Thought for the Week: On holy ground

Here's my Thought for the Week at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The logo created to advertise Telling Encounters, this year’s Disability conference, features the burning bush. This story of Moses turning aside to see a bush that is burning and God telling him to take off his sandals for the ground he is standing on is holy, is also one of the readings for our Eucharist this week.

In the story Moses takes off his sandals because he realises that the ground on which he is standing is holy. Sometimes we may need to take off our sandals in order to realise that the ground on which we stand is holy.

I’m reminded of a sculpture by David Robinson called ‘On Holy Ground’ in which a suited and booted businessman stands on a globe with his feet bare and his shoes in his hands. Shoes are designed for movement and travel. We take our shoes off when we come to rest, to stop, to linger. That is what the businessman in sculpture has done and it is in those moments when our busyness ceases that we may realise that all the ground on which we stand is holy.

Rob Bell writes: "Moses has been tending his sheep in this region for forty years. How many times has he passed by this spot? … 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)

So, as we reflect on Telling Encounters this autumn, let us remember the words of the folk singer Woody Guthrie: ‘Every spot on earth I traipse around / Every spot I walk it’s holy ground … Take off, take off your shoes / This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground.’

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The Klezmatics - Holy Ground.

Looking Up: The vision of Helaine Blumenfeld

My latest review for Church Times is of Helaine Blumenfeld's 'Looking Up' exhibition at Canary Wharf:

'On the opening day of the exhibition, she says, “I saw people pausing and reflecting on the work and the world.” That is what she had hoped for, as she believes that if we are able to approach a work of art open to its effect, then we can have a revelation.

It is also, she believes, a very timely show. Over the past months, she has “felt increasingly concerned that society was moving towards a precipice caused by isolation, lack of empathy, the breakdown in trust, and absence of leadership”. She had originally planned to call the show “Towards the Precipice”. The exhibition is both warning and antidote, with works depicting broken edges reflecting the precipice but with other works showing connection and relationship. That is how we can come out of this, she believes: through community, spiritual values, and acknowledgement that we are all human. In doing so, we will have to learn look at the world in a different way; by looking up to see a spiritual dimension and also by acknowledging the crisis of our climate.'

Helaine Blumenfeld's exhibition can be viewed online at https://hignellgallery.com/exhibitions/29/works/. The exhibition featured in my recent Thought for the Week at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

My earlier pieces about her work can be found here and here. Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. 

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Pēteris Vasks - The Fruit Of Silence.

Thought for the Week: Looking Up

Here's my Thought for the Week written for the newsletter of St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld has a major exhibition at Canary Wharf that opened shortly before lockdown.

When I interviewed Helaine, as part of an exhibition review for Church Times, I expected major disappointment, yet she has taken the setback in her stride.

This is, in part, because lockdown demonstrates the timeliness of the exhibition. Over recent months she has felt increasingly concerned that society was moving towards a precipice caused by isolation, lack of empathy, the breakdown in trust, and absence of leadership. Many of the works in the show depict broken edges, reflecting this.

But the show is both warning and antidote, as the majority of pieces show connection and relationship. That is how we can come out of this, she thinks; through community, spiritual values, and acknowledgement that we are all human. We will have to learn to look at the world in a different way. By looking up – the title of the exhibition - we can see a spiritual dimension.

This is, she says, an incredibly important time when we will either learn to empathise, cooperate and connect or we will have failed the challenge in front of us. Through her words and her works, she is picturing resurrection for us.

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Victoria Williams - Why Look At The Moon.

Thought for the Week: The Servant King

Here's my Thought for the Week at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The Servant King

The Jewish leaders jeered at Jesus: ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah [or King] whom God has chosen.’ The Roman soldiers mocked him: ‘Save yourself if you are the King of the Jews.’ One of the criminals hanging there alongside him hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah [or King]? Save yourself and us!’ All of them were asking ‘What kind of King are you then? If you are a King then behave as we expect a King to behave.’ Their mockery came because Jesus did not look or behave as they expected a King to do.

This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King when we celebrate Christ as a King who turns the notion of Kingship on its head; who is seen as King at the point when he is least powerful and most vulnerable – at his own death. In Philippians 2 we read of Jesus letting go – stripping himself – of everything which made him equal with God in order to become a human being like us in order to serve us and die for us. On Maundy Thursday we celebrate Jesus’ decision to become a servant to those he had created when we re-enact his washing of the disciples feet and his words that ‘You call me Teacher and Lord, and it is right that you do so, because that is what I am. I, your Lord and Teacher have just washed your feet.’ Jesus makes service of others the true vocation and measure of Kingship.

Jesus turns the meaning of Kingside upside down. No longer is Kingship to be understood in terms of garnering wealth and power for oneself in other to defend others. Now it is understood to be about service; giving your life that others might live. Jesus, as the servant King, says to us, ‘I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another’s feet. I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you.’

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King's X - King.

Heaven in Ordinary

Here's my 'Thought for the Week' for this week at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Soon after I arrived at St Martin’s I commented that being here had similarities to being at the Greenbelt Festival, but on an ongoing basis.

Several of us have just returned from this year’s Greenbelt Festival. St Martin’s Voices gave two Great Sacred Music performances, led Night Prayer and a Come and Sing workshop, while HeartEdge organised and led a panel session with Inclusive Church on ‘Wit and wisdom from the Margins’. These contributions draw on the cultural, compassionate and congregational strands of our 4Cs, while our music-making generally is a part of our commercial offer. These contributions work well in the context of Greenbelt because the 4Cs have considerable synergy with Greenbelt’s aim of being a festival of arts, faith and activism.

Discussions in our panel session touched on the idea that the role of the Church (however defined) is to anticipate, in the here and now, the kind of radical welcome and acceptance that will be our experience in the coming kingdom of God – to have a taste of heaven now! This was also the main thrust of the Inclusive Church lecture given by Sam Wells earlier in the summer. It remains my experience that there are moments when a sense of heaven breaking in genuinely occurs both here at St Martin’s and also at Greenbelt; and this year’s experience of St Martin’s being at Greenbelt was no exception!

Our prayer for our own ongoing community life can and should be the same – to experience more of heaven in our ordinary ongoing life and experience. Let’s make that our prayer for the Autumn, in particular, as we anticipate all the potential blessings from our Autumn Lecture Series, the HeartEdge conference, our Thinking Differently About God weekend, and much, much more.

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Manchester Orchestra - I Know How To Speak.

Thought for the Week: Reversed Expectations

Here's my Thought for the Week at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Reversed Expectations

I began my first Palm Sunday sermon from the back of the church and not, as expected, in the pulpit. That was intended as an illustration of the reality that Jesus, through his life and teaching, turned our understanding of life upside down. He did it when he called on the one without sin to cast the first stone. He did it when he, their Master, served the disciples by washing their feet. And he did it on the occasion of his entry into Jerusalem too.

Some people at the time expected him, if he really was Israel’s Messiah or King, to lead an armed rebellion against their Roman oppressors. As his ministry had gone on, these people had begun pressing him to declare his hand. Jesus chose the moment of his entry into Jerusalem to do so, but not in the way that those people expected. Instead of coming into Jerusalem as a warrior King on a war-horse leading an army, he came unarmed and riding on a donkey.

In doing so, he was pointing to a passage in Zechariah: ‘Look, your king is coming to you! He comes triumphant and victorious, but humble and riding on a donkey – on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ By entering Jerusalem in this way, Jesus made it clear he was the expected Messiah but that he would not be the kind of Messiah that was expected. He did not come to destroy Israel’s enemies but as the Prince of Peace, under whose rule the only things destroyed are weapons themselves.

Jesus came to love his enemies and unite them with his own people, making peace. In a time of national division we, too, can reverse people’s expectations by living and demonstrating Jesus’ embrace of all.

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Ride On, Ride On In Majesty.

The end of the Church Year

Here is the Thought for the Week I've put together for the newsletter at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Advent, the beginning of which we celebrate next Sunday, marks the beginning of a journey that we undertake each year as we travel through the Church Year. That also means that this Sunday we have come to the end of that journey, as we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King.

At the beginning of the Church Year we celebrate Christ’s coming into our world and all the ways in which he comes to us again. At the end of the Church Year, we celebrate Christ as past, present, and future King over all the earth, at the same time that we express our faith in a coming Kingdom where the world will once again fully reflect its creator.

On our journey through the Church Year, we follow in the steps of Jesus as he is born, ministers in Galilee, is crucified, and rises again. On that journey we also celebrate the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost and reflect both on the mission of the Church and what it means to be a disciple. By making this journey we remind ourselves who we are and whose we are.

We are reminded that God is with us, in Christ, throughout the year and through all the seasons of life. We are here because of Christ. We journey through the Church calendar because of him. We gather, ‘neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free’, because we are one in Christ. It is Christ who presides over his kingdom, his Church, our journey and the table where we share his supper – the Eucharist. Here, throughout the Church Year, we can all come freely week by week to experience and participate in the means of grace that visibly exhibit to us the heart and mind of Christ the King.

(Adapted from http://www.crivoice.org/christtheking.html)

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Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir - Christ The King.

Thought for the Week: Healing and Wholeness

Here's my Thought for the Week at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

This weekend Ali Lyon and I are leading a session at the Parish Away Day entitled ‘Healing, Wholeness and Holiness: many branches: one vine?’

We are doing so on the basis that St Martin’s has many people involved in health and wholeness in its broadest sense. The session will draw on that rich diversity of experiences and perspectives to explore the holistic nature of healing ministry and how its many ‘branches’ connect to one vine. We hope that it will be a rich opportunity to learn more about God and about one another, and will continue to grow the understanding of healing and wholeness that has been developing at St Martin’s.

In the culture of Jesus’ time, disabled people - those with physical, sensory or mental health conditions, learning disability or neurodiversity - were actively excluded from the wider community and from worship at the Temple. Jesus’ healing ministry had the effect of re-including those who had been excluded in the wider community and in worship.

The key issue, however, was a culture which excluded others and which Jesus sought to address through his teaching about the Kingdom of God. Today, the best way to achieve this same aim within our society is by understanding and utilising the social model of disability, which recognises and seeks to dismantle the barriers to belonging that our society throws up through environment, structures and attitudes.

When we explore and address these barriers in church and society – as we seek to do through our Disability Advisory Group and our annual conference on disability and Church together with Inclusive Church – we are doing what Jesus sought to do through his healing ministry.  

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James Taylor - Fire and Rain.

Abiding: What we need is here

Here is my Thought for the Week from the Newsletter at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

In the film Wings of Desire, Damiel is an angel seeking to strengthen what is spiritual in the minds of the people he supports. He is, however, outside of time, in eternity, and therefore can only observe but not experience human life itself. He decides to become human in order ‘to be able to say “Now and now” and no longer “forever” and “for eternity” … At last to guess, instead of always knowing. To be able to say “ah” and “oh” and “hey” instead of “yes” and “amen.”’

In ‘Abiding’, the book we are studying together in Lent, Ben Quash uses the example of Damiel leaving the certainty and the knowledge of eternity to live in the flux and flow of life, in order to explore the Biblical sense that ‘to abide we must journey; to have truth and life (to have true life) we must be always underway.’ Damiel’s embrace of a world in which we (unlike angels) exclaim “Ah!”, and “Oh!”, and “Hey!” is ‘a delicious reversal of that human instinct to eradicate all uncertainty and know everything fully, clearly and precisely.’

Quash writes that ‘A life of growth and surprise and relationship and invention … is the nature of the Way which is also Home.’ As a result, ‘Christian people have been called … to exchange changeless abiding into changeable abiding …’ We abide, he suggests, by fully living life in all its flux and flow.

As a result, this Lent we may wish to echo the prayer of the poet Wendell Berry, who, ends his poem ‘The Wild Geese’ with these words: ‘we pray, not / for new earth or heaven, but to be / quiet in heart, and in eye / clear. What we need is here.’

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Van Morrison - Listen To The Lion.

Thought for the Week: Small Action Big Difference

Here is my Thought for the Week for the Parish Newsletter at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Brother Lawrence said that ‘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 could be a motto for this year's BBC Radio 4 Christmas Appeal which uses the slogan 'Small Action Big Difference'. Jesus taught that truth when he told the Parable of the Mustard Seed, where a small action - the sowing of a small seed - led to the growth of a large plant.

We see it illustrated, too, in Jesus' incarnation which, as Dr James Allan Francis reflected in a sermon preached in 1926 was one solitary life which nevertheless had a massive impact: 'Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. Long centuries have come and gone but all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of humans upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.'

As we begin Advent we would do well to reflect that the nativity we are preparing to celebrate is the ultimate expression of a small action with a big impact. As we support the 2017 Christmas Appeal let us, like Brother Lawrence, learn to value small actions recognising that, by doing so, we are following in the footsteps and the teachings of Christ.

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Will Todd - No More Sorrow.

Prophetic voices calling from the edge

Vox pop interviews given by participants at Prophets & Seers: Calling from the Edge, the 2016 conference on Disability and Church, organised in partnership between St Martin-in-the-Fields and Inclusive Church. Participants shared their message to the Church.

Here is my Thought for the Week for the Parish Newsletter at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

“My weakness and my weariness can be something like a gift.”

“It is really important to have a chance to tell our stories, hear them underpinned by theology and find out how they can – or should – influence wider public policy.”

“We need to move on from welcoming disabled people as an act of grace and see them as whole people with as much right to be there as anyone else.”

“Disabled people are not so much a pastoral problem as a prophetic potential. We need to ask not how the church can care for disabled people but to ask what is the prophetic message of the church in our culture and how disabled people can make a unique contribution to that renewal.”

“Our disabilities don’t necessarily detract from how whole we are, please don’t presume we need to be healed or that we have nothing to contribute – everyone has gifts to give.”

These quotes come from ‘Calling from the Edge’, a beautifully produced booklet celebrating the first five disability conferences that have been held as a partnership between St Martin-in-the-Fields and Inclusive Church. In the booklet you will find stories and reflections that tell the story that underlies this significant series of conferences. We are launching this booklet during a weekend of events that includes the sixth conference in the series, in which we are exploring what being disabled says about God and what the stories of disabled people tell us about God’s story.

All this is predicated on the basis that nothing should be said about us without us and, as a result, that the conference is organised by and for disabled people. The prophetic voices we hear emanating from the conference and booklet are, rightly, challenging for the Church but, as Sam Wells says in his Foreword to the booklet, we need to recognise the sin of how much we have rejected in the past, and celebrate the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives. That’s what prophetic ministry means.

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St Martin's Voices - Gloria.

Worthship

One hundred and eight members of the congregation, clergy, choir and C-Club members of St Martin-in-the-Fields will gather together this weekend at Worth Abbey; the theme of the weekend is At the Heart, On the Edge. Jane Williams, Neil MacGregor, Tim Bissett, the Disability Advisory Group and many others from our community will be leading reflections, along with an evening of Great Sacred Choral Classics: Allegri Miserere in the Abbey Church with the Choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields and Revd Dr Sam Wells. We hold both the congregation at St Martin's and the congregation at Worth in our prayers.

Here's my Thought for the Week for this week's Parish Newsletter at St Martin-in-the-Fields, which relates to the Parish Weekend:

The church at Worth Abbey, designed by Francis Pollen, is an incredible space; subterranean, circular and with a central lantern lighting the cavernous space.

In a poem written there during a past retreat, I wrote of this lantern as a channel for prayer and praise to reach God:

Down dimly-lit stairwells
into a cavernous immensity
of curved brick, concrete and darkness
to stand still, transfixed,
in silent expanse
focused on the glow
and gleam
of the white stone table
over which
the crucified Christ hangs
from concrete cross-beams.
Morning light softly
infiltrates,
casting shadows,
bringing the dawn.
Monks move like shadows,
spectral figures flitting
between material pillars,
robes rustle rhythmically
and doors close echoingly
as they glide
to private devotions
and public prayer.
A zither sends its solitary note
to circumnavigate
the circuitous void
where every sound is magnified
and heard.
Dual voices lead
the hushed plainsong chant
that ascends.
Our simple psalm tones
rise like smoke, like incense,
as we are broken
and opened
by luminous harmonies.
The space and acoustic
act and appear as
the inside of a hi-fi speaker;
the lantern, like an industrial chimney,
funnels the aromatic incense
of prayer and praise
to tease and to please
the senses of God.

Whether we gather for worship this Sunday at Worth Abbey or at St Martin's, our praises will be a sweet aroma that will be received by and will delight God.

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Gregorio Allegri - Miserere.

The art of discovering beauty

Here is the Thought for the Week that I have prepared this week for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

After Easter I read ‘The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art’ in which Charlene Spretnak demonstrates that ‘nearly every significant art movement of the modern period emerged partially in response to spiritual issues in the zeitgeist and the particular spiritual interests of numerous artist s’.

For many years, however, ‘the spiritual dynamic in modern art was all but invisible within the professional art world because it did not fit within the contours of the historicism of modern art’ as ‘the informing values and preferences of the secular modern worldview’ meant that spiritual content was viewed as ‘unbearably backward … irrelevant, and … distasteful’.

The book daylights ‘the great underground river of spiritual influences’ which ‘flowed through nearly all the major art movements’ of the modern era. St Martin’s, through its programme of loans, commissions and exhibitions, has also contributed to the ‘daylighting’ of this river. The present increasing awareness of these influences amounts to a resurrection or revival of interest in the links between spirituality and art.

At St Stephen Walbrook, our All Night Vigil on Easter Eve, based on Mark Dean’s films for the Stations of the Cross projected onto our Henry Moore altar, also daylighted these spiritual influences by means of readings exploring the spiritual influences of modern artists such as Andy Warhol and Yves Klein.

A prayer written by Yves Klein asks that God grant him ‘the favour of inhabiting my works and that they may become ever more beautiful, and also the favour that I may continually and regularly discover ever new and lovelier things in art even if alas I may not always be worthy to be a tool for the construction and creation of Great Beauty. Please let everything that comes out of me be Beautiful. Amen

I will be preaching in the 10.00am Eucharist at St Martin's tomorrow and will be saying more about Stations2017 in my sermon.

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Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed.

Ongoing gratitude

Here is the Thought for the Week that I prepared for Sunday 9 October at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

This year the Business Harvest Festival at St Stephen Walbrook follows the wonderful Harvest Service of which we were part at St Martin’s last Sunday. I’m therefore still in Harvest mode and reflecting on the opportunities for giving thanks which Harvest provides.

Gratitude, as our last Stewardship campaign reminded us, is something for which we need to pray. George Herbert wrote:

‘Thou that hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, a grateful heart.’

While the idea of counting our blessing is a cliché, there is nevertheless a value to the exercise, as thankfulness and gratitude isn’t always our default position as we journey through life. This is despite the fact that there is often much for which we can be grateful when we do stop to reflect.

The Gospel reading used for Harvest at St Stephen Walbrook (John 6. 25 - 35) reminds us that Jesus is the bread of life. By being the one who meets our basic needs for love and acceptance, Jesus gives a reason for constant gratitude and thankfulness whatever our circumstances. In Jesus, God has given us a harvest of love which can be our ongoing experience.

Here at St Martin’s our Harvest Festival is now in the past but the gratitude and thankfulness that it engenders can continue to be a part of our ongoing experience.

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Michael Kiwanuka - Father's Child.