a ministry scrapbook
>Another crisp day for a run – like skating on ice. A bit greedy this morning, trying to run further than I could, and halfway round thinking what a long way there still is to go. That’s always dangerous. The thought comes with tiredness and the temptation is to up the pace and get it over with. Far better to take care with each step and to get there in the end. Who siad life’s a marathon?
>Sometimes we feel that people have to have the “last word” in an argument. It is so annoying! Sometimes I have to do presentations – and I apologise for all those occasions when I’ve appeared to want to have the “last word”. That’s the way it happened in my educational background – lecturers who seemed to have everything buttoned up. What they said really was “the last word”, and there was no chance of comeback or developing what had been presented. The impression given was that you had to go away and “learn your lesson”.
I would rather be giving a “first word” – something to set trains of thought going.
And that’s got me thinking about the first word and the last word. The first word is the Word by whom all things came into being – and the last word is also spoken by God. A word of triumph – “it is completed”. Kingdom come – on earth, just as in heaven. The first and the last – alpha and omega – but thanks be to God who allows us to get a word in edgeways, even if we do make a hell of a din.
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Do you fill a space or create a space?
>One member of our church aged 60+ (his age is important) commented to me at the beginning of last Sunday’s Carol Service that he had sung the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City as a solo at the carol service when he was a boy. I suspect that every year the Carol Service began with Once in Royal …………. Things get like that don’t they? This year we started with “Let all mortal flesh keep silence”. Nobody minded. The world didn’t end and nobody complained that we hadn’t sing Once in Royal David’s City at all.
The change that has upset a lot of people is moving hymn books to a table further in the church – done so that those greeting people can concentrate on greeting instead of giving books out, and so that they don’t have their backs to people as they come in. Also it means that people don’t have to walk past the coffee station at the end of the service to return their books. Old habits die hard and I suppose it’s always been done like that. Some change is noticed – other change slips in unnoticed.
I am old enough to remember Roman Catholic churches having to have central altars, so the priest faced the people when celebrating instead of having his back to everyone – and having to use the vernacular instead of Latin. They managed the change almost overnight. Sometimes it pays to have a Pope!
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>Well – I’m not sure it worked! The Liverpool Nativity was obviously very ambitious but probably fell between the two stools of celebrating Liverpool life and the telling of the Nativity. It was good to see a city celebrating itself (though what say did the citizens have in that?) and the ideal to be “hospitable” was good to highlight. But the plot was naffly political although feasible and lost credibility in trying to be politically relevant. Joseph is an asylum seeker from the beginning, rather than becoming an asylum seeker after Jesus’s birth, and asylum seekers become the target of strong government as opposed to boys under the age of two. I got the feeling that the story was being (ab)used for publicising the Year of Culture. There will be better attempts at retelling the Christmas story in our schools and churches over the next week – including “Come to a Party” – the nativity at Tarvin with so many children enjoying being part of the telling story.
What did come across was the power of government and the vulnerability of the holy family/migrant worker. In today’s Guardian Madeleine Bunting refers to R I Moore’s book on medieval history called “The Formation of a Persecuting Society” suggesting that today’s society is just as likely to be a persecuting society as any. She paralells today’s society with medieval society. One comment (from PetraMB) to her article puts the blame on “the church” but rimbaudbob points out that scapegoating has always been part of human nature, and that Jesus on the cross was scapegoat. Rimbaudbob is saddened that the work of Rene Girard has been ignored on this subject.
The Birth Story Christians treasure is a challenge to how church politics are conducted and how the power should be lived. Only saintly and exceptionally has the challenge been met – but I guess that is also the point of the Christmas story – that we should be so surprised to be so highly favoured, and that God so loves the world that he gives us his life. Why?
I wonder whether persecution is part of wanting to be powerful and whether it’s better to conclude that power is something we can’t really be trusted with. One of the hymns of the early Church praises Jesus for resisting it (Philippians 2:6).
>Well done R. We have known you since you were four – and now, 14 years later, you have given birth to a son. Good luck to you, to R and your partner, and to your Mum and all the family who will be in the supporters’ club.
A long time ago in Bethlehem another baby was born. The baby’s grandparents must have wished it was all otherwise – knowing that bringing a baby into the world is hard enough in itself, let alone when the political powers herd you like cattle (the “round up” in Bethlehem) and when you’ve got a cruel king like Herod breathing down your neck.
Tonight, in the city of Liverpool, the Year of Culture is being launched with the Liverpool Nativity being shown on BBC3. One of the shots shows Mary and Joseph at the bus stop. It looks like they are waiting for the bus to go and “sign on” at the DSS. They have a battered suitcase and plastic bag for their journey and are surrounded by the rubbish of an outer estate bus stop on a cold winter’s day – including overturned shopping trolley.
>Kenneth Stevenson in his book Watching and Waiting: A guide to the celebration of Advent refers to a Christmas sermon preached by Austin Farrer. He made the following observations:
We love the exercise of power in ourselves, it is the citadel of our being, our darling sin. We hate it in our neighbours, and in order to escape from it, we take a pathetic refuge in meaninglessness. . .
I don’t think we hate it in others that much – only when it doesn’t serve our purposes. Power plays an important part in the Christmas story. The power of heaven surrenders itself to the earthly powers. A young girl, her husband and a baby are no match for Herod. The powers of heaven come to their aid when they warn Mary and Joseph that they need to fiind asylum in Egypt – but from birth to death Jesus is in the hands of the powers of the world.
>One of the things I have to do is prepare something (for clergy) on support networks available. While doing this preparation I have been thinking about scarcity and abundance in relation to God. I wonder whether the question about support networks comes from the world f scarcity – in the sense that there aren’t (we believe) supports available to us and therefore we have to go looking for them.
At the heart of the scripture is the “sabbath principle” which is a principle that denies scarcity. Moses taught the sabbath principle to people who – like everyone else – would have made more (bricks/bread whatever), yet they had to have the 7th day off – in the image of God and also trusting that there was enough time and that their lives were made and completed by God.
Grits and Grains 