God's presence in cloud and fire

 Here's the reflection that I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this evening:

As they travelled through the wilderness, God’s presence was shown to the Israelites by a cloud and a fire (Numbers 9.15-end). These symbols help us to understand aspects of God’s support and presence in our lives too.

The cloud was both a guide to the Israelites and an immersive presence. When they were outside the cloud, the movements of the cloud were able to guide them on their journey through the wilderness and God continues to guide us as we pray, whether through the Bible’s teachings or through the prompting of our hearts. When they were within the cloud, they became immersed within it and surrounded by it. This provided protection for them but also, because the cloud could not be fully seen from the inside, revealed God’s omnipotence; the all-surpassing greatness of his being which can never be fully known or understood by human beings. 

‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ is a Christian spiritual classic, written in the fourteenth century, which sets out to describe a transcendent God who exists beyond human knowledge and human language. The anonymous author asserts: " We can not think our way to God. He can be loved but not thought." So, we dwell in a not-knowing where contemplation, calm, and above all, love, are the way to understand the Divine.

The fire provides light, warmth and inspiration. The light of Christ is revelatory as it reveals the good and bad in our lives and communities. Light reveals those things that have been hidden so we can see their true nature; whether live-giving or life-denying. Fire also provides a warmth that encourages everyone to gather together around its source. The fire of God’s love is what draws us to church to gather together and together receive that love. 

Finally, fire is inspiration, as was the case for the first disciples at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon them with tongues of fire giving them the gift of inspired utterance in a number of different languages so they could speak God’s message to all that were present in Jerusalem at that time. God continues to inspire and equip his people who turn to him in prayer.

Like the people of Israel, may we also know God as guide, as omnipotent, as revelation, as love and as inspiration. And may we pray that we might experience him in each of these different ways. Amen.

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Anawim - Give Us The Peace.

Realising the sovereignity of God

Here's the sermon I prepared for St Catherine’s Wickford this morning:

I wonder how you feel at this stage in the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of us have been unwell. Many of us know people who have died. Many of us, understandably, feel anxious about the extent to which Covid continues to circulate. Many of us have concerns about the impact the pandemic has had on the Church, the extent to which people have come back since we were able to reopen and the underlying financial challenges that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Our feelings in this situation are not so dissimilar to those experienced by Elijah in our Old Testament reading (1 Kings 19:1-15). Elijah was depressed, disheartened, isolated and on the run. He felt as though the whole world had turned against him and that he was left bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders alone.

He had gone from a great triumph in which he alone had stood up for God against King Ahab, Queen Jezebel, and all their priests. He had called down fire from God on the altar he had erected on Mount Carmel. The priests of Baal had been unable to do the same, but by undermining them, he had incurred the wrath of Queen Jezebel, in particular, who had put a price on his head and sent death squads to seek him out and kill him. He had fled, taking nothing with him and needing God to provide for his basic needs.

In today's reading, he reaches Mount Horeb expecting God to reveal himself in fire and thunder and lightning, as had been the case when God gave Moses the 10 commandments. Elijah knew the story of the 10 Commandments and had experienced fire from heaven on Mount Carmel. That was the way God acts. When God wasn’t visible through fire and brimstone, he wasn’t there. That, in essence, was the problem Elijah had been experiencing, God had not smitten his pursuers, therefore God must have abandoned him.

But God was about to open up a new paradigm for Elijah and reveal a new dimension to relationship with him, as well as a new way of revealing himself within Israel. The question was not, where was God, but was Elijah up for receiving from God in new ways that were outside his current frame of reference.

To help Elijah, God took him through a process of new understanding. First, he experiences all the old phenomena – wind, earthquake, fire – that he associates with God’s presence or revelation. Yet God’s voice is not heard in any of these ways. Once again, as Elijah experienced these phenomena without hearing from God, he must have been thinking that he had been abandoned and was on his own. Then, the dramatic signs stop, there is quiet, sheer silence, complete absence of speech or gesture, and yet this becomes the moment of revelation, the moment in which Elijah hears God speak in a new way; in a whisper, in gentleness, in presence, within and with Elijah; not through external phenomena but instead an internal conversation – Spirit speaking to spirit.

Not only is the means of transmission new but what God says is new, too. Elijah had come to believe that it was all about him; that he could stand in the breach between God and a world gone wrong and by calling down fire from heaven reveal God in his actions. His sense was that he, and no one else, could do this and that, anyway, he was on his own in standing up for God.

Not so, says God, in reality there are thousands of others quietly making their own stand for God where they are and there is Elisha, ready and waiting to take on Elijah’s mantle and lead the ongoing resistance, which ultimately does not depend on Elijah, or any other human being, because it is all about God and God’s purposes being fulfilled in God’s ways. Elijah has to learn that it is not all about him but instead about God, that God’s purposes are fulfilled in God’s ways, that God always has new ways of acting in human history and speaking into human lives, and that God’s people are more diverse than he, or we, are usually prepared to acknowledge or recognise.

God wants to speak into our worries and fears at this time in similar ways. Just as Elijah needed to realise that God’s purposes in his day and time were not solely reliant on him, it is also fatal for us to think God’s purposes for Wickford and Runwell rely solely on us. Equally, it is fatal to think that God’s purposes for Wickford and Runwell rely on the existing churches in the Town, or even the Church of England churches. Were they no longer to be there, God’s purposes for this place would still be able to be fulfilled.

The most fundamental element to relationship with God and to God’s mission is God. It is God who first reached out to us, it is God who equips and leads, it is God who will bring the kingdom of heaven. Each of us has a part to play, a contribution to make, is loved individually and absolutely, while being equipped for the roles we are called to play. But does it all depend on us? Well, the answer to that question is, ‘No’. This understanding is vitally important because it means we can relax – not in the sense of doing nothing, but in the sense of acting from a place of confidence rather than anxiety. It better to fail in an enterprise that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in an enterprise that will ultimately fail. That is our situation and when we understand it and take it to heart, we will act with confidence in God, rather than from our own anxiety.

Just as Elijah needed to hear God speak in a new way, so we need to realise that God is always doing a new thing because the Gospel always needs to be presented afresh in a new generation. Our job is to look for and discern the new thing that God is doing in our time and our community. That means asking who are the people of peace where we are? Where are those who are creatively reaching out across divides and dismantling barriers in order to bring divided people together? Who are they that stand with those on the margins, who are they that are with the dispossessed, who is it that hears the voice of the voiceless?

It is as we ask ourselves these questions and look for such people, that we will see the new thing God is doing in our area and can get involved. Now is always the right time to look for the new thing that God is doing because God is always doing a new thing.

Asking those questions and looking for those people will also lead us to new partnerships because God’s people are always more varied and diverse that we tend to perceive. Just as Elijah needed to understand that the deaths of the other prophets did not mean that God had no followers left, so we need to look outside our congregations and those of other churches to find those in the wider community who are God’s people, just not aligned with a particular church.

The pandemic has changed us and the Church. The changes that have occurred are not all negative and not all reversible. Change is inevitable – despite the Church sometimes appearing to be the one place where change does not occur – because God is always doing a new thing. The pandemic necessitated changes that we are only just understanding and to which we are only just getting used. As just one example, livestreaming services has meant that people who are housebound have been able to join churches again in ways that they couldn’t previously. It has also meant that people who are not used to church and are reluctant to cross the physical threshold of a building because they don’t know what they will encounter can now check out church from the comfort of their homes before deciding whether to come in person. These are good reasons for continuing to livestream services, even when those who can come to the building no longer need that themselves.

Just as our experience and understanding of God can never define God because God is always deeper and fuller, broader and wider, than we can ever experience or understand, so it is also true that our experience of church can never define God for exactly the same reasons. We constrain God and bring God down to our size when, like Elijah, we come to view our understandings, practices, approaches as definitive. Not only so, but, like Elijah, we become anxious, depressed and defensive, so we think we have to defend what we believe has always been.

Instead, there is freedom and release in coming to the place that Elijah eventually reaches of understanding that God is sovereign, is endlessly creative, is entirely trustworthy, indeed, knows exactly what he or she is doing, and will, in his or her time, bring the kingdom in full on earth as in heaven when all will be well and all manner of thing be well.

So, like Elijah, let us let go of our tendencies to seek to control, and instead let go and let God. It is from just such a change of heart and mind that our revival and renewal will come. Amen.

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Gungor - Dry Bones.

ArtWay: Interview with Belinda Scarlett

My latest artist interview for ArtWay is with Belinda Scarlett, theatre costume and set designer and ecclesiastical textile artist :

'I have just completed an altar cloth for St Philip and St James Leckhampton, Cheltenham. This was worked on four sides and included a set of vestments in the four liturgical colours. Awareness of climate change was the basis for this work. The intense vibrant band of turquoise light that encircles Planet Earth as seen from space fills me with awe. As climate change is affecting every corner of this planet it seemed appropriate to set each of the four panels within the infinite dark of space and to evoke the four elements: Water, Air, Fire, Earth. Water shows the currents of the oceans. Air the dawn of a new day, jetstream, a feather. Fire, refining fire that both destroys and brings new life. Earth is framed by a rainbow. The focus is in the central image of the adult’s hand holding soil in which a seedling has sprouted. This is offered to a little child whose hands are eager to receive it. May the beauty and the wonder of creation of this precious world we inhabit be here for generations to come.'

My visual meditations include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Jake Flood, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Sidney Nolan, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton, Anna Sikorska, Jan Toorop, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu.

My Church of the Month reports include: All Saints Parish Church, Tudeley, Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsingham, Coventry Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Eton College Chapel, Lumen, Metz Cathedral, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy,Romont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford, St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church, St. Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, St Mary the Virgin, Downe, St Michael and All Angels Berwick and St Paul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.

Blogs for ArtWay include: Congruity and controversy: exploring issues for contemporary commissions;
Photographing Religious Practice; Spirituality and/in Modern Art; and The Spirituality of the Artist-Clown.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker and Peter Koenig. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst.

I have reviewed: Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace, Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe and Jazz, Blues, and Spirituals.

Other of my writings for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Church Times can be found here. Those for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here. See also Modern religious art: airbrushed from art history?

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Arvo Pärt - De Profundis.

Fire and Fruit

‘Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.’ (1 Corinthians 3: 12-15)

‘the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.’ (Galatians 5: 22-23)

Fire and fruit are images that run throughout the pages of scripture because they are images drawn from everyday experience and also because they are images that open up reflection on spiritual experience.

John the Baptist speaks in a period when the people of Israel felt confused (Luke 3:7-18). They believed they were the people of God having a special covenant relationship with God and yet they were also an oppressed people under the rule of the Romans and their appointed Kings. They were unable to make sense of both realities together and, as a result, had splintered with some fomenting rebellion against the Romans, some collaborating with the Romans and the majority seeking to live life the best way they could in the circumstances. All these were reflected in the crowd that came to listen to John, as we hear him speak specifically to the people, the tax collectors, and the Roman soldiers.

John talks primarily about the need for fruit in the lives of those that are God’s people, but he is also clear that there is ultimately no entitlement within God’s kingdom, and he talks about that through the image of fire.

As those having a special covenant relationship with God the people of Israel felt entitled. That was a key element to the confusion they felt. Why had God abandoned his God’s chosen people by allowing them to be invaded by an oppressing Empire? They thought the covenant made with God ensured protection for them from invasion and oppression.

John turns that sense of entitlement on its head by saying that the covenant depends on God’s people bearing fruit. What he says here is predicated on the understanding that God chooses to be in a special relationship with a particular group of people, not so much for their own sake, but in order that they become a blessing to all nations, drawing all people everywhere into relationship with God. Therefore, whenever, God’s people become entitled, thinking God is primarily theirs and theirs alone, God acts to break down that sense of entitlement in order that his blessings – the fruit of his people – can once again be available to all people.

John uses the language of horticulture to talk about the way in which God does this. In John 15 we also hear of Jesus talking in very similar terms. The gardeners among us today will be very familiar with pruning in which those parts of a plant, tree, or vine that are not necessary to growth or production or are injurious to the health or development of the plant, are removed or reduced. Pruning is essential to the flourishing of plants and the production of fruit. This is, in essence, what John says is going on in his own time. The current experience of God’s people is one of pruning for future growth and the way for them to approach the challenges of that situation constructively and effectively is to prioritise growth.

Before speaking about fruit, however, John throws out a challenge to his hearers because their sense of entitlement ultimately holds the seeds of disaster. Those who persist in thinking that God is just for them and who, as a result, do not bear from fruit by being a blessing to others will ultimately risk being disinherited by being cut out of the tree or seeing the tree cut down.

However, even here the language John uses – that of fire – holds within it the possibility of refining in order to restore. Experiences of tribulation and trial, including those of being pruned, even cut off and burned, may still be refining experiences that return those enduring them to right relationship with God and to becoming a blessing to others.

John has specific instructions for all those who respond to his message by asking, “What then should we do?” To the crowd he says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” To the tax collectors, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” To the soldiers, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

John does not expect the same fruit to be produced by everyone. The fruit that can be grown by those in everyday life differs from the fruit that can be grown by tax collectors, as again from that which can be grown by soldiers. We know from Jesus’ teaching in the Parable of the Sower that seeds grow differently in different kinds of soil. So, also here. What it is possible or appropriate for a tax collector or a soldier to do in their circumstances to be a blessing to others might be very different from what an ordinary citizen can do. Yet, we know from the Gospels what an impact was made when tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus or soldiers, including two centurions, responded to Jesus and acted in ways that accord with John’s teaching here.

The kind of fruit that God is seeking in those who become a blessing to others is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is what God yearns to see in his people at all times and in all places. While there are times when we may experience considerable trial and tribulation, whatever our circumstances – in good times or in bad – God is seeking to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in our lives in order that we bring his blessing to those who have yet to experience or receive it.

So, what can we learn from John’s teaching including his challenge made to Jews and Gentiles alike? To act as God’s people in God’s world, we need to be those who grow the fruit of the Spirit and who become a blessing to others by sharing that fruit as widely as possible. Each of us needs to look at our contexts and roles in order to work out with God how best to do that where we are. The business of growing fruit is not a franchise where one model is simply applied everywhere. There is a diversity of soils and a diversity of fruits. Fundamentally, however, becoming fruitful by being a blessing is the intent of all that John is saying. His talk of fruit is teaching for all times and all circumstances.

His talk of fire, by contrast, is teaching for situations of extremis, where God’s people resist fruitfulness principally by thinking and acting as though God is for them alone. In such circumstances, experiences of tribulation and trial become arenas for pruning and refining; opportunities for change, for reflection, for repentance, for turning and learning. God’s intent though, as St Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians, is always that all should be saved, even if through fire.

Our task, like those responding to John the Baptist, is to continually ask, “What then should we do?” and to take the opportunities which are constantly in front of us to share what we have with those who have nothing, collect no more for ourselves than the amount prescribed, not to extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with what we have. In these and in many other ways, we can be a blessing to others and reveal the love of God through the body of his people. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Salisbury Cathedral Choir - On Jordan's Bank, The Baptist's Cry.  

God was with them as they went through

Here's my reflection for today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

But now thus says the Lord, / he who created you, O Jacob, / he who formed you, O Israel: / Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; / I have called you by name, you are mine. / 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.

These words from the beginning of Isaiah 43 are emblematic of the story we have heard today of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Fiery Furnace (Daniel 3). Their experience was of God with them as they passed through the flames; their time of trial and trouble. King Nebuchadnezzar and his counsellors saw four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire; and the fourth had the appearance of a god. God was with them as they went through their trial.

That is the story of the People of Israel; God was with them as they went through the waters of the Red Sea, God was with them as they went through the wilderness, God was with them as the crossed the waters of the Jordan into the Promised Land, and God was with them again as they went into exile in Babylon.

God was with them as they went through. That was their experience; an experience that they extended even into the experience of death itself. So, they sang with the Psalmist, ‘Even though I walk through the darkest valley, / I fear no evil; / for you are with me; / your rod and your staff— / they comfort me.’

Jesus came as Emmanuel, God with us, in order that we know that God is with us in all of life, not simply in the times of trial. For 90% of his time among us he lived an ordinary life as a child and young adult in Nazareth, that we might see God with us in every aspect of our day to day lives. He then experienced torment and trial himself, even unto death, as assurance that God remains with us in those times of trial too.

It was this reality that those he encountered in his ministry found hard to understand (John 8. 31-42). The reality of God being with us is what Jesus had experienced in God’s presence and is what he was sent into our world to show and share. We can readily understand why those encountering Jesus had difficulty in understanding, as their expectations of a Messiah had been shaped by dramatic stories of presence, such as that of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Fiery Furnace. They were looking for one who looked like a god and instead got Jesus, an ordinary man growing up in an ordinary family in an ordinary town. His ordinariness was a stumbling block to many and yet was the key to understanding what God was doing through the incarnation; as it was for understanding what God was revealing through the incarnation.

We continue in Jesus’ word and know the truth when we recognise the reality of God with us in our lives and world, especially in our trials and troubles, and as we seek to be the hands and feet, eyes and ears of God in our world by being with others. Being with is what Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego experienced of God in the fiery furnace and is what God revealed to us through Jesus. Being with others is then our response to all that we have received from God.

We gain comfort from these stories by remembering that God is with us in our time of trial, as was the case with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. God will go through this time of trial with us, whatever it entails for us. We experience challenge through these stories as we explore what it means today to continue in Jesus’ word, life and truth by finding ways to be with others at this time.

‘thus says the Lord, / I have called you by name, you are mine. / 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.’

‘Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

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Sofia Gubaidulina - The Canticle of the Sun of St Francis of Assisi part I.

Perfect love drives out all fear

Here is the reflection I shared in Wednesday's Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love (1 John 4. 11 – 18).

The writer of the first letter of John sees no place in Christianity for fear because fear has to do with punishment and Christianity has nothing to do with punishment. Yet the idea of eternal damnation through 'the endless, bloodthirsty torment of body, mind and spirit in Hell' captured the Christian imagination over many centuries and is 'the stuff of nightmares, graveyard humour and revivalist preaching.' It is an idea wholly based on fear.

Our Vicar Sam Wells has noted two major objections to the traditional understanding of hell - the moral objection and the sovereignty problem. The existence of hell implies that God isn’t all loving, otherwise he couldn’t consign parts of his creation to eternal damnation, and that God isn’t all powerful, otherwise he’d be able to bring their torment to an end whenever he saw fit. But there is also an objection thrown up by today’s Epistle which is not primarily to do with God and is instead to do with us; that is, how genuine is our love of God if it generated primarily by fear of Hell?

The writer of the first letter of John says that love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. What removes fear and gives boldness on the day of judgement is a process of change by which Christ takes on our humanity, and in exchange gives us a share in his divinity. We become like him; as he is, so are we!

Christmas reveals the mystery of this "marvellous exchange", the Creator becomes a human being, born of the Virgin. We are made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity. Christ takes what is ours and gives us what is his. In this “wonderful exchange', Christ assumes our place and gives us his place. According to Thomas F. Torrance (possibly the most important British academic theologian of the 20th century), the “wonderful exchange” embedded in the incarnation is: “the redemptive translation of [humanity] from one state into another brought about by Christ who in his self-abnegating love took our place that we might have his place, becoming what we are that we might become what he is.”

This change is both a state of being and a daily process of renewal in Christ. The daily process of renewal is, in essence, a refining and reforming process which then leads us to a different understanding of the biblical imagery of fiery furnaces, lakes of fire and its contents of burning sulphur; all traditionally understood as forming the fear inducing fires of Hell. Sam Wells has contributed an alternative understanding based on those same texts and images, with the key being words spoken by the prophet Malachi: “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness”.

'Think about this picture of a refiner’s fire. Imagine that there is indeed a fire which burns, not eternally, but until the last day. And that after we die, every little piece of us that has not turned to the glory of God, every tiny part of our history or character, every word or thought or deed that shrinks from God’s grace is burned off by the refiner’s fire. And that means that when that process is finished not all of our earthly self gets to heaven. But not none of it, either, even among the worst that humanity has produced. Out of such as remains from the refiner’s fire, God remakes a heavenly body fit for worship, friendship and eating with him forever. So, Hell is not an eternal horror that abides forever as a scar on the face of God’s glory. Hell is a refiner’s fire, from which that in us that has been soaked in God’s forgiveness and transforming sanctification moves on quite rapidly, but in which that in us that has turned away from the glory of God remains being prepared to meet God for as long as it takes until the job is done.'

This is a picture of hell that stays true to the scriptural imagery, stays true to our faith in the self-giving and loving character of God, and stays true to our belief in the almightiness of God. Most importantly, it takes fear of Hell out of the equation leaving us free to do what the writer of the first letter of John wants, to love God for God’s own sake, not for fear of punishment. It leaves us able to pray:

Loving God, if I love thee for hope of heaven, then deny me heaven; if I love thee for fear of hell, then give me hell; but if I love thee for thyself alone, then give me thyself alone. Amen.

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Arvo Pärt - Stabat Mater.

After the Fire

The fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017 shocked the nation. A personal tragedy that claimed over 70 lives and affected many more, it exposed inequalities and tensions but also a strong sense of community and resilience and, in particular, a wide range of faith groups that are embedded in the community, and that responded practically, pastorally and professionally in a time of serious need and confusion.

In advance of the one year anniversary of the fire, the parish of St Clement and St James and the religion and society think tank, Theos, will host an evening to reflect on the faith groups’ response.

The evening marks the launch of two publications: After the Fire by Alan Everett, Vicar of St Clement and St James, and After Grenfell: the Faith Groups’ Response by Amy Plender, from Theos. After the Fire is a moving and penetrating account of Alan’s experience at the heart of the mass disaster, while After Grenfell draws on over 30 interviews with faith groups across the community to understand how they were able to respond in the way they did.

In the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, the local parish church became a focal point of the relief effort, and a gathering place for a traumatised community. In the months that followed, it worked closely with other community and faith groups to provide a compassionate network of support.

In this bold and prophetic challenge, Alan Everett shows that the church's response was possible only because it had opened its doors long ago, building relationships with the most marginalised in the community. Its effectiveness was born out of a patient, faithful, unheroic ministry that is all too easily underestimated.

Through gripping reportage and searching theological reflection, After the Fire demonstrates how parish ministry can be a living symbol of God's love, and a vital sign of hope.

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Petris Vasks - Lord Open Our Eyes.

Start:Stop - What is it that you desire?

Bible reading

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2. 1 – 4)

Meditation

What is it that you most desire? How would you answer that question? It could be another person that you desire; your current or a future partner. You might answer in terms of other relationships; time with children or grandchildren, for example. It might be money that you desire; a lottery win would do very nicely and give you wealth to do with as you please. You might answer in terms of opportunity; the chance to travel or to enjoy particular types of experiences. Some might answer in terms of dreams; the chance to make a difference in the world, be famous for 15 minutes or to prove you have the X Factor.

A few years ago I was at a conference on ‘The Holy Spirit in the World Today’ where the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said that the Holy Spirit is desire in us. He didn’t, of course, mean that the Spirit is any or all desires that animate us but instead a very particular desire; the desire, longing or yearning or passion for Christ and to become Christ-like. The challenge of the Rowan’s homily was that we should be consumed with desire for that goal. He quoted St Symeon who prayed "Come, you who have become yourself desire in me, who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one!"
The desire that the Holy Spirit creates in us is a desire to be where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father, in the stream of healing love which flows from the Father to the Son. This is the place of intimate relationship with God, this is what it means to be in God and it is the Holy Spirit who stirs up the desire in us to be in that place where we are able rightly and truly to speak intimately with our “Abba” Father.

By stirring up this desire in us, the Holy Spirit provides the answer to one of the most fundamental questions of existence; the question of identity. We ask ‘Who are we?’ and the Spirit answers, we are beloved sons and daughters of the Father because the spirit has united us to Christ that we might live forever in the love that the Father has for the Son.

That answer to the question of our identity then leads to the question of our vocation – what are we here for? Again, the Holy Spirit is key because the Spirit is given to us as the first fruits of the kingdom of God. The Spirit comes from the future to anticipate the kingdom in the present by creating signs of what the kingdom will be like when it comes in full. As Colin Gunton wrote, “the Spirit is the agent by whom God enables things to become that which they were created to be.”

Our role is to become involved in this work of the Spirit to heal the broken creation, bring it to maturity and reconcile it in Christ. We get involved by creating signs of the coming kingdom here and now in the present. At the conference Rowan Williams also told the story of Mother Maria Skobtsova who on Good Friday 1945 changed places with a Jewish woman at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp and went to her death in the gas chambers. Mother Maria was a sign of the coming kingdom in her passion and sacrifice. Mother Maria said that "either Christianity is fire or there is no such thing." Christianity is fire, passion, desire, longing, yearning for Christ and Christ’s mission. What is it that you desire?

If the Holy Spirit has stirred that fire, passion and desire in you then, like St Symeon, we need to cry out for the Spirit to come to us. To daily pray, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Come to stir up this desire and longing and yearning and passion in me. Come to make my heart restless till it finds its rest in you. Come to cause me to run into your arms of love. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Prayer

Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, ignite in us your holy fire; strengthen your children with the gift of faith, revive your Church with the breath of love, and renew the face of the earth.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people, and kindle in us the fire of your love.

Holy Spirit, powerful Consoler, sacred Bond of the Father and the Son, Hope of the afflicted, descend into our hearts and establish in them your loving dominion. Enkindle in our tepid soul the fire of your Love so that we may be wholly subject to you. We believe that when you dwell in us, you also prepare a dwelling for the Father and the Son. Deign, therefore, to come to us, Consoler of abandoned souls, and Protector of the needy. Help the afflicted, strengthen the weak, and support the wavering. Come and purify us. Let no evil desire take possession of us. You love the humble and resist the proud. Come to us, glory of the living, and hope of the dying. Lead us by your grace that we may always be pleasing to you.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people, and kindle in us the fire of your love.

Sovereign God and eternal Father, daily your Spirit renews the face of the earth, bringing strength out of weakness, hope out of despair and life out of death. By the power of your Spirit, may your blessing rest upon us. Let us know your acceptance and adoption, your equipping and empowering. Form in us the likeness of Christ, that we may be witnesses of your astonishing love, and fill us afresh with life in all its fullness.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people, and kindle in us the fire of your love.

Blessing

The Spirit of truth lead you into all truth,
give you grace to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
and strengthen you to proclaim the word and works of God;
and the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always.
Amen.

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Late Late Service - Our God In Heaven.

Poem: Paying Attention

Attend, attend, pay attention, contemplate.
Open eyes of faith to days, minutes,
moments of miracle and marvel; there is wildness
and wonder wherever you go, present
in moments that never repeat, running free,
never coming again. Savour, savour the present –
small things, dull moments, dry prayers –
sacraments of presence, sense of wonder,
daily divine depth in the here and now.
There’s only here, there’s only now,
these are the days, this is the fiery vision,
awe and wildness, miracle and flame. Take off
your shoes, stand in the holy fire; sacrament
of the burning, always consumed, never repeating
present moment, knowing the time is now.

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Victoria Williams - This Moment.

Armageddon: Mariano Chelo

Rather late in the day, as the exhibition is over, but here is my review of Armageddon at ArtMoorHouse:

Armageddon has begun in the City of London. The countdown to Apocalypse is over and an existential explosion has covered the ground floor walls of Moor House in Moorgate.

Mariano Chelo, from Bosa in Sardinia, is an abstract, installation and performance artist who founded MAP (Movementi Artistici Periferici), a gallery/workshop where he has exhibited his own and other artists’ works. While he has shown work internationally, this is his first solo show in the UK. In his work Chelo has journeyed from traditional beginnings – landscapes, still life and figure studies – through a period of collaboration with advertising agencies - as he abandoned painting for photography and graphic design in the 1980s – to the extravagant expressionism of his current abstractions and action painting performances.

Armageddon features paintings formed out of darkness. Beginning with inky blacks swirled and dripped and covered in the sheen and shimmer of varnish, these are works exploring the emotions of an underworld – physical or personal, in which a limited palette of colours, under pressure, boil and churn to rise in spurts and splurges of volcanic red. ‘Illusione Russo’ is split by a jet-black crevice from which beautiful surges of fiery oranges and reds flow to fill the canvas. ‘Confusamente Russo’ and ‘Russo’ fill their canvasses with the flicker and flare of flame.

Fire is, therefore, one motif Chelo uses for the experience of personal and social Armageddon. Water is another. Biblical motifs underpin much musing generally on apocalypse and Chelo, while not foregrounding Biblical references, certainly has images of deluge and flood within his frame. ‘Oblivion’, in particular, evokes - in blues, blacks and whites - the submerging of our world and consciousness. He ends the show more peacefully, using blacks, greys and whites, by depicting the stillness of the sea in evocative works (‘Mare’ and ‘Mare II’) which divide at the horizon as we are enveloped in darkness by the setting of the sun.

Chelo maintains a balance throughout between the personal, the natural and the social in these works. It could be personal and cultural apocalypse that we are viewing. At times, his shapes suggest cityscapes or caverns yet, here too, our perceptions can be both of physical chaos and of the collapse of our interior world. As the exhibition catalogue suggests, this sequence of images is a migration ‘through a deep dark sea’, ‘a “passage” towards the unexplored, a metaphor to express our inability to fully know the result of our quests.’

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Extreme - Politicalamity.

Genesis: Steeped in a great weight of human experience

A major new exhibition, Genesis, by artist Julian Bell is at St Anne’s Galleries, Lewes this summer. The exhibition presents an extraordinary series of 37 panel paintings in oils that represent a bold new interpretation of the first thirty three chapters of the Bible.

'Julian Bell started working on his Genesis project some 18 months ago after re-reading the Bible's opening book for the first time since his youth. The initial series of drawings were burnt in a catastrophic fire in March 2014 that destroyed his studio and all its contents. This is Bell’s first major project since the fire. He describes what initially drew him to the subject:

“Genesis is about stories that are steeped in a great weight of human experience. They're about what there was in the world, back in the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, and in fact about what there very largely still is - the relationships that humans have with each other and the relationships that they have with God and the environment. So to me, Genesis is absolutely full of substance. It points me to things that are enduring and strongly typical in many, many human lives. That's why to me it is the best of subjects.”'

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Bruce Cockburn - Creation Dream.

Scriptural Reasoning: Using God's gifts

Our Scriptural Reasoning group considered our use of God's gifts this evening. This is what I said in introducing the Christian text:

Paul’s main role after his conversion was to start new churches in different parts of the Roman Empire. His practice when he arrived in a new city was to preach - either in the synagogue or public square or both. While he continued preaching, he also met with converts in their homes and taught them how to be church. He appointed people in these new churches to be leaders of the church and then moved on to a new area.

So what he means by having laid the foundation for the church at Corinth is that he began the church by preaching and teaching about Jesus, with the teachings about Jesus and the experience of knowing Jesus being the ultimate foundation for the church. He then moved on and the people that he left in charge are the ones who are now building on the foundation that he laid. In other words, they are the ones taking the church forward now.

However, Paul doesn’t leave them behind altogether. He hears news of how they are getting on and he writes to them with advice and further teaching to try to ensure that they develop in the way that he thinks best.

That is the immediate context for the passage. What can it say to us about the use of the gifts that God has given us?

First, Paul is saying that, although the work that we may do is significant, ultimately the work is God’s not ours. We see this in two ways. First, the foundation laid is Jesus. The basis of the work we do for God is God. We are only working for God if we are building on the foundation of God’s revelation of himself. Second, we never complete the work. There is always more to be done and people who will follow us and build on what we have done. This is important as it brings a sense of perspective to what we do. We are working for the long-term not the short-term and we need the input and perspectives of others.

At times in his writings Paul can seem directive and domineering but this tendency is also reigned in to some extent by his awareness that it is God’s work that counts and that he cannot achieve solely by himself and his own resources (which is one reason why he generally travelled with a team of people and created teams of leaders in the churches he established).

Second, our work will be tested. Fire refines or consumes. It burns up wood, hay and straw so it is as though these things never existed but it refines/purifies gold and silver. In Paul’s thinking the test comes at the end of time on the day of judgement but we could also understand testing to be an ongoing, ever-present reality as those around us question and critique what we are doing and the motivations for it. This passage, therefore, seems to encourage us to understand questions and critiques positively as things which can help to refine and better shape the ways in which we use our gifts in God’s service.

In this life the ultimate test is the test of time. What kind of legacy will we leave? Will we, the things we do or the things we make be remembered for any length of time? Will the things we do in the here and now enable other things to occur in the future? Will we have leave a legacy or will the things we do now prove to be ephemeral?

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The Swell Season - Low Rising.

Earthairwaterfire exhibition

I've spent today assisting Bishop David with his marvellous Earthairwaterfire exhibition at St Peter's Harold Wood. We have had tremendous support and help in hanging the show from folk at St Peter's which has enabled Bishop David to show both his largest expansive landscapes together with smaller more intimate work.

Bishop David is fascinated by the organic structure of landscape and its transitory appearance as weather and light pass over it. Like landscape, many of these pieces are layered whether composed using stripes of colour or collage. The concept for the exhibition comes from the Prayer of Anthony the Great; 'Keep us alive with the earth of humility, with the air of contemplation, with the water of remorse and the fire of love.'

The opening times for the exhibition are: Weekdays 9.00am - 5.00pm. Saturday 15th March 9.00am - 12.30pm. Evenings Wednesdays and Fridays 6.00pm - 9.30pm. The exhibition is open until Friday 21st March.

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Lifehouse - Aftermath.