Category: church resources

Ash Wednesday – a Love-Life-Live-Lent-flavoured sermon

church resources, Love Life Live Lent, sermons

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.

An Ash Wednesday service is a messy one: it involves marking our foreheads with 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.  If a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, then the ash cross is the reverse: an outwards and visible sign of an inward and invisible lack of grace. We sign ourselves with this messy mix of ash and oil because all of us are in a mess.  It helps us be honest about the disparity between what we appear to be and what we feel we are.  Many of us may sometimes feel uncomfortable with the respect that people give us – that we don’t quite match up to the person people think we are – the person we want to be.  When people praise us we may feel, ‘if only they knew…’   So the cross of ash helps us reconcile the person we feel we are with the person that others see.  It helps us remember that God sees us as we are – the good stuff and the not so good stuff – and he still loves us, even having seen the truth. Lent is a time for us to learn to see ourselves just as God does: as beloved sinners.

But the washing powder  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.

One of the key themes of Love Life Live Lent is being creative and imaginative – whether that’s making cakes and sharing them or trying something you’ve never done before: when we do so, we reflect something of our creator God, and we give a little bit of life to the world as well as becoming a little more alive ourselves.

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.

Many of the Love Live Live Lent actions are also about our own identity as human beings and as beloved children of God; learning to be ourselves, making the most of who we are, and giving thanks for the way that we have been blessed – even if it’s just for the food we eat.

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.

Again, within Love Life Live Lent there are actions that bring real peace and reconciliation – between us and other people, and between humanity and the earth.  Ash Wednesday’s action is to say sorry for something we have done wrong: it may be enough simply to say sorry to God, or it may be that there are others who need to hear it too, and we may also need to acknowledge and repent of the harm we’ve done to ourselves, for sin has a habit of harming the sinner, too.

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. We take heart, and take courage, because we believe in a God who already knows the secrets of our hearts.

Guilt is a prison with sin as the bars, trapping us inside our past mistakes, but true repentance allows us to receive the forgiveness that God always offers, and it may even start to rebuild relationships that we had given up on.  Forgiveness is just as real as sin – and indeed is stronger. Life is stronger than death, light is stronger than darkness, and love is stronger than hate.

The actions in LLLL are all about the triumph of life over death, of light over darkness, of love over hatred.  Just as sin harms the sinner, so random acts of kindness, creativity and love can help repair the wounds on the soul.  This Lent, let us ask God to breathe life into our dust, that we may live lives of love, for our own sake, for each other’s sake, and for the sake of God’s world.

Love life live lent: have a pancake party!

church resources, Love Life Live Lent, random thoughts

No doubt there will be pancakes at tonight’s fundraising meeting, but just in case, my daughter and I had some for breakfast.  In fact, I was woken up especially early “because it’s pancake day!” to give me time to make them.

As I groggily mixed the flour and egg and milk and set the frying pan to heat up, it occurred to me that everyone probably has their own favoured pancake recipe.  When I first made pancakes I used the Delia recipe, but these days I don’t weigh or measure anything, I just chuck stuff in a bowl and stir it until it looks right. It generally works, and it suits my personality much better than getting out the kitchen scales and doing things ‘properly’.

Everyone has their own favourite toppings, too. My daughter and I love golden syrup and lemon juice, while one of her friends will only eat pancakes if they are coated in tomato ketchup.  One of the tutors at my theological college used to make the most wonderful orange pancake sauce which I’ve never been able to replicate.  Our taste in food is as unique as we are, clearly, and some of the best pancake parties I’ve been to have been those with a ‘bring and share topping’ rule – enabling each person to try everyone’s favourites, perhaps enjoying something new, perhaps confirming their own preferences.

Whether it’s syrup, lemon juice, orange, or ketchup, there seems little point in trying to be frugal about pancakes.  Their whole function on Shrove Tuesday is to use up some of the luxuries that will be denied during Lent. So making the most of this last ‘feast’ is absolutely related to the way we approach the fast of Lent, whether or not we’re actually going to be giving up a particular food.  ‘Deny yourself’ we are often told at the start of Lent.  But this isn’t about denying who we are – we are still unique people, with unique tastes, preferences and desires. But Lent is a good time for each of us to reflect on how the person we are impacts on those around us and on the wider world.

So much in Love Life Live Lent is not about denying ourselves, but rather about revisiting who we are; doing things a bit differently in the belief that what we do can profoundly affect who we are, as well as affecting others.

As you eat your pancakes (whatever topping you put on them), think about how the person you are, in all your individuality, makes a difference to the world around you, and how, during Lent, you are going to make that impact even more into something which really does change things for the better.

Judgement and Salvation

church resources, sermons

Some thoughts on the readings for Advent 2 (Malachi 3.1-4 and Luke 3.1-6)

Judgement and salvation – two sides of the same coin.

Throughout the Old Testament prophetic tradition is the notion of ‘The Day of the Lord’ – in today’s first reading, it’s ‘The Day of his Coming’ (and I imagine we’re all hearing those words to Handel’s music, just as we do the words from Isaiah quoted in today’s gospel).  The Day of the Lord was both a message of hope – that there would come a time when God would intervene and save his chosen people from the various nations and races that had persecuted them – and a warning – that when the Day came, everyone would be judged, and that included God’s people themselves. Their birth-right, their national identity, their history, would not protect them if their own behaviour was just as worthy of judgement, condemnation and punishment as the behaviour of their oppressors.

Equally, within the tradition of the Day of the Lord is contained the possibility that God’s love and care can be extended far beyond the confines of the chosen people.  Isaiah, in particular, contains many oracles that hint at the eventual ingathering of the nations, drawn by the love and power of God, and converging on the ‘Holy Mountain’.

But our two readings today are about more than judgement and salvation. They are about transformation. We may look on the image of the refiners’ fire and equate it to the fires of hell; we may think of it as a means of punishment, of destruction. But the fire here is not one of punishment, but of purification, it is the purging of everything that is unworthy of God, and unworthy of who we really are, created in his image. It is the liberation of all that is good in us, it is our transformation from unwieldy lumps of rock to pure and precious gold. And God, the master-refiner, is the only one who can truly see within us, through all the stuff that gets in the way, and help us to become who we were always meant to be.

This is God’s judgement.  It’s devastating, but it’s life-giving. At present we are people of dross and gold, but God longs to burn away all our impurities and enable us to shine.  We are fields of wheat and weeds, and God longs for the time when he can pull up and destroy everything about us that will never be fruitful.  This is his judgement.  And this is his salvation.  Perhaps they are not two sides of the same coin, but in fact one in the same thing.  Judgement and salvation together are the transformation that only God can achieve.

Who can stand the day of his coming?  Well, plainly nobody can.  The idea of standing tall and proud while we are transformed so wonderfully is absurd.  We may kneel, or fall, we may be tossed about and overwhelmed, but if we try to stand on our own two feet, resilient and strong, self-reliant and in control, then we cannot possibly embrace the judgement, salvation and transformation that God longs to achieve in us.  We cannot stand in the face of this process. And it’s OK that we can’t.

In the Isaiah passage quoted in Luke’s gospel we also see transformation at work, but it is no longer the personal transformation of our souls, it is the transformation of the whole of creation, it’s almost a re-creation of the whole earth, a re-alignment of tectonic plates, with mountains sinking into the earth’s crust and valleys rising up in response, so that the winding roads which previously picked their way through the rise and fall of the landscape can now run straight.

It’s a metaphor, of course it is. There is nothing wrong with hills, or valleys, or indeed of roads with corners. But the transformation of the landscape is a global picture of the transformative power of God, the power to re-create, to re-form a world in which nothing can get in the way of God’s self-communication to his world. There are no barriers, nothing blocking our view of God, nothing that can stand in the way of God coming to us.  His path is straight, and his purpose is absolute.

We live in a complex world. Our life’s journeys are full of twists and turns, of uphill struggles, and descents, often into the valley of the shadow of death.  Even as we look out over the flat fenland fields (and that passage always makes me think of the road between Earith and Sutton, on the way of Ely), we may wish, sometimes, that our journey of life were a little more like that.  Few distractions, few gear changes, few challenges, nothing unexpected, because we can see for miles. A journey in which we can clearly see our destination and head towards it, just as we can see the Cathedral at Ely on the horizon when we are still miles away from it.

But there is a great deal of transforming to be done before that time.  There is much in us, as well as in the metaphorical landscape, that blocks our view of God, or that blocks other people’s view of God.  There is much twisting and turning in our own journey of faith, and there is much dross mingled with our gold.  We are in dire need of transformation, all of us, and this is a time of year when we’re encouraged to admit that.

But rather than write off this transformation as merely a future moment, promised long ago but yet to be fulfilled, and pinning our hopes on this future ‘Day of the Lord’, however painful it may be fore us, might we instead look for the signs that just like the days of creation, the day of the Lord is a long, long, process, and the judgement and transformation are not just for the future, but are happening right now, if we are willing to submit to them? Every time we meet together as God’s people we bring before him our sins, and we ask him to purify our hearts and lives.  We bring before him the complexity of our lives and ask him to show us a path through it all.

God is at work transforming us, and transforming this world right now.  All around us there are hints and glimpses of this process. Even as we look towards its ultimate completion, we can give thanks for the fact that God’s work of judgement and salvation is well under way, and that we are very much part of it – just as much as Malachi, as Isaiah, as Luke, and as John the Baptist were in their own day and in their own way.

How do we worship? And why?

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It’s commonly acknowledged that personality type affects the way that we learn, but surely then it is also a major factor in many other aspects of life, too?

I came across a very interesting piece of research the other day, about how our preferred styles of worship relate to our personality type. You can take part in the research by completing a short survey, accessible through the main site here.

The more people who complete the survey the more significant will be the research’s findings – have fun!

Pray for the ABC-to-be

church resources, Other cool stuff, random thoughts

There are many things about which one might pray at the moment, and while I’m not advocating sacrificing any of them in favour of this particular issue, I do think it’s important.  Please, if you pray, pray for the newly-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Rt Revd Justin Welby, currently Bishop of Durham. If you want to know more about him, I can recommend this thoughtful article.

The Church of England does not have a stunning track record for spotting and encouraging prophets, but I am starting to think that we are living in a time that needs prophets more than ever – we need prophets within and outside the church, who can help us see the wood for the trees and start to become the sort of church that God would like to have in the world. And that, in turn, will start to enable the church to become the prophetic voice that the world also needs.

Increasingly, I am afraid of the institution of the church – the sheer weight of it, the sluggish speed of its decision making, the baggage that it carries around, often seeming to leave no hands free actually to be the body of Christ and to undertake his work of blessing and healing and reconciling. We are ‘busy with many things’ and I suspect that many of us do not feel that there is enough slack in the system for us to make brave, prophetic choices about what church looks like and feels like and how church actually works at a local, let alone national or international level. It is as if we have imprisoned the body of Christ in an institution.  Financially, the church is in trouble.  We may well not be able to sustain the standard of living to which we have been accustomed, but when the bailiffs come round they cannot take our silver (because we’re not able to sell it) – instead they repossess our servants (our ministers) leaving half-empty houses full of riches, and nobody to care for them.

OK, so I’m having a bad day, clearly. But even on a good day, I worry. I worry that our new ABC will be the one who presides over the end, and that makes me want to pray for him. But equally I worry that we will continue to limp along for the next 10 years, deluding ourselves that change isn’t necessary, and keeping up with the trappings of our former glory until there’s suddenly nothing left and we all get jobs feeding the pigs.

We need, urgently, to rediscover what God wants us to be and to do.  The question for me is, can our new Archbishop help us get our act together?  Please?

OK rant over.