>Dancing God

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Former lapdancer Anna Nobili has converted and become a nun according to this story. She now dances a different dance for prisoners and hospital patients and says:
Jesus is a God who dances, not one who stands still. It’s not a dance we readily understands.

“God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform”

The idea of a dancing God intrigued 20th century song writer Sidney Carter. His classic hymn Lord of the Dance has been for me a test of a good hymn book. For some editors it is too controversial for inclusion.
Cecil Collins painted a wonderful picture of Jesus dancing on the cross. He’s tapping his feet to the music of the clowns’ procession as he turns his gaze on them and away from the well regimented procession of soldiers who take themselves far too seriously.

God of many breasts

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In the news last week was a man who has fathered a child aged 75 and a woman who has given birth – aged 70 (that’s the Mum, not Benjamin Button). Her name is Raji Deva Lohan – and it’s her first child!But that’s nothing compared to the story from Genesis 17 in our worship this week. Abram was 99. His wife Sarai was regarded (and ?despised) as barren, and they suddenly expect their first child. Not just one – but millions of them! It changes their whole life and identity. Abram becomes Abraham (meaning father of many nations) and Sarai becomes Sarah (meaning “princess” – better than being despised any day!) Together they become known as the father and mother of nations which include Jews, Christians and Muslims (see, we really are brothers and sisters).

Kate Huey’s posts are always worth a read. This week she puts together the opinion of experts who reckon that the Abraham and Sarah stories were written at the time of the Exile in the 6th century BC – when the deported Jews sat down “by the rivers of Babylon and wept when they remembered Zion”. They were so desparate they couldn’t even bring themselves to sing the songs of their homeland. They were powerless. This powerlessness is the backdrop to the Genesis story in which the reader is asked to look back and is given a future tense for their lives – hope and direction.

Reading betwen the lines – OK they were all powerless. So was Abram and Sarai. Try as they might they couldn’t have a baby. Yet at 99 – why 99? – presumably to emphasise just how old and knackered they were – they get their baby/babies. Trust God to do the business – and that gave them their future (and us ours).

Kate Huey refers to the name of God in the story – El-Shaddai. Usually translated as “God Almighty” – in other words “all-conquering” there is an alternative which is God of the mountains – and yet again (according to Valerie Bridgeman Davis) “God of many breasts”. Now even if that is not a correct translation it really is worth playing around with because it contrasts the fertility and generosity of God with the barrenness and powerlessness of human nature for Abram, Sarai, the exiled and all those who can’t feel “at home” in their world.

Barbara Brown Taylor’s sermon on this text, “The Late Bloomer,” makes Abraham and Sarah feel like people we know, who find it hard to believe in the promise or the future. “To live by it, day after day, to see it in the night sky and hear it in your name and see it again in your lover’s eyes. It is a hard thing, to believe in a promise with no power to make it come true. Everything is in the future tense. And yet. What better way to live than in the grip of a promise, and a divine one at that?”

Barbara Brown Taylor reflects that living in the meantime calls us “to live reverently, deliberately, and fully awake: that is what it means to live in the promise, where the wait itself is as rich as its end. All it takes are some regular reminders, because as long as the promise is renewed, the promise is alive, as vivid as a rainbow, as real as the million stars overhead” (“The Late Bloomer,”in Gospel Medicine).

The art of conversation

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>The words ‘sermon’ and ‘homily’ seem to get used interchangeably. I always thought that homilies get preached in Catholic churches or are sermons which aren’t long enough to be sermons. I have also always been rather wary of the power relationship between preacher and hearer and its patronising nature.

Timothy Radcliffe reminded me this morning (in ‘Why go to Church’) that the word ‘homily’ comes from a Greek word ‘homilein’ which means ‘to converse’. Aha! Inclusive language. Everyone converses, but not everyone preaches sermons (you have to be qualified for that!). “Conversation is surely the foundation of any society” writes Radcliffe. “It is by talking together that we overcome misunderstandings, receive and offer forgiveness, grow in sympathy and mutual understanding, take pleasure in each other’s company, and develop a shared language and memories.”

What if what we preach is ‘conversation’? It means ‘listening’ and ‘appreciation’ – by all parties. If conversation is something all of us do, then the Sunday homily should be enabling “the real preaching, the community’s conversations” so that Christian faith becomes embedded in the everyday conversation of our communities, the Word thereby becoming flesh and living among us.

Man of conversation

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Jesus always has time for conversation. He has animated conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, and the man born blind, anyone he meets. He will eat, drink and pass time with everyone: prostitutes, the hated tax collectors, religious leaders, lepers. God’s word became flesh – not, initially, in sermons proclaimed from pulpits, in learned books of theology, but in human conversation.
Timothy Radcliffe: Why go to Church? (p53)

Writing

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At its best the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain and then – and only then – it is handed to you. From the corner of yur eye you can see motion. Something is moving the air and headed your way.

from the Writing Life by Annie Dillard (p75)

>Psalm 78

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>He remembered that they were but flesh ………… so the Psalmist (Psalm 78:39) explains the mercy of God and how God excuses the calamities of human history and human nature. Time and again God rescues his people, but repeatedly the people forget God and become so utterly absorbed in their own needs. But “we are but just flesh”.

This is immensely liberating – the realisation by God that we are just flesh. Who else, or what else, could we be? If we were anything else we too would be gods, and as gods, perfect. Perfection is not an option for us – and the imperfections (and the wrong doing) are the occasions for God’s love of us, and our love for each other. Is it right to think that we are loved only because we are imperfect? If we were perfect we wouldn’t be loved as much as worshipped – and we all discover sooner or later that those who are worshipped and given hero status – soon come tumbling from their perch and their feet of clay smash when they come down to earth. Similalry millions of lives are ruined by those who think themselves “gods” with their divine rights.

However, those who know God’s love for them – in spite of the shortcomings of being fleshly – seem to raise their game as a response to the lover. They become sanctified – or as the saying goes, “those who are loved become lovely – those who aren’t become unlovely”.

>Psalm 78

David HerbertLeave a comment

>He remembered that they were but flesh ………… so the Psalmist (Psalm 78:39) explains the mercy of God and how God excuses the calamities of human history and human nature. Time and again God rescues his people, but repeatedly the people forget God and become so utterly absorbed in their own needs. But “we are but just flesh”.

This is immensely liberating – the realisation by God that we are just flesh. Who else, or what else, could we be? If we were anything else we too would be gods, and as gods, perfect. Perfection is not an option for us – and the imperfections (and the wrong doing) are the occasions for God’s love of us, and our love for each other. Is it right to think that we are loved only because we are imperfect? If we were perfect we wouldn’t be loved as much as worshipped – and we all discover sooner or later that those who are worshipped and given hero status – soon come tumbling from their perch and their feet of clay smash when they come down to earth. Similalry millions of lives are ruined by those who think themselves “gods” with their divine rights.

However, those who know God’s love for them – in spite of the shortcomings of being fleshly – seem to raise their game as a response to the lover. They become sanctified – or as the saying goes, “those who are loved become lovely – those who aren’t become unlovely”.

Ash Wednesday

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According to our Eucharistic (thanksgiving prayer) today is the day when we are led “into the desert of repentance that through a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline we may grow in grace and learn to be your (God’s) people once again.” The Imposition of Ashes reminds us “that we are dust, and to dust we shall return”. On the face of it Ash Wednesday sounds pretty miserable – but wait a minute, for words by Herbert McCabe quoted by Timothy Radcliffe in “Why go to Church“:

If we go to confession, it is not to plead for forgiveness from God. It is to thank him for it … When God forgives our sins, he is not changiing his mind about us. He is changing our minds about him. He does not change; his mind is never anything but loving; he is love.” (from God, Christ and Us)

I came across this brilliant poem thanks to Jenee Woodard’s wonderful work with the Textweek website.

Marked by Ashes

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
halfway back to committees and memos,
halfway back to calls and appointments,
halfway on to next Sunday,
halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with
some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

Walter Brueggemann (b. 1933)

Ash Wednesday

David HerbertLeave a comment

According to our Eucharistic (thanksgiving prayer) today is the day when we are led “into the desert of repentance that through a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline we may grow in grace and learn to be your (God’s) people once again.” The Imposition of Ashes reminds us “that we are dust, and to dust we shall return”. On the face of it Ash Wednesday sounds pretty miserable – but wait a minute, for words by Herbert McCabe quoted by Timothy Radcliffe in “Why go to Church“:

If we go to confession, it is not to plead for forgiveness from God. It is to thank him for it … When God forgives our sins, he is not changiing his mind about us. He is changing our minds about him. He does not change; his mind is never anything but loving; he is love.” (from God, Christ and Us)

I came across this brilliant poem thanks to Jenee Woodard’s wonderful work with the Textweek website.

Marked by Ashes

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
halfway back to committees and memos,
halfway back to calls and appointments,
halfway on to next Sunday,
halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with
some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

Walter Brueggemann (b. 1933)