How do you spell that?

 

Sunday’s Harvest Festival was fun!  It was a real delight to welcome families and children along to the Worship Together service and then have so many people take part.  The Chiltern Food Bank has written thanking us for some 86kg worth of food, and so far we’ve raised around £500 for Operation Agri.

So, it was a shame about the preacher – me!!  There I was doing a ‘spelling game’ up the front trying to get other words out of the word Creation.  I thought I survived till the car journey home when Rachel looked at me smiling and said, you know you can’t get ENTIRE out of CREATION – it’s got two e’s!  To have made that mistake so publicly is quite an embarrassment, even if I did admit to everyone at the start of the talk that I’ve always been bad speller.  Well, Q.E.D!

At moments like these I’m grateful for a generous and forgiving congregation.  In fact, I thought the whole atmosphere on Sunday, from listening to Diane’s insightful presentation on the Foodbank to watching that wonderful Junior Church video about our church shrubbery, from being led in the visual prayers by Erna to the strong lead offered us by the music group as we sang, was all about being a ‘family’ at worship, accepting each other’s offerings with gratitude.

So, in making my spelling mistake – I’m glad it was at AFC amongst good hearted friends.

See you next weak….I mean week!

Ian

Goodbye Summer!

Well, as I write this Blog the sun is shining; perhaps far more than it did in August!  Yet, there is no doubt we are once again on the cusp of the seasons changing.

Now the Autumn Equinox of Wednesday is behind us we begin that inevitable march to the year’s end.

It's significant that in church services and private prayer we often mark these ‘on the cusp’ moments.  In the Monastic offices of the day, Lauds is said as the dawn breaks and Vespers is prayed at dusk.  And this weekend at AFC we hold our Harvest Festival which, to me at least, is an annual marker that summer is over and the autumn beginning.

As I ponder all this it strikes me that in observing these ‘transitional’ moments we are re-affirming our faith in the God who has walked with us in the past and promises to take us in coming days.  Life has a momentum which is unstoppable, and our moments are usually anything but truly ‘settled’.  In a way, as we emerge from the Pandemic, gradually and cautiously, we are once again in another ‘on the cusp’ phase. 

The hymn we often sing at New Year has a refrain that seems equally appropriate as the seasons change: So, it’s from the old we travel to the new, keep me travelling along with you…

The Life behind the Words

 

This week it was my privilege to officiate at the funeral of a father of an AFC member. The tributes given in honour of this ‘gentle-man’ were touching and one has lingered with me. He would often encourage the family with the single word ‘steady’.  I am sure it would have been said when they were facing a complex decision or needed strength and courage to take certain actions.  Well, his grandson said in tribute to him, that now he often says that word to himself, ‘steady’, when he’s up against it.  The influence of his beloved grandpa lives on.

It does in my own life too. For my grandfather would often say ‘life isn’t a rehearsal’, meaning everyday was the ‘real thing’ and needs to be lived with energy and determination.  I often think of that, as I often think of him.

The point, I think, is this: we recall these words and phrases because they were matched with a life that authenticates them. Both the words and the life speak and validate each other.

I sense it is the same with the Lord Jesus Christ. His words speak truth to us and guide us, and his life inspires and motivates us.  The gospels brilliantly contain not just the SAYINGS of Jesus but also His STORY.  We are the beneficiaries of both.

Elders' Social at AFC on 3rd September 2021

 

When Less is More

 

Talk given at the restart of LunchBreak on Tuesday 7^th September 2021

There is a story doing the rounds that comes from the Conclave, the one convened in 2013, to elect the Pope.

Although all this happened behind closed, even locked doors, the Cardinals, apparently, asked three or four of their number (the front runners) to address them in the Sistine Chapel and speak about the vision for the Church’s future.  Obviously, this was the opportunity of a lifetime, and they all over ran their allotted time.  They tried to say everything and in doing so somewhat tested the patience of their audience.  Apart from one man, Argentina’s Jorge Bergoglio.  He spoke for less than his allotted time, so maybe it was his brevity that earnt him the papacy, for it was he who became the new Pope, Pope Francis.

I wonder what he left out?  I wonder what he thought was so important that he put it in?

Over these last 18 months, since we last had a Bite Sized Service in February 2020 to celebrate Epiphany, many things have been left out of our lives.  Meeting up, contact, hugging, shaking hands, seeing one another face to face.

We’ve discovered the value of less.  We, who have, relatively speaking, been so used to more, have felt the significance of the changing seasons, have been uplifted by a kind word spoken on a telephone call, have been thrilled to come back to a church service even if it meant wearing a mask and not singing.  Less has become more and the worth of the ‘ordinary’ has made a new impression on us.

Chatting to a neighbour in Lockdown, he said to me it wasn’t the expensive cruises he’d missed the most, but driving over to Cambridge to be with the grandchildren.

We’ve been recalibrating our values and it’s not the number of our words, or the monetary value of our gifts that matter most, but the spirit of open generosity in which they are given that truly blesses people around us.

So, we’ve missed you.  We missed LunchBreak.

This re-start isn’t quite the old LunchBreak, yet in a way less is more.  Because even though we might miss the food, what we value most is the fellowship.

Manse Garden Party: Sunday 29th August 2021

 

'Blast Off' Sunday!

 It is popular, amongst the churches of North America, to designate one of the Sundays in September as their re-start day after the summer break.  These used to be called ‘Rally’ Sundays.  One church I know now gives it the rather more modern sounding designation of ‘Blast Off’ Sunday.

September, often treated by churches and educational establishments as a ‘New Year’, is a month full of promise as we once more take up old routines refreshed by our summer break.  And, in many ways, such an atmosphere of hopeful expectation is to be once again found amongst us in September 2021.

However, we know that in reality we are not returning to the calmer and less anxious days of pre-March 2020.  Although many of our organisations have planned to ‘return’ this autumn, none of us know how things will work out.  We have become used to living with such uncertainty.  Our diary entries are now, as it were, more often made in pencil than permanent ink.

Perhaps we never thought it would be like this.  We envisaged there would be a universally declared day of rejoicing after the last infection was logged.  Yet in this Virus War, although so much wonderful progress has been through the roll out of the vaccine, it doesn’t look as if there will be the equivalent of VE Day any time soon.

What, I wonder, is our reaction to such uncertainty?  At least two possibilities exist:

One is to be a ‘Temple People’ and value ritual and tradition, all carried out in a huge edifice that spoke of permanence and security.  I’m not sure this is the best mindset for today.

There is, however, another way, and that is to be a ‘Tabernacle People’.  Just like in the story of Exodus, we travel with God putting up our tent in the most unlikely places, confident that God’s strength, peace, wisdom, and joy will enable us to meet new challenges and situations with faith, trust in our hearts.  New contexts and fresh challenges come our way daily. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring but that’s part and parcel of ‘travelling hopefully’.

So, September has dawned.  We’ve made a few plans.  We are putting our best foot forward and, with God’s help, doing what we can, when we can.  We won’t, I think, have a ‘Blas Off’ Sunday at AFC – but we are in for something of an unknown voyage of discovery.

p.s.  We recently worshipped at Southwark Cathedral and a report on that visit can be found at:
https://viewfromthepewsabbatical.blogspot.com