On Waterloo Bridge

Last Saturday I was walking over Waterloo Bridge on my way to meet Rachel at the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House.

It was a bright spring day and I had just come from a URC Synod in Upminster so my mind was going over some of the issues that had been raised that morning - and I was looking forward to lunch at Pizza Express in The Strand!!

And then it happened.  Nothing dramatic but very meaningful to me.  And I played no part in it.  Just observed.

A rough sleeper - a young, intelligent looking guy, was holding out a plastic cup for coins.  He looked utterly dejected and hopeless as the world - including me - was passing him by.  And then the lady in front of me, walking alongside her husband, suddenly stopped, stooped down and offered the rough sleeper her plastic cup of Starbucks coffee.  It was just a moment - she did it 'on hoof' and at the spur of the moment.  But that isn't the point - the point is that I was privileged to see the beautiful look between these two individuals.  Her look of no nonsense compassion and his utter amazement and gratitude for it.  He barely had time to say 'thank you' - but he did manage it - and all too briefly their encounter ended and she walked on to greet the rest of her day.

It was the look between them that I confess made my eyes moist.  Such a beautiful look of engagement. That momentary connection seemed to me to be so deep and profound.

I am not so naive as to claim this was in anyway an answer to the epidemic of rough sleeping that goes on in central London.  I know the young man would have had a complicated 'back story' and I'm grateful for the sort of ministry offered by St Martin in the Fields to assist such people in need.

No - all I'm saying, and no more, is that there was something so utterly beautiful in that brief moment between these two people and more particularly the look of surprise and gratitude on the young man's face at being offered a half cup of Starbucks on Waterloo Bridge.

And as I went off to a pizza - very much aware that it was the lady in front of me, rather than me, who had shown such compassion -  the words of Jesus rang in my ears all afternoon - something about offering a 'cup of cold water in my name...'

Best wishes,

Ian

Joining in!

This week the Book Group at AFC discussed Nicholas Holtam's book about his time as Vicar of St Martin in The Fields, 'A Room with a View'.

I rather like Holtam's definition of 'mission' which he shares with us in the Introduction: Mission is really about looking for what God is doing in the world and joining in'.

There is sometimes a lot of angst around the agenda item 'Mission' when it crops up in church committees.  In our 'pro-active' way we like to have projects and strategies in place because then we think we are somehow fulfilling the Great Commission.  Yet I wonder if we are leaving enough room for God to surprise us.

This time last week I was chairing a Trustees' Meeting in central London for a national organisation and we were looking (rather creatively it has to be said) at our 'Business Plan'.  We have many boxes on this master document that we fill in throughout the year helping us keep tract of our progress in reaching some of our goals.  Yet perhaps there ought to be an additional box - not filled in but left blank headed; God's Surprises.

That's because it seems to me that God often works as much despite us as through us.  We can plan and plan - indeed I freely admit I'm a planner by nature - yet God has the habit of being untidy and working outside our best laid strategies.

A colleague of mine goes on Sabbatical next month.  She has, I think quite wisely, left a lot of gaps in her programme - she hasn't over-planned.  She will go on retreat, visit projects that interest her and do some of that 'stuff' that has been on the 'wish list' for years but never got round to.  But she's also left gaps - believing that just maybe they will be the most important part of the time she spends away from routine - gaps in which God might, or might not speak.

I think Nicholas Holtam, who is now Bishop of Salisbury, was right in his somewhat playful definition of mission because he is essentially urging us to become more AWARE of God's presence and activity in the world and to see it for what it already is - the mission of God in action - and in finding it - let's not reinvent the wheel but join in!

Best wishes,

Ian

Wot I wrote on the Tube

Attended a meeting in London yesterday...thought about the service I'm leading on Sunday focusing on Mary Magdalene...and wrote this monologue about her on the Tube!

In a way I’m used to being in two places.

I mean alongside Simon Peter I’m probably one of the best known of Jesus’ original followers, and two thousand years on I’m told people are still writing about me; some are even continuing to make up rather upsetting stories about my life, but I’ve long since decided to put all that gossip to one side and ignore it.

So I know what it’s like to live in the limelight.

Twelve times, they say, I’m mentioned in the gospels; and I was there at all the important moments during Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem: his crucifixion (it was mostly us women who stuck by him – his male disciples found other places to be that first Good Friday), we helped with the burial ceremonies and I believe I was the very first one to experience his resurrection presence.

Yes, I know what it’s like to be in the limelight.

But, you know, I was happy to be in the background and quietly give support.

You see a group of us got together after meeting and listening to Jesus.  We knew each other because we’d all got a bit of money – most of us inherited because the male line in our families had run out.  Anyway, we all felt we’d like to use the few shekels we had to support Jesus and his preaching tour.  We paid for the food, made the arrangements for our stays in various villages up and down Galilee.  We were in the background as encouragers and enablers but Jesus always seemed aware of us and valued our contribution to his mission.

I’m used to being in two places.

But can I tell you about the best place I’ve ever been, and in a way it was the worst as well.

I didn’t understand his death and to be truthful his empty tomb and absentee body was a mystery to me also.  So it all started off as the worst morning of my life – Jesus dead and now his body stolen.

Then he spoke my name.  He spoke my name and everything changed.

The hope and trust that filled the days I spent with him up in Galilee – that hope and trust returned in the garden in the early dawn of Easter Day.

He called me by name.  Once again we shared God’s love as a gift to each other and once again I knew why I believed in him and his mission.  A mission to preach acceptance, live in a spirit of service, die offering forgiveness and live again showing us a way of hope.  God’s mission of love in Jesus.

He called me by name.

He calls you by name too, and invites you to join him – celebrating and expressing the love of God made real in both the struggles and joys of life.

So, perhaps like me, you too live life in at least two places – but it’s OK, God calls you by name, you are his.

Shifting Chairs!

A job well done last Saturday!!

Not everyone has the same ideas about ‘Community’.

If we take it as being synonymous with ‘society’ then Mrs T told us she didn’t really believe in it whereas her current successor once called for it to be ‘big’.

Last weekend as both boilers in the Sanctuary and Alfred Ellis Hall simultaneously went kaput I felt very conscious of the value and inspiration of our church ‘community’.

After a flurry of emails we decided to hold the Sunday morning Communion Service in the hall which meant a big effort at 5pm the night before to get things ready.  So many willing volunteers came along, bringing not only themselves but also a willing spirit that the job of assembling a hundred chairs and various other bits of ‘essential’ church furniture was done in no time. As things were got ready there was a sense of  purposeful ‘togetherness’ which actually made the whole experience such a good and positive one I was almost grateful for the two misbehaving boilers!

I’ve always thought that the idea of ‘community’ is central to Christianity. 

Rob Bell in his book, Love Wins, expresses the rather provocative idea that the phrase ‘a personal relationship with Jesus Christ’ is simply one you’ll never find in the gospels.  He’s just flagging up the thought that faith isn’t meant to be only, or even primarily, a personal pilgrimage with God.  Faith is also about ‘community’ – learning and experiencing it in a Faith Community and living it out in a Local one.

For me this was exemplified in a really inspiration way at the Lent Lecture, hosted by Churches Together for Chesham, at which the former Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Sir Peter Fahy was the speaker.  He spoke so eloquently and passionately of his Christian faith, formed through his Roman Catholic tradition, and the way it impacted upon his life as a serving police officer.  For Sir Peter there has clearly never been a division between what he privately believes and how he publicly acts and I sensed that all of us came away from that splendid evening at Broadway Baptist Church in Chesham deeply inspired by the connection between belief and praxis this former Chief Constable displayed. All of us need good role models and I thought Sir Peter was a gift to us that evening.

As our Lent journey continues my prayer is that we will all make that connection between the private and public parts of our lives and realise afresh that as Easter Morning People our faith is not only about how I say my prayers by the bedside but also how I live out that prayerful life in all the various communities to which I belong.

Best wishes,

Ian

So you're a Protestant.....

Last week the Anglican Bishop of London and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster shared together in an evening service of Vespers at Hampton Court's Chapel Royal - the first time a Roman Catholic service had been held there since Henry VIII became Supreme Governor of The Church of England.

Speaking afterwards Richard Charters, The Bishop of London, said: We live in a Post Denominational Age.  Establishment and Dissent don't seem to matter any more.

It got me wondering 'Do I really feel Baptist anymore?', especially as I now have the privilege of serving in an ecumenical context at Amersham Free Church where none of us generally know if we are Baptist or URC - however the accent of our many Scottish friends at AFC usually indicates their Presbyterian past!

All of this came into focus for me this week as we spent half term in Italy visiting the beautiful city of Florence dominated by its awe inspiring Roman Catholic Cathedral and numerous churches.

It was outside the Cathedral that I succumbed and had  my caricature portrait done - we'll hang it on the wall of the littlest room in the house! The artist was an engaging chatterbox telling me the city receives twenty million tourists a year (half from China) and inevitably he asked me my occupation.  I told him I was a 'priest' but not a Roman Catholic one.  'Ahhhh - you are Protestant', he replied, 'You are protesting'!!

Well, am I?  Is that how I define my faith - a protesting Protestant?!

Florence is lovely in so many ways and our week there has been terrific and during our stay we were able to attend worship in three of the city's ancient churches. Yet to be truthful this wasn't always the uplifting experience I hoped for.  I am probably too wedded to an English version of 'Gothic' architecture to really appreciate its Continental cousin and as the only Italian words I speak are Spaghetti and Lasagna the services were basically incomprehensible to me! In truth I do wonder if faith can get a little lost in old buildings, liturgies and ideas of authority.

So as I sit here in the airport waiting to come home I've come to the conclusion that I do somewhat protest against theological concepts that see God as more powerful than loving and at church traditions that support the status quo by clinging on to priestly and ecclesiastical 'power'.

In their place I don't long for either a post or new denomination era but for the experience of walking alongside fellow Seekers after Truth who sense that love is the deepest, strongest, most comforting and challenging aspect of God we can ever explore or experience.  And that God is bigger than any of our constructs so there really is no such thing as 'orthodox' faith or 'infallible' truth.  We grasp.  We look into the mirror dimly.  We delight in mystery and are wary of the delusion of dogma.  We seek to walk humbly before God and in companionship with fellow pilgrims.

In short I've come away from this beautiful place (with a fine portrait in my suitcase!!!!) even more convinced that I'm not in the business of 'guarding' truth but 'exploring' it.

Yours, protestingly!!

Ian

Selfies in The Vestry

So with Epiphany still a very fresh memory we are now officially in Lent - so for us at AFC it was pancakes at LunchBreak on Tuesday and sharing in a Service of Ashing and Eucharist at St Michael's yesterday.

But what does it all mean? And how can we find a sense of freshness in the Church Year?

That’s why I was very grateful for the insights of two ministerial colleagues yesterday - Ash Wednesday.

Sharon, the Associate Priest at St Michael’s used a phrase in her off the cuff vestry prayer (that's the Selfie photo - even clergy can misbehave in vestries!!)  before we went into the Lady Chapel for the Eucharist that asked God to help us this Lent ‘realign’ ourselves.  She didn’t linger in guilt or try to define sin, she didn’t pray about giving up anything but chose instead having a positive view of Lent.  That in the business of life when it’s easy to get so many issues out of perspective Lent could be seen as an ideal time for realignment – actively seeking to restore the equilibrium of our faith, relationships and responsibilities.

An earlier contribution to a conversation in the day was also helpful.  I was having lunch in Ruislip with Edward and Edwin, pastors of our link church at Harlesden in North London and Edward was telling me of his recent Sabbatical.  He told me of the month he spent on St Kits, and then the month back home in Ghana and finally the four weeks with which he concluded his Sabbatical on a Silent Retreat with the Sisters of The Lamb of God just outside of Oxford.  Four weeks of silence – I gasped over the garlic mushrooms.  'How did you survive'? I asked.  He smiled and told me; 'well I only went to the 5am service twice!' He then said: 'But I actually got into the rhythm of being there and ended up loving silence so much I didn’t want to come home!' Well, just like Jesus and his 40 days, Edward seems to have been changed, or at least his faith deepened by that experience.

Wilderness and realignment - that will do me at the beginning of our Lenten pilgrimage!

Best wishes,

Ian

Of Alley?!

Having had lunch at St Martins in The Fields on Saturday we walked along to the Courtauld Institute of Art at Somerset House.  En route Rachel read out from the guide book that this whole area had been sold off by a previous Duke of Buckingham many moons ago with one proviso - that every part of his name and title should be commemorated in this area by becoming a street designation.  Hence there is a George Court (his first name), Villiers Street (his family name), Buckingham Street (that's obvious) and would you believe it Of Alley (now called York Place) because - rather pedantically - as Duke OF Buckingham he wanted every part of his title on record!

Well - what do you make of that?!! He certainly wanted history to remember him!

I suppose all of us wonder what people will remember about us when, in the words of the Salvation Army, we are 'promoted to Glory'.

The newspapers were full of very sincere and heartfelt tributes to Sir Terry Wogan on Monday.  He was a man who really seemed to 'connect' with many people.

Last Friday at AFC we held Brenda's Thanksgiving Service.  Brenda was a wonderfully warm and encouraging member of our fellowship.  In her early eighties she still had great energy and enthusiasm.  I never left the table after having a coffee with her without being uplifted.  She played a big part in our church's life as in so many other societies and clubs in Amersham and Chalfont.  Perhaps no surprise, then, that about two hundred people came to church last Friday to give thanks for this kind hearted lady.

I believe I saw something of Jesus in Brenda - something of his warmth, kindness and laughter.

Isn't there an old gospel song that goes 'Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me...'  And that, I would suggest, is the greatest complement that anyone could ever pay us.  Although I'm not sure the Duke of Buckingham would agree?!

Best wishes,

Ian