View from the Pew: St James', Piccadilly

 

On Sunday, as part of my ongoing Sabbatical, we attended Morning Service at St James', Piccadilly.

You can read about it in the View From the Pew blog here.

Love Letters

 

Waking up to the newspaper headlines today feels again like ‘Armageddon’ is just around the corner.  This was frequently the case at the height of the Covid Pandemic and is now being repeated with prospects of 11% inflation being described this morning as ‘Welcome to Hell’.

No one would want to deny that we continue to live in challenging times with such enormous hikes in fuel and energy costs; something most of us never saw coming.

So I was cheered yesterday to read of the discovery of a bundle of letters, found in a wardrobe in Reading, between an airman and his sweetheart in Blackpool during World War Two.  Their discoverer hasn’t found a marriage certificate but would dearly love to pass them on to Ronnie and Frankie’s family.

These letters, one containing a pressed flower, are a testament to the triumph of love even during the bleakest days of war.  As the world battled these two young people found each other, fell in love and dreamt of better days.  Their letters are full of hope, tenderness and compassion.

Such a story has been told a million times.  It’s also at the centre of Christianity.  For, on a terrible day filled with injustice and violence, on a hill outside the city walls of Jerusalem, our Lord showed forgiveness in the face of aggression and responded with love after encountering hate.  The cross shows us there is another way to live. 

The other evening at church, the AFC Pastoral Team reflected on that phrase from Irenaeus of Lyons that The glory of God is a human person fully alive.  It’s a wonderful thought that reflects the gospel truth that God longs us to embrace life in all its fullness.

We have recently lived through a very desperate crisis (one that has not fully receded yet) and it’s becoming clear that we have emerged into another.  However, I do not share the newspapers’ sense of doom.  The cross teaches us that we are called to face our challenges with courage and integrity, and that bundle of letters from Ronnie and Frankie remind us that even in the darkest hour, love can triumph.

The Dance of The Trinity

 

Trinity Sunday, falling this week, is one of those when preachers, unadvisedly, attempt to do the impossible and explain God as one in three and three in one.

Perhaps, because lots of our faith is in poetry rather than prose, a wiser move is to describe the idea of Trinity rather than quantify it.  After all any definition of God always comes up short.

Our Jewish friends have always pictured God as both a great deity and a personal companion.  This is the God who both made the universe and settles upon kings, priests and prophets to empower them.  Theologians have two big words for that understanding calling God both transcendent and imminent.

Us Christians add yet another layer to that mystery by including Jesus.  Put in that last piece of the jigsaw and we end up with Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Conscious that I’m now about to do the very thing I counselled against just a moment ago, here are three descriptions of God for this Trinity season.

I’m grateful for the Breath of Creation and the touch of God’s hand in our planet’s DNA.  Nature, in both its magnificence and delicacy is comforting and overwhelming at the same time.  After all, during Lockdown many of us fell in love with our gardens again!  Although the edges are blurry and the message is complex, nature seems to teach us about God.

And there is Living Truth.  I’m a big fan of the stories of Jesus; not only the ones he told but also the narrative he lived.  This is grounded truth and it is the genius of the Gospel that God came and lived among us in a way we could understand, appreciate and, in the best sense of the word, imitate.

So, last but never least, there is the Power of Love, that contemporary and everyday activity of love when life is infused by the divine Spirit, found in us all.

Wherever and whenever love touches our lives, God is near.

Describing God is as frustrating as a child thinking they could ever capture the ocean in a sand castle’s moat!  It keeps running away and escaping.

Yet it’s good that we don’t give up because in seeking to get to grips with The Trinity there is just the possibility that its mystery will both amaze and inspire us that little bit more.

And, perhaps, it wasn’t for nothing that in the Jewish Scriptures God chooses to announce himself with an economy of words in the tantalisingly ambiguous: I am who I am.

Happy Trinity!

The Elizabeth Line

 

It must be quite something to have a railway line named after you!  And whilst opening the Elizabeth Line last week I suspect the iconic photograph from the visit will be that of Her Majesty being shown how to ‘top up’ an Oyster Card!  You might have thought you could travel for free on your own line!

As this is my ‘Jubilee Blog’ (we’re on holiday next week) I just note how fitting it is to think of ‘journeys’ at this national time of rejoicing.  Since 1952 our Queen has, as it were, accompanied us on so many.  Our nation, and The Commonwealth, has been on a journey from the old to the new, from post-war to post-pandemic.  The Sovereign has not led these journeys, that’s been down to the Prime Ministers, but it feels as if she has travelled with us, alongside us and always there.

In any family or community having a constant travelling companion brings security and comfort.  I think I felt like that in April 2020 when the Queen made her now famous speech about ‘meeting again’ during the opening weeks of the pandemic.  Afterwards her image was beamed up on those huge boards overlooking a deserted Piccadilly Circus.

Our long serving monarch has been travelling with our nation on her own ‘Elizabeth Line’ now for over 70 years.  And this Jubilee we give thanks to God for her quiet inspiration and exemplary faithfulness, shown at every step of the journey.

Rules are Rules?

 

Lovable Rogues are often popular and occupy central roles in books and films.

Denis Waterman’s death last week prompted the news outlets to recall his role in the TV series ‘Minder’, alongside that loveable cockney, cigar smoking rogue, Arthur Daley, played by George Cole.

One of the best film releases I’ve enjoyed this year has been ‘The Duke’, staring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren. Broadbent plays Kempton Bunton, from Newcastle who in 1961 stole (or was it him?) a painting of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery as part of his one-man campaign to get free TV licences for pensioners.  All through the film I found myself routing for the supposed ‘criminal’!

Of course, the rule of law matters, and we are grateful for it.  But there are times when the mantra ‘Rules are Rules’ just doesn’t work.

Just before Prince George’s birth the word went out that parliament had changed the rules of succession.  For over a thousand years it had been the tradition that the eldest son succeeded the king.  Girls could only sit on the throne if there were no male candidates in front of them.  Yet that rule was torn up and has been replaced by one that says the King or Queen’s first born child, male or female, shall succeed.

I’m not sure Jesus comes under the description of a ‘loveable rogue’, but certainly many around him viewed him as a blatant law breaker.  One Saturday, walking through a field he crushed some wheat and offered it, snack like, to his disciples, only to be accused by on lookers as breaking the rules and working on a Holy Day.  His intriguing response was: The Sabbath was made for us, we were not made for the Sabbath’.

History teaches us that when rules are broken with the best of intentions often good outcomes, eventually, (and sometimes it takes years or decades for this) follow.

Just think of that day when Rosa Parks sat, quite deliberately, thoughtfully, and bravely, in a white person’s seat on the bus.  Her rule breaking, in the name of equality, rippled out from Montgomery, Alabama and kick started the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s.

The Rule of Law is about society seeking to respect all, rich, and poor, women and men and people of all faith traditions and none. If it unfairly favours one against another, then we need to recall the image of Jesus in the wheatfield, rather than just repeat the mantra: rules are rules.

The Naming of God

Sara Maitland, the journalist, comments in one of her books about the sheer number of words English has for flowing water including: cascade, dribble, ripple, gush, spout, spurt, flush, flood etc!

It would be fascinating to explore further why we sometimes only have one word for an object or action and then a myriad for others, such as flowing water!

Describing God, as an idea, action or experience, has always got the better of us.  Christians invented the word Trinity (which might, in retrospect have been something of an own goal!).  Whereas our Muslim friends have decided all descriptions of the Divine are best expressed in words rather than images and our Jewish cousins have a scripture in which even God seems to give up on the task, proclaiming instead I am who I am.

Yet, in our prayers and preaching, we persist in this task that is both helpful and frustrating at the same time.  Helpful in that, as we battle with language and push our comprehension of God to the limit, we actually grow and deepen our understanding and appreciation.  Frustrating, because even the best prayer and most articulate sermon must surely barely scratch the surface of who God is.

In my Sabbatical journey thus far, as I’ve gone round contrasting churches, it becomes almost instantly obvious as to the corporate understanding of God held by that particular congregation.  For some, God is a best friend, for others she is the most compassionate of comforters.  For some God is a great strength, for others a profound mystery.

I think I’ve encountered great sincerity, even integrity, in each expression.  And I’ve come away sensing that each is valid, even if incomplete by itself.

So, if you thought just three expressions of God found in the concept of Trinity was challenging enough, the bad news is (actually I think it’s good news really!) you can at least times that up by at least ten.

Or, as a children’s song puts it, with greater profundity that might at first be apparent: Our God is a GREAT big God..

You can say that again, again and again…in so many different ways!

View from The Pew: May 2022

This week, following our visit to Malver last weekend, I've published a new View from The Pew Blog which can be found at:

https://viewfromthepewsabbatical.blogspot.com/2022/05/