Category Archives: The Word

ASCENDING ALLELUIAS

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I OFTEN SPEAK about life’s being, for me, a colour-full affair. I’ve read on several occasions that some blind people can “see” in their dreams. This doesn’t surprise me.

Anger, anxiety,
adoration and awe,
celebration, communion,
confession, consolation,
consternation, contemplation,
dying, fear, joy,
lamentation, loneliness,
longing, love,
Magnificat, meditation, mediation,
passion, poetry, prayer and prose,
sadness, sleepiness, silence, song

- any and all forms of worship – often translate for me into vivid and fluid colour. The movement is gentle and healing. And thankfully, for a minimalist like me, the colour sometimes involves shades of plain and lovely uncluttered white. Neither the movement nor the colours are loud or aggressive or overwhelming. But they are bright. And each represents someone, some emotion, or some thing. A bit of time spent with “Alleluia” above may reveal some faces and one or two particular spaces …

In common with many artists, pray-ers and writers I think of our ultimate Heaven as fullness of life expressed in colours hitherto beyond our wildest seeing and dreams, but utterly reminiscent, too, of experiences we’ve known throughout our incarnate lives, here, in “this world”. Our hymn book contains a (much too long) version of the Ascensiontide “Hail the day that sees him rise”. Printed service orders (our Sunday usage) allow for discreet pruning. Not so when we use the hymn book, as we did on Thursday. So lots and lots of alleluias! For me though the words sometimes become the means of transport to a different level of seeing and / or hearing.

This “Alleluia” developed whilst humming “Hail the day” on and off over a period of about 48 hours. Sometimes these paintings start out with canvas or paper, paint and brush, and are photographed and digitally developed later. For this one the “medium” has been entirely my miracle iPad with BoxWave stylus. Have a great Sunday-after-Ascension. And may your Alleluias be colour-full and joyful.

WHAT’S GOOD NEWS?

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I’M OFF TO A DAY CONFERENCE on “Catholic Evangelism” tomorrow. I’m not wholly sure whether it’s going to be about Catholic Evangelism (capital C, capital E) or catholic evangelism (small c, small e), and I’m rather hoping for the latter … hoping, that is to say, for a catholic evangelism that really is about good news (evangelism) universally applied (catholic), ie, for everybody – no matter their “faith tradition” or lack thereof – everywhere.

I’ve spent a very great deal of my life passionately pondering what exactly constitutes good news, and in particular why having some sort of acknowledged relationship to / with the Source of our lives might matter – to individuals, to communities, to nations, to our world, to the whole created order – some of these whole and healthy, some desperately broken, hurting, and in need of that Divine touch that brings healing. And I’m consistently finding that old definitions of what it means to be Catholic, or Protestant, or Christian, or shades in between all of these, don’t fit all sizes any more, if they ever did.

Christ everywhere …

What constitutes Good News in a ‘catholic’, pluralistic world? Where is an / our anointed Christ to be found? (as I’m sure such a Christ is indeed to be found, anywhere in the world, and across the world’s faith traditions). And the questions are so important to me because as a Christian priest, seeking always to live and learn – to be a disciple – after the pattern of Jesus of Nazareth, I have observed that some kinds of Catholic, some kinds of Protestant, and some kinds of “Christian” plainly do not represent very good news for many people at all. So catholic evangelism must be something quite different, something much more open, something prepared always to be held to account as to the reach of what it purports to be good news. Catholic evangelism will not, I think, be too prescriptive.

Feast of life for all

Catholic evangelism will offer the “feast of life” to people in the “highways and byways” won’t it? Catholic evangelists, personal and corporate, will have dismantled their drawbridges. Catholic evangelism will be less concerned (although not wholly unconcerned) with the Faith of our Fathers and hugely more concerned with Faith Being Received Today. When I’ve asked adults over the past thirty years whether they’d like to come to confirmation classes, so that they can be presented to the bishop, confirmed, and thereafter receive Holy Communion many have politely declined. When I’ve offered the Sacrament of Holy Communion “no questions asked” it has been the case, more frequently than I can count, that the recipient has ended up doing the asking, seeking to confirm a present and acknowledged reality – satisfied hunger – in their lives.

Let’s explore!

And I remember that Jesus was ever ready to go the extra mile for children, too. “Do not try to stop them for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these”. Catholic evangelists will work hard at becoming more, well … catholic – so that they’re more plainly seen to be, well … “Christian” or “Anointed”. Catholic evangelists will be interested in marginalised multi-tasking-capable women, tax collectors, prodigal sons, unimaginative but very opinionated men, quieter and more imaginative men, too, and in lost sheep. Catholic evangelism won’t chastise the lost sheep for having left the fold in order to “explore”, still less tell the poor creature that God forbids it. Instead truly catholic evangelists (like Jesus of Nazareth) will make the fold larger so that there’s the space for MORE sheep to engage in the business of exploration, to engage, that is to say, in their God-given Life!

The Sound of Silence

One of the biggest growth areas in our parish (liberal Catholic with blurry edges – a bit like my paintings!) – has been a call to shared and silent meditation in the parish church – arriving and departing in companionable silence. No coffee or handing out electoral roll forms afterwards. And numbers in excess of many a church’s entire Sunday congregation have responded to a call – we believe a Divine call – to dwell for a space, together in the “house for the Church”, to wait upon the Word that touches life in silence. (The Word – not words. There’s not “even” a Bible reading). It’s life-changing, say many participants. It’s the only occasion in my month when I’m really and deeply aware of the heartbeat of God, the pulse of life, say others. This silence, this “that’s not very Catholic” but absolutely catholic encounter is breathing into our common life new elements of what it means to bear good news in our lives today, what it means, first and foremost to BE the Body of Christ now on earth, what it means to be religious in the original sense of the word (religare) – reconnected, re-membered. Restored to what we’ve forgotten.

Old assumptions yield

So whether tomorrow proves to be slanted more to Catholic Evangelism, or to catholic evangelism, I hope we’ll be asking the same question – What is Good News? – at least sometimes. Because, remembering Louis MacNeice’s Mutations again:

… old assumptions yield to new sensations.
The Stranger in the Wings is waiting for his cue.
The fuse is always laid to some annunciation …

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

IMAGINING

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IMAGINING. I think that’s one of our chief works as humans. It’s how we co-create with the Source of all life. And imagining is what I’ve been doing all day. First in a fairly routine sort of early morning meeting, later in a scintillating encounter between an artist, Stephen Raw, an architect, John Prichard, two churchwardens, Ralph Luxon and Sue Taylor, and a photographing priest who thought he was in photographic heaven, moi …

I took many dozens of photos. Mindful of my manners though I will check with the artist before sharing too many more than the one above. This is a little trio of beautiful articles in a Stephen shaped cave. Not the work of the artist, but absolutely the work of the artist, if you know what I mean? Stephen’s studio feels like a coloured X-ray of his heart and soul and mind and body; a statement of faith and an act of imagination and creation. We came away energised at some profound level. We’d been standing on holy ground. I shall hope to stand there again. And there was good coffee! And cookies.

~

Later in the day I imagined a lovely local man being now in the nearer presence of God. I was deeply moved by his wife Sheila’s beautiful reading of Psalm 121 during a memorial service at nearby All Saints’ where Harry had been the organist until his sudden and unexpected death. The music, sung, played and listened to, together with Fr David’s quite simply superb shepherding of the service, and a fine address, made for one of the very finest funeral thanksgivings I’ve ever experienced. I’m deeply grateful for that and know that Harry’s family must surely be yet more thankful. Harry was an artist in his own distinctive and giving way. Perhaps all of us, in early morning meetings, artist’s studio, thanksgiving service in Church, or wheresoever we may be, are, each and every one of us, artists in our own distinctive ways.

How did  God bring about such an extraordinary work, I wonder? And I only come near being able to approach an answer when I make time in my life to imagine ….

Update: with Stephen Raw’s kind permission: my photos are here

ALMOST SPELLING ‘HOLY’

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WRITING ABOUT stained glass fragments “blown apart in wars” and haphazardly reassembled later, the priest poet David Scott, in the second stanza of his A Window in Ely Cathedral, tells of

A leering bit of face with twisted lips,
a bit of beard, and letters almost spelling ‘holy’,
a sheaf of corn, a leaf, and then the sun dips,
lighting Mary in her simple glory.

Piecing Together
 A Window in Ely Cathedral,
stanza 2 of 3, page 29

In the economy of God there’s something afoot. I can feel it in my bones. The downtrodden, the dispossessed, the shattered, the fragmented and the forgotten, wherever they are in the world, are raising their voices. They cry for the reconciliation, resurrection and restoration of a humane humanity – for people of every race and nation, and of every creed (or lack thereof), or “class”, or colour. Too much has been blown apart by wars and for too long. But days wear on, the sun dips in her course, illuminating that which speaks of life’s real glory, and is thereby truly holy.

This is exciting. This is the stuff of the reign of the Source of all of our lives, to whom we have prayed, and with whom we have yearned, in every time and place, in every political and religious tradition, for so very long. Whether we’re speaking of ordinary Libyans standing up to be counted, intent on “occupying” their own entitlement to a bit of their own space as human beings; whether we’re speaking of Occupy New York, or Occupy London, or occupy-a-space-in-the-queue for fresh air, or clean water, or a bowl of rice, something is most assuredly afoot. The sun dips, lighting Mary in her simple glory, and because at evensong we’re rather quieter than usual we may hear her softly say and pray

he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek

Come Christ-Mass this year the stable and the tent will not be featured only in hand-picked and glossy Christmas cards. Tents and stables are being raised up alongside cathedrals and churches. Tents and stables are being raised up in our dreams and in our slowly-awakening hearts. Here are opportunities to catch real glimpses for the possibilities of life’s glory, opportunities that are thereby truly holy. Some amongst us, nonetheless, will not look any more kindly upon such fragmented opportunities than they would ever have looked upon the teenage mother in the stable of Bethlehem.

But something of and from the divine is afoot. The leering bit of face with twisted lips, a bit of beard, and letters almost spelling ‘holy’, must give way to the sun’s dipping

lighting Mary in her simple glory.

MAXIMILIAN’S BAPTISM

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THE FULL HOUSE for the joy-filled Baptism of Maximilian this morning gives me (another) opportunity to head up this post with my very favourite account, by a simply wonderful narrator, of Jesus’ Baptism! But more than that, it’s always such a joy when our House for the Church is full of people come to celebrate the goodness of God and the richness of the gifts we revel in. And there’s no greater gift to a family than that of an infant. Nor, perhaps, any greater responsibility laid upon older shoulders. Bringing infants to Baptism in and into the House of the Lord provides glorious opportunity for all of us to reflect upon the giftedness and gratuitousness of our lives, upon our hopes and our aspirations, what – in co-creating with, and in, and surrounded by God – we want to make of our world, our humanity, our society, our church – for Maximilian, for ourselves, and for God.

“I baptise with water”, said John the Baptist. One who will come after me will baptise with Holy Spirit. And so it came to pass. Today and every day humankind is baptised “new every morning” by the Spirit of Divine Grace and Love. Perhaps that’s why Maximilian and his wonderful parents were smiling so much in our sacramental celebration of the fact this morning. Perhaps that’s why people had travelled from far and wide to celebrate the gift and the treasure. Yes! – wherever and whenever humankind is “baptised” in the Spirit of God we can rest assured that the Source of our Life continues to turn the world upside down. “Whoever has seen (this human) me has seen the Father” said the anointed Jesus to Philip. And this morning he might have said “whoever has seen Maximilian has seen the Father”. What a joy, what a commission, what a responsibility – this living of the Life and Love of God in and through each one of us, dear created people.

DIVINE PARENT,
Mother and Father, Sister and Brother of us all,
in company with Jesus,
in the power of your Spirit,
with prophets, priests and royal leaders,
and with every woman, man and child
upon the face of the earth,
we bless you for the gift of life and of abundance.
And as we bless you we also ask
your blessing for ourselves that we may be
inspired, strengthened and encouraged daily
to share that life and that abundance
throughout the world.

WATER TO THE THIRSTY

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LUNCH WITH ROGER CLARKE the other day reminded me of one of the hymns we’ve got lined up for the 9am Eucharist here tomorrow: “As water to the thirsty”. Lunch with Roger has been like that for me, every now and again, for over a quarter of a century. The steak burger was great but I came away, as ever, with another kind of food, too, the kind for which I have a large appetite. Introduction to someone else asking – and seeking to live faithfully with – the same kinds of theological questions that are on my heart and mind day and night. In this case Roger mentioned Dale C Allison’s Constructing Jesus: Memory, imagination and history. The title had instant appeal and was purchased that afternoon alongside Allison’s The Historical Christ and The Theological Jesus – page 1 of which offered instant relief for the present writer, this committed Christian (and parish priest) who for the whole of his life has doubted the possibility of theological certainties:

“It may be necessary to live with uncertainty as an alternative to living with a closed mind” – David Hay p.1

quoted by Dale C Allison Jr
The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus

Does the (hotly disputed) “historical Jesus” matter as much as some religious agencies would have us believe? Is the “theological Jesus” rather that voice, that Spirit, Advocate, Comforter and Guide of God, that Jesus is said to have promised would be “sent” to lead us into “all truth”, and is the theological Jesus just as important, or more important than the historical? Should both be given equal weight? Are we to be directed by a once and for all Jesus, and if so, whose Jesus? (including consideration of the “Jesus” known through other world faith traditions) – or are we to be open to a degree of fluidity, a continued outpouring and outworking? – the Word engraved on tablets of stone (or papyrus) – or the Word emanating from hearts and minds and souls and bodies “new every morning”?

Are we still waiting for the physical Second Coming of the Historical Christ or can we know his continuing advent in hearts and souls and minds and bodies NOW – if only we’d “hush the noise” a bit, if only we’d “be still for the presence …” of the Theological Jesus. ? These are the questions of my daily life, and they matter to me, as I’ve said so often, because of my passionate conviction that matter matters … all created things are from God, belong to God, and are intended to return to the fullness of God. And too many elements of that Creation are engaged in doing battle over unknowable “certainties”.

My personal soteriology has more to do with salvation from such certainty than with “nights of wonderful conversion”. I rather wish that church attendance, or bible reading, or the sacraments really could show me, or anyone else, “how to have life in all its fullness”, but such fullness lies yet in the future for me, and for many (millions of) others – amongst these, sons and daughters of God whose physical hunger and thirst leaves neither time, opportunity, energy or inclination to debate theological niceties. Would that (anyone’s) theological certainty might give food and drink to more than just the token few of such as these.

“I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect. That’s the pulpit speaking but it’s telling the truth.” – Marilynne Robinson p.6

quoted by Dale C Allison Jr
The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus

Isn’t there a measure of truth that comes to us today as we engage in theological reflection? Isn’t it the case that we sometimes just intuit truth for our time and our place and circumstance as did the prophets of old? Do we leave room in our learning, our discipleship, and especially in our preaching for “visions that come to us only in memory … the pulpit speaking … telling the truth”. Might not a move away from tired literalism stem the exodus from our churches? Wouldn’t a genuine openness to the voice of the Spirit of God in our own day make way for re-energising and for necessary revolution?

Bishop John V Taylor wrote in 1989

Though we may not understand what he meant by it, we know what the Gospel of Jesus was: “The time has come; the Kingdom of God is almost here; turn your minds round and believe the good news.” Here is the keynote of the faith of Jesus of Nazareth. Here is the word which, on his lips, moved people with such extraordinary power. If we could resuscitate that declaration so that it conveyed in the terms and in the experience of our world the essence of what it meant to his, might it not stir the pulse and quicken the imagination of a new generation in our own day and restore a clarity of purpose to the churches?

John V Taylor
Kingdom Come

What and where is the Kingdom of God that is almost here? What will it look like? How will our politics look? Will the hungry be fed? Will justice and peace prevail, and how? Will the long-running and tragic sores of our denominationalism, gender issues, homophobia, “Westernism”, and other-phobic forms of alienation from almost anything different from ourselves have been resolved? And how? Will our addiction to “raising funds” have been quietened? Will our “growth action plans” have been sufficiently brought to prayer so that the “still small voice” can get a word in edgeways? Will we “redeem the time” – make the time? Do we need to turn our minds round first?

The Church of England’s General Synod last week heard a non-too-cheerful exchange:

The Church of England will no longer be “functionally extant” in 20 years time according to some projections, a member of the General Synod has warned. The Rev Dr Patrick Richmond, from Norwich, told members of the Church’s national assembly that they were facing a “perfect storm” of ageing congregations and falling clergy numbers. The average age of congregations was 61, with many above that, he said. “These congregations will be led by fewer and fewer stipendiary clergy … 2020 apparently is when our congregations start falling through the floor because of just natural wastage, that is people dying. “Another 10 years on, some extrapolations put the Church of England as no longer functionally extant at all.”

The first Church Estates Commissioner Andreas Whittam Smith said the demographic “time bomb of 2020” for Anglicans was a “crisis”, “One problem may be that decline is so slow and imperceptible that we don’t really see it coming clearly enough,” he said.“We know about it in theory but we don’t really know about it in practice.” He added: “I wish that all of us would have a sense of real crisis about this.” – Yorkshire Post

Mr Whittam Smith is not alone in wishing members were possessed of a “real sense of crisis about this”. I sense already that Dale Allison will be “water to the thirsty” for me in that he IS possessed of just such a sense of crisis, and it comforts me beyond all telling that there are others out there in the big wide world, and in the big wide Church, who doubt that adherence to the biblical / theological literalism of the past is going to do anything much at all to lead us out of it, and may even lead us deeper into it.

But “visions that come to us only in memory … the pulpit speaking but … telling the truth” … could this be the nudging of the Divine Word – from pulpits within and without the Church in our day? Please God …

WORD SHARING

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Word sharing ...

IN THE BEGINNING was the Word. Hide and seek was a favourite childhood game with my friends Sian, Sarah and Richard. Then there were the really special days when I was allowed access to their family typewriter. It’s no exaggeration to say that it was in Tony & Catrin Bramhall’s elegant and welcoming home that I first began to feel the Word.

And being a very slow, painstaking typist, at 6 or 7 years old, there was time enough to become aware of the power contained in every single word. The Word: possessed of the power to raise up  new worlds. (John 1.1-14). Or to bring a world down. The power of the Creator is contained in the Word. In the beginning was the Word. And on the 2nd January 2011 that same Word still breathes new worlds into being.

We – and especially those of us whose faith, hope and love are, from time to time, limited by our own ‘certainties’, and recognising that ‘an horizon is nothing save the limits of our sight’ – do well at the dawn of a new year in our time to behold the mystery of the Word, to be aware of the immeasurable fullness of the  power contained in the Word, of the vulnerability in the Bethlehem-born Word, and to afford such liberal and proper acknowledgement of the universal worth in the Word that we cannot help but do worship. Whoever we are. Whenever we are. Wherever we are. In the beginning was the Word.

 

new worlds