150 - not out!

Although some folks live a settled life in the same location for years ministers can, potentially at least, live quite mobile lives.  Since my ordination in 1987 we’ve had the privilege of serving in five churches in different parts of the UK; each has been a ‘chapter’ in its own right.

Last Sunday I revisited one of these churches, Walsworth Road Baptist in Hitchin, as a guest preacher at the start of their 150^th anniversary year. It was super to be back and learn of all the exciting and imaginative projects the congregation are involved in.

I always enjoy meeting up with college friends occasionally and that’s usually on a one to one basis in London.  Sunday was different.  I found myself in a building I knew intimately and after the service, over coffee, a queue started to form around me of people who had known me when I was the church’s minister.  I served at Hitchin between 1992 to 1999 and our children were born there. Last weekend every handshake seemed like a ‘time machine’ back to the 1990’s.  Each conversation recalling some event or person from the past and in that process making it ‘come alive’ again.

I am only too aware that some issues from our past are difficult to deal with and that ‘living’ in bygone days is not the best way to cope with the present.  However, Sunday made me realise again that the past is very ‘real’ and has formed us into the people we are.  Fortunately for us our trip down ‘memory lane’ to Hitchin last Sunday reminded us of some very happy and positive days.

We wish our old church God’s richest blessing during this very special anniversary year.

The heavens are telling...it's snowing!

Tuesday saw Amersham and district grind to a miserable halt because it was snowing.  Folks leaving Tea at Three and the Property and Finance Committee (we do have fun on Tuesdays!!) endured road journeys home lasting between 3 to 4 hours; trips that normally take 20 to 25 mins.  It was a difficult rush/slow hour full of angst and frustration. 

I left church on Tuesday evening with just a walk back home to the Manse and to be truthful the ‘whiteout’ looked quite beautiful with one little schoolgirl in front of me singing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ as she skipped home; it felt like the return of Christmas.

Yet for those drivers anxious to arrive home without accident or injury there was no sense of celebration, just struggle.

Last week our Life and Faith homegroup looked at Psalm 19 which begins with those wonderful words: The heaven are telling the glory of God.  Well yes, but on Tuesday as the snow fell from those heavens I guess very few drivers looked heavenward and sang alleluia.

Of course, many of the Psalms use the poetry of praise as they ponder the wonder of creation.  Somehow the majesty and grandeur of creation, along with the rhythm of the seasons, drew these temple songwriters to worship and thanksgiving.  Even today many people would still say they feel ‘nearer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth’.

Yet there is another, more dangerous and demanding side to the natural world which is ‘red in tooth and claw’.  Those ‘heavens’ described in Psalm 19 also bring hurricanes or scorching heat; on Tuesday it was disruptive snow.

I don’t think the Old Testament writers were unaware of this seeming contradiction.  Just think of the story of Joseph overseeing the Egyptian famine in the book of Genesis.  Seven years of plenty were followed by seven lean years.  The point of the story is that the management of Joseph, his foresight and planning, saved the day.  He worked with nature in both the good times and bad.

Psalm 19, and other ‘creation songs’ are poetry.  They rejoice in the earth’s great potential and made a link between that sustaining provision and the faithfulness of God.  But the Bible doesn’t blandly look out on nature in a sentimental way. The writers of both Testaments knew the terror of tempest, storm and wind alongside the life-threatening horror of the noontide heat in The Wilderness.

The natural world can be frightening as well as inspiring.  It draws us to wonder even as it demands from us a certain respect and deep understanding.  We are both ‘stewards’ and ‘worshippers’, working with creation even as we give thanks for it.

A Poisoned Chalice

Back in the very early years of this new century I was persuaded to accept the post of Moderator of my regional Baptist Association.  This meant I kept the day job of local church minister, but in my ‘spare time’ chaired the Association’s Board of Trustees, the Council Meetings and became ‘line manager’ to the Regional Ministers.  I was full of optimism as I took up the post, thinking it would be fascinating to get a broader view of Church life as I got to know the 150 or so churches that made up the Association.

What I hadn’t bargained for was that my tenure of office came immediately after an acrimonious reorganisation.  Various ‘top’ jobs had been re-allocated and not everyone way happy, in fact the ‘fall out’ from that rearrangement of the chairs dominated the Association’s life for the three years I was in post.

Although I wasn’t the architect of the changes, the mere fact that I was the Moderator made me, in the eyes of many, the automatic ‘villain of the piece’!

I regularly sat with my fellow trustees around the board table and encountered amongst them a willingness to listen, calmly reflect and do everything in their power to make the situation better.  Yet, they too were viewed by many as the ‘baddies’. 

I sometimes wrote emails to grieved parties in what I thought was an encouraging tone, only to get back a response accusing me of being aggressive.

I chaired full Council Meetings with over a hundred reps from the churches being present only to hear one speaker after another decry the Association as a bad and uncaring employer.

Throughout this time it seemed to me that so many agendas were running it was hard to know exactly where people were coming from.  I would go to the annual Ministers’ Conference, supposedly for the good of my own soul, only to find after evenings prayers a line of half a dozen colleagues queuing up to see me and share their ‘disgust’ at what was going on.

As the time went by it dawned on me that I was just about the only person who now knew the whole story, as so many people had shared opposing views with me, yet I was not at liberty to disclose to others the confidential information I had from time to time picked up along the way.

It was a mess!  I had been handed a poisoned chalice.  I hadn’t made the mess, but I was charged with clearing it up.

In the end, often because people left the area, the tensions eased, and Association life turned a corner.

It was a deeply disillusioning experience to go through, made bearable because of the sanity and goodwill I encountered Sunday by Sunday in my own congregation.

Does any of that sound familiar?!! 

For me this ‘mess’ occurred in the ecclesiastical world.  It’s happened this week in the political one.  Indeed, it can occur in any micro or macro context.

Dealing with issues like these is the ‘stuff’ of leadership and it can be a lonely and tough call.  So I’m glad the New Testament urges us to pray for those in authority over us.

You don’t have to agree with everything our Prime Minister says to see that over recent months she has kept her cool and filled the office of ‘First Lord of the Treasury’ with exemplary dignity.

She and her colleagues, I believe, deserve our heartfelt prayers at this difficult and challenging times.

The Past is a Foreign Country

I love L.P.Hartley’s well known quote: The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

This week we went, as a family, to watch the film about Freddie Mercury and Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody.  It both starts and ends with that July day thirty-three years ago in 1985 when Wembley hosted Live Aid.  The film had a terrific re-creation of Queen’s performance on stage in front of one hundred thousand people.  Afterwards our boys quizzed us about Live Aid and couldn’t really take it in that we watched it the first-time round – we are that old!!!  For us 13^th July 1985 seems like yesterday, to them it’s up there with the Saxons and Romans!

Does the past, I wonder, teach us anything?  Or does each succeeding generation have to encounter every tricky situation for themselves and find their own way through? 

This week a Radio 4 reporter has returned to South Africa for the first time in twenty-five years.  His reports about continuing repression and corruption, but this time administered by black rather than white officials, was deeply depressing.

So much in the Judaeo-Christian tradition is about remembering and learning from yesterday.  The Jewish scriptures often proclaim: Israel, remember this…. And of course, feasts such as Passover and Communion have rememberance at their very heart.

It’s understandable when we lose patience with either ourselves or those around us who continue to make the same mistakes because they are deaf to the lessons from yesterday.

In his great poem about love and its ethical consequences St Paul wisely says: Love keeps no record of wrongs.

God treats us like this in his mercy and grace so surely we have to be open to such a generous and forgiving spirit too.

However many times the Prodigal comes round the corner, returning home seeking a new beginning…however many times, I believe The Father always runs to greet him with open, welcoming arms.

Alpha and Omega

The only symbols in chapel when I was at theological college in London were the first and final letters in the Greek alphabet: alpha and omega.  I have to confess they constantly reminded me of the inadequacy of my New Testament Greek!

Although the college chapel didn’t have a cross, those who designed it in the 1950’s did want us worshippers to have that sense of a God who is mysteriously, yet wonderfully, present in every part of life; that he can be understood in those terms, used in the book of Revelation, as the ‘first and the last’, the alpha and omega.

Islam also calls God by this name and when our Jewish cousins call God ‘Truth’ they make up that word using the first, middle and final letters from their Hebrew alphabet.

So, it seems to be a common longing amongst people of faith that we both sense and appreciate the presence and activity of God in every aspect of our living. ‘Expressions of God’ constantly bless our everyday lives. Sometimes that’s obvious, yet in those tougher moments it might take some purposeful looking for.

As we begin this final ‘teen’ year of the century I find it hopeful to think that whatever happens in the twists and turns of the next twelve months, God – the alpha and omega, beginning and end – will make the journey alongside us.

Shepherd Monologue: Christmas Day Talk

My name is Dan and I’ve been a Bethlehem shepherd ever since my bar mitzvah.  It’s the only life I’ve ever known.

Us shepherds are a predictable lot.  When you work with animals and the seasons you tend to get into a routine.

That night you Christians talk about, the night that changed my life for ever – well, it wasn’t in the winter.  You see we’re on the hills during the lambing season in the spring – that’s when it happened, a spring night at the height of the Roman occupation of our country.

I’m old now and rarely go up on the hills these days but I remember that night as if it were yesterday. We seemed to be at the centre of it all and that’s not really us.  Usually we live away from the action.  Every spring we take the flocks out of their winter corrals and they graze at will on the hills and the lambing starts.  We can be away from the village for days, even weeks.  It’s as if we live in the background, just remembered by our families but forgotten by the shopkeepers, merchants and civic authorities.

It’s not that we just become village outsiders, we’re temple outsiders too.  You see Jerusalem is just a stone throw from Bethlehem, yet we only ever go there to sell our lambs to the priests – never to worship.  They say our hands are unclean.

Odd then, really, to think God gave us ringside seats at the birth of his beloved son.  Suddenly that night we became insiders.  And from what I heard of Jesus later that seemed to me to be part of his message – that God draws us all in, draws us to his love and makes us feel as if we belong, no longer outsiders.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about recently is how it happened all so quickly.  We weren’t being religious that night, we weren’t even praying.  Just going about our ordinary jobs.  Somehow, I always used to think you met with God at Synagogue or on Shabbat.  That night was so ordinary.  We’d just finished making sure one of our sheep, who had been having trouble, safely delivered her young and then suddenly there was this piercing bright light – at first it was almost blinding, but then it became the warmest shining imaginable.  We were told not to be afraid.  We were told the promised one had been born.  There seemed to be the most joyful singing in the air.  It felt like a dream yet became for us the most real conviction any of us ever held.

Still thrills me really.  That announcement to us as we went about our every night lives.  I’m sure when your country has a new king the heralds will stand on the balcony of palaces and proclaim the start of a new reign.  That night the Herald Angels choose to announce the news to us.  But isn’t that part of the message too.  Jesus came for everyone just as God’s love is for all – so why not announce the incarnation to shepherds on a hillside.  That said I still smile at the audacity of God by passing the priests and choosing me and my mates!

And the next bit that happened just blows my mind away even all these years later.

Those angels asked us to go and worship.  That’s all.  We didn’t even have time for a wash!  We went as we were.  Grown men.  To be truthful most of us shepherds know more about lambs than babies.  But off we went.  We asked Jacob to stay behind and make sure the flock was OK.  The rest of us ran to Bethlehem.

It was as if we were guided to that family and the place where Jesus had been born.  We went around the back and looked in.  Joseph asked us if we’d like to look.

Mary appeared exhausted but blissfully happy.  It was all so ordinary, a scene so full of love and hope – yet the words of the angels rang in our ears – that this birth was special – that God was blessing our world with his presence in this child.

As I look back now the thing that strikes me most of all is that we didn’t have to say anything, we went just as we were – all we were asked to do was to welcome the child.  It felt to me then, as it does today, that we were welcoming God come amongst us.  We knelt, we bowed our heads – and then we touched his brow, smiled at Mary, shock Joseph’s hands and walked back up the hillside in a shared silence that went so deep.

In our hearts we knew things would never be the same again, God was with us to bless us and show us the way. 

Amazing really what can happen when you are just watching the flock by night – all seated on the ground.

Christmas in Community: Nativity Service Talk

AFC Nativity 16.12.18

Once again it’s been lovely to have our All Age Nativity with different age groups taking part.

Just seeing the story re-enacted has reminded me that the days surrounding the birth of Jesus were  anything but  private occasions.

That first Christmas was very much a community event. 

There’s the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph and their baby.  This young couple went through so much together from their long journey to Bethlehem, the chaos of the birth itself to their panic laden escape as refugees to Egypt.  But, maybe that’s the point, they did it together and found support in one another.

Then there’s the visitors without an appointment – shepherds and wise men.  Groups of people from either end of the social spectrum who all wanted to welcome the infant Jesus.

And, of course, there’s the angel choir, maybe even big enough to have filled the Albert Hall, singing SATB, or whatever angels sing (!) to both honour and proclaim the birth of The Prince of Peace.

Christmas isn’t a private time for the original participants.  It’s struck me this year just how much it was a moment of community.

God has made us in such a way that we often find strength in community.  Even the Trinity itself is a picture of community in action as Father, Son and Spirit work co-operatively together.

When a group of us visited Hauke and his family in Germany in September we arrived for our stay at Bremen airport and were taken to look at the town.  We stood outside the cathedral beside the statue of four animals standing on top of each other – the Brothers Grim Fairy Tell entitled the Musicians of Bremen.

The story has a moral – each of the four animals was rather small by itself and not able to fend off its enemies.  But if they each stood on one another’s back, if they worked together and became one in their endeavour, then they would look really big and tall and maybe in the darkness frighten off those who wanted to do them harm.

By working together they became stronger.

So much of Christmas is about community.  In the Lord Jesus, God has shown us what a human life looks like when others are put first, when service is undertaken by a whole group or when a collection of individuals pull together and take note of the one going at the slowest pace.

God seems to delight in community and the birth of Jesus is surrounded by it from the Holy Family to the shepherds, angels and wise men.

May God’s blessing be yours this Christmas as you celebrate it amongst the communities you cherish, and may your part in those communities – be they church, family, neighbours or work continue to be a sphere of service and a source of inspiration throughout 2019.

In the name of that community of love and light, the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen