Life stages and lives of Jesus

At St John's Seven Kings we have enjoyed some innovative thinking in sermons today and last week as well as in a spirituality workshop today.

Last week, for our Patronal Festival, we welcomed Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of Chelmsford. In preaching from the lectionary readings for the Feast of St John the Evangelist, he took the final statement of John's Gospel (John 21. 25) as a challenge to each one of us to be the extra books that could be written about the life and work of Jesus. As well as being a historical statement about the life of Christ, Bishop Stephen used the possibility of additional books about Jesus to convey the idea that the story of Jesus continues to be written in and through our lives and ministries.

Today, Rev. Ronni Lamont suggested that the story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10. 38 -42) could be understood in terms of different life stages - youth as activity, work, child-rearing and family life; later life with more time and space for contemplation and reflection. Drawing on the thinking of Carl Jung, Richard Rohr and James Fowler on life/religious development stages plus writing on spiritual styles, Ronni led us into a workshop exploring ways in which our spirituality naturally changes in later life and raised questions about the extent to which this changed spirituality is reflected in Church services.

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Bob Dylan - Tryin' To Get To Heaven.
  

Spring Harvest

Spring Harvest is coming of age. In terms of James Fowler’s Stages of Faith it stands between stages four and five, where what was once unquestioned is now subjected to critical scrutiny and a "bigger picture" is glimpsed which makes room both for mystery and a new sense of justice.

Over the past three years Spring Harvest has been redefining itself through its ongoing theme of One God, One Church and this year, One Hope. As illustration of this ongoing redefinition, here is a selection of things said and done around the Skegness site in Week 3:

• Recognition of hypocrisy within Evangelicalism - “There has been something of the Pharisee about us; we have been protective of our theology and selective in our targets.”
• Revised understandings of scripture i.e. “Scripture is reticent on the mechanics of the atonement but profoundly insistent on its reality”; “Taking the Bible seriously does not mean taking the Bible literally”; and revised understandings of hell ruling out eternal conscious torment.
• Importance of facing issues of inclusivity in the Church i.e. an apology to those people with disabilities who have been told by their church that they don’t have the faith to be healed or that they must have unconfessed sin in their lives because they have not been healed; and stories of being on reality TV alongside a representative of a gay and lesbian group to oppose a fundamentalist group claiming that “God hates fags”.
• Need to be real about faith - “raw and real in prayer”; dangers of self-congratulatory or romantic worship.
• Respect for the great world religions. No ‘no-go’ areas in interfaith, relationships can be built with side by side conversations on issues of the common good and intra-faith conversations on issues of belief.
• The Kingdom of God is about rehumanising the dehumanized and involves God in renewal of the whole world therefore salvation is not just about me and my sins but also about the overthrow of oppression.

Some things, of course, have not changed. Worship remains upbeat, uptempo and uplifting. There are moments of reflection, often when some sort of response is called for, but emotions are quickly lifted or whipped up once again. Dance, drama and painting are also fully utilised in worship with the drama during this week being particularly apposite.

Spring Harvesters continue to love an emotional appeal and, as a result, took to first-time Big Top speaker Andy Caldwell who became so caught up in the passion of the moment that he forgot the third point of his sermon which, as a good Baptist, he had earlier promised to us. No one else seemed to notice or mind, least of all the hundreds who knelt on the creaking boards of the Big Top to renew their sense of astonishment at the Son of God.

Caldwell was clearly being groomed in the standard style for Spring Harvest sermons; the after-dinner sermon which aims to combine humorous anecdotes with punchy bible-based points. Jeff Lucas is the star performer when it comes to the after-dinner sermon and he did not disappoint on the final evening with stories and delivery equivalent to a stand-up comic combined with direct and poignant teaching drawn directly from the passage. In this case, the story of Jesus turning water into wine which afforded great scope for reflecting on humour as a symbol of joy, including a quote from the Pope on the subject.

The Anglican input was particularly marked this year with the Bishop of Willesden, Pete Broadbent, delivering the daily Bible expositions and the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, lecturing, preaching and in late night discussion. Pete Broadbent moved rather ploddingly through the Isianic Servant songs and, although he outlined the exilic background of these passages, seemed to miss a trick by choosing not to make the link to the situation of the post-Christendom church. Instead, we were asked to think mainly in terms of other generic experiences of exile like migration or a house move.

Tom Wright, however, was a whirlwind of Biblical connections as he explored the centrality of Christ to creation and the impact of his crucifixion and resurrection on the coming of the Kingdom of God. In his lecture and sermon he gave a vision of a Kingdom that overthrows the oppressors to bring forgiveness and wholeness to all. This vision was received with spontaneous applause but to what extent it was fully grasped was unclear from the late night q&a where the questions asked – Christian political parties, belief in a fiery hell, cremation versus burial - were mainly peripheral to the content of his talks. My question about his use of the five act play as a way of imaging salvation history drew from him an image for the work of the Kingdom which still lies ahead; that of the jazz musician listening deeply to the structure of the music in order to improvise his or her individual contribution.

Wright’s image could stand as an appropriate metaphor for Spring Harvest itself as it seeks to equip the Church in a way that is open, compassionate, humorous, self-deprecating, passionate, transforming, uplifting and evangelical.

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Albert Ayler.