clearly be recognised as men and women who belong to God. When Christians take action on behalf of the world’s poorest communities we not only put into practice the values of the Kingdom of God here and now but also become signs of what the Kingdom will be like when it is made perfect in eternity. That is what it means to pray, ‘Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.’
So, by the resurrection, Jesus has gone ahead of us in signing and establishing the Kingdom of God and calls us to follow where he leads. In this way, as the theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, the “resurrection of Christ does not mean a new possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility altogether for the world, for existence, and for history.” That’s the first indication of what resurrection means in this passage.
The second, takes us back to the women and their position in a patriarchal society. God deliberately chooses women to discover Jesus' resurrection because the Kingdom of God, of which the resurrection is the first fruits, is to be a place of equality and inclusion. In his ministry, Jesus consistently included in God’s Kingdom those people in Jewish society that were excluded – he included women in his followers, he brought lepers and possessed people back into the community by healing them, he ate and drank with tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes.
Therefore, it is significant that it is people who were thought of as being second class in the society of his day who become the first witnesses to his resurrection. In the Kingdom of God which Jesus’ resurrection inaugurates, no one is second class and this is why the Apostle Paul writes in his letters, “there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free men, between men and women; you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Just as we are called to be signs of God’s Kingdom in the way that we love, so we are also called to be signs of God’s Kingdom by the way in which we include those who are excluded in our day. In our churches we need to be able to demonstrate that we are all one in Christ Jesus by there being no difference in the way that we accept men and women, white and black, rich and poor, straight and gay, non-disabled and disabled, the settled and the migrant, people of faith and people of no faith. We are called to be a people of liberation who cross the divides erected by our society. Who, as Jurgen Moltmann has said, in solidarity enter “the brotherhood of those who, in their society, are visibly living in the shadow of the cross: the poor, the handicapped, the people society has rejected, the prisoners and the persecuted.”
Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of a new way of being human – a way of being human that ultimately knows no death, no grief, no crying, no pain, no inequality and no exclusion. Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of the healing and renewal of human beings, human society and the entire world. This is the meaning of the resurrection. This is where we, and our world, can be heading, if we get on board with God.
Delirious? - Our God Reigns (Forever His Truth Shall Remain).
To us, the resurrection is a wonderful event. One that we have been celebrating since Easter Sunday in hymns such as Jesus lives! and Thine be the glory risen, conquering Son. But to the women who first encountered the resurrection it was anything but wonderful. Instead, it was a shocking, unexpected, fearful experience.
We are often surprised to read that that was their reaction because we are so familiar with the resurrection stories and the idea of resurrection itself. And we wonder why they weren’t instantly grateful to know that their teacher and Lord was alive again. But those people who were there at the time were on unfamiliar and disturbing ground and they were unable initially to see the wonder and glory of what had occurred.
And many people today who are not Christians would react in ways that are similar to the reactions of those women. Many would struggle with the whole idea that someone can rise again from the dead and would view this central Christian belief as a reason for rejecting, rather than accepting, Christianity.
So, what I would like to share with you this evening then are two things from this passage that suggest that Jesus did rise from the dead and two things that suggest why his rising is important for us today.
First, the reaction of the women suggests to us that there was nothing in the Judaism of their day that had prepared them for the idea that one person could rise from the dead. They were distressed and fearful, in part, because they had no way of understanding or comprehending what had happened. It was totally outside of any frame of reference that they had.
Most Palestinian Jews at the time believed that God would resurrect the bodies of the dead at the end of the age. When Jesus had spoken to the disciples about his own resurrection, it is probable that they would have understood him to have been meaning that he would rise again as part of this general resurrection at the end of the age. This belief in a general resurrection was not accepted by all Jews. The Sadducees, in particular, argued that there was no resurrection at all. But even where this belief in a general resurrection was held, there was never any thought that one person would rise ahead of everyone else.
The reaction of these women - bewilderment and fear – is entirely consistent with situations where we are confronted by things that are totally outside our way of understanding the world and life itself and which radically challenge beliefs which we had thought were unchallengeable. The idea that one person could rise from the dead was so far outside their understanding of life, death and God that they could not have invented it. And, if they had, then they would not have responded with astonishment and fear because they would have known where the idea had come from and would have wanted to have appeared confident in their claim. You don’t convince anyone by being confused and in hiding.
So, instead the reaction of these women suggests that something significant had occurred and that that significant something could only have been the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
The second factor in this story which suggests that Jesus did rise from the dead is the idea that it was women who first discovered his resurrection. The Judaism of their day, like most cultures at that time, was patriarchal. The testimony of women, particularly in a court of law, was either inadmissible or regarded as of lesser value than the testimony of men. If the disciples had wanted to make up a story about Jesus rising from the dead then they certainly wouldn’t have said that it was the women in their group that had discovered his resurrection.
It is interesting, in this context, that the first known pagan written critique of Christianity builds on the Gospels’ report of women as the first witnesses and proclaimers of Jesus’ resurrection. It is called The True Word and was written by the middle Platonist Celsus in A.D. 175. Celsus claims that a ‘hysterical’ female was the witness to Jesus’ resurrection. To Celsus’ patriarchal mind all women were unreliable witnesses because they were hysterical and as a result, he then discounts the claims of the Gospels about the resurrection.
Both these factors then can give us confidence that the resurrection stories are telling us about actual events because if they weren’t then the Gospel writers would not have written them as they have. If the stories about the resurrection had been made up, then in order to be convincing they would have had men as the first people to discover that the resurrection had occurred and those people discovering the resurrection would be portrayed as entirely confident and clear about what they had seen and heard instead of the portrayal that we actually have, one of confusion and fear.
These are not the only factors which give us confidence that these stories have the ring of truth but they are two that emerge clearly from this account of the resurrection in Mark’s Gospel. What of the meaning of the resurrection though? Why is it so important and how can it affect us today if we believe that it occurred?
Again, two ideas drawn from this account. First, the message of the young man to the women (verse 7) – “He is going … ahead of you”. Literally, this means that Jesus had gone to Galilee where he would show himself to the disciples when they followed him there. But, at another level, it indicates what Jesus’ resurrection means. We read in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus has been raised from death as the guarantee that we will also be raised from death. He is described as being the first fruits of those who have died. In rising from the dead, he has gone ahead of us into the new risen body and existence that we shall experience in future when Jesus returns to this earth to fully bring God’s Kingdom into existence here.
When Jesus walked the earth, he looked ahead to that future time when the Kingdom of God will be made perfect, and all suffering will come to an end. But he also announced that, because of him, there is a sense in which that Kingdom has already begun. When he healed sick people and brought good news to the poor it was a sign that the Kingdom had come. In the same way, when he overcame death by rising from the dead he became the first fruits of the Kingdom, an example of what we will all become in future.
Jesus wants us to be signs of God’s Kingdom in the same way that he was. He commanded us, his followers, to love in the way that he did. He wanted people to see us practically demonstrating love, so that we will clearly be recognised as men and women who belong to God. When Christians take action on behalf of the world’s poorest communities we not only put into practice the values of the Kingdom of God here and now but also become signs of what the Kingdom will be like when it is made perfect in eternity. That is what it means to pray, ‘Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.’
So, by the resurrection, Jesus has gone ahead of us in signing and establishing the Kingdom of God and calls us to follow where he leads. In this way, as the theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, the “resurrection of Christ does not mean a new possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility altogether for the world, for existence, and for history.” That’s the first indication of what resurrection means in this passage.
The second, takes us back to the women and their position in a patriarchal society. God deliberately chooses women to discover Jesus' resurrection because the Kingdom of God, of which the resurrection is the first fruits, is to be a place of equality and inclusion. In his ministry, Jesus consistently included in God’s Kingdom those people in Jewish society that were excluded – he included women in his followers, he brought lepers and possessed people back into the community by healing them, he ate and drank with tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes.
Therefore, it is significant that it is people who were thought of as being second class in the society of his day who become the first witnesses to his resurrection. In the Kingdom of God which Jesus’ resurrection inaugurates, no one is second class and this is why the Apostle Paul writes in his letters, “there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free men, between men and women; you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Just as we are called to be signs of God’s Kingdom in the way that we love, so we are also called to be signs of God’s Kingdom by the way in which we include those who are excluded in our day. In our churches we need to be able to demonstrate that we are all one in Christ Jesus by there being no difference in the way that we accept men and women, white and black, rich and poor, straight and gay, non-disabled and disabled, the settled and the migrant, people of faith and people of no faith. We are called to be a people of liberation who cross the divides erected by our society. Who, as Jurgen Moltmann has said, in solidarity enter “the brotherhood of those who, in their society, are visibly living in the shadow of the cross: the poor, the handicapped, the people society has rejected, the prisoners and the persecuted.”
Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of a new way of being human – a way of being human that ultimately knows no death, no grief, no crying, no pain, no inequality and no exclusion. Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of the healing and renewal of human beings, human society and the entire world. This is the meaning of the resurrection. This is where we, and our world, can be heading, if we get on board with God.
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The best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness
Here's the Stewardship sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:
Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever you do, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.
The Christian life is so much more than how we gather together on Sunday; 98% of Christian disciples spend 95% of their time not in church. Everyday faith is all about how we express our Christian faith every day, in everyday situations, Monday to Saturday, not just on Sunday. It is about where and how we encounter God as we go about our lives and how we express that to others in our words and actions. It is found in our joys and cares, in our challenges and conflicts, in our work and rest, in our workplaces and homes, in our friendships and relationships as we lean into God’s presence and guidance.
Our faith connects with the wider community through our everyday lives and commitments. Whether because of our paid work, our family roles, or our community or political involvements, we are all intimately involved in the wider community. God calls us to do so as people of faith.
God knows each one of us intimately and prepares us for our calling before we are born, so we need to trust that our interests, skills and talents are gifts from God to be used for his glory. Then, as St Paul wrote to the Colossians, whatever we do, in word or deed, we do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever our task, he wrote, we are to put ourselves into it, as done for the Lord (Colossians 3.23). The poet George Herbert wrote that this way of thinking is the “famous stone / That turneth all to gold.” So, this is where we begin with our calling, looking carefully at our natural interests, abilities and talents and putting them to use where we are doing what we do in the name of the Lord Jesus and for his glory.
Then, we develop and grow how we act as Christian people in our everyday lives. Living as a Christian is like getting undressed and then dressed again. The picture we are given in Colossians 3.12-17 is of taking off our old clothes (our old way of life – our vices) and putting on new clothes (a new and different way of life – Christian virtues).
This is something that we have to consciously choose to do. Getting dressed is not usually something we do without thinking about it. We take time when shopping to find clothes which we think suit us and generally we do not just put on the first thing that comes to hand with whatever the next item is. Instead, we match items until we are satisfied that we will look as we wish.
The new clothes that we are to put on as Christians are compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. That implies that the old clothes we take off would be their opposites; hatred, unkindness, pride, roughness, and impatience. Also implied is the idea that compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience do not come naturally to us, so we have to make a conscious change. Tom Wright has said that “the point about “vice”, the opposite of “virtue”, is that, whereas virtue requires moral effort, all that has to happen for vice to take hold is for people to coast along in neutral: moral laziness leads directly to moral deformation (hence the insidious power of TV which constantly encourages effortless going-with-the-flow). The thing about virtue is that it requires Thought and Effort . . .”
So, change begins with a conscious decision, not a magical or instant makeover. St Paul writes in Romans 12. 2, “let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.” We know this is so because we only make changes in our lives when we break bad habits and form good habits. Tom Wright, again, “The point about the word “virtue” – if we can recapture it in its strong sense – is that it refers, not so much to “doing the right things”, but to the forming of habits and hence of moral character ... All behaviour is habit-forming … we [can] use the word “virtue” and “virtuous” simply to mean “behaviour we have had to work at which has formed our character so that at last it becomes natural and spontaneous to live like that.”
We can use a different illustration to see how this works in practice. Tom Wright says, “The illustration I sometimes use is that when you learn to drive a car, the idea is that you will quickly come to do most of the things “automatically”, changing gear, using the brakes, etc., and that you will develop the “virtues” of a good driver, looking out for other road users, not allowing yourself to be distracted, etc.; but that the highways agencies construct crash barriers and so on so that even if you don’t drive appropriately damage is limited; and also those “rumble strips”, as we call them in the UK, which make a loud noise on the tyre if you even drift to the edge of the roadway.
“Rules” and “the Moral Law” are like those crash barriers and rumble strips. Ideally, we won’t need them because we will have learned the character-strengths that St Paul lists for the Colossian Christians and will drive down the moral highway appropriately. But the rules are there so that when we start to drift, we are at once alerted and can take appropriate action – particularly figuring out what strengths need more work to stop it happening again.”
So, to sum up, Christian virtue comes “as the fruit of the thought-out, Spirit-led, moral effort of putting to death one kind of behaviour and painstakingly learning a different one.” When the Spirit is at work in us in this way, “we become more human, not less – which means we have to think more, not less, and have to make more moral effort, not less.”
What habits do we need to break and what habits do we need to build as a result of what we have thought about today? “So then, you must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience … and to all these qualities add love, which binds all things together in perfect unity.”
The final week of our Stewardship month is to do with our community involvements. The Five Marks of Mission include: Tending - responding to human need by loving service; and Transforming - seeking to transform the unjust structures of society. Our Stewardship Pack suggests many things we can do to transform our community including:
• Volunteer with Project 58.7 or another voluntary organisation.
• Help at the Gateway Project.
• Pray regularly for your work and community.
• Make creative suggestions in your work.
• Write to your MP and/or Councillors about issues of international, national and local concern.
Can you commit to doing any of these or others mentioned in the pack? When we do, we are having a ministry of presence and engagement. Presence is what we often talk about here as ‘Being With’:
“The word ‘presence' points to our incarnational theology and the word ‘engagement’ to our pentecostal theology ... Presence can be largely passive, a simple acceptance that this is where we are, without any meaningful recognition of the relationship between our presence, the presence of others and the real presence of Christ who seeks constantly to bring human beings into relationship with each other in love. But the Spirit of God is constantly seeking to move us on from the fact of presence to the action of engagement – engagement as a public sign of our commitment to the wellbeing of the world and to the discovery of the Kingdom in the midst of the places where we are present.”
Jonathan Sacks has said: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good ... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.”
David Ford has expanded on the opportunities that community engagement provides including the: “Opportunity to learn more about other human beings around us, especially those sincerely engaged in seeking God. Opportunity to present our Christian understandings of God by the lives we live and the words we speak. Opportunity to contribute to the common good and above all, opportunity to learn more about trusting in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” We can grasp these opportunities as we take up the challenge of our Stewardship Pack to be involved transforming our community and as we follow St Paul’s advice do everything that we do in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever you do, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.
The Christian life is so much more than how we gather together on Sunday; 98% of Christian disciples spend 95% of their time not in church. Everyday faith is all about how we express our Christian faith every day, in everyday situations, Monday to Saturday, not just on Sunday. It is about where and how we encounter God as we go about our lives and how we express that to others in our words and actions. It is found in our joys and cares, in our challenges and conflicts, in our work and rest, in our workplaces and homes, in our friendships and relationships as we lean into God’s presence and guidance.
Our faith connects with the wider community through our everyday lives and commitments. Whether because of our paid work, our family roles, or our community or political involvements, we are all intimately involved in the wider community. God calls us to do so as people of faith.
God knows each one of us intimately and prepares us for our calling before we are born, so we need to trust that our interests, skills and talents are gifts from God to be used for his glory. Then, as St Paul wrote to the Colossians, whatever we do, in word or deed, we do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever our task, he wrote, we are to put ourselves into it, as done for the Lord (Colossians 3.23). The poet George Herbert wrote that this way of thinking is the “famous stone / That turneth all to gold.” So, this is where we begin with our calling, looking carefully at our natural interests, abilities and talents and putting them to use where we are doing what we do in the name of the Lord Jesus and for his glory.
Then, we develop and grow how we act as Christian people in our everyday lives. Living as a Christian is like getting undressed and then dressed again. The picture we are given in Colossians 3.12-17 is of taking off our old clothes (our old way of life – our vices) and putting on new clothes (a new and different way of life – Christian virtues).
This is something that we have to consciously choose to do. Getting dressed is not usually something we do without thinking about it. We take time when shopping to find clothes which we think suit us and generally we do not just put on the first thing that comes to hand with whatever the next item is. Instead, we match items until we are satisfied that we will look as we wish.
The new clothes that we are to put on as Christians are compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. That implies that the old clothes we take off would be their opposites; hatred, unkindness, pride, roughness, and impatience. Also implied is the idea that compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience do not come naturally to us, so we have to make a conscious change. Tom Wright has said that “the point about “vice”, the opposite of “virtue”, is that, whereas virtue requires moral effort, all that has to happen for vice to take hold is for people to coast along in neutral: moral laziness leads directly to moral deformation (hence the insidious power of TV which constantly encourages effortless going-with-the-flow). The thing about virtue is that it requires Thought and Effort . . .”
So, change begins with a conscious decision, not a magical or instant makeover. St Paul writes in Romans 12. 2, “let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.” We know this is so because we only make changes in our lives when we break bad habits and form good habits. Tom Wright, again, “The point about the word “virtue” – if we can recapture it in its strong sense – is that it refers, not so much to “doing the right things”, but to the forming of habits and hence of moral character ... All behaviour is habit-forming … we [can] use the word “virtue” and “virtuous” simply to mean “behaviour we have had to work at which has formed our character so that at last it becomes natural and spontaneous to live like that.”
We can use a different illustration to see how this works in practice. Tom Wright says, “The illustration I sometimes use is that when you learn to drive a car, the idea is that you will quickly come to do most of the things “automatically”, changing gear, using the brakes, etc., and that you will develop the “virtues” of a good driver, looking out for other road users, not allowing yourself to be distracted, etc.; but that the highways agencies construct crash barriers and so on so that even if you don’t drive appropriately damage is limited; and also those “rumble strips”, as we call them in the UK, which make a loud noise on the tyre if you even drift to the edge of the roadway.
“Rules” and “the Moral Law” are like those crash barriers and rumble strips. Ideally, we won’t need them because we will have learned the character-strengths that St Paul lists for the Colossian Christians and will drive down the moral highway appropriately. But the rules are there so that when we start to drift, we are at once alerted and can take appropriate action – particularly figuring out what strengths need more work to stop it happening again.”
So, to sum up, Christian virtue comes “as the fruit of the thought-out, Spirit-led, moral effort of putting to death one kind of behaviour and painstakingly learning a different one.” When the Spirit is at work in us in this way, “we become more human, not less – which means we have to think more, not less, and have to make more moral effort, not less.”
What habits do we need to break and what habits do we need to build as a result of what we have thought about today? “So then, you must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience … and to all these qualities add love, which binds all things together in perfect unity.”
The final week of our Stewardship month is to do with our community involvements. The Five Marks of Mission include: Tending - responding to human need by loving service; and Transforming - seeking to transform the unjust structures of society. Our Stewardship Pack suggests many things we can do to transform our community including:
• Volunteer with Project 58.7 or another voluntary organisation.
• Help at the Gateway Project.
• Pray regularly for your work and community.
• Make creative suggestions in your work.
• Write to your MP and/or Councillors about issues of international, national and local concern.
Can you commit to doing any of these or others mentioned in the pack? When we do, we are having a ministry of presence and engagement. Presence is what we often talk about here as ‘Being With’:
“The word ‘presence' points to our incarnational theology and the word ‘engagement’ to our pentecostal theology ... Presence can be largely passive, a simple acceptance that this is where we are, without any meaningful recognition of the relationship between our presence, the presence of others and the real presence of Christ who seeks constantly to bring human beings into relationship with each other in love. But the Spirit of God is constantly seeking to move us on from the fact of presence to the action of engagement – engagement as a public sign of our commitment to the wellbeing of the world and to the discovery of the Kingdom in the midst of the places where we are present.”
Jonathan Sacks has said: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good ... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.”
David Ford has expanded on the opportunities that community engagement provides including the: “Opportunity to learn more about other human beings around us, especially those sincerely engaged in seeking God. Opportunity to present our Christian understandings of God by the lives we live and the words we speak. Opportunity to contribute to the common good and above all, opportunity to learn more about trusting in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” We can grasp these opportunities as we take up the challenge of our Stewardship Pack to be involved transforming our community and as we follow St Paul’s advice do everything that we do in the name of the Lord Jesus.
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Bob Dylan - What Can I Do For You?
Saturday, 17 May 2025
Windows on the world (519)
Dublin, 2025
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Bap Kennedy - The Beautiful Country.
Sunday, 11 May 2025
Hope: The light of the promised future that is to come
Here's the reflection that I shared during Reflective Evening Prayer this evening at St Mary's Runwell.
The readings were Lamentations 3:19-33 and 'Hope' is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson.
Disasters are frequent occurrences, “some natural, many more due to man’s ham-fisted neglect of the planet or our inability to get by without recourse to violence.” “The result is always the need for a new start, and how we respond and rebuild colours an uncertain future more than ever. Yet, for all the carnage and chaos that catastrophes bring, an odd truth is apparent: disasters do give us the chance to shape things differently.”
As a result, as Terry Eagleton writes in Hope without Optimism, “the most authentic hope is whatever can be salvaged, stripped of guarantees from a general dissolution.” It is whatever survives a general ruin. This is where we find the writer of Lamentations; bowed down with the reality of exile, yet trusting that it is in the nature of God to bring a new beginning from this disastrous affliction which is “wormwood and gall” to him. Similarly, Emily Dickinson claims that, hope is heard most sweetly in the Gale, “the chillest land” and “on the strangest Sea”.
Hope, Eagleton writes, “is to be found in the unfinished nature of the actual, discernible as a hollow at its heart.” “Potentiality is what articulates the present with the future, and thus lays down the material infrastructure of hope.” Hope is about a vision for a future that is different from the present; one which therefore requires imagination and vision. For Christians that vision is of the kingdom of God; which has begun to be realised but is still to come in its full reality.
As a result, in Theology of Hope Jürgen Moltmann argues that “Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves with things as they happen to be. That we do not reconcile ourselves, that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality, is due to our unquenchable hope. This hope keeps man unreconciled, until the great day of the fulfilment of all the promises of God.
The Church, then, is intended to be “the source of continual new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come.” Our hope should “provide inexhaustible resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love.” It should constantly provoke and produce thinking of an anticipatory kind in love to humanity and the world, “in order to give shape to the newly dawning possibilities in the light of the promised future, in order as far as possible to create here the best that is possible, because what is promised is within the bounds of possibility.” “Thus it will constantly arouse the ‘passion for the possible’, inventiveness and elasticity in self-transformation, in breaking with the old and coming to terms with the new.” The Christian hope should always have “a revolutionary effect in this sense on the intellectual history of the society affected by it.”
“Wherever that happens, Christianity embraces its true nature and becomes a witness of the future of Christ.”
The readings were Lamentations 3:19-33 and 'Hope' is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson.
Disasters are frequent occurrences, “some natural, many more due to man’s ham-fisted neglect of the planet or our inability to get by without recourse to violence.” “The result is always the need for a new start, and how we respond and rebuild colours an uncertain future more than ever. Yet, for all the carnage and chaos that catastrophes bring, an odd truth is apparent: disasters do give us the chance to shape things differently.”
As a result, as Terry Eagleton writes in Hope without Optimism, “the most authentic hope is whatever can be salvaged, stripped of guarantees from a general dissolution.” It is whatever survives a general ruin. This is where we find the writer of Lamentations; bowed down with the reality of exile, yet trusting that it is in the nature of God to bring a new beginning from this disastrous affliction which is “wormwood and gall” to him. Similarly, Emily Dickinson claims that, hope is heard most sweetly in the Gale, “the chillest land” and “on the strangest Sea”.
Hope, Eagleton writes, “is to be found in the unfinished nature of the actual, discernible as a hollow at its heart.” “Potentiality is what articulates the present with the future, and thus lays down the material infrastructure of hope.” Hope is about a vision for a future that is different from the present; one which therefore requires imagination and vision. For Christians that vision is of the kingdom of God; which has begun to be realised but is still to come in its full reality.
As a result, in Theology of Hope Jürgen Moltmann argues that “Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves with things as they happen to be. That we do not reconcile ourselves, that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality, is due to our unquenchable hope. This hope keeps man unreconciled, until the great day of the fulfilment of all the promises of God.
The Church, then, is intended to be “the source of continual new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come.” Our hope should “provide inexhaustible resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love.” It should constantly provoke and produce thinking of an anticipatory kind in love to humanity and the world, “in order to give shape to the newly dawning possibilities in the light of the promised future, in order as far as possible to create here the best that is possible, because what is promised is within the bounds of possibility.” “Thus it will constantly arouse the ‘passion for the possible’, inventiveness and elasticity in self-transformation, in breaking with the old and coming to terms with the new.” The Christian hope should always have “a revolutionary effect in this sense on the intellectual history of the society affected by it.”
“Wherever that happens, Christianity embraces its true nature and becomes a witness of the future of Christ.”
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Van Morrison - These Are The Days.
Stewardship: CreationCare
Here's the Stewardship sermon I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:
Animals and plants were first domesticated across a region stretching north from modern-day Israel, Palestine and Lebanon to Syria and eastern Turkey, then east into, northern Iraq and north-western Iran, and south into Mesopotamia; a region known as the Fertile Crescent. This was in the Neolithic Period, also known as the New Stone Age.
It is arguable that this is the period of human history that is described by the creation story told in Genesis 2 (Genesis 2.4b-9, 15-17). Ernest Lucas notes that Eden is located at the place where the Tigris and Euphrates rise – which is in the upland plateaux of Turkey and that the word ‘Eden’ may come from a Babylonian word meaning ‘plateaux’. He also notes that Genesis 4 tells of a descendent of Adam called Tubal-Cain, who was the first person to use metal to make things. That means that Adam must have used only stone implements. Genesis 2 tells us that Adam was a gardener and that he tamed animals. All of which adds up to a picture of Adam as what we would call a ‘New Stone Age man’.
This is the point in history when human beings begin, by a combination of social organisation (sociality) and individual creativity (development), to have a choice about how we behave ethically. Prior to this point human beings had been hunters, migrants dependent on the movements of their prey and participants in the natural ‘kill or be killed’ processes of a nature that is ‘red in tooth and claw.’ However, as human beings developed agriculturally and socially, the killing of animals and other human beings was no longer essential.
So, the biblical creation stories locate the image of God in the ability of human beings to be consciously social and creative. Albert Wolters comments that: “Adam and Eve, as the first married couple, represent the beginnings of societal life; their task of tending the garden, the primary task of agriculture, represents the beginnings of cultural life." (Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview)
In speaking of Genesis 1, Wolters suggests that: ‘There is a process of development and evolution as the earthly realm assumes, step by step, the contours of the variegated world of our experience. On the sixth day this process is completed with the creation of [human beings], and on the seventh day God rests from his labors. This is not the end of the development of creation, however.’
Creation, once made, is not something that remains a static quality. ‘There is, as it were, a growing up (though not in a biological sense), an unfolding of creation.’ ‘Although God has withdrawn from the work of creation, he has put an image of himself on the earth with a mandate to continue. The earth had been completely unformed and empty; in the six-day process of development God had formed it and filled it – but not completely. People … now carry on the work of development: by being fruitful they must fill it even more; by subduing it they must form it even more. [Hu]mankind, as God’s representatives on earth, carry on where God left off.’
Human development of the created earth is societal and cultural in nature. We are to use our organisational abilities in community and our creativity to cultivate creation (to make it fruitful) and to care for it (to maintain and sustain it), just as God told Adam to work the ground and keep it in order. As God’s image bearers we have a responsibility to care for and work with the good environment God has created.
God’s first words to men and women, were that they would rule over ’the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’ in a way that reflects his own image. Not just God’s power, but his unselfish love, mercy and tender compassion. Similarly, when Jesus points us in the Sermon on the Mount to reflect on God’s care for the birds and plants, then he is also flagging that we, too, should care for them as well. Our focus shouldn’t simply be on our needs or wants but on God’s kingdom, including the world he made and the creatures and plants within it. We have been given a special task – to look after the rest of what God has made (Genesis 1: 26–28; Gen. 2:15). This is not an optional extra for a few keen environmentalists, but a fundamental part of what it means to be human.
Today we are seeing massive climate change and increased destruction and pollution of creation. We are treating God’s gift badly and it is the poorest in our world who will suffer most from that reality. Tragically, our rule over creation has been characterized by cruelty, greed and short-sightedness, but this was clearly not God’s intention. If we desire to obey God, then we must look for ways in which we can be good and responsible stewards of the natural world by reducing our environmental impact and raising awareness of the environmental challenges we face today as a global community.
One of the Five Marks of Mission is to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth. One of the ways we have worked towards that has been to take part in the EcoChurch initiative run by A Rocha. This provides a framework that support our churches and our leadership in taking practical action on caring for God’s earth. The EcoChurch survey covers five key areas of church life: Worship and teaching; Buildings and energy; Land and nature; Community and global engagement; and Lifestyle.
Our Stewardship Pack helps us think about our lifestyle by suggesting many things that we can do to treasure our environment. These include, for example:
Being a good steward means caring for and conserving the world in which we live and the resources within because to do otherwise selfishly uses up those resources for ourselves and alters the natural cycle of life in ways that harm the world and all that lives on it. We will, therefore, be encouraging all of us, as we have done previously, to look again at the actions we can take to show responsibility by caring for this world, rather than acting in ways that dominate and exploit the natural world.
Let us pray: Lord, grant us the wisdom to care for the earth and till it. Help us to act now for the good of future generations and all your creatures. Help us to become instruments of a new creation, founded on the covenant of your love. Amen.
Animals and plants were first domesticated across a region stretching north from modern-day Israel, Palestine and Lebanon to Syria and eastern Turkey, then east into, northern Iraq and north-western Iran, and south into Mesopotamia; a region known as the Fertile Crescent. This was in the Neolithic Period, also known as the New Stone Age.
It is arguable that this is the period of human history that is described by the creation story told in Genesis 2 (Genesis 2.4b-9, 15-17). Ernest Lucas notes that Eden is located at the place where the Tigris and Euphrates rise – which is in the upland plateaux of Turkey and that the word ‘Eden’ may come from a Babylonian word meaning ‘plateaux’. He also notes that Genesis 4 tells of a descendent of Adam called Tubal-Cain, who was the first person to use metal to make things. That means that Adam must have used only stone implements. Genesis 2 tells us that Adam was a gardener and that he tamed animals. All of which adds up to a picture of Adam as what we would call a ‘New Stone Age man’.
This is the point in history when human beings begin, by a combination of social organisation (sociality) and individual creativity (development), to have a choice about how we behave ethically. Prior to this point human beings had been hunters, migrants dependent on the movements of their prey and participants in the natural ‘kill or be killed’ processes of a nature that is ‘red in tooth and claw.’ However, as human beings developed agriculturally and socially, the killing of animals and other human beings was no longer essential.
So, the biblical creation stories locate the image of God in the ability of human beings to be consciously social and creative. Albert Wolters comments that: “Adam and Eve, as the first married couple, represent the beginnings of societal life; their task of tending the garden, the primary task of agriculture, represents the beginnings of cultural life." (Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview)
In speaking of Genesis 1, Wolters suggests that: ‘There is a process of development and evolution as the earthly realm assumes, step by step, the contours of the variegated world of our experience. On the sixth day this process is completed with the creation of [human beings], and on the seventh day God rests from his labors. This is not the end of the development of creation, however.’
Creation, once made, is not something that remains a static quality. ‘There is, as it were, a growing up (though not in a biological sense), an unfolding of creation.’ ‘Although God has withdrawn from the work of creation, he has put an image of himself on the earth with a mandate to continue. The earth had been completely unformed and empty; in the six-day process of development God had formed it and filled it – but not completely. People … now carry on the work of development: by being fruitful they must fill it even more; by subduing it they must form it even more. [Hu]mankind, as God’s representatives on earth, carry on where God left off.’
Human development of the created earth is societal and cultural in nature. We are to use our organisational abilities in community and our creativity to cultivate creation (to make it fruitful) and to care for it (to maintain and sustain it), just as God told Adam to work the ground and keep it in order. As God’s image bearers we have a responsibility to care for and work with the good environment God has created.
God’s first words to men and women, were that they would rule over ’the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’ in a way that reflects his own image. Not just God’s power, but his unselfish love, mercy and tender compassion. Similarly, when Jesus points us in the Sermon on the Mount to reflect on God’s care for the birds and plants, then he is also flagging that we, too, should care for them as well. Our focus shouldn’t simply be on our needs or wants but on God’s kingdom, including the world he made and the creatures and plants within it. We have been given a special task – to look after the rest of what God has made (Genesis 1: 26–28; Gen. 2:15). This is not an optional extra for a few keen environmentalists, but a fundamental part of what it means to be human.
Today we are seeing massive climate change and increased destruction and pollution of creation. We are treating God’s gift badly and it is the poorest in our world who will suffer most from that reality. Tragically, our rule over creation has been characterized by cruelty, greed and short-sightedness, but this was clearly not God’s intention. If we desire to obey God, then we must look for ways in which we can be good and responsible stewards of the natural world by reducing our environmental impact and raising awareness of the environmental challenges we face today as a global community.
One of the Five Marks of Mission is to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth. One of the ways we have worked towards that has been to take part in the EcoChurch initiative run by A Rocha. This provides a framework that support our churches and our leadership in taking practical action on caring for God’s earth. The EcoChurch survey covers five key areas of church life: Worship and teaching; Buildings and energy; Land and nature; Community and global engagement; and Lifestyle.
Our Stewardship Pack helps us think about our lifestyle by suggesting many things that we can do to treasure our environment. These include, for example:
- Share transport, walk, use a bike or public transport.
- Turn the heating thermostat down by 1°C.
- Reduce the time that the heating is on by 15 minutes.
- Install low-energy light bulbs or LED lights.
Being a good steward means caring for and conserving the world in which we live and the resources within because to do otherwise selfishly uses up those resources for ourselves and alters the natural cycle of life in ways that harm the world and all that lives on it. We will, therefore, be encouraging all of us, as we have done previously, to look again at the actions we can take to show responsibility by caring for this world, rather than acting in ways that dominate and exploit the natural world.
Let us pray: Lord, grant us the wisdom to care for the earth and till it. Help us to act now for the good of future generations and all your creatures. Help us to become instruments of a new creation, founded on the covenant of your love. Amen.
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Cat Stevens - Morning Has Broken.
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