Thy Kingdom Come

Today is Pentecost Sunday

The last of the questions I'm thinking about is:

How do we allow God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven - in this place?

I'm coming to the end of the book 'Church After Christendom,' and I'll just have a few thoughts here.

1   

De-emphasise worship, and make Mission and Community Building just as central

2   

Reduce the number of church focused commitments to allow congregation members to be involved in other activities and mission opportunities outside church.

3   

Cultivate simplicity - which does not necessarily mean blandness or lacking in creativity.

4   

Take a long look at ourselves, using tools that are there to help us identify areas of strength and weakness - especially in areas of conflict within the church.  Use resources such as Appreciative Inquiry, The Healthy Churches Audit, Bridgebuilders.

5   

Promote lay participation and become less 'leader centric.' Encourage multi voiced worship.

7   

Refocused commitment - we live in an age when it is often said that people do not want commitment - yet movements like extinction rebellion show that where people see something worth struggling for, they will do it.

I love this prayer, with four words that are used to describe the way we are called to be ... full of generosity, joy, imagination and courage

Living God, draw us deeper into your love;

Jesus our Lord, send us to care and serve;

Holy Spirit, make us heralds of good news.

Stir us, strengthen us, teach and inspire us,

to live your love with generosity and joy,

imagination and courage;

for the sake of your world,

and in the name of Jesus, Amen.

That reminds me

... Of the blog by Jonny Baker, which I haven't looked at for ages.

https://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/

In his blog post on flipped church, he refers back to some questions he was asking himself nearly 15 years ago ...

can we imagine...
church beyond gathering?
church beyond once a week?
church as always on connectivity to christ and one another?
church where community is the content?
theology and resources of church being open source?
church valuing the wisdom of the crowd rather than the knowledge of the expert?
our church/spirituality being easily found by seekers because we tag it that way?
an ethos of low control and collaboration?
an economy of gift?
church as spaces for creative production and self publishing?
church as providers of resources for spiritual seekers and tourists?

What are the temptations we need to avoid - as a church ?

There might be many temptations to avoid, so I'll focus on the one that comes to mind, the one closest to my heart.  My fear is that as lockdown eases, we will all breathe a sigh of relief and go back to the way we were.

Here's a quote from Bishop Nick Baines blog, posted recently:

“Christian faith does not assume a life (or world)of continuous security and familiarity. It is fed by scriptures that speak of transience, mortality, provisionality, interruption and leavings. But, they also whisper that the endings are always beginnings – the leavings open a door to arrivals that could not have been experienced otherwise. In other words, the loss can be seen as a gift – what Walter Brueggemann calls ‘newness after loss’.

The temptation at the moment is to want to move on too quickly from our experience of loss, and so lose things of immense value that we can learn.

Back to Nick Baines again, who has a useful tool for helping us examine ourselves at this time:

He has suggested to clergy in the Diocese of Leeds, that it might be helpful to ask these four questions:

(a) what have I/we lost that we need to regain in the weeks and months ahead? 
(b) what have we lost that needs to remain lost – left behind in another country? 
(c) what have I/we gained that we need to retain in the future? 
(d) what have we gained recently that was useful for this season but needs to be lost if we are to move forward?”

My last post was Song of the Day #4, home, by Foo Fighters.  I chose it before I decided what to write here, but it does seem appropriate.  What we all want is 'to be home.'  To have a sense that we are exactly where we belong.  To be in a place - maybe, but not necessarily geographically - where we can grow.

But to find the road home we will have experiences of what the Bible calls exile.  Where we are far from home in order to learn what is really important.

This prayer, attributed to Sir Francis Drake, is one of my favourites.

DISTURB US, LORD,
When we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Song for Today #4

Here is song no. 4

Home by Foo Fighters

Wish I were with you
I couldn't stay
Every direction
Leads me away
Pray for tomorrow
But for today

All I want is to be home

Stand in the mirror
You look the same
Just lookin' for shelter
From cold and the pain
Someone to cover
Safe from the rain

All I want is to be home

Echoes and silence
Patience and grace
All of these moments
I'll never replace
No fear of my heart
Absence of faith

All I want is to be home
Ooh

All I want is to be home

People I've loved
I have no regrets
Some I remember
Some I forget
Some of them living
Some of them dead

All I want is to be home

Song for Today #3

I'm back with another song suggestion.  Another artist who gets me in the gut, as well as the brain and the heart.

No Cover Up, by Duke Special.

I don't need to add anything to these remarkable lyrics.

Take a picture if it helps you sleep
Then expose me as your royal creep
For now I've torn it we are not the same
There's a sun that's breaking through my window pane
It's burning up my face yes it's doing it again

No cover up, no room for hiding
No cover up, my faith is sliding
No cover up, just sharp reminding
Of the fake I was

There are faces that we should not know
There are places we're not meant to go
If you try to find me you will never win
For behind each layer lies another skin
I'd love to let you near if you find a way in

No cover up, just so much trouble
No cover up, I'm bent in double
No cover up just wreck and rubble
Of the person I was

I am broken and I stand accused
Is there someone who can let me loose
If you find the answer make a careful note
I could use your pardon and a lot of hope
I'm getting to that part at the end of the rope

No cover up, I feel the burning
No cover up, nor time for turning
No cover up I hope I'm learning
Some honesty, some honesty

How is God asking us to reach out ?

This is the seventh question to think about as our church is called to think and pray about the future.

I'm reading a book by Stuart Murray - Church After Christendom.

It has some really helpful things to say about what healthy churches might look like in a Post Christendom world.

The thing that struck me in relation to the above question is a passage from Paul's letter to the early church in Ephesus.

Ephesians 4:11&12.

"So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,  to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ..... "

The passage does not mention leaders, but gifts.  it is clear that these are 'leadership' gifts, but we have identified gifts almost exclusively with officially recognised and often paid leadership roles in the church, requiring years of training.  In my context, it is clear that the vicar/minister is the main pastor.  A Lay Reader would usually be one of the main teachers.  I'm not sure where the other three gifts mentioned here appear. 

There are several passages in the New Testament that talk about the gifts that are needed for a healthy church.   In Christendom, the gifts that were prominent were Pastors and Teachers.  In Post Christendom, we can no longer rely on people being familiar in any way with the Christian story. Gifts that take the faith beyond the bounds of the Christian community become vital.  That means that our very structures need to change to allow this to happen.

"Ephesians 4 focuses not on church leaders, but on a harmonious church.It is the empowered community that engages in works of service.Its multidimensional activities result in the church functioning properly and becoming mature. It is a long way from this to the clerical (i.e. top down - my addition) models in which the laity support gifted clergy who perfom the worls of service. These models exalt or exhaust those designated as leaders and disempower community" Murray p. 189.

When thinking about the 'How' questions, like the one I'm thinking about today, it might be easy to draw up a list of actions a local church might take to reach out to their community.  That's fine, but there might be other 'how' questions that precede these very practical ideas - questions that are more fundamental to enabling long term change.

For example:

How can the church be less hierarchical, and promote and encourage a much wider participation, as envisioned by Ephesians 4.

How can churches be better at exploring difference, and resolving conflict, and so be the kind of communities that people want to join ?

How can funds be redistributed so that reaching out becomes a major item of expenditure in a church's budget ?

.... perhaps you might make up a question ...

What could we hold onto ?

This question is posed to us - a church community in the middle of the coronovirus lockdown.

What might we hold onto from the experience of the last 9 weeks or so ?

I think that is such a big question.  For me the bigger question that it leads to is

How can we learn from both the inherited church, and the emerging 'new ways of being church' to enable us to be a church fit for a post Christendom world ?

But for now, I'll focus on what have I learned from lockdown, especially with regard to worship.

So - for the last two weeks, our 'zoom church' has been like this:

Short 'hellos' and a prayer

* Brief reading of and introduction to one of the Bible passages for the day. (Usually, but not always the Gospel).

This has been done in a way that is accessible to all ages from pre-schoolers up.  E.G Godly Play.

* Some open questions to think about what might emerge from the introduction.

* Break out groups of 4/5 people.  This for me has been great, because I have 'met' people who I have known a little bit before, but got to know them much better through these small zoom groups.

* Come back together for some prayers.

* Close and further chat over coffee etc.

I would like to hold on to this much simpler approach to worship.  I like the way it has given us something to reflect on, rather than a sermon with a possibly complicated train of thought.

It's very 'word light' in the sense that we don't have a lot of the quite wordy prayers and responses typical of Anglican worship.  This is good for inclusivity.  Some prayers that we all can learn off by heart would be good to give structure and stability.  (But not too many, or prayers that are too long)

I like the way that it invites everyone to contribute.  This makes it more empowering and engaging.

Maybe there are some principles to draw that can be adapted back in a church setting.  In fact this is something we were beginning to experiment with before lockdown, with the time to break up in the middle of the service to respond to the opening introduction in a variety of ways. 

The drawback is that it's harder to be a bystander, which can be quite threatening/challenging, so there should always be the option of using this time for personal reflection.

Song for today #2

Song for today: Nahko and Medicine for the People.

We saw Nahko a couple of years ago at the Greenbelt Festival.  They are one of the special bands that I remember for the power of their performance, which was intense and spellbinding.

Other people in the same category of amazing live acts will appear, no doubt in days to come.

This song calls on the wisdom of elders. Oh how we need that wisdom now.

"Directions"
(feat. Joseph)

For the West
For the North
For the East
For the South

Grandfather, I'm calling on you
Need your guidance now
Grandmother, I'm calling on you
Need your guidance now

Nahko and Medicine for the People - Directions

Poppies in a time of Coronovirus

We walked past the church today

the grass

usually neatly mown

but left to grow for weeks now

is full of colour

blood red poppies

growing where they will

We saw someone with a posh camera

he's stopped and set it up on a tripod

to capture that moment

before

the grass is cut

and everything looks tidy and ordered once again

We walked past the church today

the door

usually open and inviting

has been closed for weeks now

the seeds of faith

now dispersed

growing where they will

I'm writing this with my posh fountain pen

in the A4 spiral notebook where I jot down ideas

to keep this memory alive

before

the doors open once more

and we go back inside.

What could be different

Today's question  - What could be different about church ?

I came across a verse today in psalm 68 - I'm reading the New Revised Standard Version

verse 9:

Rain in abundance, O God, you showered abroad;
you restored your heritage when it languished;

I'm taking God's heritage here as the Church of God.  And in this country and in so many secular, Post Christendon societies, the Church of God has lost its edge. 

So the hope held out here is that God will restore the Church.

Rain in abundance: this reminds us that this restoration will be a work of God.  We do not send the rain, this is not something that we can control.

You showered abroad: I realise that translations vary enormously, but the word that came to me today through this phrase was another hope - that God's renewal would be widespread.

In the latter half of the 20th century, there was a widespread renewal in worship, with greater openness to the work of the Holy Spirit.

What I am praying for is a greater openness now to the Holy Spirit breaking down the walls of the church to spread God's goodness and grace.

There's a story in the Gospel about the woman who brought a jar of precious perfume to Jesus - she broke it open and poured it over Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

What I pray for is for the world to filled with the gracious works of the Holy Spirit through God's church.  Of course those works of love and grace are not absent now, but we long for more. 

Today's song

I'm going to add a song each day if I can.

Here's today's:

There's a bright side somewhere

A very simple song lyrically and musically, but played and song so wonderfully, and expressing a yearning for life in all its fulness.  More love, more joy, more peace.  Amen to that.

Lyrics:

Well there's a bright side somewhere,

there's a bright side somewhere
Ain't gonna rest now, 'til I find it
There's a bright side somewhere

There's more joy ...

There's more love ...

There's more peace ...

What do you cherish ?

I'm assuming that this means - What do we cherish about church ?

Cherish is not an easy word.  We don;t tend to use it in everyday speech.  It's in the anglican wedding service.  'To love and to cherish,' but I can't think of other contexts where it is regularly used.

I knew a vicar once who had a major falling out with his congregation.  One of the church members said to me - 'One of the problems with .... is that he doesn't cherish us, and he won't let us cherish him.'  I knew what he meant.  The vicar in question was quite strident in his leadership style, and was someone it was quite hard to get alongside.

David Cassidy had a hit a long long time ago with the song 'Cherish'.  

Cherish is the word I use to describe
All the feeling that I have
Hiding here for you inside
You don't know how many times
I wished that I had told you ...

As I think about the word cherish, it seems to be to do with relationships above all.  So as far as church goes, I cherish the friendships that we have made there.  The people who have cared for us.  The people who have made themselves vulnerable to us, so allowing us to love and care for them.

Maybe I'll let Kool and the Gang have the last word today.

Let's cherish every moment we have been given
The time is passing by ...

Cherish the love we have, we should cherish the life we live
Cherish the love, cherish the life, cherish the love.

Kool and the Gang - Cherish

What led us here ?

Today's question is - why do we find ourselves at St Paul and St Stephen, Gloucester.

The answer to this goes back at least to 2012.  In March 2012, I had an interview for a job in Gloucester.  I felt excited about the job, but a little daunted.  I didn't have the inner city experience that one of the other candidates had, so I was not completely confident.

After the interview my wife and I met up for a coffee in town.  We were mulling over how we felt about the job, and about Gloucester.  I was pretty sure that I would take the job if I was offered it, but there was a little bit of doubt at the back of my mind.  I said "what we need is a white van with a sign on the side to come round that corner."  Literally at that very moment, a white van went by, and the sign on the side said "Evans Preservation!"

We looked at each other and though - what does that mean.  It could be that we would be preserved by not getting the job, or that we would get the job and it would be OK.  Whatever it meant, we felt that God was looking after us.

As it happened, I didn't get the job. I came a 'close second.'  (I did get another job at a church in Hertfordshire very soon after, but that's another story).

Anyway ... the whole point of telling this story is to say that although I didn't get the job in Gloucester, we felt an affinity for the city as we wandered round on the day of my interview.  So when I was coming up to retirement age a few years afterwards, we remembered how much we had felt drawn to the city, and started looking for houses in Gloucester. (How we found the house is also another story).

So here we were, in 2018.  We moved in on May 15th, and straightaway started thinking about church, and where we would worship.  Although not brought up in the Church of England, we had been worshipping in C of E churches for 30+ years, and I had been a vicar for 20+ of those!  So we trawled round the Anglican churches within a mile or so of our house to see what they were like.

Being a city, there were quite a few to choose from - in all we visited 5 plus the cathedral.  None of them actually felt like 'home' which made it hard to decide.  There were three within a 20 minute walk of our house, so any of them might have worked from a practical point of view.

On Sunday 5th August, we were at the church closest to home- St Paul and St Stephen. As the one closest to home, we had been there a few times.  Ruth, the vicar was talking about the Gospel reading in John chapter 6.  Jesus had done the miracle with bread and fish and fed a crowd of people, but still they didn't seem to get him and his mission.  They come looking for him and asking for a sign.  So he said to them 'What have I just done for you ?  And what MORE do you want ?'

At that moment we both independently thought that this was God speaking to us.  It was as though God was saying - 'Look at what I have done for you.  You're looking for a sign to help you decide where to worship. You wanted to live near a city centre, and you're 15 minutes walk away.  You wanted to live in a Victorian semi, and that's what you got!  You wanted to be able to walk everywhere and you've got a doctor's surgery just round the corner.  There's a garage round another corner 2 minutes walk away.  So you can get your health problems seen to, and you can get the car fixed without going more than a couple of hundred yards. What more do you want ?  Why are you looking for a sign ? WHY WOULD I NOT ALSO GIVE YOU A CHURCH ON YOUR DOORSTEP ?!

And logically that was absolutely true.  Going to this church would give us the opportunity to worship right in the heart of our community, which we have done for the last 20+ years.  So we took this as a sign from God that this was where God wanted us.  Looking back on the last two years, we know that it has been the right decision.  That's not to say it's always been easy.  Apart from anything esle it's hard going from being the vicar to being a member of a congregation.  As a vicar, when you move to a new church, everyone knows who you are - you have a ready made community, and you're immediately a part of that community, as well as being the vicar.

As newly retired people, we came to St Paul and St Stephen almost anonymously.  No one knew us, no one knew all the things we had experienced in life and in church life.  So in some ways it's been hard.  But that Sunday in August nearly two years ago reminds us that we had a definite call to this parish, and so we continue to seek God day by day as we live and serve in this community.

Daily Bread

We've been asked at our church to think about some questions over the next few days.  Today's question is "What is the spiritual bread that you need each day ?"

The word 'spiritual' is a tricky one. It can mean different things to different people.  I remember once being on a visit to a local Catholic Church when I was training for ordination. The priest was showing us round, and then sat us down. He asked 'What is the opposite of spiritual ?' - there was a pause. We guessed that there was just one right answer to this question.  Who would be brave enough to answer?  Eventually someone said 'Physical ?'  The priest might have laughed, or cried, or got angry, I can't remember.  He very simply told us - the opposite of spiritual is unspiritual.  Oh. Light bulbs go on.

That's all a bit off topic when thinking of the answer to today's question.  But it might help.

Another memory I have is reading something by Eugene Peterson, who was very careful with the words spiritual and spirituality.  The light that he shed on the word spirituality was this: Christian  Spirituality has to do with what God is doing.  Now that I like.

So when I think about what spiritual bread I need, I want to set it within another question - How might God be at work in me and through me today.

So it's not just about having my own 'worship time with God', important as that is.  Questions to do with community and mission also appear.  Do you see what's happened ? Worship, Community, Mission - in that order. It's so seductive.

So the question that Ruth, our vicar asked us has left me asking other questions.  How might mission and community be a daily part of what God is doing in me and through me, as well as the personal aspect of scripture reading and prayer.  Because experiencing mission and community as a daily part of life will surely feed me as well as my own personal reading and prayer.

I had better say a little about that.  My daily discipline has been pretty spasmodic a lot of the time.  It tended to be OK when I was working as a vicar, thank God. But on holiday for example, I couldn't make it work.

I also get bored with doing the same thing all the time, so every so often I have to change to keep it fresh.  At the moment, I'm using one reading from the book of Acts, a part of a psalm, and a few verses from John's Gospel.  I keep a journal which helps me to focus.  Writing stuff down is important for me.

I find the psalms are pretty vital. They cover the whole range of human need and emotion.  They make it Ok for example to be angry with God, and to ask God hard questions.

I look for prayers from different places to get me started. Here's one that I have slightly adapted - it's part of a prayer from the Iona Community.

For your love, strong and challenging,
which has called us to risk for you,
asked for the best in us,
covered the worst in us,
and shown us how to live,
how to love,
how to serve,
We give you thanks.

Grace and peace everyone.  Another question tomorrow,

What is Church?

Yesterday was Ascension Day in the Christian calendar.  It's the day when the church remembers Jesus' return to the Father - 40 days after the resurrection.  Jesus left his follwers with a command to pray as they waited for the promised coming of the Holy Spirit.  That would happen on the day of Pentecost, 10 days later.

In recent years, many Christians have used these 10 days between Ascension and Pentecost to pray 'Thy Kingdom Come.'  This is a prayer that we offer continually, but we are called to pray this prayer especially at this time.

In our congregation in Gloucester, we are praying that we will learn new lessons about what it means to be church at this time of crisis.

We are considering some questions to help us with this prayer:

• what is church to you?  
• what is the spiritual bread you need each day?
• why St Paul and St Stephen's?  why do you come to church here?
• what is it that you cherish about our community?
• what could be different in the days ahead?
• what could we hold onto?
• how is God asking us to reach out to others?
• what are the temptations we need to avoid - as a church?
• how do we allow God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven in this place?

I'm thinking about the first question today.



One model of church (Purpose driven church) has these five priorities: Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Fellowship, Ministry.

(I won't unpack any of those words here)

Others will have other models to describe church ... One that I have found helpful is found in a book by Eugene Peterson: Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work.

He has five - Prayer Directing, Discipleship Making, Community Building, Pain Sharing and Injustice Resisting. (I'm actually paraphrasing his categories, which he describes slightly differently)

Notice the absence of Worship and Mission ....

I think that's because Worship and Mission are not things that we do but more about who we are. Worship is at the heart of all of the five categories above.  As is Mission.  To share the pain of another in works of service and compassion is a missional activity.  To resist injustice is a mission activity.

So I would argue that one of the ways we need to see church is with Mission at its heart, not simply a set of activities.  The famous analogy of fire works well - As a fire only exists through burning, so the Church only exists in mission.

For many churches, this is about changing a mindset.  Having a complete revolution in the way we think, so that we see everything in our lives through a lens of mission.

And at the heart, this mission is not ours to contain and own, but it is the mission of God, expressed most completely in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And God invites us to be a part of his saving mission to the world, bringing reconciliation through forgiveness and peace through justice.

It's good to remember another recent well used phrase - It is not that the church of God has a mission, but that the God of mission has a church.

It is only when we are people defined by mission as much as worship that we will see the world blessed by the church. Otherwise, we remain behind the doors of our churches, in a different kind of lockdown, unable to be the agents of blessing to the world.

The Moviegoer

I've been thinking quite a bit about the longterm effects of Lockdown.  Some of course are bad news - for families suffering bereavement, for those whose businesses will not survive, for those whose education has been affected.

There will be some good news as well.  But I think we will have to be attentive to what that might be, otherwise we will slip back into old ways.

We have on our shelves a book by Walker Percy - The Moviegoer.  I can't actually remember if I have read it.  I bought it on a recommendation years ago, and I'll have to revisit it.

I was reminded of the book today when I picked a random page (page 73) from 'The Ragamuffin Gospel' by Brennan Manning. He is writing about a moment in the book that helped me make some connections with where we are in Lockdown.

The Moviegoer tells the story of a commuter who has a pretty good life in many ways, but in spite of that feels bad all the time. Every day as he rides the train he is gripped by a nameless despair.

Then, one day, while on the train, he has a heart attack, and is taken from the train to hospital.  he wakes up in a strange place, surrounded by faces he doesn't recognise.  He see a hand on his bedsheet, and not realising it is his own hand, he marvels at the way it can move and open and close.

Percy describes what happens to the man as an awakening, as bit by bit, he encounters himself and his life in ways that he hadn't done for years.  The ordeal restored him to himself.  What he chooses to do now will be the whole burden of his existence ...

His heart attack has liberated him from a meaningless life and set him on a path to a new existence.

Manning writes - "Percy plunges his heroes into disaster and ordeal, only to speak out of the whirlwind about the worst of times being the best of times ... through the catastrophe they discover the freedom to act and to be"

It's as if we have all had that 'heart attack moment' when we suddenly went into lockdown.  For Christians, and those of other faiths, that meant we could no longer meet together.  Our buildings were closed.

For Muslims, this has been a Ramadan like no other.  On a typical night in Ramadan, mosques would be full with hundreds of people, many of them praying all night.  How terrible to not be able to meet together in this way.  Yet out of this catastrophe there may have been new opportunities, new discoveries, new experiences.

Christians too have had to cope with online virtual services, and all that lockdown has meant.

But could this time signal a reawakening ?  As we ask questions about our faith, and the meaning of church, might this lead us as churches to discover a new freedom to act and to be.

More to come, as I ponder on all of this.

Peace be with you.

Some phrases above are quotes from 'The Ragamuffin Gospel'

The Importance of Pruning

Thursday this week - May 14th was the day the church remembers St Matthias.

Judas Iscariot (remember him ?) had come to a sticky end, and the 11 remaining disciples chose a replacement.  There were two possible candiates, Joseph and Matthias.

The disciples drew lots, and Matthias was chosen.

So there were some readings to go with this part of the story of the early church, one of them being from the prophet Isaiah.

Apparently, there was a man of some status, called Shebna, who had come up short.  This is what it says about him. (The Message translation)

God is about to sack you, to throw you to the dogs. He’ll grab you by the hair, swing you round and round dizzyingly, and then let you go, sailing through the air like a ball, until you’re out of sight. Where you’ll land, nobody knows. And there you’ll die, and all the stuff you’ve collected heaped on your grave. You’ve disgraced your master’s house! You’re fired—and good riddance!

Woah! That's harsh.

Then God chooses someone else - Eliakim - to carry on the work. It's all there in chapter 22.

One of the other readings set for this day is from John's Gospel chapter 15, where Jesus tells his followers that they have been chosen, and put in the world to bear fruit.

Now bearing fruit is an interesting thought.  Earlier in the chapter, Jesus had been talking about the importance of pruning a vine so that you get good grapes from it.

We're learing the importance of this - we have two young fruit trees - and apple and a plum.  They are in their second year, and if I pay attention to the experts, I will need to prune all the fuit bearing branches this year, because that will allow the tree to put all its energy into growing strong roots and branches.  If I don't take the fruit off this year, then the fruit I do get this year will be small, and I will be risking not having the best fruit in years to come.

It's a hard thing to do, but necessary if I want the very best for the trees.

So my question is this - where does God's church need pruning at this moment in time ?  I have often heard these verses about pruning applied to the life of an individual, but what about applying it to communities, and to the church in general.

In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, we (the church) are having to find new ways to meet each other - through online platforms, social media etc.  Hopefully this time of crisis is causing us to think about what is really important for the health of the church. (Returning to a growth metaphor)

What might need to be pruned for us to see new growth ?

What are the essentials that make for church ? How can they be nurtured ?




 

Priests etc

In the current (coronoavirus) situation, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the nature of church, and the lessons we might learn for the future for a healthy church.

Sort of related to that, I've been thinking about my own (Anglican) tradition, and the mess I believe we are in, for all sorts of historical reasons, over leadership.

The New Testament has various words for gifts and roles within the early church.  The roles are - Deacon (Diaconos), Elder (Prebyteros) and Bishop or Overseer (Episkopos)

It may be that the roles of Elder and Bishop were pretty much the same thing ?  The Deacon (origin of the role in Acts chapter 6) was different and seems to be to do with meeting practical needs.

In around the 2nd Century, the word priest begins to be used for presbyter, mainly in connection with the eucharist - sharing of bread and wine as commanded by Jesus at the Last Supper.

The origin of the word priest comes from the Old Testament role, (hiereus in Greek), from which we get the word hierarchy.

My point is that churches today that use the word priest as a way of describing an ordained person, are using and Old Testament word for a role that stood between us and God.

The New Testament emphasis is on leadership, rather than on a role connected with a cultic ritual - eg sacrifice.

The Eucharist (Holy Communion) is in some ways a reinterpretation of the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, seeing Jesus death, symbolised in bread and wine, as a sacrifice. But there doesn't seem to be anything in the New Testament that justifies a role of priest, in the same way as the Old Testament role.  To remember Jesus in bread and wine is far removed from that sacrificial system.

I am an ordained person in the church of England, and sadly the word usually used about people like me is priest.  This unfortunately only goes to perpetuate a church that is hierarchical, with an undue degree of authority and power vested in the vicar.

As far as my ordination is concerned, I have always preferred to see myself as Episkopos (overseer) or Presbyteros (elder).

The part of the episkopos word - scope - tells me it's something to do with seeing, so Episkopos is about having an overview of what's going on.

The prebyteros (elder) role tells me that it's to do with experience and maturity.

You might guess by all of this that I'm in a strange place with regard to the church I find myself in!  Yet I believe for sure that this is what God called me to back in the early 90's.  I have no regrets, but have to live with a certain amount of tension.

One way of dealing with the tension is to find voices that are outside traditional Anglican thought, and so I have a connection with the UK Anabaptist Network, where words like priest are seen for what they are - designations that belong to a pre Christian era.

Lord Have Mercy

I have been a part of the Anglican Church (Church of England) for around 35 years, both as a member of congregations, and as a minister (vicar).

One of the distinguishing features of churches like the Church of England is the pattern of the worship, which nearly always includes prayers of confession, a statement of belief (creed), readings from the Bible, a sermon, prayers of intercession, and often communion.

As well as Anglican Churches, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Lutheran and other denominations all use the same pattern, which gives rise to the description 'Liturgical Churches.'

By the way, the word Liturgy, which is usually used to mean the structure of the worship, actually means 'The Work of the People.' The idea being that worship is the offering of the whole people of God.

This post is about one aspect of the Liturgy - the prayer of confession, or prayer of penitence.

A typical prayer of confession goes something like this:

 Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we have sinned against you and against our neighbour

in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault.

We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past and grant that we may serve you in newness of life to the glory of your name.  Amen.

The starting point for this type of prayer is a confession that we are sinners.  In the Book of Common Prayer, it includes phrases such as "We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness ..."

Marcus Borg, in his book 'Speaking Christian' makes a plea for a wider understanding of the place of public confession in worship.

He argues that prayers of penitence in worship typically focus on sin as thoughts, words and actions that we have committed against God, but that sin needs to be seen in a wider context that includes the idea of sin as - addiction; powers that hold us in bondage; being in exile and needing to return home; sick and wounded and needing healing.

He writes "imagine that our confession of sin was supplemented by images of our predicament as bondage, exile, blindness and infirmity ..... sin matters, but when it and the need for forgiveness become the dominant issue in our lives with God, it reduces and impoverishes the wisom and passion  of the Bible."

In my own prayers, I make use of the Kyrie form of confession, which, rather than taking sin as a starting point, can take some aspect of God's nature and work.

It uses a trinitarian form - Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

I was reading today from John 10, Psalm 87, and Acts 11, and wrote this Kyrie confession:

Lord, your grace is enough

Lord, have mercy

You have written our names in your book of life

Christ have mercy

Lord you give us eternal life

Lord have mercy

It might be a good exercise for you to try this - take a reading from scripture and focus on something Gos says or does -  God's mercy, grace, compassion etc.

Here's one take on this subject

https://theopolisinstitute.com/confession-absolution-kyrie/