Pastoral Care

Of all Scripture, the passage I most often speak from is Psalm 23. Most recently I spoke from it as I baptised a mother and two of her daughters, a young girl and a baby. There had been another daughter: last year, following her cot death, I had taken her funeral. We lit a candle in her memory, and as testimony to God’s faithfulness in dark times. After the baptism, the mother said to me, “Twelve months ago you told us that life would be good again; I couldn’t see then how that could be possible, but I can now.”

The Psalm draws on the experience of sheep. It begins in the low winter pasture; but the spring has arrived: the grass here is wearing thin, while the grass on the flat mountain top is lush and full of flowers, like a table-top spread with a banquet. The shepherd, sensitive to these things, leads the sheep up the ravine. The ravine is a hostile environment – a flash torrent could sweep the sheep away; predators hide in the rocks – but the sheep do not need to fear, because the shepherd carries two sticks: a crook, to guide – and, if need be, to rescue – the sheep;* and a club, with which to drive back predators.** At the end of the journey, the shepherd checks over his sheep, rubbing healing oil into any cuts.

But the mountain top is not the final destination: the shepherd will lead his sheep up and down the ravine many times as one pasture is depleted and another has regrown.

Psalm 23 is such a good funeral psalm not because it speaks of my life after my death, but because it holds out the hope of life (as opposed to mere ongoing existence), in time, after the death of one I have loved.

Life is change. Births, deaths, marriages. Children leaving home. Parents getting old. Jobs lost; jobs begun. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. At a personal level; at a community level; at a regional, national, international, or global level. We can no more hold back change than we can step outside of time and space.

Life is change, experienced as rhythms of change. Advent is my favourite Season of the year; but if it were always Advent, where would Christmas, Epiphany, Lent be? There is much that I love – and much that I find a real challenge – about having young children; without wishing it away, I wouldn’t want it to last forever!

Life is change, as we are simultaneously and paradoxically passing away and being transformed from one degree of glory to another.

The good shepherd –

by shepherd I mean someone with a primarily pastoral impulse;

someone whose gifts relate to humanising our organisational structures and working systems;

whether within the church or anywhere within wider society –

the good shepherd:

recognises tipping- or turning- points;

leads a community (not just the most adventurous individuals) into the new season of life, via our dying to our common (communal) and personal self;

encourages, guides and protects in the inevitable and unavoidable stage of moving through the valley of the shadow of death;

and attends to the wounds that are picked up along the way.

Life is change, and change is always disturbing – even for those who enjoy change; and even for those who are moving from sadness to joy. It involves a leaving behind and a setting out on a journey. We might have made the journey before, but the journey – in particular, the out-workings of the dangers of the journey – is different each time. We need shepherds to guide us. And yet, at least within the church, shepherds have become the most change-averse of all. Too often, a shepherd:

accepts that the grass is not as green as it was, but tries desperately to find ways of extending the season in the pasture, believing that it will grow back if we stick things out;

ironically endangers the survival of the flock out of concern not to enter the ravine;

and, ironically, frightens the sheep by taking up the voice of a predator.

That is why shepherds, just as much as anyone else, need to be reminded that they are also sheep – and that they follow the Good Shepherd.

That there is a wolf hiding within them, too, needing to be confronted by the Good Shepherd.

That the ravine may be the place of death, but that the place of death is the very place where God is at work in and through the Good Shepherd to bring about new life.

*the crook also symbolises commitment to Covenant relationship between the Father and his children, between Jesus and his Bride...

**the club also symbolises commitment to Kingdom responsibility, to drive back the accuser...

Garden

The Garden was a hive of activity yesterday afternoon: running repairs on a section of wall that had been knocked down by a neighbour’s tree; borders that needed redefining; a silted-up water feature; some planting. Spring has arrived, and the garden is returning to good shape.

It isn’t only the garden that goes through seasons: the gardening team had been pruned right back, through various pastoral circumstances; and had experienced a time when those left were unable to do very much; but is now growing vigorously again, with evidence of fruitfulness to come.

Not only is it a great part of the life of the church; it is a great illustration of the life of the church, and of the rhythm of life with its seasons of pruning, abiding, growing and bearing fruit (John 15:1-17).

I’m hoping that we get a better summer this year than last, with scope for quiet days, outdoor services, and a party or two...

Photos here.

Kairos : Season : Weather

Following on from the previous post, my friend Ian Paul (Dean of Studies at St John’s College, Nottingham, where I trained) informs me that in modern Greek, kairos now means season, or weather.  I find that really interesting.


Yesterday I was having a conversation with another friend, in America (Skype is a good thing).  We were discussing fruitfulness.  Jesus says, by their fruit you shall know them – that is to say, the condition of our hearts is revealed through something observable; something that can be bitter – such as envy – or sweet – such as generosity.  Clearly, we would hope to bear good fruit, the external outworking of an internal transformation.  But even so, fruit is produced in its season.


The consumer can get fruit instantly, at any time of year, simply by going to the supermarket.  The farmer knows that fruit has a season – and that attending to the fruitless times is essential if the crop is to be a fruitful one.


In John 15, Jesus describes the process of achieving fruitfulness: the gardener prunes back the branch; the branch is surrounded by the thickening vine-stock; the branch grows out from the vine; the branch bears fruit; the branch is pruned again, and the cycle repeated.  In order that our lives are fruitful, the Father prunes back our lives, inviting us into times of retreat, of intimacy with Jesus.


The pattern of discipleship is one of invitation and challenge.  Both, held in tension, are necessary: but in pruning and abiding, invitation is the leading beat to our rhythm of life; in growing and bearing fruit, challenge is the leading beat.


Is it coincidence that, living in societies where the supermarket has flattened-out seasonality, that we expect to be fruitful all of the time?  Is it coincidence that we have overlooked the need for pruning and abiding?


The meaning of words evolves over time.  I’d suggest that the meaning does not change arbitrarily, but as different expressions of the potential meaning contained within the word – just as every seed produces a plant that is true to its type.


A kairos, therefore, is (amongst other things) a shift in season: from fruiting to pruning to abiding to growing.  A kairos expresses God’s current activity within chronos.  A kairos is a change in the weather: rain and sun (God’s blessing on the righteous and the unrighteous alike), again often connected with seasons.


I love it when conversations come together, and spread out again...

The Semi-Circle : Living In Rhythm with Life

‘Lifeshapes’ are a series of tools for discipleship – for helping us to follow Jesus, and to help others to follow Jesus. Recognising that we live in an iconic culture, where brand logos both carry and unlock significant volumes of experience for us – try it: how much information and experience does the Disney logo, or the Apple logo, or the M&S logo recall to your mind? Choose a logo and write a list – they make use of simple iconic shapes to carry and unlock biblical teaching to live by, with a focus on the life and ministry of Jesus. The beauty of iconic symbols is this: that, just as with every new Disney (etc.) release, the reservoir of knowledge their logo carries and unlocks expands; so with every new thing we learn about living as disciples, the reservoir of knowledge the Lifeshapes carries and unlocks for us also expands.

On the night of his arrest, walking through Jerusalem from the Upper Room where he had celebrated the Last Supper, to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives, Jesus and his disciples look up at the Temple. There on the wall is the giant gold frieze of a vine, the symbol of God’s people planted by God himself in the Promised Land, lit by the firelight of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem to observe the Passover. And Jesus declares that he is the true vine (John 15), and goes on to describe the experience of the life of his disciples:

they are the branches that grow out from the vine, bearing fruit;

once the fruit is harvested, the branches are pruned back: those branches that have not borne fruit are cut off and thrown in the fire; while those that have borne fruit are pruned right back to the vinestock;

the vinestock (as all trunks do) grows thicker year-on-year, surrounding the pruned-back branches, from which they will grow out again, themselves stronger, able to bear more fruit than the year before.

There is a rhythm: of remaining, or abiding, in the vine; growth; fruit; and pruning. And we should expect just such a rhythm in our lives; learn to recognise the points where abiding turns to growth, growth to bearing fruit, fruitfulness to pruning; and to go with the gardener, rather than resist him.

So, as we spend time with Jesus, in the hidden place where no-one sees, in time we will become aware that our faith for producing a particular fruit in our life – patience, perhaps, or exercising the gift of healing – is growing. And then we will experience a season of fruitfulness – we demonstrate a patience that we had not known before; we pray for those in need of healing, and see healing more often than in the past. And then, just as we are enjoying this new experience, something happens: we stop bearing fruit; we might even notice that the fruit we were bearing, we are no longer bearing – we seem to be more impatient again; we pray, and don’t see healing, again. If we don’t know to expect this – if we don’t see it as a gentle invitation to abiding again (the idea of retreat in order to go forward) – then we will worry that something has gone wrong: that God has let us down, or that we have let him down and he has abandoned us, for now at least. In fact, it is un-pruned branches that grow too thin to support the weight of fruit, too long for goodness to travel from the vine. The life that does not embrace this rhythm will see a law of diminishing returns, bearing increasingly less and increasingly bitter fruit. On the other hand, the life that embraces this rhythm will bear much fruit, in season.