Lama's log

We've been looking at the beatitudes in Stone Soup and using Dallas Willard's The Great Omission to lean on through it. Along with this I'm re-reading Power & Passion by Samuel Wells. All these strands seemed to have converged this week onto the topic of agendas. When is OK to push your agenda and where do you get this authority to know what the right agenda is? Why is my perspective better than someone else's?

In terms of passive resistance then, why is calling someone to die for a cause better than telling someone to kill for a cause? I know that harm to the other person is involved here but isn't that the same as inciting someone to give up their lives? How am I not involved in killing when I ask someone to matry in passive resistance? Isn't that just pushing and promoting a different cause?

What Willard and Wells both hint at is surrender of power and plan. In other words if, through seeking Christ what you do is try to live in a Christlike way, you try to be disciple to the extent which you then stop trying to manipulate outcomes. You are faithful to a way of being so much so that you are prepared to be the loser ( I am taking what they say and running with it a bit here).

This does make Jesus being abandoned on the cross really important. If Jesus really felt alone, abandoned and without help then everything he did could have been pointless, meaningless and all for nothing. In the face of this though, he still hung there. He had surrendered his agenda, in fact any agenda really. He was a fairly spectacular loser. And those he had asked to follow and live like him? Those he invited to live kingdom lives, us now who chose to either stick with him or not bother? There can be little doubt that if we want this kind of God then it involves us being perpetual losers to. Our agendas will rarely make it into the daylight. We will lack credibility.

On the plus side though, it also means absolute freedom. To live in Christ means I can't be owned by state or media, materialism or ambition. If I really have no agenda other than being faithful to God then I have no vested interest in the outcome of situations only in the process of conduct. I think this is more exciting than it sounds. I know I'm not going to actually get to the state that I'm so in with JC that holiness emanates from me and I have no selfish desires or agendas. I'm not totally deluded.

I can start to think though that I don't understand God's agenda therefore it's not my job to push it. It's just my job to be faithful.

The glaring question that then comes up for me is, where does this leave evangelism?

I preached yesterday afternoon to a congregation of no more than ten. A normal service was inappropriate but we ploughed on regardless because that's what was wanted and required. The guy on the piano was sweet but at 92 and hard of hearing was struggling which meant that we in turn struggled. All of that, as surreal and off the wall as it was, was OK though. In fact I found quite a lot of it very amusing. The notices were the place where my ass got bit. The usual was given until we heard that next week there will be a strawberry tea. Quite lovely. Tickets £3.50 please buy one 'you don't need to come just buy the ticket'. Right there was a significant reason there were just 10 of us. It didn't so much matter about relationships or Christ. Just pay your subs and go.

This was a line passed on to me. It referred to a friendly lament about the type of families coming into a particular church community. I know what they mean. Often I am in wonderment at the lives of people around me. Sometimes in their complexity or brokenness. Here's the thing though.... I would have joined in the friendly lament except for the fact that I too am now one of the abnormal families. I am now one of the complicated ones with a slightly if not, predominantly broken edge to them.

Problem is, I'm a bit touchy about it. I hate being divorced. Really hate it, its hard and painful and the car crash of it goes on and on and on. I also hate the connotations it carries, you know, took the easy way out, not committed enough, not quite the right Christian model. The reason I know some of these connotations (and a few more besides) are around is that lots of people aren't able to mention the 'd' word to me, eyes are averted and subjects changed. On other occasions I myself struggle to utter the words 'ex-husband' without feeling shame and inadequacy. There is an immediate desire for me to start explaining myself to people coupled with the overriding factor that it's none of their sodding business.

So... where are all the normal families? I have no idea. I know I'd like to still be classed as one. It gives you a bit more clout and credibility. Stops you feeling like you have to apologize for how your life's turned out.

Then again maybe there is something about my own view being a bit skewed. I can only feel this suggested shame if I buy into the criteria set. I don't need to adopt people's bench marks as my own. It's hard though. Its much more comfortable to show benevolence and understanding than it is to rely on someone else's. Damn my pride.

In the mean time I hope to see many more abnormal families in church this week if for no other reason than to keep me company.

This week I'm preaching on Obadiah. A couple of weeks ago I dabbled in Hosea. Am I enjoying it? Not really but looking at why it's because it's making me work HARD. Basic message of lots of the minors. God's going to smite you unless you repent and in Hosea's case, God's going to smite you whether you repent or not. It's not cheery stuff.

Given my predisposition though to doom and gloom I am starting to think they're on my wave length. God does love us which is fab but it is a love of great expectation. This weeks jaunt into Obadiah looks at a people still tied up with familial fight between Jacob and Esau and a desire to win at all costs. Esau's descendants will watch as their brother's people suffer because it feeds their hunger to win an argument and be vindicated. I can relate on a personal level I love winning arguments, but really this story is about corporate feeling. This is about how a people are acting. All my time in church doesn't prepare me for this story because church, as we all know, was only invented for our own personal salvation. Church is to develop our individual relationship/walk with a loved up messiah. All this talk then in Obadiah of a nation being out of kilter with God we put in the back of the mental filing cabinet and label it out of date.

Corporate sin though is still mega bucks. Lots of the minors are drawing our attention to this. It matters how we act as a body of people. It matters what our corporate identity looks like and what the values and beliefs are that make up that identity. This value base is what's going to shape how we act.

Who are my people then? Will I describe myself as English? Will Baptists be a people I own? It's important. Humans need a sense of who we are to be healthy. We also need to own it and take responsibility before God for it. God will call us to account for who we collectively seek to be. I'm not going to get away with blaming Gordon Brown when it comes down to it, I can't write off the slavery debate as irrelevant just because I don't feel personally responsible for what happened and what continues to happen. It involves my people so I'm culpable and responsible.

Lets leave it with Obadiah:

You should not march through the gates of my people
in the day of their disaster,
nor look down on them in their calamity
in the day of their disaster,
nor sieze their wealth
in the day of their disaster.
You should not wait at the crossroads
to cut down their fugitives,
nor hand over their survivors
in the day of their trouble.

The day of the Lord is near
for all nations.

Church meeting. We've just had one. It was the alcohol debate. Many things now come to mind as a result.

Firstly was my appreciation of a meeting well run. Mazza kicked things off and the atmosphere was one of reflection and worship. This really did put into perspective how we go about speaking to each other and what it looks like to be a Christian community. I think the way she started the meeting had a massive effect on how things were said.

That was the next thing then - people spoke from directly opposing views with tolerance and without personal insult. It's harder to do that than it should be. I came away from the meeting feeling I had input from other people that has has altered my view point. That would have been unlikely had there been a lot of shouting.

After that, our voting requirements suck. We need a 2/3rds majority to pass something, be it a leadership vote or a new proposal. It's inadequate. For my money we should be working very hard at seeking a 'mind' at trying to find the spirit and following God. 66% doesn't hack it for me. Also this discussion highlighted a real problem. In the end the vote was split, fairly evenly. This meant that the proposal didn't fly and 50% of folk were not happy. Because the proposal didn't go through though this issue will be dropped.

I reckon this was not so much a decision made but that a 'mind' wasn't reached. We highlighted that we still had more to do. If we implemented a change here we would have needed at least 80-90% of the meeting to go with it for it to fly with no ill will. Similarly though if we want to keep a dry church then we would need a 80-90% in this direction for that to show we are in agreement. It's hard to put figures down about it but surely we should be working very hard at seeking a way forward and finding some sense of clarity and God? Until then couldn't we allow ourselves time to journey? It can't be done on this issue now because people would perceive an agenda. But it has brought the need for us to look at this in all aspects for me both with leaders and decision making.

As for the issue itself. Well we did manage to touch upon the bigger issues. That of how we use alcohol not just in the church but also in how we socialise and live outside the building. We touched upon it but didn't run with it. That needs to take off. Suggestions for getting behind a campaign for plastic cups rather than glasses to reduce injury and an alcohol fast by certain groups have been suggested and now we need to put some energy into them.

If I'm honest I was also staggered by the majority of those who wanted church to be an alcohol free 'oasis' were also the ones running the fund raisers and social events involving alcohol, the 'wine pudding and plonk', the caleigh with a bar, the nights out where people staggered home from the club. I've staggered home too on various occasions. I'm not so proud of them but it happens and these events and times highlight a need for all of us to understand Kingdom as the place we find ourselves. That we are a people of God right where we stand and s/he celebrates and weeps with us wherever we are.

The high points for me in the meeting were listening to those who had managed to take a consistent approach throughout their lives with drink. Those who drank in moderation and those who were deciding or had made the decision to stop. I was both challenged and inspired and that was the meeting doing it's job and looking different from debate or politics. That was us operating in the spirit.

It's been a long while since I blogged and quite simply it's because I've had really nothing of note to say. There are a few things that have been buzzing around in my head of late which I may well comment on now, but I think I am still only writing out of a sense of duty to a space I seem to have been neglecting.

So; where to start. Easter day, which seems to have been a very long time ago was marked with me being a little, well, depressive. By that I mean that by the time I reached Sunday morning this year I had undergone such a journey through Holy Week that I felt very responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. That's not such a bad thing in as much as I really did walk the walk this year. However, it did mean that come Easter Morning a congregation who were expecting a rather chipper preach on the risen Christ instead got hit with, 'Christ is risen, feel the fear'.

It was an interesting take for me as well. Lets face it though if you actually were part of the crucifixion, you know, one of the ones baying for blood, or even a disciple fleeing the scene, then you have to wonder at just how pleased you would be to see the risen Lord. The feelings of guilt and mastodonic error, the fact that not only had you fled the scene but then have been caught doing it by God himself. Peter must have squirmed in Jesus' presence (which was then preached on rather brilliantly by Andy the following week from John). Yep, on Easter morning it wasn't simple joy floating around me, there was a tangible sense of the fear of God

Other than that, I read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini which prompted me to enter the world of women's oppression again. It's a good read, well written and I advise you not to let the fact that it's been in Richard and Judy's book club recommendations put you off. I am often awed by the fate of most other women in the world. Gender issues brush me but lightly and there have only been 2 occasions in my life where my gender has put me in a position of real powerlessness. Realisation that other people live in such a way day to day provoked both an emotional and practical reaction in me. It also prompted a recurring thought that in the normal sphere of things, fiction may well be a much more powerful medium than academia.

In and amongst things there's also been a lot of 'stuff' at church which has meant huge numbers of conversations which have been both draining and enlightening. All in all I look at 'church' and think it's bloody marvellous. People are glorious with tendencies towards mass lunacy. I stand in the midst and alongside the madness for the most part, and so it goes on......

I know it was ages ago but I've had a a quick trip to Germany to squeez in.

Day three saw feed back from the racial justice issues raised and some space given over to discuss the stipend issue a little further.

The racial justice stuff was a bit disappointing. I realise the apology last November was an exceptional meeting but still...

It became obvious that in many of the associations little had been done or articulated with regard to the apology. One of the reasons for this is quite simply, how do you communicate the apology? It was exceptional. We are also now post apology so it's not a question of getting people to the point of wanting to issue anything, they are now in a place where they need to own it. I also suspect that for many it is not even a relevant issue to be discussed and this in itself is a problem. So what to do? Well Jonathan said a seminar had been given over at assembly! Yep a seminar. Thankfully council suggested that more testimony was given in large spaces so many people rather than a few would hear. I think this will be considered and done.

The small group was the same as last time. We discussed questions given to us and I was yet again in the uncomfortable position of watching while one woman failed to be able to articulate the word 'black'. Instead she looked uncomfortable for a while, stuttered while trying to make her point and then looked at the only black guy in the room and said, 'you know, people like you'. Oh please. No wonder we have issues taking this back into churches.

Yep, overall council was like the longest church meeting you've ever been to. At points I felt that there were a lot of people striving to do their very best for God. At other times there were lots of people who just loved committees making the most of their inbuilt pedant and the love of their own voice.

As for the stipend question, I think there will be a review in the light of the angst of the room. It was good to see space given for people to vent a little even though not really in line with procedure.

Overall, it was knackering but I remain having a sense that it is a place where people work out what it means to be interconnected in denomination and to follow Christ.

Gosh yesterday was arduous. I think the discussion on the word 'good' was a particular high point. I guess though that the significant bits were around the Home Mission discussions. The financial presentation showed how the denomination had missed its giving target and the worries about this were highlighted. The BU reserves are set to dry up in 5 years at current projections.

We listened to this and took note. It was interesting then when the issue stipends came up. Especially with regard to home mission. The rise in salary will not match inflation. It is rather in line with other public sector workers. There was outrage and a a very tense moment when people clearly wanted to speak but were not allowed due to procedure and protocol.

For me it was interesting that the outrage did not arrive earlier. We are not going to be able to pay Home Mission ministers more if we don't work hard at giving more. My experience is though that many of our churches are not really engaged in Home Mission in any real way. Out of sight out of mind. We are not aware enough of our structures and of what Home Mission does unless we get to the point of need.

If that outrage in the room turns into working towards increased giving then it will not have been wasted but we do need to take some responsibility for the fact that some ministers work in near poverty. It was also worth noting how desperate the housing situation is for ministers retiring without equity. Basically if you have a manse through your working career then you are homeless at the end of it. Poverty then at both ends.

I hope the passion from the meeting translates into more advocacy for Home Mission.

I'm back at the BU council in Swanwick. It's an interesting one given the enormity of what happened last time. How do you follow a gathering that is being freely described here as a pentecost?

Yesterday we looked at the issues of children's workers. There was a move to have them put on a 'recognised' list. The aim being to show that their work is highly valued and to give them access into further support and training. This looked like a no brainer to start with. Why not.

Well, as it turn out the why not lays in definition. So why would we 'recognise' a children's worker but not accredit them. There was dispute over whether their job was ministerial or not. There was dispute over the role of children in communion and whether that made a difference to the nature of a children's workers role.

We talked and talked and then it was slung back to the ministry department to have a look at again. We are not likely to see this come up again until council reviews who is on the accredited list and why and apparently that won't happen much before 4 years time.

Now all this is pretty, well..... committee esq. It struck me though particularly at this council because the one thing this discussion lacked was the physical presence of a children's worker and the story they could bring. What do they think about going on a list and which list would they want to be represented on and why? The last council was so incredible because we allowed people to speak. We heard voices from those concerned. The model was successful and I am now wondering if it is just to be left as an exception in the past or if we can implement this as a rather good way of doing business. Not just in council but in association and beyond......

When I was around 22 I had one of the worst years of my life. It kicked off with my Grandmother dying of a rather horrid cancer riddled death and I struggled with it. I recall not understanding the concept of death. What happened at four minutes past six that meant she was dead when at three minutes past six she was still alive. It made no sense to me at the time.

I went to church at the end of that day. It was a Sunday. I don't know what I expected, I just knew that things were now operating in a spiritual dimension for me and I needed some help with it. I told one or two people that knew me well and who I trusted. They seemed to feel the need to hug me. This didn't help. I realise this aspect of my personality puts me at odds but there it is. I didn't really want anyone to tell me, 'there there we care', I needed some insight of what on earth was happening and how I could speak Jesus into this and find a way through with some sense of God.

The year got worse from there and in the end I resigned from work bought a rucksack and headed off. As I was trogging through the Himalayas I picked up a book that everyone was raving about. 'The Tibetan Book Of Living and Dying'. It's a very long time ago now since I read it but I remember feeling like I could breath again. There were techniques to deal with suffering and death, stories to help with the spiritual conflict I was experiencing. I read it and took a whole heap of stuff on board.

I reflected after reading that book that the expression of Christianity I was involved in was stripped of serious engagement in the spiritual. Platitudes and niceties were all that were expressed ( heartfelt though I think they were). There was nowhere and no-one who could engage with me on the horror of what I just witnessed, her body ransacked with tumors from her armpit to her vulva. There was no one to help me place it in the Christian story.

I have been reflecting a lot on that time this lent. The Buddhist communities I have experience of, place a lot of stock in how you are when you die. The importance of being at peace and in a good state of mind. A lot of time is spent on freeing yourself from the erratic mood swings we often go through and the trivial attachments that we are often bogged down with.

Christianity has at the centre of it a saviour who died in agony. He was racked with pain. He was one of the despised and his body at the end was in tatters. I have a faith context which speaks of a God who dwelt directly in abject pain and is identified in brokenness. Other faiths turn their face away from Christ's crucifixion because it's too hard. It's not a reflection of the holy for them. I believe in a God who walked with the least and suffered in His humanity.

It should have been my Christian context that was able to ease the pain of that time. God Himself was tortured and racked with pain yet I felt unable to connect with that side of my history. I was living with a resurrection community and as such we often also turn our faces away from Christ crucified. We have our empty crucifixes with Easter morning skimming sweetly over Good Friday as if it didn't count. When we do this we run the risk of denying our spiritual reality and we also allow ourselves the possibility of turning our faces away from the despised and the suffering in our communities. It allows us to tell ourselves we are better and different to them. We may be a bit bad but they are on a different level. We separate ourselves from suffering so we are not reminded too forcibly about our own frailty, we forget we follow a despised and bloodied saviour. That we meet with this saviour on the cross as well as outside the empty tomb.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:23-24:

23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

There is a massive unacceptability in the crucifixion which I think I am starting to touch on again. I'm hoping to be able to understand it more deeply as the power and wisdom of God and display some of our innate spirituality through it.

We are covenanting together this Sunday. While we voluntarily tie ourselves to each other and to God we will also break bread and share company with David Shosanya.

I have been putting the order of service together this morning and reflecting on the fact that covenanting services have the effect of making me feel hopeful and at the same time inadequate. Being in community offers me a richness and diversity in living and being. It also means that that I open myself to others and stand in vulnerability way way beyond my comfort zone. I am both drawn to it and repelled by it. The constant struggle for me is to wake up and affirm my choice to follow Jesus and that means to walk in meaningful fellowship with other people. This does mean that people will not only be able to see the witty bright Kez but the broken and inadequate Kez too. It's hard to choose to put that on display

Some time ago I went to the dentist. I have a love hate relationship with my dentist. He loves the amount of cash I give him and I hate the pain he provides me with. Still, I keep going back. On the particular visit I have in mind he was prodding about my mouth when he came across the tooth I told him was giving me a load of jip. I said 'Aughwww' in the way you do when your mouth is full of someone else's hand.

He then sat back and shook his head for a bit. 'I know you are telling me it hurts,' he said, 'but I think you're wrong.'

You can imagine what was going through my head at this point. I would have said some of it too but there were still bits of threatening metal instruments in my mouth.

'I think,' he said, 'you have some "transferred pain" going on'

This was a new one on me. The concept that my brain was throwing pain off to another place like some mad ventriloquist act. The result though was that he gave me a filling in a different tooth and the pain stopped.

I reckon there's a bit of transferred pain going on at church. We're talking a lot about mission. The more we talk about mission the more people talk about how crap church is. This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. I could have a conversation which goes a bit like this:

Me: Let's do some mision
Bod: Church is rubbish, make it better.
Me: Errr, OK then

and then try and address a list of percieved needs. Or I could have a conversation which goes like this

Me: Let's do some mision
Bod: Church is rubbish, make it better.
Me: Yep lets start by doing some mission.
Bod: But it's rubbish here, fix things.
Me: agreed, I reckon mission might help.

The second conversation might work or it might be analagous to two people covering their ears whilst shouting la, la la la very loudly.

The first conversation allows people to carry on talking about church as if it is something other than them and which needs fixing before anything meaningful can be attempted.

I don't have as much control as a dentist in all this. No ones going to sit back in a chair and do as they're told for me whether I have drills in my hand or not. There is something about keeping your head down and walking forward even when things are not so easy. There is also the slight worry though that by doing that you fail to see the pain that is not transferred but a gaping wound that might need some attention.

I went over to Bradford this week and in and amongst watching a bit of drama I had another discussion on the frustration felt over experiencing real community in church. The dilemma of when to leave a church because it is not being community it is simply doing community.

It's a toughy. Meeting in a building, singing songs and listening to a preacher just doesn't hack it. If you change that all about though and get a small group of folk together and do a bit of liturgy and 'alternative worship' and call yourself emergent church, my guess is that that won't hack it either. The buzz word seems to be 'authentic'. I hear it so much I am beginning to tire of it a little. There is a lot in it though.

Authentic meaning that people commit to each other and seek to explore faith seems to work. I'm not sure the format is all that important but the intentionality is. If services are held in order to preserve what has always been done, after a while folk may struggle.

We have started a mid week service at our place. For all the world it seems to me to be emergent church but the term has never been used because being is emergent it not the aim, being community is. I found myself this morning being in the position to invite one of the families from my son's school along, something I haven't attempted in some time. It is a group of people enjoying each other and seeking God (last nights discussion on the agenda's of the Gospel writers with regard to the transfiguration is something I have not experienced before in a church service).

The people in the group have come though not with a sense of washing their hands of an existing community but from working with it. The aim is not about worship but about people and the commitment to community and the work being invested is high. In other words they are not expecting 'the church' to put on a more authentic worship event. They instead are seeking authentic discipleship.

Sometimes church is such a gorgeous place I want to bust.

I am frustrated with the reports on Rowan Williams. I am frustrated beyond belief by Christian reactions to his comments on Sharia law. It seems that few people have actually listened to what he had to say and there has been little time given that to the fact that it may actually be worth pondering.

I am annoyed at the fact that at best he has been patronised as a 'lovable academic'. Making being clever an outrage and an offence and dumbing down the respect he has as being sourced in him being a good chap rather than insightful and disciple.

There is a huge challenge in what he says when we come to consider our Christian identities, what governs us and the relationship that has with society and the law. There could be a great deal of pride and a good few links with Baptist history when we consider a religious leader speaking about how people of faith come to live amongst each other in a just society. If we as Christians recognise that we follow Christ and only obey the law when it is in line with Godly values; if we can glimpse at this, then maybe we can see that when we seek to coexist with other faiths under a jurisdiction that is meant to be universally accepted but rooted in church history, we may be looking at a complex issue that needs depth of consideration.

Williams says in his lecture,

'So much of our thinking in the modern world, dominated by European assumptions about universal rights, rests, surely, on the basis that the law is the law; that everyone stands before the public tribunal on exactly equal terms, so that recognition of corporate identities or, more seriously, of supplementary jurisdictions is simply incoherent if we want to preserve the great political and social advances of Western legality.'

But as Christian we must understand that this will bring us into conflict and as William's said in a radio 4 interview. Christians and Muslims alike do not want a situation where their discipleship in faith causes them to need to square up to 'the law'. That's not beneficial for any of us.

There's huge amounts to unpack in the lecture with nuances abounding and it needs careful consideration. I am disappointed in our communities, that we have joined the media pack in hounding Williams. In joining the scrum of anti Islam feeling and using this to feed the tabloid lynching.

I leave you with some words from his lecture and hope that they encourage thought ,

But if the reality of society is plural – as many political theorists have pointed out – this is a damagingly inadequate account of common life, in which certain kinds of affiliation are marginalised or privatised to the extent that what is produced is a ghettoised pattern of social life, in which particular sorts of interest and of reasoning are tolerated as private matters but never granted legitimacy in public as part of a continuing debate about shared goods and priorities.

But this means that we have to think a little harder about the role and rule of law in a plural society of overlapping identities. .......

But the point of defining legal universalism as a negative thing is that it allows us to assume, as I think we should, that the important springs of moral vision in a society will be in those areas which a systematic abstract universalism regards as 'private' – in religion above all, but also in custom and habit. The role of 'secular' law is not the dissolution of these things in the name of universalism but the monitoring of such affiliations to prevent the creation of mutually isolated communities in which human liberties are seen in incompatible ways and individual persons are subjected to restraints or injustices for which there is no public redress.

So I ended up preaching this week on eschatology. Well not really. I was preaching on mission and on how some people see salvation all about the end game, the parousia and what happens when you're dead, and about others who are in the here and now and translate salvation into the immediate; Jesus ushered in the Kingdom fully and all. And then others who kind of straddle the two - 'inaugurated realised eschatology'.

I thought about if people cared about these terms or even had a glimmer of wanting to know such things. Then I thought about the fact that most adults still describe the trinitarian mystery as a piece of clover so then thought that I really couldn't make things any worse.

In a quest for people to engage with mission I really think they need to relax about what that means. I mentioned mission to the football and poker group here and they nearly broke into convulsions. Anyone would have thought I'd asked them to consider unspeakable acts of extreme violence. It's not such a big deal once you relax about what it might mean and anyway, without getting too nousy about it ,you know, Jesus; brutally killed on a cross for us? Is it too much to ask that we might, well, not cringe every time His name is mentioned.

I get that years of cheesy evangelism aimed at people who didn't want it in the first place has put a few of us off but then lets think again a bit.

We had a Burn's night last Friday. The evening was worth it just to see Dave T in a kilt doing a dodgy Scottish accent (he's now practicing for Cinque De Mayo!). It was a good event. Good whiskey, good food and an open mic and the evening went off well. It was something you could invite people to without having the standard Christian shame of a speaker standing up at the end giving a 'message' and ruining a perfectly good night. We could just trust that relationships would be built and 'witnessing' would take place over a glass of wine and genuine conversation.

This week I'm going round the new houses and the local neighbourhood to ask if they would like 'us' at church to pray for anything in particular. Door knocking has its place just as much as unadulterated fun in the witnessing arena. Basically I reckon a genuine desire to love people goes a long way.

This srtuck me as I read a comment someone made about loving God. I sat there mulling it over and wondering what it meant to love God, wondering if I could at all say that I not only love God but love God more than any other.That struck me as hard. Then it struck me that I am supposed to be able to say it. Especially in my job.

I know I love my children, that's an easy one. I feel a sometimes overwhelming desire to protect them, a constant urge to do my best for them, an inexplicable pride in them, a deep, deep affection.

God, mmmmm. I search for God, yearn for God, long for God, have a deep need for God. At the same time though it does cross my mind in more than a passing way that God may not exist. That I've just gone along with this whole thing and the more I got involved the more it kind of just stuck (my mum reckons that's what's happened with me. I guess she needs to rationalise the way I turned out!).

To love God..... what does that mean? I can do the outplaying of relationship, you know the going to church the talking the talk, the praying the prayer; but that's just window dressing. If to love God is to hope and search with depth then I am in it a little. I still don't know that I could with any honesty say that God is number one and family etc all fall in line behind. They are more tangible to me to be brutally honest. I often affirm God in the midst of my doubting and my questions. I do at times experience inexplicable and overwhelming gratitude. Points at which I feel 'saved' or just seem to experience a hightened sense of beauty wthin the utterly normal.

If I struggle to speak of loving God it makes me wonder about how those who don't have a trust in God hear words about loving God as if he's another guy (it usually is thus) around us who we can hang out with.

I'm not sure I love God, or at least I'm not sure if I love God in the way I thought I ought to.

Why is mission such hard work? Why is living in community simultaneously scary and exciting? Why do intentional communities not have a very long life span? Why do churches predominantly attract the middle class? Why do the middle class find it impossible to dwell in working men’s clubs? Why do many Baptist churches kick against drinking when the red wine is out in all the homes I go to? Why do we think that our systems of benefit is better than it is in reality? Why is it so hard to be vulnerable in church? Why do we expect God not to heal and trust our doctors more? Why do we insist on Sunday church more than community? Why did that TV report have to tell me bacon was bad for me?

My son was non too pleased that I took the tree down on the 1st Jan.
'Is Christmas over then?' he said
'Errmm no, actually we have 12 days of Christmas.'
'Then why is the tree down?'

The following conversation about a season of Advent and a Christmas season was lost on him. All he knew was that he'd been cheated out of a bit of Christmas.

This was in my head as I've sat down to plan tomorrow evening's sermon on the Epiphany. My head is still in festivities (especially since I've just come from a really rather wonderful Epiphany breakfast with bubbly and every kind of wondrous food). I am reeling from the excess and reveling in the celebration.

So I sit down and read about the journey of the wise men feeling all nativity scene esque. I am wondering what to do with this passage and then remember some distant teaching that the wise men were really just soothsayers and it's not quite as glam as it is made out to be in the church propaganda. That it was some ancient monk who gave the magi their names and that they were probably to be derided not applauded and that OT biblical teaching is against them not for them. Suddenly I have my sermon. Matthew's on another shock session hurrah and there's much to be said about who the gospel story includes and that will probably be our epiphany if we choose to take it seriously. Great, sermon on the way.

What about Christmas though? I took the tree down. For all the guff I gave my son about the reasons why and my blathering over seasons and times, I think it would be true to say that somewhere on rout I lost the rhythm of Christmas. Advent was the Christmas season rather than just the preparation. Christmas was the day and not the birth; the incarnation; the journey. As I reflect on how Christmas was for me I realise with a touch of regret that there was just one occasion, when I sat in Wakefield Cathedral with a friend, that I allowed the enormity of Christ incarnate to enfold me and thus prompt me into gut wrenching, heart tearing prayer for any and all.

So with this epiphany upon me I would like with all sincerity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and thank God for the miracle of Jesus Christ.