ANOTHER GLORIOUS MORNING. I read somewhere last week that though the UK Met Office bungled their “barbecue summer” forecast last year, and have shyly become more circumspect, a newer forecasting agency, whose name now escapes me, has predicted one of the longest and hottest summers on record. Maybe we won’t have to emigrate this year then?
St Mark, Claughton, Birkenhead: photo/ the late Miss Joan Gray, circa 1972
REMEMBERING WHERE WE’VE COME FROM – reflection – informs where we’re going. I’ve been so grateful recently to old friends David & Irene Lee (Irene was my Sunday School teacher!) who have become involved in helping to facilitate the installation of an 1892 “Father” Henry Willis Organ in the Cathedral at Leiden in the Netherlands. Grateful because they and a sizeable number of their friends, myself included, think of that organ in some sense as “ours”, its having been built for, and housed until 1991, in the Church, St Mark, Claughton, Birkenhead, that mothered us in the Christian faith. It has been lovely to share memories with friends. Some treasured photographs made by several people have been drawn together here.
I remember the grief I felt when, holding my then very young middle child Rachel’s hand, I gazed upon the demolished ruins of this house of prayer I’d loved long and well. And the grief came back to me a hundredfold as I worked, years later, as Vicar of another community who had to face up to the closure of their long-loved parish church. And on both occasions I recalled the grief of a whole nation – a whole religious culture – upon the loss, twice over, of the Temple in Jerusalem. Such grief and attendant tears cause wincing even today. But the day will come, please God, when Leiden Cathedral will be blessed with the magisterial music heard once upon a time in St Mark’s Birkenhead. Some things live on. The Divine is greater by far than the form of bricks and stones. There is, indeed, (and I’m heartily grateful to the C of E’s Common Worship for reminding us) such a thing as “the silent music of his praise”. God wills that yesterday, today and tomorrow are to be all of a piece.
Not long before I left Salisbury & Wells Theological College (of equally blessed memory!) in 1982, my then group tutor, the Reverend Bryan Pettifer, wrote to me:
I have valued the honour in which you hold those who have mothered you in the faith.
I do. We should.
God be praised for the life, ministry and music of the priests and people of St Mark, Claughton, Birkenhead.
WALTER BRUEGGEMANN wrote of the Bible:
I believe that this is how the church must live in response to the text; the church, in its deepest moments of trusting faith, is addressed by the revelatory text – not in predictable ways but in ways that surprise and subvert and enliven. But, then, that is what one must expect from a text that bears witness to the God who judges and restores Israel, who shows up as Friday absence and as Sunday newness.
The church, when it answers to this text, is indeed called to an alternative life in the world. The world around us – with its immense power and knowledge – intends none of the vulnerability of Friday. With its capacity for control and prediction, it intends none of the surprise of Sunday. But the church, when it responds in alternative imagination, is exactly a practice of vulnerability and surprise that keeps our common life human. That is the passion that propels my exposition.
And this is just in his Introduction to Redescribing Reality – What we do when we read the Bible, (pxxiii). This is good material for the coming Advent. Who came, who’s come, who’s coming? And who, if any, is intended by God to “control”?
Vulnerability will be a good keyword for Advent.
WAITING FOR HOLIDAYS this year seemed to take forever. Steve and Katie’s wedding today at 1pm. Car packed and ready for our departure whilst the happy couple were being photographed. Touchingly their guests waved and cheered us on our way down to Folkestone at just after 2pm. I’m 50 years old and still as excited about setting out for summer holidays as I was at 5! Eurotunnel this evening followed by a leisured dinner at Coquelles … and the weather forecast is great for tomorrow’s 500 mile amble down to southern Brittany. Happy as a sandboy, alongside a smiling sandgirl! À Bientôt …
first potatoes
THERE’S NOTHING QUITE LIKE IT. The first of the season’s potatoes for tonight, with leisure to dig them up, and eat, mark and inwardly digest them! At the same time we observe a delightful and extremely friendly young rabbit with an eye on the broccoli. To chase or not to chase? Ah. Jilly’s decided on the latter.
IN 1986 I WAS WORKING ALONGSIDE Bishop Roy Williamson, then of Bradford, later of Southwark, as his domestic chaplain. That year the bishop published his Primary Visitation Charge to the Diocese of Bradford. I’ve just re-read it and so much of what he wrote then is apposite for the Church now:
… there is Hope. The Church needs to be a bringer of hope to a world where many live without hope. The Church is intended to be a sign, a microcosm of the community to which it points – which is the Kingdom of God.
When the Spirit came at Pentecost everyone heard in his own tongue the wonderful works of God. It was a symbol of the Spirit’s ministry. Separateness and division were overcome. The dividing wall between people was broken down for ‘in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3.28)
Here indeed is hope for a divided world. If within our churches there is openness and acceptance, love and support, honesty and healing, reconciliation and peace, then we have hope indeed to offer the world. But if these things are absent from the Church how can they be offered to the world? The world is therefore left without hope, and, perhaps, the Church is left without a Gospel.
Patches Chabala
ANOTHER RICH SUNDAY. 8am reflection on “The Bread of Life”, led onto 10am Family Eucharist. First communion for young Freya, and visiting preacher, Zambian ordinand Patches Chabala, enthralling us with a very personal “photo album” of life back home in Zambia. Choices are simpler, Patches reflected. Asked whether you’d like a hot or a cold drink you’d simply reply, “hot, please” or “cold”. It takes a while to get the hang of the plethora of choices available in the UK. Here you can’t even get away with “tea, please” or “coffee”, for a further half dozen questions as to personal preference follow on from even these decisions. Get beyond hot or cold drinks and on to “what’s to eat?” and the world of the UK supermarket dazzles. Thankfully, God keeps things simple. In Jesus He’s the “bread of life” … french, ciabatta, naan, flat or Hovis don’t come into it. He just IS the bread of life. In Jesus we encounter God.
As an Iona liturgy has it:
He whom the universe could not contain, is present to us in this bread. He who redeemed us and called us by name now meets us in this cup. So take this bread and this wine. In them God comes to us so that we may come to God
God in the ordinary stuff of life. God in that which we can’t help but to do every day of our lives: eating and drinking. In this encounter we’re not left dazzled or baffled by a plethora of choices, nor asked to tick boxes, nor sent away “to get some experience and come back later”. God meets us today. Now. Where we are are and who we are. Because that’s who and what the Bread of Life is … Here and Now. The doors of God’s hospitality are open to every man, woman and child upon earth, today. We do well to remember that. And to open our church doors, ever wider.
See also: Patches goes to Lambeth
CHESTER ORDINATIONS LAST WEEK, first communions here in Bramhall this week. Mission, and a new commission, it seems are in the air. And it’s such a joy to see the willingness in many an ordinand and in young communicants alike. A visitor from Mars might well be forgiven for thinking that religious activity on earth, in all its forms, is at times primarily to do with bashing others over the head with your own particular version of a hard-backed book.
Well, I’d have been delighted to welcome a little ET here today. First communions were made by smiling, happy youngsters, warmly encouraged and cheered on by their peers on the one hand and by grandparents on the other. I thank God that so very many of the church people I encounter seem very much keener on opening hearts and doors wider than upon turgid debate and indecisiveness about who’s in and who’s out. I thank God that in first and last communions here I see “mirrors in which the blind look at themselves and love looks at them back”. Yep: this is what I think of as making Eucharist when I hear Christ’s command to “give them something to eat”. So all you first communicants, and those of you who have trained them, know that I’m proud of you, and happy, and grateful.
house martin young under the shadow of mother's wing
KEEP ME AS THE APPLE OF AN EYE. Hide me under the shadow of thy wing – from the Office of Compline or Night Prayer. The Prime Minister speaks of a long, hard summer ahead for those engaged in service in Afghanistan and elsewhere. O Lord, come the day quickly when every soul on earth may pray: hide me (and all my brothers and sisters) under the shadow of thy wing.
FEW THINGS ARE MORE ENCOURAGING than the conversations I have with people who are ready to explore Christian vocation in depth – and I’ve had several such encounters in the past few weeks. And it’s not an easy option, not a call that guarantees an easy life. The hurdles to be scaled before one ever gets down to the church history, the doctrine, ethics, pastoralia, spirituality, theology, worship and possibly a house move are all part of the training. And this “being thrown in at the deep end” is the norm, of course, when one has just successfully negotiated school and university – one’s friends are all in the same situation. But it’s quite another thing when you’re considering leaving a 20 year career, a home you’ve nearly paid the mortgage on, the settled outlook and friendships formed over decades of belonging somewhere. “Follow me” was the Master’s call beside the Sea of Galilee. And it’s a call still being heard the world over – and wonderfully and bravely acted upon. These vocations are today’s fresh expressions, and it’s the sacrificial generosity at the heart of so many of them that gives me such hope for a more generous, open-hearted and Spirit-led future.
