Author: reverendally

Human, parent, priest, (hymn)writer, painter, vegan, amateur. She/they. Chaplain @catz_Cambridge (views my own). Trying to do justly, love mercy & walk humbly.

Transfiguration

Other cool stuff

We spent out honeymoon on the Isle of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland.  It was early June, well before the summer tourist season, and we rather got the impression that we might be the only visitors to the island. We spent a largely very lazy week, eating a lot of extremely tasty freshly caught poached salmon, and wandering through the brightly-coloured streets of Tobermory. We were slightly more ambitious on one day, however, when we thought it might be nice to hire mountain bikes and explore the whole island.  It was a beautiful day: bright sunshine, blue sky with not a single cloud.  It turned out that mountain biking was harder than it looked: I was too unfit to ride up the hills, and too scared to ride down them. But around the middle of the day, I puffed and panted my way to the top of the biggest hill on the island, we laid down the bikes, and then had a really good look around. 

What we saw was utterly breathtaking.  Just over the crest of the hill was a lake.  There was no wind; the surface of the water was as still as glass, and bluer than the sky.  A kestrel hung in the air, right above the centre of the lake, his reflection captured in the water.

I think we stood like that for about five minutes, in complete silence. I actually cried, it was so perfectly beautiful.  

A really good photographer might dare to try and preserve such a moment in film.  I tried, even though I’m no photographer.  But the picture was nothing like the real thing – the sky and the water of a photograph were never going to be quite blue enough, the silence of a simple printed image could never be as silent as a windless hilltop.  The beauty that we experienced in that moment was for that moment – we couldn’t preserve it, capture it, or keep it for later. 

But what we could do was let it change us. We could let that moment of absolute overwhelming beauty become part of us. We could let it make our world bigger. We could make sure that when we made our way down the hillside and back into town, our faces were still radiant from our encounter with that glimpse of heaven. 

 

 

Ash Wednesday

church resources, sermons

What is it that we are actually doing when we mark the cross in ash on our heads?

For want of a better way of putting it, I think we turn ourselves inside out. For one day, we show each other and ourselves what we’re really like. We put a messy cross on our foreheads to say, publicly, ‘I have mess. I have sin. I am not right. I need help.’

Today is about honesty. About admitting that we’re not perfect. Admitting that there is much in us which, left unchecked, will prove destructive for us, for those around us, and perhaps beyond, too.

Ash Wednesday can be seen as a service that condemns, that concentrates on what is wrong.  But as some of you may have noticed from what I tend to preach, I have this unrelenting urge to find good news in things, and I want to find good news in the ash, too.   When you start looking, there’s lots of it.

The first bit is that this service doesn’t work so well if only one person comes.  If I turned up to preside and nobody else was there, it just wouldn’t work. Why? Because the ash cross is a great leveller. It says, my sin is my own, but I am not alone in being a sinner.  It’s precisely what we see in today’s gospel reading: the woman taken in adultery is not alone. Her sin is her own, but she is not alone in having sinned. That’s the first bit of good news.

The second bit of good news is that although this is the day when we tell ourselves and each other than we are messy people, full of dirt and sin and shame, the fact is that God already knew.  The fact that we are sinful, that humanity as a whole is sinful, is not news to God. He sees us for who we are – perhaps God is the only one in the universe who truly sees us as we really are, inside – and he still loves us. Infinitely. That’s the second bit of good news.

The third bit of good news is that when we receive the ash on our foreheads we are told ‘remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.’  We hear these words and we might remember the second account of creation in Genesis, in which God lovingly puts his hands in the earth and shapes a human being out of the dirt, breathing life into its nostrils.  The fact that we are dust is testament to God’s creativity, and God’s ability to bring life out of that which seems dead.  God has done it once. He can do it again. And again.  That’s the third bit of good news.

The fourth bit of good news is that the ash cross is tangible, and visible. It feels real.  It’s an action which changes us on the inside – the church would call what we do on Ash Wednesday ‘sacramental’.  The classic definition of a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward invisible grace, whereas the ash cross is almost the opposite: an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible lack of grace!  It means that our ‘sorry’ isn’t empty, but feels real.  And that reality is something that needs to be carried forward into our thoughts and words and actions beyond our repentance in the service. The ash reminds us that what we do, our action, the things that people see when they look at us, and what they hear when we speak – these things shape who we are inside as well as changing the world around us. We have a lent’s worth of actions ahead of us that can help us become more who God created us to be.  We may not be able to make good on all our past sins, but our actions and words can bring us closer to being who we are meant to be.  That’s the fourth bit of good news.

And finally, the fifth bit of good news is that we can wipe the ash off our forehead.  It’s not a brand, there for ever as a reminder that we are sinners. It’s a temporary mark, which rubs off to remind us that we sinners who can be forgiven.  Whether you keep your ash on for the rest of the day, or wipe it off later in the service, there comes that moment when you remove the sign of your sin.  At school, on ascension day, we draw a cross in glitter on our foreheads – to remind ourselves and each other that we are called to ‘shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’.  It’s a long way to go till Ascension Day, but that commission, to be the body of Christ, to witness to the peace which can, against all the odds, exist between earth and heaven, and to reveal the glory of God, starts now.  That’s definitely good news.

A Hymn for Candlemas

church resources, hymns

A Hymn for Candlemas (aka the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple)  Tune: Repton. 

Dear Father God, we gather here
In this great house of prayer.
We come just as we are to you
as one who knows us through and through,
and keeps us in your care,
in love beyond compare.

Dear Father God, we praise the name
of Jesus Christ your Son,
The light for all the nations shines,
we see how your salvation binds
all people into one,
and brings your children home.

Dear Father God, we sing your praise
for promises come true.
As young and old our voices raise
and joyfully proclaim, “God’s ways
are heaven breaking through
to make the earth anew.

So Father God, may each of us
go out into the night
to share the joy you give to us,
to praise, to sing, to teach, to bless
all people with your light,
and make the darkness bright.

We praise you, Father, for you own
our future and our past.
Your promised kingdom soon shall come,
and then, when earthly life is done
your love will hold us fast,
in heaven’s peace at last.

New baptism hymn

Other cool stuff

OK, it’s a bit banal, but here goes…
(the tune makes it sound even more banal, because it’s All Things Bright and Beautiful)

Bless this water, bless this child,
Upon this joyful day:
Bless us as we gather here
and lead us on our way.

We hear your voice from heaven,
speak blessings from above,
such words of affirmation,
encouragement and love.

Your faith in us is stronger
than we can ever know,
You see our true potential,
and guide us as we grow.

You give us light in darkness,
and hope when we despair,
You strengthen us in weakness
and hold us in your care.

We pray for peace and purpose,
for happiness and fun,
for health of mind and body,
till life’s adventure’s done.

 

The call of Nathaniel

church resources, sermons

I love the story of the calling of Nathaniel. I love his sense of humour, and his honesty, wondering aloud whether anything good could ever come out of Nazareth (and we can substitute whatever place is the equivalent now!) but also his openness – he does, after all, come and see for himself.

But mostly I love the fact that Jesus picks him out, and seems to know him, perhaps even better than he knows himself.  There’s a painting of Nathaniel by a contemporary artist, in fact, which depicts Nathaniel under the fig tree  naked – a symbol that he has nothing to hide, that Jesus sees him simply for who he is, without pretense.

Undoubtedly, Nathaniel’s call by Jesus is very personal. And because being called is something that happens to us, personally, we might think of vocation as being a very personal thing in the sense of being about us as individuals, even a private matter.

But actually God doesn’t call Nathaniel in isolation.  One of the jobs I have done in the church is to be a vocations advisor – accompanying people as they reflect on their understanding of God’s purpose for them, so Nathaniel was helped by others to hear Jesus’ call.

Think for a moment about your own understanding of God’s call on your life – the purposes that he has for you. Now think about those who led you to be able to listen to what God was saying to you.  If you were Nathaniel, remember who was your Philip.  Remember those who were around you when you first heard the voice of the Lord speaking to you.  Give thanks for them, and give thanks for those who are alongside you as you hear his voice today.  Pray for them, and pray that you might be a Philip for those who have yet to hear, who have yet to follow.

This is true for us as individuals, and it’s true for us as churches.  It is when we listen together that we stand the best chance of hearing what God is calling us to do, and when we act together that we stand the most chance of being able to fulfil our vocation as God’s holy people for God’s needy world.  Often God calls us into something that we can do only when we do so together – and often that we can only work out we need to do when we do our working out together.

When churches work together (locally or nationally or internationally)  each church, through that church’s own life and witness and ministry, reveals something slightly different about what God’s mission is in this place, and how we as his churches might be part of that mission.  Just as Jesus’ disciples in their individual gifts and foibles each brought something unique to Christ’s earthly mission and ministry.

So one of the other things I love about this story of calling is the way that it (I think along with pretty much every calling story in the bible) illustrates that God calls unexpected and ordinary people – the fisherman, the tax collector…

I was once asked by someone if God called everyone, or if he only called special people.  I said, ‘God only calls special people, but everybody is special’.   There is a poem that I often use with my vocations people, which goes like this:

God sends each person into the world
With a special message to deliver,
With a special song to sing for others,
With a special act of love to bestow.
No-one else can speak my message,
Or sing my song, or offer my act of love,
For these are entrusted only to me.

If any of us fails to speak our message or sing our song or offer our act of love, then the world is a poorer place.  Each church also has its song, its message, its act of love – just as God graciously uses our uniqueness as human beings, and even our foibles and our weaknesses, as witnesses to his love and glory, so he also is willing to use the unique and special attributes of his many churches to reveal his love, if we will only let him!  Complete unity between all Christians may well be only a dream this side of heaven, but unity of purpose could be a reality, if each church is to fulfill what God is calling us to do in and for the world.

We – all of us together – are the body of Christ, and in the words of Teresa of Avila, Christ has no body on earth now but ours.  Ours are the hands by which he is to bless, ours are the feet by which he is to go about doing good, ours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on the world.

We can be those hands, those feet, those eyes, in the places where we find ourselves, and we can do it, through the grace of God, if we really are diverse in gifts, but one in purpose.  Amen.