If I’m towards right about ‘journey’ being a zombie category and it is no longer a useful idea for thinking about our ongoing relationship with Christ, then what is?  Most of my thoughts here start with a comment from Brian McLaren at an Emergent conference in 2003 (I think).   During a question time a very astute delegate asked Brian for a definition of ‘community’.  It felt very much like Brian had been put on a spot, but his answer seemed well rehearsed.  After a short story about a college lecturer and his family farm Brian’s simple definition of community was, and maybe still is, ’staying’.

This was enormously encouraging and challenging.  Encouraging because at the time that was exactly where I was; looking for a place to put down roots and stay.   Challenging because it is!  As it happens, too challenging for us at the time since we have moved twice since then and will almost certainly do so again in the next two years or so! Staying has challenge on a whole bunch of levels, some which I hope to explore in later posts.   Here I would like to briefly consider the challenge it holds for our notions of discipleship personally and for us as a community [whoever 'us' are?].

There are readings set out in the Common Lectionary for everyday taking the diligent follower through a three year reading program.  The whole Bible is not quite covered as there are a few chapters here and there that are missed out.   As an Anglican priest I have essentially promised to follow this reading pattern since it sits hand in hand with Common Worship [the common prayer book for the Church of England since 2000].  There are other bible reading guides and notes of which I am sure most of my readers will at least be aware of if not experienced with.  There are all kinds of great things about a continuous reading pattern that takes you through Scripture, but there is also something transient about it too.   “I read this passage yesterday and the life changing thoughts and encounters I had were dealt with in 24 hours and now I am on to my next reading and encounter with the divine.”  I have similar things to say about ‘powerful preaching’; how many life changing messages can a person deal with in a month?

Journeying, moving, going, forward, progress usually also means both leaving something behind and speed.  For our personal spirituality this often means we don’t have time to engage, dig down, explore and harvest the wisdom and grace available from our engagement with spiritual disciplines: scripture, church going, prayer…  Fear of the Lord might be the beginning of wisdom, but experience tells us that wisdom grows through attention and examination; neither of which can be done at speed and in fact almost insist on being still: staying.

The Christian life is not just about loving God though, because its twin challenge is to love neighbour.  The bottom line here is the same as above, neither can be done at speed and in fact almost insist on being still: staying.  Yet our cultural pattern is to move on, quiet literally.  How long do you need to stay in one place, live there and be part of the community there, before you can experience and partake in ‘love neighbour’?  Have we repackaged this notion of ‘love’ into episodic acts of kindness?

A common word-association with discipleship is growth, but I wonder whether maturity would be more helpful.  Maturity is a staying word.  When we think of mature things like trees, shrubs, cheese, meat, they all need to have been in the same place for a long time.  ‘Long time’ is a relative term.  A long time for an Oak tree does not compare well for a long time for hanging beef!  Nevertheless, the point holds, maturity is about staying in the same place for a long time.  We are called to maturity in Christ, in fact to present each other as mature in Christ.  Such is the size of this call that maybe it trumps upgrading property, moving into school catchment, following a promotion. Whether such actions illustrate immaturity in Christ is a question that perhaps holds too much challenge for us to contemplate!  It might be that staying too has become a zombie category, alive but dead.  To say that I am ‘Staying here’ is usually, even if silently, qualified with a ‘until it is more convenient, cheaper, appealing or desirable to move to somewhere else.  We are training to think in such a way as part of growing up in C21st western society.  We are convinced that it is impossible to settle for something, because we are hooked on upgrades, thinking that these will give us better: experiences, feelings, tastes, efficiency, life-styles.  So does maturity stand a chance?  I think only if we are brave enough!

I have recently re-read Gordon Lynch’s Losing my Religion [I'll be reviewing this else where] in which he describes his own move away from evangelicalism.  There is a huge implicit assumption throughout the book that everyone involved in evangelicalism will want to move away and continue their journey elsewhere: whether that be within a Christian context or not.  There are a number of issues I want to engage with from this book but it is the idea of journeys, spiritual journeys, that I want to start with here.  But first, what are Zombie Categories?

Ulrich Beck, a professor of Sociology teaching in Munich and London, has this idea of Zombie Categories: categories that are dead and still alive.  Ulrich believes that “because of individualisation we are living with a lot of zombie categories…”  His ready example is ‘family’.

Ask yourself what actually is a family nowadays?  What does it mean?  Of course there are your children, my children, our children.  But even parenthood, the core of family life, is beginning to disintegrate under conditions of divorce.  Families can be constellations of very different relationships.  Take, for example, the way grandmothers and grandfathers are being multiplied by divorce and remarriage.  They get included and excluded without any means of participating themselves in the decisions of their sons and daughters.  From the point of view of the grandchildren the meaning of grandparents has to be determined by individual decisions and choices.  Individuals must choose who is my main father, my main mother and who is my grandma and grandpa.  We are getting into optional relationships inside families which are very difficult to identify in an objective, empirical way because they are a matter of subjective perspectives and decisions.  And these can change between life phases.

So a zombie category is a social concept which is still in use but which has lost the content, or substance, of its original or intended use.  It is still in use because we have romantic ideas about restoring or getting back to a place of substance, or because we actually have not noticed this change has taken place.  I don’t think Ulrich is saying that we should be performing resuscitation on these categories, it is not necessarily about trying to restore these categories to former glory.  Instead, it is more about facing the reality that we no longer mean what we think we mean when we reference these categories.  We therefore have the option of redefining our category, or recognising that we do in fact work with a redefined category, or stop using it for what it is not.

I would like to suggest that journeys, discipleship journeys, spiritual journeys are a zombie category.  It is not at all that spiritual things don’t happen in our lives, or that we don’t grow as a disciple.  My point is that the category ‘journey’ is not helpful.

Most of our physical journeys today are over very quickly.  We could be the other side of the world, in a different culture with a different language, climate and landscape within 24 hours.  Even our very short journeys, into town or to a friend’s place, are generally over in minutes rather than hours.  Personally I have very little patience for these everyday journeys: I leave at the last minute and I drive too fast.  And I have too little patience for my spiritual disciplines!

When the category of ‘journey’ was used in relation to discipleship the actual physical journeys that people undertook where much more gruelling.  Walking to the next town, although a common occurrence, would nevertheless be measured in hours not minutes and in pain not comfort.  Travelling to a different part of the country would not have been undertaken lightly by ordinary folk like you and I.  A short look at some writing like Pilgrims Progress by John Bynam, will bring these categories of spiritual and journey together.

Again I need to point out that I am not saying that our spiritual life, our following Jesus, is not at time gruelling, difficult and drawn-out.  My own testimony will stand as an example of that.  I am saying that maybe the category of journey is not as helpful as it used to be.  We still use this category prolifically; it is still alive, but also somewhat dead.

If our category of journey has been empty of its substance and it is indeed a zombie, then continuing to use it as a framing concept for our discipleship might have adverse affects on that discipleship: our discipleship.  Today journeys are all about A-to-B and little about the path.  Journeys are about the ‘fastest route’ selected on the sat-nav.  Journeys are about air-conditioned cocoons removed from the elements, isolated from encounters with the environment through which one passes.  Journeys are to and not via, they are uninterrupted movements without the space for another.  Journeys need drive-through tactics for fuel and convenience only.  Journeys are too long and so need a thick layer of headset entertainment to ensure that it is not wasted time.

Discipleship, following Jesus, is all about the path and little about destination, choosing the narrow route along which we notice and listen, seeking encounters with others as we travel via their lives, willing turning aside for their convenience ensuring that each moment is not wasted but is filled with Presence.

The idea and concept of journey offers little substance for us when thinking about our discipleship and spirituality.  It is nevertheless used both casually in conversation, from pulpits and platforms in church services and by reflective and academic minded writers as a framing metaphor for containing and understanding our call to follow Jesus.  I wonder whether the time has come to put it out of its misery and shoot it dead.

The reflection is based on the BCP Gospel reading for the Next Sunday before Lent [Quinquagesima]

There is clearly something in these readings about not seeing and seeing.  Jesus is making statements about what will happen to him when he enters Jerusalem and the disciples do not understand.  Understanding was hid from them and they could not see.  Are we to understand that the disciples were like this blind man that Jesus and the crowd pass as they entered Jericho.  He too could not see and had to enquire what all the noise was about as Jesus and the crowd approached; except this man calls out to Jesus to be saved.  Jesus hears him, asks him what he wants and then gives him what he asked for: sight.  This man then praises God and follows Jesus.  Yes surely there is a parallel here between the disciples lack of seeing and this man’s new seeing.

However, this is not just about those disciples on their feet walking with Jesus into Jericho, it is also about us as disciples tying to follow Jesus in the villages, towns and cities where we live.  Is Luke, as he writes this, challenging his readers to think about who can see and who cannot?  Am I more like the disciples who cannot see, or more like the blind man who has received sight?

Perhaps even more challenging is, who else could the blind man be: my neighbour, my work colleague, my brother, my friend, the stranger whom I pass in the street?  Can they see or not see?

This reflection is based on the BCP gospel reading for Sunday 7 Feb 2010

This story has been heard so many times and it is difficult to come to it and expect to get anything else from it. It is over-familiar to us, but bear with me for a moment. In the middle of this gospel reading Jesus days “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

When we began to follow Jesus we had to learn, like a baby and child, how to recognise the Jesus’ voice. How to discern the voice of the creator in and amongst the chatter of life. Perhaps as time has gone on this voice has blended into the background once again. Just like the parable, the voice has become over-familiar and we don’t expect to hear much from it. Life has settled into the rut of discipleship: going to church, reading the scripture and praying for our needs; and we no longer expect the challenging, encouraging, life-giving encounters with Jesus.

Perhaps as we listen to this familiar parable expecting to hear very little, we might be challenged to pay more attention to listening to the One who speaks and become once again one who hears.

Welcome to those who are from our larger churches. Please tell your friends at larger churches to come to gatherings like this. We need your experience and wisdom. Can I also tell you that we need people from larger churches to be ready to go. To go to places in the diocese that are in need of mission, new housing estates for instance. And places where parishes are struggling, desparate for mission but with little idea or people to put it in to action.

I’ve paraphased a little, but this is basically what he said. What struck me about this is that in most of my chrisitan experience there has been a theme of staying. Whether that is in a home group or small group, youth group, congregation, cell and church staying, enjoying the comfort zone of growth and friendship is a clear theme.

Our culture has a different theme, movement, fluidity, flow and movement. It is fairly easy to argue that our much cherished freedom, particularly of movement, has been at the cost of security of place and stability.

You would think that the ‘be prepared to go’ that Bishop Stephen encoraged would fall on easy ears and find churches and people ready to stand up for. However, as the Bishop also noted, we don’t celebate success in other, neighbouring, churches very easily, in fact probably not at all. We like success in our own patch and find it uncomfortable in surrounding places.

And yet at the same time we are a faith that has at it’s core vlaues a ‘go’. Each one of these churches that we feel like we want to stay in was planted by some who left, arrived and planted the Gospel amongst a group of people.

Being someone who used to work in a large church, who considered the idea of sending people out as a resource to other local churches, but who never managed to get to a place were we could do it, I still find the idea of not planting a new church but helping a perhaps smaller one capture and move on with a vision for mission very exciting.

I wonder whether they might be willing to accept such help.

This coming Sunday is the last Sunday after Trinity and we are hurtling towards Christmas.  Before we get there we will glory in All Saints Day, remember those fallen in the wars, we will celebrate Christ the King and prepare ourselves during Advent.  As we come to the end of our long Trinity season the Gospel reading for Sunday has a little similarity to those signs on the motorway that count-down to a junction.  The 3 / 2 / 1 signs.

When I was younger, and in fact still occasionally today, I got fixated on working out whether these signs are correctly spaced out, whether there really do represent a correct count-down to the actual slip-road.  And I wonder to where they are measuring? Is it the beginning of the slip-road, where the white line begins to peal off?  Or is it to the centre of the slip-road?  I was concerned about all kinds of things about the signs, but of course, this is to completely miss the purpose of the sign, which is to tell you about something coming up, something ahead of you that you need warning about.  It does, in the end, matter too much whether they are correctly spaced out.

Our Gospel reading on Sunday is one of these signs.  There is still a way to go, but get ready.

Blind Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside doing what he normally does, begging.  He hears that it is Jesus who is coming and begins to shout out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Some people told him not to be so silly, but this did not deter him and he shouted all the more.
Jesus hears him and calls him over.  Some people help him over and Jesus asks what he wants of him.  Bartimaeus asks for his sight back and Jesus, stating that it is his faith that has made him well, gives his sight back to him.  Bartimaeus, as you might imagine, begins to follow Jesus.
It is like God the Father is saying to us today, get ready, just as it was with Bartimaeus, Jesus is about to pass by.  Just as it was with Bartimaeus, we are begging for life to the full.  Just as it was with Bartimaeus, if we are prepared to shout it out, and call upon Jesus for who he is, the King, then we will be heard.

You know that feeling when you miss the junction?  When just too late you pass it by and then you become painfully aware of the distance to the next junction and what a right pain this will be?  Don’t miss this junction in your life of calling out to Jesus as he passes by in the coming season.  Here is the first count down sign in Sunday’s reading, get ready.

If this is what it is like for you, you who know the sign, know what it means, and can get ready for the junction, for Jesus coming down the road.  What is it like for those who don’t know about the sign?  What is it like for those who are also begging for life to the full, but don’t know Jesus is coming and won’t call out because they will be distracted by other things and will miss the junction where their life crosses the path of Jesus?  What is it like for those people?

As we begin to think about getting ready for the coming season, begin to get ready for Jesus as he passes through town, let us be prepared to warn other people.  It is so easy to join in with conversations that paint Advent as time to shop and Christmas as a time for gifts, lots of food and wine and good programs on the tv.  Joining in those conversations is easy.  But we are called to say, get ready, Jesus is coming.
This Sunday, in our reading is the first sign on the path we are on.  You today, have noticed it and will be getting ready.  Please, as the opportunity arises, talk about the coming of Jesus in this season to others who don’t know, who don’t even know that we have passed the first get ready sign.  Don’t get sucked into Christmas talk, without mentioning it’s Jesus who is coming!  What are you going to ask for this year?

Today I am launching my next writing project.  I have for a long time thought that the best people to offer insight into life as a curate are the curates themselves.  Hearing from those who have tread the path before us is great, their insights and wisdom is often invaluable and unique and we should be willing to listen and learn; but the expert at life as a curate today are the curates themselves.  Despite great wisdom and experience, those who have tread the path before us cannot appreciate life as a curate in these cultural times.  Not because they lack some thing but simply because times change.  This is just the general brush stokes before we get to the detail of personal circumstances and the experiences and perspectives that each curate brings with them and lives and works from within.  Add to that individual preferences of spirituality and theological twists and turns and it soon becomes very difficult for one or even a few people to essentially stand up and say what life as a curate is like.

Curates occupy a fairly unique position.  By curates I mean those who hold an office a Assistant Curate under a Training Incumbent in a training post for a fairly fixed time of between 3 and 4 years.  They will have come from some form of training sponsored by their Diocese and when they leave, the majority of curates become incumbents themselves.  This place of liminality acts as a furnace of leadership, where the curate is under authority of the incumbent and yet looked to for leadership from the congregation and community, where there is the constant presence of the promise of future authority and plans for leadership.  Experience is filtered into habits to adopt and practices to never duplicate. Where the training incumbent is both to be followed and avoided, mimicked and guarded against.  It is in these few years that habits at the core of their leadership will be formed and as they come out of the curacy furnace they cool and set and become fixtures of their ministry.

This project is a exercise in collective wisdom focused particularly around issues of leadership and will almost entirely consist of stories.  Stories told by curates about themselves in positions ans situations of leadership.  I will groups these stories and present them with a framework but only so they become accessible.  My hope is that this exercise will become a valuable resource for curates thinking about leadership as a curate.

I went to see many of the headliners at greenbelt this year. Athlete were great, Martyn Joseph with Stuart Anderson was brilliant and then there was Rob Bell.

It is not at all that Rob was not good, he was, as expected, engaging, funny, full of compassion and very clear, but two things disturbed me. The first, which I guess I’ll have to live with, is the celebratory status that the crowd afford to this human being. Ok, so Jesus had crowds too and I in fact participate in crowds as well; most notably at a U2 360 concert this summer. So maybe I should just get over this. The second disturbance, which I find sad that we are living with, was captured at the type of questions that the crowd asked this super-christian.

One of Rob’s hour long sessions was titled ‘In Conversation with Rob Bell’ which was essentially an open Q&A time. Questioners were pulled from the crowd with easy questions, hard questions, funny and interesting questions etc. It seemed to me that the questions, while extremely difficult for the person involved, were of a very basic discipleship nature.

Now, on the one hand there is nothing basic about discipleship. Re-orientating one’s life towards Christ and then following as a disciple is enormously energising and draining. “I have just met Jesus and now I wonder what I need to do in my life to follow?” Such a question can and should have great impact on one’s life. What flows out of such a question is almost certainly a range of difficult decisions and situations. If following Jesus were easy, then there might be more people in church and the world might be worse of for it. However, the place for such difficult questions and life-giving support through such situations is amongst the community of believers, where the next basic theological questions gets asked. “We a community of believers, what does it mean to be the Body of Christ in this time and place?” How do we live faithfully and authentically together as disciples of Jesus. As well as addressing internal matters of nurture and support of disciples and life together as community, it is this group and only this group that can begin to think about how to relate to those not yet part of them: “How do we as the community of disciples communicate the love of God to those who have not heard?” Yes of course individual disciples are at the coal-face of being in relationship with on-disciples, but they can only do so out of their community of believers: theologically, emotionally and practically. This layering of theological questions, this ‘how do we talk about God’ conversation, is, or at least should be it seems to me, at the heart of ecclesial theology; by which I mean church based theology. So perhaps it is now easier to see my second disturbance in context. How come these attendees at a Christian festival asking this super-Christian who has been flown in from the states basic discipleship questions?

Perhaps it is because they were just testing him out. A whole group of festival attendants got together to form a list of questions which would essentially test out Rob Bell’s authenticity to be called a ’speaker’! If this is the case, I wonder whether he passed? Perhaps those who asked questions were not in fact active members of a local community of believers and so in effect GB becomes their community and this is where you can ask the visiting preacher these type of questions. I’m sure this is the case for a whole heap of people who attend GB. They are either disaffected church-goers or never in fact went to church but found faith in the festival circuit and never made a connection with their local church.

Thirdly, and this is where this article has been leading up to, perhaps it is because these questions aren’t being answered in the local communities of believers, the local church. The preaching and teaching in local churches is not up to addressing these discipleship questions or local preachers and teachers are not brave enough to address them. Talking about non-believers who need converting strongly implies that we have it right and they have it wrong; talking about parents and partners who don’t believe who as a result face separation from God [assuming that we still have a lost and found theology], these are hard things and you can’t blame teachers and preachers for a little self-preservation. However, these are the questions that our people are asking.

This second disturbance of mine does cause me sadness. Not because we don’t have answers for these questions, or because it is so hard, but because I don’t think we talk about these questions enough. There are no easy answers to these and other difficult situations but the best chance we have is to have an ongoing space within the community of believers of support, care, prayer, love and wisdom seeking. Which we are probably not going to find in the hour session of a paratrooper preacher in a field a GB.

I was particular interested in listening to Rob Bell, primarily to here the questions he was asked rather than his answers, because I am convinced that on the whole we have a very low discipleship agenda in our churches. By discipleship I mean just asking those type questions that I outlined above; what does it mean for me to become and be a follower of Jesus; as a community of believers how show we life our lives together and how do we as a community engage with those who have not heard?

Trinity 14 Mark 8:27-end

Who am I?

This is one of the foundational questions of all humanity. It has been asked in all ages and is asked across all cultural divides. It is a question that has had many answers, perhaps as many as there are human beings. Although many individuals often have many differing answers throughout their lifetime.

The question gets to the heart of what it means to be a human and the way we answer it shows a lot about what we value. We are many things and we are often judged on the things that are easily seen; our work, or non-work, what we wear and look like, where we live, the way we speak… People can answer the ‘who are we’ question by looking at these things, but these things can and often change.

If I want to find some stability to the way I answer this big question, ‘Who am I?’, then I need to go much deeper to find the things that don’t change about me.

I can’t change that I am a son, first born of John and Sue Stacey, and as it happens, born white, British and working class. I’m also a brother, three times over. Even though I became a husband in 1996 and that became who I mostly am, I can’t forget that I am a son. But I am mostly a husband and this is something I can’t change either. I am also, of course, a father to my three children. With these ones at the core, I have many relationships that I can’t change and it is these things that are stable in my life, whatever life may bring. It is these relationships that enable me to answer the ‘Who am I?’ questions with some clarity, fear and hope.

When Jesus asks the disciples “Who do people say that I am?” he is wondering whether people have been able to see beyond the miracles and compassion and gentleness and wisdom, to who he is in relationship. The answer that comes back to Jesus is that the crowd has not yet seen who he is. So then he asks the disciples plainly: “But who do you say I am?” When Peter said “You are the Messiah.” he probably wasn’t expecting the kind of answer he got, nor the rebuke he was to get for objecting to it. But Peter did see Jesus for who he really was and is. Beyond the things he did, where he travelled, the way he spoke, the job he did [by which I mean his teaching and healing], Peter saw that this person was related to the Divine.

You are the Messiah, or you are the Christ… you are the one sent by God, anointed by the Creator, filled with the Holy Spirit. You have a relationship with the Lord like no other human we have known! Notice that at this stage they have not made the giant leap to Son of the Father, even though Jesus refers to his Father as Father many times. What they have noticed, or what Peter has noticed is that there is more to this man who is the Son of Mary and Joseph, although there is rumoured that there was some tricky business about that. There is more to this early retired carpenter from Nazareth and Peter puts his finger on it by saying he is related to the Divine, the Lord.

Peter’s answer did not bring this about, it was always there; and our answer to the same question will not alter it one bit either. Jesus, as they were later to realise and we now declare, is the only begotten Son of the Father. Our answers to the same question that Peter answered won’t change that, but they do change us.

How we answer the same question that Jesus put to his first disciples; “But who do you say I am? Doesn’t matter what others think, what do you say?”; how we answer it has a massive effect on us. If we can perceive, can really see, albeit imprecisely and vaguely, that Jesus is related to the Divine in such a way that he is not just sent by but sent from, as one with the Divine, then…

then following, becoming a disciple, is probably more than we ever thought it was.

Common Worship reading for this coming Sunday: Mark 7:24-end

Here is this woman… who is desperate to see her child released from the pain and anguish she lives in day after day.  Some of you will be able to sympathise with her, knowing members of your own family who likewise struggle with some affliction day after day.  Such anguish, watching someone you love, in daily pain and misery, is very hard to bear.

This woman comes to Jesus, willing to endure insult and embarrassment and humiliation; crossing all kinds of social convention and expectations; to come to the only place where she knew to go.  The only place worth going to.  The only place to find peace: Jesus.
Things are very different for us today.  We have a health service that helps us to patch up our bodies and manage our pain.  We have an organised church to help us encounter Jesus in the security of social conventions and practices.  Our situation is very different from this Syrophoenician woman.

And yet on Monday evening I sat in a concert at Greenbelt weeping in public waiting for Jesus to do something for someone I love.

I guess things aren’t so different.  We still struggle with things we can’t explain and pain we can’t bear to live with.  Still the only place to go is Jesus, to find peace, healing, comfort, strength, grace, mercy…  And we still get desperate enough to humiliate ourselves in public, to ignore social conventions, risk insult and embarrassment in order to get to a place where Jesus will hear us.

Below is a longer exploration of the 5-a-day self-leadership tool.  This will eventually form part of a new web resource on self-leadership that is currently under construction.

For those being ordained this at Petertide, I hope this final week amidst rehersals and retreats you find the space to hear from God…

The files you need are linked below:

You can find plenty of confusion and misdirection in the Gospel of John. John seems to want us to conclude… conclude… conclude very little!
It’s clear that the early disciples were also in a state of confusion for much of the time; and so John’s writing is at least reflective of that.

But what about us, who like answers. Our ways of thinking, that are hugely influenced by a scientific approach to evidence and conclusions, don’t handle mystery very well. And we don’t appreciate misdirection!

So what can we say about our reading then? It appears as though Jesus is preparing the disciples for an emotional roller-coaster of a ride. It appears as though John is reminding his early readers of how confusing those last days in Jerusalem were. And for us, who live a long time after this event and the writing down of it, it appears to be reminding us that we live in the Days of Joy.

“Your hearts will rejoice and no one shall take your Joy from you.” Says Jesus. By any measure, we are living after the ‘little while’ that the disciples were finding so confusing. We are living in the Days of Joy

One man asks another, “Are you happy?” “Yes!” the man replies. “Well tell your face then.” Retorts the first.

So the question I’ll leave you with is: to what extent do we need to be reminded that we are living in the Days of Joy.

We begin Passiontide today, the week before Holy Week, the last week of Lent. There is a whole bunch of getting ready for this huge event on Good Friday.  Although of course this Good Friday event does not make sense without Easter Day. The death of Jesus does not mean much by itself, it only makes sense when it is connected to the resurrection. But you know this. We cannot disconnect any one event from the others.
Creation only makes sense once there is incarnation, God becoming human, the Son of God becoming like us. The incarnation only really makes sense on Good Friday, when like us, Jesus suffers and dies. But this is just another death and only makes sense on Easter Sunday, when death becomes nothing in light of the Love of God. The resurrection in turn only makes sense on Accession, when Jesus returns to his Father’s side in heaven and that in turn only makes sense on Pentecost; when Jesus sends the Spirit freely to whoever desires it without prejudice; enabling us to become like him. And that finally only makes sense today, in us, in your life and my life.

We are sat here at the beginning of Passiontide on the brink of the biggest festival in the Christian calendar and it only makes sense because of you.

It relies on you making sense of Jesus’ charge to us. And during our lent readings it is right that we are reminded of these charges. To pick up our cross and follow, to be prepared to be last instead of first, and today in our reading: Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Leaving aside the cultural explanations and the literary analysis about why Jesus is using these particular words, these kind of statements are just impossible. What does it mean to hate my life, or pick up my cross, or be last, or die to self and give it all up for others. These are just massive, impossible statements.

And so is running a marathon. You are all wise enough to know that setting yourself impossible tasks and trying to do them by sheer will is just asking for failure. I cannot decide to go and run a marathon this afternoon, just as much as I cannot decide to give my life away, pick up my cross, live for others and hate my life here in this world.

But I can train. The running analogy is brilliant because it make such sense of the spiritual life. Paul uses it time and time again, and we’re using it today. Following Jesus is like training to run a marathon. Not trying to run, but training to run. You have to do it a bit at a time.
It might look like, being prepared to be wrong for the sake of a friendship. Who cares if my side of the story is accepted as true if it means losing a friend or a potential friend.

It might look like putting your task off to another day, in order to assist someone else. How often does my own personal agenda and to-do-list mean that I miss out on the life giving opportunities to help someone else.

It might look like giving something away because it would be more useful in someone else’s hands than in mine.

These small, although sometimes difficult tasks are great training for following Jesus. It is when we can handle, without thinking about it, these small chances of preferring one another’s needs, that we might be ready to notice when someone else is in real need, and have the strength of character to do something about it.

Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Good Friday, the Resurrection, it only makes sense if in our lives the marks of Jesus can be seen and witnessed; if just as we have benefited from the life, death and life of Jesus, others will benefit from that same life, death and life of Jesus in us.

Kate has this amazing ability. I can go to the cupboard and see that they is nothing for supper; but Kate can go to the same cupboard and produce something to eat for whoever happens to be at our house at the time. This ability has become a source of humour between Kate and I; that she can essentially produce food from nothing

It seems to me that Jesus is doing the same thing in our passage today. He is not sending them home to find their own super; he is inviting them to stay at his place. He is not despairing that more people have turned up than he had planned for; rather he takes what’s available and stretches it. Quite apart from the miracle that happens on the hillside there, Jesus is doing what mother’s up and down the country do occasionally, week-by-week, day after day as they feed their families and whoever happens to have come home with them that day. Stretching the family budget and food cupboard; sending no-one home.

The feeding of the 5000 is an exercise in motherhood; it’s Jesus being a mother. This, and the many times that Jesus feeds his followers and disciples, should be and is an enormous encouragement for those who are mothers, and those fathers and carers who are the ‘mother’ in their situation – if only they, and in particular mothers could hear it.

Here we are at communion; and here is Jesus being a mother again. Take, eat, all of you. Drink this cup, all of you. Whoever you are, however you have got here, wherever you have come from and whom ever you have been with, your welcome at this table and there is enough for you; I am enough for you says Jesus.

Jesus turning our assumptions up-side down – again. The market in the temple had become a normal way of doing things. People arriving at the temple for their acts of worship needed these services; to change money and purchase their sacrifices. Perhaps it is my capitalist conditioning that means that this is just obvious and if I were such a visitor I would be lamenting that I hadn’t though of providing such services to such a captive audience.

But perhaps it is precisely my capitalist tendencies that need turning up-side down and to hear the challenge; the challenge that asks whether their is anything more important than convenient services and financial growth. This rhetorical question of course demands the answer “Yes!”. Yes there is more important things than convenience and disposable income, but I’m not sure what they are!?

What I mean, is that I can thing of some more important things and in fact they are mostly people. My problem is, and the real challenge is, acting as if these are more important people, and things.

When the Jews demand a sign from Jesus, just to check that he is allowed to come in and rampage through their marketplace and small business workshops, Jesus continues to turn things upside down. I’ll try and paraphrase: “You thin that this temple is important, and my actions have shown you that I think it is important too, possibly more important than you think it is. However, if you destroy this place it does not matter at all, because the real temple is me, and in fact you too.”

Jesus’ challenge is doubled up. What’s more important than the temple marketplace? The Temple! Ahh, but what’s more important than the Temple?

Lent if anything, should be driving us back to the important things in our life, but at the same time challenging what those important things are.

Having suffered too many seminars and workshops at the hand of lecturers.  Having wasted too many hours listening to stuff I already have experience of or knowledge already acquired or learned.  Having sat for so long on uncomfortable chairs calculating the number of hours represented by the group that equate to each minute spent listening to someone say “We’ll skip that bit because we are running out of time!” I just want to ask… is there not a better way?

The real situations of which the previous paragraph is an emotional caricature are usually a room full of adults, with plenty of mixed life experience, passionate about the subject or at least the macro-subject of which a particular workshop or seminar is a part and, usually as a result of the aforesaid, have options, perspectives and questions about the subject in question [or not actually in question as is often the case].

Ok, let’s get really real: I was in a room of 18 adults, a good proportion of which were [and of course still are] parents; all of which had had some lay experience of volunteering in a church in a leadership position; all of which will have completed a CRB application and check and therefore will have some familiarity with a child protection document; all of which had been or about to be ordained into orders in the Church of England; at least two in the room had at least 10 years experience as a team leader of children’s and youth ministry; one person some years experience as a police officer and I am willing to place money on there being at least one person with full-time teaching experience, one with full-time nursing experience and one with some form of social worker experience. To this group of people someone thought it would be a good idea to give a 2 hour lecture on child protection issues with 2 short group exercises, straight after lunch having already being in the room for 2 hours previously listening to someone else.

As an exercise in learning this does not score highly…!

OK, rant almost over… breathing deeply now…

It seems to me that we spend far too long talking about whatever instead of allowing people to participate in the learning process. In the late nineties it would have been fairly easy in the Christian conference and training circuit to find oneself sitting listening to some talk about the encroaching condition of postmodernity in our culture and how this would affect life as we know it and, usually, the threats this would bring to both being Christian and any evangelistic and mission activity we might have or imagine. Almost certainly one of the points to be made in this talk would have been to describe the fragmentation of life, relationships and imagination, highlighting one of the most obvious indicators as an increasingly short attention span as we adapt to the flickering plethora of information and entertainment invading our senses. Almost certainly… you guessed it… these words of truth were delivered lecture-style whilst the subjects and illustrators were sat on, almost certainly, uncomfortable chairs for about a hour, and more if you were lucky!

Research indicates that 7 mins is about the concentration span of adults… by now it has probably taken you about that long to read this so I’ll…

Tentmaking is certainly as old as Christianity and probably older. Paul, the one of the Damascus Road, is known to have been a tent-maker. Literally one who makes tents so as to be able to support himself and offer ministry without charge. This was practice amongst some rabbis too and therefore certainly an influence on Paul. Tentmaking, as many who are reading this will know better than I, is still the majority practice amongst many recognised missionaries. For some it serves as a segue away from the illegal practice of being a Christian in the country they are living/serving. For others it is because the missionary activity has no chance of being funded any other way.

I have been struggling with tentmaking! Since I am coming from a place where all my waking ‘working’ hours have been consumed with ‘things of the Lord’ or at least working in the context of full-time church-based ministry, the idea of diverting a whole bunch of hours, and therefore energy, into earning a living has seemed like a colossal… diversion.

There is a whole bunch of conversation which is pertinent at this stage, like why should a calling abscond one from labour and what does a stipend say about the ministry of those who actually do have to ‘work’ for a living. I am going to skip over these pertinent points though and get to my point which is what is ministry anyway? Our ideas of ministry are of course socially conditioned and are made reality by our taking up of somethings and the ignoring of others. We have come to this place where there is a thing called full-time ministry and in such a way as it becomes a benchmark for ministry: anything less is often seen as somehow inferior. This valuing is applied not only to time but also the content of that ministry. Full-time church based ministry, dealing with the things of the lord that happen to focus around the running of a set of services and the associated pastoral care and evngelistic projects, as a calling is only beaten by full-time overseas missionary status.

Before we entertain too much digression, the point here is that this cultural valuing of various types of ministry completely devalues others: being a nurse, mother, solitictor, dental receptionist, checkout operator etc etc. This observation is nothing new and I only raise it because of the struggles I have been grappling with concerning my own life. I am just getting to this point where, yes, running a small commerical affair to prove some income is not in contrast to my ministry but part of it.

As I take note of the mental and emtional processes involved in getting to this point I see that in the large part it was a case of getting over the spiritual snobery of not been able to say that I am in full-time church based ministry! A spiritual snobery that is reflective of the cultural framework in which we see ministry – the way we do and think about ministry in these parts.

At this stage the future of stipendary ministry is up for grabs, the only sure thing being that more of the same will not work! Which therefore means a painful grappling with our social understanding of what ministry is; a dismantling of our cultural framework for constructing ministerial pathways; confronting the ecclesiastical expectations both from demoninational and congregational perspectives and a gentle healing approach to the many whose very identity is deeply contected to the way they have done ministry thus far.

It is this onotlogical component, the way of being in ministry, that will of course be the real issue. If we construct, say a ministerial pathway to train and equip people for tentmaking ministries of which part of is the preistly oversight of a local church, what does that say to those who have given their entire working life to the full-time preistly and pastoral care of that local congregation. The deep feelings associated with loosing the vicar in pastoral reorganisation [1 vicar taking on 2 or more parishes instead of each parish having its own vicar] will be repeated and added too. Since the previsously secure side to pastoral reorganisation has been the role of the vicar, whose role and identity has in some ways received a boost from such reorganisation. This boost will not be missing in such reconstruction of ministry, but quite the reverse, there will be a sapping of the foregoing confidence: what have I been doing all my life now that a part-timer is fulfiling my role?

I have been in lots of wars. Some of the most fierce were with my brothers that only ended in peace because of the intervention of parents. Even then there was not a lot of peace that followed, only discipline. I have had wars with friends because of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. I have even been at war with my best friend, my wife, although in each of these cases I came to realise that it was my fault and that I should say sorry first!

It only takes a single word to start a war! I have often said this to my children in the aftermath of conflict as we are wiping tears away and trying to untangle the confused state of who said what and who did what first. It only takes a single word, and words turn to actions and me and him turns into us and them and we have a war.

Wars don’t just happen, they are started somewhere, by someone! But wars worthy of the title never remain with the individual they always involve everyone. When it becomes us, we are all called forward as a community, as a nation, in which we all play our part.

It is for the politicians amongst us to declare the war.

It is the Generals job to strategise and mobilise the troops.

It is the soldiers job to bear arms and face the enemy, and to do so offering their lives! For their loved ones, for everyone they knew and everyone they didn’t and for all of us that follow.

And then it becomes every one’s job to remember. Everyone and all those that follow, it is their job, our job, our duty, to remember.

To remember fallen loved ones, husbands, wives, dads, mums, children. To remember how much it cost. To remember so that we might treat war and potential war with the dignity and fear it demands. To remember to watch our words least we start a war.

And it is our job, as disciples of Jesus, to pray. To pray for our politicians that they would earnestly seek the wisdom of God. To pray for our Generals as they discern a path through strategy and the safety of our troops. To pray for our soldiers as they do the job that most of us couldn’t and do so willingly putting their own life at risk. And it is also our job as disciples of Jesus to pray for our enemies!

Blessed are those that morn… for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the merciful… for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers… for they will be called children of God.

There are all kinds of rumours floating around the establishment of the Church of England about the future of stipendary ministry. Out of these rumours arrive various futures.

For anyone who is not aware, a stipend is a living expense, paid to priests, vicars, ministers et al, so that they are freed from the necessity of working for a living. Thus freeing up one’s time to attend to the things of the Lord.

I have been in full time stipendary ministry for 10 years now [the last three of those were as one in training for ordination]. Although I could not have formulated a sentence about it at the time, entering full-time was very much part of my conversion: in retrospect, was also a call. However, this year it’s different as I am job-sharing a curacy with my wife, Kate. Job-sharing means stipend sharing and of course part-time work. In two years time I am most likely to be non-stipendary, or what is called in the trade NSM [non-stipendary minister], whilst Kate takes on a stipendary position, i.e. being a full-time vicar. All of this means that I am paying attention to what it means to be part-time, see previous post, what it means to have a stipend and what it means to be earning money alongside this.

It seems to me that these questions soon begin to cut to the heart of what it means to be a priest, or at least what it might mean for me? It also brings into play all these rumours, and to what extend I might be pre-empting one of these futures?