My six year old daughter was irritated with me this evening as we worked on her homework, as she thought I wasn't really concentrating properly. I told her I was a bit distracted because it's Remembrance Sunday tomorrow and it's a really important occasion and I didn't want to make any mistakes. She thought for a minute, then bent over a piece of paper, obviously writing something down. She then passed it to me, triumphantly, and told me to put it in my cassock pocket.
I just read it. It says this: "I love you. Don't get it rong."
I'll bear that in mind in the morning.
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Saturday, 30 October 2010
All Saints
Six years ago on 31st October my first child was baptised - in church we celebrated All Saints that day as the nearest Sunday, just as we will this year. It is also year C again in the lectionary. Which is probably why I'm struggling to write my sermon - I'm trying to stick to the readings like I usually do, but what keeps coming to mind is the imagery and meaning of baptism, and the place of baptism in our identity as saints.
If there's a link with the readings, then it's first and foremost a link with the epistle (Ephesians 1.11-end) where it talks of our inheritance through Christ, and the 'seal of the Spirit' as a sort of downpayment to the full and final communion with God which we long to enjoy. Both of these are central to baptismal imagery and meaning.
The other big image of Baptism is the sign of the cross, and I've long felt that the act of drawing the sign of the cross on a child's forehead in preparation for their baptism is an incredibly potent way of marking the fact that this child is a child of God, and that the sign of the cross stays there, invisible, through their whole life, so that when they choose to look for it, they will be able to find it. If you use your forefinger to retrace the sign of the cross on your own forehead now, you will find that you can 'feel' it there long after you have removed your finger. In times of great need, when you most need to remember that you do indeed belong to God, and that if you are on his side, then he is on your side, then why not retrace it again? Many people carry a small cross in their pocket, or wear one as a piece of jewellry, so that they are always near to the badge and emblem of their faith. But even if you don't, when you need a cross you can usually find one - a window frame, two fallen twigs, aeroplane trails crossing in the sky... all these can be signs that we are not, after all, alone.
We can see this in the lives of so many of the saints - from St George with the great big cross on his tunic, to St Francis with the marks of the nails in his own hands. The cross was with them.
Where this links into the Gospel reading, though, is that it brings home the strange fact that the emblem of our faith is a sign which, on the face of it, represents not triumph and life, but death, punishment, and shame. The cross represents the ultimate foolishness of God. And so, when we read the gospel reading - all the blessings and woes - and hear ourselves condemned, and read the almost unattainable standard of selflessness commended there, we remember all over again that the one in whom we place our faith was himself rejected, despised, and considered a failure.
And maybe that's what being a saint is.
Success is seductive, and it feels great. Same with popularity. But Luke's gospel, in particular, unpicks them and finds them to be empty. In fact, there is a lot about the life of faith that looks like foolishness and failure. Which is what makes the epistle's words all the more remarkable - a song of praise and hope and faith in all the stuff that you can't see, utter confidence in the power of the God who was quite willing to make himself powerless for our sake.
Now, I just have to go and write the sermon...
If there's a link with the readings, then it's first and foremost a link with the epistle (Ephesians 1.11-end) where it talks of our inheritance through Christ, and the 'seal of the Spirit' as a sort of downpayment to the full and final communion with God which we long to enjoy. Both of these are central to baptismal imagery and meaning.
The other big image of Baptism is the sign of the cross, and I've long felt that the act of drawing the sign of the cross on a child's forehead in preparation for their baptism is an incredibly potent way of marking the fact that this child is a child of God, and that the sign of the cross stays there, invisible, through their whole life, so that when they choose to look for it, they will be able to find it. If you use your forefinger to retrace the sign of the cross on your own forehead now, you will find that you can 'feel' it there long after you have removed your finger. In times of great need, when you most need to remember that you do indeed belong to God, and that if you are on his side, then he is on your side, then why not retrace it again? Many people carry a small cross in their pocket, or wear one as a piece of jewellry, so that they are always near to the badge and emblem of their faith. But even if you don't, when you need a cross you can usually find one - a window frame, two fallen twigs, aeroplane trails crossing in the sky... all these can be signs that we are not, after all, alone.
We can see this in the lives of so many of the saints - from St George with the great big cross on his tunic, to St Francis with the marks of the nails in his own hands. The cross was with them.
Where this links into the Gospel reading, though, is that it brings home the strange fact that the emblem of our faith is a sign which, on the face of it, represents not triumph and life, but death, punishment, and shame. The cross represents the ultimate foolishness of God. And so, when we read the gospel reading - all the blessings and woes - and hear ourselves condemned, and read the almost unattainable standard of selflessness commended there, we remember all over again that the one in whom we place our faith was himself rejected, despised, and considered a failure.
And maybe that's what being a saint is.
Success is seductive, and it feels great. Same with popularity. But Luke's gospel, in particular, unpicks them and finds them to be empty. In fact, there is a lot about the life of faith that looks like foolishness and failure. Which is what makes the epistle's words all the more remarkable - a song of praise and hope and faith in all the stuff that you can't see, utter confidence in the power of the God who was quite willing to make himself powerless for our sake.
Now, I just have to go and write the sermon...
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Bible Sunday
It's coming up to Bible Sunday again, and it's hard to find songs and hymns that are appropriate - someone once told me that this is because although the Bible is undoubtely the most special of all books, the fullest revelation of the word of God isn't found in the pages of the Bible, but in the Incarnation. In my church we're going to be reflecting on the Bible stories that have helped for shape and form us - each person will be asked to note a verse, or a quotation, or a story, and we will stick them all in a scrapbook. We're then going to look at the passage that Jesus chose - as we find in the lectionary reading for Bible Sunday (Luke 4 - the reading from Isaiah), and ask what that means for us as a church - how does the bible not only shape our faith, but our action in the world?
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
New hymn - the lost sheep (sort of)
What a long time it's been since I wrote anything...
Here's one that I wrote a few weeks ago when the shepherd and sheep reading came up in Luke 15. It goes to the tune 'Tyrol' (better known for the words 'A man there lived in Galilee'). I wanted to link it with Augustine's wisdom about our hearts only being able to find their true rest in God. I can't decide whether the finished product is alright or merely trite!
There came a shepherd from the hillside
searching all alone.
He came to seek and save the lost,
And welcome us back home.
‘O come to me, beloved child’,
The shepherd spoke his plea:
‘Your heart will never find its rest
Until you rest in me.’
We sought you, Lord, in rules and laws,
In duty and in care,
In toil and trial, and stress and strain ,
We hoped to find you there.
In all our searching, we forgot
What deep inside we knew:
Our hearts could never find their rest
Unless it was in you.
O search us out and know our ways
In waking and in sleep;
Protect us through the day and night
And in your presence keep.
We travel on in life and faith
And find that it is true:
Our hearts will never find their rest
Until we rest in you.
Here's one that I wrote a few weeks ago when the shepherd and sheep reading came up in Luke 15. It goes to the tune 'Tyrol' (better known for the words 'A man there lived in Galilee'). I wanted to link it with Augustine's wisdom about our hearts only being able to find their true rest in God. I can't decide whether the finished product is alright or merely trite!
There came a shepherd from the hillside
searching all alone.
He came to seek and save the lost,
And welcome us back home.
‘O come to me, beloved child’,
The shepherd spoke his plea:
‘Your heart will never find its rest
Until you rest in me.’
We sought you, Lord, in rules and laws,
In duty and in care,
In toil and trial, and stress and strain ,
We hoped to find you there.
In all our searching, we forgot
What deep inside we knew:
Our hearts could never find their rest
Unless it was in you.
O search us out and know our ways
In waking and in sleep;
Protect us through the day and night
And in your presence keep.
We travel on in life and faith
And find that it is true:
Our hearts will never find their rest
Until we rest in you.
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Today's gospel reading (Sunday 28th February, Lent 2, year C): Luke 13.31-end
That bit about Herod as the fox isn't one that I've preached on before - not sure why - but I realised only belatedly that the 8am congregation would need their written homily (a compromise, since some of them would like a sermon and some don't, so they all get one on a piece of paper, and everyone is if not happy, at least satisfied!). For what it's worth, this is what I came up with.
‘I am casting out demons today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will finish my work’. We are immediately put in mind of the famous ‘third day’ of the resurrection – two days in the sphere of death and hell, before a triumphant third day of life, and not just for Jesus but for all who trust in him. That alone tells us that in this passage we are being told something about Jesus’ coming passion and death, and what it means.
There are two particularly resonant images here, both from the animal kingdom. The first casts Herod as a fox – the crafty predator, vicious in attack, merciless in the pursuit of his prey. A formidable opponent, and one who must have been frustrated by his inability to intimidate Jesus, both at this point in the story, and later when Jesus stands part of his trial before him. Casting Herod as the fox immediately makes us ask the question: ‘who are the chickens?’ The death threat that is reported by the Pharisees is directed at Jesus himself – and, I suppose, be extension to his disciples. And Jesus confirms that this is the case, as he laments over the city of Jerusalem: ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings’. The image here (I understand, courtesy of the very helpful commentary by the Bishop of Durham) is of a farm that is beset by fire, and a mother hen who is unable to get herself and her chicks to safety, and so shelters them from the fire under her wings, giving her own life to save theirs.
But the salvation under the wings of the mother hen only works for the chicks who are willing to be protected. Jesus came for any who would welcome him, but time and time again, as was always the case throughout the whole of the history of God’s relationship with humanity, God (and so also Jesus) not welcomed, but is seen as a threat to the status quo, and as a threat to the power of those who have grown to enjoy wielding it – whether they are Pharisees, Herod(s) or anyone else. We tend to think of first masculine images for God, but there are many times in the Old Testament where God is described in maternal terms, when God has been the mother hen, longing to gather her chicks. Jesus’ frustration here seems to be that his own people are looking not for a mother-hen sort of God, but for a God who is more like a fox – a fierce, vindictive God capable of tearing apart the enemies of the chosen people; a God who would sweep the Romans away, and lead his people to victory.
But this is not how God works, and this is certainly not what Jesus came to do. Much of his ministry was spent convincing disciples and opponents alike that he would never be the sort of Messiah who would take victory by force, but would instead conquer through love, and win one heart at a time, through a life and ministry that was about self-giving and ultimately self-sacrifice. To cast ourselves as the chicks means that we are willing to accept the protection not of a defender who, like a fox, could kill for us, but of one who, like a mother hen, would die for us.
That bit about Herod as the fox isn't one that I've preached on before - not sure why - but I realised only belatedly that the 8am congregation would need their written homily (a compromise, since some of them would like a sermon and some don't, so they all get one on a piece of paper, and everyone is if not happy, at least satisfied!). For what it's worth, this is what I came up with.
‘I am casting out demons today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will finish my work’. We are immediately put in mind of the famous ‘third day’ of the resurrection – two days in the sphere of death and hell, before a triumphant third day of life, and not just for Jesus but for all who trust in him. That alone tells us that in this passage we are being told something about Jesus’ coming passion and death, and what it means.
There are two particularly resonant images here, both from the animal kingdom. The first casts Herod as a fox – the crafty predator, vicious in attack, merciless in the pursuit of his prey. A formidable opponent, and one who must have been frustrated by his inability to intimidate Jesus, both at this point in the story, and later when Jesus stands part of his trial before him. Casting Herod as the fox immediately makes us ask the question: ‘who are the chickens?’ The death threat that is reported by the Pharisees is directed at Jesus himself – and, I suppose, be extension to his disciples. And Jesus confirms that this is the case, as he laments over the city of Jerusalem: ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings’. The image here (I understand, courtesy of the very helpful commentary by the Bishop of Durham) is of a farm that is beset by fire, and a mother hen who is unable to get herself and her chicks to safety, and so shelters them from the fire under her wings, giving her own life to save theirs.
But the salvation under the wings of the mother hen only works for the chicks who are willing to be protected. Jesus came for any who would welcome him, but time and time again, as was always the case throughout the whole of the history of God’s relationship with humanity, God (and so also Jesus) not welcomed, but is seen as a threat to the status quo, and as a threat to the power of those who have grown to enjoy wielding it – whether they are Pharisees, Herod(s) or anyone else. We tend to think of first masculine images for God, but there are many times in the Old Testament where God is described in maternal terms, when God has been the mother hen, longing to gather her chicks. Jesus’ frustration here seems to be that his own people are looking not for a mother-hen sort of God, but for a God who is more like a fox – a fierce, vindictive God capable of tearing apart the enemies of the chosen people; a God who would sweep the Romans away, and lead his people to victory.
But this is not how God works, and this is certainly not what Jesus came to do. Much of his ministry was spent convincing disciples and opponents alike that he would never be the sort of Messiah who would take victory by force, but would instead conquer through love, and win one heart at a time, through a life and ministry that was about self-giving and ultimately self-sacrifice. To cast ourselves as the chicks means that we are willing to accept the protection not of a defender who, like a fox, could kill for us, but of one who, like a mother hen, would die for us.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Are you tough enough?
The first Sunday of Lent. The time of year when many of us have given things up – whether a particular food, or some other luxury, in the modern equivalent of the fast, or some bad habit that we’re trying to kick. If the particular discipline that you’ve chosen to focus on this Lent is a difficult one for you (as it was for me the one year I tried to give up chocolate – I’m never doing that again!) then forty days can seem like a long time indeed.
When it gets to this time of year I can’t help being reminded of a programme on TV a few years back called “SAS: are you tough enough?” In the programme a group of hardy, and to my mind completely bonkers, people volunteered to be sent into the middle of nowhere and undertake SAS-style endurance training. They marched for hours without food, they were deprived of sleep, and carried their own body weight around in a huge rucksack. Believe me, I have nothing but admiration for those people who survived the course intact, but the whole thing looked absolutely horrendous to me, and if anyone were to ask me ‘are you tough enough?’ I would have no hesitation at all in replying, ‘No, I’m not, so please don’t make me try!’ I’m sure I’m not alone in this, and that that’s partly why the programme made such compulsive viewing.
The wilderness, of course, puts us in mind not only of Jesus’ forty days of testing, but also of the Israelites’ forty years, between the Exodus from Egypt and the entry into the promised land – a story that will be familiar to most of us, and which is reflected in so many of the Lenten hymns that we'll be singing over the next few weeks.
I wonder, though, whether we’re in danger of making God like the fearsome SAS trainer, sending the Israelites into the wilderness for forty years, and his Son into the wilderness for forty days, to see if they were tough enough? To see how strong they were, whether they were robust enough and had the willpower that he was looking for in his chosen people, and in his Son? I don’t think that's what God was doing, and I certainly hope not.
Actually, if you read through the book of Deuteronomy, you'll see that God tells his chosen people straight off that he didn’t choose them because they were the strongest, toughest, biggest, people. He knew they were small in number, weak, and prone to temptation. And yet he still chose them. And the whole point of the incarnation really was that Jesus was God become vulnerable, human, frail and open to the dangers and temptations of the world just as we are. Not that he would be superman.
Perhaps the forty years in the wilderness were more about teaching the children of Israel that actually they were not tough enough. That they didn’t have what it took to survive in their own strength. That in order to become the people they were called to be, they must rely not on themselves, but on God. And perhaps Jesus’ own time in the wilderness was a chance for him to affirm the same things for himself.
Lent, particularly the discipline of giving things up, always opens us to the risk that it will become for us a matter of self-reliance, when instead it should be about realising that it’s in our weakness that we can find our strength in God. Remember that when Jesus went into the wilderness he was led there by the Holy Spirit, and he set out on his wilderness experience with the wonderful affirming words of God ringing in his ears: you are my son, my beloved, and I am pleased with you. When we undertake our own Lenten journey – whatever form our own wilderness takes – we can’t do it unless we approach it in the same way: secure in the knowledge that through it all God leads us by the hand, and that our strength comes from him alone.
If God left us on our own just at the moment of greatest suffering, hardship and temptation, none of us would stand a chance. But God doesn’t leave us on our own. And Jesus called on God the Father to help him: he drew on his knowledge of the scriptures - the story of God’s saving help throughout history - to remind himself that this was not a test of willpower or character but an opportunity to rest in the power and love of God. If Jesus’ temptations were highlighting the things that we might rely on: sustenance, status, safety and protection – if it’s all about those things being taken away, then it’s also about coming back to what will never be taken away: the faithful presence of God. As the hymn says, ‘When other helpers fail, when comforts flee, help of the helpless, O abide with me.’
But Jesus’ time in the wilderness was about more than that. It was also a demonstration that everything he would go on to do in the rest of his ministry was also absolutely dependent on God. It was a genuine period of preparation, a time away from everyone except God, to work out against all the tempting alternatives, what his mission and ministry would be like. In short, having heard the words ‘you are my beloved son’ Jesus had that time of retreat to take that wonderful affirmation and work out what it meant for the rest of his life and ministry. The forty days in the wilderness was a time for Jesus to show what he understood that sonship to mean. That Sonship wasn’t about power and status, but about obedience and trust.
Jesus would face temptation again – we might think in particular about his agony in Gethsemane, where he so desperately wanted there to be another way. But just as he refused the easy way out in the wilderness, so he would refuse it then in the garden. And just has he refused to prove God’s love by jumping off the temple roof, so he would refuse to claim God’s love for him by coming down from the cross and saving his own life.
For what Jesus understood so well, and what was acted out in the wilderness is that God’s sovereignty and love were best demonstrated not through cheap acts of power, but through the sustained loving relationship that God had always desired with his people right from the moment of creation, an endlessly patient and enduring relationship of love, and betrayal and forgiveness which is written on every page of scripture. This is what Jesus came to teach us. This was his mission and his ministry.
Temptation is not so much something external to us, it’s the insidious voice within ourselves that sounds so reasonable, that is so easy to listen to. For Jesus, temptation came in the form of thinking through the various other ways that he could have tried to fulfil his vocation, but were not God’s way.
Lent can also be a time for each of us to spend time alone with God, and in that time, to realise not only our own dependence on God, but also the ways in which we are called to live out our own calling as his children. What will being sons and daughters of God mean for us? How will the disciplines we’ve set ourselves in Lent help us to work out what God is calling us to be and to do?
That’s why, for me, what is at the heart of Lent is tucked away in the Lent Eucharistic prayer, and it is this:
“For in these forty days you lead us into the desert of repentance that through a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline we may grow in grace and learn to be your people once again.”
Through fasting, prayer, and immersing ourselves in the word of God – that’s how we learn to be God’s people once again according to today’s Eucharistic prayer. That’s what Jesus did in the wilderness, and in so doing, he showed that he really was God’s Son. And that’s what we need to do. Through our own wilderness of fasting, prayer, and immersion in God’s word, we learn again to be children of God, showing that God is our Father not by having strong wills, but by submitting our wills to his will, and living out all that he is calling us to be and do.
Now, in this time of testing, we train our hearts not to be tougher, but to be more reliant on God, so that in the rest of our lives we remember what it feels like to be children of God.
When Lent asks you the question, ‘are you tough enough?’ don’t be afraid to respond boldly: ‘No, but God is.’
Amen.
When it gets to this time of year I can’t help being reminded of a programme on TV a few years back called “SAS: are you tough enough?” In the programme a group of hardy, and to my mind completely bonkers, people volunteered to be sent into the middle of nowhere and undertake SAS-style endurance training. They marched for hours without food, they were deprived of sleep, and carried their own body weight around in a huge rucksack. Believe me, I have nothing but admiration for those people who survived the course intact, but the whole thing looked absolutely horrendous to me, and if anyone were to ask me ‘are you tough enough?’ I would have no hesitation at all in replying, ‘No, I’m not, so please don’t make me try!’ I’m sure I’m not alone in this, and that that’s partly why the programme made such compulsive viewing.
The wilderness, of course, puts us in mind not only of Jesus’ forty days of testing, but also of the Israelites’ forty years, between the Exodus from Egypt and the entry into the promised land – a story that will be familiar to most of us, and which is reflected in so many of the Lenten hymns that we'll be singing over the next few weeks.
I wonder, though, whether we’re in danger of making God like the fearsome SAS trainer, sending the Israelites into the wilderness for forty years, and his Son into the wilderness for forty days, to see if they were tough enough? To see how strong they were, whether they were robust enough and had the willpower that he was looking for in his chosen people, and in his Son? I don’t think that's what God was doing, and I certainly hope not.
Actually, if you read through the book of Deuteronomy, you'll see that God tells his chosen people straight off that he didn’t choose them because they were the strongest, toughest, biggest, people. He knew they were small in number, weak, and prone to temptation. And yet he still chose them. And the whole point of the incarnation really was that Jesus was God become vulnerable, human, frail and open to the dangers and temptations of the world just as we are. Not that he would be superman.
Perhaps the forty years in the wilderness were more about teaching the children of Israel that actually they were not tough enough. That they didn’t have what it took to survive in their own strength. That in order to become the people they were called to be, they must rely not on themselves, but on God. And perhaps Jesus’ own time in the wilderness was a chance for him to affirm the same things for himself.
Lent, particularly the discipline of giving things up, always opens us to the risk that it will become for us a matter of self-reliance, when instead it should be about realising that it’s in our weakness that we can find our strength in God. Remember that when Jesus went into the wilderness he was led there by the Holy Spirit, and he set out on his wilderness experience with the wonderful affirming words of God ringing in his ears: you are my son, my beloved, and I am pleased with you. When we undertake our own Lenten journey – whatever form our own wilderness takes – we can’t do it unless we approach it in the same way: secure in the knowledge that through it all God leads us by the hand, and that our strength comes from him alone.
If God left us on our own just at the moment of greatest suffering, hardship and temptation, none of us would stand a chance. But God doesn’t leave us on our own. And Jesus called on God the Father to help him: he drew on his knowledge of the scriptures - the story of God’s saving help throughout history - to remind himself that this was not a test of willpower or character but an opportunity to rest in the power and love of God. If Jesus’ temptations were highlighting the things that we might rely on: sustenance, status, safety and protection – if it’s all about those things being taken away, then it’s also about coming back to what will never be taken away: the faithful presence of God. As the hymn says, ‘When other helpers fail, when comforts flee, help of the helpless, O abide with me.’
But Jesus’ time in the wilderness was about more than that. It was also a demonstration that everything he would go on to do in the rest of his ministry was also absolutely dependent on God. It was a genuine period of preparation, a time away from everyone except God, to work out against all the tempting alternatives, what his mission and ministry would be like. In short, having heard the words ‘you are my beloved son’ Jesus had that time of retreat to take that wonderful affirmation and work out what it meant for the rest of his life and ministry. The forty days in the wilderness was a time for Jesus to show what he understood that sonship to mean. That Sonship wasn’t about power and status, but about obedience and trust.
Jesus would face temptation again – we might think in particular about his agony in Gethsemane, where he so desperately wanted there to be another way. But just as he refused the easy way out in the wilderness, so he would refuse it then in the garden. And just has he refused to prove God’s love by jumping off the temple roof, so he would refuse to claim God’s love for him by coming down from the cross and saving his own life.
For what Jesus understood so well, and what was acted out in the wilderness is that God’s sovereignty and love were best demonstrated not through cheap acts of power, but through the sustained loving relationship that God had always desired with his people right from the moment of creation, an endlessly patient and enduring relationship of love, and betrayal and forgiveness which is written on every page of scripture. This is what Jesus came to teach us. This was his mission and his ministry.
Temptation is not so much something external to us, it’s the insidious voice within ourselves that sounds so reasonable, that is so easy to listen to. For Jesus, temptation came in the form of thinking through the various other ways that he could have tried to fulfil his vocation, but were not God’s way.
Lent can also be a time for each of us to spend time alone with God, and in that time, to realise not only our own dependence on God, but also the ways in which we are called to live out our own calling as his children. What will being sons and daughters of God mean for us? How will the disciplines we’ve set ourselves in Lent help us to work out what God is calling us to be and to do?
That’s why, for me, what is at the heart of Lent is tucked away in the Lent Eucharistic prayer, and it is this:
“For in these forty days you lead us into the desert of repentance that through a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline we may grow in grace and learn to be your people once again.”
Through fasting, prayer, and immersing ourselves in the word of God – that’s how we learn to be God’s people once again according to today’s Eucharistic prayer. That’s what Jesus did in the wilderness, and in so doing, he showed that he really was God’s Son. And that’s what we need to do. Through our own wilderness of fasting, prayer, and immersion in God’s word, we learn again to be children of God, showing that God is our Father not by having strong wills, but by submitting our wills to his will, and living out all that he is calling us to be and do.
Now, in this time of testing, we train our hearts not to be tougher, but to be more reliant on God, so that in the rest of our lives we remember what it feels like to be children of God.
When Lent asks you the question, ‘are you tough enough?’ don’t be afraid to respond boldly: ‘No, but God is.’
Amen.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
More Ash Wednesday ramblings
It’s not mess…
There was an advert a few years ago for Persil automatic. It was on TV and on billboards everywhere, so most of you will probably have seen it. It features a film of children happily painting a wall in splashes of multicoloured paint. Inevitably, more of the paint gets on their clothes, their hands and faces, and on each other, than on the wall. The captions read ‘It’s not mess, it’s creativity, it’s not mess it’s learning’ and so on.
The Ash Wednesday service is a messy one: we will be invited to receive on our foreheads the sign of the cross in a very messy mixture of ash and oil. This service is messy because we are: sin is a messy business, and the ash reminds us of all the mess that we make of our own lives, of other people’s lives and of this world. The situation in today’s gospel of the woman caught in adultery, and the man she was with, is just an obvious example of the destructive sin that infects our relationships, that eats away at our souls, and that undermines our own and others’ flourishing. That the crowd of scribes and Pharisees are willing to use her misfortune to try and score a cheap point is just as shameful.
We sign ourselves with this messy mix of ash and oil because all of us are in a mess.
But the Persil advert puts an altogether more positive slant on mess, which is worth exploring.
One of the captions reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s creativity’.
When we receive the ash cross on our forehead, we hear the words, ‘remember that you are dust’. And so with the ash perhaps we can recall that wonderful picture of God’s creativity in Genesis 2, lovingly molding the earth into human beings, and breathing life into what was dry and lifeless. And so as we receive the ash on our foreheads we can give thanks that God can still breathe new life into us even in the dirt and dust and deathliness of our sin.
Another of the captions reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s pride’. Pride is perhaps not quite the right word. But the sign of the cross that we carry is certainly not something that we are ashamed of. At our baptism, Christ claimed us as his own, and so we are glad to be marked with his sign of the cross. Because Jesus took the shame of death on a cross and transformed it into hope and victory, he can also transform the shame of our sinfulness into the triumph over it. 'I shall not boast in anything save the cross of Christ.'
The TV advert ends with one of the children accidentally on purpose painting another’s nose – at first she looks cross, but then starts to smile. The caption reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s forgiveness’. When we have the sign of the cross on our foreheads, we are a walking testimony to the fact that everyone can be forgiven.
We are messy people. The messes we make in our lives are real messes. They are dark and dirty, and if left unchecked they will be the death of us. And God does not condone our mess. It is not that God does not mind about sin – on the contrary, it grieves him that we hurt and abuse ourselves and others, that we deface and corrupt the very air, water and land of this world he has given us. Just as Christ said to the woman in the gospel, ‘go and sin no more’, so he says the same to us: ‘turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’.
But we have a God who for our sake is willing to get his hands dirty. We have a saviour who entered into the mess we made of the world in order that we might be made clean; a saviour who embraced the shame of the cross that our shame could be transformed by his forgiveness; a saviour who sees us for who we really are, mess and all, but rather than condemning us, gives us the chance of a new start.
When Jesus looks up from his drawing in the dust, his glance pierces the soul of the sinful woman, and the souls of the hypocritical crowd. Will we slink away like the scribes and Pharisees, who see so clearly the sins in others but dare not expose their own souls to the all-seeing, yet forgiving face of Christ? Or, like the woman, will we stand here before him, dirty as we are, and let Christ examine our sin, so that we might be forgiven?
There was an advert a few years ago for Persil automatic. It was on TV and on billboards everywhere, so most of you will probably have seen it. It features a film of children happily painting a wall in splashes of multicoloured paint. Inevitably, more of the paint gets on their clothes, their hands and faces, and on each other, than on the wall. The captions read ‘It’s not mess, it’s creativity, it’s not mess it’s learning’ and so on.
The Ash Wednesday service is a messy one: we will be invited to receive on our foreheads the sign of the cross in a very messy mixture of ash and oil. This service is messy because we are: sin is a messy business, and the ash reminds us of all the mess that we make of our own lives, of other people’s lives and of this world. The situation in today’s gospel of the woman caught in adultery, and the man she was with, is just an obvious example of the destructive sin that infects our relationships, that eats away at our souls, and that undermines our own and others’ flourishing. That the crowd of scribes and Pharisees are willing to use her misfortune to try and score a cheap point is just as shameful.
We sign ourselves with this messy mix of ash and oil because all of us are in a mess.
But the Persil advert puts an altogether more positive slant on mess, which is worth exploring.
One of the captions reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s creativity’.
When we receive the ash cross on our forehead, we hear the words, ‘remember that you are dust’. And so with the ash perhaps we can recall that wonderful picture of God’s creativity in Genesis 2, lovingly molding the earth into human beings, and breathing life into what was dry and lifeless. And so as we receive the ash on our foreheads we can give thanks that God can still breathe new life into us even in the dirt and dust and deathliness of our sin.
Another of the captions reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s pride’. Pride is perhaps not quite the right word. But the sign of the cross that we carry is certainly not something that we are ashamed of. At our baptism, Christ claimed us as his own, and so we are glad to be marked with his sign of the cross. Because Jesus took the shame of death on a cross and transformed it into hope and victory, he can also transform the shame of our sinfulness into the triumph over it. 'I shall not boast in anything save the cross of Christ.'
The TV advert ends with one of the children accidentally on purpose painting another’s nose – at first she looks cross, but then starts to smile. The caption reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s forgiveness’. When we have the sign of the cross on our foreheads, we are a walking testimony to the fact that everyone can be forgiven.
We are messy people. The messes we make in our lives are real messes. They are dark and dirty, and if left unchecked they will be the death of us. And God does not condone our mess. It is not that God does not mind about sin – on the contrary, it grieves him that we hurt and abuse ourselves and others, that we deface and corrupt the very air, water and land of this world he has given us. Just as Christ said to the woman in the gospel, ‘go and sin no more’, so he says the same to us: ‘turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’.
But we have a God who for our sake is willing to get his hands dirty. We have a saviour who entered into the mess we made of the world in order that we might be made clean; a saviour who embraced the shame of the cross that our shame could be transformed by his forgiveness; a saviour who sees us for who we really are, mess and all, but rather than condemning us, gives us the chance of a new start.
When Jesus looks up from his drawing in the dust, his glance pierces the soul of the sinful woman, and the souls of the hypocritical crowd. Will we slink away like the scribes and Pharisees, who see so clearly the sins in others but dare not expose their own souls to the all-seeing, yet forgiving face of Christ? Or, like the woman, will we stand here before him, dirty as we are, and let Christ examine our sin, so that we might be forgiven?
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