I just finished reading this a moment ago, and I had to say something about it. (Although, being on the silence of God, and how we need to try to practice economy with our words in order for people who listen to us to hear God, or not hear God… I don’t want to say too much!) I don’t think that I have ever read a non-fiction book that was as beautifully written as this book by Barbara Brown Taylor. The book is mostly addressed towards those who have the frightening, awesome and beautiful privilege of preaching within their communities of faith. Taylor addresses the role of preachers in talking about, of, to, and with God. She talks about what has happened to language, what it means to try to stand before your community and speak truthfully, and how we try (unsuccesfully) to name God. The language that she uses is simply exquisite, I found myself reading and re-reading phrases that she wrote, just to enjoy again the way she expresses her thoughts. The words are so beautiful, its like they leave a sweet taste in your mouth: sweetness that is true, real and names the feelings and thoughts that you know but have not or cannot express with such eloquency. There are so many bits that I would like to share with you, but I just cannot here, but you should try to read this book if you can. I will leave you with the closing two paragraphs:

“Whatever preachers serve on Sunday, it must not blunt the appetite for this [God's] food. If people go away from us full, then we have done them a disservice. What we serve is not supposed to satisfy. It is food for the journey. It is meant to tantalize, to send people out our doors with a taste for what they cannot find in our kitchens. When they find it, they understand why we did not say more about it than we did. It was not that we didn’t. It was that we couldn’t.

Our words are too fragile. God’s silence is too deep. But oh, what gorgeous sounds our failures make: words flung again the silence like wine glasses pitched against a hearth. As lovely as they are, they were meant for smashing. For when they do, it is as if a little of God’s own music breaks through.”

Good Friday

Father God, You waited through the long hours of agony, when He was robbed even of the sense of Your love, Your presence, when the sin and disease and hatred and darkness overwhelmed Him so greatly.

He was wounded for my transgressions, He was wounded for our transgressions.

Father, what love is this of His? What love is this of Yours that His dying love reflects? Your forgiveness for me, as we gaze upon His sacrificial death, is as truly an undeserved gift as the pardon He spoke to the dying thief. It is mine if I will only receive:

He was wounded for my transgressions, He was wounded for our trangressions.

(Adapted from Celtic Daily Prayer: Inspirational prayers and readings from the Northumbria Community.)

Mystery worshippers?

The Baptist Times this week is carrying on its front page the possibility of starting a new ‘mystery worshipper’ programme for churches. This comes from the ‘mystery shopper’ business concept, except for churches. You can read the article here:

http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/news1.htm

What do you think of this? I can’t decide if I think its shocking and depressing that the only way that churches feel that they might be able to get an opinion on their Sunday morning services is by paying someone to ‘evaluate’ them… or if I think its an interesting idea. Some things to think about include why are we using market research techniques for the church? Has the church in Britian become so captivated to the consumeristic society that church is seen as a product, or commodity that we need to check if people like? What does is mean if a church gets rated 100%? What are the criteria for doing well or not? Should a church be evaluated simply on what happens at a Sunday morning service? Is the church forgetting that Christians are normal human beings too… and that people who are not Christians are also normal human beings… do we need to be paying these “outsiders” to come into our services so that we can (finally) find out what the “outsiders” think?! Shouldn’t the church be going to the world, not expecting the world to come to the church? Has the church lost its way?

I think that probably one of the more worrying things is that this new ‘tool’ is hopefully going to be ready for “Back to Church” Sunday. “Back to Church” Sunday? Is that the day that all the Christians sit in their churches and hope and pray that loads of people (sinful backsliders) will come flooding back to church and there will be revival in the land?!! We are truly in a sorry state if that is the case.

What do you think?

p.s. I know and enjoy the “Ship of Fools” mystery worshipper reflections… but this is voluntary, done by Christians and also rather satirical. I don’t think that it is the same thing as what is being proposed by Christian Research Organisation.

On death.

I just heard from the pastor of the church that I did my placement in, that one of the guys that the pastoral visitor and I went to see during my month there, has died. I went to go and visit this man twice during my time at HBC, and it seems so strange that he has died. He was in his nineties, so he had a full life… but he still had so many questions about God, life, the world, many things. When I was there once, he was telling me about the war (one of his favourite topics..!) his wife, his brother that he was estranged from. He was also asking some searching questions about God, faith, the world as it is. (all of these questions asked very loudly… and needing answered very loudly too..!) It made me sad to visit him, he seemed so alone, so melancholy. He said more than once that he just wanted to die so that he would be at peace. A shocking thing to hear, but it expressed a honesty that we don’t often see, a yearning to be with God that many don’t experience.

The second time that I went to see him, we took him communion. Red grape juice in a thimble-sized communion cup and a chunk of not-as-fresh-as-it-could-be bread… not exactly the meal that Jesus said it should be. I really don’t know what happens when we die… I don’t know if we float off somewhere, or if we all wait until Jesus returns to the earth and then we are resurrected from the dead. But I do know that that old man will get the answers to his questions, he will have his worries erased. In the presence of God, all these things will melt away, as he basks in the embrace of his Father. And the meal that they will enjoy will be awesome…

The Samaritan woman

I am preaching this Sunday in SVCC (Sarka Valley Community Church) our church in Prague. We following the lectionary, and the passages this week are centred around water and the Holy Spirit. They are interesting and thought-provoking. (Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 95, Romans 5:1-11, John 4:5-42) The passage that I’m probably going to focus on the most is the John passage, which is the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The conversation that they have is the longest conversation between Jesus and another person that is recorded in the New Testament. I guess you could argue that its because he’s talking to a woman, and (not to stereotype or anything…) she just keeps chatting away to him. Or, to be less cliched, it could be because Jesus is showing us something significant about this conversation. By taking the time to talk and engage with the Samaritan woman (who doesn’t ever get named, but I whom I have nicknamed ‘Samantha’), Jesus spends time with someone who his contemporaries, and people from his cultural background, would have shunned.

I guess that most people have heard this story of Jesus talking with Samantha. Jesus broke many social taboos in engaging in conversation with her: he was a man, she was a woman; they were unaccompanied; he was a Jew, she was a Samaritan (who were despised and vilified by the Jews); he should have been concerned about preserving his ‘purity’, but instead asked for a drink from her water jug (which would have been absolutely ‘unclean’ because she was a Samaritan). We know why this story is suppposedly shocking, but we’ve heard it so many times that we don’t find it shocking anymore.

I guess it makes me wonder who our ‘Samanthas’ are. Who are those people that Christians are not ’supposed’ to associate with? What people would you be afraid of people from your church seeing you with? I think that we need to recover the shockingness of this story, so that our own self-righteousness can be revealed, and Jesus can show us how to truly love his people. Here are the lyrics from one of the most powerful Christian songs that I have ever come across. It is called “God of the Moon and Stars” and it is written and composed by Kees Kraayenoord.

God of the moon and stars
God of the gay- and singles bars
God of the fragile hearts we are, I come to you.
God of our history, God of the future that will be
What will you make of me, I come to you.God of the meek and mild,
God of the reckless and the wild
God of the unreconciled, I come to you.
God of our life and death
God of our secrets unconfessed
God of our every breath, I come to you

God of the rich and poor
God of the princess and the whore
God of the ever open door, I come to you.
God of the unborn child
God of the pure and undefiled
God of the pimp and paedophile, I come to you.

God of the war and peace
God of the junkie and the priest
God of the greatest and the least, I come to you.
God of the refugee
God of the prisoner and the free
God of our doubt and certainty, I come to you.

God of our joy and grief
God of the lawyer and the thief
God of our faith and unbelief, I come to you.
God of the wounds we bear
God of the deepest dreams we share
God of our unspoken prayer, I come to you.

God of a world that’s lost
God of the lonely cross
God who has come to us, I come to you.

Sitting with God

This Lent I want to try to be a bit more quiet… (I’ll continue as soon as the snickering has died down..!)

I think that we’re so good at being busy… we want to be as busy as we possibly can be, cramming a hundred things into our day. We pride ourselves on being busier than other people. But what is it all for? Busier lives don’t usually mean fuller lives, although if our lives were empty that wouldn’t be good either..! I think that the balance of work, play, noise and silence is really important… but its often difficult to work out. I think that this especially applies to our relationships with God. We are told (in good evangelical fashion) that we must have a ‘quiet time’ each day. So, we strive (usually) to do this… we rush into God’s presence, read a bit of Bible, say a prayer and then rush into the rest of the day… the ‘real’ part of our lives. We don’t take time to sit, be still, wait on God. I’ve been trying to do this more… but I find it really hard. I think that I’m doing well… you know, not just talking away to God, but trying to listen too… but then I realise that I’m just thinking about what we should have for dinner, or a conversation that I had with someone, or when I need to do for work that day. I guess that we can only hope that as we practice being still before God more, we will improve… but we need his help to do it!

On a different note, we still haven’t heard anything from the social services department about the papers that we handed in for the adoption. We at least know that they have them… but apart from that, nada. Its been nearly 2 months, but I know that I shouldn’t get impatient… everything will happen (or not happen) in God’s timing. (Yeah, that’s another thing that’s hard to get your head/heart around… just trusting God simply for every thing in life.) We know from friends who have been through this process that it doesn’t happen ultra quickly… but that it will work out in the end. We are holding onto the hope that they have encouraged us with, and to the knowledge that God is our loving Father, in whom we can fully trust. Keep praying for us though… that we can keep faithful, and that God would work out his will in our lives.

Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, and in chapel this morning we were reflecting on the up-coming time of Lent. This has been through history, the time in the Christian calendar for reflection, confession and yearning for God. I think that many Protestant traditions have lost the value and meaning that there is in the different seasons of the Christian calendar, so I feel so privileged to learn from different people at IBTS the times, seaons and meanings of the Christian calendar. The service this morning was particularly moving because it was a Eucharist service, so in the midst of our own awareness of sin and need of Christ, we were reminded that Christ did come, he did die and he did rise to life again… and because of this, we can be healed, forgiven, restored. After the Eucharist, many people stayed behind to have the cross of ash signed on their forehead. As the cross was being made on my forehead, Ivana said the words “Remember that you are from ashes, and to ashes you will return.” These are quite profound words. I found myself thinking about them… on one hand I think that they can be quite depressing… I was nothing before I was born, and I will again become nothing. That is sort of sad in a way… all the things that we have worked for in the end could just die with us. But then at the same time, it is that reminder that this life is only temporary… so we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously..! At the same time, it reminds us that although this life is temporary, it is the life that God has given us. We should therefore use this life to glorify and honour God with our lives. It was a very moving moment, and challenging start to the Lenten season. I will try to blog a little more often during the next 40 days… please feel free to bring any thoughts, prayers or reflections that you have during this Lenten time to the blogosphere..!

During this time of Lent, may you again seek to draw close to God, may you strive to see his face and to walk in his ways.

John Wesley (a word about social action versus evangelism)

  

Reflecting on Matthew 25: 31 – 46: To those who wondered “what does it avail to feed or clothe men’s bodies, if they are just dropping into everlasting fire?” Wesley responded, “whether they will finally be lost or saved, you are expressly commanded to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. If you can, and do not, whatever becomes of them, you shall go away into everlasting fire.”

From John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, vol 1: Sermons 1:1-33 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), Sermon 24: “Sermon on the Mount 4″ p. 545-46

Interesting to refect on, particularly considering the conversations that I often find myself being involved in with some very dedicated missionaries in Central/Eastern Europe. In the discussion about social action and evangelism, these two topics are often pitted against each other. Or at least considered that they need to be held in tension. At the moment I am reading Christine D. Pohl’s excellent book on hospitality, called “Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition”. But this is not the hospitality of small talk and sandwiches, but robust openness to strangers, refugees and outsiders, those that have been excluded or forgotten. I am really enjoying this book, and it has opened my eyes to the great heritage of hospitality that Christianity has, but over the past couple of centuries has been largely neglected. She is advocating a recovery of this essential practice in Christianity, stating that hospitality to ‘the least of these’ is a fundamental Christian imperative.

Have a great weekend…! May you experience both the joy of being welcomed and welcoming others.

World Council of Churches asks for Prayer, advocacy and solidarity with churches in Gaza

In a statement issued yesterday, the heads of churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land called on the international community and the state of Israel to end the current siege on the Gaza Strip which has caused most recently cuts in electricity and limited the shipments of medicine, fuel, food and other goods across the border.

The statement says the siege of Gaza has effectively imprisoned one and a half million people without proper food or medicine. The church leaders stress that “this is illegal collective punishment, an immoral act in violation of the basic human, natural as well as international laws. It cannot be tolerated anymore. The siege over Gaza should end now.”

The statement urged Palestinians to unite in ending their differences for the sake of the people in Gaza and urged Israel to act responsibly.

In a letter issued today, the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia called on the Council’s 347 member churches around the world to pray for the end of the suffering in Gaza and speak out for the people in Gaza to their governments.

“Address your parishes, the public, your governments and the embassies”, Kobia writes, “calling for an end to the siege, an end to their collective punishments and a negotiated ceasefire”.

The letter urges churches to manifest solidarity with the churches in Palestine by supporting the work done by local churches on the ground and church-related agencies like Action by Churches Together. Kobia also suggests to send messages of support directly to the local churches.

Statement from the heads of churches in Jerusalem
http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=5519

WCC general secretary letter
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=5522

Thinking and stuff

I am nearly at the end of my second week of my placement at Horley Baptist Church, and its going really well so far, I’m really enjoying the whole experience. I have been able to get involved in most of the things that the church does as part of its ‘regular’ life and witness. This has ranged from going to ‘Noah’s Ark’ which is for the little kiddies, to ‘Thursday Group’ (original name, eh?) for the oldies. Also been on a few pastoral visits to the local hospital, which has been challenging but important for me to reflect on.

The congregation is a good mixture of a bit of everything really… which I love, I didn’t just want to have a placement in a nice, leafy, overly posh church..!! So, everything is going well so far. The whole experience is causing me to reflect on so many things… what it means to be a church, how to look after people pastorally, how to deal with issues of addiction in the church community… etc etc etc. It also forces me to think about what kind of church I might like to work with/in, what kind of issues might be involved, what challenges there might be… and all that sort of thing..! It actually makes me apply what I have been learning to real people, in real life, with real issues. And if the theology that is written in books can’t stand on two feet in the real world (ie, outside of academia) then I see very little point in it.

Anyway, more to follow soon..!