Walk Through the Easter Story

Walk Through the Easter Story at St Nicholas’ Church

I am delighted that we shall be hosting groups from two local secondary schools taking part in this event, around ten Year 7 pupils from one and around fifteen Year 10 pupils from the other, in the last week of term before the Easter holidays. Hopefully, the church will also be open during Holy Week (the following week).

The purpose is to help pupils make connections between their own life experience and the challenges they face, and the Gospel accounts of the Passion of Jesus the Christ. My working assumption is that faith (all faiths) engage the gritty questions of life, so we don’t start from scratch, but have resources to draw on.

We’ll be setting up eight spaces in the church, depicting and interpreting key events. We’ll begin with welcome and an overview of the story (15 minutes), then extended time for student-led but church team-supported engagement (40 minutes: there will not be time for every pupil to engage with every space; they will need to choose where to go), before gathering for feedback and sending out (15 minutes). We might also offer hot cross buns and juice (to be confirmed with the schools).

Here are my notes around creating the eight stations along the Way:

X The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, Luke 19:28-44
Theme: Demos and Protests
Key questions: What matters to you? Where do you feel you are not taken seriously?
Summary: A banner-waving people-movement has come to Jerusalem to demonstrate their hopes and dreams, and are dismissed as dangerous dreamers by the powerholders of the day. Pupils will be invited to make their own placards for a procession of hope.
Location in church: steps to main entrance of church, and inner vestibule.
We will need: palm branches to decorate the entrance into the church; wooden batons, card, gaffer tape, and coloured pens to make your own placard.
Extra: connect to Palm Sunday practices, including the palm procession and public reading of the Gospel of the Passion.

X The Anointing with Oil, Mark 14:1-11
Theme: Grief
Key questions: How do you say goodbye to someone you love, and know will die soon, when there are no words?
Summary: Mary loves Jesus (not in the romantic sense; but as a friend so close as to essentially be a family member) and knows that he will soon die. She does something special, to create a lasting memory. Pupils will be sensitively invited to reflect on bereavement and related rituals, and to leave messages written on crushed hearts.
Location in church: around the font.
We will need: bunches of flowers; football jersey; tea-light candles, in glass jars; possibly the essential-oil burner and patchouli oil (a spikenard substitute); red paper hearts, and pens to write on them; a bowl to leave the crushed hearts.

X The Washing of Feet, John 13:1-20
Theme: Fashion Models, Role Models
Key questions: Is beauty skin deep? Are you at home in your own skin? Who do you want to be like, and why?
Summary: Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, and talks to them about serving one another. Peter objects. This moment engages how we feel about our bodies—are they holy or dirty, untouchable or our obsession—and also how we relate to other people, to their bodies and to their souls. Pupils will be invited to create a ‘mood board’ of cut-and-pasted images.
Location in church: rear of seated area, right hand side.
We will need: a large bowl, jug of water, towel; a selection of fashion/men’s health/etc. magazines, photo images of various positive role models, images of hands and feet; scissors, glue-sticks, large board(s) of card.
Extra: connect to Maundy Thursday practices, including foot-washing.

X The Last Supper, Matthew 26:17-30
Theme: Betrayal and Forgiveness
Key questions: Should you forgive someone who hurts you? Are happy memories lost to hurtful actions?
Summary: Jesus is betrayed by one of his closest friends, and yet speaks about the central importance of forgiving people. Pupils will be invited to reflect on friendships, broken and potentially restored, and to ‘send’ text messages saying ‘I forgive you’—or ‘please forgive me’.
Location in church: rear of seated area, left hand side.
We will need: a table, possibly set; bread, wine; as many old (disabled) mobile phones as possible.

X The Garden, Matthew 26:36-56
Theme: Gangs and Knives
Key questions: What do you fear? Where don’t you go?
Summary: Jesus is with his friends in a place that is familiar and ought to be safe, when a ‘rival gang’ arrives. Peter reaches for his sword, and strikes; but Jesus de-escalates the situation. Pupils will be invited to think about identity and belonging, to a group and/or neighbourhood, and to mark territory and dangerous places on a map.
Location in church: front of seated area, right hand side.
We will need: ‘structural’ plants, to create a sense of garden; play swords (?); a large-scale hand-drawn map of the local area (parish?) and pens to mark places on it.

X The Trials, Luke 22:54-23:12
Theme: Celebrity
Key questions: Why do we build people up to tear them down? Can authority figures be trusted?
Summary: Pilate is asked to judge ‘the king of the Jews’. The crowd who were delighted when Jesus entered Jerusalem are whipped into a murderous frenzy now. Herod hopes to be entertained by this charismatic figure, so often on everyone’s lips. Pilate and Herod form an unholy alliance. Pupils will be invited to reflect on our obsession with celebrity, and to write, anonymously, encouraging and wounding words that have been spoken over them.
Location in church: front of seated area, left hand side.
We will need: a panel of ‘judges’ chairs, score cards, a pile of today’s tabloid newspapers; two blackboards on easels (one for positive words, the other for negative words), chalk.

X The Crucifixion, Mark 15:21-41
Theme: Bullying
Key questions: (When) have you felt forsaken? Who stood by you? Who needs you to stand by them? Can scapegoats become transformative agents?
Summary: Simon of Cyrene is forced to carry Jesus’ cross. He, and his family, later become members of the Church. Jesus is humiliated, to the point of feeling utterly forsaken by God. The women look on, from a distance, powerless women condemning powerful men by their brave, silent rebuke. Pupils will be invited to add to the wrapping of the cross in brightly coloured wool, representing scapegoats and scapegoated groups who, in God’s grace, have the power to change the world for the better.
Location in church: between the choir stalls.
We will need: large wooden cross; a selection of brightly coloured wool, to wrap tightly around the cross, so that it is progressively transformed in appearance (we may also need a hammer and nails, to create anchor-points for the wool). Potentially, also images of Jesus on the cross; and images of persecuted minorities.
Extra: connect to Good Friday practices, including Three Hours at the Cross.

X The Empty Tomb, John 20:1-18
Theme: New Beginnings
Key questions: the end of the world is not the end ...
Summary: At the Last Supper, Jesus said he was going to the Father, but would come back for his friends, to take them to be with him. When Thomas had questions, Jesus responded, ‘I am the Way and the Truth and the Life’. Going forward, life would be different, and perhaps uncertain, but could be lived in a confident hope. This was the experience of the disciples, post- Jesus’ resurrection. As we gather to reflect on the session, we will offer every pupil a small compass, that attaches to the zip of a coat or a bag, as a takeaway reminder of the experience.
Location in church: the Lady Chapel.
We will need: small plastic compasses.
Extra: connect to Easter Day practices, including Easter Vigil and Blessing of the Light.

World Book Day

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Synopsis: The Very Hungry Caterpillar falls off the wagon and goes on an absolute bender at the weekend, but discovers grace on Sunday.

It is, rightly, a classic.

The other day, I was in the chapel, when someone came in. I was deep in concentration, writing notes for a colleague, and they startled me. They are an alcoholic, and had had a relapse, and had come asking for prayer — if I was willing to pray for them, given that they had had a drink.

Of course I was bloody willing.

They talked, I listened. And then I prayed with them, and spoke over them God’s forgiveness for their guilt; God’s deep cleansing for their deep shame; and asked for God to hold them and carry them when they could not hold nor carry themselves.

That is what we are there for. If you need to know.

Ten of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the tenth:

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.

Exodus 20:17

Comparison is the thief of joy. Yours, and theirs. The inability to be happy for another’s blessings, or thankful for your own.

Social media thrives on covetousness. It is your duty to present an enviable life. Shiny. With the dust of the wilderness filtered out.

But that dust is the stuff of life. That dust is you. Dust, that has been blessed, with relationship, to know partnership in life’s struggles, to create society, to care for creation. The secret to contentment is ... having been set free from envy.

And there is a disturbing presence here, though, to be fair, it has already turned up in the fourth word: [your neighbour’s] male or female slave. Are these not a people set free from slavery? Why, then, is the expectation that they have slaves? Is this simply a turning of the tables, a re-shuffling of injustice, not a transformation of society? Is this god no better, morally, than the rest?

Ambiguity is the condition of life, between the house of slavery and the land of promise. We never get to sign-off the words of life — job done! They turn us over when we make such claim. So do not covet the house, the society, that seems to have it made. They still have work to do (and rest to enter into on the way) as much as you.

Where is your ambiguity?

Nine of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the ninth:

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

Exodus 20:16

Fake news, we call it now. Bare-faced lies, they used to be called. Words of death, not life. A lynch-mob of syllables, falling over one another in their lust for blood. But, oh! What juicy bones, bursting with marrow to slurp and suck, and wipe from our jowls with the back of the hand.

When you want to control slaves, you tell them a false witness, of who they are, over and over and over again.

This is, in fact, so common place, that to hear a true witness it must be spoken again and again for a lifetime. But a lifetime is what we have. For we have been set free, and this god is in no hurry to get us home. We are a pilgrim people, and the journey on the Way is what transforms us.

That thing you believe about yourself, who told you that?

And what were their motives? Freedom or control?

Eight of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the eighth:

You shall not steal.

Exodus 20:15

I once went to a church supplier to purchase some ash ahead of Ash Wednesday. The seller informed me that priests and vicars were always being caught trying to steal ash, deflecting the attention of whoever was behind the counter towards some other item they might or might not actually be interested in buying. It was, he told me, a dog (collar) eat dog (collar) world at that time of year.

Theft is driven by a fear of not having enough. Of there being a lack, and of needing to not be found wanting. It is a very understandable fear of slaves — and all the more-so of slaves who are descended from Joseph, the hero who saved the whole world from famine and yet whose memory, at least for the Egyptians, had been swallowed whole by the intervening years, as insatiably hungry as the grave. It is a fear that haunts us to this day, not least vicars woken in the night by feverish nightmares of Ashen humiliation.

But you do not have to steal from your fellow former slaves now that you have been set free by this god, whom they are already, falteringly, beginning to discover to be their Provider. There is enough for all, for today.

What do you fear will run out?

Seven of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the seventh:

You shall not commit adultery.

Exodus 20:14

What’s the big deal about sex between consenting adults, regardless of existing commitments? It’s only sex. No-one needs to find out. No-one needs to get hurt.

Except that adultery is never only about sex, is always found out (if not confronted) and someone — in all likelihood, everyone involved — has already been hurt, and will only be hurt even more.

That said, the point is not primarily about what you do with your genitals, so much as what what you do with your genitals — the life-producing organs — says about the life you are continuing to produce. Are you faithful? And, as this is in fact a marriage-treaty between a god and a people, is this god faithful? Yes, indeed — to a thousand generations!

Are you faithful — in all your relationships?

Six of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the sixth:

You shall not murder.

Exodus 20:13

Over and again, it is found to be the sixth Commandment — just two words in the Hebrew — that is most readily called to mind. In part, this is surely because it is the most visceral (and, for all that the King James Version, Thou shalt not kill, has colonised our imaginations, it is murder, extra-judicial killing, that is prohibited here). In part, it is also because murder is always the consequence of fear of being found out to have broken another Commandment — seven, eight, ten — or anger or envy at discovering that someone close to us has done so; and the subsequent attempt to hide tracks, to deflect suspicion — not only by the murderer, but also by key witnesses who do not wish to be exposed in relation to their own transgressions — trespasses onto the ninth life-giving word.

You shall not murder, then, lies at the very heart of a web of violations — and, conversely, freedoms. Little wonder that crime fiction, most often the investigation of a homicide, is so perennially popular an exploration of human nature.

Jesus said, to belittle someone is to break this Commandment. For to belittle someone is to cause them to die, inside: it is murder, or at least attempted murder, of the spirit, the inner person. And the spirit can be crushed, can be bound, unjustly — extra-judicially — in a cellar.

Murder, in all its forms, interrupts, disrupts, freedom. Yet it holds itself out to us as being the very means to that end. It is, as such, an idol (see the second word), the image of a false god (of whom Moses himself had to be disabused).

Who do you fantasise being dead?

What do you hope this death will achieve for you?

Five of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the fifth:

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Exodus 20:12

It is worth remembering that these words are spoken to a generation of adults who have just escaped from generational slavery lasting several hundred years. In other words, for many of them, their father and mother never lived to see the freedom they have just stepped into. True, never had to do the hard work of forging a new society, a whole new way of being in the world. But these former slaves were only where they were because the parents had passed on the dream of the god of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the dream their parents had handed on to them, having in their turn been entrusted with it by their parents, and so on and on back through centuries. Promises, and a story, held close even though everything about the world around them told them that it wasn’t true.

They did not grow out of their story, and now, they would enter into the land God had promised to give to Abraham’s descendants. They would work that soil, and, when the time came, be buried in that soil, their personal dust returning to their communal dust.

Except that they wouldn’t. Moses, and essentially all of the adults who left Egypt, would die in the wilderness before they ever reached the Promised Land. Why? Because they didn’t honour their father and mother. Didn’t continue to hold the promises, to love the story, of this god and his people. While the bones of long-dead Joseph were carried ‘home’ to the land, the living were less faithful.

Their children came into the promise. And there, in the land, if they wanted to live in it and enjoy it for generations, they would need to keep faith with their fathers and mothers, with Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rachel, Jacob and his wives ... and with their own parents, despite their failure. Living with disappointment, learning to forgive, honouring our heritage without becoming captive to it, releasing our predecessors and our heroes from impossible standards and learning to trace God’s faithfulness through the at times messy reality of human history. These are the lessons that will enable us to live long in the land that Yahweh is giving us — and to share it, living peaceably alongside whoever else he may see fit to give it to also.

What dreams, unfulfilled, did your parents (biological, adoptive, or communal) hand down to you?

What ghosts do you need to lay to rest?

What long-dry bones do you need to call to new life?

Four of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the fourth:

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work — you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

Exodus 20:8-11

The thing that people say to me more than anything else is, “I’m sure you’re busy at the moment.” Every single moment. Because that is the conspiracy of our times. The conspiracy of slavery. We all need to be busy — “the devil makes work for idle hands, you know!” — this is not true, by the way: the devil provokes our hands to constant distraction when we do not embrace a rhythm of stillness, of rest. We all need to be busy, to feel important, to justify our existence. Who the hell needs to justify their existence? That God has created me is all the justification I need.

Jesus, when asked, summarised the Commandments as teaching us how to love: how to love God, and ourselves, and others. And all of the Commandments relate to all of these — our lives are deeply interconnected — but the focus varies: the focus of the first three Commandments is on how we love God; the focus of Commandments five to ten is on how we love others; and the focus of the fourth Commandment is on how we love ourselves. To a people freshly liberated from slavery, God says, live into your no longer being a slave by enjoying rest. Follow my lead: work, as an expression of creativity and to bring the world into harmony, and, every seventh day, down tools. Pause. Reflect. Look back at what you have done, look around at what I have given, and enjoy it.

I work. At times it is a joy, and at times it is deeply painful. At times it feels as if something good is accomplished, and at times it is frustrating. I work, but — and in the present climate, this has become part of my work — I resist being busy with every fibre of my being.

And I have been given the gift of a stipend, the provision of a roof over my head and the means to put food on the table, in order that I do not have to be busy, but, in a world full of busy people, might have time to sit with the infirm and the elderly or see the world from the eye-height of a child. But it is still a challenge.

Once, not so long ago, when our society was shaped by the Commandments, whole communities would take their rest together. Shipyard fortnight, the annual holiday was known locally, where I live now. In these days of 24/7 retail and zero-hours contracts — all presented as greater flexibility — of bills that require the juggling of several poorly-paid jobs to meet them, our rest has become so atomised that it doesn’t feel worth taking. We are no longer human, we are economic units (taking a short-term view, at that). Machines, switched off when not being used.

Modelling rest, and recreation, in community with others — and, in as much as we are able, empowering others to enter into times of rest, including the security of having work to take up again — is just about the most subversive thing you can possibly do in England in 2020. Especially when it crosses divides that have been erected between young and old, richer and poorer, indigenous and immigrant communities, and human aspiration with care for the world in which we live.

Work has become an idol (see the second life-giving word), a cruel taskmaster in a competition against others for limited resources. It has become an arena of injustice. The god who made all things, and blessed them with re-generativity, says, “Come to me, all who are weighed down; and I will train you in the rhythms of work and rest.”

When did you last still your inner being for long enough to feel the wonder of life?

Three of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the third:

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Exodus 20:7

We might no longer believe in Baal and Yamm and Mot, in Zeus and Poseidon and Hades, even in Yahweh, but we all still invoke our gods. If you don’t believe me, pick up a newspaper, listen to a politician speak, scroll through social media. We all invoke our Great Liberators and our Demonic Forces — and, viewed from different sides, one man’s hope is another woman’s enemy.

Recently, US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke out against the weaponizing of the Bible to push bigotry and discrimination. And at the heart of the matter, don’t make wrongful use of Yahweh’s name, in many ways shorthand for his character. Don’t claim that God is on the side of everyone who agrees with you, and opposed to everyone with whom you disagree. Don’t withhold the hope of freedom to others, not on the terms of your understanding but on the terms of Yahweh’s enduring record of setting people free.

Yahweh will set free whoever calls on his name. And he’ll set them free from the thing they need to be set free from, not the thing I think they need to be set free from.

In what way might you be misrepresenting God?

Two of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the second:

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Exodus 20:4-6

The ancient world was compartmentalised, with realms of the gods, the humans, the monsters, the dead, along with spheres of activity or role within each realm. It was quite a complex administrative structure, filled with gods major (often with jurisdiction over a particular realm) and minor, many with local variations in their iteration. And wherever you found yourself in the world, or whatever activity you were engaged in, it was provident to seek — and seek to keep — the goodwill of the relevant deity. This list is pretty much endless.

This god, Yahweh, cuts through all of that, laying claim to every realm and activity. For his credentials, refer to his recent activity in saving a people from the Egyptian pantheon of gods who had held them captive. Where this god lives to set captives free, other gods seek to take captives. Once set free, don’t let yourself be enslaved again.

True, this god constrains, where necessary. This god sets limits on your freedom, where you exercise your freedom in such a way as to impinge upon the freedom of others. If you choose to use your freedom to keep other people in captivity, you will, eventually, provoke this god to act. As the Egyptians had done. But his steadfast love for those he has freed extends immeasurably far beyond the initial act of liberation.

Our own world is no less compartmentalised than that of the ancients, no less complex. Count the -isms. Beneath a veneer of wealth, it is no less insecure; and, no less driven. Who even has time to enjoy the gift of earth and sea and sky, the precious span of life shared with those we love?

Who or what are you hoping will keep setting you free?

How will you use that freedom, in relation to others?

One of Ten

Lent is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the first:

Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

Exodus 20:1-3

One of the things about being a vicar, at once fascinating and frustrating, is that people don’t know where they stand in relation to me. They’re forever asking, ‘What should I call you?’ There are formal titles, culturally prescribed — I am the Revd Dr Andrew Dowsett, or Mr Dowsett (but not Mr Andrew Dowsett, nor again Revd Dr Dowsett) — but my name is Andrew. When people ask, ‘What should I call you?’ I answer, ‘Call me Andrew.’ ‘Father Andrew?’ ‘Just, Andrew.’

When God says, ‘I am the Lord ...’ God is actually given this god’s personal name — it is YHWH, or Yahweh — but this was considered to holy to be uttered, and so finds itself hidden behind some formal title put there in its place, when in fact this god comes looking to be known, personally. This god spoke, and said, I am a particular god, my name is Yahweh, and I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of generational slavery.

Why? Because this is what this god does.

This is the god who freed Abraham from the need to be safe, to become father of descendants as numerous as the sand on the seashore, that liminal strip between the land (symbol of Yahweh’s promises) and the sea (symbol of chaos and rebellion against Yahweh).

This is the god who freed Isaac from the need to compare himself to others, which is the thief of joy.

This is the god who freed Jacob from the need to win, to constrain others, to have the last word, so he might speak first words, releasing others into their destiny.

This is the god who freed Joseph from the need to be special, that all peoples might have enough for life.

This is the god who freed Joseph’s brothers from famine, of grain, yes, and of love, to father a nation.

This is the god who freed Moses from murder, from three attempts on his life (by royal edict, as a new-born and in adulthood; and in a terrifying encounter with YHWH himself) and from the burden of having, himself, become a murderer, to point the people to choose life.

Because this is what this god does, through all generations. And, because every one of us is captive to something, from which we cannot free ourselves, this is the god to know.

What holds you captive?

Of jackals and sea monsters

The psalm set for Morning Prayer today is Psalm 44. It comes around regularly, but this morning I was particularly struck by verses 17-19.

In the NRSVA, the translation used as standard by the Church of England, they read,

“All this has come upon us,

yet we have not forgotten you,

or been false to your covenant.

Our heart has not turned back,

nor have our steps departed from your way,

yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals,

and covered us with deep darkness.”

Robert Alter’s translation is truer to the Hebrew, rendering these verses,

“All this befell us, yet we did not forget You,

and we did not betray Your pact.

Our heart has not failed,

nor have our footsteps strayed from Your path,

though You thrust us down to the sea monster’s place

and with death’s darkness covered us over.”

There is something primeval here, and, at the same time a significant development of thought. Yes, this God defeats chaos and establishes order that is then maintained through fidelity (this claim is not new) ... but, the mutual fidelity of this God and his people reveals to the world that there is a strength — greater than chaos, greater than death — that can only be known through defeat.

That is a radical claim, and one worthy of attending to.

Yet, in domesticating the sea monster for a jackal, and obscuring the parallel to the valley of the shadow of death that runs through the Twenty-third Psalm, the Church of England displays a characteristically English discomfort with such a claim.

Hospitality

I go to visit an elderly parishioner in hospital. On my way in, I drop by the chaplaincy base, as a matter of courtesy and because I am now on their patch — I am a man under authority, and all that — but all of the chaplains are out on their visits.

When I arrive on the ward, I coincide with ward rounds in that bay, and, on asking, am told to come back in ten minutes. I give it fifteen. The collar allows me not to have to gate-crash precious visiting hours, and I am always happy to come back if it is not convenient.

I sit down on the plastic chair next to the bed. He is having a bad day, and glad to see me. We labour together: him, to speak; me, to listen, to make out his words, or just enough of them. I am young(er) and have broad enough shoulders for such labouring; but he is not one for silence, will want to talk for as long as I am present, and less than half-an-hour will be enough for him.

Eventually, he admits to a great burden of bitterness, for something that happened in the past. This is almost invariably the burden of old age. Bitterness, the fruit of believing that you are in possession of more of the facts of a situation than, in fact, you are (which is why so many of us experience it). But bitterness is never remedied by being more fully informed. Bitterness can only be let go. I hope my presence dissolves that particular cancer a little, and empowers him just enough to loosen his grip on it. He asks me to pray for him before I go; I do so gladly, asking for the strength for this day.

On my way out of the hospital, I look in again on the chaplaincy base, and this time find the lead chaplain in. We pass a joyful time catching up, on each other and on various mutual acquaintances, before it is time to head on.

A place to bring your pain

Eight years ago today, I took the funeral of a young man who had been the victim of a particularly brutal murder. It was, and I hope will remain, the most traumatic funeral I have ever had to walk alongside a family.

When we open our church doors to the community, we do so primarily as a place to bring their pain. This is ultimately true even of weddings and christenings, for to birth a marriage or a child into the world is to open ourselves to the inevitability of pain, even if the gas-and-air of celebrations takes the edge of it.

And the Church says, here is a place where you can always bring your pain; a safe place where you can sit with it long enough not to get over it but perhaps to make peace with it. Where the burden can be shared, by neighbours who will pray for you (some ask, what good does that do? but, at times, there is nothing else that can be done), by those who have gone before us, by the Son of Man who gladly carries our infirmities and burdens.

I knew a man once who had come into the church for the funeral of his daughter, a young woman taken too soon by cancer, and who from then on found it too hard to enter the building. His coming to church, from then on, was to mow the church lawn, alongside others who did the same. He did so, religiously, as they say. It matters not which side of the door he was on. In so doing, he was held together while he healed to the possibility of a new life, that carried the memory of another.

And for those of us whose wounds are not raw, the church is a place where we come in from walking alongside our neighbours, and receive the bread and wine and cold water of the Spirit poured out over us, that refreshes us in preparation for another day, another week, seeking out the heavy-laden and saying, there is a place where you can go.

Ash Wednesday

Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.

Shorty

Many translations render Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:27, “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” However, the Greek word translated ‘span of life’ can also be translated ‘stature’ and the Greek word translated ‘hour’ is in fact ‘cubit’ (about one-and-a-half feet), and so a better translation would be, “... add one cubit to your height?”

I’ve noted earlier that the word Jesus uses for ‘body’ translates both literally as your ‘body’ and metaphorically as your gathered congregation. And so, it is not really a stretch to say that, among the layers of meaning here, is, “And can any of you by worrying bring about the numerical growth of your church?”

As ironic humour would have it, after the service this morning — at which, for a variety of reasons, quite a few members of the congregation were absent — two members were lamenting how small the congregation is, compared to a couple of larger independent churches local to us, and how hard it is to know what to do about it ...

Well, firstly, don’t be anxious! Size does not equate to health, nor to long-term commitment. And, in any case, we aren’t comparing like for like, as the Anglicans are simply spread across the city in smaller gatherings — which have their advantages, as well as disadvantages. If greater size was the best yardstick, we should close all our churches and gather together at the Minster — but I don’t fancy the chances of that proposal being well-received, for some very good reasons, as well as, inevitably, some unhealthy reasons.

As the old hymn goes, God made them great and small. And as the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy.

On anxiety

I’m thinking about anxiety, and this coming Sunday’s Gospel, which is relatively familiar and, therefore, widely misunderstood.

Jesus is addressing the experience of anxiety, which must be very common: at least, I experience anxiety, fairly regularly; other people tell me that they experience anxiety — and I see it up-close in those closest to me; and the bookshops are filled with titles addressing anxiety. So, this would seem to be a live issue.

The Greek word Jesus uses for anxiety is brilliantly descriptive: it describes being pulled apart.

The word he chooses for ‘life’ refers to the soul, or life-breath that animates us. In biblical imagery, we have heart and mind and strength and soul. Heart refers to our will, or capacity to choose, between right and wrong, good and evil; and how such choices, repeated over time, shape our character. Mind refers to our capacity for insight, informing our choices, and again, over time, shaping our disposition. Strength refers to our capacity to exercise force, in the Physics sense, to act on the basis of our informed choices. Soul refers to our life-breath, to these elements being held together, as a living person, at the sovereign decree of God.

Anxiety attempts to pull them apart. The experience of anxiety can even lead to panic attacks, to breathlessness, or the physical suggestion of a loss of soul. Again, the use of language demonstrates Jesus’ incredible insight.

Jesus also chooses a word for the body which both refers to our bodies, in the physical sense, and is a metaphor for our community — as in the use, later in the New Testament, of the term body of Christ for the church. A playful word.

So, Jesus is addressing anxiety in relation to our selves and our community, to the network of relationships that are an inextricable part of who we are. And Jesus’ concern is for wholeness, or shalom.

And the summary of Jesus’ advice (to skip the middle, which I’ll come back to) is: desire to know the reign of God over every area of your life, and to know his approval of the life he has given you, and you will find that all these elements that have been pulled apart by anxiety are brought back together. Wholeness.

Jesus’ point is not that if you seek to obey God you will not experience anxiety, but, that if you desire to know God then this is how you can respond whenever you feel anxiety rearing its head. Which, in my case at least, is often.

So, how do you do that? Firstly, Jesus invites us to look beyond ourselves. Notice the birds. They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns — this last, a play on words, the same root as the synagogue or the gathering of the people to worship. But the point isn’t really a comparison, it isn’t about us, whether workaholic or lazybones, devout or never coming to church. It is about birds, who don't experience anxiety, but, most of all, it is about God’s sovereign activity.

Likewise, the observation about the flowers of the field, except that this one also weaves in reflection on the past story of God’s dealing with his people.

If God is sovereign over our community, however it looks, and over our past or history or story; and if that sovereignty is expressed through delight, through approval and provision; then we can desire to know that in our lives too.

And so, we are invited, in all things, in the place of anxiety, the thing we are anxious about, to imagine God’s reign in this place. To eagerly anticipate that this might be so, and soon, and to look for even the smallest signs of that breakthrough. For example, by praising God for who God is and for what God has done and for what we trust that God will do again.

It is a work of the heart and the mind and the strength — our wills choose it, as an informed choice, on which we act, hard though it might be at first, until we find that, God delighting in the soul he has created, our whole being is brought back together. Anxiety is defeated, not once-and-for-all, but, over and over again, day after day.

Desire births desire, delight births delight. Worship brings our scattered lives back into wholeness. Anxiety is, more or less, universal; but, there is a cure.

[Update: this became a sermon, here]