Become fools so that you may become wise

Here's the sermon that I shared with our Mothers' Union branch members during their pre-TGM Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

A wise person once said, “There is only one way to acquire wisdom. But when it comes to making a fool of yourself, you have your choice of thousands of different ways.” In our NT reading today ( 1 Corinthians 3.18-end), St Paul says “If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” So, what is the wisdom that we are to seek and how do we acquire it?

In his letter, Jesus’ brother James states, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (1.5). Wisdom is a gift given by God that must be wholeheartedly sought and asked for. Once received, it must be relied upon to help one persevere, live a godly life, and have hope. More than just insight and good judgment, wisdom is “the endowment of heart and mind which is needed for the right conduct of life.” (http://www.galaxie.com/article/atj29-0-03)

James also helpfully distinguishes between Christian wisdom and that of the worldly-wise. The worldly-wise are full of selfish ambition, eager to get on, asserting their own rights. God reckons a person wise when s/he puts selfishness aside and shows disinterested concern for others. This kind of wisdom is seen in a person’s personality and behaviour – not in mere intellectual ability. Accordingly - and this is one of the main themes of James’ letter – genuine faith in Christ always spills over into the rest of life. It affects basic attitudes to yourself, other people, and life in general meaning that there should be no discrepancy between belief and action. (The Lion Handbook to the Bible)

Secular philosophy tends to measure everything by human beings, and comes to doubt whether wisdom is to be found at all. But the Old Testament with its motto – ‘the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom’ – turns the world the right way up, with God at its head, his wisdom the creative and ordering principle that runs through every part; and human beings, disciplined and taught by that wisdom, finding life and fulfilment in his perfect will. Knowledge in its full sense is a relationship with God, dependent on revelation or wisdom and inseparable from character or discipline.

Philosophy means the love of wisdom but we are not talking here about a detached, academic or ivory tower style love of wisdom; instead we are speaking of insights which come from hard graft, wisdom from experience tested in the fire. So, for the Bible’s wisdom to really make sense we have to take and use it in everyday life; to apply to our Monday to Saturday lives rather than keeping it bottled up on Sundays alone.

Wisdom comes as we make a habit of reflecting on daily life recognising that God is to be found there. As David Adam has written:

“If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

The second source of wisdom is Jesus himself. What is said of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is also said of Jesus in John 1. James Dunn puts it succinctly: "What pre-Christian Judaism said of Wisdom … Paul and the others say of Jesus. The role that Proverbs … ascribe to Wisdom, these earliest Christians ascribe to Jesus." (Christology in the Making)

‘The New Testament teaches a “wisdom Christology” in various passages, indicating that Jesus is the fulfilment of this portrait of wisdom (see 1 Corinthians 1:24, 30; Colossians 2:3). The connections between Proverbs 8 and John 1 are particularly important: Wisdom is “from the beginning” (8:23), as is the Word that is with God; wisdom is the agent of creation (8:27-31), as is the Word (John 1:3); wisdom is “begotten” by Yahweh (8:24), as is the Word (John 1:18).’ (Peter J. Leithart)

This means that ‘Christians seek and find all the things Wisdom offers in Christ.’ Wisdom makes plans and carries them out. Wisdom helps kings to govern and rulers to make good laws which bring honour and prosperity to their nations because they walk the way of righteousness and follow the paths of justice (Proverbs 8. 11 - 21). Jesus, the Wisdom of God, also enables all these things to happen.

‘Wisdom was [God’s] agent to create the world, and through Wisdom, kings establish boundaries and create worlds (cf. Ecclesiastes 2:1-11); and Jesus is the Wisdom of God who equips us to form our worlds after the pattern of God’s Word and to re-form the whole world after the pattern of His kingdom. Jesus as the Wisdom of God does not rescue us from responsibility for the world, but equips us to be [righteous leaders].’

So, we are called to become wise but not with the wisdom of the world. Instead, let us beg for knowledge and plead for insight of God. Let us look for it as hard as we would for silver or some hidden treasure. If we do, we will know what it means to fear the Lord and we will succeed in learning about God because it is the Lord who gives wisdom; from him come knowledge and understanding. May it be so for us too. Amen.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iona - Wisdom.

The ground we are standing on is holy

Here's the sermon I shared at St Mary's Runwell this morning:

"A man named Moses is tending his sheep in the land of Midian when he comes across a burning bush. He moves closer to see more and hears the voice of God, speaking to him about his people and their need to be delivered from the land of Egypt. God tells Moses to take off his sandals, for the ground he is standing on is holy.” (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)

Holy Ground is an art installation by Paul Hobbs which includes a collection of shoes and stories from Christians all around the world. The stories are short statements about what it means for each person to believe in Christ in their particular situation. Among those represented are: a thief, a refugee, the despised, the rejected – people who Jesus specially sought out – as well as those who have known great opportunity, wealth and success. There are those who are beautiful, those who are disabled, those struggling to make a living and raise a family, those who have known great loss and tragedy, and those asking the deep questions of life. All have encountered the living God, arriving at a place of holy ground; where they must, metaphorically at least, remove their shoes in acknowledgement of God’s holiness.

Some contributors are persecuted and despised for their faith, yet retain confidence in the living God. Several people need to be anonymous due to the lack of religious freedom in their lands. For others, anonymity allows them to speak more easily. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5/10).

For some the idea of giving up their shoes for this project seemed amusing and culturally odd. For others it was costly to give their only pair of shoes in exchange for another. For some it was an honour to be featured in this way, to have their story told to represent others from their situation. For many, it was an expression of thankfulness to be able to share their stories with others.

At the burning bush, God said to Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3/2-5). Similarly, acknowledging God’s holiness is the beginning of life as a Christian.

What would your story be of metaphorically taking off your sandals in acknowledgement of God’s holiness?

Hobbs goes on to say that “as a believer follows Jesus Christ, he or she finds that this holy God is also a servant king, humbly and lovingly attending to one’s needs, just as when he washed his disciples feet (John 13/3-5).

As testified in many of the stories, Christians are encouraged to bring this gospel to others with “feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6/14-15) and thus they realise the prophecy of Isaiah, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation” (Isaiah 52/7).”

So he “trusts that this collection of shoes and stories will show the rich variety of believers across the world, their strength of faith despite hardship, and their joy in knowing Christ. The collection also demonstrates God’s love to all types of people, and is a testimony of how the gospel has spread - often at great cost - throughout the world over the last two thousand years, and how it is reaching every part of the globe.

Please pray for people like these – many of whom make great sacrifices and take great risks to follow Christ where they live.” In this way he reminds us of those, such as Christians in North Iraq at present, who need our prayers, our giving and our action on their behalf. He says, “I am struck, in looking at these shoes, by Jesus’ words, “Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mark 10/31).”

Here is a very different figure; this time a sculpture by the Canadian artist David Robinson. Irena Tippett writes: “Dressed in his finest uniform (suit, tie, pants perfectly pressed) the bronze figure would blend in well with the teeming businessmen of the city. He is tidy. His hair is groomed. Not too young, not too old, he is in his prime, at the top of his game. One expects his head to be held high and it is. Is he, like everyone else, focused on the horizon of his ambition?

Thousands might note in passing that this is no hero, no grand general and no great statesman; in fact the crowds of the morning rush might not find him notable at all. Yet, though in business there is never a minute to spare, allowing him even a moment’s notice would pay off a hundredfold. Would some turn aside and see that he is not rushing as they are? Would anyone take time to look at his hands, to look at his feet?

Bare feet. What has caused this perfectly dressed businessman to humbly remove his shoes? In the stillness of the erect figure, face looking upward, we do not see what he sees but we can perceive a heavenly and personal encounter. Perhaps it is a gesture of repentance that he holds his shoes so lightly?”

These details should bring to mind that “man of another era who similarly, while busy at his workday job, had an encounter which changed his life forever.” As we have heard, “while minding his father-in-law’s sheep in the desert, this man came upon a contradiction: a green bush aflame but not consumed. He could have hastened on his way but for some reason did not.”

“As the story goes, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, he called to him from out of the bush by name, saying, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

It is by no means certain that everyone would catch the allusion to Moses’ powerful call in the wilderness or know how in that place he met the living God face to face. Nevertheless, David Robinson’s sculpture speaks clearly. Today, under the bare feet of his everyday man, there is holy ground.

Like Barbra Streisand in her song ‘On Holy Ground’ we’re much more comfortable with the concept of God’s being limited to churches or other sacred spaces. Yet the universal message of the sculpture is clear: the whole world is potentially holy ground. Look how the globe extends beneath those shoeless feet.”

Reflecting on this sculpture Irena Tippett concludes, “So here is the truth: There is no time or place immune to the intrusion (if you will) of the living God. Even in a city strident with buying and selling, God is able to reveal himself to people. And a corollary is this: There is no one immune to an encounter with him. Through Jesus Christ God’s great mercy extends to all who hear his voice.”

American Pastor Rob Bell makes a similar point: "Moses has been tending his sheep in this region for forty years. How many times has he passed by this spot? How many times has he stood in this exact place? And now God tells him the ground is holy?

Has the ground been holy the whole time and Moses is just becoming aware of it for the first time?

Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we are moving so fast and returning so many calls and writing so many emails and having such long lists to get done that we miss it?" (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)

One of my favourite quote comes from David Adam. You will no doubt have heard me use it before, but it bears repeating: “If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

So, in the words of Woody Guthrie:

“Take off, take off your shoes
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
Take off, take off your shoes
The spot you’re standing, its holy ground

These words I heard in my burning bush
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
I heard my fiery voice speak to me
This spot you’re standing, it’s holy ground

That spot is holy holy ground
That place you stand it’s holy ground
This place you tread, it’s holy ground
God made this place his holy ground

Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground

Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground

Every spot it’s holy ground
Every little inch it’s holy ground
Every grain of dirt it’s holy ground
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Klezmatics - Holy Ground.

Love came down at Christmas

Here's the sermon I shared at St Catherine's Wickford for Midnight Mass and at St Mary's Runwell in their Christmas Day Eucharist:

In a previous parish, a mosaic of the word ‘Love’, that had been hanging at the East End of the church for several years, was blown down overnight in strong winds at Christmas time. For us, at the time, it was a literal reminder that love came down at Christmas.

Christina Rossetti’s wonderful carol, from which that phrase comes, focuses on the Christ-child as the ultimate expression of love:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and to all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

Through these words, she reminds us firstly that God is love. As the Apostle John wrote, “God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him. This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven” (1 John 4. 9 & 10). And, again, “This is how we know what love is: Christ gave his life for us (1 John 3. 16).”

But Rossetti also reminds us that the incarnation, God become human, is as much a sign of love for us as is Christ’s crucifixion. This is what she means by that marvellous phrase “Love came down at Christmas”.

But what does it mean that love came down? When I run Quiet Days on everyday prayer, I often use a prayer by David Adam which provides a clear answer to this question.

Escalator prayer

As I ascend this stair
I pray for all who are in despair

All who have been betrayed
All who are dismayed
All who are distressed
All who feel depressed
All ill and in pain
All who are driven insane
All whose hope has flown
All who are alone
All homeless on the street
All who with danger meet

Lord, who came down to share our plight
Lift them into your love and light

(David Adam, PowerLines: Celtic Prayers about Work, Triangle, 1992)

This prayer uses the imagery of descending and ascending an escalator to pray that those at the bottom of the descent will be understood and ministered to before being then raised up themselves. The prayer is based on the understanding that, through his incarnation and nativity, Christ comes into the messiness of human life, as a human being, to experience all that we experience for himself. The betrayals, dismay, distress, depression, illness, pain, insanity, loss of hope, loneliness, homelessness, danger and despair that many of us experience at periods in our lives and which some experience as their everyday life. Christ comes to understand all this and to bear it on his shoulders to God, through his death on the cross, in order that, like him, we too can rise to new life and ascend to the life of God himself. “Lord, who came down to share our plight / Lift them into your love and light.” This is the hope held out to us through the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem; that he was born into poverty, exile, danger, stigma for our sake, in order to reach out to and rescue us.

God, in Jesus, “had to become like his people in every way, in order to be their faithful and merciful High Priest in his service to God, so that the people's sins would be forgiven. And now he can help those who are tempted, because he himself was tempted and suffered” (Hebrews 2. 17 & 18). “... we have a great High Priest who has gone into the very presence of God — Jesus, the Son of God. Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. Let us have confidence, then, and approach God's throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it” (Hebrews 4. 14 – 16).

This is the wonderful result of love coming down at Christmas - of Christ’s nativity and incarnation – we can have confidence to “approach God's throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it.” Lord, who came down to share our plight, lift us all into your love and light.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Rutter - Love Came Down At Christmas.

Love came down at Christmas

Here is my sermon from  yesterday Eucharist of Christmas at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

In my last parish we commissioned a mosaic which hung on the outside of the East wall of the church facing the street. The mosaic was simply the word ‘Love’ created in grafitti-style. It hung there for several years without a great deal of comment as part of the community garden we created until one Christmas, in high winds, it was blown down from its position on the East wall; quite literally a case of ‘Love came down at Christmas’.

Christina Rossetti’s wonderful carol, from which that phrase comes, focuses on the Christ-child as the ultimate expression of love:

‘Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas …

Love incarnate, love divine’

Through these words, she reminds us that God is love and that the incarnation - God become human - is as much a sign of love for us as is Christ’s crucifixion. As the Apostle John wrote, “God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him. This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven” (1 John 4. 9 & 10). That is what she means by that marvellous phrase “Love came down at Christmas.” The incarnation is at the heart of Christianity because it is a sign of the love that God has for us. God loves us so much that he is prepared to become one of us, even though this means huge constraints and ultimately leads to his death.

On Christmas Day last year Peter Wehner, an opinion writer for the New York Times, argued in a piece for that paper that: 'Because the Christmas story has been told so often for so long, it’s easy even for Christians to forget how revolutionary Jesus’ birth was. The idea that God would become human and dwell among us, in circumstances both humble and humiliating, shattered previous assumptions.’ As a result, ‘we … do well to remind ourselves of the true meaning of the incarnation.’

So what is that true meaning and what does it mean that love came down? When I have run Quiet Days on prayer in everyday life, I have often used a prayer by David Adam which provides a simple answer to this question.

Escalator prayer

As I ascend this stair
I pray for all who are in despair

All who have been betrayed
All who are dismayed
All who are distressed
All who feel depressed
All ill and in pain
All who are driven insane
All whose hope has flown
All who are alone
All homeless on the street
All who with danger meet

Lord, who came down to share our plight
Lift them into your love and light

(David Adam, PowerLines: Celtic Prayers about Work, Triangle, 1992)

This prayer uses the imagery of descending and ascending an escalator to ask that those at the bottom of the descent will be understood and ministered to before being raised up. The prayer is based on the understanding that, through his incarnation and nativity, Christ comes into the messiness of human life, as a human being, to experience, for himself, all that we experience; the betrayals, dismay, distress, depression, illness, pain, insanity, loss of hope, loneliness, homelessness, danger and despair that many of us experience at periods in our lives and which some experience as their everyday life.

Christ comes to understand all this and to bear it on his shoulders to God, through his death on the cross, in order that, like him, we too can rise to new life and ascend to the life of God himself. “Lord, who came down to share our plight / Lift them into your love and light.” This is the hope held out to us through the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem; that he was born into poverty, exile, danger, stigma for our sake, in order to be one with us in our lives. Jesus was born to be Emmanuel – God with us. As John 1. 14 says, in the contemporary translation of the Bible called The Message: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.” This is what Rossetti meant by that marvellous phrase “Love came down at Christmas”.

Because God, through Christ’s birth, has entered our world and moved into our neighbourhood, he has identified himself with us. As we have reflected, he became a human being experiencing the whole trajectory of human existence from conception through birth, puberty, adulthood to death, including all that we experience along the way in terms of relationships, experiences, emotions and temptations. He has been made like us, his brothers and sisters, in every way, tempted in every way just as we are and able to sympathize with our weaknesses. As Hebrews 4. 16 say: “He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all — all but the sin.”

This can be seen as the fulfilment of a promise of God recorded in Isaiah 43. 1 - 3:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.”

That then means that, as we pass through life’s challenges, we never walk alone. As a result, we have a reason to sing, with the fans of Liverpool F.C.:

“Walk on, through the wind
Walk on, through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone.
You’ll never walk alone.”

The wonderful result of love come down at Christmas - of Christ’s nativity and incarnation – is that God is with us in all of our experiences. He is the one who leads us beside the still waters and walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death and he can do this because in Jesus he has experienced human life for himself. As a result, God understands and will be alongside us in all our experiences. God’s promise is that he will be with us as we walk the path of life and that is where true security is to be found.

As we know from our online lives: ‘... there is no substitute for being there - incarnate or, literally, in the flesh.’ No amount of words that we send ‘by post or by telephone or over social networking sites - can ever match the visceral reality of presence.’ ‘Face to phone or face to screen’ can ‘never match face to face’ (Rhidian Brook, Thought for the Day) and that is why Love came down at Christmas.

The novelist Charles Williams suggests, in ‘The Descent of the Dove,’ that the incarnation, because it is not simply about God taking on flesh but also about our humanity being taken up into God, is also the ultimate affirmative act. This is based on the understanding that nothing is lost and everything can be redeemed. All experience and all images are ultimately to be gathered in and up to God and, in this sense, the beauty found in the selfless giving of the incarnation and crucifixion really will save the world.

So, by becoming one with us through the incarnation – by being the Love which came down at Christmas - God is able to be with us through times of darkness until we come to live with him in the light forever. As David Adam prays, Lord, who came down to share our plight, lift us all into your love and light. Amen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce Cockburn - Cry Of A Tiny Babe.

Paying Attention: Events

Here is my first address from the Silent Retreat at the Retreat House, Pleshey, organised for the communities of St Martin-in-the-Fields and St Stephen Walbrook. Entitled 'Paying Attention', we are exploring ways of paying attention to people, creation, events, emotions, absence and mystery. Earlier, at St Martin's, I spoke about paying attention in terms of the Arts.

Paying Attention: Events

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. How can we do this?

One of the ways, I would suggest is that we use all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. The Celtic Christians had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary events and tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every event or task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam, who has written many contemporary prayers in this style, says that: “Much of Celtic prayer spoke naturally to God in the working place of life. There was no false division into sacred and secular. God pervaded all and was to be met in their daily work and travels. If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

Other examples of similar styles of prayer include, Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Gaelic prayers and poems collected in the late 19th century, which “abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed.” Many of George Herbert’s poems use everyday imagery (mainly church-based as he was also a priest) and are based on the idea that God is found everywhere within his world. People like Ray Simpson and Ruth Burgess have provided series of contemporary blessings for everyday life covering computers, exams, parties, pets, cars, meetings, lunchtimes, days off and all sorts of life situations from leaving school and a girl’s first period to divorce, redundancy and mid-life crises.

Similarly, Martin Wallace suggests that: “Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets of the city chatting about the events of the day and the images we see.” (City Prayers, The Canterbury Press, 1994) He wants to encourage us to “chat with God in the city, bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of urban life” and, “as you walk down your street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till … to construct your own prayers of urban imagery.”

One helpful way of beginning to do this is to identify the times and spaces in your normal day when you could take time to pray in this way. Before ordination, when I worked in Central London I used to use my walk to and from the tube station in this way and also had a prayer on my PC that I would pray as I ate lunch at my desk. As a result, since being ordained I have been sending emails to working people in the congregation of which I have been part with a brief reflection and prayer that they can use in these ways.

If you would like to pay more attention to events in this way, why not start by making a list of all the things that you see and do in a typical day? Then think how you could use these to reflect and pray. Then, as Martin Wallace suggests, you might like to try writing your own prayer, reflection or blessing using some of these things as your starting point.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Jam - News Of The World.

Past Life - Present Mission (5.1)

The Open Gate

"As long as we are alive, we are on the move. To become static is to stagnate ... life is meant to be an adventure ... In Celtic folk-tales a curse that could happen to a person was to enter a field and not be able to get out of it. To be stuck in that place forever ... The Open Gate is the call to explore new areas of yourself and the world around you." (The Open Gate, David Adam, Triangle 1994). David Adam suggests that the open gate is the choice that God is always placing before us and that we "should look upon the open gate as a way to extend ourselves and our vision ... it may take a great deal of discipline to get off the old familiar track and to break with old habits, but, in return, it offers the excitement of new ground and new vistas ..."

"Every now and again our eyes are opened and we see beyond the narrowness of our day to day vision ..." into new spiritual dimensions of awareness and experience. I was privileged to have two such experiences whilst on Celtic pilgrimage. The first, whilst staying for a few days in a remote cottage on the Island of Lismore where I had an overwhelming experience of the awesomeness of God's presence together with an anointing that led to a great rejoicing in Jesus. The second was during my 'Celtic Pilgrimage of Discovery' when I experienced a new relationship with God and his physical creation.

For us, living in the inner city, some new gates may open at a point of crisis in our lives. When we are suddenly and unexpectedly bereaved, or made redundant, or "where we are having what the world calls a breakdown". Such events make us more aware of change because they have dislocated us. Pain, brokenness and loneliness may be involved in walking through that new gate.

At St. Edmund’s at that time we seemed to be moving into a spiritual field where there were new gates before us. Inevitably there was also a variety of responses. To some, the Lord was acting as a heavenly potter bringing change and re-moulding which involved brokenness, inner healing and a move through the gate marked spiritual renewal. To others, it included dislocating experiences that re-directed that person's pilgrimage. To others again, it was a gate of deepening awareness of the plans that the Lord had for that person.


Spirituality exercises

At St Edmund’s we encouraged people to reflect on spirituality with several ‘spiritual exercises’. Here is one that you might like to try:

• STAGE 1: Get a blank sheet of paper and write at the top of it this statement on Spirituality – “Spirituality means ... the real, the effective understanding of Christian truth and experience from within our own human awareness (or consciousness). It's ... understanding ... it's experience of God's Holy Spirit Presence ... It's an inner awareness of The Lord; and the realness (reality of) Christian faith from within the person that is YOU. It is often surrounded by or part of prayer and it's a vital part of our personal commitment to Christ. It includes our understanding of ourselves in relation to the religious and moral values we believe and/or practice!”
• STAGE 2: Write down what you've made of it. Add anything else you think it means and especially note if you think it's left out anything that's part of it ...
• STAGE 3: Over the next three weeks add anything else that happens to you that is within you ... your thoughts, feelings, responses to being a follower of Jesus that day ... any awareness you had of the actual presence of God. Especially, how you became aware of His presence. Put it down on your spirituality sheet. If you are a housegroup member why not have a 'chin wag' about it together, and weld it together with prayer.
• STAGE 4: Return your sheet so that all the replies can be looked at to see if something comes out that all can share in.

As part of all that, try praying to the Lord, say at the start of the day, in a way that starts to invite Him to make you aware of His lovely presence. Or, you never know, it might be a slightly different awareness!! In my case, who knows, God (in spite of His lovely presence) may need to give a bit of a 'kick on the ankle' over something or other!


The Tysley Prayer Vigil

At our Prayer Vigil in St Edmund's, on the day the UN deadline for the first Gulf war was reached, our burden was that war should be avoided. As we moved toward the end of the Vigil, the Lord spoke to us strongly in two ways. First, He brought to our notice, through the reading of Daniel 10: 1 - 18 and Ephesians 6: 10 - 18, that the Gulf War is part of a great cosmic struggle going on between the forces of evil in conflict with the forces of light. Second, one of our ladies shared with us something that had happened to her the previous night. She was unable to sleep and as she spoke with the Lord, He gave her a message which was to 'Prepare the Way'. All of us in the Vigil then sought the Lord to ask Him to share with us what He was now saying to us as a Church, how to prepare the way. Various ones then shared the following: That the Lord was saying to us, here in Tysley, that we needed to move into a time of preparing for the Way of the Lord. That the Gulf crisis, and our legitimate concern about it, shouldn't stop us from committing ourselves as a Church to earnestly seek the Lord's face that His Spirit might start to prepare us for His work here, in the days ahead. That God was also preparing the way nationally, and internationally, for His work and will to be done, even from within the war. Preparation was what we had been told to focus upon. A new commitment to prayer seemed to be at the heart of it. The Lord had spoken to us whilst we had been in a trough. He had all sorts of plans for Tysley and local people, and we were a part of that. He wanted us to share in that, even though we were a small congregation. The example of Gideon was relevant (Judges 6 - 8). God doesn't always need masses of people to be His local commando troop but He does require those who are prepared, when it comes down to 'brass tacks', to put Him first.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Fitzgerald & Dave Bainbridge - Though The Dawn Breaks.

Past Life - Present Mission (4)

Chapter 3: Christian life and mission in the light of Celtic Christianity

St Edmunds Tyseley

Tyseley is a large geographical area in East Birmingham, 2½ miles from the city centre, known as ‘the forgotten triangle’. It is an older working-class area of mixed residential and industrial land use with high proportions of minority ethnic people together with a rapidly increasing young family population with a high birth rate. Social needs in Tyseley included high levels of unemployment, large numbers of elder people and lone parents, a lack of youth facilities, congested roads and heavy industrial traffic, a polluted atmosphere, high levels of illness, and few open or play spaces. On my arrival at St Edmunds in 1989, a social worker told me:

“The thing you will soon discover about Tyseley people is that they have no hope. If they are middle-aged and unemployed they will never be employed again. What they have got in life now, won’t really be added to before they eventually die.”

The Church buildings and site were in need of refurbishment although the facilities were used by the community and the Church members viewed themselves as being an extended Christian family committed to being a church for their community. Change occurred in our situation as major building works were financed and completed and through an experimental Neighbourhood Project, StEdicare – Tyseley. The building works and StEdicare created an environment where, by the mid 1990s, we were motivated to search for a fresh and relevant set of Christian mission principles that applied both to our own lifestyle and were relevant to the local community. The use of Celtic materials in worship and study were a key part of developing this fresh approach.

Using the Biblical themes

Mitton’s biblical themes were used by three housegroups and several individuals (45 starters, 40 completers) as a set of notes with the following format:

1. Consider an historical story about one or more of the Celtic Saints which illustrates each Biblical theme.

2. Interpret the story and its theme and apply it to the Church of today.

3. Read a relevant Bible Passage for each theme.

4. Discuss questions arising from the text.

5. Conclude with prayer.

When each group had finished studying the material I visited them and discussed their response. Behind my approach lay the question: “Is it possible for an ancient form of indigenous Christianity to act as an important guide line for Christians living and mission in a deprived UPA 1500 years later?”

Responses

Category 1 responses: This included the majority of participants (a total of 32 out of 40), most of whom were long-term residents of Tyseley. As a group, Category 1 people were untroubled and perhaps unaware that there could be a problem in accepting, that an ancient, indigenous, Christian approach could be relevant to their own spiritual growth and awareness. In general they set aside what one might call the structural and historic differences between rural, agrarian people and themselves as urban dwellers immersed in the culture of Tyseley and St. Edmund’s Church. They were prepared to consider what the biblical theme itself offered. As a part of that, they accepted themes and aspects of themes that affirmed existing Christian life-style, and any challenge toward new ways for them, to live out that theme.

Category 1 people coped with the ‘Woven Cord’ programme notes through the strength of the story approach, and the sense of concreteness it brought to their discussions. The success and centrality of the story approach with its visual and descriptive imagery should not be lost sight of. Neither should the use of biographical content and illustrative testimony by group members, which became a positive part of their own involvement with the notes. The notes were totally focussed on examples of Celtic Christian principles and practices. So this was what participants accepted and applied to their lives. Equally themes which were not accepted reflect positive decisions as these emerged from the exploratory process they had practised.

People in this first category were warmed by stories of Celtic Christians and connected with them at a feeling level.

Category 2 responses: These people were a minority (8) of participants in the ‘Woven Cord’ programme. Category 2 people found the issue of responding to cultural knowledge and life style from an ancient Christian people somewhat difficult. They perceived the Celtic way to be ‘romantic’ and rural and, therefore, irrelevant. Their reasoning was academic and the question arose as to whether the use of ‘non-academic’ faculties such as intuition, story and art was viewed as a threat.

This also raised the question, are well-educated Christians who occupy a high social class but choose to live in or near a UPA and worship within it, less motivated to consider alternative Christian life-styles than the ones they currently live out? Whilst this is merely a possibility it could be relevant to the way mission was planned and structured in UPA parishes. After a lifetime’s involvement in working class areas, I am of the view that well-educated, professional people are needed to worship and live in UPAs. They have lots of gifts to offer, but the essential question is how effectively they relate to Christian living and life-style of local people who are long-term residents. In this instance the two categories seemed to be within two different worlds.

I asked myself the question, why were the Category 2 people so unaccepting of the Celtic themes? Various possibilities seemed relevant: What was their commitment to living in a UPA, was it for ‘Romantic’ reasons? Was their response related to the kind of worldview they implicitly accepted, which (perhaps) made receptivity to the past difficult? What theological position had they adopted with respect to tradition? Had they thought through the question of ancient text (the Bible) or story (the Celtic) in relation to contemporary life? Did they assume the Biblical text transcends the historical and cultural in a way which other texts do not?

Themes that resonated

The following are themes that particularly resonated with the Category 1 participants. They are themes that were transposed directly into their approach to Christian living, and are not presented in any particular order:

• The importance of authenticity, simplicity of life-style and holiness within daily Christian living.
• The centrality of the Bible and the commitment to living out its teaching in a direct manner.
• The acceptance of the presence of illness, death and dying and the significance of faith in relation to that awareness. ‘Life’ beyond the grave.
• The sense of unity with the world of creation.
• The reality of spiritual powers, including those of evil, and the fact of spiritual battle.
• The place, work and gifts of the Holy Spirit...Discernment, prophecy and healing.
• Acceptance of the ministry of women, and the place of children within the Christian setting.
• The importance of prayer in the daily life and worship of Christians.

Other themes that strongly emerged included:

• The possibility of experiencing peace, quietness of spirit and hope in the living out of faith.
• The sense of freedom in Christian living and worship.
• The awareness of Christian belonging and sharing faith with others.

Themes that did not resonate

In the main these were as follows:

• Celibacy seemed to be regarded as irrelevant to their lives. In terms of gender, their view and assumption was the acceptance of heterosexual family life as being the norm. 
• Asceticism was regarded as strange and irrelevant. They were aware of the challenge toward discipleship but now saw that in terms of direct Christian living within their daily lives. Asceticism was not applicable to their view of growing in holiness. 
• Poverty was a matter most knew something about. For them it had not involved choice. As a factor that was chosen as part of a Celt’s life of faith, it did not appeal to participants in the ‘Woven Cord’ programme. 
• Christian Monastic Community was ignored as significant to their lives. In general the response of participants was biased towards direct examples of Christian living as demonstrated in the ‘story’ approach. This particular theme illustrated their unreadiness to approach issues from the basis of Institutional life.
• Peregrinatio was discussed with interest and felt to be Biblical. We have already established that with most themes that resonated, they were then applied directly to people’s lives, especially any scriptural teaching. The fact this theme did not resonate related to the lack of feasibility for them to practice peregrinatio i.e. it was a Celtic Christian practice that did not transpose into their social structure. The fact it did not resonate, thereby showed the critical ability of Category 1 participants to show that not everything about Celtic Christianity was suitable for them.

The common denominator in these negative responses was that even where they were individual practices, they had a particular link with the institutional structure of the Celtic Church. As a result, there was not the same acceptance by the Category 1 participants.

Key factors

The key factors which made these themes of significant meaning were:

• People’s identity and self-image: Many UPA Christian people do not have a strong identity or confident self-image in relation to the wider society. They are not confident about many roles. Roles that for example, most middle-class people are automatically prepared for by family and life experience. In the Christian context of St. Edmund Tyseley that included such common roles as: becoming a Sunday School Teacher; taking a Bible reading in a Church Service; or joining a visiting team. All of the themes that resonated had this linking strength. Acceptance of the themes aided that person’s identity and self-image as a Christian believer.
• Direct applicability to everyday Christian life as a UPA person: The social context for the target group of Tyseley residents was one of ‘deprivation’ and marginalisation from affluent Britain. Within the Church context of St. Edmund’s there had been an absence of ‘hope’. The movement into using Celtic Christian principles and practices as a set of guide lines for spiritual growth within the Church reinforced in the mid 1990’s, a movement away from this no hope perception for the individual and the Church. As the ‘Woven Cord’ programme progressed there was an increasing awareness of the presence of God, a God who was at the centre of the new openness to directly apply the practice of Celtic spiritual material into daily living. The story of the way Celtic Christians saw and lived out their faith became relevant and accessible to participants. The manner in which this happened, suggested that Category 1 participant’s perception of renewed Christian living did not depend on institutional or social class definitions of the correct type of image or behaviour. One of the more significant changes in absorbing Celtic Christian practice, was the move away from coming to Church “to get your batteries charged” – to viewing Christian living as a daily affair involving prayer, worship and service to others. The themes that resonated had this “direct applicability” element to the participant’s everyday Christian life as a UPA person.
• Need for a sense of belonging and to find their Christian roots: Within UPAs’ there is usually found a locality-based, neighbourhood sense of community. Social networks are often locally based also. This, together with family and friendship networks, link strongly into a person’s identity and self-image. Tyseley has been very much a white community with a great emphasis on extended families. That structure is now in rapid change into a multi-ethnic community, surrounded by the influence of contemporary social values and rapid social change. This means there are areas of new vulnerability within the local neighbourhood, within family, Church life and for the individual. The whole structure of belonging and the sense of roots has been dislocated through rapid social change. It is hardly surprising that for Christian UPA believers, anything that helps their sense of belonging and discovery of significant roots is welcomed. This programme and its Celtic Christian backcloth together with the themes that resonated, strengthened the participants sense of belonging to each other and to God through Christ. Their sense of dignity and worth as a child of God gained new roots through their identity with Celtic Christians. A significant factor in this was that their faith was no longer to be so determined by their UPA human context or definitions about them stemming from social class attitudes and behaviour.

In the earlier Chapters I noted two developmental stages in the evolution of Celtic Christianity. First, the age of the Sancti, where there was a major focus on the Saints of the 4th-6th centuries AD. These were the men who were the Christian equivalent of the Celtic war-lord heroes of which Ninian, Patrick and Columba were distinguished examples. Second, this was followed by the movement into structures that were to characterise the Celtic Church, in particular monasticism and Peregrinatio from the early 6th Century onwards. The Themes that resonated with UPA people were particularly illustrated by stories from the first time period of the Celtic Sancti. The Themes that were rejected or ignored, were generally related to the period when the focus was upon the characteristic structures found within Celtic Christianity and its practice. In terms of the wider study of Celtic Christianity, both divisions include major themes. For future programmes the different contemporary contexts within which such themes may be placed, will help to determine whether they are regarded as major or minor Themes.

Implications for developing future programmes

Some excellent material has surfaced in the last few years, that greatly improves the position. This comes, for example, from the Rev. Martin Wallace who initially published a series of low cost, samizdat publications based on Celtic style talks given at St. Peter’s Chapel, Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex. This was the Church St. Cedd built in 654 AD. Wallace’s basic value in writing such books was to “combine the lives of the Saints together with radical lessons for today.” These were followed in 1998 by Wallace’s “The Celtic Resource Book”. This excellent book uses the same type of worship resource material we used at St. Edmund’s, which included material from David Adam, the Carmina Gadelica, Wild Goose Publications (Iona), the Northumbrian Community and the like. Content is divided into sections that include: Liturgies; Prayers; Lessons from the Saints; Practical Meditation; Artistic Activities; and Going on Pilgrimage Today together with exploratory ideas on different ways of using the Resource book. Any future programmes about Celtic Christianity among UPA people would be helped by making use of Wallace’s ability to relate Celtic Spirituality into the context of modern urban living, particularly that of ‘deprived’ communities.

Learning patterns

The following were important to the way the Study developed:

• Celtic Christian prayers, poems and meditations used within Church worship from 1994.
• A series of sermons during 1996 that transposed Celtic approaches into life, living, and Christian faith within a UPA context. 
• The use of everyday objects as visual aids or as a sacramental symbol. For example: offering the congregation, after a sermon about Columba’s life and ministry, a small pebble from the beach on Iona where he landed. It was offered on condition that if accepted, the pebble would be used as a symbol for that person of a commitment to share the Good News about Jesus with others. Another image used was that of the ‘Open Gate,’ signifying movement in our Christian pilgrimage individually and as a Church.
• A series of visions that occurred at the time of a PCC Away Day in 1996 and their challenge about responding to the Spirit’s work in rebuilding Church relationships.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Fitzgerald & Dave Bainbridge - I Arise Today.

Art as epiphany and sacrament

Here is the sermon which I preached at today's commission4mission's service celebrating the Arts held at St Stephen Walbrook as part of an Arts in Worship event:

Please look at The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio and ask yourself three questions: What is central in this picture? How does the artist point us to what is central? Why are those things central?

At the centre of this picture and at the centre of the story it depicts is a very simple and ordinary action; breaking bread or tearing a loaf of bread into two pieces. Although it is a simple and ordinary thing to do, it becomes a very important act when Jesus does it because this is the moment when Jesus’ two disciples realise who he is. They suddenly realise that this stranger who they have been walking with and talking to for hours on the Emmaus Road is actually Jesus himself, risen from the dead. They are amazed and thrilled, shocked and surprised, and we can see that clearly on the faces and in the actions of the disciples as they are portrayed in this painting.

Something very simple and ordinary suddenly becomes full of meaning and significance. This simple, ordinary action opens their eyes so that they can suddenly see Jesus as he really is. That is art in action! Art captures or creates moments when ordinary things are seen as significant.

When our eyes are suddenly opened to see meaning and significance in something that we had previously thought of as simple and ordinary that is called an epiphany. Caravaggio’s painting is a picture of an epiphany occurring for the disciples on the Emmaus Road but it is also an epiphany itself because it brings the story to life in a way that helps us see it afresh, as though we were seeing it for the first time.

The disciples realise it is Jesus when the bread is broken because Jesus at the Last Supper made the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine (the Eucharist) into a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible sign of an inward grace and so it is something more than an epiphany. In a sacramental act there is a connection between the symbolic act and the reality being symbolised, which does not need to occur in an epiphany. So, an epiphany is a realisation or sign of significance, while a sacrament is a visual symbol of an inner change. For Christians the taking of bread and wine into our bodies symbolises the taking of Jesus into our lives. As a result, art (or the visual) can symbolise inner change and be sacramental.

This understanding of epiphany and sacrament is based on the doctrine of the Incarnation; the belief that, in Jesus, God himself became a human being and lived in a particular culture and time. Jesus is an epiphany because he is the visible image of the invisible God. For the Church this has been the primary reason why we have such a strong tradition of figurative art. As Rowan Williams has written, ‘God became truly human in Jesus … And if Jesus was indeed truly human, we can represent his human nature as with any other member of the human race.’ But when we do so ‘we’re not trying to show a humanity apart from divine life, but a humanity soaked through with divine life … We don’t depict just a slice of history when we depict Jesus; we show a life radiating the life and force of God.’

Williams goes on to write that it is when ‘we approach the whole matter in prayer and adoration’ that ‘the image that is made becomes in turn something that in its own way radiates [the] light and force’ of God. He is implying therefore that an important element of prayer is paying attention.

In 2007, the Uffizi Museum in Florence lent Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation to the Tokyo National Museum for three months. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the museum every day to see the renaissance masterpiece. A number which, when divided by the museum's opening hours, equates to each visitor having about three seconds in front of the painting - barely long enough to say the artist's name, let alone enjoy the subtleties of his work.

By contrast, a well-known art historian, observed as he entered the first room of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery, went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician (1486), and there he stayed for about 10 minutes, rocking backwards and forwards, before moving from side-to-side, and then finally stepping back four paces and eyeing up the small painting from distance. And then he repeated the exercise. Twice.

The 10,000 visitors per day visiting the Tokyo National Museum during those three months wanted to see Leonardo’s Annunciation, but did they really ‘see’ it? They certainly didn’t see it in the same way that the art critic saw Leonardo's Musician.

Art historian Daniel Siedell has said: ‘It is a cliché, but I would suggest that one must approach contemporary art with an open mind … Attending to … details, looking closely, is a useful discipline for us as Christians, who are supposed to see Christ everywhere, especially in the faces of all people. If we dismiss artwork that is strange, unfamiliar, unconventional, if we are inattentive to visual details, how can we be attentive to those around us?’ Daniel Siedell (http://imagejournal.org/page/artist-of-the-month/daniel-siedell)

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. We can do this by paying prayerful attention to all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. This is a style of prayer that seems to go back at the very least to the Celtic Christians, who had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam writes that, ‘If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God.’

Attending to details in the way Daniel Siedell suggests is the outworking of St Paul’s words in Philippians 4. 8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things” (Philippians 4. 8). We are called to look for and look at these things as we go through life. This is an excellent approach to bear in mind when also looking at art.

Then, as Rowan Williams writes, visual images will be to us ‘human actions that seek to be open to God’s action’ and which can ‘open a gateway for God.’ If we pay prayerful attention, art can truly be epiphany and sacrament to us.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steve Scott - Sun Poem.

Quiet Day: Daily Divine

 

Today I led a Quiet Day at the Retreat House in Pleshey for the Parish of St Andrew's Sandon. Entitled 'Daily Divine,' this Quiet Day explores experiencing God in the events and emotions of the everyday or, as the poet George Herbert put it, ‘Heaven in ordinaire’. During the day thoughts are shared on the idea and reality of having an ongoing conversation with God in which we pray through our emotions and our everyday encounters.

Over the course of the day we used an eclectic range of materials from: David Adam, Brother Lawrence, Ruth Burgess, Alexander Carmichael, Jean Pierre de Caussade, Bill Fay, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jonathan Sacks, Ray Simpson, Simon Small and Victoria Williams.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill Fay - Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People).

An affirmative approach to life

‘Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’ (Philippians 4. 8)

I want to suggest that these words are a key to answering the question, where is God in our world and how do I see and hear from him?

What Paul commends in Philippians 4. 8 is an affirmative approach to life; an attitude of mind by which we go through life looking for those things which are excellent and praiseworthy. Jesus said, seek and you will find (Matthew 7. 7). Paul is working with a similar premise; he is saying look and you will see. In other words, if you look for excellent and praiseworthy things as you go through life, you will see them.

Why should this be so? This view (which has been called ‘The Way of Affirmation’) is based on God’s creation and Jesus’ incarnation. The Way of Affirmation holds that ‘God is manifest in many things and can be known through these things,’ as in Psalm 19. 1: ' The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork ' or, in Paul’s words from Romans 1. 20, ‘ever since the creation of the world [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.’ For this reason, David Adam is able to write, ‘our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God.’

More than this, our humanity has been embraced by God through the incarnation. In Jesus, God becomes human; affirming our humanity and taking it into the Godhead. God affirmed his creation as good (Genesis 1) and he affirmed his incarnate Son, saying of him, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’ (Luke 3. 22). The world reflects God and God has actively embraced humanity therefore we have a basis on which we can build an affirmative approach to life; looking for those things that are excellent and praiseworthy and expecting to find them.

What difference does this make? I want to talk about its impact in three areas of life; prayer, actions and conversation.

Simone Weil said that, ‘absolute unmixed attention is prayer.’ Similarly, Simon Small has written that, ‘To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God ... Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is’ (Simon Small, 'From the Bottom of the Pond', O Books, 2007).

Jean Pierre de Caussade called this, 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment,' which ‘refers to God's coming to us at each moment, as really and truly as God is present in the Sacraments of the Church ... In other words, in each moment of our lives God is present under the signs of what is ordinary and mundane ... God is equally present in the small things of life as in the great. God is there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers ... There is nothing that happens to us in which God cannot be found. What we need are the eyes of faith to discern God as God comes at each moment - truly present, truly living, truly attentive to the needs of each one’ (Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, Life in God's NOW, New City, 2012).

Brother Lawrence was a member of the Carmelite Order in France during the 17th Century. He spent most of his life in the kitchen or mending shoes, but became a great spiritual guide. He saw God in the mundane tasks he carried out in the priory kitchen. Daily life for him was an ongoing conversation with God. He wrote: 'we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment.'

As a result, 'The time of action does not differ from that of prayer. I possess God as peacefully in the bustle of my kitchen, where sometimes several people are asking me for different things at the same time, as I do upon my knees before the Holy Sacrament.'

'It is not needful to have great things to do. I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of God. When it is finished, if I have nothing to do, I prostrate myself on the ground and worship my God, who gave me the grace to make it, after which I arise happier than a king. When I can do nothing else, it is enough to have picked up a straw for the love of God.'

'We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.'

This sort of spirituality - the sense of the presence of God in all things, and the possibility of honouring God in every action is also found in our hymn books. We sing:

‘Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee:’

George Herbert’s hymn, originally a poem called ‘The Elixir,’ ends with these words:

‘A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.’

This affirmative approach to life always impacts on our conversation. In James 3 we read that ‘no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing’ (James 3. 8 – 10).

As a result, the conversations which go on around us and of which we are part are often negative rather than affirmative. Gossip, back-biting, criticising or running others down; these are standard parts of many everyday conservations. Those attending the ‘Lyfe’ course which we are currently running in the Cluster were encouraged this week to try to bring a breath of fresh air to their workplace or home. It was suggested that they make it their aim to speak well of everyone, try and turn gossiping conversations around and if they do find fault in someone, find a way to flip it round so they can come alongside them and help them to grow. This is about pursuing a compassionate life which includes breathing new life into our relationships and interactions by representing Jesus and his love to the people around us.

Ultimately, what we do and say derives from those things that we focus on as we go through life. If we focus on negatives then we are likely to say and do negative things, if we focus on affirmation, as we have been thinking about this more, then we are more likely to say and do affirmative things.

‘Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’ (Philippians 4. 8)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gungor - You Have Me.

Paying attention to sacraments and epiphanies

Tonight I led the evening service at St Peter's Bradwell with Peter Webb of commission4mission and Café Musica led by Peter Banks, with whom I co-wrote The Secret Chord. 70 - 80 people filled the chapel to participate in a liturgy which celebrated the Arts, view artwork by commission4mission artists, and be led in song by Café Musica. Click here to see photos of the artwork in the Chapel.

Here is the sermon that I preached:

Take a look at Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus by clicking here and ask yourself three questions: What is central in this picture? How does the artist point us to what is central? Why are those things central?

At the centre of this picture and at the centre of the story it depicts is a very simple and ordinary action; breaking bread or tearing a loaf of bread into two pieces. Although it is a simple and ordinary thing to do, it becomes a very important act when Jesus does it because this is the moment when Jesus’ two disciples realise who he is. They suddenly realise that this stranger who they have been walking with and talking to for hours on the Emmaus Road is actually Jesus himself, risen from the dead. They are amazed and thrilled, shocked and surprised, and we can see that clearly on the faces and in the actions of the disciples as they are portrayed in this painting.

Something very simple and ordinary suddenly becomes full of meaning and significance. This simple, ordinary action opens their eyes so that they can suddenly see Jesus as he really is. That is art in action! Art captures or creates moments when ordinary things are seen as significant.

When our eyes are suddenly opened to see meaning and significance in something that we had previously thought of as simple and ordinary that is called an epiphany. Caravaggio’s painting is a picture of an epiphany occurring for the disciples on the Emmaus Road but it is also an epiphany itself because it brings the story to life in a way that helps us see it afresh, as though we were seeing it for the first time.

The disciples realise it is Jesus when the bread is broken because Jesus at the Last Supper made the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine (the Eucharist) into a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible sign of an inward grace and so it is something more than an epiphany. In a sacramental act there is a connection between the symbolic act and the reality being symbolised, which does not need to occur in an epiphany. So, an epiphany is a realisation or sign of significance, while a sacrament is a visual symbol of an inner change. For Christians the taking of bread and wine into our bodies symbolises the taking of Jesus into our lives. As a result, art (or the visual) can symbolise inner change and be sacramental.

This understanding of epiphany and sacrament is based on the doctrine of the Incarnation; the belief that, in Jesus, God himself became a human being and lived in a particular culture and time. Jesus is an epiphany because he is the visible image of the invisible God. For the Church this has been the primary reason why we have such a strong tradition of figurative art. As Rowan Williams has written, ‘God became truly human in Jesus … And if Jesus was indeed truly human, we can represent his human nature as with any other member of the human race.’ But when we do so ‘we’re not trying to show a humanity apart from divine life, but a humanity soaked through with divine life … We don’t depict just a slice of history when we depict Jesus; we show a life radiating the life and force of God.’

Williams goes on to write that it is when ‘we approach the whole matter in prayer and adoration’ that ‘the image that is made becomes in turn something that in its own way radiates [the] light and force’ of God. He is implying therefore that an important element of prayer is paying attention.

In 2007, the Uffizi Museum in Florence lent Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation to the Tokyo National Museum for three months. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the museum every day to see the renaissance masterpiece. A number which, when divided by the museum's opening hours, equates to each visitor having about three seconds in front of the painting - barely long enough to say the artist's name, let alone enjoy the subtleties of his work.

By contrast, a well-known art historian, observed as he entered the first room of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery, went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician (1486), and there he stayed for about 10 minutes, rocking backwards and forwards, before moving from side-to-side, and then finally stepping back four paces and eyeing up the small painting from distance. And then he repeated the exercise. Twice.

The 10,000 visitors per day visiting the Tokyo National Museum during those three months wanted to see Leonardo’s Annunciation, but did they really ‘see’ it? They certainly didn’t see it in the same way that the art critic saw Leonardo's Musician.

Art historian Daniel Siedell has said: ‘It is a cliché, but I would suggest that one must approach contemporary art with an open mind … Attending to … details, looking closely, is a useful discipline for us as Christians, who are supposed to see Christ everywhere, especially in the faces of all people. If we dismiss artwork that is strange, unfamiliar, unconventional, if we are inattentive to visual details, how can we be attentive to those around us?’

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. We can do this by paying prayerful attention to all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. This is a style of prayer that seems to go back at the very least to the Celtic Christians, who had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam writes that, ‘If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God.’

Attending to details in the way Daniel Seidell suggests is the outworking of St Paul’s words in Philippians 4. 8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things” (Philippians 4. 8). We are called to look for and look at these things as we go through life. This is an excellent approach to bear in mind when also looking at art.

Then, as Rowan Williams writes, visual images will be to us ‘human actions that seek to be open to God’s action’ and which can ‘open a gateway for God.’ If we pay prayerful attention, art can truly be epiphany and sacrament to us.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Jones - My Lord Did Trouble Me.