Category Archives: Christian discipleship

SIT AND EAT

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RESURRECTION is about nothing if it is not about irresistible life bursting forth in people, and out of “tombs”, and out of our millions of daily deaths, and from other most unlikely places. And the food of life is unconditional love. And Love of that sort emanates from the all embracing Heart of an eternally creating God. God bears “blame” for any lack of love by “minding the gap” with what one of our favourite hymns calls Immortal Love, forever full, forever flowing free; forever shared, forever whole, a never ebbing sea. And that kind of Love, in human form, looks like, acts like, speaks like, listens like, prays like, heals like, laughs like, offers hospitality like, weeps like, dies like, and altogether lives like Jesus.

During this season we’re hugely blessed to welcome the artist Stephen Raw – and some of his work – into our hearts and family home. We’ll be hearing more about Stephen and his life and work over the coming weeks, but for now I want to commend to your attention and care-full eye his artwork of George Herbert’s fabulous Love bade me welcome – presently exhibited behind the font in our lantern tower.

For the passion, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth are not just about Him. They’re also about us. They happen to us, to some degree or another, every day of our lives. That’s what Jesus himself taught. Son of Man. He and we are of the same sort. And just when we feel at our most unworthy, just when we feel that our fully human “eye” has caused us most fully to fall into “dust and sin”, just then we’re most likely to notice that “quick-ey’d Love” is smilingly beckoning us in. “Who made the eyes but I?”

And we shall want to remember. And we shall want to serve that kind of life and that kind of Love Whom we now dare to address as “my dear”. We shall want to serve that kind of life and that kind of Love by offering similarly gracious hospitality, following the example of the one Who, for our sustenance offers us his “meat”. And that is indeed a tall task! Radical hospitality is no mean feat! Let’s remember though, when we find the going tough, that our ultimate end is to “sit”, basking in the light of the first of countless Easter mornings – there to “sit and eat”. And in this eucharistic feast – here on earth and then in Heaven – we shall know the depths of God’s solemnity and the heights of God’s life-giving joy at one and the same time …

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.

George Herbert, priest and poet, 1593 -1633

May you know that your self-giving and service in Lent, Passiontide, Holy Week and Easter, with and for our Christ, will be blessed richly – by God’s New Life. And may our household of faith, New every morning, now and in all eternity, pray a joy-filled ALLELUIA!

for Bramhall Parish News

GOD’S FUTURE

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ONE THING LEADS to another. The creation of one world leads to another. Questions and answers lead to more answers and questions. And so we grow towards the future. God’s future. Our future.

And I’ve returned again and again since yesterday’s Enough Nattering to Archbishop Rowan’s “question and answer” in a homily addressed to the General Synod on Wednesday morning – (text and video here)

What does God’s future look like? Well, one thing we can say is that it looks like Jesus.

So the fact that next Sunday’s epistle reading is to be from Colossians feels like a fairly substantial gift.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible – Colossians 1.15-20

We’re relatively more familiar with ‘things visible’ than with the ‘invisible’. And what we’re able to ‘see’ of Church, of God, of humankind, of future, can at times be rather depressing – or at the very least a bit slow and ponderous (“Like a mighty tortoise moves the Church of God; let’s preserve in aspic where the saints have trod”).

So I shall spend some time in the next few days remembering that there’s an entire universe of created order that lies quite beyond either my imagination or my sight. And that was in the beginning. And is still growing. We haven’t seen the End. So in the meantime we can cheerfully engage in being “changed from glory into glory” – confident that the author of the change is none other than the author of our life in the beginning, and that She looks and breathes life into adamah, mere dust like me. She looks and breathes life into the Body of Christ now on earth. Like Jesus.

I’m much taken with a line from a forthcoming film I’ll definitely be heading to the cinema to see; in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Trailer) the would-be perfect hotelier and host says

Everything will be alright in the end, so if everything is not alright now it’s not the end!

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ARE YOU GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO?

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TO SAN FRANCISCO? I wish. But no. No immediate plans. Bramhall’s my patch for the present. But some day. Some way. Because somehow St Gregory of Nyssa’s Church in San Francisco lives and listens and speaks with and about the kind of words I’m constantly wanting to say. And do. And Grace Cathedral too. Church Times’ front page photo of a celebration of the Eucharist at St Gregory’s represents for me the glorious hotch-potch of loved and redeemed humanity that is my own life’s prayer and perpetual dream. And there’s a big chunk of an extract of Sara Miles, author of Jesus Freak: Feeding, healing, raising the dead. 

Worship and service were part of a whole; the Friday food pantry and the Sunday eucharist were just different expressions of the same thing. Well meaning Christian visitors liked to describe the pantry as a “feeding ministry”, but that just seemed like a nervous euphemism to me. What I saw was church: hundreds of people gathering each week around an altar to share food and to thank God. And then, on Sundays, in the very same space, communion. The priest and whoever else was serving that day – a woman with cancer, a fussy older guy, a serene, angelic seven year old boy in shorts – would lift the plates of fresh bread and cups of wine, and turn, showing the food to the people standing pressed close around the big, round table in the middle of the sanctuary …

These words, and this photo, and these films speak to me of the God of Life whose own freedom has granted humankind its own. Freedom to explore. Freedom to become whole and holy in and amongst the hotch-potch of communities filled with people of every shade and hue and opinion and creed under the sun and stars. Freedom in which hospitality and generosity are extended to all. Am I going to San Francisco? Well, whether on earth, or the San Francisco in heaven, some day, I pray. And in the morning here in Bramhall? There will be alimentos gratis – the free food of Divine Love – in Eucharist at 8, 9 and 10.45am – and during the course of these celebrations, by the Grace of God, six children will be baptised …

BECOMING THE BELOVED

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Henri, I want a blessing …

YOU ARE MY BELOVED. On you my favour rests. – I’ve just come across this extraordinary little series of films and have found myself transported into the company of angels and archangels. Blessed be God for his eternal grace at work in Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) – dear Wounded Healer. Truly beloved.

 

JEAN

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in St Paul's Parish Centre, Macclesfield, 9 July 2003

in St Paul’s Parish Centre, Macclesfield, 9 July 2003

BACK TO BOLLINGTON today, by kind invitation of the Vicar, for the funeral thanksgiving for Jean Lawson (front far right) who I’ve known and loved for years – Jean’s having been a member of both St Paul Macclesfield and St Oswald Bollington. Some pictured here were present at St Oswald’s today. Others took part from a higher perspective. The Reverend Veronica Hydon led a wonderfully reflective service of thanksgiving, the most moving part of which, for me, was the sprinkling of the coffin by Jean’s sons, other family members, some devoted friends, and two of her priests, “In remembrance of her baptism”. Jean Lawson led others into Christian faith and practice by her sheer goodness. Goodness and mercy lead her now into the paths of peace, and old acquaintance …

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

TS Eliot

COMMITMENT

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LONGISH CHURCH COUNCIL meeting tonight (8-10pm), but productive, and with plenty of causes for celebration scattered amongst Agenda items. It’s no secret that I’m a one-to-one-or-two-or-three sort of a man, not a great lover of formal meetings, still less of evening meetings after already very full days. Perhaps it’s worth recording, though, that I’m always impressed by the thought that in countless similar meetings, attended by volunteers all over the world, there’s a vast representation of human commitment to community building and a greater good, and that such endeavours teach us all, across lifetimes, how to listen to other people.

Some listen better than others. Some, like me, manage to listen attentively to some of the people at some of the meetings, and not to, or at others. It’s a human predicament. And extroverts and introverts, not to mention all the other different personality types, add further need for continuing improvement. But I think that Archbishop Sentamu was right when, addressing our diocesan clergy the other night, he stressed the great – even primary – need for listening in the Church and in the world. And in the life of a large and busy church like ours there’s certainly a lot of listening to be done. Tonight’s meeting showed me that, in our church council, there’s a high degree of commitment to the process. And I’m grateful for that.

WITH A LITTLE HELP …

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PAUL DEAKIN (vested, left) preached an encouraging and challenging sermon this morning, attired for a few brief moments in a too short preaching scarf – because it’s more ordinarily employed at Stockport County FC!  It’s great having Paul home on leave from his studies at Mirfield. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” – Nathaniel asked of Philip. Well, of course, someone could and did! And Paul Deakin’s one of the many good things to “come out of” Bramhall.

DAVID TAYLOR (robed, right) served the dual offices of assistant verger and altar server, at short notice, in the midst of one of those whirlwind sort of mornings that Sundays at St Michael’s often look like. With consecutive celebrations of the Eucharist at 8, 9 and 10.45am there’s a lot to be done behind the scenes to make sure there’s a smooth flow. With David and other willing souls like him we’re able to sing: “we get by with a little help from our friends …”

AND ANDY BROWN put imagination into gear and was quick to snap the moments when some of my wonderful young friends here got stuck into “the priesthood of all believers” liturgically. Literally “active angels”, we encouraged each other to pray according to the style and practice of ancient tradition, standing, and with arms raised in a posture of praise, thanksgiving and receptivity. And we all shared in times of silence and stillness too. It all made for a holy communion. Eucharistic. Something accomplished. Religio - a binding together. And I recall that the great son of man who came out of Nazareth once said: I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends – John 15.15-17

COMPANIONS

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A HAPPY MORNING in company with a local group from hereabouts of the Companions of the Community of the Resurrection (CCR) for whom I’m Chaplain. Their name speaks of what they are, and aspire to be further, companions: companying with God, with the monastic  community based in Mirfield, and with one another, in the quiet grace and witness of prayer, shaped and fashioned by a simple Rule of Life. Their presence lent an additional quiet attentiveness to our celebration of the Eucharist this morning. The lectionary epistle was the surprise gift it always is: “God is love, and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them” (1 John 4.16).

Should anyone ever feel that the Church of England might be renamed I’d be in favour of The Companions of the Community of the Resurrection – but lovely as they are I’m not sure how kindly CCR would take to having their name nicked!

A BRIDGE

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THERE’S ALWAYS a lot going on in and around the life of a large and busy parish like ours. There are comings and goings in the ordinary sense and also, of course, in the literal sense. New arrivals. New departures. St Michael’s is often involved in celebrating both, and today a couple of hundred or so people gathered to say farewell to Nancy, a much beloved member of the local community and the church family.

Many who share in our Monthly Monday Meditation (blissful tonight after a busy start to the New Year) have spoken quietly of how these times, in this space and place, are for them a bridge between earth and heaven, of having, on these occasions, “a foot in both camps”. And I am thus assured that the teachings of Jesus about prayer are still alive and well; that the oft alluded to “going (alone) up a mountain” to commune with God is still a model that we can rejoice in. Jesus himself was able to be Pontifex – a bridge between heaven and earth – precisely because he had “a foot in both camps”. And it doesn’t matter at all that our view of earth or of heaven is misty. In fact it’s probably better that way. In my experience it’s in the quiet times, in the misty times, that I’m most moved to pray – and yet more importantly, to stay.

VOCATION, VOCATION …

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vocation, vocation, vocation, vocation ...

JOHN THE BAPTIST was really talking about vocation out there in the wilderness, wasn’t he? Prepare yourselves for a new world. That seems to have been the message.

Bring together the best of the old with the best of the new. Leave the dross behind. Take a cold bath and rise up out of it renewed, ready to rise and shine. Look about you, every day and always, for the coming of a Word who’ll proclaim that the hands in which the new world will be held and shaped and moulded and nurtured belong to you, and you, and you …

The City of Peace will be built not of stones. The new Jerusalem will be built upon the hopes, the aspirations, the “sacrifice” of those who prove willing to risk traversing lonely highways in the desert because they somehow just have an instinct that there’s a voice to be heard out there (or in there) in the wilderness that’s just too important to miss.

And that’s why, in what has been one of my busiest months in a long time, I’m as happy as a sandboy. I’ve been doing what parish priests love doing. I’ve been talking with one willing disciple after another about vocation, vocation, vocation. And the light in their eyes is reflected in mine. Yes, yes, again:

let earth to heaven draw near;
lift up our hearts to seek thee there,
Come down to meet us here.

This is the day of light 
Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised 42
John Ellerton, 1867

see: Paul David Deakin & Rachael Elizabeth