Spring in the midst of autumn

A headline about either teenage pregnancy or an elderly woman giving birth would, these days, be greeted with a curl of the lip.

"Irresponsible interfering with nature!"we'd say. "By the time the child's grown up her mum will be ready for a nursing home.
It isn't right. And as for teenagers getting themselves pregnant, don't get me started!"

But Sarah laughed. Perhaps it was a laugh of weary despair: "Me - a mother at my age? Don't make me laugh!" She was just a dried up stick. Life was nearly over, until suddenly Good gave it a whole new start. Then her laughter was pure joy.

But with God, all things are possible. I heard yesterday about a lady in hospital, after a major coronary, coming round from a coma and telling her family she felt fine. I prayed for her, bit I didn't expect this to happen.

With God all things are possible. What would that mean for me today? For the things in my life that I have written off? Could God yet breathe new life into them?

An Advent Journey

Advent Sunday is a good time to start a journey, so I'm inviting you to travel with me and others on the road marked out by John Kiddle from the Diocese of St Albans.
The Advent Challenge offers you the chance to receive a daily email or text, with a Bible verse and a short reflection. The website offers you the chance to share comments with fellow travellers.
I've posted an prayer for the start of the journey up there, and I hope that I won't be travelling alone.

I've been a journey the last couple of days. A journey of 300 miles, to Bristol and back, to see Michael my son. Very nice, very pleasant to see him in his new surroundings at university, and to meet some of his new friends.
But as with all journeys, it needed some preparation, and some work. Most of the work beforehand was done by Rachel, who booked us a place to stay overnight, organised food, supervised the packing and thought of every detail like cancelling the milk, and getting friends to feed our guinea pig while we were away. My part came in doing the driving – Rachel doesn't much like motorway driving, so I took care of that.
When you come home from a journey, you see things in a new light. The revelations that come from a day or so away are nothing earth-shattering – mainly in our case to do with how much colder a vicarage is than a hotel room!
But I want to suggest that these three components are common to all journeys – preparation; work in the travelling; and discovery – both of new things learnt on the way, and new perspectives on your situation back home.
Travel broadens the mind.
So it's with that in mind that I want to invite you on a journey this Advent. Don't worry, it won't cost anything in petrol or hotel bills, it won't take you away from the vital things you've got planned over the next few weeks. But I hope, that if you put a little effort into that preparation and the work of the travel, that you will make some valuable discoveries along the way.

The passage from Isaiah that I'll hear read in church in 90 minutes' time ends with these words: "Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord."

There's an invitation if ever I heard one. Come on, let's walk in the light of the Lord together.

What would it mean for us to walk in the light of the Lord? What would need to change in your life, if that truly were to happen? I can't answer that question for you, I can only begin to answer it for myself. And for me, it would mean a little more dying to self, and a little more living to others. It would mean a little less finding out what pleases me, and the little more finding out what pleases God. Paul in Ephesians says “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light and find out what pleases the Lord.”

So will you come on this journey with me? Every day another step? I don't expect great revelations will accompany us every step of the way, or that wonderful insights will come on every single day. But it's important not to be discouraged if nothing happens at first.

I'm confident of this, that God who began something good in you and in me, won't stop halfway, but will keep on working in us until the day when Jesus Christ does return, and that therefore if we ask, seek and knock, we will find.

And let me say that no journey is wasted. Not all who wander are lost. And if nothing else, we might see some nice scenery along the way.

A Christian Ghost Story

This is the challenge I set myself this Halloween: when you get to that stage at a Halloween party of sitting around swapping ghost stories, I want to tell one about Jesus and the Resurrection.

So I wrote this.

A long long time ago, an innocent man died a cruel and unjust death. But it was worse than that, it was about the cruellest and most painful death that people had ever invented. It's no exaggeration to say that he died screaming in agony. But, as I said, he was innocent, and was killed for crimes he did not commit.

It happened like this. A friend of his, whom he trusted, had betrayed him for money, and he found himself surrounded by his enemies who captured him, held a sham trial to find him "guilty" and sentenced him to die. Then they tortured him, just for the fun of it. After that, they made him carry the thing that was going to kill him to the place where he was going to die. He'd lost so much blood as a result of the torture, they had to get someone to drag him up the hill in the end - they killed him on top of a hill because they wanted him to die in full view of as many people as possible.

The thing that killed him was a massive block of wood, and they literally stapled his body to it, stood it on end and left him hanging in the blazing sun.

He died on an unlucky day, a Friday. The original Friday the 13th. To make it worse, the people of his time had a belief, or a superstition, call it what you will, that if anybody died on a Friday, and was buried on a Saturday, those who'd buried him would be in trouble. Others would avoid them, they would be counted as "unclean" and they wouldn't be allowed to mix with people until they had made a sacrifice to pay for their transgression.

So his friends couldn't bury him properly. The rule was that you had until the sun went down on Friday, and then you had to stop work. Not just burying, but all work. You had to stop when the sun went down, or face the consequences. So they had a couple of hours, no more. One of them gave his own gravespace, and they shovelled his body in as quickly as they could, before the last rays of the sun went down. They couldn't wait around anyway, because the army had sent soldiers to guard the grave. There was a rumour going round that said that this man was not going to rest easy in his grave, and they didn't want to take any chances.

Darkness fell on Friday night. The graveyard was quiet and still. Saturday came and Saturday went. Afraid of the law, the friends kept away all day and did no work. They got ready to visit his grave again on Sunday morning, bringing some flowers.

Darkness fell on Saturday night. The graveyard was quiet and still. The guards shivered in the cold. They weren't enjoying this job. They jumped at the slightest sound, eyes straining in the darkness, minds imagining all sorts of strange happenings in the graveyard all around. Fancy sitting here, with all these bones. all these dead people resting, some peacefully, some perhaps, not so peacefully. After all, people say that those who die unjustly cannot rest.

I wonder, did they stand with their backs to the grave, or did they keep it in view? They knew the man had died unjustly, did they worry that he might stir in his grave? Did they tell themselves that they weren't frightened, that superstitions like that were for children, not grown men and soldiers? If they did, it wasn't working, because they were jumping out of their skins at the slightest sound.

At last it was midnight. Sunday had begun. Friday, Saturday, Sunday - the third day since the innocent man died in screaming agony. And as Sunday began, his grave began to open, and the guards trembled and became like dead men.

What happened next? I don't know, because there was no one watching to give a report. The guards had fainted with fear. But this I know, that dead man was dead no longer, because now it was Sunday, and the man's name was JESUS CHRIST.

Why Halloween ties me in knots

When I was young, both not very old, and new as a Christian, I used to think that what mattered was believing the truth and trying to persuade others to believe it too.

As I get older, I find myself more and more concerned about what others think of the church, and how our Christian beliefs seem so odd and out of step with the world that there's precious little chance of them believing what we believe because we express it in such a weird way. In other words, it's not what you say it's the way that you say it.

So although I've been opposed to Halloween for years, I've come to think that my long standing opposition to this upstart of commercial festivities is comprehensively misunderstood by people outside the Christian bubble that I inhabit.

Boo! Christian killjoys! Don't you understand irony? You think we really believe in vampires and zombies? Well actually, we're more likely to believe in vampires and zombies than in Jee-zus anyway! Cause the way you talk about him is so off-putting!

So what's a middle-aged vicar to do?

Especially one who finds himself in charge of a secular youth club, where his committee think it would be a good idea to have a Halloween party.

Tomorrow I'll tell you what I did.

Today, it's all about the dilemma. Why is Goodness boring? Why would we rather muck about with evil? It's not an old problem. Milton, writing Paradise Lost, accidentally turned Satan into a sublime tragic hero and made Jesus about as exciting as John Major. (sorry John). I'm not quite at Milton's level, but I am trying to come up with something to say and do that speaks about Jesus and the Resurrection.

Perhaps you could pray for me.

Or maybe you'd prefer to wish me luck.

Restless Prayer

I tried to start a prayer journey, but I couldn't be bothered to leave home.

That's how it feels, as I look back on my resolution to become closer to God through prayer. And going public with it is pretty embarrassing, because as a professional Christian, a church leader, I ought to be good at prayer.

Somehow, I am inclined to think of prayer as a hobby, a side interest, something to do if I have time, or (if I’m not ashamed to say it) nothing better to do. But today I want to speak about prayer as a necessity, as a desire that is as deep as our deepest need, prayer that is not an optional extra to a comfortable life, but the bedrock on which life is built. If we are serious about putting God at the centre of our lives, then we need to cultivate a deeper desire.

But here's my problem. Being honest, really honest, (because where God is concerned there’s no point in doing anything else) I don't want a relationship with God anything like enough. I’m too used to being comfortable, satisfied, and full. And I suspect that many of you are just the same as me.

Gerard and Chrissie Kelly wrote a book called Intimate with the Ultimate, and the third chapter is called Restless. It's about cultivating a dissatisfaction with the way you are, and a deep deep longing to be closer to God.

They must have known what I am like.

Fortunately, they are very realistic. I love this bit of advice: "Tell God that you want this relationship; or if you can't get that far, that you want to want it; or if that is too difficult, that you want to want to want it; or if even that is too high a price, that you want to want to want to want it. Whatever your starting point, take a step towards a life of prayer driven by desire to know God."

I think I can manage that. I might be sitting in an armchair behind the starting line, not even dressed for a race, while the Olympic stadium is full of the saints cheering the competitors on, and the runners are under starters orders. The crowd are the saints, God has his finger on the starting pistol, and I'm sitting back, reaching for another chocolate.

God! Help me want to get out of this chair, and run the race!

"You do know, it's all down to you, don't you?"

Why did this question fill me with horror?

I had a moment of revelation the other day. I was in a meeting, and the role of the church in the local community was under discussion. Our church was praised for being present in situations that other churches didn't seem to care about.

And then came the question.

"You do know, it's all down to you, don't you?"

What would you think was meant by that? I'll tell you how I took it. To me, it sounded like this person was telling me that it was all down to me, as the vicar, to keep the church involved in this and other important things in the community. And I quailed.

But seeing the look on my face, the last who said it clarified: she meant it as a compliment, that credit was due to me for leading the church to be so active in the community.

Why does this matter? Because for some time I have had my leadership style under scrutiny, and it is becoming clearer to me that I keep too much to myself
To much responsibility, too much work, too much worry. Like many clergy, I'm a poor delegater. It might be because I'm a control freak, it might be because it takes quite a bit of nerve to persuade a busy person to do another job for you. But partly because of something a bit more complicated and intractable.

Because of the way I responded to that question. It's all down to me. I didn't know that I thought that, but apparently I do.

Time to remind myself that it's NOT all down to me. It never was, and never will be. This isn't my church, it's God's church.

Sorry God. You can have it back now. I hope I haven't broken it.

The storage tide

I'm thinking of preaching tomorrow on the parable of the rich fool - Jesus' story of the farmer who needed to build bigger barns to keep all his possessions safe.

It struck a chord - every time I see a self-storage warehouse I think, "We have way too much stuff!"